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https://www.yahoo.com/news/switzerland-votes-phase-nuclear-energy-121710224.html
Swiss voters have backed government plans to replace the power from ageing nuclear reactors with renewable energy.
A total of 58.2 per cent of voters supported the phaseout of nuclear energy in a binding referendum on Sunday. Under the Swiss system of direct democracy, voters have the final say on major policy issues.
The plan will provide billions of pounds in subsidies for renewable energy, ban the construction of nuclear plants and decommission the country’s five existing ones, which produce about a third of the country’s electricity.
[...] The move echoes efforts across Europe to reduce dependence on nuclear energy and has been in the making following Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011. Germany has announced it will close all nuclear plants by 2022 and Austria banned it decades ago.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:20AM (16 children)
... to see that the left still has its anti-science (nuclear power, GMOs, and vaccines bad) contingent.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:38AM (1 child)
I blame Mr. Einstein:
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Socialism%3F [wikipedia.org]
-- https://daily.jstor.org/albert-einstein-the-anti-racist/ [jstor.org]
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein [wikipedia.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:21AM
Give all your money to SoylentUtopia and trust super-intelligent Philosopher-God-King NiggerCommando will decide how to redistribute the wealth and who among us shall be conscripted into staff jobs.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Lagg on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:43AM (5 children)
Favoring renewable energy is anti-science?
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:09AM (4 children)
No, pay attention:
Seem familiar?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:15AM
Nuclear energy is a science; coal is a technology; renewables are a sad.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:37AM (2 children)
1879: "Mr.Benz, that internal combustion engine is a waste of time.
Everybody knows that steam is the thing."
1885: "Mr.Benz, that horseless carriage will never replace real horses."
Stand in the way of progress, denying the future, and you're liable to get run over.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by scarboni888 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:01PM
1895: "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" – Lord Kelvin, British Mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2017, @08:23AM
- Nikola Tesla, over a century ago
(Score: 2, Troll) by kaszz on Tuesday May 23 2017, @01:45AM (4 children)
There certainly are nuclear technology that can be safe and efficient. The problem is people, especially the type of the MBA, PHB, sales, marketing, managers etc. As long as they are in the loop, it won't be safe. And then screening of engineers that "I'm just going to test.." Chernobyl.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:53AM (1 child)
Since Capt. Obvious [soylentnews.org] hasn't weighed in I'll mention that the RBMK designs had significant flaws that contributed to the seriousness of the disaster--among them the inadequate containment structure and the positive void coefficient--and that they were created in a planned economy in which concerns about sales and marketing ought not to have pertained.
http://insp.pnnl.gov/-profiles-reactors-rbmk.htmhttp://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-23/news/mn-15781_1_design-flaws [pnnl.gov]
http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-23/news/mn-15781_1_design-flaws [latimes.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient [wikipedia.org]
I don't think you meant to use Chernobyl as an example of harmful sales or marketing practices, but you seem to be saying that one engineer unilaterally decided to do a test. I've heard otherwise:
-- http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/cause/ [chernobylgallery.com]
-- http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/appendices/chernobyl-accident-appendix-1-sequence-of-events.aspx [world-nuclear.org]
It seems not to have been the "hold my beer" situation you depict (perhaps in jest?) but it was bad enough.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:45AM
The point isn't the reactor but the behavior.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:20AM (1 child)
Hmmm, so in this reactor design the MBAs, PHBs, et al., are actually inside the loop? Are they used strictly for heat transfer or can they also drive a turbine? This sounds like a promising area of research.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:35AM
Redacting testing protocols, skipping on maintenance, not buying proper equipment, keeping to small staff or uneducated, wrong priorities etc.. The usual.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:24AM (2 children)
I haven't noticed that nuclear power is either left or right.
Are you saying that nuclear power is "good"? I don't really think you can make a case for that. Nuclear power is better than no power. Our civilization would have to be rebuilt to cope with no power. Nuclear power is arguably better than coal power, at least it's not dumping tons of pollutants into the atmosphere 24/7/365. But, it's hard to make a case that nuclear is "good". The US, Russia, and Japan each has a history of nuclear accidents. The accidents are far to damned serious to shrug off. The next accident COULD cost a million lives, and make an entire state uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
Nuclear power is not the best of all possible alternatives. The best alternative really is renewable. We don't yet have the technology to harvest power reliably out of the air, but it's coming. Solar panels have been around for most of my life now. The first ones were little more than novelties, really. Big, clunky, ugly panels that could keep a lead-acid battery charged, most of the time, unless you had three or four cloudy days in a row. Today, they are getting more efficient, and a lot less ugly. Not to mention, a lot cheaper. Whether it takes another twenty years, fifty, or a hundred years, one day, renewables will be about all there is.
And, THAT is a "good thing". All the power you want or need, with zero pollution. No crap running into the sea, nothing blowing in the wind, then falling on your head with the rain. No poisons in the ground, waiting to be harvested with your garden vegetables. And, best of all, no radiation mutating your kids and the wildlife into unrecognizable creatures from your worst nightmares. Just clean, pure energy, at your fingertips.
Maybe I'm a little overly optimistic, but I think you'll admit that "the best of all possible worlds" would have zero pollutants from any energy source. That isn't happening in my lifetime, and probably not in any Soylentil's lifetime - but that doesn't mean it can never happen.
Salutes to all the people who are helping such a future to happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @06:36AM
In my opinion there is an astroturfing campaign in effect to try to frame nuclear as a standard right wing view. I generally post on more conservative sites to try to keep myself balanced, and have noticed a sharp spike -out of nowhere- amount of pro-nuclear propaganda, for lack of a more nuanced term. It's also generally framed in a sharply partisan fashion, "leftists are anti-science"/anti-energy, etc. There's 0 basis in reality for the position, but I think the number 1 rule of American politics is that frame things in a political fashion and people turn into mind-blanked followers.
At the same time there is an intentional misinformation campaign about renewables being propagated. For instance cloudy days are supposed to drop the output of solar percent to near 0%, even under optimal conditions a solar panel might be enough to keep a flash light turned on, etc. The entire rhetoric is trying to formulate some sort of a machismo 'nuclear is for men', 'renewables are for soy latte sippin' tree huggers.'
(Score: 2) by Alphatool on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:09AM
No, it really couldn't. There is no mechanism that could possibly kill more than a few thousand people from an incident at a nuclear power plant. Even a worst case (i.e. well beyond design basis) accident or sabotage is highly unlikely to cause more than 100 fatalities. Once you start looking at a realistic accident in a western nuclear power plant then everyone walks away unharmed. The plant might never restart, but everyone who worked there or lived nearby would be absolutely fine.
If you don't believe me, there has been lots of research on what can happen (e.g. here [candu.org], here [inl.gov] or here [nrc.gov] as a starting point, but there is plenty of detailed information in the scientific literature and also in publications from regulators if you want to find out more) and we also have thousands of reactor-years experience to look at. In all of that time there have only been 3 major nuclear accidents at power plants - Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island. Chernobyl killed less than 100 people, Fukushima killed 0 but hurt a handful and everyone was fine at Three Mile Island. All three incidents were tragic in their own way and nobody should ever die at work, but in the scheme of industrial accidents they're a long way down the list.
Chernobyl and Fukushima both have exclusion zones around them, but the zones are political constructs rather than actually being uninhabitable areas. Worst case, living there might slightly increase your risk of cancer - a far smaller increase than comes from smoking - and with active decontamination and dose minimization programs even this potential increase in cancer risk could be avoided. I won't provide references for this part, but if you really doubt it you can go visit the exclusion zones and see for yourself. If they were truly uninhabitable this just wouldn't be possible.