Silicon Valley is full of cancer causing superfund sites due to improper disposal of chemicals used to produce semiconductors back in the 70’s and 80’s.
Solar panels are semiconductor based (the actual power generating parts are diodes, specifically).
If the chemicals are disposed of properly and workers wear the correct PPE, there are no measurable increases in cancer.
It’s a whole grab bag of chemicals, from TCE, Chromic Acid, Crystalline Silica, etc. etc. 130+ common ones with significant carcinogenic potential.
Thanks for bringing up the concrete example of Silicon Valley's chemicals.
Btw, just to be clear: overall both solar power and nuclear are very good technologies in terms of overall harm done per Joule produced. Much, much better than coal or oil. But we shouldn't pretend that the harm per Joule is literally zero; and we should also be honest about what harm there actually is, and not just what sounds plausible or good.
What is that 'super obvious' link of cancer with nuclear power?
There's lots of dangerous chemicals involved in both the production of solar panels (and semiconductor technology in general) and also in the production of nuclear fuel. And those have to be handled carefully and responsibly, to avoid causing problems like cancer.
Note: I'm deliberately not talking about radiation, because it's basically not a factor. You can live right next to a nuclear power plant, or even work in one, and your radiation exposure will be indistinguishable from background levels. Working as an airplane flight attendant (or even at the top of a really tall building or on a mountain) is much more dangerous in that regard.
Radiation destroys DNA and directly causes cancer. That's the super obvious link. Your deliberate avoidance doesn't change that fact.
Because of this are a bunch of safety protocols in the extraction, transportation, storage and use of radio active materials and their waste products.
100% sure that all of the chemicals involved in Solar manufacture are less toxic to the human body than handling Plutonium. So, we can probably design enough protocols to make it safe to manufacture given we did it for far more toxic materials.
> You can live right next to a nuclear power plant, or even work in one, and your radiation exposure will be indistinguishable from background levels.
So they dug up and replaced all the surface soil around Fukushima for no reason?
Don’t bet on that plutonium toxicity thing. For one, most reactors aren’t going to have any plutonium (or any other radioisotope) where anyone can touch it or interact with it in any way.
Concentrated Hydroflouric acid, and even pure fluorine gas however? That can be an easy turn of a tap away at most semiconductor plants. And much worse. And if you know anything about Florine, ‘much worse’ should be pretty chilling.
I’m honestly not sure if radiation poisoning (actually quite hard and rare to die from) is worse than dying from fluorine exposure (I’m sure it’s killed a lot more people than radiation), but fluorine is certainly going to be faster.
Most fire departments are going to be a lot more concerned about a semiconductor plant than a nuclear one.
But choosing nuclear power doesn't remove our need for semiconductors, so it's a bit weird to attribute that to solar.
The fabrication of of panels is more analogous to fission material mining. As in you are procuring the materials that will produce energy in the future.
If we get rid of nuclear power, we don't need to mine those things anymore. If we get rid of solar panels, we still need semiconductors. So I don't think you can use it for an argument against solar manufacture.
The more semiconductors you make, the more waste chemicals you produce (and use), and the more contamination and cancer you’re going to have if those chemicals aren’t handled correctly. Aka more solar panels, more waste chemicals.
Same with nukes and nuclear waste by running your nuclear plant longer/harder.
90/10 one way will produce a lot of one thing, and less of another - and vice versa.
> 100% sure that all of the chemicals involved in Solar manufacture are less toxic to the human body than handling Plutonium. So, we can probably design enough protocols to make it safe to manufacture given we did it for far more toxic materials.
So?
You have to look at the amount of chemicals required to produce 1 Joule (or perhaps to install one 1 Watt of capacity).
For example, 1 kg of coal is much less dangerous than 1 kg of uranium. But you need much, much more than 1kg of coal to replace 1 kg of uranium.
Similar for solar power: you need to normalise the amount (and 'badness') of waste by the amount of energy produced. Semi-conductor manufacturing isn't exactly like organic farming, you know?
The best example is perhaps hydro-power: 1 kg of fresh water is basically the most harmless substance you can think of. But you need enormous amounts of water to produce reasonable amounts of electricity. And in these huge quantities water can become dangerous.
> > You can live right next to a nuclear power plant, or even work in one, and your radiation exposure will be indistinguishable from background levels.
> So they dug up and replaced all the surface soil around Fukushima for no reason?
Huh? Fukushima was not a normally operating nuclear power plant. Yes, accidents happen. That's why I'm suggesting to look at the impact of accidents per Joule produced (or per Watt of installed capacity, depending on context).
Nuclear power has had only a handful of accidents and lots and lots of Joule produced.
Right so pick a metric that highly favours nuclear because its been around longer.
And ignore common sense that leaving inert rocks in the sun is fundamentally less dangerous than super heating water with highly toxic and unstable materials.
If you can't see your bias here, I don't think I am going to change your mind.
Even by your joule measure, give it time, Solar will beat that too. And even if the largest solar farm in existence started to fail or "not operate normally" we would not have to replace the top soil or bury it in sand for 20,000 years.
> Right so pick a metric that highly favours nuclear because its been around longer.
Huh? It's the opposite! Being around for longer is worse for nuclear for this metric. Nuclear has a small risk of catastrophic failure (especially when used with outdated, bad designs and when operators make careless mistakes). If you only observe nuclear for a short time, say between inception to 1980, or between 1990 to 2010, that metric would look really good, because we got lucky during those times and didn't have any 'jackpots' in the accident lottery.
> And ignore common sense that leaving inert rocks in the sun is fundamentally less dangerous than super heating water with highly toxic and unstable materials.
Huh? What does common sense have to do with anything? We have actual numbers. The realised dangers come not so much from operating already installed solar panels, but mostly from (a) accidents while installing the panels, especially rooftop residential solar, and (b) the chemicals used when producing them.
Overall solar power is very, very safe over its whole life cycle; and that also includes the two dangers listed above.
> Even by your joule measure, give it time, Solar will beat that too. And even if the largest solar farm in existence started to fail or "not operate normally" we would not have to replace the top soil or bury it in sand for 20,000 years.
I don't understand your point. Yes, solar power is pretty neat, I already agree.
But we already have data showing that solar power is more dangerous than nuclear per Joule produced. We roughly know how many people slip and fall off roofs when installing solar panels. (And we have good estimates for how many people died because of nuclear accidents and because of routine operations etc.)
And yes, I agree, that accidents while installing solar panels are a ridiculously small danger per Joule of electricity produced. It's just that both nuclear power and solar power are so safe, that if you insist on making a comparison between the two, these very tiny dangers are what tips the scale.
You could also just be pragmatic and say: both of them are vastly more than 'safe enough' and any difference is pretty close to zero.
I'm fairly sure solar power will 'win' over nuclear. Mostly because it's actually politically possible to install new solar power quickly and cheaply.
People can point it out, no worries. Disasters happen. But it isn't fair to claim that the risks of a nuclear disaster are worse than solar one. We haven't seen what a big solar disaster looks like yet because it has been a serious contender for ~5-10 years and it takes a few decades to figure out what a disaster looks like for any given form of power generation. For solar it could easily be quite bad and impossible to design out.
We have, to date, 0 methods of generating electricity at scale that are free of catastrophic failure modes. Solar will not be free of them either, and we don't really have the data yet to figure out how they compare relevant to nuclear ones (which, on balance, are the mildest of all the tested options!). It could do well, it could do badly, but it is not entirely fair to compare a known low risk in nuclear to an unknown risk in solar.
> So you are kind of referring to mass extinction events. no?
No, I'm not. I included a wiki link to the sort of thing I think could be a problem. It doesn't mention extinction.
It was 1812; they'd barely discovered how to generate electricity. But note that they describe effects like a persistent dry fog dimming sunlight over NA. That would have an effect on solar production and that was half a world away from the eruption.
> The idea of a global darkness for a significant period of time, would be extinction level.
Your scenario not mine; and I don't know why it needs to be global. I'm talking a 12-month period with much less sunshine than normal. A scenario which other sources of power would be independent of but that solar would be very correlated with. Since the nuclear disasters we've seen so far can be escaped by walking away from them slowly, that sort of rare volcanic event influencing solar production would probably be more damaging than a nuclear plant meltdown. It could kill a lot of people.
It is similar to Fukushima where the fact that they had an unsafe nuclear plant that maybe roughly doubled the damage caused by the tsunami that hit Japan. Heavy solar use might do something similar with big volcanic eruptions. We don't really know because we've never tried mass solar use before so it is a bit hard to judge how bad catastrophic failures are vs. nuclear.
Because we have power lines and batteries now, so solar can be where the sun is, and consumption can be where it isn't.
I guess I'm envisioning a future where there is a lot more solar panels than there is consumption, meaning we can store for later or transmit to places that cannot generate themselves.
> or transmit to places that cannot generate themselves
Sticking to the 1812 scenario; that is a substantially harder problem to solve than putting the nuclear plants somewhere extremely remote and moving power to where it is needed. I'm not convinced you're really thinking about the cost-effectiveness of the redundancies you're suggesting here.
I wouldn't say impossible, but I would say there is room here for a solar catastrophe to turn out to be worse than a nuclear one. It is hard to overemphasise how mild the nuclear industry has been so far in terms of harm done - even including the catastrophes. Places like Fukushima apparently have exclusion zone limits of 50 millisieversts per year [0]. That is almost a third of what humans left to their own devices live with when left to their own devices with no local panic [1]. We're talking damage done that is right on the threshold of our ability to even detect it. It won't take that many sigmas of a correlated outage for solar panels to do worse than that.
Storing throughout the day can be done with batteries locally.
Storing throughout the seasons is much harder. (But then, you can probably use a cable to give Germany electricity in winter from solar farms in the Sahara or so.)
Yes, but will it wipe out the advantage of solar by adding cost to the generation capacity? As I said, batteries still aren't cheap, and their replacement lifetime is still not good. We could rely on future technology, but is that a sound investment plan?
If this project is viable, then it'll probably be more viable to have a massive solar farm coming from India, where the timezone shift is in the correct direction, and it would outcompete Australia.
I think any project is going to need some form of capacitor as a grid would just become unstable if you dump a huge amount of peak solar onto it without the consumption.
So either way you need batteries, and all the problems they bring. Just about "how many".
Is it? That's the thing we literally mass produce in factories. I think it's the machinery to do voltage conversions and transmission that is the critical cost factor.
From a competitive point of view, yes. The conversion hardware is common in both cases, the difference is one side needs more storage than the other. As others have stated, with the propagation of EV voltage conversion equipment, that's essentially mass manufactured too now.
Edit: I'd also like to add that for something cheap and mass manufactured that we shouldn't concern ourselves with, we sure don't have a lot of it on a grid that already delivers some of the most expensive power in the world. ie one that should be able to afford it a lot more than others
Just go look up former prime minister Julia Gillard address US congress.
I cringe every time I rewatch.
(Then again thanks to Wikileaks we now know US were “assessing” whether Gillard would be a good replacement to Rudd a year before it all happened… so I guess that made her a fan!
Well, Alcohol is an even more easily accessible fuel that your body can readily use for a variety of activities... but its negatives are well understood...
So we should tell the US to stop driving its ships and planes right on the Chinese border? And directly through the Taiwan strait.
Who is the aggressor in your mind here? Note: China don’t have any military assets off the US west coast… meanwhile then US has multi thousands of soldiers within staging distance of Chinese coast line from the very bottom to the very top.
US ships and aircraft stay in international waters and airspace near China, or in the territorial waters and airspace of allies who give it permission. That includes the Taiwan strait.
Allowing China to prevent US or other aircraft to operate in such international waters or airspace would amount to giving them control over it, which is why it’s important to have regular freedom of navigation sailings and flights.
Chinese ships and aircraft are violating the territorial waters and airspace of other countries in the region, especially in the South China Sea. It’s annexing territory that belongs to other countries. It’s not at all the same thing.
I see because the US border is near there? Not on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
Anyone familiar with history, recall that Mexico was bigger? Did the Chinese get involved in that conflict? I guess what we are saying is they should have to stop an aggressor annexing territory?
Oh wait, but that was actual land, where as the annexing you are talking about is ocean… ocean that the US has filled with military bases. Do you think the conflict between China Vietnam and Philippines is unrelated to US activity? Maybe you should lookup a map if US military bases and perhaps you’ll change your mind in who the aggressor is.
China, except for Tibet and Korea (Both neighbouring countries) has never invaded another country. Should we look at the US? Just in that region It’s invaded Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, China directly. Philippines indirectly.
So countries may only send their aircraft and ships along their own border now? Anyone is free to operate in international waters. And, yes, Chinese military ships do at times sail just outside US territorial waters to monitor naval exercises.
It’s quite telling that the examples you have to bring up of the US annexing territory are from over a century ago, before we had developed modern concepts of international law. We’re supposed to be past the era of annexation by force.
The area that China is annexing is not empty ocean, it’s a set of islands that belong to other nations, like the Philippines. Those are not theirs to take, and it’s a breach of international law, but their military power and UNSC veto means they can get away with it.
And, no, the conflict is not because of US activity. It’s because China, as it quite openly states in various forms including its doctrines, believes it has the right to regional hegemony over neighbouring countries. They, in turn, obviously don’t want that, so they’ve invited the US in as an ally. None of those are ‘aggressor’ moves toward China, because even the largest US military facilities in the area only have sufficient forces for defensive actions, not for an attack on mainland China.
The US didn’t invade Korea, it was part of a United Nations force protecting South Korea from attack by the north. It invaded Japan after being attacked first at Pearl Harbor. It was invited into South Vietnam, at the time under attack from North Vietnam. Laos I’ll give you, that was illegal and unacceptable. The US has never invaded China, it had a post-war force at the request of the then-government to disarm and repatriate the remainder of the Imperial Japanese Army from Manchuria. Similarly, it liberated the Philippines from the Japanese and immediately restored its pre-war democratic government. That’s not an ‘invasion’ as you cast it.
Of course of this is to say the US has always done good or is perfect. Far from it. But your whataboutism and insistence that China has done no wrong is ridiculous.
In the past two decades alone China has been in border disputes and land grabs with nearly all its neighbours, encroaching on territory in India, Bhutan, and the South China Sea. This should not be considered acceptable either.
None of my examples (except China) were from over a century ago, nor were they from before the United Nations (or League of Nations existed).
Guess you need to look at the nations that took part in the various battles during the annexation of Hong Kong, Opium Wars etc. The US was not involved?
Didn’t say China has done nothing wrong, just if we are looking at nations that need to be reigned in. The US has done more to damage other countries sovereignty than basically the rest of the world combined. So it seems weird to focus on China…
So the US is just protecting Phillipines sovereignty… randomly? Interesting take on it. I wonder why they don’t care about Myanmar… same region… very clear cut destruction of a democracy (which was the reason they went to Vietnam…)
Or even Australia, that time they assisted in the sacking of a prime minister to protect their mining interests. Or the fact they passed laws to try to undermine nations (specifically its allies)to purchase drugs as a whole to prop up the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s not whataboutism. It’s the US is shit to everyone, and the fact that people even talk about China (unless you’re a Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino) is just falling for US propaganda.
> None of my examples (except China) were from over a century ago, nor were they from before the United Nations (or League of Nations existed).
I was referring specifically to the example you provided of US annexation of formerly Mexican territory. As far as I know the US hasn't annexed territory since 1945. Which is also when the world collectively changed its approach in an attempt to avoid great powers creating another World War, and shifted to a model where annexation by force is a bad thing. Rather have stable borders shifted by appeals to the ICJ than by rolling tanks over the borders. It has never been a perfect system, of course, but by and large it held as a set of norms until recently.
> Didn’t say China has done nothing wrong, just if we are looking at nations that need to be reigned in. The US has done more to damage other countries sovereignty than basically the rest of the world combined. So it seems weird to focus on China…
That's a very myopic US-centric view, and I think one that can only be held because there's much more accessible
> So the US is just protecting Phillipines sovereignty… randomly? Interesting take on it. I wonder why they don’t care about Myanmar… same region… very clear cut destruction of a democracy (which was the reason they went to Vietnam…)
I never said it was random. Clearly, it's also of strategic value to the US. I said it's because they were invited in by those countries, and remain only because the democratically-elected governments that host them continue to renew those agreements and alliances because it's in their interests too. Myanmar is run by a military junta that doesn't want to be an ally of the US. In contrast, South Vietnam invited the US in.
> It’s not whataboutism. It’s the US is shit to everyone, and the fact that people even talk about China (unless you’re a Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino) is just falling for US propaganda.
That's exactly whataboutism, and the fact that you think that nobody should even talk about China unless they're Uighur, Tibetan, or Filipino just proves the point. Everyone has an interest in a peaceful, stable, and fair global order, and that means opposing the actions of any country that threatens it whether it's the US, China, Russia, or any other power. China's clearly stated ambitions to take over Taiwan by force, for instance, would massively and negatively impact the rest of us through the knock on effects to the global economy and the shortage of key electronic parts like chips.
It’s not nobody should talk about China, it’s that it literally hasnt done anything worth talking about compared with a whole host of countries…
If you think the view is myopic… how about you challenge it? Who’s disturbed more foreign nations than the US? Like in the history of civilisation.
Myanmar was not run by a junta, it was a democracy and they did invite the US and are desperately asking for help right now… just like Vietnam did. So what is different?
I would say because the US only wants to fuck with China and couldn’t care less about these other nations. Which you also admit is the case. What is “strategic” about protecting the Philippines? The answer is China, most specifically “containing China” - but why “contain” a country that has never expressed ill will towards you?
Is the US also containing India?
It is like people purposely pretend the US are the “Good guys” and ignore any other possibility.
If you point this out, it’s whataboutism (a made up term pretending to be a fallacy used generally to justify American exceptionalism)
The US was rightly condemned for its invasion of Iraq, and more should have been done by the world’s nations to prevent it. We have that opportunity with China and Taiwan now, and letting it happen just because other major powers have done stuff too would be a mistake.
The USSR (and now Russia) and China have ‘disturbed’ just as many foreign nations as the US. Both have long pursued interventionist foreign policies, covertly and overtly supporting sub-national groups that worked in their interests. Even in the most recent years we have Russian intelligence causing a string of coups throughout Africa and funding and supporting disruptive extremist groups, and China has been caught spying on the African Union’s governance structures in order to influence continental policy and coerce leaders.
It’s less publicised and less visible because, unlike the US, neither Russia nor China have a free and unfettered press and civil society who can obtain and report on leaks and other embarrassing information.
It’s not enough that Myanmar was a democracy, because soon after winning elections that administration launched a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya. There’s also no strategic interest for the US there. As I said earlier, alliances happen when the two align.
The US’s strategic interest in that area is not to ‘fuck’ with China, but to preserve a rules-based order that’s open for international trade. If China is allowed to take over the entire South China Sea and other surrounding areas they can close it to any traffic whenever they want, they’ll be more easily able to take over Taiwan and maybe even countries like the Philippines, and there’ll be nothing stopping them from annexing more and more territory. We saw in the 1930s what allowing this sort of thing can lead to. I’d say it’s in all our interests, not just the US’s, that China not be allowed to simply annex more territory. I’d similarly be opposed to the US or any other country trying to annex territory by force.
China has been rightly condemned for "speaking" of invading Taiwan. What would you like the world to do for this "thought crime" given no invasion has occurred? Surround the country in military bases? We've done that, has that helped defuse the situation?
China have pursued interventionist policies? You are going to need to cite that. Which African leaders did China coerce?
Your reasoning for "less publicised and less visible" doesn't make sense... couldn't the "free press" of the US shine a light on it? Taiwan has a free press...?
I think you need to understand Myanmar better, it was the military that launched the genocidal campaign, and it was the military that overthrew the democracy. Converting a state that shares a land border with China to be an ally of the US feels way more strategic than the Phillipines... or even Taiwan for that matter (sans the microchip manufacturing capacity).
"Rules based order" - Wow, straight out of "Western nations' talking points". You honestly sound like the communists quoting Mao from the little red book. Is the US following this rules based order? Seems to me China is following those rules more than the US ever did. Which rules is china breaking?
Like when the US signed the treaty that said space would not be militarised, then it created the "space force", and banned china for the ISS.
Or that it wouldn't imprison people unfairly (according to both its own constitution AND its international treaties), so it created prisons on foreign soil to imprison them unfairly.
Or that it helped establish the United Nations but then lied to them, and ignored them when it invaded Iraq... well and Pakistan... which no one even mentions.
When it established the five-eyes then used that infrastructure to spy on its own allies.
Did you mean domestically? Like how it impeached its last president twice, has since convicted him as a felon... so he can't vote? But can still run as president? That rule based system?
> China has been rightly condemned for "speaking" of invading Taiwan. What would you like the world to do for this "thought crime" given no invasion has occurred? Surround the country in military bases? We've done that, has that helped defuse the situation?
Has it been? Where are the peace campaigns arguing against an invasion? The urges to use diplomatic methods and to win over the Taiwanese public for a peaceful 'reunification' if that's what they want?
> China have pursued interventionist policies? You are going to need to cite that. Which African leaders did China coerce?
Through both espionage[0][1][2] and economic and political coercion.[3][4][5]
>Your reasoning for "less publicised and less visible" doesn't make sense... couldn't the "free press" of the US shine a light on it? Taiwan has a free press...?
Do you think Chinese officials or whistleblowers involved in those programmes are going to speak to American or Taiwanese media? Seriously? These leak in democratic countries because there is a domestic free press that people can speak to. Russian and Chinese officials are not going to pick up the phone to the New York Times or the Washington Post...
>I think you need to understand Myanmar better, it was the military that launched the genocidal campaign, and it was the military that overthrew the democracy. Converting a state that shares a land border with China to be an ally of the US feels way more strategic than the Phillipines... or even Taiwan for that matter (sans the microchip manufacturing capacity).
The US and other Western countries condemned the coup and instituted sanctions against the military officers involved. What more do you want them to have done, invade?
>"Rules based order" - Wow, straight out of "Western nations' talking points". You honestly sound like the communists quoting Mao from the little red book. Is the US following this rules based order? Seems to me China is following those rules more than the US ever did. Which rules is china breaking?
This is not an American concept, it's a global one created in the aftermath of WW2's immense destruction, aiming to encourage countries to resolve disputes peacefully though diplomacy and the use of international institutions like the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. And that violent interventions should follow international law and be channeled through the United Nations Security Council where the immediate principle of self defence doesn't apply. The United Nations Secretary-General often refers to the term and concept.[6][7]
The US broadly follows it, though as I've said before I regard the invasion of Iraq as being contrary to it and a black mark on the US's history and credibility. I'd say that secret CIA 'black sites' and extraordinary rendition fall in the same category and are rightly condemned. China is not following it in many cases, including Tibet, its encroachment on Bhutan, its threats and promises to invade Taiwan, and its takeover of the South China Sea. It's following a traditional 19th century view of 'might makes right' and annexation by force.
Once again, this is not a 'US good, China bad' debate as you seem so eager to turn it into. We can and should condemn any country that acts this way, whoever it might be.
Are time sensitive notifications new? I’ve never heard of them but the setting is there for me.
Using Uber as the example if I turn off Lock Screen notifications and turn on time sensitive notifications then will I get no marketing notifications, and only notifications about my driver turning up?
> if I turn off Lock Screen notifications and turn on time sensitive notifications then will I get no marketing notifications, and only notifications about my driver turning up?
It's up to the app developer, they get to mark notifications as time sensitive or not. So if someone decides that because a coupon is expiring soon it's "time sensitive" to ping you about it, then they can mark it as such. Hypothetically Apple could frown on this in app review, but it isn't something app reviewers are likely to be able to reliably catch.
