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It's time to dispel the myths about nuclear power

243 points by Osiris30 11y ago

grecy 11y ago
I'm by no means anti-nuclear, though watching Fukushima unfold showed me a reality I hadn't fully thought out. A few days after it all went bad, there was basically nothing we could do to stop it, which is terrifying. No humans could go in there, and there were no robots capable of doing the job. So we as humans have the ability to build a machine of enormous power and (possibly) radiation, but when things inevitably go bad from time to time, our only course of action is to stand back and say "well, damn".
- noxToken 11y ago
  I believe the issue with Fukushima was that the early warning signs were ignored. If you ignore those warning signs with something that has the potential to be catastrophic, this is the result.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    The seawall was shorter than it should have been, that is a planning and design failure, not just ignoring warning signs. There also doesn't seem to have been any planning for a situation where the seawall failed (the inundation rendered the on site backup power inoperative). Adding a second layer of protection to such an important system would not be particularly aggressive.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewmcg 11y ago
  I agree. But watching BP's contractors repeatedly fail to plug the Deepwater Horizon gusher made me realize that these catastrophic possibilities are not limited to nuclear power. With non-renewable energy production, the situation is literally "pick your poison."
  - jbattle 11y ago
    Also the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak - something like 100+ days of the thing uncontrollably spewing gas
  - atemerev 11y ago
    Hydro is renewable, and dangerous. So is silicon production for solar panels. Life is a risky business.
  - zeveb 11y ago
    > With non-renewable energy production, the situation is literally "pick your poison." Isn't that true of renewable energy production at scale, too? Solar panels require some very nasty industrial processes to produce, wind more than decimates bird populations, tidal affects sealife and the seafloor, hydroelectric affects fish (and poorly-maintained dams can destroy cities and regions …). I think it might actually be unavoidable: any process which generates the amount of energy required to sustain human life at scale will … be responsible for handling a huge amount of energy at scale. edit: I'm unaware of issues with goethermal, but a) it's not possible most places; b) the fact that I'm unaware of them doesn't imply that they don't exist.
    - patall 11y ago
      Well, another big issue with (current?) solar panels is that they are highly problematic in case of fire (fire brigade with the waterhose closes the electric circuit with the grounded panel) And geothermal has more than once been suspected to be responsible for more or less immidiate earth-quakes. Choose your risks on yourself...
    - mcv 11y ago
      The decimation of bird populations by wind turbines is somewhat exaggerated. Wind turbines do kill birds, but not remotely as many as powerlines, windows, cats or cars do: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science... So while it is an issue, it's not remotely as much of an issue as other technologies that everybody takes for granted and nobody complains about. I wonder if the same might be true for tidal: that existing sea traffic and fishing might have a far bigger impact on sea life than energy generation would have.
- exabrial 11y ago
  A design from the 50s-60s era of nuclear design should not still be in service for this reason. We can do way better now. Our process, materials, and engineering have advanced orders of magnitude.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    All of those and reactor designs for safe(r) generation of civil power are very different to reactor designs for breeding weapons grade material/based on similar designs. We can build clean, efficient reactors that fail entirely safe.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Good designs can't fix faulty construction and poor maintenance. France has a long history of success with nuclear power, but using the exact same designs in Afghanistan would be begging for problems. Further, we really don't have a good solution for nuclear waste. PS: Most importantly they cost more than renewable power even including energy storage.
      - noir_lord 11y ago
        Possibly so I've not look recently but the cost of reactors is historically high because of the way they where built. Newer cheaper safer reactors built in volume would be cheaper than old designs, when the french went on their reactor building spree the cost per reactor was massively less than what Hinkley is costing. Tooling, scale, been able to lots of the same thing, experience etc all drive the cost down.
        Retric 11y ago
        Construction costs are only part of the story. Construction, Mining/fuel processing, Operation, Decommissioning, Fuel Storage / reprocessing, Disaster Insurance. Sure, we can hand wave R&D as a sunk cost, but many of these costs only show up after the fact.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 11y ago
  >I'm by no means anti-nuclear, though watching Fukushima unfold showed me a reality I hadn't fully thought out. The even worse reality is the government, contractors and everybody else involved repeatedly caught lying about it -- plus all the human errors in judgment and engineering involved leading to this. And it's a huge industry which can employ a lot of researchers to lie with selective statistics, and sell the evergreen "newer models will be different this time, really".
- Symmetry 11y ago
  And yet, given the amount of power it generated Fukushima still didn't kill any more people than a typical coal power plant.
  - jhanschoo 11y ago
    Hi, I'm inclined to believe you, but can you quote some numbers to back your assertion?
    - arm85 11y ago
      I don't know where he got his reference from, but, renewable energy without the hot air, has something similar, it calculates the number of deaths per GWy, for different sources[0]. Coal is certainly near the top (second to oil)[0]. Although I believe it was published after fukushima, and people might be suffering illness not accounted for in the book, I imagine that fukushima won't have dented the stats very much. [0] http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml
    - overdrivetg 11y ago
      Here's a simple chart, with what look like credible sources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...
    - Symmetry 11y ago
      Sorry, should have included a link with that. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs-coal.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs...
      - tobltobs 11y ago
        "So it was a disaster that killed roughly 180 people." Just if somebody don't want to read all the glorification of nuclear power of this guy but want to know which numbers he used for his theory. "Over it's lifetime Fukushima generated 877,692 Gigawatt-Hours of electricity .." Subtracting the energy required to build, maintain, dismantle a nuclear reactor and store the waste for the next few thousand years would be nitpicking.
- rurounijones 11y ago
  Have a read of this as a counterpoint to fukusho.a http://thebulletin.org/onagawa-japanese-nuclear-power-plant-didn%E2%80%99t-melt-down-311 http://thebulletin.org/onagawa-japanese-nuclear-power-plant-...
emodendroket 11y ago
I take issue with the account of Fukushima. Yes, a natural disaster kicked off the chain of events, but it was not completely unforeseeable and stronger safeguards and maintenance would have mitigated the disaster. The big problem in my mind is not that nuclear power can't be safe but that I don't see anything to give me confidence that it can regulated to ensure that it actually is in practice.
- dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  The only appreciable release of radiation was a result of the Soviets playing fast and loose with shoddy infrastructure followed by higher ups attempting to rectify the situation by burying their heads in the sand is good enough for me. Compared to oil spills ("oops, we grounded our tanker") and dam failures ("maintenance, lolwut?") a lot of different things needed to come together for the Chernobyl disaster to happen and the runners up, (3-mile, Fukushima) are downright benign by comparison. As long as we don't get complacent and half-ass things I have no problem with nuclear power.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    I'm a strong supporter of nuclear power, but calling Fukushima benign is counter productive. Thousands have lost their homes and there are dangerous amounts of radiation leaking into the ground. The site will remain a money sinkhole of ongoing mitigation measures for a long time. But besides these direct effects, the handling of disaster showed that the responsible parties were trying very hard to cover everything up and thus permanently destroyed any confidence you might have had in them, proving the "human factors make nuclear unsafe" crowd right.
    - adsfqwop 11y ago
      Unfortunately the human factor is exactly the problem with these types of systems. I don't think humans can ever be considered to be safe stewards of anything where a seemingly remote cascade event can wipe out life on the planet. Look at the disaster of Long-Term Capital Management from the financial industry as an example, where a presumed ten sigma event almost wiped out the whole western financial system. http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.fi/2007/05/11000000000000000000000000.html http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.fi/2007/05/11000000000000... These nuclear reactors are built with the same underlying principles and risk-management profiles. There's always the element of human error; you can't over-engineer something you did not foresee. In addition to that you have the enormous profit incentives from running nuclear power. These incentives can overwhelm the incentives for safety, or lead to disregard of warnings where profit potential would be compromised if warnings were attended to. It's human, therefore it's hard to ever sleep completely sound knowing that these constructions are running on the planet. Fukushima didn't just happen because one mistake was made either. It happened because a long string of mistakes and disregard of safety happened. Want to bet it doesn't happen again? It's hard to bet against human nature... http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf
kemenaran 11y ago
Maybe it's time to recognize investing in renewable energies is better than in the dying nuclear power. Nuclear is a fossil fuel too (uranium has to be extracted and is limited), costs a tremendous amount of money in power-plant building and dismantling costs, and concentrate the production of energy in a few remote places (which makes transport costs higher). Meanwhile, the number of places running on 100% renewable energies is surprisingly high (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy#Places_with_around_100.25_renewable_electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy#Places...). Why would we need nuclear again?
- tombert 11y ago
  While I agree that the long-term solution is absolutely to use renewable stuff (especially solar), I don't know that the renewable tech is completely ready to power 7 billion people. Nuclear is messy, and far from ideal, but it doesn't spew chemicals into the air, with a high yield of power, and we already have decent(ish) nuclear tech.
  - ewzimm 11y ago
    I've been hearing just the opposite for the last few years, that nuclear power no longer makes economic sense in comparison to renewable energy. Renewables are just getting cheaper much, much faster than nuclear and don't require the enormous initial investment and construction time. I'm no expert, and this is just based on several things I've heard over the years, so I'd suggest just starting at the Wikipedia article if you wanted more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... It's showing a range of estimates between $0.067-$0.30/kWh. In comparison, solar was around $0.25/kWh in 2008, $0.15/kWh in 2011, and continues to fall quickly.
    - VLM 11y ago
      The problem is how do megacorps and their privately owned properties such as media and government do their FIRE sector thing to profit off distributed solar panels... Well, they could issue subprime loans and all kinds of weird financialization for people to buy panels. The factories are all all in china but some games can be played there. That's about it. Its not as profitable as building billion dollar class nuke plants... They don't like being frozen out of a market, in this case the energy market, so we're all going to have to sit thru a lot of what boils down to sponsored content about how "we" need plants not panels (who is this "we" anyway?), and how panels are going to destroy the grid and motherhood and apple pie, etc.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
leecarraher 11y ago
we should invest in fossil fuel backed intermittent renewables like wind and solar because hydroelectric is bad for environments, nuclear means there could be a mushroom cloud blowin' up my neighborhood, and coal pollutes. Or at least that's what my brochure from my local n̶a̶t̶u̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶g̶a̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶p̶p̶l̶i̶e̶r̶ greenpeace tells me.
tehabe 11y ago
Be careful when someone speaks about ideology if they were free of it. "In the wake of Fukushima, Germany acquiesced to demands from lobby groups to shut down its nuclear sector, building heavily polluting fossil-fuel plants in their stead." This is probably the worst part in this article, because coal is also decreasing in Germany. Not as fast as nuclear but nuclear was always the smaller than coal. My main issue is, that again, someone believes that nuclear power is a way of solving the climate change crisis. It isn't for that nuclear power never had a big enough market share to begin with. Even the current plants which are being build won't change that. Also nuclear power is extremely expensive. The ones currently being build in Finland and France are 3x over budget and are lagging behind years. Those two plants will supply 1600 Watts for the grid. You can get that from renewable energies in less than a year. And yesterday I read that Chinese researchers developed a solar panel which can even use also rain. Why do people want a an energy source, which comes with so many unsolved issues and only promises to solve them later. In the last 50 years none of the issues could be solved. None! (I'm not talking about safety!)
- pjc50 11y ago
  The UK's Hinkley Point C seems to be overbudget and delayed despite construction not even having started.
  - tehabe 11y ago
    And they get feed in prices for 35 years and even inflation will be priced in.
- TorKlingberg 11y ago
  > Those two plants will supply 1600 Watts for the grid. You definitely have the wrong unit there. 1600 W is less than one electric kettle.
  - tehabe 11y ago
    True, it is 1600 MW. Sorry. But the rest is still true.
struct 11y ago
For anyone interested in this topic, I can really recommend "Radiation: What It Is, What You Need to Know" (by Robert Peter Gale and Eric Lax)[1] which includes some very thorough discussion on Chernobyl and Fukushima. An interesting point they raise about Chernobyl is the psychological fallout of people thinking they were exposed: there was a notable rise in abortions and quite a few plant workers drank themselves to death after the accident. It's all very fascinating. [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radiation-What-You-Need-Know-ebook/dp/B008TSBYLY/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1460470306&sr=1-2&keywords=Radiation http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radiation-What-You-Need-Know-ebook/d...
ebbv 11y ago
Nuclear power is safe and clean in the abstract, where ideal safety procedures are always followed and mistakes are never made. But in the real world, human error always causes problems. The problem with nuclear power is that the results of these problems are enormous and long lived. That's why I am against nuclear power. We have much, much safer alternatives in wind, solar, geothermal and hydro electric. (Yes dam disasters have killed many, many people, I am not in favor of building any more dams where that kind of risk is a possibility.) In my mind there's no need for the risk that comes with nuclear power, we can build out our power infrastructure with safer, renewable sources of energy.
- justizin 11y ago
  Even though disasters with dams are terrifying, it is still just nature reclaiming its' territory. There is no ecological fallout from a dam breaking. Water's gonna water. I'm still with you on trying to avoid this risk, but don't feel it's at all comparable to the risk of a nuclear power plant.
lolc 11y ago
In nuclear, there are many myths like "decomissioning costs are covered" or "we know how to store the waste". And there are some blatant truths like "risks like that cannot be insured against". But that's usually just accepted as a given so I guess it's fine if the article doesn't mention that one. I think the biggest myth in the article is the one where they assume that it will have to be either fission or coal burning, pick one.
- touristtam 11y ago
  oh yes, toxic waste production and safe storage facility. Those are definitely the main point of contend against civil nuclear. Not even France with its 75% energy generation hasn't found a way to recycle nuclear waste or at the very least reduce their lifespan significantly.
pinaceae 11y ago
Nuclear is a prime example for Black Swan instances. All fine until it blows - but when it blows, the catastrophe is really big. If a windmill fails catastrophically, the area around it does not become uninhabitable for at least decades.
- GVIrish 11y ago
  That's true in the abstract, but the big picture is that we're trying to avoid a much larger disaster with climate change. If wind+solar could fill the world's energy needs now, that is what we would be doing. But that is far, far off into the future, if it's possible at all. Burning coal is causing damage to the environment now, killing people from air pollution now, and potentially driving us towards climate change that will kill and displace many millions of people. Nuclear has its downsides but it is not going to raise sea level by 2 or 3 feet in the next century nor cause widespread disruptions in crop growing, or cause devastating extreme weather. A nuclear accident could result in an exclusion zone of a 2 or 3 dozen miles. Climate change could cause global consequences that would be irreversible with our current technology.
xigency 11y ago
I agree (sort of) with the premise of this article but I'm not sure I believe all of its facts. Specifically, the analysis of the negative effects of each respective meltdown, Chernobyl and Fukushima. I personally believe there's reason to distrust any study on Chernobyl because of the blatant cover-up mentioned and the interference of the Soviet government, so it doesn't really work well as a citation to convince skeptics of the safety of nuclear energy. Likewise, I don't know that we've seen the full effects of Fukushima yet. Here is one article that shows some of the milder social effects on residents: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/10/national/life-indoors-exacts-toll-on-koriyama-children/#.VgGiGpcvaDl http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/10/national/life-in... "Some of the smallest children in Koriyama, a short drive from the ruined Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, barely know what it’s like to play outside — fear of radiation has kept them indoors for much of their short lives." I lived at one point in time relatively near the Fukushima plant (100 km away) at about 2 months after the disaster and I did follow pretty closely at that time the pattern of fallout, but since returning to the USA it is not something I have followed as closely as I should. For me, the hardest part is seeing the impact on people I met and their friends and families. But I also saw many people doing well even in the hardship. I did live somewhere (a university campus) with continual radiation level monitoring, with levels somewhere below 0.12 uSv/hour or maybe twice the background radiation of Rome, and I also took Iodine pills in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. For that reason, maybe somewhat selfishly, and because of all of the obvious reasons, I do believe that nuclear energy is essential. Side note: Fukushima Prefecture has the University of Aizu, which is the only public, graduate-level university in Japan dedicated to computer science and engineering.
patall 11y ago
Well, I am not sure but from my point of view, this article misses quite a few arguments against nuclear power. Some may be excusable but not mentioning waste storage (or even regeneration, though I want to see it before I believe it) at all. It does not tell about the destruction cost of nuclear plants (that will never be covered by waste regeneration). It does not talk about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants or just someone stealing radioactiv material to make a dirty bomb. I understand that some arguments against nuclear power are just nonsense but there are some quite tricky ones, picking some that you are able to refute is rediculous. Edit: and a broken dam in a (at the time) third world country that kills >80% of 170.000 people later through famine and epidemics is nothing that translates to the first world. I agree that hydro-electric power has some big down-sides (like mentioned terrorist attacks) but still you should give things in context. Fukushima happening in Angola would have been a different story than in Japan.
bakhy 11y ago
what bugs me is the possibility that one disaster, however unlikely, when it happens may render a wider area uninhabitable for a longer period of time. is this not the case? and then, perhaps a bigger issue, waste management. just look at Germany [1], supposedly a role model country. please note that the New Scientist text is mostly about light waste, "just" 1000 years storage time. there's a committee trying to plan storage of highly radioactive waste - for 1 million years! we are a species of idiots. none of the plants generating that waste is going to give us a million years of power. as others have mentioned, Fukushima could have been prevented. and Japan has also had accidents and cover-ups before [2]. all in all, it seems too risky. and finally, what happened to Thorium plants? aren't they much much safer? or the breeder reactors, how are those coming along? [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2075615-radioactive-waste-dogs-germany-despite-abandoning-nuclear-power/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2075615-radioactive-was... [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20263-japans-record-of-nuclear-cover-ups-and-accidents/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20263-japans-record-o...
squozzer 11y ago
Sadly, the article doesn't do the problems - of both a nuclear future and a non-nuclear one - much justice. It relies on facts and figures, which even taken at face value, will not spur many people to action. Part of the problem is that in general, and particularly with expensive / unattractive projects such as nuclear power plants, those who benefit the most (power company execs, building contractors) assume the least amount of risk - e.g. nearby residents and taxpayers. Same for jails and landfills - same game with a different name. As other commenters have suggested, those who believe in nuclear should consider making a bold gesture. A petition drive might be interesting, but expect a lot of doors slammed into one's face. But to me it still sounds too conventional. Crowdfunding, anyone?
known 11y ago
Cost of electricity by source. 1. Natural gas 2. Hydro 3. Coal 4. Nuclear 5. Solar 6. Wind
- gmac 11y ago
  [citation needed] — that #4 placing for nuclear looks especially suspect if you consider the recent furore over Hinkley Point C in the UK[1]. [1] e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/05/scrapping-hinkley-for-renewable-alternatives-will-save-tens-of-billions http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/05/scrapping...
- GlennS 11y ago
  Onshore wind is quite a bit cheaper than nuclear at this point. It is politically difficult for aesthetic reasons though.
  - Retra 11y ago
    Yet for some reason giant mounds of stinking garbage are aesthetically and politically acceptable...
pithic 11y ago
If the risk/reward calculus of nuclear power is really favorable, then the industry should accept full liability for damages. Repeal Price-Anderson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...). Let them bear the market price of insuring against civil liability.
- wmf 11y ago
  Right after coal bears the true price of air pollution?
paulsutter 11y ago
Fukushima was caused by shoddy planning. From a Carnegie Endowment report[1]: "The original design-basis tsunami for Fukushima Daiichi of 3.1 meters was chosen because a 1960 earthquake off the coast of Chile created a tsunami of that height on the Fukushima coast." Assuming that future tsunamis would be no higher than a recent historical tsunami is already silly. But it's worse: "one compilation of historical tsunamis in and around Japan lists twelve events since 1498 having a maximum amplitude of more than 10 meters, six of which had a maximum amplitude of over 20 meters." In 2002 they already knew the seawater pumps were located too low, but took no action: "Fukushima Daiichi’s design basis tsunami was estimated to have a maximum height of 3.1 meters above mean sea level. Given this, TEPCO decided to locate the seawater intake buildings at 4 meters above sea level and the main plant buildings at the top of a slope 10 meters about sea level" "In 2002, on the basis of a new methodology for assessing tsunami safety developed by the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, TEPCO voluntarily reevaluated the tsunami hazard and adopted a revised design-basis tsunami height of 5.7 meters. Yet, NISA neither updated the licensing documents to reflect this change nor reviewed TEPCO’s analysis. Given that the revised design-basis tsunami was now 1.4 meters above the seawater pumps, such a review should have been conducted." [1] http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf
- tunesmith 11y ago
  This is one of those "Therefore, what?" points... (although you may not have intended anything more than sharing some very interesting and relevant information). But I can see a "therefore, we should not dismiss nuclear power due to some shoddy planning". And, I can see a "therefore, we can expect some degree of shoddy planning in any engineering project, given that it happened even with a nuclear plant, where the risks were well-known ahead of time."
  - paulsutter 11y ago
    To net it out for you: the disaster never would have happened if they had built it on higher ground. And that fact should have been obvious when they did tsunami planning. Nuclear safety is a multifacted issue and only the news media would take one fact (Fukushima was avoidable) and reach a conclusion (proving that nuclear is completely safe / completely risky). I'm personally an advocate for fission, because power storage has a long way to go before wind/solar can handle baseload. I especially like the newer designs such a Moltex (http://www.moltexenergy.com/ http://www.moltexenergy.com/). But that one fact about Fukushima isn't enough to support that position so I didn't bring that into the discussion.
lazyjones 11y ago
Even if we completely ignore most of the risks and hidden costs, nuclear power is still unattractive in its centralized form - large, expensive power plants that require safety measures, usually a lot of water and huge overhead power lines and need to keep operating or millions will be without electricity. On top of that, the consumer is affected by (international) market price fluctuations all the time. I much prefer being self-sufficient with solar panels on my roof and some far away plant as backup. Once nuclear power is safe, I'll happily put a small reactor in my basement as backup too.
- kilroy123 11y ago
  I agree the water usage is a huge concern. However, don't modern designs not require massive amounts of water for cooling? I honestly don't know. To be fair, I think the cost would go down if we started constructing a large number of plants again. We can not go 100% renewable without nuclear. Here's a great talk on the reality of going 100% renewable: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_re...
  - matheweis 11y ago
    Thanks for linking that - really terrific back of the envelope estimates. If anything, I found it to be quite encouraging. If we could just get people behind some of those...
justizin 11y ago
I had the interesting experience of working in a startup under a VP of Engineering who was a Nuclear Scientist and was part of the team the US sent to Chernobyl's sister site - exact same plans, basically - to ensure its' safety. He told me that overwhelmingly what went wrong at Chernobyl is that the head of the plant consistently ignored all of the alarms and monitoring in place, because he was overconfident at what the results of his test would be. He apparently died in the control room. Interestingly, one thing the Russians did notably different was to have a big guy, I want to think at the sister site his name was Sergei, basically live in a hut next to the cooling lake, which was uphill from the plant. In the event of a disaster, he had a humongous mallet he would use to slam open the valve, draining the lake. ... or maybe this was all made up, I couldn't tell you tbh, but it sounded legit to me. ;)
- Tomte 11y ago
  He told me that overwhelmingly what went wrong at Chernobyl is that the head of the plant consistently ignored all of the alarms You may consider this an excuse of the kind "but that's not nuclear power's fault" and you'd be right-ish, but I simply don't care who exactly is at fault for whole regions to become uninhabitable in case of disaster. That is connected to nuclear power in my risk assessment, even if you can make a rational argument that it shouldn't be. And I'm very risk-averse when the magnitude of consequences is that big. Same with Fukushima: yes, everything was safe. Unconnected to the reactor per se they made huge planning errors, underestimating a tsunami. Again, I don't care. It may be a bias or even a fallacy that Kahnemann has already described, but it's a useful and correct fallacy, I would argue.
  - readams 11y ago
    I'm fascinated by the idea of a "correct fallacy." How could such a thing ever make sense? Are you saying that you use this fallacy to reach a conclusion that you believe correct for other reasons? If so, why not state those other reasons and not use your fallacious reasoning? If not, how could your fallacy be correct?
    - 11y ago
codingdave 11y ago
If I were to come up to you, and describe the perfectly running software I can build, and show you how there have been problems in the past, but they were door to poor planning, bad design, human error, etc... and show that perfect construction of software is quite possible... would you buy my argument that in the future, problems will not occur? This is the same thing. Yes, it is possible to do it right and be perfectly safe. It is also possible for someone to not do it right. And if someone does so, the repercussions are severe. Having worked in the energy industry, the goal is to minimize risk. Saying it is OK for nuclear to have some inherent risk because so does everyone else is true, but over-simplified. The consequence of a nuclear accident is much greater than the consequence of a wind power accident, so the reduction of risk in nuclear power needs to also be greatly reduced vs. other forms of power generation. I would not describe myself as anti-nuclear, but I do not believe we need it. I believe solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc, can provide the power we need in this world. Why take on greater consequences to the risks of power generation unless it truly is needed?
- wrsh07 11y ago
  Their point is that these risks are overblown. Nobody died from Fukushima. So if the major accident you're concerned about was, in fact, completely due to human error [and even still the number of deaths was relatively small], why are you still so skeptical? It would be very difficult to change this picture [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/#production http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/#production] to using only clean energies without ramping up our nuclear. Finally, when literal millions die per year because of air pollution, you are choosing something significantly more dangerous [and worse for the environment] because of many fewer memorable nuclear power-related deaths.
  - chefkoch 11y ago
    I'm not even sure that the number of people who died or could die is really the most severe point but i rather believe it is the cost of a nuclear accident. We as a society decide every day to let people die because it is too expensive. Think of healthcare, safety norms or human aid. And having massive areas in high developed countries beeing uninhabitable is unbelieveble costly. Think what 100 sqm in california would amount to.
Animats 11y ago
Fukushima had a meltdown because all reactors of the General Electric Mark I reactor design will melt down if they lose cooling pump power for 12-18 hours. They have an undersized containment vessel. This was known as early as 1972. Peach Bottom, in Pennsylvania, has the same reactor design, as do some other US reactors. We also need to stop storing used fuel rods at reactor sites. Yucca Mountain may not be perfect, but it's so isolated that even if something goes badly wrong, there's nobody around to be affected. The area was previously used for outdoor nuclear weapons testing, after all. Even if everybody evacuates after a disaster and it doesn't kill many people, you don't get your city back.
ergothus 11y ago
I was once at a panel at a scifi convention (Dragoncon, for the curious) where they had a few people working in various nuclear power related areas there to discuss and answer questions. While they were clearly biased, I felt they did a good job addressing the issues directly. I too am biased (I tend to not trust anything that requires maintenance on a time scale so much larger than we can comprehend) and my walk-away conclusions were: * There are a LOT of safety precautions, backups, and more backups - But I still don't trust those will survive human perversity [Edit: And that makes this point hard to settle - if I just don't trust any precautions would be enough, there's no effective way to add precautions that would change my opinion. ] * Nuclear Power, with all the risks and detriments, has a very strong argument that the fossil-fuel alternatives we're using now are MORE damaging. That last point was a huge deal to me. Instead of it being "Nuclear Power: Safe/Unsafe", it became "Nuclear Power vs Fossil Fuels (largely coal): Which is the bigger danger today". I went from anti-nuclear power to "oh gee, I don't know, that's hard", which I generally take as a sign that I've become somewhat enlightened on a topic.
- eridius 11y ago
  As another commenter has said (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11483147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11483147), we now have nuclear reactor designs that have failsafes that cannot fail because they rely on physical laws. That should address your "survive human perversity" concern. As one example, look at the Pebble bed reactor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor#Safety_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor#Safety_feat...). The way it's designed, as the reactor temperature increases, the reactor power decreases, and this is a completely passive effect (meaning it happens without any human intervention), so in the event of an accident the reactor will end up automatically reducing to safe power levels all by itself.
  - ergothus 11y ago
    I'm less worried about a reactor going critical than I am the safe storage and management of the waste. Anything from providing materials for a dirty bomb to general pollution to just generating a safe-but-expensive mess to manage for a really, really long time.
ArtDev 11y ago
The problem of what to do with radioactive wastewater have not been solved. Nuclear power is not economical. It actually works really well on the small scale, but not for city power generation. Nuclear power is simply the worlds most expensive way to boil water. There are cheaper ways to boil water! http://www.nea.is/geothermal/electricity-generation/ http://www.nea.is/geothermal/electricity-generation/
- NolF 11y ago
  You do know that most places don't have the geothermal energy close enough to the surface to make that happen? Also you'll need to provide a source to show that nuclear is "not economical" and "the worlds most expensive way to boil water". All the evidence indicates some of the renewables are it [1]. About 77% of France's energy is nuclear, so I'm not sure what you mean it doesn't work on a large scale...[2] Fun fact a lot of aluminium is made in Iceland because of the cheap energy [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland#Aluminium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland#Aluminium
  - ArtDev 11y ago
    The Geothermal plants in Iceland are amazing to see. The tech is still quite new though. There are many improvements that will make them more efficient. Regardless, they are really really cheap to run. I would imagine that drilling deeper will would allow for Geothermal plants in more places in the world. Here is some background info on the poor economics of nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants#Recent_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power
    - DanBC 11y ago
      They're so cheap they might run a cable from Iceland to the UK to supply power. That would be a cable 30 cm in diametre and about 5600 km long. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b075pxg8 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b075pxg8 > The Ice Link interconnector would link Iceland's cheap and carbon free electricity from hydro and geothermal to the UK. It could provide the equivalent power of a medium sized power plant through a copper cable laid under the sea between the two countries. Crucially the power would be reliable and available when other renewable sources such as wind and solar are not. However, as Tom Heap discovers when he visits the land of fire and ice, environmental campaigners like Bjork fear that this green solution for UK homes could create a need to develop into the pristine wilderness of Iceland's Highlands. Should we pursue our global climate goals even if it has the potential to affect untouched and fragile landscape elsewhere? Tough decisions for Iceland and for us all. Producer: Helen Lennard.
johansch 11y ago
I remember being about 14 (in 1991; 25 years ago) and learning about the effects of CO2 emissions on climate change in school. It seemed blatantly obvious - the only remotely feasible chance the planet had was to replace coal/oil with nuclear. The risk calculation was trivial. (Even after seeing the effects of Chernobyl in the years after 1986 in southern Sweden - we couldn't pick berries and mushroom in the forest for a while and moose meat was contaminated iirc.) I'm so sad that we're still having this debate 25 years later and nothing has changed.
danielpwm 11y ago
Sure, as long as the nuclear reactor is literally in your backyard and nowhere close to me, I'm ok with nuclear power.
abpavel 11y ago
The actual mortality rate from both Chernobyl and Fukushima are so low, I'm not even sure what are we talking about half the time. Fear? Fear of a fear? People store yellow cake at home just for fun, and it's perfectly legal and OK. Yet at other times, just mentioning the word nuclear gives half of the community brain cancer.
collinmanderson 11y ago
This seems to have ignored the 1600 people who died during Fukushima evacuation, and it didn't mention the possible thyroid cancer cases in children around Fukushima. It also didn't mention link between spent nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons. Seems to me that's a good reason to avoid it. (Yes, it might be possible to separate these two, but it seems to me it's still a few years down the road.) There's a pretty good summary of the negative effects here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEYbgyL5n1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEYbgyL5n1g
- kirrent 11y ago
  The 1600 people who died in the evacuation were being evacuated during a natural disaster that was far more devastating. Not mentioning increased rates of thyroid cancer could be attributed to journalistic integrity. There is no evidence of higher incidences of any cancer in any group of residents and it's not expected that there will be. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1022.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1022.full The plutonium in spent nuclear fuel is very difficult to purify to weapons grade. If you're not satisfied with inspections of purifying facilities then taking the waste off the hands of problem countries for free has been discussed. Unfortunately, Uranium isn't that rare or hard for countries to come by. If they really want nuclear weapons then a normal breeding program is the simplest way to do it. That video you linked to was hilarious. Reprocessing is a great idea. There's no harm in waiting a hundred years for a method of getting rid of your spare plutonium when it means you get to reduce the total amount of radioactive waste anyway. Also, while we may wail and gnash our teeth at having nowhere to store our nuclear waste the truth is that governments overwhelmingly deal with the very quite simple problem of storage in a competent manner. Certainly more competently managed than our storage of the products of coal power generation in our atmosphere has been.
nickbauman 11y ago
Nuclear plants are being shut down often because of safety concerns. Planning a new nuke plant is a 30+ year prospect. Therefore while nuclear power has potential, one wonders if a 30-year lead time itself makes nuclear a risky bet. http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-22/nuclear-reactor-closings-us-continue-roil-energy-industry http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-22/nuclear-reactor-closin...
dredmorbius 11y ago
It's time to dispel the myth that the problems of nuclear are technical in nature and have technical solutions. The book to read in this context is Charles Perrow's Normal Accidents. http://www.ohio.edu/people/piccard/entropy/perrow.html http://www.ohio.edu/people/piccard/entropy/perrow.html Humans have had roughly 50 years' commercial generating experience with nuclear power. It took 25 years from first criticality to come up with passibly useful and safe reactors. Of the fewer than 500 commercial reactors which have been built, three have experienced significant core failures, and, despite design deficiencies in each, the core failings in all of these cases, as well as numerous other non-reactor or non-core failures, have been organisational. Bad management. Bad design. Bad emergency response. A continuous underappreciation of the seriousness of what's at hand when you decide to start splitting atoms. Fukushima was infiltrated by the Japanese mob. Future Gen IV and Gen V reactor designs, other than not being currently proven, raise risks of proliferation and novel chemistry experiments (600C highly radioactive florine salts -- what could possibly go wrong?) with a long-tail horizon of tens of thousands to millions of years. We don't have any human institutions that are of comparable longevity. Our companies, governmentals structures, even major religions and languages are nowhere near that old. This is a mucking with things at scales we're nowhere near capable of handling. Hell, the smartest minds in Silicon Valley can't deliver cat gifs without stuffing browser exploits into the accompanying ads networks. Human and organisational problems don't have technical solutions. The scale at which nuclear energy would need to be extended to replace existing fossil fueled systems is on the order of 15,000 reactors, worldwide. At present levels of energy consumption. Uranium itself won't deliver the energy we need (proven resources are good for about 8 decades at present levels of nuclear energy, six years if all present energy were nuclear sourced). At present rates of one core failure per roughly 100 reactor years, we'd see a meltdown per century. How much safer are future designs, organisations, and people going to be? 10x? 100x? 1000x? Is creating a new radioactive wasteland only once a century, until forever, acceptable? Solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass have issues. Leaving glowing holes in the ground, or nondiscretionary slightly mutagenic wildlife preserves, isn't one of them. The bigger lesson is that humans need to embrace limits. There are far too many of us, consuming far too much, and ignoring for far too long the warnings that we're exceeding any rational sustainable bounds. Nuclear energy isn't going to address any of those issues. Facing reality might.
mtgx 11y ago
Too late. In 5 years it will make little sense to start a nuclear power plant instead of a solar power facility with batteries.
outworlder 11y ago
I'm surprised to see this much advocacy of solar and wind here. I do agree that we need way more of that, but what's the required size of a solar power plant that's feeding an aluminum plant? Get a few (modern) nuclear reactors for baseline load, fill the rest with renewables. And shutdown the damned coal plants, those things spew radiation.
smegel 11y ago
> it is important to note that they operate on very different principles. High fissile vs low fissile equates to different principals? What a load of FUD in an article claims to show some insight on the matter.
ageofwant 11y ago
I'm a voting member of that Australian Greens (representing ~10% of voting public on a good day). The green movement has yet to take responsibility for the disastrous effect our rabid anti-nuclear narrative has had on the health of this planet. For a movement that prides itself on conscientious reflection and progressive evidence based policy our track record on this matter is truly dismal. Green Party policy on nuclear power is a massive failure.
zik 11y ago
This article is deliberately misleading. It's wearing its biases on its sleeve by admitting to only the direct deaths of Chernobyl (43) and saying that the WHO's projected tally of 4000 deaths merely "might suffer some ill effects". Death is certainly a pretty serious ill effect. > The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests it could reach 4,000 civilian deaths, a figure which does not include military clean-up worker casualties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll#Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...
trhway 11y ago
there are less than 500 nuclear reactors in the world. So less than 300 power plants for the 50 years. There have been 2 major catastrophes- i.e. 1 per 13000 reactor/year (or 1 per 8000 power plant/year). Compare that to drunk driving (which almost everybody agrees is unsafe) - 112 million alcohol-impaired driving episodes in US per year produce 13,365 deaths (http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/by_the_numbers/drunk_driving/index.html#_ftn1 http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...), ie. 1 death per 8000 drunk driving episodes.

243 points by Osiris30 11y ago

grecy 11y ago

I'm by no means anti-nuclear, though watching Fukushima unfold showed me a reality I hadn't fully thought out. A few days after it all went bad, there was basically nothing we could do to stop it, which is terrifying. No humans could go in there, and there were no robots capable of doing the job. So we as humans have the ability to build a machine of enormous power and (possibly) radiation, but when things inevitably go bad from time to time, our only course of action is to stand back and say "well, damn".

noxToken 11y ago
I believe the issue with Fukushima was that the early warning signs were ignored. If you ignore those warning signs with something that has the potential to be catastrophic, this is the result.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  The seawall was shorter than it should have been, that is a planning and design failure, not just ignoring warning signs. There also doesn't seem to have been any planning for a situation where the seawall failed (the inundation rendered the on site backup power inoperative). Adding a second layer of protection to such an important system would not be particularly aggressive.
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matthewmcg 11y ago
I agree. But watching BP's contractors repeatedly fail to plug the Deepwater Horizon gusher made me realize that these catastrophic possibilities are not limited to nuclear power. With non-renewable energy production, the situation is literally "pick your poison."
- jbattle 11y ago
  Also the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak - something like 100+ days of the thing uncontrollably spewing gas
- atemerev 11y ago
  Hydro is renewable, and dangerous. So is silicon production for solar panels. Life is a risky business.
- zeveb 11y ago
  > With non-renewable energy production, the situation is literally "pick your poison." Isn't that true of renewable energy production at scale, too? Solar panels require some very nasty industrial processes to produce, wind more than decimates bird populations, tidal affects sealife and the seafloor, hydroelectric affects fish (and poorly-maintained dams can destroy cities and regions …). I think it might actually be unavoidable: any process which generates the amount of energy required to sustain human life at scale will … be responsible for handling a huge amount of energy at scale. edit: I'm unaware of issues with goethermal, but a) it's not possible most places; b) the fact that I'm unaware of them doesn't imply that they don't exist.
  - patall 11y ago
    Well, another big issue with (current?) solar panels is that they are highly problematic in case of fire (fire brigade with the waterhose closes the electric circuit with the grounded panel) And geothermal has more than once been suspected to be responsible for more or less immidiate earth-quakes. Choose your risks on yourself...
  - mcv 11y ago
    The decimation of bird populations by wind turbines is somewhat exaggerated. Wind turbines do kill birds, but not remotely as many as powerlines, windows, cats or cars do: http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science... So while it is an issue, it's not remotely as much of an issue as other technologies that everybody takes for granted and nobody complains about. I wonder if the same might be true for tidal: that existing sea traffic and fishing might have a far bigger impact on sea life than energy generation would have.
exabrial 11y ago
A design from the 50s-60s era of nuclear design should not still be in service for this reason. We can do way better now. Our process, materials, and engineering have advanced orders of magnitude.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  All of those and reactor designs for safe(r) generation of civil power are very different to reactor designs for breeding weapons grade material/based on similar designs. We can build clean, efficient reactors that fail entirely safe.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Good designs can't fix faulty construction and poor maintenance. France has a long history of success with nuclear power, but using the exact same designs in Afghanistan would be begging for problems. Further, we really don't have a good solution for nuclear waste. PS: Most importantly they cost more than renewable power even including energy storage.
    - noir_lord 11y ago
      Possibly so I've not look recently but the cost of reactors is historically high because of the way they where built. Newer cheaper safer reactors built in volume would be cheaper than old designs, when the french went on their reactor building spree the cost per reactor was massively less than what Hinkley is costing. Tooling, scale, been able to lots of the same thing, experience etc all drive the cost down.
      - Retric 11y ago
        Construction costs are only part of the story. Construction, Mining/fuel processing, Operation, Decommissioning, Fuel Storage / reprocessing, Disaster Insurance. Sure, we can hand wave R&D as a sunk cost, but many of these costs only show up after the fact.
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coldtea 11y ago
>I'm by no means anti-nuclear, though watching Fukushima unfold showed me a reality I hadn't fully thought out. The even worse reality is the government, contractors and everybody else involved repeatedly caught lying about it -- plus all the human errors in judgment and engineering involved leading to this. And it's a huge industry which can employ a lot of researchers to lie with selective statistics, and sell the evergreen "newer models will be different this time, really".
Symmetry 11y ago
And yet, given the amount of power it generated Fukushima still didn't kill any more people than a typical coal power plant.
- jhanschoo 11y ago
  Hi, I'm inclined to believe you, but can you quote some numbers to back your assertion?
  - arm85 11y ago
    I don't know where he got his reference from, but, renewable energy without the hot air, has something similar, it calculates the number of deaths per GWy, for different sources[0]. Coal is certainly near the top (second to oil)[0]. Although I believe it was published after fukushima, and people might be suffering illness not accounted for in the book, I imagine that fukushima won't have dented the stats very much. [0] http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml
  - overdrivetg 11y ago
    Here's a simple chart, with what look like credible sources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...
  - Symmetry 11y ago
    Sorry, should have included a link with that. http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs-coal.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs...
    - tobltobs 11y ago
      "So it was a disaster that killed roughly 180 people." Just if somebody don't want to read all the glorification of nuclear power of this guy but want to know which numbers he used for his theory. "Over it's lifetime Fukushima generated 877,692 Gigawatt-Hours of electricity .." Subtracting the energy required to build, maintain, dismantle a nuclear reactor and store the waste for the next few thousand years would be nitpicking.
rurounijones 11y ago
Have a read of this as a counterpoint to fukusho.a http://thebulletin.org/onagawa-japanese-nuclear-power-plant-didn%E2%80%99t-melt-down-311 http://thebulletin.org/onagawa-japanese-nuclear-power-plant-...

emodendroket 11y ago

I take issue with the account of Fukushima. Yes, a natural disaster kicked off the chain of events, but it was not completely unforeseeable and stronger safeguards and maintenance would have mitigated the disaster. The big problem in my mind is not that nuclear power can't be safe but that I don't see anything to give me confidence that it can regulated to ensure that it actually is in practice.

dsfyu404ed 11y ago
The only appreciable release of radiation was a result of the Soviets playing fast and loose with shoddy infrastructure followed by higher ups attempting to rectify the situation by burying their heads in the sand is good enough for me. Compared to oil spills ("oops, we grounded our tanker") and dam failures ("maintenance, lolwut?") a lot of different things needed to come together for the Chernobyl disaster to happen and the runners up, (3-mile, Fukushima) are downright benign by comparison. As long as we don't get complacent and half-ass things I have no problem with nuclear power.
- adrianN 11y ago
  I'm a strong supporter of nuclear power, but calling Fukushima benign is counter productive. Thousands have lost their homes and there are dangerous amounts of radiation leaking into the ground. The site will remain a money sinkhole of ongoing mitigation measures for a long time. But besides these direct effects, the handling of disaster showed that the responsible parties were trying very hard to cover everything up and thus permanently destroyed any confidence you might have had in them, proving the "human factors make nuclear unsafe" crowd right.
  - adsfqwop 11y ago
    Unfortunately the human factor is exactly the problem with these types of systems. I don't think humans can ever be considered to be safe stewards of anything where a seemingly remote cascade event can wipe out life on the planet. Look at the disaster of Long-Term Capital Management from the financial industry as an example, where a presumed ten sigma event almost wiped out the whole western financial system. http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.fi/2007/05/11000000000000000000000000.html http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.fi/2007/05/11000000000000... These nuclear reactors are built with the same underlying principles and risk-management profiles. There's always the element of human error; you can't over-engineer something you did not foresee. In addition to that you have the enormous profit incentives from running nuclear power. These incentives can overwhelm the incentives for safety, or lead to disregard of warnings where profit potential would be compromised if warnings were attended to. It's human, therefore it's hard to ever sleep completely sound knowing that these constructions are running on the planet. Fukushima didn't just happen because one mistake was made either. It happened because a long string of mistakes and disregard of safety happened. Want to bet it doesn't happen again? It's hard to bet against human nature... http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf

kemenaran 11y ago

Maybe it's time to recognize investing in renewable energies is better than in the dying nuclear power. Nuclear is a fossil fuel too (uranium has to be extracted and is limited), costs a tremendous amount of money in power-plant building and dismantling costs, and concentrate the production of energy in a few remote places (which makes transport costs higher). Meanwhile, the number of places running on 100% renewable energies is surprisingly high (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy#Places_with_around_100.25_renewable_electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100%25_renewable_energy#Places...). Why would we need nuclear again?

tombert 11y ago
While I agree that the long-term solution is absolutely to use renewable stuff (especially solar), I don't know that the renewable tech is completely ready to power 7 billion people. Nuclear is messy, and far from ideal, but it doesn't spew chemicals into the air, with a high yield of power, and we already have decent(ish) nuclear tech.
- ewzimm 11y ago
  I've been hearing just the opposite for the last few years, that nuclear power no longer makes economic sense in comparison to renewable energy. Renewables are just getting cheaper much, much faster than nuclear and don't require the enormous initial investment and construction time. I'm no expert, and this is just based on several things I've heard over the years, so I'd suggest just starting at the Wikipedia article if you wanted more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... It's showing a range of estimates between $0.067-$0.30/kWh. In comparison, solar was around $0.25/kWh in 2008, $0.15/kWh in 2011, and continues to fall quickly.
  - VLM 11y ago
    The problem is how do megacorps and their privately owned properties such as media and government do their FIRE sector thing to profit off distributed solar panels... Well, they could issue subprime loans and all kinds of weird financialization for people to buy panels. The factories are all all in china but some games can be played there. That's about it. Its not as profitable as building billion dollar class nuke plants... They don't like being frozen out of a market, in this case the energy market, so we're all going to have to sit thru a lot of what boils down to sponsored content about how "we" need plants not panels (who is this "we" anyway?), and how panels are going to destroy the grid and motherhood and apple pie, etc.

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leecarraher 11y ago

we should invest in fossil fuel backed intermittent renewables like wind and solar because hydroelectric is bad for environments, nuclear means there could be a mushroom cloud blowin' up my neighborhood, and coal pollutes. Or at least that's what my brochure from my local n̶a̶t̶u̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶g̶a̶s̶ ̶s̶u̶p̶p̶l̶i̶e̶r̶ greenpeace tells me.

tehabe 11y ago

Be careful when someone speaks about ideology if they were free of it. "In the wake of Fukushima, Germany acquiesced to demands from lobby groups to shut down its nuclear sector, building heavily polluting fossil-fuel plants in their stead." This is probably the worst part in this article, because coal is also decreasing in Germany. Not as fast as nuclear but nuclear was always the smaller than coal. My main issue is, that again, someone believes that nuclear power is a way of solving the climate change crisis. It isn't for that nuclear power never had a big enough market share to begin with. Even the current plants which are being build won't change that. Also nuclear power is extremely expensive. The ones currently being build in Finland and France are 3x over budget and are lagging behind years. Those two plants will supply 1600 Watts for the grid. You can get that from renewable energies in less than a year. And yesterday I read that Chinese researchers developed a solar panel which can even use also rain. Why do people want a an energy source, which comes with so many unsolved issues and only promises to solve them later. In the last 50 years none of the issues could be solved. None! (I'm not talking about safety!)

pjc50 11y ago
The UK's Hinkley Point C seems to be overbudget and delayed despite construction not even having started.
- tehabe 11y ago
  And they get feed in prices for 35 years and even inflation will be priced in.
TorKlingberg 11y ago
> Those two plants will supply 1600 Watts for the grid. You definitely have the wrong unit there. 1600 W is less than one electric kettle.
- tehabe 11y ago
  True, it is 1600 MW. Sorry. But the rest is still true.

struct 11y ago

For anyone interested in this topic, I can really recommend "Radiation: What It Is, What You Need to Know" (by Robert Peter Gale and Eric Lax)[1] which includes some very thorough discussion on Chernobyl and Fukushima. An interesting point they raise about Chernobyl is the psychological fallout of people thinking they were exposed: there was a notable rise in abortions and quite a few plant workers drank themselves to death after the accident. It's all very fascinating. [1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radiation-What-You-Need-Know-ebook/dp/B008TSBYLY/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1460470306&sr=1-2&keywords=Radiation http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radiation-What-You-Need-Know-ebook/d...

ebbv 11y ago

Nuclear power is safe and clean in the abstract, where ideal safety procedures are always followed and mistakes are never made. But in the real world, human error always causes problems. The problem with nuclear power is that the results of these problems are enormous and long lived. That's why I am against nuclear power. We have much, much safer alternatives in wind, solar, geothermal and hydro electric. (Yes dam disasters have killed many, many people, I am not in favor of building any more dams where that kind of risk is a possibility.) In my mind there's no need for the risk that comes with nuclear power, we can build out our power infrastructure with safer, renewable sources of energy.

justizin 11y ago
Even though disasters with dams are terrifying, it is still just nature reclaiming its' territory. There is no ecological fallout from a dam breaking. Water's gonna water. I'm still with you on trying to avoid this risk, but don't feel it's at all comparable to the risk of a nuclear power plant.

lolc 11y ago

In nuclear, there are many myths like "decomissioning costs are covered" or "we know how to store the waste". And there are some blatant truths like "risks like that cannot be insured against". But that's usually just accepted as a given so I guess it's fine if the article doesn't mention that one. I think the biggest myth in the article is the one where they assume that it will have to be either fission or coal burning, pick one.

touristtam 11y ago
oh yes, toxic waste production and safe storage facility. Those are definitely the main point of contend against civil nuclear. Not even France with its 75% energy generation hasn't found a way to recycle nuclear waste or at the very least reduce their lifespan significantly.

pinaceae 11y ago

Nuclear is a prime example for Black Swan instances. All fine until it blows - but when it blows, the catastrophe is really big. If a windmill fails catastrophically, the area around it does not become uninhabitable for at least decades.

GVIrish 11y ago
That's true in the abstract, but the big picture is that we're trying to avoid a much larger disaster with climate change. If wind+solar could fill the world's energy needs now, that is what we would be doing. But that is far, far off into the future, if it's possible at all. Burning coal is causing damage to the environment now, killing people from air pollution now, and potentially driving us towards climate change that will kill and displace many millions of people. Nuclear has its downsides but it is not going to raise sea level by 2 or 3 feet in the next century nor cause widespread disruptions in crop growing, or cause devastating extreme weather. A nuclear accident could result in an exclusion zone of a 2 or 3 dozen miles. Climate change could cause global consequences that would be irreversible with our current technology.

xigency 11y ago

I agree (sort of) with the premise of this article but I'm not sure I believe all of its facts. Specifically, the analysis of the negative effects of each respective meltdown, Chernobyl and Fukushima. I personally believe there's reason to distrust any study on Chernobyl because of the blatant cover-up mentioned and the interference of the Soviet government, so it doesn't really work well as a citation to convince skeptics of the safety of nuclear energy. Likewise, I don't know that we've seen the full effects of Fukushima yet. Here is one article that shows some of the milder social effects on residents: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/10/national/life-indoors-exacts-toll-on-koriyama-children/#.VgGiGpcvaDl http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/03/10/national/life-in... "Some of the smallest children in Koriyama, a short drive from the ruined Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, barely know what it’s like to play outside — fear of radiation has kept them indoors for much of their short lives." I lived at one point in time relatively near the Fukushima plant (100 km away) at about 2 months after the disaster and I did follow pretty closely at that time the pattern of fallout, but since returning to the USA it is not something I have followed as closely as I should. For me, the hardest part is seeing the impact on people I met and their friends and families. But I also saw many people doing well even in the hardship. I did live somewhere (a university campus) with continual radiation level monitoring, with levels somewhere below 0.12 uSv/hour or maybe twice the background radiation of Rome, and I also took Iodine pills in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. For that reason, maybe somewhat selfishly, and because of all of the obvious reasons, I do believe that nuclear energy is essential. Side note: Fukushima Prefecture has the University of Aizu, which is the only public, graduate-level university in Japan dedicated to computer science and engineering.

patall 11y ago

Well, I am not sure but from my point of view, this article misses quite a few arguments against nuclear power. Some may be excusable but not mentioning waste storage (or even regeneration, though I want to see it before I believe it) at all. It does not tell about the destruction cost of nuclear plants (that will never be covered by waste regeneration). It does not talk about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants or just someone stealing radioactiv material to make a dirty bomb. I understand that some arguments against nuclear power are just nonsense but there are some quite tricky ones, picking some that you are able to refute is rediculous. Edit: and a broken dam in a (at the time) third world country that kills >80% of 170.000 people later through famine and epidemics is nothing that translates to the first world. I agree that hydro-electric power has some big down-sides (like mentioned terrorist attacks) but still you should give things in context. Fukushima happening in Angola would have been a different story than in Japan.

bakhy 11y ago

what bugs me is the possibility that one disaster, however unlikely, when it happens may render a wider area uninhabitable for a longer period of time. is this not the case? and then, perhaps a bigger issue, waste management. just look at Germany [1], supposedly a role model country. please note that the New Scientist text is mostly about light waste, "just" 1000 years storage time. there's a committee trying to plan storage of highly radioactive waste - for 1 million years! we are a species of idiots. none of the plants generating that waste is going to give us a million years of power. as others have mentioned, Fukushima could have been prevented. and Japan has also had accidents and cover-ups before [2]. all in all, it seems too risky. and finally, what happened to Thorium plants? aren't they much much safer? or the breeder reactors, how are those coming along? [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2075615-radioactive-waste-dogs-germany-despite-abandoning-nuclear-power/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2075615-radioactive-was... [2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20263-japans-record-of-nuclear-cover-ups-and-accidents/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20263-japans-record-o...

squozzer 11y ago

Sadly, the article doesn't do the problems - of both a nuclear future and a non-nuclear one - much justice. It relies on facts and figures, which even taken at face value, will not spur many people to action. Part of the problem is that in general, and particularly with expensive / unattractive projects such as nuclear power plants, those who benefit the most (power company execs, building contractors) assume the least amount of risk - e.g. nearby residents and taxpayers. Same for jails and landfills - same game with a different name. As other commenters have suggested, those who believe in nuclear should consider making a bold gesture. A petition drive might be interesting, but expect a lot of doors slammed into one's face. But to me it still sounds too conventional. Crowdfunding, anyone?

known 11y ago

Cost of electricity by source. 1. Natural gas 2. Hydro 3. Coal 4. Nuclear 5. Solar 6. Wind

gmac 11y ago
[citation needed] — that #4 placing for nuclear looks especially suspect if you consider the recent furore over Hinkley Point C in the UK[1]. [1] e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/05/scrapping-hinkley-for-renewable-alternatives-will-save-tens-of-billions http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/05/scrapping...
GlennS 11y ago
Onshore wind is quite a bit cheaper than nuclear at this point. It is politically difficult for aesthetic reasons though.
- Retra 11y ago
  Yet for some reason giant mounds of stinking garbage are aesthetically and politically acceptable...

pithic 11y ago

If the risk/reward calculus of nuclear power is really favorable, then the industry should accept full liability for damages. Repeal Price-Anderson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...). Let them bear the market price of insuring against civil liability.

wmf 11y ago
Right after coal bears the true price of air pollution?

paulsutter 11y ago

Fukushima was caused by shoddy planning. From a Carnegie Endowment report[1]: "The original design-basis tsunami for Fukushima Daiichi of 3.1 meters was chosen because a 1960 earthquake off the coast of Chile created a tsunami of that height on the Fukushima coast." Assuming that future tsunamis would be no higher than a recent historical tsunami is already silly. But it's worse: "one compilation of historical tsunamis in and around Japan lists twelve events since 1498 having a maximum amplitude of more than 10 meters, six of which had a maximum amplitude of over 20 meters." In 2002 they already knew the seawater pumps were located too low, but took no action: "Fukushima Daiichi’s design basis tsunami was estimated to have a maximum height of 3.1 meters above mean sea level. Given this, TEPCO decided to locate the seawater intake buildings at 4 meters above sea level and the main plant buildings at the top of a slope 10 meters about sea level" "In 2002, on the basis of a new methodology for assessing tsunami safety developed by the Japan Society of Civil Engineers, TEPCO voluntarily reevaluated the tsunami hazard and adopted a revised design-basis tsunami height of 5.7 meters. Yet, NISA neither updated the licensing documents to reflect this change nor reviewed TEPCO’s analysis. Given that the revised design-basis tsunami was now 1.4 meters above the seawater pumps, such a review should have been conducted." [1] http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf

tunesmith 11y ago
This is one of those "Therefore, what?" points... (although you may not have intended anything more than sharing some very interesting and relevant information). But I can see a "therefore, we should not dismiss nuclear power due to some shoddy planning". And, I can see a "therefore, we can expect some degree of shoddy planning in any engineering project, given that it happened even with a nuclear plant, where the risks were well-known ahead of time."
- paulsutter 11y ago
  To net it out for you: the disaster never would have happened if they had built it on higher ground. And that fact should have been obvious when they did tsunami planning. Nuclear safety is a multifacted issue and only the news media would take one fact (Fukushima was avoidable) and reach a conclusion (proving that nuclear is completely safe / completely risky). I'm personally an advocate for fission, because power storage has a long way to go before wind/solar can handle baseload. I especially like the newer designs such a Moltex (http://www.moltexenergy.com/ http://www.moltexenergy.com/). But that one fact about Fukushima isn't enough to support that position so I didn't bring that into the discussion.

lazyjones 11y ago

Even if we completely ignore most of the risks and hidden costs, nuclear power is still unattractive in its centralized form - large, expensive power plants that require safety measures, usually a lot of water and huge overhead power lines and need to keep operating or millions will be without electricity. On top of that, the consumer is affected by (international) market price fluctuations all the time. I much prefer being self-sufficient with solar panels on my roof and some far away plant as backup. Once nuclear power is safe, I'll happily put a small reactor in my basement as backup too.

kilroy123 11y ago
I agree the water usage is a huge concern. However, don't modern designs not require massive amounts of water for cooling? I honestly don't know. To be fair, I think the cost would go down if we started constructing a large number of plants again. We can not go 100% renewable without nuclear. Here's a great talk on the reality of going 100% renewable: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_re...
- matheweis 11y ago
  Thanks for linking that - really terrific back of the envelope estimates. If anything, I found it to be quite encouraging. If we could just get people behind some of those...

justizin 11y ago

I had the interesting experience of working in a startup under a VP of Engineering who was a Nuclear Scientist and was part of the team the US sent to Chernobyl's sister site - exact same plans, basically - to ensure its' safety. He told me that overwhelmingly what went wrong at Chernobyl is that the head of the plant consistently ignored all of the alarms and monitoring in place, because he was overconfident at what the results of his test would be. He apparently died in the control room. Interestingly, one thing the Russians did notably different was to have a big guy, I want to think at the sister site his name was Sergei, basically live in a hut next to the cooling lake, which was uphill from the plant. In the event of a disaster, he had a humongous mallet he would use to slam open the valve, draining the lake. ... or maybe this was all made up, I couldn't tell you tbh, but it sounded legit to me. ;)

Tomte 11y ago
He told me that overwhelmingly what went wrong at Chernobyl is that the head of the plant consistently ignored all of the alarms You may consider this an excuse of the kind "but that's not nuclear power's fault" and you'd be right-ish, but I simply don't care who exactly is at fault for whole regions to become uninhabitable in case of disaster. That is connected to nuclear power in my risk assessment, even if you can make a rational argument that it shouldn't be. And I'm very risk-averse when the magnitude of consequences is that big. Same with Fukushima: yes, everything was safe. Unconnected to the reactor per se they made huge planning errors, underestimating a tsunami. Again, I don't care. It may be a bias or even a fallacy that Kahnemann has already described, but it's a useful and correct fallacy, I would argue.
- readams 11y ago
  I'm fascinated by the idea of a "correct fallacy." How could such a thing ever make sense? Are you saying that you use this fallacy to reach a conclusion that you believe correct for other reasons? If so, why not state those other reasons and not use your fallacious reasoning? If not, how could your fallacy be correct?
  - 11y ago

codingdave 11y ago

If I were to come up to you, and describe the perfectly running software I can build, and show you how there have been problems in the past, but they were door to poor planning, bad design, human error, etc... and show that perfect construction of software is quite possible... would you buy my argument that in the future, problems will not occur? This is the same thing. Yes, it is possible to do it right and be perfectly safe. It is also possible for someone to not do it right. And if someone does so, the repercussions are severe. Having worked in the energy industry, the goal is to minimize risk. Saying it is OK for nuclear to have some inherent risk because so does everyone else is true, but over-simplified. The consequence of a nuclear accident is much greater than the consequence of a wind power accident, so the reduction of risk in nuclear power needs to also be greatly reduced vs. other forms of power generation. I would not describe myself as anti-nuclear, but I do not believe we need it. I believe solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc, can provide the power we need in this world. Why take on greater consequences to the risks of power generation unless it truly is needed?

wrsh07 11y ago
Their point is that these risks are overblown. Nobody died from Fukushima. So if the major accident you're concerned about was, in fact, completely due to human error [and even still the number of deaths was relatively small], why are you still so skeptical? It would be very difficult to change this picture [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/#production http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/#production] to using only clean energies without ramping up our nuclear. Finally, when literal millions die per year because of air pollution, you are choosing something significantly more dangerous [and worse for the environment] because of many fewer memorable nuclear power-related deaths.
- chefkoch 11y ago
  I'm not even sure that the number of people who died or could die is really the most severe point but i rather believe it is the cost of a nuclear accident. We as a society decide every day to let people die because it is too expensive. Think of healthcare, safety norms or human aid. And having massive areas in high developed countries beeing uninhabitable is unbelieveble costly. Think what 100 sqm in california would amount to.

Animats 11y ago

Fukushima had a meltdown because all reactors of the General Electric Mark I reactor design will melt down if they lose cooling pump power for 12-18 hours. They have an undersized containment vessel. This was known as early as 1972. Peach Bottom, in Pennsylvania, has the same reactor design, as do some other US reactors. We also need to stop storing used fuel rods at reactor sites. Yucca Mountain may not be perfect, but it's so isolated that even if something goes badly wrong, there's nobody around to be affected. The area was previously used for outdoor nuclear weapons testing, after all. Even if everybody evacuates after a disaster and it doesn't kill many people, you don't get your city back.

ergothus 11y ago

I was once at a panel at a scifi convention (Dragoncon, for the curious) where they had a few people working in various nuclear power related areas there to discuss and answer questions. While they were clearly biased, I felt they did a good job addressing the issues directly. I too am biased (I tend to not trust anything that requires maintenance on a time scale so much larger than we can comprehend) and my walk-away conclusions were: * There are a LOT of safety precautions, backups, and more backups - But I still don't trust those will survive human perversity [Edit: And that makes this point hard to settle - if I just don't trust any precautions would be enough, there's no effective way to add precautions that would change my opinion. ] * Nuclear Power, with all the risks and detriments, has a very strong argument that the fossil-fuel alternatives we're using now are MORE damaging. That last point was a huge deal to me. Instead of it being "Nuclear Power: Safe/Unsafe", it became "Nuclear Power vs Fossil Fuels (largely coal): Which is the bigger danger today". I went from anti-nuclear power to "oh gee, I don't know, that's hard", which I generally take as a sign that I've become somewhat enlightened on a topic.

eridius 11y ago
As another commenter has said (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11483147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11483147), we now have nuclear reactor designs that have failsafes that cannot fail because they rely on physical laws. That should address your "survive human perversity" concern. As one example, look at the Pebble bed reactor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor#Safety_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor#Safety_feat...). The way it's designed, as the reactor temperature increases, the reactor power decreases, and this is a completely passive effect (meaning it happens without any human intervention), so in the event of an accident the reactor will end up automatically reducing to safe power levels all by itself.
- ergothus 11y ago
  I'm less worried about a reactor going critical than I am the safe storage and management of the waste. Anything from providing materials for a dirty bomb to general pollution to just generating a safe-but-expensive mess to manage for a really, really long time.

ArtDev 11y ago

The problem of what to do with radioactive wastewater have not been solved. Nuclear power is not economical. It actually works really well on the small scale, but not for city power generation. Nuclear power is simply the worlds most expensive way to boil water. There are cheaper ways to boil water! http://www.nea.is/geothermal/electricity-generation/ http://www.nea.is/geothermal/electricity-generation/

NolF 11y ago
You do know that most places don't have the geothermal energy close enough to the surface to make that happen? Also you'll need to provide a source to show that nuclear is "not economical" and "the worlds most expensive way to boil water". All the evidence indicates some of the renewables are it [1]. About 77% of France's energy is nuclear, so I'm not sure what you mean it doesn't work on a large scale...[2] Fun fact a lot of aluminium is made in Iceland because of the cheap energy [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland#Aluminium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland#Aluminium
- ArtDev 11y ago
  The Geothermal plants in Iceland are amazing to see. The tech is still quite new though. There are many improvements that will make them more efficient. Regardless, they are really really cheap to run. I would imagine that drilling deeper will would allow for Geothermal plants in more places in the world. Here is some background info on the poor economics of nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants#Recent_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla... http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power
  - DanBC 11y ago
    They're so cheap they might run a cable from Iceland to the UK to supply power. That would be a cable 30 cm in diametre and about 5600 km long. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b075pxg8 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b075pxg8 > The Ice Link interconnector would link Iceland's cheap and carbon free electricity from hydro and geothermal to the UK. It could provide the equivalent power of a medium sized power plant through a copper cable laid under the sea between the two countries. Crucially the power would be reliable and available when other renewable sources such as wind and solar are not. However, as Tom Heap discovers when he visits the land of fire and ice, environmental campaigners like Bjork fear that this green solution for UK homes could create a need to develop into the pristine wilderness of Iceland's Highlands. Should we pursue our global climate goals even if it has the potential to affect untouched and fragile landscape elsewhere? Tough decisions for Iceland and for us all. Producer: Helen Lennard.

johansch 11y ago

I remember being about 14 (in 1991; 25 years ago) and learning about the effects of CO2 emissions on climate change in school. It seemed blatantly obvious - the only remotely feasible chance the planet had was to replace coal/oil with nuclear. The risk calculation was trivial. (Even after seeing the effects of Chernobyl in the years after 1986 in southern Sweden - we couldn't pick berries and mushroom in the forest for a while and moose meat was contaminated iirc.) I'm so sad that we're still having this debate 25 years later and nothing has changed.

danielpwm 11y ago

Sure, as long as the nuclear reactor is literally in your backyard and nowhere close to me, I'm ok with nuclear power.

abpavel 11y ago

The actual mortality rate from both Chernobyl and Fukushima are so low, I'm not even sure what are we talking about half the time. Fear? Fear of a fear? People store yellow cake at home just for fun, and it's perfectly legal and OK. Yet at other times, just mentioning the word nuclear gives half of the community brain cancer.

collinmanderson 11y ago

This seems to have ignored the 1600 people who died during Fukushima evacuation, and it didn't mention the possible thyroid cancer cases in children around Fukushima. It also didn't mention link between spent nuclear fuel and nuclear weapons. Seems to me that's a good reason to avoid it. (Yes, it might be possible to separate these two, but it seems to me it's still a few years down the road.) There's a pretty good summary of the negative effects here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEYbgyL5n1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEYbgyL5n1g

kirrent 11y ago
The 1600 people who died in the evacuation were being evacuated during a natural disaster that was far more devastating. Not mentioning increased rates of thyroid cancer could be attributed to journalistic integrity. There is no evidence of higher incidences of any cancer in any group of residents and it's not expected that there will be. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1022.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6277/1022.full The plutonium in spent nuclear fuel is very difficult to purify to weapons grade. If you're not satisfied with inspections of purifying facilities then taking the waste off the hands of problem countries for free has been discussed. Unfortunately, Uranium isn't that rare or hard for countries to come by. If they really want nuclear weapons then a normal breeding program is the simplest way to do it. That video you linked to was hilarious. Reprocessing is a great idea. There's no harm in waiting a hundred years for a method of getting rid of your spare plutonium when it means you get to reduce the total amount of radioactive waste anyway. Also, while we may wail and gnash our teeth at having nowhere to store our nuclear waste the truth is that governments overwhelmingly deal with the very quite simple problem of storage in a competent manner. Certainly more competently managed than our storage of the products of coal power generation in our atmosphere has been.

nickbauman 11y ago

Nuclear plants are being shut down often because of safety concerns. Planning a new nuke plant is a 30+ year prospect. Therefore while nuclear power has potential, one wonders if a 30-year lead time itself makes nuclear a risky bet. http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-22/nuclear-reactor-closings-us-continue-roil-energy-industry http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-22/nuclear-reactor-closin...

dredmorbius 11y ago

It's time to dispel the myth that the problems of nuclear are technical in nature and have technical solutions. The book to read in this context is Charles Perrow's Normal Accidents. http://www.ohio.edu/people/piccard/entropy/perrow.html http://www.ohio.edu/people/piccard/entropy/perrow.html Humans have had roughly 50 years' commercial generating experience with nuclear power. It took 25 years from first criticality to come up with passibly useful and safe reactors. Of the fewer than 500 commercial reactors which have been built, three have experienced significant core failures, and, despite design deficiencies in each, the core failings in all of these cases, as well as numerous other non-reactor or non-core failures, have been organisational. Bad management. Bad design. Bad emergency response. A continuous underappreciation of the seriousness of what's at hand when you decide to start splitting atoms. Fukushima was infiltrated by the Japanese mob. Future Gen IV and Gen V reactor designs, other than not being currently proven, raise risks of proliferation and novel chemistry experiments (600C highly radioactive florine salts -- what could possibly go wrong?) with a long-tail horizon of tens of thousands to millions of years. We don't have any human institutions that are of comparable longevity. Our companies, governmentals structures, even major religions and languages are nowhere near that old. This is a mucking with things at scales we're nowhere near capable of handling. Hell, the smartest minds in Silicon Valley can't deliver cat gifs without stuffing browser exploits into the accompanying ads networks. Human and organisational problems don't have technical solutions. The scale at which nuclear energy would need to be extended to replace existing fossil fueled systems is on the order of 15,000 reactors, worldwide. At present levels of energy consumption. Uranium itself won't deliver the energy we need (proven resources are good for about 8 decades at present levels of nuclear energy, six years if all present energy were nuclear sourced). At present rates of one core failure per roughly 100 reactor years, we'd see a meltdown per century. How much safer are future designs, organisations, and people going to be? 10x? 100x? 1000x? Is creating a new radioactive wasteland only once a century, until forever, acceptable? Solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass have issues. Leaving glowing holes in the ground, or nondiscretionary slightly mutagenic wildlife preserves, isn't one of them. The bigger lesson is that humans need to embrace limits. There are far too many of us, consuming far too much, and ignoring for far too long the warnings that we're exceeding any rational sustainable bounds. Nuclear energy isn't going to address any of those issues. Facing reality might.

mtgx 11y ago

Too late. In 5 years it will make little sense to start a nuclear power plant instead of a solar power facility with batteries.

outworlder 11y ago

I'm surprised to see this much advocacy of solar and wind here. I do agree that we need way more of that, but what's the required size of a solar power plant that's feeding an aluminum plant? Get a few (modern) nuclear reactors for baseline load, fill the rest with renewables. And shutdown the damned coal plants, those things spew radiation.

smegel 11y ago

> it is important to note that they operate on very different principles. High fissile vs low fissile equates to different principals? What a load of FUD in an article claims to show some insight on the matter.

ageofwant 11y ago

I'm a voting member of that Australian Greens (representing ~10% of voting public on a good day). The green movement has yet to take responsibility for the disastrous effect our rabid anti-nuclear narrative has had on the health of this planet. For a movement that prides itself on conscientious reflection and progressive evidence based policy our track record on this matter is truly dismal. Green Party policy on nuclear power is a massive failure.

zik 11y ago

This article is deliberately misleading. It's wearing its biases on its sleeve by admitting to only the direct deaths of Chernobyl (43) and saying that the WHO's projected tally of 4000 deaths merely "might suffer some ill effects". Death is certainly a pretty serious ill effect. > The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests it could reach 4,000 civilian deaths, a figure which does not include military clean-up worker casualties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll#Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...

trhway 11y ago

there are less than 500 nuclear reactors in the world. So less than 300 power plants for the 50 years. There have been 2 major catastrophes- i.e. 1 per 13000 reactor/year (or 1 per 8000 power plant/year). Compare that to drunk driving (which almost everybody agrees is unsafe) - 112 million alcohol-impaired driving episodes in US per year produce 13,365 deaths (http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/by_the_numbers/drunk_driving/index.html#_ftn1 http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...), ie. 1 death per 8000 drunk driving episodes.