If you want a good example of the hysteria the enviro-left can whip up regarding nuclear energy, go check out the comments to this post in which someone was evil enough to suggest that maybe we consider a second look at nuclear energy. He didn’t propose building plants. He didn’t propose putting one in anyone’s back yard. He suggested re-considering nuclear power. Some snippets:
Species extinction and ecosystem destruction are far more important issues than global warming, but anthropocentric humans who’ve created this problem (including, unfortunately, many environmentalists), are willing to sacrifice the rest of the planet in an attempt to save our destructive way of life. We should forget global warming and concern ourselves with the root causes of ecological and environmental problems. If we don’t, we’ll destroy so many other species and ecosystems that we’ll become extinct, anyway.
I confess, I am guity. Any discussions I have regarding human energy consumption are anthropocentric.
It’s truly shocking that the Grist — which I usually enjoy — would give a single pixel in support of nuclear energy. It’s worse than shocking — it’s irresponsible.
Discussion and reasoned debate are shocking. The parties on both sides of this issue seem to have dug in, fortified positions. For a critique of the Bush Energy policy, head here.
This is, to many, not a debate on energy, but a debate on the American system:
Uncontrolled growth is defined as cancer, and that’s what capitalism advocates. You’re right, I don’t like the current American system, I like the one that was here 500 years ago before the European invaders murdered the indigenous people, stole their land, and destroyed it to enrich themselves with material things.
There are ways that we can change human behavior, but we are never going to change human nature, and attempts to massively overhaul the way of life we have grown accustomedto are doomed to fail. Even our ‘green’ technologies drain enormous energy resources- check out the network effect of energy consumption and the internet. Every time you access a website, an ftp, etc., anywhere, you aren’t just consuming the energy produced by your machine.
There has to be a middle ground- we aren’t going to move back into caves and hunter gatherer societies, and no matter how many times those on the hard left claim that is not what they want, it is, in its essence, what they are proposing. They should be as marginalized in this debate as those who think we can drill our way out of this mess.
*** Update ***
One more time, I can not re-iterate enough that nuclear energy is not the same technology it once was- read this on pebble-bed nuclear power plants in China and read this on waste disposal by Toren Smith. Of Course, it is not helpful when the jackasses at the DOE and US Geological survey lie out their asses and fabricate data for the computer modeling of Yucca Mountain.
ppgaz
Good post, John.
Unblinking opposition to nuclear power is mostly grounded in memories of the 1970’s. The technology was prehistoric, and the nuclear industry’s attitude was just as dogmatic as the anti-nukes became, partly out of necessity, in order to oppose them. Nothing breeds rigidity like … rigidity.
Well, if we can have really safe and clean nuclear power now (and I think we can), then there is no reason not to pursue it. The problem is, flames of opposition are fanned by the fact that much of that opposition is fear of big, rich corporate interests who lie, cheat and steal, as it is to the technology itself. Big, rich and dishonest corporations, in league with corrupt government, are not trivial concerns. THAT’s why the “environuts” do what they do.
The technology is ready. Is government ready? Is corporate governance ready? Honestly, I don’t know. But the Enron debacle does not exactly build confidence.
Sarah
Unfortunately, it’s no longer up to us. We have waited too long to implement alternatives to the oil economy, and a massive overhaul of the life we have grown accustomed to is on it’s way whether we like it or not. The truth is, there is no viable alternative right now. To build enough nuclear plants (which admittedly I hate – and I live ten miles from one) in order to run our economy the way are are used to would take decades. We don’t have that long.
odograph
Have you ever seen those graphs of per-capita energy conumption before and after the 70’s oil shocks?
I think it is pretty clear that we can be quite responsive.
(As I’m sure you are aware one of the reasons OPEC has had a low and a HIGH target on oil prices is that they didn’t want to shock us again. If THEY believe that we can reduce our energy usage enough to hurt them, why don’t we just do it?)
ppgaz
I live 20 miles downwind from a big one. The fellers who put it there had in mind selling power to adjacent states, and got cheap land … directly upwind from a huge population center. Things like that are why people oppose nuclear power. We sit here and take the risk (unwarranted risk … the plant could have been built downwind from the big population center, but at higher cost …) so that people in California can sit around and figure out how Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to get it to them cheaper (I can hardly believe that I am saying that; it’s a crazy world we live in).
Anyway, a relatively modest reversal of the curve of consumption would make a huge difference too. I cut my electric bill by 30% by using shade and insulation. I moved 3 miles from my work, my commute is practically nothing. I don’t have a gas guzzler.
odograph
ppgaz – I’m in California and I didn’t wait. I cut my energy use in half, and it was easy. I’m not even derpived. My cars are faster and my TV is bigger.
It is just choosing efficient products.
Christie S.
I’m all for promoting Nuclear energy as soon as we figure out a way to a) produce it that doesn’t inflict harm on the surrounding areas and b)dispose of the waste products in a better manner than “bury it and forget about it”.
ppgaz
Well, as the only card-carrying Blue Dog Democrat here, and a proponent of nuclear energy …. I say: God gave us the gift of Nevada. No offense to Nevadans, but we can bury the waste there. Hey, you still have gambling.
Toren
Ah, the “peaceful natives living in harmony with nature” myth.
Let me quote:
“Personally, I have a clear and uncomplicated attitude to the whole business. The white man took North America from the Indians, by means frequently foul. As a result, we have a civilized nation here, with laws and legislatures, with libraries and hospitals, with colleges and police departments and TV talk shows and orthodontists and supermarkets and second-hand bookstores and gun clubs and lawns and swimming pools. If the thing had not happened, North America would be vegetating in barbarism, as it did for the previous several millennia, with none of the above. I like the above, all of them. I don’t want to live in a society with no law but blood revenge, with no medicine or sanitation, with no books or computers, with a 30-something median lifespan, with a famine every five years, with ritual public torture, human sacrifice and chronic tribal warfare. Far as I am concerned, civilization is the bee’s knees, and barbarism stinks. Yes, I know how it was done, and I can’t say I altogether approve. But it was done, and I am glad it was done.”
–John Derbyshire, NRO, June 28th 2002
Toren
Christie: both of those problems have been solved for over thirty years. Reactors like Westinghouse 459s have a 100% flawless operational record, even in places like France and India. Newer designs like pebble-bed and PIUS are basically unbreakable.
Waste? Reprocess, vitrify, bury in Yucca, then destroy with fusion-powered plasma furnaces in 40 or 50 years.
Half Canadian
Toren, whose to say that in 100 years we don’t have another purpose for the nuclear waste? Like space travel?
The charges of fraud with Yucca are maddenly vague. What was fabricated? They’ve never stated what the problem was. I think that this is being played for for Reid’s sake and nothing else.
Christie S.
Toren, thanks for the info. I’ll go check that out.
Randolph Fritz
“we aren’t going to move back into caves and hunter gatherer societies, hard left claim that is not what they want, it is, in its essence, what they are proposing.”
NO, IT IS NOT.
Really, there are serious efforts underway to answer the objections you make and there have been for decades. Please, please, please–that hasn’t been a hard left position since Karl Marx, who criticized it unmercifully. Most of the politically astute left is very well aware that the 21st century, at least, is going to be urban.
There are a lot of sorts of sustainable technology that don’t involve going back to hunter/gatherer societies; the research projects begun decades ago are bearing fruit, and there is no doubt that more research and change is possible.
You might want to mosey over to http://www.worldchanging.com for a look at some current thought in this area. Or take a look at some of the green modernist design at http://www.fosterandpartners.com.
There’s a lot more of this out there.
bago
You can design reactors so that leaks are impossible, barring UFO attack.
When oil hits 80 dollars a barrel, it will seem damn cheap to be able to provide energy to a city for a year with just 200 pounds of fuel.
People that oppose nuclear energy are people that can’t do math.
ape
JC –
This mischaracterises ‘the enviro-left’. In fact, there is great division amongst greens on nuclear energy, but many self-styled radical environmentalists are very pro-nuclear.. with good reason:
Even a worst case scenario for nuclear accidents would not be much worse than the number of people killed in coal mines each year (c3000 in China alone).
And that’s before we start talking about global warming. (In which regard: I saw an estimate that fires in China’s coal mines, which have been burning for decades, emit more Co2 per year than all US auto emissions.)
Nuclear is a potential disaster, coal is an actual catastrophe.
None of this refutes the comments above to the effect that we should try to be less wasteful. Nuclear power is of course only part of the solution.
Randolph Fritz
“You can design reactors so that leaks are impossible, barring UFO attack.”
I am less concerned, really, about accidents, than I am about incompetence and malice. I really doubt there is such a thing as a terrorist proof nuke, and I am sure there is no such thing as a terrorist-proof nuclear fuel chain. And, hey, let us be glad that Enron owned no nukes. So I am sure that nuclear power on the planetary surface is an inherently risky technology, and likely to remain so.
That said, we are in a very bad environmental situation, and the risk might be appropriate if undertaken as part of a planetary ecological management plan. This is as big-government, though, as big-government can get. We’re talking world government here–world government with great big teeth and control of the nuclear fuel chain. And even this advocate of world government looks at that prospect with dismay. Conservative? hell, no!
Terry Finley
What are all the alternative ways to produce energy?
Thanks for the blog.
Terry Finley
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