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Happy new year, all. More geopolitics that I don't understand:
Why doesn't the US or some other nuclear power Simply (tm) operate nuclear power plants at a profit on foreign soil on behalf of the local government? This would defuse narratives of the tech tree being made inaccessible to developing nations due to climate change campaigns. It would also promote nuclear non-proliferation and defuse narratives of preventing access to effective power technologies due to the risk of dual-use tech development. Finally, it would stabilize local power grids in regressing states and promote both stability, enabling eventual growth, and loyalty/dependency on the operator in the region. For the cost of single-digit billions of investment, the US (frex) infuses money into American industry, develops the region, and effectively infuses an extra quantum of stability and pseudo prosperity into regions that desperately need it, while extending and securing American hegemony and economic entertwinement/influence.
A couple of points- I'm not married to any of them, but I think all of them are at least worth considering. I definitely invite anyone who has further information/context/pushback on any of these to bring it.
Atoms for peace was a thing, once. Cold war era programs tend to get wound down even if they were actually kind of cool, but "a nuclear power provides enough assistance to running a nuclear power plant in your country that you can't use it to build a weapon" isn't unprecedented, and winding it down out of bureaucratic inertia is just bureaucratic inertia.
The environmental movement has a pretty big anti-nuclear wing. In my more optimistic moments I think this is because they're wildly misinformed; in my more cynical moments I think it's because they don't actually want a solution to carbon emissions, they want a continuing problem that gets money sent to their NGO's. In my really depressing moments I think it's because they have a solution in mind, and it's "everybody be poor", and that like lockdowners in 2020, they're not interested in discussing alternatives because they've settled on a solution and anyone who disagrees with them is axiomatically evil. I don't think there's a nice explanation for the anti-nuclear environmentalists and I also don't think they're Alex Jones villians who just hate whites or whatever; surely some are, but there's enough of them pushing electric cars and the like that I think they mostly are motivated by climate change and sinecures.
The environmental movement is bound up in progressive signalling. This is I guess a subset of 2, but it seems worth pulling out separately. Nuclear energy(and hydropower, and now that I think about it any workable solution) is a right-wing coded solution so a group that wants to signal progressive credentials will avoid it in favor of rambling about things that can't solve the problem.
The institutions dedicated to brainstorming solutions for climate change have a habit of not noticing the developing world. Like, that it exists. Yes, this habit is bad and they should feel bad for it. But we can't really change it; these institutions treat "now, what's your plan for the developing world" as "what about China" bad faith trolling. And that attitude just bleeds over; these people see their mission as making the US, CANZUK, EU carbon neutral by means x,y,z. They are very committed to both sides of that equation and nuclear power plants aren't part of it.
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