Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 489 posts

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

#271

Post by bArray »

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…

> 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

I think that nuclear waste will be the next big problem with nuclear energy, with storing it safely for the thousands of years required just being a problem we're kicking down the road. It only needs to leak into the water supplies and suddenly you have a disaster on a scale never seen before (human & animal consumption, contaminated crops and land, etc).

To be honest, renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydro are really the way forwards. I would favour solar and wind though, as a failure to invest in infrastructure just means they break - whilst a failure to invest in hydro has some very serious consequences (dam collapse, etc).

In the next 10 years or so I want to see solar panels being recycled if they really are to play a large put of our future energy production. Otherwise there is always the method of pointing mirror arrays at a single spot to heat water.

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

#272

Post by corty »

makomk wrote: post #179
cbmuser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France does reprocessing, too, and they're very good at it: > https://orano.group/en/nuclear-expertise/from-exploration-to... > https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968

France seems to be the only country that's very good at it - nuclear reprocessing everywhere else has a pretty poor safety record, with widespread radioactive contamination and an unfortunate tendency to irradiate workers. (It's also, as I understand it, the exact same process used to produce weapons grade plutonium for bombs, not merely similar.)

Well, you separate the spent fuel into chemical components by suitable chemical processes. One of those components is plutonium salts. So, yes, reprocessing is a rather direct way to nuke materials.

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

#273

Post by umvi »

Lazare wrote: post #182
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. 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…

> Imagine a system that kills 5k people once every 20 years, versus a system that kills 1 person a day. You end up with scary headlines about the first one, but the second one kills significantly more people over time.

"Imagine a virus that kills 300,000 people once every 100 years, versus a virus that kills 20,000 people per year. You end up with scary headlines about the first one (and shut down economies, and political turmoil, and...), but the second one kills significantly more people over time."

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

#274

Post by dredmorbius »

lucb1e wrote: post #251
dredmorbius wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that rising populations and standards of living, as well as shifts from fossil fuels, mean increasing total electrical generation likely by ~500% in the next 50 years or so. The alternative is a large number of very disappointed people.

True, so we have to divide "centuries" by 5 or more, that's still long enough to help with the transition. Not sure if that's what you meant though? Please correct me if I misunderstood.

200 years / 5 gives about 40 years useful life. Some technologies (thorium MSR) remain unproved, so there's R&D lead time which is likely prohibitive --- we're going to go into this with the designs we have now.

Construction and planning still takes 10--20 years, and commercial viability remains dicey. (Illinois is looking to shut down two nuclear plants not for political/public opposition but economic reasons: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/ct-exelon-nu...)

Meantime wind and solar keep getting cheaper. They carry few long-time-horizon risks, and are as safe as nuclear within measurement error, a fact nuke boosters tend to omit. Even hydro, as horrific as past incidents have been, is safe when well-managed, and again lacks nuclear's civilisation-spanning risk time horizons.

If presently proven nuclear technologies can smooth the path, then maybe there's a role, but we're still looking at swapping out all but a minuscule fraction of nuclear within a generation (which will mean trying to smoothly phase out an entrenched, powerful, politically-connected, but dying industry, much as today's coal industry), bearing resulting near-term risks, addressing (all but certainly via government subsidies) unfavourable economics, and creating a long-term risk liability spanning millennia.

Meantime, nuke boosters generally continue to paint renewables as the enemy, misconstrue risks, and lowball opportunities, none of which does much for engendering institutional trust in the nuclear community itself.

Don't get me wrong: the challenges are huge, there's plenty of bullshit and opportunism on all sides, and we're going to need to make some really unpleasant decisions and trade-offs here. The Democratic party platform announcement is probably a good thing: it's another option on the table.

But this isn't smooth sailing, and going in with a very realistic view and eyes wide open is critical.

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

#275

Post by osn9363739 »

formercoder wrote: post #218
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.)

Yep, if you want California-style rolling blackouts.

Except those have been happening longer than renewables have been a meaningful provider of energy.

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

#276

Post by nl »

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…

I wish nuclear advocates would stop selectively quoting to try to hide things. Almost no one wants to continue with fossil fuels, and instead the competition is renewable. "This comparison" mentioned in that quote doesn't include renewables (it was from 2007) but from the very same page, in the very next section:

> Modern renewables are about as safe as nuclear energy

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#modern-r...

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

#277

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

Aerroon wrote: post #219
losteric wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Profits play a massive factor in why governments tend to be incompetent.

What do you think taxes are? They're a wealth transfer without option from everyone else to those in the employ of government.

A whole bunch of people are profit from government expenditure, we even have a word for a special type of fraud about government expenditure: pork barelling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel

But, government run operations tend he notorious for incompetence for a few reasons, others have done a better job of detailing:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=why+governments+are+notorious+...

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

#278

Post by nl »

Ancapistani wrote: post #40
khuey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> I don’t have deep knowledge in this area, but it’s clear to me that more modern designs have very different risk profiles

There are lots of claims of that, but many of those claims sound exactly the same as the ones made about he "safe Japanese nuclear industry" prior to Fukushima.

Here's a take by someone who actually has very deep knowledge on the subject:

>I oversaw the U.S. nuclear power industry. Now I think it should be banned. The danger from climate change no longer outweighs the risks of nuclear accident

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nucl...

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

#279

Post by godelski »

jayd16 wrote: post #27
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…

I'm all for nuclear but the safety record talk always seems disingenuous or at least obtuse to me when the stats focus on day to day operations but the fears are about worst case scenarios. I also feel like the industry would do better if it rallied behind specific new technologies so politicians could rally behind molten salt reactors (or what have you) and placate fears about "old nuclear" designs.

> but the safety record talk always seems disingenuous

This is WHY I support nuclear, because of their safety record. All the people in all the nuclear accidents (or usage) ever that have died is far less than the yearly death from coal or oil or natural gas. As a death per TWhr it is even lower than solar[0]. So I'm a bit confused by the safety concerns. Having worked with nuclear materials, the reason it is so safe is because the safety levels are set to be much stricter than other energy sources, and by a lot. We've seen coal, fracking, and mining all create zones that won't be habitable for thousands of years.

Now we have reactors that produce thousands of times less waste than previous generation reactors. But you should also consider that the amount of nuclear waste is tiny. Over the last 60 years, the estimated total (radioactive and non-radioactive) waste is estimated to be about 445k tons[1] (324k tons need to be stored). In 2014 the US (just the US) produced 130m (that's million) tons of coal ash[2]. We're talking astronomically big differences in waste size. If we do a basic naive comparison that's coal _in the US_ is producing 18 _thousand_ times as much waste per year than the _global waste_ from nuclear. This is RIDICULOUS.

Saying "nuclear produces more waste and/or more damage to the environment and/or people" just signals one not paying attention to the damage caused by other resources. Sure, nuclear is scary, but the data says it is one of the safest, cleanest, and best sources of energy for our environment. And that's why people get up in arms about it, because the data is there and easy to find. And unfair comparisons are being made left and right.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-amount-of-nuclear-wa...

[2] https://www.epa.gov/coalash/coal-ash-basics

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

#280

Post by cesarb »

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…

> 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.

Brumadinho wasn't a hydroelectric dam; it was a dam containing leftovers from iron mining (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brumadinho_dam_disaster for details). Apparently, this kind of dam has a very different design from hydroelectric dams (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailings_dam, "Unlike water retention dams, a tailings dam is raised in succession throughout the life of the particular mine.").

Post reply on HN