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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • This is the product of a couple of cultural movements in previous generations.

    1. People who conflated their Cold War-era opposition to nuclear weapons with opposition to nuclear energy. The Venn diagram with early environmental movements has considerable overlap.

    2. A more general and mostly-irrational fear of nuclear energy mostly stoked in the U.S. by Three Mile Island, which is a case study in good nuclear accident management with piss-poor public relations. (See: the first few seasons of the Simpsons many gags about the dangers of the power plant.)

    3. The current environmental movement’s general unwillingness to acknowledge nuclear energy as a very advantageous tool in the push to eliminate fossil fuels. Why? Over-optimism about where renewables are now and continued influence of the Boomers from #1 who taught all of their university classes.

    4. Over-reaction to Fukushima, particularly in the EU (other than France). And then doubling down until Ukraine forced their hands when Russian gas became an embarrassment.







  • Just to clarify, the union then was MUCH more federal (small “f”)–the power was more divided between states and Washington. What we always call the Federal government they often called the National or General government since federal rule inherently has regional governments.

    The Civil War, while not about States’ Rights in the sense neo-Confederates claim, did weaken the states, though the 16th and 17th Amendments and the New Deal really did them in. It’s hard for our generation to conceive of every topic not being a national issue.