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Watch out
There has been much speculation over the past few decades that we may be approaching or even experiencing a Nuclear Renaissance, a watershed where even countries such as my homeland Australia and the homeland of Nuclear Energy the USA might once again consider building nuclear power stations.
Picking a tipping point is very difficult before it happens.
But there are some reasons to think it will happen. The current political situation is quasi-stable, like a cone balanced on its point.
Sooner or later, surely the crash must come. But when or how... ?
It is I think revealing to ask, what's stopping it?
And the answer is, history. See pollies and participants for how this works.
So the next question is, what will the crash look like?
We can I think answer this one too. The tipping point will come when nuclear power is seen as being good for the environment. No earlier than that, and no later.
But it won't be pretty. The pollies and participants, as stakeholders in the anti-nuclear-power movement, will not take this lying down. Have the arguments been dirty, illogical, emotive, ill-informed technically so far? Have the tactics been violent and abusive? You bet. But you ain't seen nothin' yet.
In one forum I was recently called a "nuclear fanbois". Personal attack rather than discuss the issues. I expect much more of it.
No later
The environmental credentials of Nuclear Power are impeccable. There's a smokescreen built around the myths of bombs, wastes and accidents, but none of these arguments stand up to even shallow scrutiny.
- Military technology has supported and shaped the civilian power industry, but never the other way around.
- The nuclear industry is the only one in history to even attempt to account for its waste, let alone to fund its environmentally sound disposal.
- And the accident record is remarkably good. Three Mile Island killed nobody, and the meltdown didn't even escape the reactor vessel let alone the containment building.
See sex lies and Nuclear Power and Energy reality for more on these!
So what's the problem? Cost. But what's causing the costs? Politics. Often well-meaning and generally successful economic sabotage by the many who are appallingly ignorant of the facts. Spin. Political opportunism.
So can this be overcome? Maybe. But if and when it is overcome, if and when nuclear power is assessed on a fair and logical basis, and seen as part (not all) of any rational and environmentally responsible energy policy, this last hurdle evaporates instantly.
That's what I mean by quasi-stable.
But no sooner
Gernany and the USA are two of the major industrial and financial and intellectual powerhouses of the world.
Politically, nuclear power is currently not viable in either. See what happens when you do not go nuclear, and scratch your head. Even existing PWRs have been closed prematurely and replaced by fossil fuel. In the case of New York at least, that was because natural gas was cheaper. Cheaper than running a nuke that had already been paid for? Yep.
Politics is a strange beast. See pollies and participants, but it's even stranger than that. See The Howard Donahue theory on the JFK assassination. That case is bulletproof (pun intended) and has been since it was first published, in 1977, but most people still don't believe it.
Similarly, most people long believed that the world was flat, including most scholars, despite Aristotle (lived about 384–322 BC) having provided unanswered empirical evidence that it was not. Get over it.
See also
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