CHOOSE AND PERISH

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1606301]

Comments

[andrewducker]

context

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

Nuclear power has never worried me in the slightest. And don't forget that if anything bad does happen, then we all get cool superhero powers from the radioactivity. It's a win-win situation!

Also, don't forget fusion power, which (as far as I'm aware) results in no radioactive waste.

I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[andrewducker]

Useful fusion power has two major drawbacks:
1) It's not likely to exist in the next thirty years.
2) It's not likely to exist in the next thirty years.

I realise that this is technically only one drawback, but it's so large that I thought I'd mention it twice.

Re: I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[marrog.livejournal.com]

And last I heard thirty years was optimistic.

Re: I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[andrewducker]

Fusion Power is like Artificial Intelligence. They've both been "Coming in 30 years" since work on them started.

Re: I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I heard "forty years after you start funding it properly"

Re: I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[andrewducker]

Well, we'll find out in 2035!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO

Re: I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[nmg.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, when (weak) Artificial Intelligence works we stop calling it AI.

For example, we used to refer to rule-based systems as expert systems and treat them as AI magic. Nowadays, there are rule-based systems at the heart of many software projects - and noone thinks twice about them.

Re: I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. As soon as we can do X, X stops being artificial intelligence. I remember when "beating humans at chess" was considered to be a mark of AI. Nowadays I can search billions of documents with the help of a computer system that will correct my spelling, be recommended movies based on prior purchases, and face opponents who can command armies much more effectively than me, but apparently none of this is AI any more :->

Re: I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[0olong.livejournal.com]

'AI of the Gaps'

Re: I can never resist a Red Dward reference

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, they seem to have been saying it's 20-30 years away for the last... 50 years?

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I ~think~ that while fusion itself doesn't result in radioactive waste, it will however strongly irradiate the machinery and containment apparatus of the reactor itself, resulting in a problem when it comes time to decommission.

But, compared to the fission byproducts, this is a drop in the ocean.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Wow, would love to hear more from the people who think nuclear power is scarier than global warming.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

(I clicked on the wrong thing. Doh.)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

You can change your vote here.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ah ha, thank you kindly. I didn't know it was possible to do that.

[matgb]

There are people that don't believe global warming is happening. Some of these people are otherwise sane and rational and just don't think the evidence is trustworthy (and sometimes, they've got a point).

Nuclear power, on the other hand, has clearly killed people within living memory.

So if you don't think "AGW" is happening, then nuclear power is clearly scarier.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

It's worth noting that the fossil fuel industry kills really quite a lot of people, but they tend to be a) foreigners and b) miners or oilrig-workers, so they obviously don't count.

[matgb]

Well, yeah, but they tend to be over a period of time, and rarely make the news, complete disasters with deaths don't hit headlines often.

Because they're fairly common on a small scale.

Even the gulf oil spill was mostly about all that oil, the deaths were mentioned a few times then forgotten.

Whereas Chernobyl was global news, Iran building a reactor is global news (and, really, I can't see what the fuss about that is, if we're allowed them, and China's allowed them, why can't Iran have them?).

People think air travel is dangerous, but road travel isn't, despite the latter being a lot more lethal.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

What do you think - do you think we are experiencing anthropogenic global warming?

[matgb]

My tick in favour of it being scarier implies yes, I do. I'm not utterly convinced, but then I'm rarely sure about anything, the evidence points to it being true, and the best estimates is it'll sink my hometown, amongst other not nice effects.

Ergo, it scares me and I'd rather try to stop it, and the opportunity cost represented by the resources spent on other things is an annoyance. Renewable power is probably a net good even if climate change science is wrong.

[andrewducker]

Twenty four years after the catastrophe, restriction orders remain in place in the production, transportation and consumption of food contaminated by Chernobyl fallout. In the UK, they remain in place on 369 farms covering 750 km² and 200,000 sheep. In parts of Sweden and Finland, restrictions are in place on stock animals, including reindeer, in natural and near-natural environments. "In certain regions of Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Poland, wild game (including boar and deer), wild mushrooms, berries and carnivorous fish from lakes reach levels of several thousand Bq per kg of caesium-137", while "in Germany, caesium-137 levels in wild boar muscle reached 40,000 Bq/kg. The average level is 6,800 Bq/kg, more than ten times the EU limit of 600 Bq/kg", according to the TORCH 2006 report. The European Commission has stated that "The restrictions on certain foodstuffs from certain Member States must therefore continue to be maintained for many years to come".[6]

Edit: Of course, I had the link to the radioactive boar on my LJ in the last few weeks.

[matgb]

Exactly, if it goes wrong, it really goes wrong. But such events are very rare, and normally due to incompetent design and procedures.

Apart from their deliberate positioning fairly close to where I grew up, the French don't seem to have had any problems with their stations, not major ones anyway.

[andrewducker]

Oh, agreed. I believe newer designs are much better. I just also understand why people are scared of it going wrong, and if some people felt that nuclear power going wrong was worse than global warming then I wouldn't be surprised.

[simont]

They might have interpreted the question as "inspires more visceral fear" rather than "objectively more dangerous in the long run", perhaps?

The word "nuclear" is impressively scary in the former terms, including as it does the twin failure modes of earth-shattering kabooms that level a city and invisible death fields you don't even know you're walking into until it's far too late. (I realise the former is unlikely in terms of nuclear power in particular, but it will still be associated in people's minds with the word "nuclear".) Either of those on its own would be fairly scary; associating both with the same technology makes it entirely plausible that that technology would inspire a lot of gut-level fear.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Oops. I voted for the wrong thing there, not having read the poll properly. Global warming, definitely scarier than nuclear power.

[star-tourmaline.livejournal.com]

Icon love.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[zz]

I like the sound of the newer designs of reactor, e.g. that don't operate at high pressures (less likely to go boom), ones where increasing temperatures slow the reaction (can't meltdown), and/or can take any old shite as fuel (far less waste compared with current designs).

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

My feelings on global warming are well documented and any way you are going to generate energy is going to be dangerous. The current BP thing documents the problems of oil, which is going to run out anyway, natural gas can go "boom" and destroy a shit load of area, burning coal fucks up people's lungs, etc....

It would be nice to think we could power everything with windmills and solar panels but that's about 30 years down the road.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

It would be nice to think we could power everything with windmills and solar panels but that's about 30 years down the road.

I don't think that's down the road at all, honestly, if we're going to maintain a civilization. The problem with wind and solar is their unpredictability and uncontrollability... you could get a reasonably-accurate average over a big enough area, if you can solve the transport problem, or maybe store excess if superbatteries or other storage media finally prove out, but you can't turn up the Sun if you suddenly need more juice.

The absolute maximum you can get out of solar power is ~1kW/m^2 anyway, which assumes perfect conversion of all incoming sunlight into electricity and ignores cloud cover and dust. That's a hard limit; that's how brightly the Sun shines, less the amount soaked up by the atmosphere itself. If you knock off about 25% for inefficiencies (which is absurdly optimistic; current consumer-grade photovoltaics lose about 80%, while the best commercial and military pVs lose "only" about 75%) we can call it 1 horsepower per square meter.

A Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 motorcycle has a 190hp engine. To power it with our magic photocells we need a square solar power array about 14m to a side. The bike itself is only 2m long... so that's one heckuva big parasol, and remember to never, every go into the shade and keep up with the wash-and-wax.

Just an illustration of the limits of the method that technology cannot surpass; solar needs huge land areas to generate power at the levels we take for granted today. Relying on it (and wind, though the math on that is far more fraught) would lead to a huge drop in standard of living even if we increase efficiencies to as-yet unattained levels.

-- Steve thinks we'll need throttleable power supplies to make up the gap for a lot longer than 30 years, and maybe indefinitely.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Neither to me is particularly scary. Safety in nuclear power has advanced a long way from the reactors of the 1960's, which are the cause of much of the fear of nuclear power. Don't get me wrong, nuclear power still has it's risks, and generates extremely nasty waste, but if they are managed properly, it can be a safe form of power generation.

Global Warming isn't a particularly scary thing either. It is almost certainly happening - I'm not one of those people who deny its existence. How much is down to human activity and how much is due to natural climate cycles, remains to be seen. I suspect it is a bit of both, and I expect science will debate the relative contribution for many years to come (I'm not a climatologist so will leave that to the experts). As the climate changes, no doubt things will change here on planet earth. Water levels and weather patterns will change. No doubt some species will become extinct and others will appear to take their place. But life will go on. And most likely human life will go on as well. We may have to adapt somewhat, but it will go on (although possibly not in Holland).