If we want to fight the climate crisis, we must embrace nuclear power

Some of the paranoia is no doubt rooted in cold war-era associations of peaceful nuclear power with dangerous nuclear weaponry. We can and should separate these two, just like we are able to separate nuclear bombs from nuclear medicine. And we should also push back against popular narratives around Chernobyl and other disasters that simply aren’t replicable with modern technology. Advanced reactors and many existing ones are designed with passive safety systems – they don’t need active intervention by humans or a computer to deactivate in case of emergencies. Instead these plants use natural forces such as gravity to disable them, while maintaining active monitoring as a backup. As the science journalist Leigh Phillips puts it, “it is no more physically possible for them to melt down than it is for balls to spontaneously roll up hills.” There are some legitimate concerns about nuclear waste, but the public perception is driven by outdated information. The amount of waste produced by plants has been reduced dramatically, and most of what remains can be recycled to generate more electricity. These worries are not particularly unique to nuclear, either. Renewable energy produces waste of its own – solar, for example, requires heavy metals like cadmium, lead and arsenic, which unlike nuclear waste don’t lose their toxicity over time. As an article in Science points out: “Current electric vehicle batteries are really not designed to be recycled” and could pose public health problems as battery cells decay in landfills. Other objections to nuclear power, like its reliance on mining, are also not unique to nuclear. Renewables require destructive extraction to unearth lithium and other critical minerals. The answer to those concerns is simple: we should demand environmental and labor regulations from the state and defend good working conditions as our primary consideration. But opposing socially necessary extraction as a matter of principle simply isn’t compatible with wanting to live in a world that can meet basic human needs.
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