the-pi-guy said: HylianSwordsman said: Alright, I'll give you a chance to defend this.  How gracious of you.... HylianSwordsman said: Why nuclear? Because as far as I can see, it's a dead industry dragging the green movement down, and we'd be better off investing billions into fusion than trying to keep alive a failing fission industry. Everyone I've talked to so far just repeats talking points from the nuclear industry. >Why nuclear? It creates massive amounts of energy.   > it's a dead industry  It's largely dead because of fears that don't really hold up anymore.  It's not because of a lack of progres.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poPLSgbSO6k

No, it's dead because it's not economically profitable without government help. Not something that can be said of solar and wind. Again, we should be investing in nuclear fusion. Fusion doesn't have meltdowns, isn't radioactive, doesn't create waste, and would make every other form of energy completely obsolete the moment we commercialized it and scaled it up. Energy would become basically free, it would be a massive step toward a post scarcity economy.

I read through Bernies climate change plan and looked at other candidates plan. Bernies plan is for sure more detailed but it also has a lot of stuff that doesn't pertain to climate change in there and some of the stuff he outlines I don't think is feasible.

tsogud said: the-pi-guy said: How gracious of you.... >Why nuclear? It creates massive amounts of energy.   > it's a dead industry  It's largely dead because of fears that don't really hold up anymore.  It's not because of a lack of progres.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poPLSgbSO6k I have to say, for me personally, I was very ignorant of the progress nuclear energy has made. My main gripe with it was the waste it produced and how it would effect the environment. And also I was weary of how stable these reactors were. But after watching that video it seems nuclear energy is relatively safe now and continuing to be more efficient and safe as we make progress with it and should be considered as a viable source of energy going forward.

But at this point it's more economic to just go all renewable. Why bother with economically unviable nuclear, when you could invest that money into solar and wind? It's just the more efficient thing to do. We need to decarbonize as fast as possible, we don't have time to waste with nuclear. Eventually, fusion will come around and make it all pointless, but for now, nuclear fission is just a waste.

jason1637 said: I read through Bernies climate change plan and looked at other candidates plan. Bernies plan is for sure more detailed but it also has a lot of stuff that doesn't pertain to climate change in there and some of the stuff he outlines I don't think is feasible.

That's the point though. Of course it has stuff that doesn't pertain to climate change. It revolutionizes the whole economy to fix climate change, and nothing short of that will fix climate change, so while it's revolutionizing the economy, it's fixing other things as well. That's the point of "New Deal" legislation. It's a complete economic realignment. This time, however, it's also fixing the climate crisis.

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Wrong thread!

Last edited by COKTOE - on 22 August 2019

HylianSwordsman said: tsogud said: I have to say, for me personally, I was very ignorant of the progress nuclear energy has made. My main gripe with it was the waste it produced and how it would effect the environment. And also I was weary of how stable these reactors were. But after watching that video it seems nuclear energy is relatively safe now and continuing to be more efficient and safe as we make progress with it and should be considered as a viable source of energy going forward. But at this point it's more economic to just go all renewable. Why bother with economically unviable nuclear, when you could invest that money into solar and wind? It's just the more efficient thing to do. We need to decarbonize as fast as possible, we don't have time to waste with nuclear. Eventually, fusion will come around and make it all pointless, but for now, nuclear fission is just a waste.

While I do agree we need to decarbonize asap and that renewable energy should make up for a lot of that, if not all, nuclear can help us out a lot with our ever increasing demand of energy moving forward. We should at least consider it, not explicitly state in the plan not to and be anti-nuclear. How far are we along to making fusion energy viable because I really don't know?

Last edited by tsogud - on 22 August 2019

tsogud said: HylianSwordsman said: But at this point it's more economic to just go all renewable. Why bother with economically unviable nuclear, when you could invest that money into solar and wind? It's just the more efficient thing to do. We need to decarbonize as fast as possible, we don't have time to waste with nuclear. Eventually, fusion will come around and make it all pointless, but for now, nuclear fission is just a waste. While I do agree we need to decarbonize asap and that renewable energy should make up for a lot of that, if not all, nuclear can help us out a lot with our ever increasing demand of energy moving forward. We should at least consider it, not explicitly state in the plan not to and be anti-nuclear. How far are we along to making fusion energy viable because I really don't know?

Well the technology is in its infancy, but we have fusion technology now, technically. It's doing it on a commercial scale that's given us trouble. We're getting close though. Here's a guy named Steven Cowley, explaining it a bit. In the video, he estimates in the 2030s around 9:10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6BLFdBfgfU You'll also note that around 8:24 he mentions "switching it on again in 2013 and breaking all the records." Truth is they didn't switch it on, they just started construction on it in 2013. Here's an article on that: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/one-giant-leap-for-mankind-13bn-iter-project-makes-breakthrough-in-the-quest-for-nuclear-fusion-a-8590480.html You'll note in that article that it explains that this 2030 estimate is actually for the first demonstration power plant. It's estimated that beyond that, we won't see nuclear fusion operating on the same scale as say, coal right now, until the 2050s. If this is all still on schedule, we'll see what's known as "first plasma", the first successful demonstration of the experiment, in the mid 2020s, so pretty soon. Maybe even during Bernie's administration, and if it does, you can bet he'll jump on board the fusion train. Oh, and that's just the public sector. Here's an article on the private sector, which claims it'll have energy on the grid by 2030: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46219656 I don't really believe them, because they're just hyping things up to please investors. I don't believe the Chinese saying they're close either, because they're known to lie to boost their ego. Edit: The editor isn't loading for me and the formatting is getting all fucked up. I apologize for that, but I can't get the editor to load.

the-pi-guy said: HylianSwordsman said: After that amazing climate plan from Bernie, if Inslee doesn't endorse him, his entire candidacy was a joke. https://earther.gizmodo.com/bernie-sanders-climate-plan-is-nothing-short-of-a-revol-1837456120 This reminds me of one of the things about Bernie that I don't agree with.   He's anti-nuclear and that's very much written into his plan.

Same here. But that's also about his only weakness

HylianSwordsman said: Alright, I'll give you a chance to defend this. Why nuclear? Because as far as I can see, it's a dead industry dragging the green movement down, and we'd be better off investing billions into fusion than trying to keep alive a failing fission industry. Everyone I've talked to so far just repeats talking points from the nuclear industry.

Several points and reasons:

1. Fusion is still a long ways off. We're only achieved a quarter of a second of stable fusion right now, and we still need to inject more power than we gain from it. So we still need something else for the baseline energy. I don't expect to have a stable fusion test reactor before the mid 2030's, and a fusion production reactor before the 2050's, so we need something to bridge that gap.

2. The aforementioned baseline energy. Renewables alone are too shaky in their power output, too dependent on factors we don't have any influence over. Batteries can only do so much to smooth that out. At current tech, you would need a battery as large as Wyoming to ensure that all the fluctuations  can be taken hold of just for the US. That's just not feasible or practical at any level right now. Granted, there are already some battery plants, and electric cars on charge can be used as temporary batteries, but that would need to be massively scaled up, and these things need tons of space, which isn't always easy to come by.

3. While I do support nuclear, I don't support extending the lifetimes of the old, existing nuclear power plants. Those are outdated and unsafe and need to be replaced. All those second generation nuclear reactors would need to be shut down as soon as possible and replaced by Gen 3/3+, which are designed with safety in mind. 3 mile, Tchernobyl, Fukushima, neither of those 3 would have happened with a gen 3 design as they are inherently safe against those types of accidents (in fact, they were designed after the first two to avoid such problems in the future). The reason those are not built is because they are much more expensive to build than second gen reactors, limiting profits of nuclear companies, and there we need legislative changes to force them to build newer and stop extending the lifetimes of old the existing ones.

4. I also stress that we need to find a final storage for nuclear waste first. This is also one advantage of some 3rd gen reactors: they can also run on MOX, which means they can also use those weaker fission materials as fuels, reducing the nuclear waste we already have at hand. It ain't a final solution however, and we need to find one first.

jason1637 said: I read through Bernies climate change plan and looked at other candidates plan. Bernies plan is for sure more detailed but it also has a lot of stuff that doesn't pertain to climate change in there and some of the stuff he outlines I don't think is feasible.

The big differences in my opinon are:

• Caring for the transition of jobs of workers currently employed in fossil fuel industry (something also AOC has).
• Going to persecute executives of companies that brought destruction onto the planet. That is a revolution!

tsogud said: HylianSwordsman said: But at this point it's more economic to just go all renewable. Why bother with economically unviable nuclear, when you could invest that money into solar and wind? It's just the more efficient thing to do. We need to decarbonize as fast as possible, we don't have time to waste with nuclear. Eventually, fusion will come around and make it all pointless, but for now, nuclear fission is just a waste. While I do agree we need to decarbonize asap and that renewable energy should make up for a lot of that, if not all, nuclear can help us out a lot with our ever increasing demand of energy moving forward. We should at least consider it, not explicitly state in the plan not to and be anti-nuclear. How far are we along to making fusion energy viable because I really don't know?

Regarding nuclear fission energy people often talk about reactor accidents. In my opinion (and that of many others) the far bigger and yet unsolved problem is nuclear waste. Uranium-235 has a half-life of over 700 million years. We have no way to store stuff for that amount of time. I have seen no sound solution to this yet.