3 ms·

> "My concern about NuScale is that they believe so deeply that their reactor is safe and doesn't need to meet the same criteria as the larger reactors, that it

> "My concern about NuScale is that they believe so deeply that their reactor is safe and doesn't need to meet the same criteria as the larger reactors, that it's pushing for lots of exemptions and exceptions," says Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists Bit of a red flag there... Edit: The article further states: > "Licensing this design is challenging. It's so different from existing plants that regulations must be changed to accommodate it. That worries some watchdogs and critics." Let's not shoot the messenger here. If they are regulatory requirements that clearly do not apply to this technology because, e.g. it does not use the regulated parts or technology then fine. But that should be very thoroughly scrutinised and no exception should be granted on the basis that it is safe on paper. Many requirements are very expensive to meet so I would understand that a private startup tries to minimise the burden. But I think nuclear safety comes first.

jabl 7y ago
Is there evidence of this actually happening? Considering said Edward Lyman has made a career out of FUD'ing anything nuclear, I'd be sceptical of taking anything he says on face value.
nickik 7y ago
Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Anything they say should be dismissed out of hand. They have 0 credibility and have spent the last 50 years spreading lies and fear about nuclear energy. The problem here is actually that the people at 'Union' are deeply convinced that nuclear is bad and no nuclear project no matter how much time was spent on safety has ever been endorsed by them. This is simply how they operate. The reason there are 'exceptions' is because partly with the help of themselves the nuclear regulatory system was changed in a way to hardcore specific technological solution into the regulatory process that only work for traditional PWR, practically excluding every other form of nuclear energy. NuScale uses PWR technology in a slightly different form but because that's what they believed to be able to regulated, but even that requires lots of extra cost to get regulated. The regulatory changes after the nuclear accidents essentially killed all research and all progress. This can be seen both in the rates of new reactor designs and reactor building rates. Union of Concerned Scientiests and Greenpeace have been at the forefront of this issue for a long time now, and their deliberate strategy since literally 50 years (and this is a fact that has been shown based on their internal documents) is to always focus on nuclear safety because that's how they can make it uneconomical. And to their credit, this strategy has worked perfectly. It might be the single most successful political campaign of the 'environmental movement'. If they had been this effective against coal we would live in a better world now.
- neuronic 7y ago
  > Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Or maybe they are just concerned about a power source which has proved catastrophic multiple times in the past.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Compare the number of deaths due to nuclear accidents to the health effects of us all breathing in coal pollution.
    - mcguire 7y ago
      Deaths / trillion kWhr (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#34a80aa0709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity) Wind 150 (2% global electricity) Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity) Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity) Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush) Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity) I've never been quite enthusiastic about these kinds of numbers, because I'm not sure what deaths are included. I believe this article includes indirect, pollution-related deaths for fossil fuels, but what about deaths in uranium mining and processing? Forbes separates out the US numbers because of the strong regulatory regime here---which strikes me as odd; doesn't Forbes usually consider environmental and health-and-safety regulations bad? One confounding factor in this data is the low numbers of large-scale accidents for nuclear power. The reason the hydro power number is so high is a number of very large dam failures; would nuclear numbers be similar if Chernobyl happened in a much higher population area or if Fukushima happened faster?

jabl 7y ago

Is there evidence of this actually happening? Considering said Edward Lyman has made a career out of FUD'ing anything nuclear, I'd be sceptical of taking anything he says on face value.

nickik 7y ago

Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Anything they say should be dismissed out of hand. They have 0 credibility and have spent the last 50 years spreading lies and fear about nuclear energy. The problem here is actually that the people at 'Union' are deeply convinced that nuclear is bad and no nuclear project no matter how much time was spent on safety has ever been endorsed by them. This is simply how they operate. The reason there are 'exceptions' is because partly with the help of themselves the nuclear regulatory system was changed in a way to hardcore specific technological solution into the regulatory process that only work for traditional PWR, practically excluding every other form of nuclear energy. NuScale uses PWR technology in a slightly different form but because that's what they believed to be able to regulated, but even that requires lots of extra cost to get regulated. The regulatory changes after the nuclear accidents essentially killed all research and all progress. This can be seen both in the rates of new reactor designs and reactor building rates. Union of Concerned Scientiests and Greenpeace have been at the forefront of this issue for a long time now, and their deliberate strategy since literally 50 years (and this is a fact that has been shown based on their internal documents) is to always focus on nuclear safety because that's how they can make it uneconomical. And to their credit, this strategy has worked perfectly. It might be the single most successful political campaign of the 'environmental movement'. If they had been this effective against coal we would live in a better world now.

neuronic 7y ago
> Union of Concerned Scientists are an anti-nuclear lobbyist group. Or maybe they are just concerned about a power source which has proved catastrophic multiple times in the past.
- magduf 7y ago
  Compare the number of deaths due to nuclear accidents to the health effects of us all breathing in coal pollution.
  - mcguire 7y ago
    Deaths / trillion kWhr (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#34a80aa0709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...) Coal – global average 100,000 (41% global electricity) Coal – China 170,000 (75% China’s electricity) Coal – U.S. 10,000 (32% U.S. electricity) Oil 36,000 (33% of energy, 8% of electricity) Natural Gas 4,000 (22% global electricity) Biofuel/Biomass 24,000 (21% global energy) Solar (rooftop) 440 (< 1% global electricity) Wind 150 (2% global electricity) Hydro – global average 1,400 (16% global electricity) Hydro – U.S. 5 (6% U.S. electricity) Nuclear – global average 90 (11% global electricity w/Chern&Fukush) Nuclear – U.S. 0.1 (19% U.S. electricity) I've never been quite enthusiastic about these kinds of numbers, because I'm not sure what deaths are included. I believe this article includes indirect, pollution-related deaths for fossil fuels, but what about deaths in uranium mining and processing? Forbes separates out the US numbers because of the strong regulatory regime here---which strikes me as odd; doesn't Forbes usually consider environmental and health-and-safety regulations bad? One confounding factor in this data is the low numbers of large-scale accidents for nuclear power. The reason the hydro power number is so high is a number of very large dam failures; would nuclear numbers be similar if Chernobyl happened in a much higher population area or if Fukushima happened faster?