5 ms·

You’re right. There will be downsides, but your snide remark at “liberals” was uncalled for. Not every person has the same beliefs. Limping every left leaning p

You’re right. There will be downsides, but your snide remark at “liberals” was uncalled for. Not every person has the same beliefs. Limping every left leaning person into a “liberals” category is demeaning.

Ericson2314 7y ago
I dunno the New Left's participation in anti-nuclear politics will hopefully be remembered as a horrible and irresponsible mistake. There are tons of other bad things born of politics of course, but most of those stem from the right :P.
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  You may wish to look into the economic case against nuclear since it's been dire for a few years now. It's good in comparison with coal (if you include externalities) but solar and wind have undercut it today and are forecast to keep getting cheaper. It's getting to the point that just the steam turbine part of the nuclear plant is more expensive than solar/wind/battery. The fact this is such a powerfully held opinion I'd put down to highly effective anti-renewable propaganda having a pernicious effect. Most people seem more anti-renewable than pro-nuclear, probably from absorbing fossil fuel funded propaganda. In fact I spoke to a Green Party member the other day who thought Tesla batteries only lasted 5 years before needing replaced. It's amazing how well propaganda works if you just repeat stuff enough.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    Speaking of propaganda, I’d love to see citations on solar and battery being cheaper than just the turbine of a nuclear plant. This seems so hyperbolic as to have gone well into the realm of silliness, but I’d love to learn I’m wrong.
    - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
      You can see this fairly clearly in the Lazard LCOE report. It shows how much it costs to build each type of plant seperate from running and fuel costs. (Pages 11 and 12 specifically, note the low end coal has no carbon capture so that's more appropriate here for just steam cost, and why the cost of coal overlaps nuclear at the high end) https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 So low end, coal is about half the cost of nuclear to build, and gas turbines, which are simpler to build as they don't need the phase change (though some add secondary steam generation based on waste heat to enhance efficiency) are about a third of the cost. Now obviously, to run those coal and gas systems you need to burn fossil fuels which you need to pay for and they generate CO2 (both things that nuclear will win on and regain lost ground, as seen by the high end coal costs with 90% carbon capture included) but we're excluding all of those things entirely from this comparison to try to get the cost of merely building and running a steam turbine. You could say that not all the cost of the coal plant is the cost of the turbine, but it's unlikely to be much less than the cheaper end of gas plants, and we're not even counting maintenance and operation costs, which again are less for gas than for coal, so that gives us a lower bound. So in this slightly rigged comparison, gas comes out well ahead of steam generation alternatives, they simply cost more to build and run, even just the coal one with no fancy nuclear stuff. But renewables are matching that gas cost in many places today. Not only are they the same price to build, if you ignore the build cost of coal and gas entirely they're still cheaper than just the fuel and running costs in many cases. That's why many existing fossil fuel plants are being closed as uneconomic and replaced with newly built renewables even in places with flat energy demand. I think everyone kind of knows this implicitly. Is there anyone, even their biggest fan, who has ever claimed current nuclear can compete with gas on price if you ignore carbon costs? I've never seen it. Renewables plus batteries are wrecking the business case for building new gas plants and even rkeeping existing ones open. This will only become clearer as prices drop further. The dramatic price decline of renewables is projected to continue. Solar plus battery storage is predicted to be cheaper than just gas running costs by 2045. Which seems like a long way away in some senses, but if you build a gas plant today, you'll probably be relying on projections of still making money at that point, which makes gas less economic to build today. And if you start planning a fission plant, then you'll be planning for it to come online around that timeframe and run for 40 years. So unless that fission plant will cost less in total than just the cost of running a gas plant, there's no point starting to build it just on economics alone.
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    The economic case against nuclear is largely a byproduct of falling prices from fracking. That obviously can’t go on forever, and pulling back subsidies for fossil fuels would slowly help the economics align. Meanwhile nuclear plants are being built at a good pace throughout the world. A lot of the “anti renewable” people I know are some of the biggest proponents of nuclear. It’s strangely a popular position among America’s “right”.
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > The economic case against nuclear is largely a byproduct of falling prices from fracking. Fracking changed the economics of all energy production, not just nuclear. The economic case against nuclear is that it can potentially wipe out everyone in a 50 mile radius. The cost of a nuclear power plant is therefore proportional to the surrounding real estate value.
      - alentist 7y ago
        > The economic case against nuclear is that it can potentially wipe out everyone in a 50 mile radius. Your magnitudes are way, way off. Even the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, only had a blast radius of 22 miles. And we’re talking about a nuclear power plant here, not a nuclear bomb. Do you understand the difference in how they operate? Your comment is a perfect example of anti-nuclear hysteria based on embarrassing levels of ignorance.
    - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
      See my other comment for some thoughts on how much gas generated electricity would cost even if you set the price of gas at zero and ignored carbon pollution In the past fracked gas and unpriced carbon externalities have been the big factors for nuclear cost disadvantages, starting roughly about now (and already in some places) renewables will be doing to gas what gas has done to nuclear and take nuclear (and coal) out at the same time as a byproduct. A carbon tax would give a short term boost to existing nuclear over gas, which is one of the many reasons it's a good idea, but it also accelerates renewable adoption and price declines which already render new build nuclear ridiculous in economic terms.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > I dunno the New Left's participation in anti-nuclear politics will hopefully be remembered as a horrible and irresponsible mistake. I suspect that the minority of leftists that criticize nuclear energy will be remembered far less than those on the right that say global warming is a hoax.
- jdjdjjsjs 7y ago
  The only people supporting nuclear are also on the left. Nuclear's demise has nothing to do with the liberals blocking it (if they were so powerful their efforts against coal and fracking and oil pipelines may have been marginally effective) but rather the terrible economics of it vs solar/wind as well as natural gas.
  - CapricornNoble 7y ago
    >The only people supporting nuclear are also on the left. There's some on the right supporting it as well. Not everyone right-of-center is beholden to the coal/oil/gas lobbies. https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/12/conservative-case-nuclear-energy/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/12/conservative-case-nuc...
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Solar and wind beat out nuclear for generation without regard to intermittent production. If you counting the cost of actually replacing fossil fuels, that has to take into storage and retrieval costs which drastically increase cost well beyond nuclear. Well, to be more pedantic nobody really knows the cost because the technology to store energy effectively and at the required scale in a manner that is not geographically dependent does not yet exist.
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
> Limping every left leaning person into a “liberals” category is demeaning. Honest question: what's the difference between "liberal" and "left-leaning"? I thought they were basically two different terms for the same concept.
- mikestew 7y ago
  And now you’ve learned that labels are more often used to denigrate than inform. Just talk about the issues, you don’t need to stick people in a box first. I’d answer your honest question, I really would, but there’s not a “hardness scale” type measurement for liberality or conservatism. $DEITY, that would have to make things a little easier, wouldn’t it? “Don’t project on me like I’m an L7. Firmly a 5, thank you very much. Here’s the certificate.”
- jsilence 7y ago
  Even more confusing for non US people is the fact that the word stem of liberal, libre, literally means free. Freedom loving right wingers harking on liberals does not make any sense seen this way.
- jamil7 7y ago
  It's just labels. In my opinion "the left" is a collective term for a large spectrum of different political views, sometimes overlapping, often not. As a non-american "liberal" to me indicates a US centric type of neo centre-left political view.

Ericson2314 7y ago

I dunno the New Left's participation in anti-nuclear politics will hopefully be remembered as a horrible and irresponsible mistake. There are tons of other bad things born of politics of course, but most of those stem from the right :P.

ZeroGravitas 7y ago
You may wish to look into the economic case against nuclear since it's been dire for a few years now. It's good in comparison with coal (if you include externalities) but solar and wind have undercut it today and are forecast to keep getting cheaper. It's getting to the point that just the steam turbine part of the nuclear plant is more expensive than solar/wind/battery. The fact this is such a powerfully held opinion I'd put down to highly effective anti-renewable propaganda having a pernicious effect. Most people seem more anti-renewable than pro-nuclear, probably from absorbing fossil fuel funded propaganda. In fact I spoke to a Green Party member the other day who thought Tesla batteries only lasted 5 years before needing replaced. It's amazing how well propaganda works if you just repeat stuff enough.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  Speaking of propaganda, I’d love to see citations on solar and battery being cheaper than just the turbine of a nuclear plant. This seems so hyperbolic as to have gone well into the realm of silliness, but I’d love to learn I’m wrong.
  - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
    You can see this fairly clearly in the Lazard LCOE report. It shows how much it costs to build each type of plant seperate from running and fuel costs. (Pages 11 and 12 specifically, note the low end coal has no carbon capture so that's more appropriate here for just steam cost, and why the cost of coal overlaps nuclear at the high end) https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 So low end, coal is about half the cost of nuclear to build, and gas turbines, which are simpler to build as they don't need the phase change (though some add secondary steam generation based on waste heat to enhance efficiency) are about a third of the cost. Now obviously, to run those coal and gas systems you need to burn fossil fuels which you need to pay for and they generate CO2 (both things that nuclear will win on and regain lost ground, as seen by the high end coal costs with 90% carbon capture included) but we're excluding all of those things entirely from this comparison to try to get the cost of merely building and running a steam turbine. You could say that not all the cost of the coal plant is the cost of the turbine, but it's unlikely to be much less than the cheaper end of gas plants, and we're not even counting maintenance and operation costs, which again are less for gas than for coal, so that gives us a lower bound. So in this slightly rigged comparison, gas comes out well ahead of steam generation alternatives, they simply cost more to build and run, even just the coal one with no fancy nuclear stuff. But renewables are matching that gas cost in many places today. Not only are they the same price to build, if you ignore the build cost of coal and gas entirely they're still cheaper than just the fuel and running costs in many cases. That's why many existing fossil fuel plants are being closed as uneconomic and replaced with newly built renewables even in places with flat energy demand. I think everyone kind of knows this implicitly. Is there anyone, even their biggest fan, who has ever claimed current nuclear can compete with gas on price if you ignore carbon costs? I've never seen it. Renewables plus batteries are wrecking the business case for building new gas plants and even rkeeping existing ones open. This will only become clearer as prices drop further. The dramatic price decline of renewables is projected to continue. Solar plus battery storage is predicted to be cheaper than just gas running costs by 2045. Which seems like a long way away in some senses, but if you build a gas plant today, you'll probably be relying on projections of still making money at that point, which makes gas less economic to build today. And if you start planning a fission plant, then you'll be planning for it to come online around that timeframe and run for 40 years. So unless that fission plant will cost less in total than just the cost of running a gas plant, there's no point starting to build it just on economics alone.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  The economic case against nuclear is largely a byproduct of falling prices from fracking. That obviously can’t go on forever, and pulling back subsidies for fossil fuels would slowly help the economics align. Meanwhile nuclear plants are being built at a good pace throughout the world. A lot of the “anti renewable” people I know are some of the biggest proponents of nuclear. It’s strangely a popular position among America’s “right”.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > The economic case against nuclear is largely a byproduct of falling prices from fracking. Fracking changed the economics of all energy production, not just nuclear. The economic case against nuclear is that it can potentially wipe out everyone in a 50 mile radius. The cost of a nuclear power plant is therefore proportional to the surrounding real estate value.
    - alentist 7y ago
      > The economic case against nuclear is that it can potentially wipe out everyone in a 50 mile radius. Your magnitudes are way, way off. Even the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated, only had a blast radius of 22 miles. And we’re talking about a nuclear power plant here, not a nuclear bomb. Do you understand the difference in how they operate? Your comment is a perfect example of anti-nuclear hysteria based on embarrassing levels of ignorance.
  - ZeroGravitas 7y ago
    See my other comment for some thoughts on how much gas generated electricity would cost even if you set the price of gas at zero and ignored carbon pollution In the past fracked gas and unpriced carbon externalities have been the big factors for nuclear cost disadvantages, starting roughly about now (and already in some places) renewables will be doing to gas what gas has done to nuclear and take nuclear (and coal) out at the same time as a byproduct. A carbon tax would give a short term boost to existing nuclear over gas, which is one of the many reasons it's a good idea, but it also accelerates renewable adoption and price declines which already render new build nuclear ridiculous in economic terms.
speedplane 7y ago
> I dunno the New Left's participation in anti-nuclear politics will hopefully be remembered as a horrible and irresponsible mistake. I suspect that the minority of leftists that criticize nuclear energy will be remembered far less than those on the right that say global warming is a hoax.
jdjdjjsjs 7y ago
The only people supporting nuclear are also on the left. Nuclear's demise has nothing to do with the liberals blocking it (if they were so powerful their efforts against coal and fracking and oil pipelines may have been marginally effective) but rather the terrible economics of it vs solar/wind as well as natural gas.
- CapricornNoble 7y ago
  >The only people supporting nuclear are also on the left. There's some on the right supporting it as well. Not everyone right-of-center is beholden to the coal/oil/gas lobbies. https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/12/conservative-case-nuclear-energy/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/12/conservative-case-nuc...
- manfredo 7y ago
  Solar and wind beat out nuclear for generation without regard to intermittent production. If you counting the cost of actually replacing fossil fuels, that has to take into storage and retrieval costs which drastically increase cost well beyond nuclear. Well, to be more pedantic nobody really knows the cost because the technology to store energy effectively and at the required scale in a manner that is not geographically dependent does not yet exist.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago

> Limping every left leaning person into a “liberals” category is demeaning. Honest question: what's the difference between "liberal" and "left-leaning"? I thought they were basically two different terms for the same concept.

mikestew 7y ago
And now you’ve learned that labels are more often used to denigrate than inform. Just talk about the issues, you don’t need to stick people in a box first. I’d answer your honest question, I really would, but there’s not a “hardness scale” type measurement for liberality or conservatism. $DEITY, that would have to make things a little easier, wouldn’t it? “Don’t project on me like I’m an L7. Firmly a 5, thank you very much. Here’s the certificate.”
jsilence 7y ago
Even more confusing for non US people is the fact that the word stem of liberal, libre, literally means free. Freedom loving right wingers harking on liberals does not make any sense seen this way.
jamil7 7y ago
It's just labels. In my opinion "the left" is a collective term for a large spectrum of different political views, sometimes overlapping, often not. As a non-american "liberal" to me indicates a US centric type of neo centre-left political view.