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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

#201

Post by orangecat »

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, do that. And you'll find that the meltdown and evacuations killed fewer people than did shutting down all of Japan's nuclear plants afterward (PDF: http://ftp.iza.org/dp12687.pdf). In other words, nuclear power comes out ahead even if you assume there will be a Fukushima-class disaster every 10 years, which is absurdly pessimistic.

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

#202

Post by Teever »

cbmuser wrote: post #82
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...

Just look at Japan, most of the region around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has actually been reopened to the public already: > https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/20/national/beach-... > https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/05/national/evacue... Looking at the radiation levels, most places are already back to save levels: > https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/site/portal-english/en02-01... You ha…

> Even Chernobyl is mostly safe these days unless you stay at the hotspots for too long.

You could say the exact same thing about a house fire.

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

#203

Post by colordrops »

controversy wrote: post #177
colordrops wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More solar and wind and energy conversion and storage mechanisms can also keep our current level of society. Why can't we subsidize renewable forms of energy for trillions of dollars if our lives are truly at risk? Will these take any longer to spin up than nuclear?

And are you suggesting that solar plants really create more toxins to dispose of than nuclear? Really?

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

#204

Post by M2Ys4U »

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'…

The shift from nuclear to coal in Germany and Japan after Fukushima has caused on the order of 10,000 deaths.

The total number of deaths caused directly by the actual accident at Fukushima was what, one? We'll perhaps have a couple of hundred in the years to come, but that's two orders of magnitude fewer anti-Nuclear activists have caused.

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

#205

Post by belorn »

khuey wrote: post #35
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…

Existing already-operating nuclear plants can barely compete with cheap fracked gas in the United States. Capital investment in new nuclear is never going to pencil for a private operator without carbon taxes or enormous price drops.

Instead of a carbon tax, the government should simply treat gas similar to what many governments did before to nuclear. Forbid the construction of new ones, and let the planned life expectancy of existing plants be final.

When they did that to nuclear it worked wonders in getting people to invest. After all, people then knew that there would be vacant spots in the energy market at very predictable dates. Telling a market that in X year there will be Y amount of demand not being fulfilled, and a main competitor gone, and someone will want to fill it. The price will be based on how cheap the non-fossil fueled alternatives can be made when competing against each other.

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

#206

Post by lucb1e »

rriepe wrote: post #187
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…

It's this line of thinking that ultimately pushes me to being pro-nuclear. However, I think our optimism regarding the political situation is more misplaced than our optimism regarding the tech. Here, you criticize Carter's order and present an alternative. A great one, even: Not having the order in place and doing the reprocessing. But that's not reality, right? It's more likely that we'll have Carter's order and so…

(Not OP)

> our optimism regarding the political situation is more misplaced than our optimism regarding the tech

Yeah, living in Germany I am afraid this is going absolutely nowhere. I've given up on seeing nuclear energy help us even a little bit in this emergency, but I do try to still inform people about how out of proportion the fatalities from coal and the fatalities from fission power really are. We're shutting down nuclear before coal? Environmentalists in Germany are handing out stickers for it and you see them on literally every third car or building. It's ludicrous. I've never seen a disinformation campaign more effective than this. It's like fear of flying but without the people claiming it's safe or faster than traditional methods. Not a one in Germany; no one I've spoken to was even neutral about nuclear. Next, when they realize their safety argument isn't logical, they turn to costs. What do they think the costs of extreme weather events, ecosystem collapse, and mass relocations will be?!

I just hope that, with better information, they will at least realize that we have a bigger problem than nuclear power, even if it doesn't mean they become neutral or in favor of building a new nuclear plant to help with the transition.

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

#207

Post by 29athrowaway »

Once I saw a TV show about the challenges of constructing a deposit for nuclear waste that is expected to operate for thousands of years.

In this show, they mentioned that they did not want to use skulls to represent danger, because skulls are not seen as dangerous in some cultures (with "Dia de los muertos" as an specific example).

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

#208

Post by defnotashton2 »

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'…

Yea your right then political atmosphere around both of those situations had absolutely nothing to do with the engineering of the plant and therefore had no impact... ️

There are more industrial accidents in every other power generation source that hurt and kill more. 100% renewals is 100 years out.

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

#209

Post by M2Ys4U »

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.

How many people died as a result of the accident?

Wikipedia lists only one. There'll probably be a few hundred in the coming decades as a result of cancers caused by radiation.

Now compare that to the number of people that have died since then, as a result of burning coal. Two, maybe three orders of magnitude more people.

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

#210

Post by corty »

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.

Look at Three Mile Island. That is the kind of accident profile with less shitty reactor designs than Chernobyl and Fukushima you should be looking at. Modern PWRs built today are even safer than TMI in accidents.

It is the 50 year old or soviet shitty designs that unfortunately caused the bad reputation of nuclear power. Plants which should have never started operating or should have been shut down a few decades ago, when the next generation (like TMI) came into being.

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