But what's going to happen with the nuclear waste? I've heard too many times about water getting into permanent repositories and leaking containers contaminating the biosphere. Seems like a bad idea to me...
After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
71–80 of 489 posts
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#72I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster. Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan events: no matter how well designed, some fraction of plants will cause INES Level 7 disasters. If the resulting cost (ie $10…
Yes, and even when you consider those costs, it pales in comparison to the lives lost and negative externalities of coal, oil, and gas usage. These include climate change, particulate pollution, environmental release of mercury, devastation of vast swaths of the environment worldwide, and other factors that may be hard to quantify but negatively impactful.
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#73I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster. Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan events: no matter how well designed, some fraction of plants will cause INES Level 7 disasters. If the resulting cost (ie $10…
> Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster.
For Fukushima, it seems that the panicked response of the local authorities (evacuating the whole area ...) was what caused the most problems.
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#74Earlier 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...
> I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years.
Meanwhile burning fossil fuels as designed is going to make the entire planet uninhabitable. It's already unsafe to eat seafood very often because of the mercury content. Smog blankets many cities causing numerous health issues. I haven't even touched on global warming yet...
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#75For 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…
Partly I think nuclear triggers a cognitive bias where humans will tolerate ongoing low-level shittiness, but really struggle with large catastrophes, even if the catastrophe is far less damaging than the ongoing low-level damage. However, I think the resistance is also because the nature of the catastrophe is different. Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? I know that mining/drillin…
Well said. I had a small version of this debate with someone I know who posts political stuff on FB, who pointed out in absolutist fashion that the poor failure modes of nuclear and the regular emissions from dirtier sources are both bad, and we need something without either downside.
Literally true but has a bit of "perfect as the enemy of the good" to it. I know absolutely nothing about the challenges involved in updating existing infrastructure to a different source but it seems like an immense challenge, and not at all black and white.
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of Republicans "believe in science." You're probably confusing science with policy. You may be surprised that: - Republicans are only like "20% more religious" than Democrats - Over half of Republicans believe the scientific method produces accurate conclusions - Nearly a third of Democrats don't believe the scientific method produces accurate conclusions https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/part…
To elaborate on the policy part, in the second poll linked, majorities of Republicans are opposed to scientists being involved in making policy.
To be fair, this is following a period of time which saw Democrats funding a lot of "scientific research" structured to study things like "would reducing the number of guns reduce gun violence" etc. Which is a foregone conclusion in the same way that reducing the number of red cars would reduce the number of collisions involving red cars.
It's a government-funded study structured in such a way as to produce a "scientific result" convenient to the politics of the party funding the study, rather than e.g. a cost/benefit analysis of all the possible solutions to reduce violent crime. It's not overly surprising that the response from Republicans was to become skeptical and demand for that to stop happening.
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear also got much, much more expensive than it was in the previous century, making it economically completely unreasonable in the west. Nuclear is also the only energy source where people get displaced from their homes in thousands of square kilometers in catastrophic events.
> Nuclear also got much, much more expensive than it was in the previous century, making it economically completely unreasonable in the west. Because we stopped building them. Of course costs are going to explode when every time you do it the people on the project are doing it for the first time.
To be fair, increased reliability and safety also comes at a cost. But I agree - loss of expertise and lack of economy of scale are a major factor.
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#78For 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…
Nuclear also got much, much more expensive than it was in the previous century, making it economically completely unreasonable in the west. Nuclear is also the only energy source where people get displaced from their homes in thousands of square kilometers in catastrophic events.
> Nuclear is also the only energy source where people get displaced from their homes in thousands of square kilometers in catastrophic events.
Luckily displacing thousands of people for hydroelectric energy is fully planned [1]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-threegorges/thousan...
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The real answer is mostly "don't do that".
Spent fuel rods can't be used anymore because about 5% of the uranium has been converted into elements that slow down the reaction. The remaining uranium is still good.
Due to a presidential order by Carter, we waste that uranium. The process for recovering the unused uranium (called "reprocessing") is vaguely similar to the process for making bombs. We'd rather not have lots of countries making bombs. The idea was that by not reprocessing our own fuel, we could set an example and hope that somehow that would keep other countries from making bombs. Yes, that is terrible logic.
Japan does the reprocessing. We could do it too, and it wouldn't suddenly arm the world with nukes.
If the fuel is reprocessed, we could cut our need to mine uranium and cut our need to store radioactive material. It's about a 95% reduction. The uranium itself is the long-lived portion, so we'd clear up that problem too.
We could also recover rare-earth elements from the spent fuel. This is the only practical way to create rare-earth elements.
Of course, that doesn't get rid of 100% of the waste. We don't really have a shortage of great places to store it. The worries about burial are blown way out of proportion. All of the proposed facilities for burial are ridiculous overkill.
Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform
#80I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster. Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan events: no matter how well designed, some fraction of plants will cause INES Level 7 disasters. If the resulting cost (ie $10…
Yes, and even when you consider those costs, it pales in comparison to the lives lost and negative externalities of coal, oil, and gas usage. These include climate change, particulate pollution, environmental release of mercury, devastation of vast swaths of the environment worldwide, and other factors that may be hard to quantify but negatively impactful.
There was a post on HN the other day that talked about how hard it is for humans to see beyond direct first order effects. Once you get to indirect or N order effects, it's nearly impossible for humans to fully appreciate.
People see nuclear and it's easy to draw a straight line accident -> damage. People know about mercury is seafood, but they can't seem to attach fossil fuel burning to that problem even when told. It's a disconnect that I hope as a species we will one day figure out. Global warming and weather changes? Good luck.