How Disney Became a Nuclear Power | Hacker News Reader

How Disney Became a Nuclear Power

neddonovan.substack.com

43 pointstosh28 comments

Other things aside, the expression "a nuclear power" generally means an organization -usually a state- with nuclear weapons.

As such, if you search for nuclear power in general you'll find there are about 30+ countries in the world with plants. If instead you search for "nuclear powers" you'll find it refers to just 8 countries with nuclear weapons.

I mean, I know this is just stupid clickbait to make you think of something like the Pepsi Navy and grab your imagination. But it is still stupid clickbait.

I see substack.com has become the new medium.com, welcome to my blocklist. Lots of low-substance, clickbait articles from this domain lately.

No idea how these articles manage to reach the front page.

Blogspam will exist everywhere people are allowed to blog, the real issue is your latter point.

Title is clearly click bait. Can't understand why someone would post this here and why people would upvote.

We need a way to downvote postings.

Just in the last 24 hours 20 links posted by the same account. Go figure.

Unfortunately, it seems karma is the only incentive for many users to submit stories.

I know this would never happen but it would be so so cool if Disney used this authority to become an early sponsor / adopter of fusion power once that is available. (See e.g. Commonwealth Fusion Systems [1]). In the meantime they could put a simple but futuristic demonstration like a fusor [2] in Tomorrowland, and jazz it up with lasers and smoke machines. I know none of this will happen but a person can dream. It would also be incredible if Tomorrowland would bring back jetpacks like they demoed once in the 60's [3]. Tomorrowland could again be what Walt hoped it would be - a place of inspiration and dreams of a better tomorrow.

[1] https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-fusio...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyvN3rF3mUM

Radiation sources as child entertainment, what could possibly go wrong?

I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool, but doing things "for real" isn't really the Disney way. Why bother with a real fusor when you probably make a perfect visual simulacrum with some fiber optics? Then you don't have to worry about stray neutrons, induced radioactivity, X-Ray leakage, etc...

Yeah, that's true. I know you're right it's just a bummer. Doing it for real doesn't make sense in the context of today's real-world constraints - it would just be a symbolic move in the sense that in a true "world of tomorrow" fusion reactors would be commonplace, and there'd be no reason not to have one. Like the fusion reactor on the DeLorean in Back to the Future II - just an ordinary piece of future life, no more remarkable than a car or a refrigerator.

I think your (quite valid) perspective reflects the difference of the view on risk in Walt's day vs today. When he was setting the vision it was considered worth the risk to fly a real jetpack over the park. Today it's "too risky" even though actual jetpacks are much safer than they used to be.

Makes sense. If you can bend copyright law your way, then why not also get authorization to build a nuclear power plant while you're at it.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a Federal agency and they might have a thing or two to say if Disney actually tried to build a nuclear plant, state laws notwithstanding.

I wish Disney would make the attempt though, we need someone to push forward with building new nuclear plants.

-->But the law has never been changed, and there is nothing to stop the theme park going nuclear.

I too thought this sentence was flippant.

How disney became a nuclear power according to legal principle, but actually built a methane plant.

How Walt Disney got planning permission from Florida to build a nuclear reactor back in the sixties but probably still needs federal regulatory permission, and never built it because it cost too much whuffie.

Florida has a number of nuclear power plants. I don't think money has ever been a deterrent factor for Disney. They were probably worried about a meltdown scenario.

Well, I didn't expect to watch a Disney documentary about nuclear power at 10am on a Wednesday... thanks for sharing!

> is a former card-carrying member of the Nazi Party.

Haber was not a member of the NSDAP... he certainly was a nazi but why see the need to make false statements?

I don't know the difference, but I'm not sure why it's surreal. I mean, the whole point of what they did in the wake of World War 2 was to try to prevent World War 3 (since Hitler's rise was largely dependent on the punishment inflicted on Germans for WWI). And they did that by building up the Japanese and German economies. And during the cold war, the former Nazi scientists were crucial for helping to build up the U.S. space program. Operation Paperclip was an initiative that recruited 1,600+ former Nazi scientists and engineers for that effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

What? It's really simple he was not a member of the NSDAP or "nazi party". It matters to be factual in your statements because otherwise people who know that you are misinterpreting one fact don't know at how much face value they can take the rest of your writing.

Exactly. It is sad when people think that a moral high ground justifies being sloppy with the facts, not checking them, or just making things up by following stereotypes and clichés instead of researching their subject well.

Saying every German was a Nazi is like saying every American during Gulf War was a Republican.

During the Nazi regime, did they tolerate opposition parties?

Yeah but in this particular case "Testimonies portray Haber as an avid supporter of Hitler and the Third Reich." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Haber#Connection_to_War_...

I suspect this is an unfortunate consequence of the fact that people nowadays say “card-carrying member of the X” to say “really believed in the X”. In this case, the fact that he was a decorated Luftwaffe volunteer pilot in WW 2 made the author believe that he “really believed in the Nazi cause”.

I suspect the “need to make false statements” here is more accident than intention.

Anyway, I’m glad you corrected this.

This article creates an interesting question - how does 1957 America compare to the one in 2022?

It is hard to imagine a powerful billionaire employing basically-Nazis being allowed to run this sort of science project.

We see no problem letting an billionaire immigrant who grew up in apartheid-era South Africa build orbital-capable rockets that could easily be reprogrammed to deliver warheads anywhere on earth. Countries are extremely willing to be pragmatic about the past as long as it brings a benefit in the future.

In general it's far better society than in 1957, but selecting a single highly specific scenario from 1957 and comparing it to 2022 to draw conclusions about America at large is pretty ... selective reasoning. A better example would be the lack of white vs non-white drinking fountains.

But plenty of signals point to regressions also, including the resegregation of schools and neighborhoods, and the turning back of voting rights protections.

Its hard to reconcile the Disney image of my youth with the Nazi-nuclear-scientist hiring dictator who bought his own city so he could keep away the riffraff and build his own nuclear power supply.

I'm just glad there are places like Efteling around, so that youthful magic can still be found beyond the totalitarian capitalist dystopia that is Disney World, and a sense for that wonder and magic can stay in place beyond the horizon of expanding adulthood perception.

Imagine if he'd been able to sponsor UN peacekeepers ..

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