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I changed my mind about nuclear waste

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Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#171

Post by cptskippy »

legitster wrote: post #31

I'm all for fighting the good fight on this, but I'm also a realist: consumer sentiment isn't going to change much. People on the extremes will still fight to the nails on MSG, Flouride in water, GMO, etc. But the median person doesn't really care where their power comes from when they hit a switch so long as it's cheap. If we want any serious progress on Nuclear you need regulators with authority to ignore organized…

> ...consumer sentiment isn't going to change much.

> ...the median person doesn't really care where their power comes from when they hit a switch so long as it's cheap.

> If we want any serious progress on Nuclear you need regulators with authority to ignore organized civilian protestation.

The reason sentiment isn't going to change is because much of the situation is dictated by greed. People want cheap power, the companies want money; both are driving forces compelling them to act not in their best interest but cheaply.

Unless regulators can ignore commercial and private interests a like, then greed will always taint regulation. Which is why sentiment will never change.

There's a complete lack of trust that the industry will do the right thing and sustain it long term because it is under constant pressure to be both profitable and cheap.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#172

Post by erpellan »

sampo wrote: post #137
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #18

The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry, founded an activist group that claims: > Aim for 50% nuclear at least, as per the science. Which suggests a pretty cavalier attitude to "the science". edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting. I thought the timing was mysteriously exact for both her and Shellenberger…

> Extinction rebellion have a page on her You accuse someone to have a "cavalier attitude to science" and "being in cahoots with" parties you allege are suspicious and then you proceed to use Extinction Rebellion as a source? You should worry more how cavalier Extinction Rebellion are, and who they are in cahoots with.

Citation needed.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#173

Post by closewith »

sgu999 wrote: post #150
matthewdgreen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fossil fuel industry is not funding pro-nuclear arguments because they want to see 50% of their business lost to nuclear. They are not worried about losing huge profits to nuclear because from a purely economic perspective nuclear is not cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Hence it doesn’t pose a major threat, absent massive government-subsidized build-outs (which aren’t remotely on the table now.) The fossil fue…

> The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) I wonder if it's not even more cynical than that because it doesn't seem right. We still need an alternative controllable* source of energy when renewabl…

> * is "controllable" the right word in this context in english?

I believe the appropriate term is dispatchable.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#174

Post by sgt101 »

This made me laugh out loud.

1) I support Sizewell c & d. There's already two big reactors there, a third and fourth one make no difference to be fair. 2) I live about 20km from Sizewell. 3) The road that will be choked with traffic from building it is 1.5km away, the rail track is also 1.5km away - they should really build a sea pier like last time. 4) 5 years ago the wet storage at Sizewell suffered a leak. 5) No one noticed, until someone decided to do a wash [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jun/11/nuclear-...] 6) If they hadn't noticed then pond would have boiled enough to expose the rods. This would have taken just a few hours. 7) A column of fire would have erupted out of the pond, creating a radioactive plume that would have rendered my house uninhabitable, for like, 200 years.

So, I do not give a toss about whether it glows green or not... but it's definitely scary stuff that needs to be watched.

She is right about weapons though, that stuff is the real deal. There's 1000 Hiroshima's worth of Plutonium in a shed on the other side of the country [ https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-wa...] - that's even scarier.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#175

Post by AndyMcConachie »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #116
nickelcitymario wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While these are reasons to be suspicious, they do not counter a single point she made in her article. Her logic and her facts were solid. If they're not, I'd love to see a take down of that. But I see no problem with anything she wrote, I remain convinced nuclear is the only rational energy source left, and all this fear mongering about nuclear is causing us to slowly kill ourselves.

The fossil fuel industry is not funding pro-nuclear arguments because they want to see 50% of their business lost to nuclear. They are not worried about losing huge profits to nuclear because from a purely economic perspective nuclear is not cost-competitive with fossil fuels. Hence it doesn’t pose a major threat, absent massive government-subsidized build-outs (which aren’t remotely on the table now.) The fossil fue…

> The fossil fuel industry is funding pro-nuclear PR because they realize that renewables do pose a major economic threat to their business in the short term, since they are now cost-effective enough to replace vast chunks of their business (even if not 100% of it.) Pro-nuclear (and coincidentally anti-renewable) PR is the most efficient way to protect their business. If they can convince the public [incorrectly] that the best way to decarbonize rapidly is to abandon/block renewable build-outs because “nuclear is the only way” then they’ve paid enormous dividends to their shareholders.

This is an interesting theory devoid of evidence to back it up.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#176

Post by himinlomax »

sonofhans wrote: post #159
rayiner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Extinction rebellion have a page on her (NSFW warning for some nudity in the banner image Controversial opinion: by scaremongering about nuclear power—which the west could have started adopting in the 1970s like France did—the naked tree huggers did as much to set back climate change mitigation efforts as the oil lobby. At least with the oil folks, they were pushing a status quo that was likely to stand until today…

I can't believe you're blaming "tree huggers" for this, when the clear beneficiary is the global fossil fuel industry, who've been lobbying against nuclear power since the 50s. Shit, many anti-nuclear groups have been funded by fossil fuel industry for decades. At best, their protests were political cover for governments to do what the oil industry paid them to do.

Are you sure there's a difference here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenpeace_Energy

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#177

Post by karaterobot »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #18

The author, who gives every appearance of being funded by the industry, founded an activist group that claims: > Aim for 50% nuclear at least, as per the science. Which suggests a pretty cavalier attitude to "the science". edit: I take it back, she's in cahoots with Shellenberger and GWPF so it's the fossil fuel industry that she's supporting. I thought the timing was mysteriously exact for both her and Shellenberger…

This message feels like you're trying to make a case that the author must be dismissed because of her group affiliation. Is there anything in the argument itself that you find incorrect or misleading?

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#178

Post by evolve2k »

Look here’s what you want to consider. The waste needs to be stored safely and responsibly for not a decade, not a century but for thousands of years.

We can’t manage shit that needs a few years of care unless it continues to make profits right now. It’s a fucking joke.

So your local government is recommending a nuclear waste dump, as mine is.

Here’s basic maths to know if your getting screwed or if they’ll be doing all the coolest activities shown in the nice diagrams with big solid containers and a scientists in lab coats monitoring for issues for eternity. People will definitely be there working and maintaining 50 and 500 and 5,000 years after the initial political announcement, right?

Anything needing maintenance for decades either needs to be politically important, like government spending on educational institutions or hospitals. What’s that you say? Your hospital buildings are decaying. Oh umm let’s chat further.

Ok so back to the maths. This thing needs its own stewardship funding.

Let’s say it costs a mere $20million a year to maintain. To be honest I don’t know the cost, insert X. So what your going to want is a simple endowment, setup in a nice 10,000 year organisation that’s free from corruption, that’ll reliably generate your needed $20M in funds a year. What’s that, the government haven’t announced support for a new corruption free, science institute that is funded upfront to run for eternity? I sure you just missed it.

So your looking for an endowment that will reliable generate your $20M a year, or whatever figure, ongoingly, forever. Luckily this can be achieved, you just need to think of this like the interest to be earned from a big term deposit.

With say a need for a say 2% guaranteed yield, nice and conservative, you’ll need around $1 Billion to be setup in a waste stewardship endowment institute thing.

And here’s where you can expose all the BS. I’ve seen no announcements for anything close to these funds, for these types of facilities. All that seems to be budgeted for is intial job creation construction as well as a couple of political cycles of funding.

These are mud map numbers, but hopefully they illustrate the grift involved in most of these initiatives when they are not taking straight on long long long term stewardship and how that’ll be funded 50, 500, 5000 years from now. Hell we can’t even think in those sort of long timeframes.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#179

Post by pflenker »

glitchc wrote: post #17
pflenker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s condescending to claim that environmentalists are guided mainly by emotions and people who share your view are guided by science. The problems surrounding nuclear waste is not as clear cut as the article suggests.

The fact that you feel personally attacked by my statement suggests that your beliefs are well, beliefs, and not necessarily grounded in fact. I recommend you read "The Wizard and The Prophet" as it chronicles the dawn of the environmentalist movement in an engaging and insightful way. That environmentalism was largely funded by wealthy folks, most of whom had only a rudimentary understanding of science, should be a…

No, that’s not it, sorry. The line of argument which boils down to „my side is guided by logic and facts, while your side is guided by emotion and fear“ makes the one who invokes it (ironically) vulnerable to missing valuable facts that might otherwise enrich or even challenge their mental model of the discussion at hand.

Note that this is a meta discussion which comments on how you were presenting your thoughts.

Re: I changed my mind about nuclear waste

#180

Post by luckylion »

uoaei wrote: post #46
legitster wrote: post #31

I'm all for fighting the good fight on this, but I'm also a realist: consumer sentiment isn't going to change much. People on the extremes will still fight to the nails on MSG, Flouride in water, GMO, etc. But the median person doesn't really care where their power comes from when they hit a switch so long as it's cheap. If we want any serious progress on Nuclear you need regulators with authority to ignore organized…

Virtually no one who is critical of nuclear thinks that "it's scary" is the best, or even a good, reason for not having nuclear. But loads of analysis have been done on the financials of different energy generation methods and shows very clearly that, except for those contracted to build and maintain the thing, no one sees a real benefit. It simply doesn't pan out to plan and build new nuclear reactors today, conside…

> Virtually no one who is critical of nuclear thinks that "it's scary" is the best, or even a good, reason for not having nuclear.

That's 99.9% of Germany's anti-nuclear movement. The "it's just not economical" is a super recent addition (last 3 years, I'd say) to the public debate, and it feels very much tacked on. If anyone discovered a method to bring down cost, most of those who are against nuclear energy wouldn't change their mind, because that's not an actual concern to them.

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