Nuclear power is too safe • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#61

Post by majoe » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:48 AM UTC

tooltower wrote: post #16

The problem is perception. It has the word "nuclear" which, along with the mechanism, associates it with nuclear bombs. Not to mention, we react to large incidents with lots of fatality much more strongly than the same fatality spread out over time.

A bit of trivia about that: In Germany, which had a rather vivid nuclear energy discussion for decades due to historical reasons, nuclear energy proponents often use the word "Kernkraft" (literally "nuclear power"), while opponents call it "Atomkraft" (literally "atom power"). That's because nuclear bombs are called "Atombombe" in German and the proponents try to avoid that association.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#62

Post by illiarian » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:48 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #48

If plants were still being built to 1960s standards, we'd have many Fukushima type reactors that can't survive a loss of plant power. The US still has some of those, Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania being the best known. There's a lot to be said for a big, strong containment vessel. That's why the Three Mile Island meltdown was an expensive accident but didn't injure anyone. Maybe if the industry just got better at big, st…

Even at Fukushima one person died as a direct result of the accident.

Evacuation killed more people.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#63

Post by eftychis » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:48 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #12

epups wrote: post #6

If nuclear power was invented today, it would have been considered a breakthrough capable of changing the course of climate change dramatically. Since it exists for long and people formed an emotional reaction to incidents that were not that serious, while dying constantly from things they cannot see (like air pollution from coal), we are in this weird scenario where otherwise educated people say absolutely stupid th…

> while dying constantly from things they cannot see (like air pollution from coal) Air pollution from coal has many problems. But invisibility is not one of those problems. You can see it.

Not 100% true.

Here is a counter-example.

First, guess what is one of the most abundant element on earth. Uranium. [1] Now consider what is a common pollutant when we mine coal or burn it. Uranium. [2,3, 6]

Saying that we should burn coal because we are afraid of nuclear/radioactive waste is ad absurdum.

And unlike nuclear plants it is questionable if we process the radioactive waste in question [4 & 5 show the contradiction in assuming if the post-processing is done correctly or not]

[1]: https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-fuel-facts-uranium

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

[3] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/langsdorf2/ [4] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-po... [5] https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta... [6] http://large.stanford.edu/publications/power/references/hvis...

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#64

Post by illiarian » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:51 AM UTC

perbu wrote: post #19

vpaulus wrote: post #13

I never understand why the "man in the street" with their zero knowledge will decide if which type of power plant is safe/sustainable/economical. Imagine if they would be also allowed to tell your car mechanical what is wrong and how to fix that.

Democracy. Sounds banal, but it's all we got. Nuclear triggers some primal fear. The safety regulations have become table stakes, unfortunately.

> Nuclear triggers some primal fear.

It doesn't. In the 50s-60s people were happily imagining everything nuclear: from kitchen robots to interplanetary travel. "Primal fear" is the result of longtime negative portrayals in the media and by politicians.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#65

Post by makeitdouble » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:51 AM UTC

epups wrote: post #6

If nuclear power was invented today, it would have been considered a breakthrough capable of changing the course of climate change dramatically. Since it exists for long and people formed an emotional reaction to incidents that were not that serious, while dying constantly from things they cannot see (like air pollution from coal), we are in this weird scenario where otherwise educated people say absolutely stupid th…

> emotional reaction to incidents that were not that serious

You're really making easy for those emotionally impacted by these deaths and whole regions made inhabitable to swallow your argument.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#66

Post by illiarian » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:52 AM UTC

Gwypaas wrote: post #14

epups wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have had very few nuclear hazards in the past, with very limited impact as shown in this article. Nuclear plants that were really old rarely failed as well, before we added all this regulatory overhead. Weird how something "borderline unmanageable" causes way less damage than the alternatives.

Depends on if you count the $2T cleanup cost for Fukushima as limited. After Fukushima about all plants in the west had to install independent core cooling because the regulators realized the risk was systemic, even though the cause was special. A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006 when many of the "defense in depth" layers had been accidentally removed through freak occurrences and upgrades. It…

> the $2T cleanup cost for Fukushima as limited.

Let's ignore the earthquake and tsunami that happened and pretend that all that cleanup is only due to Fukushima.

> A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006

Severe as in: exploded? people died?

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#67

Post by Ma8ee » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:55 AM UTC

eftychis wrote: post #63

thaumasiotes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while dying constantly from things they cannot see (like air pollution from coal) Air pollution from coal has many problems. But invisibility is not one of those problems. You can see it.

Not 100% true. Here is a counter-example. First, guess what is one of the most abundant element on earth. Uranium. [1] Now consider what is a common pollutant when we mine coal or burn it. Uranium. [2,3, 6] Saying that we should burn coal because we are afraid of nuclear/radioactive waste is ad absurdum. And unlike nuclear plants it is questionable if we process the radioactive waste in question [4 & 5 show the contr…

It was a long time since the discussion was coal version nuclear. Today it is sun and wind and different storage solutions versus nuclear. Nuclear is losing due to slow building times and being too expensive. The nuclear industry is unhappy about that and tries to blame it on regulations.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#68

Post by synecdoche » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:55 AM UTC

bottlepalm wrote: post #39

choeger wrote: post #27

Is that the new hot take after "costs are too high because scale is too small"? There are many issues with the economics of nuclear power but too much safety isn't one of them. The Chernobyl comparison conveniently ignores the liquidators by only looking at residents. Residents that have been evacuated, mind you. Even if radiation is not as harmful long-term as the LNT model makes us believe, which might very well be…

Not only does it need water, but the water can't stop for any reason without resulting in a disaster. You have to keep that spent fuel cool otherwise it'll burn itself.

> On top of that, nuclear power needs a lot of water. This means they can become less reliable, especially once they age.

> Not only does it need water, but the water can't stop for any reason without resulting in a disaster. You have to keep that spent fuel cool otherwise it'll burn itself.

I'd say your information is incomplete.

Nuclear power does not necessarily need water. Modern reactor designs do not use water at all, for example molten salt reactors that use salt for cooling instead of water.

Unlike wind power there are several ways to construct nuclear power plants, which eliminate the possibilities of several, if not all, of the scary failure modes, such as spontaneous meltdown, as is the case for the aforementioned reactor type. Instead of spontaneous meltdown of nuclear material, spontaneous lessening of nuclear activity is part of its design, in case total loss of control.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#69

Post by elcritch » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 6:57 AM UTC

uecker wrote: post #49

As a physicist and full professor in medical imaging I can ensure you somewhat authoritatively: You can simply disregard every clown on the internet who dismisses linear no threshold out of hand. This is fairly sure sign that this person relies on pseudoscientific sources, also promoted by certain industries and shills which generally lobby against anti-pollution laws and sadly adopted by some pro-nuclear lobbyists.…

Okay great, you've established some measure of credibility. But given the number of medical treatments and established methods of with zero actual backing evidence, could you cite some decent support for LNT?

Currently TFA links to some interesting arguments in favor of a time-rate dependent factor that incorporates cellular repair mechanisms. At first glance that seems plausible, especially below a certain threshold. There appears to be no statistical evidence of higher cancer rates around many nuclear areas, etc. LNT is not a topic I've dived into but seen pop up a few times so I'm curious why LNT is considered unassailable.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#70

Post by psychoslave » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 7:10 AM UTC

Premises exposed in the first paragraph feels completely out of touch with reality to me.

You can not compare death by, say accident in building construction, with those caused by a major nuclear incident. If anything, deaths caused by such a punctual event is marginal compared to the global effect of nuclear industry, its mines, its million year wastes and the awfully embarassing target it provides in military conflicts. Find me any other industry that is comparable in term of geopolitical risks and ecological impact, and then you can maybe start to make some relevant points.

I will buy that nuclear plants are too safe when we have a tracking record of absence of any major incident for a duration of plutonium half-life period.

All the said, I'm not fundamentally against use of nuclear energy. But let's not pretend any arbitrary conclusion can be supported by flawed premises.