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Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

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Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#111

Post by icebraining »

pjc50 wrote: post #44
ekianjo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenpeace has successfully spent several decades painting nuclear power as Evil so its going to be difficult to convince voters to support it from now on.

Hoisting my previous comment on Greenpeace from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17774347 The backlash against nuclear comes from four points and a meta-point: 1) Weapons proliferation. The standard fission cycle is just too convenient for this (after all, that's why it was developed) and so an international infrastructure needs to be developed around restricting this. See Iran for example. This also prompted a l…

Related to (2) and (5), nuclear advocates also tend to assume that the designs being safe if in the hands of a competent, well-supplied, conscientious organization is enough. I used to think the same, but seeing how nuclear plants are neglected even in Western European countries, I no longer think that assumption can be maintained.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#112

Post by zzzeek »

joycian wrote: post #102
mncolinlee wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of news pieces about nuclear are unrealistically rosy. Waste reprocessing isn't really all that new and it doesn't really get rid of waste. It replaces much of the solid waste with even more liquid waste. The problem with having any discussion of nuclear is agreeing upon the facts. It's crazy hard to find an unbiased source. If you asked a random bystander why we haven't built nuclear reactors in recent years,…

Aren't the "environmentalists" the ones that are creating the mood that makes it hard to invest in nuclear?

Probably but Fukushima probably helped too.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#113

Post by eeZah7Ux »

Meandering wrote: post #83
jhallenworld wrote: post #65

Solar is growing so fast that it is creating its own waste problem: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23... What happens when we add the necessary batteries (to replace the nuclear base) to this problem?

This is one of the issues with solar power that gets overlooked. The physical 'stuff' needed to build a large solar farm is far more than a base nuclear plant. After a quick search: Solar Panels Lifespan - ~25 years - Good Grid Battery Lifespan - 5-10 years - ehh.. If we switched to 100% solar, with a majority of the equipment probably manufactured in China, there would be an orders of magnitude more physical product…

Simply comparing lifespans is extremely misleading. We need to look at the potential risk associated with waste.

Solar panel waste: grind and reuse. Health risk: negligible.

Battery waste: empty, disassemble and reuse. Health risk: very moderate.

Nuclear waste: highly radioactive for thousands of years. No way to recovery leaks in the environment. Health risk: very high.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#114

Post by lokimedes »

It feels like something out of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. A telltale sign of a civilization in decline when the most advanced energy form accessible to mankind is being replaced by wood burning and windmills. Meanwhile people delusion themselves with arguments that renewable is more advanced. Our first energy source was renewable, but the energy density of wood is pitiful compared to nuclear.

I Want my future back.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#115

Post by godelski »

JTbane wrote: post #47

I often hear the argument that "nuclear is bad because there is a chance of a catastrophic loss of life". Well, there has not yet been any large scale nuclear disaster. Cars kill hundreds and we still use them.

While I agree with your point it is phrased wrong.

There have been two large scale nuclear disasters. BUT in those disasters less people died (globally) or will die (using LNT model) than Americans die per year from coal ash. By a fair amount too (4x-100x. 100x is the UN estimate from 2006). You could argue that 10x Americans die every year by cars than any person has died from nuclear. Because when it come to nuclear we're really only talking about 1 event that lead to deaths, and the HIGH estimates of that are still under 100k (for reference, the coal ash number is ~200k/yr, and cars are ~33k/yr). Which yeah, that's a lot of people, but not that many when you consider the time frame of all of nuclear power. Other energy sources and utilities have their deaths spread out over decades and location, the problem with nuclear is that it is temporally and physically concentrated.

But let me repeat the main point.

Every year more Americans die from coal ash than ALL the people who have ever died from any nuclear incident.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#116

Post by dreamcompiler »

mncolinlee wrote: post #89
Cederfjard wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grandparent comment mentioned modern recycling. Perhaps Belgium is operating old types of reactors that aren't amenable to modern ways of dealing with waste? A quick search yielded that all of Belgium's reactors were built in the 70's and 80's.

A lot of news pieces about nuclear are unrealistically rosy. Waste reprocessing isn't really all that new and it doesn't really get rid of waste. It replaces much of the solid waste with even more liquid waste. The problem with having any discussion of nuclear is agreeing upon the facts. It's crazy hard to find an unbiased source. If you asked a random bystander why we haven't built nuclear reactors in recent years,…

Exactly. Solar is winning because of economics. Nuclear is losing because of economics.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#117

Post by blackbrokkoli »

magduf wrote: post #99
perfunctory wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also modern airplanes with modern software never crash.

Modern planes really do crash less than older ones. Just stay away from 737MAX models.

So, nuclear reactors are very safe except of dangerous-tech-xA45b which we only know is deadly after one or two incidents?

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#118

Post by eeZah7Ux »

JTbane wrote: post #47

I often hear the argument that "nuclear is bad because there is a chance of a catastrophic loss of life". Well, there has not yet been any large scale nuclear disaster. Cars kill hundreds and we still use them.

This is a logical fallacy.

Re: Steep decline in nuclear power would threaten energy security and climate goals

#120

Post by jcranmer »

mncolinlee wrote: post #96
JTbane wrote: post #47

I often hear the argument that "nuclear is bad because there is a chance of a catastrophic loss of life". Well, there has not yet been any large scale nuclear disaster. Cars kill hundreds and we still use them.

Both coal and nuclear have potentially killed millions. Just because it can take decades for Chernobyl, Fukushima, and coal air pollution to result in some cancers, that does not mean they aren't primarily responsible for those deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...

The estimation of excess cancer deaths for Chernobyl and Fukushima is based on exposure results and the LNT model of accumulated dose response instead of actual observed cancer incidences, because it's impossible to actually assign specific incidences of cancer to specific causes. Thus, the counts for deaths caused by Chernobyl--the only nuclear power plant to cause significant death--will include deaths that have yet to occur.

The total estimates for deaths to nuclear power, even including the use of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, struggle to amount to a million, even if you start using the high outlier estimates of anti-nuclear groups.

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