FirmWeird
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User ID: 757
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
20d ago
It's the only alternative that can work anywhere on the Earth's surface on a calm, cold night.
"Work" is the key sticking point here - does it provide enough energy to pay for itself? To pay for the extraction of the raw material from the ground, refinement into usable fuel pellets, transportation to the plant, the construction of the plant, the lives of the people who run it and then on top of that provide usable power for the rest of the society that sustains it? The answer is, at present, "No."
That's the entire basis of my objection - even if you just handwave away the problem of storing dangerous radioactive waste that lasts for millenia and hope it doesn't leak into the rest of the environment, nuclear just can't pay for itself. Every single existing nuclear program I'm aware of is made viable on the basis of government subsidies or exploitation (i.e. the hilarious prices France paid for Nigerian uranium). Every single proposed nuclear program that doesn't have these problems (fusion, molten salt, thorium, etc) is 20 years in the future, and has been 20 years in the future for the past 60 years.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
20d ago
I have, and I have eaten numerous downvotes for it. My point has always been that nuclear energy has too low an EROEI to be a viable answer to the energy needs of a modern industrial society, and I haven't seen any convincing evidence to the contrary. France's nuclear system was only viable because they got their uranium for cents on the franc from Nigeria, and even then it ran out of money and had to be restructured when I was posting about it last. This doesn't necessarily mean that there's no place for nuclear power - having a source of power that isn't reliant on fossil fuels could prove to be particularly useful in a future where fossil fuels are harder to come boy or the Middle East is in a state of war. Similarly, nuclear submarines which don't actually have to make enough money to justify their continued existence but place a huge emphasis on the density of their energy source are another good use for them. If China actually manages to get those molten salt reactors working, that would be fantastic as well. But right now I haven't seen any convincing evidence that nuclear power is a sustainable answer to the depletion of fossil fuels - and a large graveyard of failed attempts.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
20d ago
I'd expect something like the redditor response to John McCain's death in that case, where they acknowledged that they disagreed with him entirely, but still really respected him and are sad that he is dead.
The only reason "redditors" liked John McCain was that he was anti-Trump - I don't believe redditors are real people (in many cases they aren't, especially the ones posting from Eglin AFB). John McCain was a terrible human being and lent his support to pointless wars that lead to disastrous consequences while sticking his snout in the trough and slurping up a bunch of the profits made as a result. He served in a pointless, failed war of aggression as part of a military that committed truly awful and evil deeds (evil might be a bit hyperbolic, but when I look at the children of Agent Orange I find it hard to find other words). He was substantially worse than Charlie Kirk who, to the best of my knowledge, didn't actively support or fight any wars as odious as the Vietnam war and wasn't a beneficiary of corporate corruption.
The feeling does not go both ways.
I think that you're looking at different sections of the populace. There are absolutely figures on the right that I can respect - Ron Paul and Thomas Massie are two that come to mind for me. But I'm not really representative of the circles on the left that are calling for total republican death, in the same way you aren't representative of the parts of the right that talk about the day of the rope with bated breath. I don't think there's really anything to gain from comparing the worst segments of either side of politics - we can compare the power levels of Patrick Crusius and Tyler Robinson until the cows come home, but I don't think there's much useful information to be gained from doing so.
I don't believe that this endorsement of violence is a partisan phenomenon - there are increasing levels of radicalisation on both sides of politics because the normal, traditional methods of deciding these disputes is hopelessly gridlocked and dysfunctional. Politics as usual are simply unable to address the increasingly intractable problems faced by the average person, and political violence is on the rise because desperate people see no other way to actually get their problems addressed. Political violence of every flavour is going to be a growth industry for as long as the mechanisms of regular politics remain as worthless and nonfunctional as they are today.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
23d ago
I do think a problem that the GOP hasn't solved yet is how to get their voters motivated to show up when Trump isn't on the ballot.
I'm not an American so you can take my analysis with a few flakes of artisanal sea salt, but as one of the people who fall into the category of "Would have voted for Trump but not for republicans" I can tell you that the problem is actually extremely easy to solve.
What drew people to Trump was his repudiation of politics-as-usual and the beltway consensus. In order for Republicans to get this demographic to show up to the polls, they can't rely on the same tired culture war distractions - they need to deliver on actual change that improves the material conditions of the people they want to vote for them. Contrary to the opinions of a lot of shrill left wing commentators, these people are not interested in deportations for the purposes of pointless cruelty towards brown people (I mean sure, some of them are) but because they have been legitimately harmed by the importation of a vast illegal labour force who are not under the protection of existing workplace relations law and drive wages down below the floor. The outsourcing of productive manufacturing and the growing financialisation of the economy, vast amounts of H1B visa abuse, illiterate Indians mowing down families while driving trucks they aren't qualified for, the entrenchment of corruption and rent-seeking - all of these policies have immense costs which have been borne by the people who showed up to push Trump over the finish line in 2016 and 2024.
Trump himself, despite seeming to understand these policies and why people hate them, has completely ignored these people and their priorities since being elected. Calling affordability a democrat scam is the latest in a line of recent moments where Trump is fucking over the people who supported him, coming hot on the heels of his newfound support for illegal immigrant labor and the mass importation of Chinese students in order to preserve the elite universities which hate him. Cost of living relief? No, 50 year mortgages! Trump's new priorities seem to be selling pardons to fraudsters and drug traffickers, sending more money to Israel, making criticism of Israel verboten (my position on Israel isn't widely shared on here, but the actual valence doesn't matter for this point - I don't think even the Israel supporters will deny that it has been a huge focus of the current administration) and getting ready for war with Venezuela, the exact kind of stupid war that Trump got into office by opposing. This is to say nothing of the incredibly sloppy handling of the Epstein files - if Trump wasn't going to release them, stirring up his base and making them believe he would is an incredibly short-sighted move given the gravity of what they contain.
While Trump is torching his own base and movement, it isn't like the democrats are going to do anything to stop him or even mount any kind of effective opposition. The last democrat politician to actually inspire people and even win an election was Zohran Mamdani, and the DNC went out of their way to try and make sure he lost. The reasons why are extremely obvious as well - they're taking donations and benefiting from the same corruption that Trump claimed to oppose and promised to fight, and a left wing that actually fought for the people would be a death sentence for a left wing that exists to enrich Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio.
Ultimately the election is still the republican's to lose - the DNC is currently blowing itself up and destroying their own relevance. All it would take is for the republicans to actually deliver on the agenda they promised... but at the moment that seems like a very tall order.
I actually mentioned this in an earlier post. If they can safely generate power with a good EROEI, great!
You're right that there's definitely a political aspect holding nuclear power back - the fact that you can't find enough subsaharan africans with degrees in advanced nuclear physics to meet diversity requirements most definitely imposes an additional cost on American/European nuclear power efforts. But some of those policy restrictions are actually extremely sensible and following them imposes lower costs on society as a whole. Take nuclear waste for example - if you can just throw your highly radioactive waste into the river, fucking the nearby ecosystem and causing a massive spike in cancer for every living thing that is connected to that river (which is more than you'd think if you haven't studied ecology) you've actually created a problem that will be substantially more expensive to fix than simply following the regulation. Building nuclear reactors on earthquake fault lines is in fact a bad idea, as is building them in floodplains or directly next to the sea. Your nuclear reactor should also be built to rigorous construction standards rather than relying on cheap contractors who half-arse everything and replace a bunch of structural cement with styrofoam to reduce construction costs.
Do all of those regulations impose additional costs? Absolutely. But at the same time, they prevent much larger and more expensive consequences from showing up later. I'm not going to deny that some of those regulations are bad - mandating that half of your construction workers are women of colour imposes additional costs for negative benefit. But I don't think many people can accurately determine which regulations fall into the former category and which fall into the latter.
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