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

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

#441

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:25 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #393

beat wrote: post #369

Of course, this is only comparing to fossil sources, not solar, wind, or other renewables (except biomass). I don't think this is going to matter in the end, though. The best, most optimistic arguments the nuclear proponents can make would still take 20-30 years to build out enough to make a standard-deviation difference in greenhouse gasses. Meanwhile, solar/wind are already hitting production costs that rival or be…

> Of course, this is only comparing to fossil sources, not solar, wind, or other renewables (except biomass). You can include them, nuclear still comes out ahead. Solar, wind, etc, are not very power-dense. So you need a LOT of installations, building all of them inevitably has fatalities and injuries. (Falls for example.) From here: http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear... (and you can google…

How many deaths as a result of exposure to nuclear waste products do you project over the next 20,000 years?

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

#442

Post by pm90 » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:26 PM UTC

slackingoff2017 wrote: post #336

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 energ…

I don't understand why this would have any effect on domestic nuclear power production in the nations that already have nuclear weapons. Probably the most important question: why don't the US and China get more of their domestic power from Nuclear?

Also, I need to some source for the claims that Atoms for Peace was meant as a cover to transfer nuclear technology. I believe the program was created as a way to provide civilian nuclear generation capabilities to friendly nations, in return for a guarantee that nations would not use the technology for making nuclear weapons (India was probably the most famous "rogue": they used the know-how from the research reactors to build an actual nuclear weapon).

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

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Post by Chathamization » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:26 PM UTC

chris_va wrote: post #321

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…

> The concept that "solar and wind will save us all" by themselves is fundamentally incorrect, and actually they make things worse in many ways.

Sure, this comes up a lot in these discussions. We don't need to rely 100% on any one type of plant, and we don't even have to eliminate coal plants completely. In the end, we're going to have to use a variety of options to fight climate change, and some of the major ones (like increased efficiency) aren't even going to deal with energy production.

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

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Post by sliverstorm » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:26 PM UTC

simias wrote: 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…

Ecologists against nuclear baffles me too. You'd think they'd be booster #1. Worst-case, Chernobyl still worked out pretty darn well for the local ecosystem.

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

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Post by zanny » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:26 PM UTC

ronald_raygun wrote: post #316

moomin wrote: post #255

I'm something of a fan of nuclear power, but there's no way it's safer than a solar panel array. Ah, they didn't include renewables. Colour me surprised.

Renewables solve a different problem though. There aren't great ways of storing energy on a large scale. So you end up needed two components to a grid - a baseline that you can scale up whenever (coal, natural gas, nuclear), and a renewable component. Saying that nuclear is the safest in regards to a baseline energy load is a valid argument to make.

Mechanically we have the perfect solution to storing power - reverse hydro. Pump up into a reservoir while the grid is full of renewables that you drain through turbines when the renewables drop off. All the logistics are solved problems, it is mostly a matter of just paying to transition to it:

* The grid itself would need a dramatic rework. It needs renovation for renewables in the first place, but introducing a hydro base load solution increases pressures on existing infrastructure.

* You need enough solar / wind volume to justify a sizable centralized investment in such a power solution. But broad wind/solar causes problems involving peak grid load well before you even start building these things, along with the aforementioned grid updates, make a real chicken and egg problem.

Hydro storage facilities are also vulnerable to extreme climate, take a long time to build (especially in countries where bureaucracy makes building anything take 10x longer than it should) and aren't expandable.

But they would work, easily, to solve the power storage problem. Hail potential energy!

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

#446

Post by thevardanian » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #222

lispm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It was developed out of government driven military technology That's not a justification. The internet was also developed out of DARPA. Most of silicon valley exists because of cold war electronics warfare research, etc.

Well most of the internet and internet companies continue to exist because of military tech, and military strategy. It turns out the internet is a wonderful tool for psy-ops, and social influence, a la Arab Springs. Even Tor, and decentralization technologies are/were military tools.

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

#447

Post by beat » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #414

beat wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my argument above, though... it's going to be faster and cheaper to replace a standard deviation's worth of fossil electricity with solar/wind than it would be to replace it with nuclear. So the "transitional power" argument doesn't really hold.

That ignores another factor- we've been decommissioning nuclear and replacing it with natural gas & coal capacity while we wait for the eventual renewable ramp.

Yes, but that's not an effective argument for building new plants in the face of my critique. It's possibly an argument for delaying the decommissioning of older nuclear plants, but those decommissions are probably due to age-related safety concerns - the owners would likely prefer to keep the old plant running, if possible.

I've argued elsewhere for a flat-out ban on new domestic coal-fired plants. Coal is by far the worst safety and environmental offender. If we forced power companies onto a renewable-or-nothing path, we might see faster progress.

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

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Post by freeflight » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #310

nnfy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, would be sufficiently safe. Just not in Fukushima. It was hit by an earthquake. Reactor performed SCRAM correctly. Plant was ok. Tsunami hit. Fuel tanks were washed away. This should never have been an issue. If you are in a zone that's prone to tsunamis, you don't locate essential infrastructure where it can be hit by tsunamis. Everything went downhill from there. Including their inability to hook up generator…

> Now, if only this nuclear scaremongers would go away, then we would be able to upgrade those shambling power plants with modern technology.

That's really where you want to put the blame? Don't you think that's a bit dishonest? Nobody is stopping the operators of plants from modernizing plants, nobody except the realities of economics.

Don't kid yourself: If they can keep on running reactors with the least possible effort they will do so because everything related to nuclear involves massive investment costs.

If you had the choice between spending several billion of dollars on modernizing a plant, which you've already amortized, or NOT spending several billion dollars while still making massive profits from the plant, which of these two is the more likely thing to happen? Greed always wins out.

It's not like plant operators want to modernize their plants and are being stopped by protests, nobody is stopping them from modernizing except for their own economic bottom line.

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

#449

Post by michaelsbradley » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #178

yellowapple wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar doesn't have to be reliable; it just has to charge a battery (or some other means of energy storage) which is reliable. Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power.

A very expensive battery made from a material we likely don't have enough of to scale for the world.

It's not impossible that someone could make a breakthrough in Flywheel Energy Storage for domestic use:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage

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

#450

Post by agumonkey » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:29 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #222

lispm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It was developed out of government driven military technology That's not a justification. The internet was also developed out of DARPA. Most of silicon valley exists because of cold war electronics warfare research, etc.

Come on, network communication and nuclear energy are different planets. I kinda agree that without national plants things might have been better, but these kinds of efforts and risks cannot exist outside of govt for a while.

It will take some guys to figure out MSR designs if possible, and then they'll be small and safe enough to access the private market.