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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

#211
post #170
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Good" design is ill defined. The fact that a design is riskier than an alternative does not immediately make it worse. Especially when safety can be engineered to arbitrary standards with enough money.

> Especially when safety can be engineered to arbitrary standards with enough money.

There is not 'enough money'. If a reactor shows cracks in the steel in critical places, preventing this upfront might not be technologically possible and afterwards repairing might also be so expensive, that it economically makes no sense.

The big problem: if there is a technical problem, it is politically a very tough decision to close it, because of the costs involved (loss of profits from selling electricity, costs of decommissioning, costs of replacement, ...). Thus a more or less clear need to shutdown the reactor because of technical unfitness will conflict with financial interests and the scale of the money involved makes it worse.

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

#212

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…

Doesn't it address this in the intro paragraph?

"The production of energy can be attributed to both mortality (deaths) and morbidity (severe illness) cases as a consequence of each stage of the energy production process: this includes accidents in the mining of the raw material, the processing and production phases, and pollution-related impacts."

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

#213
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Don't forget things like Small Modular Reactors:

https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-reactor-technologies/small...

http://www.nuscalepower.com/

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

#214
Comparison is incomplete without taking into consideration BDBA (beyond design basis accidents). Probability of an accident worse than Chernobyl is low, but not zero. Multiply it by economic loss from large densely populated area becoming uninhabitable, and it can easily flip the conclusion.

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

#215
Fission power's bad rep is bad for fusion power, the latter being way more safe in any respect.

Anyway, although it is a serious issue, to this day no cities had to be evacuated permanently because of air pollution.

Regretfully, nuclear energy has an aura of doom, and investment in nuclear power plants wrongfully reek of hubris.

Even if it isn't a renewable source, fission power is one of our best allies in tackling CO2 emissions. At least it may buy us some time before fusion power and the dissemination of renewables.

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

#216
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.…

It's the absolute opposite of skewed. It's fair and representative. If a country needs XX TWh/year, this is exactly how many deaths will be caused by the various production methods.

You car analogy is on the other hand completely wrong: the death/HP is a meaningless indicator. How about deaths per mile travelled? Check out the values at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort which has a section for traveling (named Additional)

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

#217
post #64

People are scared of nuclear energy for the same reason that they're scared of taking an airplane. Even though it's technically and statistically very safe, the perceived risk appears much greater. In particular in both cases when something goes wrong it tends to go extremely wrong and you're completely helpless to stop it. In contrast getting in a car accident or slowly suffocating in coal power plant emissions seem…

New reactor designs completely eliminate the possibility of meltdown. LFRs include an electrically cooled salt plug that seals a holding tank. If power fails, the molten salt melts the plug, and the fuel safely drains into the tank. I particularly like ThorCon's concept, where the reactor is underground. Another plus of this reactor type is that water cooling isn't needed, so siting is much more flexible. Note that t…

"Completely eliminates the possibility" sounds like something a supervillain would say.

I'm not saying that this passive safety system won't work, or is a bad idea. It sounds great from the brief description. BUT. There's a terrible, terrible tendency of the pro-nuclear side to use bombastic language, and then sneer at those with doubts as ignorant and emotional rather than logical.

Pricing promises are another problem. "Power too cheap to meter" has been promised since the 1950s. It hasn't happened yet.

Be careful with your language.

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

#218
I find this line of reasoning a little misleading. Looking at nuclear's safety record isn't entirely the correct measure, its that the potential consequences are so extreme.

Consider Fukushima. In some ways Japan got lucky, it was entirely possible that an additional reactor on the site could have melted down and the holding pond could have breached. Because of this they were having to consider evacuating areas on the outskirts of Tokyo. Obviously, if that had happened we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

I don't claim that we have considered the risks appropriately, have a sensible nuclear policy, or are considering nuclear correctly wrt climate change. But to claim nuclear is the safest because direct deaths to date are lower is not the full story.

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

#219
post #197

Before Chernobyl blew up, nuclear energy proponents promised us, nuclear energy was safe. When Chernobyl blew up, it was obviously a stupid Soviet design, with stupid operating personnel. But now we've got new reactors, they are safe! Nothing could ever happen! Then Fukushima blew up. That was obviously okay, because it was a Tsunami in conjunction with a few other improbable acts, and we obviously can't expect the n…

"They have been playing with catastrophes of a magnitude we can't really comprehend"

Did you even read the article? Statistics show you that nuclear is safer. Coal/oil/etc actually kill about 1000× more people than nuclear per TWh generated.

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

#220
post #118

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…

Natural gas kills 4,000 people per PWh generated. Fukushima killed zero immediately, and might kill 100-200 eventually through increased cancer incidences. Fukushima made a few hundred square kilometers briefly unsafe, and some tens of square kilometers temporarily uninhabitable. (Or really, inhabitable but slightly unhealthy.) Fossil fuels are wrecking the entire planet. It's interesting that Fukushima seems to be a…

briefly unsafe

What crack are you smoking? How about you move to Chernobyl and check in with the local population. Oh, that's right. No one can live there anymore....

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