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After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

forbes.com

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Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#51

Post by dan-robertson »

notRobot wrote: post #4

For the uninitiated, nuclear power is actually much, much safer than it was in the previous century, and fossil fuel power plants have killed exponentially more people through pollution than all nuclear power accidents combined – it's just not something that happens all at once so it doesn't seem like a big deal to most people. We will not be able to "defeat" climate change and keep this planet inhabitable for future…

What does it mean to say that fossil fuel plants killed exponentially more people?

Isn’t this just the triviality that any two points (with different y values) are exponentially related?

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#52

Post by [deleted] »

rriepe wrote: post #29
jayd16 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for nuclear but the safety record talk always seems disingenuous or at least obtuse to me when the stats focus on day to day operations but the fears are about worst case scenarios. I also feel like the industry would do better if it rallied behind specific new technologies so politicians could rally behind molten salt reactors (or what have you) and placate fears about "old nuclear" designs.

I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. If I had a dollar for every time a pro-nuclear person (not that I'm not) ignored that, or peak uranium...

[deleted]

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#53

Post by dmm »

rriepe wrote: post #29
jayd16 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for nuclear but the safety record talk always seems disingenuous or at least obtuse to me when the stats focus on day to day operations but the fears are about worst case scenarios. I also feel like the industry would do better if it rallied behind specific new technologies so politicians could rally behind molten salt reactors (or what have you) and placate fears about "old nuclear" designs.

I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. If I had a dollar for every time a pro-nuclear person (not that I'm not) ignored that, or peak uranium...

Anti-nuclear people like to ignore the fact that the status quo _will_ result in many equatorial regions being uninhabitable for thousands of years.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#55

Post by csours »

I've been reading "Normal Accidents" by Perrow. I started reading the book expecting an even-keeled explanation of risk, but I was pretty shocked by how prejudiced against Nuclear the tone was.

It was also a reminder of how TERRIBLE the industrial design (aka UX) of reactor monitoring and controls were at the time the book was written (1984).

So many of the things he seems to have felt were insurmountable could be solved by better design, something the book goes a long way toward dismissing.

Anti-nuclear sentiment seems to be one of those things that became widely fashionable, and Pro-nuclear became demonized.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#56

Post by cure »

rangoon626 wrote: post #18
sg47 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand corrected then. I wonder why for a cohort that doesn't believe in science.

It was always elitist leftist “environmentalists” who were anti-nuke. They were the ones who bought into Malthusian systems that believed that the world would be over populated if nuclear energy ever reached widespread deployment. They pushed this narrative to gullible hippy “environmentalists”, who swayed public opinion and, whoops, accidentally caused us to burn another 50 years worth of coal. Yeah, “fight the man”…

> Everyone today should be absolutely livid over what happened.

Why? Perhaps additional serious nuclear accidents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...) were avoided because nuclear plants were never built.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#57

Post by Orou »

mceoin wrote: post #44

What is the RNC's stance on nuclear? Does nuclear now enjoy bi-partisan support? Or just the Dems?

The article states that the Republican Party is pro-nuclear and anti-government, and the Democratic Party was anti-nuclear and pro-government.

While it seems from the headline that both parties are now pro-nuclear, it is unclear how that will play out at a policy level. Based on the quoted stance of being "technologically-neutral", it may well be the case that Democrats still won't support nuclear power, not because they are against it as a rule but because they see solar and wind as being superior alternatives.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#58

Post by eecc »

rectang wrote: post #39
rriepe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. If I had a dollar for every time a pro-nuclear person (not that I'm not) ignored that, or peak uranium...

Every time I've seen one of these threads on HN asserting that nuclear is safer than the alternatives and I've looked more closely into the claims, I've wound up unconvinced because of omissions like the one you've identified. It's gotten to the point that I tend to tune out pro-nuclear arguments on HN. :( I'm sure there are good arguments in there somewhere, but I don't have the bandwidth to sort them out from the m…

I still haven't heard a convincing protocol for long term storage of spent fuel. That's even worse than a remotely possible nuclear disaster: because unless a solution is found, it's a certainty.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#59

Post by TeMPOraL »

rriepe wrote: post #29
jayd16 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for nuclear but the safety record talk always seems disingenuous or at least obtuse to me when the stats focus on day to day operations but the fears are about worst case scenarios. I also feel like the industry would do better if it rallied behind specific new technologies so politicians could rally behind molten salt reactors (or what have you) and placate fears about "old nuclear" designs.

I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. If I had a dollar for every time a pro-nuclear person (not that I'm not) ignored that, or peak uranium...

> nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years

Note that this is not special to nuclear materials; it's true for a good chunk of industrial chemistry in general as well.

> peak uranium

I'll need to look up some more up-to-date numbers, but going by https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_162.shtml, there's more than enough for couple centuries (and new reactor designs can make one-two orders of magnitude better use of what's available).

But even if we only had 100 years worth of nuclear fuel reserve, that's more than enough to fix the climate problem and fully develop renewables (possibly including orbital collectors). Or who knows, maybe even fusion.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#60

Post by pjc50 »

StreamBright wrote: post #23
melling wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now we just need to make it affordable. Cost overruns seem to be a big problem in the industry. The US recently canceled 2 plants, and we’re struggling to finish the other 2.

Let's move it out from government oversight. Anything gov touches gets super expensive, especially in the US. Best example is the Obamacare website. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare... Imagine how much cheaper you could have built that website with the same functionality. Now apply the same mental process to nuclear power plants.

The government could never build an important highly advanced technical project in a hurry; the atomic bomb project should have been put out to the private sector. /S
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