One of the starkest examples of the foolishness of climate poseurs is their wheezing opposition to nuclear power. It is arguable that to some extent anti-nuclear ideologues created the climate problems we have by derailing scientific and social progress on energy generation for decades. But it isn't just climate impacts that were exacerbated by this muddle headed opposition since the environmental impacts of fossil fuel reliance are legion.

Continuing opposition to nuclear power at this late date is intellectually dishonest. The two most frequent issues cited - and lied about - are waste disposal and fuel aqusition. First waste disposal.

"There are engineering questions about the massive storage repository proposed for the Nevada desert. Certainty about its ability to keep groundwater supplies safe falls off after about 10,000 years—while the facility needs to function as planned for several hundred thousands of years."

The quote is from an interesting article on global warming and ways of dealing with it in the latest issue of Harvard Magazine. The context is a discussion of problems in storing nuclear waste as one limit to increases in the role of nuclear power.

To me, at least, the idea of worrying about effects more than ten thousand years out is so absurd as to be marginally sane. Nobody alive knows whether our species will still exist in ten thousand years, if it exists if most humans will still live on earth, or if we still live on earth what sort of society, economy and technology we will have. If things do continue more or less along current lines—not, in my view, very likely—ten thousand years of economic growth would give us a society for which a little radioactivity in Nevada groundwater would be a trivial problem. If we assume a 1% annual rate of growth in per capita real income, it takes only about 2300 years to bring the income of the average individual up to the current income of the world.

Worrying about problems ten thousand years out is particularly odd given that nuclear power is being discussed as a way of limiting global warming. Elsewhere in the article, in the context of a time horizon of 100 to 500 years, another source suggests the possibility of sea level rises of over 200 feet. I am reluctant to trust extrapolations that far out as well—but compared to 10,000 years, a hundred years is practically as close as next Thursday. And drowning areas containing a considerable fraction of the population of the globe would be a slightly more serious problem than contamination of the Nevada water table.

David Friedman hits most of the useful points and rightly concludes that these concerns are simply insane. The intellectual poverty of avoiding a cure for a near term problem because it may itself be a problem in an exceedingly distant future suggests some mental competence problems as well.

The second specious argument - that nuclear fuel is too scarce to be the basis of base load power for a usefully long period - is simply false. The argument relies on deceit, failing to look at available evidence and reason from it. Instead it selects old and partial factoids and reasons poorly from them. No one with a smattering of knowledge or any intellectual integrity is deceived, but some of those who have political skin in the issue or emotional problems can trumpet the confirmation of their biases.

This is no surprise since it is the same sort of squirrely argument used to falsely claim that fossil fuels are scarce. Neither fossil fuels nor nuclear fuels are scarce or likely to be exhausted for a very long time. The sources of nuclear fuel are numerous. It is readily available in many places - so available that little effort has gone into mapping reserves. Supply exceeds demand, but with the certain increase in nuclear power generation there will be renewed interest. Several elements and isotpes are useful as nuclear fuel, especially in newer generations of reactors. Besides, it can be made if need be.

One idea that I find compelling is the notion of coproducts. One of the truly scarce resources in the world is fresh water, but we have lots and lots of sea water. Some nations already get a large percentage of their fresh water from processing sea water to remove the minerals it contains and so make fresh water. In future this will doubtless become ever more common. The minerals removed from the water have value too. As the volume of both water and minerals processed rises we will utilize them both. Some of the minerals in sea water are useful as nuclear fuel. We may have a practically inexhaustible supply of nuclear fuel as a coproduct of fresh water production.

We have a long way to go in the evolution of nuclear power systems. Some of the designs being developed now are pretty interesting since they are small, sealed, inherently safe and long lasting. They work anywhere from the bottom of the sea to the dark side of the moon without any emissions of any sort. They can be massive central generators or small scale and distributed. In time we are bound to get ever better designs and one day graduate from fission to fusion.

There are no rational arguments for delay in taking advantage of this technology but that doesn't mean it should be done without proper concern for safety and economics. The rational debate is about which systems make sense for right now. Like any business or economic decision there are opportunities, constraints, unknowns and unknown unknowns. Much of the world's power is made this way now and much more will be made that way very soon. Many nations are expanding their nuclear power systems and more will do so in future. Those that did so long ago - such as France and Sweden - have a significant competitive advantage today as a result.