Besides, Fukushima-Daiichi is rapidly changing the safety statistics cited.

Yes, accidents happen, but the risks are not equivalent at all: only nuclear offers the jumbo worst-case scenario of rendering an entire region completely uninhabitable.

So far the only drawback to renewables mentioned here is that they aren’t ready yet to take over. What’s the worst case scenario for a solar or wind accident?

In your experiment, Chris, please also examine how the different sides account for the *actual* cost of nuclear. I like the idea of nuclear, except for the cost: we taxpayers foot the bill for loan guarantees, cleanup in case of an accident, decommissioning, safe & monitored waste storage in perpetuity — costs that aren’t factored into the heavily subsidized retail price. Neither are the external costs of fossil fuels. How can the American consumer make a choice on how they’d rather spend our limited tax dollars if they don’t have an apples-to-apples comparison?

It’s odd that some are ready to go full steam ahead and continue spending billions on each new nuclear plant, as well as on R&D to find the someday-solution to nuclear waste (Yucca Mtn was built over a fault line, btw). Yet people balk at taking the same approach to renewables. The technology already exists, we could go full steam ahead and spend billions to deploy it to scale, along with R&D to speed up the develoment of battery tech already ongoing. No need for a 10,000 year storage facility, no wind spills, no solar spills. Yet this is somehow a bridge too far. Can anyone explain that discrepancy?

Finally, two impacts barely mentioned here are the nuclear’s water requirements & the environmental costs of mining. Nuclear is not “renewable” by definition as long as its physical fuel requirements exist in finite quantities.

Since I was on the edge of the MIT anti-nuke movement, blind anti-science wasn’t part of my friends’ approach. Though an insider’s appreciation of just how dumb the bad application of a technology was.

The best talk on nuclear power came not from Helen Caldicott, who always got on my nerves; but from Amory Lovins, whose 1978 speech recapped his hen-recent Foreign Affairs article, Soft Energy: the path not taken.

In one of the first uses of scenario thinking I’d heard, Amory hypothesized a choice between
1- The Official Future, based on coal, oil, gas and nuclear power and
2- Renewables and Conservation

He pointed out, as M. King Hubbert did in 1956, that oil and gas would peak and become more expensive, thus raising the cost of infrastructure building; that powerful planners always projected more power than we used; that a number of technical fixes were available to buy time because we were massively inefficient.

He pointed out, 33 years ago, in 1978, that nuclear reactors, then still on the new side, had a limited life and would need to be decommissioned. He proposed decommissioning them early. A good idea then, and still is now, in my thinking. (This proposal was revived after Chernobyl by the radical wing of the West German Greens, but rejected by Joschka Fischer. It was, however, eventually adopted by the Green-Labor coalition; until overturned. Unless the overturn is overturned.)

Amory’s trump card, however, was a simple one, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been pointed out by the previous 39 comments.

Nuclear power doesn’t pencil out. It is always subsidized.
By laws that say it doesn’t need to pay adequate insurance.
By federal subsidy of fuel processing costs.
By eminent domain seizure of indigenous lands in the US and Australia for uranium mining.
By laws that mandate pre-payment of construction by ratepayers. Free market nuclear power doesn’t work.
By exempting nukes from the toxics and brownfields laws that apply to other industries

Before the Cato Institute turned weird, I disagreed with much of what they said; but they did oppose subsidies for nuclear power. That is the only consistent libertarian, free market position.

You wanted to know if liberals, embracing science when it came to climate, would turn their backs on it.

One could ask if cafeteria conservatives, who reject scientific consensus when it comes to climate, but embrace technology when it comes to nuclear power, will turn their back on the market when it comes to energy prices.

There was a time when conservatives respected virtue– the notion that there were some hard truths that just had to be faced up to, and that one should not take from one’s children. Perhaps the hard truth is this– that there ain’t no [ecological] free lunch (TAANSTAFL) and we have to realize that our wastefulness and lack of planning have a higher cost than we were willing to admit.

Fukushima wasn’t unforeseen– yes, it was the strongest earthquake in 1,200 years, but it was the one of three that strength in 2,000 years. Not exactly on schedule, but by no means unforeseen. http://j.mp/gQRwEv

I hope this hasn’t been too polemical. Like Ropeik, I aspire to a thoughtful discussion. Thanks to all for their comments.

For conservatives, it’s just another component of their ideology. Nuclear=good. It’s build, baby, build.

Interesting.

Because for some strange reason a lot of people have got the idea that CO2 will destroy the planet, and nuclear is currently the only feasible alternative.

“Why trust private sector to run nuclear?”

Private or public makes little difference – they’re all human. But I suppose the question is: “Why not?”

“Why ask future generations to manage our waste. How much will it cost to manage the watse, over all time required to do this.”

Over all time, it will make a profit. Fast breeder reactors can burn the waste from current generation reactors, producing a hundred times more energy. What’s left decays naturally within a few centuries. Nuclear waste will eventually become really valuable.

And even on the current mindset of treating it as waste, the cost has been calculated and it’s really cheap.

“How do ypu decommission a nuclear reactor?”

Design it with decommissioning in mind. Take it to pieces and store it.

“Accidents happen. Allways have, always will. When nuclear accidents happen, it is off the scale.”

Not so far. There have been plenty of industrial accidents that have been worse, or have killed more. (Even wind farms kill people. You will always get industrial accidents anywhere people are working at height with high-voltage fast-moving machinery.) And even the biggest industrial accidents pale into insignificance compared to natural disasters.

Unless of course you’re talking about media excitement, in which case they’re up there with other top causes of death like serial killers and mad cow disease.

Yes, accidents happen. Yes, people will sometimes die or suffer injury as a result. They always have happened, and you won’t stop them or even reduce them by not using nuclear power. (Arguably you even increase them.) So how is it rational to make such a fuss about nuclear power, while completely ignoring preventable risks that kill many thousands of times more people?