4 ms·

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 dis

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.
  - eridius 11y ago
    Waste management is certainly a problem. The pebble bed reactor produces waste that, while more voluminous than traditional reactors, contains the same radioactivity, but this does mean the waste is less hazardous and simpler to handle. It's also much more difficult to re-use pebble bed reactor waste for nuclear weapons as compared to other reactors. And there are other reactors that have a closed fuel cycle, meaning their waste can be reprocessed, though the reprocessing does itself end up with some amount of nuclear waste that has to be disposed of. All that said, it's not like the waste from fossil fuel power plants is particularly safe either, it just has a different effect than nuclear waste, such as causing global warming.
  - yompers888 11y ago
    For your future advantage in these discussions, please know that going critical is a prerequisite for power generation; it is the steady state in which a fission-causing neutron is given off from each fission. A sub-critical reactor requires power input because it is not giving off enough energy to sustain the chain reaction; its population of fission-causing neutrons will exponentially decay, if left alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass
    - ergothus 11y ago
      You are correct, I expressed that poorly. Instead I should say "I'm less worried about a disaster in the reactor itself..."
- pilom 11y ago
  I think the parent was thinking about the storage issue. The fact that spent nuclear fuel needs to be maintained for 100s-1000s of years.
redwall_hp 11y ago
The simplest argument is that we will only ever need more power, and nothing else can deliver. Burning shit is about as primitive as it gets, and that nets us a lot more power than wind or solar ever will. They're good supplemental power sources...but they will never meet our current needs, let alone what's right around the corner. So...electric cars are growing now. You know how much power it takes to charge one of those suckers? The battery matrix in a Tesla can power the average household for a couple of days. These things are going to triple our power needs. In the end: human potential is directly tied to our ability to harness energy and apply it. Fossil fuels enabled us to greatly reduce the need for human labor, but already we're limited by them. And clinging to them (or futilely pretending we can ever reduce our global energy needs) only hinders progress toward a better tomorrow. Nuclear energy's "drawbacks" are incredibly overblown. Waste fuel is compact (weights sound impressive, but uranium and its isotopes are incredibly dense and take up very little space) and more importantly is wasted. Fuel shouldn't be wasted, it should be reprocessed with breeder reactors and reused. And if coal plants' waste was all contained in a convenient solid block instead of the atmosphere, we wouldn't even be discussing replacing it. Anyway...if you want to see a good documentary on the subject, check out "Pandora's Promise." It's told from the perspective of several figures who were anti-nuclear activists before becoming "enlightened," so to speak and realizing they were mislead.
- greglindahl 11y ago
  Teslas can be charged at home at night when wind is available, or at work during the day when solar is available, so they reduce the amount of energy storage needed in grids with a lot of intermittent sources.
- olau 11y ago
  Electric cars: no, in fact it's the opposite. Electric cars are much more efficient compared to burning gasoline, so we can save a lot of the energy spent in the transportation sector once most cars are electric. Most people would never recharge their car batteries fully every day. Waste fuel: I'm not an expert, but in Denmark work is currently underway to dismantle a small experimental reactor. The problem isn't really the fuel, the problem is the huge amount of contaminated reactor material (concrete etc.). I think some of the videos out there make nuclear seem like a piece of cake. Don't believe that. It's complicated.

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.
- eridius 11y ago
  Waste management is certainly a problem. The pebble bed reactor produces waste that, while more voluminous than traditional reactors, contains the same radioactivity, but this does mean the waste is less hazardous and simpler to handle. It's also much more difficult to re-use pebble bed reactor waste for nuclear weapons as compared to other reactors. And there are other reactors that have a closed fuel cycle, meaning their waste can be reprocessed, though the reprocessing does itself end up with some amount of nuclear waste that has to be disposed of. All that said, it's not like the waste from fossil fuel power plants is particularly safe either, it just has a different effect than nuclear waste, such as causing global warming.
- yompers888 11y ago
  For your future advantage in these discussions, please know that going critical is a prerequisite for power generation; it is the steady state in which a fission-causing neutron is given off from each fission. A sub-critical reactor requires power input because it is not giving off enough energy to sustain the chain reaction; its population of fission-causing neutrons will exponentially decay, if left alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_mass
  - ergothus 11y ago
    You are correct, I expressed that poorly. Instead I should say "I'm less worried about a disaster in the reactor itself..."
pilom 11y ago
I think the parent was thinking about the storage issue. The fact that spent nuclear fuel needs to be maintained for 100s-1000s of years.

redwall_hp 11y ago

The simplest argument is that we will only ever need more power, and nothing else can deliver. Burning shit is about as primitive as it gets, and that nets us a lot more power than wind or solar ever will. They're good supplemental power sources...but they will never meet our current needs, let alone what's right around the corner. So...electric cars are growing now. You know how much power it takes to charge one of those suckers? The battery matrix in a Tesla can power the average household for a couple of days. These things are going to triple our power needs. In the end: human potential is directly tied to our ability to harness energy and apply it. Fossil fuels enabled us to greatly reduce the need for human labor, but already we're limited by them. And clinging to them (or futilely pretending we can ever reduce our global energy needs) only hinders progress toward a better tomorrow. Nuclear energy's "drawbacks" are incredibly overblown. Waste fuel is compact (weights sound impressive, but uranium and its isotopes are incredibly dense and take up very little space) and more importantly is wasted. Fuel shouldn't be wasted, it should be reprocessed with breeder reactors and reused. And if coal plants' waste was all contained in a convenient solid block instead of the atmosphere, we wouldn't even be discussing replacing it. Anyway...if you want to see a good documentary on the subject, check out "Pandora's Promise." It's told from the perspective of several figures who were anti-nuclear activists before becoming "enlightened," so to speak and realizing they were mislead.

greglindahl 11y ago
Teslas can be charged at home at night when wind is available, or at work during the day when solar is available, so they reduce the amount of energy storage needed in grids with a lot of intermittent sources.
olau 11y ago
Electric cars: no, in fact it's the opposite. Electric cars are much more efficient compared to burning gasoline, so we can save a lot of the energy spent in the transportation sector once most cars are electric. Most people would never recharge their car batteries fully every day. Waste fuel: I'm not an expert, but in Denmark work is currently underway to dismantle a small experimental reactor. The problem isn't really the fuel, the problem is the huge amount of contaminated reactor material (concrete etc.). I think some of the videos out there make nuclear seem like a piece of cake. Don't believe that. It's complicated.