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New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

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51–60 of 69 posts

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#51
post #49

Why don't we build these reactors deep underground? Doesn't the United States use an old abandoned mine to store spent nuclear rods while they decay? Is it extremely cost prohibitive to dig down into existing abandoned mines (or even quarries)? and retrofit them with nuclear reactors? Even if something catastrophic happens, if it's geologically separated by thousands of tons of rocks/dirt/sediment and is away from a…

Cooling can be a problem. Reactors usually have access to large amounts of water (cheap) to expel excess heat so you would need to pump the heat over a long distance to somewhere cool enough to dump the heat to. Or you would need to surround everything in TEGs to convert the excess heat (expensive).

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#52
post #20
post #3

Unpopular opinion (though getting less so): the politicization of nuclear energy in the 1960s and the resulting lack of investment & R&D advances may go down as one of the biggest blunders in human history. Even with some modest ongoing investments, we'd have designs that are FAR safer than systems currently in operation.

Problem isn't designs, problem is generating power, without subsidies, at a rate competitive with renewables. (Particularly, wind.) Point is, the problem is financial, not technical. Nuclear, any nuclear design, is just expensive. As opposed to the bunches of a thousand windmills that T Boone Pickens wanted to slap up on whim in place after place. Those windmills start generating revenue a month later. It's just hard…

That's something I feel a lot of people are missing with the nuclear argument, we are having this argument 20 years too late. Nuclear would have been the perfect energy source of the latter half of the 20th century, which if embraced would have allowed us to avoid this ridiculous climate panic situation we are in. However, renewables would have ended up replacing nuclear anyway, not because of safety concerns, but because at the end of the day a wind turbine or solar panel doesn't need to be constantly babysat by PhDs with costly salaries.

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#53
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this can be considered a failure of regulation; that the regulation stopped short of an outright ban is much more of a failure of regulation in some ways. The tail risks involved in nuclear power are just too high. It's not a question of laymen misunderstanding or thinking that radiation is magic or being scared by the specter of Chernobyl. If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's…

> If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's that we underestimate the risk that bad things can happen with nuclear, and we overestimate our ability to engineer around those things. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... : > there were no deaths caused by acute radiation syndrome. Given the uncertain health effects of low-dose radiation, cancer deaths cannot be ruled…

The severity of Chernobyl was greatly compounded by the fact that the Soviet government went out of their way to conceal the severity. The response to Fukushima had no such operations in place; the response was swift and well-organized and evacuations were rapid and deliberately more severe than the situation seemed to warrant. Monitoring was also used to detect elevated radioactive isotopes in drinking water and other secondary effects to prevent them from causing more widespread damage.

That said, is it your belief that if the government had taken no action to protect the civilian population, that the impact would have been similar -- "no consequences to humans" as you say? Don't confuse the severity of the scope of the accident with the casualty list; the disaster was very serious and should not be underplayed. And most of all, it should force all of us to reconsider our assessment of the potential damage that can be done by failing nuclear power plants.

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#54
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People got scared (somewhat legitimately) and we regulated them to death. It became so risky and so expensive to invest in nuclear that nobody, not even the big companies with nuclear divisions like GE did it. People talk about failures of the market all the time, and there are many. This was one of the failures of regulation. I think we're starting to see a small revival here finally, but is it too late? Renewables…

I don't think this can be considered a failure of regulation; that the regulation stopped short of an outright ban is much more of a failure of regulation in some ways. The tail risks involved in nuclear power are just too high. It's not a question of laymen misunderstanding or thinking that radiation is magic or being scared by the specter of Chernobyl. If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's…

I must have missed something with Fukashima. How much land area is going to be literally lost (sumberged in water) due to it? How many cities? How many species are projected to go extinct because of it?

Nuclear was our alternative to the biggest environmental crises we have ever faced. The baseline consequences of not using it are worse then the tail risks you cite.

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#55
post #3

Unpopular opinion (though getting less so): the politicization of nuclear energy in the 1960s and the resulting lack of investment & R&D advances may go down as one of the biggest blunders in human history. Even with some modest ongoing investments, we'd have designs that are FAR safer than systems currently in operation.

It's not only about safety though. A big problem with nuclear is the centralization it entails. Big, centrally controlled power, in contrast with localizable options like solar, lends itself to heavy handed state control, big industry exploitation, corruption, and just general top-down control of consumer options. I prefer technologies like solar, which can be installed and controlled locally by the property owner themselves.

If nuclear is really needed, I would rather see it be the last resort option only in cases where renewables are not sufficient... but this conclusion about whether renewables are sufficient or not should be reached only after best efforts at renewables have been made, which is certainly not the case today.

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#56
post #11
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People got scared (somewhat legitimately) and we regulated them to death. It became so risky and so expensive to invest in nuclear that nobody, not even the big companies with nuclear divisions like GE did it. People talk about failures of the market all the time, and there are many. This was one of the failures of regulation. I think we're starting to see a small revival here finally, but is it too late? Renewables…

I agree that it seems like a massive wasted opportunity, but the most compelling argument I've heard against nuclear power is that it creates a vulnerability. If a nuclear power plant in New York City had been successfully attacked 18 years ago, what would the damage have been? We may need to focus on the security of existing infrastructure before we begin to build the next generation of power.

It also creates a vulnerability to crony capitalism, top-down control, corruption, and overtaxation.

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this can be considered a failure of regulation; that the regulation stopped short of an outright ban is much more of a failure of regulation in some ways. The tail risks involved in nuclear power are just too high. It's not a question of laymen misunderstanding or thinking that radiation is magic or being scared by the specter of Chernobyl. If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's…

I must have missed something with Fukashima. How much land area is going to be literally lost (sumberged in water) due to it? How many cities? How many species are projected to go extinct because of it? Nuclear was our alternative to the biggest environmental crises we have ever faced. The baseline consequences of not using it are worse then the tail risks you cite.

How much money was spent on it, building it, operating it, cleaning it up, and losing what had been invested in the region around it? How have these costs have been passed on to the Japanese population as taxes, fees, or in other ways? I don't think we'll ever know.

If you are arguing that because you missed something, then the figure is zero, I don't think that's a reasonable argument. I don't think that is what you are saying, right?

Whatever the amount is, if that same amount of money had been put into renewables, many of those people would still be living in their homes today, with sustainable power for the foreseeable future.

Sometimes, when there is a crisis as you mention, the alternatives have to be weighed against each other. Just because one alternative addresses the crisis, doesn't mean it is the best alternative. Sure, we can use both if absolutely necessary (renewables and nuclear being the alternatives we are talking about here) but it makes more sense to me to start with the sensible one, namely, renewables, and use both only if, repeating myself, absolutely necessary.

Nuclear energy is less sensible from a consumer standpoint because it is more centralized, has larger safety issues, creates more hazardous wastes, impacts property values more, raises anxiety levels more, and is more susceptible to corruption, big industry control, crony capitalism, cost overruns, and leads to huge tax increases imposed to pay for all these issues.

Even the property value impact alone should be enough for nobody to want to have a nuclear power plant in their area.

We should go as far as possible with renewables before resorting to a technology that has larger problems.

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#59
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must have missed something with Fukashima. How much land area is going to be literally lost (sumberged in water) due to it? How many cities? How many species are projected to go extinct because of it? Nuclear was our alternative to the biggest environmental crises we have ever faced. The baseline consequences of not using it are worse then the tail risks you cite.

How much money was spent on it, building it, operating it, cleaning it up, and losing what had been invested in the region around it? How have these costs have been passed on to the Japanese population as taxes, fees, or in other ways? I don't think we'll ever know. If you are arguing that because you missed something, then the figure is zero, I don't think that's a reasonable argument. I don't think that is what you…

Today. The policy decisions we are talking about were made decades ago, when nuclear was an established (although young) industry, are renewables were decades away from being viable.

The damage is done. Building nuclear now won't fix it. But with the benifit of hindsight (and the benifit of arguing for the counterfactual), but strangling nuclear power decades ago was a regulatory mistake with literally disasterous consequences.

Re: New York state wants both renewables and nuclear energy (2016)

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this can be considered a failure of regulation; that the regulation stopped short of an outright ban is much more of a failure of regulation in some ways. The tail risks involved in nuclear power are just too high. It's not a question of laymen misunderstanding or thinking that radiation is magic or being scared by the specter of Chernobyl. If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's…

I must have missed something with Fukashima. How much land area is going to be literally lost (sumberged in water) due to it? How many cities? How many species are projected to go extinct because of it? Nuclear was our alternative to the biggest environmental crises we have ever faced. The baseline consequences of not using it are worse then the tail risks you cite.

You could make exactly the same argument about renewables. In terms of negative impacts they are very similar.
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