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> First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Am I crazy, or did the Green New Deal have as an explicit goal the decommissio

> First off, you can have both. Green new deal doesn't ban reactors or anything. Am I crazy, or did the Green New Deal have as an explicit goal the decommissioning of all nuclear plants? EDIT: Ah, apparently that was in the initial released plan, but they changed the language to technically leave the door open for nuclear, without supporting it (and with occasional statements expressing disfavor towards nuclear as a piece of the plan)

tertiary 6y ago
I don't think so, at least not according to Ocasio-Cortez [1]. It is a pretty new idea though and is probably in flux, so it may have been different in the past? [1] https://morningconsult.com/2019/05/06/ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal-leaves-door-open-nuclear/ https://morningconsult.com/2019/05/06/ocasio-cortez-green-ne...
- tl 6y ago
  AOC can claim any position she wants, but the Green New Deal says (page 7, lines 6-9 as linked in another post) says "meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources". That's a clear anti-nuclear stance.
  - iron0013 6y ago
    You don’t think that’s a desirable goal?
    - xupybd 6y ago
      It is desirable however impractical given currently available technology. We need significant developments in energy storage to make it work. We could have zero carbon now using nuclear with no new technologies.
      - skitout 6y ago
        Why impractical??? Whith a diversified mix, energy efficiency, a big market for demand response, thermal storage, and a bit of electrical storage, there is no problem with current technologies. Coming tech could decrease the cost and make it easier to implement. And nuclear is much much more expensive than most renewable now (https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/)
        xupybd 6y ago
        Yes we are getting there but some countries are at the point of diminishing returns with current renewables. For example, Germany has to pay it's neighbours to receive peak generation. Coming tech will improve that but we could get to carbon zero far quicker and cheaper with a mix of nuclear and renewables. One problem with nuclear is that safety concerns. However nuclear has caused less death than coal generation. It does require a huge capital investment but it pays for itself over the long run. Waste is an issue but it produces a tiny volume of waste compared to any other form of generation. We could get rid of all current coal and gas plants and have power when it's required with nuclear. Until we have a better storage option the true can't be said of any renewables (unless you are lucky enough to have abundant geothermal options). With wind and solar you have too much during peak supply and too little during peak demand. Even the article you linked states whole sale solar and batteries are not yet economically viable. If there is a viable thermal storage option, I'm wrong but I've not heard about it. I would love to be wrong if that is the case.
        andrewjl 6y ago
        > thermal storage, and a bit of electrical storage I'll acknowledge that renewable generation costs have been falling at an impressive rate. However you're understating the problem for storage. Besides cost, there are far more complex regulatory and political hurdles. Just read about the public response to "smart meters" when they were proposed a while back. We'll likely have price-competitive storage technology by the middle of the next decade, maybe even sooner, but it will take another two or three decades to deploy it thanks to the patchwork of regulatory complexity we're left over with from the 20th century.
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
    Following that logic, then Solar Panels are off the table. They don't last forever and their waste is not environmentally friendly. Mining the material to produce them also creates a large amount of greenhouse gasses.
    - HappyDreamer 6y ago
      > [solar panels] creates a large amount of greenhouse gasses. Sounds misleading to me. A quick websearch and I found that currently they seem to be 10 x better than oil and coal etc: > Making solar or photovoltaic cells requires potentially toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. It even produces greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that contribute to global warming. Still, the researchers found that if people switched from conventional fossil fuel-burning power plants to solar cells, air pollution would be cut by roughly 90 percent. Although manufacturing solar cells requires heavy metals, the researchers noted that coal and oil also contain heavy metals, which get released during combustion https://www.livescience.com/2324-solar-power-greenhouse-emissions-measured.html https://www.livescience.com/2324-solar-power-greenhouse-emis... > Mining the material to produce them ... I think everything is off the table then, also your laptop or tablet -- websearch for "minerals laptop environment" for example. It seems you don't like solar panels?
      - LinuxBender 6y ago
        It seems you don't like solar panels? I never said that. I'm saying that based on AOC's 100% plan, pretty much everything is off the table, meaning that the plan needs to be revised. I plan to have 30kw of solar panels in my next home and a large collection of LifePo4 batteries that also have a dependency on strip mining. I also plan to do some of my own mining (drilling, blasting) for zinc and silver.
        HappyDreamer 6y ago
        Sorry I misinterpreted. How interesting with mining zinc and silver -- is that possibly related to the solar panels you'll add? I never met anyone who mines zinc and silver LiFePO4 -- that's lithium iron phosphate batteries, then, zinc and silver makes me confused. One can use zinc and silver instead? 30 kw sounds nice -- I think my oven uses about 3 kw, and I guess then that 30 kw is more than enough for your whole house :-) which I suppose is the idea, obviously. What do your neighbors think about your plans to mine zink and silver? Or maybe your nearest neighbors are far away? (Or maybe you'll drill & blast far away from where you and any neighbors live?)
- m0zg 6y ago
  Is this a revision with or without cow farts? It cracks me up when people take suggestions of a _bartender_ on this topic seriously.
  - dagmx 6y ago
    She is a Congress woman with a degree in economics. Whether or not she was a bartender is neither a disqualifier for her current position, nor is it a source of shame. What are your credentials if any to have an opinion on this matter, if you think that being a past bartender disqualifies her position?
    - m0zg 6y ago
      I did not voice an "opinion on the matter" precisely because my credentials with respect to it are the same as her own: non-existent. An economics degree does not make one an expert on energy policy, just like a law degree or a software engineering degree doesn't make one a surgeon.
      - dagmx 6y ago
        You however voiced your opinion that her platform is meaningless based on a past profession rather than acknowledge the merits of her current profession, educational background or any external input she may have received to put forward this platform with many others. Why not address the merits or lack thereof of the platform instead of trying to tear her down? How is anyone of a lower socioeconomic demographic ever meant to make a difference if people like you simply dismiss them based on a job they had to hold to make ends meet? It's elitist
        m0zg 6y ago
        First off, I do generally regard non-expert opinions on complex subjects as ridiculous (see Gell-Mann amnesia on why that is). But AOC helped me in that by not reading her own proposal, and allowing "cow farts" to figure prominently in it. That just invites ridicule. As to why I did not address the merits: it's not a serious proposal, so there's really nothing to address as it presents no details for how to get from point A to point B, how much it will cost, how it will (or will not) help domestic industry, what the electricity will cost when all is said and done, how that will affect the standard of living, etc. It's a "hope" and, as they say in the military, hope is not a strategy. This is sort of like "addressing" a poem - a completely meaningless endeavor.
est31 6y ago
Well the currently deployed, old nuclear plants certainly aren't as safe as the new, unbuilt ones the nuclear proponents always like to showcase. Even if you decide towards using nuclear in the future, you should build new reactors from scratch using those new safer designs.
- wolfram74 6y ago
  There's that branch of minimalist environmentalism where their favorite nuclear reactor is whatever doesn't already exist. The instant it starts getting built, /somebody'll/ start protesting it.
  - est31 6y ago
    Of course there will always be a better and safer design. But what about replacing the 50 year old designs currently deployed now with recent ones?
    - xupybd 6y ago
      Can we afford to do that? We have finite resources. If prevention of a disastrous change in climate is your goal does it make sense to replace the older plants? Yes it would be safer to do so but would the cost be worth it?
    - Aeronwen 6y ago
      They angry mob will refuse to let you build the replacement, and demand the old one be torn down since you admitted it's so unsafe.
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    > The instant it starts getting built, /somebody'll/ start protesting it. Is normal when the hype does not correspond with the reality and the promises of behaving well and to be responsible are replaced by "hide under a rug and find a scapegoat" five seconds after having the green light. Citizens have the right to ask about how their taxes had been spent, specially when the construction costs increased exponentially, the whole structure is ruinous after 50 years and there are lots of new surprises in tiny characters in an appendix of the social contract that they signed, but never received. Nuclear plants can only make a limited amount of money in this lifetime but the cost seems almost unlimited.
adamsea 6y ago
It's a proposal; it can be negotiated and changed until it becomes law. The main purpose is: a) Help give future generations a reasonably livable and enjoyable planet. b) Help Americans by creating jobs.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  OK sure, but if you want words to mean something, you can't just define "green new deal" as "all the good things" instead of the current proposal.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Fair point.
- nickpp 6y ago
  You forgot its actual main purpose: Help politicians get elected.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Yeah but you can say that about anything any politician ever does. I mean you can also say all code written by developers for for-profit companies exists to create revenue. Both are true yet incomplete statements.
sanderjd 6y ago
A big problem I have with things like "the green new deal" is that they are buzzwords onto which many different policies can be mapped. I think to lots of people it implies no nuclear, and to some others it doesn't. Both are "right" because the buzzword has no implicit meaning.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  I'm not sure how that can be true, given that it's a written proposal[0]. Not many have read it, and certainly both opponents and proponents have made up things that are or are not in it, but it's not just a buzzword. https://docsend.com/view/8gxh826 https://docsend.com/view/8gxh826
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    A lot of the text describes the goals of, and route to, a plan. It is not, itself, actual policy.
  - sanderjd 6y ago
    Its existence as a buzzword predates that proposal, and thus inevitably the proposal is not the final word on how the term is defined.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

tertiary 6y ago

I don't think so, at least not according to Ocasio-Cortez [1]. It is a pretty new idea though and is probably in flux, so it may have been different in the past? [1] https://morningconsult.com/2019/05/06/ocasio-cortez-green-new-deal-leaves-door-open-nuclear/ https://morningconsult.com/2019/05/06/ocasio-cortez-green-ne...

tl 6y ago
AOC can claim any position she wants, but the Green New Deal says (page 7, lines 6-9 as linked in another post) says "meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources". That's a clear anti-nuclear stance.
- iron0013 6y ago
  You don’t think that’s a desirable goal?
  - xupybd 6y ago
    It is desirable however impractical given currently available technology. We need significant developments in energy storage to make it work. We could have zero carbon now using nuclear with no new technologies.
    - skitout 6y ago
      Why impractical??? Whith a diversified mix, energy efficiency, a big market for demand response, thermal storage, and a bit of electrical storage, there is no problem with current technologies. Coming tech could decrease the cost and make it easier to implement. And nuclear is much much more expensive than most renewable now (https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/)
      - xupybd 6y ago
        Yes we are getting there but some countries are at the point of diminishing returns with current renewables. For example, Germany has to pay it's neighbours to receive peak generation. Coming tech will improve that but we could get to carbon zero far quicker and cheaper with a mix of nuclear and renewables. One problem with nuclear is that safety concerns. However nuclear has caused less death than coal generation. It does require a huge capital investment but it pays for itself over the long run. Waste is an issue but it produces a tiny volume of waste compared to any other form of generation. We could get rid of all current coal and gas plants and have power when it's required with nuclear. Until we have a better storage option the true can't be said of any renewables (unless you are lucky enough to have abundant geothermal options). With wind and solar you have too much during peak supply and too little during peak demand. Even the article you linked states whole sale solar and batteries are not yet economically viable. If there is a viable thermal storage option, I'm wrong but I've not heard about it. I would love to be wrong if that is the case.
      - andrewjl 6y ago
        > thermal storage, and a bit of electrical storage I'll acknowledge that renewable generation costs have been falling at an impressive rate. However you're understating the problem for storage. Besides cost, there are far more complex regulatory and political hurdles. Just read about the public response to "smart meters" when they were proposed a while back. We'll likely have price-competitive storage technology by the middle of the next decade, maybe even sooner, but it will take another two or three decades to deploy it thanks to the patchwork of regulatory complexity we're left over with from the 20th century.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  Following that logic, then Solar Panels are off the table. They don't last forever and their waste is not environmentally friendly. Mining the material to produce them also creates a large amount of greenhouse gasses.
  - HappyDreamer 6y ago
    > [solar panels] creates a large amount of greenhouse gasses. Sounds misleading to me. A quick websearch and I found that currently they seem to be 10 x better than oil and coal etc: > Making solar or photovoltaic cells requires potentially toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. It even produces greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that contribute to global warming. Still, the researchers found that if people switched from conventional fossil fuel-burning power plants to solar cells, air pollution would be cut by roughly 90 percent. Although manufacturing solar cells requires heavy metals, the researchers noted that coal and oil also contain heavy metals, which get released during combustion https://www.livescience.com/2324-solar-power-greenhouse-emissions-measured.html https://www.livescience.com/2324-solar-power-greenhouse-emis... > Mining the material to produce them ... I think everything is off the table then, also your laptop or tablet -- websearch for "minerals laptop environment" for example. It seems you don't like solar panels?
    - LinuxBender 6y ago
      It seems you don't like solar panels? I never said that. I'm saying that based on AOC's 100% plan, pretty much everything is off the table, meaning that the plan needs to be revised. I plan to have 30kw of solar panels in my next home and a large collection of LifePo4 batteries that also have a dependency on strip mining. I also plan to do some of my own mining (drilling, blasting) for zinc and silver.
      - HappyDreamer 6y ago
        Sorry I misinterpreted. How interesting with mining zinc and silver -- is that possibly related to the solar panels you'll add? I never met anyone who mines zinc and silver LiFePO4 -- that's lithium iron phosphate batteries, then, zinc and silver makes me confused. One can use zinc and silver instead? 30 kw sounds nice -- I think my oven uses about 3 kw, and I guess then that 30 kw is more than enough for your whole house :-) which I suppose is the idea, obviously. What do your neighbors think about your plans to mine zink and silver? Or maybe your nearest neighbors are far away? (Or maybe you'll drill & blast far away from where you and any neighbors live?)
m0zg 6y ago
Is this a revision with or without cow farts? It cracks me up when people take suggestions of a _bartender_ on this topic seriously.
- dagmx 6y ago
  She is a Congress woman with a degree in economics. Whether or not she was a bartender is neither a disqualifier for her current position, nor is it a source of shame. What are your credentials if any to have an opinion on this matter, if you think that being a past bartender disqualifies her position?
  - m0zg 6y ago
    I did not voice an "opinion on the matter" precisely because my credentials with respect to it are the same as her own: non-existent. An economics degree does not make one an expert on energy policy, just like a law degree or a software engineering degree doesn't make one a surgeon.
    - dagmx 6y ago
      You however voiced your opinion that her platform is meaningless based on a past profession rather than acknowledge the merits of her current profession, educational background or any external input she may have received to put forward this platform with many others. Why not address the merits or lack thereof of the platform instead of trying to tear her down? How is anyone of a lower socioeconomic demographic ever meant to make a difference if people like you simply dismiss them based on a job they had to hold to make ends meet? It's elitist
      - m0zg 6y ago
        First off, I do generally regard non-expert opinions on complex subjects as ridiculous (see Gell-Mann amnesia on why that is). But AOC helped me in that by not reading her own proposal, and allowing "cow farts" to figure prominently in it. That just invites ridicule. As to why I did not address the merits: it's not a serious proposal, so there's really nothing to address as it presents no details for how to get from point A to point B, how much it will cost, how it will (or will not) help domestic industry, what the electricity will cost when all is said and done, how that will affect the standard of living, etc. It's a "hope" and, as they say in the military, hope is not a strategy. This is sort of like "addressing" a poem - a completely meaningless endeavor.

est31 6y ago

Well the currently deployed, old nuclear plants certainly aren't as safe as the new, unbuilt ones the nuclear proponents always like to showcase. Even if you decide towards using nuclear in the future, you should build new reactors from scratch using those new safer designs.

wolfram74 6y ago
There's that branch of minimalist environmentalism where their favorite nuclear reactor is whatever doesn't already exist. The instant it starts getting built, /somebody'll/ start protesting it.
- est31 6y ago
  Of course there will always be a better and safer design. But what about replacing the 50 year old designs currently deployed now with recent ones?
  - xupybd 6y ago
    Can we afford to do that? We have finite resources. If prevention of a disastrous change in climate is your goal does it make sense to replace the older plants? Yes it would be safer to do so but would the cost be worth it?
  - Aeronwen 6y ago
    They angry mob will refuse to let you build the replacement, and demand the old one be torn down since you admitted it's so unsafe.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  > The instant it starts getting built, /somebody'll/ start protesting it. Is normal when the hype does not correspond with the reality and the promises of behaving well and to be responsible are replaced by "hide under a rug and find a scapegoat" five seconds after having the green light. Citizens have the right to ask about how their taxes had been spent, specially when the construction costs increased exponentially, the whole structure is ruinous after 50 years and there are lots of new surprises in tiny characters in an appendix of the social contract that they signed, but never received. Nuclear plants can only make a limited amount of money in this lifetime but the cost seems almost unlimited.

adamsea 6y ago

It's a proposal; it can be negotiated and changed until it becomes law. The main purpose is: a) Help give future generations a reasonably livable and enjoyable planet. b) Help Americans by creating jobs.

wutbrodo 6y ago
OK sure, but if you want words to mean something, you can't just define "green new deal" as "all the good things" instead of the current proposal.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Fair point.
nickpp 6y ago
You forgot its actual main purpose: Help politicians get elected.
- adamsea 6y ago
  Yeah but you can say that about anything any politician ever does. I mean you can also say all code written by developers for for-profit companies exists to create revenue. Both are true yet incomplete statements.

sanderjd 6y ago

A big problem I have with things like "the green new deal" is that they are buzzwords onto which many different policies can be mapped. I think to lots of people it implies no nuclear, and to some others it doesn't. Both are "right" because the buzzword has no implicit meaning.

pwinnski 6y ago
I'm not sure how that can be true, given that it's a written proposal[0]. Not many have read it, and certainly both opponents and proponents have made up things that are or are not in it, but it's not just a buzzword. https://docsend.com/view/8gxh826 https://docsend.com/view/8gxh826
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  A lot of the text describes the goals of, and route to, a plan. It is not, itself, actual policy.
- sanderjd 6y ago
  Its existence as a buzzword predates that proposal, and thus inevitably the proposal is not the final word on how the term is defined.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]