Political Discussion Thread

General Discussion Off-Topic
#7632

So I seriously don’t know if I’m misreading this sentence. I can’t tell if it’s genuine and we’re talking about banning fracking or if it’s sarcastic because emissions are going down.

My understanding of why people are anti fracking has… very little to do with greenhouse emissions though. I always thought the issue was the chemicals they’re injecting into the bedrock getting into underground water tables, and/or potentially causing geological issues.

Like I remember a lot of people being able to light their tapwater on fire as it came out of the tap…

I don’t know if this comes off as confrontational I’m just… actually factually confused :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes
#7633

Heh. I remember talking to a friend of my dad’s once who helped build the AGR power plant that’s just down the road from me. It’s cooled with CO2, so won’t blow up in the way Chernobyl did, but that means it’s a lot less efficient. Anyway, among other… lax practices on the building team, the one I remember him describing in particular was running out of super alloy steel to weld the pipes (needed to resist corrosion), so just using ordinary steel files. Not great.

Aahh, it’s a wonderful promise with just so many damn problems.

In the UK experiments with nuclear power have left us with a series of rarely noted and pretty ghastly messes… As I understand it the water used to store our spent fuel is mostly dumped in the Irish sea (though that’s a fine tradition with anything we want to get rid of).

My grandpa was an engineer at Dounreay in Scotland, which is now in the process of decommissioning, but it isn’t predicted to get to a brownfield site until about 2300… three cheers for the government that can put in an effective 300-year management plan.

He did have a lot of fun there, but also described practices which don’t give me hope, including throwing fuel and coolant (sodium and potassium) into a deep shaft, which then flooded, caused a violent reaction, and littered the area with radioactive particles. But hey, it is a very out of the way place and it’s only Scotland! I suspect his frivolous gallivanting with isotopes probably didn’t help his later cancers but that’s speculation and like I said he did have an awful lot of fun.

He was working on a Fast Breeder reactor which is definitely the best hope for nuclear power in my humble and extremely uneducated opinion. 3rd generation designs like integral fast reactors are a pretty exciting prospect which could deal with the waste issue… but that’s still pretty theoretical, and the demands of a Fast Breeder reactor that we’ve tried (like at Dounreay) - using a combination of liquid sodium and potassium as coolant - are extraordinarily difficult to meet, even if you don’t have workers making do with impure steel or throwing everything into mine shafts.

There are lots of unsubtle / generalised scare stories about nuclear power that deserve short shrift and it’s troubling when they’re used to forestall research (which is what happened with integral fast reactor designs in the US), but at the same time, the current state of things is pretty worrying. I’m not dead set against it at all, goddamn I wish it could deliver what it promises - but there are some seriously troubling features and unsolved problems in the industry as things stand… alas. Coal sucks too of course, no arguments there.

3 Likes
#7634

Honestly, I think you’ve rather pointed out the same thing that made me come around here, namely that what most people consider a nuclear reactor due to military standardization from the previous century isn’t the only option. Sodium cooled reactors are very much a thing, and remove one of the biggest risk factors in regards to nuclear power. Further, the capacity to burn nuclear waste in and of itself is a huge deal.

And while the technology may not be fully mature, it isn’t new either. It dates back to what, a bit after the middle of the previous century, implementation wise? I think we might actually still have one or two around.

1 Like
#7635

They are… but among other difficulties (liquid sodium is a tricky material to handle) they require truly massive amounts of perfect stainless steel piping - and making that work in reality just isn’t possible. It was one of those issues where the (rather humorous in its clichedness) gap between the visions of scientists/theoretical physicists and the practical knowledge of engineers drive the latter up the wall. (My friend at JET is having exactly the same issue actually, heh).

You’re right, attempts to get this tech working have been going on a long time (like Dounreay, which was set up in 1955), and haven’t really been successful yet. They have supplied power but the problems are… manifold. It may be a lot more successful in the future, but utopian dreams are the reverse and equivalent of dystopian scare stories - it’s easy to lose sight of the practicalities. Hopefully Fast Breeder reactors will improve. And, hey, there’s always JET! In 30 years…

2 Likes
#7636

I’ll try to remember to take a look in more detail later, I have to admit I was mostly looking at feasibility by checking if it had been done rather than any details when I was glancing over the topic. I freely admit I’m disappointed if it can’t even outcompete our current rather abysmal options.

2 Likes
#7637

There are a lot of folks talking up fast breeders right now. The last time I checked Wonkypedia for actual FBR installations (current and pending) there were very few and at least one of the pending ones I’d seen referenced as an example had actually been cancelled.

Part of that is - at least historically - FBRs were how you got the fuel for nuclear weapons, and that was considered a Bad Thing™. I think some of the current crop of proposals to use existing waste with a different set of reactions have issues around controlling the process (particularly start/stop)?

4 Likes
#7638

The rest of this post did not go how I expected.

2 Likes
#7639

I was certainly aware of the double meaning while writing that post, yes. Someone needs to come up with a RABBIT solution for FBRs so we can make jokes about breeding like… well, rabbits.

4 Likes
#7640

Well, it is valentine’s day.

3 Likes
#7641

:broken_heart: :heart: :broken_heart: :heart: :broken_heart: :heart: :broken_heart: :heart:

Couldn’t resist the title of this article, and it does make for some interesting reading (especially some of the demographic numbers):

Thoughts?

3 Likes
#7642

So, I’m not sure where else to get opinions on things that perplex me, and am therefore turning to y’all.

I’m all for population control, and for making points in interesting and creative ways, but I’m doubtful this will accomplish either. Thoughts?

1 Like
#7643

Following the article, Buttigieg’s numbers are going to take a steep decline, while Biden should recover. Quite possible and it’s been pointed out more than once that Iowa and New Hampshire barely make for 1 % of the electorate. So, I’ll once again quote @TemetNosce who famously said:
tumblr_n0ste4rnd21qc4wydo2_250

Drat, wrong quote! Another try:

Ha! That’s the one.

I think the point of the bill isn’t population control, but to show, for once, the male part of the populace how it is when the state restricts their reproductive rights. And since Alabama is a state where a bunch of religious older male lawmakers answered the question: ‘Should the victim of a rapist be forced to give birth to his spawn?’ with ‘Yes’ instead of a resounding ‘WTF?! Are you nuts?! This ain’t the middle ages!’, Alabama may be the right place to propose that bill.
It makes a point, but that point isn’t population control. It won’t accomplish much, except a few headlines, though.

4 Likes
#7644

I know that, but I doubt the people that point targets will get it. As you said:

I think I’m perplexed because it’s the sort of roundabout point making that you wouldn’t think would be well received. It’s almost like subtle teasing.

3 Likes
#7645

When the choice is “bitch loudly and make sure everyone notices” or “enjoy your thumb up your ass”, the most American option, regardless of party, is the bitching.

4 Likes
#7646

It depends really, lawmakers, particularly state ones may hate eachother less than the public does. Teasing may very well be a valid way of persuasion in some cases. They used to be actually relatively amiable, given they were essentially one social group up until Gingrich.

That all said, I generally expect such bills (and it’s not the first one) to be more PR stunt than seriously expected to change the political calculus.

3 Likes
#7647

Count me as very pro-fracking (because, reasons) and pro-nukes. Both the power plants, and weapons for home defense.

#7648

Care to expound on the fracking bit? I’m honestly curious because I don’t know a lot about it, but honestly it being “another way to get fossil fuels that increase CO2 emissions” is less of a deal to me to the impacts on the local geology/ecology/water table. That being said, I’ll absolutely admit my only knowledge of it comes from (I think) a John Oliver bit from a few years back that has issues with the chemicals and then gas seepage through the holes, and an increase in sink holes in some areas. I’m rpretty anti-fracking because based on what I know about it and where these sites tend to get set up, I think it ■■■■■ rural people more than anyone else as well as their environment and way of living.

Edit: Just tried to youtube for a john oliver fracking bit. The closest I can come is his segment on North Dakota and unregulated oil stuff, so I’m not entirely sure where I saw the piece I remember most of it from.

#7649

Fracking isn’t nearly as dangerous as nuclear power - at lest on the larger scale… it does appear to affect human health and potentially ground water, but in practical terms, that’s arguably the cost of wanting to drink from the unpleasant cup of fossil fuels. It has advantages over coal, like… pretty much every other source of power does lol. I would much rather live by a fracking site or a nuclear plant (which I guess I do now, although much of ours is being wound down 'cause the cooling rods have cracked) than a coal power station.

With both nuclear and fracking there are misleading scare stories - and, with both, people who are in favour tend to leverage the more ridiculous of those stories to dismiss very legitimate concerns (not accusing anybody here, it’s just how public debates tend to go… you’ve hopefully forgotten me ranting about a pro-nuclear power documentary I watched a while back, which got itself firmly marked, ‘specious as ■■■■’).

2 Likes
#7650

I agree with the overall sentiment but have issue with this bit-

Most of the people affected by fracking sites in the US ala drinking water live in rural areas where they don’t get their water from city/local government, but from natural springs/wells piped into their home. Even better, a lot of those places don’t own the mineral rights to their land because coal/gas/oil companies bought them for pennies on the dollar 40-80 years ago, so they don’t really have much say in what the companies do in their own backyard. It’s a… super grim situation that’s quite a bit worse than even the gas wells around my area, but with a lot of the same rationale. Doesn’t matter if you support it or not if grand-dad needed some cash to lean on in the 40’s :confused:

1 Like
#7651

Oh no I get that, I was making a more general point that our (collective) reliance on fossil fuels is often going to ■■■■ people up, whether it’s where they’re extracted or where they’re burnt (your chances of getting leukaemia are vastly increased if you live next to a coal power station). That process rarely goes on with the joy or desire of its residents, which is why I got absolutely livid at the friends who decided to take a proposed local offshore windfarm as their personal crucifixes because it “spoiled the view”.

2 Likes