This piece amounts to a recital of old and incorrect arguments, which quite purposely does not encourage the reader to actually engage with the article it is supposedly responding to.
I will assume we are saying that all this change will take place in a Degrowth Environment. The presupposition to Degrowth as an argument is that we are indeed in a growth environment - so what does this mean? We still need vast amounts of energy to be provided at the moment of rupture with this economic system, and we need to be honest about what that means - which this piece isn't.
I would encourage debate around the original piece instead.
Nevertheless, a point by point discussion/rebuttal
Butler poses:
Q:What if a nuclear power plant had been in the path of Australia’s huge bushfires in 2020?
A: File Missing
A classic theme of anti-nuclear work from all traditions, it's great to pose a question that sounds terrifying and not answer it.The mention of Fukashima as if it is the rule, rather than the exception, is another cheap shot - any sensible planner would have told you a tsunami path is not a great site for many things, and that this structure was likely put here without adequate protocols to provide a massive amount of power on the cheapest budget possible, which is the fault of capitalism, not nuclear power itself.
Note from physicist I consulted:
There may be new things that nuclear plants can have to trigger an accident but the Fukushima accident has been resolved in designs that have existed since the early 80s. New reactors are designed to take a direct hit from a passenger jet
Now to answer Butler's original question - they would have been fine, unless Butler wants to provide proof otherwise, but conveniently doesn't!
In football terms, Butler here is criticizing a footballer who is being played despite protests to the manager about an inury they haven't recovered from, and harshing on the footballer unable to reach their potential instead of the manager who insists on playing them because they have no replacement, fit or not
What does wastes mean here, exactly?
The article cites the Union of Concerned Scientists as its source, which is an immediate red flag for those who keep up with disinformation. The funding of this organisation (particularly what groups fund it past individual donations) is opaque and its board members include Obama appointees who have written books on how more fuel efficient cars will save us and previous employees of Exxon, it doesn't change the nature of the points, which I will address next, but bear in mind who is providing us with all this kind information and why so many of them seem to have connections with the establishment and end up pushing to stay with fossil fuels.
And that is the key point, what is Butler saying when he says nuclear wastes water?
What Butler means, from the source is that Nuclear uses (as of the source's last update a near decade before the article was written) more water than fossil fuels.
Are we, then, to accept a fossil fuel doomerism as this is all we have compared it to? Nuclear using more water than fossil fuels is the argument Butler presents here, but I would assume they don't follow the thinking for any alternative energy source that if it fails the efficiency or water usage versus fossil fuels test, we use that as a reason to stick with fossil fuels (which again is what his source states, it is not compared to renewables).
RISE Note: In the further reading, more up to date figures are given and comparisons with renewables (which should be our proper metric) are given, with primary sources https://climateandcapitalism.com/2020/01/15/reconsidering-nuclear-power/, which I wanted to include as primary reading but felt its essential points were covered by the podcast.
Engineer Note: This will likely also be the case for energy storage from renewables if we want to avoid huge amounts of specific mineral extraction like lithium and want to instead use mass storage and heat exchangers/turbines.
Of course what is also to be noted in terms of water usage and waste here, is that the damage and water waste from oil spills is not included in these calculations, which would dramatically alter the figures.
Butler makes a point different to the stated point within this section,
Uranium mining can also make nearby groundwater unusable forever
Which is really an argument for degrowth, as this is specific to the practice of mining, not just uranium mining
New nuclear is, sure, Butler is misrepresenting the figures, but yes, nuclear is slow (compared to fossil fuels), correct.
A poorly phrased point, "green" energy is a buzzword, we are not to get bogged down in debating terms with no material bearing and rely on how individuals define them.
Nevertheless, to respond to points made here
1. The article this piece is supposedly responding to, and indeed anyone serious discussing nuclear power has never said this.
2. The source provided (link is a pdf warning) for the claims here again are from groups that have suspect connections and don't lead us to renewable energy as Butler hints it would do.
Indeed, the preamble to the work of the report openly says before its investigations that "there is no sound way to compare the two sources of energy". The report used as the source for this point states that this comparison being made is not something to take from the work.
The report is also bad in terms of providing any useful results, it is just an opaquely funded attempted takedown of nuclear power "industry" that it doesn't define well, and its main funder that gets special thanks (the Trajart Foundation) doesn't appear to exist outside of this report - which for some reason doesn't raise any questions of motive. As you can probably tell, I could ramble for days about dark money in science, I won't do that right now.
3. A ridiculous point, do we think the mining process for renewables (which is very similar) isn't going to reach this same problem as all mined materials do? No literature suggests the elements in new batteries won't follow this path, so this point suggests a deep misunderstanding of the material reality of building a power system. If there is any solid research to indicate the minerals used in "renewables" are exempt from this problem, I will gladly engage - but as articles linked to at the end will lead to, they also leave land unusable.
I am like a broken record here, but the article this is supposedly in response goes to pains several times within it to distance nuclear power from "renewables".
What are we talking about when we discuss the costs of nuclear?
Several issues are posed with responding to this question, which Butler glosses over.
'Producing energy with nuclear power is a lot more expensive than renewables.', Butler says. Finally, a direct comparison with renewables instead of fossil fuels to dissect. Why is nuclear power more expensive than renewables, then?
According to Butler:
'The higher cost of nuclear power reflects the higher amount of
human labor time and natural resources it consumes.'. An
unsourced (and untrue) claim, that admittedly sounds good and
informed. Unless you believe labour power is less valuable in the
Global South, where a lot of the devices used to harness energy elsewhere are made.
Socialists should avoid 'costing' arguments in the first place anyway if they do not wish to outline the entire labour process. This is why requirements for extraction and the more measurable projections of staffing power stations of any form are better pointers.
That said, I think discussing the labour aristocracy involved in all forms of power production is important, and we should aim to do this.
This is categorically not true, relies on associating things that happened around the same time as being equivalent.
In the countries that already have enough nukes to blow up the world ten times over, there is no incentive to create further nuclear weapons (nor has the money been going this way, a proof that would give this point any material weight).
Here Butler argues that waste poorly disposed of and in legal disputes from the 1970s should dictate our stance on how we deal with future nuclear waste.
No sources on any actual nuclear waste disposal technology since the 1970s, or the decreased radioactivity that happens naturally over time, or any idea of how much nuclear waste is involved in any energy production.
This is just point 2
Conveniently, we can make the direct comparison for Butler here that gets avoided. Butler's source to a source outlines from an EU report in 2009 that 70% of the material used for nuclear power production comes from the land of indigenous peoples.
Quite comically excluded from this (for Butler, not the indigenous people writing the letter) is that indigenous communities in Australia also sit on some of the largest lithium mines in the world, just don't have lithium disasters to discuss that and people to rally behind. Indigenous communities in South America (where 60-70% of the world's lithium ores ["The Lithium Triangle"] are estimated to lie, mostly on the land of indigenous peoples) repeatedly talking to the press about the problems of wealth extraction and the raw deal they are getting. Is their exploitation less than those who live on nuclear material deposits? Or are we just pointing to general problems of energy production and attributing them to nuclear energy?
You can access the gloabl distribution breakdown of lithium (and other materials with a quick search) here
This rounds off nicely why I think it is best to propose on the whole where energy comes from, we will have to undergo massive extraction to facilitate a move to a "renewable" economy, no matter how much degrowth we embrace, and would encourage further reading on the problematic elements and more importantly, material realities of energy production going forward, to contrast between nuclear and lithium-based producers of energy.