Ultra Safe Nuclear • Hacker News Board

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#131

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

beders wrote: post #56

manfredo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not a problem. There's actually very little of it. It occupies a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high [1]. Storing it is pretty foolproof: bury it in an area with no aquifer. The main risk of contamination is getting into the groundwater. If there's no groundwater the risk of contamination is eliminated even if the containers decay over time. And lastly, it doesn't make sense to bur…

> Because it's not a problem. Have you seen John Oliver's piece about that and can you point out the flaws?

[deleted]

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#132

Post by Reedx » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

xibalba wrote: post #3

Assuming nuclear truly can be ultra safe, how do you convince a public that has seen Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima to get on board? Particularly when the "competition" (solar, wind, etc) has such a strong tailwind.

Data and statistics aren't getting through, so maybe the answer is to rebrand it. Drop the word "nuclear". Chernobyl is too powerful of an association. All the data in the world is just no match for that story and imagery.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#133

Post by evgen » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #129

evgen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually trying to use an ill-informed rant by a mid-tier comedian as the primary support for your argument? Seriously?

Wait, we're better than this on HN. If you have concerns about an argument being made it's important to articulate the concerns. Pointing out someone's career/reputation is an appeal to authority, and a form of bias. It's possible that a comedian could be well informed from a staff, for instance, doing research. I am not familiar with John's arguments, but I wanted to address that dismissing him out of hand seems per…

Sorry, that was probably too glib of a response. How about this: John Oliver has a history of making ill-informed rants that conveniently skip relevant facts or counter-arguments for the sake of having a pithy little segment that sounds funny and which complements his English mock-outrage. It is not a good argument against nuclear power and in fact it generally only takes a few minutes to point out the rows and rows of strawmen he has set up so that he can knock them down with comedic zingers.

We should have higher standards here.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#134

Post by throwaway0a5e » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #129

evgen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually trying to use an ill-informed rant by a mid-tier comedian as the primary support for your argument? Seriously?

Wait, we're better than this on HN. If you have concerns about an argument being made it's important to articulate the concerns. Pointing out someone's career/reputation is an appeal to authority, and a form of bias. It's possible that a comedian could be well informed from a staff, for instance, doing research. I am not familiar with John's arguments, but I wanted to address that dismissing him out of hand seems per…

>Wait, we're better than this on HN

No were not. We're just more polite and consider it customary to google up someone else who agrees with you that you can cite.

Humans are pretty consistent. The rules of conduct vary between tribes.

And FWIW John Oliver seems to be a pretty decent comedian. His filter bubble certainly informs his work and he's prone to bias but he's an entertainer by trade so I don't count those against him.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#135

Post by option » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

xibalba wrote: post #3

Assuming nuclear truly can be ultra safe, how do you convince a public that has seen Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima to get on board? Particularly when the "competition" (solar, wind, etc) has such a strong tailwind.

I grew up near Chernobyl and my parents still work on Chernobyl power station. You actually don’t have to convince anyone there in the benefits of nuclear.

Renewables are great but can’t meet 100% of demand. And when they can’t we should be using nuclear.

As a CA resident now (who installed solar on my roof) it sickens me when our “leaders” scream “climate change” but close nuclear early and buy coal-generated electricity from Utah instead.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#136

Post by option » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:04 PM UTC

beders wrote: post #51

manfredo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated. For three mile island and Fukushima this figure is zero among the public. Less than two dozen among the plant workers (all of which died due to the hydrogen explosion not radiation). The areas that were evacuated are now safe to return. Chernobyl was worse, but th Sov…

> First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated. I keep seeing justifications like that and it makes me want to puke. First of all: The total number of victims is unknown and it is still rising. Even for Chernobyl. Second: It costs tens of billions of dollars to clean up these messes. Paid for by the cow you can m…

>>” The total number of victims is unknown and it is still rising. Even for Chernobyl.”

- This is false. Total number of victims who can be reliably linked to the disaster is two digit number. Source: lived there most of my life (grew up there) and still have friends and family working there

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#137

Post by colonwqbang » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #129

evgen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually trying to use an ill-informed rant by a mid-tier comedian as the primary support for your argument? Seriously?

Wait, we're better than this on HN. If you have concerns about an argument being made it's important to articulate the concerns. Pointing out someone's career/reputation is an appeal to authority, and a form of bias. It's possible that a comedian could be well informed from a staff, for instance, doing research. I am not familiar with John's arguments, but I wanted to address that dismissing him out of hand seems per…

But no arguments were cited in the comment, there was only a John Oliver name drop.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#138

Post by zaroth » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #125

zaroth wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mathematically impossible. The entire world could be powered with 200,000 square miles of solar panels. Since 1990 we’ve lost ~2.5x that amount of land to deforestation, approximately zero of which was due to building solar. We have a deforestation problem, but it has nothing to do with solar.

Using present-day numbers to say that solar deforestation will not be a problem is just as fallacious as using today's temperature to say that global warming is not a problem.

That is a flawed comparison, and a poor argument.

Present day worldwide energy usage is a real metric which allows us to calculate the present day 200,000 sq mile figure. Today's temperature doesn't allow calculating anything relevant to global warming.

I assumed you were being hyperbolic and thought some readers might be curious about the hypothetical area of panels required to meet the entire world's energy demand. It's an interesting figure to put things in perspective.

But a claim that widespread solar power will be a leading cause of deforestation is entirely devoid of evidence and fails the basic napkin-math test.

Energy usage will increase over time. Interestingly, so does solar panel efficiency. And most solar panels won't be built in forests. And the Earth will never be 100% powered by solar.

But most compellingly, even if you did have to build solar farms only in forests, and even if you did need to provide 100% of the Earth's demand for energy through those farms, you could do it today with only 40% of the deforestation that's already occurred over the last 25 years.

It's also nice to consider that solar panels built in deserts can even be beneficial to local flora and fauna (although not universally). [1]

[1] https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2020/04/can-desert-plan...

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#139

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

s9w wrote: post #96

merb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. How long does it need to be kept safe? 2. How to find a storage facility that can keep it safe that long? 3. How to ensure that a facility does not contamine other stuff in X years? 4. if it is recycable why does nobody do it? 5. if it is so easy to store it safe, why does not country have a TRUE final depot? yeah coal is bad, but why compare it to coal in the first place when we want to reduce such things anyway?…

In Germany we have a thing called Ewigkeitskosten ("eternal costs"). That's how we call the expenses that still arise as a consequence from the coal mining operations, especially in the west of Germany. That are things like constantly pumping around water. About a fifth of the western coal region would be underwater without it. They're called that way because we already knew that they will never go away. That was acc…

[deleted]

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#140

Post by Tade0 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #87

gruez wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! except you know, the solar panels. by the same logic you can you can capture fission power for free, all you need is set up the reactor.

There was a comment here about cleanup costs of nuclear vs. solar, that was deleted while I was typing my response to that. I'm just gonna copy in my response here, because I think it's an interesting topic: Are we really sure solar panels are much easier to dismantle on a euro-per-kWh basis though? That is, if you divide the total cost of dismantling and recycling a solar power plant, divided by the total amount of…

EDIT: my numbers regarding annual kWh/m2 were wrong.

Are you sure you would spend significantly less than 150 euros per square meter of panel to dismantle, transport and recycle the solar panels?

Yes, because it's being done by leading companies and doesn't seem to diminish their competitive advantage:

http://www.solarscorecard.com/2018-19/scorecard-2018-19.php