4 ms·

It's at least a few orders of magnitude away from ever plausibly getting there. For all intents and purposes, such a concern is imaginary. And even then, one d

It's at least a few orders of magnitude away from ever plausibly getting there. For all intents and purposes, such a concern is imaginary. And even then, one doesn't preclude the other. Retrofitting power distribution to have less energy loss, buildings with better insulation, more efficient logistics networks for food delivery, these are green new deal issues. None of that is anti-nuclear - they simply aren't related. By "sucks up all the resources" you'd have to have all humans efforting to do things like this that nothing can be allocated to anything else. That is simply not how reality works.

pdonis 6y ago
> By "sucks up all the resources" you'd have to have all humans efforting to do things like this that nothing can be allocated to anything else. Nonsense. Please apply some intelligence and common sense. We're not talking about shutting down all other activities and only doing Green New Deal stuff. We're talking about the limited amount of resources that can be redirected by various choices of government policy. Given the magnitude of the resources that would be required for the grandiose plans for renewables touted in the Green New Deal, there wouldn't be anything left over for nuclear.
- kristopolous 6y ago
  How so? Nuclear requires certain types of expertise and I'd hope, certain certifications for construction. Also, historically, they've each been multi-year ventures. These are likely different humans and different companies than people doing urban gardening projects and rooftop solar. I honestly don't see the conflict here. I don't know too much about nuclear construction and maintenance but I'd imagine it takes years of specialized training and experience to be competent. If that's true, I can't imagine someone sliding from say, retrofitting insulation to older apartment buildings to nuclear in any reasonable time. I think we have to conclude they're as different as any other sophisticated skills; you're still starting at zero if you want to switch. The GNDs problem has been the same since Jill Stein was talking about it in 2012 - it's too grandiose for a society and time that has rejected grand visions. We would need to fix our systemic cultural inability to be able to subscribe to a collective imaginary before a GND is broadly entertained. However, you crack and divide GND as separate goals, such as increasing the usefulness and efficiency of mass urban transit, most people are on board. And each of these concrete goals doesn't preclude Exelon and GE from building nuclear power plants. Once you reframe the GND as simply a basketcase of low hanging fruit of city and neighborhood level projects, then we get into nuclear's real issue in this conversation - It is the biggest project of the bunch. Ignoring possible futures and going with historical pasts, nuclear plants are what are called "megaprojects" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaproject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaproject) and that's their main Achilles heel for our times. Americans at least, have stopped believing in them. They think "big = broken disaster". Some american may even feel obligated to respond to this, "But it's true" and then my point will be made. The GND proponents could finally understand marketing and branding and successfully reposition their project to our collective appetites as a collection of small bite-sized community projects but nuclear cannot do this.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > These are likely different humans and different companies than people doing urban gardening projects and rooftop solar. Humans can decide to enter different fields; more can choose to enter one field and fewer can choose to enter another. New companies can be started and old ones can go out of business. Resources are fungible; there isn't a fixed pool of resources that are suitable for nuclear but not for renewables, or the reverse. What determines where those resources get allocated are economic incentives. If the government puts its thumb on the scale and gives lots of incentives for renewables and lots of disincentives for nuclear--which is exactly what the US government has been doing for decades, and what the Green New Deal would mean doing even more of--then resources will be available for renewables but not for nuclear.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > The GND proponents could finally understand marketing and branding and successfully reposition their project to our collective appetites as a collection of small bite-sized community projects but nuclear cannot do this. The GND proponents aren't even talking about specifically how individual GND projects would be executed; they aren't talking about whether it would be a collection of small bite-sized projects or a few large ones. What they're talking about is the government putting its thumb on the scale even more in favor of renewables. And that means even more incentive to do those projects, and less incentive to do others. That's where the conflict is.
    - kristopolous 6y ago
      I've been a proponent of it for 8 years and no, that's inaccurate. Instead, many advocate for oil, gas, and nuclear to no longer get tax subsidies, government insured loans, preferential treatment with land use, or be able to freely externalize on to the community the damage and debris their products leave behind. These companies also shouldn't have a Right to profit guaranteed by international trade treaties or be able to sue countries in tribunals when the countries decide against their wishes. Instead, oil gas and nuclear need to stand on their own two feet, take full fiscal responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their products and fund it not from government handouts but from the prices paid for their product. They should also get no preferential treatment and legal rights to their business interests. Communities should have a right to say no without being sued in international courts. It's the exact opposite. Take the thumb off the scale, include All the costs, remove all the special privileges and then let the market decide.

pdonis 6y ago

> By "sucks up all the resources" you'd have to have all humans efforting to do things like this that nothing can be allocated to anything else. Nonsense. Please apply some intelligence and common sense. We're not talking about shutting down all other activities and only doing Green New Deal stuff. We're talking about the limited amount of resources that can be redirected by various choices of government policy. Given the magnitude of the resources that would be required for the grandiose plans for renewables touted in the Green New Deal, there wouldn't be anything left over for nuclear.

kristopolous 6y ago
How so? Nuclear requires certain types of expertise and I'd hope, certain certifications for construction. Also, historically, they've each been multi-year ventures. These are likely different humans and different companies than people doing urban gardening projects and rooftop solar. I honestly don't see the conflict here. I don't know too much about nuclear construction and maintenance but I'd imagine it takes years of specialized training and experience to be competent. If that's true, I can't imagine someone sliding from say, retrofitting insulation to older apartment buildings to nuclear in any reasonable time. I think we have to conclude they're as different as any other sophisticated skills; you're still starting at zero if you want to switch. The GNDs problem has been the same since Jill Stein was talking about it in 2012 - it's too grandiose for a society and time that has rejected grand visions. We would need to fix our systemic cultural inability to be able to subscribe to a collective imaginary before a GND is broadly entertained. However, you crack and divide GND as separate goals, such as increasing the usefulness and efficiency of mass urban transit, most people are on board. And each of these concrete goals doesn't preclude Exelon and GE from building nuclear power plants. Once you reframe the GND as simply a basketcase of low hanging fruit of city and neighborhood level projects, then we get into nuclear's real issue in this conversation - It is the biggest project of the bunch. Ignoring possible futures and going with historical pasts, nuclear plants are what are called "megaprojects" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaproject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaproject) and that's their main Achilles heel for our times. Americans at least, have stopped believing in them. They think "big = broken disaster". Some american may even feel obligated to respond to this, "But it's true" and then my point will be made. The GND proponents could finally understand marketing and branding and successfully reposition their project to our collective appetites as a collection of small bite-sized community projects but nuclear cannot do this.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > These are likely different humans and different companies than people doing urban gardening projects and rooftop solar. Humans can decide to enter different fields; more can choose to enter one field and fewer can choose to enter another. New companies can be started and old ones can go out of business. Resources are fungible; there isn't a fixed pool of resources that are suitable for nuclear but not for renewables, or the reverse. What determines where those resources get allocated are economic incentives. If the government puts its thumb on the scale and gives lots of incentives for renewables and lots of disincentives for nuclear--which is exactly what the US government has been doing for decades, and what the Green New Deal would mean doing even more of--then resources will be available for renewables but not for nuclear.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > The GND proponents could finally understand marketing and branding and successfully reposition their project to our collective appetites as a collection of small bite-sized community projects but nuclear cannot do this. The GND proponents aren't even talking about specifically how individual GND projects would be executed; they aren't talking about whether it would be a collection of small bite-sized projects or a few large ones. What they're talking about is the government putting its thumb on the scale even more in favor of renewables. And that means even more incentive to do those projects, and less incentive to do others. That's where the conflict is.
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    I've been a proponent of it for 8 years and no, that's inaccurate. Instead, many advocate for oil, gas, and nuclear to no longer get tax subsidies, government insured loans, preferential treatment with land use, or be able to freely externalize on to the community the damage and debris their products leave behind. These companies also shouldn't have a Right to profit guaranteed by international trade treaties or be able to sue countries in tribunals when the countries decide against their wishes. Instead, oil gas and nuclear need to stand on their own two feet, take full fiscal responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their products and fund it not from government handouts but from the prices paid for their product. They should also get no preferential treatment and legal rights to their business interests. Communities should have a right to say no without being sued in international courts. It's the exact opposite. Take the thumb off the scale, include All the costs, remove all the special privileges and then let the market decide.