For balance, consider interviews with people like Dr Helen Caldicott (Sleepwalking Towards Armageddon); Kate Brown, (Manual for Survival); Dr. Ivana Hughes of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Dr. Timmon Wallis of Nuclear Ban.US and Warheads to Windmills; Joshua Frank (Atomic Days), Ralph Nader; Svetlana Alexievich (Voices From Chernobyl); EPA radiation specialists (but check funding/obligations); Project Drawdown nuclear team who classify it as a 'regrets' industry, best phased out.
I appreciate you taking up the topic of nuclear power, and this was quite a brave interview.
The topic of nuclear power has never been seen as more confusing than now. Following you interview with Mr. Nelson, I listened to the latest episode on the Energy Transition Show: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-219-nuclear-illusions/ with an interview with Jim Green. (I can share a link to free episode if anyone is interested)
Gosh, these viewpoints on nuclear are as far away from eachother as possible.
Bottom line: I guess we could just look at the number of GWs of wind and solar installed , and then at the number of GWs of nuclear installed. In 2023 >500GW of solar and wind was installed globally. Nuclear declined by 1.7GW.
Also this interview with nuclear historian Stephanie Cooke gives similar picture drawn by Green.
I’ve heard far better reasoned arguments for nuclear than this rather disjointed effort. We seemed trapped between clunky simplifications and trust me because if I get into the physics and maths I’ll lose you, falling back to the old if you visit you’ll see trust me logic. I don’t accept his death stats - estimates of longer term premature deaths from Chernobyl vary from 4k-60k. He might be comfortable with the risks but wasn’t probed aggressively as to whether he’s being sponsored to take that attitude. His economics seemed way out. Overall he had a lobbyist feel to me. Probably the weakest pod I’ve listened to in an otherwise excellent interview series. A topic worthy of your time Rachel, and I look forward to more credible interviewees! Btw a giant solar farm in the desert doesn’t get weaponised in quite such an alarming way as this. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/03/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-torture-meltdown/677612/
Unfortunately, the "clean, cheap, plentiful" myth, like other bad ideas, doesn't go away. And also unfortunately, every probable Green New Deal proposed by governments depends on nukes as "transitional" technology until if ever, we get to really green renewables. We are daily creating more wastes (and more bombs, misles and the like) and even slinging radioactive substances around space in nuclear fueled devices. The nuke industry is thriving and, in good capitalist fashion, looking to get bigger (though sometimes, via the miniaturization model, as with mini-nukes and fusion reactors).
Here, just a three points of the many that might and should be made, about Mark Nelson's rosy, tech-fix remarks.
First, he correctly notes that "in nuclear we want perfect." But of course, perfect is not available to we humans. Stuff, especially human error, happens. Fukushima is not an anomaly; it was an accident waiting to happen. Stewart Brand's famous line in his infamous promotion of nukes, "We are as gods" and ought to start acting like it, was and is bs (and as the Greek playwrights would have recognized, mortal hubris of the worst sort, subject to deific punishment).
Second, the old 60s slogan "Plutonium is Forever" is still relevant. Governments last a couple of hundred years at most, civilizations a couple of thousand, nuke waste tens of thousands. While Nelson feels wastes that have degraded for 500 years or so (or the equivalent in fast or recycling reactors) do not present a "high [human] health risk," we may well question what environmental risks tons of rad waste accumulated over thousands of years will pose (or even what life forms may then be at risk),, even when the wastes have been, as he says, "locked away, like forever."
Third, he says that "nobody has ever been hurt by nuclear waste," but certainly the results of the experiments are not yet in. Immediate deaths are not the appropriate measure. Rather, chronic health problems, in non-human as well as human species must be considered, and trans-generational genetic effects, which may not show up until long after the damage is done.
This was a very interesting conversation, and Mark Nelson made a compelling case, but I still have many nagging doubts. For example, I heard a very different opinion about the safety of nuclear waste from someone who was supposed to be highly involved in U.S. regulation. He seemed to be saying that the regulatory system had been captured by the industry. Here's the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdTlItSvv9s .
Here in the U.K. and I think elsewhere, nuclear plants are often situated in places that are forecast to be prone to flooding by 2050. Is this a concern?
I think that Rachel's point about continuity of civilisation is a valid one. If there is some sort of collapse, who is going to be maintaining the reactors and waste storage? Surely there needs to be some safe decommissioning process? Who will do that?
In The Good Ancestor by philosopher Roman Krznaric, he makes the case that if you fire an arrow into a forest, not knowing who might be standing within, you are morally culpable if that arrow harms someone. Using the same logic over time rather than space, if we leave these substances that can be toxic for hundreds or thousands of years, are we responsible for harm they might cause to future humans and non-humans. The vault in Finland is an exception rather than the norm.
On Nuclear War, Chuck Watson as a guest on The Great Simplification came up with the term 'risk homeostatis', to describe how a great risk can seem to diminish in our minds (and in the mind of our politicians) just because it hasn't yet come to pass, even though the actual risk is maybe greater than it ever was.
What I find is interesting about this presentation is this guy's dismissive criticism of Simon Michaux and other likeminded people. He's tragically missing the point.
At the beginning, Mark says that the world's problem is a lack of infrastructure for producing clean energy. That's very myopic. While energy-related issued certainly are a problem, the issue at play humankind is facing runs much much deeper. What really is at stake is our very relationship with nature, with people's natural habitat.
The problem is that humans are too smart and at the same time too stupid for their own good. While it's a natural thing for critters to make nests, burrows, to hedge against adverse conditions, to do stuff to make their lives easier and safer, humans - thanks to their intellectually capacity - have gone way beyond what's reasonable. As per the above, their smartness has allowed them to exploit shit that's lying around to their great advantage, but their stupidity has prevented them from seeing that the endless effort to secure more security and more comfort is detrimental not only by atrophying their natural ability to survive, but also by destroying their natural habitat.
Humans are operating based on God's instruction to have dominion over the Earth and multiply (God was probably high or kidding when he issued this order). This puts humanity on a collision course with Nature. It's unsustainable in the long term, especially the present-day endlessly wasteful phantasmagoria.
In other words, humans have to redefine their raison d'etre. Period. It's not about finding an alternative source of energy and carrying on. Sure, nuclear can provide power and if they can figure out technologies that do it efficiently and cleanly, all the better. But that's not the point.
From what I can see, guys like Michaux, to whom this nuke guy refers kinda disparagingly, certainly seem to employ much more holistic an approach to the predicament we're in. Plus, Simon has rather detailed calculations, while Mark here has wishful thinking, as regards fossils that is.
So, while the information about nuclear energy per se is interesting and useful, I would take anything Mark has to say about stuff in general with a grain of salt.
No doubt there are drawbacks and risks surrounding Nuclear, but it's a necessary evil. Society will not adopt the rapid and wholesale degrowth necessary to lower our energy demands sufficiently to allow renewable energy to replace fossil fuels in the short-term. Therefore Nuclear provides a viable transition energy that can ween us off fossil, until we scale up cleaner alternatives such as geothermal, hydro, solar, wind etc..
As well as powering homes and businesses, a fission reactor (such as an SMR) linked to a hydrogen electrolyser can fuel mass transport, with zero emissions (other than the depleted uranium). It's not a permanent long-term solution but it's an interim, and a least-worst option to the alternative...
What an episode. A unique guest for you. An engineer, a capitalist (hoping for a board seat, could have gone to wall street to make "real money" etc) He was talking over you, putting words in your mouth. Yes a lobbyist. Full of himself and his views/experience. He was a disappointing person which made his arguments hard to accept. He was also very scattered in his thinking. Maybe the nuclear debate deserves a Planet Critical Panel debate. I like that you are trying new types of people but he wasn't as compelling as most of your guests.
According to this documentary, https://youtu.be/VOMWzjrRiBg, while we have substantial uranium reserves today, if nuclear power is used to generate the 10 terawatts of electrical power the earth uses per annum, uranium reserves will be depleted in less than 2 decades. Building nuclear reactors is extremely fossil fuel intensive and produces a shit load of toxic waste, as does converting uranium for use in the reactor.
I grow weary of the brattish foot stamping of a privileged few who insist in the most strident terms that we must continue to live this way, at any cost. And even lean on the rights of those who have been oppressed by this way of life, to also live this way, in the most disingenuous fashion.
What do you do to have fun? What is it you really enjoy in your life? Does this really need so much energy? This generation must be brave and truly grow into our wisest beings.
I am an hour+ into listening to Mark Nelson fast talk us into believing nuclear energy offers us a good life as well as a good way to save our planet.
I have 38 minutes left in the podcast to listen to. Mark has still not addressed the most dangerous aspect of nuclear power - the wastes that will endanger living things for many tens of thousands of years into the future. Hoping he gets a chance to seriously discuss that and when he does, he offers more than platitudes.
I write this comment now because early on in the podcast he ran a dismissive and fanciful narrative of the environmentalists who warned about nuclear power in the 1960s and 1970s. I was one such - not a researcher and writer at that point, mostly just finding time to show up at demonstrations. I am glad that @CAROKALI already commented with a list of some of the many quite serious critics in those days.
One thing Mark's narrative ignores, is Eisenhower's _Atoms for Peace_ initiative which sought to rationalize and normalize military nuclear development under cover of its benefits for civilian life. Mark's effort to separate the military from the civilian goes against nuclear history up to and including today.
In my circles in the 1970s, most everyone was talking up the need for wind and solar power. We were also very aware of the power of the oil, coal, and gas companies. None of this is new, just more urgent to get the analysis correct and take action.
The guest made this interview unlistenable for me. He completely refuses to even consider the notion that future energy use might be constrained or decline in any way, which puts the rest of his assumptions on rapidly disintegrating foundations. He acts shocked that we don’t already know that all mines produce radioactive waste, but assures us that his mine does it safely. The techno-optimism is trying really hard to keep up here, but there is nothing credible about it.
I understand Marks real concern. He sees the world now as the horse trader did when automobiles began to show in larger numbers every day. It was clear horses were on their way out, but the horse trader would shout every time they saw a broken down car on the side of the road, "Get a horse!"
Sorry Mike, but renewable energy power generation will be the end to dangerous and dirty nuclear energy. Plain as day.
The other week I rewatched Thank You For Smoking. Unfortunately Mark comes off a bit like the main character.
He was right to declare his focus was purely on the technical and economic aspects but you can't just cast aside the social impacts let alone assure us we can squeegee uranium out of the ocean at scale economically. It's weird how going into the episode I thought to myself "Oh man, I hope I don't come out liking nuclear" but Mark's approach just turned me off.
I think Rachel did a great job calling him out but it's hard when the guest is using a bit of a gish gallop approach to stay on topic. I think the point that was lost on Mark was that simply saying "Oh enforce that every 50-100 years you need to reline or check the waste" or whatever his exact words were, in our world where governments and nations fall, isn't a safety guarantee. I'm still glad you had him as a guest, it's great to cover different perspectives.
It's pointless discussing energy alternatives, within an insane irrational socio-economic system that requires infinite growth, and where profit is paramount. You can have unlimited resources and man power at your disposal, but if a profit cannot be extracted, you may as well have nothing. Plenty of profits in war, its a boon for weapons manufacturer's, funeral directors real estate developers, mining companies and news media. There is only one relevant discussion, and that is how to get rid of the lunatics in power, so we have free access to the land and resources they have stolen.
"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes, might not anyone have saved mankind by pulling up the stakes, filling in the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
For balance, consider interviews with people like Dr Helen Caldicott (Sleepwalking Towards Armageddon); Kate Brown, (Manual for Survival); Dr. Ivana Hughes of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Dr. Timmon Wallis of Nuclear Ban.US and Warheads to Windmills; Joshua Frank (Atomic Days), Ralph Nader; Svetlana Alexievich (Voices From Chernobyl); EPA radiation specialists (but check funding/obligations); Project Drawdown nuclear team who classify it as a 'regrets' industry, best phased out.
I appreciate you taking up the topic of nuclear power, and this was quite a brave interview.
The topic of nuclear power has never been seen as more confusing than now. Following you interview with Mr. Nelson, I listened to the latest episode on the Energy Transition Show: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-219-nuclear-illusions/ with an interview with Jim Green. (I can share a link to free episode if anyone is interested)
Gosh, these viewpoints on nuclear are as far away from eachother as possible.
Bottom line: I guess we could just look at the number of GWs of wind and solar installed , and then at the number of GWs of nuclear installed. In 2023 >500GW of solar and wind was installed globally. Nuclear declined by 1.7GW.
Also this interview with nuclear historian Stephanie Cooke gives similar picture drawn by Green.
https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-209-end-of-the-nuclear-age/
I’ve heard far better reasoned arguments for nuclear than this rather disjointed effort. We seemed trapped between clunky simplifications and trust me because if I get into the physics and maths I’ll lose you, falling back to the old if you visit you’ll see trust me logic. I don’t accept his death stats - estimates of longer term premature deaths from Chernobyl vary from 4k-60k. He might be comfortable with the risks but wasn’t probed aggressively as to whether he’s being sponsored to take that attitude. His economics seemed way out. Overall he had a lobbyist feel to me. Probably the weakest pod I’ve listened to in an otherwise excellent interview series. A topic worthy of your time Rachel, and I look forward to more credible interviewees! Btw a giant solar farm in the desert doesn’t get weaponised in quite such an alarming way as this. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/03/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-torture-meltdown/677612/
Unfortunately, the "clean, cheap, plentiful" myth, like other bad ideas, doesn't go away. And also unfortunately, every probable Green New Deal proposed by governments depends on nukes as "transitional" technology until if ever, we get to really green renewables. We are daily creating more wastes (and more bombs, misles and the like) and even slinging radioactive substances around space in nuclear fueled devices. The nuke industry is thriving and, in good capitalist fashion, looking to get bigger (though sometimes, via the miniaturization model, as with mini-nukes and fusion reactors).
Here, just a three points of the many that might and should be made, about Mark Nelson's rosy, tech-fix remarks.
First, he correctly notes that "in nuclear we want perfect." But of course, perfect is not available to we humans. Stuff, especially human error, happens. Fukushima is not an anomaly; it was an accident waiting to happen. Stewart Brand's famous line in his infamous promotion of nukes, "We are as gods" and ought to start acting like it, was and is bs (and as the Greek playwrights would have recognized, mortal hubris of the worst sort, subject to deific punishment).
Second, the old 60s slogan "Plutonium is Forever" is still relevant. Governments last a couple of hundred years at most, civilizations a couple of thousand, nuke waste tens of thousands. While Nelson feels wastes that have degraded for 500 years or so (or the equivalent in fast or recycling reactors) do not present a "high [human] health risk," we may well question what environmental risks tons of rad waste accumulated over thousands of years will pose (or even what life forms may then be at risk),, even when the wastes have been, as he says, "locked away, like forever."
Third, he says that "nobody has ever been hurt by nuclear waste," but certainly the results of the experiments are not yet in. Immediate deaths are not the appropriate measure. Rather, chronic health problems, in non-human as well as human species must be considered, and trans-generational genetic effects, which may not show up until long after the damage is done.
This was a very interesting conversation, and Mark Nelson made a compelling case, but I still have many nagging doubts. For example, I heard a very different opinion about the safety of nuclear waste from someone who was supposed to be highly involved in U.S. regulation. He seemed to be saying that the regulatory system had been captured by the industry. Here's the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdTlItSvv9s .
Here in the U.K. and I think elsewhere, nuclear plants are often situated in places that are forecast to be prone to flooding by 2050. Is this a concern?
I think that Rachel's point about continuity of civilisation is a valid one. If there is some sort of collapse, who is going to be maintaining the reactors and waste storage? Surely there needs to be some safe decommissioning process? Who will do that?
In The Good Ancestor by philosopher Roman Krznaric, he makes the case that if you fire an arrow into a forest, not knowing who might be standing within, you are morally culpable if that arrow harms someone. Using the same logic over time rather than space, if we leave these substances that can be toxic for hundreds or thousands of years, are we responsible for harm they might cause to future humans and non-humans. The vault in Finland is an exception rather than the norm.
On Nuclear War, Chuck Watson as a guest on The Great Simplification came up with the term 'risk homeostatis', to describe how a great risk can seem to diminish in our minds (and in the mind of our politicians) just because it hasn't yet come to pass, even though the actual risk is maybe greater than it ever was.
What I find is interesting about this presentation is this guy's dismissive criticism of Simon Michaux and other likeminded people. He's tragically missing the point.
At the beginning, Mark says that the world's problem is a lack of infrastructure for producing clean energy. That's very myopic. While energy-related issued certainly are a problem, the issue at play humankind is facing runs much much deeper. What really is at stake is our very relationship with nature, with people's natural habitat.
The problem is that humans are too smart and at the same time too stupid for their own good. While it's a natural thing for critters to make nests, burrows, to hedge against adverse conditions, to do stuff to make their lives easier and safer, humans - thanks to their intellectually capacity - have gone way beyond what's reasonable. As per the above, their smartness has allowed them to exploit shit that's lying around to their great advantage, but their stupidity has prevented them from seeing that the endless effort to secure more security and more comfort is detrimental not only by atrophying their natural ability to survive, but also by destroying their natural habitat.
Humans are operating based on God's instruction to have dominion over the Earth and multiply (God was probably high or kidding when he issued this order). This puts humanity on a collision course with Nature. It's unsustainable in the long term, especially the present-day endlessly wasteful phantasmagoria.
In other words, humans have to redefine their raison d'etre. Period. It's not about finding an alternative source of energy and carrying on. Sure, nuclear can provide power and if they can figure out technologies that do it efficiently and cleanly, all the better. But that's not the point.
From what I can see, guys like Michaux, to whom this nuke guy refers kinda disparagingly, certainly seem to employ much more holistic an approach to the predicament we're in. Plus, Simon has rather detailed calculations, while Mark here has wishful thinking, as regards fossils that is.
So, while the information about nuclear energy per se is interesting and useful, I would take anything Mark has to say about stuff in general with a grain of salt.
No doubt there are drawbacks and risks surrounding Nuclear, but it's a necessary evil. Society will not adopt the rapid and wholesale degrowth necessary to lower our energy demands sufficiently to allow renewable energy to replace fossil fuels in the short-term. Therefore Nuclear provides a viable transition energy that can ween us off fossil, until we scale up cleaner alternatives such as geothermal, hydro, solar, wind etc..
As well as powering homes and businesses, a fission reactor (such as an SMR) linked to a hydrogen electrolyser can fuel mass transport, with zero emissions (other than the depleted uranium). It's not a permanent long-term solution but it's an interim, and a least-worst option to the alternative...
What an episode. A unique guest for you. An engineer, a capitalist (hoping for a board seat, could have gone to wall street to make "real money" etc) He was talking over you, putting words in your mouth. Yes a lobbyist. Full of himself and his views/experience. He was a disappointing person which made his arguments hard to accept. He was also very scattered in his thinking. Maybe the nuclear debate deserves a Planet Critical Panel debate. I like that you are trying new types of people but he wasn't as compelling as most of your guests.
According to this documentary, https://youtu.be/VOMWzjrRiBg, while we have substantial uranium reserves today, if nuclear power is used to generate the 10 terawatts of electrical power the earth uses per annum, uranium reserves will be depleted in less than 2 decades. Building nuclear reactors is extremely fossil fuel intensive and produces a shit load of toxic waste, as does converting uranium for use in the reactor.
I grow weary of the brattish foot stamping of a privileged few who insist in the most strident terms that we must continue to live this way, at any cost. And even lean on the rights of those who have been oppressed by this way of life, to also live this way, in the most disingenuous fashion.
What do you do to have fun? What is it you really enjoy in your life? Does this really need so much energy? This generation must be brave and truly grow into our wisest beings.
Rachel @RACHELDONALD:
I am an hour+ into listening to Mark Nelson fast talk us into believing nuclear energy offers us a good life as well as a good way to save our planet.
I have 38 minutes left in the podcast to listen to. Mark has still not addressed the most dangerous aspect of nuclear power - the wastes that will endanger living things for many tens of thousands of years into the future. Hoping he gets a chance to seriously discuss that and when he does, he offers more than platitudes.
I write this comment now because early on in the podcast he ran a dismissive and fanciful narrative of the environmentalists who warned about nuclear power in the 1960s and 1970s. I was one such - not a researcher and writer at that point, mostly just finding time to show up at demonstrations. I am glad that @CAROKALI already commented with a list of some of the many quite serious critics in those days.
One thing Mark's narrative ignores, is Eisenhower's _Atoms for Peace_ initiative which sought to rationalize and normalize military nuclear development under cover of its benefits for civilian life. Mark's effort to separate the military from the civilian goes against nuclear history up to and including today.
In my circles in the 1970s, most everyone was talking up the need for wind and solar power. We were also very aware of the power of the oil, coal, and gas companies. None of this is new, just more urgent to get the analysis correct and take action.
Charles @vulnerableadvocate
The guest made this interview unlistenable for me. He completely refuses to even consider the notion that future energy use might be constrained or decline in any way, which puts the rest of his assumptions on rapidly disintegrating foundations. He acts shocked that we don’t already know that all mines produce radioactive waste, but assures us that his mine does it safely. The techno-optimism is trying really hard to keep up here, but there is nothing credible about it.
I understand Marks real concern. He sees the world now as the horse trader did when automobiles began to show in larger numbers every day. It was clear horses were on their way out, but the horse trader would shout every time they saw a broken down car on the side of the road, "Get a horse!"
Sorry Mike, but renewable energy power generation will be the end to dangerous and dirty nuclear energy. Plain as day.
No it's not.
The other week I rewatched Thank You For Smoking. Unfortunately Mark comes off a bit like the main character.
He was right to declare his focus was purely on the technical and economic aspects but you can't just cast aside the social impacts let alone assure us we can squeegee uranium out of the ocean at scale economically. It's weird how going into the episode I thought to myself "Oh man, I hope I don't come out liking nuclear" but Mark's approach just turned me off.
I think Rachel did a great job calling him out but it's hard when the guest is using a bit of a gish gallop approach to stay on topic. I think the point that was lost on Mark was that simply saying "Oh enforce that every 50-100 years you need to reline or check the waste" or whatever his exact words were, in our world where governments and nations fall, isn't a safety guarantee. I'm still glad you had him as a guest, it's great to cover different perspectives.
It's pointless discussing energy alternatives, within an insane irrational socio-economic system that requires infinite growth, and where profit is paramount. You can have unlimited resources and man power at your disposal, but if a profit cannot be extracted, you may as well have nothing. Plenty of profits in war, its a boon for weapons manufacturer's, funeral directors real estate developers, mining companies and news media. There is only one relevant discussion, and that is how to get rid of the lunatics in power, so we have free access to the land and resources they have stolen.
"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying, “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes, might not anyone have saved mankind by pulling up the stakes, filling in the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1757