I have quoted DV82XL before since he has many insightful comments. This one was on Depleted Cranium

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DV82XL Says:
July 25th, 2010 at 11:52 am

drbuzz0 said:

I’m a bit more optimistic. The public opinion of nuclear energy in the US and many other Western nations is quite good and is rising.

Unfortunately positive public opinion, and public support are not the same thing.

One of the major revelations for me on this issue is that real public opinion on nuclear matters is nowhere near what both the antinuclear side, the media, and the governments claim it is. The fact is that very few polls have been done, and even fewer that have be done with the sort of rigour that one would expect for such an important subject. Those that have been done like the Eurobarometer survey carried out for the European Commission’s directorate-general for energy and transport on the subject have yielded surprising results, yet policy in most of the EU on nuclear energy has remained little changed, with politicians claiming that there is no public support.

Much the same in happening in Canada with projects being squashed in the planning stages, even in the face of positive public opinion. Look at the current efforts to build a merchant NPP in New Brunswick, or the attempt by Bruce Power to begin a study on replacing Nanticoke with a nuclear power station, or the stymied plans to build a NPP at the Whiteshell.

In the US its beginning to look as if the best that can be accoplished is that new builds will keep up with old plant retirements, which have been eroding the total percentage of nuclear supplied power for some time now. Nuclear will be lucky if it grows to 25% in the next thirty years, if things continue as they are.

In terms of what has to be done to achieve significant reductions in burning carbon-base fuels, next to nothing is being accomplished and growth in nuclear energy such as it is is little more than token efforts, accompanied by much hand wringing over the collection of false issues (like proliferation, and waste management) that have been carefully cultivated by the opposition to be trotted out whenever there is danger of real progress.

All of the so-called problems are simple creations of propaganda. The proliferation issue has been done to death, as has the radiation issue and the LNT nonsense it’s based on. All of them are false dilemmas, designed to create the illusion of problems where none exist. First and foremost it seems that few understand that the debate is not really centred on technical issues, nor is it centred on public fears as delineated by antinuclear forces. As a consequence there is no “designing around” these perceived issues, in fact attempting to do so only allows the other side to claim these efforts validate these problems.

The waste issue is a case in point. The uncontrolled and persistent wastes from combustion driven energy is by many orders of magnitude a greater problem than nuclear wastes could ever be. Rather than go on the offensive and push this fact at the public, nuclear has tried to fix this non-existent problem by planning, and in some cases, creating ridiculously over complicated disposal sites. The upshot of this tactic however is that first it corroborates the belief that these are necessary, and second, as illustrated neatly by the farce surrounding The Yucca Mountain Repository is the United States, a convenient target for the opposition. Similar efforts are facing organized protests in other countries as well.

How often does it have to be repeated that the reasons given by antinuclear forces objecting to nuclear power are contrived, and they will not accept any ’solution’ – they are not interested in one, and nether is the general public, because in fact they don’t care. Consider this: how often do you see protests at dry-cask storage sites left over from decommissioned nuclear plants? The reason you don’t is that as far as the public is concerned they ARE a solution, and the protesters know that getting people worked up would be a hard sell.

(Even the subject of this thread is contrived to the point of being ludicrous: Even if a nation with a nuclear weapons complex the size and calibre of the ones in Nuclear weapon States could, theoretically build a device with RGP that might, under idea conditions, and a lot of luck, go supercritical, this still wouldn’t be a weapon. An explosive device isn’t a weapon until it is deliverable, reliable, and deployable in militarily significant numbers. The whole argument becomes sterile if this factor taken into account.)

As well, there is not a nuclear industry per se; almost every company involved in nuclear, also have energy interests in other sectors. They will act in their shareholders best interests, and if that means they can make more money building windmills than reactors, that is what they will do. Thus is is a waste of time to attempt to curry the favour of these players. No help whatsoever can be expected from this quarter.

Furthermore, too much hope is being put in the new entries into the reactor market. Even those that are legitimately looking to introduce new designs, face an almost unscalable wall of regulation, and the hostility of those firms that have obtained type-approval for their products, and will not likely stand still if the bar is lowered for newcomers. And like it or not, there are players in the small reactor sector that are more about attracting investment, than they are about bringing a product to market.

In a similar vein, debate about what GenIV design is superior is at best premature, but is certainly becoming divisive. the product cycle for GenIII and GenIII+ designs is not done, and will be twenty years before GenIV technology will be launched. During that time several new reactor types will be tested and it is likely that in the end a mix of designs will be the outcome, rather than one type taking all. At the moment getting new NPP built with existing technology should be the major thrust of everyone’s effort. There is no point drawing knives on each other now over this; it is a very sterile issue.

The deployment of nuclear energy cannot be accomplished by cultivating political support, and looking for a legislative solution. The enemies of nuclear energy simply have pockets too deep and have ingratiated themselves too firmly into government to allow a small group of elected officials to overcome the influence these interests can apply. The only hope is create a groundswell of public support and very few in the pronuclear movement seem to want to do anything more than pay lip-service to this, hoping it seems, that there is some short-cut that will see some ‘Manhattan Project’ launched from the top down to bring about a nuclear revolution.

This is not just the case in the States, but all over the West. If a real Nuclear Renaissance is what we want, it is going to have to be a popular movement – it is just that simple, and anyone thinking there is a short cut is deluding themselves.