Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 139 posts

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#81

Post by maest »

Roritharr wrote: post #8
murftown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? As an aside, I was surprised by the repeated use of "climate hawk" throughout the article as an identity that we might be interested in taking on. Could they have said e.g. "people concerned about climate change"? I may just not know the term's history.

I find this focus on identity politics so toxic it's starting to make life miserable. I'm currently driving a VW SUV company car in a german suburb and the amount of hate I receive because of it is ramping up daily. Even from people driving similar polluting cars, like high-powered station wagons. The other day my wife was breastfeeding our child in our car while I was quickly grabbing something from a store when it…

I wonder if it is fair to discount those people by calling what they're doing "identity politics".

Perhaps there's a move in the Overton window: as environmental issues are brought to the forefront of people's minds, the average person is becoming more hostile to what is perceived as being non-eco behaviour - not because of "identity politics", but because they're more aware of negative externalities coming from such behaviour.

That woman sounds like an outlier based on our experience so far, but perhaps that indicates that the window is moving and what is and isn't acceptable in our society is changing.

I mean, not long ago, slavery was widely accepted in our society and it took some violent societal transitions (at least in some parts of the world), to move to a world where slavery is highly frowned upon.

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#82

Post by nickik »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #12

If it's really the case that the only way to make nuclear viable is to deregulate the industry , then Bernie is absolutely right that we need to end reliance on nuclear power.

I just so much hate how anytime the solution to anything is 'deregulation' its meet with utter horror. Just using the word 'deregulation' is basically a political death sentence.

Even when deregulation things like airplanes, logistics and lots and lots of other industry has been very beneficial.

I don't think people even realize to what absurd extend the anti-nuclear movement had managed to attack nuclear energy. To the point where it is basically impossible to build any kind of new reactor in the US.

There are only two types of regulation, for extremely tiny research reactors that are whole unsuited for researching actual power reactors. Or full deployment ready reactors that meet all the regulation of a current reactor.

Now the current regulation says that you need to have a way to cool steam. Well, a sodium or molten salt reactor (or lots of others) simply don't have steam that can be cooled. Meaning that LOTS of technical requirements that are only valid for one specific type of reactor and a specific way of building that reactor is valid at all.

Now we can argue over the expect right regulation needed to run a nuclear plant but arguing that 'deregulation' as a concept is so horrible that its worth trying to destroy the biggest source of carbon free energy is beyond dogmatic and wholly irrational.

Its simply outright refusing to deal with the problems of the nuclear industry based on principle rather then actually trying to evaluate the real problems with the current set of regulations (that are widely acknowledged by people from the industry and even within the government itself).

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#83

Post by unethical_ban »

ajross wrote: post #79
viburnum wrote: post #6

Placing some bets on nuclear make sense (France gets 80% of electric generation from nuclear) but counting on nuclear is risky because nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore. America should probably keep trying on a small scale and if they can figure it, then ramp up. The big problem is that nuclear is essentially a big government project, and America is very bad at those.

> nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore Nobody ever could! Nuclear power generation, from its infancy, has been outrageously subsidized, both directly (i.e. DoE grants, government funding of waste disposal) and indirectly (industrial-scale refining of fuel as a side effect of the weapons industry). Once those sources dried up it just plain stopped making sense. At the end of the day it needs to stan…

>At the end of the day it needs to stand on its own to make sense

Why? Why does such a critical piece of civilization NEED to make money on a free market? Why is it absurd to expect governments to help fund power generation like they are expected to fund other infrastructure (and healthcare, in most of the developed world)?

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#84

Post by graeme »

ajross wrote: post #79
viburnum wrote: post #6

Placing some bets on nuclear make sense (France gets 80% of electric generation from nuclear) but counting on nuclear is risky because nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore. America should probably keep trying on a small scale and if they can figure it, then ramp up. The big problem is that nuclear is essentially a big government project, and America is very bad at those.

> nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore Nobody ever could! Nuclear power generation, from its infancy, has been outrageously subsidized, both directly (i.e. DoE grants, government funding of waste disposal) and indirectly (industrial-scale refining of fuel as a side effect of the weapons industry). Once those sources dried up it just plain stopped making sense. At the end of the day it needs to stan…

Subsidized against what? It's main competitor, carbon, has the implicit subsidy of not having to account for the externalities in the waste it creates.

Against new green tech yes, it's a better argument.

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#85

Post by googlryas »

pjc50 wrote: post #17
Roritharr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this focus on identity politics so toxic it's starting to make life miserable. I'm currently driving a VW SUV company car in a german suburb and the amount of hate I receive because of it is ramping up daily. Even from people driving similar polluting cars, like high-powered station wagons. The other day my wife was breastfeeding our child in our car while I was quickly grabbing something from a store when it…

That's not based on identity, that's based on action. Running a stationary car is basically a form of littering.

Would the woman been treated the same way if she was in a Skoda or Audi?

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#86

Post by googlryas »

_ph_ wrote: post #74
all2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying "cooling a stationary house is littering". Operating a device for the comfort of the user is precisely why we make things like AC, whether it's in a car, a boat, or a house.

No, there is a huge difference. In a house, the AC is powered efficiently by electric power from the grid or even your solar cells. With the car, you keep a combustion engine , that could output 100kW or more running purely to power a 1kW AC unit. This is one of many advantages of electric or hybrid cars, that you can keep AC running.

In a house, you are cooling the entire volume of space enclosed so that wherever a human happens to go, they are comfortable. It is still littering, regardless of the scale.

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#87

Post by jstummbillig »

ajross wrote: post #79
viburnum wrote: post #6

Placing some bets on nuclear make sense (France gets 80% of electric generation from nuclear) but counting on nuclear is risky because nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore. America should probably keep trying on a small scale and if they can figure it, then ramp up. The big problem is that nuclear is essentially a big government project, and America is very bad at those.

> nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore Nobody ever could! Nuclear power generation, from its infancy, has been outrageously subsidized, both directly (i.e. DoE grants, government funding of waste disposal) and indirectly (industrial-scale refining of fuel as a side effect of the weapons industry). Once those sources dried up it just plain stopped making sense. At the end of the day it needs to stan…

Is this actually the prevailing analysis of the status quo? Is the best unsubsidized nuclear power plant we could technically build today actually cost effective or is it not? Can people with insight chime in? I just tried to google an answer and, from a layman's perspective without a horse in the race, there seems to be no single easily available answer.

As a side note, it irritates me how often this is the case for many simple and important (but, apparently, hard) questions, that must have a correct answer.

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#88

Post by kjar »

Sorry folks give up the ghost nuclear was dead at least 3 decades ago. Solar and wind are the future. We don’t have a decade to build a new nuclear plant, in that plan we’d need a time machine going backa decade to abate climate change that’s now locked in. I’ll spare you all the risks and externalities, it’s just dumb. Again sorry.

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#89

Post by The_rationalist »

ajross wrote: post #79
viburnum wrote: post #6

Placing some bets on nuclear make sense (France gets 80% of electric generation from nuclear) but counting on nuclear is risky because nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore. America should probably keep trying on a small scale and if they can figure it, then ramp up. The big problem is that nuclear is essentially a big government project, and America is very bad at those.

> nobody can make nuclear plants cost efficiently anymore Nobody ever could! Nuclear power generation, from its infancy, has been outrageously subsidized, both directly (i.e. DoE grants, government funding of waste disposal) and indirectly (industrial-scale refining of fuel as a side effect of the weapons industry). Once those sources dried up it just plain stopped making sense. At the end of the day it needs to stan…

Stop spreading dangerous fake beliefs, if you make such an extraordinary claim that nuclear is less cost effective than "green competitors", source it. This is in complete Contradiction with this scientific analysis: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-a...

Re: You don’t have to be “pro-nuclear” or “anti-nuclear.”

#90

Post by The_rationalist »

CaptainMarvel wrote: post #77
makomk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's worth remembering that Russia still operates RBMK nuclear reactors and plans to do so for as long as they can keep them working. The safety levels of their nuclear power program do not exactly match Western standards to put it lightly.

Context: The RBMK reactor had a serious flaw which resulted in Chernobyl. Source: the recent TV show of the same name.

"The RBMK reactor had a serious flaw" The serious flaw was multiple consecutive human errors which could today be prevented by software checklist enforcement.
Post reply on HN