No, but to map your analogy on to this thread, I would have to be claiming that global warming is not a problem – which I clearly am not. So it’s unlcear to me what point you might be making with this post.
You’re very fixated on that first point. The other two are much better. 
In any case, I’m not sure that any prominent members of the anti-nuclear movement say that nuclear solutions are not possible, just that others are better even considering the disadvantages of those other solutions. Just because they weigh the importance of the waste issue more highly than, say, the aesthetic problems of wind power does not make them unreasonable.
Yes, my understanding is that it does. Nuclear submarines don’t have to be the size of a stadium, that’s true, but they also don’t have to worry about a number of concerns that electrical power plants have. I’m no expert on the area, but my understanding is that making small, flexible nuclear power plants that are as safe as we want them to be is not possible in the foreseeable future. I’ll try to dig up a cite if you desire.
I’m intimating that it’s kind of a weak debate, and a distraction from the topic.
Your point seems to be that people who are wrong have less credibility later. I think we can all agree on this. What it has to do with AGW and the generally mainstream crowd’s proposed solutions, I have no idea, except to maybe tar them by their shared belief in human-caused warming.
I’ll make it even easier- Greenpeace has little credibility with me based generally on their activities over the last few decades. So I am not listening to what they say on, really, anything. If Greenpeace told me it would be sunny, I would bring an umbrella. It has not much to do with their position on nuke power in the seventies.
They arent exactly cheap though.
I imagine the problem is economies of scale, as in you still have to do a ton of the things you have to do for much larger plants, while getting a much lower return power wise. Security would have to be similar as well.
They might make sense for things like satellites or military ships, but I suspect theres reasons we dont see civilian companies clamouring for cheap long lasting nuclear power plants in their own ships and the like. I doubt it can all be put down to consumer backlash or the like.
Otara
So Bricker, 30 years ago some people thought that nuclear energy was a greater threat than coal fired generators. In the ensuing years, further evidence proving AGW has changed the hierarchy, demonstrating that the risks of coal fired electrical generation is higher than previously believed, and the already small risk of nuclear energy has become even lower because of technological improvements and greater experience in operation.
Your position is that the people who have changed their minds because of this have less credibility? If only they had continued to believe what they used to believe and acted the way they used to act we could trust them more? Like when an elderly person steps on the gas instead of the brake, they should step on the accelerator harder?
One of the things I really hate is when people confuse a bad outcome with a bad decision. If I walk up to you with an honest die and bet $10,000 against $1,000 that you can’t roll a six you’d be a fool not to take that bet, even though 5 out of 6 times you’re going to lose. When you lose, that’s a bad outcome, but it’s still a good decision.
Based on the information available 30 years ago nuclear energy was a larger risk than coal. Because new evidence changes the picture does not retroactively make the decision to oppose nuclear energy wrong.
When people learn things that make what they previously believed incorrect, they should change what they believe. That’s pretty much the definition of rationality. You can’t assume someone is less credible for demonstrating rationality.
In France, nuclear power has long been touted as being a strategic choice, about energy independence, with short term economic issues taking second place. France has no oil, and I believe the last coal mines are now closed too. Going nuclear was obviously a long-term, large-scale government driven project, with an uncertain payoff. (The kind of thing the US generally reserves for military applications only). The Superphénix reactor famously turned into a giant money-hole and political bone of contention. Having said that, France is 80% nuclear for electricity today, which is kind of comforting when the Russians and the Ukrainians start squabbling about pipelines.
I think the anti-nukers of the 70’s are more correctly identified with the anti-GMOers and anti-cloning movements of today, than with the AWG environmentalists. The old-time anti-nukers were basically somewhere along the spectrum between ‘conservative on technology’ to ‘anti-science luddites’, whereas the core idea of today’s AWG activists is basically about better use of technology and socially progressive change. There was also a part of the anti-nuke movement that objected to reactors on the grounds that they provided the materials for nuclear weapons, and for some, ant-nuke may even have simply been a proxy for anti-government.
Where the whole thing gets complicated is when left-wing voting blocks include both social progressives and ‘anti-science leftists’. In the last French presidential election, the Socialist candidate Ségolène Royale did some world-class waffling on her position on nuclear energy to try to unite her very diverse base.
Then again, maybe there was more than meets the eye to the anti-nuke movement of the 70s - an Israeli/Swiss, Chaim Nissim, recently ‘took credit’ for the rocket attack on the aforementioned Superphenix reactor. He claims the weapons used were supplied by Carlos the Jackal.
As for wind power, although it brings its own set of problems, there is certainly room for progress. 34% of electricity from wind sounds like a big number, but if you consider that Germany is at about 20%, and Spain has gone from 0 to 10% in the space of about 10 years, maybe 34% is not completely outrageous. On the other hand, a lot of environmental groups object to turbines…
This last part kills me. Some environmental groups have objections to any solution it seems like.
I would love to see a lot more wind farms. There is a pilot project that keeps stalling off the Jersey Coast. Most of the protest surround either the very wealthy complaining their view will be ruined or a few green groups objecting to the birds that will die in the turbines. I think some raise the question of noise. These objections are spurious to me.
Were there any other environmental objections?
Jim
If a boy cries ‘wolf’ in a forest, does it in any way fit the parable?
Sure, we’ve heard of Greenpeace, but I haven’t heard of this plan. In fact, in what media I am exposed to, I hear almost no discussion of remedies to global warming at all.
Discouraging, but true.
The whole idea that anyone’s credibility is undermined among the general public at this point with respect to their anti-global-warming proposals is absurd to me, because I doubt that more than a small fraction of the public has heard anyone’s plans, beyond the most vague “we need to use less fossil fuels” generalities.
Well, it seems to me I addressed this concern quite clearly in post #5 of this thread, where I said:
Having re-read those words, is my position clearer?
Here’s where you and I part company. As has been acknowledged by other posters above, the anti-nuke movement 30 years ago did NOT have the benefit of good science, and the decision that it was a larger risk than coal was utterly wrong – not in retrospect, but at the time, given a rational and dispassionate review of the evidence. (Note: such review should not include viewing “The China Syndrome” for clues).
No evidence (too lazy to look it up at work)…how about logic? All the protesting and court cases to prevent a new nuclear reactor have to be for SOME reason…i.e. at least the anti-nuke crowd think that more reactors would have or could have been build. Secondly, all that stuff adds some non-zero dollar figure to the construction of any new (or proposed) nuclear reactor…and we are talking about money just to make lawyers rich, not to actually improve the reactor design.
I don’t know how many nuclear reactors we WOULD have had if the anti-nuke crowd had never gotten their panties in a bunch. We’ll probably never know. As many as France has? Maybe not. More than we have today? Almost certainly. Would it have helped reduce our CO2 footprint? Well, even one more reactor and one less carbon spewing coal fired or oil fired plant would have a non-zero effect on our C02 output…wouldn’t it? How about 10 more nuclear reactors and 10 less coal/oil fired plants? 20? 50?
And what about the reactor designs of today? Why aren’t THEY being built? They are cheaper (so more economical) than the older designs. More reliable. Where are they?
-XT
“Bear skins up two points in active trading…Shell fish futures down on concerns that the ocean being dead may negatively impact profits…”
Climate studies are not exactly a capital intensive research environment, it doesn’t take all that much money to look at a thermometer, or to look up the temperature in Oslo on Sept. 23, 1879. Contrast and compare to the amount of money available to GW “skeptics” to buy national air time to fling pooh-pooh.
This is rich! You start in from the very get-go insulting your rhetorical opponents and then whimper about my lack of propriety? Please.
Yeah, just like we crushed the SUV like a bug. How we forced the auto industry into CAFE standards. You remember how Congress voted generous tax breaks to purchase SUV’s? Was that dirty fucking hippies, or white guys in suits?
Should have started a lot sooner, as suggested by us deranged berserkers. Did we have your support then?
Better late than never. Not much better, but better.
Make up your mind, are we facists, or fuzzy bunnies?
Chernobyl, tovarich! Nye horosho, cnyeshna horrorshow!
Now, clearly, such an incident is an outlier (thank the Goddess!) From what I can gather, it is an example of human error compounded by human stupidity and exaggerated by panic. But human stupidity happens, no? But what’s that you say? In the words of St. Francis of Zappa, “It can’t happen here”? Are we a different species than they? Immune to stupid? Really?
I never understood the anti-nuke people. Coal powered plants are foul and grotesque, causing untold human death, misery, disease, and environmental degradation. However bad you think nuclear plants are, there’s no way in my mind they could ever approach the danger of coal plants. Until the day we get fusion or find a way to trap a coal plant’s pollution from being belched into the very air we breath and store it somewhere, it looks to me like nuke plants are the obvious choice. But I could be wrong…
A big part of the reason more plants weren’t built was the lack of provision for nuclear waste. In France, waste is reprocessed and used again so the waste problem is far less significant (the products of reprocessing also have much shorter half-lives). But Carter prohibited this in the US because of (somewhat justified) fears of nuclear proliferation. California legislatively banned the building of new reactors until the waste situation could be sorted out, and many states followed suit though not always in explicit laws.
**Jshore **is right that to some extent it was a matter of economics. In addition to the high-cost of investment in unstable energy market conditions, the government has a huge incentive to not certify new plants because under the NWPA and subsequent court decisions the feds have to pay for all the waste until they get Yucca sorted out.
None of the mainstream environmental groups that I know of do. I think most of the objections are NIMBYism. Even the Audubon Society (which one might expect to be the most likely opponent of wind energy given that they are not deeply involved with the global warming / sustainable energy issue and are very concerned about birds)apparently supports wind energy, including the controversial Cape Wind project.
Well, I based my original statement at least partly on a talk that I once saw where the person compared the economic costs of nuclear power and fossil fuel power in the U.S., France, and Japan. The conclusion was that the costs of nuclear were about the same in the 3 countries but that the cost of fossil fuel power was much less in the U.S…which is what drove the U.S. toward this while the other countries invested more in nuclear. Unfortunately, I can’t find a citation to this study.
I admit that the concerns over nuclear power and the resulting regulations after 3-Mile-Island were probably a factor in driving up the cost…but it is not clear how large of a factor. And, one has to ask whether the regulations adopted were unreasonable. It is interesting that even the nuclear industry seems careful not to criticize the regulations of the NRC as too draconian, although they do say that there might be some modernization of them in order. (I recall this from looking at this industry website in discussions on SDMB a few years ago but they seem to have updated and reorganized their website so I couldn’t track down the page that I remember.)
Here is a Wikipedia article on the economics of nuclear power plants. It is definitely worth a read. As they note, one thing that may be making nuclear power less economically viable now is the deregulation of utilities markets:
Seeing as how you’re the first person I’ve heard to draw a connection between nuclear protests and the current climate change lobbyists, I can’t agree with that statement.
The environmental movement (especially the rational and informed part of it) suffers from a different disadvantage. We can’t easily see or feel climate change on a personal level, so people can’t get too worked up about it. Try telling someone shoveling 6 inches of “global warming” out of their driveway in January that they have to take steps to reduce the rising temperature of the planet, and it’s easy to understand why their response is “why should I?”
[quote=Bricker
…rational persons are also willign [sic]
to acknowledge the error of their former positions. When a new position is adopted without acknowldging the error of a former position, it hurts credibility; contrawise, when - as jjimm has - the former position is acknowledged as error, it enhances credibility.
[/quote]
And what should be the reaction when the former position’s “error” was not one of judgment, or morality or responsibility as you so strongly insinuate, but the simple lack of data that has since become available?
And what can we say of the judgment, and proneness to error, of someone who today refuses to get drawn into a discussion of the scientific evidence, and instead assesses the situation based on his own perceptions of the degree of looniness of Greenpeace? Or refuses to acknowledge the point, made several times here already, that “the crowd” now advocating responses to global warming is *not * the same “crowd” as the anti-nuke activists of an earlier time? What sort of credibility does a person expressing *that * judgment have? :dubious: (Hint: It’s called “well-poisoning”. As you should well know by now).
xtisme, we did not “indulge” the anti-nuke people; there have been no nuke plants ordered in the US since 1973 because of … wait for it … their cost! Safety regulations! Siting reviews! Permits! Waste disposal availability! Dollars, every time! And all of it, every last bit, motivated by a desire to improve safety and protect the environment. The activists were often incredibly naive and narrow-focused, as activists often are, but their goals were hard to argue with and *effective * activism does require some degree of fanaticism.
I always was bemused by the focus on Seabrook, btw, when it wasn’t even the most serious nuclear threat on the 16-mile New Hampshire seacoast - all the bomb at Pease AFB were *designed * to blow up.
And yet…other countries who one would suppose are less wealthy than the US have managed to make nuclear reactors to generate power. Why? Why is it economical for them but not us? And if its NOT economical for them, why do they still build them? HOW do they build them if they make no economic sense? WHY do they build them if they are such money losers?
Further, if its NOT economical and if no new plants would have been built in the US anyway…why did the activists go to so much trouble to prevent them from being built? I mean…what’s the point if they weren’t going to be built anyway due to all that economic stuff?
-XT
Duplicate due to glitch
No new Nukes were built largely because the US has abundant cheap coal and it was far cheaper than nuclear fission plants. Now the cost question is changing as we are beginning to put a cost on what coal plants are doing to the environment.
I am just repeating what others have said, but I thought I would try it in another way to see if I could make it clearer.
Jim