[Luis Dias]

Going against the current is always bad at the beggining, but sometimes, it pays off. I do hope this new attempt to get Nuclear into the Environmentalist Agenda gets going.

A new movie is set to go about this stuff:

Featuring Mark Lynas and Mike Shellenberger (from ecomodernism).

Mark Lynas (whom I've disagreed with a lot in the past) also wrote this book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Q1TAOC8



I wish them the best of luck. While George Monbiot's epiphany over the subject was very powerful and "traumatic" (here: http://www.monbiot.com/2011/04/04/evidence-meltdown/), 4 years have passed and still we get environmentalist movements still championing anti-nuclear power.

It's like trying to herding idiot cats into a new, better, place. Almost impossible, but still quite important. I am actually interested in the movie, not for knowing the facts ( I do think I'm aware of them), but to check if they are persuasive or not.

Let's see if they are.

[Bobboau]

I'll believe it when I see it.

[Turambar]

Everyone who isn't an idiot should be in favor of nuclear power.  There's just too many idiots. Too much old cold war propaganda scaring people about nuclear bombs.  Too much fossil fuel industry propaganda.  Too many coal miners afraid of losing their **** jobs.

[Luis Dias]

And too many idiot environmentalists.

[jr2]

Well, if nuclear came and solved 95% of the world's energy problems, they'd have to find something else to protest about (as we wouldn't be producing greenhouse gases etc). 

Who'd want that to happen?  So much wasted political power, it would be a shame!  And, horror of horrors, you might get lefties and righties agreeing and working together on something.  Again, wasted political opportunity there... for both sides!

[watsisname]

I've been saying this for a while: nuclear is a good option to bridge the gap to clean and renewable energy, even more so with the newer reactor designs.  We cannot (easily) move away from fossil fuels by solar and wind power alone. 

I think humanity will need to pursue this or some similar course with great haste and conviction, if we are to avoid eventually finding ourselves in the position of facing potentially unfeasible methods of avoiding more than 2°C of warming.  Each year we wait will make the change we will need to make more drastic, to the point of requiring net negative emissions.

[rubixcube]

The main problem right now is economic. Nuclear power has tremendous up front costs, and the new thorium reactors even more so. There is not much incentive to switch to nuclear power until natural gas becomes more expensive, or some drastic advancement makes nuclear power much, much cheaper.

[FlamingCobra]

I thought the biggest reason nuclear power is so expensive is regulations.

[AtomicClucker]

Lots of good points have been brought up, I support nuclear power... but also depends on the people who run and administer things.

For example, Utah is sorta infamous for its terrible regulations and lax protocols to safety, ergo, between that and Energy Solutions and idiotic track record of safety, I don't want a reactor in my state. Period - 'cause the people here are corrupt and prone to stupid things. Giving them a reactor is like giving a drug addict a meth lab - going to explode sooner or later. Terrible anecdote on my part, but the point is that my problem with reactors is the people and organizations that run it.

They wanted to (and some still are pushing) for a reactor in the Green river valley. I have a problem with it because not only does our state suck at safety, but the place they want to put the reactor happens to be on an aquifer that feeds a good part of Utah, and if the reactor goes boom, less worried about fallout and more about contamination for our local ground water. Some people call me a worry wort, but my response is that after incidents like them burying waste out here and repeated incidents like the Crandall Canyon mine that killed a bunch of miners, I don't trust my local government or companies to administer it.

[jr2]

Don't reactors have to meet federal safety standards as well as states'?

[Klaustrophobia]

Yes.  And honestly, I've never heard about a reactor needing to do more stuff to meet state regulations.  Probably because if that were the case, they wouldn't put one there (as was probably the goal of the extra laws in the first place).

Mamba, yes regulation is part of the reason it's so damn expensive up front, but another is the nuclear stigma in general.  The components may be identical to those in a fossil plant, but attach the word "nuclear" to it and it triples in price.  Same way the wedding industry works. 

[Dragon]

I've been saying this for a while: nuclear is a good option to bridge the gap to clean and renewable energy, even more so with the newer reactor designs.

With breeder reactor designs, nuclear power is renewable energy, in the most literal sense. Breeders are complex tech and have some proliferation concerns, as most make a lot of plutonium (which is one of the better nuke materials), but they could make the world's uranium supply last a ridiculous amount of time, since they essentially produce more fuel than they use. They can do that by converting non-fissile materials into fissile ones, meaning that as long as you can provide regular (non-enriched) uranium for breeding, you can keep making nuclear fuel.

In general, it's great to see greens finally seeing the light. Nuclear fission is the most ecological power source available today and the second best energy source we'll ever have, the absolute best source that is physically possible being nuclear fusion. All the current "alternative sources" are a dead end, good only on small scale and for specialized applications.

[qwadtep]

I thought the biggest reason nuclear power is so expensive is regulations.

That's probably the lion's share of it, yes. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; nobody wants to see more Fukushimas.
But massive public undertakings is the reason we pay taxes. Or it's supposed to be.

[Klaustrophobia]

Fun fact: your tax dollars don't go toward nuclear regulation.  The NRC is a self-funded organization through the licensing fees.