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!
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):
mothersfornuclear.org
thoughtscapism.com
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.