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Nuclear Power in France

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Re: Nuclear Power in France

#261

Post by pbhjpbhj »

belval wrote: post #167
dehrmann wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A horrifyingly large portion of the population believes all sorts of stupid things. The sad thing for democracy is most people don't understand policy or even civics well enough to make an informed decision on a candidate. Even then, most candidates don't either, and they end up relying on advisors and lobbyists. The fun implication of campaign finance reform is it implies elections can be bought (just ask Michael Bl…

I'd go one step further and say that we all believe in all sorts of stupid things. It's just that we are unaware of our own misconceptions because they aren't often disproven. Democracy works when the population is generally educated because the mean opinion (or the opinion held by the most people) should converge to the "right" one.

The population has to have access to the truth though.

One bellend (idiot) spouts lies in front of a bus, supported by media magnates. A couple of years later we have fuel and food shortages, myriad supply chain issues, broken off from a treaty that gave us relatively stable local peace for 50+years, etc.. Now COVID has plummeted us into a place where the exchequer has been exploited to the hilt for 'contracts for the boys' (nepotistic corruption) because the oversight of our former arrangements have been stripped away.

Our representatives are actively conning the population into voting against their own (the populations) best interests.

Just having generally good education levels isn't seemingly protecting us from powerful ruling classes who simply don't care and are willing to use their power to exploit the population.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#262

Post by Jedd »

asdff wrote: post #246
cesarb wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When environmentalist types rail against nuclear power, they reveal their true preferences. They care more about dismantling technological civilization than they do about reducing emissions. If they really cared about emissions as much as they claim to care, they'd support nuclear power out of necessity. They don't, so it's fair to conclude they have unstated goals. There's an alternative explanation: that their "t…

There hasn't been a nuclear detonation on the planet in almost 29 years. At this point that argument is out the window.

> There hasn't been a nuclear detonation on the planet in almost 29 years. At this point that argument is out the window.

That's clearly not true.

France 1996

China 1996

India 1998

Pakistan 1998

North Korea 2017

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

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#263

Post by dane-pgp »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #73
rllearneratwork wrote: post #4

being anti-nuclear at times of climate crisis is a moral and intellectual equivalent to being anti-vaccines during the pandemic

Being anti-nuclear is more like being anti-facebook. Nuclear is a giant centralized free-loading subsidized secretive toxic industry. Just like nuclear.

I think the usual way of phrasing that joke is:

"What's the difference between nuclear power and Facebook? One is a giant centralized free-loading subsidized secretive toxic industry, and the other is a way of providing low-carbon electricity."

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#264

Post by the8472 »

it_citizen wrote: post #256
the8472 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building them in series tends to make per-unit cost come down.

Surprisingly, experience has shown that building more nuclear plants, even standardized, don't make them cheaper to build but more expensive. 2010: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... 2020: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...

In the 2020 article two of the 3 reasons listed are changes, regulation and design changes. So it's not really series-production of a single model.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#265

Post by somethoughts »

redm wrote: post #2

"Government policy is to reduce this to 50% by 2035." I'm no expert on Nuclear power but it seems to me were going in the wrong direction. At a time when we're investing so much money in other fuels, we could be investing that in better nuclear power, like Small Modular Reactors [1], Sodium Cooled Fission, Small Pellet reactors, etc. [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-sm... [2] https://…

Don't shoot the messenger but my take is that environmentalism is much more than just climate change. It just feels like it because carbon emissions is the current topic and perhaps is the most pressing topic because most of the worlds energy is generally carbon based.

The actual issue that environmentalist want solved is less overall production, reduction in all pollution and impact on the environment. And perhaps a bit of wealth redistribution throw in.

If nuclear ever took off meaningfully, the conversation would change and the Greta Thunberg's and Netflix documentaries would be targeted toward nuclear (or whatever takes the place of carbon based fuel) instead. The EVs, solar, wind, batteries and nuclear are great... until they are the last thing standing.

Again don't shoot the messenger! This is just my hot take.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#266

Post by effie »

kazinator wrote: post #104
lm28469 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Because nuclear = bad word / bombs / chernobyl They don't mind living in cities and breathing cars exhaust all day long even though it shaves years of their lives though. Real world boiling frog situation

Indeed, the word nuclear is so bad that nuclear-magnetic resonance (NMR) has to be called just magnetic in medicine. You go for an MRI, not NMRI. When nuclear-magnetic resonance is used in a scientific or industrial setting for analyzing the chemical content of a sample, it is properly called NMR. [Source: organic chemistry prof pointed this out, almost 30 years ago.]

However, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is the preferable term; the process has nothing to do with nuclear reactions or nuclear energy or nuclear material or nuclear bombs. The fact that the thing that is resonating with EM radiation are nucleic magnetic moments does not make the process nuclear in the usual sense of the word.

CT (computer tomography), on the other hand, is slightly deceptive term; it actually gives you a dose of X-rays. It should be called X-ray Computer Tomography (XRCT).

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#267

Post by lazide »

cinntaile wrote: post #214
lazide wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the basic economics of a PWR or even BWR are quite sound and you don’t need fancy tech to change that. Even with very expensive uranium and very expensive turbines, it doesn’t change that (depending on the number of orders of magnitude we’re talking about of course). And if you’re making 10x-100x of the things in a few years, it actually gets cheaper for both, since you can build a series of turbines, or reopen a…

Nuclear is very expensive, that's why even countries very positive to nuclear aren't happily replacing their old reactors. France did the math recently, 100 billion euros for 10 new reactors. The old ones are better from an economical point of view so it's much better to try and keep them going.

I take it you didn’t read my earlier comment?

There is no engineering reason for those reactors to cost $10bln. Literally zero.

There are lots and lots of other reasons why they will probably cost even more than $10bln/ea though.

Just like there is literally zero engineering reason for the ‘high speed’ rail in California to cost the insane sums it is currently consuming, and will continue to consume.

The reason why the old ones are ‘better’ is because they already are operating under existing approvals, so the tarpits don’t work on them.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#268

Post by lazide »

mcguire wrote: post #208
lazide wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a ‘basic capacity price’ type basis, nuclear is dirt cheap. When you throw in endless political tarpits and their side effects (like having no economies of scale at all despite the clear opportunity for them) then yes, it is very expensive. shrug Most nuclear projects outside of China basically turned into exercises in endless planning churn and endless delays for no rational reason to appease anti-progress politi…

" When you throw in endless political tarpits and their side effects... " Like "where are you going to put the waste?" and "I don't want my property values to go to zero when an accident occurs"? :-) If one were suitably cynical, one might suggest China does not have that kind of problem.

Nah, those (if legitimate) aren’t tarpits. We’ve had, at various times, approved locations for waste, and we actually still approve the storage of waste on site - indefinite storage of ‘temporary waste’. Paying into an insurance fund in case of a nuclear disaster would be far cheaper than what has been happening.

What happens instead is 1) a set of requirements is made, 2) someone spends years figuring it out. 3) it gets approved, 4) before it finishes getting built (or started to be built in some case), someone files a lawsuit causing it to stop or changes the rules, 5) rinse and repeat, or;

Someone gets the bright idea to try something new and unproven, and then they pay all the R&D time, and then the first thing starts happening, and then you’re tarpitted again.

In California it even appears to be part of the plan for high speed rail; as the engineering firms get paid every time the plan needs to get redrawn, and they can keep juking between plans forever until the funds are gone. This happened with Caltrain electrification for a decade. Billions spent for literally a 45 miles’ish stretch of track to electrify it, with zero progress over that time.

If folks are being paid to make plans instead of make a project, that’s usually what they are going to do.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#269

Post by shakow »

mcguire wrote: post #227
shakow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If humans build it, it will fail, and a single catastrophic nuclear plant failure isn’t acceptable. We do people focus so much on the danger aspect of nuclear energy only? Why not the thousands of people who died of dam break, the millions who die of lung failure due to exposure to polluants, or, the elephant in the room, the dozens of millions whoe die and will die of climate change? Sure, it's very sad that a han…

Probably something to do with the nearly 2000 sq mi of "exclusion zones" from Chernobyl and Fukushima. (Which, admittedly, is great for the local wildlife.) " Ah yes, remind me how many windmills we would need to produce as much energey as a NPP? About 1500.

> About 1500.

Nope. Average charge load for a windmill is ~35%, vs. over 90% for NPPs. Thus, you would need roughly thrice as many, and that in places with alternating winds – otherwise you would just get blackouts.

Re: Nuclear Power in France

#270

Post by concordDance »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #229
concordDance wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is nowhere near as big a deal as it sounds. The damage it will do (on average) if glassed and buried 100ft under ground is absolutely negligible at the scale we are talking about (global climate change and energy in general). Yes, there's a 1 in 10000000 chance that 2000 years from now industrial age humans recovering from the apocalypse might dig a well in exactly that location and thousands will get sick with…

I really liked how you framed the danger. But what about if we had a Reactor Dump storing 100's of these reactors, and then something happened to that dump, either it was hit by a meter or it was intentionally attacked in some way. Could that result in an apocalyptical type event?

No, it couldn't.

It would basically be a few Chernobyls in the worst case (a 1 in 1000 year asteroid impact winning the 1 in 100 million lottery and hitting the dump) and that mostly means extra birth defects and cancer (you wouldn't want to live somewhere that gave you a 10% chance if dying due to cancer age 40, but you could still have a civilization in such a location). It doesn't end life in the impacted area.

For intentional attacks there are much much easier ways of killing a lot of people.

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