Welcome to your Monday open thread. I think spring is back on! What’s shaking in your part of the world? Tell us what’s caught your attention.
P.Z. Myers has a powerful essay on the Koran burning/UN workers killing incident in Afghanistan. It’s hard to pick an appropriate excerpt so please go read the whole thing yourself. Here is how it begins:
Sometimes, issues demand nuance. This is a complicated world and there are a great many subjects that simply aren’t reducible to binaries — we do a disservice to the subtleties when we discard them in favor of absolutes. And often I can agree that we need depth and breadth of understanding if we’re to navigate a difficult situation.
But sometimes the issues are black and white. Sometimes the answers are clear and absolute. And in those cases, attempts to bring out the watercolors and soften the story by blurring the edges do a disservice to reality. There are places where there are no ambiguities, and the only appropriate response is flat condemnation. And we witness them every day.
All around the world, people are killing and being killed; they are crossing the clearest, least arbitrary border we have. You don’t come back from death, and you can’t atone for extinguishing another life. There are no excuses. Life is not a video game, where your targets are smears of pixels with no history and no awareness. In the real world, those bodies are people, with 20 years or 30 years or 50 years or 70 years of stories and connections behind them, part of a web of humanity, and their every action tugs on the people around them. Dehumanizing them, as we often do, dehumanizes us. You are the killer, but you are also the killed.
Black and white absolutists are a big problem in this world. Life is complicated and many times decisions aren’t easy. I wish more people would show empathy for what others are going through.
Delaware’s own Tom Noyes (of Tommywonk fame) has an interesting op-ed in yesterday’s Guardian. It’s about the costs of nuclear energy vs renewable energy: “The incalculable cost of nuclear power.”
If the costs and benefits of nuclear power are so attractive, where are the investors? At least with wind and solar power, it is possible to see the cost curve dropping to the break-even point in the near future. Nuclear power, by contrast, may never be able to convince investors to put their money down without government guarantees.
The prospect of cost overruns, waste disposal and extended shutdowns are daunting enough. But mostly, it is the potential cost of catastrophic failure that scares away investors. Large-scale disasters, however rare, are colossally expensive, as well as dangerous. The first estimate of entombing the Fukushima plant is $12bn. And this doesn’t include the other liabilities that could force the Japanese government to nationalise the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco).
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The total costs of coal may be high, but the total costs of nuclear power are, in any meaningful sense, incalculable. Investors face cost overruns that could burn through even the deepest pockets. The true cost of waste disposal still is not known. The cost of decommissioning, even decades away, is also a big unknown. And the cost of catastrophic failure is more than a company as large as GE is willing to face. How can any investor calculate the return on investment with such large uncertainties?
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Looking at the bigger picture, I don’t see why I or anyone should apologise for advocating developing energy resources that don’t blow up and take their investors with them. The renewable energy advocates I work with are willing, and even eager, to discuss the full costs and benefits of all sources of energy. Supporters of nuclear power should be willing to hold themselves to the same standard.
I’ve had many conversations with smart people who think we will never be able to go to renewable energy because of the price differential. I tell them that coal, oil and nuclear are all heavily subsidized. Are we sure it’s not wind and solar that can’t compete?