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Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

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Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#91

Post by padseeker »

This is the year 2017 - This article deliberately skips over any consideration to Wind, Solar, etc. What kind of BULLSHIT excuse for journalism and scientific study is this? Who in the nuclear industry paid for this?

I only read the first 3 paragraphs but I can already tell you this article is not worth your time.

The article compares the statistics of energy sources, but all of the charts focus on fossil fuels. This article starts off giving lip service by offhand mentioning renewable sources in one sentence.

"While the negative health impacts of modern renewable energy technologies are so far thought to be small, they have been less fully explored."

Maybe in the short term nuclear does kill fewer people, in the short term compared to recent history. If nuclear plants are maintained safely - thats a pretty big if - and no other disasters befall a plant, maybe there current status is true.

One of the many things I have learned while working in technology is Risk Assessments. If an upgrade or change has a low chance of failure but a high potential for damage then you need to be very careful and cautious. Nuclear Power strikes me as having a small chance of risk of failure but the potential damage of that failure is catastrophic.

There are only 3 nuclear power mishaps I know of - 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. I guess 3 Mile wasn't too bad, but the other 2 had epic consequences. That's not even considering the waste issue. Or a dirty bomb.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#92

Post by epistasis »

jesus92gz-spain wrote: post #63

How can nuclear (fision) energy be safer than wind/solar/hydro? New efficient solar cells should be enough, environment friendly, and safer than other alternatives as long as the manufacturing of these are environment friendly as well. Also, everyone can setup their own solar plant at home, I almost did so, but the price of the materials and the setup are too high for me. I'd like you to consider if nuclear material…

Working on the roofs of homes is extremely dangerous. This makes residential solar much more deadly than utility-scale solar, for example.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#94

Post by maxerickson »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #37
xg15 wrote: post #12

Can anyone explain to me why "deaths/tWh" is even a meaningful measure? Of course nuclear energy has one of the highest Wh outputs, no-one is disputing that. However, what does that have to do with the risk of use? That seems like a measure very skewed to make arguments in favour of nuclear power. I might as well argue that car drivers are safer than pedestrians because the average deaths/horse power is vastly lower.…

I'm only aware of two deaths specifically caused by wind power, when two engineers were caught on top of one when it caught fire. It's likely such a negligible number that it wouldn't even show up on the graph.

What about falls? They don't happen often but it seems clear enough that they are attributable to wind power.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#95

Post by nextos »

padseeker wrote: post #91

This is the year 2017 - This article deliberately skips over any consideration to Wind, Solar, etc. What kind of BULLSHIT excuse for journalism and scientific study is this? Who in the nuclear industry paid for this? I only read the first 3 paragraphs but I can already tell you this article is not worth your time. The article compares the statistics of energy sources, but all of the charts focus on fossil fuels. This…

Taleb would say all this statistics are bullshit, cause they ignore the long tails. I doubt a gas or coal power station can destroy a nation. A nuclear plant has the potential to do so.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#96

Post by the_gastropod »

It appears that these figures take into account _just_ energy production. They don't seem include the mining, enriching, construction of reactors, disposal of waste, decommissioning reactors, etc. When mining low-grade ore (which isn't uncommon, and is becoming more command as high-grade ore becomes more scarce), nuclear plants are as inefficient as coal-fired plants [1]. Nuclear advocates tend to ignore the full system, and focus on where nuclear shines: power production. The setup to get to that point is extremely costly.

[1] https://www.stormsmith.nl/i05.html

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#97

Post by yellowapple »

anotherbrownguy wrote: post #52

Isn't nuclear hysteria created mostly by American CleanTech industry? Solar is not a reliable source to begin with so you can't use it to power anything critical. It has to be combined with something like nuclear or fossil fuels to have reliable power. But if we go nuclear, we will have 1000s of years worth of power. So, where exactly does Solar fit in?

Solar doesn't have to be reliable; it just has to charge a battery (or some other means of energy storage) which is reliable.

Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#98

Post by pinaceae »

Funny humans care about their children.

Nothing is scarier than birth-defects. Radiation causes very visible birth defects.

Hence people are very, very scared of radiation. And rightly so.

A windpark will not cause disfigured babies. Hence wind is better.

And: Nuclear is the most expensive energy source, by FAR. safety, waste, clean-up - super, super expensive. dismantle a wind park and it is gone, poof. dismantle a reactor and now you have a new problem.

Also very hard to weaponize wind or solar. Blow up a wind park and well, the wind park is gone. Steal a rotor and now you have a rotor.

etc etc etc.

What is sooo hard to understand about this?

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#99

Post by GeneralMayhem »

jesus92gz-spain wrote: post #63

How can nuclear (fision) energy be safer than wind/solar/hydro? New efficient solar cells should be enough, environment friendly, and safer than other alternatives as long as the manufacturing of these are environment friendly as well. Also, everyone can setup their own solar plant at home, I almost did so, but the price of the materials and the setup are too high for me. I'd like you to consider if nuclear material…

The manufacture of solar panels is not as safe or as environmentally friendly as you might hope, just like how buying a new Prius to replace your car is probably a net loss for the environment unless your existing one is already near the end of its useful life.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#100

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Terr_ wrote: post #49
cjsuk wrote: post #14

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.

You could argue that it's actually our social and legal system which is causing problems, rather than a deficiency of technology. Not in the sense that people are being irrational, but in the sense that we don't have a good framework for dealing with liabilities -- like nuclear waste -- for extremely long periods of time. We could probably store it pretty well if anybody was motivated in paying the direct and indirec…

It's also possible that if those costs were correctly tallied, then nuclear power would not be economically viable (assuming it even is without them).
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