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Safe Enough?

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Re: Safe Enough?

#11

Post by troupo »

otherme123 wrote: post #10
troupo wrote: post #8

> a slippage between tectonic plates so powerful that it moved Honshu, the main island of Japan, 2.4 meters to the east. The earthquake generated a tsunami 14 meters high The definition of a black swan event. And yet the conclusion is, unsurprisingly, indistinguishable from "nuclear is bad, be very very wary". Imagine if any other tech had the same fear-mongering. We'd never have a single hydroelectric plant after Ba…

You can still build nuclear reactors, they are not banned. But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. They don't scoof accidents without analysis and adaptation, saying "if you want to fly you must accept that some 787-MAX are crashing down from time to time, but still safer than traveling by car, we did the…

> But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons.

No, I don't

> The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures.

Yes, they do.

Note: we're still flying. The number of aircraft is increasing. And we don't turn aircraft into boogey men.

Had aircraft been treated the way nuclear plants are treated, we'd stop building most of them in the early 80s, and the construction of each new one would be met with strong opposition and campaigns to shut the entire thing down.

Re: Safe Enough?

#12

Post by skybrian »

roenxi wrote: post #4

> Is it right to ignore the cost of the evacuation of Tokyo, merely because an unplanned flow of water saved us? What if we assume the maximum cost of a nuclear event is not $1 trillion for the Fukushima we lived, but $10 trillion for the Fukushima we escaped This continued focus on cost rather than cost-benefit must be some sort of cognitive bias because it makes no sense. Even if there is risk of a $10 trillion dis…

Japan’s power grid apparently has problems making increased capacity and load sharing difficult, and they rely a lot on imported fossil fuels. It explains among other things why they’re so enthusiastic about hydrogen and not so much about electric cars. I’m not sure what lessons other countries can learn from their choices.

Here’s a deep dive about it:

https://tildes.net/~enviro/15sb/japan_to_invest_107_billion_...

Re: Safe Enough?

#13

Post by roenxi »

otherme123 wrote: post #9
danielheath wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear costs a fortune under the regulatory regime it's operated with to date. We genuinely don't know how much less it would cost to have nuclear power on an equal-safety-to-coal-power basis, because it's not been tried.

Why would you equal-to-coal today? You need to equal wind, solar or at least gas safety. Lately I'm reading a lot about lowering nuclear safety to improve costs. Imagine cars makers asking to get rid of ABS, airbags, safety belts... to make cheaper cars. Any sane person would raise a brow when hearing that, any industry should aim to be as safe as possible, not to cut costs on safety and assume some preventable death…

> Imagine cars makers asking to get rid of ABS, airbags, safety belts...

But cars with all those safety features are still much more risky then nuclear plants. Cars can kill you. Practically speaking nuclear plants cannot. They force people to move. If you are going to complain about preventable deaths, what is your plan to make cars safe? We haven't done all we can do. If we bought the speed limits down to walking pace and banned reversing we'd save a huge number of lives (including small toddlers, it remains a tear jerker every time someone reverses over their own toddler).

Why are you accepting high risks from cars but raising an eyebrow at nuclear plants? It isn't rational. You know people, right now, who will be killed by cars. Why isn't something being done [0]?

> in the page 5 you can see that regulatory costs are minimal

Nuclear is the only technology that gets more expensive the more is built. And I'll give you a hint. That anomaly is 100% caused by the regulatory framework.

The report is obviously misjudging something. They're probably doing something like assuming only things that the regulators explicitly ask for count as regulatory costs. We should see a learning effect in the nuclear industry where technology gets cheaper over time.

[0] That was rhetorical. The answer is because it'd be damn silly and the costs would far outweight the benefits. Everyone can see that because the costs are obvious and felt personally. It is unfortunate the the costs of lacking energy are going to be felt before people accept that there aren't alternatives to building new powerplants.

Re: Safe Enough?

#14

Post by nerdponx »

troupo wrote: post #11
otherme123 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still build nuclear reactors, they are not banned. But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. They don't scoof accidents without analysis and adaptation, saying "if you want to fly you must accept that some 787-MAX are crashing down from time to time, but still safer than traveling by car, we did the…

> But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. No, I don't > The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. Yes, they do. Note: we're still flying. The number of aircraft is increasing. And we don't turn aircraft into boogey men. Had aircraft been treated the way nuclear plants are treated, we'd stop building most of them in the early 80s, and the construc…

You're ignoring the fact that humans generally do not think in terms of expected value, nor should they. An improbable outcome of widespread catastrophe (irradiating a million people) is and should be treated as something worse than a more-probable outcome of localized catastrophe (plane crash). You can't just do "loss x probability = cost".

Re: Safe Enough?

#15

Post by totetsu »

In the hypothetical situation where Tokyo needed to be evacuated, or a large enough portion of the population there feared for their health and wanted to leave, i wonder if in the long term, the redistribution of population back into regional Japan would not be a good thing over all.

Re: Safe Enough?

#16

Post by perihelions »

The spent-fuel pond fire is also the ongoing risk at Zaporizhzhya. There's a long list of stressors going into that probabilistic equation: e.g. the reservoir it draws on for cooling water source collapsed with the dam bombing; and all of its connections to the offsite power grid have disappeared, save one (now a single point of failure).

Re: Safe Enough?

#17

Post by zarzavat »

troupo wrote: post #11
otherme123 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still build nuclear reactors, they are not banned. But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. They don't scoof accidents without analysis and adaptation, saying "if you want to fly you must accept that some 787-MAX are crashing down from time to time, but still safer than traveling by car, we did the…

> But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. No, I don't > The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. Yes, they do. Note: we're still flying. The number of aircraft is increasing. And we don't turn aircraft into boogey men. Had aircraft been treated the way nuclear plants are treated, we'd stop building most of them in the early 80s, and the construc…

The crucial difference is that people consent to get on a plane.

There are quite a few people who are afraid of flying, so afraid that they refuse to fly. That’s of course their prerogative.

The problem with nuclear power stations is that when they have serious accidents they don’t just affect the people who wanted to build them, they affect everybody, including the people who didn’t want them to be built, and even people in neighboring countries who didn’t even get a vote on it - depending on which way the wind blows.

So the nuclear power station has to be built as safely as the most fearful person demands.

Re: Safe Enough?

#18

Post by troupo »

nerdponx wrote: post #14
troupo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you want to build them ignoring safety lessons. No, I don't > The aeronautical industry is improving safety all the time, and accidents prompt new safety measures. Yes, they do. Note: we're still flying. The number of aircraft is increasing. And we don't turn aircraft into boogey men. Had aircraft been treated the way nuclear plants are treated, we'd stop building most of them in the early 80s, and the construc…

You're ignoring the fact that humans generally do not think in terms of expected value, nor should they. An improbable outcome of widespread catastrophe (irradiating a million people) is and should be treated as something worse than a more-probable outcome of localized catastrophe (plane crash). You can't just do "loss x probability = cost".

> An improbable outcome of widespread catastrophe (irradiating a million people) is and should be treated as something worse than a more-probable outcome of localized catastrophe (plane crash).

Quoting myself again:

Imagine if any other tech had the same fear-mongering. We'd never have a single hydroelectric plant after Banqiao dam failure that killed anywhere from 25 000 to 240 000 and left 11 million people homeless.

Re: Safe Enough?

#19

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #4

> Is it right to ignore the cost of the evacuation of Tokyo, merely because an unplanned flow of water saved us? What if we assume the maximum cost of a nuclear event is not $1 trillion for the Fukushima we lived, but $10 trillion for the Fukushima we escaped This continued focus on cost rather than cost-benefit must be some sort of cognitive bias because it makes no sense. Even if there is risk of a $10 trillion dis…

[deleted]

Re: Safe Enough?

#20

Post by wokwokwok »

roenxi wrote: post #4

> Is it right to ignore the cost of the evacuation of Tokyo, merely because an unplanned flow of water saved us? What if we assume the maximum cost of a nuclear event is not $1 trillion for the Fukushima we lived, but $10 trillion for the Fukushima we escaped This continued focus on cost rather than cost-benefit must be some sort of cognitive bias because it makes no sense. Even if there is risk of a $10 trillion dis…

There is certainly bias, but there’s also a whole lot of “refuse to acknowledge reality”.

Certainly, there is a cost/benefit to compare, but really, bluntly, we’re shit at cleaning up nuclear disasters.

In every situation where they’ve occurred, it’s taken longer and cost more than anticipated, and the point here is that this enormously expensive disaster could have been 10x worse if not for a lucky coincidence.

> Even if there is a risk of a $10 trillion disaster…

/sigh…

The problem is not that it’s too expensive; it’s that we’re not technologically advanced enough to deal with nuclear disasters other than brute force “pack everything into bricks and bury it in a hole”.

People will do it, because they close their eyes and hope nothing goes wrong (hey, won’t be in office when it does, this is your problem next generation, haha~), but things will go wrong, and it will. Again. Be crushingly expensive.

…and until we solve ”deal with it when it goes wrong”, bluntly, nuclear energy is always going to be controversial based on different levels of risk acceptance by different groups.

It’s not cognitive bias. You just have a different opinion. Neither you nor they are “right” about acceptable levels of risk.

The solution isn’t singing and dancing about nuclear power being safe.

It is not safe.

The solution is find ways to make it safe by being able to contain, control and deal with nuclear materials without needing “10000 years in a hole in the ground” for waste material, or “evacuate the entire metropolitan Tokyo” when things go wrong. Those are not things that happen with “safe” technology.

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