Christine Lemmer-Webber 🌀
boosted
What could go wrong?
"Trump expels all but one member of nuclear waste oversight board”
George Shot (May 9, 1951) – Operation Greenhouse - YouTube
China is aiming for a full actinide recycling + fission product removal approach to nuclear fuel.
You can see that this would be a big win for energy security (moving from three 3 1/3s to just incountry resources would be very possible.
I am more interested in the switch from 100,000 year waste to 500 year waste. Building a management organisation to last 500 years is a much more tractable problem than all the stuff for 10-100,000 years.
So, good luck!
Just a subtoot: If you don't 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 nuclear, you'll find reasons to be against it - facts, climate change and human flourishing be damned.
It is therefore the wrong approach to respond against anti-nuclear arguments with facts. Believe me, I've tried. You can reply to worries about nuclear waste (spent fuel) for example with facts - like it being manageable just fine, or it only needing safe storage for 300 years before it becomes radiologically harmless, or it being able to be recycled perfectly fine, or its volume being negligible... If you get a denial of these facts, just stop bothering as people are just being dishonest with you.
I'm also not arguing with people who deny climate change, vaccines, the Earth being a globe (ffs), or whatever crazy batshit stuff people come up with these days. It's just not worth my time. I'll just smile and move along. Being against nuclear is likewise a denial of the science.
What does tend to work (better) is setting an optimistic narrative: industrialised society cannot run on solar and wind alone (this isn't hard arithmetic, it's just not enough, even ignoring other problems inherent with them) and nuclear is a 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 to this problem.
The third world, primarily Africa, is going to explode in energy consumption as they economically develop themselves (at long last) this century and, if we don't want them to burn coal for decades, nuclear energy is a 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 to this problem.
All energy sources have toxic waste streams. Nuclear has the fewest and best managed. It is a 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 to the problem of how to minimise our impact on the environment.
That spent fuel I was talking about earlier? It's full of energy still. So much so that it can power 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘵𝘺 for 𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴. No more mining needed if we wanted to. Nuclear 'waste' isn't waste at all, it is a 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘦.
The degrowth movement has a view that we need to use radically less energy, up to 95% less for the West and 60% less globally. These are numbers degrowthers share. The underlying view, explicit or implicit, is that there are just too many people on this planet. A malthusian view of sinful people. Sometimes this is wrapped up in an anti-capitalist rhetoric that 'infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible'. Catchy slogan, but it doesn't actually align with (capitalist) reality.
Yes, as a communist I strive for the end of capitalism and class society in general. And yes, we'll need to rearrange society by quite a bit. 'Degrow' some sectors, grow others. But for humans to flourish we need loads of clean energy. We need to in fact 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘥𝘦 our energy production as a species, up it by a factor 2 or 3 compared to the 200,000 TWh we consume now. Nuclear can deliver that, for billions of years, for the smallest footprint.
TL;DR, the two takeaways are:
Set the narrative, don't be reactive. The latter will cost you time and energy to combat. With the former people will have to engage with you.
If humanity is to have a future, the future will have to be nuclear.
#Nuclear#NuclearEnergy#Degrowth#ClimateChange#EnergyTransition
Alex
boosted
40 years ago today, the #Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret service agents. Two blasts destroyed the ship and murdered onboard photographer, Fernando Pereira.
The biggest problem for US #nuclear plans is that, at this stage, they only make economic sense if you want to avoid climate change or care about pollution. If you don't, then CCGT or coal are cheaper & faster.
The current US administration doesn't care about them (and is actively supporting FF).
So, unless something changes and the administration works out a 10+ year, bipartisan plan with funding, loans, & bankruptcy guarantees a nuclear comeback is still a non-starter in the US.
Wouter Tebbens
boosted
The attack backfired, instead galvanising the movement. Greenpeace only grew stronger, and "You Can't Sink a Rainbow" became a rallying call for resistance.
The Rainbow Warrior sailed again and is here today as a powerful symbol of resistance, putting hope into action for a better world.
#nuclear #ship#RW40
Read the story here:
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/76907/you-cant-sink-rainbow-cant-silence-hope/
Interesting take from an unnashamed nuclear advocate critical of the building of the BWRX-300 SMR in Darlington Canada.
Beardy Star Stuff
boosted
@tante
…and they are trying to bring back #nuclear with #AI …
…and they are trying to bring back #nuclear with #AI …
While #nuclearenergy is not #fossil it not #green at all - but #colonial , #deadly & totally unfair because, like in AI, the #profits are being privatised, the costs are hitting the whole #society & the #planet
But from the point of view of someone believing in #cybernetics or one of its #TESCREAL grandchildren it is great - because in cybernetics EVERY problem will be solved in "the future" by "technology"
Tim Chambers
boosted
'There Is No Intel': #Trump's Attacks on #Iran Were Based on Vibes, Sources Say
Following Trump's attacks on Iran, an admin official tells Rolling Stone, "The intelligence assessments have not really changed"
After Trump's decision to strike 3 Iranian #nuclear facilities on Sat, admin ofcls are barely bothering to pretend the unprecedented—& potentially calamitous—attacks were motivated by new #intelligence suggesting Iran was on the brink of having nuclear weapons.
The second #Trump admin skipped the pretense, opting to speed-run the #US into conflict, at a time when public polling shows that the idea of #war with #Iran is spectacularly unpopular with the American people.
In his address to the nation Saturday evening, Trump said, "Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity & a stop to the #nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror."
#Trump's attacks on #Iran constitute an act of #war - & could set off a new, long-term conflict with potential to grow into something much larger. Unlike a previous time an American president preemptively initiated a war in the #MiddleEast, when George W. Bush plunged America into a disastrous war in Iraq, he & his team spent roughly a year building a case of lies & propaganda to sell to a public that was already broadly supportive of post-9/11 military action.
The second #Trump admin skipped the pretense, opting to speed-run the #US into conflict, at a time when public polling shows that the idea of #war with #Iran is spectacularly unpopular with the American people.
In his address to the nation Saturday evening, Trump said, "Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity & a stop to the #nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror."
'There Is No Intel': #Trump's Attacks on #Iran Were Based on Vibes, Sources Say
Following Trump's attacks on Iran, an admin official tells Rolling Stone, "The intelligence assessments have not really changed"
After Trump's decision to strike 3 Iranian #nuclear facilities on Sat, admin ofcls are barely bothering to pretend the unprecedented—& potentially calamitous—attacks were motivated by new #intelligence suggesting Iran was on the brink of having nuclear weapons.
Just months ago, Trump's Director of National Intelligence #TulsiGabbard testified to #Congress, in her opening statement, that the US intel community "continues to assess that #Iran is not building a #nuclear weapon" & had not reauthorized its nuclear weapons program.
While #Trump recently publicly disputed Gabbard's testimony, acc/to 2 admin ofcls with knowledge of internal deliberations in recent weeks, Trump's decision to strike was not driven by any new US #intelligence on Iran.
Tim Chambers
boosted
A #MiddleEast-based maritime center overseen by the #US #military warned Sunday that there’s a “high” risk to US associated ships after the American strikes on #Iran #nuclear sites.
“The threat to US associated commercial shipping in the Red Sea & Gulf of Aden is currently assessed as HIGH,” the Joint Maritime Information Center, which is overseen by the US #Navy, wrote in an advisory to shippers.