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

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

#291

Post by nl » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:59 AM UTC

hymangrickover wrote: post #115

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…

We have Hyman G. Rickover, Admiral in the US Navy to thank for steering nuclear energy research away from thorium to uranium. He very much wanted the Navy to be in command of nuclear wessels carrying nuclear missiles. If I can remember correctly from research in US energy policy history in college, the US had sunk about 10 years into thorium reactor research when Hyman came along. Seems rather important to not ignore…

> On the upside, the Navy has never had a nuclear accident. We’ve proven it’s doable.

Well that's not true:

"An American nuclear-powered submarine leaked radiation for more than two years, releasing the bulk of the material in its home port of Guam and at Pearl Harbor, Japanese and U.S. officials said Thursday."[1]

There was also the A4 that fell off an aircraft carrier with 3 nuclear bombs on board, which were never recovered[2].

Both the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion sunk and haven't had their nuclear reactors or weapons recovered. They do appear to remain intact though.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nuclear-subs-radia...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Philippine_Sea_A-4_incide...

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

#292

Post by Manfredo_1 » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:02 AM UTC

ozborn wrote: post #63

Folks should parse the article and the platform carefully, it actually reads "existing and advanced nuclear". This could be interpreted as maintaining existing reactors and building advanced (fusion?) reactors and NOT building new fission reactors. From my perspective this interpretation would be desirable (although probably wishful thinking) given that nuclear energy is too expensive in practise (really only existin…

Solar and wind are only viable with storage. Storage at immense scales that are not remotely possible with our current technology. What are we going to do to fulfill electricity demand at night, which is actually when peak consumption occurs?

With solar and wind, the answer is that we keep burning fossil fuels. California and Germany still get 50-60% of their electricity from fossil fuels despite large investments in solar and wind power. Hypothetically it's possible to get below that with energy storage. But the amount of capacity it would require to make that possible is immense. We'd need 12 hours of storage to get to 80% renewables and 3 weeks of storage to get to 100% renewables [1]. By comparison the US has ~5 minutes of storage currently, most of it in the form of hydroelectric storage which is geographically limited.

By comparison, France has been using nuclear power as its primary energy source for close to half a century at this point. Its carbon intensity is far lower than Germany's despite lower energy costs.

The cynical reality is that you're right: solar and wind make sense from a political perspective. Low cost, rapid installation time. The fact that it's a dead end won't surface until well after the current generation of politicians' terms are up.

1. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-stora...

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

#293

Post by nl » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:08 AM UTC

fouronnes3 wrote: post #88

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'…

Source for "1% failure rate"?

I don't believe the 1% number is accurate, but it's a lot higher than people might believe. From 2016:

our range of models suggests that there is presently a 50% chance that (i) a Fukushima event (or larger) occurs every 60–150 years, and (ii) that a Three Mile Island event (or larger) occurs every 10–20 years.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/risa.12587

Summary:

https://mtec.ethz.ch/news/d-mtec-news/2016/07/a-rethink-of-n...

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

#294

Post by RhysU » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:10 AM UTC

schoen wrote: post #111

RhysU wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have sources on claims in the last two paragraphs?

I don't think so -- which parts are you wondering about?

The enthusiasm and social bias claims.

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

#295

Post by 838hhh » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

controversy wrote: post #268

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?

Yes. The Swiss have safely encapsulated their waste into a building smaller than Norte Dame stadium. It will safely house their waste for centuries to come. The US doesn’t recycle its waste because the Democrats were afraid brown people would get nuclear material in transit and build dirty bombs. Europeans knew that was stupid and both recycle and store their waste reasonably. Further if we spend money on thorium you…

> Solar and chemical storage requires poisonous materials that will leech into the ground water.

Nobody is willing to acknowledge the elephant in the room

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

#296

Post by kingaillas » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

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.

In 2013, an ammonium nitrate storage facility exploded (1). In 2014, a leaky storage container poisoned a river in West Virginia (2).

It's instructive to consider some thought experiments/scenarios:

What if...

a) Both were run by the government. In this case you'd have people of certain political parties screaming about government incompetence, and how the best solution would be to eliminate regulations and privatize, since competition somehow guarantees better results.

b) Foreigners deliberately engineered both situations, an act of terrorism. In which case as certain administrations after 9/11, the US might pick some country that didn't have anything to do with it and go to war.

c) Private companies were responsible. This is actually the case and the collective attitude was generally "eh, shit happens, private companies just trying to run a business". Just declare bankruptcy and walk. No real changes made in either case.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explos...

2 -

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

#297

Post by kazagistar » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:21 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #278

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…

> 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 i…

That sounds like an indictment of the commercial industry and deep corruption of US regulatory bodies. Its not an indictment of nuclear itself. The new designs are fundamentally safer, but i can see the value in the aegument that its not worth trying in as risky and corrupted a regulatory environment as the United States without significant political change first.

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

#298

Post by Aerroon » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:21 AM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #280

Aerroon wrote: post #233

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. 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.wikiped…

Thank you for correcting me! I read dam and assumed.

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

#299

Post by DangitBobby » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:22 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #267

DangitBobby wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just worst case scenario "rates", but the scenarios themselves. What is the worst case scenario from a completely unmitigated core meltdown versus whatever the most extreme failure mode of, say, a coal plant?

Pollution from coal power kills about a million per year, and that's not counting accidents. I don't know why you'd want a "completely unmitigated meltdown," but even if terrorists rent a 747, hoist an active reactor, and drop it onto the middle of Manhattan, it will kill less than the non-failure mode of coal plants during the same year.

[citation needed]

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

#300

Post by username90 » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:25 AM UTC

legulere wrote: post #92

etrautmann wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and even when you consider those costs, it pales in comparison to the lives lost and negative externalities of coal, oil, and gas usage. These include climate change, particulate pollution, environmental release of mercury, devastation of vast swaths of the environment worldwide, and other factors that may be hard to quantify but negatively impactful.

There’s already a disinvestment in fossil fuel going on. You have to compare nuclear with renewables.

Why then did we shut down nuclear plants and build coal plants?