A big part of the problem are the green parties themselves. They were in many cases started as a youth movement against nuclear power in the 60s. The basis of these green parties consists of people who are ideologically opposed to nuclear energy and their youth rebellion against it is now part of their identity. This is why the leadership of green parties cannot support nuclear energy even though opposing it is completely nonsensical at this point.
European nuclear advocates really don’t have a satisfactory political response to Chernobyl and Fukushima. Truthfully, the best argument for nuclear power is an extremely unpleasant one: a bit of radioactive contamination (an immediate and visceral threat) is a small price to pay for the emissions offset (still a somewhat abstract and distant threat). The numbers check out but it is undeniably ghoulish.
But pretending people are motivated by sheer hippie-foolishness is just an ignorant ad hominem. It is not “completely nonsensical” to oppose nuclear power, even if the argument is badly flawed. Chernobyl was a traumatic event for many Europeans and they are correct to be suspicious of claims that a proposed nuclear technology is actually safe.
Being so condescending and dismissive doesn’t help anyone.
I think that's exactly what the above commenter was saying in: "European nuclear advocates really don’t have a satisfactory political response to Chernobyl and Fukushima."
If a country experiences a nuclear accident like Chernobyl or Fukushima, your "number of casualties is lower than if we moved to coal" argument won't work. Cold numbers won't beat emotion.
Edit: On downvotes, it's very demographically consistent of HN to not believe or want to hear that emotions rule over cold numbers for many people in the world. I'm not saying that coal is better than nuclear (it's not per the numbers), but you need a satisfactory answer when a disaster happens, and rationalizing the deaths of thousands of people as "a preferred alternative to more deaths over time" won't cut it.
It’s more like cold numbers won’t beat lobbying. It’s not “if we moved to coal”. It’s “coal definitely killed more people than Chernobyl every few months for the last 100 years and is now literally burning the planet down, but somehow that’s OK.”
Yes, and that being OK is the magic of how emotions work! That's the exact valid point being ignored.
If you don't have a better response to a catastrophic nuclear disaster than "well, it killed people but coal definitely killed more people over time," then as the commenter said, you really don't have a satisfactory political response [1] to a nuclear disaster.
You're acknowledging the difference in our emotional response between gradual deaths over time versus a nuclear accident, but then hand-waving it away as irrational and unworthy of response, and ignoring that those irrational people form the majority of voters in the country.
[1] A satisfactory political response is one that will keep public opinion positive towards nuclear energy after a disaster.
Calling my explanation condescending seems exaggerated. The opposition against nuclear energy makes sense if Chernobyl is your reference in terms of safety. But modern reactor designs are a lot safer than Chernobyl and Fukushima. That's why I'm calling it nonsensical - the skepticism was warranted at the time but it's outdated now.
I agree with you that your comment wasn't condescending like the above commenter suggested, but disagree about modern reactor designs. They'll always carry this risk.
Sure, reactor design has changed since Chernobyl in various ways that help mitigate it, but what about Fukushima?
Fukushima was devastating, and the result was the NRC asking US reactors to reconfirm their flooding and earthquake preparedness. I don't know of any measures taken in European countries.
As climate change progresses, there could be some disastrous consequences, and it's unfair to say that the skepticism is outdated.
This isn't to say that nuclear is worse than coal (it's not), but that it isn't just handwaving.
Modern reactors are also much more expensive and take literally decades to build. Right now the option is to choose between comparatively cheap solar and wind energy (and their immense land usage) and nuclear power plants that are decades old. If we could build modern fission reactors more cheaply and quickly and if we had the water to operate many more of them they would be an option. Right now, they are not.
The only nuclear power plant under construction in the USA will cost nearly thirty billion dollars. That's not cheap no matter how low the interest rate.
> But pretending people are motivated by sheer hippie-foolishness is just an ignorant ad hominem.
I couldn't see any obvious ad hominem in the comment. They are correct in that the anti-nuclear stance of many Greens is often dogmatic to a point where they wouldn't even discuss it if the alternative were a social and economical catastrophe. And I don't think it's too far-fetched to attribute the emergence of that dogmatism to the early green movements.
> The numbers check out but it is undeniably ghoulish.
The numbers are bad for any energy source. Or any industry, for that matter. Coal-fired power plants have emitted much, much more radionuclides than the nuclear industry over the last half century. And contributed to killing millions of people.
The problem is that we’ve come to think that our current way of operating is fine. After all, it clearly is working. Except that it isn’t, but a lot of people have some trouble realising that.
> It is not “completely nonsensical” to oppose nuclear power, even if the argument is badly flawed.
You’re right, and we should be able to have a nuanced discussion. However, arguments such as “nuclear is bad because nuclear weapons” really are completely nonsensical. So is the “we should get rid of nuclear waste, but we are never going to accept to put them anywhere” argument. Or “we need better technical solutions but we oppose any R&D funding”. Or “nuclear plants are important greenhouse gas emitters”. These points are things that actual politicians say, and the a lot of other people believe. They also are utter bollocks.
> Being so condescending and dismissive doesn’t help anyone.
Quite right. And the fact that nuclear has been so opaque because of its association with the military and closely-guarded industrial secrets is very unhelpful.
That said, there are a lot of parallels with trump-like nationalism and anti-vaccination movements. At some point we have to accept that on any given issue some people are going to be vocally ignorant.
We have a weird situation in the UK where the green party oppose nuclear power and public transport development in England but are all for an independent Scotland reliant on north sea oil to stay solvent.
I expect very little from our political class but these ones are especially bizarre.
that is comical - funny to see how climate change doesn't really drive direct action even with environmentalists - looking into this they appear to be against nuclear while claiming carbon emissions are biggest issue?
They grew out of movements opposing nuclear power in the 60s, for various reasons (some of the weapons proliferation concerns were valid enough then, though a detailed understanding of fuel cycles and what does/doesn't generate usable weapons material seldom factors into the objections).
As the concerns shifted, the environmental groups seem to have simply added on various new concerns without re-evaluating old points. So you end up with a lot of the groups now being in a weird state where they're against nuclear, opposed to carbon emissions, and don't actually seem to care much about the actual environment beyond "We have to find a way to keep industrial civilization powered without carbon, and without nuclear." Blowing off mountain tops to extract materials to do this doesn't seem to be a huge concern anymore, and that certainly seems it should fall somewhere under the banner of "environmentalism" - but you mostly hear crickets these days.
If you're looking for something resembling a self consistent environmental group, you can read some of the stuff by the Deep Green Resistance people - their latest, Bright Green Lies, is a decent enough read on their position. That position, simply, is that industrial civilization is incompatible with the planet, and they do a decent job of arguing their position, which is that it doesn't matter how you power an industrial civilization, it does massive and irreparable damage to the planet as a result of the focus on energy and exponential growth. They look at the resource requirements to implement some of the forecast green futures ("We need 3M windmills? Ok, what does that look like in terms of steel, copper, rare earths, and how does that compare with the global production during the timeframe required to build them?") and come to some depressing conclusions. But even if you disagree with them, they show their work decently enough throughout and it's an interesting set of problems to think through.
But in general, you'll find an awful lot of "Climate change is a huge problem; someone else really ought to do something about it!" style thinking in the environmental groups, and I'm pretty comfortable saying that if the last decade hasn't done much useful on this front, continuing the same thing for years to come will accomplish roughly the same "almost nothing."
I'm also not at all sold with the "You can buy your way to green!" solutions that are peddled constantly by those who are interested in ensuring that, no matter what happens, the core of the modern consumerist economy won't be bothered. I'll gesture in the direction of the standard "worried about the climate" somewhat senior tech worker who has a million dollar home, a six figure car, absurdly expensive solar that offsets at least a bit of their power use on their roof, and who feels that they've consumed their way to green, without having really considered any of the resources that actually go into the vehicle, or lower energy/material alternatives to meet their needs. You can directly reduce emissions by simply using less, but this isn't really discussed these days.
I don't see a good path out, sadly. It's very possible we've accelerated growth in a direction that is simply a dead end canyon with no valid paths out that maintain a lot of what we've developed.
This issue is a tad more complex than the silly tropes of "greens oppose nuclear" and "greens claim gas is green". That's not quite what this is about.
Nuclear is very slow to (up|down)cycle. It's very good at putting out a constant rate of power. Pretty cheap power, once it's operational and when conviently ignoring all externalities. However, having boatloads of cheap nuclear on the grid, means that there isn't much room for renewables at the same time. Which means they're often seen as a poor investment. Which means not much capacity gets added. You get the idea.
What the greens want, is as much renewables on the grid as possible, as quickly as possible. You can't use nuclear as backup for intermittent renewables (clouds, lack of wind, etc) because it's too slow. That's why the gas peaker plants are a thing.
Is this an ideal situation? No, of course not. Everything about the energy mix on the grid is a compromise. But it's slowly moving towards a situation where renewables become an attractive investment, which will hopefully lead to more green power.
Nuclear isn't truly green. It still involved mining, and industry that as of today does burn lots of hydrocarbons. Nuclear is certainly better, but it isn't 100% green. It could become green if we can manage to electrify mining and/or get uranium from alternative sources such as water. While I am a fan of nuclear power I don't think it is perfect nor totally carbon free. True renewables, when they are working, are still better than nuclear. Nuclear's niche is that 24/7 reliability that we need to gap-fill wind and solar.
I mean obviously it's not green but this particular classification is about financial investment. The bar for what is considered green could be lowered to encourage investment into those sectors.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-four-others-...