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Pandora's Promise and the Problem of "Solutionism"
Lasrick writes "Kennette Benedict of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reviews Pandora's Promise, a new documentary that focuses on environmental activists like Stewart Brand who have gone from vehemently anti-nuclear to vehemently pro-nuclear views. Good points brought up by Benedict that weren't really addressed in the film."
From the article: "The flaw in the film's approach is its zealous advocacy of one solution — one silver bullet — to meet the tremendous challenges of providing for some nine billion people by 2050, while also protecting societies from the ravages of climate disruption. The kind of thinking that led some of these environmentalists to single-mindedly protest nuclear power plants during the 1970s and 1980s leads them to just-as-single-mindedly advocate a push toward nuclear power 40 years later."
Of course they want nuclear power -- they just don't want it here.
The most important thing for us to be spending our money on is trying to avoid that 9 billion, or at least trying not to go beyond it. Universally available (heavily subsidized) contraception is the first place to start. Secondly try to counter those who actually WANT to increase population numbers, like Erdogan & Romney and their respective religions. Once that's done there'll still be plenty of money left to pay for nuclear power.
The review doesn't disagree that nuclear is a big part of the solution, it just complains that the authors sweep aside all other considerations and doesn't like their attitude toward anti-nuclear activists. In other words, it wants the anti-nuclear activists to have a voice.
What is disingenuous about Pandora's Promise is the way the new judgment is conveyed. The film mocks groups that continue to protest nuclear power, treating one-time colleagues as extremists and zealots. An audience discussion after a preview at the University of Chicago made it clear I was not the only one who sensed the self-righteous tone of the newly converted in the film's narrative. In the end, by dismissing the protestors and failing to engage them in significant debate about the pros and cons of nuclear energy, the film undermined its own message.
Nobody loves nuclear power, but what else can provide sufficient power to the world without damaging the climate? Burning carbon, including natural gas, will cause a catastrophe. Wind, solar and geothermal can't ramp up fast enough to meet power demand, AFAIK. Only nuclear power provides sufficient energy without causing more climate change.
Chernobyl. Fukushima. Two megadisasters in my lifetime doesn't count as "incredibly low potential" in my book. Though frankly, I am more concerned about the lack of long-term storage facilities for high-level waste. Meltdowns can only happen while the reactor is operating; radioactive waste is a disaster waiting to happen any time in the next 10,000 years.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Natural Gas burns clean. Environmentalists are not against natural gas produced conventionally. They are against fracking because it affects the water table and has been shown to affect seismic activity as well. States that are heavily fracking are playing with fire.
If Fukashima has not occurred, we would be currently looking at a global uranium shortage in the next 5 years as existing major sources (re-purposing from old warheads) dry up and are not replaced with new mines.
Whenever production of power plants comes back on track, we will once again be facing such a shortage.
Yes there are limited reserves of uranium like everything else on the planet, but there is a lot more than 5 years... more like 200 according to this article. This is important because it buys us time to get technologies which are actually clean (looking at you, solar energy researchers) up to the speed of our current energy sources. Or find something else
-1 Comment Contains Portal Reference
With Uranium and something more efficient than the USA's once-through fuel cycle, we have well over a thousand years of energy given current known reserves at roughly today's economic recovery costs. Allow for thorium and breeders and we easily have 10,000 years of energy, all without needing any vast new reserves to be discovered.
In short, you are grossly misinformed. Stop spreading your ignorance around.
Best to have a diversified diet. The government needs to do only 2 things: don't subsidize, and make sure every energy form pays for its REAL cost. And that means one motherfucking hefty CO2 tax, and a big piggy bank full of money next to every nuclear plant to pay for dismantling when the time comes.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Doesn't matter if you blame the hippies - the bankers are the ones that are not going to let nuclear happen.
nuclear fuel still needs to be mined, which means a new kind of geopolitical conflict over precious resources.
Considering the fact the neither potable water nor arable land are distributed equally about the surface of the earth, there will always be geopolitical conflict over precious resources. So that's not really a problem to worry about.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
Very limited?
You can recover it from seawater.
Mines will open before the shortage occurs. Markets are pretty going at this.
people selling snake oil or people whining about "solutionism".
Since when is a documentary required to promote every possible agenda? I haven't seen the documentary, but I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that it does not ignore nuclear power's downsides, especially considering its focus on previously anti-nuclear environmentalists.
"Solutionism" is a thought terminating cliche, a way to dismiss any solution because it doesn't encompass every possible solution. It's a ploy for people who only know rhetoric and politics to wrestle control of the debate from people who know science and engineering.
Consider the vacuous absurdity of the closing of the article:
No one is under any obligation to please you, the head of an anti-nuclear activist group, which is no stranger to zealotry. If you want other options, make your own documentary to promote them. You can make it "fact-based" too!
Solutionism?
Seriously?
How deprived of all faculity of thinking must a movement become to come up with the idea of "solutionism" as a critique? There is a problem and people think about solutions. Any solution would, of course, be reason for existential difficulties of the problem. But the problem is the basis of power of said movements. When the problem goes away, so does the power that came with it, when the movement came into existence and so does the only solution the movement sanctioned: complete austerity and refraining from any use of technology and any interaction with nature as much as in any way possible.
"Solutionism" is the latest, most ludicrous and hopefully last, attempt at defending the only solution "environmentalism" ever came up - by denying the adequancy of any solution of their problem whatsoever. Thus perpetuating their claim to power indefinitely - you know, the UNSOLVED PROBLEMS of technology.
Go and rot in hell.
The summary paints this picture that it's defective motivations that lead people to go from anti nuke to pro nuke. Au contrair. In the 1970s and 1980s it made a lot of sense to be anti-nuke just as it now makes sense to be anti-GMO. Those people did us a huge favor. They forced these industries to account for the unpaid externality costs that they were free ridiing on. The nuke industry was a headlong rush to market paid for with public bonds going into private investors pockets with very little accounting for the costs of downstream waste disposal, the risks of faclities, and under appreciated environmental costs (such as the tennessee rivers being sterilized by excessive heating).
The protestors forced the nuke industry to face a large regulatory and captical risk hurdle to develop new plants. This forced a better accounting even if the actual costs they were including were only proxies for the real costs. IN the mean time the technology has advanced remarkably.
We also have a better grip on the future costs of peower production and an attentiveness to conservation of power that we did no have then. Fracking has come online, renewables are forming a competitive market.
Nuke power now has a good role to play as a major part of a power mix, especially in china where demand is insatiable and the olny alternative is coal.
It makes complete sense to start developing nuclear power under these safe, sober conditions with the externalities properly built into the costs.
thus this is not "soluionism" as a reasoning defect. It's simply good reasoning in both cases. changing your mind as conditions change actually shows these people were not simply hung up on nuclear = evil but rather the nuclear plants of the time in the market of the time were potentially a bad idea.
I'd say GMO and Fracking are at the same level today. There's a gold rush for these with very little accounting for the true external costs (e.g. water aquifer destruction, fugitive methane, and maybe earthquakes, all being uncosted while wars are driving up the price of oil faster than alternatives can replace it. This means market forces now are out of balance and could cause imprudent envirnmental destruction).
But fracking can be done safely eventually but may have to be done away from aquifers and with better technology.
GMO is going to be the next green revolution. But it's fraught with perils. Even the risk of excessive monocropping leading to a potatoe famine like disaster is not absurd. GMO is oversold right nowand is dangerous because of the unkown risk exposure but will be very important later. We need to let a generation of beta testers pass by at very low levels of introduction of GMO before we allow it to spread. By then we will know how to monitor it's hazzards better.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You seem to be saying nuclear power is safe because the risks were known, but nobody did anything about them. I say nuclear power is unsafe, for exactly the same reason.
It's more along the lines of "Stop pointing at accident performance for 1967 VW beetles when we want to build modern cars".
I want new nuclear plants so we can finally shut down the end of life plants, as well as the nasty by design coal systems.
I don't read AC A human right
The survival of technological civilization depends vitally on energy supply. Which means that the omni-obstructionists and the arithmetic deniers are, knowingly or by being duped, enemies of technological civilization. The alternative to technological civilization is getting rid of about six billion people on a very short time span.
"I am not so much pro-nuclear as I am pro-arithmetic" -- Stuart Brand, not an arithmetic-denier.