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suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

silence_kit posted:

No no no you're not getting it. One of the mantras of this thread is that we should ignore the fact that nuclear power plants are incredibly complicated feats of engineering and require extreme care in order to be operated safely. Instead we should blame the government for why nuclear power plants take forever to build and why they cost bajillions of dollars.

A wonderful half-true statement, since approximately half the cost (i.e. most of the cost and time overrun) of a EU/US nuclear plant comes from paying people to do nothing while an endless wave of NIMBYs and self-proclaimed environmentalists launch frivolous lawsuits. Those idiots shouldn't get to complain about nuclear being expensive if they're a major reason for cost overruns.

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hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

silence_kit posted:

No no no you're not getting it. One of the mantras of this thread is that we should ignore the fact that nuclear power plants are incredibly complicated feats of engineering and require extreme care in order to be operated safely. Instead we should blame the government for why nuclear power plants take forever to build and why they cost bajillions of dollars.

Somehow the USN doesn't have problems producing their own reactors.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

hobbesmaster posted:

Somehow the USN doesn't have problems producing their own reactors.

Rather like China, illustrating a very good correlation with a plausible causal link between how easy it is for NIMBYs to stir poo poo up and how hard it is to build a nuclear reactor on time and at a reasonable price.

e: now nuclear power will be accused of standing in the way of the glorious revolution

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jun 17, 2014

The Insect Court
Nov 22, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

hobbesmaster posted:

Somehow the USN doesn't have problems producing their own reactors.

This is such a stupid argument that I'm not sure if it's being made ironically, but the nuclear reactors built and operated by the United States Navy are done so under constraints that a commercial nuclear plant in the mainland United States would not have.

For example, large metropolitan areas with significant power needs are generally not located on submarines.

blowfish posted:

A wonderful half-true statement, since approximately half the cost (i.e. most of the cost and time overrun) of a EU/US nuclear plant comes from paying people to do nothing while an endless wave of NIMBYs and self-proclaimed environmentalists launch frivolous lawsuits. Those idiots shouldn't get to complain about nuclear being expensive if they're a major reason for cost overruns.

Not as stupid as "if it's good enough for fast attack subs, it's good enough for me!", but close. Exactly as stupid as the lolbertarian "food-borne illnesses are a thing of the past these days, so let's eliminate the FDA!".

The Insect Court fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Jun 17, 2014

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

The Insect Court posted:

This is such a stupid argument that I'm not sure if it's being made ironically, but the nuclear reactors built and operated by the United States Navy are done so under constraints that a commercial nuclear plant in the mainland United States would not have.

For example, large metropolitan areas with significant power needs are generally not located on submarines.

However submarines and carriers are often docked there.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

hobbesmaster posted:

However submarines and carriers are often docked there.

Glorious Mother Russia did the obvious thing and built nuclear power plants on boats that provide power to wherever they're docked :ussr:

The Insect Court posted:

Not as stupid as "if it's good enough for fast attack subs, it's good enough for me!", but close. Exactly as stupid as the lolbertarian "food-borne illnesses are a thing of the past these days, so let's eliminate the FDA!".

Did we mention nuclear reactors on boats have a rather good safety record, and that some early commercial power plant designs were literally "build a nuclear reactor for a boat, except don't put it in a boat"?

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jun 17, 2014

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

Nevvy Z posted:

Maybe you should get the Sun's cock out of your mouth and make a real argument.

lol. The only posts about solar energy in this thread that I have made have been to correct misconceptions regarding solar cells. If you take a closer look at the posts that I have made in this thread, since you seem to be all about snooping through my post history, you'll find that nowhere have I claimed that solar cells are a perfect or miracle energy generation technology. This is to be contrasted to the posters in this thread who bend over backwards to apologize for and blame outside factors for every drawback to nuclear energy generation technology.

The Insect Court posted:

This is such a stupid argument that I'm not sure if it's being made ironically, but the nuclear reactors built and operated by the United States Navy are done so under constraints that a commercial nuclear plant in the mainland United States would not have.

Yeah, the military is not really well-known for being efficient with their money or spending.

Office Thug
Jan 17, 2008

Luke Cage just shut you down!

silence_kit posted:

No no no you're not getting it. One of the mantras of this thread is that we should ignore the fact that nuclear power plants are incredibly complicated feats of engineering and require extreme care in order to be operated safely. Instead we should blame the government for why nuclear power plants take forever to build and why they cost bajillions of dollars.

Except the cost of new first-of-a-kind nuclear plants is competitive and in many cases lower than other fossil fuel baseload options, and building additional standard systems reduces the cost and construction time dramatically: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Economic-Aspects/Economics-of-Nuclear-Power/

However, as previously stated, cost overruns will arise with delays incited by politics and politically-sanctioned changes in regulation during construction.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

silence_kit posted:

lol. The only posts about solar energy in this thread that I have made have been to correct misconceptions regarding solar cells. If you take a closer look at the posts that I have made in this thread, since you seem to be all about snooping through my post history, you'll find that nowhere have I claimed that solar cells are a perfect or miracle energy generation technology. This is to be contrasted to the posters in this thread who bend over backwards to apologize for and blame outside factors for every drawback to nuclear energy generation technology.

Well solar thermal is sane. Not what I'd say any already-industrialised nation should build as their primary electricity source, but sane.

quote:

Yeah, the military is not really well-known for being efficient with their money or spending.

Good point.

Maybe we should take a look at Kommunist increasingly neoliberal, you sellouts :argh: Sweden, where there is little hubbub about nuclear power plants or waste dumps getting built since people aren't reflexively against it and hey there's free jobs.

The Insect Court
Nov 22, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

blowfish posted:

Did we mention nuclear reactors on boats have a rather good safety record, and that some early commercial power plant designs were literally "build a nuclear reactor for a boat, except don't put it in a boat"?

I can't imagine how I wasn't explicit enough earlier, but here goes: The navy builds nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers because they provide strategic advantages over diesel-powered generators, not because the USN is a power company trying to provide commercial electricity generation.


blowfish posted:

Maybe we should take a look at Kommunist increasingly neoliberal, you sellouts :argh: Sweden, where there is little hubbub about nuclear power plants or waste dumps getting built since people aren't reflexively against it and hey there's free jobs.

It's clarifying when you make your motivations and your biases clear. If only our politicians had the perspicacity and foresight of a bunch of internet aspie redditors, instead they quiver in terror of Big Flower Power and its iron-fisted control of Washington.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

The Insect Court posted:

I can't imagine how I wasn't explicit enough earlier, but here goes: The navy builds nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers because they provide strategic advantages over diesel-powered generators, not because the USN is a power company trying to provide commercial electricity generation.


And they are the exact same advantages nuclear power has over all other power. :)

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

The Insect Court posted:

It's clarifying when you make your motivations and your biases clear. If only our politicians had the perspicacity and foresight of a bunch of internet aspie redditors, instead they quiver in terror of Big Flower Power and its iron-fisted control of Washington.

And that is related to what I said how...?

Pander
Oct 9, 2007

Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.



The Insect Court posted:

In theory Pander, communism works. In theory.

The "proper economic and environmental context" in which you just flip on your personal Mr. Thorium reactor for safe, limitless energy is one which in no way resembles the world as it is or is likely to be(outside of absurd "if I were world dictator" type thought experiments) any time in the next few decades.

Sure, nuclear power has and will continue to have a place in zero carbon energy generation, but the techo-panglossian hippie-punching fanboy-cultists who seem to pop up around the issue aren't realy helping things.

Jesus. That quote was over 3 months old. I don't know why you and silence kit jumped in to drop turds everywhere.

Fact is, both nuclear and solar face severe headwinds economically and politically for different reasons. I don't know any proponent of nuclear power who is saying otherwise. We'd certainly LIKE for it to immediately, magically replace coal and natural gas, but it won't, because people suck.

Tasmantor
Aug 13, 2007
Horrid abomination
The nuclear fan club in here really seam to kill conversation. We get it, it's great, but the constant bashing of other tech makes this thread into the nuclear equivalent of the coal industry. This "well nuclear MAY have it's short comings, but they can all be engineered out or are just the result of ignorance" echo reeks of the sort campaign coal is engaged in.

Rather than feeling like a place for discussion of alternatives and all their pros and con's there is an almost constant "well this isn't perfect so out shouldn't be on the table" unless it is nuclear. Counter points to the god king nuclear get cursory dismissals and that is that, the thread rolls on.

The knee jerk distrust of nuclear from the community is a major downfall for the tech but any attempt to address it just gets "people are dumb this is what they need". People don't like being told what they need, they do like getting what they want though. Rather than shouting about how good nuclear is maybe an open, honest and frank talk about all options would sell people on nuclear anyway?

That was what this thread looked like being I'm not sure if it got highjacked or that was never the intension but now it really does feel like the nuclear power appreciation station.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Tasmantor posted:

The nuclear fan club in here really seam to kill conversation. We get it, it's great, but the constant bashing of other tech makes this thread into the nuclear equivalent of the coal industry. This "well nuclear MAY have it's short comings, but they can all be engineered out or are just the result of ignorance" echo reeks of the sort campaign coal is engaged in.

Rather than feeling like a place for discussion of alternatives and all their pros and con's there is an almost constant "well this isn't perfect so out shouldn't be on the table" unless it is nuclear. Counter points to the god king nuclear get cursory dismissals and that is that, the thread rolls on.

The knee jerk distrust of nuclear from the community is a major downfall for the tech but any attempt to address it just gets "people are dumb this is what they need". People don't like being told what they need, they do like getting what they want though. Rather than shouting about how good nuclear is maybe an open, honest and frank talk about all options would sell people on nuclear anyway?

That was what this thread looked like being I'm not sure if it got highjacked or that was never the intension but now it really does feel like the nuclear power appreciation station.


Do you have any actual solid points to bring to the table? Are you saying the pro-nuclear people in this thread are using bad science or bad numbers, or people pointing out severe flaws in solar or wind are missing some important facts? Where are people not being open and honest? Perhaps an open an honest discussion of energy generation actually leads to a conclusion, based on the current evidence. I think everyone in this thread will readily discuss any new information or ideas brought to the table.

computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Tasmantor posted:

The nuclear fan club in here really seam to kill conversation.

Much in the same way as the consensus to "should you raise minimum wage" kills conversation.

Prav
Oct 29, 2011

blowfish posted:

Maybe we should take a look at Kommunist increasingly neoliberal, you sellouts :argh: Sweden, where there is little hubbub about nuclear power plants or waste dumps getting built since people aren't reflexively against it and hey there's free jobs.

I wouldn't overstate the popularity of nuclear power in sweden. People aren't quite dumb enough to force a shutdown of it all overnight like in germany, but several parties have anti-nuclear as a fairly core part of their party program and they're no less popular for it. Quite the opposite.

Just look at the 1980 referendum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_power_referendum,_1980. Notice what's missing? Yeah.

One NPP, Barsebäck, was shut down in 1999/2005 (reactor 1/2). More recently, in 2010 a law was passed (barely) that allows for replacement of the remaining 10 reactors with 10 new ones, but there's no allowance for constructing any additional reactors beyond that. Which is pretty much where things stand now: the reactors will probably be kept running for the foreseeable future, with about as much investment as is necessary to safely maintain them (ie replacing the old reactors that are at EOL), but Ringhals, Forsmark and Oskarshamn sure aren't popular.

More in general swedish nuclear policy has actually been a fairly heated political issue ever since the first reactors were built (which was mostly because the military wanted nukes).

Prav fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Jun 18, 2014

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Tasmantor posted:

The nuclear fan club in here really seam to kill conversation. We get it, it's great, but the constant bashing of other tech makes this thread into the nuclear equivalent of the coal industry. This "well nuclear MAY have it's short comings, but they can all be engineered out or are just the result of ignorance" echo reeks of the sort campaign coal is engaged in.

Rather than feeling like a place for discussion of alternatives and all their pros and con's there is an almost constant "well this isn't perfect so out shouldn't be on the table" unless it is nuclear. Counter points to the god king nuclear get cursory dismissals and that is that, the thread rolls on.

The knee jerk distrust of nuclear from the community is a major downfall for the tech but any attempt to address it just gets "people are dumb this is what they need". People don't like being told what they need, they do like getting what they want though. Rather than shouting about how good nuclear is maybe an open, honest and frank talk about all options would sell people on nuclear anyway?

That was what this thread looked like being I'm not sure if it got highjacked or that was never the intension but now it really does feel like the nuclear power appreciation station.

Well obviously that's because THE MIGHTY ATOM is superior :agesilaus:

As a more serious response, there are a few available alternatives besides "yay fossil fuels, drat the torpedoes straight ahead into 4C warming" and "nucular power über alles" that kinda make sense and some that don't.

Firstly, ~natural~ gas is a lovely stopgap solution that fucks us over slightly less quickly than coal.

Solar Thermal is suitable for countries where the sun actually shines (read: Germany or Canada bad, Australia or Spain good) if you don't want to build nuclear, for which there can be good reasons like "it's the Central African Republic". Also comes with a limited buffer built in, so you won't strain your electricity grid whenever a few clouds are moving over some place with many solar panels.

Geothermal works in places like Iceland, but otherwise gets tricky.

For hydro, you need to decide on which river ecosystem to gently caress up (please don't make ecologists cry), so preferably put dams in one that's getting canalised anyway. For countries like Norway with a ridiculous number of rivers it works as a major electricity source.

Wind is... awkward. Due to extreme intermittency (it makes solar seem downright predictable), you need to have really really good ways to compensate for fluctuating output. Pumped water storage currently is the only large scale energy storage, since we don't have a useful hydrogen/synthetic gas economy yet, so you'll have very extensive land use for the windmills, and also gently caress up mountaintops and/or rivers. Alternatively, you can use super-rapidly load-following gas power stations that emit more CO2 than normal gas power stations like the Brits, and not actually reduce CO2 emissions meaningfully below what you'd achieve by just running normal gas power stations (see above). I can see wind sort of making sense if you have tons of dams for hydro that for some reasons never get completely full anyway, but usually it probably isn't worth the effort, and again, please don't make ecologists cry. Offshore wind may be less problematic, but it's still not going to be really worth it I'd expect.

Wave power is neat, but you need to cover ridiculous stretches of coast with power stations. Please don't make ecologists cry (again, again).

Heavy metals bad, replacement of heavy metal laden panels (e: heavy metals are in the production process mostly) every 20 years bad, therefore photovoltaics bad, therefore solar roadways also bad. Literally the only advantage is that PV allows for a decentralised grid gently caress decentralisation, it's dumb and I can't be bothered to comment seriously on PV when solar thermal exists.

Also most of the above (except maybe hydro) will be more expensive than nuclear on an actual MW electricity generation capacity even in the current crappy political environment, so a good helping of nuke in the powergrid makes sense I'd say. Supplement with solar thermal and geothermal as appropriate, and hydro if it's really convenient like in Norway.

Prav posted:

:words: about glorious Sweden

Interesting, I'll have to read up on that.

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Jun 18, 2014

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

blowfish posted:

Heavy metals bad, replacement of heavy metal laden panels every 20 years bad, therefore photovoltaics bad,

I'm questioning whether you actually understand anything about power generation technologies and whether the rest of your post is also riddled with misinformation because you couldn't be further from the truth here. The dominant solar cell technology is silicon, which is an incredibly plentiful element. It is extracted from sand, which isn't exactly hard to come by.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

blowfish posted:


For hydro, you need to decide on which river ecosystem to gently caress up (please don't make ecologists cry), so preferably put dams in one that's getting canalised anyway. For countries like Norway with a ridiculous number of rivers it works as a major electricity source.


There's also that a ton of the good hydro sources have already been harnessed already.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

silence_kit posted:

I'm questioning whether you actually understand anything about power generation technologies and whether the rest of your post is also riddled with misinformation because you couldn't be further from the truth here. The dominant solar cell technology is silicon, which is an incredibly plentiful element. It is extracted from sand, which isn't exactly hard to come by.

Obviously silicon itself is not actually a heavy metal :rolleyes:

However:

quote:

The most important materials that are needed to produce solar power today include silicon, silver, tellurium, and cadmium, with steel, aluminum, and copper being used in the contacts and housings and other bulk components. Emerging technologies could require significant quantities of indium, selenium, molybdenum, gallium, germanium, arsenic, and ruthenium. Many other metals, such as nickel, zinc, and tin, are used in minor amounts.
Sounds healthy alright.

Also a fuckton of lead is currently used, though some EU based companies are reducing that.

Deteriorata
Feb 6, 2005

The main reason nuclear gets discussed so much is that it's complicated and interesting, with a wealth of possible technologies to compare. For technology geeks, that's fun to talk about.

Other electric generating technologies are pretty boring and staid by comparison. Solar is the closest competitor, but even then, "breakthrough" advancements are about getting another 0.1% of conversion efficiency. Solar highways got bashed because it's a dumb idea from any standpoint.

There's just not a lot to talk about with technologies other than nuclear most of the time. New developments in other fields get discussed as they come up.

Quantum Mechanic
Apr 25, 2010

Just another fuckwit who thrives on fake moral outrage.
:derp:Waaaah the Christians are out to get me:derp:

lol abbottsgonnawin

blowfish posted:

Solar Thermal is suitable for countries where the sun actually shines (read: Germany or Canada bad, Australia or Spain good) if you don't want to build nuclear, for which there can be good reasons like "it's the Central African Republic".

Honestly at this point I'd call "The Liberal-National Coalition Government of Australia" as a good reason. By this point they'd have flogged any nuclear power plants we owned to Gina Rinehart as an apology for China buying less coal.

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

Tasmantor posted:

The nuclear fan club in here really seam to kill conversation. We get it, it's great, but the constant bashing of other tech makes this thread into the nuclear equivalent of the coal industry. This "well nuclear MAY have it's short comings, but they can all be engineered out or are just the result of ignorance" echo reeks of the sort campaign coal is engaged in.

Rather than feeling like a place for discussion of alternatives and all their pros and con's there is an almost constant "well this isn't perfect so out shouldn't be on the table" unless it is nuclear. Counter points to the god king nuclear get cursory dismissals and that is that, the thread rolls on.

The knee jerk distrust of nuclear from the community is a major downfall for the tech but any attempt to address it just gets "people are dumb this is what they need". People don't like being told what they need, they do like getting what they want though. Rather than shouting about how good nuclear is maybe an open, honest and frank talk about all options would sell people on nuclear anyway?

That was what this thread looked like being I'm not sure if it got highjacked or that was never the intension but now it really does feel like the nuclear power appreciation station.

Why don't you just come right out and demand that we teach the controversy?

Nuclear does have it's problems, but a lot of them are political and social constructs, not natural ones. Fuel supply isn't really an issue. We have X reserves now, but like all other sources of energy that's at current prices. As those get depleted others can become available at higher costs of extraction. Sure there's an end-game, but it's stupidly far off.

The Insect Court
Nov 22, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Tasmantor posted:

The nuclear fan club in here really seam to kill conversation. We get it, it's great, but the constant bashing of other tech makes this thread into the nuclear equivalent of the coal industry. This "well nuclear MAY have it's short comings, but they can all be engineered out or are just the result of ignorance" echo reeks of the sort campaign coal is engaged in.

Rather than feeling like a place for discussion of alternatives and all their pros and con's there is an almost constant "well this isn't perfect so out shouldn't be on the table" unless it is nuclear. Counter points to the god king nuclear get cursory dismissals and that is that, the thread rolls on.

The knee jerk distrust of nuclear from the community is a major downfall for the tech but any attempt to address it just gets "people are dumb this is what they need". People don't like being told what they need, they do like getting what they want though. Rather than shouting about how good nuclear is maybe an open, honest and frank talk about all options would sell people on nuclear anyway?

That was what this thread looked like being I'm not sure if it got highjacked or that was never the intension but now it really does feel like the nuclear power appreciation station.

Mindless group-think combined with lolbertarian narcissism and techno-utopianism. Leads to a lot of "nuclear power is the future, I should know because I just got promoted to assistant manager down at the Geek Squad, plus look at my reddit karma from /r/thoriummakesyourdickbigger"-style Dunning-Kruger. Not to mention the usual conspiracy theory/echo chamber nuttiness about how those who hold different opinions are not just wrong but evil. See, for example, the ranting about those STUPID NAZIS at the UCS who want to KILL YOUR CHILDREN RIGHT NOW because their position is "focus nuclear development on improving existing reactor technologies".

The Insect Court fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jun 18, 2014

Pander
Oct 9, 2007

Fear is the glue that holds society together. It's what makes people suppress their worst impulses. Fear is power.

And at the end of fear, oblivion.



So. Many. Strawmen. Can't. Breath.

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

Maybe we can finally replace nuclear power with an infinite supply of strawmen to burn.

Or do they give off too much CO2?

hobbesmaster
Jan 28, 2008

^^^^ :argh:

Pander posted:

So. Many. Strawmen. Can't. Breath.

Burning straw men is carbon neutral so it's a good idea! You see since all that carbon is already in the carbon cycle the CO2 doesn't count!

Tokamak
Dec 22, 2004

Quantum Mechanic posted:

Honestly at this point I'd call "The Liberal-National Coalition Government of Australia" as a good reason. By this point they'd have flogged any nuclear power plants we owned to Gina Rinehart as an apology for China buying less coal.

This is by far the biggest reason to be sceptical of nuclear power. You can't treat a nuclear plant like you would any other large, industrial, money making asset. The way that a plant depreciates and erodes safety is far more complex and subtle then most other industrial processes.

They require constant supervision by a nuclear engineer who consults with a team of engineers and physicists to manage and remediate the plant to its original specification. They operate in the similar manner to a large scientific project/experiment (or a hospital). When you treat a nuclear plant as a series of pipes and mechanical parts that need to be monitored, repaired or replaced, the integrity of the nuclear process becomes a secondary issue (to the physical condition of the asset).

Essentially, nuclear plants can't be privately run. In addition, governments need to ensure the plants are maintained by a scientific/engineering body who has a significant interest in keeping them safe. Politicians will have to accept that funding and directives of nuclear power generation is an apolitical issue, and can't sustain any financial or regulatory burden that would get in the way of operational safety.

It's certainly possible to meet these conditions, and to do so in a manner that is safe, financially sound and in a manner that minimises its impact on the environment. When you allow multinationals like GDF Suez, or have partially privatised businesses like TEPCO, you end up with people who care more about a return then the operating safety of an asset. It cultivates a corporate culture that encourage middle managers to ignore and put off minor repairs to save a couple of bucks, only to have it lead to a catastrophic failure a few years down the line.

The USN having an interest in an operational navy and the service-people having an interest in the power plant not disabling the ship or killing them. If commercial power generation was kept to a similar standard, I doubt many people will have a problem with it.

With western governments having a hard-on for selling off/privatising government assets, and the with governments looking to cut science/research budgets as a financial quick-fix, I hold little faith in a government making a significant financial and ideological commitment to nuclear power.

Unfortunately government's haven't been interested in big public works projects for a quite a long time. We couldn't even replace Australia's copper phone network, without the opposition party getting in charge and loving things up. And the new optic fibre network even had a long term business plan to become profitable and was set up with the idea that it could be privatised.

It's far easier (from a practical perspective) to coax a government to supplement and support renewable projects. It's got everything: privatisation, hand outs to friends/entrenched interests, hi-tech manufacturing, environmentalism and making the world a better place 'for our children'. The side effect is that nuclear and other low carbon technologies will need to be investigated if it becomes too challenging to completely replace fossil fuels.

Office Thug
Jan 17, 2008

Luke Cage just shut you down!

The Insect Court posted:

Mindless group-think combined with lolbertarian narcissism and techno-utopianism. Leads to a lot of "nuclear power is the future, I should know because I just got promoted to assistant manager down at the Geek Squad, plus look at my reddit karma from /r/thoriummakesyourdickbigger"-style Dunning-Kruger. Not to mention the usual conspiracy theory/echo chamber nuttiness about how those who hold different opinions are not just wrong but evil. See, for example, the ranting about those STUPID NAZIS at the UCS who want to KILL YOUR CHILDREN RIGHT NOW because their position is "focus nuclear development on improving existing reactor technologies".

I think you're the only person thinking along those lines. Everyone else seems to just want cheaper electricity that isn't loving up the environment.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

hobbesmaster posted:

Burning straw men is carbon neutral so it's a good idea! You see since all that carbon is already in the carbon cycle the CO2 doesn't count!

Well in theory biomass is not terrible, and since it works like a normal powerplant but with biomass it can even provide base load better than most other renewables. Then you run into the brick wall of reality. Biogasanlagen require land use that made even Germany blush as the entire countryside started turning into a giant corn field till we hit the emergency brakes: wind in explicitly unprofitable and not-windy areas is still subsidised, but biomass plants that are supposed to run on maize aren't anymore, and the biogas industry complains that it's really hard to build a cost-effective Biogasanlage running on different kinds of waste. Did I mention those corn fields were often used to fulfill quotas required for subsidy (you only get them if you have a certain area of fields to dump slurry from animals on) and since nobody is supposed to eat them anyway you just dump stuff in the cheapest dirtiest way possible. Eating biogas corn is fun, especially if you see other people do it and get the diarrhea. In addition, one of the main causes of Central European habitat loss is nitrogen deposition via air from spraying slurry and from intensive animal farming, so we actually need to implement the Dutch model of intensive farming where slurry is dripped instead of sprayed and animal farming is required to filter exhaust air (that is actually a thing).

silence_kit
Jul 14, 2011

by the sex ghost

You don't know what you are talking about. 90% of all solar cells are silicon cells and it doesn't look like that is going to change. Your list of elements in various solar cells that you Googled frantically to back up your bogus point that solar cells require rare elements and/or heavy metals is irrelevant. I think that you are more interested in bashing environmentalists than bothering to understand different energy generation technologies.

silence_kit fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Jun 18, 2014

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

silence_kit posted:

You don't know what you are talking about. 90% of all solar cells are silicon cells and it doesn't look like that is going to change. Your list of elements in various solar cells that you Googled frantically to back up your bogus point that solar cells require rare elements and/or heavy metals is irrelevant. I think that you are more interested in bashing environmentalists than bothering to understand different energy generation technologies.

Are you aware that silicon solar cells aren't just a big panels of silicon that magically come into existence? The manufacturing of silicon cells results in the production byproducts, including extremely toxic silicon tetrachloride. Silicon cell production also produces sulfur hexafluoride, a greenhouse gas that The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change estimates has an effect that is 25000 times greater than CO2 per molecule. Many silicon cells also still have heavy elements like lead in them, simply because that's a result of the manufacturing process.

I mean if you're going to accuse the thread of ignoring all of the downsides of nuclear (even if the thread hasn't been doing that), then why are you allowed to ignore the downsides of photovoltaics? I love solar power, but I'm not going to pretend that it's a boundless source of cheap green energy when it's not.

The reality is that electricity production loving sucks and all that we can do is minimize its impact on the environment as much as possible. As such, we should be using a mix of wind, solar, and nuclear power. 100% solar is an impossible pipe dream and every pro-solar advocate with a science degree knows that. Informed environmentalists accept that nuclear power is an extremely green energy source despite its downsides and that no energy source is perfect, unless it's a power plant that runs on the hopes and dreams of the nuclear fusion crowd.

tl;dr we need nuclear power right loving now stop bitching about nuclear power unless you want to continue choking on coal smoke, for gently caress's sake

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

silence_kit posted:

You don't know what you are talking about. 90% of all solar cells are silicon cells and it doesn't look like that is going to change. Your list of elements in various solar cells that you Googled frantically to back up your bogus point that solar cells require rare elements and/or heavy metals is irrelevant. I think that you are more interested in bashing environmentalists than bothering to understand different energy generation technologies.

Look at how hard environmentalist publications are insisting that silicon cells don't cause pollution. Oh wait they don't, though maybe I should've said "heavy metals and other pollutants" instead of just "heavy metals".
Lead is still a problem (though we're starting to do something about it), apparently there are people worried about silver as well, and SiCl4 is all sorts of fun if dumped into the environment. Silicon solar panels get rather expensive if you dispose of waste properly, especially the SiCl4, but luckily there is a cheap dumping ground called China:china:.

e:

QuarkJets posted:

unless it's a power plant that runs on the hopes and dreams of the nuclear fusion crowd.

On that note...

That poo poo is expensive, fusion scientists are goddamn miracle workers for achieving anything at all.
Triple fusion funding because fusion would be a nice centralised power source which doesn't cover the country in crap and won't run out till the sun itself runs out and becomes a red giant.
Might come in handy once we've fed all existing nuclear waste into breeders to get rid of it.

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Jun 18, 2014

Tasmantor
Aug 13, 2007
Horrid abomination

blowfish posted:

Well obviously that's because THE MIGHTY ATOM is superior :agesilaus:If that is right (and this thread has me pretty well convinced) then it will sell its self

For hydro, (please don't make ecologists cry)

Wind is... awkward... and again, please don't make ecologists cry. Offshore wind may be less problematic, but it's still not going to be really worth it I'd expect. you expect that but rather than encouraging discussion about it you'll just hand wave it off and cry about how people can't see all that is nuclear?

Wave power is neat, but you need to cover ridiculous stretches of coast with power stations. Please don't make ecologists cry (again, again).
hered to comment seriously on PV when solar thermal exists. 3 times you ask us to think of the poor poor ecologists, are you claiming that none have any issues with nuclear?

Also most of the above (except maybe hydro) will be more expensive than nuclear on an actual MW electricity generation capacity even in the current crappy political environment, so a good helping of nuke in the powergrid makes sense I'd say. Supplement with solar thermal and geothermal as appropriate, and hydro if it's really convenient like in Norway.

A good post and the sort of thing this thread should see. I would be most interested in why a new kind of distribution grid or system is infeasible. Italics are snarky nit picks but thank you for the post.

Taerkar posted:

Why don't you just come right out and demand that we teach the controversy?

Nuclear does have it's problems, but a lot of them are political and social constructs, not natural ones. Fuel supply isn't really an issue. We have X reserves now, but like all other sources of energy that's at current prices. As those get depleted others can become available at higher costs of extraction. Sure there's an end-game, but it's stupidly far off.

This is exactly what I mean. Nuclears down falls are social/political and therefore not problems. Why can't you see that public opposition is a major problem. Good news everyone it's not impossible to overcome! Sadly just shouting at people about how enlightened you are and how they are just scum wallowing in the filth of their ignorance doesn't work.

Office Thug posted:

I think you're the only person thinking along those lines. Everyone else seems to just want cheaper electricity that isn't loving up the environment.

Unless it's not nuclear power because then it just has all these issues, oh god to many to even consider it just go nuclear. :worship: NUCLEAR

computer parts posted:

Much in the same way as the consensus to "should you raise minimum wage" kills conversation.

:thumbsup: I couldn't agree more, the prevailing gently caress the poors and working class BS that the right use to shout down all conversation is just like this threads dogged devotion to nuclear.

QuarkJets posted:

I mean if you're going to accuse the thread of ignoring all of the downsides of nuclear (even if the thread hasn't been doing that)

I am, not him but GG on the bashing of a solar proponent!

Baronjutter posted:

Do you have any actual solid points to bring to the table? Are you saying the pro-nuclear people in this thread are using bad science or bad numbers, or people pointing out severe flaws in solar or wind are missing some important facts? Where are people not being open and honest? Perhaps an open an honest discussion of energy generation actually leads to a conclusion, based on the current evidence. I think everyone in this thread will readily discuss any new information or ideas brought to the table.

Sorry mate do you need bullet points?
  • Other people got what I meant
  • You didn't
  • You're a fuckhead

Thanks for demonstrating my point though dudes.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
So you poo poo on the discussion because it's not the one you want to have about... well I don't know what because instead of trying to discuss it you just came to poo poo on the thread.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Solkanar512 posted:

You claim that nuclear power has and will continue to have a place in zero carbon energy generation, but why have so many major environmentalist groups not echoed your position?

I'm still waiting for an answer on this. What do major environmentalists groups expect us to do for baseload power generation that doesn't contribute to our carbon problem?

Bip Roberts
Mar 29, 2005

Solkanar512 posted:

I'm still waiting for an answer on this. What do major environmentalists groups expect us to do for baseload power generation that doesn't contribute to our carbon problem?

Nothing's more environmentally friendly than hydroelectric power.

Taerkar
Dec 7, 2002

kind of into it, really

Tasmantor posted:

This is exactly what I mean. Nuclears down falls are social/political and therefore not problems. Why can't you see that public opposition is a major problem. Good news everyone it's not impossible to overcome! Sadly just shouting at people about how enlightened you are and how they are just scum wallowing in the filth of their ignorance doesn't work.

Do you seriously not understand the rather significant difference between social/political problems and problems that involve physics?

Coal cannot be 'clean', this is a basic fact concerning what's being burned. We can capture most of the pollution from burning coal for power, but we still need to do something with it and there are no real good options.
Hydroelectric in the form of dams is pretty much maxed out. There aren't many good options left. For wind and solar the problem is that the places best suited for those types of generation are either where people like to live (NIMBY!) or nowhere near where people like to live which means that transmission becomes an issue. Oh and both have very poor energy density, requiring large sections of land that again is not likely going to be near large population centers.

To further complicate this is that as gasoline prices continue to rise you're likely to see those large population centers get even larger.

Nuclear power in its current state is pretty phenomenally safe and can generate lots of power in a relatively small footprint. There are means by which we can even reduce the amount of radioactive waste that has to be dealt with, but that's legally impossible right now thanks to a ban on breeder reactors in the US.

Though it may not seem like it right now social and political hurdles can be overcome. The public memory of nuclear events of the past will fade and, more importantly, the problems of the future will require people to accept things that they wouldn't otherwise. To many Americans, their understanding of how nuclear power works is based upon The Simpsons.

Taerkar fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Jun 18, 2014

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Kalman
Jan 17, 2010

Bip Roberts posted:

Nothing's more environmentally friendly than hydroelectric power.

Minus the tremendous ecosystem destruction that the reservoirs generally inflict, of course, and that's when you already have a favorable river to work with.

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