Not the end of the world

[king_of_apathy]

Time for my thoughts on Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie. I finished it several months ago and should have written about it back when it was fresher in my mind, but better late than never. If you have the slightest interest in environmental issues then I totally recommend this book! Avoiding the extremes of doomerism and denialism, she

Comments

[amw]

Isn't it interesting how big the no nukes thing was when we were kids? I remember having it drawn on my pencil case in school, it was like having a peace sign or a smiley, you had to be no nukes or you were obviously an asshole.

On reflection, i think a lot of the anti-nuclear power movement was influenced by anti-nuclear weapons pacifism and fear of a post-apocalyptic wasteland if the cold war turned hot. And let's be completely honest, most countries that still run nuclear power stations either already have nuclear bombs, or they are unofficially but almost certainly maintaining a program that could quickly pivot their power stations into bombs if a war ever broke out. So it wasn't a completely unfounded fear. But now i'm like... well yeah Taiwan should bring back their nuclear power stations. Forget the emissions and energy independence point, it'd also be very handy to be able to conjure up a quick nuke if China gets (even more) aggressive. It'll never happen any more, though, because the anti-nuclear movement was more successful than it ever could've hoped.

I suppose nowadays there's less of a case to be made for it - except the "could also fast-track us to a bomb" case - because renewables have gotten so much cheaper.

[king_of_apathy]

Yeah, I think a lot of it was as simple as nuclear weapons are bad, therefore anything else with 'nuclear' in the name must be bad too. Though I hadn't considered the nuclear energy programs could be pivoted towards nuclear weapons programs angle.

You got me googling nuclear power plants korea and I didn't realise until today that we already get a third of our power from nuclear. Or that we have Kori Nuclear Power Plant on the outskirts of Busan , which wikipedia informs me is 'the world's second largest fully operational nuclear generating station'.