Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
Swedish teenager Ia Anstoot says group’s ‘unscientific’ opposition to EU nuclear power serves fossil fuel interests
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Anti-nuclear people in here arguing about disasters that killed a few k people in 50 years. Also deeply worried about nuclear waste that won't have an impact on humans for thousands of years, but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
They're bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
The biggest enemy of the left is the left
People tend to overrate the harms from potential changes, while simultaneously vastly underrating the harms that already exist that they’ve gotten used to.
This is the most wise thing I've read today. We all know it, but it needs to be said more.
A lot of the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the 80s when the concerns were a lot more valid (and likely before half the pro-nuclear people in this thread were born).
But blaming people on social media for blocking progress on it is a stretch. They're multi-billion dollar projects. Have any major governments or businesses actually proposed building more but then buckled to public pressure?
Anyway, I'm glad this conversation has made it to Lemmy because I've long suspected the conspicuous popularly and regularity of posts like this on Reddit was the work of a mining lobby that can't deny climate change anymore, but won't tolerate profits falling.
At least part of the billion dollar cost is the endless court fights and environmental impact reports before you can even break ground.
Like every other piece of infrastructure. Are you actually advocating that people should just be able to build power plants wherever they want?
No, I'm saying the opposition to nuclear plants is uniquely strident. It's almost easier to get a new coal plant built. And it shouldn't be.
Okay sure, I can see how that would plausibly be true, even if I haven't bothered to check it genuinely is.
But why were "environmental impact reports" lumped in with your criticism of the process?
Usually the only people throwing tantrums over those are property developers upset they can't bulldoze forests full of endangered species or heritage buildings and replace them with high density housing.
An EIR covers the effects to the human environment as well as the wild. So the effect to land value and perceived fear of the neighbors are part of that, regardless of any actual risk.
I saw one article which said a company spent $500 million just on the design and bureaucracy to file an application. Before a single shovel of dirt was moved.
An EIR covers the effects to the human environment as well as the wild. So the effect to land value and perceived fear of the neighbors are part of that, regardless of any actual risk
Yes, I am aware of what an EIR is and what it covers. I'm also aware of their shortcomings, but I'm also aware of exactly who would make hundreds of millions of dollars (and at whose expense) if they were scrapped.
I saw one article which said a company spent $500 million just on the design and bureaucracy to file an application. Before a single shovel of dirt was moved.
How much did that company spend on articles complaining about how much they spent?
The poor little things clearly had $500 million to spend and still believed they could profit from the building despite that.
You also danced around how much of that was actually spent on an EIR and what the context of it was, so deliberately that it makes me wonder if it's in your self interest to spread FUD.
What exactly does "design and bureaucracy" mean? Site selection, zoning approval, architectural design, engineering, EIRs, geotechnical surveys, legal fees for contracts and submissions could all fall under that extremely broad category.
Mining lobby? You realize that most of what is mined are the roughly 2 billion tons of iron ore annually. While uranium mining is what... 50,000 tons a year?
There is no version of Earth where mining executives say "It's fine, our profits are already profitable enough".
Astro-turf is cheap and uranium is expensive -- something you conviently left out to focus purely on tonnage, which bears little relation to profitability.
My parents, who are boomers, are vocally anti nuclear because when they were children through young adulthood, had weekly nuclear drills. Stop, drop and roll. They thought it was ridiculous, and believe that all nuclear technology should be destroyed as it leads to nuclear weapons. They also strongly believe that the human race will make itself extinct in a nuclear war any moment now.
The biggest enemy of the left is the right, it's just that everyone on the left can agree that they're terrible so it doesn't come up in discourse too much, whereas the people who are on your side but want to do things a different way will take up much more of your attention.
If socialists and liberals worked together in Germany, the Nazis would not have come to power. It's their bickering that led to liberals giving Hitler power in a coalition and socialists famously saying "after Hitler, us".
Even when there's a fascist takeover, it's enabled by the left of center arguing with itself.
Firstly, liberals are not left of centre, they are the original capitalists, the ideology that socialism was built in opposition to.
Secondly, Liberals will always side with fascists when push comes to shove. To liberals, Fascists are distasteful, bigots and extremists, however, fascism does not threaten the liberal system. It does not threaten the liberal ruling class, at least inherently, whereas socialism is an existential threat to that class. To a liberal economy, to a liberal nation.
And to Germany's communist party, fascists were also distasteful, bigots, and extremists, and they would lead to the collapse of capitalism.
"As late as June 1933 the Central Committee of the [KPD] was proclaiming that the Hitler government would soon collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions, to be followed immediately by the victory of Bolshevism in Germany." - The Coming if the Third Reich, Richard Evans
I'm not going to make some ridiculous statement however that leftists will always side with fascists when push comes to shove. German liberals tolerated fascists to get political power, and German communists tolerated fascists to get political power. They were both fucking idiots for doing so.
You're correct that on the entire spectrum of political theory that liberals are on the right. However, on that grand spectrum, liberals are also authoritarian, and communists are also authoritarian -- because the entire notion of having a centralized government is authoritarian. It's pointless to look at the spectrum from an objective, academic position, because it's totally incongruous with the actual reality of things. When it comes to the scope of Western politics, liberals are left of center, and most tend towards positions of complete civil equality for everyone, which is libertarian in Western scope.
Arguing that liberals are actually on the right is like arguing that we never actually have negative temperatures in winters because Kelvin is always positive and it's impossible to have negative Kelvin. You're technically correct, but for realistic purposes it's utterly meaningless.
And to Germany's communist party, fascists were also distasteful, bigots, and extremists, and they would lead to the collapse of capitalism.
This would be a good mirroring response if it had any amount of truth to it. To the Communists in Germany, the fascists were their mortal enemy. The two parties were fighting in the streets. The Communists saw the fascists as a capitalist system, they certainly were not under the impression that fascism would bring about the end of capitalism.
A declaration by the Communists that the Fascists would collapse under their own contradictions is not evidence to the contrary, or evidence that the German communists tolerated the fascists.
Liberal and libertarian are not the same thing and cannot be conflated, and authoritarianism isn't anything with a state.
I swear, the political compass has rotted people's brains.
But that's kind of part of the problem though... By resorting to violence they destroyed democracy in Germany by the legitimizing the authority of the state.
As cited by the University of Cambridge:
“Smash the Fascists…” German Communist Efforts to Counter the Nazis, 1930–31 Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
By James J. Ward
"For most historians in the West, the German Communist Party (KPD) belongs among the gravediggers of the Weimar Republic. Other culprits certainly abounded; still, the Communists are held to have made a major contribution to the fall of Weimar by preaching violence, promoting civil disorder and economic disruption, and deliberately trying to weaken the republic's chief supporters, the Social Democrats (SPD). With such policies, Western scholars have charged, the Communists in effect collaborated with the Nazis and their allies on the right to bring about the destruction of Germany's first parliamentary democracy."
They're bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
I really don't get this "nuclear as stepping stone" argument. Nuclear power plants take up to ten years to build. Also (at least here in Germany) nuclear power was expensive as hell and was heavily subsidized.
We have technology to replace coal and gas: Wind, solar, geothermal, etc. Why bother with nuclear and the waste we can't store properly...?
Because none of those (except hydro and geothermal, but those are both extremely location dependent) will deal with the baseload power generation we need. And don't just say we will make more batteries, lithium is already getting more expensive, and there may be global shortages in the next few years.
Because none of those (except hydro and geothermal, but those are both extremely location dependent) will deal with the baseload power generation we need.
Is this the problem though? I mean: The sun is shining somewhere at all times and the wind is blowing somewhere at all times. Energy is being produced. The problem is either storing it (okay, batteries are expensive, I get it) or better: distributing it.
In Germany we have the problem that we are producing a surplus of wind energy in the north but currently we are not able to distribute the energy into the south of Germany which results in needing gas power plants in the south while at the same time shutting down wind generators in the north. This is obviously bad.
Upgrading our grid would solve this problem and would vastly reduce our need for gas energy. This is costly but is far from impossible.
Until we got a worldwide grid and cheap superconductor distribution, there will be gaps in coverage if you rely on just solar and wind. Of course there are many times when we have too much supply, but it's not all the time.
I swear you lot saw one 15 minute video made by some 17 year old about how nuclear is safe and now you just spout the same 3 or points over and over again without any critical understanding.
I love how this person made a good argument about energy storage and you just responded with speculation and an insult, not actually addressing the point. If it's the same 3 points, you should be able to perfectly counter their argument without resorting to an ad hominem attack.
and ive made that response dozens of time before. Hence why im making that comment.
Or you don't actually have an argument and are posturing.
Well for one he's implying chemical batteries are the only way to store energy, which is disingenuous and not a good argument, pumped storage is a proven, relatively cheap and widely known technology. and then the whole "BaSeLoAd" argument which is just literally just a bullshit buzzword the fossil fuel industry uses to try and make renewables seem less reliable.
So please wont you forgive me for not engaging the guy spewing bad faith arguments and ff propaganda.
How do you plan to reach 80% non-carbon-based energy by 2030? That's the current stated goal by the Biden Admin, and it's arguably not aggressive enough. Nuclear plants take a minimum of 5 years to build, but that's laughably optimistic. It's more like 10.
SMR development projects, even if they succeed, won't be reaching mass production before 2030.
The clock has run out; it has nothing to do with waste or disasters. Greenpeace won.
Greenpeace won
And in doing so, helped doom us all together with big oil, gas and coal.
This is why I'm very wary of groups that are environmentalists vs groups of scientists. I have strong distaste for the former as woo woo people who only follow the science when it's convenient.
10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.
If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.
And at that time, you'll say either "it's too late to rely on nuclear now" or "fortunately we're about to get these new power plants running". You're not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you're building for the next decades.
Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on "clean production" and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim "green manufacturing". That country is... China!
The biggest enemy of the left is the left
That's a little out of nowhere and I don't get what you're saying, but I totally agree with the rest
but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
Yes, so we need change FAST. Not in 15 years when the nuclear plant is finally built, not in 20 years when it starts producing commercial power, not in 25 years when it finally offsets the carbon cost of the concrete to build it, not in 30 years when it breaks even on the cost and the company can think about building another, not in 35 years when it offsets the cost in money and carbon to decommission the thing in the future. Now, so we should be building windfarms, that are MASSIVELY cheaper per MW than nuclear and can be built in 6 months and have less of a carbon impact.
Any way you run the numbers, any metric you look at wind beats nuclear.
I used to be very very pro nuclear, then one day I tried to argue against someone and did the calculations myself.
There is no conceivable way that we can reach NetZero carbon-free worldwide global economy in 15 years. This isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. And it's a marathon that will last hundreds and thousands of years if human technological civilization is to continue to exist.
Therefore, it would be prudent to invest in every carbon neutral and zero carbon technology that we can right now to achieve those goals. This is not a one technology solution. It's an all hands on deck response to the climate crisis, and we will be lucky if we achieve this by the year 2100.
It is very much a sprint. We are hurtling towards societal collapse (currently estimated to accoure between 2040 and 2050) and already can't stop the worst effects of climate change, all we can do is scramble to reduce the harm as much as possible, and then means acting as a fast as possible.
There's about 100 years of uranium ressource available actually, double the production and you got only 50 years... that's mainly the problem with nuclear. Extraction from the ocean is economically not viable.
They aren't left. Communists are strong pro-nuclear for the last 70 years.
Downvoting people want to tell me communists are not strong pro-nuclear since 1950-ies?
Why yes lets build 150 fission plants every year for 30 years so we can checks notes generate 1/5 of the current demand. By all means research fussion. But to think that humans are competent enough to manage that many plants at once and to ignore the permanent issue of the waste is crazy to me. In addition nuclear is more carbon intensive than renewables and the more plants you make the quicker you will run out of optimal uranium deposits. “But what about fast breeders?!?!” why yes lets make tons of plutonium and have our plant constantly catch on fire so we can pursue a decades old dead end technology. We could be building massive floating wind farms off coasts around the world but nah lets whine about a pipe dream that nuclear will save the day instead. This activist is misled as many are sadly.
Isn't the main worry the "side product" of weapons grade nuclear materials?
There are nuclear plants in operation today that do not use or create any fuel that is capable of being weaponized. In fact, coal plants emit more radiation than a modern nuclear power plant.
The issue of reactors creating weapons grade materials and the radioactive impact of a plant on the surrounding environment are really 2 totally separate issues. You're right on both counts, but the way you put them together makes it sound like they're somehow related.
Also to split some hairs, just because you can't make a nuke out of radioactive material doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be weaponized, you could make dirty bombs out of pretty much anything radioactive, just conventional explosives to scatter radioactive stuff around making it hard to clean up. Pretty sure that spent fuel of any type would probably make for a great dirty bomb if the wrong people were able to get their hands on it.
If we really want to split some hairs, some waste products don't even need to be radioactive to be weaponized. Depleted uranium ammunition makes for excellent armor penetrating rounds and comes (primarily) from the enrichment process of uranium for use in reactors.
I thought about mentioning that too, it muddies the waters a bit because it is still technically radioactive and so there are some concerns about health effects from that (although it is not very radioactive, to the point that it can actually actually used as radiation shielding in some applications)
But it kind of goes down a bit of an absurdist rabbit hole from there. Because we humans are really good at weaponizing pretty much literally anything if we put our minds to it. Even if we were able to somehow able to tune our nuclear processes so that at the end all of the fuel and byproducts would be converted into nothing but a pure, clean, non-radioactive mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and traces of other gasses just like our atmosphere, we could then use that in a compressed air cannon or something.
There are nuclear plants in operation today that do not use or create any fuel that is capable of being weaponized.
And they cost too much. Governments only fund weaponizeable fission.
In fact, coal plants admit much more radiation than a modern nuclear power plant.
Not in a way that can be concentrated and weaponized.
I don't have the sources right now, but nuclear reactor designs exist that output minimal weapons grade materials and some that output none at all. IIRC they are in use already, but I'd have to check what their names are.
Yes. It's possible, but they are not of interest to nuclear power states.
No.
None of them is ignoring climate change, Actually you are more than anyone else since you are promoting an energy source that isn't green. Many other nuclear accidents happened over the past years but you sound like the kind of person that doesn't care much about the environment:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste_dumping_by_%27Ndrangheta
"Nuclear energy isn't green" lol. You sound like an anti-vaxxer.
Nuclear is not green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_energy
You do realise that the article you just shared lists nuclear energy as sustainable, right?
It was literal case of TLDR
It doesn't, learn how to read
LMAO are you daft? Such an obvious troll.
I think you're confusing terminologies here. Nuclear is not renewable since it requires using a finite resource that has to be mined from the earth to create energy, however it is a nearly zero emission form of energy since it's basically a giant tea kettle who's steam spins a turbine to generate energy. That steam is just water vapor, the by products and spent fuel rods can be safely stored and processes or reprocessed. Wind, Solar, Geothermal and hydroelectric are renewable since they require no fuel to operate. All of the above could be considered green since they emit zero emissions unlike Coal and Liquid Natural Gas plants
Citing a Wikipedia article that categorizes things as green or not green is not a reputable source. Anyone could edit the page right now and invalidate your claim. I'm not convinced you are right or wrong but I'd like a stronger argument.
Nuclear energy is THE ONLY green energy.
Weeeell, no. Solar and wind too. But not hydro. Except hydrothermal.
Solar is yellowish orange, wind is gray, hydro is blue. Nuclear is the only green one.
Was just trying to figure out the other comment's logic. They may have watched one too many Simpsons episodes.
Oh. You were replying to comment above mine, but replied to me. Ok.
I was replying to your reply of the other comment.
