[lostmyoldone]

If it is Prometheus' fire, we are not ready to handle that fire yet. When one of the core concerns of using a technology is to prevent it being used to create weapons capable of obliterating entire cities, we are not as a species mature enough to use it on a wider scale. This is only one example of why we are not ready yet.

Nuclear (fission) technology is not the problem, we are the problem. Looking at the recent history of political leadership all over the world, and the baffling level of support even the most immature of policies have, it's clear we have a ways to go. Most people doesn't even seem to realize that as a species we've only just emerged, we're so young. Toddlers on any timescale but the most naïve and short sighted.

[jjoonathan]

If we hadn't stopped building nuclear power in the 80s and had merely kept up the pace, our electric grid would be 100% decarbonized by now.

Instead, we do have nukes and don't have a carbon free grid. Ditto everyone else.

Naïve, immature, and short sighted, indeed.

[Gwypaas]

A negative learning curve coupled with Chernobyl doesn't create a very compelling business case right at the end of the 80s.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

[throw0101a]

> If it is Prometheus' fire, we are not ready to handle that fire yet.

If we should only be allowed to use technology when we fully understand its consequences, then we should still be living as hunter gatherers (agriculture).

Heck, most people don't understand how wood has shaped humanity:

* https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Age-of-Wood/Rolan...

See also Marshall McLuhan:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

[VortexDream]

Either we use it and learn to use it or we wipe out wide swathes of the human population over the next hundred years. I'm sure the millions who die and suffer over the next few decades will be grateful to your absolute principles.

[ashtonkem]

1) We already have a ton of nuclear weapons laying around, without even getting the upside of lots of electricity. Stopping nuclear power to avoid nuclear proliferation has not worked.

2) The alternative for lots of the world is coal. Between letting the Germans have access to refined Uranium (not highly refined) and letting the Germans continue to burn coal, I’d take the former.

3) This argument falls apart once you realize how little we’ve invested in Thorium reactors, which don’t post a nuclear proliferation risk.

I think that the ugly reality is that fossil fuel companies have cynically co-opted legitimate fears about nuclear power (and there are legitimate concerns) in order to shut them down or push them off into “we can use them once <impossible condition> has been met” specifically because nuclear power is the only serious threat to their continued profits.

[mihaaly]

How about airplanes and internal combustion engines? Those are weaponised with track record off killing millions and millions. Should we immediately throw away those as well?

[vlovich123]

I'm unclear about what your point is. Are you saying that Nuclear power production is somehow linked to nuclear arms production?

[dboreham]

Of course it is.

[throwaway898989]

are you saying that nuclear power related accidents like chernobyl don't happen?

[MR4D]

> When one of the core concerns of using a technology is to prevent it being used to create weapons capable of obliterating entire cities, we are not as a species mature enough to use it on a wider scale.

Just wanted to point out that stone (trebuchets), wood (arrows), bronze (swords), and steel (guns, bombs, tanks, etc) fall into this category too. Silicon is probably there already as well, but hasn’t been used yet.

Mankind has used everything as his disposal to gain the upper hand over another group of humans since well before history began. I don’t ever expect it to stop.

[TheDudeMan]

Regardless of whether the big carbon-producing nations use nuclear power, they will stock nuclear bombs. Thermonuclear, in fact.

[prox]

I wonder what the pathway would be (in a perfect everything-matures-at-a-constant-rate way)

Probably better representative systems that don’t pit countries or peoples against eachother. A way to identify as a human or earthling above all nationalities.

A revolutionary better economic understanding so we don’t have to choose politically and have clear economic growth tied to wellness of people.

Probably connected to the above is a superior education system for everyone who wants to and help to realize mature atomic sciences.

[denton-scratch]

The issue that concerns me about nuclear power isn't so much weapons (they tend to be well-guarded, and it's hard to make weapons from reactor fuel), but decomissioning.

The UK was one of the first countries to build nuclear reactors; no UK reactor has ever been fully decomissioned, and from what I can see we haven't even got a strategy - WP says they're still working out whether decomissioning should occur over a 20-year or a 100-year span. The UK's first nuclear reactor, Calder Hall, was built in the year of my birth, and decommissioning is estimated to take well into the next century; my grandchildren will have died of old age.

You can stand next to a thermonuclear bomb without a mickey-mouse suit; you can even open it up, take the components out, and render the weapon unusable, fairly easily. Nuclear reactors, not so much.

I have grandchildren under 5. Until we've proved that a reactor design can be fully decommissioned, I don't think we should build more. That's not a problem that I want to dump on their shoulders.

[throwaway894345]

What sort of world will your grandchildren inherit if we don’t invest in nuclear? What happens if the mystery renewable energy storage and carbon scrubbing technologies never materialize? What happens if the climate scientists are right about the increasing droughts and floods and the knock-on effects to food supplies and so on? By comparison the risk of nuclear is negligible.

[ksec]

Am I missing something? Why is decommissioning nuclear power plants the problem here? There are plenty of nuclear power plants that has been decommissioned. So this is nothing new.

[simion314]

>using a technology is to prevent it being used to create weapons capable of obliterating entire cities, we are not as a species mature enough to use it on a wider scale. This is only one example of why we are not ready yet.

So now this big countries like US,Russia and the rest still have the bombs, you don't reduce the risk of a nuclear war or a big country accidentally or intentional detonating one by reducing the number of nuclear power plants.

Unfortunately the nuclear weapons already exist and any country with enough budget can create one, I suggest you try to understand that you can't have a group of terrorists dropping a plane in a nuclear plant and have it explode like a bomb, nuclear plants do not explode like an atomic bomb.

[lokimedes]

I tend to agree with you, but it should not be the conclusion. We must become ready to handle this, it is in my opinion the real underlying challenge behind the climate problem.

We have started this technologically driven expansion of the human footprint, and either we revert to pre-industrial levels or progress. Assuming that non-nuclear technology will let us have the cake (of prosperity) and eat it too (without drowning our cites) is the collective lie I see propagated politically.

In the spirit of the recent TV series release of "Foundation", this is our Seldon problem.

[q1w2]

Running a nuclear reactor does not produce nuclear weapons. This is simply fear-mongering fake news.

Also, modern nuclear reactors are dangerous. The GenIII+ specification for all new reactors requires the use of passive shut off. Which means the operator must actively keep the reactor on.

If they were to all turn into zombies, for example, the reactor would simply shut off.

Omega Tau podcast also did an extensive series on nuclear waste storage that I highly recommend every skeptic listen to. Nuclear waste storage is not a problem.

The problem is that naivete people seem to have that renewables can provide 99% uptime baseload, the boomer ignorance that all-things-nuclear-are-bad-because-Greenpeace-told-me-so.

Moreover, China has proven that nuclear Gen III reactors can be built cheaply - they are concurrently building 24 1GW plants.

Steamline ancient western regulations, block the endless lawsuits against plant development, re-open the Nevada storage center, tell boomers to stop stonewalling the only ready climate change solution, and BUILD THE DAMN NUCLEAR PLANTS.

We have a PROVEN solution ready to go that can be deployed in literally 10-15 years. We just need to end the ignorance.

[chefkoch]

> We have a PROVEN solution ready to go that can be deployed in literally 10-15 years. We just need to end the ignorance.

No we don't. We don't have even one new Gen reactor running and even more important we don't have the people educated to build them in a massive scale.

It would take at least ten years to educate the nuclear engineers needed to build dozens or even hundreds of them. And even then they don't have experience, they are juniors building very complex multi billion dollar installations.

[kortex]

> Also, modern nuclear reactors are dangerous. The GenIII+ specification for all new reactors requires the use of passive shut off. Which means the operator must actively keep the reactor on.

This seems confused. Shouldn't this read not dangerous?

100% agree though on the broad point. Newer reactors have way better passive safety, and the way to cheaper, safer nuclear energy is build more new plants and retire the old ones.

[bombcar]

So we’ll slowly level cities via burning coal instead “in the name of safety”.

[robwwilliams]

Brilliant comment. And yet we as a barely intelligent emergent species will play with politically dangerous fire/energy.

Let do it more as a basic science challenge and work 10X harder on the fusion chimera that is beginning to look real!