Energy Risks

 This is a fascinating story about the dueling priorities of France and Germany when it comes to meeting climate goals. President Macron has made a commitment to re-open and add nuclear reactors. Germany has decided that they are going to shutter their plants. There was a line from the mayor of a German town near a reopening nuclear reactor: "When a vegan business wants to settle, it probably won't move next to a slaughterhouse."

Germany currently produces a great deal more CO2 per capita than France, because as it shutters reactors, it has to open more coal burning plants. But their antipathy towards nuclear feels very much like many vegans I know: a sort of self-righteous virtue signaling. Is nuclear dangerous? Sure, the potential for a really bad outcome exists, because nuclear reactions create nuclear waste. However, the deaths attributable to burning coal and global warming tend to be secondary cause effects. 

The two worst nuclear disasters are Fukushima and Chernobyl. Fukushima - which the Germans reference a lot - killed one person and will likely lead to significantly reduced lifespans for dozens more. Chernobyl killed a few 100 directly and the question as to how many are going to see dramatically shortened lives is an ongoing debate, but let's take a reasonably high estimate of 4.000. Meanwhile, we have a study estimating that rising global temperatures kill 5,000,000 a year. Let's assume that's a ridiculously high number and cut it in half.

In other words, if you were to take Chernobyl and Fukushima combined, they barely make a dent in the yearly deaths from climate change.

Germany is engaged really poor risk assessment. Nuclear accidents are very, very rare. Should they happen they are very bad. Climate change is happening all around us and kills a great many more people, and like a very rare nuclear accident is rendering parts of the world as uninhabitable. (Let's leave aside that solar is a particularly poor option for Germany, given the hours of sunlight they get this time of year.) 

There a two impending crises threatening the world right now. One is democratic backsliding in the Europe, India and the United States. The other is the presence of too much carbon in the atmosphere. The impact of that carbon is rising temperatures, but the actual crisis is the presence of carbon. Nuclear power produces abundant electricity with much of any carbon output. Also, there is a new generation of nuclear reactors coming on line that are smaller and safer than existing reactors. 

Maybe the broad category of "renewables" will be able to produce enough electricity to power our world - a world that should require a LOT more electricity. If we want to produce more electric cars and burn less fossil fuels to heat and cooks with, then we need more megawatts. Adding more, safe nuclear reactors is the quickest way to zero emissions. Period.

The Germans are stuck in the environmental movement of the 1970s while the world burns.