4 ms·

Get rid of the red tape and nuclear becomes much cheaper (over time).

bamboozled 3y ago
Fukushima is what happens when you get rid of the red tape, go look at the cause of the accident and you will see why the red tape exists [1]. The Japanese tax payer is still paying for this disaster, and the environment is paying in more ways imaginable, all of the cleanup operation so far has been running on fossil fuels and it's an significant amount of cleanup still going onto this day, hundreds of thousands of tons of top soil have been moved around the country and stored in disintegrating plastic bags which end up in rivers, for example. People avoid buying produce and seafood from the area too which has had enormous impact on the economy and tens of thousands of people have been displaced with little to no compensation or anywhere to go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#2000_and_2008:_Tsunami_studies_ignored https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#200...
- TheDudeMan 3y ago
  Fukushima is what happens when it is prohibitively expensive to replace your known-unsafe reactor with a new one.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  You mean the disaster that killed between 0 (from radiation) and 2000 (from the evacuation) people? Compared do the literal millions that die every year from fossil fuel pollution? It would take about 10x the amount of nuclear power plants that we currently have for global energy to be totally nuclear. If we therefore 10x every single nuclear reactor disaster from the past 70 years (~ how long since the first production plant came on line in the USSR), global deaths would be between between 80,000 and 40,000,000 (using the implausibly high Greenpeace estimate of Chernobyl associated deaths). I think that all of those estimates are implausibly high, but even if we just take the 40,000,000 number, the most ridiculously, obviously wrong number, the estimated deaths every year from fossil fuel pollution (not climate change...direct particulate matter air pollution) is between 2 and 8 million every year. So go ahead, tell me again how we can't afford to relax safety standards on nuclear power.
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    Zero deaths is debatable, and it is only possible due to a trillion dollar cleanup cost.
    - endominus 3y ago
      Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup, "In 2016, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimated the total cost of dealing with the Fukushima disaster at ¥21.5 trillion (US$187 billion)" (with breakdown following). Hyperbole does not serve to convince intelligent people of your point, much less your objectivity in the matter.
      - lamontcg 3y ago
        ASME estimated closer to US$500b: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-abstract/134/09/46/380240/Forging-a-New-Nuclear-Safety-Construct https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/arti... JCER estimated from US$470b to US$660b https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radioactive-rubble-heap-that-was-fukushima-daiichi-7-years-on/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi... The official govt estimates have risen from $50b to $100b to $200b and are probably too low.
        MagnumOpus 3y ago
        ASME estimated more, right after the disaster, and they were proven wrong. Actual paid-out amounts after a decade were Y12.1tn - less than $90bn.
        bamboozled 3y ago
        Of course because it’s a political issue and japan is extremely conservative you won’t really know the exact figures.
    - MagnumOpus 3y ago
- paulddraper 3y ago
  Fukushima is what happens when you build a nuclear reactor on a literal fault line + tsunami zone. (In Japan's defense, the whole country is a fault line. But the US doesn't have that problem.)
  - bamboozled 3y ago
    If you read the Wikipedia article you’d know that the earthquake didn’t cause the meltdown specifically. Not even the tsunami itself did.
hayst4ck 3y ago
Admiral Rickover (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover), the father of the nuclear navy would disagree with you, but probably in a much more nuanced way than direct contradiction. It is not the red tape, but the difference between oversight and culture. You can not regulate safety and expect safety. Safety does not come from oversight. Safety comes from culture and a shared culture of responsibility for safety. Therefore the adversarial nature of red tape, implying an entity that does taping and therefore bears primary responsibility for safety, encodes within it the set of incentives that will result in eventual doom because alignment is always for cheaper and not for the long term. Safety requires individual responsibility and therefore a culture of responsibility, not to shareholders or next quarters profits, but to a set of values such as safety and competence. This hearing where the head of the nuclear navy tells congress about their philosophy of safety is very much worth a read: https://web.archive.org/web/20060629082752/https://www.navy.mil/navydata/testimony/safety/bowman031029.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20060629082752/https://www.navy.... The end result is that if you are talking about red tape at all then you have not reached a state of understanding because you must breach the topic of culture and alignment. Capitalist alignment of nuclear energy directly results in disaster. A culture that venerates next quarters profits should not run 30 year+ programs for which failure can result in centuries of contamination. Do you want people cut from the same cloth that the people who run BP are cut from running nuclear? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill A congress that asks for cheaper will get cheaper. Unfortunately what is cheap in dollars can be expensive in property, lives, and well-being. A simple word like cheaper is too naive.

Fukushima is what happens when you get rid of the red tape, go look at the cause of the accident and you will see why the red tape exists [1]. The Japanese tax payer is still paying for this disaster, and the environment is paying in more ways imaginable, all of the cleanup operation so far has been running on fossil fuels and it's an significant amount of cleanup still going onto this day, hundreds of thousands of tons of top soil have been moved around the country and stored in disintegrating plastic bags which end up in rivers, for example. People avoid buying produce and seafood from the area too which has had enormous impact on the economy and tens of thousands of people have been displaced with little to no compensation or anywhere to go. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#2000_and_2008:_Tsunami_studies_ignored https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster#200...

TheDudeMan 3y ago
Fukushima is what happens when it is prohibitively expensive to replace your known-unsafe reactor with a new one.
MostlyStable 3y ago
You mean the disaster that killed between 0 (from radiation) and 2000 (from the evacuation) people? Compared do the literal millions that die every year from fossil fuel pollution? It would take about 10x the amount of nuclear power plants that we currently have for global energy to be totally nuclear. If we therefore 10x every single nuclear reactor disaster from the past 70 years (~ how long since the first production plant came on line in the USSR), global deaths would be between between 80,000 and 40,000,000 (using the implausibly high Greenpeace estimate of Chernobyl associated deaths). I think that all of those estimates are implausibly high, but even if we just take the 40,000,000 number, the most ridiculously, obviously wrong number, the estimated deaths every year from fossil fuel pollution (not climate change...direct particulate matter air pollution) is between 2 and 8 million every year. So go ahead, tell me again how we can't afford to relax safety standards on nuclear power.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  Zero deaths is debatable, and it is only possible due to a trillion dollar cleanup cost.
  - endominus 3y ago
    Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup, "In 2016, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry estimated the total cost of dealing with the Fukushima disaster at ¥21.5 trillion (US$187 billion)" (with breakdown following). Hyperbole does not serve to convince intelligent people of your point, much less your objectivity in the matter.
    - lamontcg 3y ago
      ASME estimated closer to US$500b: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-abstract/134/09/46/380240/Forging-a-New-Nuclear-Safety-Construct https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/arti... JCER estimated from US$470b to US$660b https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radioactive-rubble-heap-that-was-fukushima-daiichi-7-years-on/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi... The official govt estimates have risen from $50b to $100b to $200b and are probably too low.
      - MagnumOpus 3y ago
        ASME estimated more, right after the disaster, and they were proven wrong. Actual paid-out amounts after a decade were Y12.1tn - less than $90bn.
        bamboozled 3y ago
        Of course because it’s a political issue and japan is extremely conservative you won’t really know the exact figures.
  - MagnumOpus 3y ago
paulddraper 3y ago
Fukushima is what happens when you build a nuclear reactor on a literal fault line + tsunami zone. (In Japan's defense, the whole country is a fault line. But the US doesn't have that problem.)
- bamboozled 3y ago
  If you read the Wikipedia article you’d know that the earthquake didn’t cause the meltdown specifically. Not even the tsunami itself did.

hayst4ck 3y ago

Admiral Rickover (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover), the father of the nuclear navy would disagree with you, but probably in a much more nuanced way than direct contradiction. It is not the red tape, but the difference between oversight and culture. You can not regulate safety and expect safety. Safety does not come from oversight. Safety comes from culture and a shared culture of responsibility for safety. Therefore the adversarial nature of red tape, implying an entity that does taping and therefore bears primary responsibility for safety, encodes within it the set of incentives that will result in eventual doom because alignment is always for cheaper and not for the long term. Safety requires individual responsibility and therefore a culture of responsibility, not to shareholders or next quarters profits, but to a set of values such as safety and competence. This hearing where the head of the nuclear navy tells congress about their philosophy of safety is very much worth a read: https://web.archive.org/web/20060629082752/https://www.navy.mil/navydata/testimony/safety/bowman031029.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20060629082752/https://www.navy.... The end result is that if you are talking about red tape at all then you have not reached a state of understanding because you must breach the topic of culture and alignment. Capitalist alignment of nuclear energy directly results in disaster. A culture that venerates next quarters profits should not run 30 year+ programs for which failure can result in centuries of contamination. Do you want people cut from the same cloth that the people who run BP are cut from running nuclear? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill A congress that asks for cheaper will get cheaper. Unfortunately what is cheap in dollars can be expensive in property, lives, and well-being. A simple word like cheaper is too naive.