I mean, thorium fears are unfounded. Theres a structural argument that they centralize the energy grid and take power out of the hands of the people, which is why I'm more for decentralized networks of solar and wind cooperatives like Japan is building. But they produce fairly manageable waste that will decay in 500 years.
That said, uranium reactors are actually a huge problem. In Japan, one melted down and they had to evacuate a whole prefecture. It's only a matter of luck that they didn't have to evacuate all 5 cities in Tokyo. Now the government is claiming they cleaned it up, but independent scientists disagree and so there are lots of people just getting irradiated right now.
There's also the issue of disposal. In Japan there's no good place to do it, and in the US we love to do it on indian land. Then it's there for 10,000 years.
Then there's the issue that without maintenance they melt down. States fall and companies go bankrupt, what happens to nuclear plants then?
You're right that nuclear weapons are also a problem, but that doesn't mean we should make the problem worse.
Modern reactors are designed to shut down if they approach critical temperatures without human input
We live in a crumbling empire on a dying planet. We can't make plans that are only safe if we do everything right, because we won't do everything right.
Thorium doesn't melt down the same way, and solar and wind just become hunks of metal when civilizations crash. Uranium reactors become tests of if we actually installed and maintained the safeties.
That's reductionist. We can de-grow the west and use the spoils to bring up the living standards in the rest of the world. It's not nuclear or agrarian society, there are spaces in-between.
Western population degrowth is a good idea. We can do it by improving sex education, improving access to reproductive healthcare, paying a basic income to women, increasing social security, and doing green development of rural areas and the rust belt.
We can also lower the energy needs of the west by stopping new car sales, de-militarizing, rezoning the suburbs, creating policies requiring products to last longer, reducing access to metals and plastics, stop subsidizing beef and dairy, among other policies.
I mean, thorium fears are unfounded. Theres a structural argument that they centralize the energy grid and take power out of the hands of the people, which is why I'm more for decentralized networks of solar and wind cooperatives like Japan is building. But they produce fairly manageable waste that will decay in 500 years.
That said, uranium reactors are actually a huge problem. In Japan, one melted down and they had to evacuate a whole prefecture. It's only a matter of luck that they didn't have to evacuate all 5 cities in Tokyo. Now the government is claiming they cleaned it up, but independent scientists disagree and so there are lots of people just getting irradiated right now.
There's also the issue of disposal. In Japan there's no good place to do it, and in the US we love to do it on indian land. Then it's there for 10,000 years.
Then there's the issue that without maintenance they melt down. States fall and companies go bankrupt, what happens to nuclear plants then?
You're right that nuclear weapons are also a problem, but that doesn't mean we should make the problem worse.
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We live in a crumbling empire on a dying planet. We can't make plans that are only safe if we do everything right, because we won't do everything right.
Thorium doesn't melt down the same way, and solar and wind just become hunks of metal when civilizations crash. Uranium reactors become tests of if we actually installed and maintained the safeties.
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That's reductionist. We can de-grow the west and use the spoils to bring up the living standards in the rest of the world. It's not nuclear or agrarian society, there are spaces in-between.
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Western population degrowth is a good idea. We can do it by improving sex education, improving access to reproductive healthcare, paying a basic income to women, increasing social security, and doing green development of rural areas and the rust belt.
We can also lower the energy needs of the west by stopping new car sales, de-militarizing, rezoning the suburbs, creating policies requiring products to last longer, reducing access to metals and plastics, stop subsidizing beef and dairy, among other policies.
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Can't farms become closed loop except for labor?
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