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Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

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Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

BassAle said:
its not a popular opinion now, but splitting atoms is better than burning stuff (even "clean" stuff like natural gas). Fossil fuels have caused more environmental damage than nuclear ever will.
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Well... maybe. Nuclear can cause a lot of damage.

But we're getting better at it. I've always assumed nuclear would be the bridge to solar. I just don't want Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel Inc. or Ivan the Drunk Russian LLC building them.
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

Kepler said:
Well... maybe. Nuclear can cause a lot of damage.

But we're getting better at it. I've always assumed nuclear would be the bridge to solar. I just don't want Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel Inc. or Ivan the Drunk Russian LLC building them.
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No, you don't want Ivan accidentally throwing the switch at 2am when you're ironically in the middle of an emergency shutdown dry run.
 
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Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

Kepler said:
Well... maybe. Nuclear can cause a lot of damage.
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there is no maybe about it. pollution from burning fossil fuels kills hundreds of thousands of people a year. How many will climate change kill?

Fukushima is really bad, but still probably overblown at this point.

Chernobyl of course was very bad (and could have been much worse), and caused 10s of thousands of cases of cancer (much of it treatable thyroid cancer). However, research has also shown that the the forced removal of people from the exclusion zone probably caused more harm than if they had just been allowed live the rest of their lives there (certainly Pripyat needed to be evacuated considering it was ground zero) but more people were probably relocated than necessary. Elderly villagers removed from the less contaminated parts of the exclusion zone would probably have lived longer had their lives not been so disrupted (they'd probably have to have food that was shipped in from elsewhere though). The number of people harmed in one year from fossil fuels dwarfs the total number ever harmed from Chernobyl.
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

BassAle said:
Chernobyl of course was very bad (and could have been much worse), and caused 10s of thousands of cases of cancer (much of it treatable thyroid cancer). However, research has also shown that the the forced removal of people from the exclusion zone probably caused more harm than if they had just been allowed live the rest of their lives there (certainly Pripyat needed to be evacuated considering it was ground zero) but more people were probably relocated than necessary. Elderly villagers removed from the less contaminated parts of the exclusion zone would probably have lived longer had their lives not been so disrupted (they'd probably have to have food that was shipped in from elsewhere though). The number of people harmed in one year from fossil fuels dwarfs the total number ever harmed from Chernobyl.
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The radiation in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is hit or miss. One plot is safe, while the forest next to it can be dangerously radioactive. I watch a YouTube channel with a guy who does a lot of bare-bones, or so-called "extreme" tourism and he's visited the zone a few times now, chatting up the few locals who returned after the Soviets weren't around to keep them away anymore.
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
The radiation in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is hit or miss. One plot is safe, while the forest next to it can be dangerously radioactive. I watch a YouTube channel with a guy who does a lot of bare-bones, or so-called "extreme" tourism and he's visited the zone a few times now, chatting up the few locals who returned after the Soviets weren't around to keep them away anymore.
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957582017300782
"Relocation was unjustified for 75% of the 335,000 people relocated after Chernobyl."
"Relocation was unjustified for the 160,000 people relocated after Fukushima."

I really want to do one of the exclusion zone tours. I'm not sure I can convince my wife to go, and the authorized tours won't allow my son.
 
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Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

ticapnews said:
Would you prefer the reverse?
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no, but a UN study showed that the overly aggressive exclusion zone and relocation caused more harm than good (including increased alcoholism, depression, unemployment, all resulting in a reduced life expectancy). for many people in the exclusion zone, the most humane and healthy thing for them would have been allowed to remain in place if they wished, brining in food grown outside the exclusion zone.
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

BassAle said:
no, but a UN study showed that the overly aggressive exclusion zone and relocation caused more harm than good (including increased alcoholism, depression, unemployment, all resulting in a reduced life expectancy). for many people in the exclusion zone, the most humane and healthy thing for them would have been allowed to remain in place if they wished, brining in food grown outside the exclusion zone.
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Hindsight is often 20/20. Mistakes are made in the response to nearly every catastrophe. We learn from mistakes and try to do better the next time. In the cases of Fukishima and Chernobyl, we can hope there won't be a next time...
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

ticapnews said:
Hindsight is often 20/20. Mistakes are made in the response to nearly every catastrophe. We learn from mistakes and try to do better the next time. In the cases of Fukishima and Chernobyl, we can hope there won't be a next time...
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The current problem with Fukishima and Chernobyl is that few seem to want to get into the physics of what really happened, and understanding that both were terribly flawed designs. It's not about hope. If you are really going to be anti nuclear, at least fully understand the physics to really understand why you don't like it.... Don't just knee jerk and worry that either of those could happen exactly in the US. Especially Chernobyl.

Kep- to even pretend that Chernobyl would happen in the US is pretty ignorant of the style of reactor it was vs the ones used here in the US, let alone the designs that are being proposed for the future. You say you think nuclear would be a good bridge to solar, but what you are really saying is that it's a bridge to better storage solutions that don't harm the environment- that's far more important than solar efficiency is at the moment.
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

alfablue said:
Kep- to even pretend that Chernobyl would happen in the US is pretty ignorant of the style of reactor it was vs the ones used here in the US, let alone the designs that are being proposed for the future. You say you think nuclear would be a good bridge to solar, but what you are really saying is that it's a bridge to better storage solutions that don't harm the environment- that's far more important than solar efficiency is at the moment.
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I'm not pretending anything. I'm not even remotely competent to speak on this issue. So I will not.
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

I'm also ignorant of the engineering science involved, but it's not only accidents that slow the acceptance of nuclear power. Particularly with increasing awareness of the possibility that our systems can be hacked. Doesn't mean nuclear is not a viable option to carbon burning, but security will be an issue.
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

The answer to the hacking issue is easy, if somewhat inconvenient. DO NOT connect the control systems to the internet. Keep them isolated, stand alone. Do not connect them to anything that IS connected.
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

JoeZ said:
The answer to the hacking issue is easy, if somewhat inconvenient. DO NOT connect the control systems to the internet. Keep them isolated, stand alone. Do not connect them to anything that IS connected.
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I thought the problem is that a lot of the software depends on interconnectivity with web-based resources (updates, status accounting, etc).
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

JoeZ said:
The answer to the hacking issue is easy, if somewhat inconvenient. DO NOT connect the control systems to the internet. Keep them isolated, stand alone. Do not connect them to anything that IS connected.
Click to expand...

With automation becoming more and more prevalent, do you think people would be willing to take the steps to make an entire system that needs to be manned 24/7/365?
 
Re: Climate Change 2: Thank God for Global Warming

JoeZ said:
The answer to the hacking issue is easy, if somewhat inconvenient. DO NOT connect the control systems to the internet. Keep them isolated, stand alone. Do not connect them to anything that IS connected.
Click to expand...

I'm under the impression from an old 60 minutes episode that we still use 1970's floppy disks for our ICBM's for a combination of laziness and because they're too primitive to hack
 
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