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Comment by rdempsky | Hacker News Reader

Good.

Not if you want to power missions like New Horizons. That far away from the Sun, nuclear power is the only option.

The money that would have gone to such missions would be much better spent on solving problems closer to home, like reducing the effects of climate change.

And it almost certainly would not have been spent on those things even if the missions were cancelled.

It's like getting angry at software companies because they're not spending all their profits on solving climate change. The existence of a problem doesn't mean that the entirety of society and technological progress must pause until it's solved.

hear, hear

https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-...

This concept of "drop everything and study only the most 'important' areas" is misguided. Research doesn't work that way.

There are already an enormous number of talent scientists studying climate change, how would putting nuclear battery scientists on this project help? Are climate scientists short on resources? Better yet are they short on resources because NASA wants to produce nuclear batteries.

Finally there is the concept of cross pollination and random discovery. For example, CERN scientists invented the modern cell phone touch screen, super conductivity was discovered by accident, methods developed by materials scientists to study liquids is used in robotics. You kill off this kind of creativity and random advancement as you narrow the scope of scientists.

Or they could take that same amount of money away from things that aren't furthering knowledge of the universe and research that leads to new advancements that historically have had a rather impressive impact on the technology available to the average person.

You know like from military minded funding, hell that amount would barely make an impact there. Especially since more efficient safer nuclear power, which continued research into nuclear battery construction could potentially contribute to, could itself help provide a source of power to help slow climate change.

So you are against all other forms of basic research as well? You don't think we should have built the LHC either?

The problem with combating climate change is not money, but the science having been turned into a political football by right-wing activists.

There are two teams in any football game.

I actually "know" a guy ( old Usenet contact, current Facebook friend ) and he's savvy enough to explain the models to me. I don't understand them, but I can kinda sorta get a little bit about it - they depend on theorems and assumptions that, if I started now, I might get to the bottom of before I die. The knowledge gap here is staggering. I just don't have that kind of training and bandwidth.

Basically, I sort of have to trust him. That's not the same thing as "knowing".

No, he won't write That Book; I asked. He doesn't have the time. He has grad students that do have the time, but they're busy doing something else.

I am unusually lucky in that regard. And fossil fuels are pretty important as a replacement for animal - and human - muscle power, historically.

It's less activists than ordinary people going "Lol, whut?". And if, as I see it, there's a skirmish line between the industries that make carbon-causing things and ... "science", it's not reasonable to expect the carbon-people to all just get shot and lay down.

This is looking more and more like a "smoking" thing, and that didn't turn out so well. I know people of low income who smoke, and the taxes hurt them. They already live close to the edge. You and I don't get to tell them to quit; that's up to them.

I am not even a "doubter" but don't ask me to show my work. So I can hardly throw rocks at people who draw a different conclusion.

> It's less activists than ordinary people going "Lol, whut?".

The activists are the ones telling ordinary people "scientists disagree and there's no consensus" when the reality is it's fundamentally settled science. The same occurs with evolution.

> I know people of low income who smoke, and the taxes hurt them.

Smoking is actually a great example to use here. Same situation as climate change - right-wing lobbying groups (some like the AEI are now engaged in the climate change "controversy") funded by industry succeeded for decades in muddying the waters and making it look like the science wasn't yet settled.

Sure. So ignore the activists, outside of publishing stuff to make your point. My point is it'll all go adversarial and that'll be more heat than light. I am still waiting on the book 'AGW for Dummies' that people who want to make the point can use as a reference. There are a handful of places on the Web that are pretty good, but it's not enough.

I don't like the appeal to consensus. Give people the tools and let them make up their own minds.

Smoking is a terrible thing to use as an example. "Whoemever" is aiming at the lobbyists and hitting people who have no dog in the fight and just can't, or won't, quit smoking. The companies were not alone in this; they had millions of customers. Still do.

There was a component of the thing that was about truth. but that passed a long time ago. Now it's just about winning or losing. Here's hoping I'm wrong and AGW doesn't go the same way.

Aren't things divided enough yet? "When elephants fight, it is the grass gets trampled".

> So ignore the activists, outside of publishing stuff to make your point.

That's been tried, and it results in them getting their misinformation heard by the public (who simply don't have the scientific knowledge to figure out it's bullshit) without a counter-argument. See: anti-vaccination movement.

> I don't like the appeal to consensus. Give people the tools and let them make up their own minds.

One of the tools necessary is a graduate-level education in the topics at hand. I don't get to do my own cancer treatment or prescribe myself lab tests for the same reasons random yahoos shouldn't get to evaluate climate science - we don't have the requisite training and knowledge. That's why we have experts, who nearly unanimously agree.

> The companies were not alone in this; they had millions of customers. Still do.

And the taxes are intended, in part, to prevent new customers. Teenagers pause a bit at the idea of picking up a $10/day habit.

This is a false dilemma. The reasons those problems aren't solved aren't because of scarcity of resources but lack of political will.

I fail to see how this is good? These batteries are being sent into space to explore our solar system. Without them powering some of these spacecraft becomes extremely difficult or impossible.

There is some opposition to using nuclear material on space missions, since space travel isn't safe. The biggest fear would be a rocket blowing up at some perfect point in the launch to end up spreading plutonium-238 over a wide area.

I don't think that fear is in the end warranted, but as fears of such things go, it is more justified than many.

I could only find 5 cases where a space craft carrying an RTG suffered a mishap. of those only 2 resulted in the release of radiation. Both of those were in the 60s.

from Wikipedia: To minimize the risk of the radioactive material being released, the fuel is stored in individual modular units with their own heat shielding. They are surrounded by a layer of iridium metal and encased in high-strength graphite blocks. These two materials are corrosion- and heat-resistant. Surrounding the graphite blocks is an aeroshell, designed to protect the entire assembly against the heat of reentering the Earth's atmosphere. The plutonium fuel is also stored in a ceramic form that is heat-resistant, minimising the risk of vaporization and aerosolization. The ceramic is also highly insoluble.

it also notes that the LEM on Apollo 13 carried a RTG, and there was no sign of contamination after it re-entered and landed in the Tonga Trench. And that was a extreme outlier due to the high velocity it re-entered at being it was following a trans lunar trajectory.

So justify it. What is the expected number of excess cancer fatalities, given an LNT model, the known activity of NASA RTGs, and the explosion rate of deep space launches?

The people who protest these things expose themselves to orders of magnitude greater risk on their drive to the protest.

Most of the groups who strongly oppose this stuff are against any nuclear material whatsoever entering space. The reasons span beyond basic safety to opposing any combination of space programs with nuclear programs.

There are actually quite a few RTGs on Earth (most of them - IIRC - in remote Soviet-era outposts and such) that I'd be more concerned about; they tend to be in remote areas where maintenance is difficult.

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