4 ms·

> Its just that when something goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. Not only does it go wrong, we have absolutely no way to stop it. It's literally out of our con

by grecy 9y ago

> Its just that when something goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. Not only does it go wrong, we have absolutely no way to stop it. It's literally out of our control. I was a supporter of Nuclear, though Fukushima taught me a very important lesson. When things went bad there, we literally stood back and said "well, damn. There is nothing we can do" and watched it melt for weeks and weeks. Nobody could go in, and we had no robots that could go in and do a thing. It was lucky it's close enough to just pump endless water into it. Then a few weeks later the experts said "oh, all that highly contaminated water is going straight into the ocean. We wondered where it was going". As it were the Japanese had elderly people volunteering to go in, essentially committing suicide. It's also worth remembering that at Chernobyl there was also nothing we could do - other than force people to commit suicide by going in where it was deadly. That won't fly today. While the chances of things going that wrong are very low (it's only happened twice, maybe three times in history) I think the consequences are too great to justify it. We can't even control it when it goes bad!

iooi 9y ago
A bit more than twice, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...
cjslep 9y ago
This seems like cherry picking and the innate human bias at play. Given a big enough disaster, there isn't anything anyone can do as it unfolds. And spectacular failures stick in our mind. Here's some non-nuclear disasters that happened that people could only watch: * Taum Sauk hydro pump-storage collapse * Duke Energy's 30k+ tons of coal Ash spill into the Dan River * But that was tiny, try Kentucky's 306 million tons of coal Ash spill or Tennessee's 525 million. People can only stand and watch that unfold, no modern robot is going to stop that either. * Gas pipes in San Bruno, New Jersey, and Colorado exploding, killing families instantly * Deepwater Horizon and the Valdez. Again, not much to do but stand and watch as it unfurls. I could keep Googling more but every source of energy has its gigantic catastrophes where no amount of human bodies or robots will save the day (well, I guess a large enough pile of bodies would plug a hole in a collapsing dam).
- codebook 9y ago
  But those events were temporal and local. Nuclear failures are catastrophic and never ending events in many generations.
  - cjslep 9y ago
    You have a strange definition of "local" for Exxon Valdez/Deepwater Horizon. As well as "temporal", too. 20 years later species haven't recovered from the Valdez spill (unless you ask Exxon). Deepwater Horizon was also a very prolonged event, it took "forever" to cap the damn thing. 1 billion+ tons of coal Ash spilled across the USA didn't just disappear over a day either from some small city corner. The only reason why nuclear sticks so easily is because of the magic word "radiation". It's easier to be scared of it than sit down land learn that it is all a natural physical phenomenon, even if it originated from a man-made isotope. It's difficulty arises from the stochastic (quantum) nature of it's interactions. Lastly, reactor designs have significantly improved since 50 years ago. New reactor designs I saw coming out of Westinghouse could lose all power and pumps and still use natural convection and reservoirs (elevated pools) within the containment to prevent any sort of critical event leading to meltdown. Imagine if we were stuck with the coal technology of the 70's. I would prefer modernizing the nuclear fleet if possible, which does include decommissioning old reactors, and closing the fuel cycle loop in a way that is proliferation resistant (some sort of pyroprocessing) unlike UREX.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Look, I'm pro-nuclear but 'if only everyone were as knowledgeable as me' is a losing communications strategy. seriously, why do you expect people to trust the engineering in a nuclear power plant when clever people can't even get the financing to work or the construction ot go smoothly?
      - cjslep 9y ago
        My point isn't "be as smart as me" and I do apologise if my tone is coming across that way. My point is "get educated on the issue" which seems reasonable to me (the tone of which I guess can also be misconstrued as negative, but I mean it in a constructive and positive manner).
opo 9y ago
>...I was a supporter of Nuclear, though Fukushima taught me a very important lesson. You missed the important lessons from Fukishima. A major power plant suffered about the worst possible catastrophe that it could have through a combination of incompetence by the plant and its regulators. For all that, the highest estimates of death due to the evacuation are less than the deaths that come from a day of burning coal (when the coal plants don't have an accident). What about other power sources? Coal/gas/hydro all have much worse records than nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents (The accident rate is also ignoring the long term, possibly existential, threat from climate changed due to using coal and natural gas.) Ground based solar is probably the only power source that might be safer than nuclear.
swixmix 9y ago
The lesson I got from Fukushima is that, if we have a reactor, we need to take care of it. I think Fukushima was neglected because people didn't like it. I see this as more of a political issue. The lessons learned summary[0] hints at this. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253923/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253923/
- joe_the_user 9y ago
  Well, You can't really say "it's the safest kind of energy of all - except when you don't do the right thing, then it's scary" because the chance that people are going to do the wrong thing has to be an inherent part of any risk analysis. Nuclear might be safer than coal and oil but coal and oil are established and nuclear is marginal most places. More people might die falling from roofs installing their solar panel than die from nuclear power "done right" but hey, if they'd installed their solar panels right, they too wouldn't have died either. But finally, renewable allow relatively incremental development - you can gradually add solar panels and wind-generators and see if the investment pans out. Nuclear requires vast gobs of investment and you only learn if it's a good idea, provides good total positive returns, over a long time frame, just as you're expected to store your pollution over a large time frame. So nuclear's prospects don't look good, don't seem like they should be good, etc.

by grecy 9y ago

iooi 9y ago

A bit more than twice, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...

cjslep 9y ago

This seems like cherry picking and the innate human bias at play. Given a big enough disaster, there isn't anything anyone can do as it unfolds. And spectacular failures stick in our mind. Here's some non-nuclear disasters that happened that people could only watch: * Taum Sauk hydro pump-storage collapse * Duke Energy's 30k+ tons of coal Ash spill into the Dan River * But that was tiny, try Kentucky's 306 million tons of coal Ash spill or Tennessee's 525 million. People can only stand and watch that unfold, no modern robot is going to stop that either. * Gas pipes in San Bruno, New Jersey, and Colorado exploding, killing families instantly * Deepwater Horizon and the Valdez. Again, not much to do but stand and watch as it unfurls. I could keep Googling more but every source of energy has its gigantic catastrophes where no amount of human bodies or robots will save the day (well, I guess a large enough pile of bodies would plug a hole in a collapsing dam).

codebook 9y ago
But those events were temporal and local. Nuclear failures are catastrophic and never ending events in many generations.
- cjslep 9y ago
  You have a strange definition of "local" for Exxon Valdez/Deepwater Horizon. As well as "temporal", too. 20 years later species haven't recovered from the Valdez spill (unless you ask Exxon). Deepwater Horizon was also a very prolonged event, it took "forever" to cap the damn thing. 1 billion+ tons of coal Ash spilled across the USA didn't just disappear over a day either from some small city corner. The only reason why nuclear sticks so easily is because of the magic word "radiation". It's easier to be scared of it than sit down land learn that it is all a natural physical phenomenon, even if it originated from a man-made isotope. It's difficulty arises from the stochastic (quantum) nature of it's interactions. Lastly, reactor designs have significantly improved since 50 years ago. New reactor designs I saw coming out of Westinghouse could lose all power and pumps and still use natural convection and reservoirs (elevated pools) within the containment to prevent any sort of critical event leading to meltdown. Imagine if we were stuck with the coal technology of the 70's. I would prefer modernizing the nuclear fleet if possible, which does include decommissioning old reactors, and closing the fuel cycle loop in a way that is proliferation resistant (some sort of pyroprocessing) unlike UREX.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Look, I'm pro-nuclear but 'if only everyone were as knowledgeable as me' is a losing communications strategy. seriously, why do you expect people to trust the engineering in a nuclear power plant when clever people can't even get the financing to work or the construction ot go smoothly?
    - cjslep 9y ago
      My point isn't "be as smart as me" and I do apologise if my tone is coming across that way. My point is "get educated on the issue" which seems reasonable to me (the tone of which I guess can also be misconstrued as negative, but I mean it in a constructive and positive manner).

opo 9y ago

>...I was a supporter of Nuclear, though Fukushima taught me a very important lesson. You missed the important lessons from Fukishima. A major power plant suffered about the worst possible catastrophe that it could have through a combination of incompetence by the plant and its regulators. For all that, the highest estimates of death due to the evacuation are less than the deaths that come from a day of burning coal (when the coal plants don't have an accident). What about other power sources? Coal/gas/hydro all have much worse records than nuclear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents (The accident rate is also ignoring the long term, possibly existential, threat from climate changed due to using coal and natural gas.) Ground based solar is probably the only power source that might be safer than nuclear.

swixmix 9y ago

The lesson I got from Fukushima is that, if we have a reactor, we need to take care of it. I think Fukushima was neglected because people didn't like it. I see this as more of a political issue. The lessons learned summary[0] hints at this. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253923/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253923/

joe_the_user 9y ago
Well, You can't really say "it's the safest kind of energy of all - except when you don't do the right thing, then it's scary" because the chance that people are going to do the wrong thing has to be an inherent part of any risk analysis. Nuclear might be safer than coal and oil but coal and oil are established and nuclear is marginal most places. More people might die falling from roofs installing their solar panel than die from nuclear power "done right" but hey, if they'd installed their solar panels right, they too wouldn't have died either. But finally, renewable allow relatively incremental development - you can gradually add solar panels and wind-generators and see if the investment pans out. Nuclear requires vast gobs of investment and you only learn if it's a good idea, provides good total positive returns, over a long time frame, just as you're expected to store your pollution over a large time frame. So nuclear's prospects don't look good, don't seem like they should be good, etc.