5 ms·

I would love to see them fund (and drastically cut back the red tape) for some of the newer reactor designs that are looking very promising, like Nuscale Power.

I would love to see them fund (and drastically cut back the red tape) for some of the newer reactor designs that are looking very promising, like Nuscale Power. I know they are working on new plant in Idaho, seems like it should be sped up. (currently looking at 2029 and 2030)

kingkawn 5y ago
All that pesky red tape preventing so called ‘disasters’ from ending so called ‘habitability of the planet’
- djohnston 5y ago
  Which is killing more people per year, nuclear or coal? Nuclear or gas? Nuclear or oil?
  - lesuorac 5y ago
    So your argument is that we should remove safety requirements for Nuclear until it kills as many per year as other energy sources? Crazy requirements like being able to survive a 1-10000 earthquake and etc seem overly cumbersome until it happens. Sure a giant oil spill is not great but you were allowed to go to the Gulf of Mexico post-spill(s) and not so much for Chernobyl. So the DOE should keep its red tape so it can keep its (better than the military, see Spain) record with nuclear power.
    - briffle 5y ago
      at what point did I talk about removing safety requirements? I said to reduce red tape. Things like peforming multiple regulatory approvals at the same time. (do you really need to wait for the environment review to finish before you start the reactor safety review?) Or pre-approve reactor designs, so they don't all have to be redone from scratch for every new reactor. There is a TON of ways to speed up approvals in a way that don't comprimise safety.. but that was a great strawman agrument!
  - cellis 5y ago
    Somewhat disingenuous, you should take into account nuclear black swans which could easily make a whole state uninhabitable forever. That said, what I’ve read ( not much, haha ) about newer nuclear thorium tech seems to indicate this argument does not have a future…
    - djohnston 5y ago
      I don't think it's disingenuous at all. The reality is more people are dying every day from pollution caused by fossil fuels than all nuclear power plant accidents combined. The fact that pollution doesn't make a big boom pushes our animal instinct to focus on nuclear as dangerous but it's not even close.
      - caoilte 5y ago
        The funniest thing is that climate change is now unavoidable and will make nuclear meltdowns even more likely because of the extreme weather events it will trigger. Now seems like the worst possible moment to remove safety restrictions...
        bpodgursky 5y ago
        This is a ridiculous stretch.
        renewiltord 5y ago
        Have you considered that increasing warm temperatures will increase conflict(1) causing people to have road rage? It is quite plausible that a nuclear engineer having a road rage incident is not paying attention and blows up a reactor. Presumably, with increasing temperature, the regulators also have increased chances of road rage causing them to ignore fatal flaws. 1: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=heat+and+aggression&oq=heat+and+aggr#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DJ3BhFnVZGIAJ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=heat...
        5y ago
  - lippel82 5y ago
    They're advocating for "drastically cutting the red tape", which could certainly influence one side of these inequalities quite strongly.
  - Gwypaas 5y ago
    Why even compare to fossil fuels? That is simply disingenuous to make it look good by choosing irrelevant opponents. Compare nuclear to wind and solar and try to find any case it makes sense in.
    - djohnston 5y ago
      Wind stops and the sun doesn't shine
  - kingkawn 5y ago
    Not sure why the awfulness of oil means we have to go for the option that makes the earth uninhabitable if anything goes slightly wrong. False forced choice to satisfy nuke fantasies
    - djohnston 5y ago
      Slightly wrong? Catastrophically wrong. Earth uninhabitable? No, every nuclear plant in the world failing at once wouldn't make 1% of the earth uninhabitable, cut the hyperbole. Nuke fantasies? Vs what, the fantasy that somehow wind and solar are going to be always-on sources of energy? You need a reliable backup, right now it's either fossil fuels or nuclear. The fantasy is thinking that fossil fuels are safer than nuclear - they are not.
      - kingkawn 5y ago
        Yes but who is going to sign up to be the ones who end up with uninhabitable earth. You're thinking in generalizations, when always it will end up being in someone's backyard who doesn't want to live with the risk of losing their land for hundreds of years.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Every nuclear reactor on earth could simultaneously go critical and melt down and it would still be a tiny blip on the habitability of the planet as compared to the impact of global warming.
  - kingkawn 5y ago
    textbook whataboutism. Both options are shit. That means choose neither of them, not that we gotta take one.

kingkawn 5y ago

All that pesky red tape preventing so called ‘disasters’ from ending so called ‘habitability of the planet’

djohnston 5y ago
Which is killing more people per year, nuclear or coal? Nuclear or gas? Nuclear or oil?
- lesuorac 5y ago
  So your argument is that we should remove safety requirements for Nuclear until it kills as many per year as other energy sources? Crazy requirements like being able to survive a 1-10000 earthquake and etc seem overly cumbersome until it happens. Sure a giant oil spill is not great but you were allowed to go to the Gulf of Mexico post-spill(s) and not so much for Chernobyl. So the DOE should keep its red tape so it can keep its (better than the military, see Spain) record with nuclear power.
  - briffle 5y ago
    at what point did I talk about removing safety requirements? I said to reduce red tape. Things like peforming multiple regulatory approvals at the same time. (do you really need to wait for the environment review to finish before you start the reactor safety review?) Or pre-approve reactor designs, so they don't all have to be redone from scratch for every new reactor. There is a TON of ways to speed up approvals in a way that don't comprimise safety.. but that was a great strawman agrument!
- cellis 5y ago
  Somewhat disingenuous, you should take into account nuclear black swans which could easily make a whole state uninhabitable forever. That said, what I’ve read ( not much, haha ) about newer nuclear thorium tech seems to indicate this argument does not have a future…
  - djohnston 5y ago
    I don't think it's disingenuous at all. The reality is more people are dying every day from pollution caused by fossil fuels than all nuclear power plant accidents combined. The fact that pollution doesn't make a big boom pushes our animal instinct to focus on nuclear as dangerous but it's not even close.
    - caoilte 5y ago
      The funniest thing is that climate change is now unavoidable and will make nuclear meltdowns even more likely because of the extreme weather events it will trigger. Now seems like the worst possible moment to remove safety restrictions...
      - bpodgursky 5y ago
        This is a ridiculous stretch.
        renewiltord 5y ago
        Have you considered that increasing warm temperatures will increase conflict(1) causing people to have road rage? It is quite plausible that a nuclear engineer having a road rage incident is not paying attention and blows up a reactor. Presumably, with increasing temperature, the regulators also have increased chances of road rage causing them to ignore fatal flaws. 1: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=heat+and+aggression&oq=heat+and+aggr#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DJ3BhFnVZGIAJ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=heat...
        5y ago
- lippel82 5y ago
  They're advocating for "drastically cutting the red tape", which could certainly influence one side of these inequalities quite strongly.
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  Why even compare to fossil fuels? That is simply disingenuous to make it look good by choosing irrelevant opponents. Compare nuclear to wind and solar and try to find any case it makes sense in.
  - djohnston 5y ago
    Wind stops and the sun doesn't shine
- kingkawn 5y ago
  Not sure why the awfulness of oil means we have to go for the option that makes the earth uninhabitable if anything goes slightly wrong. False forced choice to satisfy nuke fantasies
  - djohnston 5y ago
    Slightly wrong? Catastrophically wrong. Earth uninhabitable? No, every nuclear plant in the world failing at once wouldn't make 1% of the earth uninhabitable, cut the hyperbole. Nuke fantasies? Vs what, the fantasy that somehow wind and solar are going to be always-on sources of energy? You need a reliable backup, right now it's either fossil fuels or nuclear. The fantasy is thinking that fossil fuels are safer than nuclear - they are not.
    - kingkawn 5y ago
      Yes but who is going to sign up to be the ones who end up with uninhabitable earth. You're thinking in generalizations, when always it will end up being in someone's backyard who doesn't want to live with the risk of losing their land for hundreds of years.
bpodgursky 5y ago
Every nuclear reactor on earth could simultaneously go critical and melt down and it would still be a tiny blip on the habitability of the planet as compared to the impact of global warming.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  textbook whataboutism. Both options are shit. That means choose neither of them, not that we gotta take one.