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Please can the nuclear industry stop paying PR consultants. We have one use for the nuclear industry - building scientists who can then build nuclear bombs. I

Please can the nuclear industry stop paying PR consultants. We have one use for the nuclear industry - building scientists who can then build nuclear bombs. IMO this is a reasonable use of public funds - the strategic needs of nuclear weapons are not going away. But please please just accept that and move on. Stop getting in a vital public debate. Nuclear fission is a terrible civilian technology - vastly expensive, the effects of a catastrophic failure are massive and the costs to avoid it (yes you can build safe nuclear plants) are huge - basically nuclear projects need to be on the A game - all the time, year after year, constantly upgrading and improving for decades to come. I might believe that for five or six plants run to just build weapons. But i refuse to believe we can build 1,000s of the fuckers in every country on earth and think that they will be all maintained to standards better than Fukijyma

gfodor 4y ago
China is going to do it, and you seem to believe the safety profile of nuclear energy technology has been frozen for 50 years. It's extremely strange to think something as broad as the process of nuclear fission can be spoken about as having a universal, never changing risk-profile, regardless of technological advancement. We don't do this for any other technology. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-climate-goals-hinge-on-440-billion-nuclear-power-plan-to-rival-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...
- rectang 4y ago
  The fundamentals of that risk profile haven't changed — you still have high concentration of radioactive materials in a single geographic location. The risk profile for nuclear is unlike that of other technologies. They told us it was safe back then. They tell us its safe today. They will always tell us it's safe. The fundamentals tell us they're wrong.
  - gfodor 4y ago
    "The fundamentals" is doing a lot of work there. It's fundamentally unsafe to move at a high velocity in a meat-based body. Does this mean the risk profile of high speed transportation is invariant across technology? The "fundamentals" you speak of boil down to the first principles analysis, based on physics, of the possible states a nuclear energy production system can get into. This is not invariant with regards to technology. It seems far too reductive to claim "putting radiocative materials together in the same location" should box out all civilian use of a energy production mechanism.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      All failures of nukes thus far have been direct consequences of inadequately competent and scrupulous administration. Administration and adherence to standards of excellence are not improving.
      - gfodor 4y ago
        Good systems engineering can tolerate massive levels of incompetent and scrupulous operators.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        So, not good enough engineering, either, then? Bad engineering is also, almost always, management failure.
- Brometheus 4y ago
  China is building out mostly solar and wind.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    And very large amounts of pumped hydro too.
  - kwere 4y ago
    source?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The Chinese nukes will be mothballed long short of their design life, just because they will be unable to compete on cost. That will save us from an absolute rash of accidents as habitually corrupt administration fails to operate at necessary standards. With some luck, most of those planned will be cancelled before completion as their operating cost is recognized as already undercut.
donkarma 4y ago
nuclear fission is actually the safest electricity generation we have right now, and modern reactors are pretty safe and are hard to cause to melt down even intentionally, all of this non-sense is mostly just fearmongering
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Managing nuclear fission is something that can be done safely. At fukushima they had (from memory) 6 reactors - 4 had been upgraded and 2 were left un-improved for cost / benefit reasons. The 4 that were upgraded safely failed in the flood - the other 2 caused the problem. And this is my argument - the reactors were not on their A-game. One slip, one B-level decision, one in decades and decades and the price is paid. And this is for one of the richest countries on Earth. Who is going to build and run the nuclear reactors in Argentina, Sudan, Belize. Will they be on their A-game in 2045? Why choose the option with the high cost and the nasty downside when you literally do not have to.

gfodor 4y ago

China is going to do it, and you seem to believe the safety profile of nuclear energy technology has been frozen for 50 years. It's extremely strange to think something as broad as the process of nuclear fission can be spoken about as having a universal, never changing risk-profile, regardless of technological advancement. We don't do this for any other technology. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-climate-goals-hinge-on-440-billion-nuclear-power-plan-to-rival-u-s https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...

rectang 4y ago
The fundamentals of that risk profile haven't changed — you still have high concentration of radioactive materials in a single geographic location. The risk profile for nuclear is unlike that of other technologies. They told us it was safe back then. They tell us its safe today. They will always tell us it's safe. The fundamentals tell us they're wrong.
- gfodor 4y ago
  "The fundamentals" is doing a lot of work there. It's fundamentally unsafe to move at a high velocity in a meat-based body. Does this mean the risk profile of high speed transportation is invariant across technology? The "fundamentals" you speak of boil down to the first principles analysis, based on physics, of the possible states a nuclear energy production system can get into. This is not invariant with regards to technology. It seems far too reductive to claim "putting radiocative materials together in the same location" should box out all civilian use of a energy production mechanism.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    All failures of nukes thus far have been direct consequences of inadequately competent and scrupulous administration. Administration and adherence to standards of excellence are not improving.
    - gfodor 4y ago
      Good systems engineering can tolerate massive levels of incompetent and scrupulous operators.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        So, not good enough engineering, either, then? Bad engineering is also, almost always, management failure.
Brometheus 4y ago
China is building out mostly solar and wind.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  And very large amounts of pumped hydro too.
- kwere 4y ago
  source?
ncmncm 4y ago
The Chinese nukes will be mothballed long short of their design life, just because they will be unable to compete on cost. That will save us from an absolute rash of accidents as habitually corrupt administration fails to operate at necessary standards. With some luck, most of those planned will be cancelled before completion as their operating cost is recognized as already undercut.

donkarma 4y ago

nuclear fission is actually the safest electricity generation we have right now, and modern reactors are pretty safe and are hard to cause to melt down even intentionally, all of this non-sense is mostly just fearmongering

lifeisstillgood 4y ago
Managing nuclear fission is something that can be done safely. At fukushima they had (from memory) 6 reactors - 4 had been upgraded and 2 were left un-improved for cost / benefit reasons. The 4 that were upgraded safely failed in the flood - the other 2 caused the problem. And this is my argument - the reactors were not on their A-game. One slip, one B-level decision, one in decades and decades and the price is paid. And this is for one of the richest countries on Earth. Who is going to build and run the nuclear reactors in Argentina, Sudan, Belize. Will they be on their A-game in 2045? Why choose the option with the high cost and the nasty downside when you literally do not have to.