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posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:07PM
from the interesting-but-not-surprising dept.
from the interesting-but-not-surprising dept.
Three of the four major candidates for United States president have responded to America's Top 20 Presidential Science, Engineering, Technology, Health and Environmental Questions. The nonprofit advocacy group ScienceDebate.org has posted their responses online. Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Jill Stein had all responded as of press time, and the group was awaiting responses from Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.
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U.S. Presidential Candidates Answer ScienceDebate 2016 Questions
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Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DECbot on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:46PM
2) Only Hillary has a pro-science stance. Too bad she never mentions nuclear energy as a responsible source for clean energy
Maybe she doesn't include nuclear energy because she has some insight about the character of the people appointed to be the responsible party for nuclear energy.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday September 14 2016, @01:56PM
I guess this problem is just insurmountable. There's nothing that a president could possibly propose to congress to change things. There is nobody on the planet [telegraph.co.uk] that can do this right. No technology [wikipedia.org] available that would be a better design. It doesn't matter who the secretary of energy is. There is no combination of regulation and public investment [scmp.com] that could possibly make it work [fortune.com]. Oh well. We should just give up [wired.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @02:06PM
Thorium reactors sound great.
But we've got such little practical experience with them that promoting them as any kind of solution to the risks of modern nuke design is not good policy. Explore, experiment, totally. But we are far from them being a viable option.
(Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:04PM
I understand that. I guess it's a good thing that China is doing that. Americans have become cowards who jump at their own shadow while China moves the state of the art forward.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:29PM
With all due respect I think it has more to do with the protestors in the USA being seen as a great yellow journalism topic to be encouraged via propaganda then the grandstanding politicians weigh in as if they are smart enough to say anything vs in China they just shoot the protestors.
Naturally in the USA the protestors are a major PR problem, and in China they merely slightly drive ammunition sales.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:03PM
It's actually more that China doesn't give a crap about pollution or consequences for the average citizen, since all projects like this would perforce be NIMBY for the CCP. That is, they are never affected by the consequences of their actions.
BTW the CCP's vision for the future is a horribly outdated caricature of 1930's modernism. As in, discredited in every other industrialized country with the possible exception of Russia.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bob_super on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:26PM
While the US's CEOs' vision for the future is too rarely past the next few quarters, and hardly ever as far as 5 years.
"When will a thorium reactor turn a profit? What's the ROI, and how will it affect the stock? Not interested."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:30PM
thorium reactors can be made into bombs. It is not as safe as you think.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Wednesday September 14 2016, @05:16PM
You know what else can be made into bombs? Bombs.
The USA makes god knows how many of those per year and no one seems to care about that.
(Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:00PM
Not easily. Liquid fueled thorium reactors have a very tight neutron economy. To make a bomb you'll have to shutdown a reactor, or at least spend many years making one. There are much more practical ways to make a bomb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @07:10PM
So can fertilizer.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:47PM
The problem is, everywhere we've looked carefully, whether the nuclear reactors are being run by a government or by a private company, unsafe procedures and shortcuts are taken. The design of the reactors could be improved, but that's not the basic problem The problem is the stuff is long-term dangerous, so it needs to be handled properly, but people aren't designed to properly evaluate long term risks. (They don't even do that well on short term risks, consider the popularity of betting on horse races or slot machines.)
With nuclear reactors, many "short cuts" will be safe 99 times out of 100, but the cost of it being unsafe is such that taking that short cut is an extremely unwise decision. However much of the cost of failure is not borne by those operating the plant, but is instead borne by the populace living around it. Or down stream from it, if it's on a river. So while it's true that even for those operating the plant the short cut is a bad decision, it's doesn't appear nearly as bad to them as it actually is.
If the plants were properly operated, and waste disposed of correctly (i.e. safely), then nuclear plants would be a good idea. As things are, however, it's usually a bad idea. (There are circumstances where they provide advantages that nothing else will match, and in some of those cases even their real costs [including appropriately discounted risks as a part of the costs] don't raise the cost to where they should not be used.)
OTOH, even under current operating conditions nuclear power is probably safer than coal.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday September 15 2016, @12:56AM
Under current operating conditions it's *certainly* safer than coal. It may even be safer than solar:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html [nextbigfuture.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday September 14 2016, @03:26PM
Nailed it in one.
The problem with nuclear (nook-you-lar) energy safety is not a problem with technology. It is a problem with corner cutting executive bonus maximizing MBAs or bureaucrats being in charge of a nuclear power plant.
The profit motive needs to be replaced by a safety motive. That safety motive probably exists to most levels of the power plant personnel. Except those at the very top. Safety is not a budget item on a spreadsheet that you can tweak.
The cost of an accident needs to be considered so unthinkable that it simply cannot be allowed to happen. Maybe there needs to be some kind of unthinkable personal consequences to those at the top if an accident is determined to be due to poor management.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:33PM
And, not just the nuclear industry:
my wife is an educational assistant with a public school board. On paper, a lot of the kids with special needs have one-to-one workers, but in reality don't.
There is one case she knows of where one person has 3 wheelchair bound kids on the second floor of the school.
If there is a fire, they are not supposed to use the elevator, so ONE person is in charge of getting 3 non-walking kids down the stairs and out the door.
And nothing will change unless those above are held responsible (and, of course, until something 'bad' happens...): then, maybe, something will change.
It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye: here's hoping it's the eye of someone in charge.
I told my wife she should start documenting EVERYTHING and COVER HER ASS.
also suggested reaching out to a news agency 'whistle blowing' person/website.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @04:39PM
Ya mean like requiring the MBA-types at the top of the company and their families to live right next door to the power plant? I think it may be worth trying.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14 2016, @06:41PM
Problem is the MBA types would still take risks. It's like the scorpion on the back of a fox being transported across the river.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday September 14 2016, @09:34PM
For every MBA encouraging taking shortcuts, there's an engineer and\or an independent contractor signing off plans & work they know to be unsafe and a dozen workers cutting short their end-of-shift inspections to rush home.
You want safety at work places? Put a camera at every work stations and stream it to the open internet. Not to a manager's office or a select group of government safety inspectors that can be bribed. Better yet, set-up a bounty system where a citizen can send a complaint with a time stamped picture and get rewarded financially from the offending party.
Make industry go through the same 1984 style surveillance motorists went through, and I assure that just like how people used to run at red lights and then stopped because of traffic cameras, so will industry stop cutting corners and paying bribes.
You can't change human nature. You can place enough incentives, checks & balances in oppositions to corruption and let greed take it's natural course.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 15 2016, @02:18PM
I doubt the people at the lower levels want to sign off on work they know to be unsafe.
So why would that happen?
Because they are pressured or coerced into doing so. And who is pressuring the 'grunts' to sign off on unsafe work? Those up the chain of penny pinching management that's who.
If you don't sign off on this unsafe work, I'll replace you with someone who will.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday September 16 2016, @12:08AM
I doubt the people at the lower levels want to sign off on work they know to be unsafe.
They do it all the time. It's a way to look like a team player. It's a way to get off inspections and cut the shift short.
High and low, humans are stupid. Those at the top just get more chances to REALLY fuck things up.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 16 2016, @07:28PM
> It's a way to look like a team player.
That just repeats what I said about: Because they are pressured or coerced into doing so.
Although it may be their direct co-workers.
The culture needs to be that if it isn't safe, being a team player is to report it and not sign off on it. It's only the MBAs that want it to get done NOW. When the shift ends, the shift ends. Whether something you are inspecting is safe or not should not affect an inspector's shift.
Inspectors of all people would not sign off on unsafe work unless under pressure to do so.
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(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday September 15 2016, @09:14PM
You want safety at work places? Put a camera at every work stations and stream it to the open internet. Not to a manager's office or a select group of government safety inspectors that can be bribed....You can't change human nature. You can place enough incentives, checks & balances in oppositions to corruption and let greed take it's natural course.
Then you get complaints and voter outrage about government regulations hurting business...
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 16 2016, @08:36AM
You are today's winner of the Internet for posting the correct answer to one of the world's great problems. I'd give you a donut but I don't have any.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].