This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It's more than litigation issues in the U.S. The EPC (general contractors) that build nuclear power plants in the U.S. have generally lost the technical ability to build such complex engineering projects. The major contractors and subcontractors (CB&I, S&W, Westinghouse, etc) have all gone bankrupt and the people who built our original fleet never properly transferred their knowledge to the next generation of workers. We should all be embarrassed by this. We likely would be bot embarrassed and angry if it was even acknowledged as a problem. Instead we hear about nebulous "legislation and regulation". Those are certainly part of the problem, but only one part.
I wonder if Canada fares better. I kind of doubt it. It seems like the Chinese and maybe the French are the only ones left who can handle these types of projects.
Modular plants are probably much more sensible efficiency wise, and US hasn't lost the ability to build thermal power plants.
E.g. the Danish design that provides 50 MWt through a molten salt loop from a module the size of a shipping container.
Stack 20 of these in a row in concrete coffins underground, and you have 1 GWt of heat. Do people really think it'd be more expensive than giant pressure reactors in giant containment domes that can melt down and need lots of infrastructure for safety?
The molten salt modules can't overheat, and if they're punctured the salt solidifies under 600°C or so.
As if things buried underground in reinforced concrete were at risk of getting shot through.
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe but the reason why that doesn’t exist is because litigation made it prohibitively expensive to build in the first instance resulting in depreciating the value of the goodwill.
More options
Context Copy link
IMO, they were forced into bankruptcy. After Three Mile Island, the regulators simply refused to allow any new nuclear plants to be constructed. See the wikipedia list of US nuclear plants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors#United_States
There's about five US nuclear plants started every year, up until 1978. Then there's a little excitement at Three Mile Island in 1979, where nobody is hurt. No nuclear plants begin construction until 2013.
How would Ford survive if the US government decreed that they could not produce any new cars for 30 years, they could only go on with cars in production in 1979? What use is there in having skills for nuclear power plant design and construction if they're de facto illegal to use for 30 years? And that doesn't include the insane forced cost overruns regulation imposed, requiring nuclear plants cope with physically impossible engineering failures, amongst other abuses:
Regulation was the assassin, gun and bullet while Westinghouse was the corpse on the floor.
Did you happen to see the Safe Enough guest book review on ACX? I thought it was a neat look into the genesis of this regulatory regime.
I did read that. But I think it's silly to go to huge such huge efforts to reduce risk in nuclear energy while we pump out enormous amounts of air pollution with coal. Tens of thousands die every year in the US alone, millions worldwide... and people are worried about potential risks from freak events? We should worry about large, real, experienced dangers rather than small, unreal, conjecture-based dangers.
I see Fukushima and raise dam failures - those actually kill people in huge numbers. One dam failure in China made Fukushima look like a joke - 11 million homeless, 171,000 dead. Yet nobody scrambles to prevent dams being built, blanket-bans them by law.
As for the worst case scenarios... there's excessive hysteria about radiation. The methodology is dubious at best, linear no-limit threshold models are just a guessing game of extrapolating from real danger to effects that can't even be observed. It's unscientific and defies reason - should we build giant shades to blot out the sun (a major source of radiation)? If there's no safe threshold for nuclear-derived radiation, why should there be a safe threshold for UV (which again kills orders of magnitude more than nuclear energy ever has every single year). The cost of a major nuclear disaster is a social construct, people feeling like they ought to evacuate, be stressed or expensively clean up despite the effects being small. There's zero existential risk as well.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Aren't Koreans pretty good too?
Better.
Best prices in the world, though given that it's Korea it could be a mirage.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's basically exactly what happened to the UK nuclear submarine program.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link