5 ms·

Just to remind the nuclear fans here: cost of Chernobyl: estimated around 201b euros, cost of lives: between 4000 and several hundred thousands indirectly, the

by beders 10y ago

Just to remind the nuclear fans here: cost of Chernobyl: estimated around 201b euros, cost of lives: between 4000 and several hundred thousands indirectly, the area is a radioactive wasteland for centuries to come, the reactor still needs additional protection. The effects are still measurable all over Europe, resettlement of thousands of people. That is ONE reactor gone wrong. Why anyone would build another one when solar is down to .21 per watts is beyond me.

goatlover 10y ago
By wasteland, you mean humans no longer live there, but I've seen video, and it looks like plants and animals are doing okay. You wouldn't be able to tell there had been a meltdown. Maybe some of the animals have a higher cancer rate than normal, or other health issues? Would be curious to know. Looked to me like nature had taken over after humans left.
kashkhan 10y ago
France is mostly powered by nuclear. How many french have died from it? Yes it's possible to make a nuclear wasteland. But it's also possible to not make it.
petre 10y ago
The RMBK reactors at Chernobyl are of an irresponsible design, with no containment, graphite moderator and a highly positive void coefficient. Combined that with human error and zealotry and you have a recipe for disaster. Russian VVER PWRs on the other hand have excellent track record with no accidents whatsoever. Your country has at least two gen IV reactor designs with pasive cooling and negative void coefficient. Solar is not base load. To make solar base load you need solar thermal with molten salts or a gas pipe nearby to run the turbines on gas during the night. Solar PV is good for distributed power generation, as they do it in Germany where almost every building has solar PV on their roof. Your other bet for base load power of a comparable scale to nuclear is geothermal power, but it's highly location dependent.
- dispose13432 10y ago
  >The RMBK reactors at Chernobyl are of an irresponsible design, with no containment, graphite moderator and a highly positive void coefficient. Combined that with human error and zealotry and you have a recipe for disaster. Russian VVER PWRs on the other hand have excellent track record with no accidents whatsoever. Your country has at least two gen IV reactor designs with pasive cooling and negative void coefficient. It's much easier not building a reactor than trying to shut it down when it's discovered that they don't keep standards.
  - petre 10y ago
    And you are going to make 700-1500 MWh of baseload electric power how? With PV solar and no storage? Hamster generators with flywheel storage? Coal? Russian gas? By daming every river and erecting 1k offshore wind generators with capacity factors of 0.4? International standards for nuclear reactor safety have been altered after Chernobyl, 9/11 and Fukushima in order to make reactors as safe as possible. That's why the construction costs went up and no company besides some Chinese holdings are able to build a nuke plant on schedule and w/o exceeding initial estimates by more than 200%. Brezsnyev era safety standards pioneered by the RBMK creators were basically: "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country". That's why the VVER PWR is safe - it was designed by responsible people.
hguant 10y ago
> That is ONE reactor gone wrong. That is ONE reactor that was of a design many years out of date at the time of the failure, a failure where the people at the controls turned off the safety controls, then turned off the back up safety controls, then intentionally put the reactor in an unsafe state. France gets 76% of its power from nuclear energy and has never gone above 4 on the INES scale, with an average clean up cost of 24.7 million USD[1]. There needs to be a Godwin's law for the Chernobyl. There are so many caveats and "yes buts" and weird political contexts to everything about that accident that it really isn't helpful when talking about nuclear reactors (unless you're talking about how politics and human intervention can screw up the best laid plans of mice and men). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...
- lukealization 10y ago
  > That is ONE reactor that was of a design many years out of date at the time of the failure, a failure where the people at the controls turned off the safety controls, then turned off the back up safety controls, then intentionally put the reactor in an unsafe state. Yes, reality exists. The existence of reality and all the flaws that come with it is another argument of many against nuclear fission.
- saint-loup 10y ago
  Areva, the french nuclear corporation, is in a state of constant near-bankruptcy [1] and under investigation for a massive coverup of safety and reliability issues [2]. Our nuclear infrastructure is, well, kind of a sorry mess [3] (in french, paywalled). [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-16/france-s-areva-falters-in-reactor-business-leaks-cash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-16/france-s-... [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/problems-at-nuclear-components-supplier-spark-global-reviews-1481625005 http://www.wsj.com/articles/problems-at-nuclear-components-s... [3] http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/11/24/le-parc-nucleaire-francais-est-en-bout-de-course_5037311_3232.html http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/11/24/le-parc-nucle...
Rylinks 10y ago
Just to remind the hydroelectric fans here: the cost of Banqiao Reservoir Dam is 170,000 people dead and resettlement of 11 million. That is ONE dam gone wrong. Why anyone would build another one is beyond me.
- makomk 10y ago
  Banqiao Reservoir Dam was also intended to control flooding downstream, and was eventually rebuilt for this reason. The choice wasn't between 170,000 people dead and resettlement of 11 million and nuclear power (which didn't exist at the time it was built - probably a good thing given the construction standard used in the dam). The alternative was that all those people died anyway, but you didn't get to use their deaths to attack hydroelectric power because China used something like coal power generation instead and threw away all the potential power of the water behind the dam.
hokkos 10y ago
Because for example France peek electricity consumption is between January 20 to February 10 at 19h, and there is no sun at that time.

by beders 10y ago

goatlover 10y ago

By wasteland, you mean humans no longer live there, but I've seen video, and it looks like plants and animals are doing okay. You wouldn't be able to tell there had been a meltdown. Maybe some of the animals have a higher cancer rate than normal, or other health issues? Would be curious to know. Looked to me like nature had taken over after humans left.

kashkhan 10y ago

France is mostly powered by nuclear. How many french have died from it? Yes it's possible to make a nuclear wasteland. But it's also possible to not make it.

petre 10y ago

The RMBK reactors at Chernobyl are of an irresponsible design, with no containment, graphite moderator and a highly positive void coefficient. Combined that with human error and zealotry and you have a recipe for disaster. Russian VVER PWRs on the other hand have excellent track record with no accidents whatsoever. Your country has at least two gen IV reactor designs with pasive cooling and negative void coefficient. Solar is not base load. To make solar base load you need solar thermal with molten salts or a gas pipe nearby to run the turbines on gas during the night. Solar PV is good for distributed power generation, as they do it in Germany where almost every building has solar PV on their roof. Your other bet for base load power of a comparable scale to nuclear is geothermal power, but it's highly location dependent.

dispose13432 10y ago
>The RMBK reactors at Chernobyl are of an irresponsible design, with no containment, graphite moderator and a highly positive void coefficient. Combined that with human error and zealotry and you have a recipe for disaster. Russian VVER PWRs on the other hand have excellent track record with no accidents whatsoever. Your country has at least two gen IV reactor designs with pasive cooling and negative void coefficient. It's much easier not building a reactor than trying to shut it down when it's discovered that they don't keep standards.
- petre 10y ago
  And you are going to make 700-1500 MWh of baseload electric power how? With PV solar and no storage? Hamster generators with flywheel storage? Coal? Russian gas? By daming every river and erecting 1k offshore wind generators with capacity factors of 0.4? International standards for nuclear reactor safety have been altered after Chernobyl, 9/11 and Fukushima in order to make reactors as safe as possible. That's why the construction costs went up and no company besides some Chinese holdings are able to build a nuke plant on schedule and w/o exceeding initial estimates by more than 200%. Brezsnyev era safety standards pioneered by the RBMK creators were basically: "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country". That's why the VVER PWR is safe - it was designed by responsible people.

hguant 10y ago

> That is ONE reactor gone wrong. That is ONE reactor that was of a design many years out of date at the time of the failure, a failure where the people at the controls turned off the safety controls, then turned off the back up safety controls, then intentionally put the reactor in an unsafe state. France gets 76% of its power from nuclear energy and has never gone above 4 on the INES scale, with an average clean up cost of 24.7 million USD[1]. There needs to be a Godwin's law for the Chernobyl. There are so many caveats and "yes buts" and weird political contexts to everything about that accident that it really isn't helpful when talking about nuclear reactors (unless you're talking about how politics and human intervention can screw up the best laid plans of mice and men). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...

lukealization 10y ago
> That is ONE reactor that was of a design many years out of date at the time of the failure, a failure where the people at the controls turned off the safety controls, then turned off the back up safety controls, then intentionally put the reactor in an unsafe state. Yes, reality exists. The existence of reality and all the flaws that come with it is another argument of many against nuclear fission.
saint-loup 10y ago
Areva, the french nuclear corporation, is in a state of constant near-bankruptcy [1] and under investigation for a massive coverup of safety and reliability issues [2]. Our nuclear infrastructure is, well, kind of a sorry mess [3] (in french, paywalled). [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-16/france-s-areva-falters-in-reactor-business-leaks-cash https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-16/france-s-... [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/problems-at-nuclear-components-supplier-spark-global-reviews-1481625005 http://www.wsj.com/articles/problems-at-nuclear-components-s... [3] http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/11/24/le-parc-nucleaire-francais-est-en-bout-de-course_5037311_3232.html http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/11/24/le-parc-nucle...

Rylinks 10y ago

Just to remind the hydroelectric fans here: the cost of Banqiao Reservoir Dam is 170,000 people dead and resettlement of 11 million. That is ONE dam gone wrong. Why anyone would build another one is beyond me.

makomk 10y ago
Banqiao Reservoir Dam was also intended to control flooding downstream, and was eventually rebuilt for this reason. The choice wasn't between 170,000 people dead and resettlement of 11 million and nuclear power (which didn't exist at the time it was built - probably a good thing given the construction standard used in the dam). The alternative was that all those people died anyway, but you didn't get to use their deaths to attack hydroelectric power because China used something like coal power generation instead and threw away all the potential power of the water behind the dam.

hokkos 10y ago

Because for example France peek electricity consumption is between January 20 to February 10 at 19h, and there is no sun at that time.