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

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

#471

Post by mncolinlee » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:46 PM UTC

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 suffers from the same problems as many political issues. The greatest risks of nuclear energy is not "safety," but rather cost, insurance, and financing. As humans our brains are attuned to avoid worst case scenarios instead of fearing more likely, but less scary situations.

Both sides hear the talking points. The talking points target our most passionate and overriding fears, instead of real world concerns. This is because these false fears are more effective than real ones for changing minds.

Having run for office on a few occasions, the most important factor about winning seems to be having a good narrative-- one which seems consistent with voters' personal experiences.

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

#472

Post by nnfy » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:47 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #438

digi_owl wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I suggest people check out part six of Adam Curtis' Pandora's Box, that cover this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora's_Box_%28TV_series%29#... On top of all of this we had a generation that was hammered about the dangers of a nuclear war, including the potential poisoning of the environment around a blast by fallout. And at the core of all this we have the issue that radiation is a silent killer. We can'…

"And at the core of all this we have the issue that radiation is a silent killer. We can't smell it, we can't see it, we can't feel it. This amps up the fear element greatly." As well it should. Dangerous things that you cannot detect with any of your human senses are rightly to be feared. This behavior is well-preserved in humans for a reason.

Thats borderline ludditeism. We can't detect CO or even CO2, should that stop us from using fire?

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

#473

Post by mmirate » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:48 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #407

[misleading headline] > Here we limit our comparison to the dominant energy sources—brown coal, coal, oil, gas, biomass and nuclear energy; in 2014 these sources accounted for about 96% of global energy production. While the negative health impacts of modern renewable energy technologies are so far thought to be small, they have been less fully explored.

Renewables aren't as reliable or powerful as fossil fuels or nuclear reactors; one simply cannot power a grid with only renewables. And the one exception, hydroelectric dams, are geography-dependent and can cause massive floods during any rapid unplanned deconstructions.

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

#474

Post by ars » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:51 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #441

ars wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Zero. Over time it will only get safer, and since there have been none so far, there are unlikely to be more later.

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

#475

Post by fulafel » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:51 PM UTC

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…

We'd be in a far better GHG situation if we had poured all that r&d into renewables, would have gotten solar cost below fossil 20-30 years earlier and probably left fracking and tar sands hydrocarbons forever in the ground.

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

#476

Post by rsync » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:51 PM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #422

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…

This reasoning is really closed minded and nonsensical. I've never seen the literature where people said "they are safe! Nothing could ever happen!". In fact melt downs are in many hollywood movies so I'm not sure how anyone could ever get this narrative. Also, Chernobyl and Fukushima never "blew up". There are myths that many still believe today that a nuclear power plant can explode like a nuclear bomb (it can't).…

"Also, Chernobyl and Fukushima never "blew up". There are myths that many still believe today that a nuclear power plant can explode like a nuclear bomb (it can't)."

A failed nuclear power plant can indeed explode like a nuclear bomb and it is generally believed that explosion #2 (there were two major explosions) at chernobyl was the result of a criticality and analogous to "the explosion of a fizzled nuclear weapon.":

"The force of the second explosion, and the ratio of xenon radioisotopes released during the event, indicate that the second explosion could have been a nuclear power transient; the result of the melting core material, in the absence of its cladding, water coolant and moderator, undergoing runaway prompt criticality similar to the explosion of a fizzled nuclear weapon.[63] This nuclear excursion released 40 billion joules of energy, the equivalent of about ten tons of TNT. The analysis indicates that the nuclear excursion was limited to a small portion of the core.[63]"

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_...)

Consider: in a meltdown, which you refer to, the fissile material could accumulate in arbitrary dimensions, many of which could achieve criticality. At that time it becomes a (very crude) atomic weapon. If that criticality is not interrupted it will indeed explode.

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

#477

Post by beat » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:52 PM UTC

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…

One key problem... much of the world's population lives in nations socially incapable of supporting nuclear power, or with governments that cannot be trusted with significant quantities of nuclear materials due to proliferation, or both.

Advocacy of nuclear has a bad tendency to think of "the world" as the US, Europe, Japan, and China. Any solution that aggravates the haves/have-nots divide is going to cause problems.

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

#478

Post by oelmekki » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #457

oelmekki wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a debate we have all the time, here in France, where we chose nuclear energy as main source of energy for several decades. Nowadays, everybody but lobbyists (because for those reasons, nuclear industry is strong, here) seems to agree renewable is the way to go (but we're far to be able to replace nuclear with renewable), mainly because: * we don't know what to do with nuclear wastes, and we start to have a lo…

> renewable is the way to go Everybody agrees with that. The question is whether we choose nuclear or coal during the transition to 100% renewable (if it ever happens). > we don't know what to do with nuclear wastes, and we start to have a lot > you have to dismantle old nuclear plants, and it appears the cost is totally exuberant I don't know if it's that bad. But again, is this worse than coal?

That's a hard question. I certainly would not support replacing our nuclear plants with coal plants, I would prefer everyone stay with their current system and we go as fast as possible to replace them with something worth it : trying to replace a bad source with an other bad one, but a bit better, costs time, money and human resources.

But the article kind of make me raise an eyebrow when they say that for highly radioactive wastes, we just have to find deep burial sites that will know no geological activity for one million year. Certainly doesn't sound as easy as implied, especially if all earth starts using nuclear power as main energy source.

That being said, I remember reading a few months ago about a breakthrough in Germany in nuclear field, where no rare material (like plutonium) was needed, and wastes were greatly reduced. This could be a global way (and then, we may not even need renewable).

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

#479

Post by nnfy » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

lispm wrote: post #172

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.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-... > In the last century there have been eight tsunamis in the region with maximum amplitudes at origin above 10 metres (some much more), these having arisen from earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 to 8.4, on average one every 12 years. Those in 1983 and in 1993 were the most recent affecting Japan, with maximum heights at origin of 14.5 metres and 31 metres resp…

Your own post confirms my assertion that the magnitude 9 earthquake was an exceedingly rare event and did not necessarily need to be designed for. It had been at least one hundred years since the last earthquake of that magnitude. Same for a >10 meter tsunami.

Large scale disasters almost always present as a conglomerate of smaller problems; multiple failures during 100-500 year disasters once again do not indicate poor safety standards and/or corruption.

Safety design is expensive, and there is always a balance between cost and risk, in literally everything that we as humans do, individually and collectively. Hindsight alone is not enough to bill this reactor as unsafe. There are thousands of BWRs operating globally without incident, and they have been for decades. It is ignorant to presume that they are all time bombs.

Edit: I'd like to kindly remind the community that down votes are not for communicating disagreement.

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

#480

Post by beat » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

nnfy wrote: post #472

rsync wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And at the core of all this we have the issue that radiation is a silent killer. We can't smell it, we can't see it, we can't feel it. This amps up the fear element greatly." As well it should. Dangerous things that you cannot detect with any of your human senses are rightly to be feared. This behavior is well-preserved in humans for a reason.

Thats borderline ludditeism. We can't detect CO or even CO2, should that stop us from using fire?

The most pressing problem facing humanity today is "using fire" - that is, CO2 generation from fossil fuel.