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Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

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Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#101

Post by pjmlp »

lionkor wrote: post #90
pjmlp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw the Fukushima documentary over the weekend, no thanks.

As opposed to brown coal? Because that's what we got instead, and it's much more deadly, much more radioactive, and the toxic waste it produces is not properly controlled like for nuclear. Of course pollution looks bad when you have to barrel it, instead of just shitting it out into the environment (atmosphere, etc) and saying "we'll stop doing this in a couple decades, don't worry". I understand that brown coal isn'…

No worries, paper straws will save the day.

We could start by actually having a DB that works, instead of forcing people to use cars if they want to actually reach their destination on time.

And bus connections that drive more often per villages and small towns than once per hour.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#102

Post by retired »

lukan wrote: post #59
cluckindan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like the robot thing to do. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany was entirely manufactured; it was the product of Gerhard Schröder and similar robots who enriched themselves on Russian oil and gas. Ironically, it is also where the so-called Green Party began.

Sure, it was all Schröders fault. It had nothing to do with for example chernobyl, where children were not allowed to be outside on the playground for weeks and where you had to pay attention where your food came from and it also has nothing to do that you still have to have the meat of wild boars checked and be careful with eating mushrooms. Totally unrelated. Seriously, the anti nuclear crowd might have not been ra…

[flagged]

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#103

Post by pjc50 »

Gud wrote: post #91
boshomi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power has been killed off by economic forces; there’s no turning back. Solar and wind power generate cheap electricity in abundance, and midday electricity prices in Europe regularly dip into negative territory (as low as minus €500 (sic!) on May 1!). Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investmen…

Nuclear power has been amazing for my native country Sweden and I do not believe for a nanosecond that there were “economic forces” that shut down many of our operational nuclear plants. It was political lunacy, in Sweden and Germany and many other countries.

I take a center position on this: every year new nuclear looks worse economically, but that's not a good reason to shut down already operating plants.

The safety issues .. I think the combination of low probability (unknown) and potentially huge cost (Chernobyl affected almost the entirety of Europe!) make it exceptionally prone to toxic discourse. You just can't assign reliable numbers to it. There's a risk of ending up with a Space Shuttle situation, where because a disaster would be so bad everyone in the chain downplays the risk until an O-ring explodes.

Maybe we can try SMRs once they're actually in production, but somewhere else can try them first on their own expense.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#104

Post by youngtaff »

emptybits wrote: post #39

If you like Kraftwerk and you're not aware of this book, I recommend it: "Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany", by Uwe Schütte. It's packed with details of albums, songs, tours, equipment, and people. The anti-nuclear message in "Radio-Activity" certainly came later and was repeatedly updated, right into the Fukushima era [2011], but this was not the original sentiment [1976]. From the book: "At the time, Billboard…

Currently reading it and I’d agree!

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#105

Post by youngtaff »

pjmlp wrote: post #81
cluckindan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like the robot thing to do. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany was entirely manufactured; it was the product of Gerhard Schröder and similar robots who enriched themselves on Russian oil and gas. Ironically, it is also where the so-called Green Party began.

Not at all, we look into Fukushima and Chernobyl as examples of what actual happens when things don't go as the advocates sell it. And naturally the radio waste is fine as long as we store it into other countries.

There’s not actually that much high level waste… thing the UK has a couple swimming pools worth after 50 years of operating reactors

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#106

Post by pjc50 »

01100011 wrote: post #31
colechristensen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was largely our own governments wanting to scare us of nukes so we'd be scared of the Soviets, like in America with the schoolchildren doing duck and cover drills. Having enemies the population is afraid of is good for politicians and they'll take any enemies they can find, and they'll do so indiscriminately regardless of the real nuance of the issues. Immigrants, abortion, this religion or that, rock music, jazz…

I think it came from peaceniks and hippies mostly. You're talking about the equivalent of modern anti-vax liberals. Anti-science and given to conspiracies and mysticism. There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s. The world was quite a different place back then. The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking, and Communism was much more expansionary.

> There was a pretty good reason to be scared of nukes when these folks were children in the 50s

Yes, but I think if you asked which country was more likely to "push the button" in the 50s-70s it would have been the US, and the extent to which the US continued invasions after the collapse of the USSR kind of vindicates that.

> The US was lagging behind the Soviets, militarily speaking

I don't think this was ever true except in the least useful measure, raw headcount of conscripts.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#107

Post by pjc50 »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #40
zorked wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore than the US being able to strike worldwide to this very moment. They are the only country that has used nuclear bombs against civilians. The big problem is having one country be able to do it without deterrents and with impunity. MAD is a good thing, if anyone will have those things at all.

One of those things is scarier to American school children and their teachers than the other.

Objectively, nukes have killed 0 American school children and their teachers while legal constitutional American gun owners have killed thousands every year.

The main natural predator of Americans is other Americans.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#108

Post by Neil44 »

boshomi wrote: post #78
ainch wrote: post #11

I love Kraftwerk, but contributing to anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany hasn't been a major success. If only more European countries had followed the French example and developed substantial nuclear fleets.

Nuclear power has been killed off by economic forces; there’s no turning back. Solar and wind power generate cheap electricity in abundance, and midday electricity prices in Europe regularly dip into negative territory (as low as minus €500 (sic!) on May 1!). Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investmen…

Solar and wind are still heavily subsidized are they not? If they're so economically amazing why are they subsidized?

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#109

Post by rectang »

p2detar wrote: post #62
rectang wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me that pro-nuclear sentiments have at least as much to do with ongoing accumulation of nuclear waste as anti-nuclear sentiments. > Worrying about expanding nuclear and ending up putting the waste in a hole deep in the ground is such a nonissue to me. Blithe minimization of the problem of storing nuclear waste over millenia feels like "Peak HN". :) ("Peak HN" jabs are a cheap shot, though — so let me engage…

> by our inability to design incentive structures for responsible stewardship that persist over centuries. Simply untrue. Finland‘s Onkalo is exactly that-a storage solution engineered to require zero stewardship. It is possible and now we know we can do it right. Storage is the weakest argument against nuclear. By the way, Solar panels and wind turbines contain heavy metals with no decay path, e.g. Cadmium. Nuclear…

Onkalo is the best approximation so far of of a memory hole for nuclear waste — but Finland has not agreed to accept all the world’s nuclear waste, similar sites are not available for all countries, and in practice storage remains a major point of contention as a wander through this discussion will show.

> The fearmongering against nuclear was always crazy to me.

I sometimes feel similarly about pro-nuclear cheer mongering.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#110

Post by AdamN »

Neil44 wrote: post #108
boshomi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power has been killed off by economic forces; there’s no turning back. Solar and wind power generate cheap electricity in abundance, and midday electricity prices in Europe regularly dip into negative territory (as low as minus €500 (sic!) on May 1!). Modern grids do not require high-risk investments in ultra-inert baseload power that ultimately fails to find a market; instead, they require low-risk investmen…

Solar and wind are still heavily subsidized are they not? If they're so economically amazing why are they subsidized?

I'm not sure why subsidies are per se bad. But also almost all infrastructure is subsidized regardless: roads, trains (cargo as well), ports, nuclear, coal, etc...
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