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Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

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Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#401

Post by specialist »

mitchty wrote: post #379
pil4rin wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention not having some nuclear waste to store for the rest of the foreseeable future.

What is the rest of the forseeable future exactly? If we use breeder reactors we can get the half life down to 500 years which is easily dealt with via stuff like glass entombment. The current nuclear waste solution is ignoring a lot of advances from the 90's.

I support traveling wave reactors, explicitly to reduce our stockpiles. If we get some other benefits, like some electricity, bonus.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#402

Post by beat »

ars wrote: post #393
beat wrote: post #369

Of course, this is only comparing to fossil sources, not solar, wind, or other renewables (except biomass). I don't think this is going to matter in the end, though. The best, most optimistic arguments the nuclear proponents can make would still take 20-30 years to build out enough to make a standard-deviation difference in greenhouse gasses. Meanwhile, solar/wind are already hitting production costs that rival or be…

> Of course, this is only comparing to fossil sources, not solar, wind, or other renewables (except biomass). You can include them, nuclear still comes out ahead. Solar, wind, etc, are not very power-dense. So you need a LOT of installations, building all of them inevitably has fatalities and injuries. (Falls for example.) From here: http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear... (and you can google…

I have a friend who makes that argument.

It sounds laughably absurd when he makes it, too. Do you understand anything about risk management?

edit: I've stated elsewhere in this thread that the absurdist language used by nuclear power proponents greatly undermines their credibility. This is a perfect example.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#403

Post by rurban »

outworlder wrote: post #310
nnfy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima was safe, by all standards. This was not related to corruption. It was simply not designed for the rarity of a magnitude 9 earthquake and the scale of the tsunami that followed. Your house in a five hundred year floodplain is not unsafe for lacking stilts. Safety costs money, this wasn't corruption.

Well, would be sufficiently safe. Just not in Fukushima. It was hit by an earthquake. Reactor performed SCRAM correctly. Plant was ok. Tsunami hit. Fuel tanks were washed away. This should never have been an issue. If you are in a zone that's prone to tsunamis, you don't locate essential infrastructure where it can be hit by tsunamis. Everything went downhill from there. Including their inability to hook up generator…

And how do you argue about the Diablo "safety" then? It's 6m above sea level, near a major fault line, in fact the only fault in the ring of fire which didn't go off yet in the last decade, and it's critical near to a major technical hub which will be destroyed for hundreds of years if the fault goes off, on land or at sea.

There's no safety, only luck and irrationality.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#404

Post by bsder »

pil4rin wrote: post #373
beat wrote: post #369

Of course, this is only comparing to fossil sources, not solar, wind, or other renewables (except biomass). I don't think this is going to matter in the end, though. The best, most optimistic arguments the nuclear proponents can make would still take 20-30 years to build out enough to make a standard-deviation difference in greenhouse gasses. Meanwhile, solar/wind are already hitting production costs that rival or be…

Not to mention not having some nuclear waste to store for the rest of the foreseeable future.

Fracking sludge isn't a thing? Coal tar sands waste isn't a thing? Mines that leak sulfuric acid aren't a thing? Black lung isn't a thing? Radioactive coal dust isn't a thing?

Our current energy production has hazards and costs that we do not currently account for while we place far too much burden on the alternatives to justify themselves.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#405

Post by qweqweqweqw »

I've come to the conclusion that nuclear energy is a good thing when done correctly, sadly we seem to be plagued by 60 year old power plants with severe safety problems still running because the power companies don't care about safety, they just want to run them as long as possible until they fail.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#406

Post by bsder »

fsloth wrote: post #384
pil4rin wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention not having some nuclear waste to store for the rest of the foreseeable future.

Yes, it's much better to burn up the fuel and spread it into the atmosphere where it will cause a massive climate change. Note:I'm comparing nuclear to fossil fuels which was the only tradeoff until some time ago.

> Note:I'm comparing nuclear to fossil fuels which was the only tradeoff until some time ago.

Last I checked, it still is. Solar can't get anywhere near baseline production that we need currently due to lack of storage options. And solar is the only thing which currently has even the possibility of scaling.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#407

Post by egypturnash »

[misleading headline]

> Here we limit our comparison to the dominant energy sources—brown coal, coal, oil, gas, biomass and nuclear energy; in 2014 these sources accounted for about 96% of global energy production. While the negative health impacts of modern renewable energy technologies are so far thought to be small, they have been less fully explored.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#408

Post by beat »

hashmal wrote: post #389
beat wrote: post #369

Of course, this is only comparing to fossil sources, not solar, wind, or other renewables (except biomass). I don't think this is going to matter in the end, though. The best, most optimistic arguments the nuclear proponents can make would still take 20-30 years to build out enough to make a standard-deviation difference in greenhouse gasses. Meanwhile, solar/wind are already hitting production costs that rival or be…

Nuclear being safer than other major sources just means we shouldn't demonize it and stop everything right now out of panic. it means it's just an important asset while waiting for renewables to take off.

See my argument above, though... it's going to be faster and cheaper to replace a standard deviation's worth of fossil electricity with solar/wind than it would be to replace it with nuclear. So the "transitional power" argument doesn't really hold.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#409

Post by jfoutz »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #394
ugh123 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What are solar prices like in the night? /s Is that a rhetorical question? Because night time usage largely relies on battery storage for which economies of scale are also reducing the cost in a similar predictable fashion.

/s means sarcasm However I will say there are newer solar panels that I've read about being tested which can theoretically produce power by moon light. Granted it won't be anywhere near the amount during the day but generating energy via solar at night time isn't entirely impossible it just won't be generating the same amount by orders of magnitude.

It really comes down to storage. Solar is just now passing coal costs. when it falls another order of magnitue, most of the effort will go to pumping water up hills or batteries or whatever.

Re: Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest

#410

Post by am1988 »

beat wrote: post #402
ars wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, this is only comparing to fossil sources, not solar, wind, or other renewables (except biomass). You can include them, nuclear still comes out ahead. Solar, wind, etc, are not very power-dense. So you need a LOT of installations, building all of them inevitably has fatalities and injuries. (Falls for example.) From here: http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear... (and you can google…

I have a friend who makes that argument. It sounds laughably absurd when he makes it, too. Do you understand anything about risk management? edit: I've stated elsewhere in this thread that the absurdist language used by nuclear power proponents greatly undermines their credibility. This is a perfect example.

I see one person posting an argument with numbers and links to the source and another just calling them absurd.

Wonder who I should listen to.

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