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Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

nytimes.com

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Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#161

Post by davrosthedalek »

option wrote: post #150
davrosthedalek wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard o…

nuclear waste is not as big of a problem as most people think.

Not technically, but politically. Look at the demonstrations against castor transports in Germany.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#162

Post by DennisP »

est31 wrote: post #84
ianai wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Chernobyl in 1986, the result of extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed 31 in the accident and perhaps several thousand from cancer, around the same number killed by coal emissions every day.” just that is all I need to know to prefer nuclear to coal.

You shouldn't just count deaths and conclude that a nuclear catastrophy isn't that bad. Far more people had to evacuate their home, having to leave most of their belongings behind. And most times with no or too little compensation. Sure, nuclear is prefferable to coal but that doesn't mean that both shouldn't be gotten rid of.

Should we also get rid of hydro? Because the worst power plant accident in history was Banqiao Dam, which killed 26,000 people by drowning and another 150,000 in the aftermath. The entire area was devastated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

There have been a fair number of other serious hydro accidents as well. In the U.S., Teton Dam wiped out two towns, and Oroville Dam just recently prompted the evacuation of 180,000 people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#163

Post by lstodd »

est31 wrote: post #136
lstodd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 11 still in operation, and heavily modified to not allow anything like that thirty-year old disaster. If this bullshit cloud over nuclear got dissolved they'd be replaced with much more safe design. Instead they are forced to continue operation because nothing new can be built. Because of unfounded fears. That's what caused the Fukushima disaster. No new plants - no decommisioning of old plants - old plants…

> If this bullshit cloud over nuclear got dissolved they'd be replaced with much more safe design. I've outlined above why this doesn't happen. Japan has been severely pro-nuclear in the 80s and 90s, and built tons of reactors, yet they only decommisioned a single old reactor in the 80s and 90s, according to this list [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Japan

> I've outlined above

No, you didn't.

If anything, you supported my line of reasoning - if the insane push against nuclear didn't happen, then the plants would have been modernised or rebuilt and there would not have been a Fukushima.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#164

Post by DennisP »

ajross wrote: post #116
jjordan wrote: post #58

Generation III+ reactors are orders of magnitude safer than everything else that was built before the turn of the century. China is actually leading the charge right now, with AP1000 reactors under construction. One of the plants just went live last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmen_Nuclear_Power_Station The US needs to find a way to make building reactors affordable.

> The US needs to find a way to make building reactors affordable. Early reactors were hailed as paragons of safety too. Fukushima, remember, had a triply-redundant (or whatever) power supply to ensure that cooling power could be provided even in the event of a simultaneous meltdown and grid failure. Oops. I mean, look. It's... fine. Go nuclear. I agree with you, that these are probably safe designs and are probably…

> in a world where we can build out solar and wind as cheaply as we can gas plants and handle the grid buffering with batteries

I notice you left the batteries out of your cost comparison with natural gas. Building enough battery for a carbon-free grid without fossil backup is not so cheap.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#165

Post by systemBuilder »

scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

How many times do we have to hear this "1 in 10,000 year accident!" Argument (3? This guy wants 4!) Before we realize that the idiots designing nuclear power plants don't understand probability?

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#166

Post by Lramseyer »

pdevine wrote: post #124

Can we talk about the waste that’s cast off when the reactor has finished its use of it? I understand the material will remain radioactive for centuries. Nobody wants that in their backyard.

Not to downplay the issue, but global warming is a much more urgent issue. It's expected to cause far more disasters a lot sooner than any potential disaster from our nuclear waste.

To answer your question more practically though, our nuclear waste would fit into a building the size of a football field. There's even a proposal to put it in some mine/cave in the western United States.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#167

Post by systemBuilder »

godelski wrote: post #126
istjohn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: New nuclear power plants are hugely expensive to build in the United States today. This is why so few are being built. But they don’t need to be so costly. The key to recovering our lost ability to build affordable nuclear plants is standardization and repetition. ... Currently, as M.I.T.’s Richard Lester, a nuclear engineer, has written, a company proposing a new reactor design faces “the prospect of having to…

Two points: 1: France is 75% nuclear and has some of the cheapest electricity. 2: there are a ton of small reactor designs that would be substantially cheaper and quicker to build. Problem is that you can't get them out of research labs.

France always also consumes 80% of the known uranium reserves in the world. we just don't have enough uranium to have two Frances!

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#168

Post by wisty »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #147
scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard o…

Look at Australia. We've been very easily influenced by the coal lobby. If there's plenty of jobs and investment flowing in, we'll do the same for nuclear.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#169

Post by stevespang »

PURE GARBAGE. There are nearly 300,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel waste still piling up at reactors around the world.1 1. https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/technology/2019/nuc...

The cost of building and operating a nuclear power plant WAY exceeds solar and wind, hands down.

Re: Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonize

#170

Post by Jaepa »

systemBuilder wrote: post #165
scarygliders wrote: post #128

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not s…

How many times do we have to hear this "1 in 10,000 year accident!" Argument (3? This guy wants 4!) Before we realize that the idiots designing nuclear power plants don't understand probability?

Woah. Take it easy mate.

To be clear there is no "safe" option. But this 60+ year old nuclear facility survived the 4th largest earthquake in record history, a tsunami, and only failed because the placements of the back, back up generators. Other plants (e.g. the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plan) that were closer to the epicenter survived just fine.

Old outdate plants aren't perfect, but even still its better than the guaranteed best case scenario for fossil fuels.

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