Perhaps if the war hawks had allowed for the development of nuclear reactors with passive safety mechanisms- rather than exclusively funding R&D on those with weaponisable byproducts, we'd have globally usable nuclear energy technology today.

Regarding the irrationality of the fear of current nuclear reactors, requiring active intervention (with control rods) to prevent nuclear meltdown is a genuine and justified cause for concern (as evidenced by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima).

> Regarding the irrationality of the fear of current nuclear reactors, requiring active intervention (with control rods) to prevent nuclear meltdown is a genuine and justified cause for concern (as evidenced by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima).

Fear of nuclear is irrational. Chernobyl was the single worst nuclear accident in the history of the world and UNSCEAR projects a death toll of no more than 4,000 [3] from the original accident (which directly killed about 50) onward. A large amount of them are suicide by people who fear they were “contaminated” when the most likely cancer, thyroid (due to radioactive Iodine-131 released) has a 98% survival rate [4]. Better than some flu years. That's what they were taking iodine pills for -- to saturate the thyroid so it didn't take up any of the Iodine-131.

Three mile island killed nobody and Fukushima killed 2-12 (almost 600 died from the actual quake). We learned from all 3 incidents and incorporated substantial additional safety measures for future designs.

The worst hydro accident by comparison, the Bangqiao Dam failure killed 230,000 people instantly. [2]

Nuclear has an order of magnitude fewer deaths per TWh than solar (it’s 10X safer than solar panels, yes) and two to three orders fewer than hydro and coal. [1].

Nuclear is no question the safest and most environmentally friendly energy source in the world by all metrics, and especially carbon emissions.

Of course I’d love to see thorium cycle explored too but we'll never get the funding with negative sentiment towards nuclear. It should be respected, not feared.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/d...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_dis...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid_cancer

Those are some interesting facts. I've generally been on the side that nuclear is not safe because I don't trust governments to build things safely if nuclear ever became mainstream. I'd expect multiple bidders to show up, some corrupt under the table deal happens, politicians takes a massive cut for themselves, project runs under budget, over time, and the infrastructure built gets dumped onto an area close to areas with higher rates of poverty, and what's built constantly has leaks or contamination of the environment around it due to structural errors.

That said, my confirmation bias never led me to consider how the situation could play out similarly for any other form of energy. So thanks for articulating those facts so clearly.

Nobody wants to be the elected official who irradiated their constituency, which cuts both ways. That means very little nuclear gets built, and what does get built is super safe -- and very expensive.

> Nobody wants to be the elected official who irradiated their constituency

Ummm... I wish it were that straightforward but I can't be confident of that. Power doesn't balance out as much as we'd like it to. There are a lot of elected officials who are ok with doing as bad to their constituency and they get away with it fine. And by get away that might mean they don't get another term but they take their money and go live a life of leisure. No jail time, nothing of major consequence. And usually they'll keep playing the political corruption game using the connections built up. (Eg: bringing in "preferred investors" for a "commission")

Reality around political power is ugly af :(

I don't doubt there's a lot of FUD around the perils of nuclear power but as someone that had to take iodine pills in 1986 I have to ask if you accounted for the large number of people that were forcibly moved out of their home as a result of the accident at the Chernobyl power plant?

Have you normalized all those costs with the number of power plants of various types?

It may be that in absolute numbers nuclear power has been safer than anything else but it may also be that as a result of Chernobyl and other accidents they fell out of favor and didn't see as much use as other power generating methods which in absolute numbers have had a higher number of victims.

The death count is per terawatt hour of electricity generated, and nuclear currently provides 6% of all the power generation capacity in the world. Relocations were not accounted for, however if we're talking scale, slightly more people were relocated (300,000) around Chernobyl as died in Bangqiao.

But what about perceptions! People’s perception are what counts in a democracy, not the objective fact.

Your perceptions change when you receive new facts, shouldn't they?

I don't have the time at the moment to source both points I want to make, but I read them both recently while reading about nuclear power.

1 - to your point about nuclear being the most environmentally friendly, I don't see how this is true compared to wind and solar.

Nuclear power produces nuclear waste.

Nuclear power requires significant amounts of fresh water.

2 - one of the primary reasons to not build a nuclear power now is that wind and solar are actually cheaper per MWh compared to operating an existing nuclear power plant.

That being said in my opinion, highly influenced by the book Drawdown, is that we will need to build a lot of nuclear power plants in order to meet world electricity demands.

> To your point about nuclear being the most environmentally friendly, I don't see how this is true compared to wind and solar.

Pollution comes from e-waste as panels are replaced, mining/tailings and less-than-environmentally-friendly materials used to make PV panels. Most commercial PV panels are Cadmium Telluride. Cadmium is of course highly toxic and carcinogenic, and as panels get better, they're swapped out and that material has to go somewhere.

Wind, pollution comes from mining and refining rare-earth metals like neodymium that are required to make the magnets in the motors. While rare earths exist all over the world the majority are mined in China because China is willing do deal with the toxic war zone left behind [1]. E-waste is a problem in this industry too although I'd wager smaller.

> Nuclear power produces nuclear waste.

Very small amounts relative to the amount of power generated due to its sheer unparalleled energy density. A uranium fuel pellet (1/2 in. height and diameter) contains the energy equivalent of 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, one ton of coal or 149 gallons of oil.

Yucca Mountain, had they opened it, would have solved this problem in perpetuity.

[1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic...

How do you safely and securely get the spent fuel to Yucca? Leaving aside accidents it seems securing the entire road or rail route would be a logistical nightmare. It would be quite a tempting target for bad actors. And a the kind of target against whom assymetric effort would yield “effective” results (for the bad actor)

Attacking any bridge or tunnel will easily create more casualties, with the added benefit(?) that they are essentially sitting ducks, unlike nuclear waste (which will move only once every few years or so, following some confidential route).

If you're aiming for maximum environmental damage, just attack an oil pipe or oil tanker at port.

I just don't see the terrorism angle for nuclear waste. There are far more juicier targets.

And far less protected ones. There's an entire department of the government dedicated to trucking this waste around, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Not to mention that stuxnet proved that we can quickly go from “look at all this desalinated water and zero carbon footprint!” to “crap, we just built tons of honeypots for state level hackers to hold our entire population hostage to the threat of nuclear meltdown triggered by sabotaged software”

That's not actually what a honeypot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_(computing)) is.

That's in computing. And it's close enough. We would probably HAVE honeypots to deter exactly this.

I agree with your frustration about the green movement's knee-jerk rejection of nuclear power, but in NZ anti-nuclear policy was a very galvanising touchpoint for the environmental and anti-war movements, so there's a bit more context there. Nuclear-free and the Springbok protests are referenced constantly as progressive wins.

"anti-nuclear" mean anti the weapons or anti the power?

both; nuclear-anything is banned in NZ

Untrue. The nuclear-free zone act specifically does not preclude nuclear power generation. The fact that it hasn’t happened is no different from most other places where it hasn’t happened. A combination of fear, nimby, cost, regulation and easier options.

Oops, looks like you're right. Wikipedia says "The nuclear-free zone Act does not prohibit nuclear power plants, nuclear research facilities, the use of radioactive isotopes, or other land-based nuclear activities."

The PET scanner next door and the cyclotron that fuels it beg to disagree.

The NZ anti-nuclear movement was mostly (but not completely) seen as a success against the US forcing their nuclear armed warships upon us (sailing into our harbours) during the cold war, and as a result making us a potential target.

In the end one of the right wing party's lawmakers voted with the left wing party, enough to pass a law, the right wing party used this as an excuse to dissolve parliament and call a national election which they resoundingly lost (the reasons this happened had more to do with the right wing party lying about the state of the economy and getting caught - but a mandate's a mandate) - we don't get nuclear weapons sailing into our country any more

I think your history is a bit off. NZ was declared nuclear-free by David Lange's government. Describing that government as "left wing" is misleading, since the nuclear-free zone was perhaps one of the few things the traditional "left" supported. His government is mostly remembered for the introduction of "Rogernomics", i.e., the introduction of neoliberalism to NZ.

No it's right on, Lange's govt was forced into "Rogernomics" noeliberalism because the previous right wing ("Muldoon") government had secretly borrowed lots of money overseas to prop up a wages and price freeze, and the country was unable to pay that money back when the rest of the world started to devalue our dollar (it went from US$1.25 to US$.50 almost overnight, and stayed that way for 20 years).

Muldoon as PM used the loss of the nuclear ships vote as an excuse to call an election, but was caught out when the chairman of the Reserve Bank came out publicly and explained what was happening to the economy, by then of course it was all too late. Nevertheless we were proud of our Nuclear Free state, even more so when the French terrorists sunk the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour (remember that the previous Labour govt had sailed NZ navy frigates into the French nuclear testing zone to protest atmospheric testing, this wasn't a new thing for Labour)

Alright, Marilyn Waring defected over a nuclear ships bill, but I don't think it passed under that government since Muldoon called an election instead. Muldoon ran the county practically as his personal socialist republic, Think Big, massive borrowing in foreign currencies, restrictions on foreign currency conversion, banking, wage and prices freezes, subsidies to farmers, generous welfare benefits, you name it. Lange's government was forced to float the dollar as their first act, since propping it up was no longer feasible. Their deregulation and privatisation had the (in hindsight) predictable effect of blowing up a bubble of leveraged property speculation, which came to a sudden end in the 1987 sharemarket crash. Good times!

Yes we agree - the Nuclear free moment led to an election, the actual law was finally passed by the new govt.

I headed off on my OE the day after Marilyn Waring crossed the floor, by the time I arrived in the US and had opened a bank account my (still in NZ) savings were worth less than half ... not a fan of the National Party 's economic savvy

> If we had embraced nuclear power 2 decades ago, we would have been in much better shape with respect to CO2 than we are in now.

How would New Zealand be better off with nuclear power? Keep in mind our environment. We have lots of water, plenty of sun and wind and some regions have earthquakes, including big ones in areas previously thought safe. Down here ‘we’ are doing just fine without it.

It doesn't matter what New Zealand does. There is not enough industrial production for their emissions rate and their climate is at the mercy of whatever happens in China.

I always like to refer to this chart [0] - but I also recall that nature only cares about absolute numbers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

While I don't really think NZ needs nucular, the solar and wind adoption here is appalling. Further, afaik water dams have pretty bad environment impact...

All human efforts have some eco footprint. Hydro dams have similar CO2 emission profiles to wind and solar, so for argument's sake, let's assume their ecological impact is lesser than that of coal or natural gas. The south island of New Zealand is almost exclusively hydro, the north island has just a little bit of coal and natgas (less than 1GW of generation in aggregate) to displace to go 100% zero carbon for electrical generation.

There is an interconnect (Cook Strait cable, 1200MW HVDC) between the islands, and the south island ships power to the north island (primarily hydro), so you can aggregate renewable generation between both islands fairly effectively and treat them together as a single system.

Electricitymap.org South island: https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=...

Electricitymap.org North island: https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=...

Nuclear power was never a practical option for NZ; the country is too small, has no fuel handy and has no nuclear expertise, and a huge chunk of power (not all of it tbf) comes from renewables already.

Fully agreed for many other countries (disappointingly Germany, most recently) but I don't think Ardern can be held to blame for them.

Another interesting paradox is Thatcher closing coal mines in the UK for not being profitable and left protesting and wanting the mines to continue saying there's always a need for it. "we want coal, not dole"

Unions? The United Auto Workers is totally supported by the left and yet they make gas guzzling cars and trucks for a living.

Do you have sources regarding the "left's irrational opposition to nuclear power"?

The left in New Zealand literally banned all forms of nuclear energy, going as far as prohibiting essentially all US Navy vessels from entering its waters just in case they had fissile material on board.

You may be unaware that this position was enshrined in legislation that has remained untouched in the last 3 decades including by conservative governments.

A couple of interesting facts: 1) the galvanising moment for this was the “Rainbow Warrior affair” in which French intelligence agents were caught after having sunk the Greenpeace vessel of the same name; 2) the nuclear-free zone act does not prohibit use of nuclear generation in NZ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_nuclear-free_zone

I am aware of all these things. It is a law that will likely stay in place forever, as it is such a divisive and controversial issue, yet has barely any impact on anything in NZ, no politician will ever have a motive to take political risks required to change it. The only thing it’s ever achieved is straining the relationships NZ has with some of its closest allies.

Specifically it doesn’t prohibit all power generation, but it does prohibit nuclear propulsion. Which again has no impact outside of irritating allies, as NZ never has had and never will have a use case for commercial nuclear power production. It’s a very small country, and 80% of its electricity is already renewable.

You’re contradicting yourself. Your earlier post says “they banned all forms of nuclear energy” while now you claim to be aware that they didn’t. Given that this whole article is about energy policy (as opposed to the narrow scope regarding the existing NZ ban on nuclear armed vessels in their waters), what is your point? If 80% of its electricity is already renewable, why the drama over taking that from 80% to 100% over the next 30 years? Doesn’t sound like a huge stretch frankly.

This is a mainstream political position in NZ, not one of the "left".

It’s actually a very controversial position, implemented by a left wing government.

It's not a controversial stance within NZ these days, nor seen as particularly partisan there. Other countries (especially the US given what it meant for ANZUS) might find it more so.

It was controversial at the time, resulting in the US kicking NZ out of their security alliance (something that was of no detriment to the US), and continues to be controversial every time the topic of a US ship coming to NZ is brought up. The fact that the only outcome this policy has ever achieved is the prevention of allied navy visiting NZ is a very consistent source of controversy in NZ. To claim otherwise is simply rewriting history.

I thought it was more that NZ banned nuclear weapons and the US didn't want to confirm or deny the presence of such weapons on board any ships so they weren't able to visit.

I guess it's a manner of perspective.

The ban applies to nuclear propulsion too. Excluding a large amount of Navy vessels off the bat. The rest being excluded because Navies tend not to advertise which ships are nuclear armed. The great irony of that being that those same ships protect a lot of water that NZ exporters rely on for shipping.

> the left’s irrational opposition to nuclear power

This is nonsense. In nations where opposition to nuclear power is strong (like mine, Aus), there is not a left-right divide amongst the general population. People just don't want it, end of story, irrational or not.

There is a huge divide regarding electricity supply in general here - ie. the right wants coal, the left renewables. But neither want nuclear. There have been some pro-nuclear political elite lobbies, and there is a slight rightward slant there for sure, but this is entirely ignored by the general populace, left & right alike, that just doesn't want nuclear.

As a leftist, I do concede anti-nuclear was a 60s new left thing that then went mainstream. It may not still be a leftist position today, but it was then.

Also, it does fall squarely on one side of the industrialist side of the industrialist-populist divide of the right.

Maybe I should have quoted more of the gp:

> .. that resulted in much of the world's electricity being produced by fossil fuels

My point isn't that 'leftists' (a decreasingly useful categorisation in any case) aren't anti-nuclear. It's that this anti-nuclear stance has been causally impotent in most of the nations that haven't chosen to build much nuclear capacity. Australia is a great case in point - even its 'leftist' party is very right-wing (pro-coal, pro-asylum-seeker torture, etc), yet the population, right and left alike, simply will not countenance nuclear power.

There's a great tendency for political pundits to confuse the positions and divisions of lobbyists, politicians and insiders with those of the population at large. Anyone attributing lack of nuclear capacity to 'leftists' is doing just that.

Any evidence you could link me to not that there existed "irrational opposition to nuclear" from people with left politics but that this opposition had any significant affect on the viability of nuclear power?

Nuclear Power yields some of the lowest power generation per investment of any generation type. It has basically never returned profit, costs money for thousands of years to deal with spent fuel. Not to mention the immense impact of reactor containment failure. Any argument for using Nuclear to reduce CO2 emissions is redundant when the economics, safety and alternatives (wind/solar) are taken into consideration.

France is a good examples of how nuclear power is more affordable than renewables.

Storage of waste is almost a non issue because they is just so little of it - the fuel itself is incredibly dense, so it’s really only the old concrete that takes space, and it isn’t very dangerous.