5 ms·

The author also wrote "The Wretched Atom" and is clearly nuclear-phobic. Nuclear power is the only hope to stop climate change.

Ambolia 5y ago
But doesn't work so well if you have a malthusian agenda.
- mrunkel 5y ago
  I don't understand, can you elaborate?
  - legitster 5y ago
    Malthus wrote in the 1800s about how society was on the verge of collapse because we were all going to run out of resources. People who take a lot of stock in these types of predictions generally cannot see the value of economic growth and try to save the world by enforcing their own set of puritanical environmental restrictions.
  - korantu 5y ago
    Not the original comment author, but will try and offer a clarification: Malthus [1] was of opinion that humanity growth/wellbeing is bound to be curbed by wars/famines due to limits of resources. He was mostly correct up until industrial revolution. There are, though, people who still subscribe to Malthus idea of impending doom. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Is this some kind of “the wealthy are going to leave the masses to starve” idea?
  - Ambolia 5y ago
    Well, that sounds a bit extreme. I just see generalized policies of degrowth and basically destruction of the middle-class (whatever that means) everywhere in the western world: - Local lockdowns rather than closing borders in time for the virus - Increased tolerance of petty crime to make the cities as inhabitable as possible - Very incompetent energy policies that will make energy skyrocket in price - Policies and incentives making it harder and harder to be able to afford a car. - Deindustrialization (that's been going on for a while) and no effort to reverse it. - Basically no research or very bad research on basic health improvement treatments that don't involve medication. And small things like that adding up one by one. Would be not so strange if different countries were failing in different ways, but seems strange to see so many countries consistently "failing" in the same way.
fsflover 5y ago
Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464
nicolas_t 5y ago
One of the most frustrating thing is that whenever I talk to people who claim to be environmentalist, they are deeply against nuclear power and don't want to face the facts that Germany's decision to quit nuclear was not a net positive for the environment and instead had a negative impact by keeping Coal factories open longer than they should have been. It's important to finance renewables research and there's a bright future for them but, right now, nuclear is the best hope for mostly clean energy with a lot less negative environment impact than Coal and Fossil Fuel.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Nuclear does take a long time to design, approve, and build. I would like to see somebody do a financial analysis comparing the cost and power generated timeline for spending the same amount of money on solar, wind, and nuclear. It doesn’t seem that research is really an impediment to majority renewable energy at this point. I am pro-nuclear, but would like to actually see how an equal amount of resources would lead to what power and when to give arguments like this teeth or debunk them.
  - pm90 5y ago
    Cost shouldn’t be the only dimension to evaluate solutions to planet-wide problems. See https://youtu.be/KC7YD98HixM https://youtu.be/KC7YD98HixM. It does cost more to generate nuclear power but it’s also the only viable clean and “firm” (turn on and off based on demand) type of power generation available to us.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      Nuclear is definitely not very responsive to demand, if you shutdown you have to wait days before you can restart, and it has a slow response to output levels. Demand will also follow supply, setting pricing to availability will (and has) significantly alter usage patterns. Also, having too much peak power and not enough baseline power isn't a today problem and won't be until solar/wind sources are at a much larger scale. Rolling industrial blackouts (or price spikes) in the middle of the night might become a thing, but still.. meh? Cost isn't the only dimension, but there is the question "how do we best utilize our available resources?" and we might be able to better find the best allocation if we had a nice comparison about the cost/reward of sinking those resources into wind, solar, or nuclear. We need all of them, but there is certainly a tradeoff between how much we put towards each.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I really don't understand the assault on nuclear power. It's literally the only proven clean energy solution for solving the base load problem, and it's not like we can only choose between nuclear and renewables--we can and should have a diverse energy portfolio. Not only is nuclear power clean, it's two orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels and on-par with wind and solar (it's considerably safer than rooftop solar, in fact). And that is including Fukushima and Chernobyl. Further, while nuclear is expensive, Small Modular Reactor designs are safer, smaller, simpler, and faster to build. We should be building them now if only to make sure we have the experience if we need to scale them up quickly. Yes, nuclear waste has to be dealt with, but there's very little of it and we already have to deal with it. Ignoring nuclear and praying for a breakthrough solution for the renewable base load problem is tremendously risky and there's virtually no upside.
- duped 5y ago
  To be fair, the number of people killed directly or indirectly from Chernobyl (as well as children born with birth defects, higher cancer rates regionally, etc) is hotly disputed and certainly higher than the "official" tally.
  - docflabby 5y ago
    The number of people killed just by coal power plants in Europe is around 20k a year, choosing to abandon nuclear without clean alternatives in place first was irresponsible.
    - duped 5y ago
      I totally agree, but it's disingenuous to compare estimated indirect deaths from coal plants to direct deaths of a nuclear accident that was covered up for decades with no good estimate of the indirect deaths and illness from exposure.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        > no good estimate of the indirect deaths and illness Don't we have Geiger counter that can measure the amount of radiation emanating from nuclear power plants, including Chernobyl?

Ambolia 5y ago

But doesn't work so well if you have a malthusian agenda.

mrunkel 5y ago
I don't understand, can you elaborate?
- legitster 5y ago
  Malthus wrote in the 1800s about how society was on the verge of collapse because we were all going to run out of resources. People who take a lot of stock in these types of predictions generally cannot see the value of economic growth and try to save the world by enforcing their own set of puritanical environmental restrictions.
- korantu 5y ago
  Not the original comment author, but will try and offer a clarification: Malthus [1] was of opinion that humanity growth/wellbeing is bound to be curbed by wars/famines due to limits of resources. He was mostly correct up until industrial revolution. There are, though, people who still subscribe to Malthus idea of impending doom. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
germinalphrase 5y ago
Is this some kind of “the wealthy are going to leave the masses to starve” idea?
- Ambolia 5y ago
  Well, that sounds a bit extreme. I just see generalized policies of degrowth and basically destruction of the middle-class (whatever that means) everywhere in the western world: - Local lockdowns rather than closing borders in time for the virus - Increased tolerance of petty crime to make the cities as inhabitable as possible - Very incompetent energy policies that will make energy skyrocket in price - Policies and incentives making it harder and harder to be able to afford a car. - Deindustrialization (that's been going on for a while) and no effort to reverse it. - Basically no research or very bad research on basic health improvement treatments that don't involve medication. And small things like that adding up one by one. Would be not so strange if different countries were failing in different ways, but seems strange to see so many countries consistently "failing" in the same way.

fsflover 5y ago

Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464

nicolas_t 5y ago

One of the most frustrating thing is that whenever I talk to people who claim to be environmentalist, they are deeply against nuclear power and don't want to face the facts that Germany's decision to quit nuclear was not a net positive for the environment and instead had a negative impact by keeping Coal factories open longer than they should have been. It's important to finance renewables research and there's a bright future for them but, right now, nuclear is the best hope for mostly clean energy with a lot less negative environment impact than Coal and Fossil Fuel.

colechristensen 5y ago
Nuclear does take a long time to design, approve, and build. I would like to see somebody do a financial analysis comparing the cost and power generated timeline for spending the same amount of money on solar, wind, and nuclear. It doesn’t seem that research is really an impediment to majority renewable energy at this point. I am pro-nuclear, but would like to actually see how an equal amount of resources would lead to what power and when to give arguments like this teeth or debunk them.
- pm90 5y ago
  Cost shouldn’t be the only dimension to evaluate solutions to planet-wide problems. See https://youtu.be/KC7YD98HixM https://youtu.be/KC7YD98HixM. It does cost more to generate nuclear power but it’s also the only viable clean and “firm” (turn on and off based on demand) type of power generation available to us.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Nuclear is definitely not very responsive to demand, if you shutdown you have to wait days before you can restart, and it has a slow response to output levels. Demand will also follow supply, setting pricing to availability will (and has) significantly alter usage patterns. Also, having too much peak power and not enough baseline power isn't a today problem and won't be until solar/wind sources are at a much larger scale. Rolling industrial blackouts (or price spikes) in the middle of the night might become a thing, but still.. meh? Cost isn't the only dimension, but there is the question "how do we best utilize our available resources?" and we might be able to better find the best allocation if we had a nice comparison about the cost/reward of sinking those resources into wind, solar, or nuclear. We need all of them, but there is certainly a tradeoff between how much we put towards each.

throwaway894345 5y ago

I really don't understand the assault on nuclear power. It's literally the only proven clean energy solution for solving the base load problem, and it's not like we can only choose between nuclear and renewables--we can and should have a diverse energy portfolio. Not only is nuclear power clean, it's two orders of magnitude safer than fossil fuels and on-par with wind and solar (it's considerably safer than rooftop solar, in fact). And that is including Fukushima and Chernobyl. Further, while nuclear is expensive, Small Modular Reactor designs are safer, smaller, simpler, and faster to build. We should be building them now if only to make sure we have the experience if we need to scale them up quickly. Yes, nuclear waste has to be dealt with, but there's very little of it and we already have to deal with it. Ignoring nuclear and praying for a breakthrough solution for the renewable base load problem is tremendously risky and there's virtually no upside.

duped 5y ago
To be fair, the number of people killed directly or indirectly from Chernobyl (as well as children born with birth defects, higher cancer rates regionally, etc) is hotly disputed and certainly higher than the "official" tally.
- docflabby 5y ago
  The number of people killed just by coal power plants in Europe is around 20k a year, choosing to abandon nuclear without clean alternatives in place first was irresponsible.
  - duped 5y ago
    I totally agree, but it's disingenuous to compare estimated indirect deaths from coal plants to direct deaths of a nuclear accident that was covered up for decades with no good estimate of the indirect deaths and illness from exposure.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      > no good estimate of the indirect deaths and illness Don't we have Geiger counter that can measure the amount of radiation emanating from nuclear power plants, including Chernobyl?