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

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

#171

Post by ComputerGuru »

rgbrenner wrote: post #169
ComputerGuru wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is only so relatively expensive because it’s the only fuel source that’s forced to pay up for all the externalities up front (and I’m not saying that is a bad thing to require). A nuclear plant can’t be built if the money to make it safe (as per some specification), insure against all health complications while it’s in operation, decommission it, clean up the site, securely dump all spent fuel, and return the…

Your post conveniently ignores solar/wind + batteries, which is even cheaper than coal.

Are you really suggesting those have zero externalities not priced in?

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

#172

Post by nicoburns »

monadic2 wrote: post #131
nicoburns wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But investing in wind, solar and storage would be much cheaper still. The fukushima cleanup effort has cost close to $100 billion. Imagine where we could take renewable and energy storag tech with that level of investment.

How do you know that the storage investment will produce something viable? Investments still have risk and nuclear can fill that hole.

It's true that there's always risk involved. As we know, that is true for nuclear as much as any other energy technology.

My view on this is that we are not particularly far away from this being viable even with 2020 technology. And that this is especially true if we are creative in how we apply technology, for example by decentralising the grid and installing storage capacity in people's homes, and by being aggressive with load shifting to reduce the storage capacity required. And there are dozens of promising new energy storage technologies. It seems unlikely that none of them pan out. I thus consider the risk of going all-in on renewables fairly low.

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

#173

Post by DoctorOetker »

strulovich wrote: post #159
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…

This death per TWh calculation is naive. In reality modeling and averages are not enough here. If can tell a coal plant kills X people per year, then I can pretty safely deduce it will kill somewhere between 0.9X and 1.1X people next year. (Made up numbers, but the point holds) For nuclear, we can easily estimate with the same models the damage. One miscalculation, or one disastrous outcome can cause 50000 deaths, or…

the price of protecting many small nuclear reactors against say aeroplanes will rise per watt.

I certainly agree with death per TWh calculations being naive, but for a different reason: ethics trumps metrics.

If I agree to climb a roof and maintain some solar panels in exchange for money, I am risking my own life and limb. A child 100 years from now will not fall off in my place.

If you agree to work in a nuclear reactor today, in theory a child in the future could get cancer from a mishap today.

Put differently: even if eating 20 grams of human babies cured AIDS, and hence many lives could be saved in exchange for one, does not justify the trade. We expect informed consent of all parties involved.

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

#174

Post by drivebycomment »

hwillis wrote: post #28
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #9

I think it's definitely true people are overly anxious about radiation, and irrationally so. For example, it's easy to find people who get anxious about xrays but not about flying even though it gives you roughly the same amount of exposure. I know I was pretty anxious when I had a chest xray as a kid. It's just the invisible nature of radiation. Coupled with the real and brutal effects of extreme doses, it just lend…

> For example, it's easy to find people who get anxious about xrays but not about flying even though it gives you roughly the same amount of exposure. A 7 hour flight gives you 1/5th (.02 mSv- 2000x daily background exposure) as much as a chest xray and 1/350th as much as a chest CT. They're only similar if you fly relatively often, and if you get any kind of CT you need to fly a LOT to make them comparable. Your exa…

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201... says:

During times of calm space weather, travelers on flights from say, Chicago to Beijing, over the north pole get the equivalent radiation dose of a chest X‐ray (~0.1 mSv) [e.g., Meier et al., 2009; Bennett et al., 2012, 2013; Joyce et al., 2016; Tobiska et al., 2016].

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

#175

Post by frabbit »

tengbretson wrote: post #21
frabbit wrote: post #2

Radiation is good. Without it we would not have mutation and then there would be nothing for natural selection to operate on. Ergo, if you are against radiation you are against evolution. QED. Also, I have shares in companies that can build nuclear power stations in your neighborhood. Also, because I want to keep driving and heating my uninsulated suburban single-family house while I eat beef 3 times a week and I am…

In general, due to their more recent construction, suburban homes tend to be better than average at insulation when compared to other single family dwellings. That said, given the levels of snark I'm reading I would guess things like "single family dwelling", "family", or even property ownership itself would probably be pretty hot topics for you.

Yes, exactly. More single home dwellings coupled with nuclear power and a complete absence of "snark". That's the ticket! Have you heard about the growth mindset?

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

#176

Post by frabbit »

ktal wrote: post #10
frabbit wrote: post #2

Radiation is good. Without it we would not have mutation and then there would be nothing for natural selection to operate on. Ergo, if you are against radiation you are against evolution. QED. Also, I have shares in companies that can build nuclear power stations in your neighborhood. Also, because I want to keep driving and heating my uninsulated suburban single-family house while I eat beef 3 times a week and I am…

Right, let's keep burning coal and gas for electricity, instead of getting clean and immensely plentiful electricity from nuclear.

Exactly. The only thing we can keep doing is consuming more and more energy. And who wants to get that from bombing and subverting nations around the world? Not you... you're nice. Not me... I am woke. So, the only thing to do is to build nuclear power stations everywhere.

What could go wrong? Nothing else ever has!

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

#177

Post by titzer »

Retric wrote: post #153
titzer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has successfully processed 23,000 tons of spent fuel, or 14 years worth. With zero incidents. In fact it works so well, they process other countries' spent fuel, too. https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...

That article shows the issue. “The entire process adds about 6 percent in costs for the French.” Reprocessing is simply not cost effective due to how cheap reactor grade Uranium is.

So you are saying the reason a huge problem exists is because money? Hold the phone.

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

#178

Post by p1mrx »

pfdietz wrote: post #162
p1mrx wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge is just having enough raw capacity to meet demand using intermittent renewable sources. Weather varies on the scale of days/weeks, and winter is cold because of limited sunlight. What energy source will we use to stay warm all winter?

Make hydrogen, store it underground, and have enough combustion turbines available to back up the grid. A simple cycle combustion turbine power plant is about 5% of the cost of a nuclear power plant, per unit of power output.

That seems physically plausible, though it would be a lot easier if we could make methane efficiently, because we already have the infrastructure to transport and burn it.

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

#179

Post by drivebycomment »

colordrops wrote: post #170
drivebycomment wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which large parcel of land in Japan is unusable for hundreds of years ? I am not aware of any large area declared unusable that way.

http://fukushimaontheglobe.com/the-earthquake-and-the-nuclea...

Where does it say the evacuated areas are off limit for hundreds of years ?

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

#180

Post by AI_WAIFU »

p1mrx wrote: post #119

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…

I don't understand who's bright idea it was to use water as the primary coolant for a nuclear reactor. IIRC almost every single major nuclear incident has been caused or dramatically exacerbated by having it boil away or cause a steam explosion or mix with the ground water or chemically react with the fuel rods to produce additional heat and hydrogen gas which also explodes.

Like just go through this list and count the number of times water was a good chunk of the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...

There are multiple options that don't have this issue. For instance, if you use liquid lead the thing can sit around indefinitely with no active cooling. In fact you have the opposite problem, you need to keep heating the lead to prevent the whole reactor pool from freezing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-cooled_fast_reactor

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