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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

#131

Post by andrewflnr »

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…

Ongoing shittiness is predictable and easy to understand. We've survived so far, surely we can survive if it gets just a little worse. Big disasters are unpredictable and hard to understand. One of those could end the world at any time. AFAICT that's the whole reason people are more afraid of them.

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

#132

Post by Ericson2314 »

legulere wrote: post #85
reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building it makes it affordable. Giant one-off projects have endemic problems with perverse bidding incentives, cost overruns, and engineering problems. Economy of scale production absolutely dominates most industrial supply chains and engineering. The US and other modern economies got the political will together to subsidize solar when it rarely made sense on a MW/$ basis and now it's dropped to by far the cheapest…

What drives nuclear costs is generally rising construction costs. You can’t bring that down with building more nuclear power plants. PV got so much cheaper because it’s a mass producible product.

If all the designs were the same you could start prefabbing components, that will do just fine for construction costs.

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

#133

Post by mobilefriendly »

donarb wrote: post #37
notJim wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Burning coal creates fly ash which needs to be stored somewhere, usually large ponds near the power plant. In Tennessee in 2008 a dike ruptured and released 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry that flowed into nearby rivers that drained into the Tennessee River. No-one was injured in the initial spill, but people contracted to clean it up developed cancers from being exposed to the toxic coal ash, 300 people d…

Worth noting that this power plant was run by an arm of the United States government.

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

#134

Post by Natsu »

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.

Ignoring the fact that meltdown is not even possible in modern designs, even in a Fukushima total power loss scenario, note that the Bikini atoll is safe to visit at this point and it was the site of repeated nuclear testing. It's hard to see how nuclear power plants, which are designed to avoid any possibility of having a critical mass, could do worse than what was done to the atoll. So becoming uninhabitable for "thousands of years" would pretty difficult, even if someone were trying to do that intentionally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll#Current_habitable...

> peak uranium...

And what of peak oil then? Didn't that happen already?

Also, what's the alternative? We stop using energy to make ammonium, let agriculture scale down to nothing, and leave people starving as food production plummets?

There's only so much of a solar energy budget for the planet, then we have to get it from off world (with transport costs) or use up consumable sources already on the planet like coal, nuclear, etc. The universe loses the fight with entropy eventually no matter what we do, the only question is how long we last.

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

#135

Post by roenxi »

wnevets wrote: post #90
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…

No one likes to talk about it however the Fukushima disaster could have been prevented with current technology but it was cheaper in the short term not to. Even IF you could have a super safe design a huge part of the problem was the lack of maintenance and actually implementing the safety designs they had. [1] Why would anyone trust these companies to actually do what is right at the cost of the bottom line? [1] htt…

No-one talks about it because it isn't relevant. The fact that a 1970s plant didn't get every safety upgrade over the course of 40 years is possible.

But if you do a cost-benifit analysis of nuclear power and just add Fukushima to the cost column it is still an absurdly good idea to go nuclear. The status quo we currently enjoy is comparable to the worst-case in nuclear. If we applied nuclear safety standards I suspect coal fired power plants would have an exclusion zone too; they cause a lot of pollution and the health impacts around them are detectable.

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

#136

Post by Ericson2314 »

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

Yes, and what about it?

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

#137

Post by Natsu »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #123
hymangrickover wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have Hyman G. Rickover, Admiral in the US Navy to thank for steering nuclear energy research away from thorium to uranium. He very much wanted the Navy to be in command of nuclear wessels carrying nuclear missiles. If I can remember correctly from research in US energy policy history in college, the US had sunk about 10 years into thorium reactor research when Hyman came along. Seems rather important to not ignore…

I’m with you, but this: > On the upside, the Navy has never had a nuclear accident. We’ve proven it’s doable. can really be put down to sheer, dumb luck when you hear about all the close calls.

That's why risk analysis looks at defense in depth. It's for people who believe there's no such thing as luck and every close call is a near disaster that needs to be accounted for in the plan.

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

#138

Post by weaksauce »

cbmuser wrote: post #94
legulere wrote: post #66

Earlier 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.

The thing is, displacement is often not necessary as explained by the WHO for the case of the Fukushima accident: > https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/health-consequences...

interesting. so the average lifetime dosage was on the low end of a CT scan. ~10mSv where a CT scan will be 10-30mSv. and three mile island let off even less to the people in a 10mile radius... ~80µSv.

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

#139

Post by fmajid »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #123
hymangrickover wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have Hyman G. Rickover, Admiral in the US Navy to thank for steering nuclear energy research away from thorium to uranium. He very much wanted the Navy to be in command of nuclear wessels carrying nuclear missiles. If I can remember correctly from research in US energy policy history in college, the US had sunk about 10 years into thorium reactor research when Hyman came along. Seems rather important to not ignore…

I’m with you, but this: > On the upside, the Navy has never had a nuclear accident. We’ve proven it’s doable. can really be put down to sheer, dumb luck when you hear about all the close calls.

Not the US Navy, but there was this incident:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_River_Laboratories#1952_...

you may have heard of the US Navy officer in charge of the cleanup. His name was Jimmy Carter.

Also, the US Navy's record at Hunter's Point in San Francisco is abysmal.

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

#140

Post by visarga »

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…

> I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Look at Fukushima for example.

A 49 year old plant with a 53 years old design. Are you serious, did you follow the SOTA?

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