Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

nationalinterest.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 568 posts

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#501

Post by olejorgenb »

fsh wrote: post #485
godelski wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With more plants there are inevitably more nuclear incidents Can we stop making this argument? It is an extremely bad faith argument. There have only been two accidents of commercial reactors in the history of nuclear power that led to the loss of lives. The likely value is well under 10k ( Yes, there's more nuance to this, but we also need to recognize the actual level of danger. These arguments pretend that scien…

It is quite misleading to only focus on deaths due to nuclear accidents. Fukushima may not have (directly) killed anyone, but the cleanup is hideously expensive (estimates say many hundred billion dollars). Containing Chernobyl costed a few percent of Ukraine's pre-war annual budget. So far, roughly one in a hundred power reactors have blown up. If this is priced in, the economics get even less favorable.

From https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html#tab=duratio... there has been 649 reactors operating giving 0.3% "blown up" (calling fukushima blown up is misleading IMO, but ok). Still quite high when looked at from this angle, but not 1/100.

I'm quite sure, but not 100% that the above number does *not* include research reactors. If it makes sense to include those into the statistics is less clear.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#502

Post by Kon5ole »

Manuel_D wrote: post #359
Kon5ole wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except if you add the cost of 12 hours of batteries to solar it's massively more expensive. Nobody knows what nuclear costs, because nobody knows what it will cost to handle the waste 10 years from now, let alone 100 or 1000 years from now. The solution to this for most nuclear operators has been to pay a symbolic fee and let the taxpayers cover the rest "in blanco". When accidents happen, costs also arrive very sud…

We know exactly how to store nuclear waste: bury it underground in impermeable bedrock. We already have several of these [1]. Furthermore, the figures for the costs of nuclear power already include waste disposal [2]. Also, since most countries don't reprocess nuclear waste, it's actually good to hold onto it since it's a future source of fissile material. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository 2…

> We know exactly how to store nuclear waste

Sure but we don't know how much it will cost. Yucca mountain has been debated for decades already, all those experts, contractors, scientists, politicians have already cost millions. The nuclear industry doesn't pay for that, of course.

> Furthermore, the figures for the costs of nuclear power already include waste disposal

They really don't. They only include a token sum that is nowhere near the actual costs of dealing with the waste. In France they didn't even pay enough to handle actual operations, so the government had to bail them out.

Your source explicitly explains that the cost of a plant is only calculated from the lifetime of the plant, which means it ignores the long tail of costs appearing after the plant has closed.

It also makes the argument that fossil fuel plants should bear part of the cost of global warming (despite transportation actually being a bigger culprit than fossil power plants), yet it doesn't even mention the several hundreds of billions of dollars and counting that the world has paid and is paying only for Fukushima and Chernobyl.

Why does the site not suggest that nuclear operators should pay secondary costs for nuclear, such as Fukushima and Chernobyl, when they do argue that fossil fuel operators should pay the costs for global warming? That seems dishonest.

The source is explicitly the "international organization that represents the global nuclear industry" which does of course explain it. The nuclear industry never mentions costs that are contractually assigned to governments, since such costs never appear in their own books.

But that doesn't mean such costs don't exist.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#503

Post by the_third_wave »

Krasnol wrote: post #386
the_third_wave wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We - in Sweden - noticed this when we saw our electricity prices go through the roof due to those interconnects enabling German prices to trickle back up the lines. Thanks to the boneheaded "green" politicos in Germany shutting down nuclear power plants we'll be paying more for our electricity in the coming years. Please, German neighbours, vote out those watermelons and put some sense back in to the Bundestag.

Back? Are you even aware that no party besides a small fascist party want nuclear back or did anything in recent years to stop the exit? The previous Government (today's largest opposition) had 16 years to stop the nuclear exit. They didn't. Even before Fukushima. I wonder where you got this approach from since you've obviously not come up with it by yourself through research.

> Are you even aware that no party besides a small fascist party want nuclear back

A poll [1] done in 2008 found that 46% of the German population wanted to keep nuclear power online.

A poll [2] done in 2021 found that 53% of respondents saw a role for nuclear power in the "energiewende" (changeover from fossil to other power sources), 22% of them wanted nuclear to play a major role, 31% a smaller role.

In a poll done [3] in 2022 72% of the respondents wanted to postpone the shutdown of the remaining nuclear plants.

If your claim about that small fascist party holds truth the next Bundeskanzler will come from AfD. I guess this is not the case so either those other parties are not in line with their potential constituents or your claim of only AfD - which I assume is the small fascist party you're referring to - wanting nuclear power "back" (which is true by now, it used to be "wants to keep") is in error. Time will tell but in the meanwhile it is to be hoped that the next winter is a mild one.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/46-percent-of-germans-want-nuclear-pow...

[2] https://yougov.de/topics/technology/articles-reports/2021/12...

[3] https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/special/bayern-monitor/...

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#504

Post by ben_w »

WheatMillington wrote: post #128
retrac wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind goes well with gas turbine generators, since they can match their output to demand and the supply of wind. Every watt-hour of wind energy you capture, is a watt-hour of gas you don't burn. Worst case scenario is no wind and you're burning gas -- which is already a main electric source. Taken too far you would get into this weird situation of over-spending for capacity, and having surplus wind energy when it's wi…

Hanging your hat on fossil fuel base load generation seems unwise.

Yeah, though it's not crazy for a short term while building up storage, which we need anyway for transport (be that batteries or whichever cute name is now used for hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water).

Or Sabatier process methane, depending on if Mars is the real point of Starship or merely an excuse for Starship.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#505

Post by pvaldes »

q1w2 wrote: post #352
Manuel_D wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material In quantities not relevant to safety. We can detect extremely small amounts of radiation, down to 1.0001% higher than backrgound levels. - rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly Not quite: the flow of rivers was low enough that they would exceed the 28C temperature limit (ostensibly to protect fish, but no adverse impact from higher tem…

They are referring to the leaking of tritium, which, while "technically" radioactive, regular water contains some tiny amount of tritium and deuterium naturally. They are barely radioactive, and you can actually buy them on Amazon - they are not regulated. To say that the reactor is "leaking radioactive material" because of tritium is extremely dishonest.

The problem is that some people are categorically denying the leaks for decades until eventually admitting that "yes of course it leaks but only a little"

And later "yep, it leaks routinely but it does not matter because tritium is safe"

And then "of course we knew from the start that is not totally, totally safe for environment, but fuck nature"

Ending with "as long as we can keep the stream of smoke curtains and cheap excuses so can't be linked with us is not a problem". Hey, maybe is not a real french!

This creates a big lack of credibility problem.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#506

Post by pfdietz »

cyberax wrote: post #427
pfdietz wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the entries in that table (LTO) are for 20 year life extensiom of existing plants, not new plants.

And so what? Modern nuclear reactors are licensed for 60 years and are expected to last 80-100 years with maintenance (reactor vessel annealing, mainly). This is exactly a point in favor of nuclear.

If we are trying to determibe the cost of power from new nuclear plants, looking at the marginal cost of upgrading/refurbishing existing plants makes no sense, as that is much cheaper.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#507

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

locallost wrote: post #477
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Displacing? I see increasing use of fossil fuels to backup up renewables.

Check numbers for Germany, Denmark, Scotland, Portugal etc.

Yep, coal goes up.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#508

Post by Kon5ole »

evilos wrote: post #429
forgetfreeman wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it is true because Pu-239 and other transuranic isotopes absolutely are a thing. In the case of Pu-239 it's half-life is ~20,000 years. Given the 10 half-life minimum storage requirements for high level radioactive waste, we're at 200,000 years, which is 40 times the length of recorded human history or if you prefer 2/3 of the time our species has provably existed on the planet.

Nope, half life is inversely proportional to danger. The longer the half life, the less dangerous it is to handle an isotope. You can hold Plutonium and Uranium in your hand without issue. You'd have to eat lots of Pu-239 to get sick and we know this for a fact unfortunately because of the insane story of Albert Stevens [1] who got the highest radiation dose of any known human and lived to be 79. He was one of 18 peo…

Nuclear waste contains a lot more than plutonium (and also a lot more plutonium than was injected into Albert Stevens).

The sad fact is that nobody has correctly estimated how big a problem nuclear waste is. We keep having to pay more for it than any previous estimate predicted.

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#509

Post by pvaldes »

q1w2 wrote: post #354
evilos wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Probably just Tritiated water which is essentially harmless. Basically water with extra neutrons and it is very weakly radioactive. So weak that you can't detect it with a Geiger counter. Since it is water it does not accumulate in organisms. Tritium is also naturally created in the atmosphere by cosmic radiation.

That's exactly what it is - which is why the comment above is so profoundly dishonest. You can buy tritium on Amazon - it's harmless.

> That's exactly what it is - which is why the comment above is so profoundly dishonest.

Please, could you explain why US, EU and Canada governments have set narrow legal upper limits for Tritium presence on drinking water if is soo totally harmless?

And why is recommended "extended strong medical/therapeutic intervention" [1] in some cases of accidental exposure to Tritium if is not dangerous?

If you define the qualities of a chemical by the stuff sold on Amazon prepare yourself for a nasty surprise when meeting the real deal. Leaking Tritium in some obscure dose is a problem just because 1. the dose is unknown and 2. we are mostly made of water.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22349318/

Re: Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Global and Environmental Energy Woes

#510

Post by fsh »

olejorgenb wrote: post #501
fsh wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite misleading to only focus on deaths due to nuclear accidents. Fukushima may not have (directly) killed anyone, but the cleanup is hideously expensive (estimates say many hundred billion dollars). Containing Chernobyl costed a few percent of Ukraine's pre-war annual budget. So far, roughly one in a hundred power reactors have blown up. If this is priced in, the economics get even less favorable.

From https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html#tab=duratio... there has been 649 reactors operating giving 0.3% "blown up" (calling fukushima blown up is misleading IMO, but ok). Still quite high when looked at from this angle, but not 1/100. I'm quite sure, but not 100% that the above number does *not* include research reactors. If it makes sense to include those into the statistics is less clear.

Fukushima had three meltdowns (reactors 1-3), and a hydrogen gas explosion that damaged the spent fuel pool of reactor 4. Together with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, this corresponds to roughly 1% of all commissioned reactors suffering catastrophic failure with significant radiation release.
Post reply on HN