"Yes, some of them thought that it was bad to have all that stuff around, but most thought it wasn't too serious compared to the immediate economic benefit it brought."
A technology whose proponents's best answer even today is "wait until the next breakthrough".
Nuclear: The one trick the evil environmentalists won't tell you about that will solve all your energy problems.
Every time we have a massive nuclear disaster the defense (a valid one!) Is that the disaster happened from a poorer technology that isn't used anymore today.
If we had built out nuclear earlier we would have had a lot more nuclear disasters.
The problem with nuclear is solely that by the time the technology became good enough that it could be used fairly safely it became way more expensive than almost all competitors including most other renewable sources.
And this is even before including the geopolitical limitations of nuclear. Would we be living in a better world if every country including countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan had easy access to nuclear.
As of May 2017, the People's Republic of China has 37 nuclear reactors operating with a capacity of 32.4 GW and 20 under construction with a capacity of 20.5 GW.[1]
Compare:
As of 2016, there are four new reactors under construction with a gross electrical capacity of 5,000 MW, while 33 reactors have been permanently shut down.
I'm lead to believe the reason China can have 5 times the number of new nuclear builds is because China seems to be able to get shit done while infrastructure in the US languishes. I could be wrong, I'm just going by what internet would have me believe.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
Then we would have even more problems with final disposal than we already have, that's the topic none of the pro-nuclear people ever want to touch on because they fully realize it's quite an issue.
As is, it's already bad enough how plant operators socialize these long-term costs while keeping all the profits private, which is the only way these operations can turn a short-term profit. Case in point: http://www.dw.com/en/german-government-does-nuclear-waste-de...
It's even more infuriating to see that quote of Sigmar Gabrial boasting that "society alone doesn't have to bear the costs". How generous of them to pay a little bit into a fund for the disposal of their own waste, while the German taxpayer will end up picking the brunt of the bill when, as always, everything ends up going way over the estimated costs.
Just take a look at Fukushima: TEPCO has a book equity of $US20 billion, total cleanup costs are estimated at $US250 billion, who's paying for that? Right, the Japanese government aka the tax payer.
If we had invested more in Nuclear it would be less of an issue. We've invented much safer reactors, and more efficient ones that produce much less waste. Probably much more would have been developed if the investment was there.
Many make this claim, but I do not buy it.
Take Australia as an example: relies on coal for around 85% of electricity production [1], also has some of the most expensive electricity in the western world [2] at around 29c / USD Kilowatt hour (that is over 2x the US national average).
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070709212140/http://www.iea.or...
[2] https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-elect...
I live in Tasmania now, I think most of our electricity comes from hydro. Thirty hydropower stations operating in Tasmania[1], but we still pay ~26 cents a kilowatt-hour here.
Also, agreed. Australia is a mess. I grew up in Newcastle, living in Toronto Canada now and love looking at where our energy comes from: https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelect...
No coal, beautiful!
I'll admit that no new hydro is arguably a good thing for certain aspects of sustainability, but it could be argued that new hydro is better than new coal or gas. That's sort of a false dichotomy because there are other options:
An in-principle agreement has been reached to build a new 144MW wind farm in central Tasmania[2], the first new wind project in the state in almost a decade[3].
The Franklin Dam project was to be 180MW, with arguable much greater capacity factor than wind.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy
2. http://www.goldwindaustralia.com/aurora-energy-goldwind-anno...
3. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-07/new-$300m-wind-farm-fo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb
This was researcher was completed by the United Aircraft Corporation in the late 60's and early 70's before it was canceled by Nixon along with the Mars program. It was under a NASA contract for space exploration so the literature is in the context of a rocket engine but it is even more compelling as a terrestrial reactor as it uses a tiny amount of fuel (tens of kilos instead of tens of tonnes) and actively keeps that fuel at supercritical so if power is lost the entire thing fizzles out. This is a fast neutron design with an extremely high neutron cross section, far beyond that of any other reactor, easily allowing you to feed nuclear waste into it and very efficiently transmute much of it into fuel or more manageable waste that is then separated out by centrifuges (which are already in the design to separate usable UF6 from the neon exhaust). UAC was set to win a contract to test the reactor with nuclear fuel when NASA pulled the plug so the anti-nuclear crowd isn't to blame for that line of development dying.
However, all of the technological breakthroughs in computation, material science, and nuclear engineering needed to make this happen at an industrial scale have all been discovered since the project was canceled. If it weren't for all the anti-nuclear hysteria, we might have actually had someone willing to take the risk to bring the nuclear lightbulb reactor to market. Sadly, almost all of the scientists and engineers that worked on this design have passed on so the institutional knowledge is gone and the design was classified for a while so no other nations picked up on it in time. You may be able to find the original papers on NASA/JPL's archives but AFAIK they were reclassified a few years ago.
I believe they have a project in the works. I just watch documentaries, I am not a nuclear physicist or anything. It sounds like it is safe and efficient. We've got a huge supply of thorium.
Another way of PM emissions that is not tackled at all is agriculture.
And it does not just have minor health effects. People are dying because of it.
Tire wear is something like 10%, maybe a bit less. Break wear is much higher at 60%. Engine emissions is most of the rest.
EVs are heavier so they will have more tire wear. They don't brake as often, so that would go down.
Have you read much about them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_pad#Materials
> Non-exhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231016...
But I do agree with the sentiment that anti-nuclear environmentalists fell victim to perfect is the enemy of good, and unintentionally stuck us with the dirtiest option.
We're at a point where we have better things, but choose to not use them. It's intrinsically different than the industrial revolution. It's more like slavery in the relatively modern Western world. They knew better. They just chose to argue against their core morality because they could make more money.
Though I think you could also argue that speed and low cost bring chain benefits that may balance it out. I feel we may never get quantitative answers without quantum computers crunching these numbers.
Yes. A number of generations had a good life. But what about the coming generations. What does the "progress at any cost", have in store for them?
All things considered, what does the future look right now?
We are getting better at reducing our environmental impact from tech that have been in use for decades. And that too after decades of negligence and denial.
But we are still mostly blind about how todays new tech will impact environment if it becomes widespread. For example, most people who consider electric cars as something that will undo the environmental damage from fossil fuels, fail to consider what new kinds of impact these automobiles have on the environment. For ex. The batteries. If all of todays cars started going electric, that is a lot of batteries, right? How does the environmental impact look like after 30 years of growing use of these batteries? Just an example.
The point is, the problem is our boundless affinity for new and better things. If it is cars, then we want suvs and we will have three of them if we can afford it. We throwaway old stuff and buy new stuff without a second thought. Most of the industries of the world are producing stuff that is planned to break in a couple of years. "Planned obsolesce", they call it. All of these tendencies are the dangerous ones. Not the use of a single thing like burning of fossil fuels or coal or using fertilizers.
So I think it is the tendency of our current system to maximize consumption, the real danger, and I think there is very little hope that will change, and that will be our undoing...
I think the more-useful question is whether folks knew the tradeoffs and made an informed decision in the first place.
Should someone have made more effort to determine the tradeoffs before widespread implementation? Were any facts withheld or investigation curtailed? Did one group (wrongly?) benefit from another group's ignorance?
We should really ban big diesel rigs from areas with population density above a certain threshold. Especially considering how little the regulations around diesel emissions are actually complied with.
I'd go much further than that. I'd ban all combustion engines in cities.
There are enough alternatives: Walking, bicycles, ebikes, trams, electric buses, trains, and electric cars.
We should try to keep the air as clean as possible in densely populated areas.
Is there anything yet to show negative effects? My understanding is that there hadn't been conclusive study, but from what we know of thermal radiation there aren't known mechanisms for damage to occur within the FCC(think it's their rules?) guidelines.
I think I understand the sentiment, but I don't think the three are the same. And if they had similar results, hypothetically, they would be for entirely different reasons.
edit: I'm interested to know more about peoples' concerns about smartphones and other devices emitting harmful radiation. I've never seen anything conclusive at all, but my girlfriend is positive research will eventually reveal something, for example. Very curious if anyone knows more about this. Perhaps I'm totally incorrect.
dopamine addiction coming from and through the benign electronics may count for something.
I'm a big fan of electronic devices, and a huge believer in them being a medium for addiction and escapism. But I think societies need to look at the root of that issue rather than dismiss any medium for dopamine addiction as harmful (as harmful as lead in your water in this case). That becomes extremely subjective, and maybe not worth pursuing because I admit, I'm not educated on the matter. I simply believe that (based on my experiences) the misuse of electronics will often stem from a lack of stimulation, satisfaction, and/or engagement coming from other aspects in life. There is too much room for this form of addiction in modern life in many parts of the world.
If we blame the devices, we fail to blame ourselves for better educating ourselves and striving to develop society in such a way that people feel they have better things to do than escape into a screen.
I'm totally open to being called out as clueless or full of it - that's just my take on things. It's a very fascinating conversation, but probably not a great one for the internet. I worry I'll come across as thinking I'm an authority on this stuff or something, when it's quite the opposite.
Are societies are expected to re-engineer our brains rather than put addiction in context? Or are they expected to create societies where our reward pathways are firmly under their control?
I like having fun games to play too, and I'd be upset if someone stopped my dopamine drip too. That said, lets not pretend there isn't a wave of weaponized addiction sweeping through the software design world. What other solutions exist to that problem?
Right now we consider these electronics, and their emissions, largely benign but that doesn't mean that's actually the case in the long term.
Think about the amount of wireless stuff constantly going on around you: GSM, EDGE, UMTS, LTE, bluetooth, several WLAN standards, radio, satellite and so on. Humanity has never been blasted with that much EM radiation before and the blast is constant and pretty much ever-present. I find it hard to believe that all those EMR don't have any effects at all on living things. Sure, we get doses of it anyway from space and the sun and so on, but that doesn't mean that adding our own won't make the doses cross a threshold.
Wouldn't be the first time humanity underestimated the long-term effect of something just to realize, a couple of decades down the line, "Oopps.. wasn't as healthy as we thought".
Non-ionizing, regulated dosage. Maybe we'll discover they were dangerous, but evidence doesn't support it so far.
Of a single device, but how do we account for the accumulation of the dosages when there are literally dozens of those devices constantly around us?
Let's also keep in mind that we haven't been living like this for very long, 10-20 years ain't really that big of a timeframe. For all purpose and effect, this is a rather recent development in human history.
That's stuff bad dystopian sci-fi stories are made of: 30 years from now developed countries will reach "peak ERM" and people's brains suddenly start shriveling to raisins ;)
Non-ionizing radiation can have adverse health effects, e.g. UV light.