14 ms·

I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technol

by jre 13y ago

I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all. It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits. This is fine for some other industries, but it seems to fail for areas where the impact of mismanagement is much more severe than a bankruptcy. We have to find a way to make those critical industries transparent and honest so that citizens can trust them again.

justatdotin 13y ago
I also see a similarity: both GMOs and the nuclear industry pose poorly-managed threats to genetic integrity of all forms of life.
tonyedgecombe 13y ago
I'm not sure the government would lie any less in this situation so that only leaves one option, no nuclear.
- jre 13y ago
  I agree, I don't think a traditional government-controlled company is the answer. It's probably a mix of public and private entities, with a very strong and independent control authority that doesn't fear shutting things down if they find some wrongdoings (even if this means losing a lot of money in the short-term).
- mbq 13y ago
  The gov can kill you equally well with nuclear power as with bad food/water supervision, wrong medical policy (like inoculation strategy), chemical plants, mining operations, waste management, insufficient or corrupted law enforcement, finally by causing some war or economic collapse.
samatman 13y ago
I can think of one thing, and no one will swallow it in our society: The engineers who work on nuclear plants must pledge their lives for its safety, and ritually kill themselves in the event of an incident. I'm perfectly serious, in that it's within the human experience and it would work. I also suspect our world society can't wrap its head around that kind of medieval pact, and I'm not even sure I want to live in that world. Still, knowing you have to hang yourself if the plant goes critical is pretty good motivation to do things right and not cut corners. EDIT: well, this is getting misunderstood. My point here is: would you accept a lesser guarantee of safety? If you really believe that nuclear power can be made safe, these hypothetical engineers aren't at risk. Let's say I took a pledge to kill myself if a meteor ever knocks the flame off the Statue of Liberty. Would any of you worry about me? No? Maybe we shouldn't build nuke plants at the moment, then.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  Mistakes aren't deterministic, they are largely probabilistic. While ritual suicide might make the victims of an accident feel better, they are ultimately unproductive - there are many classes of disastrous errors that have nothing to do with negligence. Not to mention also, even in incidents with a preventable cause, it is exceedingly rare for there to be a singular cause. Chernobyl, for example, was the culmination of a vast number of errors and safety lapses. Should the entire plant workforce kill themselves? Things like nuclear meltdowns are black swan events, with a multitude of causes and guilt. What you're basically suggesting is that, in the case of such a black swan event, we will kill off a large proportion of the only people who can prevent it from happening again.
  - samatman 13y ago
    While I do think a "vast number of errors and safety lapses" is unlikely to come out of a cult (note the word) of engineering which embraces ritual suicide as the cost of failure... This is about human psychology, rather than reliability in the engineering sense. I truly believe it would lead to better safety, but not perfect safety. The idea is that yes, all or most of the engineers involved in a nuclear accident of any significance would kill themselves. Not only would their knowledge be lost, their fellow nuclear engineers would carve their names on a black stone, bury it in the earth beneath their corrupted stain, and never mention them again. Their families would be rewarded only if they showed honor by staying to fight the nuclear corruption, and dying honorably when the disaster is contained. This won't work perfectly, but it would let society as a whole live with the contradiction inherent in nuclear power: it sustains us, while running the risk of turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous mutation. This is also pure thought experiment: what would it take to have a culture of safety as serious as the threat of nuclear disaster? I'm not willing to pay this price, and yet, I'm thoroughly familiar with the mass balance equations governing extractable energy and haven't a clue how to post-carbon without at least some nuclear.
yaix 13y ago
Its both cases of failing government oversight of these industries. Fukushima got worse and worse, because the company was basically doing and saying whatever they wanted (and seemingly still is) with the government just repeating it. Same goes for GMO. Its a good but potentially very dangerous technology. We should not simply allow it because a few billion USD in turnover and GDP growth are promised.
- Bluestrike2 13y ago
  No, we should allow it because GMO represents the potential for increases in agricultural efficiency and total output that mean the difference between millions starving to death or not.
  - te_chris 13y ago
    I'm not anti-GMO, but your argument is incredibly weak and completely ignores biodiversity and vendor lock in concerns (i.e Monsanto seeds requiring to be re-sown, thus repurchased after every harvest) that seem to be the main angle from most anti-GMO people I know. The problem is everyone is thinking about the short-term.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    I call BS. We have enough yield to feed the planet already. The difference between millions starving to death or not is inequality and indifference. GMO's are mostly used to sell the same food to the same people that always had food and can pay for it, just with better profit margins. Not to mention patents, locking the seeds etc -- something 100 times worse than software patents.
    - nl 13y ago
      We have enough yield to feed the planet already. "We" in this case is the US (perhaps combined with the Ukraine, Australia & a few other large grain providers). But that means that much of the worlds population has to rely on food supplies grown elsewhere. Increasing drought resistance in grain crops could allow African countries to feed themselves, which could decrease political tensions over water supplies.
api 13y ago
Both of these things are tests of our ability to be conscientious, honest, and to take the power we have seriously and act accordingly. They're tests of maturity and responsibility -- at a civilization level. So far on the nuclear front we've failed that test. Fukushima had its backup generators in the basement -- in a tsunami zone. There is no global nuclear emergency response team. There is no long-term waste solution in many countries including the USA. Managers of plants routinely slack off on safety, reporting, etc. We are quite simply too irresponsible and immature for such toys... yet. Humanity has a little bit of growing up to do. I don't think GMOs are an exact comparison, as I think the risk is much smaller there (at least with most GMO technologies). But it's the same class of thing-- a technology that demands maturity and responsibility. I'd extend that to biotech in general.
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
Regulatory capture is a big problem. One of the more bizarre twists in the Japanese nuclear story is that a program to develop robots that could remotely work inside damaged nuclear generating stations was canceled out of fear that it would send a message that nuclear power isn't safe.
- furyg3 13y ago
  If that's true it's very interesting... Do you have any sources?
  - stygiansonic 13y ago
    This is one anecdote I found: http://crasar.org/2011/03/17/word-from-japan-on-robots-and-fukushima/ http://crasar.org/2011/03/17/word-from-japan-on-robots-and-f...
  - RyanMcGreal 13y ago
    You'll find a lot of stuff if you search for the nuclear safety myth in Japan. Here are a couple of links: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/asia/25myth.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/asia/25myth.html?pag... http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/06/09/national/myth-of-nuclear-safety-sets-back-robotic-research-and-development/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/06/09/national/myth-of...
- CWuestefeld 13y ago
  Regulatory capture is a big problem. Regulatory capture is THE problem. Contrary to the parent post's claim, the problem is not with our "economic system". It's that, if you're going to regulate something (particularly something as complex as nuclear energy), then you need experts. And the only place to get those experts is from the industry. Generally, those people are naturally going to look at the industry from a certain perspective, one that views the activity of the industry as important, and its status quo as something other than an historical accident. Until you can find a way to extract human nature from the regulatory process -- and that's even before we start talking about corruption -- you're not going to get anything better. So sure, the industry tries to push the boundaries, and we should call them out for that. But while doing so, we must also consider how the regulators -- themselves humans -- might do even worse. That side of the equation is too often overlooked.
jeffdavis 13y ago
"It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits." That sounds more like an unfortunate law of nature rather than our "current economic system". Even under communism or in hunter/gatherer groups there is pressure to do more with less; it's just not called "profit". The important thing to do is avoid hiding long-term large risks with short-term safety. Our modern economic systems actually make that easier; although technology makes the long-term large risks larger.
wissler 13y ago
"I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all." If you look around you'll find a lot more examples than these two, and you'll trace the root cause as illegitimate use of government force, i.e. use or threat of violence for what is simply peaceful activity. If someone threatens you with violence, "for your own good", you tend not to trust. But for some reason, when government does this very same thing, most people still trust it. It's like how children still trust parents even though the parents might restrain or even spank them (and this makes good evolutionary sense), but the difference is that the government is not your parent, it does not actually have a concern for you as an individual, it doesn't love you. It is a collection of strangers with their own agendas. Somehow, government has figured out how to not only co-opt this evolutionary circuitry that was meant for trusting parents at a time when the child really doesn't know what's good for him, and what's more, extend this infantile frame of mind beyond childhood. All of this recent NSA stuff is just getting toward the final consequences of allowing yourself to adopt such a childish frame of mind. The government has no more right to take a threatening or coercive action against innocent people than any stranger does.
- moens 13y ago
  I think this childishness is the essential requirement of centralized power. Our current economic system rises from our (personal) taste for the conveniences of centralized power. For it we are willing to relinquish personal responsibility and individuality. Many early people groups (nomads, pueblos, even manors and unfederated fifedoms), had optimized for small communities. Presumably they were not aware of the efficiency of centralized power, or capable of the centralization we can accomplish today. Some apparently were aware, and chose the benefits of small communities. I believe we are now at a crossroads. We choose small communities and relinquish the convenience of centralized power, or we submit to the requirements of centralized power (lack of privacy, lack of individuality, etc).
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  What does this have to do with the government not exerting sufficient regulatory force against bad actors in the nuclear industry? After all, people who don't like being regulated frequently trot out your very complaint as an excuse for why they should not be subject to more regulation. I think you're confused.
kenster07 13y ago
Why is it fundamentally stupid to be opposed to it? Nuclear power in its current form presents tremendous, potentially country-altering downside when things (can and will) go wrong. Is this really the best humanity has got -- the side effect of a decades-old weapons program?
- cobrausn 13y ago
  Is this really the best humanity has got -- The side effect of a decades-old weapons program? You are asking the question this way hoping someone has a better answer - they don't. Nuclear is our best option for making clean and reliable power that will get us to that next best option. Some of the new designs out there are quite amazing feats of engineering.
  - kenster07 13y ago
    A Google search would disagree with your assertion.
    - cobrausn 13y ago
      I too can search google and come up with results that say what I want. Care to go into detail about these proven technologies that can power the world and replace our dependence on oil?
    - indefatigable 13y ago
      Your opinions are provided by PageRank? Good to know.
- baddox 13y ago
  Why is it appropriate to compare the worst case for various methods of power generation? I think it's more appropriate to weigh the potential failure cases of each by the probability of them occurring, and I suspect if we did that, nuclear wouldn't be the most harmful method of power generation.
  - 13y ago
leoc 13y ago
> I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all. It's not just the industry or governments, it's also the shamelessly, breathlessly partisan pros and antis who seem to dominate the broader debate on nuclear. > It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits. This is fine for some other industries, but it seems to fail for areas where the impact of mismanagement is much more severe than a bankruptcy. There are definitely serious incentive problems. However, making everyone a public employee and so notionally an agent of the public interest doesn't necessarily make such problems go away, viz. Chernobyl.
prewett 13y ago
I'm not convinced that nuclear power is safe, regulators or no. Accidents, mistakes, unforeseen problems, sabotage all will happen, and when it does, it makes an area of land potentially uninhabitable for many years. A system where the failure mode is long-term uninhabitability is not what I call safe.
ArkyBeagle 13y ago
Risk is cost we can't measure because it would require the ability to predict what we cannot. Rents are profits that aren't really profits. The thing to do is be open, transparent and honest about risk and rents. But at our core, we're all liars when the stakes get high. The math is also error prone. Remember the political climate those old GE nuke plants were built under - "too cheap to meter" and run by people like Leslie Groves who had infought enough to be at the top of the heap. there was this strange, willful naievete. "Making those industries transparent and honest" seems impossible.

by jre 13y ago

justatdotin 13y ago

I also see a similarity: both GMOs and the nuclear industry pose poorly-managed threats to genetic integrity of all forms of life.

tonyedgecombe 13y ago

I'm not sure the government would lie any less in this situation so that only leaves one option, no nuclear.

jre 13y ago
I agree, I don't think a traditional government-controlled company is the answer. It's probably a mix of public and private entities, with a very strong and independent control authority that doesn't fear shutting things down if they find some wrongdoings (even if this means losing a lot of money in the short-term).
mbq 13y ago
The gov can kill you equally well with nuclear power as with bad food/water supervision, wrong medical policy (like inoculation strategy), chemical plants, mining operations, waste management, insufficient or corrupted law enforcement, finally by causing some war or economic collapse.

samatman 13y ago

I can think of one thing, and no one will swallow it in our society: The engineers who work on nuclear plants must pledge their lives for its safety, and ritually kill themselves in the event of an incident. I'm perfectly serious, in that it's within the human experience and it would work. I also suspect our world society can't wrap its head around that kind of medieval pact, and I'm not even sure I want to live in that world. Still, knowing you have to hang yourself if the plant goes critical is pretty good motivation to do things right and not cut corners. EDIT: well, this is getting misunderstood. My point here is: would you accept a lesser guarantee of safety? If you really believe that nuclear power can be made safe, these hypothetical engineers aren't at risk. Let's say I took a pledge to kill myself if a meteor ever knocks the flame off the Statue of Liberty. Would any of you worry about me? No? Maybe we shouldn't build nuke plants at the moment, then.

potatolicious 13y ago
Mistakes aren't deterministic, they are largely probabilistic. While ritual suicide might make the victims of an accident feel better, they are ultimately unproductive - there are many classes of disastrous errors that have nothing to do with negligence. Not to mention also, even in incidents with a preventable cause, it is exceedingly rare for there to be a singular cause. Chernobyl, for example, was the culmination of a vast number of errors and safety lapses. Should the entire plant workforce kill themselves? Things like nuclear meltdowns are black swan events, with a multitude of causes and guilt. What you're basically suggesting is that, in the case of such a black swan event, we will kill off a large proportion of the only people who can prevent it from happening again.
- samatman 13y ago
  While I do think a "vast number of errors and safety lapses" is unlikely to come out of a cult (note the word) of engineering which embraces ritual suicide as the cost of failure... This is about human psychology, rather than reliability in the engineering sense. I truly believe it would lead to better safety, but not perfect safety. The idea is that yes, all or most of the engineers involved in a nuclear accident of any significance would kill themselves. Not only would their knowledge be lost, their fellow nuclear engineers would carve their names on a black stone, bury it in the earth beneath their corrupted stain, and never mention them again. Their families would be rewarded only if they showed honor by staying to fight the nuclear corruption, and dying honorably when the disaster is contained. This won't work perfectly, but it would let society as a whole live with the contradiction inherent in nuclear power: it sustains us, while running the risk of turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous mutation. This is also pure thought experiment: what would it take to have a culture of safety as serious as the threat of nuclear disaster? I'm not willing to pay this price, and yet, I'm thoroughly familiar with the mass balance equations governing extractable energy and haven't a clue how to post-carbon without at least some nuclear.

yaix 13y ago

Its both cases of failing government oversight of these industries. Fukushima got worse and worse, because the company was basically doing and saying whatever they wanted (and seemingly still is) with the government just repeating it. Same goes for GMO. Its a good but potentially very dangerous technology. We should not simply allow it because a few billion USD in turnover and GDP growth are promised.

Bluestrike2 13y ago
No, we should allow it because GMO represents the potential for increases in agricultural efficiency and total output that mean the difference between millions starving to death or not.
- te_chris 13y ago
  I'm not anti-GMO, but your argument is incredibly weak and completely ignores biodiversity and vendor lock in concerns (i.e Monsanto seeds requiring to be re-sown, thus repurchased after every harvest) that seem to be the main angle from most anti-GMO people I know. The problem is everyone is thinking about the short-term.
- coldtea 13y ago
  I call BS. We have enough yield to feed the planet already. The difference between millions starving to death or not is inequality and indifference. GMO's are mostly used to sell the same food to the same people that always had food and can pay for it, just with better profit margins. Not to mention patents, locking the seeds etc -- something 100 times worse than software patents.
  - nl 13y ago
    We have enough yield to feed the planet already. "We" in this case is the US (perhaps combined with the Ukraine, Australia & a few other large grain providers). But that means that much of the worlds population has to rely on food supplies grown elsewhere. Increasing drought resistance in grain crops could allow African countries to feed themselves, which could decrease political tensions over water supplies.

api 13y ago

Both of these things are tests of our ability to be conscientious, honest, and to take the power we have seriously and act accordingly. They're tests of maturity and responsibility -- at a civilization level. So far on the nuclear front we've failed that test. Fukushima had its backup generators in the basement -- in a tsunami zone. There is no global nuclear emergency response team. There is no long-term waste solution in many countries including the USA. Managers of plants routinely slack off on safety, reporting, etc. We are quite simply too irresponsible and immature for such toys... yet. Humanity has a little bit of growing up to do. I don't think GMOs are an exact comparison, as I think the risk is much smaller there (at least with most GMO technologies). But it's the same class of thing-- a technology that demands maturity and responsibility. I'd extend that to biotech in general.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

Regulatory capture is a big problem. One of the more bizarre twists in the Japanese nuclear story is that a program to develop robots that could remotely work inside damaged nuclear generating stations was canceled out of fear that it would send a message that nuclear power isn't safe.

furyg3 13y ago
If that's true it's very interesting... Do you have any sources?
- stygiansonic 13y ago
  This is one anecdote I found: http://crasar.org/2011/03/17/word-from-japan-on-robots-and-fukushima/ http://crasar.org/2011/03/17/word-from-japan-on-robots-and-f...
- RyanMcGreal 13y ago
  You'll find a lot of stuff if you search for the nuclear safety myth in Japan. Here are a couple of links: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/asia/25myth.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/asia/25myth.html?pag... http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/06/09/national/myth-of-nuclear-safety-sets-back-robotic-research-and-development/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/06/09/national/myth-of...
CWuestefeld 13y ago
Regulatory capture is a big problem. Regulatory capture is THE problem. Contrary to the parent post's claim, the problem is not with our "economic system". It's that, if you're going to regulate something (particularly something as complex as nuclear energy), then you need experts. And the only place to get those experts is from the industry. Generally, those people are naturally going to look at the industry from a certain perspective, one that views the activity of the industry as important, and its status quo as something other than an historical accident. Until you can find a way to extract human nature from the regulatory process -- and that's even before we start talking about corruption -- you're not going to get anything better. So sure, the industry tries to push the boundaries, and we should call them out for that. But while doing so, we must also consider how the regulators -- themselves humans -- might do even worse. That side of the equation is too often overlooked.

jeffdavis 13y ago

"It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits." That sounds more like an unfortunate law of nature rather than our "current economic system". Even under communism or in hunter/gatherer groups there is pressure to do more with less; it's just not called "profit". The important thing to do is avoid hiding long-term large risks with short-term safety. Our modern economic systems actually make that easier; although technology makes the long-term large risks larger.

wissler 13y ago

"I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all." If you look around you'll find a lot more examples than these two, and you'll trace the root cause as illegitimate use of government force, i.e. use or threat of violence for what is simply peaceful activity. If someone threatens you with violence, "for your own good", you tend not to trust. But for some reason, when government does this very same thing, most people still trust it. It's like how children still trust parents even though the parents might restrain or even spank them (and this makes good evolutionary sense), but the difference is that the government is not your parent, it does not actually have a concern for you as an individual, it doesn't love you. It is a collection of strangers with their own agendas. Somehow, government has figured out how to not only co-opt this evolutionary circuitry that was meant for trusting parents at a time when the child really doesn't know what's good for him, and what's more, extend this infantile frame of mind beyond childhood. All of this recent NSA stuff is just getting toward the final consequences of allowing yourself to adopt such a childish frame of mind. The government has no more right to take a threatening or coercive action against innocent people than any stranger does.

moens 13y ago
I think this childishness is the essential requirement of centralized power. Our current economic system rises from our (personal) taste for the conveniences of centralized power. For it we are willing to relinquish personal responsibility and individuality. Many early people groups (nomads, pueblos, even manors and unfederated fifedoms), had optimized for small communities. Presumably they were not aware of the efficiency of centralized power, or capable of the centralization we can accomplish today. Some apparently were aware, and chose the benefits of small communities. I believe we are now at a crossroads. We choose small communities and relinquish the convenience of centralized power, or we submit to the requirements of centralized power (lack of privacy, lack of individuality, etc).
anigbrowl 13y ago
What does this have to do with the government not exerting sufficient regulatory force against bad actors in the nuclear industry? After all, people who don't like being regulated frequently trot out your very complaint as an excuse for why they should not be subject to more regulation. I think you're confused.

kenster07 13y ago

Why is it fundamentally stupid to be opposed to it? Nuclear power in its current form presents tremendous, potentially country-altering downside when things (can and will) go wrong. Is this really the best humanity has got -- the side effect of a decades-old weapons program?

cobrausn 13y ago
Is this really the best humanity has got -- The side effect of a decades-old weapons program? You are asking the question this way hoping someone has a better answer - they don't. Nuclear is our best option for making clean and reliable power that will get us to that next best option. Some of the new designs out there are quite amazing feats of engineering.
- kenster07 13y ago
  A Google search would disagree with your assertion.
  - cobrausn 13y ago
    I too can search google and come up with results that say what I want. Care to go into detail about these proven technologies that can power the world and replace our dependence on oil?
  - indefatigable 13y ago
    Your opinions are provided by PageRank? Good to know.
baddox 13y ago
Why is it appropriate to compare the worst case for various methods of power generation? I think it's more appropriate to weigh the potential failure cases of each by the probability of them occurring, and I suspect if we did that, nuclear wouldn't be the most harmful method of power generation.
- 13y ago

leoc 13y ago

> I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all. It's not just the industry or governments, it's also the shamelessly, breathlessly partisan pros and antis who seem to dominate the broader debate on nuclear. > It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits. This is fine for some other industries, but it seems to fail for areas where the impact of mismanagement is much more severe than a bankruptcy. There are definitely serious incentive problems. However, making everyone a public employee and so notionally an agent of the public interest doesn't necessarily make such problems go away, viz. Chernobyl.

prewett 13y ago

I'm not convinced that nuclear power is safe, regulators or no. Accidents, mistakes, unforeseen problems, sabotage all will happen, and when it does, it makes an area of land potentially uninhabitable for many years. A system where the failure mode is long-term uninhabitability is not what I call safe.

ArkyBeagle 13y ago

Risk is cost we can't measure because it would require the ability to predict what we cannot. Rents are profits that aren't really profits. The thing to do is be open, transparent and honest about risk and rents. But at our core, we're all liars when the stakes get high. The math is also error prone. Remember the political climate those old GE nuke plants were built under - "too cheap to meter" and run by people like Leslie Groves who had infought enough to be at the top of the heap. there was this strange, willful naievete. "Making those industries transparent and honest" seems impossible.