
Environmentalist Says Only Nuclear Power Can Save Us Now - darepublic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9AGx2q_F_0
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wcoenen
In the video Shellenberger says that he's not against a carbon tax, but that
it's too unpopular and therefore not realistic.

Weird that he doesn't realize that the same applies to nuclear. Probably even
more so.

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mac01021
I wonder what the Venn diagram looks like of people for/opposed to each of
those two things.

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mips_avatar
Without Nuclear power the US is going to move backwards on greenhouse gas
goals. Right now nuclear makes up 18% of US electricity generation and
renewables make up 6%. Almost all those nuclear plants are scheduled for
decommission in the next 15 years. So even if we quadruple renewable energy
generation greenhouse gas emissions won’t go down.

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jammygit
According to a professor a few years ago, nuclear power has a maintainability
problem: a reactor is only good for x (50?) years, so you have to rebuild them
perpetually. Since the construction and cleanup are very complex, it isn’t
feasible to power the earth with nuclear. Only solar seems able to scale
enough, iirc

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Wowfunhappy
Huh, can anyone confirm the 50 year number?

I think powering the earth via nuclear reactors in perpetuity has problems,
but what we really need is a power source for the next century or so.
Hopefully by then, we'll have more efficient solar panels, or fission, or
something else.

What we desperately need is _time_.

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foxyv
50 years is actually pretty good. Most coal and natural gas power generating
facilities last about 30 years. Solar plants are closer to 20 years.

Nuclear's problem in the US isn't so much the lifetime of a plant as the
difficulty in constructing new plants and consignment of waste. There isn't
much political will in either major US political party to allow these problems
to be solved. As a result getting a new plant approved and constructed within
a reasonable budget is close to impossible. Oil/natural gas companies hate
them and environmentalist organizations hate them.

The only real support nuclear has is the military because it's so useful for
ships and submarines.

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ZeroGravitas
It's not clear from their recent stories on the topic whether Reason actually
would admit to believing in Climate Change.

They certainly don't recommend doing anything crazy, like a Republican backed
carbon tax. And they're very sure that oil companies shouldn't be held
financially responsible.

But apparently nuclear is the solution to this non-problem?

That kind of suggests to me that they know nuclear isn't the solution.

[https://reason.com/tag/climate-change/](https://reason.com/tag/climate-
change/)

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banku_brougham
Just finished watching Chernobyl, all I can say is that if what some
environmentalists say about nuclear being the only option is true, we are
completely screwed.

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ncmncm
"Some environmentalists".

Others, not so much.

