Debate Analysis of "Nuclear Energy is a Better Replacement for Fossil Fuels..."

#4 - Con - Con says he meant all the drawbacks of renewable energy are present and pretty much as, if not more, severe in nuclear energy..... still not true.
 
Con says "Rather than just fixate on Chernobyl, which my opponent equates to a rare plane crash, let's identify just what nuclear poisoning/contamination is and how severely it can affect people exposed to it.", but if the accident event is rare all you are explaining is the details of the rare event....
 
Con says "'Ionizing radiation' does indeed refer to nuclear, it is another name that is more specifically precise, since it refers to ions and electrons being involved, not only to the nucleus of the atom." Not even close really. Ionizing radiation is radiation that can create ions by exciting an electron enough to disconnect it from an atom or break a chemical bond. It's the breaking of chemical bonds that can harm DNA.
 
Ionizing radiation does not need to come from a nuclear reaction, a tanning booth qualifies.
 
Con goes on to claim that Pro hasn't explained why "it" [apparently dangerous radiation] is worth it, it was fairly obvious from round one that Pro was claiming it was worth it for the power. He used the plane example as an illustration that there is a level of risk which humans accept in order to get things they want. Alternatives have risks too. You can't just say "nuclear power is a risk" you also have to demonstrate that the alternatives are less of a risk. Planes may crash, but boats may sink, and walking a thousand miles isn't good for your knees.
 
Con again alludes to a conspiracy to hide the data. While such conspiracies may very well exist, allusion to them is hardly a replacement for an argument. If he had made an argument as to a higher risk than is cited by Pro that would be one thing; but to simply say they're hiding the data and let's assume it's bad?.. no beuno
 
Con has a copy paste from what seems like somebody trying to sell solar panels to some boomers who have paid off their house. If Con was taking this seriously there would be some form of quantitative analysis. There is no contention that solar panels don't have CO2 smoke stacks or that they don't need much maintenance. This resolution is about comparison. Do they need less maintenance over 100 years than the equivalent nuclear facility? How many solar panels does it take? Cost of installment. Cost of maintenance... sigh moving on.
 
Con asks "So, what is it hydropower did worse exactly?"... it shouldn't be a matter requiring citation to know that dam failures are catastrophic events in proportion to the power the dam could produce. In WW2 an intentional dam destruction killed over a million (this is from memory not being looked up).
 
Con continues with this absurdity "Even if somehow 51 people died to fossil fuels" 5100 people have already died from coal particulates. 5100 people have probably died in methane explosions. The worst part about it is that it is totally irrelevant. Fossil fuel safety, reliability, cost are all irrelevant because the resolution takes for granted that they are being replaced.
 
Con says "I am perplexed as to how Pro can say that's a big bad problem when to make a nuclear plant, you need a huge amount of land space, do you think that some area is magically free, flat and wildlife free?",  yes those nuclear power plants. So notoriously space consuming unlike the compact solar farm.
 
#5 - Pro says fission reactors are quick to build and cheap. Maybe I missed it before but this is the first time I remember seeing cost and build time explicitly mentioned by Pro, and I can therefore award score on that with a clean conscience. Similarly he mentions the fact that modern reactors are intrinsically safer with references.
 
Pro makes an argument about toxic waste from solar power, I don't think it's very strong point but neither was the claim that solar panels are recyclable. Perhaps one could say that if they aren't recyclable it isn't really renewable, but just as Pro felt comfortable including fusion reactors (that don't exist) in his arguments Con should feel comfortable including ultra-stable wind and solar. He didn't and I don't think he will.
 
Pro finally points out that solar farms take a large amount of space.
 
Pro points out the piles of corpses associated with broken dams.
 
Pro comes in with quantitative analysis of area use ++
 
#6 - Con says "every single stage of uranium (or equivalent) extraction is both energy-heavy and brutally devastating if any safety procedures are not correctly adhered to.", Pro cannot respond to this or anything else. If he did claim it before it was not with citations. So I am comfortable judging it with my own knowledge, that's false uranium ore is not significantly more dangerous than many other radioactive rocks. It is hardly devastating until the very last stages of concentration and refinement.
 
Con says "On the other hand, RE is passively available to the entire world, poor or rich country, dictatorship or democracy. ", this he has repeated several times and I wish Pro had given the simple and obvious answer: No it isn't. The whole world has wind, the whole world has solar flux, but the whole world does not have wind turbines or endless fields of solar panels. If the industrialized world is going to give the rest of the world wind and solar generators it can give the rest of the world electrical energy form nuclear reactors.
 
Con claims "Pro's rebuttals largely revolve around the fact that nuclear waste can be recycled", no that is not at all fair. He included it, but it hardly revolved around it.
 
Con claims "we still don't know the problems attached to NP in terms of its byproducts", Pro's references disagree.
 
Con points out that solar panels as they are now are not solar panels as they must be, a fair point as I suggested above.
 
Con claims that to get uranium requires harming the environment more than a dam. In my opinion neither side argued this well at all. Pro argued that a new lake constitutes environmental harm, it's environmental change obviously but not necessarily harm. An open pit mine may be an eyesore but when they're done they tend to end up as lakes too.
 
So this debate was not won deductively by either side, therefore the points I award cannot be justified certainly. It is tempting to try and damn Con for not understanding that dams are dangerous (pun intended) but the relevance is not particularly high. Overall Con simply did not do any kind of quantitative analysis which would be required to compare different factors between wind/solar and nuclear. Pro granted nuclear was more dangerous in round 1, yet Con kept making a big deal out of it. If Con wanted more than the admission of "safer by a slim margin" he needed more than the presumption that nuclear was a lot more dangerous than Pro's references claimed it was because "devious". Con failed entirely on reliability. Pro's essential claim which he finally backed in round 3 was that it didn't matter if nuclear was slightly more dangerous than a solar panel because it was safe enough to be ignored, meanwhile nuclear reactors could actually be built fast enough and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels in a generation.
 
There is no absolute or agreed upon way to balance risk to human life against dollars and joules but the notion that there is no acceptable tradeoff is pure emotional appeal. No human has ever lived without some risk, anything less risky than driving a car should not be used as an objection in serious and honest debate.
 
It is my judgement that Pro made more important points than Con and defended them.
 
 

What exactly did you base your 'sources' and 'conduct' allocation on? One source I used on solar panels? That's it?

What you did with my dam question is literally debating for Pro and acting like Pro said it.

You used more than one source, do you not remember? What about the totally irrelevant story with Margret Thatcher and the Gaia earth spirit?

Many times in my analysis I pointed out obvious counter-arguments, I did not pretend Pro said them but more than a few times he did subsequently. Just like he did point out and cite dam disasters well in excess of chernobyl deaths in round 3. You'll find it under 'Hydropower accidents'.

Well it can't be literally every single one and then "pretty much", in fact it was not every single one just the large majority of them.... In an objective general sense he is way more right than you on this issue.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't have given you the points if you had actually made an argument that solar, wind, and hydro were better. As it was Benjamin barely made a relevant argument and that barely beat your none at all.

Don't get confused here. Not everything in the analysis was a basis for scoring, most wasn't because most of your points and his points went sailing off into the void having no real connection to the resolution.

I made a comment about it being sad that "better" had to be defined, but it was especially so seeing how little comparing you two did. It's like you were arguing between cars and trains and you neglected to talk about... speed... or passenger capacity, focusing entirely on accidents and whether or not railroads were built by monopolies.

I would have just used a Google Doc and give a view permission only link.

Easier said than done for me, google hates Tor.

I am more than happy to debate this subject with you, but we should be clear that you are addressing my beliefs and arguments and not those of the debate linked to in the OP.

I did not go to your link. I skimmed through what was written and I believe the your approach via your words is short sided, as it a  narrow set of either or, with context of so much more that needs to be considered.

Nuclear and fossil energy sources both have issues. In short run, nuclear adds less to the greenhouse gas issues and that is huge gain for what is obviously occurring.

However, lets be clear, that, if the atmosphere is already over a certain critical limit ---and I believe it is---  what does not appear to be alterable in Earths biosphere future fro some many --if not hundreds of years--, then nuclear alone, is again, a short sighted{ not comprehensive } approach. 

It was either nuclear or the alternative zero CO2 options in that debate, hence that is the context in which analyzed.

It isn't so obvious to me.

That does not follow. If the utility would persist for dozens of times the operational life of a construct there is no shortsightedness in building that construct.

When you bake a pie are you shortsighted because that pie will rot in less than a month? Of course not, it will be eaten in less than a month and it will thus be fully utilized.

Any nuclear reactor we build now, excepting a truly absurd focus on longevity, will have fuel for its entire lifespan.

You complained of "either or", outside of the context of that debate it should be obvious that in terms of research there is no such dilemma. If we don't try our best to improve all potential designs for all potential energy sources we will never know what the mature technology could achieve and thus never know what the correct answer in the long term is.

In terms of immediate construction, where finite resources must be allocated (money), nuclear is the objectively correct choice.

Fossil fuels are more efficient (in terms of human effort and that is what price reflects), but even now we see the volatility of that market. It is much much easier to stockpile large amounts of nuclear fuel to stabilize the market.

In the debate rationalmadman claimed that thorium had better alternative uses. That isn't true for thorium, but it may well be true for oil. It can be used to create plastics which are some of the most stable building materials imaginable. We should be using plastic for permanent constructs, the current trend of using the most permanent material for the most disposable items is quite foolish. Oil also gives gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Despite improvements of batteries they still offer significant advantages to vehicles. It would be better not to waste oil on grid electricity when it should be reserves for plastics and vehicle fuel.

For those who are not familiar with my political ethics I would never suggest using force to prevent these things I am calling less than ideal or foolish. I would bring about the reallocation of oil to its ideal use cases by making the incorrect uses obsolete. I would invest in very large nuclear reactors that produce so much electricity that it would be wasteful to burn oil/gas for it.

This would bring down the price of oil and thus the price of plastics and travel.

With a sufficiently cheap electricity very high temperature furnaces could destroy plastic waste without long chains or smogish compounds and thereby recycle the carbon.

Hydropower is great, almost no downsides but it is being (nearly) fully utilized. It doesn't enter the conversation because we have done what we can in that area.

Solar power is simply unrealistic. Even if it was 20 times cheaper per panel (and it would need to be to compete with nuclear), it takes up an enormous amount of space. I have no objection to covering almost lifeless deserts and people's rooves. When it comes to blocking light that plants could use I object. Plants are far more useful/beautiful than the equivalent area of solar panels.

Wind power is fringe, as I said much better wind generators could be designed; and they would probably pay for themselves eventually; but they are an even weaker version of hydro. If they are placed in places without consistent high winds it is a waste of time and effort.

Geothermal has a very large potential for generation. It is also technically not renewable in the same way fission is technically not renewable. [recall I would define renewable as fusion derived power].