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Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

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Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#51

Post by gizmo »

cedws wrote: post #14

Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…

Russia has five thousand nuclear warheads. If they want to turn Ukraine into a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland they can do so today.

A nuclear plant getting bombed would result in some nuclear contamination but not _that_ much, and accidental bombing of a nuclear power plant won't result in a mushroom cloud. Taking a nuclear plant out of commission with bombs is easy, re-creating Chernobyl is very hard even if you bomb it intentionally.

Nuclear plants are not weapons of war and they serve no military purpose. The press has written repeatedly -- completely without basis in reality -- about Russia going to turn Ukrainian nuclear power plants into bombs. Nuclear feels scary to people, and that's why those narratives gain traction.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#52

Post by appointment »

maelito wrote: post #13

> Or they were—costs are so high now that we don‘t even build plants anymore. That's factually wrong. France has a program of nuclear building. We don't build a lot of plants in Europe, but we do.

It is not going to happen. France's existing nuclear fleet will not replaced by new nukes when they reach end of life.

It is clear after three EPR projects have massively overrun in a row that Areva/EDF can't do it, and when faced by paying a foreign company to do it they will choose solar and wind instead.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#53

Post by krisoft »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #10

I don't really think he understands why the safety paradigm is the way it is. The problem is fear. Fear generated by individual incidents that have terrible local harmful effects. And the (perhaps inaccurate) perception that plants may still have issues. Plus the fairly unsolved waste storage problem. Fukushima, 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl were existential for the nuclear industry. Like it or lump it, they made nucle…

> Plus the fairly unsolved waste storage problem.

Is it more or less solved than the waste storage problem of fossil fuel generation?

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#54

Post by kalaksi »

jeltz wrote: post #15
philipwhiuk wrote: post #10

I don't really think he understands why the safety paradigm is the way it is. The problem is fear. Fear generated by individual incidents that have terrible local harmful effects. And the (perhaps inaccurate) perception that plants may still have issues. Plus the fairly unsolved waste storage problem. Fukushima, 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl were existential for the nuclear industry. Like it or lump it, they made nucle…

What terrible local harmful effects? Only Chernobyl had any and they were very modest. Compare that to the hydroelectric plants. There we can talk real incidents with harmful local effects. If people actually feared incidents they would campaign against hydroelectric power. And the last such incident was last year in Ukraine. Also just building a hydro plant can ruin the local ecosystem even if there is no incident.…

Are you saying Fukushima had none or less than modest harmful effects? I don't know what the parent meant, but the whole Fukushima disaster management and clean up will take decades and people had to leave their homes.

To add, I agree about your point about hydro in general. It's a complicated comparison, though.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#55

Post by [deleted] »

cedws wrote: post #14

Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…

[deleted]

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#56

Post by entropyneur »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #21
cedws wrote: post #14

Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…

Fully agreed. When the Ukraine war broke out, in Germany we had discussions how we could no longer rely on cheap russian gas and there we politicians actively demanding NPP to be reactivated. At the same time our government decided to spent 100 bilion € for the military and defense. This is surreal, when experts explain how "safe" NPPS are, the safety assumptions never asume a war going on around that NPP. If you fac…

In Ukraine alone, there have been two major instances of military destruction of hydroelectric dams (Dnieper Hydroelectric Station during WWII and Kakhovka Dam during the current war) with the number of casualties far greater than that of all nuclear power incidents in history combined. Somehow, nobody's using that as an argument against hydro power.

If anything, Germany's reliance on Russian gas did a lot more to put the country in danger of war.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#57

Post by ekianjo »

ponorin wrote: post #50

The article is too US-centric to a fault. Basically all project's costs after 1970s balloon to an extent. Japan's cost has risen. French, while only slightly, has risen. Same for India. Only S. Korea have seen construction prices fall, but notice the price bottoming out after the 1990s. It's only maintaining the price, not getting lower. Regardless, these other countries didn't contribute that much to increase global…

> Japan (rightfully) has lost trust on nuclear and decided to reset their entire nuclear generation capacity.

bullshit. Japan is in the process of restarting all of their nuclear plants. Price of energy had doubled after the grid went off nuclear.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#59

Post by ekianjo »

cedws wrote: post #14

Something I haven’t seen discussed in the nuclear debate is that NPPs become a high risk target in times of war. Look at what’s happened in Ukraine regarding the Zaporizhzhia power plant. The IAEA has been crapping itself the entire time while both Ukraine and Russia have haphazardly been shooting and bombing around it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy…

> d it. If Russia were forced out of their position, they could adopt a scorched earth policy and destroy it, potentially irradiating the area.

thats not how nuclear power plants work. bombing them dont magically turn them into nuclear bombs or something.

Re: Why has nuclear power been a flop? (2021)

#60

Post by robertlagrant »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #10

I don't really think he understands why the safety paradigm is the way it is. The problem is fear. Fear generated by individual incidents that have terrible local harmful effects. And the (perhaps inaccurate) perception that plants may still have issues. Plus the fairly unsolved waste storage problem. Fukushima, 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl were existential for the nuclear industry. Like it or lump it, they made nucle…

> Plus the fairly unsolved waste storage problem.

I don't think it is unsolved, is it?

> Fukushima, 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl were existential for the nuclear industry. Like it or lump it, they made nuclear feel less safe.

I don't think Fukushima made nuclear feel less safe. The terrible reporting and existing mindsets might have, but how could a single death when a tsunami hits a reactor make people feel unsafe in and of itself?

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