Nothing like this will be built again (2002) • Hacker News Board

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#161

Post by acidburnNSA » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

voz_ wrote: post #154

I do not understand the argument for nuclear. The risk never seems worth the reward. Clean now? Yes. Cheap now? Yes. Potentially catastrophic? Yes. This feels like an unnecessary risk to take on. The lessons of three mile island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima seem to be forgotten too quickly.

I'm sure you understand the argument for commercial flight being safer per mile than most other forms of travel despite the potential catastrophe of a plane crash. The argument for nuclear is identical.

The combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]).

Chernobyl directly killed between 60-80 with acute radiation syndrome and caused up to 4000 cancer deaths [2]. Fukushima radiation killed between zero and one person, depending who you ask [3]. TMI killed zero.

[1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1

[2] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html

[3] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html

So, running the numbers, you see that fossil + biofuel kill the entire death footprint of the entire commercial nuclear industry very 7.5 hours and counting. Thus, from a safety perspective, nuclear is a no-brainer, despite the fact that it seems overly hazardous due to the way the stories come out.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#162

Post by mydeskistoosm » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #116

a-dub wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whatever did happen to pebble bed and all the other emerging nuclear technologies from 20 years ago that were supposed to move the bar into passive fail-safe territory and eliminate the waste problem through spent fuel reprocessing?

passive fail-safe already existed 20 years ago. CANDU Reactor is exactly that. Doesn't even need enriched uranium.

So what happened? Why aren't we in a world of abundant energy?

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#163

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #113

tda wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only it was a conscious choice... I fear significant climate has happened already, and even if we stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow will continue for a long time to come. Putting up a few km2 of solar in e.g. the Sahara now is surely less effort than decommissioning dozens of nuclear plants in 50 years.

This is my issue with the debate between Nuclear proponents and Renewable proponents (most of whom seem to be nuclear detractors): They usually compare what is possible in a future state with renewables to what is currently possible with Nuclear technology from decades ago. I want people to start imagining what innovation in Nuclear can look like again. If you want to compare current state to current state, then neit…

[deleted]

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#164

Post by acidburnNSA » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #34

This excellent article reminds me of the time in the early 80's when I got to visit the Dounreay nuclear reactor complex[0]. Now we didn't quite get to see all the guts of the power station as Charlie did, but nonetheless even as a young teenager I was impressed by the scale and complexity of the engineering. The thing that really made the hairs on the back of my neck activate was standing right above the reactor its…

I'm in the nuclear industry and have chatted with some old timers from Dounreay. What a wonder it was!

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#165

Post by pfdietz » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

mlindner wrote: post #92

ncmncm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not Tokamak fusion. That is a dead end. ITER steals the funding that might otherwise have got aneutronic FRC fusion working by now.

Correction: But not low-magnetic field Tokamak. High magnetic field Tokamak are a lot smaller and could fit on a large spacecraft. They're room sized, not skyscraper sized.

ARC has a mass of 7,190 tonnes (not including generators or radiators). This is about the mass of three US WW2 destroyers. It's not room sized; the thing is something like 20m tall (once you include the support structure).

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.3540.pdf

A 190MW(e) fission reactor would be considerably smaller. There is really no use case for DT fusion in space, especially if they have to make their own tritium.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#166

Post by njs12345 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

a-dub wrote: post #112

tda wrote: post #97

I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami…

whatever did happen to pebble bed and all the other emerging nuclear technologies from 20 years ago that were supposed to move the bar into passive fail-safe territory and eliminate the waste problem through spent fuel reprocessing?

China has just hooked a pebble bed reactor up to its grid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-PM

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#167

Post by koide » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

legulere wrote: post #155

sovnade wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we're putting in wind and solar at record rates, but that still doesn't cover us at night or when there's no wind. Batteries or other energy storage cannot meet the demand yet. Nuclear is still the best option for continuous weather-independent power among all the low-polluting options.

You could also construct the argument the other way around: Demand is highest during the day and nuclear is struggling to follow the demand. It’s also not weather-independent. When the water temperature is too hot the power stations have to be turned off. Further it’s pretty common that when one reactor has an issue others of the same type will get turned off too to check if they have the same issue.

That's one (powerful) argument against this intermittency myth on one of the sources I link to here. The grid already is powered by intermittent sources, no power plant is on 365x24.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#168

Post by yodelshady » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

koide wrote: post #141

sovnade wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we're putting in wind and solar at record rates, but that still doesn't cover us at night or when there's no wind. Batteries or other energy storage cannot meet the demand yet. Nuclear is still the best option for continuous weather-independent power among all the low-polluting options.

It can, according to some, here are a couple of sources: https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-e... https://medium.com/enrique-dans/can-we-put-the-solar-and-win...

It can't, source, gas prices in Europe now. Which we are paying. To a dictator who's overtly planning to invade the East. Because the sun isn't shining and batteries are three orders of magnitude too expensive.

Renewables get exactly as much credit for what might happen in future as Communists or NFT sellers get for how awesome their plans are. Nuclear already delivered, in some places still does, winter heat. Its detractors are responsible for gas reliance.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#169

Post by avidiax » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #115

Spooky23 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny when I read the Foundation novels, it seemed silly to me that people could lose track of technology and fall backwards. Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point!

> It’s funny when I read the Foundation novels, it seemed silly to me that people could lose track of technology and fall backwards. > Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point! And also wildly over-optimistic (as is typical for SF). In the books, I think it took something like 10,000 years to loose the technical knowledge. I bet we could do it in 100.

20 years.

A complicated technology like present aircraft, nuclear energy, petrochemical refining, pharmaceuticals, etc. is resting on the shoulders of a few thousand 40-something-year-olds that have the book learning of the 25-year-olds coupled with the experience and judgement that makes the technology practical, and particularly the knowledge of how to go from zero to one multiplied across many many sub-problems.

If something puts a particular technology out of practice for 20 years, many of those now-60-somethings, while still alive, will have forgotten much of what they knew, and not be suitable to put the hard hats back on and get in the field.

And this is not accounting for the effects of whatever catastrophe put the technology out of practice to begin with.

Re: Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

#170

Post by gandalfian » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

a-dub wrote: post #112

tda wrote: post #97

I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami…

whatever did happen to pebble bed and all the other emerging nuclear technologies from 20 years ago that were supposed to move the bar into passive fail-safe territory and eliminate the waste problem through spent fuel reprocessing?

The discovery of cheap natural gas?