DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The world wants more nuclear energy as a means to fight climate change and supply an ever-growing demand for electricity, part of a generational shift in thinking on atomic power, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Thursday.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made the comments in an interview with The Associated Press at the COP28 climate talks. He called the inclusion of nuclear power at the summit, where he said a major nuclear agreement was likely, showed just how far the formerly “taboo” subject had come decades after the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
However, he acknowledged the challenge still posed for his agency in monitoring nuclear programs in countries, particularly in Iran after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
“This used to be easier when this international consensus was there and so Iran could see that this was not about political pressure, but a widespread approach that was to see a Middle East, one of the — if not the most — volatile region in the world, not to add to the mix the possibility of a country getting nuclear weapons,” Grossi said.
Those nuclear advances are what makes nuclear feasible under the new regulations. Those regulations that prohibit the older, less safe designs. But those old designs are also cheaper. It’s why the vast majority of the least safe reactors are in the former Soviet Union; they had to be built en masse, and it had to happen cheap.
Goverments around the world would still be building the cheap unsafe shit if it weren’t for nuclear scientists aggressively recommending stronger regulations. It’s also why it’s always politicians and other idiots who advocate removing those regulations, and not the nuclear scientists who actually know what they’re talking about.
Nuclear also isn’t slow to build just due to regulations. South Korea is an example, where they built plenty of reactors with build times of approximately 5 years each. They still have regulations and red tape, but they also heavily standardised their reactors and their manufacturing. But most western countries just want to build one or two or so, and that just means doing a lot of work that you can’t copy from anywhere.
Nuclear is best done in bulk and in collaboration with others. The EU could for example launch a nuclear initiative to build say 100 reactors all across Europe, which would allow us to take advantage of building at scale. But you’ll never convince anyone of that if you come at them with your unnecessarily hostile attitude. It’s people like you who chase people away from nuclear. You don’t bring any arguments, you demonstrate no knowledge of the subject at hand, just empty sentences and name-calling.
Convince, don’t insult.
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