"But public opinion is shifting. A Pew poll from last August found a majority of Americans (56%) in support of more nuclear power for electricity generation, an increase from 43% a decade ago."
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/05/nuclear-power-modular-reactor-energy-demand-public-market-risks.html
@collectifission worth pointing out that large amounts of the necessary uranium that would need to be mined to keep up with the demands of these new reactors is on indiginous land, with many proposed and existing projects being done without the consent of the lands' respective indiginous inhabitants.
American Uranium mines and processing plants have a horrible track record of poisoning rivers and groundwater on indigenous land; the largest nuclear accident in American history happened happened to the Navajo due to complete corporate negligence which was largely swept under the rug, because the US government and corporations know they can get away with these massive accidents so long as it doesnt effect white people 🙄 the Church Rock Uranium spill is *still* responsible for increased cancer rates among Navajo folks almost 50 years later.
Like im not necessarily against nuclear power in certain careful contexts, but it can't continue to exist if it's implemention is done in a way that's practically genocidal towards indiginous communities. Currently proposed Uranium mines in the Southwest to keep up with these "modular" reactors are *still* being done without consulting the indiginous communities they will effect, and if history tells us anything it's that these projects *will* taint the rivers and groundwater in an already water-scarce area for highly vulnerable communities. And like what even is the point in all this if most of the produced power is just going towards powering new datacenters to fuel the AI bubble rather than actually going to decarbonize existing power demands for residential and legitimate industial applications? (e.g. Microsoft's deal for exclusive energy rights from the three-mile island plant for datacenter use)
#nuclear #nuclearenergy #indigenousrights #genocide #landback #ClimateChange #pollution #antimining #whitesupremacy #colonialism
@eyess @collectifission I do see this as a valid concern. We should examine closely who gets affected how much by our choices of powering our society.
Of course, you cannot count lives and livelyhoods of people against each other. But you also cannot put the effects of uranium mining up as a show-stopper while ignoring how the raw materials for the alternatives are won.
Optimizing with the goal of affecting as few people as little as possible is a thing.
@eyess @collectifission So, looking at the Church Rock Uranium spill, the way forward is to use better methods, such as in-situ leaching (which has now been preferred for a long time already), implement strict controls (which also is already done for a long time), and severely punish misconduct.
And the same holds for Lithium extraction in Yichun, and rare earth mining in Baotou.
And if you then look at those as one-or-the-other, you may do a cost-benefit-per-TWh analysis.
@eyess @collectifission But so far, it's not one-or-the-other. You just do all-of-the-above with every energy source that is not part of the problem (burning carbon).
And when that reaches its limits, I suspect we'll see that the amounts of concrete, steel, and uranium to run nuclear reactors have a much smaller environmental impact per TWh than the resources for any comparable combination of solar panels, wind turbines, gigabatteries, grid expansion, and smart inverters.
@Ardubal @collectifission i dont necessarily disagree with you; to me it just seems beside the point. The global economic order is a megamachine of genocide & ecocide, regardless if that genocide & ecocide is coal powered, nuclear, powered, or solar powered. Regulation and technical solutions are not going to fix this even if they might help in the short term. There are certainly technical solutions and it's possible that would make mining less shitty, but that doesn't matter if the profit motive is incentivizing corporations to skirt regulations and to not implement those technical solutions. Not to mention if regulation becomes too burdensome in one country, profit-driven corporations are incestivized to set up shop in the global south where that's not the case.
The *absolute* bare minimum measure that needs to be taken to prevent incidents like Church Rock is to give indiginous communities complete and total sovereignty over their land and mineral rights. They are the victims of the single most effective and longest running genocide in the history of humanity; it's not even negotiable that mining and ore processing should not be happening on their land if they don't consent to it (and yes, that includes large swaths of stolen land that are not currently recognized as part of reservations). Furthermore I'd argue they should have a complete right to the wealth generated from any resources extracted from their land; this entire fucking country is built off of the stolen wealth and labor of black slaves and indogenous peoples, it's kind of insane to me that it's controversial to suggest maybe we shouldn't steal more.
And yeah all of this also applies to steel, aluminum, lithium, etc as well. Maybe we wouldn't need to mine so much of it if we actually made devices that were repairable and recyclable and didnt need to throw out billion of tons of ewaste every year? If the profit motive and the demand for constant economic growth were not the foundations of the global order, maybe we wouldn't need to build countries worth of additional energy capacity to power useless AI datacenters, to produce millions of tons of useless disposable products, to ship a single shirt across the world 5 times before it gets to market, or to power the disguesting lifestyles of billionaires. Energy and resources need to be treated with respect first and foremost, and they should be produced as a public service without any profit motive.
Like I really want to stress that I'm not opposed to nuclear existing as a technology, but i totally understand why people are. Beyond the horrendous indigenous rights issues, the industry has historically been intrinsic to the production of nuclear weapons, and the issue of nuclear waste storage is a can that keeps getting kicked down the road (and yes i know there are ways to solve this problem, but the reality is that huge amounts of waste have been kept for decades in "temporary" storage centers that are one natural disaster away from a massive accident). But worst of all is that nuclear is treated as this silver bullet for climate change by folks that don't understand the massive web of interlocking issues that have created the current polycrisis. Carbon emmissions are a symptom of the greater genocidal machines of capotalism and imperialism, and I think nuclear energy is embraced by many as a means to preserve the current world order, because it is the only non-emmitting power source that can *possibly* generate enough energy to keep up with the completely unsustainable rate of economic growth and consumption.
Indiginous rights and decolonization are not at odds with decarbonization when you realize that the root of these problems are all in the current global economic machine and systems of hierarchy. That's why modern anticapitalist movements stress *intersectionalism*, the recognition that all of these struggles are intertwined.
The solution isn't just a technical one, it's a combination of decarbonization, degrowth, decolonization, antifascism, BIPOC and queer liberation, the abolition of capitalism, and the collective construction of new global systems that put humanity and the environment fist.
#nuclear #nuclearenergy #environment #degrowth #capitalism #indigenousrights #landback #colonialism #mining #energy #solarpunk
@eyess @collectifission Well, yes, but all intertwinings aside, each part also needs to get better by itself. Otherwise, you can always distract from one issue with the next.
I am absolutely for sovereignty of Native Americans, and they should be the ones profiting from their resources while preserving their land.
And I want more efficient use of land, so that there is more place for nature, and I want energy sources with as little ecologic footprint as possible. Nuclear power does that.
Emil Jacobs - Collectifission
eyes
Svante