Progressives (Liberals)

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

BTW, France is wedged to the hip with its nuclear industrial complex.

But now France is trying, In short, to make the famous "Make Planet Great Again" a reality with the "multiannual energy programming" (PPE)

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Macron is trying to reconcile the French with capitalism. It's a work in progress...

I see our economy is far too regulated, and yours far too unregulated. There's a sweet spot in the middle somewhere. To get there, America needs to steer left, and France right.

Interesting observations. My impression is that we have for a few decades been moving left at a far greater rate than France is moving right, and that some reversals are now required ( the sweet spot is likely a bit behind us).

Olivier5 wrote:

BTW, France is wedged to the hip with its nuclear industrial complex. We're not going to get rid of them anytime soon but they need some heavy restructuring and taming. AREVA did not serve France well at all with its EPR design, a white elephant of some proportion. They can't built it at the price they signed for, leading to long delays and massive cost overun. And they managed to sell it to Finland and the UK as well, saddling the French state and thus its people with billions in liability as a result.

Thanks, that's interesting. I'm aware that France long ago settled on a fairly uniform design for pressurized water reactors (PWRs) that have proven themselves very safe, efficient, and reliable. We have about 10 boiling water reactors in our inventory that are less so, but still OK. The rest are PWRs. (Hyman Rickover liked PWRs too, and that's what powered my ship.)

Our current problem is that we have (I suspect deliberately) made the permitting process for new reactors so complex, and of uncertain timing, that the conditions required for the up front 5 billion dollar capital investment can't be met. We had six plants in varying stages of design and construction a decade ago and all have been abandoned, chiefly due to permitting delays. This may also be a factor in the recent events in France to which you referred.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:
BTW, France is wedged to the hip with its nuclear industrial complex.
But now France is trying, In short, to make the famous "Make Planet Great Again" a reality with the "multiannual energy programming" (PPE)

Is that something from the Paris accord on AGW?

I've read that the Biblical tale of the Tower of Babel in Genesis was, in a slightly different version, also present in the Epic regarding the Mesopotamian ruler Gilgamesh written centuries before. The story may arguably reveal something enduring about human nature and our desire to create all embracing "solutions". I think most Europeans today (and American Democrats) should read it again and reflect.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Is that something from the Paris accord on AGW?

That's the program Macron announced - I'd thought, you were referring to it.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:
Don't worship a piece of paper.

I agree: it is good advice. Moreover, like the French, we have been flexible in our application of those founding principles.

Flexibility is indeed important, as is abidance to core values and principle. That's not because human nature changes, or should be changed (it should not, other than by Darwinian evolution). It's because societies do change. Beliefs, technology, politics, wars, etc. constantly change and affect human societies. So the law cannot remain unchanged among all this historical fury.

Paraphrasing an ancient Jewish sage, the Law was made for Man, and not Man for the Law.

So it stands to reason, for instance, that the law -- including a fundamental law aka constitution -- should be regularly updated to take into account technological progress. Believe it or not, neither the Hamurabi code nor the US constituion did say anything against the posession, use and trade of Plutonium 238, unlike modern states do regulate radioactive or fissible nuclear material for obvious security reasons.

The same apply to machines that can mow dozens if not hundreds of people per Las Vegas minute. I would be more than happy if your literlism re. the US constitution and the second ammendment extended to its logical conclusion, that the founders authorized folks to wear muskets, pikes, and swords. I'm kind of fine with an unregulated musket market.

Quote:

I wrote that because I believe most of our current problems are, in major part, traceable to our departures from those original principles, and most of the remedies I think needed involve a (perhaps selective) return to them. Perhaps even more influential in my motivation is my concern that the emerging socialist left in our politics will seek to rapidly erode those founding principles even more, and that their principal advocates have cast them aside entirely.

Your current problems are due to forgetting the wisdom of FDR, rather. The last truly great American generation in my mind dates back to the 1930's and 1940's. JFK and his brother Bob and MLK were also great, but somebody killed them.

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@Walter Hinteler,

The future of nuclear energy is the main issue of the PPE. French electricity is dependent on nuclear power, which weighs about 70% in the French electricity mix.
The government wants to reduce this share to 50% by 2035.
To achieve this, it is necessary to close about 12 reactors, in addition to the two in Fessenheim (whose closure has already been approved). In total, France has 58 reactors, spread over 19 power plants. The main targets are power plants that have been in operation for more than 40 years.

(As an aside: the first and only {French] nuclear reactor I've seen was that of Le Redoutable, in September 1970, in Cherbourg, before it was transferred to the arsenal de Brest. Which was kind of funny, since I had to translate unknown French terms and words to -for me- outlandish German words and terms.)

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@Walter Hinteler,

I am skeptical on winding down nuclear energy agressively. I think we can invest seriously in alternatives (wind, solar) while keeping most of the existing plants running. The only other alternative is pumping carbon in the atmosphere.

Whether we should invest in a new generation of plants is of course much more an open question. If Areva hadn't flunked the EPR I would tend to say yes, but right now I don't trust this design, the product of an anarchic leadership put it place I believe during Sarko's times. So perhaps it's an opportunity to move to renewables faster and more radically.

I guess they will end up building a few functional EPR, like 2 or 3 and run them well past 2050. For two reasons: 1 nuclear power is more reliable than renewables, easier to produce and modulate at will, so it can complement renewables. And 2 to keep the know-how, just in case. The French hate the idea of losing a métier, and maintain a minimal capacity in a multidude of old crafts, useful in fashion for instance or when you need to repair a cathedral. Likewise, the idea will prevail that France cannot lose the nuclear métier, I would imagine.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Thanks. Your guess was right.

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@Olivier5,

The general estimate of how much variable electrical power (wind & solar) can be sustained on a 24/7/365 grid is about 25% tops. New (unexpected by me at least) breakthroughs in efficient energy storage could raise that estimate. The cost of wind and solar has come down somewhat in the last decade and we should continue as much competition as can be achieved with the existing government subsidies) to reduce it further. If this is done the inefficiencies of energy storage ( ~ 50% recoverable) will matter less.

I agree a combination of Nuclear power and renewables (wind, solar & hydro) is the best solution both economically and for the environment. Unfortunately most self-styled environmentalists oppose the nuclear portion ( evidently they prefer to see people freeze in the dark.)

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@georgeob1,

What they prefer is to NOT see their kids glow in the dark. The problem of necular waste hasent been solved. Bury it? Hell they have lost track of waste that was buried 80 years ago. How are they going to keep track of it for 1000 years?

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

most self-styled environmentalists oppose the nuclear portion

The Fukushima melt down did scare people quite a lot. It's important to realize that there is nowadays among the general public a lack of trust in experts, including of course nuclear energy experts. You can resent that all you want but it's a fact of modern life. Post truthism and all this crap.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Unfortunately most self-styled environmentalists oppose the nuclear portion ( evidently they prefer to see people freeze in the dark.)

If someone is against nuclear power, she/he doesn't necessarily have to be an environmentalist, not even a self-styled.

Even in the USA, it is almost forgotten that the anti-nuclear power movement is of American origin - the world's first successful anti-nuclear initiative began in California in 1958 and was directed against the nuclear power project at Bodega Bay north of San Francisco.

Long forgotten today is also the fact that the first major European demonstrations against planned nuclear power plants - albeit unsuccessfully there - took place in France in 1971 and were in French action directe traditions: the occupation of the construction site in Alsace's Fessenheim on 12 April 1971 and shortly afterwards an even greater mass demonstration at the Bugey reactor construction site on the Rhône. On 28 December 1971, representatives of some 50 anti-nuclear initiatives from various countries met in Strasbourg; an anti-nuclear international was in the making.

It were farmers and winegrowers from the region (mainly members of the 1971 founded "Upper Rhine Action Committee against environmental hazards from nuclear power plants" [Oberrheinisches Aktionskomitee gegen Umweltgefährdung durch Kernkraftwerke] who occupied the site of the planned Wyhl nuclear power plant in 1975: the first major illegal anti-nuclear demonstration in Germany.

As a result of the oil price crisis, the 70s of the 20th century created a new awareness of the finiteness of raw materials. They were literally the birth years of organised environmental protection (and the design of the international symbol for recycling also dates from this period).

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Nuclear power was a mostly frightening, and not yet needed, source of electrical power in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Early efforts focused on carbon moderated reactors designed for the production of plutonium for weapons, but were soon applied to electrical power generation as well, particularly in the Soviet Union. However the widespread economic growth that that been building steadily since the end of WWII changed the fact and perception of the need for nuclear powered electrical generating stations.

Early efforts in the 1950s to build such plants were beset by local fears and some still unresolved plant design and engineering features. Various types of reactors were developed around the world. France the UK, Canada and the U.S. pursued a family of new designs, but by the early 1960s the Western nations had (mostly) settled on the then new Pressurized Water (PWR) reactors that dominate the world's production today. They are a good deal safer than the carbon moderated or boiling water reactor designs that still persisted through the 1970s ( but longer in the USSR) . This design has proven safe and reliable in now widespread use for almost 50 years. Moreover the, now almost universal, use of concrete and steel containment buildings around them have proved to be fully able to contain radioactive materials - without any public exposure - even in the unlikely event of a complete reactor meltdown.

Parenthetically, The Fukushima reactors were of an earlier Boiling water design; were badly designed with respect to the elevation of critical components on a shoreline facing a huge geological subduction zone; and were carelessly operated with, in some cases, twice the design limit of spent fuel stored above the reactors. Absent any one of these factors they would have survived the tsunami that killed over 12 thousand people in towns and on trains along the coastline. ( no one died in the reactor accident).

In the current era, with the contemporary focus on limiting global CO2 emissions, and doing so while huge populations in hitherto undeveloped regions of Asia and Africa are undergoing explosive economic development (and attendant fast growing needs for electrical and other sources of power, I find it very hard to rationalize the continued opposition of many environmentalists to the continued use of emissions free modern nuclear power sources that have proved their safety and effectiveness over the past five or so decades.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

New (unexpected by me at least) breakthroughs in efficient energy storage could raise that estimate.

We're very far from the topic of US progressives, but a pet peeve of mine is water retention as a way to adapt to climate change. This is because the emerging pqttern in many places is more weather extremes: long droughts followed by torential rains, for instance. If precipitations become more eratic, less regular and more violent as a result of vlimate change, one way to even up water supply and minimize floods is to store water upstream, in a series of reservoirs. This requires severe erosion control (aforestation, etc.) to limit siltation of said reservoirs, otherwise desilting costs get prohibitive, but it works. Most electric dams have already such a water storage function as well, so it's nothing new, and it's proven useful to provide reliable drinking and production water to places like Provence or California. More generally, people living in semiarid places eg with a mediteranean or sahelian climate have long learned to store rainwater in dams and retinues. So we may need to build more and better dams.

The reason I mention it here is that theoretically,a series of water dams along a river could also help store electric energy, by pumping water upstream into higher elevation dams when there's a surplus of juice in the grid, and releasing that water downstream through the dam turbines when there's not enough juice in the grid.

I believe we could store a bit more power this way. Do you think that could work, or has it already worked?

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In the state of Missouri in the u s the local power plant had a reservoir that they pumped water from lower to the reservior when they had an excess of electrical power. It worked fine until inept maintenance caused part of the dam to wash out and flooded a large area. My point is that structures like dams a d nuclear power plants seem to not be maintained as they get older by people who worry more about saving money and less about protecting the public. This stands for industry as well as government.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

The reason I mention it here is that theoretically,a series of water dams along a river could also help store electric energy, by pumping water upstream into higher elevation dams when there's a surplus of juice in the grid, and releasing that water downstream through the dam turbines when there's not enough juice in the grid.

I believe we could store a bit more power this way. Do you think that could work, or has it already worked?

What you described is essentially the most efficient, in terms of stored power recovered (~ 50%), method for storing large quantities of electrical energy. There are five or six major sites in this country involving upper and lower lakes separated by a large dam. During periods of low demand excess power is used to pump water to the upper lake and at peak loads water from the upper lake flows through a turbo generator to the lower one. Efforts have been made to use compressed gas (CO2) stored in natural salt dome caverns, etc, but so far none has exceeded the efficiency & reliability of the hydraulic systems. There are more efficient storage systems under development involving lithium batteries, with up to 705% recovery efficiency. However these are limited to energy levels orders of magnitude less, and the batteries are both expensive and short lived.

A system of sequential dams such as you described was built on the Columbia River in Washington state about 50 years ago. It has provided abundant cheap power ever since. Until about 20 years ago when urbanization and population growth raised the demand, this system provided abundant cheap electrical energy to power huge aluminum production systems.

However dams have gone out of fashion among our environmentalists, mostly due to the silting problem you cited and their effect on migrating fish. Defending existing dams has become very difficult, and building new ones almost impossible.

Interestingly a major project to construct four large nuclear plants near the same river was terminated about 20 years ago by these same environmentalists at about the 40% point in construction (One reactor plant was completed and is still operating). Ironically now with the lost power generation they can't take down the dams as they had wished.

Water use issues are even more bitterly fought in California. A similar series of dams on the Sacramento & American Rivers stores water flowing from the sierra mountains to the Pacific through the San Francisco bay. Much of that water has been diverted through a system of canals to support agriculture in the California central valley - the most productive such land in the country. That diversion has been sharply reduced to "protect" a non native species of fish in the Sacramento river, and agricultural production has fallen proportionally ( the welfare of humans is rarely included in the calculations of dedicated environmentalists.)

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Quote:

Progressives Attack Wayfair to Make Migrants Sleep on Concrete Floors

More progress and some stupidity thrown in.

Quote:

President Trump ordered bedding products from the company Wayfair to provide bedding in detention facilities at the border.Progressives sprung into action, but not to help get the relief there ASAP. Instead, they sprung into action to get Wayfair employees to walk off the job. They don't actually want to provide bedding for the migrants. They want them to be on concrete floors in discomfort.This is insane.

https://theresurgent.com/2019/06/26/progressives-attack-wayfair-to-make-migrants-sleep-on-concrete-floors/?utm_source=Insightly&utm_campaign=f6b4a8d9ec-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_198a5324d1-f6b4a8d9ec-269951881&mc_cid=f6b4a8d9ec&mc_eid=027576321b

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@georgeob1,

Okay so the idea if energy storage through water potential energy is already a well-established practice. Foot in mouth here.

I find your flippant attitude towards the environment and the people trying to defend it irrational. It's your environment too, after all. Provided you procreated, your kids and grand kids will see not the premises of climate change as we see today but a fuller and fuller version of it, as decades pass by. This is no laughing mater, and such flippant attitude as yours contributed much to the problem, by making it out of control.

It's facile to mock a group of well-intentioned people because they don't get all the details right. But how is it useful?

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Attempt to turn back to the topic of "Progressives": anyone watched the debate yesterday night?

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@Olivier5,

I wasn't trying to one up you with respect to the energy storage system you suggested. Though other techniques and "solutions" have been eagerly sought by governments and environmentalists, it remains the, largely unheralded, but best performing and most reliable form of large scale energy storage available.

I run a fairly large company that performs environmental remediation projects and environmental science consulting services to government agencies and private sector corporations. I have a fairly up close view of the motives and behavior of our customers, and as well of the various self-styled environmental organizations that have an outsized influence on policy here. They are indeed "Progressives" in that they seek to be judged on the virtue of their supposed good intentions, rather than the results they actually achieve. Moreover they are usually very quick to accuse those who disagree with any aspect of their proposals as lacking in virtue or good intentions themselves. My observation that they only rarely include the welfare of humans in their calculations was based on repeated experience.

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