Re:Scientists caught off-guard by record temperatures linked...
by throwanem on Thursday July 28, 2016 @07:05AM
(#12179522)
>This ignores the economic and construction issues that nuclear plants have.
Engineering problems with known solutions, were we only to implement them.
> There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding by some about what the fight against climate change actually entails.
If that's so, it's a result of the rhetoric employed by many on the conventional, non-nuclear anti-AGW side. For example, you're the first person I've ever heard espouse this kind of incrementalism on CO2 figures. For most rhetoric on the subject, "apocalyptic" is not too strong a term.
I think a lot of nuclear advocates adopt their position on the basis that it's the most effective available response if things really are that bad. And then we get confused when people would rather keep technologies that spew filth constantly into the air, instead of accepting a very slight increased risk of localized and contained industrial accidents which are costly but not deadly. (Yeah, I know: Chernobyl and Fukushima. No one is proposing we build RBMKs in the US, and unlike Japan, if we want to build 2nd-gen BWRs safe from tsunamis, we have ample inland territory on which to do so.) If it's a choice between nuclear power and civilizational collapse involving megadeaths, that seems like a no-brainer. If it's not such a choice, it's fair to ask why so many people have done so much to make it seem so.
Honestly, I think the environmental movement has shot itself in the foot here in a huge way. Decades of painting nuclear power as Satan incarnate has made it politically impossible, indeed unthinkable, to include new, safe nuclear as the foundation of a strategy addressing AGW with a truly sustainable generation architecture, so what we're left with is quarter measures and cheese-paring fractionalism - changing lightbulbs to save the world.
Engineering problems with known solutions, were we only to implement them.
> There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding by some about what the fight against climate change actually entails.
If that's so, it's a result of the rhetoric employed by many on the conventional, non-nuclear anti-AGW side. For example, you're the first person I've ever heard espouse this kind of incrementalism on CO2 figures. For most rhetoric on the subject, "apocalyptic" is not too strong a term.
I think a lot of nuclear advocates adopt their position on the basis that it's the most effective available response if things really are that bad. And then we get confused when people would rather keep technologies that spew filth constantly into the air, instead of accepting a very slight increased risk of localized and contained industrial accidents which are costly but not deadly. (Yeah, I know: Chernobyl and Fukushima. No one is proposing we build RBMKs in the US, and unlike Japan, if we want to build 2nd-gen BWRs safe from tsunamis, we have ample inland territory on which to do so.) If it's a choice between nuclear power and civilizational collapse involving megadeaths, that seems like a no-brainer. If it's not such a choice, it's fair to ask why so many people have done so much to make it seem so.
Honestly, I think the environmental movement has shot itself in the foot here in a huge way. Decades of painting nuclear power as Satan incarnate has made it politically impossible, indeed unthinkable, to include new, safe nuclear as the foundation of a strategy addressing AGW with a truly sustainable generation architecture, so what we're left with is quarter measures and cheese-paring fractionalism - changing lightbulbs to save the world.