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Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

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Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#11

Post by uniqueuid »

wcrossbow wrote: post #5
uniqueuid wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's stupid not to take the game-changer of solar and wind (and batteries) into account. Even though I believe that nuclear no longer has a role in energy (fuel sources, disposal, concentration of risk into few small units), the statement is still correct and it has another dimension: There is a conflict between poverty, climate change, gravity of climate change harms and the speed at which we can reduce…

A guardian or a gordian knot [0]? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot

Haha thanks fixed.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#14

Post by cedws »

Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war.

Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy it, potentially irradiating the area.

Whether Russia would actually do that doesn't even matter - just being a possibility allows them to take the area hostage much more easily.

I am well aware that it would not detonate like a nuclear bomb or like Chernobyl. It doesn’t have to, it could still contaminate a huge area and harm a lot of people.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#15

Post by jeltz »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #10

I don't really think he understands why the safety paradigm is the way it is. The problem is fear. Fear generated by individual incidents that have terrible local harmful effects. And the (perhaps inaccurate) perception that plants may still have issues. Plus the fairly unsolved waste storage problem. Fukushima, 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl were existential for the nuclear industry. Like it or lump it, they made nucle…

What terrible local harmful effects? Only Chernobyl had any and they were very modest. Compare that to the hydroelectric plants. There we can talk real incidents with harmful local effects. If people actually feared incidents they would campaign against hydroelectric power. And the last such incident was last year in Ukraine. Also just building a hydro plant can ruin the local ecosystem even if there is no incident.

Fro the record I am pro-hydroelectric, pro-nuclear and pro-wind (I am a bit more skeptical towards solar but that is probably just me being from Sweden where solar isn't really an option). None of these are perfect but nuclear is by far the safest. The issues with nuclear do not relate to safety.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#19

Post by medstrom »

maelito wrote: post #13

> Or they were—costs are so high now that we don‘t even build plants anymore. That's factually wrong. France has a program of nuclear building. We don't build a lot of plants in Europe, but we do.

Does the US not legislate that a NPP should be built with certain minimum amount of concrete that is far higher than needed? I read somewhere that lobbies inflate the cost so they will not be built, IDK if that's true.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#20

Post by ianis-h »

Nuclear Power is a complex thing, as any complex thing it require attention and commitment. Therefore it is more prone to destablization by a small number of individuals.

Russia have been quietly lobbying against nuclear in the EU for a long time (looking at you german Green Party).

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