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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

#321

Post by chris_va »

There are a couple of things everyone should know when it comes to energy production:

1) Energy investment is primarily driven by cost, not perceived/actual safety. Safety regulations do affect cost, but not enough to significantly change investment (at least in the US, with the current conditions).

2) Base load power and intermittent (e.g. solar/wind) power are not the same thing, and are not comparable. The concept that "solar and wind will save us all" by themselves is fundamentally incorrect, and actually they make things worse in many ways.

Nuclear fear mongering has resulted in high levels of regulations around nuclear power, but even without that natural gas has an edge in $/kWh. There just hasn't been demand to build nuclear. On top of that, nuclear needs to run 24/7 to amortize high capital costs. With solar/wind, there is high variability in grid supply, so nuclear is significantly less cost effective, and is getting phased out in favor of low-capex plants (i.e. natural gas).

Barring some energy storage miracle, we'll eventually end up with ~35% renewables, 15% hydro, 50% natural gas in the US, with HVDC interconnect. No nuclear, no coal.

(source: I work in a Climate and Energy R&D group)

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

#322

Post by epistasis »

Before we even get to the safety, and the disposal of the nuclear waste, we have huge difficulties with the basic economics and construction of nuclear in the US.

The two plants under construction, Summer and Vogtle, have been plagued by construction difficulties and cost overruns. The Summer plant was just finally cancelled today. It seems that the Vogtle plant is going to follow the same route.

The management competence and institutional knowledge needed to build these large, insanely expensive projects seems to have disappeared. The time for nuclear in the US is done. Other options are cheaper, faster, and more responsive. And that's ignoring the political aspect of it all.

http://www.utilitydive.com/news/breaking-santee-cooper-scana...

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

#323

Post by the8472 »

Tomte wrote: post #279
Zak wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default alternative to using more nuclear energy is to use more fossil fuels. Maybe we'd like to use less energy, or switch to wind, solar or similar, but that isn't a viable option in the short term in a lot of cases. We know that using fossil fuels will kill a few people every day, eventually adding up to a large number, as well as causing widespread, low-grade damage to the environment. On the other hand, nucl…

It may not be rational under your belief system (and that's a totally valid position), but you should realize that most people see it differently. Many people are afraid of terrorism and plane crashes and sex crimes, but are still driving to work in a car.

People seeing it differently does not mean they are rational actors.

That said, this kind of risk response might be an evolutionary adaption. Better have a threat that slowly kills individual members of the tribe (allows escape or replacement of losses) than something that is outside your control to respond to and wipes the whole tribe.

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

#324

Post by outworlder »

beat wrote: post #274
hueving wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and then sneer at those with doubts as ignorant and emotional rather than logical That's because you reply with things like this. >sounds like something a supervillain would say.

When you tell me something "completely eliminates" the possibility of failure in complex industrial design - you're being emotional rather than logical. Look, I'm actually pro-nuclear. But I think the arguments made for nuclear power are mostly awful, driven by techno-fetishism and wishful thinking rather than real logic. The "But I'm logical and you're just emotional!" argument is itself an emotional argument, a rus…

> When you tell me something "completely eliminates" the possibility of failure in complex industrial design - you're being emotional rather than logical.

No.

Modern reactor designs are actually designed in a way that makes it difficult to maintain the reaction. If you are not actively maintaining it, then it will stop on its own. This is opposed to the most common existing designs, where you need to expend effort to _stop_ the reaction.

This is not to say that they cannot fail in some novel ways.

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

#325

Post by nickbauman »

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…

The recalcitrant problem of nuclear waste storage is now a permanent part of human history going forward even if not one single nuke plant is ever onlined again. So the dangers of nukes are here to stay no matter what. Making a new nuke plant or not will not change this problem. One could even argue that if we continue developing nuke plants we'll get better at dealing with the waste. If we don't we'll get worse.

Having said that, it takes 30 years to online a new nuke plant. They have to be maintained over centuries. It's easier to make wind farms, geothermal and photovoltaics today, right now. We can't wait 30+ years for nukes to help our clean energy future happen.

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

#326

Post by iamatworknow »

jimmaswell wrote: post #314
btilly wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with nuclear energy is that a nuclear power plant isn't very different in concept from a nuclear bomb. Getting the latter from the former is a serious concern. Having the former accidentally turn into a dirty nuke (not a lot of force, but lots of fallout), is scarily easy. Just see 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl.

It is very different. You can't just make an atom bomb out of what's available at a nuclear plant. They're entirely different concepts requiting diffrrent materials. Chernobyl was an outdated design known to be dangerous at the time it was made, and something like the Chernobyl incident can't happen on anything newer. A study found statistically insignificant rises in cancer rates from the 3 Mile incident. I recommen…

I think it's worthwhile to differentiate between a critical mass fission/fusion bomb and a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb can be made from anything radioactive coupled with a conventional explosive, since the goal is just to spread the radioactive material as widely as possible. Fission/fusion bombs (what we typically would consider as "atomic bombs") are, as you said, way harder to pull off. The general public definitely likes to conflate the two.

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

#327

Post by ZeroGravitas »

CreRecombinase wrote: post #224
Tomte wrote: 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…

"X power generation method isn't safe" just isn't a legit form of argument unless you can meaningfully compare it to 1)other power generation methods or 2)not generating that power. Climate change really is a catastrophe of a magnitude we can't really comprehend, and is what nuclear plants are most often replaced with. Nuclear accidents are really bad and really scary, but they've happened before and we at least unde…

Efficiency and conservation is actually always overlooked, negawatts are basically always the cheapest/safest option, but both the free market and government intervention underinvestment in them.

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

#328

Post by titzer »

The ironic thing is, and I'll probably be downvoted for even positing this, but Chernobyl was the best thing that ever happened to that local environment, at least when you look how local wildlife has bounced back since it's been cordoned off as an exclusion zone.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/060418-chernobyl-...

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

#329

Post by AlwaysRock »

Most people who I've talked to about their fears over nuclear energy say they wouldn't want to be in the blast zone in case of a meltdown or near a potential terrorist target. Then I pull up the map of existing nuclear plants and more often than not they already live close to one. I've found its a fear thing for most people.

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

#330

Post by danieledavi »

We should try to use as much as possible renewable resources and save precious, expensive, rare elements to be used only for scientific research purposes and space missions (propulsion and power plants). We have many alternatives on earth but we don't have energetic alternatives on other planets and outer space. We are just wasting the opportunity to go far.
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