> Along with migration, it's probably the two most discussed topics. Funnily for it too, everyone says "nobody cares", yet it's literally among the most discussed things.
Its disscussed here, still nobody is acting. This is a bubble.
> I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
We've reached the point where if there's a risk of something happening, no matter the probability neither the magnitude, something must be done. Even if the solution is totally destructive, inappropriate for the problem, etc. Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI. This is what you are proposing. This is what I criticize.
Slowing down or stopping everything because MAYBE it's the right thing to do, MAYBE something we don't like might happen. This comes at a cost, especially if you apply this principle to everything around you in small doses. It's poison for productivity and efficiency.
I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy. China and South Korea are able to build reactors quickly and at low cost. The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
In the name of some ideology, we are destroying our productivity and efficency. Again. Why?
And I know very well that the answer is always the same. Safety. But it's just an excuse to sell you the services of yet another bureaucrat. There are very precise risk analyses that show nuclear reactors to be orders of magnitude safer than all other energy sources. So why this ideological obsession? Safety has nothing to do with it.
No one cares about risk analyses. Because the answer will always be “it's never enough.” But at what cost? Again, no one cares.
And thanks to this choices, in the name of safety, building reactors in Europe is difficult and expensive. But in the meantime, it is perfectly legitimate to build gas or coal-fired power plants.
> But you still said that you think most of the EU's are bad, so I'm opening the discussion with multiple that I consider to be good.
I understand your point, but I see no reason to invest time defending the EU's positive aspects. What's the point?
> Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like United Healthcare Group using algorithms to decide if care can be paid for, with a terrible failure rate, and employees just shrugging "computer said no" cannot happen in the EU. The fact that this kind of things are considered as "EU is killing AI with too much regulation" is really concerning to me.
I don't see why "asking for less regulation" concerns you. The EU seems to listen to people like you, not people like me. I should be the one who's concerned, haha. I'm worried because bureaucracy is a slow-acting cancer. It's a process that's easy to start but incredibly difficult to stop or reverse.
The problem with bureaucracy, regulation, and welfare is that they all come with a price. Increasing costs require a strong, cutting-edge economy to sustain them. Yet, no one seems to be concerned. In the US and China, new technologies are constantly being created, while in Europe, innovation is stagnating. No one seems to care that Europe's wealth is fragile, based mainly on "old" companies or banks.
Of course, no one is against welfare; my concern is its unsustainability. As an Italian (living elsewhere in Europe), I find the situation worrying. The demographic decline is dramatic, and pension and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In Italy, a worker under 40 often earns less than a retiree. With such a sharp demographic decline, retirees have enormous political power.
Europe is aging, and so is its appetite for innovation and risk. Yet, we keep adding costs upon costs. Even if the goals of initiatives like GDPR, the AI Act, and the Green Deal are "right", we can't deny that they come with a price. This added cost inevitably makes companies less efficient in Europe. This is a simple consequence. Can we truly afford this?
How long can we keep going? The rope will break sooner or later. And why doesn't anyone seem to care?
I stated quite clearly that not every regulation is bad. But it seems that you want to hear that every decision made by the EU is right. I'm sorry, but I'm not a religious person. And I think self-criticism is a great privilege of democratic (not dictatorial) countries, so let's use it.
> Ensuring that AI can't be used to make life or death decisions if its decision-making can't be explained (which the AI Act boils down to)? Ensuring there is competition on, for example, railway operations?
It's such a naive question that I can't understand how you can take it seriously.
Just because you can explain how you arrived at a specific decision does not mean that failure does not exist. Every machine is fallible. Every human is fallible. Moreover, you cannot determine decision-making made by humans. So how can you trust humans? Why should you trust them?
I would like to see the data, not the social or individual biases. It's only a matter of "when" AI will prove to be safer than humans at performing task X. I find it absurd to deprive ourselves of such an advantage, supported by data, just because our understanding isn't absolute.
Can we prove the safety or determinism of what we use or do on a daily basis? I doubt.
Shouldn't we experiment with physics because our understanding is limited, and we might accidentally create a black hole? I doubt.
Also, I find it such a generic definition... Google Maps implements AI, and accidentally sends you into a ditch. What do you do? Ban AI from Google Maps? What doesn't put people's lives at risk?
I totally understand the skepticism and fear. The risks, etc. But I'll leave it to the fortune tellers to pass judgment before it's even "a thing".
> It's such a common refrain that EU is just stifling competition with "regulating everything", but quite oftne EU regulations are actually forcing competition where none was possible before.
Is killing the car market "forcing the competition"? How?
I disagree. The need for regulation in this case stems from a lack of competition.
Regulations are empirical decisions, based on a very limited amount of data, whose implications can be endless. Regulations are a shortcut capable of poisoning the market and competition. Just look at what's been done with energy, automobiles, AI, GDPR, etc. Bureaucrats are not gods; they often make mistakes and don't predict the future. Regulations should be the last resort.
Furthermore, we're talking about a US monopoly here. The goal would be to grab a share of the pie through honest competition, not to enstablish golden collars.
Regulation should facilitate competition, not legitimize the status quo.
Honestly, I'm really critical towards EU, but this is one of the few things that EU does well. When the market is stagnating, it's better than nothing to propose an alternative or some kind of benefits in order to change the market a bit. Like the Roaming in EU.
Regarding the rest, the EU is mining competition with the obsession of regulating everything.
> Hideously expensive and any plant announced today will not be online in time to have any material effect on our fight against climate change
False, we have 26 years to decarbonize, all the time it takes to build any number of nuclear power plants in any country in the world.
> Which means funding diverted from renewables to nuclear will prolong our fight against climate change.
We can say the same thing about renewables. Then come and tell me you are not ideological... Where is the mathematical certainty that batteries at scale will be available everywhere and for everyone by 2050? If you come from the future, prove it to me and I will agree with you.
He does not care about these arguments, what matters is that there is no room for nuclear power.
In a past discussion I talked to him about how one of the important things to do was to diversify, as China has a lot of influence on the whole renewable sector (solar, batteries, etc.)
Needless to say, that's not a problem for him. For him to hope that batteries are the future is already a sure thing, without the slightest doubt.
These are lies you tell yourself and how you want people to see you. In a past discussion, you concluded by saying that those who support nuclear energy also support fossil fuels.
These are your ideological premises; you don't care about creating a better world, nor are you interested in facts and problems. You only care about your vision of things and making it prevail over others.
There's no need to know anything else to make any of your comments irrelevant. It's no coincidence that you are in every nuclear discussion, asserting how much you are against it.
The damage caused by these regulators and media terrorism is far greater than the benefits.
As another user wrote, a few meltdowns would have been much better than the total freeze of plant construction and its price increase.
This is one of those cases where fear blinds people to not accept reality.
First, we need to define what "safe" means. And a safety threshold that is a fair trade-off between public acceptance and the industrial feasibility of the sector.
One might think, sure, increasing safety is always necessary. But we must accept the fact that zero risk does not exist in any technology and will never be completely eliminated in any way. And we already accept the risks of dams and renewables, so it means that a threshold of what is accepted as safe exists, and we can define it.
It seems universally accepted that renewables are "safe." So why not take the deaths per GWh produced and use this value to define a nuclear power plant as safe?
On page 175 (chapter 3.5) of this report compiled by the European Union research center, it shows how third-generation EPRs (modern european reactors) are already several orders of magnitude safer than renewables, per GWh produced. Demonstrating how they are infinitely safer than any other energy source.
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC1...
Therefore, if we decide to define renewables as safe, we can deduce that modern nuclear power plants are very safe. Yet why is this not perceived?
Obviously, the answer is very simple, the death from installing a panel is an isolated case often limited to a single individual, and often does not make the news. Nuclear, however, even if it causes one death (like Fukushima), is discussed for decades. Besides, the dangers related to the dispersal of radioactive material often cause even more fear than the deaths from the plants themselves, despite rarely having caused tangible damage.
With this said, it's important to note that this fear does not find reflection in the numbers, which remain the reading closest to the reality of the facts.
Finally, from my point of view, even if nuclear were less safe than this, it would still help fight climate change, which should lead to millions of millions of deaths, if not billions. It would be a very logical intellectual step to accept the risks even of a less safe nuclear (and cheaper), because the long-term benefits would definitely be beneficial.
> Even their "target" for 2035 is 20% less nuclear than today.
I highly doubt it, French reactors have an average of 40 years of operation, and it is very credible to think it will be extended to 60 years, and I would aim for 80+.
That said, flamanville will go into operation this year and 6 reactors will be built, where each of these reactors realistically will have the power of 1.5 current reactor.
French nuclear power will generate the vast majority of French energy in the future as well, sorry to see you annoyed by that.
Probably a French mistake was to have invested everything in nuclear, not being able to vary easily with peaks. I expect the nuclear share to drop at 50-60 percent in the future to cover the rest with renewables.
But this possible scenario says little about your defeatism and pessimism toward nuclear power, but rather it's a pragmatic approach to the subject.
Regarding Hinkley Point, always the same thing, how boring. I'd like to point out, that the second reactor at Hinkley Point is begin build at a rate 20-30% faster than the first. I expect further efficiencies with the EPR2s.
> There seems to be little that can be done to fight the onslaught of bullshit that these evil (yep, evil) bastards use to corrupt discourse worldwide. Other than doing something that will send you to jail. It might be time to do just that.
I have never read a more fascist comment than this one on this site, congratulations on reaching such a low point.
I imagine you consider yourself a democrat, right?
> Australia is a great deal smaller in both population and wealth and utterly lacks any significant skill set in nuclear power generation and engineering, a handful of Australian nuclear scientists aside.
And so wouldn't it be better to put a patch on these lacks? China also had no nuclear competence, now it speaks for itself. Same stuff for the automobile market.
These shortcomings are not a problem, but an opportunity to build an industry. Otherwise with the same mentality there would be no progress.
> This isn't a nuclear plan, it's a plan to build more coal power station "in the meantime" and hope that one day it'll be economical in Australia to buy some "off the shelf" set and forget SMR magical thinking nuclear tech.
Which is equivalent to thinking you can install solar, wind and batteries all in one day. Germany has been investing for decades, hoping to remove coal-fired power plants. But so far, it hasn't succeeded.
At least, with nuclear power, you know that once you build the plant, you're sure you're going to have that energy, for now it's whishful think the rest.
> As a matter of pragmatic action, in the immediate short term, in an Austraian context, it makes better economic sense to put money now into rapid expansion of renewables and storage
And why wouldn't it be possible to do both? The most pragmatic solution would be to diversify.
> No, but that could change. As china did, we can orient towards an electrical future too and there are generator designs without rare earth elements. So chinese dominance is not a given.
True. But looking at the problems we are experiencing in the silicon world, a transition could bring a generalized crisis and quite a long time to return to "current" production levels. We're already struggling now with decarbonization, and China's is just one possible problem that we can't afford on the roadmap. So the priority should be to diversify to minimize these problems
> I prefer the term "sustainable" and by framing it with energy sources and waste products i am giving you the higher order problem at hand.
That's fine, but "sustainable" is a very subjective term. What is the threshold of sustainable? And I bet we have different views and different priorities.
> I disagree because my scope is broader. I agree with your statement that NE is "cleaner" than fossil based power plants for now, because as with carbon, its just a matter of scale too. In an inverted scenario where nuclear waste is the main concern, i could, like you, argue in favor of fossil power.
But somehow it seems contradictory to me in some places.
The materials and rare earths from which panels, wind blades and batteries are made are finite. Recyclable, but finished.
Uranium is recyclable from spent fuel, and renewable from the sea.
Then in addition to uranium other types of elements can be used such as fuel, Thorium, Plutonium, etc. (CANDU reactors for example can go with Thorium)
Also this basic argument seems a bit lacking to me, all these energy sources have a finite life, a panel a few decades, a power plant 60-80 years. When new more efficient ways to generate clean energy are discovered they will be used and replaced, we have this now, and it would be better to use them.
Plus, regarding the term "sustainable," and its subjectivity, I find it a priority to minimize the materials required. Because having billions of tons of waste to recycle, it's much harder to control, do it effectively, and in a sustainable way in every corner of the earth.
So I much prefer very small amounts of hazardous material (highly controlled and localized) over endless amounts of inorganic material everywhere.
Plastic, even for noble uses, has already demonstrated the worst of man's carelessness. So nice democratization, but one must also recognize its problems and limitations.
Regarding the word "democratization," however, I see a lot of propaganda in it. Whenever it's used it almost seems like people are naming a divine entity. And all kinds of issues, accountability, feasibility, etc. are omitted. And conversely, any kind of "centrality," is intrensically a problem. I really have a hard time seeing past something of the rhetoric of the "mighty and evil."
The possibility of failure should be contextualized with data. Gen 3 reactors are statistically orders of magnitude safer than any other power source, per GWh produced. Demonstrating how they are extremely safer than any other energy source.
> (for example a large wave hitting Japan) is much worse.
Mmh, like the 0-1 victims of Fukushima?
Nuclear power plants, just with Fukushima have demonstrated their tremendous reliability. We're talking about a 60-year-old reactor, which in the face of extreme conditions managed to minimize any kind of harm to humans.
> You claim some hypothetical event with china to cross the plans of global low tech solar/wind energy but ignore the impact on constructions of nuclear power plants, which, as previous comment noted, take much longer to build.
Why should I respond to someone who proposes to build renewable in parallel, while omitting in the same sentence the possibility of building multiple reactors in parallel?
It's a rhetorical game that says enough about the user's goals. I do not intend to stoop to such a level.
> You claim some hypothetical event with china to cross the plans of global low tech solar/wind energy but ignore the impact on constructions of nuclear power plants.
I am not ignoring anything, I repeat, going only renewable implies not diversifying.
That a geopolitical problem could destroy decarbonization goals is a real risk. Or do you want to deny China's total monopoly in the industry?
No energy source is perfect, including nuclear and solar, so stop adding arguments just to overshadow the problems we're talking about.
> "Green" is a perfect propaganda pitch btw.
Well, we can define and use the word that you prefer.
By green I mean a technology whose emissions are low enough to help in decarbonization. Is it better?
Decarbonization is the main issue here.
> The actual problems we try to solve are energy source and waste products. Nuclear energy looses on both aspects, which is why its much more expensive (also including risk/complexity).
As I wrote earlier, the main problem is decarbonization. Secondary problems exist in any kind of energy source.
That the IPCC predicts nuclear growth in most scenarios is quite indicative of its relevance to decarbonization.
So nuclear power is important for decarbonization. And it has been shown over the decades to be a viable option for providing electricity with low emissions. Do you deny this?
Once we accept that, we can discuss how slow and expensive it is, but before then I don't see it possible to engage in an intellectually honest discourse :)
Its disscussed here, still nobody is acting. This is a bubble.
> I get what you're saying, and there's a point at which I would agree; but I also fully consider that allowing companies to let people die and hide behind "The Algorithm" is something so fundamentally wrong, that we cannot (humanely) afford not to have regulations against it.
This sentence is fundamentally wrong, no one is dying. And for me, it perfectly sums up the issues we're discussing.
We've reached the point where if there's a risk of something happening, no matter the probability neither the magnitude, something must be done. Even if the solution is totally destructive, inappropriate for the problem, etc. Or even worse, deciding when the problem does not yet exist. Or the technology is still in its early stages. Like AI. This is what you are proposing. This is what I criticize.
Slowing down or stopping everything because MAYBE it's the right thing to do, MAYBE something we don't like might happen. This comes at a cost, especially if you apply this principle to everything around you in small doses. It's poison for productivity and efficiency.
I don't know if you are for or against nuclear power. I am quite pro nuclear power. But everyone knows about the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) project, it is a failure in terms of costs and bureaucracy. China and South Korea are able to build reactors quickly and at low cost. The same EPR reactors built in China have low costs and short construction times (I am referring to the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant). The problem is exclusively European.
In the name of some ideology, we are destroying our productivity and efficency. Again. Why?
And I know very well that the answer is always the same. Safety. But it's just an excuse to sell you the services of yet another bureaucrat. There are very precise risk analyses that show nuclear reactors to be orders of magnitude safer than all other energy sources. So why this ideological obsession? Safety has nothing to do with it.
No one cares about risk analyses. Because the answer will always be “it's never enough.” But at what cost? Again, no one cares.
And thanks to this choices, in the name of safety, building reactors in Europe is difficult and expensive. But in the meantime, it is perfectly legitimate to build gas or coal-fired power plants.
Europe is full of this kind of hypocrisy.