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

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

#221

Post by M2Ys4U » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

csours wrote: post #55

I've been reading "Normal Accidents" by Perrow. I started reading the book expecting an even-keeled explanation of risk, but I was pretty shocked by how prejudiced against Nuclear the tone was. It was also a reminder of how TERRIBLE the industrial design (aka UX) of reactor monitoring and controls were at the time the book was written (1984). So many of the things he seems to have felt were insurmountable could be so…

>Anti-nuclear sentiment seems to be one of those things that became widely fashionable, and Pro-nuclear became demonized.

There was a concerted effort to connect all nuclear power with nuclear weapons in the 80's and 90's. The effects of that are still with us.

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

#222

Post by Lazare » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

bgorman wrote: post #190

Lazare wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Nuclear power is relatively safe. Nothing is 100% safe. Rooftop solar actually has a surprisingly high fatality rate from installers falling off of roofs ! Fossil fuels release horrible byproducts into the atmosphere, hydro sometimes causes floods...everything has drawbacks. > Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan event…

How can we know that coal kills 13k people a year in the US? Sure, burning coal releases carcinogens but most of the population lives far away from coal plants.

This study says 13k: https://www.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/CATF_Pub_TheT...

Estimates vary; some reckon it's more like 50k: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...

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

#223

Post by dencodev » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

htnsao wrote: post #195

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/e…

>⌇ Possibility of a new generation quantum smartphones.

>⌇ Personal quantum computers

Yeah I can't take this seriously

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

#224

Post by federico33 » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

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.

> keep our current level of society

That's the problem. The current level of hyperconsumerism is completely unsustainable.

Cheaper electricity would only encourage more industrial production and pollution due to discarded goods.

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

#225

Post by corty » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

bgorman wrote: post #190

Lazare wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Nuclear power is relatively safe. Nothing is 100% safe. Rooftop solar actually has a surprisingly high fatality rate from installers falling off of roofs ! Fossil fuels release horrible byproducts into the atmosphere, hydro sometimes causes floods...everything has drawbacks. > Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan event…

How can we know that coal kills 13k people a year in the US? Sure, burning coal releases carcinogens but most of the population lives far away from coal plants.

Similar to how we "know" how many people a low-level nuclear release killed: You know how much of a high dose of some carcinogen it takes for a certain cancer or death risk. You scale this down linearly to low doses. Then you estimate population doses from the release and a few multiplications later you arrive at a "death toll".

You will note the amount of estimates necessary, and the pessimistic assumptions like linear-no-threshold for carcinogen exposure. Most probably, death-tolls estimated this way are upper bounds.

Only for smog events, there is a possible calibration of such estimates through excess mortality, and even that is in some doubt, because smog hits the old-infirm-dying-anyways harder.

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

#226

Post by ineedasername » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:14 PM UTC

burfog wrote: post #61

Ancapistani wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existing regulatory structure for nuclear power was designed for the previous generation of reactors. I don’t have deep knowledge in this area, but it’s clear to me that more modern designs have very different risk profiles, and the regulatory structure should change to reflect that. This should reduce the compliance cost, which is a very large portion of the initial and operational costs of nuclear power. In sho…

It's not just that "The existing regulatory structure for nuclear power was designed for the previous generation of reactors." It was designed specifically to bankrupt them. It was designed to make them unprofitable. Just changing an ordinary light bulb in a nuclear power plant is all sorts of certification and paperwork. There was a ratchet effect on regulations. You could always add more, but nobody would take resp…

That's not quite why rigorous regulations were put in place.

There have been thousands of tanker oil spills, 3,000,000 gallons of oil spilled from US pipelines each year, hundreds of coal-ash spills...

In that context, Nuclear wasn't over-regulated, other power sources are severely, dangerously under-regulated. The excellent safety record of Nuclear points towards the regulations being rather effective.

I will grant that those regulations are out-dated. Reactors designs are different now, and probably need to be streamlined. But rigorous regulations regarding multiple redundancies, safety checks, emergency drills, meticulous documentation of all practices & procedures performed... these things shouldn't go away.

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

#227

Post by class4behavior » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

pronik wrote: post #199

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 dispo…

The lack of transparency and the concentration of power is one of the biggest points against the nuclear energy sector. It affects their safety investments, oversight, subsidies, insurance contracts, responsibilities, and so on.

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

#228

Post by erik_seaberg » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #192

p_l wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Solar drops hours before daily air conditioning demand, but wind might do it. I always thought wind depended heavily on the solar cycle, but apparently Europe found it dips 20% or less at night.

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

#229

Post by colordrops » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

federico33 wrote: post #224

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.

> keep our current level of society That's the problem. The current level of hyperconsumerism is completely unsustainable. Cheaper electricity would only encourage more industrial production and pollution due to discarded goods.

My point is to compare with nuclear. Your point is orthogonal and applies to nuclear as well.

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

#230

Post by fuoqi » Sun, Aug 30, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

corty wrote: post #210

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…

These "soviet shitty designs" are also 50-60 years old. So they are as shitty as American PWR/BWR designs used in TMI and Fukushima. Positive void coefficient is certainly a design oversight (same as design errors in the early PWR/BWR reactors), but without intentionally fucking with reactor and with a good control system, it can properly work without issues and 10 operational RBMK reactors demonstrate it in practice.