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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

#141

Post by voidlogic »

futhey wrote: post #136
payne92 wrote: post #13

I believe the politicization of nuclear energy (the resulting lack of investment & innovation) will go down as one of the major blunders in human history. We'd be in a far, far better situation with greenhouse gasses if we (as a human race) had continued to invest in nuclear energy. There would have been mishaps along the way, but at a much smaller scale than we're experiencing now with deaths from air pollution and…

I'm more afraid of having nuclear power plants now that we no longer have a thriving industry to support innovation and technological progress in the field. From my understanding, we stopped innovating in fission power plant design decades ago.

>we stopped innovating in fission power plant design decades ago.

No work on new better designed as continued, we just stopped building many of them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

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

#142

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dirtyaura wrote: post #34
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.…

Wikipedia has some numbers. Hydro has caused the largest single-event catastrophe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

Relevantly, some nuclear plants are paired with hydro schemes, in order to make the flat output of nuclear plants economically match the bumpy daytime peak of consumer demand.

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

#143

Post by candiodari »

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…

> 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?

Wind is hanging rapidly rotating turbines on thin shafts 100-200 meter off the ground. Are you seriously going to claim installing and maintaining those things is a safe occupation ? They are referred to as grinders, which relates to what happens to a technician who trips while inside the machine room (which is tiny and suspended 100m off of the ground, the gears are exposed, so you can imagine exactly what happened to get the name grinders).

Likewise, most solar is rooftop solar. Rooftop solar ? That is essentially placing large and heavy glass slabs high up in the air on sloping surfaces. Likewise, if I had that job, I might neglect to mention it to my life insurance, as this is not a particularly safe occupation either.

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

Installations for both power sources are demanding a steady stream of human life, as is extracting the materials needed for construction of either wind or solar power. Construction of them is powered by coal (in the case of wind turbines by necessity, as coking is still how we produce steel). Also: China's mines are deathtraps, this is a LOT of human lives.

> 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.

As can be seen, even if you count Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear is still safer than most other forms of power. But that's a bit like chalking kills by a soldier that takes a nightlight powered by solar battery up to solar power.

For obvious reasons, any power source can easily be turned into a weapon.

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

#144

Post by dfox »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #60
gaius wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really don't know what to do about it Another myth. Of course we do: breeder reactors. Hint: why is nuclear waste dangerous? because there is still loads of energy in it .

> why is nuclear waste dangerous? because there is still loads of energy in it. I though it was because of γ-radiation and long half lives? Are those properties unique to matter with high energy potential?

The energy of the radiated γ-photons has to come from somewhere. In the first approximation the fission reactor is device for releasing this energy faster while converting it into more mamageable form.

(Pure fission and Teller-Ulam bombs are about releasing said energy as fast and as completely as possible)

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

#145

Post by y4mi »

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…

your link didn't provide any numbers as far as i can see, so i'll add another one. This one is very long though, my quoted numbers are from the appendix and are merely estimates. Read the article if you want to know more about it.

> Regarding bare plant costs, some recent figures apparently for overnight capital cost (or engineering, procurement and construction – EPC – cost) quoted from reputable sources but not necessarily comparable are:

  * EdF Flamanville EPR: €4 billion/$5.6 billion, so €2434/kW or $3400/kW
  * Bruce Power Alberta 2x1100 MWe ACR, $6.2 billion, so $2800/kW
  * CGNPC Hongyanhe 4x1080 CPR-1000 $6.6 billion, so $1530/kW
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-as...

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

#146

Post by mikeash »

martinald wrote: post #133
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…

Solar and wind has a lot of 'negative externalities' though that are generally borne by the grid or other operators. I think the economics really work against it at high% penetration (30-40%+). The problem is that solar and wind requires backup generation, usually CCGT natural gas. This is ok until you scale higher and higher. You end up having CCGT only producing 20-40% of the time (to fill in for wind and solar bli…

> Turn off solar+wind remotely (often very expensive to retrofit to existing installations as the Germans found out)

If we're talking about problems that show up when wind/solar becomes an order of magnitude more prevalent than it is now, why would you care about the cost of retrofitting anything?

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

#149

Post by bluthru »

tboughen wrote: post #76
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…

I believe it us due to the installation deaths. Typically solar cells are installed on rooftops, which are non-trivially dangerous places to work. Multiply the risk by tens of thousands of installations and we get fatalities due to solar power.

Yep. Installing solar arrays at ground level is even safer than building a fission plant.

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

#150

Post by padseeker »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #122
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…

Comments with "bullshit" in all caps aren't a very good fit for HN. In the first two paragraphs you insinuate that they deliberately skip wind and solar (when wind and solar can't generate the kind of power that nuclear can), that this is a submarine article from the nuclear industry, that you didn't read it, and that nobody else should read it either. These elements combined are toxic to HN's culture of intellectual…

They DID skip it for a reason. I'm telling you there is most likely an ulterior motive for this article. There is mention of biomass (which is burning of wood) but no mention of power generated by dams. The history of Solar and Wind are short and has grown astronomically. Maybe you could weasel out of doing any real analysis on it.

But what about hydro power? Why is that omitted. And the title says it all;

"It goes completely against what most believe, but out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest"

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