
Extinction Rebellion: Nuclear power 'only option' says former spokeswoman - sandGorgon
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54103163
======
jamescun
Nuclear was perhaps the correct option 20 years ago.

A nuclear power plant can easily take a decade to build (Hinkley C, announced
2010, approved 2016, generation expected 2025), how many decades will it take
to build enough plants to replace our current fossil fuel based generation?

It is time we don't have anymore. We should now be focusing renewables and,
more cruicially, storage.

~~~
zpeti
The IPCC predicts 2 degrees of temperature increase by 2050, which is the same
as between 1950-2000.

I believe they also think world GDP _increase_ (not actual GDP) might be 6%
less due to this, but don't quote me on that.

This is the number 1 authority on climate change.

While there are risks associated with that increase, it won't be the end of
the world. Despite what the sensationalist media says, or democratic
politicians and 15 year olds predicting the end of the world in 12 years. That
is simply not true. The world will not become a ball of flame, in a few
decades. Not even the UN thinks so.

There is plenty of time to build nuclear power plants, if that's how we wanted
to deal with this issue.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Are you sure GDP is the right metric to be looking at?

Suppose there was some event that killed all homeless people - it might not
affect GDP much. Should we do let such event happen and conclude it's no big
deal?

~~~
imtringued
Climate change will primarily affect Asian and African countries. There will
be the largest refugee crisis ever but nothing a bullet to the head can't fix.

Westerners, on the other hand, will just stay at home thanks to AC and pretend
everything is fine.

Of course GDP won't be a big deal. By the time the worst effects are there the
Chinese population will have aged to the point where getting rid of the
elderly is better for the GDP than keeping them.

~~~
dispat0r
You should not lump all western nations together. In northern Europe AC
doesn't happen at home for the most part. Here in Germany it's a luxury
because of the high prices for electricity.

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smhg
I think it would be a good idea to put the first 2 words at the end of the
title to make it less sensational?

~~~
sandGorgon
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is the name of the org
-[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_Rebellion)

~~~
smhg
But they aren't saying this if I understand correctly? Only someone formerly
affiliated with them?

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lawlessone
I'm not really a fan of ER, calls itself a rebellion and then has the most
milquetoast performances that could scarcely be even called a protest.

~~~
pjc50
And yet they've got Priti Patel condemning them, putting them on the PREVENT
list: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-
extinctio...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-
rebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance) and more
recently talking up banning them entirely. It looks like their recent protest
against the Murdoch press hit a nerve.

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LatteLazy
It seems like the environmental movement spends an enormous amount of time and
energy arguing over small details over what we should do (how much of
electrical energy should come from nuclear). Meanwhile we do nothing because
people who don't want to are a majority. So what's the point in arguing?

~~~
pjc50
Much of the older environmental movement was anti-nuclear first. Before global
warming became a key issue the big threat was the instant obliteration of a
large fraction of humanity by nuclear weapons, and since civilian power and
weapons were tightly linked this led to campaigning against nuclear power.
There were also lots of issues with waste dumping.

This goes all the way back to the French government murdering a protestor and
sinking a ship to suppress protests; the _Rainbow Warrior_.

~~~
LatteLazy
It just seems like a convenient thing for people to be tribal over, while as a
whole they achieve nothing. There's is a scene in red dwarf where there is a
holy war over the colour of the hats people should wear. This is the same
thing as far as I can tell.

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aaron695
If you don't know why Zion Lights about turn is interesting, it's because of
this well known disastrous interview -

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3kJwQBZOkM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3kJwQBZOkM)

I have to say, I'm quite surprised and happy, it seems there is hope yet.

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webreac
We have passed the peak of oil production. Nuclear is the only solution to
mitigate the crisis we are going to face. I think we will need to get rid of
nuclear at long term (like 50 years). But for the next 20 years (probably 40),
we need nuclear.

~~~
pjc50
You can't get rid of nuclear in 50 years, the decay products take centuries to
become safe.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-53595839](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
wales-53595839) "Trawsfynydd was shut down in 1991 after operating for a
quarter of a century. Magnox said it still expected the site to be completely
cleared by the 2083 target."

~~~
input_sh
We have one long term nuclear waste facility in Finland (expected to be
operational in 2023). It can handle about a hundred years of waste from an
associated power plant before being completely buried. It was made because the
Finnish law requires nuclear waste produced in Finland to be disposed of
domestically.

I don't really know if any other country with nuclear power plants have any
sort of a plan for what to do with it.

------
pvaldes
Not, Not the only.

There are a lot of room for improvement in using energy better. Cars do not
need to spend so much fuel as before, and there is room for improvement in
isolation of houses so they don't need so much energy.

None of those are related with nuclear energy but would reduce the climatic
problem just now, not in ten years, without putting a low probability but
catastrophic collateral effect in the middle of the road for our grandsons.

In any case with or without nuclear, with the highest wildfires registered in
the history in Russia, Australia, Brazil and US (2019-2020) we either focus
and solve the arsonism crimes, predatory logging, and environmental lack of
water problems or we aren't going anywhere. Deliberate arsonism should be
reclassified worldwide as crime against (the future of) humanity. If we can
bomb a whole city in Irak, we should be able to drop water in California or
Canberra.

~~~
pjc50
> If we can bomb a whole city in Irak

Notwithstanding the human and archaeological impact of this, the environmental
impact was pretty terrible as well. The oil consumption of all those tanks and
planes can't have been small, as well as the burning oilfields that blackened
the sky and all the depleted uranium rounds littering the country.

~~~
pvaldes
You have a point here. I'll rephrase it. If we can bomb a whole city in Irak,
we should be able to stop bombing cities also. Is a much easier task and would
help also to fix the climate problem.

Has anybody calculated how many greenhouse effect gasses are released when
moving and dropping a bomb?

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gralx
The world's supply of containment elements beryllium, niobium, zirconium,
yttrium, and hafnium would be exhausted within ten years to thirty years if we
were to produce enough nuclear power plants to supply our 15TW energy diet,
assuming all other industrial uses of those elements were to cease and no
advances in engineering were to provide alternatives.[0] To obtain one-tenth
of our diet, we could get from 100 years to 300 years out of nuclear power
under those same assumptions, exhausting those materials for the duration of
our species due to irradiation of the containment materials.

If nuclear is a stop-gap measure worth pursuing, then we must face dire
resource limitations.

[0] Derek Abbott. "Is Nuclear Power Globally Scalable?" Proceedings of the
IEEE, October 2011

~~~
DuskStar
> exhausting those materials for the duration of our species due to
> irradiation of the containment materials.

Not going to comment on the rest of this, but I'm pretty sure we could reclaim
those rare-earths if we really wanted to.

~~~
gralx
Since speeding up the half-life of the radioactive elements is off the table,
what do you propose?

~~~
DuskStar
I propose that 99.9% of the rare earths have not undergone nuclear changes,
and so could be separated out. If there are +neutron changes that create
unstable isotopes, that would be hard - but ones that resulted in fast beta
decay or fission would be easy.

~~~
gralx
Problems with transporting this large quantity of radioactive material (these
elements being only a small fraction) to separating facilities and their
subsequent handling are obvious, but the stakes are high enough that they're
worth considering if what you say is true. Do you you think it's feasible on
an industrial scale and without careful laboratory controls?

~~~
DuskStar
I think the issues with reprocessing low-level nuclear waste (which is what I
think this would be) would be more political and economic than practical. But
if we truly were running out of rare earths? Both of those would go away.

That being said, I would rather live near the power plant than the
reprocessing facility. MUCH rather. But another few square miles of superfund
site is a fantastic trade for the coral reefs of the world.

------
kasperni
My heart says no to nuclear power. My brain says yes.

~~~
coldtea
My reasoning says regarless of the technical merits in theory, people have
managed to mess every kind of nuclear reactor setup, have been saying for
decades "this time with the new design it's different", and have a horrible
track record of nuclear waste storage/disposal (or lack thereof).

~~~
wcoenen
I think the concerns around nuclear waste storage are a little overblown. A
lot of nuclear waste is stored on site, which is an indication of how
incredibly little of it is produced. Compare that to the hundreds of millions
of tons (!) of toxic coal ash that are produced and dumped somewhere annually.
Surely trading millions of tons of coal ash for a few tons of nuclear waste
would be an improvement?

~~~
Tepix
You are not considering how long this stuff will be around and how dangerous
it is.

That's like comparing a stockpile of bombs and comparing it to a single atomic
bomb.

~~~
wcoenen
A dump of coal ash will contain high levels of lead, mercury, cadmium,
chromium, arsenic, and selenium. Which will either slowly leach into ground
water and water ways (sometimes abruptly by dam failures) or must be kept
contained forever.

Heavy metal toxicity may be less dangerous than contamination with radioactive
isotopes. But it's not clear to me that the waste rich in heavy metals is
preferable if there's millions of times more of it. Because of the smaller
scale, radioactive waste could just be put in a big building with some armed
guards and regular inspections. Coal ash cannot be kept contained to that
degree.

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Krasnol
> Ms Lights said she has since taken a role at campaign group Environmental
> Progress UK, whose campaigns include supporting the building of the Sizewell
> C nuclear power station in Suffolk.

So she got a job at a nuclear lobby organisation.

This is great for her. I'm not sure the lobby will able to pay until her
retirement but maybe she can make the jump back into renewables.

------
ZeroGravitas
It seems odd that extinction rebellion need to do crazy stunts like glue
themselves to tube trains to get in the papers, yet someone who leaves and
says its unreasonable to abandon fossil fuels gets featured across multiple
publications.

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nix23
Why does she wear a kryptonite amulet?

------
ourlordcaffeine
As someone who works in the energy industry: it isn't.

