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

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#91

Post by veidr » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:15 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.

Yeah, but they are lobbying to we allow industry to build new plants without a fundamental and transparent rethinking of the safety issues, and with various proposed schemes to limit or eliminate corporate liability. (Is that really the best way to ensure safe designs and operation procedures?)

The reactor designs are newer, but we also need newer designs for management and disaster prevention/response. Even with the crappy obsolete Fukishima reactors, we would have come through this event fine had there been a (much) bigger investment in those non-technological areas when the plant was built and over the decades since then.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#92

Post by BasDirks » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:15 AM UTC

You guys know about the problem of nuclear waste right? You've read plenty about it right?

Because this whole "it hasn't caused an apocalypse yet" argument in favor of nuclear power is just a tiny bit short-sighted. If you make your software like you reason about nuclear power, send me a note naming your products so I know what to stay away from.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#93

Post by jbri » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:17 AM UTC

nextparadigms wrote: post #71

michaelchisari wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title of this article is that nuclear power is the safest , relative to other sources of power currently capable of scaling to needs. That's a very important distinction, so I would ask you to please consider that.

Safer than wind and solar? I don't think so. Those stats that we saw a while ago that people die from solar too because they fall off the roof are pretty ridiculous. 10 years from now all new homes will come with solar panels pre-installed, so people won't have to set them up themselves. Plus, you could always hire someone else to do it for you. In my country we're building giant wind turbines that will generate twic…

Clean energy alternatives are not viable. And they won't be for a long time.

Wind and solar power are inherently unsuitable for providing base-load coverage - you need to have sufficient generating capacity spooled-up and available to cover any lulls in output. They can reduce the environmental impact of conventional generation, but they're useless on their own.

Nuclear power already produces 100x more than even the largest wind farm, because when you're working out how much base-load coverage you've got, you need to think about that wind farm at it's worst-case 0 MW output.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#94

Post by jbri » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:20 AM UTC

BasDirks wrote: post #92

You guys know about the problem of nuclear waste right? You've read plenty about it right? Because this whole "it hasn't caused an apocalypse yet" argument in favor of nuclear power is just a tiny bit short-sighted. If you make your software like you reason about nuclear power, send me a note naming your products so I know what to stay away from.

You guys know about the problem of climate change, right? You've read plenty about it, right?

Because this whole "it hasn't caused an apocalypse yet" argument in favour of every-feasible-alternative-to-nuclear-power is just a tiny bit short-sighted. If you make your software like you reason about every-feasible-alternative-to-nuclear-power, send me a note naming your products so I know what to stay away from.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#95

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:28 AM UTC

billmcneale wrote: post #80

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…

Number of casualties from nuclear plant accidents: a few thousands. Number of casualties from coal mining accidents this past century [2]: 100,000. That's accidents in coal mines alone, not even counting lung diseases and similar. The fact that it takes a 9.0 tsunami after forty years of complete absence of nuclear accidents to bring this to the front page should be indication enough that nuclear is not just safer th…

I vote for neither.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#96

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:32 AM UTC

DarkShikari wrote: post #11

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…

You've drank milk and eaten meat contaminated by poisonous chemicals from coal power plants for your whole life. Not a single person has died yet from the Fukushima disaster, yet millions of people have died from ailments caused by coal power plants. Why is that kind of contamination just fine? I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Perhaps we should f…

If he was drinking contaminated milk from coal power plants, then he is still alive.

Surprise, coal power plants have filters now...

Surprise 2, coal is also not the energy of the future...

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#97

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:33 AM UTC

Yeah, currently the spent fuel is piling up.

You need one a more large reprocessing sites and one or more storage sites.

Currently the nuclear industry is running without it.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#98

Post by lispm » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:35 AM UTC

jberryman wrote: post #85

DarkShikari wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've drank milk and eaten meat contaminated by poisonous chemicals from coal power plants for your whole life. Not a single person has died yet from the Fukushima disaster, yet millions of people have died from ailments caused by coal power plants. Why is that kind of contamination just fine? I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Perhaps we should f…

I was kind of floored by the figure cited in the article of 6000 deaths per year in china from mining alone .

Do you think coal mining is more dangerous than Uranium mining?

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#99

Post by asharp » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:43 AM UTC

phlux wrote: post #68

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?

If memory serves, the problem is that it is politically impossible to create some area to place the waste fuel. ie. it would be much safer to move the spent fuel out of the reactor, however there is nowhere for it to go to.

Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity

#100

Post by veidr » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:44 AM UTC

jedsmith wrote: post #86

veidr wrote: post #77

I looooves me some electricity. So, even though I'm presently suffering some annoyances in my daily life here in Tokyo (sporadically contaminated drinking water, suspect milk and other foodstuffs, not enough electricity to maintain our previous standard of living, Internet outages forfuckssake), and even though I bristle any time anybody (this article's author included) ignorantly implies that we know all the bad thi…

> nuke power is the safest power we've come up with (among power sources that actually have produced a significant fraction of the power we use) This is crucial, and is why blanket statements like "nuclear power is safe" are dangerous. There is an absolutely essential qualifier required on the end of any assertion about nuclear safety, and I'm glad to see that you put it in parentheses here. Nuclear power is the best…

Yes, "at scale" is succinct and accurate, I will adopt that term too.