Nuclear energy is clean • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#121

Post by aet » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:20 AM UTC

anonporridge wrote: post #18

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…

This is one of the few good arguments against nuclear, especially large installations that produce a huge percentage of a region's power. Even if you can design it in such a way that an external attack is very unlikely to cause a meltdown, it's a juicy and easy target for an adversary to cripple your electricity production. A few dozen well placed missiles might be all you need to take an entire nation that's heavily…

Few? Here is another: mining

“Many Navajo people have died of kidney failure and cancer, conditions linked to uranium contamination. And new research from the CDC shows uranium in babies born now.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/10/4735472...

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#122

Post by stevenjgarner » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:20 AM UTC

tremon wrote: post #111

stevenjgarner wrote: post #94

Before we get all gung-ho on nuclear power, perhaps we could try solving the existential nuclear problems we already have. FACTS [0]: 1. The nuclear industry still has no solution to the 'waste problem'. 2. The transport of this waste poses an unacceptable risk to people and the environment. 3. Plutonium is the most dangerous material in the world. 4. Nuclear waste is hazardous for tens of thousands of years. This cl…

1. The fossil fuel industry still has no solution to the 'CO2 problem' 2. The continuous emission of this gas poses an unacceptable risk to people and the environment. 3. There are many compounds more dangerous than plutonium, which we happily use in day-to-day life: botulinum, ricin, hydrazine. 4. A runaway greenhouse effect is hazardous for tens of thousands of years, if not permanent. This clearly is unprecedented…

Arguing against nuclear power is not the same as arguing for fossil fuel. Many of us see them both being problematic.

EDITED: for clarity

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#123

Post by trashtester » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:22 AM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #107

TheDong wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydroelectric dams typically cause even more damage when they fail, but I rarely see people worrying about whether using them for power will lead to war-time issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure Of course, the Geneva Convention bans attacking dams, just like it bans attacking nuclear power plants. The pollution from burning coal has already killed more people than nuclear disasters conceivably could. If…

> Hydroelectric dams typically cause even more damage when they fail, but I rarely see people worrying about whether using them for power will lead to war-time issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure I believe the reason people worry less about hydroelectric dam failures is because, if they fail, they do not leave behind a contaminated area. Besides, it's just water; many people are used to floods caused by…

> many people are used to floods caused by heavy rain, and the danger feels similar.

I don't know what "people feel", but the reality of a large dam that is blown up is more like a tsunami than a normal flood. If it hits a city, casualties can easily reach the 10s or 100s of thousands, instantly.

In a way, an upstream dam is a health hazard for anyone in the area that might be flooded that should be concerning at the same level as living in an area that has had some nuclear contamination.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#124

Post by kuhewa » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:22 AM UTC

toofy wrote: post #86

tehsauce wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those accidents combined killed less than 10% of the people that are killed by fossil fuel pollution every single year. Most nuclear accidents are entirely hypothetical.

i’m not at all anti-nuclear but i’m not sure what you mean by > most nuclear accidents are entirely hypothetical. i also agree that fossil fuels kill a lot of people as well, only in slow-motion and we have some form of weird disconnect when something happens in slow-motion vs quick. but again, nuclear accidents are not hyperbole nor are they hypothetical. again, i’m not anti-nuclear, i suspect we need a mix of stron…

Just the nature of a plant requiring active management (and power) to prevent meltdown is a weak point. The reasonable answer to this concern imo is explaining how passive safety systems have advanced and are implemented in new reactor designs, and how plants are built so when intentionally attacked or incidentally damaged a meltdown or release of highly radioactive material does not ensue, especially for folks advocating for the widespread adoption of nuclear energy worldwide. Strikes me as odd that the typical response is instead 'but this old energy generation tech which we all agree needs to go has downsides'.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#125

Post by mgfist » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:22 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #110

tehsauce wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US built more clean nuclear plants that would somehow help Iran develop nuclear weapons faster? Surely the slope cannot be that slippery.

It might help the US develop more nuclear weapons faster…

The US has been decommissioning nukes for ages now. They're expensive as hell to maintain and the US has enough to flatten the earth as is.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#126

Post by epistasis » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:23 AM UTC

losteric wrote: post #12

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…

> all this is misdirection from the real challenges of nuclear, which is finding somebody who can build it and somebody who is willing to take the financial risk of nuclear, when it looks like a terribles mis allocation of capital, if one's goal is to decarbonize energy. I have read that there is much more nuance in nuclear pricing. Past projects were bespoke and subject to changing bureaucratic requirements. There a…

Yes, SMRs are the hope, but it's just a hope.

It's the right idea to switch away from construction to manufacturing, but it's unclear how quickly the manufacturing process could scale.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#127

Post by mgfist » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:24 AM UTC

Flocular wrote: post #68

lmm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does that compare to the business-as-usual shutdowns of solar (every night, cloudy days, winter as a whole) which unlike nuclear are highly correlated between separate plants? If storage is cheap enough then solar will be an important part of the mix. But unless you have the right geography for geothermal or hydro (which probably means flooding a bigger area than the chernobyl exclusion zone before you've eve…

That is just to show that nuclear isn't a magical always-on power source that some of the pro-nuclear folks make it out to be. Also: we can install twice the capacity in MW for solar and still have money left over to put into a smarter grid or storage compared to nuclear.

The big con for a solar/battery grid isn't the cost, it's the raw materials. We need an absurd amount of copper/lithium/cobalt etc.. and we need to be mining orders of magnitudes more than we do now.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#128

Post by ch4s3 » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:24 AM UTC

cesarb wrote: post #107

TheDong wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydroelectric dams typically cause even more damage when they fail, but I rarely see people worrying about whether using them for power will lead to war-time issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure Of course, the Geneva Convention bans attacking dams, just like it bans attacking nuclear power plants. The pollution from burning coal has already killed more people than nuclear disasters conceivably could. If…

> Hydroelectric dams typically cause even more damage when they fail, but I rarely see people worrying about whether using them for power will lead to war-time issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure I believe the reason people worry less about hydroelectric dam failures is because, if they fail, they do not leave behind a contaminated area. Besides, it's just water; many people are used to floods caused by…

> I believe the reason people worry less about hydroelectric dam failures is because, if they fail, they do not leave behind a contaminated area

They very easily could, especially if they wipe out a chemical plant, a dump site, or a number of other things.

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#129

Post by josephcsible » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:24 AM UTC

dongobongo wrote: post #118

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…

In some respects, vulnerability to attack is a feature, not a flaw for promoting peace and collaboration instead of violence. A country with nuclear reactors is less likely to piss neighbors off enough to lead to an invasion. If invasion occurs, everyone will be extra careful. A country with nuclear reactors is less likely to be bombed to shit by other countries due to the reactor's radioactivity inventory potentiall…

> In some respects, vulnerability to attack is a feature, not a flaw for promoting peace and collaboration instead of violence. A country with nuclear reactors is less likely to piss neighbors off enough to lead to an invasion.

That feels like saying "a woman who's not allowed to carry pepper spray is less likely to dress provocatively enough to lead to getting raped".

Re: Nuclear energy is clean

#130

Post by kuhewa » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 12:24 AM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #103

mah4k4l wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has affected millions of peoples health already and whole ecosystems. And the consequences will cumulate from this thousands of years. Count that in your equation and get more informative numbers.

Whose health? Any actual data?

This is in dollars, but 10% of healthcare spending in the US equates to a good amount of health I reckon https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041201...