6 ms·

I lived some 200km downwind from Chernobyl when it happened so have pretty solid concept of reactor failure modes.

by varjag 7y ago

simion314 7y ago
I agree that there are risks and waste from nuclear, my main issue is that for some reasons coal plants have larger damage to the environment and population. My opinion is that we should not rush on building new nuclear plants but finish the ones that are already built, use them to full capacity , invest into research for the safer nuclear versions. I would not like to have a nuclear plant near my house, but if you have to chose between a coal plant that is polluting and radiating all the time is running and a new nuclear plant design that it would fail only in super rare events (there are designs that would be safe even if the cooling system fails) then I definitely don't want the coal plant. Btw nuclear is used in medicine, there are labs that use radioactive materials, I think the number of this would grow and it may end up in countries you don't trust but you can't stop progress,
- varjag 7y ago
  Natural gas burns quite cleanly. There's a number of European nations that don't have a single active coal power plant and they get by somehow. The reason nuclear crowd loves to focus on coal is it's the worst case conventional technology and hence the easiest to argue against. The arguments against hydro, wind or NG are a lot less convincing.
  - anonymou2 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
  - simion314 7y ago
    Burning gas still creates CO2, it may be cleaner then coal. Ideally we would not have to chose and we can close all coal,gas and nuclear plants and replace them with renewable, if this is not possible then we should maybe use rationality and not emotions to dictate priorities. This means closing or reducing coal usage, keeping and using nuclear at full capacity .
  - hollerith 7y ago
    >There's a number of European nations that don't have a single active coal power plant and they get by somehow. How many of those nations would be royally screwed if Russia ever decides to stop supplying them with fossil fuels?
    - varjag 7y ago
      They couldn't screw Ukraine with gas supplies, so probably not that many.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
gambiting 7y ago
But.....that means you are assuming that all reactors have failure modes of an RBMK reactor - which is just simply not true.
- varjag 7y ago
  That means I don't think reactors explode like a nuclear bomb, as the GP have suggested.
- criddell 7y ago
  > you are assuming that all reactors have failure modes of an RBMK reactor All reactors have failure modes, no? Any reactor that depends on people for the continued safe operation should include the assumption that incompetent and malicious people will eventually take control. That's not unique to nuclear power, but a lot less can go wrong if an evil person gets control of a wind turbine. That said, I'd still vote for a politician that proposed building new nuclear power plants.
  - simion314 7y ago
    >All reactors have failure modes, no? Any reactor that depends on people for the continued safe operation should include the assumption that incompetent and malicious people will eventually take control. There are designs to build reactors that can handle the case where no humans,electricity, water are present anymore, so we could build new safe reactors. The bad people argument, the fuel in power reactors is not the same as the one in bombs, for bombs you need more "rich" Uranium, so the terrorists that would enter inside a safe reactor would have to have some super expertise to extract teh fuel and somehow make it a mass distruction weapon. You can have similar issues with chemical plants, those are not as protected and an explosion in such a chemical plant could do a lot of damage as we seen when accidents happen, or exploding a water dam, or putting poison in water... there are many bad scenarios you can imagine some evil terrorists could do
    - varjag 7y ago
      Anything with a serious gradient of energy can catastrophically fail. That's the thermodynamic nature of the things. You can't have a completely safe power plant, period. You certainly can have one where you don't know a certain failure mode exists. For example RBMK prior to 1986, or a pebble bed reactor prior to THTR-300 incident. And my war zone remark wasn't about fuel theft, but more likely things. Like dropping a buster bomb onto a live reactor.
JudgeWapner 7y ago
And yet you're still alive today, 30 years later
- varjag 7y ago
  You are alive too, despite all the perils of coal power.
  - JudgeWapner 7y ago
    so if they're at worst, both equal, at best, one that releases a small-size (compared to earth) contamination zone every 3 decades while the other incrementally worsens the climate and atmosphere everywhere, why are you arguing in favor of the worse option?
    - varjag 7y ago
      If they are equal and one of them does not contaminate the territory, how it's a worse option? :)
      - simion314 7y ago
        You failed to understand the point the person made above, there are equal only in the rare case that nuclear fails. So you have nuclear plant that produces no CO2 and could produce radiation in a rare event , and you have a coal plant that produces CO2, other pollution in the smoke and radiation 100% of the time, similar with gas and other fossil fuels. Honestly if you have 2 choices , live near the coal plant and it's smoke and radiation or live near a nuclear plant that will fail only of a super rare earthquake what do you chose ? Do you chose 100% harm vs 0.1(number I invented) harm ?

I lived some 200km downwind from Chernobyl when it happened so have pretty solid concept of reactor failure modes.

by varjag 7y ago

I lived some 200km downwind from Chernobyl when it happened so have pretty solid concept of reactor failure modes.

I agree that there are risks and waste from nuclear, my main issue is that for some reasons coal plants have larger damage to the environment and population. My opinion is that we should not rush on building new nuclear plants but finish the ones that are already built, use them to full capacity , invest into research for the safer nuclear versions. I would not like to have a nuclear plant near my house, but if you have to chose between a coal plant that is polluting and radiating all the time is running and a new nuclear plant design that it would fail only in super rare events (there are designs that would be safe even if the cooling system fails) then I definitely don't want the coal plant. Btw nuclear is used in medicine, there are labs that use radioactive materials, I think the number of this would grow and it may end up in countries you don't trust but you can't stop progress,

varjag 7y ago
Natural gas burns quite cleanly. There's a number of European nations that don't have a single active coal power plant and they get by somehow. The reason nuclear crowd loves to focus on coal is it's the worst case conventional technology and hence the easiest to argue against. The arguments against hydro, wind or NG are a lot less convincing.
- anonymou2 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
- simion314 7y ago
  Burning gas still creates CO2, it may be cleaner then coal. Ideally we would not have to chose and we can close all coal,gas and nuclear plants and replace them with renewable, if this is not possible then we should maybe use rationality and not emotions to dictate priorities. This means closing or reducing coal usage, keeping and using nuclear at full capacity .
- hollerith 7y ago
  >There's a number of European nations that don't have a single active coal power plant and they get by somehow. How many of those nations would be royally screwed if Russia ever decides to stop supplying them with fossil fuels?
  - varjag 7y ago
    They couldn't screw Ukraine with gas supplies, so probably not that many.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

gambiting 7y ago

But.....that means you are assuming that all reactors have failure modes of an RBMK reactor - which is just simply not true.

varjag 7y ago
That means I don't think reactors explode like a nuclear bomb, as the GP have suggested.
criddell 7y ago
> you are assuming that all reactors have failure modes of an RBMK reactor All reactors have failure modes, no? Any reactor that depends on people for the continued safe operation should include the assumption that incompetent and malicious people will eventually take control. That's not unique to nuclear power, but a lot less can go wrong if an evil person gets control of a wind turbine. That said, I'd still vote for a politician that proposed building new nuclear power plants.
- simion314 7y ago
  >All reactors have failure modes, no? Any reactor that depends on people for the continued safe operation should include the assumption that incompetent and malicious people will eventually take control. There are designs to build reactors that can handle the case where no humans,electricity, water are present anymore, so we could build new safe reactors. The bad people argument, the fuel in power reactors is not the same as the one in bombs, for bombs you need more "rich" Uranium, so the terrorists that would enter inside a safe reactor would have to have some super expertise to extract teh fuel and somehow make it a mass distruction weapon. You can have similar issues with chemical plants, those are not as protected and an explosion in such a chemical plant could do a lot of damage as we seen when accidents happen, or exploding a water dam, or putting poison in water... there are many bad scenarios you can imagine some evil terrorists could do
  - varjag 7y ago
    Anything with a serious gradient of energy can catastrophically fail. That's the thermodynamic nature of the things. You can't have a completely safe power plant, period. You certainly can have one where you don't know a certain failure mode exists. For example RBMK prior to 1986, or a pebble bed reactor prior to THTR-300 incident. And my war zone remark wasn't about fuel theft, but more likely things. Like dropping a buster bomb onto a live reactor.

JudgeWapner 7y ago

And yet you're still alive today, 30 years later

varjag 7y ago
You are alive too, despite all the perils of coal power.
- JudgeWapner 7y ago
  so if they're at worst, both equal, at best, one that releases a small-size (compared to earth) contamination zone every 3 decades while the other incrementally worsens the climate and atmosphere everywhere, why are you arguing in favor of the worse option?
  - varjag 7y ago
    If they are equal and one of them does not contaminate the territory, how it's a worse option? :)
    - simion314 7y ago
      You failed to understand the point the person made above, there are equal only in the rare case that nuclear fails. So you have nuclear plant that produces no CO2 and could produce radiation in a rare event , and you have a coal plant that produces CO2, other pollution in the smoke and radiation 100% of the time, similar with gas and other fossil fuels. Honestly if you have 2 choices , live near the coal plant and it's smoke and radiation or live near a nuclear plant that will fail only of a super rare earthquake what do you chose ? Do you chose 100% harm vs 0.1(number I invented) harm ?