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After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

forbes.com

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

#451

Post by opo »

Retric wrote: post #316
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…

You’re off by an order of magnitude. More than 30 of the roughly 900 workers employed during the seven-year cleanup of the nation’s largest manmade environmental disaster are dead ( https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/12/22/kingsto... ) As stated that not that unusual. At 45 a man has a 0.3285% chance of death per year at 55 that bumps to 0.7766%. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html 3 deaths per y…

As time goes on, more workers are experiencing health effects that might be due to their years of work cleaning up the spill:

>...More than 30 cleanup workers at the December 2008 TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant coal ash spill are dead and at least 200 are sick or dying — all with common ailments known to be caused by long-term exposure to arsenic, radium and the host of other toxins and metals found in the ash.

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/09/20/kingsto...

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

#452

Post by Technetium »

Funny how everyone is able to talk so much shit about nuclear being amazing and safe and all that, yet we've STILL not cleaned up the monstrous amount of TOXIC trash that has been produced by these plants. We have done nothing to stop creating more waste, and we have done nothing to deal with the toxic waste we have right now. To be honest I don't CARE if you want to call it safer when there is no direct proof of that, only proof of the contrary. There are hundreds of thousands of people still affected by major accidents, and the waste leftover from them worldwide. Trying to keep pushing nuclear for anything is an ignorant shortsighted choice.

[1] https://www.greenamerica.org/fight-dirty-energy/amazon-build... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and... [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/05/31/new-map-...

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

#453

Post by opo »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #159
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…

Another part is that people are distrustful, especially when previous promises were broken, and as far as I know, before each major accident (Chernobyl, Fukushima) happened, it was said that such an accident can never happen. That brings into doubt any promise of future safety.

No one except the Soviet Union said the Chernobyl style plants were reasonable designs. That kind of design would have been illegal to build anywhere else in the world.

No one ever promised that there would never be a nuclear accident - that would be unrealistic for any power source. But historically nuclear power has been safer than all the alternatives that were available. (For example, nuclear power has saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives that would have been lost if coal plants had been built instead.)

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

#454

Post by manfredo »

imtringued wrote: post #399
manfredo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What prevents nuclear waste from being brought to were it came from? Can't you just grind up the nuclear waste and mix it up with the excess rock to obtain a material mixture that has background radiation than the mine it came from?

Well, at a high level that's what's being done. Nuclear fuel is mined from underground and the spent fuel is put back underground.

But it's much better to put it in a known location where it's away from water sources. Naturally occurring uranium is actually a fairly common pollutant in drinking water, putting the uranium back where it came from isn't always a good choice when there are better alternatives.

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

#455

Post by dang »

sg47 wrote: post #6
manfredo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As per the article, Republicans support nuclear at a substantially higher rate than Democrats: > A 2019 Gallup poll [1] found that 65 percent of Republicans strongly favored nuclear energy but only 42 percent of Democrats did so. 1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/248048/years-three-mile-island-...

I stand corrected then. I wonder why for a cohort that doesn't believe in science.

Would you please stop posting political flamebait to HN? You've unfortunately been doing this a lot lately, which is not good. We don't want political flamewars here, or any flamewars—they're repetitive, tedious, and nasty.

Even if the rest of the world descends into hell, this site has a different mandate, and people here need to use it as intended.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#456

Post by Technetium »

dragontamer wrote: post #320
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…

> Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire Maybe not a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone, but its devastating a town and the fire will be ongoing for 250-years.

It definitely seems like most people are dismissive of this point because they think technology has somehow advanced to the point where we will never be able to have accidents.

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

#457

Post by dragontamer »

Technetium wrote: post #456
dragontamer wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have coal or gas plants ever created a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire Maybe not a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone, but its devastating a town and the fire will be ongoing for 250-years.

It definitely seems like most people are dismissive of this point because they think technology has somehow advanced to the point where we will never be able to have accidents.

I don't think Coal Seam fires are "dismissed".

They're common enough that the risks are known to coal-towns. But they're uncommon enough that most people don't seem to know about them. There are many coal-seam fires across the world, all of which take decades (or centuries) before the fires are expected to burn out.

In contrast, nuclear disasters are so rare that pretty much every nuclear disaster is known by everyone. Nuclear disasters are your "black swan" event, so to speak.

I doubt there's any conspiracy, or detractors to the coal-seam fires. Its just not a very well known fact.

----------

There are literally hundreds of coal seam fires around the world right now. Small enough to be obscure, large enough to not catch the attention of anybody looking for novelties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire#List_of_mine_fi...

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

#458

Post by neop1x »

Technetium wrote: post #452

Funny how everyone is able to talk so much shit about nuclear being amazing and safe and all that, yet we've STILL not cleaned up the monstrous amount of TOXIC trash that has been produced by these plants. We have done nothing to stop creating more waste, and we have done nothing to deal with the toxic waste we have right now. To be honest I don't CARE if you want to call it safer when there is no direct proof of tha…

And what about deaths and respiratory problems caused by burning fossil fuels? What about CO2 used to produce solar/wind powerplants? How to recycle retired or failed wind/solar powerplants? It is pretty ignorant to just look at couple of nuclear incidents and ignore the amount of energy those plants can produce. Can you imagine the amount of power the current humanity needs? If you want less waste, start reducing population growth in high-growth countries first... Here is a good video comparing various sources of energy and relevant facts https://youtu.be/lL6uB1z95gA

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

#459

Post by xorcist »

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…

But they do.

Hydroelectric dams are huge infrastructure projects, and they're almost impossible to build these days because of political concerns with huge public pushback. France and Finland have built nuclear reactors recently. When was their last hydro dams built?

China got huge pushback from both environmental and human rights organizations with diplomatic tensions. Ethopia is on the brink of war because of their huge hydro project.

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

#460

Post by theshrike79 »

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…

Wind power is surprisingly bad for the environment in the long run.

The blades need to be changed at regular intervals, weigh tens of thousands of kilos and are 100% unrecycleable, basically glass and carbon fibre.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb...

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