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Nit picking on one issue: Nuclear. I'm glad they at least listed it as a solution but I feel that there's way too much agenda in here that isn't based on the sc

Nit picking on one issue: Nuclear. I'm glad they at least listed it as a solution but I feel that there's way too much agenda in here that isn't based on the science. It has potential to avoid emissions, but there are many reasons for concern: deadly meltdowns, tritium releases, abandoned uranium mines, mine-tailings pollution, radioactive waste, illicit plutonium trafficking, and thefts of missile material, among them. [1] Nevermind: * that >60% of the carbon-free electricity in the USA comes from nukes right now, * that by displacing air pollution, nukes worldwide have saved 1.8 million lives and prevented 65 billion tonnes CO2-eq [2] * that nobody died or is expected to die from radiation at Fukushima * that uranium enrichment is by far the easiest way to illicitly traffic weapons materials (which can happen without any nuclear power) * that Hanford was a cold-war nuclear weapons facility that did not prioritize waste storage, and that it was totally unrelated to commercial power generation The capabilities of nuclear energy to thwart climate change are real and gigantic. Getting costs down would help, and the Koreans have been doing an amazing job at that. The French electrified their whole country with nukes in 10 years by standardizing designs and that's been wildly successful. This solution should have said something like: "If we can standardize a safe Gen III+ reactor and get costs down, nuclear can and will grow as our climate champion." [1] http://www.drawdown.org/solutions/energy/nuclear http://www.drawdown.org/solutions/energy/nuclear [2] http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197

spenrose 9y ago
"there's way too much agenda in here that isn't based on the science" 1) The concerns they list are the actual concerns of significant segments of the population. Such as e.g. an overwhelming majority of the German electorate. 2) I personally think that some of those concerns are overweighted. You apparently do as well. 3) Failing to weigh those concerns the way you and I do does not constitute "having an agenda not based on the science", key word "the". 4) They are evenly applying "the" science of GHG reduction to all solutions. It's not their job to follow a specific agenda on the debated science of side topics such as those you single out. Nuclear power activates identity framing for a lot of people. For some it is anti-, but for others it is pro-. The anti-nuclear people typically own the identity issue. The pro-nuclear people sometimes do, but sometimes want to claim a "these are the scientific facts with which it is irrational to agree" kind of super-identity.
- acidburnNSA 9y ago
  Good points. I guess "bias" is more of the word that I was looking for than "agenda". My concern is that they're parroting unproductive fears about nuclear energy that society has gone critical with without pointing out some key facts that are pivotal to fighting climate change, such as that nuclear reactors are gigawatt-scale, 24/7 reliable, carbon-free electricity generators that demonstrably have killed fewer people per kWh than almost anything else out there. But you're right that they're parroting what many people would parrot because that's how social memes work. I guess it's on me to expose more people to reasoning that convinces them that atomic energy is a good path in our fight against climate change.
ZeroGravitas 9y ago
I notice a contradiction in two of your points that happened to fall together: Apparently nuclear displacing other generation saves many lives, yet Fukushima, which shut down Japan's Nuclear didn't cost any lives. It seems like your trying to have it both ways.
- acidburnNSA 9y ago
  Aha! Excellent observation! However, I said that no one died or will die from radiation released at Fukushima, which I stand by. But people did die during the mandated evacuation (many people ironically evacuated to places with naturally higher radiation than they would have gotten had they stayed), and yes, people will die from increased air pollution that results from shutting down the nukes. So people died because they were afraid of radiation, not because of the radiation itself [1]. This is why I feel we need to push back against fear-driven outcry against nuclear and try to keep it based on things we can measure. To be fair, during Fukushima the policymakers didn't know how dangerous the radiation was going to be so calling the evacuation was tough. So building reactors with proper safety systems for their environment is also a total necessity moving forward. The high-water line in the area was known to be closer to 20m than the 10m seawall that they had built there. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/when-radiation-isnt-the-real-risk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/when-radiation-is...
rdsubhas 9y ago
Coal, gas, etc increased global warming - but we are talking about timescales of <100 years (sometimes <50) to reverse those changes with appropriate action. Nuclear is not like that, it takes thousands of years (plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24000 years) to undo or cleanup anything related to nuclear. When we started with coal/oil/gas/etc - we didn't know at that time about these side effects. Now the same could be said about nuclear as well. If radioactive material 10 times the size of chernobyl fallout [1] was released, would that mean the perpetual end of earth, possibly leading to a worse than climate-change kind of scenario? That's why countries like Germany have started shutting down nuclear power plants. Its like favoring a known evil rather than an unknown devil. Note: I'm neither a proponent or opponent of nuclear energy. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#National_and_international_spread_of_radioactive_substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#National_an...
- acidburnNSA 9y ago
  I think you're right that that's what people are concerned about. I'd mention that we have 17,000 reactor-years of commercial experience over the past 7 decades in nuclear. We understand the risks fairly well, though admittedly we are still learning. It is clear that nuclear reactors net save millions of lives over fossil-fuel alternatives. 10x Chernobyl fallout would be very bad but it would be nowhere near the global warming predictions we're seeing. Additionally, Chernobyl was a bad design without a containment running a risky experiment with safety systems turned off. The 4 reactors at Fukushima got hit with a huge earthquake and tsunami and no one died from their failure, and we know from models that no one will die from the radiation that was released. It's exceedingly unlikely that modern reactors would go Chernobyl, much less 10x Chernobyl. Germany has turned away from clean-air nuclear energy and replaced it with brown coal and more clean-air renewables but that's costing them a lot [1]. That's expensive fear, and only feasible for the richest of nations. Side note: Long half-life doesn't necessarily correlate with problems after an accident. It's actually the short half-life stuff that is biologically concentrated (Sr-90, I-131, Cs-137) that can cause the biggest issues. For instance, Uranium-238 has a 4.5 billion year half-life and it's not a radiological hazard (this just means the energy comes out really slowly). [1] http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/germany-renewable-clean-energy-solar/ http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/germany-renewable-clean-energy...

spenrose 9y ago

"there's way too much agenda in here that isn't based on the science" 1) The concerns they list are the actual concerns of significant segments of the population. Such as e.g. an overwhelming majority of the German electorate. 2) I personally think that some of those concerns are overweighted. You apparently do as well. 3) Failing to weigh those concerns the way you and I do does not constitute "having an agenda not based on the science", key word "the". 4) They are evenly applying "the" science of GHG reduction to all solutions. It's not their job to follow a specific agenda on the debated science of side topics such as those you single out. Nuclear power activates identity framing for a lot of people. For some it is anti-, but for others it is pro-. The anti-nuclear people typically own the identity issue. The pro-nuclear people sometimes do, but sometimes want to claim a "these are the scientific facts with which it is irrational to agree" kind of super-identity.

acidburnNSA 9y ago
Good points. I guess "bias" is more of the word that I was looking for than "agenda". My concern is that they're parroting unproductive fears about nuclear energy that society has gone critical with without pointing out some key facts that are pivotal to fighting climate change, such as that nuclear reactors are gigawatt-scale, 24/7 reliable, carbon-free electricity generators that demonstrably have killed fewer people per kWh than almost anything else out there. But you're right that they're parroting what many people would parrot because that's how social memes work. I guess it's on me to expose more people to reasoning that convinces them that atomic energy is a good path in our fight against climate change.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago

I notice a contradiction in two of your points that happened to fall together: Apparently nuclear displacing other generation saves many lives, yet Fukushima, which shut down Japan's Nuclear didn't cost any lives. It seems like your trying to have it both ways.

acidburnNSA 9y ago
Aha! Excellent observation! However, I said that no one died or will die from radiation released at Fukushima, which I stand by. But people did die during the mandated evacuation (many people ironically evacuated to places with naturally higher radiation than they would have gotten had they stayed), and yes, people will die from increased air pollution that results from shutting down the nukes. So people died because they were afraid of radiation, not because of the radiation itself [1]. This is why I feel we need to push back against fear-driven outcry against nuclear and try to keep it based on things we can measure. To be fair, during Fukushima the policymakers didn't know how dangerous the radiation was going to be so calling the evacuation was tough. So building reactors with proper safety systems for their environment is also a total necessity moving forward. The high-water line in the area was known to be closer to 20m than the 10m seawall that they had built there. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/when-radiation-isnt-the-real-risk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/when-radiation-is...

rdsubhas 9y ago

Coal, gas, etc increased global warming - but we are talking about timescales of <100 years (sometimes <50) to reverse those changes with appropriate action. Nuclear is not like that, it takes thousands of years (plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24000 years) to undo or cleanup anything related to nuclear. When we started with coal/oil/gas/etc - we didn't know at that time about these side effects. Now the same could be said about nuclear as well. If radioactive material 10 times the size of chernobyl fallout [1] was released, would that mean the perpetual end of earth, possibly leading to a worse than climate-change kind of scenario? That's why countries like Germany have started shutting down nuclear power plants. Its like favoring a known evil rather than an unknown devil. Note: I'm neither a proponent or opponent of nuclear energy. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#National_and_international_spread_of_radioactive_substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#National_an...

acidburnNSA 9y ago
I think you're right that that's what people are concerned about. I'd mention that we have 17,000 reactor-years of commercial experience over the past 7 decades in nuclear. We understand the risks fairly well, though admittedly we are still learning. It is clear that nuclear reactors net save millions of lives over fossil-fuel alternatives. 10x Chernobyl fallout would be very bad but it would be nowhere near the global warming predictions we're seeing. Additionally, Chernobyl was a bad design without a containment running a risky experiment with safety systems turned off. The 4 reactors at Fukushima got hit with a huge earthquake and tsunami and no one died from their failure, and we know from models that no one will die from the radiation that was released. It's exceedingly unlikely that modern reactors would go Chernobyl, much less 10x Chernobyl. Germany has turned away from clean-air nuclear energy and replaced it with brown coal and more clean-air renewables but that's costing them a lot [1]. That's expensive fear, and only feasible for the richest of nations. Side note: Long half-life doesn't necessarily correlate with problems after an accident. It's actually the short half-life stuff that is biologically concentrated (Sr-90, I-131, Cs-137) that can cause the biggest issues. For instance, Uranium-238 has a 4.5 billion year half-life and it's not a radiological hazard (this just means the energy comes out really slowly). [1] http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/germany-renewable-clean-energy-solar/ http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/germany-renewable-clean-energy...