Ultra Safe Nuclear • Hacker News Board

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#71

Post by riffraff » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #10

xibalba wrote: post #3

Assuming nuclear truly can be ultra safe, how do you convince a public that has seen Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima to get on board? Particularly when the "competition" (solar, wind, etc) has such a strong tailwind.

First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated. For three mile island and Fukushima this figure is zero among the public. Less than two dozen among the plant workers (all of which died due to the hydrogen explosion not radiation). The areas that were evacuated are now safe to return. Chernobyl was worse, but th Sov…

> the areas that were evacuated are now safe to return.

is this true for Fukushima? As far as I understand, 8% of the "Difficult-to-Return zones" have been cleared up for access to people, but that is a far cry from "all cleared up, everybody goes back home".

[0] https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200916/p2a/00m/0na/01...

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#72

Post by adrianN » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #54

throwaway894345 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The glaring problem (pun intended) with solar and wind is that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow and we don't have a good way to store energy for those sunless and windless intervals.

We do have a good way to store energy. It's called batteries, they are already cost effective in several use cases, and their cost is going down about 5% per year.

Don't oversell them. Batteries as they are today are much too expensive to cover all needs. You need a way to store weeks of power consumption for large areas. Batteries are too capital intensive for that. They can take the role of peaker plants, but they are currently unsuited for storing energy for dark, windstill winter weeks. For that other technology, for example Power-to-Gas is needed currently.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#73

Post by lalaithion » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

beders wrote: post #51

manfredo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated. For three mile island and Fukushima this figure is zero among the public. Less than two dozen among the plant workers (all of which died due to the hydrogen explosion not radiation). The areas that were evacuated are now safe to return. Chernobyl was worse, but th Sov…

> First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated. I keep seeing justifications like that and it makes me want to puke. First of all: The total number of victims is unknown and it is still rising. Even for Chernobyl. Second: It costs tens of billions of dollars to clean up these messes. Paid for by the cow you can m…

Coal plants kill more people each year during normal operation than Chernobyl, 3 Mile, and Fukushima killed over all time.

"In 2008 the World Health Organization (WHO) and other organizations calculated that coal particulates pollution cause approximately one million deaths annually across the world"

"Long-term death estimates range from up to 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations) for the most exposed people of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, to 16,000 in total for all those exposed on the entire continent of Europe, with figures as high as 60,000 when including the relatively minor effects around the globe."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_and_environmental_impac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#74

Post by evgen » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

beders wrote: post #56

manfredo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not a problem. There's actually very little of it. It occupies a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high [1]. Storing it is pretty foolproof: bury it in an area with no aquifer. The main risk of contamination is getting into the groundwater. If there's no groundwater the risk of contamination is eliminated even if the containers decay over time. And lastly, it doesn't make sense to bur…

> Because it's not a problem. Have you seen John Oliver's piece about that and can you point out the flaws?

Are you actually trying to use an ill-informed rant by a mid-tier comedian as the primary support for your argument? Seriously?

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#75

Post by manfredo » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

beders wrote: post #51

manfredo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated. For three mile island and Fukushima this figure is zero among the public. Less than two dozen among the plant workers (all of which died due to the hydrogen explosion not radiation). The areas that were evacuated are now safe to return. Chernobyl was worse, but th Sov…

> First, point out that Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima amount to extremely small numbers of deaths relative to the power these plants generated. I keep seeing justifications like that and it makes me want to puke. First of all: The total number of victims is unknown and it is still rising. Even for Chernobyl. Second: It costs tens of billions of dollars to clean up these messes. Paid for by the cow you can m…

> I keep seeing justifications like that and it makes me want to puke. First of all: The total number of victims is unknown and it is still rising. Even for Chernobyl.

The total number of victims was unknown for Chernobyl. We didn't know what the impact on cancer rates would be. But it isn't the 1980s anymore. We can compare the rates of cancer and other radiation related illnesses among the people who experienced Chernobyl and the general population. The radiation exposure due to Fukushima and 3 Mile Island was insufficient to cause adverse health effects. Yes, we do know the impact of these failures.

3 Mile Island took $1 billion to clean up not 10 billion. The exclusion zones around Chernobyl and Fukushima represent greater economic tolls, but the latter has since been lifted. By comparison, what is your cost estimate to build 3 weeks of energy storage in the US?

Sure, wind and solar could work if there's a scientific breakthrough that makes energy storage extremely cheap and scalable by several orders of magnitude. But until that scientific breakthrough in storage happens, nuclear and renewables aren't even playing the same game.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#76

Post by dangerface » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

aqme28 wrote: post #9

dangerface wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (solar, wind, etc) has such a strong tailwind. Do they? I love renewables but for some reason the masses still just don't think you can get enough energy out of sky farts and hippy sun rays. The fact that ALL energy in our solar system comes from the sun is irrelevant the sun just doesn't feel very powerful. The public knows that nuclear is super powerful. > how do you convince a public that has seen Chernobyl, Thr…

People aren't afraid of solar panels, and the tailwind probably refers to the fact that they're getting cheaper at an extremely rapid pace.

People are afraid of having no energy, they think the sun is too weak to provide that energy and so we must burn things like coal, gas, oil, uranium whatever, see detritus reply as an example.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#77

Post by adrianN » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #70

ceilingcorner wrote: post #60

I find it a little odd that a site called Hacker News is so bullish on nuclear power. Could there be anything less hacker than a centralized, exclusively government owned and operated source of power? No thanks. I’d rather put more resources into solar, wind, and other sources of power that don’t depend on the government to not explode and irradiate the immediate area for hundreds of years.

I think the site is bullish on nuclear power because it is overwhelmingly populated by reasonably educated people who are capable of performing risk analysis and understand cost/benefit tradeoffs. If you are looking for a herd of scared sheep who will parrot back whatever propaganda is being pushed by Greenpeace today I think you will have better luck over at Reddit.

Note that the comment you're replying to is not talking about the dangers of nuclear power, but about the spirit of centralization vs diy hacking. I don't think the amount of vitriol in your comment is appropriate.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#78

Post by ceilingcorner » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #70

ceilingcorner wrote: post #60

I find it a little odd that a site called Hacker News is so bullish on nuclear power. Could there be anything less hacker than a centralized, exclusively government owned and operated source of power? No thanks. I’d rather put more resources into solar, wind, and other sources of power that don’t depend on the government to not explode and irradiate the immediate area for hundreds of years.

I think the site is bullish on nuclear power because it is overwhelmingly populated by reasonably educated people who are capable of performing risk analysis and understand cost/benefit tradeoffs. If you are looking for a herd of scared sheep who will parrot back whatever propaganda is being pushed by Greenpeace today I think you will have better luck over at Reddit.

That doesn’t really address my comment, at all.

These sort of strawman accusations of parroting propaganda are so bizarre. I don’t think I’ve read a single article or book by Greenpeace in my life. I genuinely have no idea what you are referring to.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#79

Post by merb » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #47

merb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. How long does it need to be kept safe? 2. How to find a storage facility that can keep it safe that long? 3. How to ensure that a facility does not contamine other stuff in X years? 4. if it is recycable why does nobody do it? 5. if it is so easy to store it safe, why does not country have a TRUE final depot? yeah coal is bad, but why compare it to coal in the first place when we want to reduce such things anyway?…

1. Forever. Uranium is a heavy metal, it's toxic regardless of it's radioactivity. 2. The US already has one [1]. Congress stopped it's opening, but it's sitting there built ready to be used. Europe also is constructing a disposal site [2] 3. Like I wrote in my comment, bury it in an area with no groundwater. 4. France does recycle it's nuclear waste. 5. We do, as I pointed out above. And for the second time, this wa…

both your links actually say the following:

1. yucca mountain can not sustain a million years due to strong seismic activity

2. onkalo stores the waste in iron that is probably corrosion prone

well no matter the waste is a problem and humans can't handle it, because money is the problem. as long as somebody can make it cheaper the cheapest option is always used which probably can harm people.

nuclear technology was NEVER the problem, people were. even the safest plan is still unsafe, because people and money. fukushima, failed because of money and people. tschernobyl failed because of money and people.

and money will be even a bigger issue when there are cheaper technologies. also no nuclear plant is emission free, even most construction emissions are already pretty high and lots of studies talk so nicely about that, but undervalue most of that by a high margin.

Re: Ultra Safe Nuclear

#80

Post by slezyr » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

nimish wrote: post #18

Safety is no longer the reason Nuclear is not worth it. The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free! The wind -- caused by solar heating -- also generates free power. The cost of harvesting it is now so low, and will always continue to decline as any technology will, that any fuel-based generation mechanism is going to be rendered uneconomic…

> The sun is a giant, free nuclear fusion plant in the sky. We can capture 1/5th of its output per square meter. For free!

Are going to clean solar panels/mirrors for free?

> Bahawalpur is desert terrain , having high dust count, therefore, the efficiency of panels were reduced by 40%. It required 30 people to clean panels with 15 days to restore the panels back to their full capacity, which reduced production of installed 100MW plant to below 18 MW

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaid-e-Azam_Solar_Park#Operat...