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Is Nuclear Power Green? [VIDEO 22:46]

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See on youtube.com/c/SabineHossenfelder

This video does a good job discussing the green credentials of nuclear power. My thoughts on nuclear has shifted much like hers which boils down to:

  1. Nuclear is super scary, lets get rid of it ASAP.
  2. Nuclear is pretty fucking awesome and safe why the fuck did they lie to us? Now we have to restart coal plants because Russia won’t give us suck on dem oily teats.
  3. Nuclear cost how much???

Sabine does a great job outlining the evidence and concludes that while nuclear power is very safe, consistent and bountiful, it’s incredibly expensive, takes a lot of time to build and unless we can use something other than uranium-235, it won’t be enough to make a difference until 2040.

To that end, I think we should dramatically expand renewables now while planning for nuclear in the future which will need an abundance of energy given how most decarbonation relies on electrifying processes. Both of those have massive technical and political hurdles that must be overcome. Fusion seems like a good fix, but it’s very far away [VIDEO 12:10] if it’ll happen at all..

Also, we should stop shutting down nuclear plants and being surprised that we need to use coal again since the gas spigot turned off 🇩🇪.

Tangent

Sabine’s channel is really good. It really is science without the gobbledygook. Expect me to link to a lot of her videos in the future.