Italy Votes To Abandon Nuclear Power 848
ElementOfDestruction writes "Italy has joined Germany in halting the production of energy from atomic power generation. This differs from Germany in that the Italian decision was made by a public vote, rather than a government mandated shutdown. 57% of Italian Households voted in this public measure. While democracy should trump all, is it wise to hold majority opinion so high that it slows down progress?"
Alas, Rev. Bayes (Score:2)
You were too late to save us from human intuition.
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"US coal power fleet kills 10,000 a year; Fukushima will kill under 100, total. We are very bad at evaluating risks."
- David Keith, Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment, University of Calgary
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Re:Alas, Rev. Bayes (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, if you have a logical argument as to why this is preposterous, please feel free to cover it. I'll add credentials to the above quote just for good measure, so you're aware of the source of this statement and why he may be in a position to make such a statement:
By all means, please now back up your statement that his comparison is bankrupt with some form of proof. I think given the scale of air pollution, mining dangers and associated health issues and such makes his comparison quite a reasonable assertion.
Re:Alas, Rev. Bayes (Score:5, Informative)
And while I totally agree with the sentiment - I'd say that it is hard to consider Keith objectively when he has always been against fossil fuels at seemingly any costs (which he should be). So in the spirit of actually contributing something to the conversation:
Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA). A PRA must be done separately for each power plant (at a cost of $5 million) but we give typical results here: A fuel melt-down might be expected once in 20,000 years of reactor operation. In 2 out of 3 melt-downs there would be no deaths, in 1 out of 5 there would be over 1000 deaths, and in 1 out of 100,000 there would be 50,000 deaths. The average for all meltdowns would be 400 deaths. Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning.
From: http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm [isu.edu]
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It's not bankrupt, the existing comparison you are trying to enforce is. It's one of the basic facts of the two industrys that a whole hell of a lot less people are killed mining uranium or transporting either raw ores or processed fuels than are killed mining coal or transporting it. It's admittedly sloppy of the parent poster to compare US and Japanese deaths, but unless the Japanese are doing 10 times better on everything from mine safety to particulate scrubbing, you could total all the indirect deaths
Re:Alas, Rev. Bayes (Score:5, Interesting)
"Last week’s E. coli outbreak in Germany - potentially traced to an organic farm - was more deadly than the largest nuclear disaster of the last quarter-century."
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"According to World Health Organization statistics on E. coli deaths, in just the past two years, more people have been killed by the disease than all fission-related events since the dawn of the nuclear age - even if you include the use of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
To put it into perspective.
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Nice statistics. So you deliberately exclude Chernobyl and assess Fukushima knowingly way before any long-term effects could have set in.
Chernobyl cannot happen again; it was the result of an ancient design not built to any safety specifications. Further, it's forty years old. A series of stupid decisions lead to that disaster. It's like using Titanic as a reason we shouldn't build boats.
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"To put things into perspective: Car accidents cause more deaths than unprotected sex, so it is fine to fuck random strangers without a condom."
You are ignoring the cost of dealing with the risk. Last I checked condoms were really cheap and easy to use. There's no magic, cheap solution to some peoples' hysteria about nuclear power comparable to condoms.
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If you
Re:Alas, Rev. Bayes (Score:4, Insightful)
That must be why no-one lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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No, but they also tend to be used by people who don't rub unprocessed shit on plants as fertilizer as well.
Just because you think 'pesticides' when you think organic farm, doesn't mean thats where the problem lies. In this cause, its probably more likely to be caused by organic fertilizer or shitty cleaning processes that any other farm would have done.
You know why we have longer life expectancies than we did 100 years ago? Because we've gotten smart enough to fix a lot of problems in our life cycles usin
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It's not 50% +1 though. The summery is somewhat misleading. While around 57%* of the voters turned out, the actual results for the four questions where as follows:
All against the laws in question. Partly this is because Berlusconi has always tried to stop referenda by calling upon his supporters *not* to vote. Thereby making them no binding if a quorum of 50% wasn't reached. This re
Re:Alas, Rev. Bayes (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe truth on the ballot might have helped a bit:
A) Fix global warming
B) Stop using nuclear power
Please choose one.
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" coal power doesn't leave future generations with tonnes of highly radioactive and long-lived waste to manage and dispose of. "
are you high?
Yes, it does leave poisonous waste, as an added bonus it ALSO leaves poisoning waste we can't contain nearly as easily has nuclear waste because its in our air.
What I believe you, all of us, really, looking at is the modern nuclear designs. 4th generation reactors that not only use old nuclear waste for power, the waste they produce is at back around radiating in hundr
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Why not use geo-thermal, wind, solar or develop fusion, or anti-matter etc. Why the insistence that nuclear power is the only way.
I eagerly await your reply showing where we can find a large supply of antimatter so we don't have to use fission or fossil fuels any more.
Re:Alas, Rev. Bayes (Score:4, Informative)
US coal has not rendered any location on earth uninhabitable for future generations.
5 seconds of googling later... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, it has [wikipedia.org].
That didn't happen even when actual nuclear weapons were used - both Hiroshima and Nagasaki are inhabited today.
It turned into a de facto natural reservation?
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consider what happened a Chernobyl.
Uhm, maybe you should learn what happened at Chernobyl and what its like there now ... you know people still work there ... right?
Most of what happened was an after the fact over reaction to the event.
People left the town near Chernobyl, planets and animals seem to be doing perfectly fine and are healthy and happy. In fact, only a few years after the people disappeared, everything more or less returned to wilderness showing not only was the effect of the explosion and radiation far far less than everyone f
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No one lives within 30 km of the site, and only loons or paid professionals live in the pink areas
Because their government said so ... as an after the event over reaction to the issue.
The whole area has been basically converted into a nature reserve, and if the place is so inhospitable as you'd like to make it out, why does the area have more healthy normal animal life living in it now than it did before the government threw all the people out?
You know that people still work at the Chernobyl plant right? And that it was a functioning nuclear power generation station until just recently (last few years)
Solution? (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you do when the voters are conditioned and misinformed and the majority is wrong?
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What do you do when the voters are conditioned and misinformed and the majority is wrong?
Let them sit out a winter shivering in the dark. We *need* nuclear power. Wind power isn't a solution, because the turbines only last a few years and cannot easily be refurbished - and they don't work if there's no wind (like today) or too much wind (like last week). Hydro-electric? Yeah, let's just flood a few thousand square miles of mountain wilderness, that surely won't have *any* ecological impact!
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That's actually why we are a representative democratic republic and not a pure democracy. The "mob" doesn't always know what's best for itself and tends to be just a wee bit reactionary at times.
Re:Solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry that you live under that illusion but the founding fathers had a very low impression of the average person and their ability to make intelligent decisions. That's why the original voting populace was so small.
Look at California - they vote on almost major even using propositions and the outcome changes depending on who does a better job on getting out the vote. Pure democracy only works if ever person is perfectly informed and actually votes.
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What do you do when the voters are conditioned and misinformed and the majority is wrong?
I had a nightmare once that Bin Laden was trying to recruit me. He started his pitch with this exact sentence. Creepy.
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One of my co-workers is Italian. He's pro nuclear power in general. But he's against nuclear power run by Italians. He's very pessimistic about the amount of corruption in that country. He is confident that safety will be compromised to reduce costs and increase graft. And nuclear power is not something that you want to be playing around with, safety-wise. He seems perfectly content buying nuclear power from Franc
The US did this in the 1970's (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:5, Insightful)
In a real way, fear of nuclear power caused Fukushima. That plant should have been decommissioned a decade ago in favor of one of the new generation of power plants, maybe even one that burns thorium, meaning they could have gotten rid of all that waste they instead stuffed into the attic hoping no-one would ever find out.
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that the majority is irrational, it's that you guys are as emotionally tied to dead nuclear as others are to a lost war.
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:4, Insightful)
What's uneconomical about it? There's a huge investment cost, made worse in some cases by the amount of legal objection to building plants, but after that's paid off the plants print money. Have you seen how much tax the German government is taking of Nuclear power plant profits?
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:5, Insightful)
It's cheap until you ignore dismantling, cleanup costs, and insurance for if something goes wrong (think 100's of billions of dollars). This is what the US made the Nuclear operators consider in the 1970's for their proposals and why they became uneconomical.
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Yes, by todays stands 1950's designs are uneconomical...shocking.
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It's cheap until you ignore dismantling, cleanup costs, and insurance for if something goes wrong (think 100's of billions of dollars).
Most of this is just failures of society to rationally deal with risk and liability, not some intrinsic feature of nuclear power. Radioactive waste is treated far more stringently than similarly hazardous non-radioactive waste (or radioactive waste that manages to be classified as non-radioactive).
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"uneconomical" no, it's not. It died from fear. Plain old, logical fallacies and fear.
It's about numbers and sciences, nothing more.
I am n more emotional tied to Nuclear then I am emotional attached to Solar. Or any power generation.
The numbers clearly favor Nuclear power, over all, right now.
Modern reactors don't have ANY of the problems old reactor do.
Please attempt to understand the science at put aside the media and Greenpeace's lies and ignorance.
And to be correct: It wasn't winnable they way it was be
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This whole conversation reminds me of the guys who insist that Vietnam was winnable. ... It's not that the majority is irrational, it's that you guys are as emotionally tied to dead nuclear as others are to a lost war.
This is a rather strange argument.
Electric power is basically a necessity these days. We have to get it from someone to continue our societies; with this population, we certainly can't go back to burning whale oil and the like. So the question is, where do we get it from? Burning fossil fue
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:4, Insightful)
No design, I repeat no design is safe against corporate mismanagement.
All the engineering in the world is not going to prevent your plant from exploding when faced with an MBA CEO with a lust for profit.
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:4, Interesting)
No amount of backup power would have saved Fukushima.
The whole story still is not out yet, but all three operating reactors at the time of the quake experienced major cooling loss prior to the tsunami. It's been publicly reported about Unit I. But it is also the case for II and III, and this truth will come out in time. It is in the details of the IAEA findings. They will be forced to report it as soon as they get workers into Units II and III to actually view those RPVs. I *do* find it amazing that they completely melted down, and the RPVs remained mostly intact, and contained the molten fuel. They were able to cool it somewhat with the seawater, I guess.
Bottom line is, all three units did not withstand the quake that they were designed and certified to withstand. The tsunami was a fortunate side-effect, to cover-up this fact.
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According to Tepco's own documents, reactor 1 experienced problems with its cooling system immediately after the earthquake and before the tsunami struck.
Source: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110517p2a00m0na008000c.html [mainichi.jp]
So your (implicit) assertion that the reactor survived the earthquake is a myth. Granted, the problems would be much less severe than they are right now, but that is no excuse to allow facts fall off the wayside.
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3000/followup-why-dont-we-ditch-nukes-em-and-em-coal [straightdope.com]
Also, some back of envelope calculations.
A typical nuclear power plant generates a gigawatt of *CONSTANT* power.
A 1.5 megawatt turbine (and keep in mind these things are gigantic) typically produces at around 20% of capacity, highly variable, but let's pretend we could store the power somehow or get enough of 'em to magically balance out.
That means you'd need like 3333 turbines to replace a consistent nuclear output with an inconsistent power source. Turbines that would need constant maintenance. And this is for a traditional 1 gig nuclear power plant, not one of the new designs, or larger ones.
How much land would that cover? About 77,000 acres, or 312 square kilometres. That's a square 18 kilometres on a side filled with them. Of course, wind power is not exactly environmentally neutral if you consider constructional, maintenance, and impact on bats, birds and weather patterns.
And keep in mind, we need a lot more than just 1 or 2.
Re:The US did this in the 1970's (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, googling, I might be wildly optimistic. I quote random google result.
""Contemporary wind projects are typically rated at 25 to 100 MW. A 25 MW project might have 60 to 70 turbines covering 1500 acres," says The EPA . Really, that's a little over 4 MW of *average* power from a total of about 65 windmills. (This was typical of early California wind turbines.)
The 4 MW divided by 1500 acres is about 2.67 kW per acre. But an acre is 4047 square meters, so the power density works out to be about 0.7 watts per square meter. By comparison, direct sunlight averages 200 watts per square meter around the clock, around the year, around the US.
Scale that up to 1000 MW (more or less standard for a serious power plant) by multiplying the number of windmills by 250. That's over 16,000 windmills on about 375,000 acres (585 square miles). "
That has me underestimating by a factor of 5.
Impartial? (Score:5, Funny)
Holy biased summary, Batman!
Italia's earthquakes (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeh, just for those who don't remember: Italia has frequent earthquakes, in all regions of the country:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Italy [wikipedia.org]
Click on the epicentre cities to see where they are, dispersed along the length of the country.
Nuclear = "Progress"? Bonkers.
My favourite failed "trust technology!" argument was after the Fukushima quake when Sarkozy tried to reassure the French people by saying that France's nuclear power stations were the most advanced in the world. That's probab
Re:Italia's earthquakes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Italia's earthquakes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Japan is advanced.
No, Fukushima was not. First criticality at Fukushima was in the 1970s, meaning that construction started in the late 60s, meaning that they place was designed in the late 50's.
I don't think we can call anything that is 60 years old in design "advanced." Please stop distorting facts with your bias.
Re:Impartial? (Score:4, Insightful)
Got any logical reason why shutting down an entire branch of energy generation should be treated with any less incredulity?
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Just because it's biased doesn't mean it's not right. You're succumbing to the Fox effect... that there are "two sides" to everything, and both have equal validity.
Yes, they should be allowed to hold up progress (Score:3)
Re:Yes, they should be allowed to hold up progress (Score:4, Insightful)
Sooo. If 51% of Americans voted to teach only creationism in schools and evolution should be illegal that should be ok by your rules?
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As stupid as that would be, yes - i makes sense. The people get the government they deserve. You can always become a politician and try and change people's minds or leave. Your choice.
Re:Yes, they should be allowed to hold up progress (Score:4, Insightful)
the other 49% didn't deserve that.
People are manipulate to easily when dealing with thing the have no experience with.
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If 51% of Americans so vote, it wouldn't matter anyway. Rule of law only exists insofar as it has popular support; if the majority of your population disagree with the standing interpretation of law, they will either ignore it or bend it to fit (as it has already happened with US Constitution).
Fundamentally, the only two options are tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the minority. Any democratic form of government is the former under various layers in disguise. You can dampen the effect somewhat, but it
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You make exactly the point I was going to. What's interesting about this thread is that I agree both with you AND GP. Arrogant pricks running things sucks, whether they do it directly or they use their media clout to strike fear into the hearts of the timid masses.
I guess I'm for a world in which the masses don't rally behind brand X or Y because they are driven by fear. In such a world "elite" wouldn't be the next thing to "child molester" in the emotional lexicon of politics, so people who knew what th
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[Assuming a scenario where First Amendment has already been repealed.] It wouldn't be "ok" but it would have to be allowed. America has the right to self-destruction, if that's what we really want.
Let's say we answer the question with "no, that would be completely intolerable and would have to be forcefully resisted." How could that be done?
One answer would be to have a
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I've heard it said, anarchy and monarchy/socialism are the perfect governments but the first requires perfect people and the second requires perfect leaders. So we have a perfect government to handle all of our imperfections (hopefully).
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Yes. Majority opinion should be held so high, even if it trumps conceited arrogance assumptions of what is progress. Let me be clear, I fully support nuclear power, I think it should be expanded greatly, safely using advanced techniques. I think these countries are idiots for closing it down, but it is their democratic right, and don't anyone dare take that away from them.
Mod parent up. If the majority of people cote for something then they should get it, except when it directly infringes basic human rights of others (i.e. where most people want to kill the Jews/Gypsies/Blacks etc.)
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I agree. I would also add that if nuclear power has lost the support of the majority of people in the country, then those who view it as necessary for progress need to go out and start trying to convince people to change their minds. You don't just say "I know better than you", in a democracy. You convince other people to join you.
You know, try to educate people.
The other thing I would say is that these types of decisions aren't "forever". The Nuclear Industry can still operate in some countries, and if th
Democracy is crap (Score:3)
> but it is their democratic right
Which is why the US Founding Fathers rejected democracy as a terrible idea. They understood the idea, knew the problems with it and designed us a system of a Constitutional Republic instead. The Constitution is intentionally hard to change but not impossible. This protects against temporary insanity in the other balances of government. The People are at the core of the system (all just power derives from the consent of the governed, etc) but the rest of the governmen
Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Misleading summary and law. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny but they have not abandoned nuclear power. They are pretending they have to make themselves feel good. They import no less than 16% of their electricity from France. They have just move the responsibility for the reactors to another nation. As Italy needs more power they will import more from France and use even more nuclear power outside of their own control and regulation. This should be called the Grand Delusion. They are just going to use more and more nuclear power while taking no responsibility for it themselves.
Welcome to reality 101.
I live in northern Italy... (Score:3)
You make it sound like we're doing a smart thing, paying other nations to handle the nuclear hassle for us.
Not really, since we ended up having nuclear plants on our borders [bbc.co.uk] anyway (notice that trend going on in western Switzerland/southern France?)...
sometimes (Score:2)
Sometimes.
So where are they getting the power? (Score:2)
Germany's at least committing to trying to do this in a nonpolluting (i.e. non-fossil-fuel) way, and they actually have the infrastructure and engineering acumen to pull it off (maybe).
Where's Italy going to get their power? Russian gas? Somebody's coal? Magic space faeries?
Fukushima notwithstanding, nuclear power is reasonably safe (a hell of a lot better than coal), very environment-friendly, and economical (compared to things like large-scale solar). The only reasonable alternative I can think of is to b
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You are missing the fact that italy droped out of nuclear power 20 years ago. The voting in this case was about the question whether they build new nuclear reactors or not. (in other words the last decades they produced their own power and imported the rest via the european grid)
Idiocracy (Score:2)
Next, a democratic majority of voters will elect to replace water with Brawndo.
http://brawndo.com/ [brawndo.com].
Wrong framing. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're in a particularly sunny climate, there are already rolling out solar thermal storage systems so that their solar can generate 24 hours per day, They have tidal sources which France used to generate hundreds of megawatts back in the 60's out of a single installation -- ignoring the efficiency increases of what we can do today.
Fuel is finite, so fuel based sources are out of date. Meanwhile, renewables just keep coming down in price. Solar dropped 20% last year alone, and is expected to drop another 20% this year. Meanwhile, nuclear keeps increasing in cost. Costs for implementation, fuel, owner's costs, massive grid tie-ins, and let's not even discuss the fact that they don't pay for their own insurance and push that on to the public purse in the event of a catastrophe.
So "progress?" I don't think that word means what you think it does. The first world has made it's decision and you can flog the dead horse of nuclear, but the only new adopters will be the third world and powers that want to refine for nuclear weapons, such as arabic countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Re:Wrong framing. (Score:4, Insightful)
So "progress?" I don't think that word means what you think it does. The first world has made it's decision and you can flog the dead horse of nuclear, but the only new adopters will be the third world and powers that want to refine for nuclear weapons, such as arabic countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Yes, progress. It's clear that fossil fuels aren't viable even in the medium term, and unless we stop our population growth or drastically change lifestyles, "renewable" isn't going to cut it, either. The "future" ultimately, can and must be fusion. And we aren't going to get it by abandoning high technology, high energy density engineering. Though they aren't directly related, fission makes a good trainer for fusion. Teaches you to be CAREFUL.
Democracy is not about being wise (Score:3)
Democracy is not about being wise is about respecting the will of the majority. It's about not imposing stuff, even if you consider it to be better, on the majority. Democratic process doesn't optimize the decision (it doesn't come to the best decision) it (or is supposed to) minimizes the discontent.
I voted against: here is why (Score:5, Interesting)
There is more to this decision than simple "anti-scientific" feelings.
First of all there is the trust we can have in people managing these beasts, i.e. zero. Our administrators are not the ones with public safety in mind. Google some info about two years' ago earthquake to see how well regulation on constructions works.
Second and related, public works in Italy (and many private ones) are often just a way to throw money at your business friends. It is unlikely that something so big will be done in the most efficient and quick way. Most probably it will never recover the expenses, if it ever gets built.
Third there is the timing problem. We are late to the train. Other countries alread recovered the initial expenses and only have to keep mantaining/improving. They can undercut us easily and we would end up buying from them anyway. (also notice we did not have plans for an erichment plant, so we would have to buy enriched uranium...)
Fourth and related, the plants will arrive in no less than 20 years. Then this is essentially a bet on the price of uranium in 20 years. With many developing countries building plants I think this bet is a losing one...
But yes, I am stupid and I only want to slow progress down, laugh at me.
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But yes, I am stupid and I only want to slow progress down, laugh at me.
haha.. you made an informed decision..... jerk
Comment removed (Score:3)
Does nuclear really equal "progress"? (Score:5, Interesting)
While many Slashdotters happily wave away its real-world problems (waste, decommissioning, uninsurability, capital intensiveness, fuel supply, terrorism, non-distributed grid model, construction lead time and yes, slight potential for massive damage to life and property in a large geographic area) as irrelevant, many others are less sanguine. And that is not just because they are idiots--they look at the factors, weigh them and draw different conclusions.
And there are alternatives that might well be better. A recent study [thinkprogress.org] by the California Energy Commission that looks at estimated costs of 21 types of energy generation facilities estimates that a gen-3 Westinghouse AP1000 1,000 MW Pressurized Water Reactor would generate electricity in 2018 (the first year any of them could be expected to reach operational status) for between $0.17/kWh and $0.34/kWh.
The cost of solar PV today is already competitive with the high end of that range, and is dropping at a rapid pace [thinkprogress.org].
This comes on the heels of another new report [bee-ev.de] showing that the free-market insurance costs for nuclear would add from ($0.20/kWh) to a staggering $3.40/kWh.
If costs are the same or lower for renewable energy technologies that have numerous benefits and far fewer risks, why would rational people choose nuclear?
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If costs are the same or lower for renewable energy technologies that have numerous benefits and far fewer risks, why would rational people choose nuclear?
well I can think of a few reasons. solar PV does not work at night, wind power is variable, geothermal and tidal sites are few.
Look I'm in favour of wind technology and solar, but power generation is not as simple as just generating. You have to be able to generate it at the right time and get it to the right place. Which means you have to have a mixture of technologies. Most importantly there is not renewable technology that will create the base load.
Unfortunately power generation is not like replacing a c
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Power demand crashes at night (and is likely to go even lower in the future as incandescent lighting is replaced by fluorescents and LEDs), so unless you're idiot enough to try to run your entire grid off PV that's a non-issue. (Solar thermal systems can store heat underground in the form of molten salt, so they can actually function well overnight.)
Reduces not crashes. In our 24/7 society it is likely that load is reduced but is still going to be high. For example AC's take a lot of power and in some climates are likely to still happen at night. Storage technology such as molton salt is untried especially at the scales required to power an industrial technology.
PV power however is perfect in warm sunny climates, since it tends to generate the most energy when demand is at its peak - long, hot, sunny days. That's a feature, not a bug.
Wind power is variable, but tends to pick up when power demand spikes in cooler climates (during cool windy weather). An efficient grid allows you to move any excess to where it's needed. Energy can also be stored, as pumped water for example, or even in enormous batteries. Costly, but likely cheaper than private insurance for nuclear reactors (particularly in the wake of Fukushima).
Tends but not guaranteed. You cannot gurantee that the wind will meet the load required at anytime. Pumped storage is great if you can find enough places for them. They are also expensive. Larg
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Something is seriously wrong with the US if it cannot generate new nuclear power for less than a range of $0.17-$0.34 per kWh. The IEA 2010 Projected Costs of Electricity Generation surveys costs around the world. The range is given for 5% and 10% discount rates
Sth Korea: $0.029 - $0.042 per kWh
France: $0.056 - $0.092
Russia: $0.043 - $0.068
For some reason, the IEA estimates for the cost of new nuclear in the US are comparable to these figures. All estimates include spent fuel management and decommissioning.
A little background (Score:3)
I happen to be one of those people who owns a Geiger counter. After the incident in Japan, I set it on my desk so I could watch it. A few days after, I noticed that it was registering 3 times the usual background levels (@800 ft elevation). This lasted about a week until it went back to normal.
Now I know background is slight and 3 times background is really nothing to worry about for an individual, but at this point I'd like to point out that I was on the *other side of the planet* from Japan. While I know the /. crowd enjoys the smug hand waving and proclamation of radiation not being a big deal (myself included), I don't think anyone is qualified to really say the GLOBAL impact that these raised rates could have.
I try to err on the side of caution with worldwide issues. I urge everyone here to do the same.
stupid (Score:4, Informative)
I can imagine people think they're being green when voting down nuclear power, but actually their vote is causing much worse environmental impact and global warming by the necessary increase in conventional non-nuclear energy production.
NP = P(rogress)? Huh?? (Score:3)
While democracy should trump all, is it wise to hold majority opinion so high that it slows down progress?
That presumes that nuclear fission power is progress. Currently it appears that this has been a 60+ year old wild goose chase, and that progress lies in some other direction. None of the expensive problems associated with nuclear fission power have been resolved yet, and none are significantly closer to resolution than they were in 1951.
Perhaps a blend of renewable resources and reductions in absurdly inefficient life styles, or perhaps fusion, will be the way to true progress. But it is not nuclear fission. Even the lay public can see that, despite the nuclear power industry's 60+ years of trying to fool all the people all the time about their "progress".
How would you like it? (Score:3)
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Re:Where's the "idiots" tag? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well - they're already the largest power importer in Europe - because they went out of nuclear power after Chernobyl...
Remember this one? A storm felled a tree that cut one of the power lines transporting power to Italy - this tripped of a cascading effect cutting off all of mainland Italy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Italy_blackout [wikipedia.org]
But - even when you say 'This differs from Germany in that the Italian decision was made by a public vote, rather than a government mandated shutdown.' - this is only part of it. Germany had already decided on a nuclear exit before - it was the current government that extended the runtimes of nuclear reactors, causing public outrage. They mostly reverted back to the original targets now, since they increasingly find themselves becoming more and more unelectable, keeping to nuclear power. The governments stance pro nuclear power might have carried for a while longer, if it wasn't for Fukushima. Basically, the pro nuclear lobby said something like Chernobyl couldn't happen in Germany as our plants are safer than the Russian ones -- they couldn't convincingly say that they're safer than Japans...
Re:Where's the "idiots" tag? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where's the "idiots" tag? (Score:4, Insightful)
You all are completely missing a key part of the picture. Regardless of the environmental issues around nuclear waste disposal and all the arguments against coal power generation, Italy has one crucial difference with the rest of the world: Mafia. Mafia is in every aspect of the public life, especially public investment programmes and subsidies.
We have buildings crumbling and killing dozen of people, chemical plants exploding, all because of negligence tied to assigning public funds to mafia-owned companies that drain public money knowingly saving on safety measures because they are above the law and they will never pay if someone dies because of it.
Can you imagine what would happen in a power plant built using mafia contractors in the south of italy, close to rivers and farming fields? No thanks. We have far more pressing issues to solve before we can venture in something so volatile and risky.
We have a chemical chernobyl in the countryside region outside naples, lymphatic and bone cancers skyrocketing because of the widespread, systematic illegal disposal of wastes from the whole europe. Endemic corruption.
Even if i was in favor of nuclear power (which i am not, except for research), i cannot see how this technology can even be remotely safe in Italy. Italian scientists, traditionally supporting nuclear power, agree with me (cfr: Margherita Hack's claims about the vote).
This vote is not against nuclear power per se. It's against nuclear power *in Italy*, because we know we don't have the social, economical stability to tackle such a venture. The same reasons led to very harsh protests against building a massive bridge between mainland Italy and sicily. We can't really face modernization unless we get rid of this plague, and a lot of Italian people know this and voted accordingly.
Re:Where's the "idiots" tag? (Score:4, Informative)
What about pointing out that the Fukushima disaster was caused by building a reactor right on a coastline where tsunamis occasionally happen, and by being struck by both an earthquake and a tsunami at the same time?
The meltdown (they have confirmed that three reactors have experienced a meltdown) has been caused by greed and cutting corners. They were warned 20 years ago that flooding of generators placed in a basement was the most likely cause of reactors overheating and should be moved to a more appropriate location, this was brought up by the Japanese nuclear authority in 2004 and again 2 years ago. Who is going to [csmonitor.com] pay? [mixednutsonline.com]
Nuclear can be safe, it's the implementation and enforcement of standards that is dangerous.
There is a distinct (tongue-in-cheek) possibility that the Italian government might not be trusted to enforce the standards required. The Germans may feel the same way about their government. Is your government strong enough to stand up to multinational corporations?
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Oh wait...
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Italy has never had any running nuclear reactors anyway (there is one not fully built though and being an investition ruin since some decades). This vote is just a confirmation of the status quo. But don't let that interfere with your opinion.
Re:Where's the "idiots" tag? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where's the "idiots" tag? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not true, Italy had four nuclear power plants:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energia_nucleare_in_Italia#Centrali_elettronucleari [wikipedia.org]
(sorry, Italian Wikipedia, English one has not such a table).
Re:Where's the "idiots" tag? (Score:5, Informative)
Where will you get power now? France's nuclear plants?
we already do. I live in Turin, next to france, and we DO import nuclear energy from france: the total represents about 7% of energy consumption [tazioborges.it]; the dominant energy producer, ENEL, operates nuclear plants in Spain and Slovenia (Link [enel.com]), and France is Upwind from us, so I would laugh my head off if it wasn't sad.
Italy operates a few small research reactors, and part of the energy bill that I receive bimonthly has an Item called "sovrapprezzo termico", i.e. the part that I pay ENEL to compensate it for the added costs of dismantling the reactors that were stopped after Chernobil, plus the lost income due to fossil fuel use. But hey, it's democracy, honey.
For all it's worth, two other referenda were worse still; we voted out compensation for capital expenses incurred in mantaining and building water infrastructure, which call the question of who will put up the money required to reduce the water losses that the acqueduct has (about 20~25% here).
Just the other day, my wife came in while I was brushing my teeth and closed the water tap, saying "the TV said to save water!"; I said "good Idea, let's reach the same level of eccellence of the water company: let's leave the tap open overnight."
coming back to Nuclear energy: the incumbent italian operator gets a sizable part of its energy production from fully or partly owned and operated nuclear plants, but all of them are abroad, and all except one (in slovenia) are too far to make exporting energy to Italy viable. To add insult to injury, many people said "we italians are incapable to guarantee the orderly functioning of nuclear plants". Maybe the spanish public ain't so picky.
Now i want to see how they will sell to the public on building coke or gas turbine plants for baseline operations; as most Slashdotters know, renewables are uneconomic unless someone pays the piper.
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This referendum was more a vote on Berlusconi than anything else, and it showed that he is done for good, he is not supported by the people anymore.
I won't believe he's gone until I see a corpse. He managed to come back several times before. I don't know what made Italians vote for him in the first place, so I don't trust them to really vote him out of office for good until they actually do so.
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Re:Terrible question (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's be careful about what we think democracy does for us.
Democracy is the best system out there because it recognizes that ultimately, the people are what gives any government its power and authority. Therefore, not only is it fair, it is also wise to co-opt the largest number of people into the system and have them feel like they are part of it.
On the other hand, just because the majority votes for something, it doesn't mean it is correct. That's not to say that the masses are ignorant, although they certainly may be about certain specific and advanced topics. What it is saying is that voters have local self-interest in mind, and tend to lack perspective.
Consider that 3,000 people died on 9/11 from planes hitting the World Trade Center. Not only were there direct deaths, but other people, particularly responders and bystanders in the local area could well have chronic health issues for years to come. Yet, we are in the process of building yet another huge building on the site, which could also become a target and no one has called for people to stop using planes.
Why does no one want to outlaw massive skyscrapers or jumbo jets? Well, that seems obvious: we feel that we really can't do that.
However, the underlying reasoning is that we can manage the risk from planes hitting skyscrapers. If we couldn't manage the risk, planes and/or skyscrapers really would face being outlawed because no one wants to constantly face waves of jets being used like guided missiles at buildings.
Now take nuclear plants. There is also risk there. But how much more risk is there in a power plant than there is in a jumbo jet with a skyscraper target? How much more is there from a nuclear plant than the air pollution, heavy metals and radioactive material produced by a coal plant?
The fact is that democracy is indifferent to facts, it is simply a way to produce effective governance. Sometimes, democracy tells the truth where a self-absorbed dictatorship won't or can't. This gives the impression that democratic governments are also "smarter". We know that isn't always the case. Voters can be convinced of things that are not scientifically reasonable. Both sides of the aisle know this. Democracy is a system that provides high legitimacy for a system by recognizing the people, but it can be held captive by small groups that have specific agendas.
So yes, the Swiss have a long tradition of working democracy. That only means that democracy works for them. It does not mean that their democracy makes correct decisions, only that the decisions they have made have yet to cause their government to fail. Chances are that Switzerland is small enough that it can dispense with nuclear power, if it wanted to. That doesn't mean that the rest of the world can. It doesn't even mean that the Swiss won't be using nuclear power, it just means it won't be produced locally. It means that the Swiss will be happy to let someone else take the risk to provide them power, confident in the knowledge that someone else will.
Re:Terrible question (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolute Democracy is the exact opposite of freedom. You cannot have a Right when all laws are subject to the will of the majority. The act of voting doesn't make a policy moral or even "effective." When your rights are violated it is little consolation whether it was done by a vicious dictator or by the voting of your neighbors. Both pure democracy and pure dictatorship are morally vacant and eventually, self-destructive. The only useful form of government is one that recognizes the individual and their inalienable rights.
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Re:I really am losing hope for the future... (Score:4, Funny)
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To their excuse, they do actually elect foxes about as often as they elect wolves. So it's not all that bad.
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Can you provide morons like me with documentation to back up your claims? I spent some time searching for and reading reports, and couldn't find anything that that came even remotely close to what you claim.
-Please cite evidence for your assertion that millions around the black sea died, and are dying still.
-It is well known that there was a higher incidence of thyroid cancer due to children unknowingly drinking water and milk contaminated by radioactive iodine shortly after the accident. Since radioactiv