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This is a centralist argument. If the market were structured in a sane manner, you wouldn't need politicians to be involved in these choices. In fact, I think t

by roenxi 2y ago

This is a centralist argument. If the market were structured in a sane manner, you wouldn't need politicians to be involved in these choices. In fact, I think the argument in this article is defunct for a similar obvious reason - people can just build solar panels because they are cost effective. Bam. These alleged legions of nuclear supporters have ceased to be a roadblock. Just go do it, we may well all already agree that any blockages to building solar are a bad idea. Of course the real case that the nuclear people are making is that if we stopped putting all the bizarre political blockages in front of nuclear it'd be perfectly competitive and people would invest in that too. But this idea that we want politicians to be the bottleneck in deciding where our power comes from is even more bizzare. We should decide power is generated, by paying people who generate power in a way that works for us. The tech is not so important [EDIT not so important that we need to do it through the political process].

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pfdietz 2y ago
But politics cannot be avoided. If nuclear is to be built, there will be risk of serious accidents. The rational private response to this is to bound the liability to the nuclear operator via bankruptcy. So, in a severe accident, the cost imposed on society will not be covered by the operator. What's the response to this problem? Either imposed safety regulations, or requiring insurance (and the insurers then impose regulations as condition for insurance.) If de facto public insurance is provided (as in the US limited liability for accidents) then public regulation is a necessary consequence.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Well yes, that is what limited liability is. No argument there. We applied that concept to every industry and got fantastic results even though the absolute damage done by most industries is absurdly more than nuclear does. If you applied that exact logic to fossil fuels we'd never have made it to the industrial age. If you applied that logic to the industrial age we'd never have entered the industrial age, it was an OH&S disaster even before what happened to the health of the bystanders. I'm not sure why we've looked at our collective history and decided the West's biggest mistake was ignoring the Luddites. The costs of nuclear are nothing compared to the potential we walked away from or even the costs we accept as part of standard day-to-day existence.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    The maximum cost of a serious nuclear accident is well beyond anything we see in other industries, save perhaps the cumulative effects of CO2 pollution. The answer is not to excuse nuclear, but impose regulations on other such cases as well, and for similar reasons.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > The maximum cost of a serious nuclear accident is well beyond anything we see in other industries, save perhaps the cumulative effects of CO2 pollution. That isn't so. If I just look up a random explosion I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion which is more damage than most serious nuclear accidents. 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, 300,000 homeless. That is pretty bad. And, again, your logic would involve people looking at the industrial revolution and deciding against it.
      - ponorin 2y ago
        The cost of a serious nuclear accident is fossil fuels[0]. [0]: https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/countries/japan/ https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/countries/ja...
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        I'm talking about financial damage, not deaths. The value of the human lives lost is relatively modest compared to the hit to (for example) property values. You might object that the financial damage is due to unwarranted concerns by the public. Even if that were the case, they would be legally actionable.
RandomThoughts3 2y ago
> This is a centralist argument. It’s a French writer and not a very convincing one from my point of view after reading some of his other articles. He seems to view things through a very French prism so expects strong statism and ecology dominated by a mostly alter-mondialist view when it’s not openly Trotskyist.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Nuclear power has spent its entire life being forced into existence using subsidies. A technology agnostic subsidy market for green power leads to exactly zero new nuclear power being built. Thus the huge push from the nuclear lobby and fossil lobby loving a power source not generating a single kWh for 20 years to create targeted subsidies only for nuclear power.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Sure. What if we remove the nonsensical barriers and then let it fail on its own in the market? Like, say it only has to be 2x safer than the next safest popular form of energy? That always seemed like a reasonable compromise to me. A radical reduction in the standard of safety we hold nuclear to.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    The problem is who is affected by the accidents. For solar and wind the general public generally can’t be affected by any accidents so the deaths are general work place hazards coming from working aloft with heavy equipment. For nuclear power the public is on the hook for cleanup fees from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars and the large scale accidents we have seen caused hundreds of thousands to get evacuated. It is not even comparable. If I chose to not work in the solar and wind industry my chance of harm is as near zero as it gets. Meanwhile about all consequences from nuclear power afflicts the general public. Both in terms of costs, injuries and life changing evacuations. The playbook of trying to equate nuclear safety problems with the competition is quite sad to see because it relies on people only seeing a number. Not the real world implications of it.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > Not the real world implications of it. What real-world implications? One of my favourite lines of questioning in nuclear debates is trying to figure out what exactly the anti-nuclear crowd are worried about in terms of real-world implications. The real world implications seem to be minor enough that nobody can point them out. Even your comment, deploring real world implications, doesn't articulate what they are. The only real world implications I've seen are people panicking over negligible issues. And I'm happy to believe there are actual problems, but it'd be fantastic if someone knew what they were.

by roenxi 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pfdietz 2y ago

But politics cannot be avoided. If nuclear is to be built, there will be risk of serious accidents. The rational private response to this is to bound the liability to the nuclear operator via bankruptcy. So, in a severe accident, the cost imposed on society will not be covered by the operator. What's the response to this problem? Either imposed safety regulations, or requiring insurance (and the insurers then impose regulations as condition for insurance.) If de facto public insurance is provided (as in the US limited liability for accidents) then public regulation is a necessary consequence.

roenxi 2y ago
Well yes, that is what limited liability is. No argument there. We applied that concept to every industry and got fantastic results even though the absolute damage done by most industries is absurdly more than nuclear does. If you applied that exact logic to fossil fuels we'd never have made it to the industrial age. If you applied that logic to the industrial age we'd never have entered the industrial age, it was an OH&S disaster even before what happened to the health of the bystanders. I'm not sure why we've looked at our collective history and decided the West's biggest mistake was ignoring the Luddites. The costs of nuclear are nothing compared to the potential we walked away from or even the costs we accept as part of standard day-to-day existence.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  The maximum cost of a serious nuclear accident is well beyond anything we see in other industries, save perhaps the cumulative effects of CO2 pollution. The answer is not to excuse nuclear, but impose regulations on other such cases as well, and for similar reasons.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > The maximum cost of a serious nuclear accident is well beyond anything we see in other industries, save perhaps the cumulative effects of CO2 pollution. That isn't so. If I just look up a random explosion I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion which is more damage than most serious nuclear accidents. 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, 300,000 homeless. That is pretty bad. And, again, your logic would involve people looking at the industrial revolution and deciding against it.
    - ponorin 2y ago
      The cost of a serious nuclear accident is fossil fuels[0]. [0]: https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/countries/japan/ https://ember-climate.org/countries-and-regions/countries/ja...
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      I'm talking about financial damage, not deaths. The value of the human lives lost is relatively modest compared to the hit to (for example) property values. You might object that the financial damage is due to unwarranted concerns by the public. Even if that were the case, they would be legally actionable.

RandomThoughts3 2y ago

> This is a centralist argument. It’s a French writer and not a very convincing one from my point of view after reading some of his other articles. He seems to view things through a very French prism so expects strong statism and ecology dominated by a mostly alter-mondialist view when it’s not openly Trotskyist.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

Nuclear power has spent its entire life being forced into existence using subsidies. A technology agnostic subsidy market for green power leads to exactly zero new nuclear power being built. Thus the huge push from the nuclear lobby and fossil lobby loving a power source not generating a single kWh for 20 years to create targeted subsidies only for nuclear power.

roenxi 2y ago
Sure. What if we remove the nonsensical barriers and then let it fail on its own in the market? Like, say it only has to be 2x safer than the next safest popular form of energy? That always seemed like a reasonable compromise to me. A radical reduction in the standard of safety we hold nuclear to.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  The problem is who is affected by the accidents. For solar and wind the general public generally can’t be affected by any accidents so the deaths are general work place hazards coming from working aloft with heavy equipment. For nuclear power the public is on the hook for cleanup fees from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars and the large scale accidents we have seen caused hundreds of thousands to get evacuated. It is not even comparable. If I chose to not work in the solar and wind industry my chance of harm is as near zero as it gets. Meanwhile about all consequences from nuclear power afflicts the general public. Both in terms of costs, injuries and life changing evacuations. The playbook of trying to equate nuclear safety problems with the competition is quite sad to see because it relies on people only seeing a number. Not the real world implications of it.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > Not the real world implications of it. What real-world implications? One of my favourite lines of questioning in nuclear debates is trying to figure out what exactly the anti-nuclear crowd are worried about in terms of real-world implications. The real world implications seem to be minor enough that nobody can point them out. Even your comment, deploring real world implications, doesn't articulate what they are. The only real world implications I've seen are people panicking over negligible issues. And I'm happy to believe there are actual problems, but it'd be fantastic if someone knew what they were.