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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

#211

Post by formercoder »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #14
melling wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now we just need to make it affordable. Cost overruns seem to be a big problem in the industry. The US recently canceled 2 plants, and we’re struggling to finish the other 2.

I also haven't really seen anyone discuss the cost of nuclear in human labor costs. No matter what method or design you use you still need educated workers to babysit both the reactor and the standard turbine infrastructure, whose salary dwarfs whatever costs come from fuel or safety countermeasures. In contrast, solar and wind tend to be very manpower efficient due to the logistical pain of maintaining something spr…

Labor costs have to be figured into $/KwH by convention right? They’re not zero for solar.

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

#212

Post by orangecat »

mhh__ wrote: post #161
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…

Nuclear power isn't flawless, but the fossil alternatives can kill people every single day. Fukushima killed somewhere on the order of 10 people? That's a level 7 event on an ancient plant, a wind turbine falling over could easily kill that many people if it landed on a bus. This time it can be different, but your black swan argument isn't much different from our fear of flying.

To be fair, several hundred people died due to the Fukushima evacuations. Which doesn't change the result that nuclear power is extremely safe, even coming in under renewables in deaths per terawatt-hour: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

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

#213

Post by formercoder »

pjc50 wrote: post #60
StreamBright wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's move it out from government oversight. Anything gov touches gets super expensive, especially in the US. Best example is the Obamacare website. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-24/obamacare... Imagine how much cheaper you could have built that website with the same functionality. Now apply the same mental process to nuclear power plants.

The government could never build an important highly advanced technical project in a hurry; the atomic bomb project should have been put out to the private sector. /S

The incentives were different.

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

#214

Post by ineedasername »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #133
donarb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is only worth noting if you bring it along with a more detailed account of accident rates by government-owned facilities as compared to privately owned facilities.

Until then it's just an anecdotal bit of snark that serves a political world view without the evidence necessary to evaluate it.

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

#215

Post by formercoder »

colordrops wrote: post #203
controversy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We shouldn’t subsidize anything, the government is bad at picking winners. We should tax carbon, let the market figure out the rest.

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

#216

Post by colordrops »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #204
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'…

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.

It's not only about deaths. The area around the plant is now uninhabitable and they haven't solved the problem of what to do with the melted cores at the plant. You permanently lose a large swath of land. With coal you can just shut it off and the problem goes away.

And why is it always between coal and nuclear? With enough investment and infrastructure, renewables can serve the need as well.

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

#217

Post by [deleted] »

formercoder wrote: post #215
colordrops wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We shouldn’t subsidize anything, the government is bad at picking winners. We should tax carbon, let the market figure out the rest.

[deleted]

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

#218

Post by formercoder »

pradn wrote: post #38
mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

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

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.)

Yep, if you want California-style rolling blackouts.

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

#219

Post by Aerroon »

losteric wrote: post #154
mobilefriendly wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why is that worth noting? I feel like you're being intentionally ambiguous by leaving unstated implications. Do you believe public operation had an impact on safety? Better or worse, and based on what evidence? If neither, how is your statement relevant to the discussion?

I don't know why the parent poster brought it up, but it does seem relevant to me. The government isn't going after quick profits, so you can't blame it on that. You might be able to blame profits if it had been a private corporation though.

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

#220

Post by colordrops »

formercoder wrote: post #215
colordrops wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

We shouldn’t subsidize anything, the government is bad at picking winners. We should tax carbon, let the market figure out the rest.

Don't get hung up on the word "subsidize". Market forces clearly did not solve our problem, so shifting the incentives won't solve it either. Many do not believe that nuclear is the answer, and a carbon tax wouldn't address that. It is indisputable that solar and wind are far cleaner than nuclear and coal, so the question is whether they can be made to work for most of our energy needs, and I've never seen a good reason why not.
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