Why I am not really “pro-nuclear”

Considering semantics and the false narrative they uphold

“We emerged from microbes and muck” - Carl Sagan

Last year when Germany’s last nuclear reactors were shut down I spoke at a demonstration in Berlin. On one side of the Brandenburg Gate was Greenpeace, celebrating the nuclear phase-out with a party. On the other side was a group of “pro-nuclear” activists, lamenting the same event. 

I have been described as “pro-nuclear” for years now, and before that I considered myself to be “anti-nuclear”. I’ve been on both sides of the gate, but I’ve come to believe that these terms are meaningless.

I think the notion of being for or against any specific technology is a game of false semantics.

I think we’ve all been duped.

Games with semantics: the fallacious argument of “technology” versus “nature”

It’s a bit like saying that you are “pro-sun” or “pro-gravity”. These things exist, and they influence our lives, but whether or not we like them is irrelevant. Since we don’t control the sun or gravity, let’s apply this idea to human-made technology instead.

What is “technology”? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it is the study, knowledge, method and application of science. These are broad definitions that suggest that technology covers everything from mattresses to pencils to shoes. This is the correct definition, even if when many people initially think of the word “technology” they think of “electrical device”.

To make sense of why this is the case, we have to enter the murky territory of defining what is considered to be “natural” and what “nature” is. In its simplest form, “nature” is the world around us. This concept has become muddied in popular use, as the traditional environmental movement has shaped the concept of “nature” as a special, even revered entity personified by the old Greek myth of Gaia. According to this narrative, nature is everything that exists around us that was not made by humans. It is independent of human impact - a world before we existed. In reality, humans arose from the Earth’s natural processes and evolution, and now we create things using materials that are mined from the Earth, which makes humans a part of nature, not apart from it.

This leads us to why some people are “anti-GMO” but not “anti-organic”. “Anti-nuclear” but not “anti-sun”. On the contrary, when people promote solar panels they are endorsing the sun, which through nuclear fusion is constantly using up the hydrogen in its core. Sounds dangerous. I’m surprised people aren’t protesting it.

Solar panels are a form of technology. They require mining, raw materials, and engineering skills to construct. Why are they seen as natural and therefore good, but nuclear power plants - which require considerably fewer materials - are seen as bad? Because these perspectives have been normalised by a small faction of society. It has become socially acceptable to be against some technologies, but not others, based entirely on the spurious notion that some technologies are “natural” (an argument people regularly make about wind and solar power), while others are not (when actually, nuclear fission is a natural process). Journalists, politicians, and entire populations have fallen for this false reasoning.

What about pencils and mattresses? We don’t consider these things to be technologies because they are not contentious wedge issues with people protesting them. We don’t have to be “pro-pencils” because there isn’t a loud and powerful activist movement against pencils. We simply accept that pencils are probably useful and better our lives somehow.

What a pro-pencil gathering might look like according to AI

The terms we use when we describe certain technologies have been defined by activists, mostly of the Luddite, doomer type.

But that is not how most people think. When asked, most people will not say that they are “pro-shoes” or “anti-nuclear”. Instead, they support broader ideas - yes of course we cannot walk outdoors barefoot, yes of course I need to use lighting and to charge my phone and ideally, I’d like to be able to do that reliably and inexpensively. Ergo, they inadvertently, and naturally support things like shoes and nuclear energy. And if better and improved technologies come along, they will support them too.

Therefore, I am not really “pro-nuclear”. There is no such thing. The technology exists. The technology has immense potential. My stance is irrelevant in relation to whether or not it is necessary. Reliable energy is necessary, to escape poverty, warm our homes, to light our streets. Clean energy is necessary to improve and save lives. Being for or against it does not change these basic truths.

Arguably, if something is invented and it improves your life in some way, then you are already “pro” it, since you use it. Broader society, perhaps even universally, has approved it. For example, everyone is pro-soap. Pro-cooking. Pro-flush toilets. I have worn glasses since I was nine years old due to myopia. Do I consider myself to be “pro-glasses”? Do you? Does anyone? (Actually, watch that space, because there was a recent video of the woman claiming that we don’t need to wear glasses. Everyone on the internet appeared to laugh at her. But how is being anti-glasses different to being anti-nuclear or anti-GMO?)

The idea of being against something that is not only part of quotidian life but possibly also essential to it came from activists. Within all the pushback against the doomers, we have fallen for doomer-controlled rhetoric. The limited thinking of a limited few has had a significant impact on the way we all think and talk about technology.

To be fair to activists, there have been positive changes in the world thanks to campaigners on single issues. When I refer to “activists” here I am not referring to small groups of well-meaning campaigners, but to large, well-funded and influential interests with questionable motives, for example NGOs that have worked to undermine nuclear energy in favour of fossil fuels, and those that have damaged energy security by working with dictators. These groups have made some of the challenges we face today, like building clean energy, much harder than they should be. The damage they have done is incalculable.

Games with semantics: hearing the few over the many

Historically, debates involving technology have lacked balance. Journalists initially didn’t balance coverage of anti-nuclear protests with the voices of people who are in favour of the technology, because originally there were no “pro-nuclear” people. There were only engineers, physicists and other scientists who were getting on with their jobs, who did not identify with the term “pro-nuclear”. It would be like calling themselves “pro-physics”. So, they didn’t get a voice in the debate and their views - based on facts and data - were not represented. Only the feelings of activists were. For decades, there was no debate at all. Eventually, when “pro” voices entered the chat, the discussion began to move forward.

The opposition: “pro-nuclear” activists at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin

Now, to have a voice in the debate, people increasingly choose to identify as pro-nuclear, but this is still part of a wider false narrative. The narrative has been repeated for so long, across so many mediums, that many people have that sneaky feeling that technology is bad. That it comes for our jobs in the night, it disconnects us from each other and from “nature”, and it has ruined/will ruin the world.

Consider past technology panics about calculators, microwaves, mobile phones, and even coffee. They sound absurd to us now. Yet others remain - panics over nuclear energy, GMOs, Artificial Intelligence, and so on. These are not political issues. They are discoveries and inventions that have been made political. Being against them is just as absurd as protesting coffee.

Technology is only a tool. How we use it is up to us. We can be in favour of using it in a specific way, but that’s just called having an opinion. Being in favour of the fact that it exists? Or not wanting it to exist? That’s just bizarre. And yet those are the terms we have been reduced to - “pro-nuclearism” and “techno-optimism”. As if logical alternatives to these positions exist.

Games with semantics: endless pessimism has given rise to “techno-optimism”

Many people on social media reacted negatively to this video of many people using their phones to capture the New Year countdown

Everything around us is technology. I wear shoes, glasses, and clothes, I use a mobile phone and laptop. When I am in “nature” am I free of technology? Let’s remove the shoes, glasses and clothes. Now we are back to the old hippy idea of being “one” with nature - naked Woodstockers rolling around in the mud. It was the ’60s, man. But we have to move on from that reductive way of thinking - and from that era. If I pick up a stick on the moors and use it to start a fire, didn’t I just create a tool out of nature?

Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto is an impressive and lengthy missive that sets out his perspective on the role of technology (and also incorporates a phrase I helped to popularise - “energy is life”). I have some admiration for the ambitions and future-gazing that Andreessen’s manifesto represents, but it also perpetuates the narrow concept of what constitutes technology and frames it as something that we have to choose to be for or against.

The reason I disagree with this premise is because technology itself is value-neutral. Do I want to see positive applications of new technologies? Of course. But that’s like saying that I’m pro-breathing. Aside from a tiny number of sociopaths, don’t we all want to see positive applications of technology? Even the most Luddite of Luddites? What are all those dystopian post-apocalypse films and books about if not the dread of negative applications of technology and the desperate wish to avoid them from occurring?

In broad terms, this makes us all techno-optimists (barring the few sociopaths). 

Back to the false narrative I mentioned earlier. The lie goes deeper than being for or against technology. The lie is that there is a binary choice between being pro- or anti- any form of technology that we already depend upon. The technology is a part of us; we are already cyborgs in that regard. Without my glasses, I wouldn’t be able to write this article. Without my shoes, I wouldn’t go outside. Without coffee, you’d probably be asleep instead of reading this.

As long as humans exist, so will technology. To say that I am “pro-nuclear” is no different than saying that I am “pro-Earth” or “pro-oxygen”. All of these things are true, but saying them implies that there is a valid contrary stance, which is incorrect. A person can hold any opinion, but it is only valid if it is logical or based on fact or scientific truth. People can be “anti-breathing”, but let’s see how long a movement formed on that basis lasts.

We all live with the basic fundamental laws of the universe. In this world, fission exists, whether people are for or against it. Whether or not we use it well, to improve lives and better humankind, is up to us. A few people who might protest shoes as vehemently as they protest nuclear power plants have held centre-stage in this debate for far too long. Journalists need to stop amplifying their voices. And we need to start adopting better terminology ourselves.

While labels can be powerful, they can also be limiting, and some of the terms we have become accustomed to when we discuss technology are redundant. The language we use matters; it shapes the way we think and helps to configure society. If we continue to define our ideas based on over-simplified framing developed by Luddites, we will continue to limit ourselves. By defining ourselves in opposition to them, we allow their ideologies to hold us back. The real challenge is to move away from the traditional framing and, like the idea of thinking outside of the box, learn to approach things from outside of the Gate.