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Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

japannews.yomiuri.co.jp

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Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#161

Post by askvictor »

lucb1e wrote: post #62
askvictor wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For one: Japan has no natural resources. Fuel for power must be imported. Materials for solar panels (or the panels themselves) must be imported. Nuclear is by far one of the most efficient /and/ effective forms of power generation humanity currently has. How is nuclear fuel any different in this respect? Sure it's more compact, but it has other complications regarding transport. They're still going to be reliant o…

Imagine the sheer volume of solar panels needed to supply even a fraction like 1/5th of the energy demand. You don't manufacture and ship that to Germany in a few big orders, that's a decades-long process. By the time that's done, the oldest panels are up for renewal. Any country that is not producing solar panels (and that isn't a place like Norway or Iceland with hydro or geothermal plentiful) is effectively relyin…

I wonder why there isn't geothermal energy in Japan, being on a fault-line.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#162

Post by mpweiher »

locallost wrote: post #103

The costs of Fukushima cleanup will end up around $200B, as estimated by the government [1], with some estimates going triple that [2]. What is doing the same thing and expecting different results? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclear-fukushima-costs-i... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi...

Only because they are vastly over-reacting.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#163

Post by [deleted] »

emodendroket wrote: post #151
simondotau wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the premise you are setting up now — that it is utterly risk-free That is a fairly egregious misrepresentation of what was said. And it completely misses the point of the (rather good) analogy. Economies need energy. The only question that matters is whether a proposed source is overall better or worse — per unit of energy — than the status quo or the fallback. Remember, the choice isn’t nuclear power or no nuclear…

How was I meant to interpret “a non-venomous snake, literally safer than a pet dog” as an analogy if it didn’t mean that nuclear power was extremely safe?

[deleted]

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#164

Post by cinntaile »

mpweiher wrote: post #141
cinntaile wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the assumption we were taking about what was required to operate a nuclear power plant while trying to prevent accidents. If accidents are no issue then I agree that the vigilance/competence bar needn't be very high to operate a plant. I don't see how you would sell that to the general public though and I'm not sure I get your point in that case? It's technically right but not really applicable to running…

> operate a nuclear power plant No. I was talking about whether countries/societies operate nuclear power. Very different. For example, the Bhopal disaster at a chemical plant killed several thousand people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster Germany did not get out of chemicals production afterward, or after Seveso or Flixborough, even though the case for that was a lot stronger than for getting out of nu…

Chemical plants serve a different purpose than a nuclear power plant. You can produce electricity in a lot of different ways, you usually can't produce chemicals in a lot of different ways. They're a prerequisite to produce other chemicals or products so not producing them damages your supply chain. Sometimes you can subsitute them for another chemical, usually you can't. Chemical accidents such as the ones you mentioned have for that matter resulted in a lot of new safety precautions.

> And Fukushima showed that a lot of idiocy has to be stacked on top of each other in order to get to an accident, and even then the actual effects of the accident are fairly benign.

A lot of accidents are considered unlikely, but it doesn't stop them from happening. Even if we accept that the impact on humans has been limited, we still cannot ignore the $100+ billion in additional costs costs.

> Society also wants and needs energy, and nuclear energy is one of the safest/cleanest forms of energy we have, and the safest/cleanest form of reliable energy we have.

If only it was flexible, that would be something. Unfortunately OpEx is pretty much unchanged when you vary the output.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#165

Post by cinntaile »

danson wrote: post #138
cinntaile wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly prove his point, more vigilance and/or competence is needed.

I think his point is that even with the current levels of vigilance and competence (which unarguably can and should be improved) the actualized impact was "minimal". In other words, the expected scale of "disaster" here matters when assessing risk vs current operational fitness.

It's a bit strange to describe a total cost of $100+ billion as "minimal".

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#166

Post by sudhirc »

workingdog wrote: post #147
sudhirc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am not wrong, Volkswagen came to light in Germany not too long ago.

Volkswagens diesels illegally spewing excess particulates have killed vastly more people than Japan's nuclear meltdown. Estimates are about 40 people. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5b05190

Parent commentor's assertion that German standards would have prevented the disaster magically.

Germany or Japan Human nature doesn't change fundamentally.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#167

Post by mpweiher »

cinntaile wrote: post #165
danson wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his point is that even with the current levels of vigilance and competence (which unarguably can and should be improved) the actualized impact was "minimal". In other words, the expected scale of "disaster" here matters when assessing risk vs current operational fitness.

It's a bit strange to describe a total cost of $100+ billion as "minimal".

I am talking about actual effects, not effects due to overreaction.

If you count effects due to overreaction, you can also count Germany's Atomausstieg, which almost certainly materially contributed to Putin's decision to invade Ukraine...

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#168

Post by mpweiher »

cinntaile wrote: post #164
mpweiher wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> operate a nuclear power plant No. I was talking about whether countries/societies operate nuclear power. Very different. For example, the Bhopal disaster at a chemical plant killed several thousand people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster Germany did not get out of chemicals production afterward, or after Seveso or Flixborough, even though the case for that was a lot stronger than for getting out of nu…

Chemical plants serve a different purpose than a nuclear power plant. You can produce electricity in a lot of different ways, you usually can't produce chemicals in a lot of different ways. They're a prerequisite to produce other chemicals or products so not producing them damages your supply chain. Sometimes you can subsitute them for another chemical, usually you can't. Chemical accidents such as the ones you menti…

I never claimed there were no differences between these accidents...but we could simply ban those chemicals, or ban the industry from making those chemicals in that way. The point is not that this didn't happen because, after careful deliberation, it was found that this wasn't possible.

The point is that it wasn't even considered, despite the very many accidents having vastly more severe consequences. And it's not just this one industry. How about cars? How many people die every year? Do we ban cars? We could. Do we require cars to never go faster than 10 km/h? We could, and in fact that was what Carl Benz wanted. And one of the reasons his company effectively failed and was bought by Daimler. But we do not, because we consider the benefits to outweigh the (substantial) risks.

With nuclear, we don't seem to be capable of making such an informed decision, balancing the risks with the rewards. Instead, we demand that the risk be zero. This is obviously irrational.

The cost of the Tōhoku earthquake and Tsunami was $235 billion. Do you also count the cleanup costs of all the other technology that was destroyed by the earthquake and Tsunami against that technology. Or do you do that only with nuclear?

The $100 billion cost you claim against nuclear was caused by the Tsunami, not by nuclear power, and of course the number is massively inflated due to the overreaction to the accident. So thank you for further proving my point of the massive cost of irrational overreaction to nuclear.

Fear of nuclear power has killed more people than nuclear power. And in fact, the number of lives saved by nuclear power is in the many millions.

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#169

Post by cinntaile »

mpweiher wrote: post #168
cinntaile wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chemical plants serve a different purpose than a nuclear power plant. You can produce electricity in a lot of different ways, you usually can't produce chemicals in a lot of different ways. They're a prerequisite to produce other chemicals or products so not producing them damages your supply chain. Sometimes you can subsitute them for another chemical, usually you can't. Chemical accidents such as the ones you menti…

I never claimed there were no differences between these accidents...but we could simply ban those chemicals, or ban the industry from making those chemicals in that way. The point is not that this didn't happen because, after careful deliberation, it was found that this wasn't possible. The point is that it wasn't even considered, despite the very many accidents having vastly more severe consequences. And it's not ju…

> The point is not that this didn't happen because, after careful deliberation, it was found that this wasn't possible.

That is indeed the difference between the two that I explained to you. It is why nuclear power generation isn't strictly necessary since there are alternative ways of generating electricity.

> With nuclear, we don't seem to be capable of making such an informed decision, balancing the risks with the rewards. Instead, we demand that the risk be zero. This is obviously irrational.

There are plenty of countries that have nuclear power plants and all countries in the world use nuclear radiation in some way or another for other purposes than electricity production so I don't agree with your assessment.

> Do you also count the cleanup costs of all the other technology that was destroyed by the earthquake and Tsunami against that technology. Or do you do that only with nuclear?

It seems only logical to do that for other dangerous substances as well. If a dangerous chemical was leaked as a result and this needed to be cleaned up then that's on the dangerous chemical. Depending on how it was stored, you could shift the blame more towards the people that made the decision to store it like that or to external factors like an earthquake. Context obviously matters.

> The $100 billion cost you claim against nuclear was caused by the Tsunami, not by nuclear power, and of course the number is massively inflated due to the overreaction to the accident. So thank you for further proving my point of the massive cost of irrational overreaction to nuclear.

Decontamination costs $35 billion, costs for interim storage of radioactive material $14 billion and costs of decommissioning reactors $69 billion and this gives us $118 billion. [0] What exactly is inflated about these numbers? And what about them isn't related to the nuclear power plant? I left out vague costs such as "victim compensation".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup

Re: Japan adopts plan to make maximum use of nuclear power

#170

Post by vlovich123 »

askvictor wrote: post #159
vlovich123 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Baseload power is ensured through diversity and spare dispatchable power. Unless I’m missing something, solar and wind are not diverse energy sources though. If one plant is generating less energy because the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing, then all the nearby plants have the same problem. If you take one nuclear plant offline, the others aren’t impacted. Seems like a completely different scenario. You can…

Japan is quite long (North-South). It's comparable to the East coast of Australia, which has a single grid/energy market. Also, wind and solar are often (not always) complementary energy sources.

Is whether the sun is shining in the north sufficiently decoupled from sun shining in the south? Is the wind blowing in the north decoupled from the wind blowing in the south?

I’m suggesting that the distance is not large enough for that to be the case. Which makes it a very different situation to a nuclear plant taken offline for maintenance. Not to mention that afaik they don’t take the entire plant offline. They’ll take offline one reactor and work on it and bring it back online before working on the next reactor.

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