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New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)
- keeganjw 7y agoNukes makes it sound like they want nuclear missiles but this is about nuclear energy...
- melling 7y agoIt might confuse an AI, but a human would immediately know because the word renewables is first.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 7y agoMaybe it's a regional way of saying "nuclear" but, given the highly negative context of actual nukes, I expected a fervently anti-nuclear article. It'd be like an article in support of euthanasia being titled: "This state wants both end of life care and murder".
- melling 7y agoNope. It’s commonly used. “No Nukes Is Bad News for Climate” https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-nukes-is-bad-news-for-climate-11568325259 https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-nukes-is-bad-news-for-climat... “How Old Nukes Can Help Green New Dealers” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-10/elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders-nuclear-energy-plans-clash https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-10/elizab... Any reasonable intelligence would have understood from the context. Would make a good test for anyone’s AI.
- makerofspoons 7y agoI've said many times that nuclear power needs better marketing. Drop nuclear from the name like the MRI manufacturers did. It's no longer a nuclear plant, it's a traveling wave plant, or a molten salt plant- more descriptive and also separates the concept in people's minds from a Simpsons-esque nuclear plant.
- keanebean86 7y ago"Krypton production facility"? The mascot could be a neon light.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoThose who forget the story of Superman's origin are doomed to repeat it.
- fearhugs 7y agoYes... is this an American phrasing? I (from UK) would definitely write this as "renewables and nuclear".
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoIt's not uncommon slang in the US to call nuclear power plants "nuke plants." Hell, cooking something in a microwave oven is often called "nuking it," and that's not even the same kind of radiation.
- KoftaBob 7y agoI've never heard an American refer to nuclear power as "nukes". This wording is pure clickbait.
- tomjakubowski 7y agoNuclear powered submarines are commonly called "nukes".
- tomschlick 7y agoNo. This is Vox phrasing to drum up controversy. They do this crap all the time.
- keeganjw 7y agoTo be fair, if you clicked through, it wasn't Vox's phrasing but the original poster's.
- tomschlick 7y agoMy bad. I did click through but didn't re-read the headline. Just assumed it was the same based on Vox's history with clickbait BS.
- keeganjw 7y agoThis isn't American phrasing just the original poster's bad title.
- dang 7y agoOk, we've put nuclear energy in the title above.
- payne92 7y agoUnpopular opinion (though getting less so): the politicization of nuclear energy in the 1960s and the resulting lack of investment & R&D advances may go down as one of the biggest blunders in human history. Even with some modest ongoing investments, we'd have designs that are FAR safer than systems currently in operation.
- eloff 7y agoPeople got scared (somewhat legitimately) and we regulated them to death. It became so risky and so expensive to invest in nuclear that nobody, not even the big companies with nuclear divisions like GE did it. People talk about failures of the market all the time, and there are many. This was one of the failures of regulation. I think we're starting to see a small revival here finally, but is it too late? Renewables are driving down the cost of electricity so any nuclear companies not only have to find a way to be profitable today, but 1, 2, 3 decades from now.
- ewzimm 7y agoI agree that it seems like a massive wasted opportunity, but the most compelling argument I've heard against nuclear power is that it creates a vulnerability. If a nuclear power plant in New York City had been successfully attacked 18 years ago, what would the damage have been? We may need to focus on the security of existing infrastructure before we begin to build the next generation of power.
- imiller 7y agoIn US anyway, my understanding is that most of our containment structures should be sufficient to survive a plane impact without loss of containment. [1] [1] https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/proceedings-abstract/PVP2003/1694X/289/291668 https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/proceedings-abstr...
- bscphil 7y agoYes. Rather famously, the US tested this with a jet smashed directly into a concrete wall, resulting in the video in this article about it. https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-reactor-test https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-react...
- bilbo0s 7y agoThis is from 2016. A lot of states have been giving carbon credits to nuclear plants for a long time. There are several where it makes good sense to implement subsidies of that nature. So this is not a terribly new idea, nor is it as controversial as the article attempts to make it out to be..
- bryanlarsen 7y ago2016. I wondered why there was no mention of the debacle that is Illinois.
- ptah 7y agocare to elaborate?
- bryanlarsen 7y agoSorry, it was Ohio: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20552675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20552675
- tomp 7y ago> renewables and nukes and? Nuclear power is just as "renewable" as wind, solar & hydro in every sense of the word.
- fdgdsagfsg 7y agoIt's not renewable in any sense of the word! Renewable doesn't mean "clean" (and there's an argument to be made that nuclear isn't even clean, but I digress). Renewable means an energy source that literally renews itself. To avoid breaking the second law of thermos that implies there is an energy source (Sun) that recharges the renewable energy source with energy that would otherwise be wasted, therefore, you cannot net consume the resource. In the case of wind and sunlight there is no net consumption of the resource because they'd otherwise be wasted (assuming you put solar over a parking lot and not over fertile land). Nuclear cannot be renewable because fissile elements don't renew themselves (well, not without a supernova). We can extend the usefulness of the fuel with advanced reactors, but eventually all nuclear fuels, be they fast, thermal, fission or fusion end up with the most stable isotope of Fe - the most stable isotope. In fact, fossil fuels are infinitely more renewable than nuclear fuels since eventually the biosphere dies, decays and some of material gets geologically captured to become fossil fuels (in geological timeframes). There are (at least) two energy sources that are definitely not renewable: - Nuclear - Tidal (when we extract energy from a tide, the moon looses potential energy)
- tomp 7y agoSun is powered by nuclear power.
- fdgdsagfsg 7y agoAnd it isn't renewable either.
- willis936 7y agoJohnCenaAreYouSureAboutThat.avi Renewable is a soft definition, however all things considered “renewable” are based off of solar, geothermal, or tidal power. Fission fuels are only generated as endothermic nuclear reactions in violent cosmic events, of which there are none on our schedule. How would we go about finding more fission material once we’ve burned it all up into stable isotopes? “Renewable” is best defined as “useable power that is isn’t non-renewable”. “Non-renewable” is easier to define, since it involves a very clear, short term, one way reaction. Also on fossil fuels: they stopped being generated millions of years ago, so, no, they are not renewable currently.
- cpwright 7y agoThis is old. Cuomo is forcing Entergy to close Indian Point 2 and 3 in 2020/2021, which were the only financially viable plants mentioned in the article. The governor's desire to prolong their relicensing process made it more cost effective for Entergy to just agree to close them in 4/5 years, which is a shame because nuclear plants are all about the sunk capital costs.
- peterkelly 7y agoCorrect title: Nuclear power and renewables don’t have to be enemies. New York just showed how (2016)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cletus 7y agoIt's weird to me how many advocates there are for nuclear power on HN. Years ago, I would've been one of them. Now? I don't think I can trust people with nuclear power. People aren't capable of having a sufficiently long term view. People make short term decisions that are bad in the long term all the time. You see accident after accident caused by people making short term decisions that have a low probability of failure but where failure has disproportionately bad consequences. Just look at unsafe and drunk driving. So the problems with fission power are: 1. We have no good way of disposing with the waste. This includes the waste produced in enriching Uranium (eg what to do with all the UrF6) as well as reactor waste. 2. As much as coal and other fossil fuels have negative health effects and probably cause deaths, there is only so much damage a single coal plant can do. A single nuclear plant on the other hand can make an area of thousands of miles uninhabitable for generations. 3. Storage and transportation of fissile material (ie reactor fuel) presents a bunch of environmental and security issues. Renewable (specifically solar and wind) really are the solution here.
- scohesc 7y agoWhy don't we build these reactors deep underground? Doesn't the United States use an old abandoned mine to store spent nuclear rods while they decay? Is it extremely cost prohibitive to dig down into existing abandoned mines (or even quarries)? and retrofit them with nuclear reactors? Even if something catastrophic happens, if it's geologically separated by thousands of tons of rocks/dirt/sediment and is away from a water table, it wouldn't be a problem, no?
- moftz 7y agoCooling can be a problem. Reactors usually have access to large amounts of water (cheap) to expel excess heat so you would need to pump the heat over a long distance to somewhere cool enough to dump the heat to. Or you would need to surround everything in TEGs to convert the excess heat (expensive).