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In Vietnam the plan to build a nuclear power plant was shelved due to the lack of fund and opposition from the people. Guess what replaced it? Three coal power

In Vietnam the plan to build a nuclear power plant was shelved due to the lack of fund and opposition from the people. Guess what replaced it? Three coal power plants! As if that is any cleaner! Russia being embargoed isn't helping either, as we intended to use Russian nuclear technology. As a developing country, Vietnam's electricity consumption will triple around 2030, overtaking Great Britain around 2027. Coal will provide half of that, as renewables alone is not enough. But what else can us developing countries do? Stop developing and stay poor forever?

BrandonMarc 7y ago
Sadly, coal power plants release more radiation directly into the atmosphere than nuclear, due to naturally occurring isotopes embedded in the coal ore. So because they were so scared of potential radiation, they ended up ... getting definite radiation instead. Winning!
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Sadly, coal power plants release more radiation directly into the atmosphere than nuclear, More on average. Far less worst case.
  - gibolt 7y ago
    Average is the worst case, as everyone has to deal with it. The chance of anything going wrong with a modern nuclear facility is astronomically low.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Average is the worst case, as everyone has to deal with it. That's true if: (1) No one in the worst case receives a kind of damage that is not compensable, and (2) You have systems in place so that all the people who experience better than average results compensate all those who receive worse than average results. > The chance of anything going wrong with a modern nuclear facility is astronomically low. The chance of anything going wrong in a modern design, implemented without cutting corners, and operated without cutting corners is, yes. Whether you trust the poltiico-economic system in your country (and that of whoever is providing design/build support, for countries where that isn't purely domestic) is an open question. Social factors are part of the risk calculus. Nuclear disasters have generally not been unavoidable consequences of the technical knowledge at the time they were constructed and operated occuring at their irreducible rate, they've been symptoms of failures of the social systems involved in planning the deployment and use of the technology. You can't assess the real risk of nuclear from the risk posed by the technology when properly applied in an ideal social context alone.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    If we use worst case for everything then we should treat all coal mining as setting literally every coal vein on fire and unextinguishable a la Centralia, PA. Absolute worst case isn't a very sane way of setting assumptions or we would bar all surgery because of the risk of it killing people.
jamesknelson 7y ago
> But what else can us developing countries do? Stop developing and stay poor forever? This is sad to see, because many of the environmentalists that I've talked to seem to expect that this is the path that the developing countries will actually take. It's totally unfair that the developed world was able to bootstrap themselves into their current state using dirty power sources, continue to generate a lot of dirty power themselves, and now expect the developing world to somehow leap-frog them and build clean generating capacity from the start. But it just seems to be human nature – just like how the social safety net in the developed world is being pulled out from under the younger generations, now that the older generations no longer need it.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Solar panels weren't commercially viable until the mid 20th century. Nuclear power the same. Lithium-ion batteries came even later. None of this stuff even existed when first world countries were industrializing. Now it's cheaper than coal. Look at the map and notice how many new coal plants are being built in Europe or even the US -- none. The only reason it still even exists is the existing installed base of power plants that have already sunk their capital costs, and half of those are still getting shut down because they can't compete even then. Coal is garbage. Building new coal fired power plants is nonsense even before the environmental impact is considered. Pretending that first world countries burned coal because it was in some way better is revisionist. It was because the better alternatives we have now didn't exist yet. The path to modern power generation doesn't inherently require building a bunch of coal fired power plants and then knocking them down to replace them with something actually good. They can just skip to the end -- there isn't even any good reason not to do that.
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    They can't skip to the end, as solar, wind + storage is still not economically viable compared to burning things.
    - Jedd 7y ago
      This a) clearly isn't true, b) goes against parent's claims, and most importantly c) is contraindicated by the fact (as per parent) that 'first world nation states' are not currently building power plants that, as you put it, burn things. This is because it's economically more viable to go solar, wind, storage - than coal now (and perhaps, if not today, then clearly within a year or two, gas).
acidburnNSA 7y ago
> As if that is any cleaner! To further emphasize your point, coal emissions and other air pollution from fossil is currently killing 4.2 million people per year [1]. Nuclear plants in their entire history have net saved over 2 million lives simply by displacing some of these air pollution deaths (while also preventing over 70 billion tonnes CO2-eq). Nuclear is far far cleaner and safer than coal, and that's an understatement. [1] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/

BrandonMarc 7y ago

Sadly, coal power plants release more radiation directly into the atmosphere than nuclear, due to naturally occurring isotopes embedded in the coal ore. So because they were so scared of potential radiation, they ended up ... getting definite radiation instead. Winning!

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Sadly, coal power plants release more radiation directly into the atmosphere than nuclear, More on average. Far less worst case.
- gibolt 7y ago
  Average is the worst case, as everyone has to deal with it. The chance of anything going wrong with a modern nuclear facility is astronomically low.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Average is the worst case, as everyone has to deal with it. That's true if: (1) No one in the worst case receives a kind of damage that is not compensable, and (2) You have systems in place so that all the people who experience better than average results compensate all those who receive worse than average results. > The chance of anything going wrong with a modern nuclear facility is astronomically low. The chance of anything going wrong in a modern design, implemented without cutting corners, and operated without cutting corners is, yes. Whether you trust the poltiico-economic system in your country (and that of whoever is providing design/build support, for countries where that isn't purely domestic) is an open question. Social factors are part of the risk calculus. Nuclear disasters have generally not been unavoidable consequences of the technical knowledge at the time they were constructed and operated occuring at their irreducible rate, they've been symptoms of failures of the social systems involved in planning the deployment and use of the technology. You can't assess the real risk of nuclear from the risk posed by the technology when properly applied in an ideal social context alone.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  If we use worst case for everything then we should treat all coal mining as setting literally every coal vein on fire and unextinguishable a la Centralia, PA. Absolute worst case isn't a very sane way of setting assumptions or we would bar all surgery because of the risk of it killing people.

jamesknelson 7y ago

> But what else can us developing countries do? Stop developing and stay poor forever? This is sad to see, because many of the environmentalists that I've talked to seem to expect that this is the path that the developing countries will actually take. It's totally unfair that the developed world was able to bootstrap themselves into their current state using dirty power sources, continue to generate a lot of dirty power themselves, and now expect the developing world to somehow leap-frog them and build clean generating capacity from the start. But it just seems to be human nature – just like how the social safety net in the developed world is being pulled out from under the younger generations, now that the older generations no longer need it.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
Solar panels weren't commercially viable until the mid 20th century. Nuclear power the same. Lithium-ion batteries came even later. None of this stuff even existed when first world countries were industrializing. Now it's cheaper than coal. Look at the map and notice how many new coal plants are being built in Europe or even the US -- none. The only reason it still even exists is the existing installed base of power plants that have already sunk their capital costs, and half of those are still getting shut down because they can't compete even then. Coal is garbage. Building new coal fired power plants is nonsense even before the environmental impact is considered. Pretending that first world countries burned coal because it was in some way better is revisionist. It was because the better alternatives we have now didn't exist yet. The path to modern power generation doesn't inherently require building a bunch of coal fired power plants and then knocking them down to replace them with something actually good. They can just skip to the end -- there isn't even any good reason not to do that.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  They can't skip to the end, as solar, wind + storage is still not economically viable compared to burning things.
  - Jedd 7y ago
    This a) clearly isn't true, b) goes against parent's claims, and most importantly c) is contraindicated by the fact (as per parent) that 'first world nation states' are not currently building power plants that, as you put it, burn things. This is because it's economically more viable to go solar, wind, storage - than coal now (and perhaps, if not today, then clearly within a year or two, gas).

acidburnNSA 7y ago

> As if that is any cleaner! To further emphasize your point, coal emissions and other air pollution from fossil is currently killing 4.2 million people per year [1]. Nuclear plants in their entire history have net saved over 2 million lives simply by displacing some of these air pollution deaths (while also preventing over 70 billion tonnes CO2-eq). Nuclear is far far cleaner and safer than coal, and that's an understatement. [1] https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/ https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/