Nuclear is such a scary word to the public. Most people I’ve talked to think that every nuclear power plant is one natural disaster away from a mushroom cloud. It’s a shame that nuclear power was hijacked by war mongers. There’s more than one way to split an atom, not every reactor creates a weapon, and liquid…

Really shot ourselves in the foot not investing in nuclear R&D for decades on end. If we had a lot of the valid criticisms of it might have an answer by now. It's still worth a shot but figuring out how to build them faster, smaller, cheaper, safer and cleaner all at the same time is a big ask.

I agree with your take, we could have been really moving away from big oil by now if nuke had played its hand better. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again though, the good ship Nuclear has sailed.

“When Earther spoke to researchers at the time Sanders’ plan dropped last August, some expressed concern about the plan’s commitment to forego nuclear.”

We literally can’t get to renewable power without it. Learn something about the energy industry. Either we advance battery technology 100 years in the next 2 years, or we keep nuclear. Unfortunately there aren’t other options.  Well there are but they’re called coal and combustion turbine.

I’m sorry Brian, but your “OH NO NUCLEAR BAD ONLY RENEWABLE GOOD” article didn’t convince me.

To be fair, he put something out their to be critiqued. That is better than many of the other candidates. If forced to submit a plan, I am sure several would be even more fantastical.

Brian Kahn....

This anti-nuclear stance of yours confuses me dudebra. I know you’re much smarter than this. It comes across as very anti-science.

“huge amounts”? The entire sum of all US nuclear waste would fit in a small cave. 90,000 metric tons at last count. That’s a pretty small amount (considering how heavy the fuel rods are).

Over the entire course of a nuclear power plant’s life, it produces the lowest amount of waste product of any form of energy per…

The biggest delay to nuclear power is governmental delays. We absolutely could build the plants in time if we, as a country, decided it was important.

while eschewing nuclear power

Sorry but wind and solar are not viable replacements for constant power sources, they only work as supplementary power. They would require massive power storage to allow their use at scale. We lack the power storage technology to do so. The closest we have is Lithium batteries, but even if we ignored the astronomical…

Scientists that actually have knowledge about power generation know that you either need gas, coal or nuclear for baseload.

If the goal is

“The plan itself doesn’t focus on where the money will come from”

The reality is we need nuclear in the meantime if we want to quickly cut out fossil fuels. The best path forward is renewable/green + nuclear because renewable/green can’t yet provide the consistent baseload and we don’t have reasonable storage methods for the energy they produce to overcome that... yet.

Okay, that was funny.

Wow, this is quite a hit job. You are misrepresenting his views about as much as possible (and you backpedal and use weak language throughout because you know it). Being honest about what is going to happen is not dangerous. Carbon Capture combined with lower emissions is 100% the correct solution, and investigating…

My issue with this article is that the writer ignores a lot of Yang’s climate change policy (like carbon tax and dividend) and focuses on the most out there ideas (ie geo-engineering) and pithy soundbites to discredit. If you are going to honeslty critique him, critique him based on the totality of his climate change…