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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

#101

Post by defnotashton2 »

legulere wrote: post #92
etrautmann wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’s already a disinvestment in fossil fuel going on. You have to compare nuclear with renewables.

Your assuming we can run on renewable, which we can't, and won't be able to in our life time. Germany is a good example.

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

#102

Post by akiselev »

notJim wrote: post #28
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…

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…

Has the Gulf of Mexico recovered from deepwater horizon? How many ecosystems were lost permanently? Animals living in the exclusion zone have a life expectancy 30% lower than those in the surrounding area (based on the last paper I read about the topic) so it's not an acceptable risk for humans but it's still peanuts compared to the damage that single spill did to the Gulf ecosystem.

It's an extension of the cognitive bias you point out. Just because we humans find the area too risky to inhabit afterwards doesn't mean that the damage made a meaningful impact on the survivability of our planet.

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

#103

Post by burfog »

himinlomax wrote: post #73
tbenst wrote: post #64

I’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.

The automatic shutdown contributed.

Fukushima needed cooling pumps to operate. There were 3 ways to power the pumps:

1. the reactor itself, automatically shut down when the earthquake was detected

2. diesel generators, shut down by flooding

3. power lines from elsewhere, shut down by the tsunami knocking them down

Clearly, shutting down the reactor is a self-inflicted problem. Had they left it running, the pumps would have had power, and the whole disaster wouldn't have happened.

It's a stupid panic-driven regulation that a nuclear power plant must shut down for an earthquake. Once the earthquake hits, it is too late to reach a cool shut-down state. That would take weeks. There is no justification for doing the shutdown. It just caused problems, leading to disaster.

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

#104

Post by tbenst »

etrautmann wrote: post #72
tbenst wrote: post #64

I’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.

Agreed. The question I meant to raise was nuclear power versus other alternative energy sources, eg wind/solar/hydropower/geothermal. Comparisons of nuclear power to these other sources are typically dishonest in that they do not account for nuclear disasters. This may be an acceptable risk but it needs to at least be included in analysis, say one disaster per 100 operating years (my estimate of this value: 1 in 50-500 years). Globally, there’s only 440 operating nuclear power plants and there’s been ~100 nuclear disasters. In the last 20 years, there have been at least 6 nuclear plant disasters that cause more than $100 million in property damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...

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

#105

Post by dv_dt »

tbenst wrote: post #64

I’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…

When you dig down to it, they're claimed to be safe because of the difficulty of uniquely nailing down the cause of cancers - so any that are potentially caused are systematically discounted.

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

#106

Post by bluquark »

mceoin wrote: post #44

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

The RNC doesn't have a platform in 2020 so we can't speak of a defined Republican position on individual issues anymore. In their previous platforms, they supported expanding nuclear: http://ansnuclearcafe.org/2012/09/18/the-party-platforms-on-...

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

#107

Post by cbmuser »

beders wrote: post #84
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…

With a failure rate of 1% for commercial reactors, calling something 'safe' is - frankly - ridiculous. You wouldn't fly planes if they had that failure rate. It's not just the death count for which, btw, we still don't even have reliable numbers! What we do have is: Uninhabitable regions, radioactive boars decades after Chernobyl roaming Bavaria (google it), countless cases of cancer, highly radioactive waste we don'…

I assume you're from Germany when I'm reading your arguments.

> Nuclear power plants rank first in the amount of economic damage done.

No, that's not what science says:

> https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/US-study-presents-tr...

> https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf

> And you are seriously calling for mass adoption?

Yes, and that's actually happening:

> https://in.reuters.com/article/china-nuclearpower/china-to-b...

> https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/small...

> https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/UnderConstruction...

> It makes me mad hearing younger people falling for the propaganda of nuclear power lobbyists who didn't have to live through these accidents.

Actually, no one in the West ever thought that the RBMK was a reliable design which is why it was never licensed outside the USSR.

> We have plenty of space and money to turn our grid into 100% renewables, that are safe and cheap. All it would take is the political will to do so.

Germany will have spent more than 500 billion Euros by 2025 for their shift to renewables, yet they are still among the dirtiest producers of electricity:

> https://www.electricitymap.org/

Germany emits 400 grams of CO2 per kWh on average, France just 50 grams. At the same time, the kWh in Germany costs 31 cents while it costs only 17 cents in France:

> https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

And if that isn't already enough, Germany is building and planning more gas and coal power plants:

> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_geplanter_und_im_Bau_bef...

> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_geplanter_Kohlekraftwerk...

> The times to propose an outdated, dangerous and hard-to-control technology for commercial power generation are over.

No, they are not. See my links above. Any country which is actually serious about reducing their CO2 emissions in the electricity sector is massively ramping up the construction of nuclear power plants:

Russia, Finland, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Czech Republic, Poland, France, the UK, Turkey, Japan, China, the US, Belarus, United Arab Emirates etc. They are all building or planning nuclear power plants.

Germany is the big outlier in the list of the biggest industrial countries and it's just a matter of time when they're joining back the countries who are building and operating NPPs again.

There is simply no alternative, the shift to renewables causes new fossil plants to be constructed which is something we need to avoid by all means if we want to save the climate.

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

#108

Post by legulere »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

That’s great, anti-nuclear energy was definitely one of the anti-science stances standing in the way of progress.

Just because you need a bit of science to understand nuclear power plants doesn’t mean that it makes sense to build new nuclear plants.

New nuclear is simply too expensive, with high construction costs in the west.

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

#109

Post by bob29 »

cbmuser wrote: post #86
eecc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nuclear waste is actually the best kind of waste because of its very high density and the fact that it's solid. The density is so high that the US has accumulated just 83,000 tons over several decades operating nuclear power plants: > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... That may sound a lot but compared to coal or, in fact, any other type of power generating plant, the amount is absolutely…

> compared to coal or, in fact, any other type of power generating plant

so nuclear creates less nuclear waste than PV, wind, or geothermal?

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

#110

Post by jayd16 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #59
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...

> 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 order…

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

Hmm interesting. Where has this happened on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima? I can't thinking of any exclusion zones in once populated areas caused by industrial chemicals. Is the fact that plants are built near populated areas a factor?

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