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Imagine if the United States had gotten 80% of its electricity from nuclear over the past 4 decades. China might have adopted it instead of coal. We’d been ta
by melling 5y ago
Imagine if the United States had gotten 80% of its electricity from nuclear over the past 4 decades.
China might have adopted it instead of coal.
We’d been talking about the danger of climate change in 2150.
- Hokusai 5y agoOil Buddhists will have have allowed that. The dangers of greenhouse gases was already there, and it did not matter. It has caused wars and the rise of authoritarian governments, and it did not matter. When money is the main motivator for a country it's impossible to do what is good for the long term.
- smell-my-bacon 5y agoSo what truly matters to the Oil Buddhists?
- gumby 5y agoTo become one with the atmosphere?
- smell-my-bacon 5y agoMy carbon to your carbon, my gas to your gas...
- Hokusai 5y agoBusiness, but I'm also curious now.
- dotancohen 5y ago> We’d been talking about the danger of climate change in 2150. More importantly, people would be terrified of fossil fuel production. Spills, mining accidents, radioactive pollution (yes, coal puts out more radioactive pollution than does a nuclear power plant), particulate-related respiratory diseases, and so forth. To think that people are afraid of nuclear energy is just crazy, I cannot comprehend how nuclear is perceived dangerous yet fossil fuels are somehow not.
- i_am_proteus 5y ago>I cannot comprehend how nuclear is perceived dangerous yet fossil fuels are somehow not [0] [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
- jpalomaki 5y agoPeople are more afraid of clearly defined risks (local nuclear plant goes boom) than more abstract risks (slowly developing health issues due to air pollution). (Can’t find citation, this was likely mentioned in book Freakonomics) This is likely built into us through evolution. Natural selection has rewarded quick choices over analyzing and thinking probabilities.
- mattnewton 5y agoI think it has to do with how humans are wired; slow burning dangers don’t seem to be registered the same way that nuclear fallout and the dread of meltdowns as one big catastrophe are.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- agumonkey 5y agoTo me it's always about the lack of control. A nuclear plant failure, I'm faced with something I can do nothing about. Coal .. well unless our case of whole-plane-pollution .. you can mitigate. Same for cars vs planes. In a plane, I delegate my life to stats. Anything happens, I can do nothing about. My car.. I can always use slower, lighter roads, keep larger safety distance. Even if the odds of car crash are higher. (also if I were to drive alone in the midwest, my crash stats would probably be as high as planes.. density is a factor it seems)
- ericmay 5y agoI think it’s more of an illusion of control… you can control your car to some extent like choosing flights that might have better weather that day or something but ultimately nobody thinks they’ll be a statistic until they are. Plenty of people die choosing lower traffic roads too.
- xyzzyz 5y agoChina did adopt nuclear. They are building 15 nuclear power plants right now, more than anyone else in the world, and almost a third of all the plants under construction. It's just their needs grow very, very fast, so they make it up with coal.
- systemvoltage 5y agoMeanwhile Californians will tell us to manage power and power cuts. I can’t get behind this agenda. It’s infuriating to see the west considering itself done. It’s in the name “Developed”, past tense. No need to develop anymore. We’ve thrown in the towel, large swaths of people are against population growth and against progress.
- adventured 5y ago> large swaths of people are against population growth and against progress Population growth is largely irrelevant unless you're really facing an extinction path (which we're very far from). The standard of living that can be delivered for people is what matters. Modestly fewer people with increased standards of living is a very nice outcome for most nations. Some nations are drastically overpopulated in terms of density for their available space and resources (eg India, China). If you're in a more affluent context, having four or more children is not a blessing for most people. Raising two children well is a quite difficult and life-consuming task, even if one parent stays home full-time. It makes perfect sense that affluent populations would choose to reproduce at a lower rate. It's rational. That said it's certainly disheartening to see the lack of spirit of seeking progress that used to widely exist in the West. It's still there, faintly, diminished.
- systemvoltage 5y agoMost economists think that population decline is tightly coupled with the economy. It may be rational in individual sense, but as a society, it is pretty much a bad idea. I suggest further reading: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/03/27/the-economics-of-falling-populations https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/03/27/t... That said, overpopulation is also a problem. In a resource rich nation, it is never a problem.
- jlelse 5y agoBut nuclear meltdowns would have killed a lot of people and made a lot of land uninhabitable.
- beeboop 5y agoThere is no evidence for this and it's baseless speculation at best.
- jedimastert 5y agoMore than coal has? Honestly, I kinda doubt it.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y agoCoal burning literally releases more radiation into the environment than nuclear power would.
- dredmorbius 5y agoTrue, but utterly irrelevant. Quantities of radiation released by coal plants under normal operations are not a health concern. Coal has plenty of other health, and environmental, concerns. Quanities of radiation released by a coal plant are unlikely to vary much at all, no matter how critically mismanaged the plant might be. Quantities of radiation emitted by a badly-mismanaged, sabotaged, or attacked nuclear power plant, on the other hand, become a health concern for people across continents and beyond, as with Chernobyl and Fukushima. (Note that "concern" need not mean "realised risk", but given that one of the characteristics of nuclear incidents to date has been inaccurate or misleading information on precisely the levels of risk presented, prudence and caution strongly recommends presuming a worst case until otherwise conclusively demonstrated.)
- NaturalPhallacy 5y agoI was just pointing out that nuclear power plants don't pollute the planet with radiation. Coal plants do.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y agoAren't the biggest greenhouse gas polluters concrete manufacturing and container ships though?
- rsj_hn 5y agoWouldn't that be the people who buy products shipped from overseas and those who buy buildings made with concrete instead of wood and brick? That's the problem with an economy in which there is a circular flow of commodities.
- dehrmann 5y ago> people who buy products shipped from overseas Container shipping is pretty efficient. I found this quote: > A big ship will emit about 0.4 ounces of carbon dioxide to transport 2 tons of cargo 1 mile. That’s roughly half as much as a train, one-fifth as much as a truck and nearly a fiftieth of what an airplane would emit to accomplish the same task. For CO2 emissions, container shipping from Shenzhen to Long Beach by ship is about the same as Bloomington, IL to Long Beach by truck.
- rsj_hn 5y agoGood point! Just because there is a concentration of some activity in one part of the flow of commodities doesn't mean that the activity is inefficient.
- dehrmann 5y agoContainer shipping accounts for ~2.2% of CO2 emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shipping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shipp... You're probably thinking of other emissions. They burn heavy fuel oil, so they emit a lot of sulfur.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago>greenhouse gas