7 ms·

Japan's nuclear technology faces extinction

43 points by Red_Tarsius 10y ago

itchyjunk 10y ago
Although not the best comparison, oil industry has had some bad spills and other negative incidents. But oil is treated as too crucial of a resource to put too much restriction while nuclear power doesn't get much love. This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with short attention span. I am all for higher safety standards on nuclear power. But when population loses interest, even critical technology will lack funding and research. I wouldn't mind seeing some molten salt reactors[0] though. On the other hand, China seems to think nuclear power is unavoidable. "While the construction of new nuclear power plants has mostly stalled in industrial nations, China is pushing ahead to expand its nuclear power generation capacity. China accounted for six of the eight new reactors where construction began in 2016 and the first three months of 2017." --------------------------------- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
- petre 10y ago
  > This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with short attention span The nuke industry could hire some of the big tobacco lobbists to educate (as oppssed to misleading) the public. Compared to oil and coal, nuclear power is orders of magnitude cleaner. Closing nuclear power stations means burning coal most of the time, because the coal power stations are already there. The only renewable resources capable of providing base load that can replace some of the nuclear power are geothermal, but to use that you need a suitable site and solar thermal with molten salt storage. Aging coal power stations could be probably converted to biomass as well. But none of these are going to fully replace nuclear power.
  - mohawk 10y ago
    Solar, wind & batteries will power the future. It is a question of when not if. All others will fade into oblivion. So long, and thanks for all the Joules.
    - flukus 10y ago
      The fact that they've made so many gains despite governments often building barriers to help non-renewables is quite telling.
    - ams6110 10y ago
      Nonsense. They won't scale.
      - mohawk 10y ago
        They will. I'm an investor, i like to make money, and i hate losing it. So i'm happy there's still someone else on the other side of the trade :-)
        thedailymail 10y ago
        The person on the other side of the trade also likes to make money and hates losing it.
        mohawk 10y ago
        So may the best one of us win. My most profitable investments have been based on other people's myopia, and it is a far sweeter victory than scoring points in an online discussion forum.
      - philipkglass 10y ago
        Nuclear power presently produces ~11% of world electricity. Wind + solar can scale to that penetration level even without battery storage and in much of the world wind or solar will already deliver LCOE lower than new-build nuclear. Reaching really high penetration levels depends on presently-unknown economics of large scale storage. (Much how the success or failure of molten salt reactors and every other next-generation nuclear dream is dependent far more on delivered costs than physics.) EDIT: I see that you were responding to someone who is already sure that storage-backed wind and solar will become the only electricity sources. That's certainly a bolder claim than scaling up to match present-day nuclear penetration levels.
  - cmarschner 10y ago
    Of course it is cleaner. Until you need to deal with nuclear waste. And until the accident. Afterwards, it is not. How many Fukushimas and Chernobyls are we supposed to experience? Do we first need to have a plant like Tricastin blow up, wiping out Rhône valley wines and all of Provence for thousands of years? No thanks.
    - flukus 10y ago
      "Chernobyl was just soviet mismanagement, the west is safe", "fukishima was an unexpected tsunami, everyone else is safe", "newer reactor designs are safe". The nuclear industry move the goal posts after every disaster.
      - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
        Fukushima was not an unavoidable "act of God" as you seem to imply. Fukushima was a galloping series of well-documented fuckups and ignored warnings going back to its construction in 1967. There are no moving goalposts. And coal plants put more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear, even accounting for the historical odds of catastrophic failure. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
        flukus 10y ago
        > Fukushima was a galloping series of well-documented fuckups and ignored warnings going back to its construction in 1967. Exactly. Let me know when you fix humans, companies and governments, then I'll trust nuclear.
        aperrien 10y ago
        Have fun with global warming then. I think that humanity needs to come to terms with renewables and nuclear power (with fusion being the best case scenario) for the future of everyone on this planet.
- flukus 10y ago
  > This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with short attention span. I am all for higher safety standards on nuclear power. But when population loses interest, even critical technology will lack funding and research. The bigger part of the problem is nuclear power is a case of "cheap, clean, safe, existing, pick any two".
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    And pretty much any form of renewable energy has the same problem.
    - flukus 10y ago
      Solar may fail somewhat on the clean, but wind doesn't. And both are cheaper than safe nuclear will ever be.
      - adrianN 10y ago
        Both might be cheaper if you don't count storage.
- hannob 10y ago
  > On the other hand, China seems to think nuclear power is unavoidable. > "While the construction of new nuclear power plants has mostly stalled in industrial nations, China is pushing ahead to expand its nuclear power generation capacity. Given the scale of China's energy projects this isn't a whole lot. While China has more or less a "let's try it all" approach to energy, nuclear doesn't play any major role.
- spangry 10y ago
  On the other hand, China seems to think nuclear power is unavoidable. India too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_power_programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_... Stage 2 is fast breeder reactors and stage 3 is thorium-fuelled reactors. Nuclear is their only realistic option if they want to at least slow the pace at which they're adding more coal-fired generating capacity. I think there's a problem with how electricity generation issues get reported in the press. When we're talking about electrical power, there are three figures that sometimes get used (incorrectly) interchangeably: installed generation capacity (i.e. nameplate), actual electricity generated, actual electricity generated and consumed. I'm not going to even bother with the third type, which is the most problematic for solar and wind (as you cannot control when and how much % of capacity you generate), because data is not readily available. But even for the first vs. second type (installed capacity vs. actual generation), you have as percentages of total installed capacity / total actual generation: 2014-15: - Renewable 'nameplate' installed capacity == 13.17% - Renewable actual % total electricity generated == 2.97% - Nuclear 'nameplate' installed capacity == 2.13% - Nuclear actual % total electricity generated == 3.27% 2015-16: - Renewable 'nameplate' installed capacity == 14.18% - Renewable actual % total electricity generated == 3.09% - Nuclear 'nameplate' installed capacity == 1.91% - Nuclear actual % total electricity generated == 3.20% In other words, renewable installed capacity went from 6.2 times that of nuclear in 14-15 to 7.4 times in 15-16. Yet, over the same period, renewable increased its share of actual electricity generated by a paltry 0.12% (as in, a twelfth of one percent). Nuclear installed capacity was unchanged and contributed 0.06% less to total actual electricity generated (i.e. generated relatively less as other sources added capacity in that year). I sure hope the relationship between renewable installed capacity and generation are not linear, otherwise we're going to be working on this for a while... SOURCE (horribly confusing tables and all): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India
philipkglass 10y ago
New Japanese reactor projects face formidable headwinds: - Increasing efficiency and shrinking population (long term shrinking electricity demand) - Intense public resistance in the wake of Fukushima - Should public resistance wane, there are dozens of functional but presently idled reactors that could restart faster than you can build and pay off a new reactor
SagelyGuru 10y ago
Uranium/Plutonium reactors are a dead technology. Toshiba lost vast sums of money when Westinghouse Electric went bankrupt recently, mostly for not being able to compete with more economical sources of energy. That is not to rule out better (safer, simpler) forms of nuclear power, such as Thorium reactors, which is what India is promoting. Imho, anyone starting a major new nuclear power project today, with the existing Uranium technology, has not done their sums right.
- petre 10y ago
  Natural Uranium is also okay if used in a reactor with a good track record like the CANDU. The problem is enriched uranium because: - you are basically burning a metal as scarce as platinum (U235) - nuclear proliferation risks India doesn't have much Uranium, has mostly lost access to it because they developed nukes and has abundant Thorium resources. Their Thorium reactor design is based on the Candu PHWR which can run on natural uranium. I wish the Indians the best of luck with their Thorium design, because then they could re-license it to other countries like Japan who's nuclear sectors went bust or are about to.
  - hansthehorse 10y ago
    Commercial reactors are enriched to about 3% plus or minus a bit. Military (naval) reactors are very highly enriched to minimize the size needed. The cost and availability of the uranium has never been the problem. The Carter administration stopped the recovery of the unused uranium in spent fuel thus making the waste problem much worse for the industry. We have decades worth of perfectly good uranium sitting in spent fuel pools all over the country but are unable, by law, to recover it.
Grue3 10y ago
It would be quite ironic if irreversible climate change will come about because of ignorance of "green" anti-nuclear activists.

43 points by Red_Tarsius 10y ago

Although not the best comparison, oil industry has had some bad spills and other negative incidents. But oil is treated as too crucial of a resource to put too much restriction while nuclear power doesn't get much love. This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with short attention span. I am all for higher safety standards on nuclear power. But when population loses interest, even critical technology will lack funding and research. I wouldn't mind seeing some molten salt reactors[0] though. On the other hand, China seems to think nuclear power is unavoidable. "While the construction of new nuclear power plants has mostly stalled in industrial nations, China is pushing ahead to expand its nuclear power generation capacity. China accounted for six of the eight new reactors where construction began in 2016 and the first three months of 2017." --------------------------------- [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

petre 10y ago
> This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with short attention span The nuke industry could hire some of the big tobacco lobbists to educate (as oppssed to misleading) the public. Compared to oil and coal, nuclear power is orders of magnitude cleaner. Closing nuclear power stations means burning coal most of the time, because the coal power stations are already there. The only renewable resources capable of providing base load that can replace some of the nuclear power are geothermal, but to use that you need a suitable site and solar thermal with molten salt storage. Aging coal power stations could be probably converted to biomass as well. But none of these are going to fully replace nuclear power.
- mohawk 10y ago
  Solar, wind & batteries will power the future. It is a question of when not if. All others will fade into oblivion. So long, and thanks for all the Joules.
  - flukus 10y ago
    The fact that they've made so many gains despite governments often building barriers to help non-renewables is quite telling.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Nonsense. They won't scale.
    - mohawk 10y ago
      They will. I'm an investor, i like to make money, and i hate losing it. So i'm happy there's still someone else on the other side of the trade :-)
      - thedailymail 10y ago
        The person on the other side of the trade also likes to make money and hates losing it.
        mohawk 10y ago
        So may the best one of us win. My most profitable investments have been based on other people's myopia, and it is a far sweeter victory than scoring points in an online discussion forum.
    - philipkglass 10y ago
      Nuclear power presently produces ~11% of world electricity. Wind + solar can scale to that penetration level even without battery storage and in much of the world wind or solar will already deliver LCOE lower than new-build nuclear. Reaching really high penetration levels depends on presently-unknown economics of large scale storage. (Much how the success or failure of molten salt reactors and every other next-generation nuclear dream is dependent far more on delivered costs than physics.) EDIT: I see that you were responding to someone who is already sure that storage-backed wind and solar will become the only electricity sources. That's certainly a bolder claim than scaling up to match present-day nuclear penetration levels.
- cmarschner 10y ago
  Of course it is cleaner. Until you need to deal with nuclear waste. And until the accident. Afterwards, it is not. How many Fukushimas and Chernobyls are we supposed to experience? Do we first need to have a plant like Tricastin blow up, wiping out Rhône valley wines and all of Provence for thousands of years? No thanks.
  - flukus 10y ago
    "Chernobyl was just soviet mismanagement, the west is safe", "fukishima was an unexpected tsunami, everyone else is safe", "newer reactor designs are safe". The nuclear industry move the goal posts after every disaster.
    - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
      Fukushima was not an unavoidable "act of God" as you seem to imply. Fukushima was a galloping series of well-documented fuckups and ignored warnings going back to its construction in 1967. There are no moving goalposts. And coal plants put more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear, even accounting for the historical odds of catastrophic failure. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
      - flukus 10y ago
        > Fukushima was a galloping series of well-documented fuckups and ignored warnings going back to its construction in 1967. Exactly. Let me know when you fix humans, companies and governments, then I'll trust nuclear.
        aperrien 10y ago
        Have fun with global warming then. I think that humanity needs to come to terms with renewables and nuclear power (with fusion being the best case scenario) for the future of everyone on this planet.
flukus 10y ago
> This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with short attention span. I am all for higher safety standards on nuclear power. But when population loses interest, even critical technology will lack funding and research. The bigger part of the problem is nuclear power is a case of "cheap, clean, safe, existing, pick any two".
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  And pretty much any form of renewable energy has the same problem.
  - flukus 10y ago
    Solar may fail somewhat on the clean, but wind doesn't. And both are cheaper than safe nuclear will ever be.
    - adrianN 10y ago
      Both might be cheaper if you don't count storage.
hannob 10y ago
> On the other hand, China seems to think nuclear power is unavoidable. > "While the construction of new nuclear power plants has mostly stalled in industrial nations, China is pushing ahead to expand its nuclear power generation capacity. Given the scale of China's energy projects this isn't a whole lot. While China has more or less a "let's try it all" approach to energy, nuclear doesn't play any major role.
spangry 10y ago
On the other hand, China seems to think nuclear power is unavoidable. India too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_power_programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_... Stage 2 is fast breeder reactors and stage 3 is thorium-fuelled reactors. Nuclear is their only realistic option if they want to at least slow the pace at which they're adding more coal-fired generating capacity. I think there's a problem with how electricity generation issues get reported in the press. When we're talking about electrical power, there are three figures that sometimes get used (incorrectly) interchangeably: installed generation capacity (i.e. nameplate), actual electricity generated, actual electricity generated and consumed. I'm not going to even bother with the third type, which is the most problematic for solar and wind (as you cannot control when and how much % of capacity you generate), because data is not readily available. But even for the first vs. second type (installed capacity vs. actual generation), you have as percentages of total installed capacity / total actual generation: 2014-15: - Renewable 'nameplate' installed capacity == 13.17% - Renewable actual % total electricity generated == 2.97% - Nuclear 'nameplate' installed capacity == 2.13% - Nuclear actual % total electricity generated == 3.27% 2015-16: - Renewable 'nameplate' installed capacity == 14.18% - Renewable actual % total electricity generated == 3.09% - Nuclear 'nameplate' installed capacity == 1.91% - Nuclear actual % total electricity generated == 3.20% In other words, renewable installed capacity went from 6.2 times that of nuclear in 14-15 to 7.4 times in 15-16. Yet, over the same period, renewable increased its share of actual electricity generated by a paltry 0.12% (as in, a twelfth of one percent). Nuclear installed capacity was unchanged and contributed 0.06% less to total actual electricity generated (i.e. generated relatively less as other sources added capacity in that year). I sure hope the relationship between renewable installed capacity and generation are not linear, otherwise we're going to be working on this for a while... SOURCE (horribly confusing tables and all): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India

philipkglass 10y ago

New Japanese reactor projects face formidable headwinds: - Increasing efficiency and shrinking population (long term shrinking electricity demand) - Intense public resistance in the wake of Fukushima - Should public resistance wane, there are dozens of functional but presently idled reactors that could restart faster than you can build and pay off a new reactor

SagelyGuru 10y ago

Uranium/Plutonium reactors are a dead technology. Toshiba lost vast sums of money when Westinghouse Electric went bankrupt recently, mostly for not being able to compete with more economical sources of energy. That is not to rule out better (safer, simpler) forms of nuclear power, such as Thorium reactors, which is what India is promoting. Imho, anyone starting a major new nuclear power project today, with the existing Uranium technology, has not done their sums right.

petre 10y ago
Natural Uranium is also okay if used in a reactor with a good track record like the CANDU. The problem is enriched uranium because: - you are basically burning a metal as scarce as platinum (U235) - nuclear proliferation risks India doesn't have much Uranium, has mostly lost access to it because they developed nukes and has abundant Thorium resources. Their Thorium reactor design is based on the Candu PHWR which can run on natural uranium. I wish the Indians the best of luck with their Thorium design, because then they could re-license it to other countries like Japan who's nuclear sectors went bust or are about to.
- hansthehorse 10y ago
  Commercial reactors are enriched to about 3% plus or minus a bit. Military (naval) reactors are very highly enriched to minimize the size needed. The cost and availability of the uranium has never been the problem. The Carter administration stopped the recovery of the unused uranium in spent fuel thus making the waste problem much worse for the industry. We have decades worth of perfectly good uranium sitting in spent fuel pools all over the country but are unable, by law, to recover it.

Grue3 10y ago

It would be quite ironic if irreversible climate change will come about because of ignorance of "green" anti-nuclear activists.