6 ms·

In a half century there was ~4 major meltdowns in the world that affect people lives: 1) Kyshtym disaster (57')[1] - it was old production site after WWII - wi

by ex3ndr 10y ago

In a half century there was ~4 major meltdowns in the world that affect people lives: 1) Kyshtym disaster (57')[1] - it was old production site after WWII - will never be again 2) Chernobyl (86') - stress-testing nuclear plant and disabling all levels of protection - will never be again 3) Fukushima Daiichi (11') - Obsolete block not stopped Other disasters are not affected anyone outside of the plant, for example Three Mile Island. And that's all! On the other side, hydro plants actually make things much worse to a nature and already killed big rivers in siberia. Fossil-fuel stations (67% of worldwide energy) are even worse. Nuclear plants are still the safest for environment and the only way to bring electricity to developing world because it can be very cheap. Take a look at B. Gates nuclear reactor: http://terrapower.com/pages/technology http://terrapower.com/pages/technology Building some nuclear plants will be able to feed anyone almost forever. Unlike solar energy that you need to keep in batteries for the night. And who say that batteries can't explode? It is looks like fear of flighting: no reason to fear planes and much much more people die in car accidents that in plane one. Same here - much more people die from other sources that from nuclear plant disaster. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

colordrops 10y ago
Please dont take this the wrong way, but I'm genuinely curious from a linguistic perspective. What is your native tongue?
- ex3ndr 10y ago
  Russian
- kidmenot 10y ago
  As a non-native speaker myself (Italian), I too often notice what seem to be patterns in other non-native speaker's English writing that seem to be typical of some larger geographical area (eastern Europe, northern Asia, southern Asia). Though I can't put my finger on it and say exactly what those patterns look like, nor pinpoint where the writer's mother tongue is, I can usually tell that something is off in a certain location-specific way. It's interesting and, to a certain extent, a fun exercise. It's a pity that I'm too lazy to sit down and compare samples of writing from different areas and come up with an organic and formal description of what I'm noticing, assuming that's even feasible without being a linguist and well-versed in all the languages involved. No offense intended for the author of the parent comment, I hope he won't take this the wrong way either!
johncolanduoni 10y ago
> Building some nuclear plants will be able to feed anyone almost forever. Unlike solar energy that you need to keep in batteries for the night. I completely agree that we should be ramping up nuclear generation, but nuclear alone also has a timing issue that requires either batteries or a hybrid approach to generation. Unlike fossil fuels where the plant can be dialed up and down to cope with demand, the output of a nuclear reactor is generally fixed (at least on the timescales relevant to demand fluctuation). Solar can be a big help here, because demand tends to be higher during the day and lower at night. Some sort of energy storage technology would likely still be needed even with a full nuclear/solar grid, since energy usage in developed nations tends to peak in the early evening.
- desdiv 10y ago
  What you're describing is only true of previous generation nuclear plants, where there was no need to implement load following. There is nothing inherent in nuclear power that makes it impossible to throttle and indeed there are currently operating plants designed with load following capabilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuc...
- eigenvector 10y ago
  Some nuclear plants, including the largest in the world (Bruce NGS in Canada), have steam bypass systems allowing electrical output be curtailed without reducing thermal output. You just dump the thermal energy into a lake.
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    On a plant near the ocean, any surplus power could be used for desalination, solving two problems, one of them for free.
s_q_b 10y ago
Agreed. The OECD estimates that the probability of an accident at a Gen. II or higher reactor that results in significant casualties is approximately one per one million years. All of the accidents in the history of nuclear power have caused fewer deaths than the failure of a single hydroelectric dam. Combined these disasters resulted in an estimated 60,000 deaths. That number pales in comparison to the 288,000 people who die every year from particulate inhalation due to fossil fuels.
- Zafira 10y ago
  As much as I agree and support the use of nuclear power to meet our energy requirements, I think the most obvious downside when a nuclear plant fails also happens to help remind the public of what a nuclear failure can create. The only two Level 7 nuclear events in the world — Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi — have have rendered large swaths of land unusable for a significant amount of time. Whether or not the exclusion zones surrounding these two areas need to be as large as they are can be argued. However, when a hydroelectric dam fails more people die initially, but as the cleanup happens and the reporters fade away, the event fades into the background. With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind.
  - Someone 10y ago
    "With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind." We could make movies about dams that collapse, too and we have. I'm not even sure there are more about nuclear accidents (nuclear war, yes, but accidents?). Even if there are, I think the movies are a symptom of the problem, not its cause. The invisible danger of radiation being held back by walls of concrete just looks more dangerous to us than the visible danger of a wall of water being held back by walls of concrete. And Chernobyl? A nature reserve. I can see someone writing a SF story about cultures that protect existing nature by the controlled disposal of radio-active material.
    - 10y ago
kristopolous 10y ago
This specific reactor has some very significant earthquake risks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulnerability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulne... for an introduction. Regardless of what you think of the industry of nuclear power, this specific reactor, at Diablo Canyon, is precarious and dangerous.
- knorby 10y ago
  That there is an earthquake risk doesn't mean it isn't properly dealt with. The plant is built to withstand significant seismic risk, 10 times more than the faults around it could produce. That's right there in the wikipedia article you linked to.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    OK, I presumed that wikipedia article would be better. Anyway, there's dissenting opinions within the NRC that disagree with PG&E and allegations that the safety reports were done poorly. Under renewed scrutiny, PG&E is due to release ground-shaking safety reports in 2017 for the renewal of its lease in 2024 after some newish (last 7 year) USGS surveys suggested there may be more threats and that the fault lines may have not been properly characterized. Also there was a whistleblower case against PG&E in the early 2000s claiming that safety concerns were routinely minimized (think deep water horizon) and expressing great concern for the accuracy of the claims of safety. (http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001q9Z http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id...) Anyway, there's serious safety concerns regarding this particular plant and that it could be the US Fukushima given its location and the fault line proximity.
    - knorby 10y ago
      These are baseless associations. Perhaps Diablo Canyon and PG&E aren't flawless and honest, but you aren't establishing risk. Do you have some reason to believe there is a meltdown risk? I don't really think a reactor being retired at 40 is the worst thing (though I'm sure it could be run longer), but have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state (think the numerous oil refinery explosions that occur regularly worldwide)? What about oil train explosions (think the other oil train explosions)? People express serious concern for some of the most outlandish, obscure risks on any project if it somehow involves the word 'nuclear.' Every project. A lot more lives could be saved if the same effort was used to create real safety standards on oil, coal, and gas.
wojcech 10y ago
My two main arguments against nuclear: 1. Have we solved the waste problem satisfactorily yet? This includes accounting for war, tectonic movements, water safety and a host of other factors. 2. Are fines and punishment for not building nuclear facilities high enough as to be effective in enforcing regulations? Iff those two are satisfied, go nuclear. Before, nope. But even if they are satisfied: nuclear is a stopgap. Solar and wind are solutions. So I emotionally welcome everything which pushes those forward
- andrewfong 10y ago
  I'd flip this argument around. Have we adequately solved energy storage and base power load problems with renewables yet? That is, can they feasibly serve as a primary power source or do renewables have to be coupled with sources like goal and gas? If that's the case, sure, go full-tilt renewables. If not, then we have to weigh nuclear waste is a bigger problem than contributing to CO2 levels. I'm inclined to say no -- if only because nuclear waste can be a reasonably localized problem, whereas climate change from CO2 is global.
  - _ph_ 10y ago
    The main power loads are during daytime. So solar is a pretty good match to that, especially, if you like the US have large desert regions, where weather related changes are unlikely to reduce the solar efficiency a lot. Add to that wind power, which runs around the clock, you have a pretty good cover of the load. Of course you need also storage. That can be batteries on the small scale (also a good way to reuse old electrical car batteries), and hydro on the large scale. Just limiting the Hoover dam to produce electricity as a backup to solar should cover quit a bit of the storage requirements. If the remaining gaps are filled with natural gas, its a good balance. Natural gas produces much less CO2 than coal. And if only 10% of the energy load is done with gas, we should no longer worry about the CO2 too much.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  > 1. Have we solved the waste problem satisfactorily yet? Technically speaking? Yes, for sure. Politically speaking? Hahahahahahahaha no, nowhere close.
_ph_ 10y ago
I am living in southern Germany, about 1000km west of Chernobyl. It is not safe to eat mushrooms from the local forests and every wild animal shot has to be scanned for radioactivity before being allowed to be eaten (and often enough they have to be destroyed). This is not going to change in my lifetime and beyond. As a physicist, I am certainly not afraid of "nuclear" and "radiation" in the abstract. But seeing the country you live in to be contaminated for so long just because a single operator error is quite sobering. Solar has its challenges on the technical level, as the power output depends on the daytime and weather, but that is not killing anyone. "And who say that batteries can't explode?" - well even if they would, you would have a ruined battery, perhaps a building. That can be rebuild. The damage done by Chernobyl cannot be fixed for centuries. The good news in all of this is: by now solar has become cheaper than building new, safe and modern nuclear reactors. And as a lot of the grid load in California comes from air conditioning, I fail to see how solar would not be the perfect solution for these kind of loads.
- piotrjurkiewicz 10y ago
  > It is not safe to eat mushrooms from the local forests and every wild animal shot has to be scanned for radioactivity before being allowed to be eaten (and often enough they have to be destroyed). What a bullshit. Please provide an official source for this claims. Mushrooms in the Central Europe were contaminated, but only for a first few months after the disaster.
  - codewritinfool 10y ago
    Not authoritative, maybe, but there's this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/radioactive-boars-are-roaming-around-germany-180952586/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/radioactive-boars-a... and this: http://qz.com/258731/radioactive-wild-boars-still-run-wild-in-germany-28-years-after-chernobyl/ http://qz.com/258731/radioactive-wild-boars-still-run-wild-i... Both say the contamination comes from mushrooms.
  - _ph_ 10y ago
    Here is the link to the federal office for radiation protection: https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-wildbret/pilze-wildbret.html https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-w... It is Ceseium-137 which still contaminates mushrooms and all animals regularly eating those. Occasional consumption is possible but not recommended. And that is 30 years after Chernobyl.

by ex3ndr 10y ago

colordrops 10y ago

Please dont take this the wrong way, but I'm genuinely curious from a linguistic perspective. What is your native tongue?

ex3ndr 10y ago
Russian
kidmenot 10y ago
As a non-native speaker myself (Italian), I too often notice what seem to be patterns in other non-native speaker's English writing that seem to be typical of some larger geographical area (eastern Europe, northern Asia, southern Asia). Though I can't put my finger on it and say exactly what those patterns look like, nor pinpoint where the writer's mother tongue is, I can usually tell that something is off in a certain location-specific way. It's interesting and, to a certain extent, a fun exercise. It's a pity that I'm too lazy to sit down and compare samples of writing from different areas and come up with an organic and formal description of what I'm noticing, assuming that's even feasible without being a linguist and well-versed in all the languages involved. No offense intended for the author of the parent comment, I hope he won't take this the wrong way either!

johncolanduoni 10y ago

> Building some nuclear plants will be able to feed anyone almost forever. Unlike solar energy that you need to keep in batteries for the night. I completely agree that we should be ramping up nuclear generation, but nuclear alone also has a timing issue that requires either batteries or a hybrid approach to generation. Unlike fossil fuels where the plant can be dialed up and down to cope with demand, the output of a nuclear reactor is generally fixed (at least on the timescales relevant to demand fluctuation). Solar can be a big help here, because demand tends to be higher during the day and lower at night. Some sort of energy storage technology would likely still be needed even with a full nuclear/solar grid, since energy usage in developed nations tends to peak in the early evening.

desdiv 10y ago
What you're describing is only true of previous generation nuclear plants, where there was no need to implement load following. There is nothing inherent in nuclear power that makes it impossible to throttle and indeed there are currently operating plants designed with load following capabilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuc...
eigenvector 10y ago
Some nuclear plants, including the largest in the world (Bruce NGS in Canada), have steam bypass systems allowing electrical output be curtailed without reducing thermal output. You just dump the thermal energy into a lake.
- rbanffy 10y ago
  On a plant near the ocean, any surplus power could be used for desalination, solving two problems, one of them for free.

s_q_b 10y ago

Agreed. The OECD estimates that the probability of an accident at a Gen. II or higher reactor that results in significant casualties is approximately one per one million years. All of the accidents in the history of nuclear power have caused fewer deaths than the failure of a single hydroelectric dam. Combined these disasters resulted in an estimated 60,000 deaths. That number pales in comparison to the 288,000 people who die every year from particulate inhalation due to fossil fuels.

Zafira 10y ago
As much as I agree and support the use of nuclear power to meet our energy requirements, I think the most obvious downside when a nuclear plant fails also happens to help remind the public of what a nuclear failure can create. The only two Level 7 nuclear events in the world — Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi — have have rendered large swaths of land unusable for a significant amount of time. Whether or not the exclusion zones surrounding these two areas need to be as large as they are can be argued. However, when a hydroelectric dam fails more people die initially, but as the cleanup happens and the reporters fade away, the event fades into the background. With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind.
- Someone 10y ago
  "With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind." We could make movies about dams that collapse, too and we have. I'm not even sure there are more about nuclear accidents (nuclear war, yes, but accidents?). Even if there are, I think the movies are a symptom of the problem, not its cause. The invisible danger of radiation being held back by walls of concrete just looks more dangerous to us than the visible danger of a wall of water being held back by walls of concrete. And Chernobyl? A nature reserve. I can see someone writing a SF story about cultures that protect existing nature by the controlled disposal of radio-active material.
  - 10y ago

kristopolous 10y ago

This specific reactor has some very significant earthquake risks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulnerability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulne... for an introduction. Regardless of what you think of the industry of nuclear power, this specific reactor, at Diablo Canyon, is precarious and dangerous.

knorby 10y ago
That there is an earthquake risk doesn't mean it isn't properly dealt with. The plant is built to withstand significant seismic risk, 10 times more than the faults around it could produce. That's right there in the wikipedia article you linked to.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  OK, I presumed that wikipedia article would be better. Anyway, there's dissenting opinions within the NRC that disagree with PG&E and allegations that the safety reports were done poorly. Under renewed scrutiny, PG&E is due to release ground-shaking safety reports in 2017 for the renewal of its lease in 2024 after some newish (last 7 year) USGS surveys suggested there may be more threats and that the fault lines may have not been properly characterized. Also there was a whistleblower case against PG&E in the early 2000s claiming that safety concerns were routinely minimized (think deep water horizon) and expressing great concern for the accuracy of the claims of safety. (http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001q9Z http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id...) Anyway, there's serious safety concerns regarding this particular plant and that it could be the US Fukushima given its location and the fault line proximity.
  - knorby 10y ago
    These are baseless associations. Perhaps Diablo Canyon and PG&E aren't flawless and honest, but you aren't establishing risk. Do you have some reason to believe there is a meltdown risk? I don't really think a reactor being retired at 40 is the worst thing (though I'm sure it could be run longer), but have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state (think the numerous oil refinery explosions that occur regularly worldwide)? What about oil train explosions (think the other oil train explosions)? People express serious concern for some of the most outlandish, obscure risks on any project if it somehow involves the word 'nuclear.' Every project. A lot more lives could be saved if the same effort was used to create real safety standards on oil, coal, and gas.

wojcech 10y ago

My two main arguments against nuclear: 1. Have we solved the waste problem satisfactorily yet? This includes accounting for war, tectonic movements, water safety and a host of other factors. 2. Are fines and punishment for not building nuclear facilities high enough as to be effective in enforcing regulations? Iff those two are satisfied, go nuclear. Before, nope. But even if they are satisfied: nuclear is a stopgap. Solar and wind are solutions. So I emotionally welcome everything which pushes those forward

andrewfong 10y ago
I'd flip this argument around. Have we adequately solved energy storage and base power load problems with renewables yet? That is, can they feasibly serve as a primary power source or do renewables have to be coupled with sources like goal and gas? If that's the case, sure, go full-tilt renewables. If not, then we have to weigh nuclear waste is a bigger problem than contributing to CO2 levels. I'm inclined to say no -- if only because nuclear waste can be a reasonably localized problem, whereas climate change from CO2 is global.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  The main power loads are during daytime. So solar is a pretty good match to that, especially, if you like the US have large desert regions, where weather related changes are unlikely to reduce the solar efficiency a lot. Add to that wind power, which runs around the clock, you have a pretty good cover of the load. Of course you need also storage. That can be batteries on the small scale (also a good way to reuse old electrical car batteries), and hydro on the large scale. Just limiting the Hoover dam to produce electricity as a backup to solar should cover quit a bit of the storage requirements. If the remaining gaps are filled with natural gas, its a good balance. Natural gas produces much less CO2 than coal. And if only 10% of the energy load is done with gas, we should no longer worry about the CO2 too much.
fennecfoxen 10y ago
> 1. Have we solved the waste problem satisfactorily yet? Technically speaking? Yes, for sure. Politically speaking? Hahahahahahahaha no, nowhere close.

_ph_ 10y ago

I am living in southern Germany, about 1000km west of Chernobyl. It is not safe to eat mushrooms from the local forests and every wild animal shot has to be scanned for radioactivity before being allowed to be eaten (and often enough they have to be destroyed). This is not going to change in my lifetime and beyond. As a physicist, I am certainly not afraid of "nuclear" and "radiation" in the abstract. But seeing the country you live in to be contaminated for so long just because a single operator error is quite sobering. Solar has its challenges on the technical level, as the power output depends on the daytime and weather, but that is not killing anyone. "And who say that batteries can't explode?" - well even if they would, you would have a ruined battery, perhaps a building. That can be rebuild. The damage done by Chernobyl cannot be fixed for centuries. The good news in all of this is: by now solar has become cheaper than building new, safe and modern nuclear reactors. And as a lot of the grid load in California comes from air conditioning, I fail to see how solar would not be the perfect solution for these kind of loads.

piotrjurkiewicz 10y ago
> It is not safe to eat mushrooms from the local forests and every wild animal shot has to be scanned for radioactivity before being allowed to be eaten (and often enough they have to be destroyed). What a bullshit. Please provide an official source for this claims. Mushrooms in the Central Europe were contaminated, but only for a first few months after the disaster.
- codewritinfool 10y ago
  Not authoritative, maybe, but there's this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/radioactive-boars-are-roaming-around-germany-180952586/?no-ist http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/radioactive-boars-a... and this: http://qz.com/258731/radioactive-wild-boars-still-run-wild-in-germany-28-years-after-chernobyl/ http://qz.com/258731/radioactive-wild-boars-still-run-wild-i... Both say the contamination comes from mushrooms.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  Here is the link to the federal office for radiation protection: https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-wildbret/pilze-wildbret.html https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-w... It is Ceseium-137 which still contaminates mushrooms and all animals regularly eating those. Occasional consumption is possible but not recommended. And that is 30 years after Chernobyl.