6 ms·

That is what happened, but I can't pass by without highlighting how irrational the response was. I've been watching a livestream of Reykjanes in the vague hope

by roenxi 3y ago

That is what happened, but I can't pass by without highlighting how irrational the response was. I've been watching a livestream of Reykjanes in the vague hope of seeing some magma. Somewhere globally needs to be evacuated every year or so. Going from base rate to base rate +1 per 2 decades or thereabouts is a perfectly acceptable deal. Nobody is going to die (which is more than can be said about coal). We'd get cheap clean energy. And instead people decided that the best plan was to panic and we end up with the gently building energy crisis that has been rolling on for a few years now. It is entirely plausible we see the bloodiest war in human history as a result of the Western derailment of the transition to nuclear power. It was really foolish. Who cares that the US government are incompetent? Yeah they're incompetent. They've been incompetent for a long while. They still snuffed out one of the most (arguably the most?) promising technologies of a generation out of fear and ignorance.

nickpp 3y ago
That irrational response was heavily fueled by fear mongering from environmental activists and financed by oil producing hostile countries. In the 70s and 80s leftists couldn't much keep pushing socialism (like they are now) since the horrors of their ideology was quite visible to everybody in the example of USSR. So they embraced environmentalism - just another way for them to fight capitalism and consumerism. Russia (through the KGB) was quite happy to finance their cause. It meant Western countries (and especially Western Europe) stayed dependent on them for their energy. The folly of our strategy became quite apparent during the last few years with the Ukraine invasion and revelations of EU politicians fully paid and owned by the Russians. Together with infiltrating the Western Academia, this was probably one of the most successful undercover secret service operation ever.
- hef19898 3y ago
  This view is extremely US centrict with regards to what socialism is. It also ignores decades of history when it comes European relations with the USSR and Russia later. Mixed with some red-scare level fears it turns into pure dilussion at the end...
  - nickpp 3y ago
    Funny enough I was born, grew up and I currently live in the Eastern Europe. I could tell you so much about our history and relations with Russia. From my own experience before '90, from my parents' during communism horror years and from my grandparents' during the War and the soviet occupation after. But all that info is freely available in books and online - for naught. You can't change the mind of the Western leftists who never had to live through an actual implementation of their pet ideology. They dream about Norway, Sweden and Denmark while never even visiting Cuba, North Korea or Venezuela.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Communism isn't socialism. Cuba is as close to old school communism as you get nowadays, Venezuela is cleptocratic, deeply corrupt regime ehixh has not much to do with either socialism or communism. And North Korea, well, what can I say, is just North Korea.
      - nickpp 3y ago
        It's never "true communism", of course. That has never been tried. Yeah, right.
        hef19898 3y ago
        Who talked about true communism? Communism was tried, didn't work. Your own words by the way. There is a very important difference between communism and socialism, because the latter has been tried multiple times and worked comparatively well. You even named some of the poster child countries yourself. As I said, it is a truely US thing to equate socialism with communism, followed by touting Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea as negative examples of it.
hutzlibu 3y ago
"Who cares that the US government are incompetent? Yeah they're incompetent." I care, if they are responsible for overseeing the safety of the nuclear reactors.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Oversight that is explicitly called out throughout the repoets on the Chernobyl desaster, by both the IAEA and the USSR. Always funny how the hardest nuclear proponents can't even bothered reading the executive summaries of incident reports prepared by the nuclear industry itself.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Am I going to get push-back for saying economic policy makers should hold USSR reports with suspicion? Their ability to make rational decisions was so hopeless their civilisation collapsed. Doing the exact opposite of their economic recommendations is a strategy that is legitimately on the table. And oversight is different from strangulation. If we could dial back the regulations to mere oversight I'd go find something else to talk about.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Who talked about "economic recommendations"? The IAEA INSAG-7 report, an update on the initial Chernobyl report INSAG-1, is a quick read (I just did it in the last 20 minutes or so). That report, which includes official translations of two USR incident reports, is all about safety and technical aspectsbof RBMK reactors, nowhere do they talk about the future use and deploymant of nuclear power plants. After all, all those reports were written by the people being as pro-nuclear as you could be in the late 80s... Granted, people back then wrote long form documents not published on social media. I linoed to the report elsewhere, ypu honestly should read it. Including the truely damning ones the Soviets wrote regarding safety, regulation and oversight at, and around, the Chernobyl power plant, especially affecting the extension units incl. rwaczor No. 4 which ultimately exploded.
      - deleted 3y ago
lazide 3y ago
When the hazard is one that; 1) the public cannot see 2) lacks the skills to properly independently evaluate the scope of (99% of the public doesn’t own a Geiger counter, and 99.9% would be unable to quantify risks even if they did) 3) is potentially lethal And the authorities the are supposed to be able to do #1 and #2 are caught repeatedly and obviously lying about the hazard. It’s perfectly rational for people to get ‘irrationally’ scared. All they know is the folks who are supposed to be protecting them from this actual threat are not credible! And there is an actual threat (probably)!
- hef19898 3y ago
  You basically summarzied the reasoning of a Soviet working group investigating Chernobyl. The investigation is needed, because people, being occupied with the clean up, are reasonably scared and have no reason to believe government claims without a proper investigation. Yes, I spent some time today reading official reports on Chernobyl, again. Hell, even the Soviet reports are damning for their own nuclear industry, calling out organizations, people and structural defficiencies. As is the IAEA. And none of those groups can even remotely be accussed of being anti-nuclear.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  Couldn't you say all of the same things about coal? The risks are largely invisible, people can't assess them, and people definitely die due to its use. Maybe there needs to be another criteria. Something like, "when the hazard comes with a scary label"?
  - lazide 3y ago
    No? Coal fires are pretty obvious. Acid rain is pretty obvious (and easy to measure with ph strips, which are easy to find). Nasty smog is pretty obvious. Plumes of gunk from smoke stacks are obvious. Now, co2 and fine particulate contamination (like say radioactive contamination from ash), yes. Those take decades to be noticable (if at all). There have been big issues because of it, statistically. But those are not well known/accepted either by the public. And certainly not the most common 'acute' problems. Something like a release of radiation from a nuclear power plant can (and usually is), completely invisible. As is things like ingesting fallout. It usually kills years or decades later. If you can see radiation, you're pretty much a dead man walking already. A reactor melting down is a sudden acute incident that can release massive amounts of completely invisible radioactive elements that won't kill anyone for decades - or in weeks/months, if really bad. By the time something has obviously gone wrong from the outside (like the core blowing up in Chernobyl, or the reactor building blowing up due to Hydrogen explosion in Fukushima), massive releases are essentially guaranteed. But still usually invisible. Cherenkov radiation 'sky beam' from chernobyl excepted. [https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1142309/Chernobyl-disaster-blue-beam-of-light-HBO-Chernobyl-real-nuclear-radiation https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1142309/Chernobyl-dis...] And with a little avoidance, a lethal dose might be easy to not have! If you have good data. Without good data, it's a crap shoot though.
bumby 3y ago
Humans are inherently bad at estimating risk when it comes to low probability events. The fact that there was an irrational response shouldn’t surprise anyone.

by roenxi 3y ago

nickpp 3y ago

That irrational response was heavily fueled by fear mongering from environmental activists and financed by oil producing hostile countries. In the 70s and 80s leftists couldn't much keep pushing socialism (like they are now) since the horrors of their ideology was quite visible to everybody in the example of USSR. So they embraced environmentalism - just another way for them to fight capitalism and consumerism. Russia (through the KGB) was quite happy to finance their cause. It meant Western countries (and especially Western Europe) stayed dependent on them for their energy. The folly of our strategy became quite apparent during the last few years with the Ukraine invasion and revelations of EU politicians fully paid and owned by the Russians. Together with infiltrating the Western Academia, this was probably one of the most successful undercover secret service operation ever.

hef19898 3y ago
This view is extremely US centrict with regards to what socialism is. It also ignores decades of history when it comes European relations with the USSR and Russia later. Mixed with some red-scare level fears it turns into pure dilussion at the end...
- nickpp 3y ago
  Funny enough I was born, grew up and I currently live in the Eastern Europe. I could tell you so much about our history and relations with Russia. From my own experience before '90, from my parents' during communism horror years and from my grandparents' during the War and the soviet occupation after. But all that info is freely available in books and online - for naught. You can't change the mind of the Western leftists who never had to live through an actual implementation of their pet ideology. They dream about Norway, Sweden and Denmark while never even visiting Cuba, North Korea or Venezuela.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Communism isn't socialism. Cuba is as close to old school communism as you get nowadays, Venezuela is cleptocratic, deeply corrupt regime ehixh has not much to do with either socialism or communism. And North Korea, well, what can I say, is just North Korea.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      It's never "true communism", of course. That has never been tried. Yeah, right.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Who talked about true communism? Communism was tried, didn't work. Your own words by the way. There is a very important difference between communism and socialism, because the latter has been tried multiple times and worked comparatively well. You even named some of the poster child countries yourself. As I said, it is a truely US thing to equate socialism with communism, followed by touting Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea as negative examples of it.

hutzlibu 3y ago

"Who cares that the US government are incompetent? Yeah they're incompetent." I care, if they are responsible for overseeing the safety of the nuclear reactors.

hef19898 3y ago
Oversight that is explicitly called out throughout the repoets on the Chernobyl desaster, by both the IAEA and the USSR. Always funny how the hardest nuclear proponents can't even bothered reading the executive summaries of incident reports prepared by the nuclear industry itself.
- roenxi 3y ago
  Am I going to get push-back for saying economic policy makers should hold USSR reports with suspicion? Their ability to make rational decisions was so hopeless their civilisation collapsed. Doing the exact opposite of their economic recommendations is a strategy that is legitimately on the table. And oversight is different from strangulation. If we could dial back the regulations to mere oversight I'd go find something else to talk about.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Who talked about "economic recommendations"? The IAEA INSAG-7 report, an update on the initial Chernobyl report INSAG-1, is a quick read (I just did it in the last 20 minutes or so). That report, which includes official translations of two USR incident reports, is all about safety and technical aspectsbof RBMK reactors, nowhere do they talk about the future use and deploymant of nuclear power plants. After all, all those reports were written by the people being as pro-nuclear as you could be in the late 80s... Granted, people back then wrote long form documents not published on social media. I linoed to the report elsewhere, ypu honestly should read it. Including the truely damning ones the Soviets wrote regarding safety, regulation and oversight at, and around, the Chernobyl power plant, especially affecting the extension units incl. rwaczor No. 4 which ultimately exploded.
    - deleted 3y ago

lazide 3y ago

When the hazard is one that; 1) the public cannot see 2) lacks the skills to properly independently evaluate the scope of (99% of the public doesn’t own a Geiger counter, and 99.9% would be unable to quantify risks even if they did) 3) is potentially lethal And the authorities the are supposed to be able to do #1 and #2 are caught repeatedly and obviously lying about the hazard. It’s perfectly rational for people to get ‘irrationally’ scared. All they know is the folks who are supposed to be protecting them from this actual threat are not credible! And there is an actual threat (probably)!

hef19898 3y ago
You basically summarzied the reasoning of a Soviet working group investigating Chernobyl. The investigation is needed, because people, being occupied with the clean up, are reasonably scared and have no reason to believe government claims without a proper investigation. Yes, I spent some time today reading official reports on Chernobyl, again. Hell, even the Soviet reports are damning for their own nuclear industry, calling out organizations, people and structural defficiencies. As is the IAEA. And none of those groups can even remotely be accussed of being anti-nuclear.
_ea1k 3y ago
Couldn't you say all of the same things about coal? The risks are largely invisible, people can't assess them, and people definitely die due to its use. Maybe there needs to be another criteria. Something like, "when the hazard comes with a scary label"?
- lazide 3y ago
  No? Coal fires are pretty obvious. Acid rain is pretty obvious (and easy to measure with ph strips, which are easy to find). Nasty smog is pretty obvious. Plumes of gunk from smoke stacks are obvious. Now, co2 and fine particulate contamination (like say radioactive contamination from ash), yes. Those take decades to be noticable (if at all). There have been big issues because of it, statistically. But those are not well known/accepted either by the public. And certainly not the most common 'acute' problems. Something like a release of radiation from a nuclear power plant can (and usually is), completely invisible. As is things like ingesting fallout. It usually kills years or decades later. If you can see radiation, you're pretty much a dead man walking already. A reactor melting down is a sudden acute incident that can release massive amounts of completely invisible radioactive elements that won't kill anyone for decades - or in weeks/months, if really bad. By the time something has obviously gone wrong from the outside (like the core blowing up in Chernobyl, or the reactor building blowing up due to Hydrogen explosion in Fukushima), massive releases are essentially guaranteed. But still usually invisible. Cherenkov radiation 'sky beam' from chernobyl excepted. [https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1142309/Chernobyl-disaster-blue-beam-of-light-HBO-Chernobyl-real-nuclear-radiation https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1142309/Chernobyl-dis...] And with a little avoidance, a lethal dose might be easy to not have! If you have good data. Without good data, it's a crap shoot though.

bumby 3y ago

Humans are inherently bad at estimating risk when it comes to low probability events. The fact that there was an irrational response shouldn’t surprise anyone.