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US Politics: Shryke and Commodore agree (and other signs and portents)


lokisnow

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Anti-nuclear hysteria is actually worse for everyone in that it promotes the use of older, less safe reactors and the use of fossil fuels that are worse for the environment, health and as I remember, produce more radiation.

Yep. It's comparable to anti-GMO hysteria - both are equally vapid and regressive

My view is that that this debate will continue and the status quo will largely remain, until breakthrough fusion power generation is achieved and everything that went before will become irrelevant.

Let's hope.

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Anti-nuclear hysteria is actually worse for everyone in that it promotes the use of older, less safe reactors and the use of fossil fuels that are worse for the environment, health and as I remember, produce more radiation.

Because it's not as if hydro or solar is ever an option, is it?

(Not to mention the likes of us and Japan, where the country is literally built on a fault line, with all the fun that earthquakes can have on these structures. Or the issue of what to do with waste that outlives the containers it is stored in).

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Uh huh.

Lockesnow, if you are gonna try and have a discussion on this news item, it would behove you to actually read what other people write. You know, actually use your brain and think about a subject and be a big boy.

Your post is inaccurate, dickish and your whole demeanour here is basically yelling at anyone who dares point out any challenges with spot-generation of solar power integrating into our current power system. Because obviously anyone who might see issues on the horizon just wants to completely stop everything or whatever else your ridiculous strawman involves.

I mean, it's not like the article doesn't bring up this very issue:

But I'm sure the article is also bad and wrong.

Fair enough, it was a broad, bad and silly strawman and was clearly ill taken, my apologies.

I originally posted the article because I thought it was a great exploration of the issues. One thing I am concerned about is the liberal tendency to declare defeat often on any issue and never fight for something (I am a culprit of liberal defeatism, but that's more pessimism as it relates to the Senate, I mean we're not even trying in Maine or alabama, we've got to actually fight). I view the utilities position as an opening negotiation position, an opening salvo.

simply conceding the point and not proposing a counter offer is bad and typically liberal. It brings to mind Obama's exceptionally terrible non negotiation concede everything immediately strategies that have severely handicapped the effectiveness of his policies and presidency.

Rooftop solar has tremendous potential and a host of benefits, particularly for sprawly and dense Los Angeles which is difficult to provide with sufficient power given its absurd metro area size size and 6000 ppl per square mile in Los Angeles city limits. Tossing all of those out as well as unforeseen future benefits because utilities are cantankerous at the moment is frustrating and absurd.

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Because it's not as if hydro or solar is ever an option, is it?

(Not to mention the likes of us and Japan, where the country is literally built on a fault line, with all the fun that earthquakes can have on these structures. Or the issue of what to do with waste that outlives the containers it is stored in).

The question isn't whether it's ever an option, it's whether it's always an option. There's solutions already to some problems with nuclear and others that need to be worked on but the simple truth is that there's no other viable option for baseline power that doesn't depend on local conditions. Other then fossil fuels.

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Because it's not as if hydro or solar is ever an option, is it?

(Not to mention the likes of us and Japan, where the country is literally built on a fault line, with all the fun that earthquakes can have on these structures. Or the issue of what to do with waste that outlives the containers it is stored in).

Hydro really isn't an option in a lot of places, especially because most place where Hydro is an option have maxed out on that one.

As for Nuclear waste, how about we just put it back in the ground? The long term waste isn't what we should be worried about, it's the short term stuff that's actually dangerous. The long term stuff isn't really are that much more dangerous to the stuff we dug out of the ground to full the nuclear process in the first place.

I've never yet met a proponent of nuclear power who wants to live next door to one of these things.

Fuck is there any kind of power plant people would want to live by? Cause I've heard this about every type of power plant. There's all sorts of shit that we need that people would rather not be near, so enough of this dumbass argument.

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Well when the argument started over roof top solar panels that seems a rather obvious example of one people do want to live near :P

I would argue that individual panels do not constitute a power plant. This is a solar power plant. (or with a little imagination a super villains death ray)

Back to nuclear waste though, I realize it doesn't even matter if the container doesn't last as long as the waste. Since when the fuck has "it won't last forever" been an argument for anything? Do we stop building things because they need to be fucking maintained?

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Because it's not as if hydro or solar is ever an option, is it?

Solar, perhaps in the future in certain geographic areas, maybe, but hydro? Have you seen what built out hydro plants do to the environment? It may often be localised to places big city people don't visit, but it ain't pretty and it comes with its own host of problems with damming of water, how much to let downstream, who decides, etc. Sweden get some 50 odd percent of power from hydro, but there is a reason no new plants are planned (and haven't since the 80s). The remaining rivers either don't have rapids for it or they are protected. And the protection is for a reason.

While I prefer hydro to burning coal for power, there is a definite pro to nuclear power in that it is far less damaging to the environment, or at least it is concentrated to a much smaller area. I say that as someone sitting on top of a nuclear plant, almost literally, every day (I have the country's biggest one located less than 30 min from where I work. Four reactors baby.) I still think nuclear is getting a bad rep and bad handling. Instead of being rational about it, people are hysterical. Hell, I think they should expand the one near me to five or six reactors, but that is about as likely to happen as pigs flying.

This mean I too agree with Shryke and Ramsay Gimp. So sign this day up in the calendar people. :eek:

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RBPL,

I've never yet met a proponent of nuclear power who wants to live next door to one of these things.

I've lived within 30-50 miles of a nuclear reactor my entire life. It's a technology that is reasonable safe, available now, and that works to generate electicity in a carbon neutral fashion without breaking the bank. It's not the best solution it is simple the best solution that is technologically feasable and currently available that doesn't contribute to climate change.

I think there are very interesting break throughs coming on the solar front but until efficency of solar power gets much higher and much less expensive it will be a supplementary power source at best. Do I think utilities are screaming about point source and slapping on surcharges to curb competion, absolutely. But isn't that what happens when a private company gets a government sponsored monopoly and is "guranteed" a certain level of profit (not just income, profit) by the same government?

Locksnow,

Rooftop solar has tremendous potential and a host of benefits, particularly for sprawly and dense Los Angeles which is difficult to provide with sufficient power given its absurd metro area size size and 6000 ppl per square mile in Los Angeles city limits. Tossing all of those out as well as unforeseen future benefits because utilities are cantankerous at the moment is frustrating and absurd.

One of the things I rarely hear solar advocates address is albedo. Solar cells are highly inefficent. They average about 15% efficency which means they are radiating back about 85% of the energy that strikes them to the surrounding area. This would be no big deal but for the fact that the cells are designed to have low albedo (low reflectiveness) and trap more solar energy in an area than would be normal.

If a major metro area like LA were to go completely solar what would the climate effect of all those rooftop solar cells be?

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Have you seen what built out hydro plants do to the environment?

Yes. I've driven past the Clyde Dam and Lake Dunstan. At the bottom of that lake are countless peach orchards and the entire township of Clyde - relocated over twenty years ago as a sacrifice to New Zealand's need for electricity.

But I'd take that over a nuclear power plant any day (and bearing in mind that the Clyde Dam predates the Nuclear Free Zone).

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RBPL,

How many major nuclear accidents (accidents that have actually seriously harmed species habitats) have there been in the last 70 years as compaired to the number of dams that have destroyed habitats in the last century or more?

If you compair the square kilometers of lost habitat space from nuclear power generation to hydro power generation which is worse by several orders of magnitude?

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As opposed to the fish and animal species that would lose out in the event of a nuclear accident?

Unless the plant was built in the one area that animal lived in and it only lived in like a 20 square kilometre zone that's not an issue. Damns have actually caused species to go extinct. Nuclear plants going haven't, and can't. Chernobyl was the worst nuclear plant disaster in history, and it caused exactly zero species to go extinct. And in fact the opposite is true, Chernobyl's become a goddamn wildlife sanctuary, because as it turns out radiation is infinitely easier for plants and animals to deal with than people..

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As opposed to the fish and animal species that would lose out in the event of a nuclear accident?

Not even close to the same magnitude of damage. Dams that provide hydroelectric power have completely destroyed entire river ecosystems -- from the headwaters right to the river deltas and tidal estuaries -- driving a number of species extinct, or to the brink of extinction. For example, the Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest covers 260,000 square miles (the river itself 1,200 miles long) and has been severely impacted by hydropower. Chernobyl's exclusion zone, by comparison, is a piffling 1,000 square miles.

ETA: doh. I didn't see that TrueMetis already made this point. Didn't mean to pile on.

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But the big question for the professional economists is whether the public policy aims of a 90% tax rate would actually be achieved, or whether they could be achieved more efficiently, effectively and directly in other ways.

This is what I'm interested in discussing. I'd love to hear better ways to get the same incentive.

And the laffer curve is laughable. Let's say you have a billion dollars that was being paid to employees and taxed at the employee rate of 10%. The top tier tax rate is lowered to 30% and over the course of a decade that billion dollars, instead of going to employees, goes to the owner instead. That billion dollars is now being taxed at 30%. THAT'S why our tax coffers increased. It's true that nobody was paying the top tier rate, but it wasn't because they were dodging taxes, it's because they were using that money for other things that benefitted the economy overall, not just a single person's pocketbook. Very few people in economics still think the laffer curve is a viable economic theory still.

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