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Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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[–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I’m sick and tired of “pro-environment” useful idiots shilling against nuclear power

You know that the idea we should be investing in nuclear is being pushed by the very same people who for decades were telling us we didn't need to worry about climate change, right?

They're trying to get "useful idiots", as you so eloquently put it, to also support nuclear energy, rather than going all-in on renewables.

The "useful idiots" in this scenario are not the people opposing nuclear. They're the ones suggesting it's actually an economical idea, and in so doing either explicitly or (more often) implicitly suggesting that we shouldn't invest too much in actual renewable energy.

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  • [+] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    But why would you go with a more expensive option when a cheaper one exists? Nuclear is much more expensive than renewables, has at least as many problems in terms of its environmental impact, and won't actually come online for at least a decade. It's not a viable option.

    And just to head off what I expect is the next pro-nuclear counter: environment and energy scientists have known for over a decade that renewables are perfectly fine at providing so-called "baseload" power.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Cheaper fallacy of renewables never includes the baseline storage, it must, it has to exist at grid scale

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Right, also nuclear power helps maintain centralization and authoritarian control of populations. Decentralization everywhere is the future for both energy and security reasons.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Eh, I agree that decentralisation is good, but I don't think you need such an extreme conspiracy to explain why.

    It's not about "authoritarian control". It's just about corporate profits.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Money and power, it's both. I agree that during "normal" times it's primarily greed driving centralization, at least of things like electricity generation so that usage can be metered and charged for.

    But here are people out there that want power and they are willing to do extreme things to get or keep it. Of the top of my head:

    • Trump
    • Putin
    • Xi
    • pretty much any political party
    • pretty much any industry organization (energy industry, etc)

    I'm sure you've heard about other countries having societal issues and the state shuts down the internet? This is what centralization makes possible. It's been done, it will be done again. When power is at risk, extreme measures are taken, and centralization facilitates this.

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