The larger problem with nuclear is that it is prone to central control, taking away self determination and individual freedom of ordinary citizens in how energy is produced and paid for.
Other options like fossil fuels (gasoline, propane, etc.) but even more so solar, wind, and small scale hydro, all coupled with batteries as needed, offer much more freedom and personal choice about how people get their energy and how they pay for it.
The nuclear industry has lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and large corporations all enlisted for profit and control. These players colluding together have even managed to get the government to make the industry and exempt from liability for nuclear accidents!
As I see it, nuclear projects tend to be magnets for corruption, huge boondoggles, and don’t account for, much less pay, their full long term costs. And on top of that they force consumers to bear the cost in many ways, through taxes, lost property values, capture of government, and resulting opportunity costs.
The topic of waste is important, but it’s almost a red herring compared to the scale of the above control problems.
> nuclear projects tend to be magnets for corruption, huge boondoggles, and don’t account for, much less pay, their full long term costs
This is the point for me. Capital intensive projects with massive safety concerns and massive environmental liabilities are a recipe for regulatory capture and corruption, because they need to work hand-in-glove with the state to succeed. This is the formula that has led to accident after accident at chemical plants all over the world, some of which have been far more deadly than even the worst nuclear accidents. Civil servants need to be on board, or the project fails, and once they're on board, they tend to overlook malpractice.
That's a really good point that I never though about, thanks for bringing it up. That's one more thing to like about solar power, wind and hydro, or even gasoline in case of emergency. But my problem with fossile fuel is the large scale like coal burning plants. There is also the problem of cars, but I think you could find a middle way by forbidding gas-powered cars in the cities. If we're going to have something large-scale, I'd prefer it to be nuclear than other fossile fuels, and I'd prefer it to be renewable than nuclear. Consumers are already paying the cost of fossile fuels by dying of air pollution every year.
Hmm, surely the oil industry has more and better lawyers and lobbyists? Generally the problem with nuclear has been that building old-style reactors is expensive and unattractive, while trying new approaches is caught between regulation that wasn't designed for them, and popular opinion that wants everything to be better without actually making any changes (at the level of power generation or personal reduction, really).
> Hmm, surely the oil industry has more and better lawyers and lobbyists?
True but the distribution of energy and the whole setup is entirely different as related to the issues I mentioned.
Regulations surely have held back updated nuclear tech, I agree, and some of this may have been inflicted by the older entrenched owners of the older tech, and their lawyers and captive politicians, at the expense of newer nuclear startups.
If I had to rank things I’d say that solar, although not viable everywhere, is my favorite.
I can tell you the reason.
The larger problem with nuclear is that it is prone to central control, taking away self determination and individual freedom of ordinary citizens in how energy is produced and paid for.
Other options like fossil fuels (gasoline, propane, etc.) but even more so solar, wind, and small scale hydro, all coupled with batteries as needed, offer much more freedom and personal choice about how people get their energy and how they pay for it.
The nuclear industry has lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and large corporations all enlisted for profit and control. These players colluding together have even managed to get the government to make the industry and exempt from liability for nuclear accidents!
As I see it, nuclear projects tend to be magnets for corruption, huge boondoggles, and don’t account for, much less pay, their full long term costs. And on top of that they force consumers to bear the cost in many ways, through taxes, lost property values, capture of government, and resulting opportunity costs.
The topic of waste is important, but it’s almost a red herring compared to the scale of the above control problems.