Physicist MV Ramana on the problem with nuclear power https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/04/mv-ramana-why-nuclear-power-not-solution-energy-needs
Maya Goodfellow 4 Sep 2024
most reasonable people have come to realise that in an age of climate crisis, we need low-carbon nuclear energy – alongside wind and solar power – to help us transition away from fossil fuel.. MV Ramana makes in his new book says.. nuclear is costly, dangerous and takes too long to scale up. Nuclear, the work’s title reads, is not the solution.
Nuclear creates fewer jobs than renewables per unit of energy generated, he says in the book, and when it comes to the latter, jobs are more geographically distributed. As for supplying vast amounts of energy globally, he sayd nuclear cannot be scaled up fast enough to “match the rate at which the world needs to lower carbon emissions” or to quickly provide to those without. It takes at least 15 to 20 years to plan for and build a nuclear plant and this would probably be much more difficult in the many countries that presently do not have the infrastructure for it.
Finally, Ramana is keen to point out that the nuclear energy industry only survives because of government support. Through electricity bills and taxes, the public often pay a significant amount toward building and running nuclear plants, as well as storing the waste. Governments also provide subsidies, skew electricity markets in favour of nuclear and form such tight relationships with industry that they end up repeating their propaganda, he says.