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

bbc.com

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

#111

Post by projektfu »

mycall wrote: post #109
icedistilled wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does that mean nuclear is just a totally great idea? No; the issue with nuclear is cost. Oh don't forget the other issue: It takes decades to build a new plant. We don't got that time. For the $6 Billion or more it takes to build a nuclear plant that will then take 15 to 20 years to license and build before it generates a single Watt, we could have had a $6 Billion of solar and wind deployed and operating for 12+ ye…

If we had enough solar to power the world, would all of the solar cells actually lower the temperature of Earth due to being black?

Solar radiation that is absorbed by a solar panel will either heat the panel or generate electricity, which will also mostly become heat in the end. Reflected radiation will hopefully leave the earth.

The things that cool the planet are mostly white — reflective. Clouds, white roofs, etc.

Trees cool their local area by performing endothermic reactions creating carbohydrates and lignans.

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

#112

Post by mrtksn »

corty wrote: post #107
mrtksn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what would be the excuse when the new reactors fail disastrously? None of the failed ones were considered dangerous before they fail, they were all supposed to be impossible to cause a disaster due to redundancies, passive and active safety mechanisms. They were all supposed to be built perfectly and the people who operate them were supposed to know what they are doing. Yet, we have Chernobyl and Fukushima. What…

The failed ones were known to be dangerous. Mostly that big problem was kept under radar of the public, oversight failed big time or was complicit. The other big problem is, we keep running old rustbuckets and dubious designs. More than half of the worlds reactors should probably be shut down immediately, and most of the rest is also due for a replacement very very soon.

How do we know that this time is different?

See, the thing that goes wrong doesn’t have to be even a technological one. Fission is a process that spontaneously can go wrong unless harnessed by systems that are built by thousands of people. Anything can go wrong and anyone can screw up. All can happen and the same time as demonstrated by the previous disasters.

You say that the current reactors are very dangerous and should be closed down. Please give me a material by the plant builders and operators that communicates these dangers with the people that might get exposed to a failure.

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

#113

Post by chmod775 »

mycall wrote: post #109
icedistilled wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does that mean nuclear is just a totally great idea? No; the issue with nuclear is cost. Oh don't forget the other issue: It takes decades to build a new plant. We don't got that time. For the $6 Billion or more it takes to build a nuclear plant that will then take 15 to 20 years to license and build before it generates a single Watt, we could have had a $6 Billion of solar and wind deployed and operating for 12+ ye…

If we had enough solar to power the world, would all of the solar cells actually lower the temperature of Earth due to being black?

No. If you want to keep the planet cool you need to use white surfaces or mirrors to reflect that energy back into space.

Plus most electricty/energy that isn't stored somehow gets converted into heat. That's just how the universe works.

If you capture some energy with your solar panel just to immediately release ~100% of it as heat again because you power your servers with it, you didn't accomplish anything.

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

#114

Post by formerly_proven »

nicoburns wrote: post #81
cwp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with nuclear is that people are afraid of it. If we had spent the last 40 years trying to make it cheaper instead of trying to prevent accidents, it wouldn't be so expensive.

True, but this isn't exactly irrational. Nuclear only has such a good safety record because we have been so careful with it. Nobody seriously thinks "move fast and break things" nuclear reactors are a good idea.

They used to, and every major accident raised the demanded safety measures.

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

#115

Post by pojzon »

nicoburns wrote: post #81
cwp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with nuclear is that people are afraid of it. If we had spent the last 40 years trying to make it cheaper instead of trying to prevent accidents, it wouldn't be so expensive.

True, but this isn't exactly irrational. Nuclear only has such a good safety record because we have been so careful with it. Nobody seriously thinks "move fast and break things" nuclear reactors are a good idea.

Its about time a lot of nuclear power plans will reach their life-expancy. I wanna see how countries like France, Japan, Germany, Russia, China are going to deal with that.

Fukushima was not a good example of “how to treat reports of damaged facility”. Goverment knew and did nothing.

Newer nuclear reactors are safe, but older designs are a ticking time bombs.

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

#116

Post by codingdave »

Lazare wrote: post #53

Do we stress about the risks nuclear power far out of proportion to how safe it is? Yes. Even accounting for the worst accidents, it kills a very low number of people per TWh. Do we ignore the risks of fossil fuels far out of proportion to how dangerous they are? Also yes. They kill an absurdly high number of people per TWh; by most estimates coal is several hundred times more dangerous than nuclear. Does that mean n…

> it kills a very low number of people per TWh.

I worked in energy for 5 years. Deaths per TWh was not a metric we measured. Deaths are not made acceptable because of energy production. The goal was zero. We did not reach that goal, but nobody ever said deaths would be OK if only the numbers went up.

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

#118

Post by thaumasiotes »

codingdave wrote: post #116
Lazare wrote: post #53

Do we stress about the risks nuclear power far out of proportion to how safe it is? Yes. Even accounting for the worst accidents, it kills a very low number of people per TWh. Do we ignore the risks of fossil fuels far out of proportion to how dangerous they are? Also yes. They kill an absurdly high number of people per TWh; by most estimates coal is several hundred times more dangerous than nuclear. Does that mean n…

> it kills a very low number of people per TWh. I worked in energy for 5 years. Deaths per TWh was not a metric we measured. Deaths are not made acceptable because of energy production. The goal was zero. We did not reach that goal, but nobody ever said deaths would be OK if only the numbers went up.

> Deaths are not made acceptable because of energy production.

What? Of course they are. Just like deaths are made acceptable by anything else people need.

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

#119

Post by p1mrx »

I think the most legitimate concern about nuclear safety is, what happens to the plant if you push the "OFF" button and go home?

The current gigawatt-scale plants (AP1000, Hualong One, etc.) can cool without external water for 72 hours, after which a meltdown occurs. NuScale plans to run their reactors at the bottom of a pool, with enough water to passively transition to air cooling over the course of a month. (There are a bunch of proposed reactor designs with similar safety characteristics, but I know more about NuScale because they've been in the news lately.)

I'm not against building plants with a 72-hour buffer for now, due to the pressing need for low-carbon energy, but we should really focus our future resources on passive self-cooling designs that we can safely copy-paste across the planet on a massive scale.

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

#120

Post by zyxzevn »

I don't care much about the radiation. And this is always the wrong argument.

I care about (1) the pollution with 100,000 years of half-life and (2) corruption and (3) Murphy's law.

None of these problems are even closely solved. The only constant is that errors will be made. My previous generation thought that it was OK to put waste into the oceans. Or dump it in Africa.

Some Thorium solutions may work, but they need to be researched and improved. There are some scientists working on transforming nuclear waste, and this is the first thing that needs to be done.

Don't come back until you have done that.

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