Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by padseeker » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

nextos wrote: post #95

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.

That is an excellent comment. The downvotes are already coming in, your comment was grayed out (downvoted) by the time I saw it. No substantive responses yet, just anonymous click revenge. :(

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

#112

Post by mpweiher » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

hristov wrote: post #89

You have to be very careful about these studies, because most official government studies flat out lie about the effects of nuclear disasters. The most egregious example is Chernobyl, where the official Soviet position was that only a single person died from the disaster. But studies from other nations say the death toll may be close to one million. Well believe it or not a lot of these studies that show how safe nuc…

> You have to be very careful about these studies

Yes you do. The WHO has been following the Chernobyl consequences, and come out with a new report about every decade. Each report dramatically lowers the estimate of deaths and other health consequences.

As a matter of fact, the largest health effects now are psychosocial effects. That is, fear of and (over-)reaction to the radiation effects is causing more actual harm than the radiation itself. So potentially one of the easiest ways to mitigate the harmful effects of nuclear accidents (best of course: let's not have any!) is to (over-)react less.

Of course not reacting at all would also be wrong, but it looks like the balance today is out of whack.

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

#113

Post by ajross » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

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…

They're playing games with "major" in the title. Hydro and wind are ~5% of the US generation pool each, which I guess can be argued make them "minor". But then "biomass" appears in the chart too, and it's much smaller still, so no idea.

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

#114

Post by bradleyjg » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #72

My understanding, which is admittedly drawn from HN "napkin math" , is that at current prices for solar and wind, nuclear is a non-starter. That trend is only intensifying. It seems to me that nuclear could have been a good option, but because we've neglected it for so long, squashed innovation with regulations (not necessarily complaining that it didn't need the regulations!) it is uncompetitive economically and wil…

Even leaving aside the question of how much insurance should be required and how to underwrite that, as well as what kind of reserve should be mandated for cleanup and long term waste storage, the economics of nuclear are very rough.

The lion's share of the costs are upfront and the break even period is measured in decades. What is the energy landscape going to look like in 30 years? That's a question that you need to be able to answer with high confidence if you want to correctly price bonds that will be used to construct a nuclear power plant to be paid off from the revenue of the plant. If the potential bond buyers can't answer that question with high confidence then they don't know what interest rate is appropriate for the bonds and they probably won't want to buy them.

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

#115

Post by a_imho » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

I wonder how much nuclear suffers from PR. Clearly statistics are not really effective at changing opinions. But what would happen if popular Elon Musk/Steve Jobs type of public figure get into the lobby game with a nuclear company? Could that swing perception either way?

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

#116

Post by mikeash » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

the_gastropod wrote: post #96

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 sys…

What are the sources of CO2 for mining and all the rest? If it's electricity production then you're basically blaming nuclear for emissions from fossil fuel generation, since those would be much lower in an all-nuclear world. If it's transport then it's more justified, but when looking at how it could be in the future, transport can be electrified to close that loop.

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

#117

Post by philippnagel » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

nextos wrote: post #95

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.

It would be interesting to hear his actual opinion on this topic.

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

#118

Post by unabst » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

The public's nuclear acceptance is not about day to day death toll. It's about broken promises and Armageddon.

Looking at the chart, I'd take gas over nuclear in a heartbeat thinking of what nuclear has done to Japan. Nuclear can both power and destroy a country. Gas and other options do not. Neither does solar or wind which are not even in that chart.

Say we have a new technology that is safer than nuclear, but had a one in a million chance to destroy Earth. It would be safest on paper, for however long paper and researchers still existed.

"But Fukushima was a horrible place for a nuclear power plant and it was run by incompetent people," you say. But that's exactly the point. If we make a list of all the plants in the world and the safety measures they undermined and their staffing situation, how many would be stellar? How many would even admit anything?

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

#119

Post by 0xffff2 » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

sbarker wrote: post #88

fnj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Extreme costs. 2) Chance for disaster in case of launch mishap.

2 Is a valid point. For 1, it would be a global win as we reduced costs IMHO.

I don't think you understand how much energy would actually be required to launch the waste into the sun. Costs would have to be reduced by a couple orders of magnitude to make launching any significant amount of material into the sun viable.

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

#120

Post by mpweiher » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

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…

> over any consideration to Wind, Solar,

The title says it: major energy sources. Wind and solar aren't.