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Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

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Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#201

Post by happymellon »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #118
happymellon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wellness leftist movement Hang on, are we talking about liberal or leftist now? Because a lot of these hoax "wellness" movements are conservative. Distrusting science and things you don't understand is a conservative mindset.

And trusting science while distrusting technology you do understand is a leftist mindset.

I've never heard of that as a leftist mindset.

Do you have examples? People like the Luddites weren't distrusting of technology, they were distrusting of the owners using it to depress wages.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#202

Post by stevesimmons »

pjmlp wrote: post #142
cluckindan wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last 70 years, 600-700 nuclear reactors have been in operation worldwide, and three of them have had major accidents. You already mentioned two of them, the third is Three Mile Island. That’s a catastrophic failure rate under 0.5 percent. Sure, the effects of a failure spread widely and can be a hazard for a long time, but personally I would want to see the same risk-averse sentiment applied to production and…

One nuclear accident is already one too many.

As opposed to premature deaths from fossil fuel emissions, deaths of rooftop solar installers (surprisingly common), wars in the Middle East involving oil interests, drowning and environmental damage from dam failures, etc, etc.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#203

Post by lizardking »

01100011 wrote: post #25
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.

Like most backward looking judgements these days, such things require understanding the culture and zeitgeist of the mid 70s. I'm pro-nuclear as well, but understand that for many decades the "smart" thing to do was to oppose it. I wouldn't expect a musical artist to have a more nuanced opinion than most of their contemporaries.

There is a difference between the "smart" thing to do and what's considered to be the right opinion by "smart" people. Lobotomies were endorsed by elite medical opinion (Moniz won a Nobel for it in 1949). Smart-person consensus often doesn't survive contact with reality. Smart people are as susceptible to groupthink, moral panics, and manias as anybody else.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#204

Post by amarant »

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…

Electricity prices in Sweden have tripled as a direct result of the political decision to shut down German nuclear power(interconnected grid)

Even the German government has admitted it was a mistake.[1]

Solar generates an abundance of electricity in the summer, but the winter production ranges from tiny to nothing.

The anti nuclear crowd loves looking at buildout graphs and saying we can replace all energy production with solar in x years, assuming energy usage remains the same.

It does not remain the same.

[1]https://www.foronuclear.org/en/updates/news/germanys-chancel...

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#205

Post by amarant »

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.

Yeah our green parties brag about how they have made nuclear unfeasible via political means, and then turn around to say it's market forces. It's so stupid I want to cry.

Miljöpartiet in particular is anti-science and has among the worst environment policies of all major Swedish parties. For example they're working hard to ban spreading sludge from wastewater treatment plants on fields. Apparently phosphors are single-use.

And of course there this gem: https://omni.se/mp-politikern-slosar-resurser-pa-rent-hittep...

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#206

Post by butlike »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #195
butlike wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All fusion reactors by definition (to my understanding) don't produce the same waste we're used to since it doesn't require fission. The byproduct is literally helium. If a catastrophe happens, the reactor implodes instead of explodes, so the concern for the surrounding environs is far less than with fission reactors. The only issue is that fusion reactors have been perpetually out-of-reach for decades.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#207

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gchamonlive wrote: post #137
TitaRusell wrote: post #133

I read once that they wanted Autobahn to be longer but sadly the limitations of the LP was 23 minutes. If only they had access to the CD! What could have been. Still as it was it must have been a tremendous shock to the hippies of the era. It was the sound of the future.

Honest question, why a shock to the hippies? In 69 less than a decade before there was Woodstock and the music, while not futuristic, was very progressive and innovative. All in all I think these folks might have had more to do with the hippies than anyone else at the time, specially in a time right after the world war, with the extreme anti-fascist sentiment in the country.

The sound of Autobahn was so different than anything else in the air, that it came as a shock to everyone.

Even if you point out other synth-pop songs ("Popcorn" would be the most obvioous) of the era, Autobahn just doesn't sound anything like them. The biggest reason is that it doesn't work very hard at all to be a song. While there were plenty of people in that era who were not making "songs" (hey, prog rock, we love you!), their approach to that quest was entirely different.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#208

Post by Bayart »

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…

There's more to it than first degree economics. If you include broader externalities, including loss through pollution and energy dependency, it makes more sense. Of course it's harder to measure hence harder to advocate, but in my opinion it's one those cases where intuition hits close to the truth. Of course being French I'm highly biased, but I'm glad we went the way we did, trading CapEx for stability.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#209

Post by Bayart »

khafra wrote: post #130
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…

If power is so cheap mid-day, why don't european buildings have sufficient air conditioning not to kill the elderly during heat waves? The laws restricting AC all have power conservation as their rationale.

It's cultural latency. Europe is the faster warming continent and the buildings were perfectly fit for purpose 30 years ago. Old people lived their entire lives without AC and plainly dislike it.

Re: Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track

#210

Post by noosphr »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #173
noosphr wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear power died 20 years ago for 40 years now. Meanwhile Chinas 2060 plan for a carbon zero grid with 25% nuclear and 100% over provisioning is right on track.

So their 2060 target is a lower percentage than the EU has today? Which is itself 50% lower than the EU had 20 years ago. I think that's a pretty good support for the notion that nuclear is past its prime.

It is 50% of daily power consumption. They are planning on overbuild the network by 100% so it can be carbon neutral and cost effective even if the sun stops shining, the wind stops blowing and the rain stops raining for a year. Currently between 50% to 100% of generation capacity is idle in China as government policy to encourage growth.

This is the resilience something civilisation depends upon should have. Not the duct tape and chewing gum that the Us and EU networks are made of.

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