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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

#171

Post by tekkk »

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…

Oh jeezs, let's bury our heads in sand and never get out of our houses. How safe is air travel? Taking a car? Fact is, we take calculated risks every day - some smaller, some larger.

Unless you build the plant next to an ocean with on-going seismic activity, you should be pretty safe unless an asteroid hits straight to the vicinity of the plant. Counting out the crazy scientists who decide to do experiments in the middle of the night of course. I think we are past that stage.

And I'm tired of anti-nuclear arguments pretending that wind, solar and hydro energy will miraculously satisfy all our energy needs in the near future. If we phase out fossil fuels and switch to using electric cars and such, we need a lot more energy. Using uranium, otherwise quite useless mineral, we can produce some portion of that energy (as proven). Especially because it doesn't depend on natural conditions so it produces stable output all year around.

I would too prefer having all-green energy sources, but I'm pragmatist and in general not afraid of taking calculated risks in life. Maybe I'm too trusting of my nuclear engineers but then again, I still take planes and ride cars.

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

#172

Post by streblo »

legulere wrote: post #122
defnotashton2 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is Germany a good example? Renewables were less than 20% 10 years ago and are now more than 50%. Meanwhile it has one of the most stable electricity network. https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie_de.htm?year=2020

Germany imports much of its electricity, which often isn’t generated from renewable resources.

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

#173

Post by lucb1e »

ozborn wrote: post #63

Folks should parse the article and the platform carefully, it actually reads "existing and advanced nuclear". This could be interpreted as maintaining existing reactors and building advanced (fusion?) reactors and NOT building new fission reactors. From my perspective this interpretation would be desirable (although probably wishful thinking) given that nuclear energy is too expensive in practise (really only existin…

> it makes absolutely no economic, environmental or political sense

Environmental? As far as I understand, the much lower emissions (not zero because of construction, people driving to the plant, etc.) compared to our current main power sources is a huge benefit for the environment (and thus for us: even if you are right that it's more costly per kWh today, it might save the next generation many trillions). Given the phrasing "absolutely no [environmental] sense", it sounds like you're very sure it must be negative for the environment but I don't understand why.

I am generally supportive of nuclear but only because from what I read, it seems to be a big help in reaching environmental needs. I get the economics part: nuclear isn't super cheap and gets easily outcompeted by renewables on sunny or windy days. I also expect we'll start abolishing nuclear fission in favor of fully renewable sources as soon as we finished turning off carbon-based power plants (and, in a perfectly rational world, no sooner). If there is more to the story like some environmental effect that I'm not aware of then I'd like to hear it (note that I did read up on nuclear energy so you can assume I know the basics; I pose the comment somewhat questioningly not because I haven't done any research but because I think this is a constructive way to learn).

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

#175

Post by yissp »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #68
dan-robertson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah, usage of the phrase "exponentially more" is widespread and always almost meaningless. It drives me crazy, especially as a CS theory person, where this phrase has a precise meaning.

It's gone the way of "literally"

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

#176

Post by corty »

Natsu wrote: post #134
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. 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…

Nuclear weapon use in the atmosphere, especially when not near-ground, is orders of magnitude cleaner than reactor accidents. A few hundred kg vs. tens of tons of isotopes released.

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

#177

Post by controversy »

colordrops wrote: post #158
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…

From Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990): "They told us that nuclear plants were safe. Human accident is the danger, not the nuclear plant itself. No accidents, no danger. That's what they told us. What liars!"

Please stop with this. Nuclear is the only way to keep our current level of society. Our solar plants are going to lead to massive poisoned landfills due to their heavy metals. They are hard to recycle and so many are just dumping them. Modern nuclear can meet all our needs and stop global warming. If we pursued nuclear in the last century, we would be facing global warming now.

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

#178

Post by jodrellblank »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #147

I have preached until I was red in the face that nuclear is the only solution we have currently that will get us to zero emissions on a proper time scale when it comes to global warming. I am all for wind and solar, but you have to be practical as well. We don't have anything that is even close to being able to provide stable 24 hour power like nuclear. Obviously we want a mix, but there are safe nuclear designs out…

Neither the US not UK has built and finished a new nuclear plant in 40 years, and the single one (1) in progress in the UK is a 15-20 year project with a construction cost of £23Bn and a subsidy of £50Bn.

Trying to turn the small UK nuclear like this would cost £1Tn private construction, £2Tn government subsidies, and take 700 years.

Assuming it actually gets finished and not shelved by economic collapse/Brexit as its being built by a French company.

It goes with Patrick Collision’s question about why the West can’t build big projects quickly and affordably anymore.

Rolls-Royce were in the news recently with a mass-manufacturing small nuclear reactor design, but at this rate the political arguing will see us with Lithium battery storage for intermittent renewable years before 50 new nuclear plants for baseline/backup capacity. Or buying Russian nuclear power surplus in 2050.

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

#179

Post by makomk »

cbmuser wrote: post #87
burfog wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lot…

France does reprocessing, too, and they're very good at it: > https://orano.group/en/nuclear-expertise/from-exploration-to... > https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968

France seems to be the only country that's very good at it - nuclear reprocessing everywhere else has a pretty poor safety record, with widespread radioactive contamination and an unfortunate tendency to irradiate workers. (It's also, as I understand it, the exact same process used to produce weapons grade plutonium for bombs, not merely similar.)

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

#180

Post by rsynnott »

eecc wrote: post #58
rectang wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

Coal, of course, is far simpler; the waste can be conveniently stored in peoples’ lungs, and occasionally spilled into rivers.

The advantage of nuclear here, arguably, is that the waste is at least somewhat containable.

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