Official LRC President Joseph R Biden Thread

Monkeys typing wrote:

kibitzer wrote:

TBH I had not heard this. Seems to me that nuclear makes a fair amount of sense.

Do you happen to have a link handy for this? Not arguing, just wanting info.

The anonymous poster's statement is at odds with the facts. Here's a link to the 2020 Democratic Party platform document and the relevant excerpts:

Recognizing the urgent need to decarbonize the power sector, our technology-neutral approach is inclusive of all zero-carbon technologies, including hydroelectric power, geothermal, existing and advanced nuclear, and carbon capture and storage.

We will advance innovative technologies that create cost-effective pathways for industries to decarbonize, including carbon capture and sequestration that permanently stores greenhouse gases and advanced nuclear that eliminates waste associated with conventional nuclear technology, while ensuring environmental justice and other overburdened communities are protected from increases in cumulative pollution. All of these investments will create jobs for blue-collar workers, including in fenceline communities, help decarbonize American industries, and create valuable new exports to help mitigate climate change around the world.

https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/combating-the-climate-crisis-and-pursuing-environmental-justice/

Nuclear power is a long time right-wing talking point. It's a pretty safe rationalization for not doing anything about climate change because it's unlikely that a large scale nuclear build out will ever actually happen. This is for multiple reasons.

1) Nobody, Democrats and Republicans alike really want a nuclear plant in their backyard

2) Nukes are not really economically competitive in an open subsidized market even ignoring startup expenses.

3) The upfront and liability costs are such that no private power company is ever going to take the risk of building one without enormous support from the government (which is a non-starter for Republicans).

4) From a technical/operational standpoint, nukes are hard to throttle quickly which makes them good for base load power and poor for servicing peaking demand. This makes then lousy complements for wind and solar.

Everybody that talks positively about large scale nuclear, including the D platform document above, is talking about experimental technologies that aren't presently ready for prime time. That's not to say they won't have a place in the future and the technologies aren't worth pursuing, but they aren't a real solution at present.

There was going to be a demonstration advanced nuclear plant coming out of Bill Gate's TerraPower initiative built in and largely financed by China, but it was (for the present) killed by Trump's trade war. This reflects point #3 from above, if the technology is to advance, it will require large scale investment that only governments are capable of funding.

https://www.engineering.com/story/bill-gates-nuclear-reactor-hits-a-roadblock

L L wrote:

Lead Foil Hat wrote:

Just because Trump was president does not mean he was the one dong the dividing.

No, his words were doing the dividing:

"Make no mistake, this leftwing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution,"

"The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society," Trump warned Friday. "It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance and turn our free society into a place of repression, domination and exclusion. They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced."

"We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who in many instances have absolutely no clue what they are doing."

"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on."

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady took a stand Monday, distancing himself from President Trump’s recent attacks on National Football League players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality. “I certainly disagree with what he said. I thought it was just divisive,” Brady said on radio show Kirk & Callahan.

comedyre1i3f wrote:

What this will cause is a rise in gas and oil prices, which will translate into higher electric and gasoline prices in the near term, which will affect everything you buy and the cost of electricity that you pay. It will kill jobs and cause inflation, a hallmark of the Jimmy Carter era.

The reason I know this so well is due to first hand experience. When the democrat controlled PUC in my state mandated the end of coal power in our town and replaced it with a gas fired turbine, some solar and wind power, it doubled the cost of our electricity and caused 7% of our town to have their power cut in the first twelve months (primarily poor and elderly individuals). It killed jobs, had an extremely adverse effect on the poor and hardly had any impact on global warming (any improvements we made were more than offset by the expansion of coal power in China and India and the jobs that went with it).

Dr. Racket wrote:

comedyre1i3f wrote:

What this will cause is a rise in gas and oil prices, which will translate into higher electric and gasoline prices in the near term, which will affect everything you buy and the cost of electricity that you pay. It will kill jobs and cause inflation, a hallmark of the Jimmy Carter era.

The reason I know this so well is due to first hand experience. When the democrat controlled PUC in my state mandated the end of coal power in our town and replaced it with a gas fired turbine, some solar and wind power, it doubled the cost of our electricity and caused 7% of our town to have their power cut in the first twelve months (primarily poor and elderly individuals). It killed jobs, had an extremely adverse effect on the poor and hardly had any impact on global warming (any improvements we made were more than offset by the expansion of coal power in China and India and the jobs that went with it).

Stagflation was caused by Nixon after he broke off from Bretton-Woods to continue fighting a losing war in the jungle. As for oil and gas - there's so much of it that we can barely store it.

Democrats didn't kill coal. The free market killed coal when it decided that paying 6-figure salaries and 8-figure insurance premiums on coal workers just to get a barely mildly efficient energy source wasn't worth the cost anymore. Add in the fact that pretty much no bank wants to do business with coal mining companies because of the bad optics and damage to local environments and you get what you see today. Sucks to suck, technological innovation towards efficiency is Capitalism with a capital C.

You do want to beat China, don't you?

comedyre1i3f wrote:

Dr. Racket wrote:

Stagflation was caused by Nixon after he broke off from Bretton-Woods to continue fighting a losing war in the jungle. As for oil and gas - there's so much of it that we can barely store it.

Democrats didn't kill coal. The free market killed coal when it decided that paying 6-figure salaries and 8-figure insurance premiums on coal workers just to get a barely mildly efficient energy source wasn't worth the cost anymore. Add in the fact that pretty much no bank wants to do business with coal mining companies because of the bad optics and damage to local environments and you get what you see today. Sucks to suck, technological innovation towards efficiency is Capitalism with a capital C.

You do want to beat China, don't you?

So your idea of how to beat China is to pay more for power, pay more for labor (via an increased minimum wage, increased regulations on employers, union friendly labor regulations, etc.), and pay more for raw materials (via increased environmental regulations and a Paris climate accord that adversely affects us and benefits the very nations where we are exporting jobs to at our own expense). Worked wonders for Jimmy Carter (look at the economic impact his policies had during the second half of his presidency: high inflation, high unemployment, etc.).

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

douglas burke wrote:

comedyre1i3f wrote:

So your idea of how to beat China is to pay more for power, pay more for labor (via an increased minimum wage, increased regulations on employers, union friendly labor regulations, etc.), and pay more for raw materials (via increased environmental regulations and a Paris climate accord that adversely affects us and benefits the very nations where we are exporting jobs to at our own expense). Worked wonders for Jimmy Carter (look at the economic impact his policies had during the second half of his presidency: high inflation, high unemployment, etc.).

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

Always Remember Our leaders whether they are Democrat or Republican all have our best interest's at heart, and extremely smart advisors on every issue, we are in great shape, China is not a threat, they are no competition for us.