United States officially rejoins Paris climate agreement

[laughing dog]

You are completely missing the point here.

I believe your entire response (as most of bilby’s) is based on straw men .

 

[bilby]

The risks from wind power are about the same as from nuclear (though nucear has a slight edge); Solar is rather riskier than either. So what, exactly, would be the benefit of replacing nuclear with wind or solar "one day", assuming that it ever becomes practical to do so?

The risks of deadly disasters are roughly the same for solar and wind as they are fir nuclear? Do tell.

The total deaths per TWh of electricity generated are roughly the same for nuclear and wind.

Solar is rather more dangerous, but none of these technologies are even close to being as dangerous as fossil fuels or hydroelectricity.

The worst that can happen to a modern nuclear power plant is something like what happened to the Fukushima Daiichi facility - hit by an earthquake that was one of the three largest in recorded history, and then by the resulting Tsunami, all three of the reactors that were running at the time experienced meltdowns. This led to two people being hospitalised for minor radiation burns, from which they fully recovered; And one man was killed when he fell from a crane during the quake.

It's perhaps unfair to describe this as "the worst that can happen to a modern nuclear power plant", as F. Daiichi wasn't very modern at all. The next door F. Daini (Daiichi means "number one", and Daini "number two") suffered no significant damage at all. It was commissioned in the 1980s, while Daiichi was a 1950s design. Other nuclear plants closer to the epicentre of the quake also suffered minimal damage (one was even used as a shelter for those made homeless by the disaster, as it was one of the few intact structures in the area).

Nuclear power plant accidents are incredibly rare, and only one has killed anyone. Chernobyl was a medium sized industrial accident, and really is as bad as a nuclear power plant accident could be, if you stupidly designed one to fail as badly as possible. The majority of the radionuclide inventory in the reactor was spread across the surrounding area, while authorities spent several days pretending nothing had happened.

The result was a couple of hundred deaths, mostly amongst first responders and plant workers. Which is bad, but hardly unique amongst industrial accidents. The contemporary incident at Bhopal, where isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide plant, killed at least an order of magnitude more people.

Looking only at power plant accidents, the Banqiao Dam disaster killed at least a thousand times as many people as Chernobyl; And more people have died installing solar panels in the USA alone than were killed by Chernobyl.

So no; The risks are not really similar. In the US, wind and solar are far more deadly. Only when we look at shitty Soviet designed plants do wind and solar start to look almost as safe.

As to cost vs price, it doesn't matter which way the causation operates; The result is that wind and solar cost more than they are worth, except when they're not actually available, at which time it doesn't matter how cheap they are....

I don’t understand your obsession with German policy since I did not endorse it nor promote it. Nor have I proposed or implied that wind and solar piwer can or should be the sole sources of power. Nor have I advocated getting rid of nuclear power.

My obsession is with fucking stupid policy. Which is based on the exact same unfounded concerns you are espousing.

Of course you shouldn't advocate getting rid of nuclear power; But that's not a sufficiently strong response to the facts - it's like saying you don't advocate banning vaccines, but you want the choice not to have them yourself, or for your children.

Anyone who understands the facts should be clamoring for more nuclear plants to be built as soon as possible. It's the only effective way to fight climate change, and everything else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

German policy is to fight climate change using wind and solar power. This provides a perfect opportunity to see in the real world whether it works or not. If you advocate wind and solar, but ignore the German experience, you are just navel gazing. Experiment trumps theory. Germany is the experiment, and theorists who ignore it are denying the facts.

You may as well accuse Newton of being obsessed with apples.

 

[bilby]

Subsidies, despatch priorities, and guaranteeing wholesale prices for Wind and Solar, is just picking winners without regard for their actual merits.

Better to put a large tax on carbon emissions, and let competition determine which way of reducing carbon emissions is actually profitable.

When the cost of carbon emissions to the environment is priced into the cost of generating electricity, gas will become too expensive to support intermittent renewables, and their inherent inability to be profitable (or even to maintain supply) without gas will become obvious.

Gas companies love wind power. It's no coincidence that the big shift from coal to gas has occurred simultaneously with the building of huge wind farms. Wind power implies either burning gas, or having blackouts.

But burning gas doesn't reduce carbon emissions very much at all. Indeed, when fugitive methane is included, it may even be worse than burning coal.

 

[laughing dog]

Better to put a large tax on carbon emissions, and let competition determine which way of reducing carbon emissions is actually profitable.

Exactly.

 

[laughing dog]

The total deaths per TWh of electricity generated are roughly the same for nuclear and wind. ..

Solar is rather more dangerous, but none of these technologies are even close to being as dangerous as fossil fuels or hydroelectricity.

The worst that can happen to a modern nuclear power plant is something like what happened to the Fukushima Daiichi facility - hit by an earthquake that was one of the three largest in recorded history, and then by the resulting Tsunami, all three of the reactors that were running at the time experienced meltdowns. This led to two people being hospitalised for minor radiation burns, from which they fully recovered; And one man was killed when he fell from a crane during the quake.

It's perhaps unfair to describe this as "the worst that can happen to a modern nuclear power plant", as F. Daiichi wasn't very modern at all. The next door F. Daini (Daiichi means "number one", and Daini "number two") suffered no significant damage at all. It was commissioned in the 1980s, while Daiichi was a 1950s design. Other nuclear plants closer to the epicentre of the quake also suffered minimal damage (one was even used as a shelter for those made homeless by the disaster, as it was one of the few intact structures in the area).

Nuclear power plant accidents are incredibly rare, and only one has killed anyone. Chernobyl was a medium sized industrial accident, and really is as bad as a nuclear power plant accident could be, if you stupidly designed one to fail as badly as possible. The majority of the radionuclide inventory in the reactor was spread across the surrounding area, while authorities spent several days pretending nothing had happened.

The result was a couple of hundred deaths, mostly amongst first responders and plant workers. Which is bad, but hardly unique amongst industrial accidents. The contemporary incident at Bhopal, where isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide plant, killed at least an order of magnitude more people.

Looking only at power plant accidents, the Banqiao Dam disaster killed at least a thousand times as many people as Chernobyl; And more people have died installing solar panels in the USA alone than were killed by Chernobyl.

So no; The risks are not really similar. In the US, wind and solar are far more deadly. Only when we look at shitty Soviet designed plants do wind and solar start to look almost as safe.

Most deaths and injuries due to wind and solar power are due to poor design and lack of adhering to safety standards. If you are going to dismiss the data from "poorly designed" nuclear power plants, you ought to dismiss the same data due to poor design and lack of adhering to safety standards.

My obsession is with fucking stupid policy. Which is based on the exact same unfounded concerns you are espousing.

I am not responsible for your straw men. I explicitly said wind and solar power could supplement nuclear power and that some day (not in the near future) may replace it.

 

[bilby]

The total deaths per TWh of electricity generated are roughly the same for nuclear and wind. ..

Solar is rather more dangerous, but none of these technologies are even close to being as dangerous as fossil fuels or hydroelectricity.

The worst that can happen to a modern nuclear power plant is something like what happened to the Fukushima Daiichi facility - hit by an earthquake that was one of the three largest in recorded history, and then by the resulting Tsunami, all three of the reactors that were running at the time experienced meltdowns. This led to two people being hospitalised for minor radiation burns, from which they fully recovered; And one man was killed when he fell from a crane during the quake.

It's perhaps unfair to describe this as "the worst that can happen to a modern nuclear power plant", as F. Daiichi wasn't very modern at all. The next door F. Daini (Daiichi means "number one", and Daini "number two") suffered no significant damage at all. It was commissioned in the 1980s, while Daiichi was a 1950s design. Other nuclear plants closer to the epicentre of the quake also suffered minimal damage (one was even used as a shelter for those made homeless by the disaster, as it was one of the few intact structures in the area).

Nuclear power plant accidents are incredibly rare, and only one has killed anyone. Chernobyl was a medium sized industrial accident, and really is as bad as a nuclear power plant accident could be, if you stupidly designed one to fail as badly as possible. The majority of the radionuclide inventory in the reactor was spread across the surrounding area, while authorities spent several days pretending nothing had happened.

The result was a couple of hundred deaths, mostly amongst first responders and plant workers. Which is bad, but hardly unique amongst industrial accidents. The contemporary incident at Bhopal, where isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide plant, killed at least an order of magnitude more people.

Looking only at power plant accidents, the Banqiao Dam disaster killed at least a thousand times as many people as Chernobyl; And more people have died installing solar panels in the USA alone than were killed by Chernobyl.

So no; The risks are not really similar. In the US, wind and solar are far more deadly. Only when we look at shitty Soviet designed plants do wind and solar start to look almost as safe.

Most deaths and injuries due to wind and solar power are due to poor design and lack of adhering to safety standards. If you are going to dismiss the data from "poorly designed" nuclear power plants, you ought to dismiss the same data due to poor design and lack of adhering to safety standards.

OK. Nuclear is still safer than solar, and slightly safer than wind, then.

Although if you are going to tolerate deaths due to poor design and lack of adherence to safety standards, which have a significant downward effect on costs, then you're going to need to never suggest that nuclear power is more expensive.

If wind and solar were regulated such that design and compliance made them as safe as non-Soviet nuclear, they would be prohibitively expensive.

My obsession is with fucking stupid policy. Which is based on the exact same unfounded concerns you are espousing.

I am not responsible for your straw men. I explicitly said wind and solar power could supplement nuclear power and that some day (not in the near future) may replace it.

You are explicitly wrong then. Wind and solar power cannot supplement nuclear power, they only make it less viable in favour of gas.

And they will only replace it if, in the very distant future, we require far less electricity than at present (a very unlikely prospect absent the total collapse of civilisation). Wind and solar energy densities are simply too low, and as Scotty can tell you, ye cannae change the laws of physics.

Thoughts and prayers.

 

[laughing dog]

OK. Nuclear is still safer than solar, and slightly safer than wind, then.

I don't see how anyone can make a categorical statement in either direction without better information.

If wind and solar were regulated such that design and compliance made them as safe as non-Soviet nuclear, they would be prohibitively expensive.

I don't see how anyone can make such a categorical statement without better information.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The risks from wind power are about the same as from nuclear (though nucear has a slight edge); Solar is rather riskier than either. So what, exactly, would be the benefit of replacing nuclear with wind or solar "one day", assuming that it ever becomes practical to do so?

The risks of deadly disasters are roughly the same for solar and wind as they are fir nuclear? Do tell.

Nuke produces few big disasters, solar and wind produce far more incidents but they're small things that don't make the news. Falls and the like.

 

[Jarhyn]

The risks from wind power are about the same as from nuclear (though nucear has a slight edge); Solar is rather riskier than either. So what, exactly, would be the benefit of replacing nuclear with wind or solar "one day", assuming that it ever becomes practical to do so?

The risks of deadly disasters are roughly the same for solar and wind as they are fir nuclear? Do tell.

Nuke produces few big disasters, solar and wind produce far more incidents but they're small things that don't make the news. Falls and the like.

Yeah. It's more or an aggregate effect. Nukes are big and flashy, but it's like lighting a ball of flash paper or a fire cracker. Sure, it might burn your hand, but whatever.

Compare that to the UV lamp, though... What harm does standing under this thing that doesn't even seemingly emit light, you may ask, right ump until the cancer diagnosis.

Of course, none of these compare to the analogical dousing-in-gasoline-and-lighting-a-match that is "fossil fuels".

 

[bilby]

OK. Nuclear is still safer than solar, and slightly safer than wind, then.

I don't see how anyone can make a categorical statement in either direction without better information.

Well, you could look at how many people each technology has hurt or killed...

What do you think is wrong with that approach?

If wind and solar were regulated such that design and compliance made them as safe as non-Soviet nuclear, they would be prohibitively expensive.

I don't see how anyone can make such a categorical statement without better information.

You could look at how many people were killed or hurt, and at the cost per life saved or injury avoided when safer practices are adopted, taking into account diminishing returns.

Alternatively, you could declare that as you don't know, nobody can know. But that's just an argument from ignorance.

 

[Jarhyn]

Well, you could look at how many people each technology has hurt or killed...

What do you think is wrong with that approach?

If wind and solar were regulated such that design and compliance made them as safe as non-Soviet nuclear, they would be prohibitively expensive.

I don't see how anyone can make such a categorical statement without better information.

You could look at how many people were killed or hurt, and at the cost per life saved or injury avoided when safer practices are adopted, taking into account diminishing returns.

Alternatively, you could declare that as you don't know, nobody can know. But that's just an argument from ignorance.

So, I always thought the best measure was deaths per kilowatt hour, from, say, no longer back than the last 10 years. Or maybe 2 years if there is good enough data.

You would have to go global, as all supply chains for foss
sil fuel are global, as are many of the metals used in various solar technologies.

The result will be that for most, the deaths per kilowatt hour are going to be very bad for all the fossil fuels. More if you account for the environmental cost of the pollution itself. The number just goes up faster as you calculate in all the early death that comes because of burning oil and coal.

Solar and wind is a few mining deaths and then deaths in construction and maintenance. It isn't exactly safe to be on top of a massive pylon seating a generator WAY bigger than you. Same about sinking with solar panels on roofs really.

Compared to nuclear where most of the materials are already out of the ground generations ago and any measure of that death is a sunk cost; or perhaps the deaths arising from panic, and other non-catastrophic failures, and then the one soviet disaster that shouldn't be expected to count, and we have a pretty good track record. The numbers on wind, though, should drop dramatically once we get better infrastructure developed to place and mount the turbines, and further still when we stop futzing with them.

Nuclear is far and away the most "careful" because the results can, in theory, be so bad. Not to mention that some reactor types don't catastrophically fail, and we could just build those. And the upshot there is that they are also not the sort that make useful weapons.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, I always thought the best measure was deaths per kilowatt hour, from, say, no longer back than the last 10 years. Or maybe 2 years if there is good enough data.

You would have to go global, as all supply chains for foss
sil fuel are global, as are many of the metals used in various solar technologies.

To get a reasonable scale you look at deaths per terawatt-hour. And you need to look at a lot more than 2 years because for nuke and hydro most years have zero. The majority of all nuke deaths are Chernobyl and the majority of all hydro deaths are one dam failure whose name doesn't come to mind right now.

 

[bilby]

So, I always thought the best measure was deaths per kilowatt hour, from, say, no longer back than the last 10 years. Or maybe 2 years if there is good enough data.

You would have to go global, as all supply chains for foss
sil fuel are global, as are many of the metals used in various solar technologies.

To get a reasonable scale you look at deaths per terawatt-hour. And you need to look at a lot more than 2 years because for nuke and hydro most years have zero. The majority of all nuke deaths are Chernobyl and the majority of all hydro deaths are one dam failure whose name doesn't come to mind right now.

Banqiao.

 

[Jarhyn]

So, I always thought the best measure was deaths per kilowatt hour, from, say, no longer back than the last 10 years. Or maybe 2 years if there is good enough data.

You would have to go global, as all supply chains for foss
sil fuel are global, as are many of the metals used in various solar technologies.

To get a reasonable scale you look at deaths per terawatt-hour. And you need to look at a lot more than 2 years because for nuke and hydro most years have zero. The majority of all nuke deaths are Chernobyl and the majority of all hydro deaths are one dam failure whose name doesn't come to mind right now.

Banqiao.

My point is, you have to look at modern probabilities 2 to 10 years gives you the data, because we can't reasonably save people long dead. That is already a cost paid. Two years to ten years gives us the price we will continue to pay.

 

[bleubird]

I saw a video last year that showed the reason we don't build more nukes is economics. The pay back is very long compared to gas.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Comrade Biden will inform us when the transition to communism is finally complete, through our microchip implants. That will truly be a glorious day.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Banqiao.

My point is, you have to look at modern probabilities 2 to 10 years gives you the data, because we can't reasonably save people long dead. That is already a cost paid. Two years to ten years gives us the price we will continue to pay.

Your statistics are not valid--too high a sampling interval always produces garbage data. You need a sampling interval substantially longer than the average time between incidents. Unfortunately, that means we can't get good data on the risks of nuke and hydro.

You idiot, I told you to drive! Every time I look all you're doing is sitting there running the engine! (Sampling interval 10 sec, you're sitting at a red light.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I saw a video last year that showed the reason we don't build more nukes is economics. The pay back is very long compared to gas.

Because of the safety requirements.

Typical safety requirements are in the ballpark of $10m/life. Nuke have plenty of safety requirements well in the 9 figures/life. And then there are things like a city? state? caving to the greens and denying an operating permit for a nuke plant and making the utility company simply eat the cost. That sort of thing means nobody will build a nuke plant and the planet gets ever hotter.

 

[Jarhyn]

Banqiao.

My point is, you have to look at modern probabilities 2 to 10 years gives you the data, because we can't reasonably save people long dead. That is already a cost paid. Two years to ten years gives us the price we will continue to pay.

Your statistics are not valid--too high a sampling interval always produces garbage data. You need a sampling interval substantially longer than the average time between incidents. Unfortunately, that means we can't get good data on the risks of nuke and hydro.

You idiot, I told you to drive! Every time I look all you're doing is sitting there running the engine! (Sampling interval 10 sec, you're sitting at a red light.)

Sampling past 10 years is unreasonable for nuke and hydro. The technology is simply too different today than from when many of the incidents have happened.

You idiot pants pisser, you've pissed your pants thousands of times now, when is it going to stop (sampling period, your whole natural life)?

Sampling in analogically invalid time periods also yields bad data.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Your statistics are not valid--too high a sampling interval always produces garbage data. You need a sampling interval substantially longer than the average time between incidents. Unfortunately, that means we can't get good data on the risks of nuke and hydro.

You idiot, I told you to drive! Every time I look all you're doing is sitting there running the engine! (Sampling interval 10 sec, you're sitting at a red light.)

Sampling past 10 years is unreasonable for nuke and hydro. The technology is simply too different today than from when many of the incidents have happened.

You idiot pants pisser, you've pissed your pants thousands of times now, when is it going to stop (sampling period, your whole natural life)?

Sampling in analogically invalid time periods also yields bad data.

The problem is we don't know if the nuke and hydro situation has improved or not. Depending on your accounting we have zero for both in the last 10 years (We have a bunch of evacuation deaths that are mismanagement and one lung cancer death--but that doesn't mean the lung cancer came from the accident), but the historical data also suggests zero as the most likely value for the last 10 years. Both hypotheses give the same answer, we can't distinguish between them.