Texas in Crisis

[Harry Bosch]

Well the Chernobyl negligence was in the design and build as well as the operation. You need to fail badly at all three to get a Chernobyl style failure. Operating failures in western plants are hugely expensive, but they don't hurt anyone (except the underwriters and their hangers-on).

I’d like to think that you’re just being a nuclear proponent and want to defend the technology but you’re misunderstanding my point, I think.

The question isn’t whether the results of any given incident are going to be equal given the same scenario being tried, with whatever failsafes and whatnot activating.

My point is that we’re coming off a year of near half a million deaths from the politicization of a disease, and a party dominated by a Christian libertarian death cult. If your point is that the regulatory agencies in the US are strong enough that we could put Jared Kushner in charge for an indefinite period of time and you’re going to the mat to make the same assurance, then perhaps we have a discussion here. Or if you think there’s some state more likely in the other 49. If not, then this sounds like people talking about the resiliency of any given American system in the lead up to the Trump presidency.

A system is only good in as much as it’s defended. When you have sabotage from within, all your safeguards start to break down. We’ve already seen it with the financial regulatory system in decades past. People are living it now in Texas.

I don't understand why people are so scared of nuclear power. Sure Chernobyl and Fukushima was terrible. Nuclear power has 330 fewer deaths than coal; 250 times less than oil, 38 times fewer than gas.

 

[fromderinside]

So, mr. Musk, whadaya think about the move now?

 

[lpetrich]

So, mr. Musk, whadaya think about the move now?

Move to Texas?

Elon Musk confirms he moved to Texas - 2020 Dec 8


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Alright Houston!

We need some helping hands. The Houston Food Bank (one of our relief partners) needs volunteers tomorrow (and onward, I imagine) to help get supplies to Texans in need. We’ll be there.

If you’d like to join and help, @LaCongresista’s got the link to sign up " / Twitter

Sylvia R. Garcia on Twitter: "We are ready to show you my District and impact of the #TexasFreeze to our most vulnerable. Be ready to roll up your sleeves and work starting at Houston Food Bank. To join us sign up on line. (link)" / Twitter

 

[ZiprHead]

Matthew Kleinschmidt on Twitter: "@cenkuygur @joerogan Cenk, TYT was my first real love on the progressive news front. TY. But you guys have become bitter over the last couple years... toward allies and friends. Please cut the shit. Set a standard of moral heartiness and adhere to it, w/ humility and kindness, for the good of self." / Twitter

I agree with this, bigly.

 

[Deepak]

I don't understand why people are so scared of nuclear power.

And I: reading for comprehension.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[Elixir]

https://www.galvnews.com/news/free/article_2d9d26ea-a11d-5447-995c-3c7524f9f762.html

'Soviet-style' system led to Texas grid fiasco, expert says

“In the state’s enthusiasm for deregulating the electric market, the legislature and then-Gov. George Bush re-created an old-style Soviet Union purchasing bureau, called ERCOT,” Hirs said.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, is charged with overseeing the state’s power grid. Texas receives most of its power via the Texas Interconnection, a power grid separate from the rest of the country.

Texas social media are lit up with trumpsucking morons furious with the "lack of response from the Demonkratz in Washington".
Interspersed with their condemnations are reassertions that "Texans are tough, we will overcome this and show the Dems and WHERE IS FEMA? WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG??? Waaaaaah!!"

 

[Politesse]

View attachment 31993

In fairness, American scientist have made some pretty famous and expensive flubs on Mars.

 

[Shadowy Man]

View attachment 31993

In fairness, American scientist have made some pretty famous and expensive flubs on Mars.

And yet this Texas crisis will be costlier and deadlier than any Mars flub.

 

[Politesse]

View attachment 31993

In fairness, American scientist have made some pretty famous and expensive flubs on Mars.

And yet this Texas crisis will be costlier and deadlier than any Mars flub.

This is true. I believe the Mars Climate Orbiter only cost a few hundred million, it was a slimmed down beauty.

 

[James Brown]

And scientists learn from their mistakes.

Will Texas Republicans?

 

[ZiprHead]

The Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power

Hoff and Zaitz formed a nonprofit. Like the leaders of many other movements led by women—protests against war, drunk driving, and, of course, nuclear power—they sought to capitalize on their status as mothers. They toyed with a few generic names—Mothers for Climate, Mothers for Sustainability—because they worried that the word “nuclear” would scare some people off. But they ultimately discarded those more innocuous options. “We wanted to be really clear that we think nuclear needs to be part of the solution,” Zaitz said. They now run a small activist organization, Mothers for Nuclear, which argues that nuclear power is an indispensable tool in the quest for a decarbonized society.

https://www.mothersfornuclear.org/

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Which two ideas?

In any case, the nuclear industry in Texas hasn't had any accidents, and modern reactors have even better safety mechanisms than those currently in operation.

The one that I mentioned, that Texas would be the place, and the one I quoted, which is that in the land of Texas no case of negligence has been found. What other ones could I be talking about?

Is there any particular reason to thin k Texas would be the place, given that they're being cautions?

Moreover, this is the wrong way of looking at the matter. Suppose it is true that if there’s any place where Chernobyl style negligence would happen in the US it would be Texas. That does not entail that there is a place in the US where Chernobyl style negligence would happen. My point is that such negligence in Texas seems too improbable given their record to worry about it. Additionally, if a nuclear power station were to be built today, it would not be vulnerable to what caused Chernobyl's accident. In fact, there are reactor designs with advanced safety features that would be really hard to break in any dangerous way.

Now, if Texas does not use nuclear power, it will still need some form of power, which will be more dangerous than nuclear going by the track record of different power sources. It will also be more polluting. And probably worse in extreme weather situations.

 

[Deepak]

Is there any particular reason to thin k Texas would be the place, given that they're being cautions?

Of course. Why would I say this place would 'X' with no particular reason. Indeed I can provide a multitude of reasons.

Again, though, I want to be sure we're talking about the same thing, and specifically the thing I'm concerned about is you're so wrapped around the axle due to the word Chernobyl that you're mistaking the point I'm making here. Even after I've explained it already.

I'm a proponent of nuclear power. I don't think there's any future where nuclear is not in the energy generation mix. Sparing the discovery of entirely novel ideas in physics, the math simply does not let us maintain something near the current quality of life, diet, consumption, and family planning privileges we enjoy now purely with renewable energy.

The thing that I'm specifically concerned about is groups like the North Korean regime, Islamic terrorists, or Texas Republicans having any control of, or access to nuclear facilities.

And, I'm sure, some folks might disagree with the assessment. In either case, the specifics of the energy mix we use in the future is not the concern of this thread - it's the particular incompetence of Texas, their government, and the people who have voting power to elect that government. So are you trying to address my point, or are you trying to straw man me?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And scientists learn from their mistakes.

Will Texas Republicans?

Many will never learn but many will. Biden doesn't give a shit about who voted for him and who didn't when it comes to addressing problems. This is the best approach whether it makes converts or not.

 

[bilby]

Well the Chernobyl negligence was in the design and build as well as the operation. You need to fail badly at all three to get a Chernobyl style failure. Operating failures in western plants are hugely expensive, but they don't hurt anyone (except the underwriters and their hangers-on).

I’d like to think that you’re just being a nuclear proponent and want to defend the technology but you’re misunderstanding my point, I think.

The question isn’t whether the results of any given incident are going to be equal given the same scenario being tried, with whatever failsafes and whatnot activating.

My point is that we’re coming off a year of near half a million deaths from the politicization of a disease, and a party dominated by a Christian libertarian death cult. If your point is that the regulatory agencies in the US are strong enough that we could put Jared Kushner in charge for an indefinite period of time and you’re going to the mat to make the same assurance, then perhaps we have a discussion here. Or if you think there’s some state more likely in the other 49. If not, then this sounds like people talking about the resiliency of any given American system in the lead up to the Trump presidency.

A system is only good in as much as it’s defended. When you have sabotage from within, all your safeguards start to break down. We’ve already seen it with the financial regulatory system in decades past. People are living it now in Texas.

I don't understand why people are so scared of nuclear power. Sure Chernobyl and Fukushima was terrible. Nuclear power has 330 fewer deaths than coal; 250 times less than oil, 38 times fewer than gas.

People have been told since the 1950s that nuclear power plant accidents are uniquely and horrifyingly severe. A meltdown would kill millions, and leave vast areas uninhabitable for tens of thousands of years.

We have seen four meltdowns (Three Mile Island, plus three at Fukushima Daiichi), and the combined death toll was zero. Two workers at Fukushima were hospitalised with minor beta burns to their legs after wading through contaminated water, and made a full recovery. One man's widow was awarded compensation for his death from lung cancer, despite having been a lifelong smoker, and despite his death coming too soon after the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami for radiation from F. Daiichi to be a plausible cause.

These facts suggest that meltdowns are not, in fact, particularly dangerous. They are hugely expensive, but they don't hurt anyone.

There's also an excellent example of a truly worst case accident. If you had an uncontained fire that pumped a sizeable fraction of the total radionuclide inventory from a reactor into the atmosphere, and authorities refused to mitigate the damage at all for several days, then you could expect to see the full horror of the worst that can happen.

It turns out that the casualty toll is that of a typical major industrial accident. A couple of hundred dead, mostly workers on site at the time of the accident, and first responders who brought it under control. There was a sharp up-tick in thyroid cancers amongst children in the local area, but no fatalities (fortunately thyroid cancers are easy to detect early and to treat successfully). There's been no increase in other cancers; In fact the rate of cancer overall is lower in the most irradiated areas than would have been expected to be observed if no accident had occurred. Despite hysteria from Greenpeace et al., nobody's died or become sick in the vast area of Europe where Chernobyl fallout was detected. The initial exclusion zone has become a nature reserve, and the people who refused to leave it have all lived long and unremarkable lives, with similar life expectancy and similar diseases of old age to the rest of the population of the former Soviet Union.

Chernobyl was as bad an accident as you could get from a nuclear power plant. But it killed an order of magnitude fewer people, and contaminated far less land, than the contemporary Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, which killed at least 3,700 people (estimates range up to 16,000).

And if money is your thing, Chernobyl cost less than the contemporary Piper Alpha explosion and fire, which was at the time the world's largest single insured loss from an industrial accident.

Nuclear power plants are less dangerous than the chemical and industrial plants that ring our major cities. Accidents are incredibly rare, and in the worst case are less dangerous than those in other industrial facilities.

In the 1950s and 60s, when this was all hypothetical, people had an excuse to err on the side of caution.

But now we know how infrequent and how unremarkable nuclear power accidents are, relative to the other industrial accidents we take for granted as a part of living in comfort and wealth. There's no longer an excuse for radiophobia; It's just a consequence of inertia. And it's largely a characteristic of baby boomers, so there's some hope that it will fade over the next few decades.

 

[bilby]

Is there any particular reason to thin k Texas would be the place, given that they're being cautions?

Of course. Why would I say this place would 'X' with no particular reason. Indeed I can provide a multitude of reasons.

Again, though, I want to be sure we're talking about the same thing, and specifically the thing I'm concerned about is you're so wrapped around the axle due to the word Chernobyl that you're mistaking the point I'm making here. Even after I've explained it already.

I'm a proponent of nuclear power. I don't think there's any future where nuclear is not in the energy generation mix. Sparing the discovery of entirely novel ideas in physics, the math simply does not let us maintain something near the current quality of life, diet, consumption, and family planning privileges we enjoy now purely with renewable energy.

The thing that I'm specifically concerned about is groups like the North Korean regime, Islamic terrorists, or Texas Republicans having any control of, or access to nuclear facilities.

And, I'm sure, some folks might disagree with the assessment. In either case, the specifics of the energy mix we use in the future is not the concern of this thread - it's the particular incompetence of Texas, their government, and the people who have voting power to elect that government. So are you trying to address my point, or are you trying to straw man me?

If we're going to let Texans (or anyone else) have oil refineries and chemical plants, then also letting them have nuclear power plants isn't going to noticeably increase the risk to either the public or the environment.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, we need to seriously send in the national guard with the army corps of engineers, else expect the electric company to fix things (they are the ones who turned it off on purpose), and get power back on.

None of Texas was built for this shit.

This is a crisis, and the Texas government is dropping the ball. There has been no power for quite some time now. People are dying and something needs to be done about this.

Biden has gotten his first natural disaster with a human cost. Let's see how he handles it.

People get what they vote for. Texas doesn't like regulations to cover the rare circumstances. Rare doesn't mean nonexistent. You got hit by extreme cold, power companies are better off simply accepting that they won't have enough power to sell in extreme cold than in properly preparing for it. People freezing to death is an externiality that isn't going to be covered in an anti-regulatory climate. This was an entirely foreseeable consequence of voting Republican.

Since the issue is that the extreme cold has frozen the machinery that makes energy because industry chose not to build for extreme cold, what would national guard troops do? Hang bottled gas powered blow dryers on wind turbines?

Exactly. There's basically nothing for them to do. The equipment isn't going to operate until it warms up and while they could bring in generators you need generators capable of syncing to the grid or there only useful for spot use (ie, powering the hospital etc.) Plugging an ordinary generator into the grid is going to be counterproductive.

Since that's the Daily Fail I now question the existence of windmills.

The big problem isn't windmills that can't turn, but natural gas facilities that can't deliver gas.

I do hope we can help them. Seems like FEMA and Engineer Corps should be on the road already.

Send thoughts and prayers instead--at least they won't be an additional load on the resources.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

. Natgas generation has a rather evident vulnerability, its pipelines, but that does not exist for coal and nuclear generation. So what affected them?

I just read that reactors in Texas are shutting down due to problems getting enough cooling water.
Burst pipes, etc.

There's another factor with nuclear, also--nuclear plants are required to have two independent external sources of power available at all times. If the external sources of power drop to one the reactor trips. (The intent is to avoid a Fukushima type incident--an offline reactor still needs power for it's cooling pumps for some time after it's been turned "off"--turning it "off" really is turning it to 3% and it will slowly go down from there.) If your grid is collapsing you can end up tripping a reactor and making the problem worse.

(Note that the two independent sources doesn't mean it's actually drawing on them, only that it can. The wires that carry power out are acceptable means of bringing power in so long as there is another adequate source of power connected to them. You must have two wires and two power plants, though.)

 

[Deepak]

Is there any particular reason to thin k Texas would be the place, given that they're being cautions?

Of course. Why would I say this place would 'X' with no particular reason. Indeed I can provide a multitude of reasons.

Again, though, I want to be sure we're talking about the same thing, and specifically the thing I'm concerned about is you're so wrapped around the axle due to the word Chernobyl that you're mistaking the point I'm making here. Even after I've explained it already.

I'm a proponent of nuclear power. I don't think there's any future where nuclear is not in the energy generation mix. Sparing the discovery of entirely novel ideas in physics, the math simply does not let us maintain something near the current quality of life, diet, consumption, and family planning privileges we enjoy now purely with renewable energy.

The thing that I'm specifically concerned about is groups like the North Korean regime, Islamic terrorists, or Texas Republicans having any control of, or access to nuclear facilities.

And, I'm sure, some folks might disagree with the assessment. In either case, the specifics of the energy mix we use in the future is not the concern of this thread - it's the particular incompetence of Texas, their government, and the people who have voting power to elect that government. So are you trying to address my point, or are you trying to straw man me?

If we're going to let Texans (or anyone else) have oil refineries and chemical plants, then also letting them have nuclear power plants isn't going to noticeably increase the risk to either the public or the environment.

Precisely: among the three toys that are small enough to choke a baby no one single toy presents a risk that's clearly higher than the other two.

My point is that stupid babies require the most attention. But it seems like you're a fan of Kinder Surprise in particular.