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Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

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Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#171

Post by cycomanic »

Sevii wrote: post #137
tda wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only it was a conscious choice... I fear significant climate has happened already, and even if we stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow will continue for a long time to come. Putting up a few km2 of solar in e.g. the Sahara now is surely less effort than decommissioning dozens of nuclear plants in 50 years.

I don't think putting up km2 of solar in the Sahara will solve the problem. You just can't ship electricity that far. We're at the point where we need to build any and all green power supplies as much and as quickly as possible if we want to get past this.

While it certainly possible to ship electricity over such distances (there are connections from e.g. Norway to the UK or Europe) I agree that that should not be the priority. There is huge potential for renewables within Europe first. Most places in southern Europe still have very little solar (AFAIK Germany has by quite a margin the most Solar installations in Europe and it definitely is not the best geographically). Sweden has huge potential for wind but hardly any installationsjust two name two things.

Another aspect that should not be ignored are the efficiency gains of producing electricity close to where it is used by e.g. roof top solar

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#172

Post by konschubert »

legulere wrote: post #152
konschubert wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your risk assessment, but I have to say that given the choice between a climate apocalypse and a nuclear power buildout, I would choose the latter.

But that’s a false dichotomy. Renewables are already good enough and are still getting better.

I am just not sure. Looking at todays German energy mix, renewables provide about 20% of the load. There isn’t much wind or sun at the moment.

The rest is Gas, which has become very expensive this winter. And Coal.

We would need to invest into power-to-gas like crazy if we wanted any shot of providing a base load.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#173

Post by legulere »

mydeskistoosm wrote: post #159
legulere wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that’s a false dichotomy. Renewables are already good enough and are still getting better.

> already good enough Are they? I was under the impression they required some sort of subsidy and/or restrictions on natural gas production to be competitive.

Depends on the market. You are probably talking about Northern America, with cheap fracking gas which is slowly coming to an end.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#174

Post by Bronze_Colossus »

voz_ wrote: post #154

I do not understand the argument for nuclear. The risk never seems worth the reward. Clean now? Yes. Cheap now? Yes. Potentially catastrophic? Yes. This feels like an unnecessary risk to take on. The lessons of three mile island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima seem to be forgotten too quickly.

I do not understand the argument for hydroelectric. The risk never seems worth the reward. Clean now? Yes. Cheap now? Yes. Potentially catastrophic? Yes. This feels like an unnecessary risk to take on. The lessons of Banqiao Dam, Vajont Dam, and Sempor Dam seem to be forgotten too quickly.

Despite that I think that both nuclearpower and hydropower are good and safe sources of electricity.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#175

Post by voz_ »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #161
voz_ wrote: post #154

I do not understand the argument for nuclear. The risk never seems worth the reward. Clean now? Yes. Cheap now? Yes. Potentially catastrophic? Yes. This feels like an unnecessary risk to take on. The lessons of three mile island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima seem to be forgotten too quickly.

I'm sure you understand the argument for commercial flight being safer per mile than most other forms of travel despite the potential catastrophe of a plane crash. The argument for nuclear is identical. The combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]). Chernobyl directly killed between…

I am not sure this is a good argument, if only because the upper bound potential for damage is so much higher.

> the combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]).

Your link is on air pollution, NOT fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are gross, dirty, and far-too-lobbied. However, even in your own link, there is reference to cook fires, and I would be willing to bet that a lot of that pollution is from industrial processing and lack of regulation as opposed to just fossil fuel.

> Chernobyl directly killed between 60-80 with acute radiation syndrome and caused up to 4000 cancer deaths [2]. Fukushima radiation killed between zero and one person, depending who you ask [3]. TMI killed zero.

The numbers you site are not in your link. It says 6,000 children with thyroid cancer, and I would be willing to bet the actual damage is way, way higher than reported. Esp due to the nature of the soviet union and the fallout and radiation spread across Eastern Europe cannot have a counterfactual for cancer rates.

The real issue is that the potential of Nuclear is to make whole swaths of the planet uninhabitable. This is also where your flight analogy falls apart. The upper bound of death for a single plane crash is ~300 people on the flight + (a few thousand, god forbid) if it hits something critical as it falls. The upper bound for nuclear is... unimaginable?

Edit/afterthought. In your profile, I saw that you are a nuclear scientist. I think you should disclose that career bias when you argue for this.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#176

Post by tda »

otagekki wrote: post #118
tda wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only it was a conscious choice... I fear significant climate has happened already, and even if we stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow will continue for a long time to come. Putting up a few km2 of solar in e.g. the Sahara now is surely less effort than decommissioning dozens of nuclear plants in 50 years.

The introduction of this video is a good support to the parent comment above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ASvupr8Zg It's a massive logistics challenge and it would require an unprecedented level of cooperation between Saharan nations and given how unstable the region is as of current... I'm afraid it's not happening for another 30-50 years, when climate change will probably corner these countries or their rich…

Or we could just overthrow all their governments and make them vassal states. Sounds crazy? Well just take another good look at Saudi Arabia, crazier things happened in name of energy stability. If the choice is between unlimited renewable energy for Europe and sovereignty of the Sahara I know where I stand

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#177

Post by pfdietz »

zokier wrote: post #114
dekhn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was very disappointed when I finally learned how a nuclear power plant worked because I assumed there was some really cool way to turn nuclear energy into electricity (apparently this is still challenging to do at power plant scale).

RTGs are even more hilariously stupid simple. They are literally just lump of radioactive material that is slowly decaying by itself and heating a thermocouple, producing electricity. No moving parts, no complicated reactor chambers and systems, no nothing. edit: fissile -> radioactive

RTGs use alpha decay, not fission.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#178

Post by avidiax »

jltsiren wrote: post #73
topynate wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would contradict "even if she wanted to, France couldn't". If she wanted to, France could make nuclear engineering a highly-paid profession with strong job security. It would just cost more money.

It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy. Voters are allowed to change their minds, and the risk that they do that and completely destroy nuclear engineering as a career option is always present. Something like software engineering is a much safer career option, because the risk that your country will categorically ban it is pretty low. And because it doesn't tie you to a small number of poss…

> It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy.

We can make binding financial promises at least. It's entirely possible to grant nuclear workers each a personal 60 year annuity managed by a consortium of foreign banks, and requiring the worker to pick between working as an engineer, returning the annuity, or sitting in prison.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#179

Post by jfindley »

tda wrote: post #97

I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami…

While these are real risks, it's worth pointing out two things:

- This wasn't just "a single Tsunami", it was the Tsunami resulting from the 4th largest earthquake ever recorded happening just a few hundred km away.

- The design of the plant was really old - construction began only 33 years after the death of Marie Curie, and the design was older than that.

The effects of the disaster are absolutely terrible, and we should definitely make sure it doesn't happen again - but we should also not ignore that more modern plants don't have the same design flaws, and that events with enough destructive force to shift the entire planet on its axis by 10-25cm are not common (and if they become so, we have additional problems).

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#180

Post by teh_klev »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #164
teh_klev wrote: post #34

This excellent article reminds me of the time in the early 80's when I got to visit the Dounreay nuclear reactor complex[0]. Now we didn't quite get to see all the guts of the power station as Charlie did, but nonetheless even as a young teenager I was impressed by the scale and complexity of the engineering. The thing that really made the hairs on the back of my neck activate was standing right above the reactor its…

I'm in the nuclear industry and have chatted with some old timers from Dounreay. What a wonder it was!

I know that it's a good thing it's being decommissioned and cleaned up, but there's a certain fondness I have of the site because we spent many a holiday camping and B&Bing in the area when I was a youngster. That and the sound of the Scrabster(?) fog horn.
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