Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track • Hacker News Board

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#191

Post by Ringz » Wed, May 13, 2026, 4:03 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #175

Ringz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not on track. From https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/World-Nuclear-Industry-St... > According to the China Nuclear Energy Association, despite higher output, nuclear’s share of China’s total electricity production slightly slipped from 4.9 percent in 2023 to 4.7 percent in 2024, (Energy Institute data indicate a 3.7-percent increase in net production and a drop from 4.7 percent to 4.5 percent of the nuclear…

Remember all those projections of solar adoption that, year after year, consistently underestimated future growth? It turns out the same has been happening with nuclear, only in reverse: the agencies doing the projections have consistently, year after year, overestimated nuclear growth. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221462962... (in particular figure 3.)

Good catch! Thanks for that study!

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#192

Post by amanaplanacanal » Wed, May 13, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #96

userbinator wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appeal to nature is something that definitely cuts across the political spectrum.

> Appeal to nature is something that definitely cuts across the political spectrum. I wish this was true. How many right wing political parties support policies that improve the natural environment? Doing that is the domain of left wing parties, but I’d love to know of any exceptions.

Conservation used to be quite popular in conservative circles before it got branded as a lefty position. Once that happened, everyone who thought of themselves as conservative started running away from it.

The US EPA was created by Richard Nixon, for example.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#193

Post by shmeeed » Wed, May 13, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

cluckindan wrote: post #131

lukan wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What makes you think the Chernobyl accident was not embraced to influence European policy?

Occam's razor.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#194

Post by amanaplanacanal » Wed, May 13, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

thombat wrote: post #49

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Soviets were parking nukes in Cuba in striking distance of the White House. If that's not legitimately terrifying to you, I just don't know.

Which directly followed the USA stationing Jupiter missiles in Turkey with the range to strike Moscow. As part of the mutual climb down from the missile crisis the USA removed the Jupiters, as both sides then understood the wisdom of avoiding hot brinkmanship

Which in hindsight seems like just a sideshow, since both sides already had ICBMs in development that can strike from anywhere in the world.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#195

Post by amanaplanacanal » Wed, May 13, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

butlike wrote: post #189

mejutoco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The paranoia around nuclear power is tied to generational fear mongering of governments during the Cold War And Chernobyl. And Fukushima. Nuclear is great but it has some very real risks

Nuclear won't be ready until fusion (so if ever). The only safe nuclear is when the byproduct is helium

Just for curiosity, are there proposed fusion reactor designs that don't create nuclear waste? I haven't followed what's going on in that space at all.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#196

Post by amanaplanacanal » Wed, May 13, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

rectang wrote: post #33

acidburnNSA wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find this sentiment curious for 2 reasons: 1. Radioactive waste gets less toxic over time unlike many toxins like mercury, lead, and cyanide. People seem to emphasize the duration of toxicity for radiation while apparently giving 'forever toxins' a total pass. 2. Short-lived radiation is what's really dangerous. When atoms are decaying fast, they're shooting out energy that can cause real damage fast. Longer…

I don't trust the coal industry to manage forever chemicals over the long term, and I don't trust the nuclear industry to manage spent nuclear fuel over the long term. The question that matters for both industries is what bad things happen when their stewardship inevitably lapses and the happy path dead-ends. I don't like either answer, so that heightens the urgency of pursuing alternatives with fewer long-lived haza…

It's not just coal and nuclear. We have intentionally set up our society so that the people that own and run corporations are not responsible for the long term damage they cause. They extract the profits, and when the bill comes due for what they have done to the rest of us, limited liability and bankruptcy protects them from what they have done.

We did this so that people can buy stock on the market without having to take any responsibility for what they are doing. It's certainly a great funding mechanism, though.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#197

Post by soperj » Wed, May 13, 2026, 4:31 PM UTC

happymellon wrote: post #72

soperj wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hate to tell you this, but there's a whole contingent of "granola moms" who won't vax their children. They're the same people that subscribe to those teething stones that are really only a strangulation risk.

Yep, and a lot of what they say is deeply conspiratorial conservative rhetoric. They may be self described liberal, but their actions certainly aren't.

Conspiratorial sure, conservative though not sure how it gets labelled that. It's not a deeply ingrained philosophy of conservatism, and crazy is broad spectrum.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#198

Post by mgfist » Wed, May 13, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #188

mgfist wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bhopal helps my argument. The consequences of that were far worse than Chernobyl and yet I’d bet for every 1,000 people who have heard of Chernobyl only one or two would know about Bhopal.

I'm not sure how that matters even if it was true. Here I am clearly aware of both. And if I were not, does it make people less dead? If nuclear became #1 power source and instead of 25 year cadence we had IAEA scale 7 events every 1.5 years, would you still argue it's a net win?

> If nuclear became #1 power source and instead of 25 year cadence we had IAEA scale 7 events every 1.5 years, would you still argue it's a net win?

Events like Fukushima would be worthwhile tradeoffs. Events like Chernobyl would not, but that would require nigh non-existent safety regulations.

To put it in layman's terms - I'd much much much rather live right next to a US operated nuclear power plant than a US operated coal plant. In fact I do live rather close to several nuclear power plants.

Im also not against solar or wind, but energy diversity is important for national and energy security purposes

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#199

Post by 01100011 » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

tekla wrote: post #159

happymellon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and a lot of what they say is deeply conspiratorial conservative rhetoric. They may be self described liberal, but their actions certainly aren't.

Its so fucking wild to see how fast the winds change. And since its inconveniently politically incorrect, history rewrites or "they were actually the opposite of us and lying" Anti-Vax people are/were seen the leftist idiots who were anti-capitalist, anti-corpo, anti-the fascist govt, who would rather have died of preventable diseases than perpetuate the medical industry and its capitalist schemes trying to keep us s…

It's not surprising.

As a kid I was an anarcho-communist punk rocker but I had a friend who was a christian and his parents were scammy, MLM, right-wing conservative types(think Rush Limbaugh but loonier) who distrusted the government and lied on their taxes. It was obvious how the wings of the political spectrum almost touch at times.

Paranoia and distrust of institutions, mystical thinking, adherence to alternative truth structures.. these are apolitical just as mental illness is also apolitical.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#200

Post by FiatLuxDave » Wed, May 13, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

This seems like a good post to mention my old friend Laszlo Baksay.

He was part of the original krautrock scene, being a member of the band Dom (see https://dom1972.bandcamp.com/album/edge-of-time , scroll down to the notes at the bottom). If I recall correctly, he went to school with some of the members of Kraftwerk.

Later, he because a particle physicist at CERN. When I was in grad school he was my thesis advisor, while I was doing a project on the measurement of... radioactivity.