Lots of the push against nuclear is non-scientific. Worth pointing out that all humans reject science, not just conservatives - liberals do exactly the same thing.
This is salient to the nuclear discussion because, regardless of the science, liberals STILL push against nuclear science - even though it's the best hope for getting away from using fossil fuels that we have today.
As someone very worried about climate change, I think it would be great if we could get some significant help from advanced nuclear power.
One reason the left opposes nuclear is that the nuclear energy industry has a very long history of misleading the country about costs.
Another reason is that the conservative movement supports nuclear very strongly, and it also claims anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. As a consequence the left gets the idea that nuclear is just a way of keeping the country and the world from moving to renewables.
What are you talking about? I've never seen republicans talk against nuclear, except maybe from those that are angry about the effects of previous environmental damage where exotic particles were found in food, soil, ended up in humans,etc. Not necessarily from nuclear sources though.
In europe the vast majority of anti-nuclear rhetoric is coming from the left, especially in Germany.I would also bet this is the case in US, but never seen a good dataset made available on this topic.It's not really an anti-science position, because that would assume people are informed even in a non-scientific way,whereas the reality is that the vast majority of anti-nuclear folks are people who fear the "armageddon" from past tragic events, coinciding with the "end is near" climate doomsayers.You don't need a scientific understanding to assume those positions, sadly.
Whatever the position one has,I think people should agree this is a shitshow and sadly it has turned into a political mess.Nuclear is the most green energy there is: it is efficient and the (unavoidable) waste is very localized,unlike solar/wind energy, where the downside effects are very hard to quantify, and only recently the scientific community was made aware that those are not without drawbacks.
Maybe this is just my Silicon Valley-centric, rarefied group, but I have genuinely never met a rabid environmentalist hell-bent on shutting down nuclear power.
I know many environmentalists, including career activists. The worst they could be accused of is not making nuclear power their number one priority. But, abstractly at least, they all support increased nuclear power in principle.
I know many people against nuclear power. They, however, don't have many political or scientific beliefs, and their intelligences lie elsewhere than scientific or conceptual thinking. None would identify as green or environmentalist.
The biggest problems with nuclear power seems to be (a) the inertia of leftover regulations and bad vibes from the 60s-80s and (b) nuclear power is really, really expensive and requires a great deal of capital outlay and time to build and even to recover the energy costs of building it. People are also more sensitive to the worst case failure modes of a nuclear plant (which has happened like once in history) than they are to the failure modes of coal power (which are when they function like they're designed to).
The only people supporting nuclear are also on the left.
Nuclear's demise has nothing to do with the liberals blocking it (if they were so powerful their efforts against coal and fracking and oil pipelines may have been marginally effective) but rather the terrible economics of it vs solar/wind as well as natural gas.
The weird thing about those people is that they probably are self-professed conservative pro-economics rationalists. And yet nuclear has absolutely no economic argument right now and hasn't really for a decade.
There's this inertia that the pro-nuclear people have that they think that people oppose a nuclear just being these these Fringe green nutsos.
In reality, advocation of nuclear power is The realm of the rapid wackos and zealots. There simply isn't an economic rational case that's supported for 10 years now
Unfortunately popular sentiment doesn't equate to scientific fact. Nuclear power is cleaner, safer and less environmentally damaging than fossil fuels in every way. Still, since when have politicians ever let facts get in the way of campaigning for power?
This is always the rebuttal. No mention of the large number of deaths from fossil fuel pollution. It’s just so frustrating to see people against nuclear for no rational reason.
Being anti-nuclear (fission as we use it today) is not per se anti-science. If you do some research on how humanity has dealt with nuclear waste in the past and how it is still dealing with it, you may come to a different conclusion.
I find the debate over nuclear energy an interesting topic. From the information and evidence provided by the Environmentalists for Nuclear [1], from which Loelock was a member, I find it hard to understand why there's still so much opposition to nuclear energy. I'm not sure if I'm missing something (I'm open minded for valid arguments/evidence on either side) or if it's just that lobby and disinformation campaigns to preserve the status quo in favor of fossil fuel companies are really effective in turning the masses against nuclear energy (which would be very sad with respect to our potential to evolve as a civilization).
Being anti-nuclear is pretty much accepting the status quo though. Modern nuclear power is much, much more sustainable than coal, scales very well, and is very safe. If you believe in a quick solution for energy issues then you shouldn't halt all nuclear development and leave fossil fuels for the next couple decades.
That's a great point. Those that generally fall on the "just trust the science, bro" side are also the ones saying "nuclear isn't as effective right now, so let's avoid it like the plague" and "think of the long term!"
It has always baffled me. This flamewar being pushed by fossil fuel companies makes perfect sense.
This is salient to the nuclear discussion because, regardless of the science, liberals STILL push against nuclear science - even though it's the best hope for getting away from using fossil fuels that we have today.
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