Nuclear energy is clean • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#41

Post by Animats » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

Waste disposal isn't that hard. The Onkalo nuclear waste repository in Finland pretty much has it covered.

First, you find a hard-rock mountain where geology shows nothing much happening in the last few million years, and there's nothing worth mining. Worldwide, there are many mountain ranges like that. Then tunnel way down, but preferably above the water table. Drill holes in the tunnel floor. Put waste in suitable containers. There are a few approaches. Mixing the waste with molten glass and pouring it into big stainless steel thimbles is one approach. Put containers in holes. Fill with bentonite. Seal off with concrete. Eventually, seal off the whole installation and forget about it.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#42

Post by stefan_ » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #15

JanisErdmanis wrote: post #2

I find it asonishing that only now I learn that radioactive waste stays much longer radioactive than being dangerous. Also other good arguments are put forward by normalizing material costs VS expected energy production capacity.

radioactive waste stays much longer radioactive than being dangerous If it’s radioactive it’s dangerous. The article points out that radioactive waste doesn’t stay radioactive for very long, contrary to what is commonly believed.

Radioactive sources have all kinds of applications in industry and medicine. If you have been to the dentist, you have probably been near one. They are dangerous in the same sense that a falling brick is dangerous.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#43

Post by entropicgravity » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

Nuclear power if necessary but not necessarily nuclear power. Over the past decade the economic environment of nuclear power has entirely shifted due the huge drop in the cost of solar and wind. Not only is solar/wind cheap but because these can be built in a year or two, as opposed to decades for nuclear, governments accountants will much prefer them over nuclear. Nuclear will have some niche segments and I see a small nuclear design is about to be approved in the US that would be useful. But in the big picture of over all power generation nuclear will continue to fade away.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#44

Post by kuhewa » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

tehsauce wrote: post #23

bad_alloc wrote: post #9

We saw another downside of nuclear power in Ukraine: When Russian troops attacked towards Enerhodar and there was shelling in the area the safety of the reactor could not be guaranteed. In the end, containment can be guaranteed w.r.t to internal accidents but no facility can ever be safe from outside issues like war, natural disaster or politics. Solar has less single points of failure and if it fails not much happen…

Look at the numbers though. Fossil fuels kill many people every year, while nuclear accidents are almost entirely hypothetical. The point of the article is to show that fears like the ones expressed above just aren’t supported by the data.

Hypothetical, but the occurrence of future large scale conflict is overwhelmingly likely. This will remain a valid concern - not just accidents, but intentional attacks - until design of plants advances to be robust against strikes to failsafe without active management

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#45

Post by squarefoot » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

elietoubi wrote: post #4

Super interesting how there is a big push for nuclear in the tech world right now. To play the devils advocate, there are some pretty solid reasons why Nuclear is not ideal.The biggest one to me is the risk or nuclear material proliferation: Iran for instance is hiding their military nuclear program behind a civilian nuclear goal. Nuclear is probably net better than coal but it's not the (only) solution to climate ch…

> Super interesting how there is a big push for nuclear in the tech world right now.

And about the why, here's the reason.

https://fortune.com/2021/10/26/bitcoin-electricity-consumpti...

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#46

Post by Flocular » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

A good estimate to gauge the societal investment needed to generate electricity in a certain way, is to look at its total cost in dollar/MWh. Wikipedia has a nice graphic prepared for just that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#... (which ignores externalized costs like CO2 or nuclear waste) You can see in there that nuclear has triple the cost compared to solar.

As we need to replace as much fossil-fueled power plants as possible and as quickly as possible, wasting ressources into building nuclear power plants sounds stupid. Other interesting factors:

* Heating climate is a risk for nuclear https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/climate-events-are-t...

* Maintenance cost is hard to predict https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-revises-up-c...

* 30 planned + 60 unplanned days shutdown on average https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37252

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#47

Post by crmd » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

The most interesting thing in the article for me was that the 250 reactors needed to power Europe would produce 1.3 cubic kilometers of nuclear waste per year. That’s actually way more waste volume than I assumed. I wonder what the figure is for the United States.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#48

Post by TheDudeMan » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #3

> But the amount of concrete and steel for sun and wind is striking. This has to do with the low energy density of these two. No, it's not striking at all, and this is just as BS argument as the people arguing that nuclear isn't clean. As far as the energy density, include all the steel and concrete used outside of the reaction chamber, and you will find that nuclear and solar are pretty much on the same order of mag…

> willing to take the financial risk of nuclear

There are multiple nuclear (fission) startups in the last decade or so. My understanding is that financial backing is not their problem; outdated regulations are. And fear stokes outdated regulations.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#49

Post by I_am_tiberius » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:16 PM UTC

anonporridge wrote: post #29

I_am_tiberius wrote: post #17

I think nuclear power plants aren't worth the risk. I often hear arguments such as that modern reactors don't have the issues old ones had etc.. As long as it can't be guaranteed to me that e.g. a terror attack doesn't cause a 1000 km2 area around the plant to be unlivable for 100 years, I most likely won't change my opinion. I think living in the stone age is better than taking the risk.

I think this line of thinking has defaulted us onto a path of drastically increased carbon in the atmosphere, with no signs of stopping, which is at best going to drastically change the world and take centuries to remove, and at worst could trigger a massive biosphere collapse that drives our species to extinction. The Earth has 150 MILLION km2 of land. We could literally have hundreds of reactors blow causing 1000 k…

Why do you think you have to decide between bad and worse? I think we should prioritize our planet over economy and lifestyle.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#50

Post by GuB-42 » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 11:18 PM UTC

> Alpha radiation is completely harmless and doesn’t even get through a sheet of paper.

It is indeed harmless outside of your body, but it is devastating inside of your body.

The reason is that outside of your body, it is blocked by your layer of dead skin, if it gets to it, your dead skin ends up pretty messed up as it absorbs all the energy of the alpha particle. But no big deal, it is dead, doesn't take part of your biology, can't turn cancerous. But now, if that alpha emitter ends up inside of your body, maybe in your lungs as you breathe in radioactive dust, it will end up dumping all of its energy inside of your live cells, damaging DNA and doing everything bad ionizing radiation can do.

Gamma radiation, the unstoppable one is actually less dangerous if it finds its way inside your body, that's because it will go right through it, it will mess up a few cells on its way out, but most of its energy will be dumped outside of you.