Okay so I was scrolling through the PSL’s info page, and it is stated that they are to denuclearize the power grid. Why is this? I was under the impression that Nuclear Energy is the much more sustainable and frankly realistic source of power–even without Molten Salt Reactors and Thorium based ones.
Im finding it most orgs tend to stay away from Nuclear energy due to fear mongering from fossil fuel industries; Thus its stain in the imperial core, reaching from liberals to western "leftists". But I am surprised the PSL, a radical organization, is anti-nuclear.
FYI this isn't a deal breaker or anything--they seem to be taking the lead for vanguard party--just was curious of the stance on nuclear energy.
I dug into this quite a bit a few years ago and came to the conclusion that opposition to nuclear power was originally all astroturfed, and continues to be astroturfed to this day. I may have missed something and I don’t know why leftists in particular are against it, but here’s what I learned.
Environmentalist organizations were for nuclear power into the 1960s. In general people were for it, it was a promising new technology. Then in the late 60s and early 70s these big environmentalist groups (Sierra Club primarily, but others as well) were taken over and astroturfed by oil and gas companies. Obviously oil and gas capitalists were not at all on board with the idea of getting plentiful and cheap energy from little bits of metal, so nuclear energy had to go.
At the same time there was a huge anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons movement. It was super easy for bad faith actors to conflate nuclear weapons with nuclear power, and that’s one of the anti-nuclear-power misconceptions to this day. There also wasn’t any public awareness or even concept of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
In the 70s public opinion shifted hard against nuclear power, first due to these oil and gas lobby efforts and later due to opportunistic propaganda around the Three Mile Island accident (and the conveniently released film The China Syndrome). Further accidents such as Chernobyl (and its easy conflation with anti-communism) have only served to make nuclear less and less popular over the years.
Semi-related, but do you ever find it interesting that Chernobyl disaster is known pretty much all over the world and became pretty much synonymous with “nuclear incident”, while the Three Mile Island is barely heard of? Funny that
Interesting and yet not surprising at all, as we know anti-communism is baked into the modern western consciousness. In the minds of those who even know there was a serious nuclear accident in the USA it’s an innocent capitalist industrial accident vs. inept communist hubris and corruption. Even though many of the socio-political under and over reactions to the events are very similar.
those people can blame the Chernobyl accident to communist hubris but But the Fukushima nuclear accident was definitely caused by capitalist greed
Apparently if they had built the water cooling system on the other side of the plant, it wouldn’t have been hit so hard and would have kept the plant safe. But it was cheaper to build nearer to the ocean.
That’s likely the case. There are a few reactor facilities built on Japan’s east coast and only Fukushima had issues. Another coastal NPP (don’t remember the name right now) even closer to that earthquake’s epicenter was so well constructed that it was the evacuation center for the local residents when the tsunami hit.
Thanks for the history! Im guessing this can be easily fixed with education, hell i might compile an essay myself. As others have said, a nuclear base with renewables to subsidize energy seems the way to go.
Overall I need to dig into it more for specifics, but my main point will be: You can have a nuclear power plant with a sound system that only plays Fallout Music! Who’d say no to that?! 🤣
It’s both an “easy” fix as well as a really difficult one, much the same as teaching liberals about Marxism-Leninism. They’re on board with the core principles, but as soon as you tell them what the topic is that you’re talking about they’re immediately 9000% against you.
If you’re interested in sources I’m sure I can still dig up a few. Unfortunately most of the authors are imperial core libs but their historical investigations and analyses of opposition to nuclear power still seem pretty solid.
Id love some sources!
Yeah saying it was "easy" was probably relative, lol. I have found it that saying something along the lines of "Hey man if you don't think you're up to it, you don't have to learn what i have to say" sorta tricks them into having an open mind. Now Im curious how those in the PSL and other MLs would react?(no pun intended). Are they not used to analyzing everything with critical thinking? Would explaining to MLs be difficult?Of all political persuasions MLs should be the easiest to bring around to a new evidence based point of view. I’m not so familiar with PSL (different country for starters) but I don’t get the sense that members are majority MLs.
Sources (caution, most are quite liberal and some authors have dug into pmc shitlibism more recently):
environmentalprogress.org/Energy as well as Michael Schellenberger’s work on nuclear power specifically. Otherwise he’s really insufferable.
withouthotair.com Really interesting book on energy density and generation possibilities. Tech wise this book is unfortunately over a decade old, due in part to the author’s sudden passing. That being said, energy tech hasn’t improved in the orders-of-magnitude way it would need to in order to change the conclusions of the book.
And there is a web-published book which I am not finding anymore which disassembles an influential paper arguing that 100% renewable energy mix isn’t realistic. It’s based off the same concepts of energy density and scale explored in Without Hot Air and IIRC was released as sort of an addendum to this academic rebuttal: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1610381114
Appreciate the sources and nuggets of info, Comrade knfrmity!
I will agree PSL does not seem to have majority ML numbers-- tho some more radical tendencies are overshadowed by their demsocish aesthetic-- but its a start for a US party. I myself am too young to join any party–and frankly too poor–but its important for me to keep up with any organized left here, and navigate between myself and others into a real struggle in the Empire.
I had a chance to hear Tina Landis, the author of the PSL’s Climate Solutions Beyond Capitalism book, speak and I think it’s a bit more nuanced than “it’s astroturfed”. There is already massive energy waste in the US’s production, and it’s being driven by capitalism.
It’s kinda late and I can’t remember specific stats (of course I let my friend borrow my book lol), but the intention would be to more efficiently use energy in this country. I really wish I remembered more information, but the breakdowns of how much energy Americans use compared to the rest of the world was some looney number.
The issue of what to do with nuclear waste was also something that was brought up. I’m not entirely sold on this, but given that the current solution to this is just bury it in the ground for thousands of years… I don’t think some level of skepticism is unwarranted. Okay, I found a video of a speech she gave! Go to the 26 minute mark. It talks about issues with nuclear.
Also, in other talks I had with comrades, they talked about there are studies that show the world would be able to make a complete shift to renewables by like 2030 something (this is not including nuclear, she explains it better in the video) I think the video talks about the 2030 thing, but another issue that was raised to me about it was the imperial history of the US, especially with how nuclear weapons are concerned. Given the unnatural energy need that capitalism creates, how costly and timely it would be to build reactors, how many reactors we would realistically need to cover a lot of our energy expenses, the issue of waste, etc., the party is opposed to nuclear energy.
I really would recommend hearing what she has to say. I’m like half asleep, but my brief rambling doesn’t do her book the full justice!
I have looked into all of these points as well, although it has been a few years since I really looked at these issues in depth.
Regardless of the current state of nuclear power opposition, the original question I understood was about the origins of this opposition. Framing it that way I did come to the conclusion that the beginning of mainstream nuclear power opposition was indeed astroturfed by fossil fuel interests. Which other well funded interest group of the 1960s and 1970s would be against the hopeful idea of plentiful electricity too cheap to meter? Even today though we see plenty of anti-nuclear power activists getting funding from the fossil fuel industries.
Energy waste is not an unrelated issue, and one that needs to be solved, but it doesn’t change the fact that we need a certain amount of electricity and heat energy, and that amount will only grow as more and more people are lifted out of poverty and the effects of climate change increase.
I have personally come to the conclusion that the nuclear waste issue has technical solutions. It’s the socio-economic solutions which are outstanding. It’s possible that these cannot be solved under a capitalist paradigm, but then neither can any of our socio-economic problems. Some of the proposed technical solutions have also been canned by fossil fuel interests.
Just based on a raw materials and available labour force perspective, I don’t see how our energy needs can be covered by renewables alone. Some analyses make me think it may be impossible given current renewable technology. A breakthrough renewable energy technology may yet come, but until then I just don’t see how we can make a 100% transition on any timeline, let alone less than a decade. We also have to take cost into consideration. Germany for example has spent over half a trillion euro on their “Energiewende,” and all they have to show for it is increased GHG emissions and a less stable electric grid. China is now building out renewable infrastructure on an unbelievable scale, but they’re also building fission reactors and investing heavily in fusion technology.
A lot of the cost and timeline issues nuclear energy faces are entirely artificial as well. I’m not saying that we should cut safety regulations, far from it, but there are definitely ways reactors can be made efficiently if we want to. We could not decommission perfectly functional existing reactors as a start. We need to be funding research and development and new construction so the knowledge of how to do these things isn’t lost.
I’ll take a look at the video when I can.
thats complete nonsense, you’re basically saying a conspiracy theory that the oil companies and MIB are covering up the magical secrets to free nuclear energy for all in their Area 51 warehouses.
So, essentially, there’s a perception in the US that nuclear reactors are always at risk of catastrophic failure and that if this happens, it will be as bad as Chernobyl. Therefore, they oppose anything even remotely related to nuclear power. Of course, this perception has been very intentionally created by the fossil fuel oligarchs.
At this point, it’s been so drilled into the heads of most people here that they just won’t listen to anything you have to say that counters this point of view.
That ignores the scientific fact that even the worst nuclear disasters we’ve had aren’t as bad as the worst fossil fuel or even hydroelectric disasters we’ve had. That ignores how damaging the business as usual of the fossil fuel extraction and consumption industries are. It’s like you say, and as I wrote in my original comment as well, this perception is all by design as it benefits fossil fuel industries.
I think nuclear reactors under a capitalist model will definitely lead to disaster. I’m not afraid to say that nuclear power is sooooo much better than fossil fuels. But we have to consider:
- capitalist cost-cutting
- capitalist shrugging of cleaning up a potential disaster
- nuclear waste stored in sub-par facilities
- the military industrial complex weaponizing nuclear byproducts and nuclear energy itself and then the imperialists being totally willing to use these weapons as threats or bludgeons.
I have also wondered why the likes of the PSL would take this stance on nuclear energy. While I am all for the abolition of nuclear weaponry, nuclear power is a far safer means of powering the world than fossil fuels, even ignoring climate change. Furthermore, it technically causes fewer fatalities per KW than even solar energy. All while taking thousands of years to deplete and using few rare earth elements, unlike that of solar. I do believe that solar and wind are both still vary important to develop and incorporate into the grid of any country however. In my moderately informed opinion, nuclear should, at least for now, be used for base power, while renewables should be used for more erratic power generation throughout the day.
it technically causes fewer fatalities per KW than even solar energy.
not when factoring in mining and processing
All while taking thousands of years to deplete
just at our current usage uranium will run out in about 90 years
and using few rare earth elements,
it uses soooo many rare earth elements it’s not even funny, its actually one of biggest problems with it is all the rare earth elements
nuclear should, at least for now, be used for base power,
no. outlaw it. it’s stupid. knock it off already.
deleted by creator
it’s not lame, you’re lame, you’re all the lames, you invented the lame
deleted by creator
Yosemite has enough geothermal energy potential to power the world the 327 times over, that’s not lame, that’s cool. I’m cool, I do cool stuff like that all the time
deleted by creator
experiments are cool, nuclearionics has alot of potential for advancements in energy, medical uses, space travel etc. but stuff like thorium MSR’s powering the planet with the laughter of starry eyed children, is a dream and a dumb one… they’ve been selling that steampile of garbage since the 50’s it doesn’t work. it’s stupid. knock it off already…scientists have already tried all this stuff and said it’s stupid. I don’t know when Monty Burns became an environmentalist either, I’m still very unclear on that one
Nuclear energy in capitalism = power plants built with cardboard, no safety standards fukushima etcc Nuclear energy in socialism = idk I’m drunk
Nuclear energy in socialism = power plants growing like mushrooms after heavy rain, yet built with enough quality to function decades of capitalist abuse and neglect.
Yes, I am talking about Soviet atomic plants, i.e. those in Ukraine.
Based
I’m too drunk to taste this
chickenuranium
in china we called it “饿的轻” or"吃的太饱" means they never suffer from Hunger and cold.
Spoiled, sheltered, petulant. Brats with terrible priorities. Squishies. Yeah, I call them a lot of names too 😁
there is an anti nuclear trend in the west. I can’t put my finger on why. A lot of it is around nuclear weapons. There is also some gaia loving, back to the land/to nature aspects to it. Definitely some non scientific criticisms of it. I can’t speak to why PSL specifically has that stance; all I can say is no org is perfect but PSL is pretty rad.
Thorium-based molten salt reactors are very promising and there are many ways to get around the trickyness of traditional nuclear energy.
There are schematics for these dating back to mid XX century. Thorium reactors are pretty much incapable of melting down since it’s reaction requires constant energy input to fissure, contrasted with uranium which needs energy input to keep from melting down and chain reacting. Thorium is at present date simply considered mining refuse bc it’s so abundant while uranium is rarer than gold. The reason why thorium was not accepted for experimentation is bc uranium is much easier to weaponize, as it requires much less processing.
I think people just need to be informed. A true environmentalist will readily accept the need for nuclear energy. While clout-chasers will continue to deny its necessity.
Isn’t Thorium basically like the safer more efficient version of uranium?
not really, it’s more nuanced than that. It was never quite figured out how to make reactors with it, although that information might be outdated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
Here’s the wiki page. The science is solid. They know how to make them and there are experimental reactors. It’s safer than uranium reactors for lots of reasons, but no energy is without flaws or disadvantages.
They’ve mostly just not invested the resources into it, but we can blame that on the profit motive and the bomb lol.
PS. It’s hard to really understand the nuances of this stuff if you’re not some nuclear scientist… I’m most certainly not.
we can blame it on the fact that it doesn’t work just scroll to the disadvantages section too see why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor#Disadvantages
These are just conspiracy theories, put out by Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, and the Koch bros. It’s less credible than Tesla’s free wireless energy for all conspiracy theory. Please answer this, if the evil US big bankers and big oil and big hollywood are all conspiring against the poor honest aryan nuclear industry then why is there zero amazing futuristic advancements in salt water thorium blah blah blah anywhere else on planet earth, not the USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran?.. are they all in on this conspiracy too then?
you can say “if we just invest more resources into” anything, why not clean coal? how about we invest more resources into solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and make them more efficient? Even if we outlaw nuclear power plants, nuclear missiles, medical research, nuclear engines for aircraft cruisers will still be experimented on and developed so if some miraculous discovery in the field occurs we will be sure to build a ton of nuclear power plants like you desperately want for some strange reason, but for now its more expensive than actual renewables like wind and solar, even after trillions of dollars, and decades of research by the finest scientists in every country.
you know, smelting iron is such a resource intensive process… we should’ve just stuck with stone tools.
science takes time. Learn patience.
last i checked the whole planet is about to melt, we don’t have time to build all the nuclear plants we would need, much less wait around crossing our fingers for white jesus to give us some kind of miracle nuclear power station. This only makes sense if you think renewable energy is communist witchcraft. So im not surprised to see it on infowars and fox news but what the living fuck is it doing here?
Earth is melting? Bruh, are u serious?
Earth is a giant orb of melted rock. We sit on the crust of this giant orb. We can very much thank the very melty part of earth for our existence on top of its cooled crust, for it creates an electromagnetic field shielding us from radioactive sun rays…
White Jesus? Info wars? On what authority or on what basis are you making these claims? On anonymity on the interwebs? Please don’t make lemmygrad Reddit with your unwarranted toxicity.
Edit: beyond this, the nations that are pioneering the science are in China, India and Russia… not exactly the profile for “white Jesus”
Can you please calm down? No need to go on a hostile rant. Why does thorium trigger people so much?
I don’t assume you are qualified to speak on the validity of nuclear science… especially based on a dusty wiki article. It’s literally nuclear science… development of these projects take up to decades and it has nothing to do with the Koch brothers…
The thing is that there have been thousands of times more investment into uranium reactors and dealing with their limitations and disadvantages… don’t you think that the constant energy input to prevent meltdown constitutes a huge disadvantage for uranium?
Second of all, not all countries have access to uranium. It’s rarer than gold. How would you account for that? Shouldn’t all nations have access to safe and clean energy? How can they achieve that if they can’t even access the fuel source?
you’re not debating you’re blatantly ignoring everything I’m writing, dismissing every point I’m making, and continuing to spread this nonsense conspiracy theory that you can find plastered all over stormfront, infowars, and 4chan. Im happy to teach you more about nuclear science if you want, but you don’t seem to want to learn anything, you’re confident in your falsehoods, and are also confessing that not only do you have no knowledge about the subject, but you’re not willing learn anything about it. Would you like me to go through the whole list on the “dusty wiki article” that you literally posted yourself but is now somehow magically not good enough? What even are these questions? “not all countries have uranium so how will we give everyone nuclear power without thorium?” is that what you’re asking, the person who said we should outlaw all nuclear power? really?
Pretty sure in Germany this had to do with the anti-war movement. Nuclear power is dual-use technology and so a precursor to a nuclear-armed Germany. Apparently Germany could make a nuke within weeks, if they wanted to. So it’s about nuclear non-proliferation and arms control and such.
People are also afraid of accidents and having the nuclear waste spill, of course. Lots of Chernobyl fallout here too.
I’m not anti nuclear but it has problems.
There isn’t enough nuclear fuel available. Countries that are heavily nuclear can only achieve this through the rape of African and Indigenous lands through violence and neocolonialism. Also waste storage is a regime built by NIMBYs.
You might say b-b-but we will end capitalism and colonialism! Cool then so we wave the magic wand and do that. So what makes you think west Africans are going to care to give all their uranium to France? Also, there still isn’t enough fuel for the world to rely on it, regardless of how equitable it could be.
That being said nuclear has some strong pros for it as well. It could be huge for African nations that need baseline energy but want to skip the emissions of coal.
Well… Maybe it’s just me. But I kinda look at these things like this.
What if West Africa developed their own nuclear and sold the energy in a mutually beneficial deal?
I dont think the energy NOR the location is the problem. The issue is colonialism and capitalism.
Solar for places that can do solar.
Wind for those who can do wind.
Nuclear for those that can.
Hydrothermal for those that can.
But capital gotta capital. 🤷♂️
Solar for places that can do solar.
Wind for those who can do wind.
Nuclear for those that can.
Hydrothermal for those that can.
This is the way. With nuance of course.
The thing about ending colonialism is that France loses its power grid. The US would likley lose several dams and access to uranium and fossil fuels. It would be upheaval. All of this would likely be incremental, or come in waves, of course, but its why dogmatic pro nuclear rhetoric falls short and even gets in the way of equity and sustainability. It is partly because of the lobbyist jargon that seeps through is mostly centered on pitting nuclear against coal and not really on what decolonization and socialist construction would look like in the energy sector.
Why do you say that there isn’t enough? Was there even that much of an effort to discover uranium deposits in the first place? It seems like a very underused resource. It’s also recyclable, not like the waste is entirely useless.
I’m in anti-nuke gang… nukes are bad don’t do nukes… questions?
An RMBK reactor and a LGM-30 Minuteman Warhead are two very different things.
It’d be like saying, “Armed warships are bad, so we’re now banning all commercial fishing vessels”
nuclear powers are bad… better?
Nuclear powers as in nuclear capable countries? Or nuclear power as in nuclear electrical power?
glowy rock spark-spark maker?
Ahhh, that makes sense.
Glowy danger rock make good energy though! Shove it in a box with some water and watch the funny little turbine spin!
you act like its more than that, but that’s all it is
That’s the point. That’s what makes it good.
