Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#61

Post by Daishiman » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:29 AM UTC

kscaldef wrote: post #50

mtogo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the other options, then?

Hydro-electric, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, to name the ones that come immediately to mind.

Hydroelectric has the problem that: 1) You're making tens of square kilometers of land uninhabitable by flooding. 2) Such flooding promotes the formation of anaerobic algae which generate thousands of tons of C02 3) Dams collapse too.

Wind cannot provide a stable energy source. The advances required in battery technology and so-called "smart grids" are still too far off. You can't power a steel mill on wind power.

Solar is extremely dependent on location and, once again, requires a power infrastructure overhaul.

Geothermal and tidal are still untested.

All of the mentioned experimental technologies will require at the very least 20 years to mature and will bring their own problems as well (geothermal has the tiny little problem that it causes earthquakes).

Most people don't understand that undertaking an energy infrastructure update is something that takes decades and has to be planned thinking about its effects 30 and 40 years from now. And that also means that while you wait for technologies to mature you have to use stopgaps. Right now there is no alternative for nuclear and there likely won't be for 20 years unless nations are willing to invest hundreds of billions in research and upgrades.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#62

Post by Devilboy » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:30 AM UTC

kscaldef wrote: post #50

mtogo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the other options, then?

Hydro-electric, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, to name the ones that come immediately to mind.

None of those can replace coal / nuclear.

EDIT: Here's Bill Gates explaining why nuclear is not optional: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#63

Post by jarek » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:32 AM UTC

danenania wrote: post #34

michaelchisari wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that reason, exactly? When Banqauio kills 171,000, Bhopal kills 10,000, and 30,000 people die every year from coal pollution, why exactly don't we give energy production methods like that the kind of scrutiny we're giving Fukushima?

Uh, maybe we ought to give them both a lot more scrutiny? I'm not trying to champion coal power here. Fuck coal power. I'm just pointing out the obvious: nuclear power is dangerous.

Do you operate a fridge?

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#64

Post by thekevan » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:33 AM UTC

Yes but is it like saying wolves are safer than dogs because statistically your are less likely to be harmed by a wolf than a dog? It ignores the fact that if you do run afoul of a wolf, you are done.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#65

Post by cturner » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:33 AM UTC

danenania wrote: post #59

"History suggests that nuclear power rarely kills and causes little illness. That’s also the conclusion engineers reach when they model scenarios for thousands of potential accidents." Auditing nuclear power's extremely short history is not a valid method of assessing risk. In poker they call this 'results oriented thinking'. Especially when discussing black swan events, history is almost by definition not a very use…

The history is not 'extremely short'. Nuclear has been in operation for decades.

If fact, history inflates the risk by bringing into consideration known weaknesses of earlier reactor designs.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#66

Post by gamble » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:41 AM UTC

jschrf wrote: post #52

marze wrote: post #33

When I see a story like this, it reminds me that the events in Japan represent the biggest PR challenge the nuclear industry has faced in many years. Fifty billion dollars of nuclear reactor US taxpayer-backed loan guarantees hang in the balance. The industry has been working for the past few decades to rehabilitate the image of nuclear power after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and now they have to contend with vi…

One thing that blows my mind with the Fukushima plant (and presumably others) is that the spent fuel pond is seemingly built above ground. Wouldn't you want this to be at the very bottom of the reactor building, so that water could collect in it in an emergency situation like in Fukushima where water is pumped in from above? Maybe this is (was) one of the unknowns/unthoughtofs that you mention. As an aside, if no one…

The plant is built like that so spent fuel can be lifted out of the reactor and placed directly in the pool using one crane. A more secure spent-fuel pool would have required more elaborate fuel handling, thus a more expensive design.

Also, when these plants were built I don't think they anticipated the spent-fuel pools would become long-term storage. There was the assumption that centralized nuclear waste disposal sites would be built and the pools would only store waste until it was safe to transfer.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#67

Post by dhughes » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:45 AM UTC

owls wrote: post #8

jbm wrote: post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

Nuclear power is cleaner than coal or oil. We just need to build stronger and safer reactors. Personally I'm glad OP posted this article. Fukushima was tragic, but it didn't give everyone the right to abandon rational thought. I used to work for a state pirg banging on doors to complain about nuclear power. Spreading fear by barking "3 mile island, chernobyl" etc. Then one day I knocked on the door of a nuclear physi…

CANDU reactors are safe, in fact they have a hard time getting anything to happen on a good day. If something went wrong the worst that would happen is the reactor would stop working.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#68

Post by phlux » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:47 AM UTC

marze wrote: post #33

When I see a story like this, it reminds me that the events in Japan represent the biggest PR challenge the nuclear industry has faced in many years. Fifty billion dollars of nuclear reactor US taxpayer-backed loan guarantees hang in the balance. The industry has been working for the past few decades to rehabilitate the image of nuclear power after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and now they have to contend with vi…

So, how is nuclear fuel transported from wherever is it manufactured to the reactor? Why cant that process be implemented to transfer the fuel out of the reactor?

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#69

Post by po » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 4:57 AM UTC

jbm wrote: post #3

Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…

Jawaad, as you know, I live in Tokyo too. I haven't had to stop drinking the water because it's never gotten higher than water I've already consumed elsewhere in my travels. Even when they said it wasn't safe for children, I was drinking it because the levels weren't very high at all. I filled some containers with tap water to have on hand if the situation got worse but so far it hasn't. If you're having trouble finding foods like milk or natto it's mostly due to disruptions in the supply chain and food processing or packaging plants up north that were taken out by the tsunami.

I've been drinking the tap water and I would eat the spinach grown in fukushima as well. It makes me very sad that farmers who are struggling to get by and have perfectly fine food to sell are not able to sell it.

I can understand people being afraid of the uncertainty of the situation. I think that is somewhat rational: the situation could get worse. You might not trust TEPCO or the government to properly handle the situation. Those are risks that need to be addressed and maybe the answer is that nuclear power isn't the way to go. That decision should be made based on hard data of real threats, costs and unknowns.

I think though, that to date, nobody outside of a very small radius (mostly TEPCO workers) have ever been in danger of receiving dangerous levels of radiation. People confuse cautionary recommendations with actual threats. On the other hand, people are dying due to lack of supplies and medication from the tsunami. Farmers and fishermen are losing their livelihood because of fear of radiated food.

BTW, Here's the link to the water supply/rain water radiation levels I use:

http://atmc.jp/water/

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#70

Post by VladRussian » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 5:00 AM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #35

VladRussian wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why to promote that false dichotomy - either nuclear or coal. There are other options, better nuclear designs, natural gas, wind [ which is baseline type of energy if towers are high enough ], solar - we have so much desert on Earth, and start seriously develop nuclear fusion [ as its development has been practically stopped for the fear of proliferation ]

> better nuclear designs Nobody is advocating that we build more 4 decade old reactors. On the other hand there are plenty of people suggesting that we not build new reactors. We aren't seeing an attack on old reactor designs, we're seeing an attack on the "other option" you listed.

>Nobody is advocating that we build more 4 decade old reactors.

the real political and economical power is with the current nuclear industry which doesn't have other designs. Any permit to build if given in the next 10 years would result in a new old nuclear plant. Like any powerful established industry they protect their position with heavy regulations and wouldn't let any innovative outsiders in.