Technology

While I consider myself pro nuclear, there is something that gets forgotten everytime this conversation comes up.

Nuclear produces waste, which is mentioned often but it is usually responded by pointing out that it could be recycled and the worse to be buried.

Here is what people miss:

Are all our nuclear waste handled correctly today? If not then why should we imply that they will be in the future.

The problem with nuclear isn’t that the waste is impossible to handle, it’s that humans are too short sighted to follow through with it.

And imo that’s a very valid argument on why we should use solar as much as we can.

Technically solar power is nuclear power ☝️🤓

Averaging nuclear over the entire world really doesn't give it a fair shake, since there are many jurisdictions that won't build nuclear capacity for political and societal-preference reasons, rather than technical ones. Where I am, the percentage of electricity supplied by nuclear power plants is more than five times what's supplied by solar and wind combined, and we're doing just fine (and building out more nuclear in addition to more renewables).

Nuclear plants - with high start-up costs, national security risks and high output - will always require concentrating large amounts of power in few hands.

Solar has much greater potential for decentralization.

Greater inequality results in a worse society in just about every imaginable way. And nuclear will always encourage that more than solar.