yea the solution is to put 50% tariffs on 80% of the world’s solar panels
death to AmericaHey everyone let’s quite literally judge this book by its cover
I like the shade of yellow in the text
I don’t know about everybody else, but I’m judging it based on the author being a Canadian turbolib who’s still really scared of getting nuked by the USSR.
It’s written by an Indian nuclear physicist and disarmament activist. This book’s line is that it takes too long (valid) and is too dangerous (less valid). Naomi Klein gave it a good review so it’s probably not turbolib shit.
I know he was born in India. His professional career is in British Columbia.
His “it takes too long!” argument is absolute nonsense. It hinges on the bulk of the “construction” time being government reluctance about nuclear power. So nuclear power takes too long to build because we take too long to build it? That argument doesn’t pass muster.
The average time to build a plant is around decade solely on construction and another decade in compliance. Nuclear power is safe as a result of regulation and compliance, not in spite of it.
Weird how China can do it in five years, then.
It’s almost like a country with more engineers and a larger workforce can build things faster. Most renewables can be set up in five weeks or so. We need development in both but five years is a while with a ticking clock.
I’m sorry. I think I’ve been overly hostile. We definitely can agree on the point that we need to walk and chew gum at the same time, so to speak.
We need to be busting out every tool at our disposal to slow down this global climate crisis. I’m just of the opinion that fear of nuclear power is vastly overblown, and this book is feeding into that fear. In a perfect world we’d be running entirely off true renewable energy. But we aren’t. We live in Hell. We need to pull out all the stops so we don’t make ourselves extinct.
20 years doesn’t really seem that big of a deal compared to the consequences of climate chsnge. But in the US, it will actually take 60 years and then abandoned half way because 25 contractors were revealed to be fictitious companies and the 5 real ones demand a $150 billion screwdriver
20 years is a big deal because climate change is exponential and we don’t have that much time, many places in 2044 won’t be habitable anymore. Nuclear is a good option but it can’t be the only option.
being government reluctance about nuclear power
There are real constraints to nuclear power, it doesn’t just roll off an assembly line.
There’s a very large capital investment required, a very sophisticated workforce and quite of a bit of work before construction even starts.
Even if nuclear produced no waste, it’s still very expensive and complex, and too complex to build the ~600 2GW plants at the same time that the US would need to fully transition.
What energy source ist fast enough to build? Wind? PV?
France constructed 56 reactors in 15 years (1974-1989) with about 60GW capacity.
Germanys nuclear program was faster in constructing capacity than any phase in the Energiewende.
Yep, solar and wind. Site selection isn’t easier with wind but considerably easier than nuclear.
Static pumped hydro is still complex but not as hard as nuclear plants
You do know that you can build nuclear power plants almost anywhere?
Four of the french ones are not at water sources. The biggest in the US is located in a desert. Katar has nuclear reactors.
Why would site selection be difficult?
Naomi Klein gave it a good review so it’s probably not turbolib shit.
I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you simply don’t know what you’re talking about.
Let’s take a peek at Naomi Klein’s recent writing, but first I want to preface it by pointing out her last book was about how “the pandemic made everyone crazy” and some people mixed up her Twitter account with an antivaxxer. Pretty thin gruel, and the Shock Doctrine wasn’t really much better at using a lame analogy to conduct a historical investigation. It’s kind of impressive how people trip over hacks like Klein and Zizek and make them part of their weird pantheon of writers considering their writing contains so many blatant insults to the reader’s intelligence. I guess it’s all about the buzz surrounding some writers, Klein speaking at occupy, Zizek appearing in documentaries, which obscures the hints in their writing that precede their most trashy displays in rando magazines like Compact and whatever this one where Klein is using a genocide to sell the aforementioned shit book is called. Okay, now on to the good stuff.
DS: It’s very hard to know how to behave right now. I know you wrote a piece last week about the tragedy of the Hamas attacks, and there were some who were hurt by parts of it.
NK: I think everybody is in an impossible position that we didn’t create. The Israeli government has used the bloodiest day in the history of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and there was not even time to bury the dead to mourn before those deaths were used to justify a massive war crime that is ongoing in Gaza and now expanding beyond it.
Let’s remind ourselves what got her in hot water that she’s brushing off here:
I spent the evening in candlelight and tears with a dear friend who just learned that a close family member was among those massacred in Israel. I won’t name the kibbutz to protect her privacy but yes, it was unequivocally a massacre.
We tried to explain the killing of this family member – a civilian with two kids – to our kids. We tried to do it in a way that would not fill their young hearts with fear and hatred for the people who committed the crime. That was hard enough, but possible. Harder for us adults is the fact that, in their desire to celebrate the powerful symbolism of Palestinians escaping the open air prison that is Gaza — which occupied people have every right to do — some of our supposed comrades on the left continue to minimize massacres of Israeli civilians, and in some extreme cases, even seem to celebrate them.
In fact these callous displays are a gift to militant Zionism, since they neatly shore up and reconfirm its core and governing belief: that the non-Jewish world hates Jews and always will – look, even the bleeding-heart left is making excuses for our killers and thinks that Jewish kids and old ladies deserved death merely by living in Israel.
“So sorry you were offended, it’s hard to know how to be “politically correct” with all the rabid leftists these days, buy my book. :-)”
It really seems to be a no-brainer that any writer who compulsively shits on the USSR without making a real analysis just by making shitty historical comparisons (Ann Pettifor comparing proposals to use western tax dollars to fund a “green belt” of for profit enterprises in the Sahel to the Soviet Union may be a rare exception, but honestly she seems to hinge everything on investors putting down the cocaine and considering climate change seriously so maybe the rest of her stuff is lame too, also the guy who wrote Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of A Ukrainian Nationalist trashes the USSR here and there but he never backs it up with anything good and the stuff on the OUN etc is great) can be dismissed completely
Thank you for coming to my TED talk in conclusion check the ingredients on your slop next time
Why does it take too long? Because there are too many people who believe it’s too dangerous
Because it’s genuinely complex thing?
Since the start of 2022, China has completed an additional five domestic reactor builds, with their completion times ranging from just under five years to just over 7 years.
For argument sake, let’s say it takes China five years to build five 2GW plants (10GW). Let’s assume 25 plants can be in this 5 year pipeline at anytime.
Rounding up from China’s population, assuming instantaneous training and transformation of the global population to a similar level as China’s nuclear industry, we can then assume that 60 GW can be delivered annually, globally.
With a global electricity usage of 23,000 TWh a year translating into 2.6 TW required hourly, and a capacity factor of 80 percent, it would take 54 years to completely transition to nuclear - call it 40 years to account for existing renewables, building ~1300 nuclear plants
Looking at China’s uranium consumption for nuclear, we can estimate new requirements of 17,000 tons of uranium per year. So in 2065, 40 years after ham on nuclear, we’ll need 750,000 tons of uranium annually.
One estimate is that about 8 million tonnes of uranium is recoverable at $260 a kg (uranium is currently ~100 a kg).
That’s fine, surely we’ll have a good ten years of full uranium consumption before it becomes unviable? Unfortunately not, because with the additional requirements each year, we’d hit that recoverability/cost limit within 30 years.
Too long, too expensive and too hard.
(Come back when thorium SMRs are viable though, those could be good)
why are you assuming that nuclear has to completely replace all other forms of energy, whether renewable or not, to be worth building?
Death to America
I didn’t - I cut 16 years off the timeline, or about 30 per cent
That’s accurate enough for a thought experiment that turns 80 percent of the world’s population into China
Did your calculation account for the fact that energy and economic growth having an almost 1:1 relation, meaning a compound growth of ~3% economic growth every year will add up quadrupling the energy requirements in 50 years.
let’s quite literally judge this book by its cover
The title on the cover is pretty blatant about what the thesis of the book is.
I think the layout is boring and makes it look like a textbook.
Anti-nuclear greens are serving the fossil fuel industry
Canadian Greens are the absolute most insufferable kind of libs. Their solutions for climate change are basically to replace fossil fuels with [Future Technology 18] like they’re playing Civilization 2 with cheats turned on.
I mean it’s not the solution. We can’t afford to rely on fossil fuels for twenty more years while we build nuclear plants. Nuclear is probably the best way to generate power but it takes so long to get running and will be a small portion of the solution to climate change. Building nuclear is a good idea but renewables can happen now and we can see immediate benefit. Also keep in mind a lot of the success of nuclear in the West is a result of cheap uranium from colonial exploitation. Nuclear isn’t a silver bullet, more of a pellet in silver buckshot.
Of course it’s not the solution. Much like geothermal isn’t the solution, or wind isn’t the solution. They’re all tools we need to be using, right the hell now.
And the decades long startup time for reactors is solely a mater of political will. There’s no reason we can’t have modern nuclear power plants up and running in the span of a couple years, rather than decades. These aren’t the rinky-dink 1960’s reactors that melt down if the operator is an arrogant capitalist asshole. Modern designs take that choice out of human hands—if things go sideways, they self-terminate.
The recent war in Ukraine made me a lot more cautious of nuclear because if there’s a belligerent who’s willing to cross the Rubicon by bombing nuclear plants (ie the US), then all the statistics about nuclear plants being safe goes out the window. There’s also speculation that if Israel nukes Tehran, Iran will launch hypersonic cruise missiles targeting Israeli nuclear plants and Chernobyl Israel since their main nuclear plant is located at the very center of Israel on top of other nuclear plants that are located close to urban centers.
Of course, it’s not like bombing coal plants will have zero environmental impact and I would imagine blowing up dams will overall do far more environmental damage and kill far more people.
The relevant questions are:
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What are the environmental impacts and human costs of a nuclear plant being bombed and destroyed by a belligerent military?
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What safeguards can be placed to thwart or mitigate military attacks targeting nuclear plants?
if i didn’t want iran to bomb my nuclear power plants i would simply not bait them into conflict when committing genocide
Death to America
iran is not going to blow up your power plant. nuclear plant in ukraine wasn’t destroyed in recent fighting either. the hypersonic missiles were just regular ballistic missiles that reach hypersonic velocities at the end of their flight path, not state-of-the-art. it’s not speculation iran can absolutely sustain a blackout of israel
Taking a look at Chernobyl today, the environmental impacts of a melted down or destroyed nuclear reactor are way less destructive (maybe not destructive at all, except to human life within close proximity of the reactor) than the costs of avoiding nuclear in fear of these hypothetical possibilities
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Just fucking shoot me
A post about the debate between nuclear and green energy and not one idiot in the comments talking about windmills killing birds or claiming solar panels don’t work in winter.
I feel like I’m breathing fresh air for the first time
Solar panels kill birds and windmills don’t work in the winter. If nuclear wasn’t the only truly green energy source, why does it glow that color.?
I believe that’s what they call, in the business, a checkmate.
nuclear is the answer (destruction of the west with nuclear bombs)
heres my fake summary:
instead let’s… i dunno, drill a hole to the earths core or mine asteroids for orbital solar panels or other easily attainable, practical solutions we can do in the next 5 years
then we’ll just wait for a bunch of scam startups in the west to magically develop a commercial fusion reactor
Japan is literally doing an orbital solar demonstrator lol
Solve one problem by introducing a dozen new ones
i mean in theory its a cool idea and i’d love to see it but only under the auspices of an accountable to the people, global world socialist government space agency
we might need a combo of that plus sun shade eventually anyways just to make it through the next 50 years
In theory it’s a cool idea, in reality the ravages of space and having to transmit power through the atmosphere make it far inferior to just deploying massive solar
Who wants to get in on scamming Western governments with my patented and 100% guaranteed safe Swensonium reactor?
Because when you buy a Phineas Q. Swenson product, you can rest assured that it's a quality product at a quality priceAfter all, that's what the Q in Phineas Q. Swenson stands for, guaranteed!
maybe read it first before posting it here
Nuclear is actually the solution, trap every billionaire in a nuclear waste barrel and bury them in a cave 1km deep forever
~for better results, recycle used barrels~
based and correct. if you still think there is any technology that is the answer to human civilizations unsustainable ways you are worse than useless.
The opposite of this^
As opposed to the useful demand that entitled, murderous imperialists stop buying trinkets and treats and help developing countries?
Yeah exactly 👍
if you think moderating individual consumption choices is going to solve this, you are worse than useless. only like 10% of the population in the imperial core has significant disposable income
fuck your lazy degrowth idealism and eat shit, nuclearizing the first world and developing all kinds of power infrastructure, including with fossil fuels in the third world is critical to ending climate change
for poor countries to stop being exploited in a climate-destructive way they paradoxically need power plants, senegal needs oil refineries for industry in order to undo the wasteful hierarchy of imperialism
oh yeah, how are they going to do that, AmeriCorp? is there even a coherent thought behind this or is it more typical “:3 postivity and green!!!” posting
Okay Ted
Someone smarter than me would need to run the numbers on actual electricity consumption but a while back someone took the world’s total energy consumption, which is kinda uncharitable but also kinda representative of how nuclear isn’t a solution tbh, and we would need to be constructing like 1 nuclear power plant of the scale of one of the largest nuclear power plants that exists on a weekly basis for over a decade to meet the demands and constraints (including the need to decommission and replace the current nuclear power plants at the end of their lifecycle).
I can only imagine that the world’s energy consumption has increased since that point and, given the very late hour of climate change we are in, even if it was only building one nuclear power plant of the capacity of the largest ever built per month (which is exceedingly conservative an estimate) we’re still looking at something that is unfeasible for a variety of reasons.
Add to that the fact that nuclear reserves might only realistically last us in the order of a decade, give or take a few years, at that rate of consumption, and you’re looking at something unfeasible from another perspective.
I’m pretty much an irredeemable doomer by this point but if we rule out the hail Mary of fusion then we’re looking at investing heavily into what is essentially a dead-end technology due to resource limitations or investing heavily into renewables which have much greater promise of being a long-term solution.
I think we’ve already blown it but whatever.
MSRs are not the solution they’ve been made out to be and it’s still going to take years before we could reasonably expect to see us going all-in on them, at which point we probably would need to start building one or more per week. And thorium, while relatively abundant, is not nearly as viable on the scale we would need it for thorium reactors; there’s also a lot of gold in the ocean but even that isn’t enough to motivate us to start extracting it at an industrial scale.
I agree with this, wholeheartedly. Nuclear is okay from a surface level thinking, but comes with so many caveats, limited resource and slow build times that it’s just not viable this late in the game, especially when compared to renewables which are quicker to pump out and modern options range between equal-to-cheaper than nuclear. Nuclear probably was the right interim choice to start building, 60 years ago. But it is no longer 60 years ago.
Uranium will last us 10 years tops. And anyone arguing “but the technology will be able to do X in X years” may as well just sit back and wait for techbros to invent the magical climate changer fixer. We have the long-lasting, cheaper, easier-to-deploy technological solution now, already. Its only ‘downside’ is that it’s so decentralised that oil barons are struggling to make a profit from them, so the bourgeoisie aren’t interested.
I’d argue it’s just silly to be considering other options than renewables and storage, at this point. Yes your magic rocks may have lots of power in them, but the sky is being bombarded by orders of magnitude more energy every second, will actually last longer than a fraction of a lifetime.
We have the cheap, easy, sustainable solution, now, in our hands. Considering other ‘interim’ options on a major scale, especially under capitalism, is a waste of time at best.
Yeah, I agree that 60 years ago was the time to build nuclear and that this window has basically closed on us.
I think this is probably what gets lost on a lot of people who hear from the most unhinged or the most anti-science anti-nuclear positions; I’m not opposed to nuclear power. I think there is very likely to be niche applications for it that we will see long into the future (beyond just nuclear subs or nuclear space travel too), provided we last that long. I just don’t see it as a magic bullet and from the standpoint of environmental concerns I’m about as enthusiastic with regards to nuclear power as I am with EV cars - like I guess it’s something? But it mostly represents a huge waste of resources that would be better dedicated to something else and it’s really just a bandaid measure when the patient has already haemorrhaged out and is going to flat line at any moment. And at the same time I’m far more concerned about the bourgeoisie having private jets and yachts that are so massive they have smaller yachts docked inside of them than I am about whatever EV car I come across.
I just wish we’d go all-in on renewables but moreso sustainability in the long-term, like radically reorganising society so that we work two shifts instead of a 9-5, thus making things like public transport, urban footprint, and load on the energy grid reduced in a huge way.
Just imagine the environmental impact if every office job suddenly required roughly half the amount of office space and IT equipment - in your city alone that would have a major impact.
I know this is going to be a bit vague and vibes-based but so many ways that we engage in consumption and we have waste scales in a non-linear fashion; adding one extra car on the road doesn’t simply contribute +1 to traffic or demand on road infrastructure. If the demand for parking spaces is roughly halved, if the need for childcare is reduced by 1/3, if there are half as many people in the UK all turning their electric kettles on at approximately the same time, if peak hour isn’t two hour-long periods in the day but it’s distributed across four of them then the need to spool up production and supply of services is reduced in a huge way and it’s likely that there would be a lot of efficiency built into that equation. If you only need roughly half the amount of trains and buses for the peak hours and during the overlapping shift-change peak hour you have public transport running near full capacity as it’s both inbound and outbound, rather than only being at capacity half of the journey, then it would make for more efficient public transport.
It kinda breaks my heart to really grapple with how absurdly wasteful society is. And I’m not just talking about the most obvious examples of things like piles of fruit left to rot because of the anarchy of the market but there are so many other deeper aspects to it that go mostly overlooked.
I think this is what a new socialist revolution would need to undertake in order to get out from under capitalist encirclement - we have the modelling and we have the data, it would be reasonably easy to just outstrip the prevailing capitalist mode of living at every turn by opting for things that are vastly more efficient but which would never be permitted under capitalism. One example would be having Venezuelan-style colectivos but well-equipped and operating things like a tool library - suddenly there isn’t any great need for everyone to have a battery-operated cordless drill sitting in their garage that goes unused for 99.9% of its existence. Or for everyone to have a lawn mower. And so on. With the added benefit of the internet and communication tech, the ability to optimise a tool loan scheme would be greatly increased.
I imagine this is what countries like Cuba and the DPRK have had to resort to in some measure but I still think there’s so many overlooked opportunities for optimising society to be as efficient and low-footprint as possible that don’t get considered mostly due to deferring to the conventional way of doing things. It would be funny to see a high-tech socialist utopia where it is so thoroughly optimised that the “GDP” wildly outstrips similar capitalist countries on half the “budget” with regards to consumption and infrastructure etc.
It’s what could have been, I guess. Oh well.
I don’t have a problem with nuclear power technology, but y’all are familiar with the companies running the plants, right?
Very much recommend checking out The Dollop PG&E episodes
Pt 1
Pt 2
I assume we all agree that they should be state-run, and that PG&E will continue to kill people regardless of the types of power generation they use.
