Dunking on Nuclear Power

How simple-minded and ignorant rejections stand in the way of positive change.

In this time of endless agitation about acting to save the climate, save the planet, etc., from the predations of human carbon emissions (see: anthropogenic global warming), the nuanced debates about severity, about cost/benefit tradeoffs, about efficacy, and so forth have been pretty much shelved in favor of Act NOW or we all die!!! absolutism. While we can rail against the illogic of this all we want, decarbonization of our energy sector is a rolling freight train, leaving our only option to try and steer it in a more logical direction.

I've been an advocate for nuclear power my entire adult life - and even more so after I worked on engineering projects involving nuclear reactors. With cultures clamoring for "green" energy, and governments rushing to "green" their nations' energy sectors, there really is no better time to advocate for the cleanest and greenest of all power sources (cleaner and greener than wind or solar, which not only require vast tracts of land be devoted to them, but also require backup base capacity (see: natural gas turbine generators) for when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine) and - their nasty little secret - they require certain elements whose excavation and refinement is, to put it mildly, really dirty.

So, I thump the nuclear drum wherever I can. Including on open-forum social media, where the prime motivation for many is contrarianism, gainsaying, and "look how much smarter I am" zingers, rather than informed exchange of information.

This means that, almost inevitably, whenever I tout nuclear power, some self-styled genius will rebut me with "Fukushima! Three Mile Island!! CHERNOBYL!!!"

As if I am unaware of those events.

It's like saying "what about the roads!?" to a libertarian.

This is the state of public-forum discourse today. It both amuses and saddens me. Amuses in that there are enough people out there who think they're being profound and "gotcha" with such simple-mindedness (see: Dunning-Kruger Effect), and saddens in that it speaks to the widespread ignorance and misinformation (and in many cases outright disinformation) regarding nuclear power safety.

To wit:

Chernobyl, to put it bluntly, doesn't count. It was an inherently unsafe design built recklessly, without a containment vessel, akin to cooking street meth in open tubs in Times Square and being surprised when something goes wrong. It was the product of a totalitarian socialistic (but I repeat myself) government that had absolutely no regard for the health and safety of its citizens, nor for the environment itself. No Western reactor was ever or would ever be built like that, and even the Chinese and Russians wouldn't do so today.

Despite Three Mile Island being about as bad an accident as could happen in a Western reactor, no one died from the event - in fact, no one even got sick from it. The radiation release was trivial, below background levels.

Only one person died from radiation from Fukushima, and that was many years after the fact. More die every week mining rare earths for wind and solar plants.

There are additional deaths attributed to the Fukushima evacuation, but even considering those, it remains that the safety record of the West's (decades-old) nuclear reactors is an exemplary one that stands an order of magnitude or more ahead of most of our other power sources (natural gas being the only exception), and that includes the "green" wind and solar. The human and environmental cost of mining the rare earths required for wind and solar power is [far more severe][16] than most are aware.

Moreso, many modern reactor designs are even safer ("fail-safe," in that if something goes wrong, the reactors simply stop working).

The other mic-drop is the "what about nuclear waste" retort.

Again... 'golly gee willikers gosh, that never occurred to me!'

The reality of nuclear waste management, as opposed to the misinformation that the press and the Greens love to peddle, is that it's only a political problem. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was ready to be the solution, one that would absolutely work, but for Senator Harry Reid and NIMBYism, and that's just in America. France, which has 58 nuclear plants providing 70% of her electricity, manages waste just fine. And, as technology evolves, that waste becomes gold, with reprocessing and new types of power plants making it useful.

Of course, the enviro-scolds don't want to hear any of this. They've committed themselves to anti-nuclear positions, despite all the aforementioned realities. As an old aphorism (some attribute it to Jonathan Swift) laments:

You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.

Nevertheless, we try, and hope that seeds of reality we plant today sprout into revised opinions in the future.

Want to do yourself a favor? Take an hour and a half and watch Pandora's Promise.

And, if your first reaction to someone's pro-nuclear views is as obvious as I've noted here, please ask yourself, "do I really think he hasn't thought of that?" before you comment.

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An addendum. A few "greens," in moments of candor, have let us in on another dirty little secret: They don't want a climate crisis solved, not in a way that lets us continue to lead our lives as we have been.

Solutions that don't involve imposing collectivists' will upon the unwashed masses are of no use to them.

This is by no means unique to global warming. We've seen it in the response to police misconduct, in the response to the pandemic, to poverty, to drug abuse, and to countless other matters of public policy. As a certain cynical political player offered, "never let a crisis go to waste."