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

bbc.com

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

#401

Post by pfdietz »

steeve wrote: post #385
pfdietz wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are much cheaper when someone subsidizes them. If the state funds nuclear at below the rate the market would give, that's a subsidy. It could mean, for example, that the state is taking on financial risk that would otherwise have been accounted for in higher interest rates.

This is not a subsidy but a loan. If the state wants to stay out of it, but only has to say: "we are going to be using nuclear power for the next 40 years", and the interests will naturally go down because the investment is safer, and so everybody would pay less. One would think that the state backing (either politically or financially) investment in infrastructure would make sense, since it benefits everyone.

It's a subsidy, because the interest on the loan is below what the market would charge.

Requiring use of nuclear even if it becomes noncompetitive is also a subsidy.

What's happening in both cases is that risk is being moved from the investor to the public. Privatize profits, socialize risk. It's the nuclear story as old as time.

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

#402

Post by advanced-DnD »

Udik wrote: post #332
rgbrenner wrote: post #149

BBC on nuclear: asking the questions that don't matter. You know what the real problem with nuclear is? It's not economically competitive. What if I told you: you can invest in a project that will tie up your money for 10+ years and once it's completed will provide energy for 10x the current cost of solar/wind. And while youre building this plant, solar/wind and batteries will keep getting cheaper.. and by the time y…

I wanted to check up your reasoning. Actual calculations can be pretty complicated so I relied on a real world example: the largest solar array project under construction in the world, Australia's Sun Cable. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/14/just-a-m... A few numbers: the projected cost is $20 billion. The nameplate capacity is 10GW. The most efficient solar plant in the world (located in Arizona) h…

im glad someone did their due diligence than pulling out facts from their butts.

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

#403

Post by natmaka »

titzer wrote: post #132
HarryHirsch wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the nuclear waste problem. Nuclear reprocessing looks nice on paper, but the technical implementation is problematic, it's chemistry but in a radioactive environment. If something catches on fire there's problems.

France has successfully processed 23,000 tons of spent fuel, or 14 years worth. With zero incidents. In fact it works so well, they process other countries' spent fuel, too. https://www.heritage.org/environment/commentary/recycling-nu...

Spent-fuel processing isn't sufficient. After ~50 years with running nuclear plants France doesn't have any long-term waste disposal facility, and is actively searching a solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse/Haute_Marne_Underground_...

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

#404

Post by natch »

Solve the radiation problem and we are still left with the problems of massive cost overruns, corruption, and centralized control of energy which takes away individual freedom to choose where to spend energy money, because the cost gets passed down to us as taxes and fees. A better idea is to scale up battery production and use renewables. Nuclear may still be needed but as a last / worst option amongst all non-fossil fuel options.

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

#405

Post by bregma »

roenxi wrote: post #248
rgbrenner wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post conveniently ignores solar/wind + batteries, which is even cheaper than coal.

Those are held to a much lower standard. I've seen people on HN seriously argue that we need to isolate nuclear waste from the biosphere for multiple generations, including contingencies for the collapse of English as a comprehensible language. What is the plan to isolate the poisonous meals in a solar panel for multiple generations? There isn't one. It just goes in landfill, I expect with relatively little concern f…

Just wait until people find out how lithium batteries are an incredibly toxic fire hazard with incredibly expensive externalities involved in their production and disposal. At least people haven't been stockpiling nuclear fuel pellets in their homes and sending them to their local landfill.

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

#406

Post by nullc »

piokoch wrote: post #269
Lazare wrote: 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 issue with nuclear is cost" the cost is the problem indeed, but the cost is something that can be lowered with sufficient amount of innovation - see how SpaceX managed to lower cost of sending satellites or people to the space. Nuclear energy researches were stagnant for many, many years - anything "atomic" was considered to be "non-green", and green movements were fighting nuclear energy vigorously, as a result…

> "the issue with nuclear is cost" the cost is the problem indeed, but the cost is something that can be lowered with sufficient amount of innovation - see how SpaceX managed to lower cost of sending satellites or people to the space.

so, four nuclear disasters in 13 years? :)

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

#407

Post by i_am_proteus »

DanBC wrote: post #379
koheripbal wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show me the costs associated with decommisioning a hydro electric dam? This is a hurdle people are only throwing in front of nuclear plants. Nuclear plants can run indefinitely if maintained - just like all major infrastructure.

I think we should be building nuclear everywhere, but it's important to realise the life of a nuclear power plant is between 20 to 40 years. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/29402043133.pdf > It is evident that the average age of power reactors in the IAEA's Member States is increasing. (See accompanying graphs.) By 2000, more than 50 nuclear plants will have been providing electricity for 25 years or longer.…

This study is strongly influenced by when nuclear reactors were built. Of course there aren't any 100-year-old nuclear plants; the technology isn't that old.

Some components certainly do degrade due to use, but it's entirely feasible to reuse large portions of the old plant by replacing the components that have degraded.

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

#408

Post by pfdietz »

adrianN wrote: post #313
Manfredo_1 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electrifying heating doesn't improve this situation, it worsens it drastically. People come back home after work and turn on the heat or AC right as the sun goes down. A big part of why renewable generation is so high in Germany is because they mostly heat their homes with gas (which emits carbon, but doesn't factor into electricity generation statistics). Using car batteries for storage doesn't solve the fundamental…

Eletrifying heating helps a lot if you integrate it with a smart grid. People generally don't care whether their home is 21 or 23 degrees warm, but the difference enables a lot of load shifting. I know people who take advantage of this today. This is btw, also true for many industrial processes. You'd integrate your car battery with the grid because you'd get cheaper charging in return, or some other form of monetary…

And even more so if your heating and/or cooling system has integrated thermal storage. Storing a joule as heat (or cold) is much easier/cheaper than storing it in a battery.

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

#409

Post by nullc »

AI_WAIFU wrote: post #180
p1mrx wrote: post #119

I think the most legitimate concern about nuclear safety is, what happens to the plant if you push the "OFF" button and go home? The current gigawatt-scale plants (AP1000, Hualong One, etc.) can cool without external water for 72 hours, after which a meltdown occurs. NuScale plans to run their reactors at the bottom of a pool, with enough water to passively transition to air cooling over the course of a month. (There…

I don't understand who's bright idea it was to use water as the primary coolant for a nuclear reactor. IIRC almost every single major nuclear incident has been caused or dramatically exacerbated by having it boil away or cause a steam explosion or mix with the ground water or chemically react with the fuel rods to produce additional heat and hydrogen gas which also explodes. Like just go through this list and count t…

Water certainly causes trouble. At least they're not cooled by something that explodes on contact with air or water!

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

#410

Post by eeZah7Ux »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #389
DanBC wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should be building nuclear everywhere, but it's important to realise the life of a nuclear power plant is between 20 to 40 years. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/29402043133.pdf > It is evident that the average age of power reactors in the IAEA's Member States is increasing. (See accompanying graphs.) By 2000, more than 50 nuclear plants will have been providing electricity for 25 years or longer.…

Surely the same aging effects also affect dams too, though?

Not at all.
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