We can do both.
If you have a set amount of money and resources to invest renewables are almost exclusively the better choice. Investing in nuclear instead means it will take even longer for us to wean off fossiles. That’s why it’s so useful for the oil lobby to support nuclear.
We don’t have a set amount of money and resources, fundamentally.
We have an abundance of food, water, and shelter.
We have a lot of smart people who are currently spending their lives making money on made up markets and apps.
We have plenty of steel, concrete, and any other resources that would be in contention.
When it comes to money, if we raised taxes just a little, we’d be fine. I’m kind of an MMT person, but point is, we could get money, print it, tax it, etc. as it’s an abstraction on top of the other things above.
The mindset of “it’s gotta be one or the other” is a false choice presented by the fossil fuel industry and conservative politicians. They say we can’t raise taxes and we can’t increase deficit spending so they can get us to fight. And I guarantee you, if we all agreed to do nuclear, they would flip the script and start investing in renewables, because what they want is to kill momentum. After all, who do you think was behind all the scare mongering after three mile island?
I don’t want to kill momentum for renewables, but I want to start building it for nuclear at the same time.
We can do both.
If we were actually going full speed with “all of the above”, I’d agree. We need to and it’ll give the best results. However nuclear is very expensive and takes too many years to build. All too often it’s there only because the current fossil fuel companies would find it more profitable.
We can’t afford to lose momentum on the fastest and cheapest energy choices to wait for something more profitable for fossil fuel companies
The mindset of “it’s gotta be one or the other” is a false choice presented by the fossil fuel industry and conservative politicians.
What fossil lobby or conservative politician is currently saying “okay guys you can have renewables, but then we will have to cut back on nuclear”? That’s the opposite of what conservatives are saying.
You are repeating a talking point that’s being spread around to distract from the fact that it is financially rewarding for the fossil lobby to postpone the transition away from them to sustainable energy sources as far as possible, which is exactly what will happen if we drain resources from renewables towards nuclear. And acting like our resources aren’t in some way limited is nothing but wishful thinking.
While you wait for the next nuclear power plant, the fossil fuel lobby is raking in record profits for decades to come.
Invest the money into renewables instead. And every bit of money you think you can get from “just raising the taxes a little” or “printing it” - invest that too. Everything else is a waste of time and resources.
I don’t care what bad-faith conservatives are saying, yes they’re full of it. Here are the facts:
- We are pushing forward full-tilt on renewables in general. Factories are going up, the IRA was 80% focused on renewables, and as long as the incoming admin doesn’t actively roll things back, we’re heading in the right direction.
- Headlines like this one are coming up because private companies are starting to invest in nuclear for their own purposes. This is spare money and effort that we could be leaving on the table.
- If we start seeing politicians actively shutting down green energy in favor of nuclear, we should absolutely say “fuck no”.
- As of yet, I have not been seeing this in policy or in reality, and every year the renewable industry becomes more self-sustaining and grows without active pushes from the government (though we can and should continue to subsidize).
From where I’m standing, we should be encouraging the private sector and investing some percentage of our portfolio in restarting and building nukes with all of that context.
This is the same logic behind building an investment portfolio. You could go all in on Bitcoin, or you could spread out your portfolio in the market. 80% into the solid, tried and true stocks, 15% into up and comers, 5% into moonshots like crypto or gamestop or whatever. Same deal here.
Almost exclusively? No. Nuclear produces predictable energy and a lot of it in a small area, which is why things like data centers are being built on them. As another example, if you’re above the arctic circle renewables straight up aren’t a thing in the winter (unless you count geothermal, maybe).
Overall it’s still probably the better choice, just because nuclear is hard, but it’s not like it doesn’t have a few remaining drawbacks.
