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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

#611

Post by freeflight »

logfromblammo wrote: post #519
freeflight wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pron…

> 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.

That's a non-sequitur, there are alternatives besides coal just like there are more solutions to the problem than merely increasing energy production.

> Can you think of any reasons why a car door handle might be more reliable (for the same cost) as dirigible door handles?

A car handle is only one piece of a bigger machine, one could argue it's actually rather unimportant because if your car handle fails your car still drives, as such I'm not sure that's actually a good example.

How many iterations did we have on cars, as a whole system, so far? Over a century of designing cars and how close are we to a car that never fails? Which should be a way easier task than trying to make nuclear reactor safe, we had more time for it and even way more need for it, yet we are still nowhere close to having our "perfect cars", as such I just don't see how "perfect nuclear" is anywhere in our reach.

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

#612

Post by ogoffart »

freeflight wrote: post #425
lispm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The japanese nuclear industry is famous for their corruption. Not just the Japanese nuclear industry, Tihange 2/Doel 3 Nuclear Power Stations are sitting right in the middle of Western Europe and they are another catastrophe waiting to happen. These reactors pressure vessels have serious issues with micro-cracks in their steel and at this point, it's not certain their structural integrity can actually be guaranteed…

New inspection tools showed micro fissures. The power plant was stopped as a precaution. Then further investigations showed that these have always been there and are not evolving. It was safe all along, that was a false alarm. The power plant is then restarted. Still extra security measures are set, just in case.

To me this just shows that the security is taken seriously. Why is the public opinion so scared about such an exemplary event?

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

#613

Post by KVFinn »

chris_va wrote: post #561
KVFinn wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Base load power and intermittent (e.g. solar/wind) power are not the same thing, and are not comparable. >Barring some energy storage miracle, we'll eventually end up with ~35% renewables, 15% hydro, 50% natural gas in the US, with HVDC interconnect. No nuclear, no coal. Does this scenario look any more promising with a massive government project to build HVDC? That reduces the intermittent aspect of solar/wind (wea…

Sort of Without HVDC, renewables will probably peak lower (15%) than the 35% I mentioned. HVDC and UHVDC is getting fairly cost effective now, so I don't think we'll need huge government subsidies to see adoption there, and it can be driven by utilities. You can amortized wind really well with interconnect (unlike solar, which is strictly diurnal), so we'll see a trend back to wind in the renewable space. However, I…

>HVDC and UHVDC is getting fairly cost effective now, so I don't think we'll need huge government subsidies to see adoption there, and it can be driven by utilities.

I've been told by people trying to build these things that there are some pretty terrible incentives discouraging HVDC.

States without access to good wind sites may still oppose HVDC because they would prefer to build either different power sources or less efficient windmills in their own state to capture the tax revenue (or to use federal subsidies that might go unused), so they prefer not to be able to buy power form a farther away state.

And even the reverse can be true. Localities with extremely cheap energy prices can sometimes oppose a HVDC market expansion because if local sources were able to sell to more consumers it would raise their local prices (the market changed over time or was estimated incorrectly, etc).

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

#614

Post by roryisok »

oh_sigh wrote: post #427
roryisok wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of injury or death while installing solar may be greater than nuclear by the numbers, but if a guy falls off his roof installing a solar panel it doesn't poison the land around him for hundreds of years

If a guy falls off a roof building a nuclear plant, it doesn't poison the land for hundreds of years either. A more fair comparison would be if a PV manufacturing plant had an industrial accident and hundreds of thousands of gallons of nasty chemicals o to the land.

Yes I suppose it would. But if I had to choose (and I really hope I never do) I'd rather have silicon tetrachloride spilled in my town than nuclear waste.

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

#615

Post by unabst »

mikeash wrote: post #284
unabst wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring the suicide missions, the betrayed promises of the electric company, the endless coverage on the news, the anxiety and fear, and the government blatently lying about the health consequences. You're ignoring the long term consequences of habitability, of raw fish being a vital food source and the nuclear core having melt straight into the ocean. You're ignoring the media censorship. And that many of th…

What suicide missions? The only people who have died at the reactor were killed by the tsunami. You're worried about contamination of fish? Coal power has contaminated fish throughout all the world's oceans with dangerous levels of mercury. You've probably seen warnings for children and pregnant women to be careful about the fish they eat and not to eat fish more than a couple of times a week. Coal is responsible for…

Humans went back into the plant not knowing if it was going to explode. Whether they survived is not the issue. It's that they had to do it. Think 9/11 firefighters.

You're constantly reminded of Fukushima because the disaster is still ongoing. An earthquake happens, people die, and we get over it. It's the ugly side of mother nature, and we get over it. A nuclear disaster happens, and it's a shit storm. Stories of incompetence, greed, shame, conspiracy, tragedy, and betrayal. It's the ugly side of human nature. And we can't get over it. Like the several radioactive isotopes that have a half-life of 30 years and remains in the environment for decades, it continues to be a problem, and a reminder of the worst of ourselves.

You don't get to decide who gets offended. Justifying offending people based on what you did or didn't see, just shows you lack empathy. If you don't, I would choose my words more carefully.

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

#616

Post by anotherbrownguy »

yellowapple wrote: post #97
anotherbrownguy wrote: post #52

Isn't nuclear hysteria created mostly by American CleanTech industry? Solar is not a reliable source to begin with so you can't use it to power anything critical. It has to be combined with something like nuclear or fossil fuels to have reliable power. But if we go nuclear, we will have 1000s of years worth of power. So, where exactly does Solar fit in?

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.

>it just has to charge a battery (or some other means of energy storage) which is reliable.

That's not true. Let's say you build your system with enough solar panels to fully charge batteries that lasts 3 days. And lets say sun doesn't shine for 4 days, which is not uncommon. Where is your reliability? Lets say you are designing a system to have reliable power. How many days worth of power backup would you design it to support?

>Also worth mentioning (at the risk of being very pedantic) that solar is technically nuclear power.

Yeah, and fossil fuels is solar. I don't see how it's worth mentioning.

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

#618

Post by mSparks43 »

godelski wrote: post #591
mSparks43 wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you balance the two? From my experience "most" industry is ~10-20 years behind research. That's how long it takes to work out the kinks, be that mobile phones, cloud computing or AI. So while the US and Europe mess around spending stupid money on ITER the Chinese will be rolling out molton salt reactors leaving the west behind, and that 'sucks'. But these are big projects, running them like a Turkish ticket…

So there are certain aspects that can be be iterated upon faster than others. Something like shielding is going to be faster, and can be iterated upon, compared to something like the main reactor. That may also be because that's what I'm more familiar with. I am also in favor of more small reactors, vs fewer large reactors. I think this provides a higher safety level and ease of upgrading. Plus you can just bury thes…

From what ive read about nuclear technology, the reason the west has big non salt reactors is that they wanted them for making nuclear bombs. providing energy was a by product of making nuclear weapons.

That also accounts for much of the delays, they are using the tech for so many naughty things they need to wait for staff turnover on the project so no one knows too much about what they are doing.

So while I agree we need to "open the discussion up", I dont believe that discussion will be allowed because of the war politics involved.

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

#619

Post by rusk »

rsync wrote: post #502
nnfy wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Thats borderline ludditeism. We can't detect CO or even CO2, should that stop us from using fire?" I said that fear was justified - not that we should or should not use those things. Similarly we should indeed be afraid of CO for those very same reasons. I know I certainly have a healthy respect for, and fear of, CO.

CO detectors are in pretty widespread use.

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

#620

Post by boomboomsubban »

lispm wrote: post #608
boomboomsubban wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paragraph concludes the reactor was built for nuclear weapons development, I don't see how it can be considered "another example."

It's another example of a reactor designed to produce electricity and plutionium. North Korea a;so operated a smaller 5 MWe reactor creating electricity for a town and plutonium for their weapons program.

It's a reactor designed to produce large amounts of plutonium. Any reactor produces some amount of energy, nuclear reactions are famous for their energy creation.
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