Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 323 posts

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#101

Post by altacc »

StillBored wrote: post #23
thawaway1837 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. But the green energy people are an easy punching bag for the nuclear advocates who are simply unwilling to face up to the reality of why nuclear keeps failing to take off.

The costs to built the plants dominates the price. Once built the actual operation and fueling costs are best in class https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/artic... The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are mass…

Expensive to build and cheap to run ignores the high decommissioning and long term waste management costs (both financial & practical impacts). If you add that to the kilowatt price, nuclear tends to end up more expensive than most other options.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#102

Post by natmaka »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #76
Ididntdothis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima was a good reminder that these “regulations” exist for good reason.

Radiation hazards are very real, as we saw graphically with Chernobyl. With Fukushima, we see that they're still real, but we realize we're doing a lot better. Fukushima accident is now estimated to cause up to 1 long-term death from radiation. Chernobyl killed ~70 first responders acutely and up to 4000 long-term. For comparison with other energy sources, Banqiao dam failure killed 100,000 [1] and fossil fuels (84%…

There are many estimations of the effects of nuclear disasters, covering a very wide spectrum.

This one, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...

The social/economic plane is known:

According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union spent ((...)) $35.7 billion in today's dollars) on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Social_econ...

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#103

Post by davidwihl »

Reedx wrote: post #88
natmaka wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a bunch of mishaps (Fukushima being the more recent) it becomes more and more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. It justifies fear. Moreover the waste management problem is not solved. During the last decades more and more citizen are less and less willing to pay for nuke plants. In democracies imposing is pretty difficult, and IMHO it's a good thing. In the same timeframe wind, and even mo…

Except nuclear energy is the safest form of power: https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy As for Fukushima, more died as a result from it being shut down than in the disaster: https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japan... Furthermore, it lead to a surge in imports of dirty fuels. More coal and oil.

That report excludes renewables like hydro, solar, etc.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#104

Post by anoplus »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #76
Ididntdothis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima was a good reminder that these “regulations” exist for good reason.

Radiation hazards are very real, as we saw graphically with Chernobyl. With Fukushima, we see that they're still real, but we realize we're doing a lot better. Fukushima accident is now estimated to cause up to 1 long-term death from radiation. Chernobyl killed ~70 first responders acutely and up to 4000 long-term. For comparison with other energy sources, Banqiao dam failure killed 100,000 [1] and fossil fuels (84%…

The number of deaths is clearly in nuclear energy' favor. But Chernobyl's area is now inhabitable for thousands of years, isn't it? If that is true, having large areas of earth uninhabitable for 1000s (or much more) years sounds to me like the ultimate disaster. I just wish I am wrong.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#105

Post by buzzkillington »

Reedx wrote: post #51
thawaway1837 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. But the green energy people are an easy punching bag for the nuclear advocates who are simply unwilling to face up to the reality of why nuclear keeps failing to take off.

Nuclear energy languished largely because of fear, I think. Our failure to invest in nuclear the past several decades was a huge mistake that future generations will rightfully scorn us for.

It's rather bold of you to assume that future generations will be around to scorn anyone with the apocalyptic climate change we've already locked in.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#107

Post by bildung »

creato wrote: post #68
Spooky23 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely the point. Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. The capital costs of any traditional power plant are massive, and fix high costs of goods sold for the life of the plant. This Canadian effort may find a way to build more smaller units, which will be great if they succeed. Solar and wind are disruptive because the…

> Once the direct subsidy of nuclear via the military's nuclear weapons buildout went away, new plant construction... went way. I don't think there was ever a direct subsidy of civilian nuclear power for weapons production. The ways in which military reactors are run to produce fuel for weapons is different than that of power plants. There are dual use technologies involved, shared R&D costs, and so on, but there is…

> I don't think there was ever a direct subsidy of civilian nuclear power for weapons production.

Most subsidies are not direct and called "subsidy". But as long as nuclear weapons production was a priority, the US had an more of an incentive to research decommissioning, funding final disposing sites, have more people study nuclear engineering, creating job opportunities for nuclear engineers to build up an ecosystem, funding basic research in the area, researching and providing the logistics for transporting waste to disposal sites etc.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#108

Post by kortilla »

thawaway1837 wrote: post #15
StillBored wrote: post #3

A few years ago Toshiba was going to build a small reactor in Alaska. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galena_Nuclear_Power_Plant But it got canceled, and for the life of me I can't understand why anyone thinks its better to truck in heavy fuel oil for generators vs having a small reactor buried in the ground for 30 years. I've been saying for a few years now that green energy only advocates are basically on the side of…

Only if the “green energy” people actually had that much power... In reality there are 2 forces that have stopped nuclear. NIMBYism. And terrible economics. But the green energy people are an easy punching bag for the nuclear advocates who are simply unwilling to face up to the reality of why nuclear keeps failing to take off.

The green energy people have massive amounts of power. They are the reason solar and wind is being built all over the world at an astonishing rate. Their lack of support for nuclear as a base-load is a major factor in its stagnation.

In the US a Democrat at the federal level who doesn’t support green energy will be sentenced to the gas chambers. That’s more than half of the House of Representatives and nearly half of the Senate. It has a strong chance of being the next presidency as well. If nuclear were actually supported by green energy people there would be a new plant going up in every state.

Re: Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear reactor technology

#109

Post by kortilla »

altacc wrote: post #101
StillBored wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs to built the plants dominates the price. Once built the actual operation and fueling costs are best in class https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/artic... The majority of the cost to build the plants are due to the crazy uncertainty about the design/build timeline every-time one is built. Given that conceptually they aren't any more complex than your average coal plant those costs are mass…

Expensive to build and cheap to run ignores the high decommissioning and long term waste management costs (both financial & practical impacts). If you add that to the kilowatt price, nuclear tends to end up more expensive than most other options.

Citation needed. Also, don’t try to include plants that were shut down early or plants built on designs from the 50s.
Post reply on HN