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

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

#421

Post by imtringued » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:08 PM UTC

Akronymus wrote: post #364

username90 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because it feels good is my guess. Over here in europe, Germany basically did the same thing. They now have higher cost AND pollution per kwh than france, who has MUCH more nuclear. Oh and germany often has to sell the energy for very cheap when the renewables are having a peak, and buy pretty expensively when they are having a drought.

>They now have higher cost

Well, this chart proves the opposite:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

Remember, when you're talking about how nuclear is cheaper you're talking about the cost of generating power, not what the consumer is paying.

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

#422

Post by Akronymus » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:23 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #421

Akronymus wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it feels good is my guess. Over here in europe, Germany basically did the same thing. They now have higher cost AND pollution per kwh than france, who has MUCH more nuclear. Oh and germany often has to sell the energy for very cheap when the renewables are having a peak, and buy pretty expensively when they are having a drought.

>They now have higher cost Well, this chart proves the opposite: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g... Remember, when you're talking about how nuclear is cheaper you're talking about the cost of generating power, not what the consumer is paying.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/industrial-power-prices-and-...

From the article, it seems to be a graph detailing how much they pay with all exemptions applied. Which, according to the article itself, only about 4% are eligible. The article doesn't seem to state how much the partial exemptions make up of the final price either. Could be 1% of the exemption, could be 99%.

> For example, Europe's Statistical Office Eurostat says the average power price for industrial consumers in Germany was about 14 cents/kWh in 2017 – the highest in Europe. But the following graph also reveals that German companies with maximum exemptions would pay the lowest price in Europe (energy price component):

> Out of 46,400 industrial companies active in Germany, 96 percent paid the full surcharge in 2017, while only four percent benefitted from exemptions, according to the association. At the same time, 41 percent of electricity used by industry is partially exempt from the surcharge, while 43 percent is not exempt at all. The remaining 16 percent of the power originates from own generation facilities, part of which is also exempt. The utilities forecast that German industry will use a total of 246 TWh in 2019.

And I was actually talking what the customer is paying, because that is what is relevant to most people.

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

#423

Post by p_l » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:31 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #420

p_l wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are average values with shortest timespan being full 24hour days. Which don't show daily slumps in production, nor issues with overproduction at times. Germany is net exporter in general, but that's again - net. If you look, right now as I am writing this Germany is importing ~294 MW of power from France.

> Which don't show daily slumps in production, nor issues with overproduction at times. The atmosphere doesn't care. Less CO2 is less CO2. >If you look, right now as I am writing this Germany is importing ~294 MW of power from France. I think you're missing the entire point of a continental grid. The 294MW are a sign of cooperation, not of failure. If no country imports or exports energy then we could just get rid of…

What I'm complaining about is that energy transfer already runs into issues, and the weather differences might be not big enough to allow feeding a slump in wind/solar production at one end of EU with renewables from the other side.

Even with continental grid, we don't eradicate the chaotic nature of many renewable sources, which increases the strain on the system.

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

#424

Post by Lazare » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:43 PM UTC

cure wrote: post #313

Lazare wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In practice, in the real world, the consequences of accidents are extraordinarily bad and costly. ...not really. Fossil fuels kill a simply enormous amount of people. Coal is responsible for something like 13k deaths per year in the US alone; air pollution (from burning fossil fuels) kills something like 10k people per day . > How much do you think it cost to have 1,000 square miles in the Ukraine uninhabitable for…

> I don't think you can handwave that away as an "of course". The externalities around fossil fuels are simply enormous; the issues and costs and risks of nuclear are multiple orders of magnitude less. That wasn't intended as a handwave. Fossil fuel externalities are indeed enormous and well documented. It's exhausting to talk to pro-nuclear people, because all everyone ever talks about is nuclear vs fossil. That was…

> That was the 20th century's fight.

https://www.wired.com/story/china-is-still-building-an-insan...

We shall see.

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

#425

Post by RealityVoid » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:54 PM UTC

joejohnson wrote: post #419

The debate around safety in nuclear power is kind tangential to the larger issue: what do you do with all this radioactive material when you’re done with it? This is a much trickier issue and is largely why countries like Germany have started to phase out nuclear power plants. But the US treats the whole world as their dumping ground and as long as they are the global imperial power, they can probably just dump radio…

Nuclear waste is not that much actually and you simply store it in sealed containers. The waste storage is a political issue rather than a technical issue. How many accidents have we had related to nuclear waste storage? Zero, that's how many.

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

#426

Post by notRobot » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

pvaldes wrote: post #400

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 power is not safe and never will be. This ship sailed with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are repeating that nuclear plants are safe now. "Safe" of course if some conditions meet. If your car is a parking your probability of dying in a car crash is really low, this is obvious. What really counts is their behaviour in hard times. "If all go well, and we have luck, and everybody behaves, nuclear is safe" is not e…

Did you even read my comment or click on the source I cited? Nuclear energy is the safest form of energy we have.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nuclear weapons dropped on them. I'm talking about power plants. The same material can be used in two very different ways to achieve two very different results.

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

#427

Post by belorn » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:26 PM 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…

In the last 10 years there has been an explosion in new renewable power plants. Consumption of solar energy has increased by 20x. Wind by 5x. Even hydro has gone up almost 30%.

But for every 1 watt hour of extra renewable energy, fossil fueled energy consumption has expanded by 10 watts. Gas and oil usage has only gone up, and the increase from 2010 in just coal consumption is more than the total amount of wind generated in the whole world.

The biosphere and its people, the future, all our kids and grandkids, water sources, atmosphere, it all depend on us stopping fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels when there are better alternatives available is a an on going crime facilitated by almost every government on the planet.

It would be good to say that the answer is renewable, but it the wrong answer to the wrong question. The answer to the short and long term danger to the planet is a immediate stop to the production and expansion of fossil fueled energy. No new fossil fueled power plant should be allowed to be built in 2020 and onward. The answer about what we do next is also related to fossil fuels, ie any alternative energy source which is not fossil fuels. We need to ramp up production of solar, wind, storage and nuclear and we need people to invest into that today. There is only so many trained people in those fields and only if everyone is working on fossil fuels alternative may we get a functional energy grid without fossil fuels fast enough.

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

#428

Post by magicalhippo » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

pfisch wrote: post #376

DangitBobby wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I was able to find stats about fossil fuels. What I question is that it would be less harmful to drop a reactor right into the middle of a city. Remember, my question was about worst case scenario for nuclear, which the very pro-nuclear crowd here has so far been unable to describe on the many occasions that nuclear is hailed here as our saving grace. They instead point to Fukushima and Chernobyl and say "see, th…

Didn't Chernobyl almost make a huge swath of Europe uninhabitable? Wasn't that the takeaway from the miniseries? That a lot of people gave their lives to prevent an unfathomable disaster?

That's a stretch. The Exclusion Zone[1] is about 2600km^2 (1000 sq mi) but it's only declared uninhabitable, there are people living there (though not saying it's a wise move to settle down there).

There are some areas outside that which is also deemed dangerous, but that's the order of magnitude we're talking about.

For reference, Europe covers an area of about 10 million km^2 (almost 4 million sq mi).

Also note that we don't have a good handle on how lower levels of radiation affects us, and there's discussion around if the prevailing method[2] to estimate exposure effects over-estimates the effects at lower exposures.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model#Cont...

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

#429

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:43 PM UTC

DangitBobby wrote: post #247

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, this is following a period of time which saw Democrats funding a lot of "scientific research" structured to study things like "would reducing the number of guns reduce gun violence" etc. Which is a foregone conclusion in the same way that reducing the number of red cars would reduce the number of collisions involving red cars. It's a government-funded study structured in such a way as to produce a "scient…

Which is unfortunate, since such social policy matters relatively little to the future of our nation and world when compared to, say, policy informed by climate science.

It's the same disease that leads to "if a metric becomes a target it ceases to be a good metric."

The purpose of science is to give you answers to questions you didn't already have. But it's hard enough to avoid things like selection bias even when you're acting in good faith. If you start using it to work backwards from a political platform to determine which questions you want to ask to lead to the policies you decided on ahead of time, the thing you're doing is the reverse of making policy based on science. It's manufacturing "science" based on politics. Which isn't actually science.

If you knew the conclusion of a study before it was conducted, its conclusion provides no new support for your position.

This kind of implies that if we want actual science, we can't have politicians deciding what to study, and we can't have scientists getting fired for their conclusions no matter how politically inconvenient they are.

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

#430

Post by pvaldes » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

notRobot wrote: post #426

pvaldes wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power is not safe and never will be. This ship sailed with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are repeating that nuclear plants are safe now. "Safe" of course if some conditions meet. If your car is a parking your probability of dying in a car crash is really low, this is obvious. What really counts is their behaviour in hard times. "If all go well, and we have luck, and everybody behaves, nuclear is safe" is not e…

Did you even read my comment or click on the source I cited? Nuclear energy is the safest form of energy we have. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nuclear weapons dropped on them. I'm talking about power plants. The same material can be used in two very different ways to achieve two very different results.

You nailed it. Is the same material.

The same that killed hundred thousands of people in a second in our recent past. Is unsafe stuff by nature. The stupidity of people at charge to see the problem or to invest serious money into fixing weak points, makes it even more dangerous, but the main problem remains: They never were able to fix their s*t, and "but, but, more people die by cars" and "we destined one whole page to our emergency plan" are still the wrong answers.