Isaiah Taylor

I always hesitate to compare nuclear to oil and gas because I have a great deal of affection for oil and gas.

I think that oil and gas has powered the modern world.

We would not be anywhere close to where we are as a civilization without oil and gas.

But it has downsides, right?

We may be farther if we had gone with nuclear earlier.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, we'd be farther if we had gone with nuclear earlier.

But still, I have an enormous amount of gratitude for the oil and gas industry for powering humanity to this point.

But we did that with trade-offs and those trade-offs are known, right?

You are at a much, much higher risk of cancer living near a coal plant than living near a nuclear plant.

That's just fact.

That's just scientific empirical fact.

The reason for that is that coal ash and the types of stuff that you're digging up from underground when you burn it gets into the surrounding environment and can cause cancer, right?

And as a civilization, we have to make these trade-offs.

We have to say,

We need power, right?

Power is existential.

If people don't have power, they die during the winter or they die in heat stroke during the summer.

And so you don't get to choose between zero deaths and zero deaths.

You're choosing between civilizational existence or die out and some level of death that is going to happen, right?