341–350 of 676 posts
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Meanwhile in Russia they are doing heating with water from nuclear powerplants. While price gouging Germany for gas.
"While price gouging Germany for gas" Huh?!? Price is settled somewhere in Netherlands, what Russia has to do with it?
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I'm quite sure that no one who asks "can chernobyl can happen again?" is actually interested in the response to "can chernobyl happen again _in exactly the same way_"?. This is malicious nitpicking. In the same way that I'm sure the victims of the next Airbus crash will be happy to know that "it didn't crash like the Hindenburg did".
If all you mean by "chernobyl happening again" is "a serious accident could happen", you've moved the goalposts beyond where I think meaningful discussion is possible. It also means that a "new chernobyl" can happen at any power station, be it hydro, coal, solar, etc.
WTF? Chernobyl will NEVER happen exactly the same way again, that much is obvious since
a) it was already a pretty rare event to begin with,
b) the event is likely referenced during the training of every nuclear operator _worldwide_, making an exact repeat of the human errors involved even more unlikely than it was to begin with,
c) steps were taken to avoid this exact situation to happen _even on the other chernobyl reactors themselves_.
I thought it quite obvious that no one would be worried about a exact repeat of Chernobyl like if you hit the "replay" button on YouTube. (But if you believe this is what people have in mind when they ask "can chernobyl happen again" then please do tell). Therefore the only remaining interpretation is "can a chernobyl[-like] event happen again" -- a category which would roughly map to "major historic nuclear accident, the kind of which it is still talked about several decades after on a non-nuclear discussion forum like HN".
Most assuredly, non-nuclear accidents, no matter how large, won't fit this category. But I have been wrong in the past, maybe people would call a dam breakup "a chernobyl" these days?
As I heard today again on the radio, the narrative is "to get energy whatever the weather, we cannot rely only on wind and solar". I'm surprised that they haven't heard of the possibility of energy storage . Both already available storage solutions, and the many other solutions in development, are largely enough to enable wind/solar and other renewable sources to replace fossil fuels, without relying on nuclear.
Neither have our grid operators it seems. Current worldwide grid storage capacity is so absolutely abysmal we could call it a rounding error.
In the end of the day, we'll need both renewables and nuclear combined to get us out of this fossil powered mess, and ignoring one of them won't exactly give us a good chance, with whatever tiny probability we still have left to unfuck the atmosphere.
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Is it not malicious to scream "chernobyl!" willfully deceptively or willfully ignorantly confusing what can and cannot happen? More people die every single year from radiation in coal than have died in the entire history of nuclear power. Replacing all coal with nuclear would save more lives and health than fighting nuclear ever could, even in theory. And delaying coal to nuclear under the banner of "wind and solar m…
> Every year coal is still here, instead of nuclear, is 100 years of death. If > building powerplants (of any type) were instant, and solar were one year away, > then we should STILL replace all coal with nuclear TODAY, to minimize harm. (in > a spherical chickens in a vacuum sort of way) But... we all know that it takes a lot longer to build a nuclear plant (on the order of 10-20 years) than it does to build (large)…
Because of the red tape the mob has strung up. China builds these in two years [1]. France does it in five [2].
[1] https://interestingengineering.com/china-moves-toward-nuclea...
[2] https://lemielleux.com/how-long-does-it-take-france-to-build...
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>No nuclear power plant has ever been fully decommissioned. Trojan? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant
WP says the plant has been "largely decommissioned". To my reading, that means the same as "not decommissioned yet".
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this is exactly the idealism thats causing problems -the energy futures in germany reaches the highest price in recorded history, the industry is being decimated and it's importing gas from a tyran that has started a war on Gemany's doorstep. Without Europe's gas dollars he would not be able to fund it's millatry and 12 million ukranians would never become homeless refugees. Meanwhile you are complaining about waste…
I think that misses the point. If you reckon it's OK to leave waste lying around, especially in constrained economic and political circumstances, that's a legitimate point of view. Argue for that. But don't declare that "decommissioning" simply means something like "Do your best, and then be done with it". That's dishonest (I'm not accusing you personally of any dishonesty). If "decommissioning" doesn't mean complete…
1. Spew the waste into the air (fossil fuels)
2. Contain and bury the waste (nuclear)
3. Go without electricity when the weather is not favorable until major tech improvements in storage
So unless you want to argue for 3, and I don't think you do, 2 is clearly the best option.
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It is stuff like people religiously dissmising you when you tell them that nuclear is nearly the safest power source in terms of deaths per TWh [1]. They don't base their opinion regarding safety on data, they base it on the feeling that they get from seeing large disasters and not seeing the countless deaths caused in silence, and they refuse to update their view even in the face of contradicting data. [1] https://o…
Those numbers are based upon flawed and selective numbers making them quite ridiculous for several reasons: For example: with Fukushima the nuclear bandwagon arguments that those deaths which actually occurred resulted from moving people to a safe area. As if not moving them would have been an option or if the movement would have happened without the accident. For Chernobyl it's even worse since there the bandwagon a…
For Fukushima for example, the deaths from evacuation ARE included in the death toll (the total number is estimated to be 2,314).
You have a detailed article about the data here [1].
But I am open to change my mind. Can you give a source that compares the mortality rate of energy sources and that, in your opinion, better accounts for all deaths? What is the highest mortality rate for nuclear someone has every estimated?
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...
De-nuclearization of other European countries is a long-held goal of the German environmentalist movement and the Green party. It's understandable that France doesn't want to go with that, as they don't want to be forced down the same ruinous path we're currently on here in Germany. And honestly, good for them. It's just sad to see how little actual science is respected in Germany. I did my PhD at the French nuclear…
No insurance company in the world is willing to insure a nuclear power plant and both risk and operation have been heavily subsidized since decades.
In fact renewable sources are even cheaper:
"The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower-idUSK...
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What "scientific" analysis has claimed "chernobyl can't happen again" ? It would be as ridiculous as someone claiming the new Airbus XXX model can't crash. Even analysis of the type "a chernobyl will happen once every XX years" are more political in nature than scientific, since you are assuming a stable society for decades to come (i.e. no degradation in the skill level of constructors or operators, etc. -- even for…
Here's an article from 2018 describing a commercial implementation of a reactor that cannot melt down. (The technology was decades old at that point.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/01/24/can-we-ma...
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> Is the waste problem solved? It has never been a problem in the first place. At least not a technical problem. Sure, it is nasty stuff, to be treated with respect, but not worse than toxic chemicals we regularly deal with. It is also potentially useful stuff: rare, exotic matter that gives off energy. Compare with coal plants that also produce nuclear waste (there are radioisotopes in coal), but that waste is dumpe…
"In the end, even with Chernobyl, nuclear power is still one of the safest per unit of energy produced." I'm not anti-nuclear at all, but I see this argument used a lot and I don't think it's a good one. The concerns with nuclear are all about tail risk. Comparing past results to other forms of energy doesn't address this since neither Chernobyl nor Fukushima were worst case scenarios for nuclear. An effective pro-nu…