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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

#541

Post by Apofis »

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…

Seriously, there's zero reason that we don't have small portable safe nuclear reactors to power neighbourhoods and large oceangoing vessels by now. Since ocean freight liners and oil tankers produce a large portion if not the largest portion of the current air pollution, it just makes sense to get them completely off of diesel and bunker fuel and equip them with small nuclear reactions, something like a LFTR would be perfect... had we spent the last 40-50 years researching them.

Thankfully, at least China has picked up the slack with LFTR research and hope to have something going within the next 5-10 years. Maybe then the rest of the world will wake up.

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

#542

Post by btilly »

xcryogenicx wrote: post #365
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.

>Just see 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. The fact that you would reference TMI in reference to dirty bombs is extremely telling in that you have no idea what you're talking about. The average radiation exposure outside TMI compound was less that an airplane flight or x-ray. Bananas are literally more dangerous.

That is disputed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#Rel... for claims from critics that official accounts of the exposure were low by a factor of 100 to 1000.

Regardless of which version of the facts you consider more believable, the public was scared witless of the possibility that there was an exposure. As a result millions of people were left with the concern that they could get cancer decades down the road. This public fear is also the most important impact of a dirty nuclear bomb used as a terrorist weapon. Very few of people will get sick, and fewer still will die. But lots will be scared.

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

#543

Post by vacri »

hueving wrote: post #201
datenwolf wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly due to the chemistry required to liberate the Uranium from the ore. What you have in the ore is mostly Uranium oxides. You have to strip away those pesky oxygen atoms in order to further process the Uranium. And in that process quite the amount of CO2 is produced. Now keep in mind that this must be done to all the Uranium, before it undergoes enrichtment. So for every atom of U235 you get about 200 (give…

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.

The figures in TFA don't talk about solar, and the parent comments don't mention it. Who is making the supposed double-standard here?

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

#544

Post by epistasis »

clock_tower wrote: post #526
epistasis wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on, there's more than enough blame to go around. Westinghouse Electric Company's bankruptcy and lies to Toshiba [1] weren't caused by nuclear's opponents. That's all on the heads of Westinghouse's management. And if management was competent, perhaps Summer would have been closer to being on budget. It's not as though the AP1000 is impossible to build, other countries are doing it just fine. It's just impossible…

I'm not surprised that Westinghouse behaved idiotically; they've always struck me as the Ford of washing machines, and I can only imagine what they're like at utility scale... It sounds like the best course of action is to bring in foreign firms to construct reactors in the US; but that'll probably have to wait for the 2020 election... if it happens at all, that is.

Westinghouse built something like 25% of all nuclear reactors worldwide. That they are failing for just 4 more reactors is a bit shocking to me, honestly, and I would not have expected it.

If it takes 10 years to plan and build a new reactor, I simply can't see the point of trying it in 2020. Sizing our solar and wind resources to cover our needs during seasonal lows, building HVDC, and adding storage at 2030 prices seems like a far smarter move economically.

Unless there are improvements that halve the cost of nuclear, and make it so that it's only a $1B gamble instead of a $10B gamble, I simply can't see why anybody would put up capital. There are lots of government backed loans on these things, but even then it's going to be a hard sell to investors. Everybody has been burned by these projects.

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

#545

Post by Apofis »

Recurecur wrote: post #180
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…

New reactor designs completely eliminate the possibility of meltdown. LFRs include an electrically cooled salt plug that seals a holding tank. If power fails, the molten salt melts the plug, and the fuel safely drains into the tank. I particularly like ThorCon's concept, where the reactor is underground. Another plus of this reactor type is that water cooling isn't needed, so siting is much more flexible. Note that t…

I feel like when a company says 10 years away it generally means that the company is still looking for funding... and 5 years away generally means they finally got the funding and are now building and experimenting.

China also says 10 years away for the LFR, but I've heard murmors of 5-7 years from a few articles... meaning they likely are finally starting to get some investment.

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

#546

Post by analog31 »

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…

- Fermi 1 in southeast Michigan, core meltdown. No casualties.

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

#547

Post by vacri »

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…

Those numbers are hugely out-of-context. All three are very low compared to other energy sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

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

#548

Post by godelski »

Mz wrote: post #540
godelski wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about cutting edge? I don't care what you're building, but 10-20 years between when you start to design and have a finished product is too much time. They have a lot of research reactors, but honestly, the only way you're going to get bigger and safer reactors is if you scale up those research reactors. There is literally no other way. And we WANT to improve safety. Don't we? I'm not saying to use c…

This is EXTREMELY unlikely. Even when things go wrong. It may currently be extremely unlikely -- due to the very regulations and processes you are decrying. But, if people like you get their way, the odds go up of seriously bad things happening.

This is actually how the industry as a whole thinks. I like to think expert advice, especially on difficult to understand concepts (hey, we're talking atomic physics here), should be held with more credibility than the layman.

I work in a related industry, part of which is in space radiation mitigation. If you have any real questions about disasters I'll be happy to answer the best that I can. But forgive me if it appears to me that you are the one who is jumping to conclusions, preventing real progress, and harming lives.

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

#549

Post by vacri »

gruturo wrote: post #466
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…

Are you aware that the Fukushima reactor was actually 6 years older than Chernobyl? Chernobyl's RBMK design is so dangerous that I'd call it borderline criminal - the experiments done in the night of the accident were the apex of recklessness, and the government's response was.... well, Sovietic. Of course no matter how well you design it, people will fuck up and use it the wrong way and ignore maintenances and safet…

> Chernobyl's RBMK design is so dangerous that I'd call it borderline criminal

Good thing that companies in the US never do anything that's borderline criminal.

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

#550

Post by Mz »

godelski wrote: post #548
Mz wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is EXTREMELY unlikely. Even when things go wrong. It may currently be extremely unlikely -- due to the very regulations and processes you are decrying. But, if people like you get their way, the odds go up of seriously bad things happening.

This is actually how the industry as a whole thinks. I like to think expert advice, especially on difficult to understand concepts (hey, we're talking atomic physics here), should be held with more credibility than the layman. I work in a related industry, part of which is in space radiation mitigation. If you have any real questions about disasters I'll be happy to answer the best that I can. But forgive me if it ap…

I used to moderate a gifted list. It was around 300 people, all of whom were used to being the smartest person in the room. So they tended to default to assuming that if you disagreed with them, you were merely uninformed and stupid. It took a while to convince people to talk to each other respectfully and from an assumption that both people are smart and informed and their different points of view are not merely evidence of stupidity.

I occasionally see that same pattern play out on Hacker News. It would behoove you to check your ego at the door and assume that most of the people you speak with here are also well informed. In the mean time, I see no real reason to try to engage you further. Meaty discussion is never founded on chest-beating and condescension.

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