Why We Must Delay Nuclear Power

Almost all of us still ignore its disturbing weapons proliferation potential.

Everyone who thinks nuclear power is safe to use at increased scale today needs to upgrade their world models. It isn’t. In fact, the technology of nuclear power itself, even with safe reactor designs, presents a growing weapons proliferation problem, a proven statistical threat based simply on how many people have classified nuclear engineering knowledge, and how capable, accessible, and affordable are the tools (especially enrichment tech) for creating weapons of mass destruction (WMD). That WMD threat to everyone living in our dense and peaceful cities has been sneaking up on us for decades, just like climate change. Unfortunately, many ecomodernists view next gen reactors, as a key part of the solution to climate change. They focus on advances in reactor safety (which are excellent but irrelevant to the WMD proliferation problem) and on the ability of some of these reactors to burn nuclear waste (which is has never been our big nuclear problem — rogue weapons have always been the real issue). They ignore or discount the weapons proliferation problem.

Most ecomodernists may not be convinced by the arguments and evidence in this article, but most environmentalists, and many in the general public, might be. Fortunately, we all vote.

A sober analysis tells us that both the risk of major climate change AND the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation are major threats to the quality and openness of our democracies in this 21st…