Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation? • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by ovi256 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:09 AM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #84

sto_hristo wrote: post #22

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. Being anxious about it is more than justified, especially with idiotic countries in mind. But that doesn't mean we need to abandon it. Nuclear is the future and there is no debate a…

> 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 enou…

>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

Why ? Paris is as far from Nogent NPP (89 km) as Kiev is from Chernobyl NPP, so there's plenty of space to setup an exclusion zone, even in the worst case scenario of an open core meltdown (which are much less probable with Western PWR designs).

This is scaremongering.

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

#372

Post by detaro » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:13 AM UTC

ComputerGuru wrote: post #125

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…

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…

I'm only familiar with policies in Germany and France, but there the externalities are in no way "covered up front".

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

#373

Post by epistasis » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

lightgreen wrote: post #194

rgbrenner wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

solar/wind + batteries is now cheaper than coal and nuclear. And it can be brought online faster with virtually no safety issues. Nuclear had it's day and it's over. At this point subsidizing it is just creating a mess so that we can give money to GE et al for providing something that--thanks to technology--has no value. If you really want to, just give GE the money directly so that we won't have to bother decommissi…

Do you have evidence that batteries are cheaper than say nuclear? I only heard of the opposite, batteries are prohibitively expensive.

Until recently, batteries have been very expensive. However, like wind and solar, as we build the industry they are dropping exponentially in cost, at about 20% per year over the past decade [1], and we are hitting a non-linear inflection point when it's more profitable to include batteries in a new build than to omit them.

One set of estimated from Lazard: advanced nuclear at $118-$192/MWh, and lithium-ion charged from directly attached solar at $102-$139/MWh [2].

Lazard have analyses for energy generation costs by technology, and storage costs based on use case and scenario. (Note that the storage use cases include the cost of charging the storage system.)

These cost estimates work hard to simplify a hugely complex subject, by estimating a levelized cost of energy, which is then of course an oversimplification. It doesn't consider the value of when energy is delivered, or the price of when the storage is charged. EIA, filled with a lot of hard energy guys that are dismayed to see renewables outperforming in cost, puts out ridiculous numbers, but has also embraced something called the LACE to try to compensate. However they have been so wrong on hard numbers that they can't be trusted when it comes to renewables.

The design of energy markets has absolutely huge impacts on the profitability of storage as well, and it can still be very hard to get compensated for the value provided to the grid. There probably would already have been GW of batteries on Texas' ERCOT grid if they buy/sell dual nature had been legal earlier.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/the-story-of-che...

[2] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/

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

#374

Post by Gravityloss » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

kavi87 wrote: post #369

Flamanville reactor in France was supposed to cost 3.3 G€ in 2007, it is now at 19.1 G€ in 2020 and called a "mess" by energy minister ( https://www.montelnews.com/en/story/french-epr-is-a-mess--en... ). Nuclear energy is great but it is a pain to build, maintain, manage, decommission etc.

This nuclear reactor is. There are a lot of different reactors and types.

France in the past very succesfully and quickly built a lot of reactors. They massively reduced their CO2 footprint. So it can be done.

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

#375

Post by jka » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

Manfredo_1 wrote: post #337

reitzensteinm wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US oil consumption increased by almost 100x from 1900-1970. In 1850 it was just a few thousand barrels annually! That orders of magnitude more batteries are needed is not in itself an issue, as long as the solution itself is sound. NMC chemistry (as used in Hornsdale) is good for 3000-4000 cycles, although it's about 50% more expensive than LFP, at least if you buy them from CATL. This isn't going to be cheap. But it…

> This isn't going to be cheap. But it is feasible, and if you care about carbon I'm not sure how else you do it. How about we use the carbon free method of generating electricity that France has used to generate most of it's electricity for close to half a century? We don't have to wait for a miracle that makes batteries cheaper, we don't have to scale up battery production by several orders of magnitude. If we buil…

Your arguments are the most compelling I've seen so far for more nuclear as opposed to renewables.

I'm still leaning towards renewables for various reasons, but could be swayed - could you share any more details about where the 12 hour capacity requirement and costs mentioned come from?

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

#376

Post by justatdotin » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:19 AM UTC

this year, the veil fell and the usa nuclear fuel working group showed the industry for what it is:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/memorandum-e...

The nexus with weapons is undeniable. I stand with hibakusha in opposition to nuclearism.

https://www.icanw.org/

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

#377

Post by zurn » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #203

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…

> Does that mean nuclear is just a totally great idea? No; the issue with nuclear is cost. Historically it has been quite expensive, but subsidised in opaque ways. In a zero carbon world, it might make sense for baseline generation even if it's expensive; in the world we live in it needs to compete on price. Can it? Compete against fossil fuels? No, but neither can solar and wind. Nuclear power also loses out against…

There are 2 scenarios:

1. We drastically reduce fossils using regulation / legislation, in which case they become harder to get (eg more expensive) than the alternatives for most users.

2. We don't reduce fossils, in which case we're left with just trying to outcompete energy supply so nobody wants to pump the cheap oil and gas from the ground anymore.

Option 2 is never going to work and is equivalent to just giving up on fighting climate change.

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

#378

Post by koheripbal » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:26 AM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #349

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…

Correct. The right questions to ask is not 'But what about Chernobyl' (which is unlikely in most countries) but instead: What about decommissioning costs? Fukushima is a good example of costs from a normal accident we can expect from time to time. Costs are at 200b USD and rising, and they still don't have the reactor site under control. Even normal decommissioning is incredibly expensive and usually covered by gover…

Can you show me the costs associated with decommisioning a hydro electric dam?

This is a hurdle people are only throwing in front of nuclear plants. Nuclear plants can run indefinitely if maintained - just like all major infrastructure.

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

#379

Post by DanBC » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:30 AM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #378

grey-area wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. The right questions to ask is not 'But what about Chernobyl' (which is unlikely in most countries) but instead: What about decommissioning costs? Fukushima is a good example of costs from a normal accident we can expect from time to time. Costs are at 200b USD and rising, and they still don't have the reactor site under control. Even normal decommissioning is incredibly expensive and usually covered by gover…

Can you show me the costs associated with decommisioning a hydro electric dam? This is a hurdle people are only throwing in front of nuclear plants. Nuclear plants can run indefinitely if maintained - just like all major infrastructure.

I think we should be building nuclear everywhere, but it's important to realise the life of a nuclear power plant is between 20 to 40 years.

https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/29402043133.pdf

> It is evident that the average age of power reactors in the IAEA's Member States is increasing. (See accompanying graphs.) By 2000, more than 50 nuclear plants will have been providing electricity for 25 years or longer. Most nuclear power plants have operating life-times of between 20 and 40 years.

> Ageing is defined as a continuing time-dependent degradation of material due to service conditions,including normal operation and transient conditions. It is common experience that over long periods of time, there is a gradual change in the properties of materials. These changes can affect the capability of engineered components, systems, or structures to perform their required function. Not all changes are deleterious, but it is commonly observed that ageing processes normally involve a gradual reduction in performance capability.

> All materials in a nuclear power plant can suffer from ageing and can partially or totally lose their designed function. Ageing is not only of concern for active components (for which the probability of malfunction increases with time) but also for passive ones, since the safety margin is being reduced towards the lowest allow-able level

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

#380

Post by throwaway0a5e » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 10:36 AM UTC

zurn wrote: post #377

manfredo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does that mean nuclear is just a totally great idea? No; the issue with nuclear is cost. Historically it has been quite expensive, but subsidised in opaque ways. In a zero carbon world, it might make sense for baseline generation even if it's expensive; in the world we live in it needs to compete on price. Can it? Compete against fossil fuels? No, but neither can solar and wind. Nuclear power also loses out against…

There are 2 scenarios: 1. We drastically reduce fossils using regulation / legislation, in which case they become harder to get (eg more expensive) than the alternatives for most users. 2. We don't reduce fossils, in which case we're left with just trying to outcompete energy supply so nobody wants to pump the cheap oil and gas from the ground anymore. Option 2 is never going to work and is equivalent to just giving…

>Option 2 is never going to work and is equivalent to just giving up on fighting climate change.

And option 1 is no better. You tax the crap out of fossil fuels forcing billions of people's standard of living to go substantially backwards, they start revolting, maybe have you lined up and shot, people like me say "told ya so" and we're left with shattered economies, refugee crisis and basically all the bad things climate change is going to bring anyway.

We're long past the point of solving this easily. Whatever option we pick is going to hurt given the choice between suffering at the hand of other people and suffering at the hand of nature I think the latter is going to result in a lot less overall suffering because the correlation between land becoming uninhabitable or non-productive and revolt is much weaker (or at the very least it takes longer) than the correlation between oppressive taxation/regulation and revolt. The climate change bill is gonna come due regardless. Having governments try and collect proactively is just gonna give is broken governments to go with our broken planet.