10 ms·

First, there can be little doubt that a substantial fraction of the high cost of nuclear is down to almost the entire west being scared stiff of the stuff for t

First, there can be little doubt that a substantial fraction of the high cost of nuclear is down to almost the entire west being scared stiff of the stuff for thirty years. If we gave actual scientists and engineers a real mandate to come up with a pragmatic, realistic (ie accepting a small amount of risk as acceptable, perhaps something on the scale of a single Fukushima every 30 years, just like we accept a small amount of risk everywhere else - driving, living in hurricane country, even flying isn't perfectly safe) regulatory regime, costs would surely come back down. Second, funny how costs suddenly matter when it's about nuclear. Barely a month goes by without some new unimaginable mind numbing (wholly impractical) 'solution' to climate change that we're being implored to consider, because it's about saving the planet for our children. Nuclear is a perfectly practical, much cheaper (if still very expensive), 80% solution to climate change that we can actually start implementing today, but somehow it's not on the table. Somehow it doesn't seem all that plausible that cost is really the issue. In short, climate change is the biggest issue facing the world (except nuclear and fracking). I'm very excited that the NYT is being practical here.

arviewer 10y ago
In 30 years, solar will have taken over. Using safe existing nuclear power plants is OK for me, building new ones seems stupid. For some countries, replacing an old unsafe one with a good new one seems plausible, but more seems a bad choice.
- mseebach 10y ago
  Perhaps the train has indeed left the platform, but the inflection point for solar only happened this year. If the parties to Kyoto had gone home back then and created said regulatory environment for nuclear and gotten on with it, we'd be looking at a 80-90% carbon emissions free electrical grid across the entire western hemisphere today. Climate change would have been more or less solved, and yes, we knew that then, this is not benefit-of-hindsight stuff. There's a lot of histrionics around putting oil companies in the dock for crimes against humanity, but anyone who's campaigned against nuclear in the last 30 years can go right up and sit next to them.
  - hubert123 10y ago
    I prefer not having fukushima events and I'm happy to wait and use coal in the meantime
    - Analog24 10y ago
      The Fukushima reactor was old and outdated. Modern reactors are built with passive safety systems that essentially make it impossible for a Fukushima style meltdown to occur. Ignorance and coal are not the answer.
      - natch 10y ago
        There's still the centralization problem. Nuclear power is centralized and lends itself to government or corporate control of the energy system, in contrast with solar which gives each property owner individual control. I'm not saying we can't have both, it's just that the problems with nuclear are not only (perceived or real) safety problems and the fact that it yields byproducts the most tempting use of which is to make nuclear weapons.
        Analog24 10y ago
        I agree with you. There are undoubtedly issues with nuclear power but the possibility of a Fukushima/Chernobyl meltdown happening in your backyard is not one of them. The main downside is that this understandable but unfounded fear get in the way of politicians having a meaningful discussions about the real issues of nuclear, such as the one you mentioned.
        hxegon 10y ago
        > Nuclear power is centralized and lends itself to government or corporate control of the energy system As opposed to what we have now?
        natch 10y ago
        As opposed to alternatives like solar. Admittedly solar does not work everywhere, but there are transport mechanisms, and batteries, and it does work in some places. And we have to decide where to spend our money. Spending on solar is a choice that leads to more local control and less centralized control, as compared to spending on nuclear. And it's not necessarily totally one or the other in every situation. I'm just saying I have a preference for things that favor local control.
- rvail2 10y ago
  "In 30 years" lol, at least the amount of time claimed for the solution is becoming more realistic. 20 years ago, people claimed solar was going to take over in "10 years".
  - afterburner 10y ago
    You completely misunderstood me. I'm saying nuclear isn't going to get much better on the next thirty years, while solar has been and is already better, and is getting even better every year. Nuclear costs have been understated since they came out.
    - drawnwren 10y ago
      This is all predicated on fusion not panning out, correct? I'd also be very surprised to see that there have been no advances that made nuclear more efficient or safe in the last 30 years.
- saint_fiasco 10y ago
  Existing nuclear power plants are old designs, much less safe than a new one would be.
  - natch 10y ago
    New ones will be just as centralized as old ones. Less democratic, more control of your energy in the hands of a big player, as compared to solar.
  - Chathamization 10y ago
    Every design will be old after a few decades. If, when these old designs were being built, people were saying "they're not so safe, but in a few decades we'll have a much safer design" and are now saying that we have a safer design, then, it seems reliable. However, if people were saying a few decades ago, "These new designs are much safer than the old ones" and are now saying "Well, THESE new designs are much safer than the old ones" and in a few decades when these designs are old will be saying, "But really, THESE NEW designs are much safer than those old ones" than it's not surprising that there's so much fear and uncertainty from the general public. Most people aren't experts in nuclear plant design and regulations. They rely on authorities, but when accidents that aren't supposed to happen end up happening, they (rightfully) start to distrust the ability of the authorities to provide them with proper risk assessment. If you tell someone that one Fukushima type disaster will happen every 30 years and that occurs, then they can at least judge the risk and decide whether or not it's worth it. If you tell someone there's little chance of that kind of disaster and then it happens, they're naturally going to be skeptical of your later pronouncements that "Of course that happened to THAT plant, but now there's REALLY little chance of that happening." People might make a bad decision because of this, but the concern isn't irrational.
    - saint_fiasco 10y ago
      I'm not talking about frequency of disasters but rather their severity. It's not that one Fukushima-type disaster every 30 years is much better than one every 50 years, but that one Fukushima-type disaster is a lot better than one Chernobyl-type disaster. Fukushima type plants have Chernobyl type disasters approximately never. That part was not a lie. Supposedly new plant designs never have Fukushima type disasters.
patall 10y ago
It is interesting how you say that nuclear might be cheaper and at the same time accept an incident like fukushima every 30 years like you pay 1000 peanuts and that it alright again. Maybe you will allow a nuclear plant in your backyard but most people already have a problem with wind power. This has nothing to do with fear about the technology itself but about the decrease in property value in vicinity of the plant. So, may be your intention is good but not realistic as the Hinkley Point C plant for 30+ billion pound in england shows. So if I have two solutions that are equally expensive but one leaves me with radioactive waste, why would you chose that one? And while I agree that we need some back up plan to stabilize the net load, that also wont be nuclear power as those plants are not fast in start up managment either.
- witty_username 10y ago
  Any such decrease in property value is precisely because of the irrational fear of nuclear power. > So, may be your intention is good but not realistic as the Hinkley Point C plant for 30+ billion pound in england shows. Government should not fund or provide any guarantees to such projects; we should tax carbon and let people decide what to do (in which case, we wouldn't even need to argue which is cheaper and we can just let power companies figure it out). > So if I have two solutions that are equally expensive but one leaves me with radioactive waste, why would you chose that one? Isn't solar more expensive when you factor in the cost of batteries (which would be required if solar scales up; i.e. a diseconomy of scale)? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
  - natch 10y ago
    The costs of solar are decreasing over time. And solar is more decentralized, so you're not stuck with huge government boondoggles, corruption, and corporate overlords.
    - witty_username 10y ago
      Source for corruption in private electricity firms? I don't think it's particularly high. Who are corporate overlords?
spangry 10y ago
Indeed. Production and use of solar and wind cause more deaths for GW/H than current nuclear fission (which is responsible for around 19.5% of the US' energy generation [0]). The problem is that deaths from nuclear generation are concentrated in very short, dramatic events. I mean, if you're looking for the biggest killer (by at least an order of magnitude), it's fossil fuels: boringly due to the reduction in air quality, leading to higher incidence of asthma/respiratory related deaths. And although this guy is clearly keen on nuclear fission (MSRs specifically), he's actually gone to the trouble or running the numbers on cost, which you are free to critique (http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear-energy-vs-wind-and-solar http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear...). Here are his four conclusions: - It would cost over $29 Trillion to generate America’s baseload electric power with a 50 / 50 mix of wind and solar farms, on parcels of land totalling the area of Indiana. - It would cost over $18 Trillion with Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) farms in the southwest deserts, on parcels of land totalling the area of West Virginia. - We could do it for less than $3 Trillion with AP-1000 Light Water Reactors, on parcels totalling a few square miles. - We could do it for $1 Trillion with liquid-fueled Molten Salt Reactors, on the same amount of land, but with no water cooling, no risk of meltdowns, and the ability to use our stockpiles of nuclear “waste” as a secondary fuel. As for those arguing against nuclear power because of well publicised nuclear accidents, it's worth considering the facts: - Three Mile Island: no direct fatalities, average exposure dose equivalent to a chest x-ray. Some academic dispute about whether it increased cancer-related deaths, in many cases because the numbers being argued over are incredibly small.[1] - Fukushima: WHO 2013 report concluded health impacts likely to be below detectable levels, although slight increase in cancer probability if linear no-threshold hypothesis applied. More people were killed because of the (probably unnecessary) evacuation of the surrounding areas.[2] - Chernobyl - UN estimates final total of premature deaths from disaster will be around 4000 (49 of these were immediate). Also made a sizeable area of land uninhabitable for some time.[3] A 2012 estimate of 'deaths per trillion kWh' [4] from various energy sources has it at: - Coal (global): 100,000 - Natural gas: 4,000 - Solar (rooftop only): 440 - Wind: 150 - Nuclear (global): 90 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident_health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident_hea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties#WHO_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities
pdog 10y ago
Fukushima was a failure of risk engineering. It's sad that you seem to think that we need to "accept" man-made disasters.
- crystalmeph 10y ago
  >>It's sad that you seem to think that we need to "accept" man-made disasters. There will never be a completely safe man-made system. For example, when designing a system for Functional Safety[0], none of the applicable standards (IEC 61508, ISO 13849, etc.) require that the product eliminate risk completely, because that is literally impossible in any complex system. Instead, you reduce the risk based on the expected harm according to the function "[likelihood of dangerous incident / time unit] * [amount of harm caused if dangerous incident occurs]" until that expected harm is below a certain threshold. Even accounting for Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, etc., nuclear already outperforms other sources of centralized power generation when you measure the deaths per unit energy produced[1]. Politically, the public may never accept this simple truth, because we are afraid of "big" things far out of proportion to their average actual danger to us. But it is a simple truth nonetheless. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_safety [1]http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energ...
MrF3ynmann 10y ago
1 Fukushima/30yrs? You remember that places linke Fukushima and chernobyl are contminated for the next couple hundred years, right? Not to mention nuclear fallout, endangered species in those regions, groundwater being poisoned, etc

arviewer 10y ago

In 30 years, solar will have taken over. Using safe existing nuclear power plants is OK for me, building new ones seems stupid. For some countries, replacing an old unsafe one with a good new one seems plausible, but more seems a bad choice.

mseebach 10y ago
Perhaps the train has indeed left the platform, but the inflection point for solar only happened this year. If the parties to Kyoto had gone home back then and created said regulatory environment for nuclear and gotten on with it, we'd be looking at a 80-90% carbon emissions free electrical grid across the entire western hemisphere today. Climate change would have been more or less solved, and yes, we knew that then, this is not benefit-of-hindsight stuff. There's a lot of histrionics around putting oil companies in the dock for crimes against humanity, but anyone who's campaigned against nuclear in the last 30 years can go right up and sit next to them.
- hubert123 10y ago
  I prefer not having fukushima events and I'm happy to wait and use coal in the meantime
  - Analog24 10y ago
    The Fukushima reactor was old and outdated. Modern reactors are built with passive safety systems that essentially make it impossible for a Fukushima style meltdown to occur. Ignorance and coal are not the answer.
    - natch 10y ago
      There's still the centralization problem. Nuclear power is centralized and lends itself to government or corporate control of the energy system, in contrast with solar which gives each property owner individual control. I'm not saying we can't have both, it's just that the problems with nuclear are not only (perceived or real) safety problems and the fact that it yields byproducts the most tempting use of which is to make nuclear weapons.
      - Analog24 10y ago
        I agree with you. There are undoubtedly issues with nuclear power but the possibility of a Fukushima/Chernobyl meltdown happening in your backyard is not one of them. The main downside is that this understandable but unfounded fear get in the way of politicians having a meaningful discussions about the real issues of nuclear, such as the one you mentioned.
      - hxegon 10y ago
        > Nuclear power is centralized and lends itself to government or corporate control of the energy system As opposed to what we have now?
        natch 10y ago
        As opposed to alternatives like solar. Admittedly solar does not work everywhere, but there are transport mechanisms, and batteries, and it does work in some places. And we have to decide where to spend our money. Spending on solar is a choice that leads to more local control and less centralized control, as compared to spending on nuclear. And it's not necessarily totally one or the other in every situation. I'm just saying I have a preference for things that favor local control.
rvail2 10y ago
"In 30 years" lol, at least the amount of time claimed for the solution is becoming more realistic. 20 years ago, people claimed solar was going to take over in "10 years".
- afterburner 10y ago
  You completely misunderstood me. I'm saying nuclear isn't going to get much better on the next thirty years, while solar has been and is already better, and is getting even better every year. Nuclear costs have been understated since they came out.
  - drawnwren 10y ago
    This is all predicated on fusion not panning out, correct? I'd also be very surprised to see that there have been no advances that made nuclear more efficient or safe in the last 30 years.
saint_fiasco 10y ago
Existing nuclear power plants are old designs, much less safe than a new one would be.
- natch 10y ago
  New ones will be just as centralized as old ones. Less democratic, more control of your energy in the hands of a big player, as compared to solar.
- Chathamization 10y ago
  Every design will be old after a few decades. If, when these old designs were being built, people were saying "they're not so safe, but in a few decades we'll have a much safer design" and are now saying that we have a safer design, then, it seems reliable. However, if people were saying a few decades ago, "These new designs are much safer than the old ones" and are now saying "Well, THESE new designs are much safer than the old ones" and in a few decades when these designs are old will be saying, "But really, THESE NEW designs are much safer than those old ones" than it's not surprising that there's so much fear and uncertainty from the general public. Most people aren't experts in nuclear plant design and regulations. They rely on authorities, but when accidents that aren't supposed to happen end up happening, they (rightfully) start to distrust the ability of the authorities to provide them with proper risk assessment. If you tell someone that one Fukushima type disaster will happen every 30 years and that occurs, then they can at least judge the risk and decide whether or not it's worth it. If you tell someone there's little chance of that kind of disaster and then it happens, they're naturally going to be skeptical of your later pronouncements that "Of course that happened to THAT plant, but now there's REALLY little chance of that happening." People might make a bad decision because of this, but the concern isn't irrational.
  - saint_fiasco 10y ago
    I'm not talking about frequency of disasters but rather their severity. It's not that one Fukushima-type disaster every 30 years is much better than one every 50 years, but that one Fukushima-type disaster is a lot better than one Chernobyl-type disaster. Fukushima type plants have Chernobyl type disasters approximately never. That part was not a lie. Supposedly new plant designs never have Fukushima type disasters.

patall 10y ago

It is interesting how you say that nuclear might be cheaper and at the same time accept an incident like fukushima every 30 years like you pay 1000 peanuts and that it alright again. Maybe you will allow a nuclear plant in your backyard but most people already have a problem with wind power. This has nothing to do with fear about the technology itself but about the decrease in property value in vicinity of the plant. So, may be your intention is good but not realistic as the Hinkley Point C plant for 30+ billion pound in england shows. So if I have two solutions that are equally expensive but one leaves me with radioactive waste, why would you chose that one? And while I agree that we need some back up plan to stabilize the net load, that also wont be nuclear power as those plants are not fast in start up managment either.

witty_username 10y ago
Any such decrease in property value is precisely because of the irrational fear of nuclear power. > So, may be your intention is good but not realistic as the Hinkley Point C plant for 30+ billion pound in england shows. Government should not fund or provide any guarantees to such projects; we should tax carbon and let people decide what to do (in which case, we wouldn't even need to argue which is cheaper and we can just let power companies figure it out). > So if I have two solutions that are equally expensive but one leaves me with radioactive waste, why would you chose that one? Isn't solar more expensive when you factor in the cost of batteries (which would be required if solar scales up; i.e. a diseconomy of scale)? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- natch 10y ago
  The costs of solar are decreasing over time. And solar is more decentralized, so you're not stuck with huge government boondoggles, corruption, and corporate overlords.
  - witty_username 10y ago
    Source for corruption in private electricity firms? I don't think it's particularly high. Who are corporate overlords?

spangry 10y ago

Indeed. Production and use of solar and wind cause more deaths for GW/H than current nuclear fission (which is responsible for around 19.5% of the US' energy generation [0]). The problem is that deaths from nuclear generation are concentrated in very short, dramatic events. I mean, if you're looking for the biggest killer (by at least an order of magnitude), it's fossil fuels: boringly due to the reduction in air quality, leading to higher incidence of asthma/respiratory related deaths. And although this guy is clearly keen on nuclear fission (MSRs specifically), he's actually gone to the trouble or running the numbers on cost, which you are free to critique (http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear-energy-vs-wind-and-solar http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear...). Here are his four conclusions: - It would cost over $29 Trillion to generate America’s baseload electric power with a 50 / 50 mix of wind and solar farms, on parcels of land totalling the area of Indiana. - It would cost over $18 Trillion with Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) farms in the southwest deserts, on parcels of land totalling the area of West Virginia. - We could do it for less than $3 Trillion with AP-1000 Light Water Reactors, on parcels totalling a few square miles. - We could do it for $1 Trillion with liquid-fueled Molten Salt Reactors, on the same amount of land, but with no water cooling, no risk of meltdowns, and the ability to use our stockpiles of nuclear “waste” as a secondary fuel. As for those arguing against nuclear power because of well publicised nuclear accidents, it's worth considering the facts: - Three Mile Island: no direct fatalities, average exposure dose equivalent to a chest x-ray. Some academic dispute about whether it increased cancer-related deaths, in many cases because the numbers being argued over are incredibly small.[1] - Fukushima: WHO 2013 report concluded health impacts likely to be below detectable levels, although slight increase in cancer probability if linear no-threshold hypothesis applied. More people were killed because of the (probably unnecessary) evacuation of the surrounding areas.[2] - Chernobyl - UN estimates final total of premature deaths from disaster will be around 4000 (49 of these were immediate). Also made a sizeable area of land uninhabitable for some time.[3] A 2012 estimate of 'deaths per trillion kWh' [4] from various energy sources has it at: - Coal (global): 100,000 - Natural gas: 4,000 - Solar (rooftop only): 440 - Wind: 150 - Nuclear (global): 90 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident_health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident_hea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties#WHO_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

pdog 10y ago

Fukushima was a failure of risk engineering. It's sad that you seem to think that we need to "accept" man-made disasters.

crystalmeph 10y ago
>>It's sad that you seem to think that we need to "accept" man-made disasters. There will never be a completely safe man-made system. For example, when designing a system for Functional Safety[0], none of the applicable standards (IEC 61508, ISO 13849, etc.) require that the product eliminate risk completely, because that is literally impossible in any complex system. Instead, you reduce the risk based on the expected harm according to the function "[likelihood of dangerous incident / time unit] * [amount of harm caused if dangerous incident occurs]" until that expected harm is below a certain threshold. Even accounting for Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, etc., nuclear already outperforms other sources of centralized power generation when you measure the deaths per unit energy produced[1]. Politically, the public may never accept this simple truth, because we are afraid of "big" things far out of proportion to their average actual danger to us. But it is a simple truth nonetheless. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_safety [1]http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energ...

MrF3ynmann 10y ago

1 Fukushima/30yrs? You remember that places linke Fukushima and chernobyl are contminated for the next couple hundred years, right? Not to mention nuclear fallout, endangered species in those regions, groundwater being poisoned, etc