Not sure if an article in Forbes (slogan: “Capitalist Tool”) would be a good source.
In addition, most of these comparisons leave negative things out in the type of power they prefer, and exaggerate or lie about the impact of the type of power they don’t like. I can find articles from scientiests (not “Captialist Tools”) giving both opinions.
However, one fact remains: nobody dies in a solar power spill.
Just a note, it’s not even an article in Forbes, the magazine. It’s an opinion piece written by a nuclear lobbyist. Anyone on the internet can get an article on their crowd-sourced news site, if they buy a membership.
I think there’s a big pro-nuclear astroturfing campaign going on right now. There seems to be a lot of people pushing a pro-nuclear line without disclosing their relationships with industry.
Except literally no one but you has gone there.
Good point!
And I’m sure it’s not news to readers of BB that there are armies of automated bots flooding chatboards with messages.
Gosh, it’s almost as if this kind of “Both sides!” complaining (which is not true at all) is the best way of achieving nothing except maintaining a smug sense of moral superiority while the world goes to hell.
That’s what I was replying to–both dismissive and an intentional misinterpretation of my original intent in order to make a morally self-righteous but ultimately pointless comment.
Given the tone of what I was replying to, I was in no way “a dick.”
Here’s a source from Wikipedia. I don’t know if people consider Wikipedia to be a capitalist tool or not these days.
The reality is that solar and wind are reasonable safe. I have no objection to them based on safety. My only point is they aren’t safer than nuclear; they are leas safe than nuclear.
My concerns about solar and wind is that if we trying to solve climate change in time to save lives, I don’t see how we build enough solar and wind capability to replace fossil fuels fast enough. And the recent closures of various nuclear plants have led to increased emissions because natural gas is generally the replacement. I also think we will run into rare earth mineral shortages which we also need for EVs.
Nuclear has inherent safety concerns, but so do a lot of technologies. Engineering is (among other things) about making things that are inherently risky safe enough to live and work with. The nuclear industry has a better safety record than other forms of energy production. That’s a fact, not my opinion.
I just want public policy based on reason and evidence that optimizes to minimize deaths and permanent harm to the planet. I think nuclear is the way to go to go on that. So do a lot of other people. The reason why you are seeing people making this case is because it is a very important issue in this election cycle.
I don’t work in the nuclear industry. My daughter is a PhD student in nuclear engineering and she went into this field because she wanted to do the most good she could on climate change. She has worked for several national labs on various nuclear projects.
As Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”
Gotta admit, Bernie lost me when he called reproductive rights a fringe issue. Seems pretty central to me…
Mind you, I will cheerfully vote for the Democratic nominee in 2020 even if that’s a stale piece of toast or a flaming bag of dog poo!
Not sure why all of a sudden so many threads are getting nuclear-hijacked today, but…
Like it or not, even with the high profile disasters that have happened, nuclear power has historically killed fewer people per MWh than any other power source, wind and solar included (or if not, it’s very close). Deaths from wind and solar, though, are concentrated within the industry itself, on the people manufacturing, installing, maintaining, decommissioning, etc. the equipment and facilities involved. Kinda like how deaths among cops are to a large extent the result of driving cop cars.
As for handling waste - this bothers me too, but I would argue that it’s only a problem because we as a society have never actually tried to solve it except through long term storage. If its still radioactive, then there is still usable energy in it, and several groups and companies have developed reactor designs that automatically consume many of the radioactive species that other reactor designs consider to be waste, so that the total amount and half-life of waste produced would be much less. But, these designs happened after most countries stopped building any new reactors at all.
I’m also curious as to whether you’ve asked wind turbine developers how they plan to handle the microplastics that result from landfilling the massive amounts of fiberglass blades that aren’t valuable enough to recycle? Or how solar farms are going to properly secure or recycle all the electronics their constituent materials involved in their operations? I have, and the answer is that no one knows yet, but I’m definitely still in favor of building as much as possible of all renewables as quickly as possible.
I think microplastics are a killer, but comparing the waste of future used wind turbine blades to even the current mass stockpiles of “short-term storage” nuclear waste canisters has to be a bit of joke, right?
A positive statistic, but a fatality tally that doesn’t seem to factor in shortened or radiation-impacted lives.
The disaster at Fukushima, while it didn’t kill any workers at the time, and it didn’t mean everyone developed cancer later, still led to thousands of deaths. Maybe you know the “dead humans per MWh” for Japan? It’s hard for me to imagine that fatality rate happening from a solar or wind operation.
https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/a_e/fukushima/faqs-fukushima/en/
Are you counting the hundreds of thousands of deaths from cancer induced by the radiation leaks at Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, Fukushima, and Hanford?
Or are you counting the future deaths from thousands of tons of nuclear waste because the “super duper” storage methods start leaking? You’ll have guard it for longer than Neanderthal Man has been gone, both from leakage and theft.
And are you taking into consideration future climate-related effects causing cooling systems to malfunction like at Fukushima? If you have 5 or 10 more meltdowns like that it’s game over, man.
I know there’s lots of people employed in the nuclear industry. There were also lots of people employed in the buggywhip industry, the cathode-ray tube industry, the landline telephone industry, etc.
From one of Sanders’ issue pages:
Q: Where does Bernie stand with regard to women’s reproductive health?
A: Bernie believes in protecting a woman’s right to choose and has a lifetime pro-choice record:
On the abortion issue, you might be confusing Bernie with Hillary:
Headline from Late-Term Abortion Debate Reveals a Rift Between Clinton and Sanders – Mother Jones
And this is why I think that, in practice, it is a much better plan to support going all-in on renewables and not bother advocating for more nuclear. Because it fundamentally doesn’t matter what the statistics are, or how they’re computed, the responses are the same regardless. Enough people are sufficiently certain that nuclear is unavoidably unsafe that it’s a non-starter politically and, partly as a result, economically.
I think microplastics are a killer, but comparing the waste of future used wind turbine blades to even the current mass stockpiles of “short-term storage” nuclear waste canisters has to be a bit of joke, right?
Yes, of course, jut like people who talk about blade-caused deaths of birds and bats are a joke. My point is that discussions of nuclear always seem to lead to isolated, asymmetric demands for rigor. Everyone nitpicks every offered data point, without ever pointing to a differently-computed data point that disagrees. (And yes, I realize in this case I’m the lazy one who did not cite a source, I stopped bothering about 10 years ago, you can find several papers in 5 seconds of googling if you’re interested). And no one applies the same level of scrutiny to their own preferred alternative.
Nuclear power looks big and scary, and the disasters are high profile, just like terrorism, but I think most on this forum agree that fear of flying and the post-9/11 security theater that lead to more driving and less flying, which killed more people than 9/11 itself did. So, I’d much rather have many different people with many different initial opinions do the math, and then see how their answers compare, than make decisions based on initial opinions directly.
I’ve read a lot of online commentary, some of it in this very thread, that something like “If my preferred Democrat doesn’t get the nomination, I will 1) not vote or 2) write-in my preferred Democrat.” If the word “privilege” means anything, then it describes these people.
You probably don’t have much at risk if Trump gets elected other than the distasteful site of the Orange Menace for 4 more years. But remember this, four more years of Trump means: 1) people who are in danger will be denied asylum, 2) children will be separated from their parents, 3) people who need healthcare will not receive it, a whole host of other atrocities. So, get on that high horse and enjoy your privilege. When you cast that protest vote I want one of these people who will really lose something watching you do it and I want you to explain to them why you thought it was best.
it’s all very silly anyway. people make decisions on whom to vote for for many reasons. you can easily find some issues from any candidate that will be for or against some interest of the individual voter.
you can then draw the line however you want and say that voter is for or against self-interest.
it’s exactly like ayn rand’s objectivism - everybody is in it for “themselves” - but the definition of what’s important shifts person to person so it is meaningless as any prediction for or interpretation of a group.
might as well say: people vote for the candidate they think is best. it has the same depth of meaning without the objectivist baggage
Nuclear is safer than a lot of possible energy sources, and you are more than reasonable.
That’s not a joke. It’s a problem. I don’t think plastic waste is a joke either, and I also hope they develop ways of dealing with it, the same way I hope they develop nuclear waste reclamation.
But they aren’t there yet, and so much of nuclear waste disposal is of the “hide it in the ocean where marine life can’t complain, or make it someone else’s problem on land”. That’s true of a lot of other waste, but too many people hand-wave the added responsibility and infrastructure we’d need for ramped-up nuclear, or the risks if we treat it the way we currently don’t.
To get back on topic … a good summary of just part of the immense forces arrayed against Sanders:
So being in lockstep with everyone’s i.e. YOUR opinion is now a requirement?
I was pointing out the progression of the argument. First it is smugly asked who else has ever had the nerve to go on Fox TV. When it is pointed out that Obama did it, that gets erased by “but only when he was President, not a candidate”. When it is then pointed out that other Democratic candidates are going to go on Fox, the argument becomes “Well they are only COPYING Bernie”.
I didn’t make those comments up. they are right in the thread, so no other people already made the claims that other Democrats have gone on Fox and are willing to go on Fox.
Basically, a question was asked and when the answer wasn’t “only Bernie has the guts to face the opposition” but instead was “he’s not the only one who is willing to take Fox on” suddenly the goal posts get shifted all over the place. Obama going, doesn’t count. Others going, well Bernie did it first so no one else will EVER count. That’s simply not right IMHO.
Plus calling Buttigieg “the flavor of the week” is incredibly disrespectful. Or shows a great desire to stomp anyone who might threaten Bernie’s chances, by denigrating them, not responding to their platform or what they may have to bring to the table.
“26% of Bernie supporters would vote for Trump over Elizabeth Warren.”
I’ll just leave this right here… https://twitter.com/schemaly/status/1119091709659369474
Anti-Sanders? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. He had the most favorable media coverage in 2016. It’s more than laughable that you think otherwise.
https://politicalwire.com/2016/06/15/sanders-received-most-favorable-media-coverage/
