A decade ago, two decades ago, I was all for nuclear.
But something that takes 20 years from start to finish isn’t going to cut it when we’re already nearing 1.5 degrees.
Again, we can do both. This is not a zero sum game, there are nuclear physicists and people who are passionate about nuclear who will either be working on nukes, OR pivoting to software engineering so they can make money on the crypto/AI/whatever boom. I have met them.
The enemy is not the person who wants to build a parallel solution to the same problem. The enemy is the person who says “oh oops, there’s just not enough money 😬 we gotta fund only one, which one should we do? Figure it out and then we can move forward, in the meantime we’ll just keep using these fossil fuels.”
They are playing us with divisive politics. My expectation if we fund both is one of the following happens:
- We reach 20 years from now, and between storage breakthroughs and renewables scaling out we are 100% renewable capable. We stop construction of new nuclear plants, we keep the few that came online for a while and then we decommission. We win.
- We reach 20 years from now. We have made significant progress on renewables and storage, but we still haven’t been able to replace base load entirely. Storage breakthroughs didn’t happen, and we have to keep funding more research. In the meantime, we’re able to decarbonize and rely on nukes instead of fossil fuels. We win.
Hedging bets is smart in all cases, especially when it’s not a zero sum game. Don’t let them divide us.
Agreed. I was never saying it was, but that oil and gas companies are pushing nuclear instead of renewables because of this very reason.
Sure, both can be true though. What I don’t see very often from the pro-nuke crowd, right or left, is that we should defund renewables. Pro-nuke types tend to be pretty technical and very in the weeds so they see the benefits of both. They just get bent out of shape by their pet project being defunded.
On the pro-renewable side, there’s more partisanship because it’s a wider base, it appeals to the crunchy side of the left, AND nuclear has been character assassinated with fear around meltdowns. Most people with concerns around timelines and technical constraints on nuclear, like yourself, are flexible too.
It’s the crunchy folks and the moderates we need to convince. If they log onto a post here on Lemmy and see a bunch of pro-nuke people and pro-renewable people arguing and not agreeing that both forms are awesome and we should do both, those people are much more likely to fall for one of the forms of propaganda from the fossil fuel lobbyists. After all, we can’t even agree!
I think it’s generally people online talking about one or the other, or trying to advocate for nuclear over renewables. If it had to be one, renewables are cheaper, faster to build, already having industry scaling up. We can’t afford to slow this train down.
I’m more than happy to jump on we need all the non-fossil energy generation we can get, but we can’t afford to be any slower than we already are. We can’t put off progress we can have now for some potential in a decade or two.
I’m also not convinced we can make nuclear affordable and safe, but it has enough advantages that we should certainly try …. Only if it doesn’t slow down where we’re already making progress
That kind of thinking was wrong a decade ago and is still wrong now. If we have any chance of stopping climate change we are going to have to massively decarbonise not only electricity production, but also transport and heating. That’s going to mean a massive electrification of those sectors and a huge increase in demand over decades. Putting off large fixed investment now as it wont help out immediately but will help significantly during the time that electricity demand is growing is just nonsense.
