Nuclear power is too safe • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#191

Post by Schroedingersat » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 1:42 AM UTC

credit_guy wrote: post #188

Schroedingersat wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome to prove your initial assertion now that you're admitting how facile the comparison was. You're also now asserting that weapons waste is handled in a perfectly fine way suitable for orders of magnitude more long lived waste in the same breath you imply they're far more irresponsible.

Ok, here we go, just because I like you so much. During the Cold War, the US has produced about 100 tons of Plutonium for weapons purposes. Here's the quote from [1] > Between 1944 and 1988, the United States built special reactors to make about 100 metric tons of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The reactors created the highly radioactive plutonium by bombarding uranium fuel rods with neutrons. Each time a uranium ato…

The smallest bit of honesty and numerical literacy is not a particularly high standard, but you've limboed under it again. You just doubled down on the same facile comparison. The fission product yield of breeding 100 tonnes of Pu is about the same as running a single power reactor for 5 years or so, and not only did it create far less long lived Pu240 and similar transuranics (the entire point of doing it this way), but they were removed with the end product.

It's like comparing a charcoal burning pit to the entire coal industry.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#192

Post by Schroedingersat » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 7:00 AM UTC

credit_guy wrote: post #137

A bit tangential, but this week I discovered an interesting tidbit about nuclear waste. We keep hearing that nuclear waste is an intractable problem, that the Yucca Mountain repository could never be approved, and there is no alternative, etc. What I learned this week is that in the US (and worldwide) more waste was produced by weapons programs than by the civilian reactors. Roughly speaking the civilian reactors hav…

So a site that is to contain a quantity of transuranics (primarily Pu239 which is the least dangerous long lived transuranic) roughly the same quantity as a single 1GW reactor produces in a couple of decades and a quantity of fission products that such a reactor would produce in 5 years along with some low level and intermediate level waste, cost billions of dollars, and already had a multi-billion dollar whoopsie where they spilled plutonium is somehow supposed to trivially contain hundreds of times as much?

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#193

Post by olejorgenb » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 12:02 PM UTC

Schroedingersat wrote: post #192

credit_guy wrote: post #137

A bit tangential, but this week I discovered an interesting tidbit about nuclear waste. We keep hearing that nuclear waste is an intractable problem, that the Yucca Mountain repository could never be approved, and there is no alternative, etc. What I learned this week is that in the US (and worldwide) more waste was produced by weapons programs than by the civilian reactors. Roughly speaking the civilian reactors hav…

So a site that is to contain a quantity of transuranics (primarily Pu239 which is the least dangerous long lived transuranic) roughly the same quantity as a single 1GW reactor produces in a couple of decades and a quantity of fission products that such a reactor would produce in 5 years along with some low level and intermediate level waste, cost billions of dollars, and already had a multi-billion dollar whoopsie wh…

So the problem with OPs argument according to you is that (a) the liquid waste is compacted/dehydrated before storage(?) (so the volume comparison does not hold), and (b) is less hazardous (spent fuel is harder to store) and (c) the handling of the waste is likely to result in some leaks.

Or is (a) that the extra volume required to safely store spent fuel is larger than for this liquid waste?

If it's true that the liquid waste need to be processed before storage, it seems to me to increase the risk of leaks during handling compared to spent fuel which is already concentrated(?)? IIRC spent fuel is already stored as very robust concrete slabs at the power stations.

Nitpick:

> The cost of the 2014 accident was expected to exceed $2 billion and disrupted other programs in various nuclear-industry sites.[44] On January 9, 2017, the plant was formally reopened after three years of cleanup costing $500 million, which is significantly less than forecasted

Interesting:

> The source of contamination was later found to be a barrel that exploded on February 14 because contractors at Los Alamos National Laboratory packed it with organic cat litter instead of clay cat litter.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#194

Post by credit_guy » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

Schroedingersat wrote: post #191

credit_guy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, here we go, just because I like you so much. During the Cold War, the US has produced about 100 tons of Plutonium for weapons purposes. Here's the quote from [1] > Between 1944 and 1988, the United States built special reactors to make about 100 metric tons of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The reactors created the highly radioactive plutonium by bombarding uranium fuel rods with neutrons. Each time a uranium ato…

The smallest bit of honesty and numerical literacy is not a particularly high standard, but you've limboed under it again. You just doubled down on the same facile comparison. The fission product yield of breeding 100 tonnes of Pu is about the same as running a single power reactor for 5 years or so, and not only did it create far less long lived Pu240 and similar transuranics (the entire point of doing it this way),…

This is a complete non sequitur. It does not matter that the mixed waste is less radioactive than the spent nuclear fuel. The mixed waste is radioactive, and it will continue to be for more than 10000 years, according to the EPA. Spent fuel from civilian reactors is even more radioactive. So what? How is this relevant?

We found a technological and political solution to the mixed waste. It is being buried in a very deep salt mine in New Mexico. The amount of mixed waste dwarfs the amount of civilian spent nuclear fuel. Therefore we could bury the SNF in the same place.

What of these things are you denying?

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#195

Post by Schroedingersat » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 11:21 PM UTC

credit_guy wrote: post #194

Schroedingersat wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The smallest bit of honesty and numerical literacy is not a particularly high standard, but you've limboed under it again. You just doubled down on the same facile comparison. The fission product yield of breeding 100 tonnes of Pu is about the same as running a single power reactor for 5 years or so, and not only did it create far less long lived Pu240 and similar transuranics (the entire point of doing it this way),…

This is a complete non sequitur. It does not matter that the mixed waste is less radioactive than the spent nuclear fuel. The mixed waste is radioactive, and it will continue to be for more than 10000 years, according to the EPA. Spent fuel from civilian reactors is even more radioactive. So what? How is this relevant? We found a technological and political solution to the mixed waste. It is being buried in a very de…

The site is unsuitable for high level waste as proven by already having leaked once and not being properly isolated, and orders of magnitude too small to properly contain the quantity of material (including casks and proper separation distance), and doesn't provide any semblance very long term protection against being dug up.

Learn the basics of what your spruiking before vomiting ignorance into the world.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#196

Post by Schroedingersat » Sun, Apr 02, 2023, 11:23 PM UTC

olejorgenb wrote: post #193

Schroedingersat wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So a site that is to contain a quantity of transuranics (primarily Pu239 which is the least dangerous long lived transuranic) roughly the same quantity as a single 1GW reactor produces in a couple of decades and a quantity of fission products that such a reactor would produce in 5 years along with some low level and intermediate level waste, cost billions of dollars, and already had a multi-billion dollar whoopsie wh…

So the problem with OPs argument according to you is that (a) the liquid waste is compacted/dehydrated before storage(?) (so the volume comparison does not hold), and (b) is less hazardous (spent fuel is harder to store) and (c) the handling of the waste is likely to result in some leaks. Or is (a) that the extra volume required to safely store spent fuel is larger than for this liquid waste? If it's true that the li…

If it were diluted to the same level it would be trillions of gallons, but this would be a terrible idea. The site is significantly too small because a long term SNF containment hole is about 100x as big as the spent fuel and needs to be separated from the next one for thermal reasons. The site is also woefully unsuited to containing something that dangerous.

SNF is also a very small fraction of the intermediate and long lived waste generated by a nuclear plant.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#197

Post by credit_guy » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:52 PM UTC

Schroedingersat wrote: post #195

credit_guy wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a complete non sequitur. It does not matter that the mixed waste is less radioactive than the spent nuclear fuel. The mixed waste is radioactive, and it will continue to be for more than 10000 years, according to the EPA. Spent fuel from civilian reactors is even more radioactive. So what? How is this relevant? We found a technological and political solution to the mixed waste. It is being buried in a very de…

The site is unsuitable for high level waste as proven by already having leaked once and not being properly isolated, and orders of magnitude too small to properly contain the quantity of material (including casks and proper separation distance), and doesn't provide any semblance very long term protection against being dug up. Learn the basics of what your spruiking before vomiting ignorance into the world.

> before vomiting

You are getting a bit agitated. I don't want you to get a stroke or something. Maybe you should take a few deep breaths, count to one hundred, go for a walk.

> having leaked once and not being properly isolated

With deep burial sites there are two problems: technological and political. You are claiming here that WIPP does not solve the technological problem. I prefer to trust the EPA and DOE on that, rather than some random dude on the internet.

Regardless, my point is that without a doubt, the WIPP has solved the political problem. For the simple reason that it exists. Congress has passed an act, the facility was funded, it was built, and is in operation.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#198

Post by Schroedingersat » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 11:42 PM UTC

credit_guy wrote: post #197

Schroedingersat wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site is unsuitable for high level waste as proven by already having leaked once and not being properly isolated, and orders of magnitude too small to properly contain the quantity of material (including casks and proper separation distance), and doesn't provide any semblance very long term protection against being dug up. Learn the basics of what your spruiking before vomiting ignorance into the world.

> before vomiting You are getting a bit agitated. I don't want you to get a stroke or something. Maybe you should take a few deep breaths, count to one hundred, go for a walk. > having leaked once and not being properly isolated With deep burial sites there are two problems: technological and political. You are claiming here that WIPP does not solve the technological problem. I prefer to trust the EPA and DOE on that…

> You are getting a bit agitated. I don't want you to get a stroke or something. Maybe you should take a few deep breaths, count to one hundred, go for a walk.

Ah, the song of the concern troll everywhere, projecting your own cult-like attachment to nuclear power on others. Slimy and pathetic tactic. Calling out your idiocy isn't getting emotional, but it does seem like I've touched a nerve.

> With deep burial sites there are two problems: technological and political. You are claiming here that WIPP does not solve the technological problem. I prefer to trust the EPA and DOE on that, rather than some random dude on the internet.

Then trust their opinion that it's not suitable for SNF. Also the US government (including after the EPA and DOE were formed) signed off on cotter mill and countless oil pipeline projects which later did massive ecological harm. They are not really great at saying no to ecological danger.

> Regardless, my point is that without a doubt, the WIPP has solved the political problem. For the simple reason that it exists. Congress has passed an act, the facility was funded, it was built, and is in operation.

The military getting away with half assing solving a much smaller problem isn't solving the political problem.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#199

Post by Schroedingersat » Tue, Apr 04, 2023, 1:12 AM UTC

synecdoche wrote: post #190

Schroedingersat wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Again, no water. Educate us. How does it do those bad things? Where can we read about them?

Nah buddy. It's your garbage claim. It's on you to show that they won't go prompt critical, you have a plan for fuel separation that actually works, you have a way of containing the fission products (including the gaseous ones) and you have a solution to corrosion (good luck when the industry can't even get hot water that isn't the direct source of neutrons right).

Otherwise it's just a fantasy. Like claiming 47% PV panels and 1kWh/kg batteries will be everywhere because they happened in a lab once.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#200

Post by uecker » Thu, Apr 06, 2023, 7:43 AM UTC

elcritch wrote: post #69

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…

Basically, there is lot of empirical data which can be described by a linear relationship. Of course, if you go to even lower doses then the effect size becomes smaller and it becomes harder to show this effect in epidemiological studies. But large scale studies show that even for the rather low doses from medical imaging, the data is consistent with this model (e.g. Pearce et al., Lancet 2012;380:499–505). A lot of effort therefor goes into reducing radiation from medical imaging. Conceptually, we assume that there has to be some tiny risk with any damage caused by ionizing radiation because physiological repair mechanisms can not be assumed to be perfect. So the assumption that additional radiation (there is always a background) causes a linear increase of risk is natural. It is, of course, possible that additional effects can cause some nonlinear effects, e.g. additional repair mechanism get activated at some dose or repair gets overwhelmed at some point. But something like this would not really be expected at extremely low dose close to background levels. It is also not clear whether such an effect would lead to a lower or higher risk estimate for low doses.

Finally, one can also observe that some of the most prominent critics of LNT are connected to industry lobbyism. We have seen this before also in the tobacco industry who downplayed the risk of smoking, sometimes even the same persons appear in this context. Terminology such such "LNT worshipping" is a clear tell sign where this is coming from. Similar to all pseudoscience it has to come with a theory how established science is wrong because scientists are stupid, corrupt, worshipping some dogma, etc.