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After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

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

#231

Post by xlc0212 »

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?

No. It cost money and land (environment) to build them.

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

#232

Post by counters »

notJim wrote: post #28
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…

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…

You hit on a really important point here, the notion of "dread risk"[1]. The public tends to poorly characterize and amortize the different degrees of risk associated with different activities, due to biases in how we perceive the risk of extreme or rare events. Simply running the numbers, it's far more likely for the average American to die in a car accident (or even, probably a plane accident, even given how rare they are!) than for the same person to ever be impacted by a nuclear meltdown, or a terrorist attack, etc. And yet, NIMBY-ism runs rampant while there are quite active political voices which argue against mandating seatbelts (I guess less so in the year 2020), helmets for motorcyclists, etc.

[1]: Slovic, 1987. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/236/4799/280

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

#233

Post by Aerroon »

notJim wrote: post #28
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…

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…

>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.

How come hydroelectric dams don't get treated this way? In 2019 a dam in Brazil had a catastrophic failure that cost the lives of 270 people. In 2019! In 1975 a dam failed in China and the death toll is estimated between 80,000 and 240,000.

All of this ignores the ecosystem destruction that building a dam and flooding a valley does. All of that plant life will die and the carbon goes back into the cycle.

Yet I don't see hydroelectric dams getting nearly as much push back from activists. Why?

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

#234

Post by lucb1e »

legulere wrote: post #66
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…

Nuclear also got much, much more expensive than it was in the previous century, making it economically completely unreasonable in the west. Nuclear is also the only energy source where people get displaced from their homes in thousands of square kilometers in catastrophic events.

> completely unreasonable in the west

So... why did France continue to build fission reactors rather than something else?

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

#235

Post by leshenka »

Aerroon wrote: post #233
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…

> 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. How come hydroelectric dams don't get treated this way? In 2019 a dam in Brazil had a catastrophic failure that cost the lives of 270 people. In 2019! In 1975 a dam failed in China and th…

Most people don't live near downstream of hydros, to them water is just water, but nuclear is ~~scary~~ stuff

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

#236

Post by htnsao »

dencodev wrote: post #223
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

Yeah not sure why they mentioned quantum computing there without any supporting information.

However given the rate of scientific progress in general I would say it's very likely to be achieved in the not-too-distant future, somewhere.

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

#237

Post by manfredo »

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.

Bury nuclear waste underground in an area with no aquifer. The scenarios where this results in contamination are borderline hyperbole, usually entailing the loss of all records of the waste's locations due to some sort of societal collapse followed by a future civilization digging up the waste for an inexplicable reason.

By comparison, what is the long term storage plan for fossil fuel emissions?

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

#238

Post by corty »

viraptor wrote: post #113
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…

One is the issues in Fukushima is that it did not have a working core catcher which is a feature in new (as in, last few decades) designs. You don't need to be immune - only handle failures which have been predicted for the region and warned about.

Core catchers do need emergency cooling working. Also, Fukushima had far more basic failures in far simpler safety features being lacking or absent.

No pressure-resistant containment to speak of.

No hydrogen recombinators.

No passive emergency cooling capacity or properly redundant active emergency cooling because of braindead placement of generators. A fish pond on a nearby hill would have helped, together with gravity...

Any later western reactor design has those. Look at TMI. Thats what it should have looked like, even without a core catcher. (granted, scenarios are not the same)

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

#239

Post by afiori »

manfredo wrote: post #237
eecc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bury nuclear waste underground in an area with no aquifer. The scenarios where this results in contamination are borderline hyperbole, usually entailing the loss of all records of the waste's locations due to some sort of societal collapse followed by a future civilization digging up the waste for an inexplicable reason. By comparison, what is the long term storage plan for fossil fuel emissions?

If we allow similar levels of hand-waving for both problems then:

Q: what is the long term storage plan for fossil fuel emissions?

A: Trees

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

#240

Post by erikerikson »

cure wrote: post #62
erikerikson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may need to get to know more Republicans. Yes, they host a fair bit of anti-climate science sentiment. Democrats host a fair bit of homeopathic sentiment. Both persuasions include competent scientists. Republicans are no more unidimensional than Democrats. In my observation, the conversations between them are far more tribal fueding than epistemological clarification: epistemology is just a prop. It seems to me t…

> It seems to me that when we allow ourselves to be distracted by the category conflicts, we are distracted from the fight between those trying to maximize our well-being and those happy to throw us all under the bus to optimize for their individual circumstance. That's a reasonable point I agree with. But you're just practicing bothsideism here. It is quite obvious that the ones throwing everyone under the bus to op…

> just practicing bothsideism here.

I disagree. I was noting a more complex reality where scientists who agree with climate science might also choose to identify as Republican given the totality of the platform. In fact, I have known some. To rephrase my earlier statement:

There exists at least one proper (accepted by the scientific community as opposed to self proclaimed) scientist who identifies as Republican.

I said that in counter to a universal statement. The reason is that the existence of one counter example leads to a contradiction with the generalization. As such the universal is false. It doesn't declare a statement on the relative frequency of scientists in either party. I choose to stay out of that conversation because I find people struggle to be rational in these discussions about politics.

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