This anthropologist (by training) Michael Shellengerger makes the point that nuclear power generators are less carbon-intensive to construct than are massive solar or wind farms. It takes consume less steel and concrete to build them. His other big point is the environmental impact that massive wind and solar farms have: degradation of the landscape, birds killed in wind turbines, rare species threatened. Nukes have a much smaller geographic footprint (when they’re operating correctly, I guess he means.)
He claims that as solar and wind generation increase as a percentage of the total they will cause require an increasing amount electricity from natural gas generation in order to quickly ramp up when the sun and wind die down. That explains to him why some fossil fuel companies are promoting wind and solar “solutions”.
He explains (too briefly) how the waste from the reactors is much lower in volume than the millions of solar panels that will have to be recycled.
The comments on YouTube are pretty negative – “nothing new here”, but it was news to me.
