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Nuclear power is too safe

jackdevanney.substack.com

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Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#101

Post by Ekaros »

goodpoint wrote: post #55
perbu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some people might be fearful but the real problem remains: Nuclear can be safe, cheap and built quickly. Pick two at best.

So if we had let's say 20 or 30 years ago started with the safe and cheap. Where would we be now with CO2 emissions? Or would have it been even slower? If it can be cheap and safe shouldn't we have started massive scale yesterday?

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#102

Post by _cenw »

Puts wrote: post #76

According to Wikipedia there is about 422 commercial reactors in the world and so far in history about 18 meltdowns. So statistically 4% of reactors will have a meltdown. To me that is crazy, and does not sound safe. Even if these accidents have not lead to direct deaths each one is an environmental catastrophe that is impossible to clean up. And that is just meltdowns - the most serious of all accidents.

That doesn't say much about the viability of the technology. Almost all of these reactors are 40+ years old by now. The safety improvement we could get from just iterating on that tech with our current knowledge is huge.

Also, meltdowns are bad, but they are accounted for, even in most of those old designs.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#103

Post by Schroedingersat »

synecdoche wrote: post #93
bottlepalm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern? They’ve been talking about ‘modern’ fail safe designs for decades. Where are they? The problem is none of the existing 400 reactors are fail safe and none are being built. Don’t use fantasy reactors that don’t exist to support the status quo.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory MSRE that produced power safely from 1965-1969 is no fantasy, but a counter example, both to the fantasy claim and the water claim.

Except the design has countless flaws that make it impossible to actually deploy and when producing a meaningful amount of power (carefully avoided during the self described dog and pony shows) skates on the edge of prompt criticality which would destroy the building well before the freeze plug melted.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#104

Post by Schroedingersat »

illiarian wrote: post #62
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.

Tell us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are without telling us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#105

Post by Schroedingersat »

synecdoche wrote: post #68
bottlepalm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your scifi fantasies that run a few tens of MW for a few hundred hours a year at a cost of billions aren't real designs. The only design that ever succeeded (and even then not really) is the GW scale LWR with a water secondary loop.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#106

Post by illiarian »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #104
illiarian wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at Fukushima one person died as a direct result of the accident. Evacuation killed more people.

Tell us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are without telling us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are.

Tell us you don't know that even scientific community is in agreement about this (and Chernobyl) without telling you don't know

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#107

Post by Krssst »

Puts wrote: post #76

According to Wikipedia there is about 422 commercial reactors in the world and so far in history about 18 meltdowns. So statistically 4% of reactors will have a meltdown. To me that is crazy, and does not sound safe. Even if these accidents have not lead to direct deaths each one is an environmental catastrophe that is impossible to clean up. And that is just meltdowns - the most serious of all accidents.

422 in operation. You should divide by the total amount of reactors that have ever run for some significant amount of time, including those that have stopped operating.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#108

Post by illiarian »

minebreaker wrote: post #94
illiarian wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note how the total deaths directly attributable to Japan's worst nuclear incidents (including Fukushima) is... three.

I'd say, Fukushima was the most successfully handled nuclear incident, given the magnitude of the earthquake. Thank god LDP was not the ruling party at the time.

Everything about response to the earthquake and tsunami was just mind-boggling IMO.

I still remember the viral video of cleaning up and restoring the roads.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#109

Post by Schroedingersat »

illiarian wrote: post #106
Schroedingersat wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are without telling us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are.

Tell us you don't know that even scientific community is in agreement about this (and Chernobyl) without telling you don't know

Yes the scientific community is absolutely in agreement with evacuation from the plume being unnecessary /s

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#110

Post by Schroedingersat »

netjiro wrote: post #23

Somehow we collectively forget/ignore that coal power releases many times the radioactivity of nuclear power, and that is just dumped directly into the air. The numbers are not directly apples to apples but absolutely lead to more life/health loss from fossil nuclear radiation contamination than fission nuclear radiation contamination. E.g: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... https://www.s…

Now do it again but add a bar for Kadapa a bar for sellafield and a bar for la hague rather than comparing the outside of a nuclear plant that is not being refueled and (unlike most of them) is not leaking tritium.

Then consider that the people you're trying to pull this straw man against want coal even less.

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