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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

#331

Post by saagarjha »

jussij wrote: post #140
yellowapple wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure hydroelectric would actually win statistics 1, 3, and 4 "hands down". It'd also be a serious contender for 2 and 6. This is of course excluding coal, which I'm 92% sure makes even hydroelectric (let alone nuclear) look like a peaceful meadow full of fairies and butterflies by comparison.

All I can say is I'd rather be spending time catching fish on a lake created by a hydroelectric system, then cooking those fish at night in the camp site by the lake, than doing the same anywhere inside the Chernobyl 30 km Exclusion Zone or the Fukushima 20 km Exclusion Zone.

The Chernobyl 30 km Exclusion Zone is actually not that bad, apart from the slight radioactivity. Since there's no human interference, it's essentially a sanctuary for local wildlife.

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

#332

Post by clock_tower »

epistasis wrote: post #322

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 compe…

> The management competence and institutional knowledge needed to build these large, insanely expensive projects seems to have disappeared.

And whose fault is that? Not the fault of nuclear-power supporters and advocates! Nuclear didn't die, it was killed.

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

#333

Post by nisa »

m0skit0 wrote: post #234
thinkcontext wrote: post #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 th…

Got lucky? I think the opposite: Chernobyl was unlucky. I mean, you're basically calling all these nuclear incidents "lucky". That doesn't statistically hold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and...

Chernobyl was not unlucky. This was organisational failure and technical failure - few to none knew about xenon pit and that positive void coefficient was a compromise at the time to fulfill the demands.

Fukushima? I'd say ignoring the known geological situation and dangers (no excuse for that IMHO) and the design of the backup cooling system that fails on a flood is also not unlucky.

It's compromises to save cost and ignore dangers both times.

We also have rotting reactors here in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station

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

#334

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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…

Weirdly, every story I read about this as it starts to happen on windy/sunny weekends and holidays is headlined "Excess solar/wind blah blah" and when you read the story, there's still coal and gas powered electricity production happening at the same time.

Even in your entirely hypothetical example you say they're having to pay natgas and coal to stop production.

Is it just me or is that really weird?

I mean turning off coal and gas is kind of the point, isn't it?

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

#335

Post by kbenson »

ekianjo wrote: post #241
hueving wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that compared to mining for battery and solar material? It's a double standard to hold nuclear accountable for manufacturing when the same is not applied to solar/wind.

batteries and solar components need numerous extracts of minerals and a bunch of chemistry as well but as.you pointed out the solar lobby is happy to ignore all that when claiming they are a clean source of energy.

No source of energy is clean, in that respect. The best you can do is separate one time production and continuing operating pollution, and account for both. Using that to show pollution per Mhh at 5, 10 and 20 year intervals should be sufficient.

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

#336

Post by slackingoff2017 »

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 problem with nuclear goes back to the beginning. The original reason for nuclear research, and even the first reactors, was to breed bomb material. Nuclear power was an extension of "atoms for peace" which was originally political cover to continue weapons programs.

Some commercial reactors are secretly used for this purpose even today.

Nuclear may have a bright future but it's extremely difficult to cleave energy from the state interest in weapons. And I'm not just talking about the US, this is an issue with nuclear power worldwide.

The biggest blunder was using nuclear technology for bombs first. I'm afraid the word is forever tainted by history.

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

#337

Post by laughinghan »

Tomte wrote: post #263
wbl wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people died in all of those? Now compare to the particulate pollution coal releases, which would force evacuation of neighborhoods if we treated them as nuclear plants. The US Navy has operated hundreds of reactors for decades 24/7.

It doesn't matter how many have died in the accidents so far. It matters what the worst-case outcome is. I don't downplay it with some statistic about how rare it would be.

Doesn't this go both ways, though? You've discussed the worst-case outcome of using nuclear power at length. But I've yet to see you address, anywhere in this thread, the worst-case outcome of not using nuclear power and using greenhouse gas-emitting power sources instead.

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

#338

Post by jimrandomh »

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…

Fukushima was constructed well before the Chernobyl disaster. It was not a new, safer design; No lessons learned from Chernobyl were incorporated.

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

#339

Post by teraflop »

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.

Yes, and those same people who drive to work in a car are willing to do so even though there's a tiny chance that they'll suddenly have an epileptic seizure and plow into a crowd of pedestrians on the sidewalk. So it's clearly not true that people only care about worst-case possibilities, without regard to the level of risk.

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

#340

Post by jloughry »

sbarker wrote: post #45
cjsuk wrote: post #14

Apart from the waste. We really don't know what to do about it other than bury it and leave it for a few tens to hundreds of generations in the future to deal with with the hope that they will know what to do. So it's the safest option. But only for now. We might just be dooming our descendants to deal with the mess and they might be in a worse state than we are now.

We should shoot the waste into to sun.

You can't simply drop something into the sun. The effort required is approximately the same as to lift it all the way up there.
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