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Michael Gease's avatar

It’s unfortunate that some don’t see the multiple benefits presented by the construction of new nuclear power plants. The power needs posed by expanding and migrating populations coupled with those essential to sustain the rise of artificial intelligence are fulfilled by the resulting energy surplus from the plant, and the facility’s construction, operation and maintenance jobs offer tangible benefits to workers and their families.

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Colin Hunt's avatar

An excellent article with many strong points that need to be made. It has occurred to me that in British society there has always been a tendency to look disparagingly upon the workers and to sneer at "the boffins" - the engineers who made technology work and improved it. The Southport riots have perhaps shown the willingness of the legacy media and the upperclasses to believe in their truisms about how uncivilised the working class is.

This comes increasingly at a time when there is a growing awareness that a university "education" in large numbers of disciplines does not actually equip a student to do much of anything useful. For example, of what use to society or the economy is the study of so-called political science? Whatever it is, science has nothing to do with it.

And you are entirely correct about innovation. If it's to be useful to people, to make their lives easier or more prosperous, it should reduce the cost of doing something. Instead "green" solutions seem to impose greatly increasing costs which strike disproportionately hard those who can least afford it.

The notion of jobs and energy can be deceptive. Building a nuclear plant indeed creates thousands of jobs, both directly and indirectly. But the real jobs benefits are the many times greater amount of jobs that are created in the larger national economy by producing low cost, highly reliable energy supply.

The whole point here is about efficiency. After all, if our intention was simply to create energy system jobs, simply point everone at a woodlot and hand them an axe. At least it's a job, but I didn't say it was a particularly good or useful job.

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