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Pictures show cracks in Ayrshire nuclear reactor
- sunkenvicar 7y ago40+ years of generating clean CO2-free energy. Designed with slide rules and drafting tables. An unbelievable accomplishment!
- yes_man 7y agoMining, refining and delivering uranium rests on fossil fuel powered operations. Building new nuclear plants is not carbon free either. Nuclear energy industry probably nets less carbon emissions per unit of energy than coal or natural gas industries. Yet it's factually incorrect to call it CO2 free. Solar energy industry is often criticised of similar greenwashing, when the initial CO2 cost of creating a solar panel and delivering it from Asia to Europe or North America can have great CO2 burden
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThat's the sunk cost fallacy though. Some particular nuclear plant was constructed by hauling ore and concrete with diesel trucks. What happens when we switch to electric trucks, with nuclear or solar generated electricity? By contrast, how do you reduce the CO2 output of coal? Do the same thing and replace the electricity the plant generates with nuclear and solar?
- mikeash 7y agoIs that really the right way to count it? A lot of the CO2 for a solar panel is because the factory is connected to a dirty grid. If the factory was connected to a clean grid this would go away, and it’s involved in making this happen. Should that be charged to the coal and gas industry instead? For nuclear, CO2 emitted by the concrete should obviously be counted. But uranium mining?
- jdavis703 7y agoThat’s like saying riding a bike isn’t carbon free because the biker relies on food farmed using CO2-based fuels and the rider breathes out CO2.
- krastanov 7y agoBut this actually matters! While your example makes it sound indeed silly, full "life-cycle assessments" and counting externalities matters. Permit me to take your example to an even more farcical end: imagine there was a correlation between bikers eating beef and bus commuter being vegetarians - in such a silly world the bus commuters would probably be much greener even though the bus is a gas guzzler. The problem is that with nuclear these analyses are really complicated, and should not be dismissed out of hand. I do believe that nuclear energy is very important in the fight against global warming, but such dismissals do not help convince people of it.
- junipertea 7y agoPeople use the same argument for solar and wind energy; however the goal is for future panels/uranium to be created/mined using non-coal energy
- ZeroGravitas 7y agoA more real world comparison is an electric bike commute. If the extra power for a cycle commute comes from human food then it's entirely possible that the extra carbon cost of making and charging the battery are a worthwhile investment to help save carbon footprint even though the bike is now heavier. As you say, vegan vs carnivore (and red vs other meats) would be a factor just as whether the electric power comes from renewable or fossil power. And to get super complicated you could then weigh the cost of healthcare if the rider is using less physical exertion.
- wool_gather 7y agoYou're not wrong, but mind the point from manfredo about double-counting, too. I.e., the bicycle is not _itself_ a source of CO2 as the bus is, so if you cownt the beefeaters' full carbon hoofprint, you have to subtract that elsewhere in the overall assessment.
- manfredo 7y agoSure, the construction of the plant and acquisition of nuclear fuel uses CO2. The generation of nuclear power itself does not. I'm willing to be that CO2 emitted per megawatt of nuclear power is a fraction of that of coal or gas plants. And the gasoline used to run the mining vehicles and transport vehicles are already counted in other carbon emission categories - namely transportation. So if you included them in the power generation emissions estimate you're likely double counting them.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago>CO2-free energy But this reactor uses tons of CO2 as coolant! /s
- einpoklum 7y ago1. And nuclear waste is nothing to you? Not everything is about CO_2 you know. 2. It is indeed a significant accomplishment. Let's keep it that way by ceasing operation on time and not risk tarring the accomplishment with a reactor failure.
- ZanyProgrammer 7y agoLiterally everything is about CO2. It'll destroy civilization much faster than nuclear waste.
- montalbano 7y agoWhat about methane? [Its] impact is 34 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period https://unfccc.int/news/new-methane-signs-underline-urgency-to-reverse-emissions https://unfccc.int/news/new-methane-signs-underline-urgency-...
- llao 7y agoThat's another thing destroying civilization much faster than nuclear waste. Not sure why you mention it in this thread on nuclear waste.
- montalbano 7y agoI was responding to the previous comment which said that "Literally everything is about CO2."
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- doomglobe 7y agoIf we do make it over that hurdle, and the many other imminent threats our civilization faces, nuclear fuel is the only means we have (with current technology) of sustaining interstellar travel. Other fuels are too bulky and solar won't work when we get a certain distance from our star. I mean, CO2 and the lies surrounding it are probably going to kill us, and if that doesn't, nuclear war will, and if we manage to muster the level of cooperation and honesty needed to survive these issues, we still face self replicating nanite disasters, murderous omniscient AI disasters, anything you can imagine could kill us before we manage to spread our society into the stars. But if we do want to perform any meaningful operations in deep space, nuclear fuel conservation will be of the utmost importance. Surviving the wealthy few who control these resources and want to use them will be far harder than any other task of cooperation we are faced with.
- Waterluvian 7y agoIt seems to me that one of the most critical safety components of a nuclear reactor is the successful isolation of its operation from political or financial pressures. How do atomic energy organizations succeed in doing this?
- Zealotux 7y ago>How do atomic energy organizations succeed in doing this? From my knowledge: they mostly don't. For example, in France, we have the Autorité de sûreté nucléaire (Nuclear Safety Authority, ASN) which is supposed to be an independent and transparent authority on nuclear safety and information. However: it has been criticized many times since its inception in 2006 regarding conflicts of interest[1][2], and lacks in terms of safety issues reporting[3]. I'm glad my country invested so much into nuclear energies, I still believe it's our best chance at tackling the upcoming crisis, but we should not let nuclear in the hands of private interests. Governments _have_ to apply a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to safety, regulation, and transparency, regardless of how expensive and inconvenient it is. We're not doing enough, in France[4], when it comes to safety, from within or without. On top of that: it's giving fuel to anti-nuclear militantism. [1] http://www.observatoire-du-nucleaire.org/spip.php?article281 http://www.observatoire-du-nucleaire.org/spip.php?article281 [2] https://www.cairn.info/revue-revue-juridique-de-l-environnement-2013-1-page-7.htm# https://www.cairn.info/revue-revue-juridique-de-l-environnem... [3] http://mai68.org/spip2/spip.php?article1347 http://mai68.org/spip2/spip.php?article1347 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STjGOGkMz4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STjGOGkMz4k
- aianus 7y ago> Governments _have_ to apply a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to safety, regulation, and transparency, regardless of how expensive and inconvenient it is. Only in combination with some kind of carbon tax, otherwise you make nuclear too expensive compared to coal or natural gas whose costs are externalized and harder to quantify than nuclear regulatory compliance.
- odiroot 7y agoHow come France is so reasonable and pragmatic with this where most other western EU (especially Germany) are going the Luddite way?
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoFrom a software / devils point of view Nuclear power is the Mainframe - and solar or wind are the nice new micro services. If we have a crack in our solar panels, it ain't going to make the BBC news site.
- mbell 7y agoI wouldn't call solar 'micro', land use is one of its largest downsides. > If we have a crack in our solar panels, it ain't going to make the BBC news site. Actually cracking solar panels could be a rather large problem. e.g. Cadmium Telluride cells are gaining in popularity, if a tornado, large hail storm, or similar natural event hits a power plant built with such cells it could result in non-trivial release into the environment.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agoNuclear is like monolithic kernels: gets a lot of flak for ideological reasons, but it keeps powering the whole world. Solar is like microkernels: nice on paper but lacks the power for anything serious.
- baq 7y agoEagerly waiting for the cloud for solar panels.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago> From a software / devils point of view Nuclear power is the Mainframe - and solar or wind are the nice new micro services. The difference is that micro services don't all stop working at the same time when the sun goes down and the air is calm. Solar is great for running air conditioners. It generates when the demand is highest. But you still need something reliable to generate baseload. They're complementary, not replacements for each other. > If we have a crack in our solar panels, it ain't going to make the BBC news site. It won't, but maybe it should. Solar panels are full of toxic substances. As long as they're covered in glass and isolated from the environment that's no big deal, but break the glass and ignore it and you're leeching heavy metals and toxic chemicals into the environment. Things done competently are good, things done incompetently are bad. Nuclear is not different, solar is not different.
- oneplane 7y agoFunny how the article doesn't say what the cracks mean, but it does end with a bunch of reasons why a safety rule has to be waived: - jobs - energy supply why is it that when a safety limit has been established and later on reached, that (seemingly) uninformed people start walling by screaming 'but the jobs' and 'but the power'. None of those should be more important than a reactor problem you'd think. On the other hand, if there is inside information describing the impact of such cracks as irrelevant to safety and operation, then it would be fine (but then you wouldn't have to cry for jobs and energy). Jobs should not be a reason to not take into account safety or evolution. As soon as you do that, everything stagnates.
- wbl 7y agoSafety limits are very conservative and are established through experiments. If the reactor can still be shut down safely and will for a few more years then it can run.
- Someone 7y agoAs an example, the initial safety assessment may assume that a) 5mm is the limit for crack width, and b) by the time cracks are 1mm wide, they will be 2mm wide a month later, and, because of that growth rate, pick 2mm as the “take out of commission now” point (nb: numbers 100% made up; for illustration only) If, in real life, it turns out that it takes a year for a crack to grow from 1mm to 2mm, the model used can be improved. Result _could_ be that the “take out of commission now” point gets moved to 3mm. They also may remove some stuff with 2mm cracks and test it for strength, and learn more about how the stuff behaves after being irradiated for decades. That, too, can change (in either direction) the life expectancy of the reactor.
- einpoklum 7y agoPerhaps, but surely you realize that there is currently a lot of pressure (and therefore bias) for keeping the plant operational: Jobs, energy supply and the operator's profits. And the thing is, those biases affect both the regulator (the government), the local population (who probably want to keep their jobs) and the operator (EDF Energy). So at this point in time I would be skeptical of new experiments and model updates performed by the operator and approved by the regulator. IMHO: Don't approve the model change, do some lab experiments / examine more empirical evidence over time and then possibly change the model for a _future_ reactor.
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoI really hate that even the BBC is going down the route of making alarmist-ish sounding article titles which completely butcher the context of the article for the sake of getting clicks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- joezydeco 7y agoThis link has shown up three times in the last 24 hours, the headline less baitclicky each time. Guess this one took.
- arendtio 7y ago> The operational limit for the latest period of operation was 350 cracks but an inspection found that allowance had been exceeded. > > EDF plans to ask the regulator for permission to restart with a new operational limit of up to 700 cracks. Yeah, next time you exceed the speed limit, just ask the police officer for permission to double the fun... No seriously, what the article is missing, is why there was a limit of 350. Was it just made up at some point to correlate with the expected lifetime? What real, increased risk is involved when operating up to 700 cracks? Just telling they would have to get the power elsewhere and jobs would be at risk, is obvious and just one side of the medal. If there is no additional risk involved, there is no reason to condemn asking to raise the limit.
- pjc50 7y agoAh, the "normalisation of deviance"; the space shuttle flew just fine with partially eroded O rings in the boosters, until the day it didn't.
- kortilla 7y agoAh, the assumption that limits in one of the most red-tape ladened industries have anything to do with safety.
- cwaffler 7y agoTotally agree and it also seems like the bbc is trying to scare the shit outta people. Everyone does have a right to know, but a crack within the core that's been accounted for by professionals needs a concise article with a way better title than this crap.
- ZeroGravitas 7y agoI look forward to the HBO drama. These dry conversations about safety margins and protecting jobs will make for lots of dramatic irony when we know, but the characters don't, that the reactor blows up shortly afterwards. Regarding the bit at the end about the alternative being gas or coal, they could just build more wind, it's cheaper than any of the other options if building new and competitive with the cost of fuel alone for existing fossil plants.
- cpach 7y agoWind and solar power is good. But you can’t turn them on by demand though, which is why nuclear and coal is still widely used. [Slightly edited.]
- 7952 7y agoWell coal and nuclear tend to take a long time to turn on. Responding to demand is more the role of gas.
- cpach 7y agoNot sure what you mean here. Where I live (Sweden) I don’t believe we rely on gas for our energy needs.
- mdorazio 7y agoNuclear power is almost always used only to provide baseload power to the grid. In Sweden's case, it looks like you're using biofuel power plants [1] for demand following uses when solar + wind can't keep up. [1] https://sweden.se/society/energy-use-in-sweden/ https://sweden.se/society/energy-use-in-sweden/
- regularfry 7y agoMore to the point, nuclear power generates when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
- lruor 7y agoThat's weird, since I seem to remember nuclear is very safe.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoThese things are a crazy gamble that civilization is not going to backslide for thousands of years, and we have hundreds of them!
- semerda 7y agoHold on, isn’t this another Chernobyl in the making? Ie. Using graphite (positive void effect). The very reason why nuclear reactors explode up during a meltdown throwing soot into the air vs melting down quietly.
- Zigurd 7y agoMillimeters != hairline. You can fit a lot of hair in a millimeter.
- Zenst 7y agoWhen I see pictures or video of anything nuclear, I tend to now focus upon the noise as radiation will cause more noise, hence the better the picture quality, the happier I feel. Though for this case, factoring in the lighting, I'd not panic, but equally mindful that cracks are part and parcel in the world of reinforced concrete, I'm not so sure about the material in use here. It's not what you want to be seeing in such use. Equally to combat cracks in any material, you drill small holes either end of the crack to stop it growing. So for me, why is that not being done? After all, hairline crack today, receding hairline tomorrow possibilities. After all, would they let an aircraft take off with a known hairline crack? That's one way to put some perspective upon this.
- schoen 7y ago> When I see pictures or video of anything nuclear, I tend to now focus upon the noise as radiation will cause more noise, hence the better the picture quality, the happier I feel. It doesn't seem to me that that many prospective nuclear safety concerns involve a radiation leak ahead of time. Your heuristic seems better calibrated to detecting leaks that exist now, rather than flaws or limitations in systems that are meant to prevent future leaks.
- Zenst 7y agoAs I said "Though for this case, factoring in the lighting, I'd not panic". Thing is about cracks, they tend to grow, hence questioning how they are handled as currently it seems a case of make a note, move along, nothing to see here approach strikes again.
- ohazi 7y ago> They cannot be fixed and will ultimately close down the station Why can't they be fixed or replaced?
- haggy 7y agoI'm no expert but I believe it would be because the graphite is so highly radioactive
- dang 7y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20132860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20132860
- jpindar 7y agoThe reactor near me (Seabrook Station) has cracks and deformation in the concrete. The structures affected are described as "operable but degraded and nonconforming." This situation has been developing slowly for last decade though, and the reactor just got re-licensed. https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/concrete-degradation.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/concre...
- jacquesm 7y agoThat's a perfect example of the kind of issue that that pilot related to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19770562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19770562 'normalization of deviance'. That was one of the best posts in a long time.
- fopen64 7y ago3.6 roentgen, not great not terrible