231–240 of 256 posts
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Right - diffuse radioactivity is harder to contain or clean up.
Less necessary to do so, though.
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You have a very focused elite building system in which the big universities creating the future members of the elite are heavily financed and influenced by pro-nuclear organizations. That goes especially for politicans, but includes engineers. The pro-nuclear propaganda repeated by the people that go through this is frightening, many of them are completely brainwashed. In no way can the ASN be really independent, as…
If we (US) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s, and had simply kept building at the same rate, our grid would be (near) zero carbon today . Not several decades from now if we hustle our asses off, today . But that's not what happened. The anti-nuclear team won and we collectively made the responsible decision to fill our atmosphere with CO2 instead. Yay?
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That might be, but Germany and Switzerland assessed the safety to be suboptimal. "In 2007, the same year a Swiss study found that seismic risks in the Alsace region had been underestimated during construction, the ASN denounced a “lack of rigour” in EDF’s operation of the plant."
Why should France care about what they think? Germany could try not importing French carbon neutral nuclear energy if they hate it so much.
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This would be great if CO2 was the only waste product of a nuclear plant, but it's not. You not only needed to keep building plants, but also designate proper waste storage sites, which are still up in the air to this day, and some sites like Hanford are utter ecological disasters. It also did not help that the 70s ended with the Three-Mile Island disaster and serious construction flaws being found at Trojan. Then in…
How many people have died because of that lax safety attitude? Less than any other power source. To call it waste is even debatable as it is still usable for energy production, it just costs too much right now. In the future, this may change. Low level and high level nuclear waste are not the same and the high level waste, as done in some countries at cost, could be reprocessed for fuel. In addition, what is the resu…
That is complicated to assess, how do you account for the indirect and long-term fatalities or illnesses? E.g. here in Germany's south east (bavaria), every hunted boar is still tested whether it contains safe levels of radioactivity. Chernobyl was 34 years ago, but it still is a problem for food safety several thousands of kilometers away from the place of the accident.
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I was already aware. How does pointing this out solve nuclear waste storage issues?
Coal was the alternative we chose, so it set the standard to beat.
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This would be great if CO2 was the only waste product of a nuclear plant, but it's not. You not only needed to keep building plants, but also designate proper waste storage sites, which are still up in the air to this day, and some sites like Hanford are utter ecological disasters. It also did not help that the 70s ended with the Three-Mile Island disaster and serious construction flaws being found at Trojan. Then in…
How many people have died because of that lax safety attitude? Less than any other power source. To call it waste is even debatable as it is still usable for energy production, it just costs too much right now. In the future, this may change. Low level and high level nuclear waste are not the same and the high level waste, as done in some countries at cost, could be reprocessed for fuel. In addition, what is the resu…
In the Harrisburg accident, the core had a melt-down, and molten uranium was forming layers at the bottom of the vessel. Water had been being cracked into oxygen and hydrogen by the intense heat. This process was stopped little time before the vessel would have blown up from overpressure. It would also have been possible that the layering of Uranium in the vessel would have become super-critical with the result of the reactor literally exploding. And this would definitively have had consequences comparable to Chernobyl.
This is stuff which isn't well-known outside of expert circles. During my studies, I read about it in an article in a journal of the nuclear power industry... this must have been between 1991 and 1995, I think.
Another huge problem which Fukoshima exposed is that not only the active reactor core must be subject to cooling at all times, in order to be safe, but also cooling basins for spent fuel with remaining radioactivity. And they should also be inside safe containments (that is, protected from airplane crashes, and so on). I think that no reactor built in the West before 2009 has adequate protections against that type of problem.
And to add, in France there is at least one reactor which is built directly at the shore of the Atlantic. It is probably not safe against major Tsunamis.
The general problem is that nuclear is a very high risk, low probability technology. Protecting against that risk costs lots of money, which makes it uncompetitive. The financial pressures in corporations lead again and again to the result that safety measures are skipped. And in addition, it is inhumanely hard to predict and plan to cope with all possible risks.
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Right, that's part of what I was citing. But the people vehemently opposing nuclear power plants, like me, are generally also opposing fossil fuels. So that doesn't change anything.
Maybe you do, but most people "vehemently opposing nuclear power plants" only pay some lip service to fossil fuels. I've yet to see an anti-nuclear activist declaring that Germany and Japan have nothing to be proud of, considering their carbon footprint. Granted I didn't search very hard, but every anti-nuclear opinion piece I've come across praises how "Germany and Japan showed" that it's possible to shut down nucle…
The valid criticism from many including the green party in Germany is, the shutdown of coal plant could go faster. But it already started.
[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/germany-co2-emis... [2]: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/japan-co2-emissi... [3]: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/us-co2-emissions... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#/media...
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Yes, that's the a common talking point that is false, "Nuclear energy does not produce CO2, or almost none". But you only see that it is false if you look at complete lifecycle analysis of building the plants, running the plants, mining and transporting the uranium, transportintg the waste, dismantling the plant etc. You can try to argue that the US would have less carbon emissions than today - something I'm inclined…
Seems to be begging the question a bit. If 100% of energy came from nuclear, then maintaining it (and all other activities) would be 0-emissions. Construction work and transportation can surely be done electrically.
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1. ASN inspectors reports are not edited by their president or directors (commissaires). The whole structure is based on engineers. Inspectors are strictly engineers. 2. Most nuclear engineer are from Grenoble/Saint-etienne or Lyon. Some are from polytech (so Paris) but this is rare. 3. If you say so. It might conflict with greepeace's vision of ecology, but not with the IPCC's and for multiple reasons, i think i wou…
> Wait! i have multiples solutions. ... I think those are reasonable measures. > But closing a nuclear plant to replace it by gas (and coal, even if temporary) is easier. I assume you'd be less angry if you were aware that I oppose that as well. I think it's in general opposed by the people wanting nuclear energy to end. Talking mostly about Germany here. The process basically was 1) Have a strong agreement that nucl…
Yes, Germany has already more renewable energy sources than it can use, due to protests against building new power lines. From north to south and west to east. When I drive to my in-laws, I come along at least a hundred large wind turbines, often in rows of ten or more. Usually, half of them is turned off because, the grid cannot take more energy.
At the German energy exchange, the price of electrical energy already dropped below zero several times, because of that.
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This article is misleading. You can NOT replace nuclear with wind and solar. Because you can't choose when the sun shines and when the wind blows. Hydro in France is already built-up everywhere it was feasible. There are no more spots to build meaningful hydro power capacity. Too bad since hydro is the only renewable that can really replace the nuclear power plants.
At least with studies on the Australian grid, it seems like the need for "baseload" sources is myth fueled mostly by resistance to upgrading to renewable sources. https://www.energymatters.com.au/renewable-news/baseload-ene...
I recommend 2030.
