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Why are liberals so opposed to nuclear energy? (1 Viewer)

timschochet

timschochet

Footballguy
I know a lot of folks are concerned about safety issues and where to store the waste. I’m no expert but it seems to me that these are not insolvable problems, because right now France gets 70% of their total energy from nuclear. Besides, let’s examine the many advantages: 

1. Once past the initial investment (which will take government money to be sure) its both cheap and profitable. None of the so-called “clean” energy sources are profitable yet- they might be some day but not now. 

2. Obviously it’s fossil fuel free. No carbon footprint. 

3. If technology ever develops a way to produce energy from nuclear fusion, that will basically solve all of our energy problems for generations or forever. 

4. Conservatives love it. Why is this such a benefit? Because for 20 years we’ve been arguing with conservatives about climate change and what to do about it, time is of the essence, and we’re still not getting anything done. What if instead of all the fighting, we were to approach conservatives and say, “Hey we don’t care what you think about climate change, surely you see the advantage to weaning us off of fossil fuels, right? You love nuclear, lets make a huge investment in nuclear.” I think they’d go along with this in a heartbeat. Conservatives reading this, you guys tell me if I’m right. 

I dunno, this seems like a way to cut through the mess here. Thoughts? 

 
Skoo said:
We watched Chernobyl.
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Haven’t seen it. 

But is an incident that happened over 30 years ago in a totalitarian country that didn’t have our safety measures very relevant today? I’m not making an argument here, only asking the question, because I’m assuming that, among other things, lots of technology has changed since then. 

 
wikkidpissah said:
a lot of us are not opposed to it in principle, only practice. in an age when industries are writing their own regulatory protocols it's hard to be confident that the "i"s & "t" will be dotted for procedure, upkeep and waste mgmt in an industry where all risks are global
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That makes sense but again it doesn’t seem to me that these are insolvable concerns. 

 
Every ocean in the world now has radiation from Fukishima in it.  Fukishima is about to release 1 million tons of radioactive wastewater into the ocean, since it has nothing else to do with it.   This cycle will continue indefinitely as the radioactive wastewater continues to build up.     

Hanford is the nation's largest environmental cleanup effort and there is no end in sight other than Trump reclassifying nuclear waste as less hazardous.  It penetrated the groundwater decades ago.   

Chernobyl.   Three Mile Island.  SL-1.   

You have 1,700 tons of radioactive waste being stored at San Onofre.   That's not a problem, since Southern California has never experienced an earthquake, right?  Sea levels aren't rising, and salt water isn't corrosive.  It will be fine.   

Yeah, no thanks.   

 
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-fish- said:
Every ocean in the world now has radiation from Fukishima in it.  Fukishima is about to release 100 million tons of radioactive wastewater into the ocean, since it has nothing else to do with it.   This cycle will continue indefinitely as the radioactive wastewater continues to build up.     

Hanford is the nation's largest environmental cleanup effort and there is no end in sight other than Trump reclassifying nuclear waste as less hazardous.  It penetrated the groundwater decades ago.   

Chernobyl.   Three Mile Island.  SL-1.   

You have 1,700 tons of radioactive waste being stored at San Onofre.   That's not a problem, since Southern California has never experienced an earthquake, right?  Sea levels aren't rising, and salt water isn't corrosive.  It will be fine.   

Yeah, no thanks.   
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I understand these concerns. Is there no way around them? 

 
I use nuclear energy as one filtering mechanism for who to take seriously when they talk about climate change, and who to ignore.  Climate change is often (justifiably) presented as a pay-any-price-bear-any-burden problem, but then as soon you bring up nuclear energy, that all flies out the window.

 
timschochet said:
I understand these concerns. Is there no way around them? 
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It is two different problems.   There's no way around an unexpected catastrophe, and history shows that they happen.  Once they do, the effects are devastating and indefinite.   The waste issue is different.   There will always be waste, and we really don't have a good way to deal with it.   

 
IvanKaramazov said:
I use nuclear energy as one filtering mechanism for who to take seriously when they talk about climate change, and who to ignore.  Climate change is often (justifiably) presented as a pay-any-price-bear-any-burden problem, but then as soon you bring up nuclear energy, that all flies out the window.
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Sounds like a false dilemma to me.   You can deal with climate change without relying on nuclear energy.   

 
-fish- said:
You have 1,700 tons of radioactive waste being stored at San Onofre.   That's not a problem, since Southern California has never experienced an earthquake, right?  Sea levels aren't rising, and salt water isn't corrosive.  It will be fine.   

Yeah, no thanks.   
Click to expand...
This is a good example of what I'm talking about.  I agree -- obviously -- that storing nuclear waste on a fault line and near an ocean is a bad idea.  But surely nobody seriously thinks that this is an unsolvable problem, right?  The US is a big country with vast swaths of sparsely-inhabited land.  It's not that difficult to find places where a) there are hardly any people and b) there are no active faults and c) there is no ocean nearby.  That's what the Yucca Mountain facility is for.  Or, send it to the Dakotas -- what do I care.  We already have a bunch of missile silos, so why not store irradiated waste here while we're at it.

 
-fish- said:
Sounds like a false dilemma to me.   You can deal with climate change without relying on nuclear energy.   
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a) Nobody ever said "rely."  It's part of a portfolio.  The opposite of "Use no nuclear power at all" is "Use some nuclear power," not "Use nothing but nuclear power."

b) How is the "Use no nuclear power at all" approach working out for us at the moment?

 
IvanKaramazov said:
This is a good example of what I'm talking about.  I agree -- obviously -- that storing nuclear waste on a fault line and near an ocean is a bad idea.  But surely nobody seriously thinks that this is an unsolvable problem, right?  The US is a big country with vast swaths of sparsely-inhabited land.  It's not that difficult to find places where a) there are hardly any people and b) there are no active faults and c) there is no ocean nearby.  That's what the Yucca Mountain facility is for.  Or, send it to the Dakotas -- what do I care.  We already have a bunch of missile silos, so why not store irradiated waste here while we're at it.
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Why is it that the only two options being presented for San Onofre both involve storing the waste onsite?

 
IvanKaramazov said:
a) Nobody ever said "rely."  It's part of a portfolio.  The opposite of "Use no nuclear power at all" is "Use some nuclear power," not "Use nothing but nuclear power."

b) How is the "Use no nuclear power at all" approach working out for us at the moment?
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Well, we haven't tried "use no nuclear power at all" or ended dependence on fossil fuels, so it's impossible to know.   

 
IvanKaramazov said:
This is a good example of what I'm talking about.  I agree -- obviously -- that storing nuclear waste on a fault line and near an ocean is a bad idea.  But surely nobody seriously thinks that this is an unsolvable problem, right?  The US is a big country with vast swaths of sparsely-inhabited land.  It's not that difficult to find places where a) there are hardly any people and b) there are no active faults and c) there is no ocean nearby.  That's what the Yucca Mountain facility is for.  Or, send it to the Dakotas -- what do I care.  We already have a bunch of missile silos, so why not store irradiated waste here while we're at it.
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Finland is in the process of constructing a spent nuclear fuel repository at the moment.  The idea is for it to be operational by 2023 and run until 2120, at which point it will be sealed forever.

I watched an interesting piece on it awhile back about how they haven't figured out how to create danger/caution signs for future generations.  Obviously they can put the "do not enter" signs in Finnish, English, etc. but who knows what languages will be prevalent hundreds and hundreds of years from now, because that waste will be there seemingly forever.  They're trying to come up with a picture-based system to basically show future generations to stay the #### away.

 
Why do liberals believe in astrology?

Why do conservatives believe in young-earth creationism?

Why do liberals and conservatives oppose vaccination?

Not all do, but for those who do, the answer is typically that they lack any semblance of relevant expertise and just go by whatever Oprah or Trump or Gweneth or whoever is telling them.

 
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Maurile Tremblay said:
Why do liberals believe in astrology?

Why do conservatives believe in young-earth creationism?

Why do liberals and conservatives oppose vaccination?

Not all do, but for those who do, the answer is typically that they lack any semblance of relevant expertise and just go by whatever Oprah or Trump or Gweneth or whoever is telling them.
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Your comparisons here aren’t really apt, because in this case enough liberals are opposed to nuclear energy so that Democratic politicians typically stop all efforts to pursue it. Therefore it’s a little different than astrology or creationism or vaccines. 

 
And also as Ivan pointed out, liberals like to think of themselves as the pro-science folks, on such issues as climate change, reproductive health issues, evolution, etc. But in this one instance the roles seem reversed. 

 
Punchlines like “nuclear plants leave contamination everywhere” or “it only supplies energy until a disaster strikes” have to take things into context.  I’ve worked in the nuclear power field for several years, and would get more exposure from the decay of Radon in the dirt in one day working outside than what I’ve received in a year.  These exposure levels people receive in the power plants are so low they make an X-ray at the doctors office look like Chernobyl.  Bananas are a healthy food and also radioactive due to the decay of potassium, would you say they are polluting the planet?  So many things in the world are radioactive or decaying, because nothing in this world is stagnant.  We are all evolving slightly one way or the other.  There isn’t any way you can replace anything with out contaminating it slightly, so the whole argument is misconstrued.   Basically, saying nuclear power has contaminated the oceans is like saying you contaminated the oceans if you swam in it, boated in them, or peed in them.  

Many recent disasters would not happen ever in the US due to safer operating regulations, and increased redundancy and coincidence for things like backup shore power, emergency diesel generators, etc.   

The current solution is in fact nuclear fission, but the future solution to achieve 100% carbon free energy is most likely nuclear fusion.  With nuclear fusion, you have virtually unlimited amounts of fuel as a resource, and could potentially create enough energy to power the world several times over.  China and Europe are ahead of us in this technology, and we should look to even the playing field.  Nuclear fusion has the potential to be the most important solution to a problem in our lifetime.  

 
dschuler said:
Punchlines like “nuclear plants leave contamination everywhere” or “it only supplies energy until a disaster strikes” have to take things into context.  I’ve worked in the nuclear power field for several years, and would get more exposure from the decay of Radon in the dirt in one day working outside than what I’ve received in a year.  These exposure levels people receive in the power plants are so low they make an X-ray at the doctors office look like Chernobyl.  Bananas are a healthy food and also radioactive due to the decay of potassium, would you say they are polluting the planet?  So many things in the world are radioactive or decaying, because nothing in this world is stagnant.  We are all evolving slightly one way or the other.  There isn’t any way you can replace anything with out contaminating it slightly, so the whole argument is misconstrued.   Basically, saying nuclear power has contaminated the oceans is like saying you contaminated the oceans if you swam in it, boated in them, or peed in them.  

Many recent disasters would not happen ever in the US due to safer operating regulations, and increased redundancy and coincidence for things like backup shore power, emergency diesel generators, etc.   

The current solution is in fact nuclear fission, but the future solution to achieve 100% carbon free energy is most likely nuclear fusion.  With nuclear fusion, you have virtually unlimited amounts of fuel as a resource, and could potentially create enough energy to power the world several times over.  China and Europe are ahead of us in this technology, and we should look to even the playing field.  Nuclear fusion has the potential to be the most important solution to a problem in our lifetime.  
Click to expand...
Thank you. Interesting info.

 
Question - based on my understanding about 1/3 of the energy of the nuclear reaction is captured as electrical power, with the other 2/3 being radiated as waste heat.  Were enough reactors in service to meet the world's energy needs, would the cumulative waste heat be an issue?

 
proteus126 said:
Question - based on my understanding about 1/3 of the energy of the nuclear reaction is captured as electrical power, with the other 2/3 being radiated as waste heat.  Were enough reactors in service to meet the world's energy needs, would the cumulative waste heat be an issue?
Click to expand...
No idea, but I'd also be curious: how much energy do we waste now using fossil fuels?

 
dschuler said:
Punchlines like “nuclear plants leave contamination everywhere” or “it only supplies energy until a disaster strikes” have to take things into context.  I’ve worked in the nuclear power field for several years, and would get more exposure from the decay of Radon in the dirt in one day working outside than what I’ve received in a year.  These exposure levels people receive in the power plants are so low they make an X-ray at the doctors office look like Chernobyl.  Bananas are a healthy food and also radioactive due to the decay of potassium, would you say they are polluting the planet?  So many things in the world are radioactive or decaying, because nothing in this world is stagnant.  We are all evolving slightly one way or the other.  There isn’t any way you can replace anything with out contaminating it slightly, so the whole argument is misconstrued.   Basically, saying nuclear power has contaminated the oceans is like saying you contaminated the oceans if you swam in it, boated in them, or peed in them.  

Many recent disasters would not happen ever in the US due to safer operating regulations, and increased redundancy and coincidence for things like backup shore power, emergency diesel generators, etc.   

The current solution is in fact nuclear fission, but the future solution to achieve 100% carbon free energy is most likely nuclear fusion.  With nuclear fusion, you have virtually unlimited amounts of fuel as a resource, and could potentially create enough energy to power the world several times over.  China and Europe are ahead of us in this technology, and we should look to even the playing field.  Nuclear fusion has the potential to be the most important solution to a problem in our lifetime.  
Click to expand...
Who's regulating that?  The NRC, with cut funding and decreased enforcement authority?   How is the storage plan for San Onofre safe from either an earthquake or the corrosive effect of the saltwater environment?   There are plenty of environmentalists/conservationists that would love to be convinced that nuclear energy is clean and safe, but the relatively short history of the industry worldwide doesn't have the greatest track record.

It's not "anti-science" liberals that have concerns.  It's groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility   

 
Steve Tasker said:
Finland is in the process of constructing a spent nuclear fuel repository at the moment.  The idea is for it to be operational by 2023 and run until 2120, at which point it will be sealed forever.

I watched an interesting piece on it awhile back about how they haven't figured out how to create danger/caution signs for future generations.  Obviously they can put the "do not enter" signs in Finnish, English, etc. but who knows what languages will be prevalent hundreds and hundreds of years from now, because that waste will be there seemingly forever.  They're trying to come up with a picture-based system to basically show future generations to stay the #### away.
Click to expand...
I've seen that story before -- it's an interesting communication problem, kind of akin to how we would communicate with aliens if we were to encounter one another.

 
-fish- said:
Who's regulating that?  The NRC, with cut funding and decreased enforcement authority?   How is the storage plan for San Onofre safe from either an earthquake or the corrosive effect of the saltwater environment?   There are plenty of environmentalists/conservationists that would love to be convinced that nuclear energy is clean and safe, but the relatively short history of the industry worldwide doesn't have the greatest track record.

It's not "anti-science" liberals that have concerns.  It's groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility   
Click to expand...
According to climate scientists, we need to massively decrease our carbon emissions in a pretty short timeframe to avoid a worldwide temperature increase that could potentially get out of control.  If you take that issue seriously, it seems like you should want to fix whatever objections you have with NRC, not close off one carbon-free technology that we already know how to build.  

Many anti-nuclear left-of-center types (not you personally, necessarily) often come across as taking the following position:

Climate change is an urgent, immediate, and existential thread to humankind.  We have to take decisive action now to avert catastrophe.  That means rebuilding our economy from the ground up and solving massive coordination problems with other sovereign countries, but we have no choice but to overcome these hurdles if we're going to survive as a species.  Oh, but getting over the whole NIMBY thing with Nevada is obviously a bridge too far.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, but that's not a rational position to take.  Climate change deniers might be wrong, but at least they're rational in the sense that they're internally consistent.  Anti-nuclear environmentalists aren't even being rational.

 
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IvanKaramazov said:
According to climate scientists, we need to massively decrease our carbon emissions in a pretty short timeframe to avoid a worldwide temperature increase that could potentially get out of control.  If you take that issue seriously, it seems like you should want to fix whatever objections you have with NRC, not close off one carbon-free technology that we already know how to build.  

Many left-of-center types (not you personally, necessarily) often come across as taking the following position:

I'm sorry, but that's not a rational position to take.  Climate change deniers might be wrong, but at least they're rational in the sense that they're internally consistent.  Anti-nuclear environmentalists aren't even being rational.
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Again, this is a false dilemma.   Why should anyone be forced to trade one environmental disaster for another?  Sorry to the "but nuclear is safe" guys, but history says otherwise.  Even if it were a fully functioning agency, the NRC can't prevent earthquakes.  One Fukishima should have been enough.

There are plenty of actual scientists who believe we can move away from fossil fuels without having to rely on nuclear.    These guys, for example, say they've done the math and it works out.

 
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This issue ties into something that I've been thinking about a lot recently.  How often do we hear a politician, activist, ideologue, etc. identify a legitimate problem, and then go on to lay out a solution that just so happens to coincide exactly with policy decisions that the speaker would have advocated regardless?  How much more refreshing would it be if more people said "Here's a problem that honestly needs to be addressed, and I've reluctantly concluded that the best way of addressing it involves making some policy choices that under normal circumstances I would oppose."  

In the case of climate change, I'm strongly of the belief that we need to impose a significant carbon tax and have the government invest heavily in wind, solar, and nuclear power.  I hate both of those things in a vacuum, but I think the underlying problem is severe enough to warrant exceptions to general principles against having the government pick winners and losers.

(I also think that the government should stop subsidizing fossil fuel production, but I don't get any virtue points for that one because I don't like seeing the government subsidize any industry).  

Part of the problem of getting conservatives and other assorted right-wingers on board with climate change policy is overcoming the deeply-rooted suspicion that people who say they care about climate change don't, and are just using it as a vehicle to push their preexisting welfare state preferences.  AOC's Green New Deal is Exhibit A for how to reinforce and justify that suspicion.  The anti-nuclear thing is similar to a lesser degree.

Climate change isn't the only topic where this issue comes up.  Republicans often argue for tax cuts as the solution to every economic problem that arises, because they want to cut taxes no matter what and any vehicle will do.       

 
-fish- said:
Again, this is a false dilemma.   Why should anyone be forced to trade one environmental disaster for another?  Sorry to the "but nuclear is safe" guys, but history says otherwise.  Even if it were a fully functioning agency, the NRC can't prevent earthquakes.  One Fukishima should have been enough.

There are plenty of actual scientists who believe we can move away from fossil fuels without having to rely on nuclear.    These guys, for example, say they've done the math and it works out.
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This is wrong, by the way.  Nuclear power has been around since the 1970s.  In that time, there have been three significant nuclear accidents.  One was Chernobyl, which was caused by gross incompetence and horrible design.  Nobody takes that particular episode seriously in terms of informing current policy.  One was Three Mile Island, which resulted in no deaths.  And one was Fukushima, which was the result of a one-off natural disaster.  As others have noted, European countries have been using nuclear power pretty extensively for decades without issue.  There's no reason to think that our experience would be any different given modern technology and design principles. 

By way of contrast, people die all the time in coal-mining accidents, and coal pollutes the air in a manner that causes illness and death.  But those deaths don't seem to count because they're insufficiently scary.  I'm 100% positive that much of the fear about nuclear energy is driven by the same availability heuristic that causes people to freak out over airline safety and drive instead, even though the latter is way more dangerous.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
This issue ties into something that I've been thinking about a lot recently.  How often do we hear a politician, activist, ideologue, etc. identify a legitimate problem, and then go on to lay out a solution that just so happens to coincide exactly with policy decisions that the speaker would have advocated regardless?  How much more refreshing would it be if more people said "Here's a problem that honestly needs to be addressed, and I've reluctantly concluded that the best way of addressing it involves making some policy choices that under normal circumstances I would oppose."  

In the case of climate change, I'm strongly of the belief that we need to impose a significant carbon tax and have the government invest heavily in wind, solar, and nuclear power.  I hate both of those things in a vacuum, but I think the underlying problem is severe enough to warrant exceptions to general principles against having the government pick winners and losers.

(I also think that the government should stop subsidizing fossil fuel production, but I don't get any virtue points for that one because I don't like seeing the government subsidize any industry).  

Part of the problem of getting conservatives and other assorted right-wingers on board with climate change policy is overcoming the deeply-rooted suspicion that people who say they care about climate change don't, and are just using it as a vehicle to push their preexisting welfare state preferences.  AOC's Green New Deal is Exhibit A for how to reinforce and justify that suspicion.  The anti-nuclear thing is similar to a lesser degree.

Climate change isn't the only topic where this issue comes up.  Republicans often argue for tax cuts as the solution to every economic problem that arises, because they want to cut taxes no matter what and any vehicle will do.       
Click to expand...
Bolded is my thought as well. It just seems like nuclear energy is a way to cut through this.

Fish says he would prefer other energy sources and he may be right. But again the promise is, we need to get conservatives on board. We can't simply defeat them in elections; there's too many in this country and there will always be enough to prevent real movement on climate change. So we have to get them on board. This seems like a reasonable way to do it.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
I'm 100% positive that much of the fear about nuclear energy is driven by the same availability heuristic that causes people to freak out over airline safety and drive instead, even though the latter is way more dangerous.
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It IS scary. There's no doubt. Even today that movie The China Syndrome is terrifying. So was the last season of The West Wing when it dealt with this issue. There is something emotional there about nuclear power, which I think goes back to the first mushroom cloud in New Mexico, and Robert Oppenheimer reciting lines from the Bhagavad-Gita. A feeling that we are tapping into an energy source that is way too powerful for mankind to handle. I think that is what is at the back of this fear.

 
-fish- said:
Every ocean in the world now has radiation from Fukishima in it.  Fukishima is about to release 100 million tons of radioactive wastewater into the ocean, since it has nothing else to do with it.   
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1 million.  

 
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