Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push • Hacker News Board

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#61

Post by bootlooped » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

dsign wrote: post #10

Pushing for green energy and good deeds with the current administration makes me fear for the health of Bill Gates... is he running out of time and considering desperate options? ... now that I think about it, we all are running out of time ... :-( ...

Nuclear doesn't have the same association with green energy that solar or wind does. For many people, green energy is associated very strongly with their political adversaries' worldview, so they oppose it. Nuclear doesn't suffer from that problem.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#62

Post by cazum » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

chmaynard wrote: post #34

Is this the way public policy is done now? Dueling billionaires throwing their money around? Gates can take his billions and shove them you know where.

What do you mean "now"?

This is the way it's been done for decades.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#63

Post by smsm42 » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

jkravitz61 wrote: post #26

jjoonathan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear energy is spurned by many (most?) self-styled environmentalists. That alone could win it favor in this administration. If Republicans could be persuaded to "own" it and Democrats could be persuaded to go along with it, we might just wind up doing something good for the planet. That's probably optimistic, but there's a lot more hope in that idea than in fighting a pitched battle about solar panels, China, and…

Nuclear has such a terrible reputation, and rightfully,people will always have legitimate complaints about it. We can never fully guarantee that a plant is free from the potential of catastrophe, not to mention we still don’t have a great solution to nuclear waste other than bury it in a mountain. It’s definitely a lot better than slowly suffocating ourselves by injecting hydrocarbons into the air, but we really need…

Nothing is ever free of a potential for trouble. Solar panel could fall from the roof and hit someone over the head, and I'm sure that happened already, but nobody makes a huge deal out of it. Nuclear incidents are made huge deal of. It's a fight between Jane Fonda and Edward Teller, and Fonda is winning because a movie actress is apparently more trustworthy in a questions of nuclear energy than actual nuclear physicists. It's a highly irrational approach and it's way past time to come back to rationality on it - yes, nuclear plants can be dangerous, but the risks can be managed as all other risks are and the benefits of working nuclear industry are huge, especially compared to burning hydrocarbons, which is how we still get the majority of energy.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#64

Post by bertil » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

meshr wrote: post #46

Just curious if someone can build nuclear station without Congress. Can Bill Gates buy a ship or island with nuclear station somewhere and “power Microsoft servers” from it?

Depending on the technology, that would most likely fell close to non-proliferation treaty and other international arrangements, so the government and possibly IAEA would have rights to control and visit. I know for instance that radioactive materials used for X-ray are under specific surveillance (it was discussed because of Brexit: the UK imports those from Germany).

In practice, anyone who knows about those technologies is active in the academic and industrial community. There are a lot of regulation that you can’t understand without professional lobbyists, and most of them are former civil servants.

I would compare it to Space exploration: a private actor like SpaceX of BlueOrigin is welcome on principle but has to pay a significant fee for controls. Whether you see that as needed security expertise or fealty is a matter of interpretation.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#65

Post by partiallypro » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:19 PM UTC

meshr wrote: post #46

Just curious if someone can build nuclear station without Congress. Can Bill Gates buy a ship or island with nuclear station somewhere and “power Microsoft servers” from it?

No, nuclear related products are incredibly regulated and monitored heavily to stop state actors and terrorists.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#66

Post by bhntr3 » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #30

I'm pro-nuclear fission (full disclosure, I work on fusion related research, but I don't care about who wins more than I want society to win), but I think talking to any random person in the public who are already skeptical about fusion, to them fission has not had a great track record. Make as many arguments you want to make about fukushima facing a natural disaster, w/e, and how the field has advanced since three-m…

> the public is skeptical regarding fission for good reason: history has not been kind to the kind of disasters fission reactors have wrought.

It's not just that! I was pro-fission until someone educated me how horribly irresponsible we've been about our nuclear waste disposal. And how dangerous it is.

Deep waste storage has been deadlocked in government since the 80s so waste is just hanging out by each reactor. If this funding and nuclear push doesn't include just finishing Yucca mountain, then imo it's a bad idea.

It looks like some progress was made recently but given that it took 40 years to vet yucca mountain I hate the idea of more nuclear power concurrent with a restarted site selection process.

http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/looking-trash-can-nuc...

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#67

Post by partiallypro » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

chmaynard wrote: post #34

Is this the way public policy is done now? Dueling billionaires throwing their money around? Gates can take his billions and shove them you know where.

A lot of billionaires in the past have done great things that have solved problems that government couldn't alone. I don't really see how this is a problem. I don't think Musk, Gates and Bezos are harming society as a whole by making big advancements in rocket tech, vaccines, etc for the benefit of humanity...while also making products that also benefit people across the globe.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#68

Post by smsm42 » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #3

He should do it without begging for public handouts. He's wealthy enough.

If you believe one can engage in a massive nuclear energy projects in modern United States without government participation or cooperation, you haven't been paying attention for a while. It's not a question of money, it's a question of public policy, regulation, etc. Gates has more money than whole Department of Energy, it's not about getting more (I recognize in many cases it's about getting handouts, but not in this one), it's about getting this thing moving. And this, unfortunately, does require government help.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#69

Post by frenchman99 » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

Always the same thing: instead of reducing energy use, humans will find a way to push back problems instead of tackling them head on. Using nuclear energy "because runway is too short" without doing much else is not going to save us.

We have to go out of our comfort zone and start pushing for laws that force manufacturers to allow for 20 year repairability of electronical products (some brands already offer 10 years, so 20 years is probably possible too), pushing for automatic 5 year warranty on electronic products instead of 2 in the EU, disallowing environment breaking agriculture, putting extremely high taxes on airplane tickets, etc.

Sure, that means that we need to change the way we live. We need to consume less and better. We need to think long term instead of jumping onto the new bright innovation every 2 years.

21st century capitalism has gotten to a point of absurdity in which everything in the world "has to" be available within the reach of a click and max 3 days delivery, whatever the cost (environment is dying, poverty is still not gone despite the absurd amount of wealth produced by modern economies, etc).

Maybe we ought to rethink how we consume and what we expect from life.

Re: Bill Gates promises to add his own billions if Congress does nuclear power push

#70

Post by Apreche » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

Hey Bill. You got more money than the Koch bros. Why not use those billions to donate to the campaigns of (aka bribe) every congressperson. Then, democrat or republican, they will do whatever you ask. They'll impeach Trump. They'll vote for nuclear power. They'll tax the other wealthy people.

You could also just buy those evil Koch Brothers/Adelson/etc. They are all smaller than you. Just buy them and shut them down.

You can save the country with a wave of your hand. Why are you always making such a small impact with such a large amount of money? Stop trying to bunt to first and smack the home run.

Alternative: Give me all your money and I'll do it for you.