
Public's Dread of Nuclear Power Limits Its Deployment - Reedx
https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/may/nuclear-power-limits.html
======
jwr
I have conflicted thoughts on this. On one hand, nuclear energy seems to be
the only way we have right now to at least try to avoid the oncoming climate
catastrophe. On the other hand, I'm reading "Normal Accidents: Living with
High-Risk Technologies" by Charles Perrow and it's scary. Really scary. The
combination of very complex systems with interactions that no one understands
and greed, poor oversight, and other human behaviors results in something we
should be afraid of. And yet, we might have no choice but to use nuclear
power.

By the way, official statistics are one thing (I used to love quoting them as
well), but if you look at the number of "close calls" that we had and if you
look into the causes behind various incidents, a different picture emerges and
you might lose some of the confidence.

I also now think that anyone taking part in the discussion should read
Perrow's book.

One thought I had while reading the book is that these days it might make
sense to try to model these complex systems and run simulations to at least
try to discover the unexpected interactions and mitigate them. Similar to (for
example) how FoundationDB was developed. Simulations on that scale were likely
difficult or impossible at the time when most nuclear plants were designed,
but with modern computing power we might have better ways of reducing the
problem domain.

~~~
pdonis
We already know how to safely operate nuclear power plants: the US Navy has
been doing so for decades with no incidents. We could have imposed a similar
level of discipline on civilian nuclear power plant operators back in the
1970s, when commercial plants started being built in the US in quantity. Or we
could have done it after Three Mile Island (which harmed no members of the
general public but clearly showed inadequacies in the way civilian nuclear
plants were operated). The fact that we didn't is a political problem, not a
technical or operational problem.

Furthermore, even the operational problem is now nonexistent with newer
reactor designs. Older designs, like the reactors at Three Mile Island,
required the operators to correctly execute a fairly complex procedure in the
event of a problem to prevent the reactor from being severely damaged or
destroyed; the TMI operators failed to do that. Also, as Fukushima showed,
older reactor designs require reliable backup power for decay heat removal.
Newer designs have neither of those requirements; you can literally pull the
shutdown switch and walk away and there will be no problem.

So while I don't disagree with what you say about complex systems in general,
I don't think nuclear reactors, with today's designs, are even that complex.
We know how to design and build them so that it is impossible to operate them
unsafely. We just don't have the political will to do it.

~~~
jwr
> no incidents

I would respectfully suggest that you read the book I quoted. I also thought
there were "no incidents". The book is from 1983, so it specifically describes
the 70s and early 80s. There were plenty of incidents and accidents, it's just
that few of them resulted in major releases of radioactive material. My take
on this after reading about some details is that we were just lucky.

Some might say it is outdated — but I followed up on some of the stories
described there and checked more recent developments. Specifically, the San
Onofre plant which gets a mention in the book. You can read about it on
Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Shutdown,_2012_and_closure,_2013)
— now tell me that we know what we're doing and that we "know how to safely
operate nuclear power plants" after reading things like:

> On investigation, the replacement steam generators from 2011 in both units
> were found to show premature wear on over 3,000 tubes, in 15,000 places.[47]
> Plant officials pledged not to restart until the causes of the tube leak and
> tube degradation were understood.

Other honorable mentions:

> "The firm Bechtel was ... embarrassed in 1977, when it installed a 420-ton
> nuclear-reactor vessel backwards" at San Onofre

> In 2008, the San Onofre plant received multiple citations over issues such
> as failed emergency generators, improperly wired batteries and falsified
> fire safety data.

Again, I am not against nuclear power. I'm just pointing out that we have way
too much hubris and the rosy picture of "no incidents" is not entirely true.

Also, which newer designs do you mean?

~~~
ip26
We have accumulated a lot of stories that can be a bit hair-raising. But
looking back, the actual rate of casualties is _much_ higher for coal, oil, &
gas. Which makes this feel like obsessing about airline fatalities (0.2 deaths
per 10 billion passenger-miles) and ignoring automobile fatalities (150 per 10
billion vehicle-miles)

I mean, look at it from the other angle. At San Onofre, a vessel was
_installed backwards_. It then proceeded to deliver power for 25 years & was
decommissioned. Additionally, we're reading about all this mismanagement as a
result of _regulatory oversight_. Not as a result of a post-catastrophe
investigative report.

~~~
patejam
I never liked comparing air travel to car travel. It's just not a fair
comparison.

Per mile danger is the most favorable towards airlines, but you could use per-
journey and then airline travel is 3-4x more dangerous than cars.

The best you can do is either say "airline travel is plenty safe enough" or
make direct comparisons like "traveling from NYC to LA via airline is safer
than driving the same distance".

~~~
wool_gather
> you could use per-journey and then airline travel is 3-4x more dangerous
> than cars.

This wouldn't be a fair comparison either, unless you normalized for number of
people on the journey. (As done in _passenger_ -miles.)

~~~
patejam
My point was that the 3-4x stat is also not fair. My point was that there are
very few fair comparisons, and gave some examples that I think are fair
statements.

------
keiferski
Correct me if I’m wrong, but nuclear energy fundamentally requires a strong
state, at least one capable enough of maintaining facilities and disposing of
the waste.

Looking at human history, the assumption that some state power will always be
able to manage it seems rather naive. There have been long stretches of
feudalism, warfare, and all-out anarchy and indeed the current relatively
stable forms of government are not the norm historically. If all it takes to
cause a nuclear meltdown is a brief lapse in order or relative peace, then
that doesn’t strike me as very anti-fragile.

Furthermore, nuclear power requires and perpetuates government control over
things in a way that say, solar energy, doesn’t. Whether that’s a good thing
or not depends on your political persuasion, of course.

That said, one could probably also make the opposite argument that nuclear
power would lead to more incentives for peace and stability, in the same way
that arguments for Mutually-Assured-Destruction argue that nuclear weapons
prevent warfare.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>There have been long stretches of feudalism, warfare, and all-out anarchy and
indeed the current relatively stable forms of government are not the norm
historically. If all it takes to cause a nuclear meltdown is a brief lapse in
order or relative peace, then that doesn’t strike me as very anti-fragile.

If that happens, the death caused by nuclear power will be the least of your
concerns. A descent into anarchy would result in millions or tens of millions
of deaths resulting from the collapse of civilization. A few hundred or
thousand deaths from any nuclear power plants would be a rounding error in the
calculation.

~~~
pfdietz
If the world descends into horrific disorder, I want our descendants to have
lots of easily accessible plutonium so they can come out on top. :)

------
NickM
Conversations about public perception ignore the bigger problem of cost. Why
build big expensive nuclear plants that frequently have to be subsidized and
bailed out, when solar/wind/storage are already cheaper and continue to drop
in cost? Even if we never have another meltdown again, and even if we never
have a containment breach of the waste for the next 10k years, the economics
just don't make sense.

~~~
CountSessine
Because there are only a few sites in the world that can supply reliable wind
power in the megawatts, and the scales of storage required to provide even
minimal backup power for solar to make it useful at the 3TW of power used by
the United States are probably impossible (the figure I've heard for pumped
water, e.g., is that every lake in the US would have to be raised 400m).

Solar/wind/storage means getting by with orders of magnitude less energy
usage. Maybe we should? I just think that asking people to vote for that is
even more impossible than getting them to vote for nuclear.

~~~
Vinnl
> I just think that asking people to vote for that is even more impossible
> than getting them to vote for nuclear.

GP still has a point: asking people to vote for nuclear sounds hard because of
the perceived risks, but even if there was no perception of risk, it'll still
be very hard to justify the costs to voters.

~~~
CountSessine
The cost of nuclear or the cost of wind/solar/storage? Solar is dirt cheap for
2 hours out of the day - how much does it cost at 10pm? This isn't a dennard-
scaling problem - it's Watts, and it won't necessarily get cheaper the more we
need to store - if commodity scarcity kicks in, it could get more expensive!
Storing enough energy to supply 3TW of power is daunting. I don't think we can
do it and I think we'll need to just use less. Then what's the cost of using
orders of magnitude less power?

"You can't commute to work anymore because your car will be too expensive to
charge. Or, rather it will be a luxury to use a car."

"Ok, I guess?"

"You'll have to live within a few miles of work"

"Well..."

"If you have a two income family and your workplaces are across the city, one
of you will need to leave your job."

"That sounds difficult."

"You can't have a detached house in the suburbs. You'll bankrupt yourself
heating it".

"I have to move? Hmm... what was that you said about nuclear?"

~~~
Xylakant
> "You can't commute to work anymore because your car will be too expensive to
> charge. Or, rather it will be a luxury to use a car."

Yes it will be. There are many many more externalities to using cars as
primary transit than their CO2 output. Noise, land use, inefficient use of
energy in terms of kWh/personmile, microplastic from tires, accidents,...

> You’ll have to live within a few miles of work.”

There’s such things as mass transit that’s actually quite ok at solving that
problem. Now, if you mean “we cannot all live in suburbs and everyone gets a
house and a little garden.”, yes, that’s already true. The sprawl would not be
possible to manage. It’s already not true for a large chunk of the population.

Heating a house is the least of our issues. Heat is something that we can
store fairly easily: Take a large, well insulated tank in your basement, fill
it with water (or a better suited liquid, but water will actually do). Heat it
up during the day, either using solar panels or electricity driving a heat
pump, use it during the night. Works with coolant, too. Insulation is a fairly
well understood problem and in such a setting, losses are fairly low.

~~~
CountSessine
_Yes it will be. There are many many more externalities to using cars as
primary transit than their CO2 output. Noise, land use, inefficient use of
energy in terms of kWh /personmile, microplastic from tires, accidents,..._

Hey, maybe you're right! Maybe we should stop using cars! Maybe you've
convinced a couple of people to do that right now! Now convince 100 million US
voters! Politics is the 'art of the possible'. That's what we're discussing!

 _There’s such things as mass transit that’s actually quite ok at solving that
problem_

But none of our cities in North America have been built with that in mind.
Convince 100 million US voters to move to transit-serviceable neighborhoods.

 _Now, if you mean “we cannot all live in suburbs and everyone gets a house
and a little garden.”, yes, that’s already true_

With nuclear, you can continue doing this. Convince 100 million US voters to
move out of the suburbs in the next 20 years. Maybe they will?

 _Heating a house is the least of our issues. Heat is something that we can
store fairly easily: Take a large, well insulated tank in your basement, fill
it with water (or a better suited liquid, but water will actually do). Heat it
up during the day, either using solar panels or electricity driving a heat
pump, use it during the night. Works with coolant, too. Insulation is a fairly
well understood problem and in such a setting, losses are fairly low._

This is difficult in northern climates, with short days and shallow noontime
sun. Or are we asking people to stop living north of some particular latitude?
That's a tough sell too!

And its not _just_ the US - politics is reflexive. As soon as your "impose a
heavy carbon tax to make oil and gas prohibitively expensive and to encourage
the deployment of solar storage" bill gets passed, you can forget about
winning the next election - people will vote a guy in who repeals it as soon
as it hits their pocketbook and their standard of living drops. Politics is
the art of the possible. I don't see how you're going to convince people to
vote for this.

~~~
Xylakant
I don’t really see how nuclear power is helping you to replace all the fossil
fuel cars on US roads with electric ones. Extending mass transit could be done
in smaller timeframes given sufficient political will.

Even then power generation for electric cars is really not a major issue with
renewables: most cars will be charged during the day when for example solar
power is quite abundant. So I don’t recognize the argument for nuclear power
here.

~~~
CountSessine
_I don’t really see how nuclear power is helping you to replace all the fossil
fuel cars on US roads with electric ones. Extending mass transit could be done
in smaller timeframes given sufficient political will._

 _political will_

Yes! And money! Convince people to vote for that now! Convince 100 million US
voters! Anyone who has taken an interest in municipal politics knows how
expensive and inefficient it is to service suburbs with transit service. The
suburbs themselves are the problem. Just don't tell the people living in them
that!

 _Even then power generation for electric cars is really not a major issue
with renewables: most cars will be charged during the day when for example
solar power is quite abundant. So I don’t recognize the argument for nuclear
power here._

On cloudy days, in the winter, do you just not go to work? Does everyone stay
home from work? Or does everyone draw from the utility-scale storage to charge
their cars? 3TW doesn't include cars - presumably we need to store power for
them?

------
maxander
I'm generally in favor of nuclear power, but I recognize that there's some
reasonable ground for opposing its development on grounds of potential
catastrophe or radiation leakage risk. What gets me, rather, is that while we
as a society have rejected nuclear power plants as too dangerous, we're still
sitting on thousands and thousands of nuclear _weapons_ \- and still building
more in the present day! [0] The failure of anti-nuclear activists to address
the kind of nuclear technologies which can _actually_ be catastrophic, while
instead focusing on those which are constructive and at least generally safe,
is maddening.

[0] [https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-nuclear-weapons-
moderniz...](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-nuclear-weapons-
modernization)

~~~
0xffff2
The grounds really aren't that reasonable. Nuclear has _potential_ for
catastrophe, but coal and other fossil fuels are a constant ongoing
catastrophe by their very nature even if you disregard climate change. It
would take many, many nuclear disasters for nuclear to come even remotely
close to killing as many people as fossil fuel energy generation already has.

[https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-
more-...](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-harmful-
than-nuclear-power/)

~~~
pfdietz
Arguiung that we should stick with nuclear because it's cleaner than coal is
like saying we should continue with gasoline fueled cars because they're
cleaner than horses. It's looking at the wrong competition.

~~~
0xffff2
Huh? This analogy makes no sense to me at all. Which is cleaner is only
incidentally related to my point. Nuclear is _safer_ than goal in terms of
deaths caused by such a tremendous margin that no single nuclear catastrophe
could possibly even make a dent.

~~~
pfdietz
Substitute "better" for "cleaner".

The point is nuclear is not competing (just) with coal, it's competing with
every other alternative and combinations of alternatives. For nuclear to be
preferable it has to beat all of them, not just one of them. Comparing it to
just coal is a species of strawman argument.

~~~
0xffff2
Nuclear is the only alternative on a scale that can actually replace fossil
fuel plants in a reasonable time scale. It does beat coal oil and gas. Solar,
wind and hydro aren't going to come close to fulfilling our energy needs on
their own (probably ever, certainly not in the next several decades).

~~~
pfdietz
> Nuclear is the only alternative on a scale that can actually replace fossil
> fuel plants in a reasonable time scale.

Why do you people keep saying that? It's not true, and it's obvious that it's
not true. It's not true in two ways: renewables can do so, and nuclear can't
do so (too expensive, too risky, too dangeous for proliferation).

------
PunksATawnyFill
WTF? Where's the actual study?

If you go here:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421519302125)

Once again there's no link to the study. And if you go here:
[https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?publisherName=...](https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?publisherName=ELS&contentID=S0301421519302125&orderBeanReset=true)

"Read the article" isn't an option! Now the question is: Were public funds
used in the study? If so, we own it and should have access.

~~~
howard941
Public funds _were_ used:

>This work was supported by the UC San Diego Frontiers of Innovation Scholars
Program; the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy; the Electric
Power Research Institute; and the Center for Climate and Energy Decision
Making at Carnegie Mellon University, which is supported by the U.S. National
Science Foundation (SES-094970).

Unfortunately I had to use a site available at a Taiwan hostname to view the
funding source info.

------
abalone
_> Crucially, the researchers showed all respondents information about the
number of deaths that had historically occurred in the worst accident
associated with the technology. This is important for nuclear power, since
accidents are rare but can have dire consequences if they do occur._

This seems like a flawed study. It implies that previous nuclear accidents are
sufficient data to form a precise “statistical risk” level. And if people
don’t decide based on those statistics alone they must be irrational and just
“anxious”.

That is not a scientific conclusion. Nuclear accidents are rare, but
potentially extreme. Just one more major accident, or the first case of
terrorism, could significantly change the statistics. Thus It is possible that
people are being rational when they recognize that we have too few data points
to form a precise risk model for nuclear power.

------
cwbrandsma
We have a "safety at any cost" mentality in society, which limits development
in multiple areas. This was not the case 50 years ago, but it is today. There
is a healthy respect for safety, but what we have now is constant fear
mongering across society. Not just nuclear power, but immigration, stranger
danger, helicopter parents, etc. All brought to you by the 24 hours news cycle
that makes money by making sure everyone stays paranoid.

~~~
zaq_xsw
It's worse than that though, because, for example, nuclear power is
_significantly_ safer than other technologies currently in use[1][2], and as
another example, immigrants (including illegal immigrants) are less likely to
commit crimes than native-born citizens in the United States[3][4], at least
for several generations (they asymptotically approach native levels).

So I think we're fighting a couple of battles here: fear-mongering _and_
misinformation/ignorance, and I guess they go hand-in-hand.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/05/hypothetical-
numb...](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/05/hypothetical-number-of-
deaths-from-energy-production.png) [2] Kharecha Pushker A, 2013 [3]
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/107808741770497...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1078087417704974?journalCode=uarb)
[4] [https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2015/jul...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2015/jul/06/donald-trump/trump-immigration-claim-has-no-data-
back-it/)

------
mistrial9
Is it coincidental, that something so complex, and multi-faceted, with both
huge potential risks and benefits, attracts floods of simple-minded and "I
told you so" comments, from even this very intelligent crowd

~~~
kikoreis
I don't think it's actually that multi-faceted. It's simple. 1. We have a coal
problem. Fixing that would buy us critical space in the climate change
equation. 2. Nuclear is the only viable short-term alternative. 3. Nuclear has
a bad reputation, but new information has come to light (modern reactor
design, handling of waste, total impact proportional to coal). We need a lot
of active debate on this.

~~~
cesarb
> Nuclear is the only viable short-term alternative.

One of the arguments against nuclear is that it's not a _short-term_
alternative; nuclear power plants take decades to build. For instance, the
latest nuclear power plant in my country is under construction for over 30
years, and is still not complete; the other reactors in the same complex took
12 years and 24 years to build, according to Wikipedia.

------
Reedx
_> ... there remains a gulf in understanding the difference between the
technology's statistical risks and the dread it evokes ... that dread about
nuclear power leads respondents to choose 40% less nuclear generation in 2050
than they would have chosen in the absence of this dread."_

Education on nuclear statistics and modern nuclear technology
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor))
would be useful.

Though I wonder if we're stuck for a similar reason many are afraid of flying,
but not of driving - despite driving being significantly more dangerous
statistically - the idea/story of a plane crash is vastly scarier than a car
crash.

~~~
the8472
Have there been any commercial deployments of Gen IV reactors? You can't cite
statistics of things that haven't been in operation for a reasonable fraction
of their expected lifecycle.

~~~
kikoreis
Gen IV you're right. Gen III (and "III+") reactors already bring significant
safety changes ("passive nuclear safety", though that is a spectrum) and we've
had a few of those running for a while now, the longest for 20+ years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Generat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Generation_III_reactors_currently_operational_or_under_construction)

------
instabird
I am in no way near an expert on this topic, but from what I know and given
nuclear's track record, nuclear energy is probably mankind's only way out of
total climate breakdown.

------
floatingatoll
I would have worded this headline differently, in a way that focuses on what I
see to be the core issue:

Public's Dread of Nuclear Power Management Limits Its Deployment

It's not that we're afraid of nuclear power, it's that we're afraid that
nuclear power will be managed as poorly as our other basic infrastructure is.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
HN may care about the difference between nuclear power and
management/operation thereof but the general public does not draw that
distinction.

~~~
imtringued
Pretty much every failure of nuclear power can be summed up as a management
problem.

~~~
floatingatoll
And so if we can present underground thorium capsule reactors as “if
mismanaged, it cools into a lump of harmless rock”, and design them to do so,
we have a viable marketing solution to nuclear power.

------
cameronbrown
Nuclear power is the only real option we have to limit climate change, that we
can put into motion right now. The downsides are the politics associated,
glacial construction times, and the fact we still lack proper disposal sites.

Critical thinking skills and more statistics education is something the world
sorely needs.

~~~
p_l
You don't need waste disposal sites if you have full reprocessing chain. Which
was made nearly-illegal and an invitation for us-sanctioned airstrike for
several decades even if you abide by NPT, so...

~~~
cameronbrown
My apologies, I was under the impression that waste was an order of magnitude
lower on modern designs, but I was unaware it's effectively eliminated.

~~~
mimixco
The waste problem has _in no way_ been solved. Reprocessing is, itself,
horribly polluting and its waste byproducts are more dangerous than the
original spent fuel rods.

I'll also add here that Fukushima is _still pouring radiation into the Pacific
Ocean_ while we pontificate.

------
srs_sput
One of the most interesting things I've learned this past week is that Ukraine
generates almost 50% of it's electricity from nuclear reactors.

I think it's impressive a country can suffer the worst nuclear accident but
still overcome the fear of using it.

~~~
mimixco
When states impose their will on the people, public sentiment doesn't matter.
The idea that a former Soviet state would submit nuclear power to a democratic
vote is simply farcical.

------
bigbadgoose
The issue is that failures are catastrophic, and not under your control. And
while systems and protocols can be perfectly designed, human administration is
the weak link.

~~~
kikoreis
When plans fail and crash, it's a catastrophe. And yet we trust technology and
process to fly everywhere all the time. We need to put nuclear in the same
place in our hearts.

(I think the root cause of why it's not is irrational fear of radiation, which
is why I love [https://xkcd.com/radiation/](https://xkcd.com/radiation/) so
much)

~~~
ElijahLynn
A plane crash doesn't have the ability to destroy an entire region.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I am becoming more convinced that we as a civilization will not cut CO2
emissions in time and we will need some type of carbon sequestration. Carbon
sequestration is going to horrendously energy intensive and we will need
something like nuclear power to provide that kind of energy.

~~~
beat
I agree we'll probably need some sort of carbon sequestration. I disagree that
nuclear is the only possible power source for that (or for that matter, that
sequestration is going to be that energy-intensive).

~~~
gizmo686
How can sequestration not be energy intensive? Carbon is diffused throughout
the atmosphere as relativly low energy statw molecules. Even assuming 100%
efficiency, what end state of sequestration would not require significant
energy just from conservation of energy.

~~~
pfdietz
I'll add that you could have figured out that there must be exothermic ways to
sequester CO2, since CO2 naturally is scrubbed from the atmosphere by some
process. If this process were not exothermic, CO2 would just accumulate in the
atmosphere until the Earth resembled Venus.

[https://skepticalscience.com/weathering.html](https://skepticalscience.com/weathering.html)

------
StreamBright
Just one pic:

[https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/05/hypothetical-
numb...](https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/05/hypothetical-number-of-
deaths-from-energy-production.png)

~~~
eeZah7Ux
The calculation completely ignores any risk of nuclear disaster.

It's simply based on historical data, which is hugely misleading and
dishonest.

Each existing barrel of nuclear waste has been causing risk for few decades at
max but will cause risk for thousands of years.

(Not to mention all the waste that has been dispersed in the environment)

This is like driving a car for a 30 seconds and claiming that it's safe.

~~~
StreamBright
So does coal waste. Handling nuclear waste is not improving because humanity
gave up on using tis energy. There are reactor types which “burn” nuclear
waste from traditional plants and make them less dangerous. All of the
problems you mention are solvable: safety, radioactive waste etc if we commit
to it. Fire and burning is 400.000 years old, nuclear power is 70-80. We have
technology ready to make it safe just as we did with fire.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> We have technology ready to make it safe just as we did with fire.

citation needed

------
jrjrjrjr
Totally safe nuclear reactor operations are easily defined by placing a
mandatory employee daycare center in the containment.

------
HocusLocus
From my 2016 letter on Energy to Candidate Trump,

[https://archive.org/download/20160422TrumpEnergyLetterSC/201...](https://archive.org/download/20160422TrumpEnergyLetterSC/20160422%20trump%20energy%20letter%20SC.pdf)

QUOTE

We must finish taming fire.

It is no longer enough to raise sensible children without an irrational fear
of nuclear energy. They must become aware at a young age that there is a
silent war on and they must, in order to ensure the continued survival of
modern civilization, begin to oppose and publicly ridicule anyone exhibiting
this fear. This may range from a gentle instruction and chiding of those who
express misgivings honestly and openly, to a direct and aggressive attack on
the greatest dangers of our time — the ones who deliberately cloak their anti-
nuclear sentiment in Byzantine ways intended to derail debate and parry the
subject to other 'alternative' approaches.

It is unethical to see no clear path to unbounded Energy as anything but an
existential threat.

Sound familiar? That is similar to the tactic fronted by frenetic climate
alarmists who are trying to push a dozen pet agendas and several for-profit
agendas crafted specially for them, all at once — rallying the people over a
global average temperature signal that is presently buried in noise, and a
CO2-to-temperature causation that may turn out to be nil or even backwards.
Unfortunately there is an international scam in progress and the scammers are
clever, they have seized the moral high-ground because it had been left
unoccupied and undefended. Those who praise humanity and progress for its own
sake, and would remind others we should never judge ourselves in haste, must
have wandered off somewhere.

There is also a scuffle on the Global Warming moral high-ground as the folks
who run nuclear power plants are kicked in the face and tossed off the mound.
They expected to be welcomed with open arms because nuclear energy will help
save the planet from CO2. They did not realize the movement is rife with
people whose irrational fear of radiation exceeds any commitment to the
environment. Anyone who even mentions nuclear power gets a feral and brutal
response. I've taken pity on the nuclear industry and have tried to explain
the phenomenon but they're not taking it very well. Like the Amish, our
nuclear power industry needs staunch defenders surrounding it. They're just
too polite for their own good.

Unfortunately, we have passed beyond peak politeness. To force Energy debates
to address practical solutions, bullies are needed. We must rout the occupiers
and re-take the moral high-ground because we place a high priority on
survival, and for the children's sake. And because ... well ... "What a piece
of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and
moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension
how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals..." And other
such stuff.

~~~
imtringued
Honestly if your proposed technology requires the brainwashing of children
then maybe it simply isn't good enough? Also at current construction time
frames of 10-20 years per plant our children will be the ones who will finish
the construction of those plants even if they were born this year.

------
imglorp
The public also dreads vaccines, dihydrogen monoxide, and planetary
alignments.

The solution to all of these problems is solid education to make informed
citizens.

~~~
umvi
> The solution to all of these problems is solid education to make informed
> citizens.

Easier said than done. Even if you drop a world class school with world class
teachers into a poor neighborhood, you _still_ won't guarantee everyone gets a
"solid education". Education is tightly coupled not just to public schools,
but private family life as well, and the latter is much more difficult to
solve.

~~~
cameronbrown
I disagree - the education system itself is deeply unforgiving in how it
functions. From even the most basic level of school scheduling being directly
at odds with teenage biology, all the way to how students are ranked and filed
purely based on test scores. These kids in poor neighborhoods usually
(statistically) don't have the support that even the best students need to get
through school. Of course there are always exceptions, but this is just what
I've observed.

~~~
umvi
Well, my neighbors are on public assistance, and I swear the kids are truant
half the time. Doesn't matter how great your school is if the kids don't go
and the parents don't care if they go or not.

~~~
cameronbrown
Let me rephrase my point: if school was more engaging and less of a punishment
(which is what it can feel like for these already disadvantaged kids) then
they might be more inclined to want to go. Obviously some home situations are
too rough to sort out, but I think that's a situation where the government
needs to step in.

~~~
umvi
What you are suggesting is not possible for the government to solve IMO. You
are basically saying that the school system needs to take on the role of
parenting ("helping kids engage") in addition to actual education.

When the kids' parents have not completed school themselves, can't help or
motivate their kids with schoolwork, etc... you need an _army_ of mentors to
help engage those kids. Unfortunately, disadvantaged kids outnumber such
mentors by a large factor and such a system would quickly swallow any budget
fed to it.

~~~
cameronbrown
Not really.

I don't believe you actually need to force/motivate kids to do homework.
Homework as a concept is fundamentally flawed as it is IMO and is another
problem with the system. I love maths and science and all that stuff we all do
on that forum, but I don't believe for one second that kids should be forced
into it. Forcing students to do homework/exams/uninteresting subjects, and not
fostering natural curiosity, is why school is not engaging.

I'm oversimplifying massively and understand there's a middle ground
somewhere, but this is what I believe.

------
thrillgore
Stop trying to make nuclear power a thing. It's not happening. We're all
concerned about the state of the aging plants in the US and many are not
hardened enough for the impact of climate change.

~~~
mimixco
The whole industry is dying, all over the world, and must now reply on PR puff
pieces such as this one that continue to haul out the "climate will kill us!"
bogeyman.

Perhaps nuclear advocates haven't considered that, given enough time, the
Earth's cyclical climate will kill us anyway. Personally, I'd rather wait for
that than have nuke plants speed up the death toll and pollute the land with
uranium tailings and contaminated water. But that's just me.

~~~
zaq_xsw
> Earth's cyclical climate will kill us anyway

Why? The reason climate change is dangerous is not because it'll get too hot
or cold for us, but because the temperature is changing _too fast_. It's the
gradient that's the problem.

~~~
mimixco
Vast swaths of North America have been under water or covered in ice sheets at
various points in the Earth's history, including the time when humans lived.

I think it's fair to say that we are not well adapted to live under water or
ice, yet both of those are definitely coming. Someday.

~~~
zaq_xsw
Okay, so updated:

> Perhaps nuclear advocates haven't considered [that if we can slow down
> climate change then we'll have to make some steady societal changes over the
> next few thousand years (instead of over a much smaller time-frame) to adapt
> to the Earth's natural climate changes]

Not to be rude, but you're wasting peoples' time when you don't even follow
your own line of thinking in your comments. You've made quite a few comments
on this post that don't really contribute to the discussion.

~~~
mimixco
I'll accept that as your subjective opinion and respectfully disagree. I'm
quite well informed on this topic and this thread needed several truths
surfaced which were occluded by industry PR claims.

