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Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

nytimes.com

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Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#71

Post by azinman2 »

beamatronic wrote: post #50
headcanon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In hindsight, yes they should not have built a nuclear power plant in an earthquake-prone area like Japan. But there are plenty of places that are completely safe to build nuclear reactors, and given the alternatives, we should lend the advantages credence. Hopefully the whole debate will be moot when either solar/wind gets to a certain point or we figure out nuclear fusion.

The earthquake wasn't nearly as much of a problem as the tsunami

Earthquakes cause tsunamis.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#73

Post by cmurf »

hackuser wrote: post #16
freehunter wrote: post #4

I find the headline weird, "a blow to nuclear power". I feel like nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry. Westinghouse has made some bad deals, sure, but the real "blow to nuclear power" has been the massive refusal by both citizens and governments to build new plants, and the few nota…

> nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry It's interesting that the fossil fuels do far more harm, but nuclear is what everyone fears. (In fairness, nuclear problems do far more harm locally to the plant.)

IEA says 6.5 million die per year from air pollution. WHO says it's 1 million deaths per year from specifically burning coal pollution. And it's roughly 1000 deaths per year from nuclear.

Air pollution deaths are "normal operation" not catastrophic event. Whereas normal operation deaths for nuclear is essentially 0, where deaths happen as a result of catastrophe. So there is something of a lizard brain mentality going on when it comes to near term risk assessment. I think the rational arguments pretty much are all economic: they're expensive and basically even a highly regulated and subsidized "free market" has said this isn't worth it and we can't make it work.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#74

Post by bgentry »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #58
killjoywashere wrote: post #5

The real concern here is making sure the existing nuclear plants have a clear glide slope toward end-of-life. Nuclear power is an extremely tight community. On the nuclear carrier I was on (powered by Westinghouse plants), there was a valve (a valve!) malfunctioning and the tech rep flown out from the company took one look at it and said "This bit's in backward". "How do you know?" "I designed it". Which means the sa…

> "This bit's in backward" This is why I'm against nuclear power. As safe as the technology could be, it still run by humans who make errors. If you think a bit being put in backwards isn't a big deal, check out the history of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. > The San Onofre station had technical problems over the years. In July 1982, Time wrote, "The firm Bechtel was ... embarrassed in 1977, when it installed…

I think this is not an argument against nuclear power, but an argument against the very complicated reactor designs that are in widespread use. Because they start with an inherently unsafe design, they can only be made safe with many layers of protective measures.

Newer reactor designs can avoid these issues.

On a personal note, I grew up about 10-15 miles north of San Onofre, and I don't think many folks had an idea of how poorly that facility was run.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#75

Post by striking »

wonderous wrote: post #53

@Dang (HN "meta" Q&A) Has HN ever looked into clustering news using Google News to do it? Reason I ask is how HN's de-dup filter works is puzzling to me and related stories would likely be useful to pool comments/de-dup/etc on a single news event. Example of dups, clusters, themes on HN on this event: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=westinghouse&sort=byDate&prefi... Google News cluster: https://news.google.com/news/m/m…

The de-dupe filter is based on how much discussion went on in past posts. But that actually doesn't affect the current case we're looking at here, as there are no duplicates of this link: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F...

Now, in a sense, there was a duplicate, but because the URL didn't match, it didn't count. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2F*.nytimes.com%2F20... The de-dupe filter would've turned new submissions of your post into votes for your post, if it had caught the duplicate.

That being said, I don't think HN is designed to pool discussion over time, preferring to archive discussion of each story. At this point, you can't even upvote older posts; they can only be added to your favorites.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#76

Post by MichaelApproved »

tonmoy wrote: post #67
MichaelApproved wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This bit's in backward" This is why I'm against nuclear power. As safe as the technology could be, it still run by humans who make errors. If you think a bit being put in backwards isn't a big deal, check out the history of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. > The San Onofre station had technical problems over the years. In July 1982, Time wrote, "The firm Bechtel was ... embarrassed in 1977, when it installed…

Are you implying installing something backwards is catastrophically dangerous?

I'm saying it catastrophically destroys my trust in the industry.

You're saying that you trust an industry that...

> In 2008, the San Onofre plant received multiple citations over issues such as failed emergency generators, improperly wired batteries and falsified fire safety data. In its annual review of 2011, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) identified improvements but noted that in the area of human performance, "corrective actions to date have not resulted in sustained and measurable improvement”.

There's a history of human error and negligence within the industry. That history of errors and negligence is why I am against nuclear power.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#77

Post by anovikov »

Why should we be worried? Nuclear power is a no go for civilized world. It is not insurable. It has well-developed, clean alternatives. Apart from carriers and subs, it has no good applications (it would be also be great to get back to nuclear missile cruisers and ideally even destroyers, but outside of the military, i can't see any use for it at all).

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#78

Post by thrillgore »

novalis78 wrote: post #56
freehunter wrote: post #4

I find the headline weird, "a blow to nuclear power". I feel like nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry. Westinghouse has made some bad deals, sure, but the real "blow to nuclear power" has been the massive refusal by both citizens and governments to build new plants, and the few nota…

Can't wait for an Elon Musk type investor tackle Thorium based Molten Salt reactors. The public opposition to nuclear needs to be changed with positive counter examples.

It won't happen. MSRs may be a great idea on paper but solar scaling cheaply negates the need or interest in using them for small communes.

Other political factors such as the inherit stigma around nuclear and the upheaval of the defense-sector supply chain make them a harder sell.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#79

Post by avar »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #58
killjoywashere wrote: post #5

The real concern here is making sure the existing nuclear plants have a clear glide slope toward end-of-life. Nuclear power is an extremely tight community. On the nuclear carrier I was on (powered by Westinghouse plants), there was a valve (a valve!) malfunctioning and the tech rep flown out from the company took one look at it and said "This bit's in backward". "How do you know?" "I designed it". Which means the sa…

> "This bit's in backward" This is why I'm against nuclear power. As safe as the technology could be, it still run by humans who make errors. If you think a bit being put in backwards isn't a big deal, check out the history of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. > The San Onofre station had technical problems over the years. In July 1982, Time wrote, "The firm Bechtel was ... embarrassed in 1977, when it installed…

Being against nuclear for trivial reasons like these is why we have the alternative: coal plants. Those kill an estimated 300,000 thousand people per year[1].

It's only recently that renewables have become a realistic alternative in some (but not all) cases, but for decades we've had people dropping like flies due to coal, entirely because the public is too science illiterate to understand that nuclear isn't anywhere as big of a deal by comparison.

1. https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/...

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#80

Post by kpil »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #37
hackuser wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nuclear power is possibly the most attacked form of energy that exists, and that includes coal and petroleum, both of which are still heavily used despite any public outcry It's interesting that the fossil fuels do far more harm, but nuclear is what everyone fears. (In fairness, nuclear problems do far more harm locally to the plant.)

Indeed. Coal plants create much more widespread radiation pollution than nuclear plants. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

As for instance half of Sweden still have increased levels of caesium 137 since Chernobyl, and I have just finished a spaghetti bolognese made from a moose from that area, I am not really impressed by average values.

The health effects have been small in Sweden, but it still affects our quality of life, in the sense that we have to be vary of what we eat.

If we keep having an incident every 15-20 years, it will potentially affect large areas, and another incident in Europe might be unfathomably expensive.

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