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Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

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Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#21

Post by quakeguy »

gingabriska wrote: post #12
781 wrote: post #3

Friendly PSA: do not dare to question nuclear energy safety on HN. I've seen no other subject which triggers such vitriolic responses as this, you'll be called a flat-earther anti-vaxxer luddite, you'll be told "coal kills more..." and so on. > After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, most reactor builders had tacked on a slew of new safety features. KHNP followed suit but later realized that the astronomical cost of th…

I wonder if they stop making them because it makes a country vunerable? After all enemies of the nation have to just blow up a few reactors to cause major damage, right? But if a solar or wind or even coal plant is bombed, not much happens?

2 points to consider here, first the damage to the grid in terms of lost power, second the environmental damage. For nuclear both are quite severe, but blowing up a dam could be devastating in both points too, think of the flooding etc.. Blowing up single wind turbines is ineffective in both terms, and damaging a coal/oil plant only in regards to the first point(Well, there will be environmental damage too, but not on the scale a terrorist desires..) Solar seems to be the safest with that in in mind.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#22

Post by mschuster91 »

bboygravity wrote: post #6
mrpopo wrote: post #2

Another reason for the "country’s shrinking appetite for nuclear" that I can cite is the North Korean terrorist threat. Rationally, there is little reason for the North Korean state to cause long term damage to a soil that they claim belongs to them, and also the number of such attacks is now close to zero, but as we all know this kind of fear will not go away. Renewables could work as a replacement, but this may onl…

"Renewables could work as a replacement" No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist. Case in point: closing nuclear plants and replacing them with renewables is what Germany has been trying to do and has failed to do so far. They essentially replaced (and will continue to replace) nuclear by renewables paired with coal and gas plants running on standby. They can't cold start these pla…

> No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist.

It does, Tesla's grid-scale Powerwall made 25% of its cost in profits in 6 months (per https://insideevs.com/news/340702/tesla-powerpack-in-austral...).

Aside from using Powerwalls, us Europeans have extensive experience with using hydro pump storage.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#23

Post by jjoonathan »

mschuster91 wrote: post #22
bboygravity wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Renewables could work as a replacement" No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist. Case in point: closing nuclear plants and replacing them with renewables is what Germany has been trying to do and has failed to do so far. They essentially replaced (and will continue to replace) nuclear by renewables paired with coal and gas plants running on standby. They can't cold start these pla…

> No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist. It does, Tesla's grid-scale Powerwall made 25% of its cost in profits in 6 months (per https://insideevs.com/news/340702/tesla-powerpack-in-austral... ). Aside from using Powerwalls, us Europeans have extensive experience with using hydro pump storage.

So why did Germany go with gas and coal?

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#24

Post by Tuna-Fish »

mschuster91 wrote: post #22
bboygravity wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Renewables could work as a replacement" No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist. Case in point: closing nuclear plants and replacing them with renewables is what Germany has been trying to do and has failed to do so far. They essentially replaced (and will continue to replace) nuclear by renewables paired with coal and gas plants running on standby. They can't cold start these pla…

> No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist. It does, Tesla's grid-scale Powerwall made 25% of its cost in profits in 6 months (per https://insideevs.com/news/340702/tesla-powerpack-in-austral... ). Aside from using Powerwalls, us Europeans have extensive experience with using hydro pump storage.

The Tesla grid scale system made that money by stabilizing the grid, essentially providing storage for time periods below 15 minutes. It in no way provides the kind of storage that is needed to use solar or wind power as baseline production.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#25

Post by bjourne »

cjslep wrote: post #14
781 wrote: post #3

Friendly PSA: do not dare to question nuclear energy safety on HN. I've seen no other subject which triggers such vitriolic responses as this, you'll be called a flat-earther anti-vaxxer luddite, you'll be told "coal kills more..." and so on. > After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, most reactor builders had tacked on a slew of new safety features. KHNP followed suit but later realized that the astronomical cost of th…

The problem is a lot of the tech advancements in the last 30 years of the field have not had a chance to play out and instead retrofits are all that's been rolled out to the existing fleet. Criticizing an entire field based on the cutting edge 60 years ago feels really unfair. Additionally the modern US standard for safety regulation by the NRC is so stringent that anyone criticizing safety often sounds like spreadin…

> The problem is a lot of the tech advancements in the last 30 years of the field have not had a chance to play out and instead retrofits are all that's been rolled out to the existing fleet. Criticizing an entire field based on the cutting edge 60 years ago feels really unfair.

AP1000 is a new reactor design from the 2000s. Vogtle 3 and 4 are AP1000 reactors. The construction was started in 2013 and should have taken four years and costed 14.3 billion usd, but now it seems those reactors won't come online until 2022 to the cost of 27 billion usd. Lest anyone thinks that is because Americans are bad at building nuclear power, many other projects around the wold suffers from exactly the same cost and time overruns.

http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/new-plants/ap1000-pwr/ove... https://www.utilitydive.com/news/southern-increases-vogtle-n... https://theecologist.org/2014/sep/19/three-every-four-nuclea...

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#26

Post by clarkmoody »

Nuclear power presents the perfect storm for negative public image:

- Environmental movement went anti-nuclear in the '70s for no particular reason.

- Fear Sells in the media. Nothing strikes fear like the invisible killer of radiation. Nuclear disasters get media attention like nothing else.

- Nuclear weapons are scary, and rightfully so. And they share a word in common with "nuclear power," so there you go.

Being tightly regulated and controlled by government makes an industry ripe for "corruption and greed" since it takes political connection and maneuvering to get things done.

It really is amazing, though, how much public image and politics can completely stall forward progress on a power source with so much promise.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#27

Post by dsfyu404ed »

mschuster91 wrote: post #19
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we like nuclear. This is a board full of people who want to see hard facts, numbers and metrics. By the numbers, nuclear kills a hell of a lot less people than fossil fuels, or anything else (even when using an age adjusted metric that more accurately represents the impact of fossil fuels than the "bazillion deaths" that headlines tout). In terms of disaster potential it's on the order of hydroelectric unle…

> In terms of disaster potential it's on the order of hydroelectric. Water disappears. Yes, a failed dam may kill thousands to tens of thousands, but the land is generally immediately reusable without major problems as long as there is no chemical industry in the floodpath. A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in…

>A nuclear reactor blowing up, though? The immediate death potential is mostly limited to the on-site staff and the "liquidators" (as evidenced in Chernobyl), but the land wide swaths around the site can remain uninhabitable for hundreds of years.

If the land is really that valuable it can be cleaned. Nobody is going to remediate a forest in the Ukraine though because the Ukraine doesn't have that kind of money and it's not like they're particularly strapped for land in eastern Europe.

By definition anything radioactive enough to cause harm is not going to be long-lived. After a few years it's generally going to

>To this day, wild pigs and fungi in Bavaria (1700 km away!) have to be radiation tested

If by "have to" you mean "in order to make people feel safe" then sure. If by "have to" you mean "because it is not uncommon to find examples that are too irradiated for human consumption" so we have to test them to get a picture of how common these cases are. Honestly I'd be more concerned about eating deer that have been drinking from god knows what contaminated water source than I would be about radiation in animals around Chernobyl.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#28

Post by davidgay »

clarkmoody wrote: post #26

Nuclear power presents the perfect storm for negative public image: - Environmental movement went anti-nuclear in the '70s for no particular reason. - Fear Sells in the media. Nothing strikes fear like the invisible killer of radiation. Nuclear disasters get media attention like nothing else. - Nuclear weapons are scary, and rightfully so. And they share a word in common with "nuclear power," so there you go. Being t…

> Nuclear weapons are scary, and rightfully so. And they share a word in common with "nuclear power," so there you go.

Now you're being specious. They share rather more than a word, they are based on the same physical process.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#29

Post by capitol_ »

clarkmoody wrote: post #26

Nuclear power presents the perfect storm for negative public image: - Environmental movement went anti-nuclear in the '70s for no particular reason. - Fear Sells in the media. Nothing strikes fear like the invisible killer of radiation. Nuclear disasters get media attention like nothing else. - Nuclear weapons are scary, and rightfully so. And they share a word in common with "nuclear power," so there you go. Being t…

"no particular reason" is quite a misrepresentation. If you mean that you don't agree with their reasons or think they are incorrect it would be more honest to state that.

Re: Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry

#30

Post by Tomte »

jjoonathan wrote: post #23
mschuster91 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist. It does, Tesla's grid-scale Powerwall made 25% of its cost in profits in 6 months (per https://insideevs.com/news/340702/tesla-powerpack-in-austral... ). Aside from using Powerwalls, us Europeans have extensive experience with using hydro pump storage.

So why did Germany go with gas and coal?

Germany has always had a lot of coal.

It's not like Germany just started building a lot of coal plants, to replace the closed nuclear plants.

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