[HN Gopher] The lessons of Fukushima - Nuclear power must be wel... ___________________________________________________________________ The lessons of Fukushima - Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched Author : mpweiher Score : 231 points Date : 2021-03-04 19:33 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.economist.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com) | neonate wrote: | https://archive.fo/SLoqm | DavidVoid wrote: | Nuclear power, when done right, is good and safe. But right now | it's much too financially and politically risky when compared to | the alternatives. | | Look at Finland for example. They're building two new power | plants: | | Olkiluoto Unit 3: Under construction since 2005, commercial | operation delayed by at least 13 years now and the initial | delivery price of EUR3 billion is estimated to end up at EUR8.5 | billion. | | Hanhikivi: Won't be operational until at earliest 2028 and is | expected to cost EUR6.7 billion. 34% of the plant is/will be | owned by the Russian state coorporation Rosatom, because all the | alternative suppliers were too expensive. If the plant eventually | becomes operational then Rosatom will supply 3% of Finland's | total electricity production. | | Would it not have been much more reasonable to spend this money | on developing and investing in renewable energy sources? | StillBored wrote: | Can you give hard reasons for the delay? As in this concrete | needed to be poured 6" thicker than originally speced and what | the upgrade provides? | | The couple times I've actually seen these changes described, | they are changes enacted to stall the development, not because | of a hard technical reason in the design. | fsflover wrote: | Nuclear power would be more competitive if the CO2 tax was | implemented. | alexashka wrote: | Maybe science, engineering and social planning should be left to | people who actually specialize and work in those fields? | | Just introduce decapitation for people who turn out to be | incompetent idiots. | | I don't understand what this fear mongering or 'discussion' of | science and technology at the level of idiot journalists | accomplishes, besides making idiot readers think they can have an | opinion on just about anything because they're now 'informed'. | | If there was a time when idiots knew they were idiots and stayed | in their lane, I'd like to go back to it, if not, I'd love for it | to be introduced. Otherwise, we'll have populist idiots promising | to go to the moon to harvest it for cheese and idiots debating | whether we should harvest the moon for cheese or invest in an | eternal life elixir. | lamontcg wrote: | Every time I get into an argument with someone pro-nuclear and | bring up the costs, they always blame hippies hamstringing | nuclear power with regulations. Around and around the argument | goes, meanwhile solar and wind costs keep on dropping, and | baseload concerns keep on fading away. | SCAQTony wrote: | Perhaps centralized nuclear plants are the biggest existential | threat whereas micro-nuclear plants, staggered some miles miles | away from each other would produce more energy and smaller scale | accidents if one was to occur? | HPsquared wrote: | I read your comment as "more and smaller scale accidents" | | Hopefully fewer accidents as well! Small reactors do tend to | have better passive safety... | nickdothutton wrote: | The message is don't use 1940s physics understanding, 1950s | design, 1960s construction to build a reactor that is then run | for about 50 years and and expect to continue to avoid problems | with it. | croes wrote: | They will say similar in 50 years about today's technology. | thereisnospork wrote: | That's the point, because right now 50 years from now they | will still be talking about 100 year old technology because | we haven't allowed ourselves to advance. | quasirandom wrote: | Some problems that Fukushima had: 1950s vintage design, active | cooling system, backup power at sea level in a seismically active | area. This kind of failure was not just predictable, it was | predicted. | | People travel to Japan from around the world to learn how to | build earthquake resistant structures. Their nuclear engineers | are top-notch. It was the bureaucracy that failed, not the | talent. | | In short, the problems were human not technical. People get | complacent and greedy. They use every procedural tool they have | to delay upgrades, maintenance, and improvement. I think that is | at the core of most nuclear skepticism. Does anyone honestly | think the United States has institutions sound enough to safely | manage nuclear power over multiple decades? Or will they neglect | basic maintenance and upgrades? | NoOneNew wrote: | I can't find the article for the life of me. From what I can | remember, it was soon after the disaster, something came out | about another plant that was "hit" by high waters as well. The | difference was, their seawall was stupid high. One of the civic | engineers during development fought tooth and nail to build the | excessively high wall compared to what the gov building code | was. If I remember correctly, it ended up being only a two or | so meters taller than the tsunami that hit them. The engineer | had a really baller statement in the article about how | bureaucrats are useless and shouldn't have an opinion when it | comes to life safety. I wish I could find it. | samizdis wrote: | This one, maybe? | | https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2012/08/how_tenacity_a_wa. | .. | NoOneNew wrote: | How the hell did you find it so quick? | | I'm surprised I remembered it relatively well. Though, 1 | meter buffer between the tsunami and seawall and the | politician quote is better in his words: | | >"Matsunaga-san hated bureaucrats," Oshima said. "He said | they are like human trash. In your country, too, there are | probably bureaucrats or officials who never take final | responsibility. | samizdis wrote: | Divination via DuckDuckGo :-) | | From words in your comment, I used this search string: | japan nuclear plant saved engineer battle high sea wall | | The result was third in the returned list. (Settings - | safe search off, global region selected.) | | Edit to amend: words and concepts in your comment. Also, | I'm chuffed to have been able to be of use. | NoOneNew wrote: | You... you're beautiful. Thank you. You may have just | made me a convert to DDG. | samizdis wrote: | Aw! The beautiful person in this effort was Karen Sparck | Jones [1], who gave us tf-idf [2]. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Sp%C3%A4rck_Jones | | [2] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_document_frequency | | But thank you. | andrewla wrote: | The reason why I find this logic faulty is that none of the | "known defects" were sufficient to shut down the plant. It's | not a question of bureaucracy -- rather, the bureaucrats are on | the other side. To cover their asses, they issue constant | statements of imminent danger, and since those dangers never | manifest, nobody believes them anymore. | | If anyone took the warnings seriously the plant would have been | shut down ages ago. And that's the problem with tail disasters | -- they happen so infrequently that the system is assumed to be | redundant to all of them, so even a "failure" as predicted | would be met by a failsafe. | | That's why I personally have turned against nuclear power. It's | too complicated and the risks live out on the tail, and they | are large (though not "fat" in the Taleb sense -- they're still | bounded geographically). | philipkglass wrote: | I think that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is world- | leading. They identify problems proactively and require | operators to phase in safety upgrades even for plants built 50 | years ago. I live near an operating nuclear reactor and I | prefer it over any form of fossil plant. Power reactors | operating in the United States are reliable, safe, and have | extremely low life cycle emissions of greenhouse gases. | | Unfortunately, one of the most common refrains from nuclear | boosters is that nuclear power is over-regulated. I don't want | American nuclear plants held to the same lax | safety/environmental standards as fossil plants. If we used | taxes to internalize the costs of pollution from fossil-fired | plants, low cost natural gas plants probably wouldn't be | pushing reactors into early retirement. But leveling the | playing field by slashing nuclear safety/inspection down to the | low standard expected of fossil plants is the wrong way to go. | | I am open to _specific_ proposals for reducing regulations in | the nuclear sector if there are regulations that impose | additional process overhead, don 't actually serve a purpose, | and survive only from inertia. I wouldn't be surprised to hear | that there are some of these. But I've been discussing nuclear | power for 20+ years, starting back on Usenet, and specific | proposals are much less common than generic "get rid of red | tape" bluster. | hanniabu wrote: | Sorry but I don't trust any nuclear plant in the US to put | safety over profits over the long term, especially after all | the illogical deregulation done the last 4 years. | | There's also already some questions on safety in regards to | current plants. They're constantly loosening tolerances and | changing the way tests are performed to make otherwise failed | tests fall within acceptable limits. Plus the plants are | already operating 2x their engineered lifespan. Yeah, no | thank you. | [deleted] | philipkglass wrote: | The Union of Concerned Scientists has posted a great blog | series "Role of Regulation in Nuclear Plant Safety." It's | written by Dave Lochbaum, a degreed nuclear engineer who | worked at American nuclear plants for 17 years. I think | it's a better overview of NRC action and plant safety than | any one incident. I've collected all the links here. | | Series introduction: | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/role-of-nuclear- | regul... | | Flooding at Nine Mile Point: Regulation and Nuclear Power | Safety #1 https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/flooding- | at-nine-mile... | | Three Mile Island Intruder: #2 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/three-mile-island- | int... | | Empty Pipe Dreams at Palo Verde: #3 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/empty-pipe-dreams- | at-... | | Yankee Rowe and Reactor Vessel Safety: #4 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/yankee-rowe-and- | react... | | Flooding at a Florida Nuclear Plant: #5 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/flooding-at-a- | florida... | | Containment Design Flaw at DC Cook Nuclear Plant: #6 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/containment-flaw- | at-d... | | Pipe Rupture at Surry Nuclear Plant Kills Four Workers: #7 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/pipe-rupture-at- | surry | | Anticipated Transient Without Scram: #8 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/anticipated- | transient... | | Naughty and Nice Nuclear Nappers: #9 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/naughty-and-nice- | nucl... | | Breaking Containment at Crystal River 3: #10 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/breaking- | containment-... | | Fatal Accident at Arkansas Nuclear One: #11 | https://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/fatal-accident-at- | ark... | gbrown_ wrote: | How much are loosening regulations a concern for nuclear in | the US? | | Obviously recently general utilities haven't fared well as | of late (Texas) or nuclear in the past (e.g. Rocky Flats). | But as a foreigner who thinks as far as nuclear power is | concerned, the DOE seems to being an OK job as of late. | Could you share the specifics of the tests you are | referring to? | hanniabu wrote: | This first link makes me absolutely furious. There's too | much to quote from here, but this succicnt excerpt | touches on the water test. It goes into more detail in | another part of the article. The post has numerous | example of very concerning issues. | | > When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed -- up to | 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused | radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier | test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet | standards. | | https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43455859 | | > The proposal comes as most of the nation's nuclear | power plants, which were designed and built in the 1960s | or 1970s, are reaching the end of their original 40- to | 50-year operating licenses. Many plant operators have | sought licenses to extend the operating life of their | plants past the original deadlines, even as experts have | warned that aging plants come with heightened concerns | about safety. | | https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/climate/nrc-nuclear- | inspe... | | > The nuclear industry is also pushing the NRC to cut | down on safety inspections and rely instead on plants to | police themselves. The NRC "is listening" to this advice, | the Associated Press reported last month. "Annie Caputo, | a former nuclear-energy lobbyist now serving as one of | four board members appointed or reappointed by President | Donald Trump, told an industry meeting this week that she | was 'open to self-assessments' by nuclear plant | operators, who are proposing that self-reporting by | operators take the place of some NRC inspections." | | https://newrepublic.com/article/153465/its-not-just-pork- | tru... | gbrown_ wrote: | Thank you for the detailed and insightful reply! | credit_guy wrote: | Here, I'll come up with a proposal. If Congress is serious | about climate change, then they can ask (and allocate the | budget) the Department of Energy to procure and operate a | bunch of naval nuclear reactors. With whatever internal | regulations they have, the US Navy has not had a single | incident in their entire history of operating nuclear | reactors. They are also quite cost effective, for example the | cost of the 2 reactors A1B [1] that power a Gerald Ford | carrier is about $1 BN. That comes to about $2BN/GW, which is | about a tenth of what a civilian reactor costs. The US Navy | builds about 1 carrier every 4 years so that comes to 1 | reactor every other year. If the DoE gets the Congressional | mandate to procure a few reactors per year, the cost is going | to surely come down. Also these reactors don't need refueling | for about 2 decades, while civilian reactors are refueled | every 1.5 years. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1B_reactor | Hammershaft wrote: | Thats a great idea. I'm trying and failing to find gotchas. | credit_guy wrote: | There is a potential gotcha: proliferation potential. The | naval reactors use highly enriched uranium; if it falls | in the wrong hands, you can end up with someone being | able to build a bomb. That's why I said such a program | needs to be run by the Department of Energy, the same | department that has to maintain the nukes. I don't have a | personal objection to this, but a lot of people would be | unhappy with an essentially military program to be | established for a problem that is not military in nature. | philipkglass wrote: | The US stockpile of HEU would be depleted a lot faster this | way, but enrichment could start again. I don't see major | downsides to this proposal. Thanks for providing a specific | and plausible idea! | [deleted] | DennisP wrote: | I'm fine with rational regulation and good safety | inspections. Here's an example of a regulatory framework that | needed reform: | | Several years ago I got to attend a meeting between a bunch | of people from advanced nuclear startups, and a former head | of the NRC. The startup people said their biggest problem was | that the NRC required near-complete blueprints before they | would even look at the design. Then they would give a flat | yes or no. If yes then you still had just a paper reactor, | and if no then you were out of business. | | Getting to that point required several hundred million | dollars. That's a pretty difficult environment for investors. | They said just a more phased process would help a lot. The | NRC person was unsympathetic, said it wasn't the NRC's job to | help develop new nuclear technology, and was uninterested in | climate change. | | Fortunately Congress has gotten involved since then and | things seem to be improving. | [deleted] | dtwest wrote: | I live near one too, I'm not sure if I should be impressed | that disaster was averted in 2002 or if I should be concerned | how close things got: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Besse_Nuclear_Po. | .. | | It would be nice to hear from someone who is more | knowledgeable on the subject than myself. | partingshots wrote: | If an accident almost happened in 2002, then the | probability only increases as time goes on. | | I personally wouldn't feel safe, in the long run, buying a | house or living near an aging nuclear power plant. | WalterBright wrote: | There was a long list of engineering failures at Fukushima. The | idea with airplanes is not "design this component so it cannot | fail" but "design the system so it can tolerate component | failure". Fukushima had a list of failures it could not | tolerate. | | You mentioned one, the vulnerability of the backup power to the | seawall being overtopped. The generators could have been put on | a raised platform. There were others: | | 1. the hydrogen was vented into an enclosed space | | 2. no way to add water to the cooling system with a gravity fed | device | | 3. critical machinery should not be located in the reactor core | building | | 4. no way to bring in electric power from elsewhere | numpad0 wrote: | Part of the reason why some fault tolerance measures were | neglected was because discussing backup plans was seen as a | sign of weakness and were leveraged often by oppositions. | | "You sound like you're looking forward for some disaster | coming with those plans" worked in Japan in those times. | Still do to some extent. | nicoburns wrote: | And it seems likely that with enough operating plant, there | always will be engineering failures. Aeroppanes sometimes | fail catastrophically too of course. | WalterBright wrote: | > Aeroppanes sometimes fail catastrophically too of course | | It's become extremely rare. | nicoburns wrote: | Well sure. But while extremely rare is fine for | aeroplanes, it's less clear that it's fine for nuclear | reactors. So far we've been lucky that none of the big | incidents have affected a major metropolitan area. | | I'm not completely anti-nuclear. But it seems clear to me | that it should be seen as a stepping-stone technology on | the way to a renewables + storage future rather than a | long-term solution. | nawgz wrote: | Do they? I can't really recall an instance of catastrophic | airplane failure over the last decade outside of 737 MAX | certification / regulatory capture issues | | I also think the amount of airplanes that exist is higher | than the amount of nuclear reactors we'd need for it to be | a strong power source, and I also suspect that airplanes | face slightly more volatile conditions | nicoburns wrote: | > outside of 737 MAX certification / regulatory capture | issues | | Well there's one example! Why would you discount it? | TheOtherHobbes wrote: | It's a key example, and is the same failure mode nuclear | power has. | | Nuclear power could be engineered to be at least as safe | as (most) commercial flight. | | But it won't be - and this is absolutely predictable. | Because of politics and money. | | There is no answer to this, except to fix politics and | money and make _them_ as safe as commercial flight. | | That's a whole different scale of problem to fixing | climate change. | | IMO this isn't a utopian fantasy, it's absolutely | critical for species survival. But it doesn't look as if | we're going to be starting the process any time soon. | | Exporting the same problems to Mars or upload space or | wherever won't solve them either. | nawgz wrote: | Right, fair question. I read "engineering failures" | above, so I want to highlight that this isn't so much an | engineering failure as it is a capitalistic failure | driven by incestuous relationships in US aerospace. | | I do totally agree this is a real risk for any domain, | especially energy which has so much money flowing, but I | just don't think "engineering" is actually the issue | which these things fail under | weaksauce wrote: | > The idea with airplanes is not "design this component so it | cannot fail" but "design the system so it can tolerate | component failure". | | that's not true. yes a lot of systems on airplanes are | redundant but also there are plenty of you die if this breaks | so we build it N times stronger than we can imagine it every | happening... also, teach pilots not to do things that would | bring that to be more possible. on a helicopter they have a | single jesus nut that if it breaks the rotor is gone. | | In rock climbing as well there is redundancy where there can | be but some things are built strong to the point where under | most foreseeable conditions the component will not break. | (the most common dynamic ropes for lead climbing twins and | half ropes aside, belay device, belay loop, belay carabiner, | harness are all built for worst case without redundancy.) | WalterBright wrote: | > there are plenty of you die if this breaks so we build it | N times stronger than we can imagine it every happening | | That's simply not true. Every component is redundant. | Nothing is built "N" times stronger. The safety factor is | 50% stronger than the maximum anticipated load. | | (I worked for 3 years at Boeing designing flight critical | systems for the 757.) | | > are all built for worst case without redundancy | | Why I'm not going rock climbing. | weaksauce wrote: | is the jesus nut redundant? is the jackscrew nut for the | elevator redundant?(one famously stripped and caused | inverted flight for 30 min to try and save it but | eventually crashed into the ocean)... they improved the | design from that but it's still one mechanism and one | screw. there are simply no completely reliable planes and | helicopters without some form of single point reliability | being required. | HPsquared wrote: | Is the main spar counted as a single component? | WalterBright wrote: | The main spar structure is redundant. | HPsquared wrote: | It's tolerant of random failure of individual components, | yes, but the entire spar could fail under an overload | condition. For this failure mode, the only way to ensure | a suitably low failure rate is by setting an appropriate | safety factor. | WalterBright wrote: | > but the entire spar could fail under an overload | condition. | | Each component individually is designed at 150% of the | maximum load ever expected. | | The spar has redundant components. Any part of the spar | can crack all the way through, and it will still fly | safely. | HPsquared wrote: | Redundancy protects against some failure modes (e.g. | unrevealed fatigue cracking) but not overload, which is a | common-mode failure that doesn't care about redundancy if | the load is high enough. It becomes a matter of | "probability of exceedance". | | Electrical/mechanical systems are different and can | usually be separated/segregated etc, but there is only | one structure. | weaksauce wrote: | There was a famous crash where the pilot flew through | some wake turbulence and caused the tail to fall off by | improper rudder inputs. at a certain point there is only | one of something. | earthboundkid wrote: | The problem with fault tolerance is that it allows the | normalization of deviance, since something is always failing, | but it's okay because there is always a backup (until there | isn't). | | The bigger issue with nuclear power is that we can trust | humans to keep up the level of effort to keep it working | without a fault for a few decades, maybe centuries if we're | lucky, but there's no way you can operate a plant for a | millennia without a catastrophic accident, but accidents take | much more than a thousand years to clean up. So it's all | totally imbalanced unless you just assume we'll have fusion | in fifty years, so nothing matters. But I don't think we can | assume that anymore. | WalterBright wrote: | > The problem with fault tolerance is that it allows | | We do that with airplanes. Think about it - you're flying | at 30,000 feet, 500 mph, 50 degrees below zero, no land in | sight over the North Atlantic, in a tin balloon loaded to | the gills with fuel and two flaming engines. | | And yet you're perfectly safe. | | How did that come about? Tolerance of failure. | silvestrov wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missing_aircraft#20 | 01-... | WalterBright wrote: | Look at how few of them there are, despite millions and | millions of flights. | | It's an absolutely incredibly good safety record. You're | much safer flying across the Atlantic than driving to the | airport. | earthboundkid wrote: | The machines are designed to tolerate fault, but the FAA | is designed to not let you take off unless you do a | checklist that proves all the engines are working, not | just the one you need for a crippled landing. So the | system as a whole requires that the FAA not give in to | the pressure from industry to sign off on less fault | tolerance. It's a difficult issue for systemantics. | WalterBright wrote: | Um, there isn't a backup if the backup isn't operable | before you take off. | opo wrote: | >...Does anyone honestly think the United States has | institutions sound enough to safely manage nuclear power over | multiple decades? | | All indications are that much was learned by industry and the | NRC after TMI: "...The NRC said the TMI accident also led to | increased identification, analysis and publication of plant | performance information, and recognising human performance as | "a critical component of plant safety". Key indicators of plant | safety performance in the US have improved dramatically. Those | indicators show: | | * The average number of significant reactor events over the | past 20 years has dropped to nearly zero. | | * Today there are far fewer, much less frequent and lower risk | events that could lead to a reactor-core damage. | | * The average number of times safety systems have had to be | activated is about one-tenth of what it was 22 years ago. | | * Radiation exposure levels to plant workers have steadily | decreased to about one-sixth of the 1985 exposure levels and | are well below national limits. | | * The average number of unplanned reactor shutdowns has | decreased by nearly ten-fold. In 2007 there were about 52 | shutdowns compared to about 530 shutdowns in 1985." | | https://www.nucnet.org/news/three-mile-island-led-to-sweepin... | | No one ever promised that there would never be a nuclear | accident - that would be unrealistic for any power source. But | historically nuclear power has been much safer than all the | alternatives that have been available. If only other power | sources were as safe: | | https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw... | | https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy | | https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener... | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... | | Unfortunately anything at all related to nuclear is covered by | the media orders of magnitude more than other power sources so | many people have an understandable misperception that it is | more dangerous than other sources of power. 200 thousand people | had to be evacuated in CA a couple of years ago because of a | lack of maintenance on a hydroelectric dam could have let to | catastrophic failure. We got lucky that time as the rains | stopped just in time, but how much did the media cover that | story? How much would the media have covered that if 200 | thousand had been evacuated because of a nuclear power plant? | | A recent Harvard study shows that pollution from fossil fuels | is much worse than previously thought and they estimate that it | is responsible for more than 8 million people yearly. We need | to move away from burning fossil fuels and we need to use all | the tools that are available. | | https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2021/02/deaths-fossil-fuel... | | It is possible there will be some major advances in grid | storage that will allow us to stop using natural gas to cover | for the intermittent nature of wind and solar. In that case - | great! But... what if that doesn't pan out? The dangers we are | facing in the coming decades are immense. Texas has shown us | what happens with even a small disruption of energy. If it came | down to a situation where you were forced to choose, would you | prefer the world to suffer through catastrophic climate change | rather than use nuclear power? | godelski wrote: | While there are a lot of human faults in this disaster (I think | it is hard to deny that generators in the basement were a bad | idea) it is also a complicated problem. One factor that isn't | frequently brought up is that the Tohoku earthquake was the 4th | largest _ever_ recorded and the largest in Japan (9.1) (second | largest recorded was an 8.5 in 1896 and the second largest | theorized was an 8.9 in the year 869. Remember this is not | linear growth). Fukushima wouldn 't have happened with an 8.5. | A big reason this is important is because it really sets this | event apart from that of Chernobyl, which I'd argue was much | more dependent upon human error and bureaucracy. | | But that means that the problem was both human and technical. | What was considered good enough regulation was the issue | because it is hard to predict earthquakes and even harder to | estimate for earthquakes we've never seen before. No one | thought a 9.1 magnitude earthquake would hit Japan and Nuclear | safety is typically magnitudes of safety above what is needed | (see radiation dosages) and this is a good thing (even though | many that are pro nuclear, but never worked in the industry, | claim that we're too strict). | | But you are right that there is infighting between the | scientists/engineers and the bureaucrats. But that's been true | for every industry I've been a part of. I'm just trying to say | that the story of why Fukushima happened is substantially more | complicated than I see in the general discussions here on HN, | Reddit, or elsewhere. | RealityVoid wrote: | I just think that people need to out things into perspective. | The tsunami that cause Fukushima was dar more damaging than | the nuclear event, but people seem to only remember the | nuclear event. I think in our mind we make these events far | far more serious than they were. Not that they were not | serious but every thing in life is a tradeoff and you need to | look what you are trading and what you are getting. | merb wrote: | > The tsunami that cause Fukushima was dar more damaging | than the nuclear event, but people seem to only remember | the nuclear event. | | because we still live with the nuclear accident, while the | tsunami damages are mostly repaired? Do you want to swim in | the water in front of the plant? I probably wouldn't. | hrktb wrote: | No. The tsunami was extremely damaging and the death count | was shocking. But it's over. | | The nuclear event had fewer immediate deaths, but the whole | area is still unlivable, the sea is still getting more | polluted every second, nothing is over, and won't be for at | least hundreds of years if we ever engineer a way to deal | with the core of the reactor. | godelski wrote: | I think what bugs me more is the armchair expertise, or | rather the confidence behind this. It is the people whose | argument essentially boil down to experts being idiots and | not seeing things that are clearly obvious. I don't see | these people significantly different from anti-vaxers. Both | do real harm to society and make it substantially more | difficult to solve the issues at hand because we're | distracted by misinformation and often radicalizes others. | Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that people are researching | and learning. I like that people question authority and | expertise too. But there is a balance here. You can say | things with confidence if you have only read a few | wikipedia articles on it, but if someone disagrees with you | don't pull out a baseball bat. I find this behavior | frequently common on places like HN and Reddit. I often | find that the real answers are buried in a thread because | they are complicated and nuanced, or non existent. I don't | think I'm immune to this behavior either, but I do try to | use the Murry Gelman Amnesia affect as a metric to check | myself, and I think there are other good strategies that we | should utilize and encourage. But I don't think our society | encourages honesty over simplicity. | dheera wrote: | Also from my understanding the earthquake wasn't really much of | an issue for most of Japan. It was the tsunami that we don't | yet have good protections against. | | Why do humans of the 21st century love building delicate | structures on the shoreline at sea level? Historical | civilizations generally avoided building on the coast, very | likely for good reasons, both for disaster resistance and for | military reasons. Most ancient cities of the world are not | located on the oceanside, but rather along inland rivers or | smaller bodies of water, or at least within some safe distance | of the coast. | | Recent modern cities seem to love building on the coast -- New | York, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, Los Angeles, Vancouver, | Dubai -- all these had relatively little history or at least | were nothing more than small towns until the past couple | hundred years, and are all terrible places to build a city in | terms of tsunami resistance. | not2b wrote: | Moving goods by sea is vastly cheaper than by land: for all | those cities, being a port is why they are significant | economic engines. And power plants need cooling and can use | sea water for that purpose. | cbhl wrote: | Ancient cities needed to drink the freshwater from the | rivers. | | Now we have man-made reservoirs and aqueducts to deliver | drinking water to the coasts. | | Japan certainly seems to have cities along its rivers, but it | also has a lot of costal cities (presumably because it's a | small island nation, unlike, say, European civilizations). | | For Fukushima in particular, I was under the impression they | were using the ocean water to cool the plant itself. (Under | non-meltdown conditions, you can transfer heat without | contaminating the water itself...) | mixmastamyk wrote: | Los Angeles was founded pretty far from the coast, and at a | decent elevation, roughly 77m / 253feet. It just expanded in | every direction. Santa Monica is protected by cliffs as well. | Farther south isn't so lucky. | piannucci wrote: | Wouldn't the plant have been located where demand and cooling | capacity were co-located? | garmaine wrote: | > Does anyone honestly think the United States has institutions | sound enough to safely manage nuclear power over multiple | decades? Or will they neglect basic maintenance and upgrades? | | Objectively, yes. There hasn't been a major nuclear reactor | leak in the ~75 years the nuclear industry has existed in the | USA. Even Three Mile Island, the worst disaster the US ever | saw, was fully contained due to regulator-forced safeguards. | mixmastamyk wrote: | False, see my SSFL links elsewhere in the thread. Direct | link: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348051 | retrac wrote: | I'm not sure why you're downvoted. | | After 50+ years of routine operation generating a nontrivial | proportion of energy, we can look back at a decent amount of | data. And what we see is that nuclear has been remarkably | safe. Up here in Canada, coal mine disasters alone have | killed far more people. When you start adding in air | pollution and other such nasties, it's an enormously vast | gulf in lethality. | | A cynical take. Estimate how many people would have died from | air pollution due to a coal power plant generating the same | amount of electrical energy as the reactor at Chernobyl that | blew up. Estimate how many died from Chernobyl. The | reasonable estimates of the high end of the former, and low | end of the latter, are overlapping. It's not entirely | preposterous to suggest that replacing unscrubbed coal plants | with shoddy reactors that simply explode after 20 years of | operation could actually save lives in net. | virtue3 wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident | | We got super super lucky. And there's some debate about how | bad the accident was with regards to NRCs monitoring. | | Frankly, the whole plant was a disaster in the making. | There was tons of warning lights and other systems but they | were essentially useless because they constantly flashed | and for poorly understood reasons. | | 3mile island is an excellent engineering study of what not | to do with monitoring. We got very VERY lucky it was as | small as it was. | garmaine wrote: | Sure, all of which are problems which we've since fixed. | But the core point is that there wasn't a major release | of radiation like Chernobyl, and the reason why is | because there were a regulator-imposed safeguard in | place: the containment building. | | There were a lot of things that went wrong in 3MI. Many | of the lessons learned from that were incorporated into | future designs. But one thing that went very right was | that there was defense in depth, so that a N different | things would have to go wrong to create a nuclear | disaster. And in this case the number of failures was | less than N. That's an engineering and regulatory | _success_ story. | sir_bearington wrote: | There was no luck about it. It was a meltdown, and the | pressure vessel was compromised. Secondary containment | saved the day. Three Mile Island didn't become a | Chernobyl not because of luck, but because the US didn't | cheap out and skip building concrete condom over the | reactor like the Soviets did. | redis_mlc wrote: | > It was the bureaucracy that failed, not the talent. | | It always is though, isn't it? | sir_bearington wrote: | > Does anyone honestly think the United States has institutions | sound enough to safely manage nuclear power over multiple | decades? | | Seeing as they have done so for 70 years, yes. I don't just | think it, I observe that it has safely managed nuclear power. | All of the plants have run safely, save for Three Mile Island. | And even in that case, safety measures worked and the secondary | containment prevented large scale contamination. | | I don't think it's infallible. But it's aware of its own | fallibility and enforces measures like secondary containment. | jhayward wrote: | > I observe that it has safely managed nuclear power. | | This is not a correct statement. You cannot assert, for | instance, that the pressure vessel head corrosion issue at | Davis-Besse[1] was a 'safely managed' power plant. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Besse_Nuclear | _Po... | sir_bearington wrote: | I'm not sure I follow. The vessel head corrosion was | detected, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had the | plant shut down. How does a story of a safety issues being | detected, and operations ceased accordingly indicate unsafe | management? It demonstrates the opposite. | HPsquared wrote: | It's down to luck that the corrosion was detected before | a serious incident occurred. | jhayward wrote: | The vessel head had corroded completely through the 6.63" | steel pressure head, and the pressure vessel was relying | only on the inner cladding to contain pressure. They were | just a transient away, for _years_ , from a steam | explosion that would completely disassemble the pressure | vessel and core and would place maximal stress on the | containment building itself. | | The issue was only "detected", after being covered up for | years by falsified reports, when the engineer doing | inspections decided to turn himself in. | | There is no way this condition can be regarded as safe | operation, and if that is what you are arguing there can | be no question that it is flat wrong. | | There are many, many of these kinds of situation where, | just by the grace of whatever, we dodged a bullet and | didn't have the catastrophe. You can't count those | situations as adding to a cherry-picked "safe operation | record". | | There is a huge different between "didn't explode today", | and "can't explode ever". We have spent too many days, | months, years, in the former, rather than the latter. The | so-called safety record is a lie. | sir_bearington wrote: | > steam explosion that would completely disassemble the | pressure vessel and core and would place maximal stress | on the containment building itself. | | This venturing into the realm of hyperbole, at best. | Nothing in your link mentions an explosion that would | "completely disassemble the pressure vessel". Stress on | the containment building isn't mentioned at all. These | statements seem to be of your own invention. | | Can you substantiate your claim that a pressure vessel | failure stood to compromise the containment building? | | > There is a huge different between "didn't explode | today", and "can't explode ever" | | Again, we set up our safety measures such that the danger | is contained _even if_ a meltdown occurs. Even the most | scrutinized designs may fail. Humans are never perfect. | You 're right: no plant can guarantee that it can't fail. | That's why safety measures are built to withstand | failure. | at-fates-hands wrote: | > Their nuclear engineers are top-notch. It was the bureaucracy | that failed, not the talent. | | This. | | All of the articles I've read about the disaster, all | continually scapegoated the engineers as the reason for the | failure, allowing the politicians and government to get a free | pass. I'm not sure why this was the case considering Japanese | engineers are some of the best, but the vilification of them | never sat well with me because then it cast a negative cloud | over every Japanese engineer unfairly. | chungus_khan wrote: | TEPCO dropped the ball pretty massively too, although IMO it | should be the government's responsibility to assume that | power operators are going to and not allow them to. | [deleted] | chefkoch wrote: | It's not only that, but also nuclear plants run by for profit | organisations, where cutting corners will at some level be | appreciated to ensure the bottom line. | | /edit: it's funny that here many are calling for tougher | regulation, while in other post many who are pro nuclear | complain about toomuch red Tape and top much security. | sigstoat wrote: | > run by for profit organisations, where cutting corners will | at some level be appreciated to ensure the bottom line | | as though government bureaucrats and congressmen don't like | coming in under budget, future consequences be damned. | chefkoch wrote: | Comming in under budget seems like a rare problem with | building nuclear plants. | | While in operation, i think congressman and bureaucrats | don't even know about the real costs. | WalterBright wrote: | > nuclear plants run by for profit organisations, where | cutting corners will at some level be appreciated to ensure | the bottom line | | How does that explain the inept handling of Chernobyl? | petre wrote: | Personal profit, zealotry, career seeking, incompetence, | design flaws, political agenda. This also includes the | design phase. The RBMK reactor was an irresponsible design | from the onset, even without the unknowns. | | Graphite moderated reactors are prone to graphite cracking, | as also evidenced by UK's AGR reactor fleet. Maybe pebble | bed reactors are safer, because new pebbles are continuosly | fed in and the spent ones are extracted for reprocessing. | We'll se how the HTR-10 and the HTR-PM fare. | wongarsu wrote: | Cutting corners was appreciated to meet arbitrary plans and | quotas. The failure mode wasn't that different. | chefkoch wrote: | From what i know about this accident, the profit in this | case was not to loose face for the higher ups running the | plant. | nullserver wrote: | Did "profit" just get redefined? | chefkoch wrote: | I know nobody likes the wiseass but | | Profit = to gain an advantage from something: profit from | sth/doing sth I profited enormously from working with | her. | | https://dictionary.cambridge.org/de/worterbuch/englisch/p | rof... | WalterBright wrote: | Good luck designing and operating a complex, dangerous | system with purely altruistic, utterly selfless people. | chefkoch wrote: | > Good luck designing and operating a complex, dangerous | system with purely altruistic, utterly selfless people. | | I know you're beeing sarcastic, but you just have to run | it by the book. No need to be a saint. | WalterBright wrote: | What I'm saying is a proper organization takes advantage | of peoples' base motives, instead of trying to defy them. | | Free markets work so well for that reason. | chefkoch wrote: | I don't think this works in any savety relevant industry | or there are not many proper organizations. Most | regulations are a response to accidents. | WalterBright wrote: | Lawsuits and loss of reputation has halved the value of | Boeing from the 737MAX mistakes. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | The handling, as in, the reaction once the top officials | actually understood the magnitude of the situation, was | nothing short of spectacular. | | No expence was spared cleaning up the mess, removing top | layer of soil at a massive scale and enclosing the failed | reactor in sarcofagus. This expence and reputation damage | contributed considerably to bringing the end of USSR. | | You've got to keep in mind how little was known about | lethality and handling of radiation back then, compared to | today. In fact good chunk of today's knowledge comes from | Chernobyl. | bluGill wrote: | While we learned a lot from Chernobly, the culture back | then was already very fearful of nuclear. | Aunche wrote: | It's not a universal rule that all for profit companies will | "cut corners." Airplanes are vastly safer than other forms of | transportation. When the public found out that Boeing cut | corners with their design of the 737 max, their share price | dramatically plummeted, signaling that this was the wrong | decision. | | Also, cutting corners isn't necessarily worse for nuclear | than other energy sources. More people die from wind turbine | accidents than nuclear power. | 0xy wrote: | Considering NASA recommends that nuclear power be | "significantly expanded" despite its drawbacks, I think they | are sound enough. The US has a pretty squeaky clean record when | it comes to nuclear safety and storage protocols. | | Also, the current status quo of "look we built all this | renewable energy! just ignore all those gas peaking plants | propping them up!" has to end. | | Nuclear is green. Renewables + gas is not renewable, not | sustainable and not green. | bob29 wrote: | >The US has a pretty squeaky clean record when it comes to | nuclear safety and storage protocols. | | One single nuclear site is consuming 10% of the DoE's budget, | and its still leaking. https://www.tri- | cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article228... | mixmastamyk wrote: | Allow me to introduce you to the relatively unknown Santa | Susanna Field Laboratory meltdown/explosion, due to | extensive cover ups over decades: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment | | Still not fully cleaned up. | sigstoat wrote: | while the comment you're replying to didn't make a | distinction, i'll make the distinction that that was a | nuclear weapons production facility (run by the federal | government). further, some of it was constructed during | WWII for the manhattan project. | | so... not great handling, true. strong evidence about how | nuclear power plants will be operated in the future? no. | opo wrote: | The NRC does not regulate defense nuclear facilities. | jdsully wrote: | The Hanford site is a WWII era nuclear weapons facility and | is not at all comparable with nuclear reactors for power | generation. | tryitnow wrote: | That's the problem I have with nuclear, it's not the | technology, it's that our species is not necessarily well- | suited to managing the risks associated with nuclear (with some | exceptions, maybe France?). | petre wrote: | The French were just a more responsible than the Soviets and | don't have to deal with earthquakes and tsunamis as much as | the Japanese. The also invested a lot in several nuclear | designs, comitted to nuclear power and are therefore quite | experienced. | chefkoch wrote: | I can't find any specifics about the partial melt down in | 1980 at Saint-Laurent, but it seems a serious accident | could bankrupt france in an instand. | | https://www.businessinsider.com/potential-cost-of-a- | nuclear-... | merb wrote: | not so sure about that: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Accide. | .. | | france often hides minor stuff, which often results in these | more severe events. well france also has only 3 reactors as | far as I know that were built in the 2000s. | | btw. it's also my take. as long as they are operated to turn | a profit or in a way that somebody might gain something, it | will be basically impossible to have "safe" nuclear power. | humans are dangerous. | fallingknife wrote: | And yet only 1 person was killed when it melted down. But | somehow, it gets more attention than the 10's of thousands that | were killed in the tsunami. | mathgladiator wrote: | The challenge is ownership at core, and we don't do well in | having organizations not trend toward bureaucracy. As much as | people hate bureaucracy, they love the order and predictability | they produce. | | It's probably why nuclear power has a ways to go, and it isn't | the tech that needs upgrade; it's the people and the | philosophy. | titzer wrote: | It's worth pointing out that essentially the entire US navy is | powered by nuclear reactors that service lives in the 3+ decade | range, and it's worked astonishingly well. It's not | _completely_ without incident, but wow, yeah, civilian nuclear | power could really work if held to military standards of | engineering and maintenance. | petre wrote: | Naval reactors are different, their scale is two orders of | magnitude lower. One could make other safety guarantees at | that scale. They also use enriched uranium which means no | refuelling is needed during the service life of the reactor. | SMRs can also make some of these safety guarantees. | fallingknife wrote: | It's worth pointing out that US civilian nuclear power plants | with service lives in the 3+ decade range have worked | astonishingly well. It's not completely without incident, but | wow, yeah, military nuclear power could really work if held | to the same standards of engineering and maintenance. | smartmic wrote: | > In short, the problems were human not technical. | | I disagree. Problems have been in both human and technical | realm and, even worse, there is no way to clearly disentangle | those two factors. Good arguments are given in Charles Perrow | classic work "Normal Accidents" [1]. It is worth citing the | tree main conditions which will result in an accident | probability of greater than acceptable | | 1.The system is complex | | 2.The system is tightly coupled | | 3.The system has catastrophic potential | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents | colordrops wrote: | All problems are human and not technical though when it comes | to engineering failures. | Spooky23 wrote: | > People get complacent and greedy. They use every procedural | tool they have to delay upgrades, maintenance, and improvement. | | That is the core argument for a meaningful regulatory regime. | | Large-scale base load generators only work from a business | sense with predictable, steady demand. The price of that | guaranteed demand is a near-fixed, managed return on assets and | tight regulatory oversight. | Krasnol wrote: | Yeah, it is always some human who fails but in the case of this | tech, the failure becomes a catastrophe. | | So we either take out the human factor or the technology out of | the equation. Right now we can only do that with the tech. | sigstoat wrote: | > Does anyone honestly think the United States has institutions | sound enough to safely manage nuclear power over multiple | decades? | | if US institutions can't manage nuclear power, what else can't | they manage? | ericb wrote: | Capitol security? | bliteben wrote: | Of course nuclear plants would not be safe if "the | president" ordered citizens to attack them. | earthboundkid wrote: | - a global pandemic | | - a war that lasts longer than 1 month | | - media legitimacy | | - global financial system | cameldrv wrote: | There is also a human element. Unit 1 had been retrofitted with | an Isolation Condenser, which is capable of cooling the core | and preventing a meltdown without needing the pumps that | couldn't run due to lack of power. This is exactly the type of | upgrade people often suggest. | | Unfortunately, for reasons that are still murky, this system | wasn't activated, and Unit 1 melted down. The problems at Unit | 1 also contributed to the problems at other units, causing | radiation hazards, diverting personnel and attention, etc. | | In fact, a larger version of this system is touted as one of | the major safety features of the newer AP1000 plants, because | all it requires is that you open a couple of valves, and the | reactor can be safely shutdown as long as you add water every | couple of days. Unfortunately at Fukushima, they didn't open | the valves. | | All of that said, the absolute damage from the accidents at | Fukushima was tiny in comparison to the other damage from the | tsunami, and much less than the damage of operating coal plants | with no accidents whatsoever in Japan. | nickik wrote: | The problem if nuclear power is that technology progress has | slowed to almost 0 and we are still operating with 60s | technology. | | In the 60s we built many, many test reactors and it was clear | that nuclear power had huge potential to revolutionize the world. | | This is still true, the energy density inherent in nuclear power | can transform lots of industries. But unfortunately the | regulatory structure built around nuclear material and nuclear | deployment is almost impossible to manage. | | This is partly simply to do with how restrictive the access to | the material itself. Forms of regulation that make it almost | impossible to do any kind of iterations, you can't even do a | small scale test reactor in a practical way. | | Look at how SpaceX is building Starship. That's how you get | revolutionary technology. Not by sitting around for 10-15 years | to maybe one day directly building a full scale reactor (that you | then have to scale). | | A fundamental shift in how to think about the potential of | nuclear needs to be done. The regulatory structures have to be | fundamentally redesigned in pretty much every aspect. | | The DoE has admitted some of the issues but trying to rationalise | the regulation but its like relocating an asteroid. | | Good regulation will not suddenly make 60s technology competitive | today, we need to rethink the process from innovation to | operation in a new way. | asddubs wrote: | and then the conservatives come into power and neuter all | regulation again | concordDance wrote: | People hugely overreacted to Fukishima. It killed no one, unlike | climate change which will kill tens or hundreds of millions. | Nuclear is hugely overregulated. | croes wrote: | Radiation has long term effects | RealityVoid wrote: | Pollution has long term effects. It's funny that now when we | talk about nuclear we _care_ about the long term effects. | Let's be honest, it's simply imprinted in our common | consciousness as scary and that is that. | | Besides, most reactors do not affect a large area unless they | go wrong and the examples are quite far in-between. | croes wrote: | But it is not either or, but in addition. The radius of | effect may be small, but the duration is extreme. Depending | on the accident, the radius can be quite large. In Germany | there are still areas where it is dangerous to eat | mushrooms from the forest because of the radioactivity from | Chernobyl. And a study from the Max-Planck-Institute | concludes that an accident is to be expected every 20 to 25 | years. | fallingknife wrote: | Regular polution does that too. BPA has been shown to | have effects that pass down through generations: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6139539/ | RealityVoid wrote: | > And a study from the Max-Planck-Institute concludes | that an accident is to be expected every 20 to 25 years. | | That is a a small price to pay compared to the | alternative. | croes wrote: | An unnecessary one because of safer alternatives. None of | our technologies is flawless and on top of that there is | human greed and incompetence. This means that even if we | had clean nuclear energy, we would not be able to operate | it faultlessly worldwide for a long time. Or do you know | an authority or a company that you would trust with this? | jtolmar wrote: | What safer alternatives? | | Look up the deaths per kilowatt hour of whatever you | think is safer than nuclear power, you may be surprised. | HPsquared wrote: | The other thing about radiation is it's highly visible / | detectable, tiny tiny traces of specific isotopes stand out | clearly in a gamma spectrum from natural background. It's a | lot more detectable than normal air pollution because the | background is so low. | kevincox wrote: | The key thing to remember is that power sources like coal and | other fossil fuels have a very real health cost. A large number | of people die every year. However a nuclear accident is much more | "exciting" news and sticks in people's mind. People dying of | cancer, asthma and other conditions are not as direct or as | dramatic. | godelski wrote: | This is largely due to the abstract nature of fossil fuel | deaths. With the exception of an oil spill these take place | over large areas and over longer periods of time. Whereas | nuclear accidents are localized both geographically and | temporally, even if their death rates (or even death per energy | rate) is magnitudes below that of other sources. | | What I think needs to happen is that these technologies need to | be put on even playing fields. Nuclear has most of its costs | built in: decommissioning, health, storage, etc. But a carbon | tax and environmental health tax would largely put technologies | on at least an even playing ground. These issues are | essentially a tragedy of the commons issue, where we share | resources. There's an economic cost to polluting a lake and if | that is not built in to the market then it isn't fair or | helpful to the population. We can argue about free markets and | stuff, but this makes it more free as certain sectors can't | skirt by this and it is unreasonable to expect the population | to be well informed (nobody can be an expert in nuclear | physics, coal, oil, solar, electrodynamics, mechanical | engineering, hydrology, etc, the burden is too high). A major | problem is that many sectors are getting major discounts | because their costs are much harder to see. It isn't only | "first order" costs that matter, especially when second and | third order are so expensive (i.e. climate and health). I'm not | saying we should reduce scrutiny of nuclear, but rather that | the other technologies deserve the same level. | jillesvangurp wrote: | True, however, solar and wind are proving to be the killer | technology in the sense that they are forcing coal plants to | actually go extinct at a rapid pace. They are being forced out | of the market based on cost. Nuclear never had that power of | persuasion because it was too expensive. That's why we have so | many coal plants. Nuclear is part of the problem, not the | solution. To be part of the solution it will have to be vastly | cheaper than it is today. Probably by at least one or two | orders of magnitude. | | That's an interesting research problem to work on the next | decades. By the time that happens or not, there won't be any | coal plants remaining and most gas will be on the way out as | well (considering that is already barely competitive today). | floatboth wrote: | Nuclear is _upfront_ expensive, but the incredible efficiency | wins hugely long term, AFAIK? | chefkoch wrote: | What about decomissioning and caring for the nuclear waste? | That seems to bei very expensive as the decomissioning of | the Greifswald plant in former east Germany is going to | cost more than 6 billion EUR. | sir_bearington wrote: | There's actually extremely small amounts of nuclear | waste. The entirety of the waste produced by USA's | nuclear electricity generation fits in a volume the | footprint of a football field and less than 10 yards high | [1]. | | The cost of storing waste is minuscule in comparison to | the amount of electricity generated. Europe's waste | repository in Finland costs ~800 million Euros [2]. Which | is an order of magnitude less than a nuclear plant. And | the repository can accommodate the fuel produced by | several plants. | | In short, waste disposal accounts for a single-digit | percentage of nuclear power operating costs. | | 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about- | spent-... | | 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fue | l_repo... | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | There is far far more to nuclear decommissioning cost | than just spent fuel storage. The costs are truly | staggering and cannot be breezed past so simply. | godelski wrote: | This is an extremely complicated matter, to be honest. It | isn't difficult to store waste on site. There are also | much cheaper technologies out there that we've invented | over the last 50 years but one of the major reasons we | don't have them in practice is because they are | "unproven", as in physically untested at large scale | (though they have been through simulations and small | scale testings at DoE labs). | | Long term storage isn't too bad of an issue either, but | there's two camps. One is to do smaller sites where we | can just bury local material in the ground. The other is | having a large mass site (think Yucca Mountain), which | means higher scrutiny because there's more chances of | something going wrong (standard failure analysis) and | you're packing more material together which increases | total radiation levels. Either one will work, but both | are bureaucratic nightmares. The result of which has been | constantly changing plans, which drives up costs very | quickly as you change gears (e.g. spend tons to survey | the US for good sites, more to verify Yucca Mountain is | good, start digging, cancel because NIMBY, start again, | cancel, survey other areas, repeat). | | But one factor I want to mention is that by the nature of | the physical processes materials can't be both extremely | dangerous and long living. The danger literally comes | from mass being expelled from the atoms. High level | radioactive materials have and always will be stored on | site, as this is the safest place for them (where they | can be monitored). | | There are still technical challenges, don't get me wrong, | but the whole process is also a bureaucratic nightmare on | top of that and we know what that does to costs. | | For some better facts I'll refer you to an article | written by a HN user that is a reactor scientist: | https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | Nope. Investment has dried up in nuclear exactly because | the ROI is garbage compared to the trend lines in | renewables + storage + gas turbine plants. A lot of posters | here have a sort of smugness about being fans of nuclear | power, blaming it's decline purely on "irrational" fears. | They blithely ignore that even in authoritarian states | where there's no meaningful political opposition to nuclear | projects, we see the same declining interest. It just takes | too much capital too long vs alternatives now. Absent a | global carbon tariff nuclear will likely never again be | competitive with gas supplementing renewables. | bronson wrote: | Nuclear operating cost is comparable to offshore wind, | coal, and combined cycle gas, and around 4X more expensive | to operate than onshore wind or solar. (Of course, coal and | gas would be more expensive if they had to pay a fair price | for their emissions) | | Nuclear is also eye-poppingly expensive to decommission. | | Finally, note that operating cost doesn't include the sort | of re-engineering and upgrades that are routinely required, | and have doomed plants like San Onofre. | sir_bearington wrote: | Most levelized energy costs do include cost of | decommissioning and maintenance. | | On the other hand, estimates of wind and solar do not | include the cost of storage to actually make intermittent | sources viable. Which is understandable, because there's | really no plan to provision this much storage without a | massive breakthrough in storage solutions. Almost all | plans for a predominantly wind and solar grid assume that | something like hydrogen, synthetic natural gas, or | something else will provide massive amounts of cheap | storage. Until then, it's fossil fuels to fulfill off- | peak demand. | _nalply wrote: | It's not coal vs nuclear. Both need to be shut down. | bsder wrote: | Then perhaps we should start funding fusion research above | the "fusion never" levels? | | Honestly, had we put the stupid amounts of money that we | subsidize fossil fuels with (think about how much government | funding went into the specialized drilling that became | fracking) into fusion research, we'd likely have it by now. | kalessin wrote: | Fusion is multiple decades ahead of us still, even with | more funding, but we need to take action _this_ decade if | we want to have an impact on global warming. | | Fusion is unfortunately not going to help here. | chefkoch wrote: | If we had put the money in renewables we almost certainly | would have solved the problems by now. | | My dad studied physics in the 60ies when fusion was just 20 | years away. | kalessin wrote: | That's not the case at all, nuclear should be how we replace | coal. Nuclear is one of the safest way to produce energy | today, including the Chernobyl & Fukushima incidents. | | Nuclear, because of its energy density, has a big edge | against solar and wind as well. AFAIK, building NPPs not only | uses less resources and land footprint than wind and solar, | they also last longer and are non-intermittent. | | In this graph, notice how safe Nuclear is, and also notice | that it is _cleaner_ than wind and solar. | | https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy | godelski wrote: | > That's not the case at all, nuclear should be how we | replace coal. | | I'm going to nit pick | | > nuclear should be _part of_ how we replace coal. | | There's no energy source that is a "one size fits all." | Renewables and storage will better replace coal in some | areas and nuclear will better in others. The point is that | nuclear is not off the table and that experts can use said | tool. It is about not tying peoples' hands behind their | backs. | michaelbarton wrote: | Did a control-F for "kurzgesagt" and saw that it had not been | mentioned yet. | | I really recommend watching this short video which gives a | really excellent overview of the dangers of nuclear power in | the context of the alternatives. | | The TLDW is even if a very pessimistic estimate of the dangers | of nuclear power is still much better than a very optimistic | take on the dangers of fossil fuels once you combine the | effects of air pollution and climate change. That includes both | Chernobyl and Fukushima. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM | [deleted] | politician wrote: | paywall | kwhitefoot wrote: | It worked for me. I have uBlock Origin I wonder if that helps? | AniseAbyss wrote: | Wow what a genius conclusion. I agree which is why I'm against | nuclear. Our society always screws up. When the aviation industry | fails in its regulations a few hundred people die- a tragedy to | be sure but recoverable. | [deleted] | misiti3780 wrote: | Nuclear energy is safer than coal, oil, natural gas. | | https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106843635-161400902674... | c7DJTLrn wrote: | You can't really measure safety in terms of deaths. Chernobyl | only officially killed a handful of people, yet rendered a | huge chunk of land uninhabitable. When nuclear goes wrong, it | goes _really_ wrong. | | And yes, you can argue that that Chernobyl was an old reactor | design, Fukushima was complacency, but the reality is that | technology _always_ goes wrong. I 'd rather have technology | that catches fire (wind turbines) than technology that gives | people cancer and forces entire cities to migrate (reactors) | when it goes wrong. | misiti3780 wrote: | What if your preferred solution doesnt curtail the raise in | temperatures fast enough and renders large parts of earth | inhabitable for future generations? | | there is no perfect solution, i understand the risk | associated with nuclear power but i think the smartest | minds thinking deeply about the climate space all basically | agree that there is no solution to fighting climate change | that doesnt include nuclear. we should be sinking lots of | money into reducing the risks and coming up with innovative | ways to make it ubiquitous | c7DJTLrn wrote: | We are already past that point. The world is not reducing | carbon emissions fast enough. I don't see how nuclear | allows us to reduce them any faster. The bottleneck is | funding and will of the everyday man. | | The world won't become uninhabitable - global warming | alone is not going to cook us. What will happen is more | natural disasters, difficulty with natural resources and | farming, and wars for those resources. | | Climate engineering is the best hope to reduce global | warming. Aerosols sprayed into the atmosphere, that sort | of thing. | kalessin wrote: | There is still hope, but we sure do need a global mindset | shift when it comes to nuclear (and many other topics for | sure). | | Global warming will make parts of the worlds inhabitable. | Sea levels will rise, so much heat and humidity in some | places that your body won't be able to regulate its | internal temperature... | thepete2 wrote: | That's a strange statistic. Saying it is safer by this | statistic alone is misleading. | Aachen wrote: | What other statistic would you use? Deaths per year? | Injuries per year? Injuries per TWh? Without further | information we can't have a conversation about what | wouldn't be misleading (or whether this is misleading in | the first place - I don't see why). | [deleted] | Krasnol wrote: | Besides the fact that people who argue against nuclear are | not pro fossil energy, I'm always astonished to see nuclear | fans argue with dead people only. As if having to evacuate | cities and regions could be ignored and accepted as some kind | of "safe". | | ----- | | Since the fans of the atom downvote everything not in their | frame of reality, I'm now unable to answer anymore so I'll | just edit my answer to this comment: | | @yongjik: I can't drink enough to follow this argument | twisting. Nothing you said makes my argument go away. Those | things ARE dangerous. Neither fossil fuel nor cars won't make | the risk go away or be hidden in a cloud of mad word | twisting. | | Also: nobody who makes an argument against nuclear, makes one | for fossil fuel. They usually are pro renewable energy. But | you know that don't you? You just wanted to derail.... | | @cestith: acutally MOST of the nuclear reactors did not | became a catastrophe. It doesn't change anything about the | fact that when it becomes one, it is one. | lstodd wrote: | Fukushima evacuation was an idiotic knee-jerk that killed | more people than the alternative of not doing it. | yongjik wrote: | If you prefer, we don't have to evacuate. We can just tell | people to keep living in Fukushima and the number of deaths | will be _still_ smaller than fossil fuel plants. | | People don't evacuate from fossil fuel, not because it's | safer, but because you can't, so we just accepted it as | facts of life. More people die from vehicle exhaust than | Fukushima: where are you going to go? | addicted wrote: | And why are we comparing to fossil fuel plants as opposed | to other renewable sources which are cheaper, safer, and | less polluting than nuclear? | | The problem for nuclear is that if you are making a | pollution based safety argument for it, the obvious | question is why not spend the money you would on nuclear | in more cost effective and equally green or greener | alternatives (ones which lack a doomsday scenario as a | bonus). | | In reality, nuclear sucks up a lot of green capital for | 8-10 years at a minimum, under delivers, if it delivers | at all, and does so at an extremely high price. | | There are new nuclear technologies that have the | potential to be cost competitive with other renewables, | but they aren't production ready yet. Why not make these | arguments when those technologies are ready. | Hammershaft wrote: | Unfortunately there is no solution on the near horizon | for large scale grid storage of intermittent renewables. | I would argue nuclear is our only choice. I made a | comment here linking sources on the problems facing grid | storage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348355 | cestith wrote: | Show me a city evacuated because it was near a CANDU | reactor. Light water plants are not the beginning and end | of nuclear power. | hahahahe wrote: | Correct me if I am wrong but USSR installed hundreds of nuclear- | powered light houses across the arctic coast. Many were | neglected. | | Edit: https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0931jtk/the-nuclear- | lighthou... | RicardoLuis0 wrote: | While those USSR generators are indeed nuclear-powered, they | use a completely different method from nuclear plants. They | simply convert the decay heat of a radioactive material into | energy, and as such aren't subject to any drastic reactions | such as meltdowns. | | More info: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge... | godelski wrote: | The neglect was largely associated with the fall of the USSR | and their economy. While this should be a scenario we should be | concerned about, I don't think it is particularly relevant to | the conversation and certainly not a coup d'etat | adamc wrote: | The potential for it to go horribly wrong gives me great pause. | Sure, if we do everything right, it might be fine. But people | make mistakes. People get greedy and lazy. The worst case is | pretty "worst" here. | hindsightbias wrote: | Perhaps being a little radioactive isn't as bad as the billions | that could die from climate change. | | In the 90's I shared a long cab ride between airports with a | nuclear engineer who said he specialized in "cleanups". I asked | what he thought about the next generation of plant design. He | spent the rest of the ride recounting a half dozen horror | stories about how nothing about the hardware or design was easy | but human factors could turn perfectly safe processes into | accidents. | | He said you could never engineer out human error, panic | behavior and blindspots. | mpweiher wrote: | _It goes completely against what most believe, but out of all | major energy sources, nuclear is the safest_ | | https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy | | And that's including the worst-case accidents. | Aachen wrote: | We all seem to get that airplanes are safe and that being | afraid to fly is something to overcome. We also know how | disastrously it can go wrong if the plane crashes into flats | (I'm thinking of the Bijlmer disaster, not a terrorist | attack): it's not a theoretical risk, it's just exceedingly | unlikely to happen to you. | | How come this is communicated differently for fission energy? | Looking at the data it's a similar situation. | StillBored wrote: | Planes are massively more dangerous too. | | How many actual deaths are a result of nuke accidents? | | Depending on how you count its possible more people died in | a single airplane crashes than have died in all the nuke | related energy production incidents, ever. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation | _... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123 | | If you want to include ground based deaths 911 was close to | 3k people dead. | StillBored wrote: | Whats the worse case? We end up with a exclusion zone for a | hundred years? | | I'm beginning to think that is a feature. | | The world needs more exclusion zones that can be left to | nature. In the last 50 years we have pretty much encroached our | shit into every single square inch of the planet. The only | areas that aren't shoulder to shoulder humans destroying the | environment, are the ones to inhospitable to live in and don't | have any obvious natural wealth to exploit. | | Maybe we wouldn't be going through one of the largest | extinction events in the planets history if we irradiated half | the land mass enough to scare people away. | polytely wrote: | There was a really good twitter tread about Fukushima by Dr. | Malka Older (great sci-fi writer) who wrote a report on the | disaster for the french nuclear safety agency, it gives you an | idea about the kinds of problems the engineers working on the | reactor faced while the crisis unfolded, very interesting read. | | https://twitter.com/m_older/status/1366324146901254146?s=19 | grecy wrote: | I'm a huge fan of nuclear power, but I took away a different | lesson from Fukushima. | | When it all went wrong (and it inevitably will), there was | _literally_ nothing we could do to stop it. People could not get | close and we had no robots that could help. All we could do was | pump as much water in and hope for the best, knowing full well | that contaminated water was going straight into the ocean. | | We literally built a machine capable of immense destruction that | - given the right series of events - we become unable to control. | | It was a HUGE stroke of luck that it didn't go much, much worse. | jszymborski wrote: | I'm not going to pretend like I know the answer here, but my | gut tells me that this is sort of like accepting the risk of | smoking but not accepting the risk of sky-diving. | | Smoking will almost certainly kill you in the long-run, but | there is a rare chance that you might explode into a fine red | mist moments after you jump if your chute doesn't unravel. | | We worry about rare acute disaster, but ignore slow but certain | disaster. | Krasnol wrote: | The difference here is that you're talking about different | people. People who don't want nuclear usually (always?) don't | want coal too. | soperj wrote: | That's because they're running a 70 year old design. You don't | need back-up power for a CANDU reactor which are still old, but | not one of the initial designs. You can't build nuclear weapons | with a CANDU reactor though, so it's not really in high demand. | dongobongo wrote: | I was going to mention CANDU, basically the only exception to | the above comment about running at too high power density. | dongobongo wrote: | This is just the dumb/old kind of nuclear in which the reactors | are operated at really high power which means they have to be | actively cooled so that the fuel doesn't melt itself and cause | release of radiation. The reason they run at really high power, | is because they think it's cheaper to get more power out of the | same reactor. But of course they have to build a bunch of | emergency systems, themselves expensive, to make sure the | reactor is actively cooled - and these inevitably fail at some | point. | | The alternative, pursued most prominently by new companies like | (usnc.com) is to operate at much lower power density which | means the reactor does not have to be cooled to prevent it from | melting. It can just dissipate the small amount of heat without | any active measures or expensive equipment. Making the | economics work is the trick. | vlovich123 wrote: | That's too risk myopic a position for my taste. I like to | compare it against impacts in other sectors. For example oil | has a massive problem with leaks. There's on average 2 events | per year (not including COVID 2020) that spill more than 700 | metric tons. Valdez was 34k metric tons. Deepwater Horizon was | ~200k, Castillo de Bellver was also in that range. | | Burning coal releases ash into the air that is 100x more | radioactive than nuclear waste (the byproduct of fission)! | | By comparison, nuclear energy has had 3 notable accidents in 42 | years with only one actually ending up to have any serious | consequences. Waste is pretty straightforward to clean up & the | byproducts can be repurposed into more fuel once the technology | starts to roll out. | | While I agree it's a scary technology because of its history, | it's comparative safety seems significantly higher. To the | point where the question is "why are we building _any_ fossil | fuel plants " (i.e. new plants under construction) but for some | reason that always to get hijacked to "we should wait for | renewables". I'd much rather have a nuclear power plant today | (with all its challenges) coming online rather than anything | using a comparative amount of fossil fuels & hoping to replace | it with renewables later. One in the hand is worth two in the | bush. | duxup wrote: | >It was a HUGE stroke of luck that it didn't go much, much | worse. | | My understanding is that with Fukushima, with everything going | wrong we had the potential for a "China syndrome" type | situation ... and yet an old style reactor with fewer | safeguards than modern reactors still managed to hold a melting | down core. | | Fukushima was a disaster, but the result might indicate some of | the worst concerns (run away super hot melting core escaping | containment) aren't very likely at all. | munk-a wrote: | This isn't an uncommon position to take - many people have this | sort of knee-jerk reaction to disasters on this scale and it's | fair to acknowledge that we did get really lucky with how it | ended up going. | | However, Nuclear power is the safest and cleanest option out | there if done correctly and we've known how to do it much | better since around the 80s[1] - the issue is that Nuclear | plants cost an insane amount of money so investors are shy to | go in on the tech and we're left with a bunch of poorly aging | dreadnoughts. The existing companies are pulling out all the | stops to try and keep from being decommissioned for as long as | possible since, from their perspective, that capital investment | is a sunk cost and the longer it runs the higher the profits | will be. | | Nuclear power is dangerous if done wrong, it really should be | largely stewarded by governments and kept out of reach of any | partial privatization efforts - we also need to kill the stigma | of Nuclear and realize that replacing those rusted hulks with | modern reactors will work out better for everyone in the long | run. | | Nuclear power in general is an incredibly good and safe option | that gets a lot of hate thrown at it because in practice nearly | all the reactors online were built in the 70s or earlier and | are near or past their advised EOL for operation. There are | real problems here but rejecting Nuclear power is not the | correct solution. | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor As an | example, the Molten Salt Thorium design is configured in a | manner that makes meltdowns self-defeating and defusing. | sigstoat wrote: | > The existing companies are pulling out all the stops to try | and keep from being decommissioned for as long as possible | since, from their perspective, that capital investment is a | sunk cost and the longer it runs the higher the profits will | be. | | perhaps it is an unintended side effect as far as they're | concerned, but i'd also hate to reach a point where we don't | have a contingent of engineers/plant operators with | experience running these plants. nuclear won't be any safer | if we turn all the plants off for 40 years and then decide | "oops, yeah turns out we don't have any workable plan besides | fission" and have to figure out how to run everything again. | tacocataco wrote: | Is there any solution for nuclear waste yet? | | The newest generation systems seem much better and safer, but the | half life on the waste is huge. There isn't a guarantee the | country itself will even be around in that time span. | | Even though clearly nuclear energy is the future, it's hard to | support nuclear energy. More R&D is required IMO. Especially | considering how efficient humans are at externalizing costs and | consequences. | cestith wrote: | Power plants designed to be only power plants rather than also | fast breeders for military doomsday weapons would certainly help. | Molten salt reactors and Candu reactors neither one fail the same | way as Fukushima and Chernobyl. Fusion plants, once commercially | viable, also will not fail the same way. New light water reactors | should probably not be built considering the options. | Aachen wrote: | Didn't bill gates fund this traveling wave reactor that has | this property? I checked Wikipedia but it doesn't say either | way. I don't remember for sure but I think this is a thing now, | just nobody wants him to build it because brrr scary nuclear | let's rather stop advancement of the field. | marcosdumay wrote: | Fast breeders _are_ scary. | | That Wikipedia page does not mention any breakthrough in | passive stability, and unless somebody mentions it, the safe | thing to assume is that any fast breeder has none. What means | that it can basically blow like the Chernobyl reactor or | worse due to failure of equipment. | HPsquared wrote: | Fast reactors usually have a strong negative temperature | coefficient of reactivity. This is inherent to the | temperature of the fuel and responds instantly. The | Integral Fast Reactor, for instance, was designed to | tolerate loss of coolant flow without even needing to | insert the control rods to shutdown, with no core damage. | | https://www.ne.anl.gov/About/hn/logos-winter02-psr.shtml | | The main issue I have with fast reactors is the liquid | sodium coolants typically used, very hazardous stuff if it | was to leak. Molten salts are a nice alternative. | Aachen wrote: | I'm no physicist, is this traveling wave reactor a "fast | breeder" that you're talking about? From what I read, the | stability comes from it not being a runaway reaction that | needs active brakes. If something fails, the reaction will | stop on its own rather than having a meltdown or explosion. | | But I'm just parroting what I read in the past (not sure | where), I don't do nuclear physics and can't say whether | it's snake oil or real. | marcosdumay wrote: | I'm not an expert. My knowledge of nuclear physics is | limited to some liquid model theory at university (what | is basically the simplest model you can find and | completely useless), and some empiric data. I also just | met this design. But I do know some general principles. | | The Wiki page claims very briefly this is a fast breeder | design where it says it uses fast neutrons, also, it | doesn't mention moderation, that is the process that | converts fast neutrons into slow ones. | | Now, the thing that makes slow neutron reactions safer is | that nothing happens unless the neutrons goes into the | moderation medium, so if things deviate from the design, | the reaction stops. Fast neutron reactions do not have | this property, so any stability must be designed into it. | That does not mean that you can't get some passive | stability built into it, what it does mean is that it | must be actively put into the project, and you must | correctly account for any possible failure mode. | | Thus, a good rule of thumb is that if somebody is talking | about fast reactors and doesn't take 90% of the time | talking about safety, then that somebody does not have a | viable idea. | cestith wrote: | I'm not familiar enough with Gate's investments nor his | foundation's investments to say, and "traveling wave reactor" | is something I've read once or twice before but not looked | much into. | | CANDU reactors have an excellent safety record and fail in a | much safer way than light water reactors. I've been looking | more into those recently. MSRs, and especially molten thorium | salt reactors, I've read about and watch documentaries about | quite a bit. Still, I'm just an interested layperson in this | discussion. I used to date someone who was planning to be a | nuclear engineer, but she ultimately ended up in software, | too. | kwhitefoot wrote: | How can one regulate an endeavour that is so inextricably | entwined with the military and government prestige? How do you | set up a genuinely independent regulator that has strong enough | teeth, one that cannot be leaned on by industry heavyweights | lobbying the government? | | These problems are not unique to nuclear power, of course; | Australia seems to have similar problems with coal, and the US | with oil. | bb123 wrote: | Is nuclear power particularly an element of Japanese government | prestige? I have to say when I think of Japan, nuclear power | doesn't spring to mind. Same goes for the military - is there | any evidence that nuclear power is particularly entwined with | the Japanese military? | redis_mlc wrote: | JAXA is basically a Japanese ICBM program, so start there. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAXA | garmaine wrote: | Energy independence is a matter of Japanese government | prestige. As Japan being a resource-poor nation pretty much | led to WW2, becoming energy independent was a major post-war | goal. Nuclear was a very essential part of that (not | anymore). | sandworm101 wrote: | >> I think of Japan, nuclear power doesn't spring to mind. | | It does for me, but that probably has more to do with | Godzilla movies. Japan is also unique in its experience with | nuclear energy. I think of Japan as a country that has a | mature understanding of nuclear power. I would not lecture | them on the subject. | Narann wrote: | In France we have an "Autorite de surete nucleaire"[1] which is | an independent administration (having its own budget, own | lawyers, not connected to governments, etc). France have 25 of | such administrations[2]. | | I can't say it's perfect, but anyone (individuals, | parliamentarians, justice) can seize one of them to require its | action or explain why it does not act. It's defenitly a | "contre-pouvoir". | | [1] | https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorit%C3%A9_de_s%C3%BBret%C3... | [2] | https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorit%C3%A9_administrative_i... | duxup wrote: | >inextricably entwined with the military and government | prestige? | | Is that a thing? For some reason when I think of nuclear | accidents, I don't often think that "military and government | prestige" were the biggest issues. Maybe Chernobyl was? | visualradio wrote: | > How do you set up a genuinely independent regulator that has | strong enough teeth, one that cannot be leaned on by industry | heavyweights lobbying the government? | | Directly elected local environmental assessors, which are | required to attend annual meetings at the state and federal | level? | | The auditors which make up the regulatory panel would then be | directly elected by residents throughout the country and would | inspect the work of their colleagues. | | Solve the waste storage and disposal problem first, then treat | it as an emissions problem, and ensure the nuclear industry is | investing in technologies which continually recycling or | minimizing the total mass of high level waste it is producing | in exchange for disposal and storage services. | vkou wrote: | As an educated voter, I would not want to vote for my nuclear | inspector, because their job solely consists of managing tail | risk[1], and I have _zero_ ability to evaluate their | qualifications, or job performance. | | I have no ability to accurately determine whether or not one | of five candidates actually knows what they are doing, or if | they are just a hustler who knows how to play Buzzword Bingo. | I suppose I could spend months of my life trying to get | educated on the subject, but I don't have time to do so, and | neither do my neighbors. | | This is why representative democracies exist. You vote for a | representative, and it becomes their job to wrangle domain- | specific underlings. | | [1] The only feedback signal I can trust is 'Did a one-in-a- | thousand-year event occur under their watch?' [2] | | [2] And if it did, well shucks, what am I going to do now? | Fire them in the next election? The damage is already done. | clairity wrote: | the flaw in that reasoning is that you're creating a single | point of subvertible power (and failure). that might have | made sense 250 years ago before the advent of electricity | and telecommunications (and smaller systemic dangers), but | not so much anymore. it also doesn't solve the 'aww shucks' | issue you mention at all, which really is an incentives | issue beyond representation (you could instead, as a wild | supposition, make all representatives live within 20 miles | of the plant to align incentives). | | we should elect 10s if not 100s of such representatives at | a time (and those folks can hire further experts as | necessary) so that no one rep has inordinate power, because | depending on a single person is certain to fail at some | point. that also is more likely to provide diversity of | thought, which is crucial to effective decision-making. | we're rich enough as a nation to support such a panel | without batting an eye. | visualradio wrote: | > you could instead, as a wild supposition, make all | representatives live within 20 miles of the plant to | align incentives | | Isn't it possible this would increase the chance they had | financial ties to the nuclear industry? My initial | thought was that if you appointed environmental | scientists to monitor emissions in areas without nuclear | plants, they could also check the work of other assessors | in areas with nuclear plants, to make sure their | colleagues were honest, when attending board meetings. | | So you would get bright people which were otherwise | uninvolved to check the work and listen to what was being | discussed. | | Another option which would not rely on local election, | would be to have Congress appoint 50 environmental | assessors, one from each state, which were required to be | permanent residents of each state they were appointed to | represent, rather than employees of a national office. | The assessors would then meet once per year to form a | national oversight board. | visualradio wrote: | > As an educated voter, I would not want to vote for my | nuclear inspector | | The chief job of local environmental assessors would likely | be gathering and aggregate local data sources to monitor | and track a wide variety of emissions, including non- | radioactive emissions in areas with no nuclear industry. | | > I have zero ability to evaluate their qualifications, or | job performance | | The feedback signal to watch would be whether newspapers | and activists say they are compromised by financial ties to | local industries, which can be assisted by financial | disclosure forms. | | > This is why representative democracies exist | | Another option which relied more on Congress would be to | have the House & Senate appoint one independent | environmental assessor from each state, which were required | to be permanent residents of each state, to attend an | annual meeting once per year, to form an independent board | of oversight. The assessors would have to be permanent | residents of the state they were appointed to represent and | submit financial disclosure forms. | 0x1DEADCA0 wrote: | "Lessons from McDonalds-- chemicals and fats must be well | regulated, not ditched" | Hammershaft wrote: | Can you enlighten me with a better currently existing | alternative to 24/7 baseload power? | 0x1DEADCA0 wrote: | Why should the power needs of certain people be put above the | safety of giant land areas? | | I am happy to pay a premium for technologies that are less | efficient but safer. | | When did it become acceptable to say that society needs to | pursue as much electricity production as possible, all risks | be damned? | mpweiher wrote: | _It goes completely against what most believe, but out of | all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest_ | | https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of- | energy | 0x1DEADCA0 wrote: | In what world can you convince me that nuclear is safe | when we have Chernobyl and Fukushima? Like are we going | to compared it to coal or something of the sort? | | When nuclear fails, which it will, through accident or | terrorism, it fails forever, catastrophically | | Why cant we all live off solar and wind? Why must you | have nuclear? | Hammershaft wrote: | > When nuclear fails, which it will, through accident or | terrorism, it fails forever, catastrophically | | Not all reactor designs are capable of failling | catastrophically. | | >Why cant we all live off solar and wind? Why must you | have nuclear? | | I wish we could just live off solar and wind, I'm only in | favor of Nuclear because the evidence suggests we can't. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26348355 | RealityVoid wrote: | > Why cant we all live off solar and wind? Why must you | have nuclear? | | What are you willing to give up? What is your family | willing to give up? Your parents? Your neigbours? | mpweiher wrote: | Hmmm...in the _real world_? | | Both TFAs answer that question for you: nuclear is | _safest_ even including both Fukushima and Chernobyl. Not | "safe", because there is _no_ power generation technology | that is 100% safe. | | And depending on which data you use, nuclear is even | safer than solar and wind. | 0x1DEADCA0 wrote: | The good news is, if you are right about nuclear being | safe, then I will benefit from it. | | If you are wrong, I will be too busy being dead to | remember that I was right! | hntrader wrote: | "Why cant we all live off solar and wind? Why must you | have nuclear?" | | Is large scale and cost competitive energy storage a | solved problem? | Corazoor wrote: | Depends on your definition of solved, but yes kinda: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas | | While I don't think any large scale P2G installations do | currently exist, it is all well proven tech that requires | little to no additional research. | | At least for Germany there exist some studies that | suggest that it should be doable (especially financially) | on a national scale. | hntrader wrote: | So it all comes down to relative costs then. Has anyone | done a comparison between nuclear costs and this? | ThePadawan wrote: | ...That sounds perfectly reasonable? | | I don't want questionable preservatives in my pasta sauce, but | they probably have their place in MREs. | bagacrap wrote: | have to say, you'd have a lot of health problems if you tried | to ditch all fats | 0x1DEADCA0 wrote: | "therefore we need everyone to eat more big macs" | spark3k wrote: | Even when we think things can't go wrong, and we think that we've | thought of all the ways they could go wrong if they did, they | still manage to go wrong. Everything goes wrong. Why do we need | to pick a mind-bogglingly expensive technology where going wrong | means catastrophe? | | You can set your watch by the regularity at which the nuclear | lobbies throw a "for the sake of climate change" article in a | respected publication. | lancewiggs wrote: | There seem to be a series of pro-nuclear submissions here, driven | by articles that are, perhaps, driven by lobbying. That would be | an interesting story to dig out. | | The resulting discussion points out that the cost of nuclear | power plants is very high, the long term risks high, the time | taken to build and cost overruns extraordinarily high and so on | and on. Meanwhile renewables are cheaper, even when adding the | batteries required to smooth lumps, and they can be stood up very | quickly. Sure keep the old plants and improve regulation, but | investors are not going to get returns from nuclear plants when | the competition is low capex, free sunlight and almost zero | maintenance. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | >driven by articles that are, perhaps, driven by lobbying | | Or because people are waking up and realizing that climate | change is gonna screw us faster than we can build the tech to | prevent that and people are defecting toward nuclear which is | relatively shovel ready compared to grid scale solar/wind and | the storage they necessitate. | Krasnol wrote: | That doesn't make sense. If you feel pressure by time, | nuclear is and never was your solution. It takes too long to | construct. By the time a single reactor is build, renewables | will jump several development steps. | Hammershaft wrote: | That's fantastic but unfortunately there is no viable grid | storage close to being capable of actually utilizing | renewables for the majority of power all over the world. | | https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/batteries- | need-t... | | Are we really going to risk human civilization on the | immediate invention and mass fabrication of new storage | technologies orders of magnitude more efficient then what | we have? | drran wrote: | Massive energy storage can^W will be built in fraction of | time needed to build and then demolish a nuclear power | plant. | addicted wrote: | Well, let's get to 30-40% solar/wind before we start | worrrying about grids that cannot accept majority | renewable. | | And guess what, at that point maybe some of the newer, | safer, and cheaper nuclear designs would have been proven | so the nuclear plays we build then for the next few | decades are better than the ones we would build right | now. | saalweachter wrote: | > By the time a single reactor is build, renewables will | jump several development steps. | | We can build more than one nuclear reactor at a time, you | know. | Octoth0rpe wrote: | > faster than we can build the tech | | You're arguing for nuclear on the basis of its build speed? | That doesn't seem to be born out in reality. Maybe another X* | years when we've got cheap, factory built small modular | reactors, but that certainly doesn't describe nuclear today. | In which case we're back to waiting for new tech. | | * X being some number of years that increments by 1 year, | every year. | bluGill wrote: | Large parts of build speed issue with nuclear is | regulation. If we could just get a permit to build done in | a reasonable amount of time and then not stop progress | again and again it would make a big difference. | Octoth0rpe wrote: | Given the price tag for Fukushima is at $187 billion and | rising, arguing for deregulation _should_ be a hard sell. | | The axiom 'safe, cheap, fast; choose any 2' doesn't even | apply to nuclear. It's more like choose 0. You might be | able to argue for some version of 'safe' by talking about | actual fatalities from nuclear energy being low, but I | think the 5000ish square kilometers of exclusion zones | from Chrenobyl/Fukushima should be part of the | conversation about 'safety'. Safe for people perhaps, | safe for property, apparently not. So maybe choose 0.5? | Aachen wrote: | We can hope that all countries will find the space for all | the solar panels, wind turbines, have some convenient | height differences for hydro power and pumped energy | storage, money for li-ion storage for the night or windless | days, grid upgrades to get it from where it's produced to | where it's needed... | | or we could apt remove coal_plant && apt install | fission_plant on the same surface area and be certain that | we'll be done in the 15 years that this takes to build. | | I'm very much afraid the former isn't going to cut it. I | also know solar is cheaper if you compare kWh produced by | panels on roofs to kWh produced by nuclear plants, but we | need to increase our energy production nearly tenfold and | renewables only won't make it easy to get there. We need to | continue on both fronts, we can't rule out nuclear if we | want to avoid this disaster. Best case the money is wasted. | Currently, the best case is that we'll succeed and the | average case a disaster. | jolux wrote: | Nuclear, shovel ready? How many economically viable nuclear | designs are shovel ready with a reasonable time to | generation? | Alupis wrote: | We regulated the industry so much that we made nuclear | plants almost entirely economically unviable. | | Some of the regulations are good, some are bad - and a lot | were born out of irrational fears about an immature | industry that we didn't fully understand at the time. | | There is no reason a nuclear plant cannot be economically | viable. They're all over Europe, Japan, Russia, China and | I'm sure other countries as well. | gitgreen wrote: | NuScale/Fluor claim they can bring the UAMPS project in | Idaho online by 2027 at an amortized average energy cost of | about $55/MWh. | | https://www.powermag.com/nuscale-uamps-kick-off-idaho-smr- | nu... | | That would make it more expensive than onshore | wind($45/MWh) and solar yet($48/MWh) cheaper than all other | sources of energy including natural gas($59/MWh). Double | the final cost of energy to $110/MWh and it would still be | in theory cheaper than the average for coal($115/MWh). | Granted I'm pulling these numbers from Wikipedia so it's | not that simple but the numbers aren't unrealistic. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source | garmaine wrote: | You do realize this is a 75 year old industry with dozens of | approved reactor designs? | Krasnol wrote: | The lobby tries everything to paint themselves as a clean | energy source and alternative to renewable energy. Striking | aggressively left and right. Sometimes even by the same | lobbyist: | | https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2020/09/16/statement-on-zion-... | | https://www.facebook.com/shellenbergerMD/videos/my-interview... | | I have the feeling that the gained pace now that nuclear is on | the retreat in democratic countries. | | https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.74261... | Tarsul wrote: | that we have so many pro nuclear articles here on HN is | remarkable to me, too. However, I come from Germany where the | general sentiment is negative. I'd guess in the US (where | probably most of HN users come from?!) the sentiment is more | positive? I can't explain it any other way (well, lobbyism, | astroturfing... okay, but I wouldn't go that far without | evidence). What I miss in all these energy discussions is | arguments about reducing the load or better managing the load | (with flexible pricing etc.), especially since that could be | very data driven which should align well with the HN crowd. And | those discussions should come before we start even thinking | about nuclear. Same argument as with recycling: the best | garbage [energy] is the one which never was (reduce > recycle). | cestith wrote: | Light water reactors are not the only option for nuclear | power. CANDU reactors have a wonderful safety record. MSRs | are on the brink of becoming commercially viable and have | been for a long time, but funding is currently insufficient. | Funding is insufficient largely because light water and heavy | water (like CANDU and derivatives) plants are already | researched on the one hand and light water reactors have | created negative sentiment for all things nuclear on the | other. | | Would I like nuclear power that fails safe and doesn't | produce bomb material? Absolutely. Would I live next door to | a molten thorium salt reactor? I'd love to. Do I want to see | new light water reactors built anywhere in the world? No. | jeffbee wrote: | HN hates data on energy discussions. The HN vibe is strongly | in favor of EVs, for example, despite the fact that EVs are | the slowest and most expensive way to reduce transport | greenhouse gas emissions. Fission is, likewise, the slowest | and most expensive way to add electrical generation today. | Fission is the only power source where the costs increased in | the last 10 years. PV is now five times cheaper than fission. | Onshore wind costs the same as PV. Batteries are easy to | mass-produce. The substantive debate is over. | hntrader wrote: | "Batteries are easy to mass-produce." | | There's people here saying the battery tech isn't ready yet | for large scale grid storage of solar/wind. Is that untrue? | jeffbee wrote: | California has 250MW of battery facilities online right | now. If you can do 250MW, you can do 50GW. The CAISO | roadmap for energy storage does not list any | technological risks. | hntrader wrote: | Not saying it can't be done, but is it cheaper than | nuclear? | drran wrote: | BTW, nuclear energy will be cheaper with massive power | storage, because nuclear power can be accumulated at | night then. | Hammershaft wrote: | Take a look at my reply to him to see some unfortunately | grim stats on this issue. I would argue nuclear is | currently our only choice. | Hammershaft wrote: | > HN hates data on energy discussions. | | >PV is now five times cheaper than fission. Onshore wind | costs the same as PV. Batteries are easy to mass-produce. | | This is an odd contrast of statements considering you gave | no data to support your argument. I take issue with | dismissing the massive problem of intermittancy and storage | with "Battaries are easy to mass-produce". | | "A cost-optimal wind-solar mix with storage reaches cost- | competitiveness with a nuclear fission plant providing | baseload electricity at a cost of $0.075/kWh27 at an energy | storage capacity cost of $10-20/kWh. To reach cost- | competitiveness with a peaker natural gas plant at | $0.077/kWh, energy storage capacity costs must instead fall | below $5/kWh." | | https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9 | | "The largest announced storage system, comprising more than | 18,000 Li-ion batteries, is being built in Long Beach for | Southern California Edison by AES Corp. When it's | completed, in 2021, it will be capable of running at 100 | megawatts for 4 hours. But that energy total of 400 | megawatt-hours is still two orders of magnitude lower than | what a large Asian city would need if deprived of its | intermittent supply. For example, just 2 GW for two days | comes to 96 gigawatt-hours. | | We have to scale up storage, but how? Sodium-sulfur | batteries have higher energy density than Li-ion ones, but | hot liquid metal is a most inconvenient electrolyte. Flow | batteries, which store energy directly in the electrolyte, | are still in an early stage of deployment. Supercapacitors | can't provide electricity over a long enough time. And | compressed air and flywheels, the perennial favorites of | popular journalism, have made it into only a dozen or so | small and midsize installations. We could use solar | electricity to electrolyze water and store the hydrogen, | but still, a hydrogen-based economy is not imminent. | | And so when going big we must still rely on a technology | introduced in the 1890s: pumped storage. You build one | reservoir high up, link it with pipes to another one lower | down and use cheaper, nighttime electricity to pump water | uphill so that it can turn turbines during times of peak | demand. Pumped storage accounts for more than 99 percent of | the world's storage capacity, but inevitably, it entails | energy loss on the order of 25 percent. Many installations | have short-term capacities in excess of 1 GW--the largest | one is about 3 GW--and more than one would be needed for a | megacity completely dependent on solar and wind generation. | | But most megacities are nowhere near the steep escarpments | or deep-cut mountain valleys you'd need for pumped storage. | Many, including Shanghai, Kolkata, and Karachi, are on | coastal plains. They could rely on pumped storage only if | it were provided through long-distance transmission. The | need for more compact, more flexible, larger-scale, less | costly electricity storage is self-evident. But the miracle | has been slow in coming." | | https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/batteries- | need-t... | | "Given the magnitude of the battery material demand growth | across all scenarios, global production capacity for Li, | Co, and Ni (black lines in Fig. 3) will have to increase | drastically (see Supplementary Tables 9 and 10). For Li and | Co, demand could outgrow current production capacities even | before 2025. For Ni, the situation appears to be less | dramatic, although by 2040 EV batteries alone could consume | as much as the global primary Ni production in 2019. Other | battery materials could be supplied without exceeding | existing production capacities (Supplementary Tables 9 and | 10), although supplies may still have to increase to meet | demands from other sectors5,9. The known reserves for Li, | Ni, and Co (black lines in Fig. 4) could be depleted before | 2050 in the SD scenario and for Co also in the STEP | scenario. For all other materials known reserves exceed | demand from EV batteries until 2050 (Supplementary Table | 5). In 2019 around 64% of natural graphite and 64% of Si | are produced in China32, which could create vulnerabilities | to supply reliability." | | https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-020-00095-x | hntrader wrote: | So storage reaches cost competitiveness with nuclear at | $10-$20/kWh. | | Do we know what the current cost is today? | drran wrote: | I have no idea where you got these numbers, but nuclear | energy is good for base load, while batteries are good | for handling load peaks. These two types of load are very | different. | | With big batteries, nuclear energy can be accumulated at | night and used at evening, which improve performance of | nuclear stations a lot. Try it yourself at simulation: ht | tps://www.tennet.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/Our_Key_Tasks/I | n... | | Current cost of power storage is below $100 per kWh | stored in the newest designs. | Hammershaft wrote: | ~ $300 - $700 /kWh. | | that figure could be outdated but its in the ballpark | hntrader wrote: | So nuclear is much much much much cheaper and until the | storage costs come way down, we have no other choice | (aside from natgas peakers). Correct? | Hammershaft wrote: | For baseline power the answer is yes. The only two forms | of low carbon baseline energy we currently have are | nuclear and hydro. | hntrader wrote: | Do you know why California is using batteries instead of | cheaper nuclear? Is it just for cynical political | reasons? | jeffbee wrote: | Nobody cares how bad the lifecycle efficiency is for | pumped storage because the input doesn't cost anything. | Hammershaft wrote: | That is only one of the multiple problems discussed with | mass pumped storage. Regardless, the efficiency does | matter as if you are attempting to store peak power as | %100 of baseline power then your input is no longer free. | It is a factor in the energy output of the PV / Turbine | over the course of its lifecycle. Lower efficiency means | more PVs / Turbines and more massive pumped storage | projects. | nickik wrote: | Its always fucking baffling to me when people believe | everything about nuclear is lobbying. Its a tiny industry | that absolutely sucks at lobbying. | | > reducing the load or better managing the load (with | flexible pricing etc.), especially since that could be very | data driven which should align well with the HN crowd. | | Nobody is against that, but its not a actual solution, its an | optimisation that doesn't play into the overall discussion. | | At the end of the day you need to generate a lot of energy, | no matter how much you want to reduce or recycle. | Hammershaft wrote: | In my opinion Germany's experience denuclearizing (and | replacing it with renewables and lignite coal) has been some | of the strongest evidence I've seen in favor of nuclear | energy. | wsc981 wrote: | I've never had a negative sentiment against nuclear energy, | even though most of the people from my country seem to be or | at least were so in the past. | | And I feel many of the measures the Dutch government is | taking these days to reduce CO2 seem borderline crazy. For | example burning trees for energy (biomass), wood that is | imported from the USA and Canada and shipped in huge | container ships to The Netherlands [0]. And let's not forget | that trees actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere. | | Or the fact that the Dutch government wants the whole country | cut off from gas for heating, while neighbouring countries | (like Germany) are trying to get people to use gas for | heating. In The Netherlands every house if connected to the | gas network, but soon everybody will need to switch to | waterpumps for heating. | | Or the fact that the whole country will be covered with wind | turbines which ruin the view, produce a lot of noise, need a | lot of space and kill many birds. | | --- | | [0]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=htt | ps:/... | sandworm101 wrote: | >> free sunlight and almost zero maintenance. | | Try running a gigawatt's worth of solar panels attached to | enough battery capacity to fill a small stadium. There is | plenty of maintenance to be done. Nuclear and solar are really | apples and oranges. They each have advantages and | disadvantages. In a given time/place/need one will always be | better than another but neither are superior always. | mtone wrote: | Maybe it's because I'm in Canada where several provinces use | hydro as a primary energy source, but why doesn't make it to | the top of the lists more often? | | Nearby ecosystem damages, relatively speaking, seem rather | low in comparison with nuclear or fuel, and for dealing with | future climate change issues in general. While they don't | explode, I'm sure they can can cause disasters of their own. | | But wind/solar require massive storage capacity to become a | primary source and require a lot of space/disruption at these | scales. I'm not sure how the affected landmass (in the long | term) compares with Hydro, or maintenance costs. | | Hydro has this great combination of zero emission and the | water being its own battery. Not relying on rare materials | and battery production avoids adding competition and could | favor the transition to electric vehicles at a global scale. | | Like nuclear, initial costs are problematic. Social | acceptance is so-so. In some places like the US many "good | spots" are taken, but it appears 2/3 of potential in the | world is untapped. More numerous but smaller damns seem to be | a possibility too. | mpweiher wrote: | First, there isn't that much Hydro around, and a lot of | that has been tapped already. | | Second, it's significantly less safe than nuclear. In fact, | IIRC the worst single power-generation disaster was a | hydro-dam failure in China. | | And the environmental impact outside of accidents is also | far from trivial. | RealityVoid wrote: | I find it amazing that people go "Let's use hydro!" When | a single event killed more people than all the nuclear | accidents combined. Unreal. | drran wrote: | What you propose to use instead of dams in place of flood | protection? | RealityVoid wrote: | Hydro dams and flood dams are different. I really do not | understand the point you are making. I want to highlight | that the fear around nuclear is not rational since you | need to compare the risk profile of the alternatives and | it seems some people completely fail to do so. | mtone wrote: | For the record, I didn't say I fear nuclear. I'd pick | Nuclear over coal any day. I'm not for or against any | particular technology. | | In normal circumstances Hydro seems among the safest [1] | for both humans and the environment all things relative. | It has served Quebec quite well at least with very low | electricity rates and emissions, and environmental | impacts are likely long paid off with no radioactive | waste to manage. Being in a low populated region (a rare | asset..) also helps on the safety side. | | Bringing up a single dam incident due to an estimated | once-in-2-millenia rainfall/typhoon [2] in a populated | region to dismiss an entire renewable energy source.. | sounds like that kind of irrational fear you mention. | | I think the arguments around possible lack of locations, | costs, planning, and water supplies are more relevant -- | and affect both hydro and nuclear. Those are also what | make wind/solar interesting -agility- as tech improves. | | [1] https://energycentral.com/c/ec/deaths-nuclear-energy- | compare... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failur | e#Gover... | drran wrote: | Yep, but hydro dams are used to control floods too, so | they save people from floods as part of their operation. | An improperly maintained dam can increase risk of flood, | of course. | | See also: https://energypedia.info/wiki/Using_Hydro_Power | _Plants_for_F... . | Hammershaft wrote: | Hydro is great at producing low carbon energy but: | | - completely destroys ecosystems and communities around it | | - Can create international water disputes that threaten war | (look at Ethiopia, Turkey, Tibet) | | - Creates a ticking time bomb much worse then nuclear if | not properly maintained | | That said, situationally I think Hydro is still one of our | better options. | mtone wrote: | Interesting point about water disputes, wasn't aware -- | and freshwater supply is not going up in the future. | sandworm101 wrote: | >>why doesn't make it to the top of the lists more often? | | Modern thinking on hydro is changing. It can be good, but | many implementations are disturbing. If you wipe out a | forest then you aren't carbon neutral. And all those | rotting logs under the water release gasses that are worse | can CO2. So while it may be a great idea in the American | southwest, it might not be a great idea to flood a rain | forest in British Columbia. | m463 wrote: | gah. | | I nuclear has a place. Nuclear generates energy and lots of it. | | Take a look at this table and check out uranium: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#List_of_materia... | | The thing is, just like we are developing solar, we have to | develop nuclear. We should drive the cost down, and safety up. | | Boiling water reactors _are_ very expensive, in the same way | solar power was in the Jimmy Carter era: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#/media/File:Price_h... | | We should be working on stable reactors, safe ones that don't | need active intervention to shut down, and work to make them | available. | | By all means we should also work on solar and wind, but we | should keep nuclear active. | | We should be working to have MORE CO2 free power, of different | kinds, that will work during a variety of conditions. | [deleted] | duxup wrote: | > perhaps, driven by lobbying | | Is there a reason to think this outside seeing something you | disagree with? | Hammershaft wrote: | The cost of nuclear is high in the short term but when debt is | paid off it becomes one of the cheapest sources of baseline | energy in the long run. I don't think "big nuclear" is behind | these posts, its just that more and more people are looking | past a period of nuclear panic and recognizing that this is | likely to be the only form of baseload power we can transition | to in the face of climate change. | melling wrote: | I don't think we currently have the battery technology to carry | the base load for the United States. | bpodgursky wrote: | I think there are far more effective venues for lobbying that | posting pro-nuclear links to HN. | | More likely, it's educated users who don't want to see the | world melt by 2100. | simonCGN wrote: | Another of those propaganda articles. | PaulHoule wrote: | The real trouble with the light water reactor is not the nuclear | part but the steam turbine it is attached to. | | Unfortunately people have a way of driving while looking in the | rear view mirror and much of the discussion around nuclear energy | revolves around issues of the 1970s. | | In the 1970s coal burning power plants were the cost king of | power plants. There was some concern about making them cleaner, | but by the 1980s gas turbine power plants with 10 times the power | density (e.g. 1/10 the capital cost) were becoming widespread and | people quit building coal plants. | | (A big literature got left behind about how to drive a gas | turbine from coal, on paper it would be lower capital cost than a | conventional coal plant, but the technology never got developed | at full scale.) | | Even if the heat was free it would be hard for a steam turbine | based power plant to compete with gas turbines. | | Now it should be possible to build a nuclear power plant based on | the brayton cycle using helium or carbon dioxide or some similar | gas as a working fluid. You then need to use helium or sodium or | lead as a coolant because the pressure would be too high with | water. | | Fast reactors are the best developed option, followed by the | prismatic HTGR, then the thorium reactors. Pebble-bed HTGR looked | pretty good until an expose came out that a German pebble bed | reactor had a difficult time... Turns out pebbles that slide past | each other just fine in air will get stuck on each other and | crack in helium. | | When Bill Gates and others go around saying we have to get over | the safety issue they are continuing the stigma. Nuclear power is | not going to get out of it's funk unless it has a cost story that | looks good when everything goes right -- which is not the case | with the LWR. | sir_bearington wrote: | > Even if the heat was free it would be hard for a steam | turbine based power plant to compete with gas turbines. | | This isn't true. People started attaching steam turbines to gas | plants precisely because it made economic sense to tap into | waste heat for co-generation. | | Nobody expects nuclear to compete against fossil fuels. But | fossil fuels release carbon. Nuclear is necessary because it's | the only consistent form of carbon-free energy production save | for geographically dependent solutions like hydroelectricity | and geothermal power. | | > Nuclear power is not going to get out of it's funk unless it | has a cost story that looks good when everything goes right -- | which is not the case with the LWR. | | True. One solution is to attach a cost to account for the | impact of climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. Then | nuclear will be competitive with fossil fuels. And competitive | against intermittent sources since those require fossil fuels | as a backup, at least until some feasible form of grid-scale | storage is developed. | PaulHoule wrote: | The "steam turbine attached to the gas plant" as a system | benefits from the high power density of the gas turbine. For | nuclear to do the same it would need to run at high temps | (e.g. sodium, sodium fluoride, ...) and be coupled to a | combined cycle powerset and heat recovery system... | | Still needs the high temps! | | Nuclear competes not just with fossil fuels but with "burn | the fossil fuels, capture the carbon, inject the CO2 back | into the ground option", which might not be so bad if this | gets perfected | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion | sir_bearington wrote: | I think you misunderstand what combined cycle means. | | In a gas turbine - without cogeneration - the gas turbine | is driven by heating air and the expanded air spins a | turbine, which spins a dynamo (as well as the compressor | blades). It's like a jet engine, but hooked up to a | generator. The exhaust air is hot and we do nothing with | that waste heat. | | Starting a couple decades ago, people started putting | boilers next to the gas turbine exhaust. This boiler is | heated by the gas turbine exhaust, and the generated steam | drives a turbine. It's combined cycle because there's two | heat engines: the jet engine which is driven by hot air, | and then the steam turbine driven by steam generated from | the jet engine's exhaust. It's tapping into waste heat to | generate steam, and that steam drives a turbine. There's | two Carnot cycles happening. One in the gas turbine, one in | the steam turbine. | | There's no such thing as a combined cycle nuclear plant, no | matter how much thermal energy it can put out. The plant | heats water which drives a turbine. If you have a reactor | that generates more heat, then you can generate more steam | and drive a larger turbine or additional turbines. But | there's still only one heat engine, one cycle. | | I guess you _could_ use the heat exchanger as a second | steam generator to drive a second turbine. But in order for | that to work, the first steam turbine would have to be very | inefficient and deliver a lot of waste heat to the second | turbine. It 'd be better to just drive two turbines in | parallel or a larger turbine. | nickik wrote: | My favourite current design is by Moltex Energy. Its basically, | what happens if you take a Sodium reactor design and instead | use molten salt. | | It basically fixes all the really terrible ideas about sodium | reactors and gives you the advantage of molten salt reactors. | | The problem is, what we are doing now are all things that could | and should have been done in the 70-80s. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-04 23:00 UTC)