Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Peter Todd's avatar

"Nuclear energy is amazing."

Sorry Rachel, but no.

Nuclear energy is probably the most unnecessarily complicated way that humans have ever devised of doing the simplest of of all human actions, heat water.

Fundamentally it's a ridiculous folly.

In my mind, what was amazing is that humans discovered a way to utilize the sun's energy to directly generate electricity, no moving parts, no water, no continual consumption or combustion of external fuel.

To me, that's truly clever.

Expand full comment
Tim Coombe's avatar

I'm going to have to disagree about nuclear. It feels like the current situation is very precarious with the current global estate of nuclear power.

Regarding the waste, there is no known safe way of disposing the spent fuel so we have it surrounded by concrete casks or perpetually cooled. This requires constant management, which is going to be a challenge to steward in the case of collapse or conflict. The safety regulations around managing the waste is another area that has been captured by the industry, particularly in the U.S. You've got to take into account that this stuff is toxic for maybe a thousand years. How certain are we that someone will be around to manage it?

Try taking a look at the position of nuclear plants in the U.S. and the U.K, then overlay the expected areas of flooding due to sea level rise by 2050. I wonder how this is will be mitigated.

Expand full comment
8 more comments...

No posts