While Canada touts small modular nuclear reactors and U.S. investors run for cover, the United Kingdom will waste billions watching the industry slowly crumble, writes veteran journalist Paul Brown.
Sue has got it spot on. A lot of support for nuclear power comes from the fossil fuel lobby. The longer nuclear takes to build and the more expensive it is the better as far as they are concerned. It allows fossil fuels to the burned for much longer and makes gas look competitive when in reality wind, solar combined with pump storage and batteries is a much quicker and cheaper option. The people who advocate for nuclear power are either badly misinformed, in love with the idea without looking at the facts, or cynically pushing a technology which has clearly failed to live up to its promise - and promises.
Not to gang up (well, only as appropriate), but here's a comment from Ralph Torrie, who's been following these issues deeply since the 1970s...
One can't help note the irony when nuclear supporters complain about "dogmatic" criticisms given the long history of dogmatic assertions in the pro-nuclear narrative. Remember "too cheap to metre"? "Atoms for Peace"? "The waste presents a public relations problem, not a technical obstacle"? As for it being "the only sensible solution", one thinks of the clearly nonsensical premise on which nuclear safety is built, i.e. that no consequence is too high if the probability is low enough.
It isn't dogmatic to suggest that a government just "easily print money" to pay for a technology that won't pay for itself? Because we know it's always worked so well when governments have done that in the past?
Even setting aside the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, the occasional devastating meltdown at Fukushima or Chornobyl or Three Mile Island, or the 240,000-year time span for protecting the most toxic of the waste, the fundamental problem nuclear faces today is that competing clean energy technologies are still plummeting in price, while SMRs are as yet unproven and costs are already escalating. Same as nuclear costs always do.
So riddle me this. If a solar or wind or heat pump manufacturer suggested that governments needed to just "easily print money" to help them scale up, wouldn't we laugh them out of the room? Shouldn't we? I know I would, and I would hope you would, too.
Governments in the U.K., Canada, and everywhere the nuclear lobby has infiltrated are misinforming, greenwashing and gaslighting the public about the supposed benefits of building more nuclear reactors. If all someone hears about nuclear energy is that it's clean, safe and affordable, who wouldn't love it? Unfortunately, the reality is the opposite, and until the truth gets out more widely and the public puts an end to it, we seem set to hand over billions to the nuclear industry – an industry perfectly aligned with fossil capital's desire to delay the energy transition and keep pumping oil and burning gas (and building new gas plants in Ontario) while we wait for reactor refurbishments and new reactors to come on line.
The UK government can easily print money to fund it. The only thing they need is the political will. Alas, dogmatic criticisms of nuclear discourage, rather than encourage, the only sensible solution.
Sue has got it spot on. A lot of support for nuclear power comes from the fossil fuel lobby. The longer nuclear takes to build and the more expensive it is the better as far as they are concerned. It allows fossil fuels to the burned for much longer and makes gas look competitive when in reality wind, solar combined with pump storage and batteries is a much quicker and cheaper option. The people who advocate for nuclear power are either badly misinformed, in love with the idea without looking at the facts, or cynically pushing a technology which has clearly failed to live up to its promise - and promises.
Not to gang up (well, only as appropriate), but here's a comment from Ralph Torrie, who's been following these issues deeply since the 1970s...
One can't help note the irony when nuclear supporters complain about "dogmatic" criticisms given the long history of dogmatic assertions in the pro-nuclear narrative. Remember "too cheap to metre"? "Atoms for Peace"? "The waste presents a public relations problem, not a technical obstacle"? As for it being "the only sensible solution", one thinks of the clearly nonsensical premise on which nuclear safety is built, i.e. that no consequence is too high if the probability is low enough.
It isn't dogmatic to suggest that a government just "easily print money" to pay for a technology that won't pay for itself? Because we know it's always worked so well when governments have done that in the past?
Even setting aside the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, the occasional devastating meltdown at Fukushima or Chornobyl or Three Mile Island, or the 240,000-year time span for protecting the most toxic of the waste, the fundamental problem nuclear faces today is that competing clean energy technologies are still plummeting in price, while SMRs are as yet unproven and costs are already escalating. Same as nuclear costs always do.
So riddle me this. If a solar or wind or heat pump manufacturer suggested that governments needed to just "easily print money" to help them scale up, wouldn't we laugh them out of the room? Shouldn't we? I know I would, and I would hope you would, too.
Governments in the U.K., Canada, and everywhere the nuclear lobby has infiltrated are misinforming, greenwashing and gaslighting the public about the supposed benefits of building more nuclear reactors. If all someone hears about nuclear energy is that it's clean, safe and affordable, who wouldn't love it? Unfortunately, the reality is the opposite, and until the truth gets out more widely and the public puts an end to it, we seem set to hand over billions to the nuclear industry – an industry perfectly aligned with fossil capital's desire to delay the energy transition and keep pumping oil and burning gas (and building new gas plants in Ontario) while we wait for reactor refurbishments and new reactors to come on line.
The UK government can easily print money to fund it. The only thing they need is the political will. Alas, dogmatic criticisms of nuclear discourage, rather than encourage, the only sensible solution.
https://open.substack.com/pub/carlhodsonthomas578876/p/errors-of-omission-and-errors-of?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=tmdbn