Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

That’s just part of the story, annual nuclear refueling is also surprisingly expensive. The raw material is cheap, but you need to refine it to reactor grade, creating fuel rods, and only use ~6% of it before replacing the rods. So on net it ends up being quite costly before considering long term storage. You also need to shutdown the reactor for refueling. Other costs like maintenance starts to really add up over time. Similarly, reactors are small but nuclear power plants take up a lot of land for security, staff, etc.

It’s really a combination of several factors that’s keeping Nuclear so expensive in every country around the world not just the US.

> Everything around the nuclear disasters has been a human bullshit of a problem, not a technological one. Probably with the exception of Fukushima, where all the conditions were put into the extreme - killer earthquake and monster tsunami.

In fact, even Fukushima there were human (stupid) mistakes:

- the levee was too low, and the regulator told TEPCO they needed to improve it (which they didn't). Interestingly enough, the exact same issue (too small levee, leading to loss of all power and water supply) happened in France in CPNE du Blayais in 1999, and in this case also the regulator told EDF that their levee was too low, with no reaction…

- a valve was automatically closed (which is the standard behavior in case of shutdown) but the Japanese operators weren't aware of this behavior, so they believed the valve was still open. When they realized it, it was too late. Opening this valve would have given several hours more of cooling water to the reactor, which could have been enough to save it because help came only a little too late.

Main takeaway: humans are going to do stupid things, which in case of nuclear will eventually lead to a disaster every once in a while. The question raised by the article, is “how much of a disaster is it really” and “do we really need to evacuate a entire region when things like this happen”.

If the answer is “yes” (which is what's commonly accepted) then nuclear is probably too risky to be reasonable (for instance, if CPNE de Nogent sur Seine suffered a critical failure, Paris and the entire Île-de-France region, which concentrate most of the French economic power, would need to be evacuated).

But if the answer is “no”, and the actual risk from contamination (not irradiation actually…) is actually comparable or even lower than regular air pollution or other pollutants, then maybe nuclear is fine, even if we admit that dramatic events will inevitably occur.

Fukushima and Czernobyl are reactor types that lack the features to fail gracefully. If you want to see an accident in a reactor that does, read about TMI. Newer reactors like EPRs are even more graceful when failing.

I'm no expert, but I did find this[1] recent (May 2020) information posted by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab that indicates that non-inverted power sources (such as solar and wind) may be able to produce synthetic current frequency in order to maintain grid stability. This technology can be included within large-scale storage batteries.

In addition, these inertial techniques ('fast frequency response') are digital and as a result could provide lower-latency and higher-accuracy response compared to mechanical approaches.

If I understand that correctly, then eventually these approaches could phase out the need for rotational inertia (no pun intended).

[1] - https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2020/inertia-and-the-power...

Edit: adding a useful quote from the linked report, below:

"In the United States, the Texas grid (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT) is the smallest of three main grids. ERCOT’s relatively small size, combined with its large wind deployment, has required it to compensate for declining inertia by adopting several low-cost solutions, including allowing fast-responding noncritical loads to respond to changes in frequency. This has enabled ERCOT to achieve increasingly high instantaneous wind penetrations—reaching a record of 58% in 2019—while maintaining reliability."

Okay you win, systemd as nuclear power is pretty epic. :-)

That said, there is something about nuclear power that is puzzling. Sure it has a lot of fearmongering but it is very well supported by folks who create these sorts of false narratives.

Kind of like conspiracy theories to me, how to they continue to exist when the narrative is clearly incorrect in the presence of all the facts?

I had a professor at USC who was teaching Nuclear Engineering and he was solidly convinced that these "whisper campaigns" were funded by the big oil companies. His thesis was that big oil couldn't survive if electricity became so cheap that the things we do with oil now could be done more cost effectively with electricity.

It is too bad he didn't live to see the revolution in PV solar power. Clearly the geopolitical aspects of cheap solar is changing the landscape, and yet solar didn't seem to get the same treatment as nuclear.

If I have learned only one thing in my life it is that if you can keep the debate emotional (fear, hate, anger) then you can prevent the incursion of unpleasant facts by shutting down the listener's ability to reason. This was not a fun thing to learn.