4 ms·

>The U.S. has the largest nuclear fleet in the world, with 92 reactors scattered around the country. Apologies to everyone for the upcoming tangential rant. A

by elhudy 4y ago

>The U.S. has the largest nuclear fleet in the world, with 92 reactors scattered around the country. Apologies to everyone for the upcoming tangential rant. Am I the only person who is exhausted with news outlets disingenuously comparing the US to all other individual countries as if that is a fair comparison? A quick google search shows there are 108 reactors operating in the European Union, which is 16 more than in the US. Yes, this also means that the US has more reactors operating per person than the EU. But why can't news outlets just say that? Why do we default to comparing the absolute number of most things in the United States to individual western countries? This was at its worst during COVID but it seems to have stuck. It makes for a completely misleading narrative.

atdrummond 4y ago
Probably because there are subconscious and conscious rationales for why they’re creating the comparisons and narratives that they are. It’s also quite rare that a news story spends time talking positively about a subject, unless it is something emotionally charged (marine vet surprises family by coming home early) or is part of a submarine PR push by the subject of the piece (university researcher finds curse for cancer).
guhcampos 4y ago
As a non-north-american I can empathize, but I believe the main reason for that is simply these news outlets are from the US, so naturally they'll use that frame of reference. Down here in Brazil news outlets will compare stuff to Brazil. The fact we are reading English news probably accounts for a good part of that bias.
BenFranklin100 4y ago
Over half those in the EU are deployed in France too. For the US to match France’s 80% electricity generated by nuclear energy, we’ll need to deploy about 300 additional equivalent reactors. I my opinion, this a good thing: 1. The per unit reactor costs will plummet if we build 300 identical units 2. France enjoys the lowest per capita CO2 emissions for electrical generation than any nation in the world. America should match them.
- weaksauce 4y ago
  what is france doing with all the waste? it's a country a little bit larger than california is with a bit more population... i suppose we could find a way to store all that waste in california somewhere since it is a big state with large swaths of land that are uninhabited. my dream is to have the main reactors give a lot of the power and then have smaller reactors that use those waste products to turn them into shorter half-lived materials. if i recall correctly liquid salt thorium was something that was trying to do that and it also had the feature that it failed safe instead of a meltdown.
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    Waste doesn’t take up much space does it?
    - survirtual 4y ago
      It does not. The problem is, we can see and measure it. If anything went wrong, it’d be clear who messed up, so it requires actual time and effort to do it right. That’s yucky. People like it more when the waste is invisible and airborne, for the wind and their children to deal with instead of them. This provides a better level of blame dispersion. As they say, out of sight out of mind.
  - tokai 4y ago
    They recycle it. Then store the unrecyclable remains in three different facilities. https://international.andra.fr/operational-facilities https://international.andra.fr/operational-facilities
  - Zopieux 4y ago
    99% of nuc waste is low to medium life, low to medium radioactivity and is mostly recyclable. Russia does most of the recycling. The total amount (from the beginning of France's nuclear energy production 50+y ago) of highly radioactive, non-reusable waste fits in a cube not bigger than the Eiffel tower, and the goal is to bury that in geological storage, but dumb politics are opposing this (for dumb reasons that were debunked a thousand times).
darknavi 4y ago
I'm ignorant in this area, but does Europe (EU) have a nuclear agreement to party in the space together? If every nation operates their nuclear facilities independently then it's not crazy to compare them directly.
- c4mpute 4y ago
  There is EURATOM (ages old, precedes the EC/EU and is a founding "part" of it), but they aren't really running any commercial reactors, it is more of a political body for control and exchange of knowledge.
kodah 4y ago
> Am I the only person who is exhausted with news outlets disingenuously comparing the US to all other individual countries as if that is a fair comparison They do this tirelessly with health, education, etc... They do it because this is how some people understand the world; a series of orthogonal comparisons thought of as one through false comparison. It's an exercise of marginalizing the readers understanding of competing arguments. Instead of thinking analytically about the arguments and the situation at hand, the reader is invited to think, "This problem is solved, and thus so should be yours."
therealdrag0 4y ago
What really drove this home for me is the book “HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS”. After reading that I see this crap everywhere. Highly recommend that book.
karaterobot 4y ago
> Am I the only person who is exhausted with news outlets disingenuously comparing the US to all other individual countries as if that is a fair comparison? It's certainly a fair comparison: they're comparing countries to countries. It may not be a helpful comparison, because no two countries are equivalent in all ways other than the number of nuclear reactors they have. But, if the point they're making is that no other country would have as much of an effect on air quality by shutting down nuclear power at the national policy level, I think it's fine. Your statistic is also useful, but since air pollution crosses borders, I think talking about absolute rather than per capita is also fine. I guess what I'm saying is that this didn't bother me.
- elhudy 4y ago
  I see what you're getting at but I still disagree, for a couple of reasons. First, the sentence itself doesn't strike me as lending itself to the idea that "the point they're making is that no other country would have as much of an effect on air quality by shutting down nuclear power at the national policy level". If the author wants to portray this point, why don't they actually say so in the article, instead of indirectly alluding to it? The sentence in question strikes me more as an exaggerated fun fact to grab the reader's attention and make them gasp, than as a way to set the context of the situation. Second, the nuclear reactors are shutting down due to rate-setting policy issues on the *state* level, not the at the federal policy level. So it becomes again a disingenuous comparison, because each state can take their own individual course of action to prevent shutdown (or not). The "US" as a whole, that is to say the federal govt, is likely powerless in this situation unless they can get a bipartisan bill passed which is unlikely. Even if passed it's just kicking the can until the rates issues are fixed.

by elhudy 4y ago

atdrummond 4y ago

Probably because there are subconscious and conscious rationales for why they’re creating the comparisons and narratives that they are. It’s also quite rare that a news story spends time talking positively about a subject, unless it is something emotionally charged (marine vet surprises family by coming home early) or is part of a submarine PR push by the subject of the piece (university researcher finds curse for cancer).

guhcampos 4y ago

As a non-north-american I can empathize, but I believe the main reason for that is simply these news outlets are from the US, so naturally they'll use that frame of reference. Down here in Brazil news outlets will compare stuff to Brazil. The fact we are reading English news probably accounts for a good part of that bias.

BenFranklin100 4y ago

Over half those in the EU are deployed in France too. For the US to match France’s 80% electricity generated by nuclear energy, we’ll need to deploy about 300 additional equivalent reactors. I my opinion, this a good thing: 1. The per unit reactor costs will plummet if we build 300 identical units 2. France enjoys the lowest per capita CO2 emissions for electrical generation than any nation in the world. America should match them.

weaksauce 4y ago
what is france doing with all the waste? it's a country a little bit larger than california is with a bit more population... i suppose we could find a way to store all that waste in california somewhere since it is a big state with large swaths of land that are uninhabited. my dream is to have the main reactors give a lot of the power and then have smaller reactors that use those waste products to turn them into shorter half-lived materials. if i recall correctly liquid salt thorium was something that was trying to do that and it also had the feature that it failed safe instead of a meltdown.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Waste doesn’t take up much space does it?
  - survirtual 4y ago
    It does not. The problem is, we can see and measure it. If anything went wrong, it’d be clear who messed up, so it requires actual time and effort to do it right. That’s yucky. People like it more when the waste is invisible and airborne, for the wind and their children to deal with instead of them. This provides a better level of blame dispersion. As they say, out of sight out of mind.
- tokai 4y ago
  They recycle it. Then store the unrecyclable remains in three different facilities. https://international.andra.fr/operational-facilities https://international.andra.fr/operational-facilities
- Zopieux 4y ago
  99% of nuc waste is low to medium life, low to medium radioactivity and is mostly recyclable. Russia does most of the recycling. The total amount (from the beginning of France's nuclear energy production 50+y ago) of highly radioactive, non-reusable waste fits in a cube not bigger than the Eiffel tower, and the goal is to bury that in geological storage, but dumb politics are opposing this (for dumb reasons that were debunked a thousand times).

darknavi 4y ago

I'm ignorant in this area, but does Europe (EU) have a nuclear agreement to party in the space together? If every nation operates their nuclear facilities independently then it's not crazy to compare them directly.

c4mpute 4y ago
There is EURATOM (ages old, precedes the EC/EU and is a founding "part" of it), but they aren't really running any commercial reactors, it is more of a political body for control and exchange of knowledge.

kodah 4y ago

> Am I the only person who is exhausted with news outlets disingenuously comparing the US to all other individual countries as if that is a fair comparison They do this tirelessly with health, education, etc... They do it because this is how some people understand the world; a series of orthogonal comparisons thought of as one through false comparison. It's an exercise of marginalizing the readers understanding of competing arguments. Instead of thinking analytically about the arguments and the situation at hand, the reader is invited to think, "This problem is solved, and thus so should be yours."

therealdrag0 4y ago

What really drove this home for me is the book “HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS”. After reading that I see this crap everywhere. Highly recommend that book.

karaterobot 4y ago

> Am I the only person who is exhausted with news outlets disingenuously comparing the US to all other individual countries as if that is a fair comparison? It's certainly a fair comparison: they're comparing countries to countries. It may not be a helpful comparison, because no two countries are equivalent in all ways other than the number of nuclear reactors they have. But, if the point they're making is that no other country would have as much of an effect on air quality by shutting down nuclear power at the national policy level, I think it's fine. Your statistic is also useful, but since air pollution crosses borders, I think talking about absolute rather than per capita is also fine. I guess what I'm saying is that this didn't bother me.

elhudy 4y ago
I see what you're getting at but I still disagree, for a couple of reasons. First, the sentence itself doesn't strike me as lending itself to the idea that "the point they're making is that no other country would have as much of an effect on air quality by shutting down nuclear power at the national policy level". If the author wants to portray this point, why don't they actually say so in the article, instead of indirectly alluding to it? The sentence in question strikes me more as an exaggerated fun fact to grab the reader's attention and make them gasp, than as a way to set the context of the situation. Second, the nuclear reactors are shutting down due to rate-setting policy issues on the *state* level, not the at the federal policy level. So it becomes again a disingenuous comparison, because each state can take their own individual course of action to prevent shutdown (or not). The "US" as a whole, that is to say the federal govt, is likely powerless in this situation unless they can get a bipartisan bill passed which is unlikely. Even if passed it's just kicking the can until the rates issues are fixed.