Reply #20: Since so many others are taking the CON, I'll take the PRO side of the debate

[kristopher]

The energy war between nuclear and renewables is worth about 1 quadrillion dollars. Just to get a sense of the scale of the value of the post-fossil, I did a quick calculation. There will always be a mix of inputs besides electricity, but going forward, the elctric share of the market is going to rise as it moves into the transportation sector via battery electric EVs so this is just to show what is at stake. It isn't "winner take all, but the winner will get the lion's share of the one-plus quadrillion.

The new nuclear plants have a design life of 60 years and, it is claimed, will last another 40 years with refurbishing. With that in mind I selected 100 years as the basis of a back-of-the-envelope calculation where I took today's total global energy use and converted it to be measured in kilowatts. I then assigned today's average rate of electricity in the US as the price per unit (KWH).

Everywhere where is a nuclear industry it is a state/corpororate entity. The governments, and the power structure that inflates them from within, of France, Russia, Korea, and Japan are heavily, heavily invested in nuclear power. They have divided the global market between them and corporations with home bases in the nuclear states of the US, Germany and England.

Nuclear power is a type of solution that fits the right-wing, corporate worldview that DOES use war to achieve both direct and indirect economic goals.

All policy moves, including war, are a product of a coalition of interests that band together to form a majority, so there is room for both support of military action based on genuine concern for the Libyan people's struggle to shake of a dictator, and a power block motivated by financial interests.

Of course, there is no way to "prove" cultural dynamics like this are responsible for a decision to go to war, but to not be aware of the dynamics of power that are influencing our culture is probably a bad thing for the basic concept behind a democratic form of government.

The nuclear industry has leaders. They have over the years spent literally tens of billions of mostly taxpayer dollars waging a multifaceted campaign to position nuclear power as the "energy of choice" for the next 100 years.

I certainly think the public reaction to Fukushima is, in their minds, sufficient threat that they would throw their weight behind ANY coalition advocating ANY act that is not a threat to their interests and that offered the potential for shifting the focus away from discussion of what is threatening them.

The attack on Libya by France and the US has wiped Fukushima from the media screens and replaced it with a mini-shock and awe.