The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

You just called the most responsible and safety-conscious industry in the country greedy and irresponsible.

You are so uninformed as to be irrelevant to the conversation. Get out.

Your country, perhaps. He was talking about germany. And it probably isn't sufficiently big news to go across the ocean, but Belgium has problems with their reactors too. The core of the problem being that many nuclear reactors open today were built decades ago, and are often horribly outdated.

As to risks, i'd compare it to airplanes. Low chance, big impact. Everyone's afraid of dying in an aircraft even though you're more likely to die on the way to the airport.

Furthermore, the most lethal industry is coal, where many thousands die every year due to abominable circumstances. And if you count global warming, the CO2 emitted by that is no less harmful than damage done by radiation.

In short, people fear nuclear power but don't fear stuff that's worse.

And you can't tolerate anything that goes against your familial bias. You're biased, irrevocably. To the point where you literally can't see the point colin is making, and you'd rather try and shout at him to go away instead of trying to understand what he was getting at.

"Get out."

I don't think you heard me. He's so ignorant in this situation that my bias is irrelevant. And my bias isn't a bias - it's lived experience in the field. These guys are the best in the world. Belgium sends its engineers to our nuke plants for advice on how to better maintain their reactors. Ours are older than their reactors in general, and we maintain better than anyone else (except maybe france - those guys are insane).

As to your last sentence: Yeah. It's a philosophical argument, not a logical one.

"My bias tells me he is so extremely wrong, so my bias is irrelevant because he is so extremely wrong".


So you say reactors that have cracks are not an issue. Great.

I heard you, I read you fine.

He isn't being ignorant. Your personal bias is showing. All accidents involving reactors in recent years have been due to older designs. Fukushima was what, 30 years old? While the press reports of TOXIC RADIATION IN OUR SEA was massively overblown (the accident wouldn't have long-term impact given the base levels of radiation present in the sea), and the main cause of damage were the natural disasters involved . . . it was still an older design that didn't hold up as well as a new design could've done.

The main argument anti-nuclear folks have going for them is that all the existing reactors are old. This is a valid argument, it's why they pressed Germany into discontinuing their nuclear programme. What we need are newer reactors, and we need people like you to stop pretending everything's fine just because you know some people that are good at their jobs.

I know people in nuclear, great people, who are good at their jobs. But that doesn't mean that the business side of things isn't run as a business. And a business is run to make money before anything else. Hence, greedy.

There are no cracks in Belgian nuclear reactors what are you talking about.
The neutral org to check it confirmed it.
The neutral org also confirmed in an internal audit it may be not so neutral and be influenced by political leaders that want to keep those reactors open.

But hey it's a lot cheaper to keep running an old nuclear plant then build a new more efficient safer one.
Looking at the news those reactors been more off lately then running cause of issues.
Maybe the decommision date of those plants might be there for a reason, and we shouldn't ignore that.

But hey I'm not a politician so I won't get on the board of directors of the energysupplier that operates the plant when my political career is over.

So yeah they should just decommision those old nuclear plants, build 1 new one and replace capacity of the second one with green energy if you would ask me.

Why build a new nuclear plant when the old one works just fine? The reactors here in the US aren't in any danger of failing due to age or other issues any time soon. The efficiency of newer reactors isn't really better than the older ones - there's no real reason to build newer ones at this point. It's perfectly safe to maintain the old ones.
It's also practical.

Green energy doesn't produce enough steady energy to supplement a nuclear reactor. Nuclear is the best power source we have by a long shot.

This isn't bias. I worked in one of these places. This is how they live their lives: Safety first. I couldn't have been more safety-conscious if I had tattooed it on my forehead. The punishment for screwing up the basics of a nuke plant are severe and immediate. The security is incredibly tight (esp. after 9/11).

The older design didn't hold out because at least one of the plant engineers didn't do his job right. They didn't anticipate the worst case scenario. Human error is a thing.

We don't NEED newer reactors - we WANT newer reactors. The old ones (some obvious exceptions) hold up just fine. They were built to last.

Germany has fallen for so many *this is totally valid* arguments over the years that I'm not even sure why we are bringing them up anymore. The US and France are the current nuke leaders. Reference them, not the leeches in Germany.

Indeed

In other news:

So Ted Cruz and John Kasich have dropped out. Unless the GOP delegates take the nuclear option, Donald Trump is the Republican Party's nominee.

There is no option. It's almost out of their control.

That said, I can see a candidate out of left field trying to scoop up delegates at a second ballot, but I doubt t it will make it that far.

Yes, the delegates still have one more option: voting to unbind themselves on the first ballot so that they can vote for whoever they want.

My two cents regarding nuklear reactors ... people should stop using them .. frankly i don' t care about the safety measures .. because what happens when a core still gets damaged we have seen 2 times now and the effects will last for centuries ... goddarn lifetimes !
and even worse people still didn't find a way to propperly get rid of the radioactive waste other than dumping them into abandoned saltmines were the stuff continues to radiate again for friggin lifetimes ... THIS is insane ...

Looks like Trump is now the only republican candidate left, others ended up dropping out. So hooray, Hillary vs. Trump, awesome /s

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/04/politics/donald-trump-republican-nomination/
Rip: didn't see Stuart's previous post.

In trump we trust

Gif doesn't work on mobile android sucks

I like how one of the radio hosts I occasionally listen to said it: the GOP has two options - embrace Trump and hope he knows his stuff, or fracture the GOP for good if they deny Trump the primary.

http://www.gobankingrates.com/savings-account/62-percent-americans-under-1000-savings-survey-finds/

If this is true well that doesn't seem healthy.

50% has no savings and 85% cant pay a bill. Reassuring