This scenario is set in a different 2020 from the one we now inhabit, on a timeline that diverged in 1974a date that means much to most people. But hindsight suggests that March 6th 1974 may have been a turning-point in human history. The decision announced on that day by Pierre Messmer, France’s prime minister, may have saved the world from a dangerous rise in temperatures—an obscure phenomenon known in scientific circles as “global warming”.
In other circumstances, that decision might have proved just one more example of France’s desire to be different. Though nuclear power had looked promising in the 1950s, and most industrialised countries had built at least one experimental reactor, progress was unsteady in the 1960s as some people conflated atomic energy with nuclear weapons.
Nervousness about countries using civil programmes to acquire the plutonium needed for bombmaking was soon put to rest. The technical breakthrough that overcame this objection, and paved the way for nu-power’s ubiquity, came from an unexpected quarter: India. In 1985 the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai announced that it had built a successful thorium reactor. Not only is thorium three times more abundant than the uranium previously used to power reactors, it is much harder to weaponise.
How about we make revere nukes? Is that even possible? Hmmmm?
Nuclear power is very efficient for it's footprint but the quality control needed for avoiding catastrophic consequences is too much of a risk. I know way too many people in quality control in many industries and they are unbelievably lazy.
True- because we would have China-syndromed in the 90’s & be living in Nuclear Winter, for a short while
The near simultaneous occurrence of the real-life Three Mile Island accident and the release of The China Syndrome, a popular movie about a fictional nuclear accident, pretty much doomed nuclear energy.
It would be hard to spin that nonsense when Time magazine and other publications were spinning Global Cooling as the ecoscare at the time. After that was the Ozone layer hole that turned out to be another baseless panic. Global Warmists had to wait to grift ecoidiots.
No but we would still be driving everything to extinction through habitat degradation especially when the nukes melt down
We would know a lot about radiation poisoning and world hot spots.
ooooor if Reagan would have excepted using solar panels and putting them on the White House. Maybe global warming might not have been heard of. The bigger concern should not be above but below. Do you think global warming may be coming from below due 2 the excavation of oil.
Please stop this idea that nuclear power is a free lunch! We would be up to our armpits In radioactive waste for thousand & thousands of years, stored in corruptible containers🤔
This shows the absolute importance of encouraging technological development and enterprise... worth considering externalities though, like waste disposal and other things we can’t see, as Taleb talks about in ‘The Black Swan’
Said no one who's heard of cars.
Yes but then we could have had the fallout universe irl
You're right
What if they hadn’t stolen the election from Gore 20 years ago....we likely would be so much better off RIGHT NOW mostly for our children’s sake, yet here we are ?!
That’s right, because you drop one of those big bombs, you will instantly get climate change and population change in an instant.
Because they would have no sensory organs due to all the mutations
🌹 to The Economist for mentioning Thorium. Raspberrys for not putting Thorium in the headline somehow.
Truly ... there's no end to the stream of puerile and specious claims that get peddled in return for clicks and views by this comic news rag.
anders_norheim ...
Virus created in Wuhan bio-weapon lab. Floyd incident planned. Capitalism destroyed. Why are communist coopted scientists still persisting with the global warming hoax? That's yesterdays lie. No longer needed, capitalism already destroyed.
Yes because my be everyone will be talking about Chernobyl and three or four other disasters
But, where would the nuclear waste be stored? NIMBY!!!
Nuclear power may be great, but remember: one screw up, and you get a catastrophe; just like in Chernobyl.
The same people who in the 70s told us that we would run out of oil in thirty years are going to roast you for writing this article
Right, no nutcases in the 1970's!!
Like greenhouse gases, radiation is invisible, and that's paydirt for conspiracy theorists. Either way there'd be some corporate collective pushing non-renewable energy on us in order to keep the money making scam going on forever. outofthefryingpan
True, just radiation releases due to natural disasters as in Japan If we Lost WWII we would be speaking German Can a Nation b prosperous & good to it's citizens Per ur point apparently not. Ur comment comes from Trumps Lower GI right into your soul
Nukes are not so safe & wonderful when they are highly subsidized, not marketable unless subsidized, and leave behind waste that causes cancer for 20,000 years. What we should have done iin 1970 was promote windmills, solar PV, super-insulated buildings, and public transportation
Crap!!! Ask Israel, USA to shut down their nuclear power...they are equally partner in crime of global warming
Think storage of waste products may have something to do with this? Signed: a person who lived about 50 miles downriver from 3 Mile Island.
Or the lack of adequate regulatory supervision combined with profit seeking might have allowed major disasters that made 3 mile Island Chernobyl etc. look mild.
Really? They could never control the radioactive leaks. And the nuclear waste! There are only so many people you can poison before you poison everyone. Sad but true. How lucky we are now! RIP and cool! 1❤️
Propaganda the fires were cause by global warming and not arson right?
But we'd have to listen to Jane Fonda whine. Totally not worth it.
But would they have heard of more towns like Fukushima and Chernobyl? That is the question.
it would be 'China syndrome' instead
I'm betting we still would, but theories for it's cause might be different.
So your saying it’s all those Greenpeace hippies fault
77cyko No, we would have heard about more Fukushimas and Chernobyl’s, plus what to do with tons of radioactive waste.
Thanks hippies.
True 👍
Or we would have had more Chernobyls and Fukushimas. Renewables are the solution not nuclear.
they still shouldn't hear about it... Because its fake😘😂🙃😘🤭
What is the average person? What is the “””””””” good luck with that view in the event of a catastrophic accident 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
But you had 3 Mile Island, China Syndrome and Chernobyl, thus scaring people from wanting nuclear reactors.
Nuklearia The amount of scientific illiteracy in the comments is amazing.
That's exactly why it didn't take off 😘 Couldn't fool half the globe to pay billions in taxpayermoney on the climate hoax then.
This makes no sense, and the writer doesn’t seem to understand the scope of global warming. I’d recommend consulting with a climate/energy expert and revisiting the premise of this entire argument.
Yeah, because we'd probably all be fried.
6point626 👋🏻
... or would be radioactive aglow!
ignoring the problem of radioactive waste which last Longer that Humans have existed or will exist ever
Suppose that depends on how many Chernobyls and Fukushimas there were, and whether they leaked, melted down, or blew up. There are better ways to save this planet than nuclear power.
Global cancer rates would have been 10000% higher.
OperadorNuclear
Oh yeah? Now you support this?!? Pleaseeee Nuclear_Matters
Would we have also not had GretaThunberg? 😅
Obviously, the nuclear power is the most important source nowadays ... there is no alternative one in the present ...
Are we seriously having this BS conversation now?
Many, many people on the left have been conditioned by propaganda to feel an overpowering emotional response triggered by the word “radiation.”
What would have become of xR, Greta, Roger Harrabin and Justin Rowlatt?
MichiganSock We sure would have heard of radioactive waste. Fuck nuclear. Go green or go extinct.
What if the Economist had not become a liberal rag?
But we would have a huge stockpile of nuclear waste. Have we figured out what to do with that? Can it be resused as energy?
Yeah, but there'd be hardly any Native/Indegenious peoples left. What with DOE burying all the spent nuclear fuel rods on/near their lands and the rate of infertility from exposure to radioactive waste occurring as a result. Climate change vs. genocide. I know, what a connundrum!
Lots of people didn't bother to read the article, but it's really good! It's infuriating that governments refused to fund research on thorium's potential as a nuclear fuel *precisely because* it had no utility for making superweapons. Instead, our climate is now slowly boiling.
That’s the future:
And I’d have that third eye I’ve always wanted!!
France, one of the countries that did, is now closing landmark facilities like Fessenheim 2, despite OECD research suggesting that extending the life of such plants is the most cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions.
Unaffordable & dangerous, nuclear explosion like Chernobyl
We would have had worries about multiple leakage accidents like Chernobyl & Fukushima.
Shill on
We should be talking about future! Nuclear power IS THE ONLY possible way of saving humanity from a much hotter planet. There’s no time to substitute all hydrocarbons for green energy... either people accept the reality or we will burn heheh
just with probability of disaster, would be worse. imagine increasing the probability of corporations greed to reduce cost. realistic speaking, I dont think so, it is not the solution. Renewables, efficiency, circularity, and equilibrium between States Corporations and Comunities
🤦♂️
Because we'd all be dead from cancer, as a result of greedy corporations cutting costs with regard to nuclear waste disposal leading to eventual environmental disasters.
We're not
CalvinAyre Until the figure out how to safely dispose of the waste, it's not a good idea.
CalvinAyre With OLD nuclear tech, there could have been 10 Chernobyls by now. So in some ways maybe it was a godsend.
I think we need to seriously consider moving to nuclear in much of the world ASAP.
Problem we bee stuffing the moon with nuclear waste
Yeah, well... should'a could'a would'a...
We probably wouldn't be around anymore to be able to worry. So this statement is very much true.
Not sure that works as an environmental plus point, but reducing reliance on oil during that period to avoid a few of the geopolitical issues coming out of the Middle East in the decades that followed? Maybe.
We would be worrying about radioactive poisoning.
They have NO SOLUTION for radioactive toxic waste .... still! Nuclear? NO THANK YOU nonukes NuclearBan
True ..
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