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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

#461

Post by chris_va »

Chathamization wrote: post #443
chris_va wrote: post #321

There are a couple of things everyone should know when it comes to energy production: 1) Energy investment is primarily driven by cost, not perceived/actual safety. Safety regulations do affect cost, but not enough to significantly change investment (at least in the US, with the current conditions). 2) Base load power and intermittent (e.g. solar/wind) power are not the same thing, and are not comparable. The concept…

> The concept that "solar and wind will save us all" by themselves is fundamentally incorrect, and actually they make things worse in many ways. Sure, this comes up a lot in these discussions. We don't need to rely 100% on any one type of plant, and we don't even have to eliminate coal plants completely. In the end, we're going to have to use a variety of options to fight climate change, and some of the major ones (l…

I agree that we'll likely have a mix, but the point I was trying to make was:

Before, we had low variability in demand, so things like nuclear, hydro, and geothermal ("clean" methods of producing base load power) had a chance to compete.

Now, we have high variability in demand, so all of those solutions are out (though hydro is a special case), unless externalities like future-cost of CO2 is priced into production cost via taxes or cap&trade.

Wind/Solar + Storage is too expensive, so the market will shift to wind/solar + natural gas. We'll end up burning possibly more fossil fuel, or roughly the same.

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

#462

Post by freeflight »

logfromblammo wrote: post #372
padseeker wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "politicization"? Please saw the movie the China syndrome and then 3 mile island happened. Then people were very afraid. These were real possibilities. Does anyone want to live near a nuclear power plant? Do you? I sure as hell would not. How can you twist fear of a disaster in "politicization"? You are also looking thru the lens of our current situation. Very little was being discussed about the ris…

I don't want to live next to a nuclear power plant, but I would be fine with living near a dozen of them. You see, that higher number implies a greater infrastructural and economic investment. Further, the sole large power plant in an area is automatically a military target, whereas if the same capacity were split across many facilities it becomes impractical to attack or control them all. I'd love to see each munici…

> You see, that higher number implies a greater infrastructural and economic investment.

A higher number of reactors also means more chances that one of them fails because reactors that don't exist can't fail but those that do most certainly can.

As such the security gains, from infrastructure synergies, would have to be massive to actually be able to offset that.

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

#464

Post by beat »

okreallywtf wrote: post #455
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…

This is the thing I don't get about nuclear proponents. While I'm not an opponent, we can scale sustainable energy sources now, we could have a Manhattan project type of program that, while costly, could replace the majority of our energy sources as fast as we can manufacture the panels and turbines. There is so much lead time in building a nuclear plant, it costs so much and then continues to be pretty costly in mai…

I think a lot of the love for nuclear is technophilia, not reason. We love nuclear because it's hard, requiring exotic engineering and, yes, risk. There's a bigger sense of triumph in it.

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

#465

Post by eli »

komali2 wrote: post #253
CydeWeys wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you say it was safe with a straight face when it clearly wasn't? That's like saying your car is fine when it's smashed upside-down in a ditch on the side of the highway. If some standards claimed it was safe, then those standards were simply wrong. By other standards (including, most importantly, reality), it definitely wasn't safe.

>That's like saying your car is fine when it's smashed upside-down in a ditch on the side of the highway. I'd argue it's more like saying your car is safe when it's smashed upside-down in a ditch on the side of the highway. It is safe. The safest minivan is fantastically safe. Then it smashes into a semi truck at 80 mph and everyone dies. It was still a safe car, when compared to other cars.

Indeed, some people would therefore conclude we'd all be better off focusing on ways to get around that don't involve driving...

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

#466

Post by gruturo »

Tomte wrote: post #197

Before Chernobyl blew up, nuclear energy proponents promised us, nuclear energy was safe. When Chernobyl blew up, it was obviously a stupid Soviet design, with stupid operating personnel. But now we've got new reactors, they are safe! Nothing could ever happen! Then Fukushima blew up. That was obviously okay, because it was a Tsunami in conjunction with a few other improbable acts, and we obviously can't expect the n…

Are you aware that the Fukushima reactor was actually 6 years older than Chernobyl?

Chernobyl's RBMK design is so dangerous that I'd call it borderline criminal - the experiments done in the night of the accident were the apex of recklessness, and the government's response was.... well, Sovietic.

Of course no matter how well you design it, people will fuck up and use it the wrong way and ignore maintenances and safety margins. And this only accounts extreme stupidity and dysfunctional management - it does not even consider deliberate attempts to blow the damn thing up (actually the Chernobyl tests could be considered that, but i mean an absolute nightmare scenario like a takeover by technically competent terrorists)

Which is why you need to take all these chances into account, add a level 9 tsunami, a comet, a once in 100000 years quake, Godzilla, a zombie apocalypse, Stuxnet, wanacry, the second coming of Christ, the Rapture, North Korea, Dr Strangelove and a dangerously bored Trump, and you engineer everything to be still impossible to blow up.

Which is what we have actually been doing. They're not getting built because certifying a new design is horribly expensive, and the anti-nuclear opposition would limit their deployment, making them anti economical, but no, we haven't stopped improving them.

Unfortunately we still run the old ones, which, like a car built in the 60s, would be so much less safe to not even be legal nowadays, but you need to take into account that they're on the road.

China is deploying some new ones, and that might cause them to be adopted in the western world (I hope).

We badly need something to bridge the gap between now and when renewables+batteries can completely fulfill demand, because meanwhile fossile fuel plants get deployed instead, and we are really fucking up the planet with those.

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

#467

Post by aquadrop »

payne92 wrote: post #13

I believe the politicization of nuclear energy (the resulting lack of investment & innovation) will go down as one of the major blunders in human history. We'd be in a far, far better situation with greenhouse gasses if we (as a human race) had continued to invest in nuclear energy. There would have been mishaps along the way, but at a much smaller scale than we're experiencing now with deaths from air pollution and…

> will go down as one of the major blunders in human history.

I agree, inability to properly advance nuclear energy will will be regarded as a big blunder in the future. The great irony that Greenpeace, which supposedly wants to save environment, dealt so much damage to it, by protesting nuclear energy.

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

#468

Post by appleiigs »

beat wrote: post #217
Recurecur wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New reactor designs completely eliminate the possibility of meltdown. LFRs include an electrically cooled salt plug that seals a holding tank. If power fails, the molten salt melts the plug, and the fuel safely drains into the tank. I particularly like ThorCon's concept, where the reactor is underground. Another plus of this reactor type is that water cooling isn't needed, so siting is much more flexible. Note that t…

"Completely eliminates the possibility" sounds like something a supervillain would say. I'm not saying that this passive safety system won't work, or is a bad idea. It sounds great from the brief description. BUT. There's a terrible, terrible tendency of the pro-nuclear side to use bombastic language, and then sneer at those with doubts as ignorant and emotional rather than logical. Pricing promises are another probl…

The senior engineer at my company was from Duke Energy. At the beginning of the Fukushima incident he loudly proclaimed that the safety mechanisms would kick in, preventing a disaster. He held educational session during lunch so he could explain the engineering. We all know the rest of the story.

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

#469

Post by bluGill »

padseeker wrote: post #187
payne92 wrote: post #13

I believe the politicization of nuclear energy (the resulting lack of investment & innovation) will go down as one of the major blunders in human history. We'd be in a far, far better situation with greenhouse gasses if we (as a human race) had continued to invest in nuclear energy. There would have been mishaps along the way, but at a much smaller scale than we're experiencing now with deaths from air pollution and…

What do you mean "politicization"? Please saw the movie the China syndrome and then 3 mile island happened. Then people were very afraid. These were real possibilities. Does anyone want to live near a nuclear power plant? Do you? I sure as hell would not. How can you twist fear of a disaster in "politicization"? You are also looking thru the lens of our current situation. Very little was being discussed about the ris…

Yes I do want to live next to a nuclear power plant. I miss my last house where I did, but I now work in a different state: it would be several hours every day of driving to live next to one.

Nuclear power plants are good neighbors: quiet and they pay a lot of taxes. Most of my neighbors when asked where the nuclear plant was pointed to the smokestacks on the coal power plant miles away.

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

#470

Post by wbl »

pps43 wrote: post #225
wbl wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people died in all of those? Now compare to the particulate pollution coal releases, which would force evacuation of neighborhoods if we treated them as nuclear plants. The US Navy has operated hundreds of reactors for decades 24/7.

The point is not how many people have died, but how bad the impact can be. Even if nobody dies, the need to evacuate a large city like New York or Tokyo because a nuclear power plant nearby underwent rapid unplanned deconstruction might easily wipe off all economic gains from the nuclear energy, and then some.

What's a worse accident then Chernobyl in terms of release? Evacuation is frequently not necessary as people willingly live in places with quite high natural radioactivity.
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