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Actually, there is a viable alternative to CO2 emitting fuels: just use nuclear energy.

Unfortunately, communism-induced disaster in 1986 and then more recent Fukushima failure have had created an opinion split in our society on the use of nuclear energy; there are countries like Germany which banned building of new nuclear plants because of that.

But sure, it is not hard to not to be communists and not to build nuclear plants in the zone of continious seismic activity.

I used to be very bullish on nuclear power, but after Fukushima I have become much more dubious (not to mention the current state of nuclear waste disposal).

What I was told was the case was that a modern reactor was incapable of failing in the way that Chernobyl failed. And that all modern reactors were designed to fail safe, so even if things did go awry, the reaction would stop because of structural constraints. Then Fukushima failed, and the story changed; that particular reactor was not designed for the particular disaster that struck, and did not fail safe.

I live near three nuclear plants (Indian Point, Tom's River, and Limerick), all of which are huge producers of cheap power for the grid. But what assurance do I have that these plants are not susceptible to a catastrophic failure due to some unexpected event? The answer is that I do not have the information to judge, but I have no reason to believe that they are resistant to local low-probability events than the residents around Fukushima did.

If someone were to try to build a new nuclear plant anywhere near me, I would oppose it as much as I could because I no longer have faith that the engineers designing these plants have taken sufficient precautions.

Nuclear is a source of energy, fossil fuels are both a source and a compact & relatively lightweight means of packaging it. Purely electric-powered cars have only relatively recently become viable for general use, and it's still not viable for aircraft. Building nuclear power plants doesn't solve that problem on its own.

Not super viable though, as it's more expensive than renewables and the Western world no longer seems to be able to complete construction within 2x of dollar budget, or 1.5x of schedule. That's a huge problem on a reactor that's supposed to only take $10B and 5-7years.

If we started planning a new nuclear reactor in the US today, by the time it completed, a wind farm with 3+ days of storage attached will be cheaper than that nuclear plant.

Nuclear's days are done. We could have avoided massive amounts of CO2 emissions if we had been able to build them in the 80s (which is a pig-headed and poorly innovating industry's fault just as much as anti-nukers), but we can't go back in time unfortunately.

The problem with nuclear plants is approval time, and that takes forever and a half because nobody wants one in their backyard. When one does get approved everyone dogpiles on it trying to get concessions.

Nuclear isn't done, it's just having a PR problem.

That’s simply untrue. Look at VC Summer and Vogtle, both approved, both with willing and suppprtive neighbors. One abandoned at a cost of $7-$10B, the other at 2x budget with more cost overruns likely.

Well, when they're the subject of a federal racketeering lawsuit, this could very well have been a casino or a stadium.

You're ignoring the fact that spent nuclear fuel storage is still a long-term problem.

Perhaps, but it's an orders of magnitude smaller problem than climate change promises to be.

It is - but anyone who thinks that it can be solved right now for all eternity is a fool - all we can do it keep it stable for 500 years (which is doable) and then let our descendants figure it out from there.

We can't assume that advanced civilization will survive another 500 years. There's a whole art project dedicated to the problem of how we communicate to our stone-knives-and-bearskins descendants that the place where we put the nuclear waste is bad and not to be trod on.

I think thats actually a worthy goal, presume the worst, hope for the best. But still, its safe to presume that we have a better than 80% odd of having an advanced civilization still in 100-500 years, when newer, more advanced technology may be able to mitigate to stabilize the problem better. If not, those warning signs for cave men saying "keep away" will probably be helpful. Either way, the costs of continuing to burn fossil fuels is very high - I can't decide if its too high or not - thats for people smarter than I to ponder upon.

We haven't done diddly on nuclear storage for about 40 years, maybe more. Still stored onsite in infrastructure not designed for long term storage.

Fuel reprocessing can make use of this spent fuel and cycle it back in for more power generation, but the problem here is the processors have a horrendous safety record compared to the plants themselves. They're often trying to squeeze every nickel out of their operations.

If it was a non-profit/federal program that could do things properly you'd have far less material that you had to bury in the desert.

I'm hoping LFTR reactors can make it to production.

> "I'm hoping LFTR reactors can make it to production."

Have you heard of Flibe Energy [1]? They are working on LFTR technologies. The founder (Kirk Sorensen) is an outspoken nuclear energy advocate, I'd definitely recommend checking out his work/lectures [2].

[1] http://flibe-energy.com/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVSmf_qmkbg

Nope. My understanding is India and China are pursuing this. I think it's political poison in the US.

Not sure I can fit one in my car, sadly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

The batshit insane nuclear products of the 1950s never cease to blow my mind. I'm still discovering new ones, like how the US built not one but two different kinds of nuclear powered aircraft, neither of which proved to be viable in the end for reasons that should have been blindingly obvious.

The idea of a B-36 nuclear bomber loitering around for potentially years and years without landing is awesome and terrifying.

Given that one of the aircraft designs had the reactor exposed to ambient air, you probably don't want that.

The idea was that after they dropped the bombs they'd simply fly around over enemy territory just to spew radioactive garbage all over the country.

If you're riding hybrid or electro, you should be already fitting it.

But those are not the arguments that are being made by those in a position make decisions related to energy and climate. The US president denies climate change, along with much of his cabinet and his EPA head, and most republicans in congress do not trust the science and in fact spread misinformation and confusion among their constituents. I was at a town hall a few weeks ago for a republican representative who listed the names of a few prominent climate deniers who made a good case to him against anthropogenic climate change 10 years ago (at the time I think claiming it wasn't happening at all, this has since changed to its happening but is natural). Denial of the science is a huge part of why we've not made more progress.

I don't even know who you are talking about that is placing the blame for all of this on the consumers, if you have some specifics I would like to know because I would like to chastise them too. Being energy conscious and trying to increase efficiency where possible at the consumer level is part of the solution but most people have no choice at all in where they get their energy (my state doesn't even have the option of purchasing renewables, I have to use renewable energy certificates if I want to do anything with my actual power bill to help). In fact, my power company has a stranglehold over much of the Southeast and many of the state governments that allows them to continually increase their rates while also not offering many renewable energy alternatives.

In many cases, not using fuels is a very viable alternative to using fossil fuels. There are compelling arguments for that alternative that don't amount to "you're horrible" or "this is what brought us computers". A study found that for a third of car commuters in Stockholm, their commute would be a <30 minute bike ride. That's a viable alternative for most of those people.

Honestly, just by

• living in an apartment in a city

• eating less meat

• getting to work via bike, walking, public transport, or telecommuting

• using renewably-sourced energy for heating and cooling

a lot of people could cut out the vast majority of their personal emissions and live very comfortably. The above changes also mean far, far less land dedicated to asphalt, which means we can leave more land in its natural state (or rewild it if need be).

It's sad to kill Earth no matter what, but it's especially sad that we're destroying the world not to keep 7 billion people alive, but to keep one or two billion in profound decadence.

For most hacker news types, I would bet air travel was the vast majority of their emissions - probably putting them well over the average, even if they bike to the city daily.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/every-time-you-fly-you-...

That's true of myself. It's around 80% of our carbon footprint, depending on the year. We live on an island, which doesn't help.

If there were a decent internet connection and I could work remotely I wouldn't mind a slow container ship for international travel.

So how would you have proposed changing behaviour on a massive scale?

Not the OP, but: don't. You can't.

Never mind that it's not practical, it's also simply not moral. Rich people in the west probably could and should use less energy, but something like 3/5ths of the world are entering the global middle class, and it's just wrong that we sit in out Teslas and tell them to forego the comfortable high-energy lifestyles that we've benefitted from.

You're kind of assuming there's no moral weight on the other side of the scale.

Statistical morality is not something that humans or even moral philosophers are very good at, but that doesn't mean it can be ignored. Statements like "the probability of a flood exacerbated by sea level rise causing X million people to die in Bangladesh goes up by Y for every liter of gasoline you use". Y is very small but it's not zero. Does that mean that if some disaster happens everyone who uses gasoline is very slightly culpable? It's difficult to talk about.

> forego the comfortable high-energy lifestyles

One interpretation of the IPCC reports might be that "if all 7bn+ people on earth use American levels of energy from fossil fuels then the average temperature will rise by an amount which will cause massive crop failures". That is, it might be impossible as a matter of physics for everyone to have comfortable, cheap high-fossil-energy lifestyles while still growing enough to eat.

I'd throw the issue over to DARPA and see if a more advanced solution is possible. Maybe we have giant solar powered aircraft combing the skies collecting CO2 and breaking it down to carbon. Or build a laser that zaps the stuff, lasers are cool, everyone loves lasers whether your gay, straight, right, left, or just don't give AF - you still love lasers. I don't know if the science behind any of that is feasible, but we have done a lot of stuff as humans that wasn't viewed as feasible at some point. And, it gets rid of Republicans main complaint of impacting the economy. Of course this would require funding, but it could be packaged into a nice shiny defense bill.

It's better than our "solution" of not good enough incremental progress on reduction and not good enough incremental increases in renewable energy. Neither of those baby steps deal with the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere.

> Of course this would require funding

Well, yes, that's the trillion dollar question. How do you get it funded?

Lasers.

Why do people have to change behaviour, instead of a change in technology?

Change in behaviour is not what humans are good at. Proof: "Thou shalt not kill".

Just launch the damn solar shade already!

Changing spending priorities to fund tech mega projects that do not provide a profit is a change in behavior.

Good gracious there are a lot of precious snowflakes who can't manage their own emotions. "Stop making people feel guilty"? Like, how?

I'm as anti-judgy and anti-bad argument as anyone but this seems a bit silly. Yes people are awful at convincing other people of things, but it's entirely unreasonable to expect anyone to package up knowledge in a way that soothes peoples' feelings.

I agree with the post except for the feelings part. I don't feel guilty. People try to make me feel guilty, but it doesn't work. That's the problem - nobody is feeling guilty. They look at what they have, they like it, the alternatives sound terrible, so they don't go for the alternatives.

Most of us just aren't buying what you're selling, that's all. From an energy standpoint, we want a certain amount of work done. We don't care if the energy generation is CO2 producing or not. Make it cheaper and more plentiful. We want to live in the future, not the stone age.

> We don't care if the energy generation is CO2 producing or not.

Let's play "trolley problem".

There is a switch in your house, as there is in every house in the City Of Hypothesis. It has two settings. "Safe" and "Unsafe". Every day you have to put a dollar in the machine or it trips back to "Unsafe". Every day, if less than (say) 1% of the population put a dollar in the machine, a random person in the city falls down dead. Nobody is quite sure what would happen if we tried to do away with the switches, but everyone thinks it would be terrible.

Do you have a moral obligation to put a dollar in the machine? Sometimes? Ever?

Does it matter how big the percentage is? At 1% I suspect enough people would do it every day that it would never be a problem. What about 10%? 50%?

(People have suggested centrally monitoring the switches, but this has been rejected on grounds of privacy. You don't know who's setting the switch unless you look in their house.)

Then you don't really agree with the post. It literally said "people aren't changing behavior because you're making them feel guilty". Which is really an impossible-to-address pretend argument.

Cheaper and more plentiful? Sure, those are helpful to talk about. Whether the government should be subsidizing particular things? Also useful.

"Making me feel guilty" or the science? Probably not productive.

> It literally said "people aren't changing behavior because you're making them feel guilty".

No it did not. It said "stop using guilt to try to change behavior".

People hate that, and it turned this subject in a political issue (which it should never have become) instead of the engineering issue it should have been.

> All in order to make people feel guilty and thereby get people to reduce their usage. Once that happened there was a backlash, that backlash needed a target and the science was chosen.

Guilt -> backlash -> people reject science. That sounds an awful lot like you're saying science would drive progress but people aren't changing behavior because "you're" making them feel guilty.

It's not _just_ an engineering issue, but if you believe it is why on earth are you contributing to the politics?

Who is making you feel guilty? What choice do you really have? I'm vocal on this issue with people that I am around but I've never tried to place the blame on them (except for when they support candidates that refuse to take action or take negative actions that is).

How do you feel about the suggestion that not using coal for electricity generation would save the USA 10 billion dollars a year? Why isn't this drive people allegedly have to save money and live in the future of cheap energy working to phase out coal?

Fracking is a very successful cheaper alternative to coal. Nobody likes that one, though. Nuclear is far better and cleaner, but nobody likes that one either.

I have studied the science on AGW and believe the central hypotheses to be true. However, I reject the moralization that has become the bread and butter of environmentalists. I've had many "ends justify the means" conversations with people who believe they can/should make energy usage a moral issue.

It's a science and engineering problem, not a moral one. The religious fervor around much of the environmental movement (complete with significant social virtue signaling) turns me off both the person and the message by association.

Ok. So you believe the science but reject the message because of how it's framed? That doesn't make much sense.

I do think it's a little short sighted to the ignore moral/philosophical implications of anything that effects large groups of people. But it doesnt really matter if you can stay reasonable The kneejerk "don't tell me what to feel guilty about or I'll do the opposite" reactions are pretty funny, though.

> Stop making people feel guilty about using energy.

But you should feel guilty about using energy.

> But you should feel guilty about using energy.

No, I absolutely refuse. I refuse to such a degree I'm not even going to ask you why I should feel guilty.

I have zero desire to live in that kind of world. The more energy we use the better the world becomes.

We should spend our effort on finding good sources of energy (i.e. cheap, and clean). Not on using less energy.

I don't mind spending some effort on efficiency, if it doesn't impact me (for example more insulation, but zero desire to drive less).

Bullshit. It's the divisive politics. Anything your political opponent says sounds wrong or whiny. Tone policing, which is what you're doing here, is just another excuse to blame your opponent instead of looking into the issues on your side.

You missed my point completely.

WHY is it political? It's because instead of dealing with this as an engineering problem we turned it into a human behavior issue.

It's not about the tone of the message - there should be no anti-human message at all.

The tone is irrelevant, just stop telling people to use less energy. Instead meet their need with better energy.

You could see it the other way around too. Everything can be turned into an engineering problem, but sometimes that's very inefficient: for instance, instead of using trash cans for garbage disposal we could all just litter the streets (and why not, any other environment) and have robots cleaning everything everywhere 24/7...

I'm sorry but that's kind of ridiculous. You're saying that society should not decide that any human behavior is wrong, it should just figure out how to accommodate everything.