The Nuclear Option
Sigh.<p>I&#x27;ve been arguing this for so long, and gave up about 5 years ago. I can&#x27;t think of a more scalable way than fission to combat carbon, yet it won&#x27;t happen for so many reasons.<p>* There are too many solar and wind success stories to point to. &quot;Why can&#x27;t NYC be like Scotland with wind power?!&quot; You start to list the reasons and the response is &quot;we can accomplish it if we put our minds to it!&quot;. It&#x27;s an endless cycle of optimistic non-problem-solving.<p>* No politician will back nuclear. If there&#x27;s an accident, they&#x27;ll be run out of town. Not worth the risk.<p>* Along the same lines, there is zero interest in technology research&#x2F;investment. This became obvious when they shut down reprocessing in the 70s and IFR was shut down in the 90s. And the reprocessing ban was by a President who happened to be a nuclear engineer! If he won&#x27;t do it, who will?<p>* The scare-mongering in the media over accidents is impossible to overcome. There&#x27;s no way to have a rational discussion when all someone has to do is point to the endless exclusion zone documentaries to win their argument.<p>* And then much of the blame needs to be shared by the nuclear engineers. They had decades to make nuclear safer before TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima (1942 -&gt; 1970s, 80s, 2010s). And yet, here we are, with the same light water reactors that Rickover speced out in the 50s! Yes, I get that has something to do with building restrictions since TMI... so how about before that?