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Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

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Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#51

Post by solveit »

thebean11 wrote: post #45
acidburnNSA wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's Thorium "hype" was started by a NASA tech named Kirk Sorensen. He outwardly said nuclear needed a rebrand as early as 2008 and has kind of doubled down on it. Like: "Hey all those problems with nuclear are solved if you split this nucleus instead of that one". I agree with you and don't think this is necessary. We should just try to help people see context in the things they don't like about nuclear. The reac…

Nuclear accidents have unique and sometimes unpredictable environment impact, like Fukushima continuing to pollute the ocean with radioactive material to this day. Not saying that's a good reason to swear ourselves off nuclear, but it's more complicated than low carbon emissions.

Everything has unpredictable environment impact at this scale. Name one energy source that can replace nuclear that doesn't have hard-to-predict consequences of unknown but possibly gigantic magnitude on a global scale.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#52

Post by fsh »

Baeocystin wrote: post #34
acidburnNSA wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's Thorium "hype" was started by a NASA tech named Kirk Sorensen. He outwardly said nuclear needed a rebrand as early as 2008 and has kind of doubled down on it. Like: "Hey all those problems with nuclear are solved if you split this nucleus instead of that one". I agree with you and don't think this is necessary. We should just try to help people see context in the things they don't like about nuclear. The reac…

There's a reason we call MRI machines MRIs, and not NMRIs. Rebranding around public perception matters, whether we like it or not.

I don't buy it. For example in Germany MRI is usually called "Kernspintomographie" ("nuclear spin tomography") and nobody has any issue with that.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#53

Post by redis_mlc »

sjwright wrote: post #16
djohnston wrote: post #12

im not sure it's useful to hold yang accountable for such technical minutae. i generally believe that nuclear has an important role to play in our mitigation of climate change, but that our bias to remember flash-point events like chernobyl and fukushima will overshadow the far more deadly and ubiquitous proliferation of CO2 and methane that lacks the same "pizazz"

And it's important to remember that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has caused one confirmed death so far. I'm not saying that it wasn't a horrific disaster, but it's like comparing one dramatic aeroplane accident to the totality of road vehicle deaths worldwide—one plane is newsworthy; whereas the vehicle death toll is normalised and ignored. Worldwide, around 50 to 500 people die in planes each year. Worldwide, over…

> And it's important to remember that the Fukushima nuclear disaster has caused one confirmed death so far.

I wish nuclear apologists with an agenda would stop repeating this.

250,000 residents were displaced, many spending their final days in gyms and other camps as rufugees in their own country.

An entire army will spend decades and likely trillions of dollars trying to do something with the shattered remains of the Fukushima complex.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#54

Post by paulddraper »

Baeocystin wrote: post #34
acidburnNSA wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's Thorium "hype" was started by a NASA tech named Kirk Sorensen. He outwardly said nuclear needed a rebrand as early as 2008 and has kind of doubled down on it. Like: "Hey all those problems with nuclear are solved if you split this nucleus instead of that one". I agree with you and don't think this is necessary. We should just try to help people see context in the things they don't like about nuclear. The reac…

There's a reason we call MRI machines MRIs, and not NMRIs. Rebranding around public perception matters, whether we like it or not.

> There's a reason we call MRI machines MRIs, and not NMRIs

My dad sold microwaves when they were new; they were careful never to say "radiation" or "irradiated" or anything like that.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#55

Post by paulddraper »

thebean11 wrote: post #45
acidburnNSA wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's Thorium "hype" was started by a NASA tech named Kirk Sorensen. He outwardly said nuclear needed a rebrand as early as 2008 and has kind of doubled down on it. Like: "Hey all those problems with nuclear are solved if you split this nucleus instead of that one". I agree with you and don't think this is necessary. We should just try to help people see context in the things they don't like about nuclear. The reac…

Nuclear accidents have unique and sometimes unpredictable environment impact, like Fukushima continuing to pollute the ocean with radioactive material to this day. Not saying that's a good reason to swear ourselves off nuclear, but it's more complicated than low carbon emissions.

Manufacturing the equivalent obscene number of solar and wind power plants also has unique and unpredictable environmental impact.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#56

Post by rendaw »

fsh wrote: post #49
erentz wrote: post #5

Yang is to be credited for stating he is open to all possible solutions to the climate crisis, and rightly pointing out that with a crisis of this magnitude no solutions should be taken off the table at this point. Something other candidates are reluctant to do when it comes to the topic of nuclear energy. He shouldn’t be expected to be an expert in the nuances of the technology or fuels. This should always be left t…

Him not being an expert is not an excuse for spreading incorrect information. He could have asked one. I am truly amazed how easy people tend to let their favorite politicians off the hook for saying dumb things in public.

If he's going to rely on experts this would certainly be one place to demonstrate that.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#57

Post by paulddraper »

deevolution wrote: post #37

My primary concern with any for of nuclear reactors is that they make for very juicey targets.

In real life, the few attacks that have been tried against nuclear power plants have "failed" miserably. [1]

It's not terribly hard to shut one down (or at least not much harder than your typical power plant) but extracting/releasing any radioactive material is very, very difficult.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/07/06...

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#58

Post by oska »

erentz wrote: post #5

Yang is to be credited for stating he is open to all possible solutions to the climate crisis, and rightly pointing out that with a crisis of this magnitude no solutions should be taken off the table at this point. Something other candidates are reluctant to do when it comes to the topic of nuclear energy. He shouldn’t be expected to be an expert in the nuances of the technology or fuels. This should always be left t…

This is giving him quite a soft pass. If he's made specific claims about thorium reactors then it's good that they're being fact-checked.

Re: Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang

#59

Post by acidburnNSA »

Klinky wrote: post #41
juped wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I hate most in nuclear advocacy is the trope of "the new, exciting, safe and economical nuclear reactor based on new, exciting miracle tech!". We have amazing, safe, economical, etc. nuclear reactors. They're called nuclear reactors, and don't need any miracle tech conjured up in some magazine columnist's imagination.

What is an economical reactor model available to be built today? Practically every commercial reactor built seems to be a multi-billion dollar project that takes years to complete, with cost overruns common.

Shipyard-constructed several-hundred-megawatt pressurized water reactors. The Navy has basically achieved economies of mass production with their reactors. The submarine and aircraft carrier weapons systems are expensive, but if you just did something similar for civilian power, I believe you could capture both economies of scale and economies of mass production. For decarbonizing the world very rapidly, this would be my going-in plan (if I could choose).

Nuclear success stories are stories of standardization of design and repetition. Most of the boondoggles are first-of-a-kind or first-in-2-decades builds.

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