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I raise this concern when people push Nuclear Energy as the solution we need everywhere. How will we deal with inevitable human error and conflict of interest i

I raise this concern when people push Nuclear Energy as the solution we need everywhere. How will we deal with inevitable human error and conflict of interest in these events, especially when the fallout could be deadly for many living beings on the planet.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
Sure, but this concern should not be seen as an argument against building nuclear power plants - the same way no reasonable people considered Challenger as an argument against human space flight in general. Challenger was about learning the lessons, and doing better the next time. In case of nuclear power, it's also worth pondering the disastrous consequences of failing to switch away from fossil fuel power generation. And as a side note: we have to somehow learn to deal with "inevitable human error and conflict of interest" in events where failure near population centers might be catastrophic. We either have to, or give up on a lot of progress. Quite a lot of interesting technologies and research areas involve managing higher and higher energies.
- jacobush 8y ago
  First comment I've seen from you I don't agree with. Not at all comparable. A Challenger disaster causes very little collateral damage. (Except fiscal.) A lot of people's lack of objection hinges on, dare I say, on the attitude "let them launch their over sized fire crackers into the sky, I don't care as long as it doesn't fall down on my head". Nuclear has the potential to create a whole no-go area around it. And I have very little faith in us humans as a wider group to learn to deal with conflict of interest. I believe mitigation is better. Widespread solar and other distributed tech like that might not hold the raw promise of nuclear but I hope it will give us a more robust energy system in the world, harder to disrupt either by malice, conflict of interest or by accident. Personally I am in love with things like nuclear fission powered rockets (nuclear engines could be started from bases in high orbit to avoid spewing dirty stuff into the atmosphere), submarine derived nuclear mini electric generator stations towed to coastal cities, fusion research and all that. I hope humanity in the long run will make use of such things...
  - dTal 8y ago
    Fossil fuels also create a no-go area - the Earth. Solar and wind are simple, safe, and democratizing technologies, but they aren't without environmental impact either (you need a lot of land area), and they aren't yet ready to meet the world's energy needs. Nuclear is here now (was here 50 years ago in fact) and, absent an avoidable Chernobyl-type disaster, is the cleanest available energy source. Worth noting that 17 Chernobyl-style RBMK reactors were built and have largely operated without incident. Lithuania was entirely powered by two such reactors until they were shut down in the 2000s, to be replaced by fossil fuels, on the grounds that they lack containment buildings. The EU ponied up nearly a billion Euros for the decommissioning, which I can't help but notice is almost as much as the new Chernobyl sarcophagus. Might it have been cheaper and better to just... build a containment building? Perhaps. But there would never have been the political will for that. The fear of nuclear is doing more damage than nuclear ever did.
    - pgeorgi 8y ago
      > The EU ponied up nearly a billion Euros for the decommissioning, which I can't help but notice is almost as much as the new Chernobyl sarcophagus. It's less than 2/3rds (<1bn vs. 1.56bn) and the new sarcophagus is the (hopefully) last of a series of developments for confinement for a century (ie. there were costs before) while the decommissioning reduces these two reactors to mostly nothing, where the remaining troublesome radioactive material can be long-term stored together with any spent fuel (once there's a proper solution for that which we need, decommissioning or not).
      - dTal 8y ago
        To be sure I played a little fast and loose with "almost as much", but to be fair, 1) the decommissioning is unfinished, overbudget, and behind schedule, and 2) building a containment building around a reactor that hasn't already exploded is sure to be much, much cheaper.
    - jacobush 8y ago
      I sort of agree with you, and it might appear like circular reasoning (although it's not really) but what you said just ties into the larger picture - people are not rational. I say, play to our strengths. Massive roll out of solar now - keep nuclear on the table (it's good tech), but don't rely on it to solve a substantial part of short to medium term future energy need. I also think we should plan for the event of "Global Thermonuclear War". Solar deployments and other renewables will fare much better. You can count on any centralized structures being targeted. That means (large) nuclear power plants and large hydro installations.
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  Isn't the scale of potential damage far different between the two? A failed nuclear power plant can cause harm that will last longer than any human civilization has managed to last. The harm caused by launching Challenger is equal to something much smaller, such as a single day of car accidents. There is also a false dichotomy presented here, because the alternative to nuclear is not limited to just fossil fuel. There are numerous forms of clean energy that doesn't have the failure possibility of nuclear.
  - kaibee 8y ago
    > There is also a false dichotomy presented here, because the alternative to nuclear is not limited to just fossil fuel. There are numerous forms of clean energy that doesn't have the failure possibility of nuclear. On the other hand, if you look at actual fatality statistics, you can make a fairly strong case for wind and solar being far deadlier than nuclear (hydro is pretty close though). Just because solar and wind often involve installing things high up and people fall.
komali2 8y ago
Wait, I would describe nuclear energy as a case of the engineers saying yes, and the administrators (politicians) saying no - what are you arguing?
- pgeorgi 8y ago
  Administrators showed a lack of interest in supporting nuclear energy designs that don't come with "weapon grade" by-products since the 1950s, even if they're potentially safer. That's a somewhat different scenario (scientists saying "yes, but" and administrators saying "hell, yes!"), but it's still pretty interesting to see what the push for nuclear power (eg. France's strategic reliance on it, UK's new reactor that is dead on arrival economically, or Iran's interest in obtaining the means) is really about. On the other hand, China and India apparently were looking into building systems that are safer with no weapon grade by-products.
mturmon 8y ago
Much of the discussion of nuclear power on HN centers on the engineering view: nuclear doesn't have climate consequences and uses a very energy-dense fuel. No doubt true. The "administrative" picture is not so rosy! Of course, the history of atomic energy in the US is replete with examples of lies told to the public to obtain "consent" - exhibit A, the Nevada Test Site and the "downwinders" [0]. These lies were told to citizens by the AEC, the predecessor agency of the NRC, which now regulates nuclear power in the US. A review of a recent book [1] by a former member of the NRC indicates that, in the view of some, administrators rolling over for commercial operators of atomic plants remains standard operating procedure. This sounds very similar to the problem with the Challenger shuttle: "The political infighting was particularly intense after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Jaczko visited Japan and grew impatient with the “litany of guarantees” from industry about American nuclear facilities. He tried to insist on new requirements to mitigate accidents triggered by natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis. One internal NRC report drafted after Fukushima criticized the practice of relying on voluntary industry initiative to address safety concerns. Jaczko's descriptions of other commissioners' attempts to quash or edit the report provide a disturbing glimpse of the dynamic of trust and betrayal within the agency." [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/american-ground-zero https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/american-ground-zero [1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6424/237 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6424/237

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Sure, but this concern should not be seen as an argument against building nuclear power plants - the same way no reasonable people considered Challenger as an argument against human space flight in general. Challenger was about learning the lessons, and doing better the next time. In case of nuclear power, it's also worth pondering the disastrous consequences of failing to switch away from fossil fuel power generation. And as a side note: we have to somehow learn to deal with "inevitable human error and conflict of interest" in events where failure near population centers might be catastrophic. We either have to, or give up on a lot of progress. Quite a lot of interesting technologies and research areas involve managing higher and higher energies.

jacobush 8y ago
First comment I've seen from you I don't agree with. Not at all comparable. A Challenger disaster causes very little collateral damage. (Except fiscal.) A lot of people's lack of objection hinges on, dare I say, on the attitude "let them launch their over sized fire crackers into the sky, I don't care as long as it doesn't fall down on my head". Nuclear has the potential to create a whole no-go area around it. And I have very little faith in us humans as a wider group to learn to deal with conflict of interest. I believe mitigation is better. Widespread solar and other distributed tech like that might not hold the raw promise of nuclear but I hope it will give us a more robust energy system in the world, harder to disrupt either by malice, conflict of interest or by accident. Personally I am in love with things like nuclear fission powered rockets (nuclear engines could be started from bases in high orbit to avoid spewing dirty stuff into the atmosphere), submarine derived nuclear mini electric generator stations towed to coastal cities, fusion research and all that. I hope humanity in the long run will make use of such things...
- dTal 8y ago
  Fossil fuels also create a no-go area - the Earth. Solar and wind are simple, safe, and democratizing technologies, but they aren't without environmental impact either (you need a lot of land area), and they aren't yet ready to meet the world's energy needs. Nuclear is here now (was here 50 years ago in fact) and, absent an avoidable Chernobyl-type disaster, is the cleanest available energy source. Worth noting that 17 Chernobyl-style RBMK reactors were built and have largely operated without incident. Lithuania was entirely powered by two such reactors until they were shut down in the 2000s, to be replaced by fossil fuels, on the grounds that they lack containment buildings. The EU ponied up nearly a billion Euros for the decommissioning, which I can't help but notice is almost as much as the new Chernobyl sarcophagus. Might it have been cheaper and better to just... build a containment building? Perhaps. But there would never have been the political will for that. The fear of nuclear is doing more damage than nuclear ever did.
  - pgeorgi 8y ago
    > The EU ponied up nearly a billion Euros for the decommissioning, which I can't help but notice is almost as much as the new Chernobyl sarcophagus. It's less than 2/3rds (<1bn vs. 1.56bn) and the new sarcophagus is the (hopefully) last of a series of developments for confinement for a century (ie. there were costs before) while the decommissioning reduces these two reactors to mostly nothing, where the remaining troublesome radioactive material can be long-term stored together with any spent fuel (once there's a proper solution for that which we need, decommissioning or not).
    - dTal 8y ago
      To be sure I played a little fast and loose with "almost as much", but to be fair, 1) the decommissioning is unfinished, overbudget, and behind schedule, and 2) building a containment building around a reactor that hasn't already exploded is sure to be much, much cheaper.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    I sort of agree with you, and it might appear like circular reasoning (although it's not really) but what you said just ties into the larger picture - people are not rational. I say, play to our strengths. Massive roll out of solar now - keep nuclear on the table (it's good tech), but don't rely on it to solve a substantial part of short to medium term future energy need. I also think we should plan for the event of "Global Thermonuclear War". Solar deployments and other renewables will fare much better. You can count on any centralized structures being targeted. That means (large) nuclear power plants and large hydro installations.
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
Isn't the scale of potential damage far different between the two? A failed nuclear power plant can cause harm that will last longer than any human civilization has managed to last. The harm caused by launching Challenger is equal to something much smaller, such as a single day of car accidents. There is also a false dichotomy presented here, because the alternative to nuclear is not limited to just fossil fuel. There are numerous forms of clean energy that doesn't have the failure possibility of nuclear.
- kaibee 8y ago
  > There is also a false dichotomy presented here, because the alternative to nuclear is not limited to just fossil fuel. There are numerous forms of clean energy that doesn't have the failure possibility of nuclear. On the other hand, if you look at actual fatality statistics, you can make a fairly strong case for wind and solar being far deadlier than nuclear (hydro is pretty close though). Just because solar and wind often involve installing things high up and people fall.

komali2 8y ago

Wait, I would describe nuclear energy as a case of the engineers saying yes, and the administrators (politicians) saying no - what are you arguing?

pgeorgi 8y ago
Administrators showed a lack of interest in supporting nuclear energy designs that don't come with "weapon grade" by-products since the 1950s, even if they're potentially safer. That's a somewhat different scenario (scientists saying "yes, but" and administrators saying "hell, yes!"), but it's still pretty interesting to see what the push for nuclear power (eg. France's strategic reliance on it, UK's new reactor that is dead on arrival economically, or Iran's interest in obtaining the means) is really about. On the other hand, China and India apparently were looking into building systems that are safer with no weapon grade by-products.

mturmon 8y ago

Much of the discussion of nuclear power on HN centers on the engineering view: nuclear doesn't have climate consequences and uses a very energy-dense fuel. No doubt true. The "administrative" picture is not so rosy! Of course, the history of atomic energy in the US is replete with examples of lies told to the public to obtain "consent" - exhibit A, the Nevada Test Site and the "downwinders" [0]. These lies were told to citizens by the AEC, the predecessor agency of the NRC, which now regulates nuclear power in the US. A review of a recent book [1] by a former member of the NRC indicates that, in the view of some, administrators rolling over for commercial operators of atomic plants remains standard operating procedure. This sounds very similar to the problem with the Challenger shuttle: "The political infighting was particularly intense after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Jaczko visited Japan and grew impatient with the “litany of guarantees” from industry about American nuclear facilities. He tried to insist on new requirements to mitigate accidents triggered by natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and tsunamis. One internal NRC report drafted after Fukushima criticized the practice of relying on voluntary industry initiative to address safety concerns. Jaczko's descriptions of other commissioners' attempts to quash or edit the report provide a disturbing glimpse of the dynamic of trust and betrayal within the agency." [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/american-ground-zero https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/american-ground-zero [1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6424/237 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6424/237