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

bbc.com

321–330 of 619 posts

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

#321
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the plants are finished and working. They just shut them down.

Nuclear plants have a lifetime of 30ish years. Many are getting shutdown now because the first wave of builds was around 30-50 years ago. The risks of continuing to operate older designs gets higher if they're refurbished.

Sure, but newer designs were shut down too. I used to live basically next to one. It was in construction for years, very close to completion when Fukushima happened. It was definitely not a rational reaction to cancel that thing.

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A battery for 100/kwh can be used several 100 to 1000s of cycles. You're making the same error as reitzensteinm. The fact that you can charge and discharge a 1 KWh battery a thousand times doesn't make it a 1 MWh battery. If the United States wants to use 80% renewables we need 12 hours of energy storage, which works out to 6 TWh. Even at a very generous cost estimate of $100/KWh, this works out to 600 billion doll…

You can avoid a lot of storage requirements by making your grid smarter and electrifying transportation and heating. 60% renewables are possible with hardly any storage at all, certainly less than 12 hours. Shifting demand is always cheaper than storage. Once you've electrified transportation, you have hundreds of millions of car batteries that can help out with demand spikes. That distributes the high upfront cost o…

Also using car batteries seem an odd choice, as the mismatch between renewable production and electrical consumption (duck curve) happens in the early morning and in the evening, just when people are about to drive (so they don't want to have their batteries emptied by the grid), are driving (so their batteries aren't connected to the grid) or have finished their drive so the batteries aren't full

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

#323
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does that mean nuclear is just a totally great idea? No; the issue with nuclear is cost. Oh don't forget the other issue: It takes decades to build a new plant. We don't got that time. For the $6 Billion or more it takes to build a nuclear plant that will then take 15 to 20 years to license and build before it generates a single Watt, we could have had a $6 Billion of solar and wind deployed and operating for 12+ ye…

> It takes decades to build a new plant. No, it doesn't. It only takes a few years. What takes decades is resolving all the NIMBY lawsuits.

So in practice is does take decades.

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

#324
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the plants I mentioned were 40+ years ago. They are all contemporary. Vogtle is still under construction, Summer was cancelled a couple of years ago ($9B down the drain), Flamanville 3 is still under construction, and the last is near completion. You may be confused with earlier reactors at some of those sites.

Olkiluoto 3 is a new design though. Making a second exact same one again will be much faster and cheaper as you have now worked out most of the issues. Olkiluoto 1 and 2 were both built quickly and on schedule. Mainly because they were already proven designs with tens of other units already built around the world (and the second reactor is practically identical with the first one)

> Olkiluoto 3 is a new design though. Making a second exact same one again will be much faster and cheaper as you have now worked out most of the issues.

The second exact same one is actually Flamanville 3, the other one with the massive cost overruns.

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

#326
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I assume that you're referring to USS Thresher and Scorpion. These weren't nuclear accidents.

> These weren't nuclear accidents.

Of course they were, unless we assume that those nuclear plants were lost on purpose and not accidentally

Anything related with the destruction of a damned nuclear submarine that is lost somewhere in the sea bottom is a nuclear accident, by definition.

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

#327
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…

The power grid is a complex beast. In Europe, as an example, the power grid is the subject to the regulations, political ambitions, restrictions and technological legacy of around 30 countries, the European Union, Commonwealth of Independent States, NATO, CSTO and probably a bunch of others as well. Getting everyone to play along amidst power-play, public opinion, financial concerns and so forth is a nightmare, and yet that is BEFORE the expected major impact from any major changes introduced in order to fight climate change.

So, in order to be able to do a large roll-out of nuclear power, you need to:

1) Find a location where building a plant is viable and from where you will be able to transmit the produced energy to it's indended destination.

2) Convince the public that the plant won't render their home uninhabitable.

3) Convince the public that the plant won't result in more environtal damage in their back yard compared to someone else's back yard.

4) Convince the authorities to give you a permits for new plants.

5) Convince the authorities that you're the right one to build it, because they WILL have an issue if you involve people seen as political opponents, say a business from another power block.

5) Convince someone that it's OK if you dig down depleted fuel in their back yard for 100,000 years.

6) Convince the authorities that that it's OK to dig down that depleted fuel in someones back yard for 100,000 years.

Now, if you fail any of those things, then your new shiny plant will most likely never be constructed. Even if you do make it, you still need to compete with solar/wind/storage to make ends meet, while a semi-monopoly sold by the state to private investors in the 90's is still sitting on the huge dam built in the 20's, and can churn out base power from it considerably cheaper.

After all, it's not their problem if your local power grid is to weak to handle all that energy being sent through the entire country through one single line built in the 50's. You should have thought of that beforce you decided to replace your coal plant with a nuclear one!

End result: the owner of the local grid gets the blame and everyone switches to solar because the government is trying to stimulate the market and no matter how inefficient and insufficient it may or may not be compared to your nuclear plant, a solar panel on the roof is preferable to a nuclear power plant for many, many people.

I'm sure there will be new nuclear plants built in the future too. Not many though -- the situation's too messed up for that.

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

#328
post #314

Has anybody else noticed that this pro-nuclear "news" seems rather orchestrated throughout Europe/"The West"? These pro-nuclear ideas have recently been in the news and hot in politics in at least 4 European countries that I frequent and where I speak the language. All around the same time. Is this manufacturing consent in action? Who's behind this and why? There are no new arguments or information that I see for or…

Nope, haven't noticed that at all. I have yet to meet the first European in real life that's neutral, let alone in favor of, nuclear. I live in a border region between Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. They always bring up the (false) safety argument and when they discover that's an airplane vs cars kind of fear, they start about costs, which is not more than the off-shore wind we're already building. (And someo…

I wasn't referring to actual public opinion. What I referred to was the Western mass media (and politicians) slowly but surely turning pro-nuclear in 2020 after decades of successful (as you point out) anti-nuclear propaganda.

I've seen this happening around September 2020 in at least UK, Netherlands and France. I'm in Germany now where I haven't followed the news, but I expect no pro-nuclear propaganda in Germany since they're already set on getting their base load energy production out of Russian gas.

I estimate that turning public opinion around again in the EU to be accepting of nuclear will take at least a few months/years. That's just speculation though.

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

#329

Whenever people bring up "but how do we store the waste!?", how much storage space would the nuclear waste used to power all of America for a year take up? Feels like the amount is an important point, but I never hear it mentioned.

This is not a hard start to find if you're actually curious, especially given that I've seen multiple people in this thread already cite how much waste has been created since the 60s. I'm on mobile and should be sleeping but I remember seeing the per-year at 100% nuclear before, just don't remember what it is, and keep in mind that nobody here is proposing going 100% forever. It's a mix and a quick way to stop producing CO2 for power.

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

#330
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three of the plants you mentioned were 40+ years ago, right? Seems a bit outdated to point to in 2020.

None of the plants I mentioned were 40+ years ago. They are all contemporary. Vogtle is still under construction, Summer was cancelled a couple of years ago ($9B down the drain), Flamanville 3 is still under construction, and the last is near completion. You may be confused with earlier reactors at some of those sites.

Vogtle 1 and 2 were completed on 1987 and 1989. They will be online until 2047 and 2049. Vogtle 3 and 4 are currently under construction and will be completed in 2021.
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