8 ms·

There are a number of problems with nuclear power. 1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1]. 2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclea

by cletus 9y ago

There are a number of problems with nuclear power. 1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1]. 2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclear reactors (eg they're seismically active). 3. We have to trust either corporations or governments to run such plants. Corporations will tend to maximize short term profits at the cost of long term safety. Governments will tend to do the same for budgetary reasons. 4. We'd create a whole bunch of radioactive slag that we honestly have no good way of dealing with. So far it seems the best power source we have is hydroelectric. Of course it's only possible in some places. This can devastate certain species (eg salmon) but in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option. Solar has been on a stellar (pardon the pun) rise for some years simply because the cost of cells has decreased by way more than I ever would've predicted. Widespread electric vehicles are still hindered by the relative expense and scalability issue of batteries, notably how much lithium we have available as well as the environmental impact of mining the necessary materials. It does seem like we're one big battery breakthrough away from completely changing this landscape however. Wind has a place but I think will remain a niche energy source. I increasingly have the view the the economic production of electricity from nuclear fusion is a pipe dream. The temperatures are too high, magnetic containment seems too problematic and, worse, the neutron emissions are a big problem (yes, yes, I know about He3). This does seem like it's a problem we're going to have to solve this century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium

jjoonathan 9y ago
> in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option. The death tolls tell a different story. You aren't alone in this belief, but I've never really understood it. Banqiao dam bursts and kills 170,000 people: hydro is fine, we should do more. Chernobyl melts down and kills 30: nuclear power is inherently unsafe! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...
- mkesper 9y ago
  You're not taking into account all the people who didn't die immediately but long before their time because of cancer. “I know three women my age (between 30–40) who have experienced thyroid cancer. When one of them was surprised to get the diagnosis, her doctor told her they see women our age from the Soviet Union very frequently with the same. Not a coincidence.” — Z. K.
  - slackingoff2017 9y ago
    I think it should be kept in mind that the design of Soviet reactors was incredibly unsafe compared to their western counterparts. Fukushima had four meltdowns with only a few casualties.
    - kodfodrasz 9y ago
      This is not true in this form. There were unsafe soviet designs, but also there were unsafe western designs. Soviet designs were not all categorically unsafe. The design used at Chernobyl was a problematic design, but still many layers of human error had to be involved to create the accident. Military reactor designs are generally less safe. Civilian designs were usually OK in the USSR.
      - rb1 9y ago
        It's not just the design(s), it is the implementation too. At Chernobyl the powers at be (accountants?) got involved and decided to use flammable bitumen coverings on the roof of reactor 3, one would assume to save money. Unsurprisingly, the roof of reactor 3 caught fire.
        fusiongyro 9y ago
        This is a good example of one of the failings at Chernobyl, but it took many of them coinciding to make the disaster as bad as it was. They were required to use another material to build the roof, but they were also required to be finished with construction by a certain time. Soviet central planning led to a shortage of the proper roofing material. I'm sure the decision to use bitumen was either made in ignorance or with the assumption that it wouldn't matter for other reasons. Lots of mistakes were made with the assumption that the rest of the system was safe so it wouldn't matter.
acidburnNSA 9y ago
Thanks for posting. I'm in the nuclear industry and would like to try to address some of these issues if you don't mind. 1. Uranium in seawater is replenished by erosion through streams at a rate faster than we could ever burn it. It is effectively totally sustainable and even renewable on a 4+ billion year time frame, even without breeder reactors. But really, breeder reactors will become a thing when uranium gets expensive enough to warrant them. The reactors that were attempted so far just weren't needed because it turned out we had way more uranium that we originally thought. 2. With passive cooling systems, even seismically active regions can be powered by nuclear. Also, there are exciting possibilities for offshore nuclear, floating 10km out to sea where tsunami wavelengths are huge. Cooling is guaranteed and huge shipyards can do the construction. I agree that it's clear from Fukushima that designs requiring active cooling are no good in such places. 3. There are teams of nuclear engineers and other reactor designers in San Francisco right now at the American Nuclear Society meeting whose goal is to reduce the price of nuclear so that corporations can make a profit from them without compromising safety. I believe it can be done. 4. The Finns are about done with their deep geologic repository [1] and it's looking great. We definitely know how to dispose of nuclear waste. It's just a matter of political will and outreach. The tradeoff you have to keep in mind is that you can get all your primary energy for literally your entire life while personally producing 2 soda cans of nuclear waste. Compare that to fossil fuel (2 million times more waste) or to the vast energy harvesting resources for wind and solar (concrete bases, fiberglass, steel, silicon, glass, semiconductor processing, etc.) and you see that nuclear is extremely low footprint and that's its magic. I sympathize with your concerns and am working to mitigate them. Biggest hurdle in my mind is standardizing designs. I dream of coordinating an open source reactor design effort some day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
- wuschel 9y ago
  Hi, interesting answers. 1) Could you tell me more about replenishment of Uranium in seawater, or point me towards your source? Wouldn't it mean that we would reach a maximum saturation of Uranium in the ocean after some time (with precipitation of excess Uranium in the form of salts)? Have you seen / access to estimates of Uranium electrode deposition cost from water? Are they cost competitive in any way in comparison to other energy systems that will be employed in the future? At the end, you would need to use electrical energy converted from another source to gain Uranium. For me, that scenario is a bit 'fishy'.
wbl 9y ago
Notice how reprocessing or fast breeders solve problems 1 and 4. As for 3 the US has never had an release of radioactivity to the environment from a nuclear reactor aboard a ship or submarine in several thousand years of operation time.
- sitharus 9y ago
  That's not correct, there have been several releases of radioactivity from US military vessels. This is all prior to the late 1980s, since the mid 1970s many controls and monitors were added to prevent releases. Personally I'd attribute this to lack of awareness rather than lack of budget. The Soviet program looks quite different. December 12, 1971, The USS Dace spilled 1,900 litres of radioactive coolant water in to the Thames River, Connecticut. Undisclosed location, radioactive resin being dumped at sea from the USS Guardfish blows back on to the vessel. May 22, 1978, USS Puffer releases another 1,900l of radioactive water near Puget Sound, Washington, United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid... Apparently 'millions of gallons' of primary loop coolant was released in to the environment prior to 1973. This even references some sources if you want to dig deeper http://www.environment-hawaii.org/?p=3836 http://www.environment-hawaii.org/?p=3836
  - valuearb 9y ago
    https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
  - wbl 9y ago
    Thanks for correcting! It seems that these are low-level intended releases, not core damage. Bad for a power plant, but not horrifically bad.
slackingoff2017 9y ago
Hydro is great, so great that around 90% of dammable rivers are already used for power generation. Further hydro generation is not really possible so it will never fulfill more than a fraction of energy needs. Wind is an excellent source for some countries. Much of the US is great for wind generation and unlike hydro the resource is largely untapped. Wind is unpredictable but averages out over large areas. It will never be a base source but has much potential remaining. Solar is held back by cost alone. All predictions point to solar providing the majority of our electricity in the future. Nuclear fuel is essentially unlimited. Uranium is in seawater and if prices rise high enough we can extract from that and basically never run out. On top of that thorium is also usable as fuel if we ever get around to building anything that uses it. In some countries the best power source is nuclear. If you don't have a lot of wind, water, or sun, your options become limited to fossil fuel or nuclear.
kodfodrasz 9y ago
Hydro is not an option at many places. Also dams also have negative environmental impact, which is often simply ignored. Fusion will work eventually, but currently it is in the constant "we'll be there in 30 years" since the 1970s. Yet we are not getting further, but closer to it. Just thnik about it: now you have technology in your pocket that was used in putting humans on the Moon. More and more durable and special materials becoming cheaper and affordable. We are getting close to handle the heat, EM and possibly the neutron flux. It is doable in the near future (<100 years), thus worth pursuing. What we must avoid (this also applies to the energy storage tech for renewables) is the wishful thinking: "we can shut down nuclear powerplants, as fusion/battery tech will be solved in ten years: extrapolation from 2 conviniently chosen datapoints..." Breeder reactors and Thorium based fuel cycle will mitigate the problem of running out of U235. Radioactive residual reprocessing will eventually be solved. Maybe peak-uranium will make it economically desireable. Btw there is current work on reprocessing spent radioactive fuel in reactors, at least in Russia and China. I firmly beleive that while solar and wind will stay with us, they cannot be the fundamentals of our energy mix, and nuclear is here to stay. Simply many politicians are not ready to admit it yet.
ckastner 9y ago
> So far it seems the best power source we have is hydroelectric. Of course it's only possible in some places. This can devastate certain species (eg salmon) but in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option. Note that according to one recent study, reservoirs also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Previous HN discussion [1]. It's just one study and its quantified result should probably be debated, but it's general argument that reservoirs contribute to greenhouse gas emissions sounds well-reasoned to me. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884030
reitzensteinm 9y ago
How can you list scarcity of uranium as an issue for nuclear, then advocate for hydro without mentioning the same? There are only so many suitable locations for hydro, and the further down the list we go the worse the incremental environmental impact.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Tidal is hydro and has barely been tapped.
  - fennecfoxen 9y ago
    Tidal's problem is that it's low-density energy and has a low capital-to-extracted-power ratio. And that capital is sitting in salt water.
  - reitzensteinm 9y ago
    My intent was not to advocate for nuclear, just to push back at a one sided argument. You can make a compelling case for anything if you leave out inconvenient details.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fulafel 9y ago
Your #1 is wrong in at least 3 ways. (Seawater, Thorium, breeders).

by cletus 9y ago

jjoonathan 9y ago

> in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option. The death tolls tell a different story. You aren't alone in this belief, but I've never really understood it. Banqiao dam bursts and kills 170,000 people: hydro is fine, we should do more. Chernobyl melts down and kills 30: nuclear power is inherently unsafe! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...

mkesper 9y ago
You're not taking into account all the people who didn't die immediately but long before their time because of cancer. “I know three women my age (between 30–40) who have experienced thyroid cancer. When one of them was surprised to get the diagnosis, her doctor told her they see women our age from the Soviet Union very frequently with the same. Not a coincidence.” — Z. K.
- slackingoff2017 9y ago
  I think it should be kept in mind that the design of Soviet reactors was incredibly unsafe compared to their western counterparts. Fukushima had four meltdowns with only a few casualties.
  - kodfodrasz 9y ago
    This is not true in this form. There were unsafe soviet designs, but also there were unsafe western designs. Soviet designs were not all categorically unsafe. The design used at Chernobyl was a problematic design, but still many layers of human error had to be involved to create the accident. Military reactor designs are generally less safe. Civilian designs were usually OK in the USSR.
    - rb1 9y ago
      It's not just the design(s), it is the implementation too. At Chernobyl the powers at be (accountants?) got involved and decided to use flammable bitumen coverings on the roof of reactor 3, one would assume to save money. Unsurprisingly, the roof of reactor 3 caught fire.
      - fusiongyro 9y ago
        This is a good example of one of the failings at Chernobyl, but it took many of them coinciding to make the disaster as bad as it was. They were required to use another material to build the roof, but they were also required to be finished with construction by a certain time. Soviet central planning led to a shortage of the proper roofing material. I'm sure the decision to use bitumen was either made in ignorance or with the assumption that it wouldn't matter for other reasons. Lots of mistakes were made with the assumption that the rest of the system was safe so it wouldn't matter.

acidburnNSA 9y ago

Thanks for posting. I'm in the nuclear industry and would like to try to address some of these issues if you don't mind. 1. Uranium in seawater is replenished by erosion through streams at a rate faster than we could ever burn it. It is effectively totally sustainable and even renewable on a 4+ billion year time frame, even without breeder reactors. But really, breeder reactors will become a thing when uranium gets expensive enough to warrant them. The reactors that were attempted so far just weren't needed because it turned out we had way more uranium that we originally thought. 2. With passive cooling systems, even seismically active regions can be powered by nuclear. Also, there are exciting possibilities for offshore nuclear, floating 10km out to sea where tsunami wavelengths are huge. Cooling is guaranteed and huge shipyards can do the construction. I agree that it's clear from Fukushima that designs requiring active cooling are no good in such places. 3. There are teams of nuclear engineers and other reactor designers in San Francisco right now at the American Nuclear Society meeting whose goal is to reduce the price of nuclear so that corporations can make a profit from them without compromising safety. I believe it can be done. 4. The Finns are about done with their deep geologic repository [1] and it's looking great. We definitely know how to dispose of nuclear waste. It's just a matter of political will and outreach. The tradeoff you have to keep in mind is that you can get all your primary energy for literally your entire life while personally producing 2 soda cans of nuclear waste. Compare that to fossil fuel (2 million times more waste) or to the vast energy harvesting resources for wind and solar (concrete bases, fiberglass, steel, silicon, glass, semiconductor processing, etc.) and you see that nuclear is extremely low footprint and that's its magic. I sympathize with your concerns and am working to mitigate them. Biggest hurdle in my mind is standardizing designs. I dream of coordinating an open source reactor design effort some day. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

wuschel 9y ago
Hi, interesting answers. 1) Could you tell me more about replenishment of Uranium in seawater, or point me towards your source? Wouldn't it mean that we would reach a maximum saturation of Uranium in the ocean after some time (with precipitation of excess Uranium in the form of salts)? Have you seen / access to estimates of Uranium electrode deposition cost from water? Are they cost competitive in any way in comparison to other energy systems that will be employed in the future? At the end, you would need to use electrical energy converted from another source to gain Uranium. For me, that scenario is a bit 'fishy'.

wbl 9y ago

Notice how reprocessing or fast breeders solve problems 1 and 4. As for 3 the US has never had an release of radioactivity to the environment from a nuclear reactor aboard a ship or submarine in several thousand years of operation time.

sitharus 9y ago
That's not correct, there have been several releases of radioactivity from US military vessels. This is all prior to the late 1980s, since the mid 1970s many controls and monitors were added to prevent releases. Personally I'd attribute this to lack of awareness rather than lack of budget. The Soviet program looks quite different. December 12, 1971, The USS Dace spilled 1,900 litres of radioactive coolant water in to the Thames River, Connecticut. Undisclosed location, radioactive resin being dumped at sea from the USS Guardfish blows back on to the vessel. May 22, 1978, USS Puffer releases another 1,900l of radioactive water near Puget Sound, Washington, United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid... Apparently 'millions of gallons' of primary loop coolant was released in to the environment prior to 1973. This even references some sources if you want to dig deeper http://www.environment-hawaii.org/?p=3836 http://www.environment-hawaii.org/?p=3836
- valuearb 9y ago
  https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- wbl 9y ago
  Thanks for correcting! It seems that these are low-level intended releases, not core damage. Bad for a power plant, but not horrifically bad.

slackingoff2017 9y ago

Hydro is great, so great that around 90% of dammable rivers are already used for power generation. Further hydro generation is not really possible so it will never fulfill more than a fraction of energy needs. Wind is an excellent source for some countries. Much of the US is great for wind generation and unlike hydro the resource is largely untapped. Wind is unpredictable but averages out over large areas. It will never be a base source but has much potential remaining. Solar is held back by cost alone. All predictions point to solar providing the majority of our electricity in the future. Nuclear fuel is essentially unlimited. Uranium is in seawater and if prices rise high enough we can extract from that and basically never run out. On top of that thorium is also usable as fuel if we ever get around to building anything that uses it. In some countries the best power source is nuclear. If you don't have a lot of wind, water, or sun, your options become limited to fossil fuel or nuclear.

kodfodrasz 9y ago

Hydro is not an option at many places. Also dams also have negative environmental impact, which is often simply ignored. Fusion will work eventually, but currently it is in the constant "we'll be there in 30 years" since the 1970s. Yet we are not getting further, but closer to it. Just thnik about it: now you have technology in your pocket that was used in putting humans on the Moon. More and more durable and special materials becoming cheaper and affordable. We are getting close to handle the heat, EM and possibly the neutron flux. It is doable in the near future (<100 years), thus worth pursuing. What we must avoid (this also applies to the energy storage tech for renewables) is the wishful thinking: "we can shut down nuclear powerplants, as fusion/battery tech will be solved in ten years: extrapolation from 2 conviniently chosen datapoints..." Breeder reactors and Thorium based fuel cycle will mitigate the problem of running out of U235. Radioactive residual reprocessing will eventually be solved. Maybe peak-uranium will make it economically desireable. Btw there is current work on reprocessing spent radioactive fuel in reactors, at least in Russia and China. I firmly beleive that while solar and wind will stay with us, they cannot be the fundamentals of our energy mix, and nuclear is here to stay. Simply many politicians are not ready to admit it yet.

ckastner 9y ago

> So far it seems the best power source we have is hydroelectric. Of course it's only possible in some places. This can devastate certain species (eg salmon) but in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option. Note that according to one recent study, reservoirs also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Previous HN discussion [1]. It's just one study and its quantified result should probably be debated, but it's general argument that reservoirs contribute to greenhouse gas emissions sounds well-reasoned to me. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884030

reitzensteinm 9y ago

How can you list scarcity of uranium as an issue for nuclear, then advocate for hydro without mentioning the same? There are only so many suitable locations for hydro, and the further down the list we go the worse the incremental environmental impact.

jacquesm 9y ago
Tidal is hydro and has barely been tapped.
- fennecfoxen 9y ago
  Tidal's problem is that it's low-density energy and has a low capital-to-extracted-power ratio. And that capital is sitting in salt water.
- reitzensteinm 9y ago
  My intent was not to advocate for nuclear, just to push back at a one sided argument. You can make a compelling case for anything if you leave out inconvenient details.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

fulafel 9y ago

Your #1 is wrong in at least 3 ways. (Seawater, Thorium, breeders).