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

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

#151

Post by nnfy » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:50 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #124

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…

Nuclear energy was politicized from day minus one. It was developed out of government driven military technology. In day zero nuclear energy was set up by politicians: goals, strategies, financing, deployment, risk handling, etc. Everything was coming from energy politics. Investments were directed and the market&regulations for nuclear were set up. Government largely financed it and insures it. The large scale, the…

Fukushima was safe, by all standards. This was not related to corruption. It was simply not designed for the rarity of a magnitude 9 earthquake and the scale of the tsunami that followed. Your house in a five hundred year floodplain is not unsafe for lacking stilts. Safety costs money, this wasn't corruption.

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

#152

Post by amluto » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

padseeker wrote: post #139

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 bet Fukushima was pretty damn safe, maybe one of the best nuclear power plants designed. The best designs cannot account for everything. There is always a risk of an accident, and you need consider not just accidental but intentional mishaps (dirty bombs). Very low risk of something happening is not the same is the damaged caused if that risk becomes a reality.

Fukushima was a boiling water reactor, which is not a good design. A good design would be passively safe, which more or less means that you can turn off the plant and walk away without a disaster occurring.

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

#153

Post by shams93 » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

Wind works so well in places like Santa Monica the utilities were able to make it illegal to use wind power for your home. Fortunately they were not able to do the same to solar. We have home owners in california generating more energy than they use with their home solar panels, like my parents they generate more than they use even at the height of the summer.

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

#154

Post by zuzun » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

Fej wrote: post #23

abritinthebay wrote: post #6

This has been known for a long time in informed circles. The problems with nuclear are waste and that we use vastly outdated designs and fuel sources. Nuclear is not perfect, but we should not buy into a perfection fallacy when looking to get away from fossil fuels. Solar is a better long term bet but a good progressive nuclear strategy that added a handful of small modern reactors could be massively complementary to…

Waste is a miniscule problem. Put it in the ground. Or, perhaps, in the side of a mountain... The only reason waste is an issue in the United States is that the Congress decided that nuclear waste repositories have to last for 10,000 years uninterrupted. As far as we know this is just about impossible. 10 millenia ago we were in the caves. Placed at the bottom of a pool, it's perfectly safe. This is a solved problem.…

What a flawed comparison. Take the water from the pool and drink it and give it your livestock to drink and water your plants with it and see how that works out over the span of a few decades.

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

#155

Post by ZeroGravitas » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

comicjk wrote: post #70

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.…

Terawatt-hours are a direct measurement of what we want from an energy source, namely, energy. The equivalent for transportation would be deaths/mile, which is indeed a commonly used metric of transportation safety. Deaths/TWh is very meaningful.

It's not a perfect measurement, as Nuclear is similar to solar in that it provides power to it's own schedule. Normally this will mean gas or coal being throttled below their capacity. It's possible that this affects their deaths/TWh negatively, though perhaps not as maybe the sourcing of the fuel is the big problem with those plants, but e.g. if it's 5 people who die building the nuclear and gas plant, and then the gas plant throttles down overnight because the nuclear plant can't, then the nuclear plant wins unfairly.

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

#156

Post by burnbabyburn » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

don't worry about waste, you could bring that here in italy, for little money.

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

#157

Post by padseeker » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

Please retitle the article to as follows;

"It goes completely against what most believe, but EXCEPT FOR SOLAR AND WIND AND OTHER RENEWABLE RESOURCES BECAUSE WE COULD NOT BE BOTHERED out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest"

This is the real title of this article. And if it was, then it would not be #1 top of the list on Hacker News.

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

#158

Post by vkou » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

padseeker wrote: post #129

ajross wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are TOTALLY playing games. Solar and Wind are relatively young, but power generated by Water based dams have been around for decades, yet only biomass is mentioned. The omission is deliberate.

1. The world's available hydro resources are nearly tapped.

2. Hydro power generation is only second to coal in the number of people it killed. [1]

3. Hydro power generation is complete hell on the environment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...

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

#159

Post by mikeash » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

jesus92gz-spain wrote: post #101

tboughen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You serious? And building an hydroelectric/atomic/coal plant is not dangerous? It's not a too dangerous place, when the people who set these up are professionals who are following a security guideline. I see lots of people working on their roof, so, at least for me, this is a nonsense argument to discredit solar energy.

You have to look at statistics, not just declare that installers are professionals so it's nonsense.

Yes, building power plants is dangerous too. The question is, how do they compare?

Wikipedia has some stats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

Rooftop solar is vastly better than anything fossil fuels, but worse than nuclear, wind, and first-world hydropower.

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

#160

Post by Maakuth » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #113

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.

Biomass, according to IEA [1], is 10% of global primary energy production. It might not contribute lot in the US, but for example here in Finland, wood biomass accounts for one quarter of all the primary energy production.

1: https://www.iea.org/topics/renewables/subtopics/bioenergy/