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Which strawman is the nuclear energy lobby trying to defeat this time?

Across Europe, the median build time since the year 2000 has dragged out to almost a decade. But it’s not a problem with nuclear power per se; it’s a symptom of the west’s chronic inability to deliver large pieces of infrastructure, an ailment that affects everything from laying high-speed railway lines, to building new housing estates, to filling in potholes.

Ah, yes, the problem is all these regulations that checks notes reduce risk (increase safety):

(this safety:)

There’s also a perception that nuclear power is dangerous, yet the data show it’s as safe as wind and solar.

And

Elaborate backup systems won’t cut it, either.

Implying that nuclear energy is NOT an elaborate system is delusional.

Tim Gregory is a nuclear chemist at the UK National Nuclear Laboratory and author of Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World (Bodley Head).

Boomers

Yes. Give me a bank, insurance, place to build, place to store AND show me how it can run without sibsedies and we can talk. Do the Söder-Challange now

With all the advantages renewables have (please use and develop them!), there are some instances where they can't reasonably be used.

For example, I live in a city of 5 million people that gets very little direct sunlight (weather is cloudy most of the time + city is located 60° North), has highly irregular seasonal winds, has rivers too small to make hydro make sense on such a scale, and barely has good hills for pumped hydro. It is almost exclusively powered by nuclear energy, because under these circumstances, there's barely a greener alternative.

There is also the need to have a backup power source for most solar/wind installations, as through some parts of the year they can only provide negligible output.

Finally, some regions might require temporary power - either due to such seasonal downtimes, or because main grid has failed. For that, Russia and China operate vessels with onboard nuclear power plants to source energy through these periods - and then move on to help somewhere else.

Unfortunately nuclear power plants would lead to higher bills for electricity as it would be up to the people to recoup the cost for building them.

Renewables are better.

So… to summarize the argument: we have to build nuclear plants, even though they are the most expensive renewable per kWh and they take the longest amount of time to build (even by the author’s “fast” timeline standards) because we don’t have batteries that can store wind and solar energy, even though there are multiple emerging potential solutions that could result in days-long storage capacity.

Not buying it. I don’t buy the “unsafe” argument but I also don’t buy this argument

Edit: this same publication that published this op-ed published a pretty negative review of this book, funny enough: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jun/02/going-nuclear-by-tim-gregory-review-a-boosterish-case-for-atomic-energy

Whenever people try to sell nuclear power, they simply "forget" to tell us...

• How much co2 is produced by mining and enriching uranium and how much water is used so it can be used for reactors
• How expensive it is to build a plant, and how much building them will go over budget (see UK)
• That nuclear plants are uninsurable
• Because of the above, tax payers are responsible for the costs of clean up and dismantling because that is not factored it
• That nuclear plants have to shut down when it's too hot
• Transport of used nuclear pellets is expensive
• Most countries struggle with final storage of nuclear waste
• That nuclear plants are often more contaminated and more expensive to dismantle than anticipated

Today, 700 million people live in extreme poverty (defined as living on less than $2.15 per day). They won’t climb out of it without access to more energy. Making as much energy as possible available to as many people as possible ought to be a defining goal of the 21st century.

And what energy sources can be safely and cheaply deployed in Burundi, Somalia, Liberia etc? Nuclear or solar?

Tim Gregory is a nuclear chemist at the UK National Nuclear Laboratory

I see.

Never understood the freakout over nuclear ..... when you measure up the long term statistics

Gas/Oil/Coal have killed more people over the past 100 years than nuclear ever did (even if you threw in the bombing deaths in Japan in WWII)

The deaths caused by gas/oil/coal are just not as dramatic ... all those people died from global pollution, poisoning, early death, shortened lives, lung problems, bad health ... and all by the millions

We certainly cannot afford not to go full renewables, like yesterday.

Some early Fords around the Model T era had a switch on them to flip between running on ethanol or gas. The idea being that farmers would brew their own fuel as needed. Big Oil didn't like that, and so it went away. Where we are now isn't thanks to science and technology, just pure greed off the backs of everyone.

It's about independence from any monopoly. Energy companies own the field, equipment, transportation, electricity generation, and distribution. I'd like my own generator and storage to lower costs.

Nuclear perpetuates the same system where safety is cut as a cost saving measure. You know they would be less safe if they legally could. Also the infrastructure is in bad shape to move radioactive waste by rail- ask Ohio.

Can we afford not to be?