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

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

#341

Post by sudosysgen » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:01 AM UTC

hehebbssjj wrote: post #196

andrewflnr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ongoing shittiness is predictable and easy to understand. We've survived so far, surely we can survive if it gets just a little worse. Big disasters are unpredictable and hard to understand. One of those could end the world at any time. AFAICT that's the whole reason people are more afraid of them.

> Big disasters are unpredictable and hard to understand. One of those could end the world at any time. In the context of nuclear reactors, Fukushima and Chernobyl are pretty much the worst case scenario. A large nuclear disaster is very disruptive to the immediate area but it would not "end the world" in any sense.

Global warming, however, can.

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

#342

Post by zik » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

8bitsrule wrote: post #339

Renewable energy sources have zero fuel costs. Their potential for life-threatening disasters - on the scale of Fukushima, Chernobyl, coal ash floods, etc. - is zero. Just as with coal mines, uranium mines and oilfields, there's a large upfront cost ... but a much lower cost to the environment. Furthermore, anyone can create solar-powered electricity, anywhere. There will be no wars over access to sunlight. Sunlight…

The crazy part is that all over the world nuclear is being phased out as it's uneconomic compared with renewable energy. I wonder why they chose now as the time to endorse it, just when it's no longer relevant. So strange.

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

#343

Post by spfzero » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:12 AM UTC

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?

To store it in our atmosphere.

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

#344

Post by spfzero » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #51

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…

What does it mean to say that fossil fuel plants killed exponentially more people? Isn’t this just the triviality that any two points (with different y values) are exponentially related?

Let’s just say it means many, many, many more deaths.

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

#345

Post by spfzero » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

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.

In the Fukushima case, completely unnecessarily.

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

#346

Post by sizzle » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

8bitsrule wrote: post #339

Renewable energy sources have zero fuel costs. Their potential for life-threatening disasters - on the scale of Fukushima, Chernobyl, coal ash floods, etc. - is zero. Just as with coal mines, uranium mines and oilfields, there's a large upfront cost ... but a much lower cost to the environment. Furthermore, anyone can create solar-powered electricity, anywhere. There will be no wars over access to sunlight. Sunlight…

Why can't we create a nuclear power plant in the middle of the desert like area 51 type of setup so if there is a meltdown it can be contained. Could we safely store the energy somehow and transport it or make some sort of long-distance hookup to our grids?

Also anyone know why the nuclear site in San Onfre by San Diego failed?

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

#347

Post by sizzle » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

8bitsrule wrote: post #339

Renewable energy sources have zero fuel costs. Their potential for life-threatening disasters - on the scale of Fukushima, Chernobyl, coal ash floods, etc. - is zero. Just as with coal mines, uranium mines and oilfields, there's a large upfront cost ... but a much lower cost to the environment. Furthermore, anyone can create solar-powered electricity, anywhere. There will be no wars over access to sunlight. Sunlight…

Why can't we create a nuclear power plant in the middle of the desert like area 51 type of setup so if there is a meltdown it can be contained. Could we safely store the energy somehow and transport it or make some sort of long-distance hookup to our grids?

Also anyone know why the nuclear site in San Onofre by San Diego failed?

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

#348

Post by john-shaffer » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

infogulch wrote: post #127

bluquark wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magnitude and extent of the radioactive release was largely unknowable in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The local authorities were put in an impossible position, either gamble with everyone's health or evacuate at great cost. The root cause of the dilemma is that the worst case scenario for traditional nuclear is so severe and nobody can tell decision-makers with high confidence whether or not you've j…

The fundamental, unsolvable difficulty of making decisions with imperfect information seems to be often under analyzed. Are there any related fields that study this decision making difficulty?

I highly recommend "Probability Theory" by E.T. Jaynes. Don't be fooled by the generic title - the book is my Bible for reasoning with uncertainty.

> In my opinion, this book is a required read for anyone who wishes to understand precisely how the scientific worldview is, in a mathematically defensible sense, the best possible worldview, the one that lets us optimally use evidence to develop an interlocked Bayesian network of evidence supported beliefs that can change and evolve as the evidence is accumulated. It also shows the critical connections between physics and statistical mechanics and Shannon's theorem in computational information theory, laying the foundation for a fair bit of modern physics as it demonstrates that physical entropy and information entropy are very much one and the same thing, from a certain point of view.

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

#349

Post by spfzero » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #220

formercoder wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rea…

It is certainly not indisputable thar solar and wind are far cleaner than nuclear, if you include their externalities such as manufacturing and disposal. Nuclear is cleaner by far than coal or gas. It’s cleaner than solar or wind, though not by a lot. We have the death counts to prove this. I would so much prefer a few nuclear plants to a million acres of windmills. Where are we going to put them when they wear out. In what landfill will they fit?

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

#350

Post by spfzero » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #293

fouronnes3 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

So, an event that kills zero people could happen every 10-20 years, and another event that kills zero people could happen every 60-150 years? That is certainly alarming.