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TODAY. Fantasies for 2025 – perhaps the nuclear one tops the list?

I mean – there’s a lot of competition for this title – top fantasy. There’s the fantastic possibility that all will go well with Donald Trump in power in the USA. That’s a big one seeing that we have a narcissisitic sociopath at the top, appointing a bunch of other narcissistic sociopaths, all of whom are singularly unsuited to their jobs, and who probably don’t trust each other, and certainly don’t trust Trump.

There’s the fantasy that the ruling Great Powers are actually going to do anything real about reducing fossil fuel emissions, or really helping the indigenous peoples who are most affeced by global heating.

Then there’s the plastic one. The same Great Powers are happy to allow those same fossil fuel companies to churn out plastic, while they make pious motherhood statements about the fantasy of “recycling” and somehow or other “disposing” of plastic wastes. They’d love to have all that toxic crap dumped on poor indigenous people too. But – at least, there’s a certain democracy about plastic wastes – as teensy weensy bits of plastic are in every organ of our bodies now, including the brain.

Still, I’m backing the nuclear industry fantasy to trump Trump and climate and plastic pollution for the fantasy of the year.

As to public realisation of these fantasies – there is a general uneasiness about the coming Trump administration.

And across the world 87% of people know that climate change is real, and are concerned about it. Public awareness of plastic pollution is growing too, especially in the USA. But the public are still using the fossil fuel products – and in order to cope with global heating, are turning on air-conditioners fuelled by fossil fuels. People are aware, but they don’t know how to stop it. So the corporate polluters are happy.

But nuclear power had a bad name, over previous decades. It really has been a huge challenge for this industry to turn all that around, to keep their profits thriving , and to have nuclear portrayed as a public good.

The well-paid minions of the nuclear industry have done an excellent job in conning the public, world-wide. They had to work hard to overcome nuclear’s history of accidents, bungles, and failed projects, not to mention how it has proliferated weapons of mass destruction.

Then, from strenuously not believing in Climate Change, the nuke lobby did a flip – with the inspired realisation that they could pretend that Nuclear Power is the Cure for Climate Change.

Well, it’s not the cure for climate change -nor for energy shortage, and it’s not “cheap” nor “clean”.

But the industry faces other huge problems, too. Nuclear publicists studiously avoid the topic of the cost of shutting down, and pulling down, nuclear reactors and then dealing with the toxic wastes. It’s supposed to be cheaper and better to “extend the lives” of crappy old nuclear reactors with their embrittled and cracked pipes. I think that the well-paid engineers, executives, politicians, trade union leaders, and media nuclear “experts” are all figuring that it’d be better if the “decommissioning” were to take place conveniently, long after their own retirement or death.

So the expensive horror of dealing with the tail end of the nuclear industry is a topic not to be discussed. Nor is the horror of nuclear war – with its weapons provided by the nuclear industry -and promoted by the ever-more profitable arms manufacturers. The “peaceful commercial nuclear industry is an essential part of this.

So – what is acceptable to discuss?

Well, it’s the “energy miracle” of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors” (SMRs). “Start-ups” for SMRs popping up all over the place (though some of them are quietly closing). The whole idea is that these, so far mythical, beasts will be commercially viable. However, Governments have always propped nuclear ventures up well, with various subsidies and tax exemptions. China and Russia solved the problem, with government ownership of the industry. France did too, though that’s not working too well. Now the British Labour government has “Great British Nuclear” set up as a government run venture- (by a conservative party that’s supposed to hate socialism.)

So – in a clearly non-commercially-viable venture, the tax-payer is to save the day.

Paul Brown sets out the whole sorry story, in particular for the UK. He explains the work of two pesky academics Prof. Stephen Thomas and Prof. Andy Blowers and their report  – “It is time to expose the Great British Nuclear Fantasy once and for all.” The costs and delays of the Hinkley Point C big nuclear project, the planned Sizewell one, the £20 billion plan for unbuilt, untested SMRs – these are exposed, and make the pro-nuclear propaganda look absurd.

Yet the propaganda goes on. The big names in nuclear – Rafael Grossi, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos keep right on, maintaining the fallacy that all is well with the global nuclear industry, – and their sycophants in politics and media rebleat their message.

Thank you, Paul Brown, for explaining this so succinctly – if only the facts could be clearly set out in the mainstream media – and the public would not swallow the Kool-Aid. But of course, it won’t be, – the fantasy will prevail – until the shit finally hits the fan.

December 3, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's notes | Leave a comment