Frenchie

The "P" word, what Anti-nuclear and Pro-nuclear Advocates Both Don't Want to Talk About There are certain things in our society that appear like a giant warp field shearing through our shared reality. A web full of omissions, half-truths, and lies where it becomes almost an art form trying to stitch together the holes in the Matrix, in order to make out what is actually going on. Almost a third of developed nations have legislatively banned nuclear power in one form or another. The common "reasons" are waste, cost, and safety. All of these turn out to be essentially untrue, half truths at best that if taken in full view are not even that. What then is really the underlying macro reason for the web of untruths and policy against nuclear? Is it mainly some kind of psychological phenomena, or was there some more informed driver that wished to guide the world in one direction. The uncomfortable truth is that even though we have spent a lot of time trying to design nuclear power systems that make proliferation less likely, the mere development of nuclear skill that is needed locally to operate a large plant is likely to increase proliferation risks. Yes the "P" word is proliferation. The US through its various governmental arms and the IAEA has been quite succesful to contain nuclear armed nations down to an impressive 9 nations. If most of the world's 193 nations adopted nuclear power in its current form, the armament efforts resulting from the much vaster nuclear skill development would exhaust the resources of the various agencies, likely resulting in increased realized nuclear weapons proliferation. I suspect that it was always about proliferation, but it was deemed too fragile to have a single argument and therefore a whole ecosystem of lies was essentially fabricated, partially emergent or not. Whether we are dealing with a grand conspiracy or a group of like minded billionaires that keep to their own and wish to guide the world through large targeted NGO and non-profit donations is speculative. All we can say is that it fits best. When nothing makes sense then there is usually an entirely different reason. What we see in the SMR space is designs that through far more passive safety systems and overall redundancies need less total nuclear skill as well as in some cases foregoing the refueling process entirely. Designed to go 10-20 years with the inherent fuel upon reactor delivery, the entire reactors are then brought back to the factory to be either refueld or replaced, once again cutting down the local need for nuclear skill in the country of operation. This certainly fits with the proliferation concern model. These companies are funded by the likes of Bill Gates who is someone very obviously heavily interested in guiding the course of our civilization. When talking to members of the silent and boomer generation I often find that when you get deep down to what drives them and what they fear deep down, it is the fear of nuclear annihilation. I think the younger generations are not fully aware of the krass cold war world they grew up in and were shaped by. Finally, I find it noteworthy that the anti-nuclear bubble of the internet really doesn't talk about this. It is obvious why pro-nuclear minded people rather not discuss it, but it would make a rather convincing argument for the opposing group. Somehow we do not pick up on the hole in the story that we are not supposed to talk about. We are set off to debate on issues that aren't actually real, completely missing the deep black hole. If we did debate only about the one issue that is actually pertinent then there is a risk that the wrong side wins. The gaping hole should be obvious especially when one gets into nuclear history where proliferation was one of the largest concerns even in nuclear power systems. The hole, the emission is often what it is all about.

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