Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment • Hacker News Board

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#121

Post by seanflyon » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

novalis78 wrote: post #113

iaw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The startup capital required for nuclear fission is so immense that it doesn't make sense from an economic time-value perspective. The problem with most renewables (excl. thermal and hydro) is that they are incapable of meeting 100% of electricity demands by their nature without better storage technology. The economics are pushing towards renewables but I feel that nuclear makes more sense for our society in the near…

a large amount of startup capital is of regulatory nature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUdwgbh6he4

I don't think unregulated nuclear is a good idea. Safer reactors would require less regulation and you could argue that even for current reactors our regulation is excessive. The bottom line is that efficient regulation is a hard problem and to use nuclear power we need to either solve that problem or endure inefficient regulation.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#122

Post by anon1mous » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:47 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #35

tomcam wrote: post #21

I am not reflexively anti-nuclear. However, I have never heard a satisfactory answer to the simple question: "How do we store nuclear waste safely?"

Bury it deep enough? Somehow everybody freaks out about nuclear waste and says stuff like "But after 20,000 years it will still retain half of its radiation!" Well, our industrial waste also contain mercury and other heavy metals. We usually just bury them. Somehow nobody freaks out and says "But after 20,000 years it will still retain ALL of its toxicity!" I can't fathom why.

Very simple - a few tones of Uranium or Plutonium, dispersed in air or water can kill the population of a continent.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#123

Post by Turing_Machine » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:50 PM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #74

yongjik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bury it deep enough? Somehow everybody freaks out about nuclear waste and says stuff like "But after 20,000 years it will still retain half of its radiation!" Well, our industrial waste also contain mercury and other heavy metals. We usually just bury them. Somehow nobody freaks out and says "But after 20,000 years it will still retain ALL of its toxicity!" I can't fathom why.

And what they also don't appreciate is that nuclear material with a 20,000 year half-life has, by definition, very very low radioactivity. It's like any other fuel -- the faster it burns, the shorter it lives. And vice versa.

Yes, very much this.

"Long half-life" = "not very radioactive" by definition.

"Half-life of infinity" must sound really scary to these people, but that's the same as saying that it's not radiactive at all.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#124

Post by acrefoot » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

Eeko wrote: post #15

peoii wrote: post #2

It's the sad truth that people seem very for nuclear, but no one wants to live near it. Of course, I've seen articles regarding people who don't want to live near wind turbines, so maybe people are just far to fickle.

When I was studying, we had an active (research) reactor running on the campus under thousands of student dorms. Less than 10km from the center of the capital (Helsinki) too. Most people do not even know it's there. Most people don't know that a lot of hospitals on densely populated areas also house running reactors. The power plants generally are pretty dull industrial sites. I don't blame for people not wanting the…

MIT has a nuclear reactor on campus right on Massachusetts Ave, between Harvard and Boston. (It's not a power-generating reactor.) There is also a cogeneration plant that produces electricity, steam heat, chilled water, and compressed air. I've never heard anyone complain about either.

Most people don't know or care except if it's super obvious (generating tons of obvious smoke/steam). However, they will raise all sorts of fuss while it's being proposed.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#125

Post by ansible » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

anon1mous wrote: post #119

brrt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We burn it! That is, nuclear burn it, not chemically. And what can't be burned can be bombarded with neutrons into radiological inertia. And what can't be neutralized in that sense can be molten into a ceramic, more specifically, a glass, and stored underground. Which is of course where it came from, when you think of it. Seriously, nuclear waste storage is not a problem . This page gives an excellent eplanation: htt…

Do you burn it? Why is it than that every reactor I know of, in US, WE, Japan, stores tones of extremely dangerous waste on site?

I think brrt is talking about "burning" nuclear waste in a molten-salt reactor or similar. Some types of existing fission reactors can only utilize a small percentage of the uranium in their fuel rods, after which the rods must be removed. The rods must then be stored, and possibly reprocessed afterwards.

MSR and other fission reactor types can utilize 100% of the fissionable material put into them, so this sort of leftover "waste" is not such a problem.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#126

Post by Nimitz14 » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:51 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #111

vonmoltke wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor does the existence of an exclusion zone mean it isn't.

That's pretty much exactly what it means.. They have actual measurements of environmental radiation.. In anything orange or red, you're looking at a minimum of 20mSv/year which is about 1/2 of the annual dose limit for US nuclear workers.. In the deep red areas, you're looking at more than 50mSv/year which is approaching the level of increased cancer incidence. Nobody is going to live in those areas for a very long t…

I still stand by my statement that I think a lot of the public reaction to Fukushima was overblown (as a resident of Germany and a supporter of NPPs, I am biased ;) ). Have to admit I falsely remembered the radiation levels being lower by a factor of ~5 (additional radiation).

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#127

Post by jcranmer » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

ebbv wrote: post #17

This article is pretty terrible. The bias is just ridiculous. When discussing wind and solar the author constantly makes assumptions that favor worst cases, and makes questionable comparisons. For example; stating that "more Americans" died from installing rooftop solar than have died from construction or use of nuclear power, cherry picking the most dangerous possible activity related to solar power (some guy up on…

The total number of people who have died in all nuclear radiation incidents (excluding the use of atomic weapons) is perhaps 20,000, with all but 100 coming from a single incident (Chernobyl). That number is less than the number of people who will have died from pollution from coal power points, alone, last year, let alone the effects of coal mining.

Nuclear power has a big image problem: people overestimate the expected risk of very rare but high damage events and horribly underestimate common, low-intensity risks. If you scale deaths per TWh, nuclear is by far the safest form of energy--solar is about 5 times as deadly.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#128

Post by Turing_Machine » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

anon1mous wrote: post #122

yongjik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bury it deep enough? Somehow everybody freaks out about nuclear waste and says stuff like "But after 20,000 years it will still retain half of its radiation!" Well, our industrial waste also contain mercury and other heavy metals. We usually just bury them. Somehow nobody freaks out and says "But after 20,000 years it will still retain ALL of its toxicity!" I can't fathom why.

Very simple - a few tones of Uranium or Plutonium, dispersed in air or water can kill the population of a continent.

Very simply, you're wrong. Badly wrong.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-th...

The ocean contains 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium already. 4.5. BILLION. TONNES. Dispersed in water.

I haven't noticed any continents dying off because of this, have you?

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#129

Post by novalis78 » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

seanflyon wrote: post #121

novalis78 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a large amount of startup capital is of regulatory nature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUdwgbh6he4

I don't think unregulated nuclear is a good idea. Safer reactors would require less regulation and you could argue that even for current reactors our regulation is excessive. The bottom line is that efficient regulation is a hard problem and to use nuclear power we need to either solve that problem or endure inefficient regulation.

It's not that simple. Nuclear regulation in the US has turned (similar to the FDA) into an innovation stifling behemoth... It's a lobbying place and a capital sink and has little to do with safety. If it was about safety, they would shut down current reactor designs yesterday and had started working on Thorium alternatives 20 years ago. The youtube link I posted from TEAC7 conference does explain that quite well.

Re: Why nuclear energy is our best option at the moment

#130

Post by ebbv » Tue, Nov 03, 2015, 9:52 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #54

ebbv wrote: post #17

This article is pretty terrible. The bias is just ridiculous. When discussing wind and solar the author constantly makes assumptions that favor worst cases, and makes questionable comparisons. For example; stating that "more Americans" died from installing rooftop solar than have died from construction or use of nuclear power, cherry picking the most dangerous possible activity related to solar power (some guy up on…

I think ""more Americans" died from installing rooftop solar than have died from construction or use of nuclear power" includes all aspects of nuclear power. The "or use" would seemingly include operating nuclear plants. And given the incredibly low number of deaths in the US associated with nuclear power production, it seems fair.

It's not everything, though. Because as I mentioned it purposely focuses on America, excluding the two biggest nuclear disasters (Chernobyl and Fukushima.)

Also fatalities hardly tell the whole story. Far more people have had their lives totally upended by Fukushima than have died from it, and then there's all the people born with defects from Chernobyl, or left unable to reproduce, and we have yet to see the long term effects of Fukushima.

Pro-nuclear folks tend to focus on a couple of things; cost and mortality under "normal" circumstances. Because those two things look great. But if you start talking about the full impact that nuclear power has had on it world, the picture becomes far less rosy.