site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26205 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Complete and utter nonsense about EROEI.

A gigawatt plant operating 70-80% of the time for decades puts out unimaginably large amounts of power.

Uranium is less than 1% of plant operating costs.

Reactor is the only unique part, steam turbines/electric machinery used are identical to those in other plants and are you really in camp of "couple of thousand tons of reinforced concrete' require gigawatt years worth of power?

Nuclear power isn't competitive because laws were made - e.g Alara so it couldn't be.

I'm talking about the actual EROEI - this means including all of the energy required to build, staff and maintain the plant over its lifetime. Actually digging up the uranium and transporting it to the power plant might indeed be les than 1% of plant operating costs, but that doesn't mean you get to ignore the other 99% and leave them out from your calculations. A "couple of thousand tons of reinforced concrete" does actually require gigawatt years of power when you remember the complicated machinery that goes into nuclear reactors and the incredible importance of regular maintenance.

[citation needed] for this claims

even under extreme security bondoogles required nowadays nuclear is energy positive - and if we would reduce safety requirements to match coal, hydro or solar, then costs would drop further

incredible importance of regular maintenance

this does not require gigawatt years of power

Here's a breakdown on EROEI of nuclear reactors.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx

You are probably riffing off this BS.

http://theoildrum.com/node/3877

Tyner was the author (or co-author) on the 1988 and 1997 reports which are examples of the lower EROI numbers -- less than 5:1. Tyner’s 1997 paper reported an “optimistic value” of 3.84 and a “less-optimistic” value of 1.86 and may be based on “pessimistic” cost estimates. For example capital monetary costs were 2.5 times higher than those reported for Generation III and III+ plants (Bruce Power 2007, see below). Fleay’s 2006 on line paper at least gives very detailed numerical analyses of costs and gains and hence probably can be checked explicitly. Different boundaries are used for these “low EROI” studies than most other recent studies that effect the results. For example Tyner takes interest (with a 4-5x larger energy cost magnitude than capital energy costs) into account in EROI (Tyner 1997). The two large EROI values reported here were for nuclear lifecycles which used centrifuge fuel enrichment as opposed to diffusion-based enrichment. Centrifuge enrichment uses much less electricity than other methods (Global Security 2007). We do not know how to interpret these analyses because centrifugal separation is an old technology. Newer rotor materials allow more rapid rotor spin which might influence results. At present much of the enriched uranium used for nuclear power is coming from dismantled nuclear warheads from the US-Russian agreement to decrease nuclear warheads but, apparently, that program will soon come to an end and we will have to contemplate again generating nuclear power from mined uranium. Much of the arguments about the great or small potential of future nuclear power comes from those who argue about the importance of technology vs. those who focus on depletion. As usual, however, technology is in a race with depletion and the winner can be determined only from empirical analysis, of which there seems to be far too little.

As anyone with a modicum of general knowledge can see, these people have no idea what they're talking about whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the world nuclear gives a clear breakdown of energy needed due to materials.

As anyone with a modicum of general knowledge can see, these people have no idea what they're talking about whatsoever.

I like to believe I have a modicum of general knowledge but it is not clear to me what is wrong here.

Though for start, EROI of 1.86 is still positive anyway. So it still goes against FirmWeird's claims.

  1. For starters, the idea that gaseous diffusion could cost more energy than you can get out of splitting uranium.

  2. Or the idea that you need to do a lot of enrichment to get useful fuel. That's only true for certain compact military and such designs, which in some cases use bomb grade material or something close to it. Famously, the RBMK reactor and the British Magnox ones can use natural uranium. It's not very efficient but good to have if you like nuclear warheads because you can extract plutonium from the 'spent' fuel.

  3. or writing that reactors use uranium from bomb warheads. The fissile elements in practically all bombs is plutonium.

You are making an extraordinary claim and should provide the source for that BS.

I remember that hogwash from the Peak Oil years when s certain contingent of doomers was getting incredibly high on their own supply, ignoring that we have enough shitty coal for centuries of early 20th cen industry.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats