Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer • Hacker News Board

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#71

Post by uterus-liner » Wed, May 08, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

acidburnNSA wrote: post #67

jcranmer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chernobyl's exclusion zone was ~1000 mi^2, consisting of ~120,000 people. The Oroville dam evacuation zone is ~250mi^2 encompassing ~180,000 people. Floods are no laughing matters; the Chinese decision to break the levees of the Yellow River during the Second Sino-Japanese War is credited with killing 400,000 people or so and rendering millions homeless, and the land was unusable for the better part of a decade, not…

Strengthening your point on the persistent anti-nuclear "uninhabitable for millennia" myth, check this recent article out [1]. The wildlife at Chernobyl is thriving. There are far worse energy accidents in other industries that cause far more and widespread damage. [1] https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/worlds-worst-energy-ac...

I wonder how many people are as tolerant of miscarriages and birth defects and tap water contamination as wildlife seems to be?

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#72

Post by uterus-liner » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

acidburnNSA wrote: post #53

v_lisivka wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, even Sun will blow and destroy our Solar system, so solar energy is not safe too. BTW: Will you move to Chornobyl to demonstrate that radioactivity is safe? Land is cheap here.

Sure, if my family and job were there. Its a thriving wildlife refuge now. Check it out. https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/worlds-worst-energy-ac...

Pretty tough talk, posting comments on the internet.

You have convenient excuses, and a lot of talk. How about you actually do it?

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#73

Post by v_lisivka » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #39

781 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to consider stuff like terrorist attack and so on. Nobody is so incentivized in making your backyard pool leak.

What if a dam explodes? More people have died due to dam failures (both intentional and accidental) than have died to nuclear power, but there is nowhere near the freaking out over the safety of dams compared to nuclear power. 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, combine…

Dams also protects people from floods, so they are net positive.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#74

Post by v_lisivka » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #61

petschge wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While dam break cost lives, there is crucial differences that are never mentioned by the pro-nuclear crowd on HN. 1.) Dam breaks devastate much smaller areas. So even if the human toll is the same, the amount of infrastructure lost is smaller. 2.) The area is unlivable (or even inaccessible) for a much smaller duration of month instead of millenia. Maybe land lost "forever" (on the timescale of individual human lives…

Chernobyl's exclusion zone was ~1000 mi^2, consisting of ~120,000 people. The Oroville dam evacuation zone is ~250mi^2 encompassing ~180,000 people. Floods are no laughing matters; the Chinese decision to break the levees of the Yellow River during the Second Sino-Japanese War is credited with killing 400,000 people or so and rendering millions homeless, and the land was unusable for the better part of a decade, not…

Chornobyl's exclusion zone covered small part of contaminated area only. My parent's home is in contaminated area, but nobody was evacuated. Cancer rate is 2.5x larger at average in four regions of Ukraine, which are near to Chornobyl. I saw 6m (20 foot) wide circle of dead grass at about 800m from my parents home, where a hot particle landed. Both my neighbors are died because of cancer. I live in clear region, but my lungs was very radioactive for few years, because of my visits to parents.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#75

Post by zie » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

fromthestart wrote: post #70

goatgate wrote: post #69

Complexity is the enemy of any reliable system. No energy source is simpler than solar arrays. They don't require any moving parts, thermal management, waste containment, or strong security. The only maintenance required is dusting. Why otherwise intelligent people cannot appreciate the cost of complexity for nuclear energy is beyond me, especially when viewed in contrast to something as simple as solar.

There are costs other than complexity which must be considered before selecting a power source. For example, energy density per unit area. Nuclear has a much smaller footprint. Also the cost, maintnence, lifetime, and environmental impact of batteries required during night time/occluded operation is also not trivial, as is accommodating for unpredictable outputs due to weather.

Agreed, Also diversity of power is a win. But I agree, with the OP comment here, the simplicity of Solar is hard to get past, but sometimes it just won't work for a given application.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#76

Post by v_lisivka » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:20 PM UTC

acidburnNSA wrote: post #53

v_lisivka wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, even Sun will blow and destroy our Solar system, so solar energy is not safe too. BTW: Will you move to Chornobyl to demonstrate that radioactivity is safe? Land is cheap here.

Sure, if my family and job were there. Its a thriving wildlife refuge now. Check it out. https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/worlds-worst-energy-ac...

I can drive to Chornobyl by bicycle. I just don't want that.

Wildlife is thriving in my area too, because people abandon homes and move to cities instead.

However, if you like it, you can create similar exclusion zone near to you. Just vote for nuclear power and wait until next nuclear disaster.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#77

Post by rwcarlsen » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

petschge wrote: post #56

rwcarlsen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an accident scenario, the heat that is problematic is not from the fissile material (i.e. U235, Pu239) but from the fission products' decay heat - the isotope soup remaining after the fissile atoms split. It is much less intense than the heat/energy produced during normal operation and drops off significantly after a couple days. So the pool's purpose in terms of accident mitigation is to keep things cool enough d…

While you are correct that it is less than the nominal heat output, we are still talking about 50MW a minute after shut down and 5MW one day after the shutdown of a 700MW reactor. So even a day after the shutdown you are able to boil of 2kg of water every second.

Yes, it is still a lot of heat. But to a lay reader, it might be easy to believe that the pool needing to be able to cool the reactor means that the pool has to cool an operating plant during an accident which is incorrect. I was just trying to make the distinction here. Also the drop from (your very approx numbers) 50 MW to 5 MW is mostly exponential - and so very quickly drops away from 50 MW. After that, any remaining heat is diffuse enough to not actually boil away water from the pool. Fuel-melting risk (which is not the chain reaction restarting for any who may be limited in fission plant understanding) is generally only a concern for the first couple days after reactor shutdown.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#78

Post by beat » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

sharcerer wrote: post #59

beat wrote: post #11

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.

May I ask why you aren't a fan?

A number of reasons, but for starters, consider inequality. Are we going to give Yemen a nuclear power plant? Somalia? Can Bolivia afford one?

They are expensive, require tremendous infrastructure, and mean deploying fissionable materials to countries that maybe shouldn't have them. So it's solving a First World problem, and exacerbating the divide between rich and poor.

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#79

Post by mcguire » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

""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."

If it's safe, it should easily meet the criteria and so shouldn't need exemptions and exceptions, right?

Re: Making Nuclear Energy Smaller, Cheaper And Safer

#80

Post by mcguire » Wed, May 08, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

goatgate wrote: post #69

Complexity is the enemy of any reliable system. No energy source is simpler than solar arrays. They don't require any moving parts, thermal management, waste containment, or strong security. The only maintenance required is dusting. Why otherwise intelligent people cannot appreciate the cost of complexity for nuclear energy is beyond me, especially when viewed in contrast to something as simple as solar.

Except that solar doesn't provide power at night, and reduced power on some days. That means you need either storage or alternative power. Areas which can provide large amounts of solar tend to be located far from population centers. That means long range transmission systems, which are among the most complex systems in existence.