Expensive nuclear will kill

If you don't pursue safety in a way that is cost effective, you are killing people.[David Okrent]

As the powers that be start to realize that windsolar cannot supply humanity with the cheap electricity it needs to prosper, nukies are starting to gloat. I told you so. We can beat windsolar, even if our did-cost is 5 or 10 times higher than our should-cost. This schadenfreude was easily predictable. The GKN has ranted against this ugly glee again and again and again and again and again and again and again under the mantra: expensive nuclear is no where good enough.

But with this choir not much sticks. The goal is not to beat windsolar, a silly fantasy that somehow metastasized. The goal is to provide dispatchable, low pollution, low CO2 electricity at a cost that every human can afford, at a cost that makes synfuel feasible. At a minimum, nuclear must be cheaper than coal. If it is not and if that expensive nuclear were somehow forced on humanity, we would make humanity poorer. Among other things, poverty kills. So maybe we need a simpler bumper sticker: expensive nuclear will kill.