Nuclear Energy Is Climate Justice | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear Energy Is Climate Justice

thebreakthrough.org

60 pointsericdanielski44 comments

"climate justice" is a charged term that's trying to piggy back on broader social trends. It is not even close to constructive or scientific. It's asinine. I'm all for nuclear energy. Not for the dilution of complex grey topics like energy to be flattened into some sort of good vs. evil or right vs wrong argument.

“Climate Justice” is a social scientific term. So if your focus is on climate models given a current trend, focusing on climate justice is certainly out of scope.

However, social scientists absolutely should focus on climate justice. And policy makers definitely should bring social scientists to the table when addressing policy to account for climate justice.

The climate disaster is disproportionately caused by a wealthy elite, and it disproportionately affects poorer communities. An effective policy like carbon tax could significantly slow the speed of climate change and potentially give us enough time build these beloved nuclear plants.

Climate justice is simply asking the polluters to either stop polluting, or at least to pay for their pollution.

While I do agree with the premise of the article, my gut reaction is "tell that to the community living in Hunter's Point in San Francisco."

That community has suffered from being around radioactive waste from nuclear research for decades, with no real resolution. Regardless of whether that radioactive material is because of (or relevant to) nuclear energy, I have to imagine telling them "our solution to climate justice is nuclear energy" would not get very far.

For background Hunter's Point situation had nothing to do with radioactive waste from a power plant. It had to do with careless handling of nuclear materials following experiments. The Verge had a good video on this a couple years ago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouzU08Byrwk

Right, no doubt about that. However, the perception of nuclear energy is just as important for policy as the science of nuclear energy. Therefore, I think gut reactions are important to discuss alongside the science.

Every power generation method causes death. If you want the lowest deaths per Watt you want nuclear power. That is a morbid measurement, but they measure it.

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

But this is a bit fallacious, isn't it? For any argument about a large policy change, must we block it if we can find even one person for whom there has been a vaguely related side effect? And the example you give was caused not by nuclear reactors for energy.

How many people in Africa die each day in large part because of poverty? Cheap, abundant energy would do so much to pull people out of that poverty. It could revolutionize the continent. It sure helped the west over the last 70 years.

This is essentially the "effective altruism" argument, and I don't disagree with it. I was simply explaining my gut reaction, which I think is also worth discussion alongside a conversation about the true value of nuclear energy.

People's perception of nuclear energy is just as important for policy as the science of nuclear energy.

Hunter's Point also did some goofy stuff, like paint all the piers with radioactive paint so it would glow.

Perhaps "safe and responsible nuclear energy" would be compelling to a broader crowd. I think for some it's already insinuated by the phrase, but I wager it would help remove ambiguity for others.

Probably because the physics wasn't well understood at the time. California probably isn't the best place to put a nuclear plant anyways, with all the earthquakes.

Is the damage and waste from nuclear even close to all the climate, air quality, and even radioactive damage the equivalent amount of fossil fuel energy production has done?

Set aside any short-sighted focus on renewables über alles, or justifiable concerns about nuclear wastes. Isn't part of the point of restrictions on nuclear energy to have means of restricting nuclear weapon proliferation? While the technology of a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb are not the same thing, they are related. They have common technological roots and use same or similar materials. Once you can refine the right elements to sufficient purity and gather enough of that high-purity material in a single location, you can kick of a fission reaction. Once you can kick of a fission reaction, you are that closer to being able to do a couple different things. You can use it as a controlled heat source for a power plant. Or, you can use it for a runaway, all-at-once heat source to vaporize everyone in an area. Iran claimed its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. But I don't doubt that Iran's leadership was also itching to glass Israel as soon they were able.

Improving the energy situation and thus standard of living in various parts of Africa may well reduce warlordism or inter-tribal fighting. But I'm not keen on various conflicts in Africa escalating to nuclear exchanges. I can only hope that those who would implement nuclear power in Africa have well internalized the lessons of the West's sins and mistakes with nuclear tech.

Not only nuclear weapons, but I’m also worried that if nuclear power plants proliferate, we will start seeing deregulation and hap-hazard safety standards that could lead to something like a nuclear scale Bhopal disaster. Not to mention proliferation of nuclear waste which would really escalate in a world where we can move these plants to an area with more lax standards.

One thing I haven’t seen in this thread: so far, countries operating nuclear power plants are mostly the world’s elite in terms of engineering culture. Aside jokes about French cars or American approach to safety vs profit, these are the countries that lead the world in engineering feats.

I’d be very cautious about extrapolating nuclear safety to the rest of the world. And this is not a dig at Africans. In my native Poland, nuclear-free, we have a lot of coal mines, some with very poor safety records. A number of disasters happened when methane sensors were deliberately tampered with, so that extraction could continue despite unsafe conditions. Both management and front miners have been blamed for such events. What would happen when operating a nuclear plant?

In both Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, there have been organisational (political corruption?) issues as well that clouded the judgment in safety. So abstracting from technical culture, would countries with lower standards of governance do as well in keeping their reactors in top shape?

Maybe yes, and maybe even if not, that’s still better than coal, but I haven’t seen this considered.

Not to mention, we usually assume the only way a reactor could be deliberately damaged is via a terrorist attack. But in a proper war, don’t reactors seem like pretty obvious targets?

I know it's a bit of a aside, but somewhat related:

I wonder if the lightening of regulations has something to do with China starting to gain a foothold in the African markets.

I wonder if the next first-world war will be fought in Africa.

While it's true that China has poured billions upon billions of dollars into infrastructure projects in Africa, most of that has been done with the sole purpose of getting to and extracting natural resources to send back to China for manufacturing purposes. Just about every foreign investor in Africa does so in order to obtain value of some sort, either economic or political. A question which must be asked is whether the locals are truly better off after foreign investments by the US, EU, Russia, or China or if they end up more impoverished in the long run and with useless or dangerous infrastructure they cannot maintain. There might not be a good actor in all of this.

I recently spent three years driving around Africa - I went through 35 separate countries and I saw a lot of what you're talking about. The jungle in Gabon being smashed down, deep sea shipping ports in Cameroon, massive bridges in Uganda over the Nile, power plants in Guinea, the new train line in Ethiopia, etc. etc. I feel so strongly about this I wrote multiple chapters about it in my forthcoming book.

The history and situation goes like this:

Back in the day the European powers enslaved the Africa nations to pillage their resources. Decimated the people and the resources. Gave nothing back.

When the African countries got independence, the West enslaved them monetarily. They all owe so much money from that they'll never even meet the interest payments, let alone pay it down. That way we control them because we can make them do anything we want, else we'll call in the loans, or kick them off the global financial markets (cough.. Sudan) and cripple them economically. They're not our physical slaves, but they are our economic slaves. There's a reason Switzerland is the 3rd biggest coffee exporter in the world despite never growing a single bean and Ethiopia is #11. [1] . Ethiopia would love to change that, but the World Trade Organization won't let them. Don't get me started on the countries growing fields of cocoa and palm trees that stretch hundreds of miles for global corporations we know the name of.

Now China are coming along and building bridges, roads, power plants, hospitals in exchange for very cheap mineral extraction rights. No doubt they're stripping the land, but they ARE actually improving the lives of ordinary Africans much more than the West ever did. That is a fact.

It's a shame what's happening to the wilderness, but we'd be hypocrites if we didn't let them develop in the same way we have, given downtown San Francisco and Vancouver used to look like Redwoods National Park.

[1] http://www.worldstopexports.com/coffee-exports-country/

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYm3TbVNf-o

(some (punk?) bands piece about that in 1980, has lyrics)

It also explains why the Soviet Union found willing ears to the message of revolution and Communism. When you've been screwed over by foreigners for so long and one comes along giving you guns and advisors in order to help you become free and independent... it sounds almost too good to be true! And when you find out that the new boss is essentially the old boss with a different accent you realize it really was too good to be true.

Nobody will be fighting over Africa directly. There could be proxy wars, but those systems collapse very quickly in that context, so there wouldn't be anything to fight over for very long. It doesn't matter what is in the Congo, nobody is going to get at it for at least 50 years because it's just chaos.

Whatever is worth something in Africa, it requires stability, which is fragile.

I'd argue wars are generally won over resources, not markets.

Which is not to say China isn't interested in Africa's rich resources including rare-earth metals, but that's different from the nuclear question

If I had infinite Nuclear energy I would pump fresh water to irrigate northern rockies. They are just getting drier and drier, the fires are going to drastically change everything.

This is the kind of pushback that's needed against ostensibly well-meaning activists from privileged and prosperous countries trying to export their worldview, never having had to face a comparable situation nor achieving a comparable victory at home.

Africa's countries are facing an energy deficit, and weak central governments, and distributed solar and wind cannot be their only option to prosper while everyone else sees fit to trade carbon credits, plant some trees in some place afar, and even contemplate the tremendous luxury of nuclear phase-out.

The US is smart to propose lifting this development ban. Russia and China have no qualms about assisting African states with their nuclear energy programmes, or at least dangling the suggestion that they are willing to do so: they are enticed by the prospect of gaining economic allies that they may one day turn into political allies.

Africa is not a major contributor to the climate disaster, but is becoming an ever more victim of it. I would say that suggesting that “Africa build more nuclear plants” is exactly the kind of “privileged reasoning” you could expect from a “well meaning activist” of a “privileged position”.

First a little reality check. If a country does not have the resources and infrastructure to build a distributed system of solar and wind power plants, it certainly does not have the resources to build a nuclear plant.

Second, there are safety and environmental concerns. Nuclear power proliferation can not come at the cost of deregulation and laxer standards. A poorer community with a weaker government is in ever more risk to be exploded with a sub-standard facility. We have seen this happen in the chemical industry (look at the Bhopal disaster, or Cancer Ally, Louisiana), and I would rather not see this in the nuclear power industry.

And finally the climate disaster is happening at a pace where we simply don’t have the time build the amount of nuclear power required to phase out fossil fuel. Let alone building them in places with very limited infrastructure.

Building more nuclear power plants in Africa will contribute nothing in the battle against the climate disaster. And I’m extremely skeptical that it will result in any economical benefits for the vast majority of the population in African Countries (except maybe in Nigeria).

"lifting a longtime ban on financing the construction of nuclear power plants in developing countries."

Nothing will kill nuclear faster than having these built in developing nations with political and operational instability.

Why do we think that that can't keep an electricity grid regular, will be able to manage this? They will do that 'one little thing' wrong and it will end up in disaster.

This is the paradox of Nuclear: if you build a safe kind of reactor (CANDU anyone?) in a stable area, with stable political regimes (Canada?), with excessive oversight, then, you're going to get the benefits of nuclear. (We still have to figure out a few things and there is more work to do).

But the messy, poor places of the world who ostensibly need it the most ... have too much risk.

In fact, it's not really a paradox at all: 'more power' usually means 'more consequence' and therefore likely 'more responsibility'.

Why do we presume that 'high concentrated power', orders of magnitude greater than the concentration of energy in Fossil Fuels, would be anything but 'very dangerous'?

A society can only use the power sources its responsible enough to harness.

There has to be strong credibility in all the surrounding institutions to make it work.

Also - 'terrorism' in all its forms has not gone away, some group 'hates' some group somewhere, the theft of some dirty spent fuel, simply 'put' in NYC could make city blocks a 'no go zone' for 100 years.

The worst thing we can do is build Nuclear power in Columbia or Morocco. At very least, they could be built in 'International Zones' where the land is declared sovereign (like a diplomatic house) managed by some other nation literally troops from that 'other nation' can guard the place.

Of course, that has really ugly echoes of colonialism, and issues of sovereignty etc., which is why it won't work.

It only takes one stupid dictator, wanting to 'grab it all for himself' to build an insanely dangerous operation.

I'm very cynical about this move, I think it's just big business lobbying so they can make money.

Instead of 'foreign financing' - they should be spending on R&D for safer reactors and fuel processing - as well as establishing rigid operational guidelines and oversight so that 100 solid reactors can be built in the US. With rigour in place, unit price can be brought down.

Who the fuck are you to decide what to build in Morocco, or not? When I look at [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco it looks rather civilised now. And has for long times, until western colonialism meddled with it. Very rich history! They even have an expanding high speed rail service operating at 200mph. Beat that!

Also: Masters of Kif!

Yes, if you can guarantee that the system that underpins it is stable. That means: political situation, economic situation, safety/checking mechanism, engineering ability, and the ability for none of these to be compromised. Then yes: nuclear energy.

Can anyone recommend any good books on nuclear power?

Are you looking for technical how-it-works stuff, or more political/environmental things, including safety and waste disposal? For the latter, I liked "Power To Save The World" by Gwyneth Cravens. For the former, I've mainly kept up with the differences between new reactor designs by wandering around the web.

i was looking for both - thanks for the rec!

Being against nuclear energy, is like being against vaccines because of risk of side effects. A lot of the anti-vaxxers have the same form of argument, demanding absolute safety and talking up the rare incidents where people were harmed, instead of considering the risks in context of what it is preventing.

Climate change if we can't control it, will end human civilization as we know it and at best result in tens of millions of people dying and many more being displaced. Compared to this, even a 100 Chernobyls would be an acceptable risk.

This is a gross oversimplification and simply wrong. There are number of unsolved problems with nuclear energy, including:

* Safety – e.g. we don’t trust Iran to operate a nuclear power plant).

* Waste – There are some expensive solutions that can store the waste (and the problem) for the foreseeable future, but we lack a permanent solution.

* Time – Global warming is already out of control, we simply don’t have time to build all the new plants required.

* Cost – Nuclear plants are really expensive, spending that money elsewhere is probably cost effective for the battle against the climate disaster.

A more apt analogy is probably GMO. Sure there are concerns about the safety, pollution, and marketability of GMO product, but what grosses most environmentalists about GMO is the false promise that GMO will safe humanity from a potential food shortage. It doesn’t. Food shortages are a problem of distribution, not quantity. There are other safer, cheaper and quicker ways to solve the problems. Focusing on GMO is simply derailing us from talking about actual solutions.

Bitcoin Is Climate Cancer

Nuclear energy is dangerous, extractive, and wasteful. If Germany can make due without nuclear the world can.

Germany is not making it without nuclear. They are buying power from abroad (mostly coal sourced) and opening new coal (!) and gas (less bad, but still bad) powerplants. While they're a net exporter on average, averages mislead and Germany buys a lot of power during winter.

Nuclear is the least exploitative, least wasteful, least deadly and most safe power generation method. Every other method is at least 10 times less safe, more wasteful and more exploitative, going up to absurd amount of exploitation and waste in case of solar due to low conversion efficiency and the requirement of a large amount of rare elements and absolutely absurd amount of required land which should be nature and not solar panels - think about all the lost ecosystems when you drive past solar arrays (same goes for hydro, which completely destroys water ecosystems).

https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

Can you show me which part of this graph [0] indicates that Germany is opening new coal? What about CO2 emissions [1]? Shouldn't they go up because Germany is so dependent on new coal?

Okay, lets investigate the claim about Germany buying a lot of power during winter. [2] shows that the seasonal variance in the renewable share is reasonably low. There is one big 9% dip in November but that is about it. That same site also has a nice export chart [3]. Germany did indeed import 1.2TWh from France in December but what about the other months?

Amount of electricity Germany imported from France in 2019

January 130GWh

February 543GWh

March 962 GWh

April 848 Gwh

May 1.8 TWh

June 2.1 TWh

Juli 1.6 TWh

August 2.2 TWh

September 1.7 TWh

October 1.1 TWh

November 673 GWh

December 1.2 TWh

Well, I'm actually surprised by this myself. Germany imported very little energy during Winter and a huge amount during every other season. Overall french electricity imports make up 2.8% of energy consumed in Germany. In terms of energy trade this is quite a significant number but in terms of energy self sufficiency that is almost nothing.

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

[2] https://www.energy-charts.de/ren_share_de.htm?source=ren-sha...

[3] https://www.energy-charts.de/exchange_de.htm?source=de_pf&ye...

> Can you show me which part of this graph [0] indicates that Germany is opening new coal?

Look up Datteln 4. It's one block of an existing coal plant that opened in 1964 with the other three blocks ceasing operation in 2014 and the new block having opened this year. So it's not in your graph yet but even if it were I doubt it would show up. Not much in the great picture, but still a sad symbol.

Agree with the other parts of your comment.

> They are buying power from abroad

In 2019, Germany was the biggest power exporter in europe. In 2018, Germany exported 50 TWh of energy, enough to power all of Portugal for an entire year [1]. In fact, neighbour countries had to install devices to prevent Germany from swamping their own networks with excess energy.

Maybe there are days where Germany has to buy power. And yes, we have to import things like oil, LNG or coal (for which the newly built coal plant is btw). But the electric power production of Germany over an entire year is more than its demand, so Germany is a exporter.

[1]: https://www.unendlich-viel-energie.de/themen/strom/verfehlte...

Yes, I know that. Changes nothing about Germany requiring other countries' help during winter - help that comes from nuclear and coal sources, not 'renewable'. That means that while Germany can use the current situation to decommission their nuclear power plants, if everyone did, everyone would be without power during winter. And then you have to count the destruction of nature the 'renewable' sources are causing.

Personally I think that until we figure out economical long term seasonal storage, we should build LNG plants and use them during the winter. They burn very cleanly compared to coal and also cause less CO2. Overall this would still mean a reduction over an all-fossil energy mix. Then, one day renewably generated hydrogen or methane can be used instead of the extracted LNG.

How do you generate the bulk of energy? Solar and hydro is a major natural disaster (mostly through ecosystem destruction, but also mining) and wind is not exactly safe. What else can you do?

Can you point to a power source that is bloodless?

Nuclear Energy does not exist without severely controlling access to fissile material, which is a strong police state.

Nuclear Energy does not exist without being aware of where the fissile material is, and who is trying to get access to is, which is a strong surveillance state.

The politics of Nuclear Energy are aligned with cops and surveillance.

Wind and solar power are sold at retail, plutonium isn't.

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