I agree with you that climate change > nuclear waste. It is the poly-crisis that touches everything. And I agree that nuclear stuff can be overblown. Most of the time it is fine. But when it goes wrong, it REALLY goes wrong with long term consequences that stretch into tens of thousands of years. It will be dangerous longer than we have had writing or civilization. We will need to signal its danger beyond the current confines of human speech. I feel similarly about the idea of some forms of pollution which will affect places for thousands of years. The thing that gets me is the timescale.

I was watching a post-apocalyptic show the other day and started wondering: if society suddenly collapsed, what would happen to the nuclear power plants? I mean, I know that there are procedures to ramp them down but what then? How would you decommission a nuclear power plant without electricity? Without expertise? What would happen to all the nuclear weapons? I have always wondered if there are catastrophic scenario SOPs for these things.

Now, I have thought that if society does collapse, it will happen more gradually than suddenly. But this little thought exercise made me think that nuclear waste / nuclear energy is one thing that necessitates a certain level of knowledge, expertise, and energy to maintain. A certain level of civilization or modernization.

Again, I could be wrong and I’m willing to change my mind, but that is where I stand at the moment.

Many good things have been said. I would add that what give me comfort is that in the present moment, it is really, really hard to tell signal from noise. You often don’t know the impact of people or events until many years out. We often said in grad school that you can’t write history until at least 30 years have passed from the event. So, it seems chaotic and confusing because it is hard to for us to understand what it important and what is not.

The other thing is that every generation often sees the sky as falling in. An ancient Greek philosophy lamented about his parents had it all figured out and his children where going to ruin everything. That same sense of doom is pretty pervasive.

That is not to dismiss any of the real terrible things out there. Climate change is the big problem on the horizon. Nuclear waste is another. But I think on the balance, we are going to muddle through fine. The great blessing of humanity is that we are adaptable. The curse of humanity is that we are adaptable.

You kind of stole most of my answer! Thanks for sharing.

My street in Chicago has been converted over to being one way with a bike lane in one direction and arrows in another direction on the main drive. I rode a Divvy bike home and was in the main road. One of the scariest experiences I’ve had in a long time. The cars didn’t give a damn. They just kept riding me. What makes it even better is that parking takes up about 45% of the street.