31–40 of 116 posts
Per gigawatt-hour, nuclear power as it stands may very well be the safest power source that we have got already. The biggest hurdle is irrational fear and the regulatory barriers consequent.
> "My concern about NuScale is that they believe so deeply that their reactor is safe and doesn't need to meet the same criteria as the larger reactors, that it's pushing for lots of exemptions and exceptions," says Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists Bit of a red flag there... Edit: The article further states: > "Licensing this design is challenging. It's s…
The problem here is actually that the people at 'Union' are deeply convinced that nuclear is bad and no nuclear project no matter how much time was spent on safety has ever been endorsed by them. This is simply how they operate.
The reason there are 'exceptions' is because partly with the help of themselves the nuclear regulatory system was changed in a way to hardcore specific technological solution into the regulatory process that only work for traditional PWR, practically excluding every other form of nuclear energy.
NuScale uses PWR technology in a slightly different form but because that's what they believed to be able to regulated, but even that requires lots of extra cost to get regulated.
The regulatory changes after the nuclear accidents essentially killed all research and all progress. This can be seen both in the rates of new reactor designs and reactor building rates.
Union of Concerned Scientiests and Greenpeace have been at the forefront of this issue for a long time now, and their deliberate strategy since literally 50 years (and this is a fact that has been shown based on their internal documents) is to always focus on nuclear safety because that's how they can make it uneconomical. And to their credit, this strategy has worked perfectly. It might be the single most successful political campaign of the 'environmental movement'.
If they had been this effective against coal we would live in a better world now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Having passive decay heat removal usually decreases the probability of core damage by about 100x." 100x isn't 100% though. 100 of these small reactors has the same risk as one large reactor. Perhaps higher, because like you, everyone goes around saying the risk has been designed out. Though obviously one small reactor going boom is preferable to a big one doing the same.
100% safe is never the metric. Nothing is 100% safe. Every form of energy generation has risks that have to balance the good the energy source brings. Nuclear is nearly unique in that it can produce carbon-free energy (unlike fossil and biomass), continuously for 2 years on end between reloads (unlike wind/solar/coal), and it can be deployed in a wide variety of geographic locations (unlike hydro and geothermal). The…
BTW: Will you move to Chornobyl to demonstrate that radioactivity is safe? Land is cheap here.
Per gigawatt-hour, nuclear power as it stands may very well be the safest power source that we have got already. The biggest hurdle is irrational fear and the regulatory barriers consequent.
Yeah, it's sad that people refuse to live at Chornobyl, Fucusima, or many other safe places. So much of land is just wasted because of this irrational fear.
Why not thorium?
And the development of any type of reactor is already expensive, adding the additional challenge of regulatory burden to change fuels is totally pointless.
The real debate is about reactor design, not fuel type.
I also started to get interested in Thorium, but I learn that its not about Thorium but rather your reactor type.
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What happens if a windmill explodes?
I'm not too sure but I can say for certain that it doesn't spew radioactive material into the environment.
Similarly, most fission reactor failure modes don't release harmful amounts of contamination to the public.
Although I'm not a big nuclear power fan for various reasons, I'm really happy to see someone approaching it with an eye to realistic safety, modern economics, and compatibility with a renewable-based grid. It'll be interesting to see if this can compete financially with batteries.
>> ... if this can compete financially with batteries. I don't think there will be competition. With storage costs dropping I don't see why nuclear plants would be any different than solar or wind. If solar+wind can cover current demands, why turn down the reactors? Why not keep them running and charge up some battery capacity for the day that solar+wind isn't enough? The ideal grid would have all energy sources runn…
That said, it's still a damn sight better than the usual rounds of how super-expensive old-style light water plants are just fine, or how magic thorium breeders will save us even though no one has built one for 50 years, or other flavors of condescension at the naive treehuggers who are going to ruin everything with their technophobia.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's sad that people refuse to live at Chornobyl, Fucusima, or many other safe places. So much of land is just wasted because of this irrational fear.
I grew up downstream of a whole set of International Paper and Boise-Meade paper mills on the Androscoggin River. I think I'd prefer Fukishima - there's less cancer there.
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I mean ... millions of people who barely maintain their homes avoid pool leaks, and when it does leak, it tends to be slow enough that they can call in a professional to fix the problem. Imagine a fastidiously maintained facility ... I think they can probably work it out
You have to consider stuff like terrorist attack and so on. Nobody is so incentivized in making your backyard pool leak.
For comparison, the Banqiao Dam failure (the largest dam failure in history) killed as many people as the sum total of every nuclear power plant failure and every atomic bomb ever used, combined.
Their webpage [0] has the construction cost at $3 billion for a ~700 MW reactor. This is about the same as the originally projected cost for the Flamanville EPR with 1600 MW, which now is expected to end up costing ~$10 Billion. Now even if we assume - and thats a big assumption - they really can build the reactor for $3 Billion, that still equals ~$7 Billion in construction costs for a Flamanville sized reactor. The…