After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by morpheuskafka » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

namuol wrote: post #46

LeegleechN wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First endorsement in the official party platform, which is a specific document released by the parties every 4 years (except this year for Republicans who re-adopted their 2016 platform with no changes...).

With some qualifiers this is technically correct, but this only makes it feel more disingenuous.

The Democratic Party platform reflects the position of the party for four years and is voted on and influenced by all delegates (including delegates for candidates that do not win, ex. Bernie's delegates the past two elections).

A page on the Obama administration website reflected the personal opinion of the president at the time it was posted, and can be changed at any time.

The presidential nominee is not necessarily going to agree with the party platform (although they are more or less telling voters they will uphold it). The party and all of its delegates certainly need not agree with everything the president says.

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

#192

Post by ip26 » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #166

pradn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many oppose nuclear power because for the same cost, you can build a lot of wind, solar, and hydro instead. I don't know if efficiencies have caught up and all. There's less of a catastrophic risk with these compared to nuclear, at least in people's imaginations. (Hydro dams have been broken in the past though and lead to many deaths.)

Except that solar or wind power plant will require significant backing from other power sources (hydroelectric outside of microscale is dead due to environmental concerns and costs), usually gas and coal. Energy storage is still very expensive in large scale except for pumped hydro storage, which again, is very problematic to arrange.

Wind blows around the clock and solar runs most of the time we are awake. If renewables are super cheap but storage is not viable, can't we simply overbuild?

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

#193

Post by wnevets » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #135

wnevets wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suspe…

>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.

You dont think plans on how to prevent a disaster caused by a Tsunami 3 years prior to a disaster caused by Tsunami is relevant? Interesting world view.

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

#194

Post by Lazare » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

cure wrote: post #100

mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

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

It's odd to me that anti-nuclear is being labelled anti-science. It's almost like the pro-nuclear people have blinders on. Nuclear is fantastic, in theory. In practice, in the real world, the consequences of accidents are extraordinarily bad and costly. The odds of a bad accident may be very small, but they are not zero (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident... ). And dealing with the waste…

> In practice, in the real world, the consequences of accidents are extraordinarily bad and costly.

...not really. Fossil fuels kill a simply enormous amount of people. Coal is responsible for something like 13k deaths per year in the US alone; air pollution (from burning fossil fuels) kills something like 10k people per day.

> How much do you think it cost to have 1,000 square miles in the Ukraine uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years?

A number so low it rounds to zero in this context?

> The same problem of externalities exists for fossil fuels, of course.

I don't think you can handwave that away as an "of course". The externalities around fossil fuels are simply enormous; the issues and costs and risks of nuclear are multiple orders of magnitude less.

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

#195

Post by htnsao » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

Within 5 years every machine, building and device may start the transition to self-charging nuclear diamond batteries with graphene super capacitors. [1] [2] [3]

So these huge nuclear power plants may quickly become obsolete along with coal, solar and wind power generation, hydro and fossil fuels.

[1] https://ndb.technology

[2] https://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diamond-self-charging-batte...

[3] https://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diamond-battery-interview-n...

BTW I think HN downvoters should lose karma for downvoting.

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

#196

Post by hehebbssjj » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #131

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…

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.

> Big disasters are unpredictable and hard to understand. One of those could end the world at any time.

In the context of nuclear reactors, Fukushima and Chernobyl are pretty much the worst case scenario. A large nuclear disaster is very disruptive to the immediate area but it would not "end the world" in any sense.

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

#197

Post by corty » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

cbmuser wrote: post #107

beders wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-nu…

I fear Germany will never build another nuclear power plant again. The anti-nuclear propaganda has become a religion now, any argument about safety is ignored mumbling the mantra "but they said Chernobyl/Fukushima was safe", any argument about economy is ignored with "but renewables cost nothing". Since no rational argument can be won, and since no nuclear counter-religion is on the horizon, nuclear will not happen here, at least not in this century.

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

#198

Post by rriepe » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

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…

Did you just slippery-slope all the way to entropy? I agree with you and I'm "on your side" in the inane political sense. Just acknowledging the drawbacks.

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

#199

Post by pronik » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

Not an american here, so it's more of a general comment.

I'm all for investing in and investigating nuclear power -- after all, the humanity needed several decades to make electricity itself safe at all; if we manage to make nuclear safer and indeed manageable, that's a fine thing, scientifically speaking. It's good to have options.

However, we should be keeping an eye on the costs. Nuclear energy is cheap, but disposing of its waste is anything but. In Europe, energy companies have essentially socialised waste disposal so that they can advertise for "cheap" nuclear energy. If the disposal costs had been placed on them, nuclear would be the most expensive energy source by far.

We are probably better off future-wise looking elsewhere for a clean and cheap energy source. Fossil and nuclear are neither.

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

#200

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

bob29 wrote: post #109

cbmuser wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]