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After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

forbes.com

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Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#91

Post by qayxc »

witweb wrote: post #71

But what's going to happen with the nuclear waste? I've heard too many times about water getting into permanent repositories and leaking containers contaminating the biosphere. Seems like a bad idea to me...

Nuclear waste is primarily a political problem (which actually makes it damn near impossible to solve in the near term).

There's no fundamental problem with it, since it's produced naturally as well [1] and sites exist that would allow for very safe long term storage if need be.

It's also possible to get rid of long lived decay products entirely using certain types of reactors that can "burn" nuclear waste.

Again, political will and major investments would be required to make that happen, though some companies are already working on it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo_Mine

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#92

Post by legulere »

etrautmann wrote: post #72
tbenst wrote: post #64

I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster. Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan events: no matter how well designed, some fraction of plants will cause INES Level 7 disasters. If the resulting cost (ie $10…

Yes, and even when you consider those costs, it pales in comparison to the lives lost and negative externalities of coal, oil, and gas usage. These include climate change, particulate pollution, environmental release of mercury, devastation of vast swaths of the environment worldwide, and other factors that may be hard to quantify but negatively impactful.

There’s already a disinvestment in fossil fuel going on. You have to compare nuclear with renewables.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#93

Post by jmull »

namuol wrote: post #46
LeegleechN wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First endorsement in the official party platform, which is a specific document released by the parties every 4 years (except this year for Republicans who re-adopted their 2016 platform with no changes...).

With some qualifiers this is technically correct, but this only makes it feel more disingenuous.

I think it’s fair to ask people to read past the headline to get the whole story.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#94

Post by cbmuser »

legulere wrote: post #66
notRobot wrote: post #4

For the uninitiated, nuclear power is actually much, much safer than it was in the previous century, and fossil fuel power plants have killed exponentially more people through pollution than all nuclear power accidents combined – it's just not something that happens all at once so it doesn't seem like a big deal to most people. We will not be able to "defeat" climate change and keep this planet inhabitable for future…

Nuclear also got much, much more expensive than it was in the previous century, making it economically completely unreasonable in the west. Nuclear is also the only energy source where people get displaced from their homes in thousands of square kilometers in catastrophic events.

The thing is, displacement is often not necessary as explained by the WHO for the case of the Fukushima accident:

> https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/health-consequences...

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#95

Post by bluquark »

himinlomax wrote: post #73
tbenst wrote: post #64

I’m continuously baffled by those that claim that nuclear power is safe. Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster. Analysis of nuclear power should take into account Black Swan events: no matter how well designed, some fraction of plants will cause INES Level 7 disasters. If the resulting cost (ie $10…

> Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster. For Fukushima, it seems that the panicked response of the local authorities (evacuating the whole area ...) was what caused the most problems.

The magnitude and extent of the radioactive release was largely unknowable in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The local authorities were put in an impossible position, either gamble with everyone's health or evacuate at great cost.

The root cause of the dilemma is that the worst case scenario for traditional nuclear is so severe and nobody can tell decision-makers with high confidence whether or not you've just hit it.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#96

Post by cma »

notRobot wrote: post #4

For the uninitiated, nuclear power is actually much, much safer than it was in the previous century, and fossil fuel power plants have killed exponentially more people through pollution than all nuclear power accidents combined – it's just not something that happens all at once so it doesn't seem like a big deal to most people. We will not be able to "defeat" climate change and keep this planet inhabitable for future…

Proliferation is a big issue, perhaps bigger than climate change. Some modern plant designs try and address that though I think.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#97

Post by [deleted] »

dtech wrote: post #78
legulere wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear also got much, much more expensive than it was in the previous century, making it economically completely unreasonable in the west. Nuclear is also the only energy source where people get displaced from their homes in thousands of square kilometers in catastrophic events.

> Nuclear is also the only energy source where people get displaced from their homes in thousands of square kilometers in catastrophic events. Luckily displacing thousands of people for hydroelectric energy is fully planned [1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-threegorges/thousan...

[deleted]

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#98

Post by cbmuser »

fouronnes3 wrote: post #88
beders wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a failure rate of 1% for commercial reactors, calling something 'safe' is - frankly - ridiculous. You wouldn't fly planes if they had that failure rate. It's not just the death count for which, btw, we still don't even have reliable numbers! What we do have is: Uninhabitable regions, radioactive boars decades after Chernobyl roaming Bavaria (google it), countless cases of cancer, highly radioactive waste we don'…

Source for "1% failure rate"?

Doesn't exist. If we had a 1% failure rate, we'd have a nuclear catastrophe every year since we have over 400 active reactors world-wide.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#99

Post by yongjik »

beders wrote: post #84
notRobot wrote: post #4

For the uninitiated, nuclear power is actually much, much safer than it was in the previous century, and fossil fuel power plants have killed exponentially more people through pollution than all nuclear power accidents combined – it's just not something that happens all at once so it doesn't seem like a big deal to most people. We will not be able to "defeat" climate change and keep this planet inhabitable for future…

With a failure rate of 1% for commercial reactors, calling something 'safe' is - frankly - ridiculous. You wouldn't fly planes if they had that failure rate. It's not just the death count for which, btw, we still don't even have reliable numbers! What we do have is: Uninhabitable regions, radioactive boars decades after Chernobyl roaming Bavaria (google it), countless cases of cancer, highly radioactive waste we don'…

> It's not just the death count for which, btw, we still don't even have reliable numbers!

We don't have reliable numbers because the effect of leaked radioactive materials on public health is so low that it's hard to distinguish it from background noise.

Re: After 48 years, Democrats endorse nuclear energy in platform

#100

Post by cure »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #2

That’s great, anti-nuclear energy was definitely one of the anti-science stances standing in the way of progress.

It's odd to me that anti-nuclear is being labelled anti-science. It's almost like the pro-nuclear people have blinders on. Nuclear is fantastic, in theory. In practice, in the real world, the consequences of accidents are extraordinarily bad and costly. The odds of a bad accident may be very small, but they are not zero (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...). And dealing with the waste is another highly risky and unsolved problem.

I will be happily become pro-nuclear the moment that all the real-world externalities are actually priced in. How much do you think it cost to have 1,000 square miles in the Ukraine uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years? What if such an accident happens in a densely populated area?

How much do you think it will cost to keep all that nuclear waste safe for the next half a million years or so? Plutonium-239's half-life is 24,000 years, and isotopes are dangerous for 10 to 20 times their half-life (cf https://www.livescience.com/33127-plutonium-more-dangerous-u...).

The same problem of externalities exists for fossil fuels, of course. And even for hydro power in a different way: it has displaced millions of people and flooded many beautiful places.

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