Okay I got into an argument with someone the other night over the idea that it's our turn to cause an ecological disaster to benefit our time on the planet to make our lives better and easier and let someone else worry about cleaning up the mess later.

My argument was this, we should be allowed to do whatever we want with nuclear power generation and not care about the waste or byproducts of the power generation so that we can transition off fossil fuels.

Thier counter was we can't be reckless assholes with nuclear power generation and that it's not the same as oil extraction or fossil fuel power plants because of the radioactive stuff.

I thought this was an incredibly short sighted view on the impact of fossil fuel extraction and fossil fuel power generation has had and how destructive it has been.

While I do agree there are some really bad issues with nuclear. Do we create a big waste problem for people after us? sure. Is it probably going to kill people in the future? sure. Could it cause ecological disasters? sure.

I dunno I get that power generation is only a part of the issue with climate but feels like we are just being bullied by old boomer hippies to not use all the things we have available to us.

Perhaps I have in my mind already convinced myself that we are bleeding out and that while nuclear power won't save our leg it could be the tourniquet to push us over the hump into cleaner power generation from wind/solar/water etc.

So shouldn't we be allowed to kick the can down the road like the last generations did?

    • iridaniotter [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      200 years left at current consumption levels, 600 years I think with better processing, and an additional 30,000 years with all breeder reactors I believe. If we could process seawater efficiently, we'd be set for even longer. But realistically we just need enough to transition to space-based solar and nuclear fusion in a couple centuries.

      Edit: For context, nuclear produces 7% of the world's primary energy. We also need to increase primary energy production for electrification and economic development. Without switching to breeder reactors (Oh shoot, I forgot about thorium. That would help too obviously), there's not enough to have a predominantly fission-based grid.