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Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

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Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#131

Post by monadic2 »

nicoburns wrote: post #85
nabla9 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those costs are negligible compared to climate change. Fukushima every 5 years for next 1000 years, or gradually leaking long term nuclear waste, are several orders of magnitude less harmful for humanity or life on earth than climate change.

But investing in wind, solar and storage would be much cheaper still. The fukushima cleanup effort has cost close to $100 billion. Imagine where we could take renewable and energy storag tech with that level of investment.

How do you know that the storage investment will produce something viable? Investments still have risk and nuclear can fill that hole.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#132

Post by titzer »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #101
Retric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just part of the story, annual nuclear refueling is also surprisingly expensive. The raw material is cheap, but you need to refine it to reactor grade, creating fuel rods, and only use ~6% of it before replacing the rods. So on net it ends up being quite costly before considering long term storage. You also need to shutdown the reactor for refueling. Other costs like maintenance starts to really add up over ti…

Also the nuclear waste problem. Nuclear reprocessing looks nice on paper, but the technical implementation is problematic, it's chemistry but in a radioactive environment. If something catches on fire there's problems.

France has successfully processed 23,000 tons of spent fuel, or 14 years worth. With zero incidents. In fact it works so well, they process other countries' spent fuel, too.

https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#133

Post by titzer »

dandare wrote: post #59
dv_dt wrote: post #5

The attitude on risks of radiation have little to do with the economic and technological failures of nuclear power. With multiple schedule and cost failures it seems like fission nuclear is an exercise in what is possible, but not really practical compared to what is accessible via renewables + storage and it's far less constrained financial and technological foundations.

Also let's not forget the problem of burnt fuel storage. Burned nuclear fuel will stay radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Unless we plan to offload the cost of storage to future generations - which we actually do now - nuclear power is horribly unprofitable.

Reprocessing is a thing.

https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#134

Post by ende »

dandare wrote: post #59
dv_dt wrote: post #5

The attitude on risks of radiation have little to do with the economic and technological failures of nuclear power. With multiple schedule and cost failures it seems like fission nuclear is an exercise in what is possible, but not really practical compared to what is accessible via renewables + storage and it's far less constrained financial and technological foundations.

Also let's not forget the problem of burnt fuel storage. Burned nuclear fuel will stay radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Unless we plan to offload the cost of storage to future generations - which we actually do now - nuclear power is horribly unprofitable.

Storage is overblown. Newer techniques have created additional uses for waste, and storage space really isn’t much of an issue.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#135

Post by cm2187 »

We are too anxious about radiation risk. We are too anxious about terrorism. We are too anxious about Covid. We are too anxious about the buzz of a mosquito flying in the room. We are too anxious about completely immaterial risks while ignoring way bigger risks (like damns failing, or common crime, or the health impact of the lockdown and medical treatments, vaccination campaigns being suspended, etc).

Our collective reaction to these risks is completely irrational and disproportionate to the actual danger.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#136

Post by jhayward »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #43
dv_dt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the answer always reply with coal and oil instead of Renewables and storage?

If you’re German for one, then it’s justified, because Merkel has been shutting down nuclear plants which forced a switch back to more coal.

Germany has cut coal use in half since the wind-down of the nuclear fleet began. Please do not repeat misinformation.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#137

Post by jhayward »

jojobas wrote: post #52
matthewmacleod wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that you don’t get to opt out of the “human bullshit”. Nuclear power comes with a massive and unavoidable cost from these matters.

You do. US Navy had zero nuclear accidents so far, simply because one Hyman Rickover was able to convince the government that safety overrides everything else.

Um, are you sure about that? I can think of at least two.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#138

Post by mensetmanusman »

sto_hristo wrote: post #22

Everything around the nuclear disasters has been a human bullshit of a problem, not a technological one. Probably with the exception of Fukushima, where all the conditions were put into the extreme - killer earthquake and monster tsunami. Being anxious about it is more than justified, especially with idiotic countries in mind. But that doesn't mean we need to abandon it. Nuclear is the future and there is no debate a…

Future humans will definitely use it, but it is too ahead of its time. You need a baseline level of average intelligence in the world for it to be widely adopted, we still have a few generations to go.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#139

Post by yurlungur »

Lazare wrote: post #53

Do we stress about the risks nuclear power far out of proportion to how safe it is? Yes. Even accounting for the worst accidents, it kills a very low number of people per TWh. Do we ignore the risks of fossil fuels far out of proportion to how dangerous they are? Also yes. They kill an absurdly high number of people per TWh; by most estimates coal is several hundred times more dangerous than nuclear. Does that mean n…

To me the bummer of nuclear power is how much advocates try to underestimate the cost of handling the waste for decades and the potential risks. I think if you really think we need to go full speed ahead with nuclear power you need to ask how close a waste deposit to your home are you comfortable with? Often times these things just get transported to supposedly remote places which just mean a more vulnerable community may be exposed to the long term risks.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#140

Post by etimberg »

p1mrx wrote: post #103
etimberg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you cannot simply replace conventional rotational generators with inverters. The inertia of the turbomachinery smooths out fluctuations in the grid keeping it stable. Lots of details in [0]. So without lots of hydro or synchronous wind generation, there will always been a need for some kind of conventional generation to keep the grid stable. 0. https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/2019/10/25/grid-inertia...

If you're building a grid-scale battery storage system, isn't it a relatively straightforward engineering problem to emulate the inertia of a flywheel? I would be much more concerned about batteries' ability to respond on the days/weeks/months scale than the milliseconds scale.

What challenges do you foresee in responding over days/weeks/months?
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