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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

#511

Post by loup-vaillant »

catwell wrote: post #361
oconnor663 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the safer designs available in 1971?

Yes. Pressurized water reactors are very old, they were developed around the same time as boiling water reactors, in the 50s. Their superior safety has been known for a long time as well, which is why all 58 French reactors active today are PWRs (and most of those in the US are as well). That being said, it is still probably a bad idea to put a power plant in a place which is known to be exposed to tsunami...

Pressurised water reactors still rely on active security. Molten salt for instance allows passive designs.

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

#512

Post by contravariant »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #484
Animats wrote: post #458

It doesn't kill many people, because even when there's a disaster, there's time to evacuate. But you lose an entire city once in a while. Major reactor disasters so far: - SL-1. Steam explosion due to control rod lifted too far during maintenance. Small experimental reactor, built in the middle of nowhere (Idaho Reactor Test Station) for good reason. Inherently unsafe design. - Three Mile Island. Meltdown due to cool…

> Some of the recently-touted small reactor designs try to omit a containment vessel on the grounds that their design couldn't possibly melt down. That's probably not a good approach. Agreed, but, fail-safe and walkaway-safe designs coupled with moderate containment vessels seem like a good medium. It is all about mitigating risk. I don't think we should ever accept that a design has actual 0 risk for meltdown, but,…

>design containment for a moderate level of failure

What on earth does this mean? When would an (as of yet) uncontained failure be considered moderate?

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

#513

Post by Retric »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #508
lispm wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK had 26 of these Magnox reactors for electricity production. These nuclear reactors were coming out of military technology and some of them were built and operated for dual use: Plutonium production and energy production. The UK now sits on around 140 tons of plutonium from fuel reprocessing...

The UK has about 200 warheads. The US has almost 7,000. The US has never used commercial power reactors to produce plutonium, because they simply aren't well-suited for the purpose.

>never used commercial power reactors to produce plutonium

That's not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Valley_Demonstration_Proj...

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

#514

Post by JTbane »

padseeker wrote: post #187
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…

What do you mean "politicization"? Please saw the movie the China syndrome and then 3 mile island happened. Then people were very afraid. These were real possibilities. Does anyone want to live near a nuclear power plant? Do you? I sure as hell would not. How can you twist fear of a disaster in "politicization"? You are also looking thru the lens of our current situation. Very little was being discussed about the ris…

>Does anyone want to live near a nuclear power plant? Do you? I sure as hell would not.

Using logic instead of emotion, yes I would. Hopefully the electricity costs would be cheaper.

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

#515

Post by rtx »

jbg_ wrote: post #383
outworlder wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> This is not to say that they cannot fail in some novel ways. So, then, they do not "completely eliminate" the possibility of failure. Your last sentence seems to contradict the "No." at the beginning of your reply.

They consider all the possibilities possible.

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

#516

Post by rtx »

pps43 wrote: post #382
scaryclam wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to...the entire planet being affected, like it is with fossil fuels?

Solar, wind, hydro do not affect the entire planet. Even burning fossil fuels might be ok, if combined with CO2 sequestration. But this is irrelevant. I'm just saying that you do a comparison, you need to take into consideration risks, too. Otherwise buying any kind of insurance looks pretty irrational.

Wind is bad for birds.

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

#518

Post by jcranberry »

godelski wrote: post #506
Animats wrote: post #458

It doesn't kill many people, because even when there's a disaster, there's time to evacuate. But you lose an entire city once in a while. Major reactor disasters so far: - SL-1. Steam explosion due to control rod lifted too far during maintenance. Small experimental reactor, built in the middle of nowhere (Idaho Reactor Test Station) for good reason. Inherently unsafe design. - Three Mile Island. Meltdown due to cool…

> But you lose an entire city once in a while. I can only see two cases of this. Chernobyl and Fukushima. Chernobyl was early on and they pushed it well past what their safety ratings were. Fukushima, they messed up on the calculations on the 1000 year tsunami. The latter is definitely a more reasonable case to point to "things can go wrong". Because that was definitely human error. My issue though, is we're stuck wi…

From what I've heard (through two or three levels of separation), the regulatory agency on Nuclear power is stiflingly draconian. Getting any kind of new technology implemented is prohibitively difficult and expensive, which just adds to the list of disincentives in venturing into nuclear power.

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

#519

Post by logfromblammo »

freeflight wrote: post #462
logfromblammo wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to live next to a nuclear power plant, but I would be fine with living near a dozen of them. You see, that higher number implies a greater infrastructural and economic investment. Further, the sole large power plant in an area is automatically a military target, whereas if the same capacity were split across many facilities it becomes impractical to attack or control them all. I'd love to see each munici…

> You see, that higher number implies a greater infrastructural and economic investment. A higher number of reactors also means more chances that one of them fails because reactors that don't exist can't fail but those that do most certainly can. As such the security gains, from infrastructure synergies, would have to be massive to actually be able to offset that.

The reactor that does not exist fails by releasing radioactive fly ash from the coal plant that was never shut down, because nothing was ever built to replace it. Don't discount substitution effects. Your argument would not put safety belts in cars, because the belt that was never installed cannot strangle or entrap its passenger.

Also, do you know of any reasons why the 1000th instance of a design might be less prone to failure than the 1st, or 10th?

Can you think of any reasons why a car door handle might be more reliable (for the same cost) as dirigible door handles? There are many thousands of car door handles in use daily, such that all common failure modes have been seen, and then addressed in later manufactured models. The handle that fails can make the next handle made better able to avoid that specific failure mode.

You want things to fail just a little bit, but not enough to hurt anyone or cost too much money. If something fails, that means it isn't over-engineered for its intended purpose. And the failure point may then be examined to make the next design better, and improve upon existing maintenance strategies.

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

#520

Post by lispm »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #420
lispm wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Calder_Hall_nuclear... Early commercial nuclear reactors, here the British Calder Hall Power Station, were producing plutionium and electricity.

That was more or less a prototype. No one uses power reactors to produce plutonium. It just isn't done.

Another example is North Korea:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/taechon.htm

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