6 ms·

People got scared (somewhat legitimately) and we regulated them to death. It became so risky and so expensive to invest in nuclear that nobody, not even the big

by eloff 7y ago

People got scared (somewhat legitimately) and we regulated them to death. It became so risky and so expensive to invest in nuclear that nobody, not even the big companies with nuclear divisions like GE did it. People talk about failures of the market all the time, and there are many. This was one of the failures of regulation. I think we're starting to see a small revival here finally, but is it too late? Renewables are driving down the cost of electricity so any nuclear companies not only have to find a way to be profitable today, but 1, 2, 3 decades from now.

ewzimm 7y ago
I agree that it seems like a massive wasted opportunity, but the most compelling argument I've heard against nuclear power is that it creates a vulnerability. If a nuclear power plant in New York City had been successfully attacked 18 years ago, what would the damage have been? We may need to focus on the security of existing infrastructure before we begin to build the next generation of power.
- imiller 7y ago
  In US anyway, my understanding is that most of our containment structures should be sufficient to survive a plane impact without loss of containment. [1] [1] https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/proceedings-abstract/PVP2003/1694X/289/291668 https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/proceedings-abstr...
  - bscphil 7y ago
    Yes. Rather famously, the US tested this with a jet smashed directly into a concrete wall, resulting in the video in this article about it. https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-reactor-test https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-react...
  - ewzimm 7y ago
    I hope that would be the case, but there are other ways to attack infrastructure. Besides physical security vulnerabilities, we have a lot of critical infrastructure that's Internet-connected and running software with known vulnerabilities. Nuclear power plants are some of the most secure in this area, fortunately. There's also the unpatchable problem of the vulnerabilities of the human mind to be swayed by extremists, and young people with career opportunities are constantly targeted. We have procedures in place to protect against these sorts of things, but they are not advancing as fast as our attack surface is increasing, and we rightfully don't want to sacrifice privacy and freedom for security.
- dTal 7y ago
  Step 1: Don't build nuclear plants in the middle of major cities. Step 2: Build extremely strong containment. Not that hard, just keep pouring concrete. Step 3: Be at peace with the fact that even the worst nuclear incident, while harrowing, would not be the end of the world - which fossil fuels literally are. And it's not like fossil fuels are immune to massive eco-disaster failure points. Deepwater Horizon was far more damaging than Chernobyl - millions of animals perished. Optional Step 4: don't use a reactor design that involves huge piles of flammable radioactive carbon, uncontained - try for something where the reaction stops if anything goes wrong. Then at worst you get a toxic site, instead of vast amounts of atmospheric radiation.
  - ewzimm 7y ago
    I agree with all these solutions, and I don't mean to imply that this is an unsurpassable problem, only that our existing security measures for infrastructure are already falling behind as we increasingly rely on them, and these compounding vulnerabilities put pressure on regulators to slow down development.
- natch 7y ago
  It also creates a vulnerability to crony capitalism, top-down control, corruption, and overtaxation.
nickik 7y ago
> People got scared (somewhat legitimately) Not really. The reality is that most fear is based on totally false believes that exist in popular culture. If people actually understood the real level of dangers they would not nearly be as scared.
- eloff 7y ago
  The risk is real, but as you say is smaller than other risks we don't even think about, like the people coal has killed with pollution and will still kill through climate change upheaval.
magashna 7y ago
It doesn't help that we have headlines calling them "nukes" which continues that negative spin.
dTal 7y ago
I think it was mostly a failure of human psychology. The over-regulation was simply a manifestation of that - democracy working perfectly. Blunder 1: war. We dropped a nuclear bomb before we ever made a nuclear power plant. Nuclear became inextricably linked with sickness and death instead of power and prosperity. Blunder 2: broken heuristic risk assessment. Radiation is scary because it's "spooky" - it's undetectable, and it kills you in a nasty, body-horror kind of way - a long time after exposure. (Although many environmental toxins also fit this bill and aren't so "spooky", so I'm not sure what's going on there). Fossil fuels just aren't "spooky" in the same way, even though the numbers show them as far more dangerous. Chernobyl is enough to put people off nuclear entirely, but even a hundred Chernobyls would not be as bad as the environmental damage wrought by the carbon industry. A bold claim? We're in the middle of a global mass extinction. A hundred Chernobyls wouldn't be a blip in Earth's biodiversity. Even Chernobyl itself is practically a wildlife sanctuary now. Blunder 3: Status quo bias. Sure, fossil fuels are terrible in many ways. But better the devil you know!
- sp332 7y ago
  Not sure I agree with #1. Nuclear power had a super utopian vibe going for a good couple of decades. Nuclear power plant orders only started to decline in the early 70's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Age
  - dTal 7y ago
    I don't think you can entirely discount the effects of 20 years of Cold War existential threat, accompanied by duck-and-cover videos and the like. People were terrified and fascinated by nuclear technology - this is the era of Godzilla, and of mutant superheroes. Yes, there was a utopian vibe as well, courtesy of a concerted propaganda campaign [1] - but when the eco-movement kicked off in the 70s, nuclear was right in the firing line. That didn't spring from nowhere - it was decades of accumulated fear finding an expression. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace
- II2II 7y ago
  For the general population, nuclear energy may be spooky. On the other hand, some opponents of nuclear energy are well informed. Claiming that their risk assessment is broken does not help the discussion because chances are that they are assessing different risks and they are looking towards different solutions. From what I have seen, nuclear has earned a negative reputation from far more than its association with weapons and disasters. Many supporters of nuclear also overly enthusiastic in presenting it as the solution rather than as a solution. It makes it sound like the issues with nuclear are being glossed over, or outright ignored. This, in turn, makes supporters of nuclear sound ill informed or as though they have a vested interest. If nuclear power is going to have much hope for adoption, people need to be informed of how it works, what the risk factors are (preferably with other forms of power generation being used as context), and what is being done to address those risks. Even then, there is going to be some opposition because different people will view different risks differently.
andrewla 7y ago
I don't think this can be considered a failure of regulation; that the regulation stopped short of an outright ban is much more of a failure of regulation in some ways. The tail risks involved in nuclear power are just too high. It's not a question of laymen misunderstanding or thinking that radiation is magic or being scared by the specter of Chernobyl. If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's that we underestimate the risk that bad things can happen with nuclear, and we overestimate our ability to engineer around those things. I think it's increasingly likely that in the far future, when energy needs are no longer the bottleneck for progress, we'll look back on the idea of using nuclear fission as a power source as a laughably dangerous concept; on par with using x-rays for shoe sizing [1] or an atomic powered car [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
- flaviu1 7y ago
  > If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's that we underestimate the risk that bad things can happen with nuclear, and we overestimate our ability to engineer around those things. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...: > there were no deaths caused by acute radiation syndrome. Given the uncertain health effects of low-dose radiation, cancer deaths cannot be ruled out.[11] However, studies by the World Health Organisation and Tokyo University have shown that no discernible increase in the rate of cancer deaths is expected[12] So basically Fukushima has taught us that over-reacting to nuclear accidents has not yet gone out of fashion? And that even when "radiation releases exceed official safety guidelines", there are still almost no consequences to humans? Comparing fission generation to those other things is unfair. Fission reactors produce gigawatts of power, Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were gimmicks and the Ford Nucleon was literally a toy.
  - andrewla 7y ago
    The severity of Chernobyl was greatly compounded by the fact that the Soviet government went out of their way to conceal the severity. The response to Fukushima had no such operations in place; the response was swift and well-organized and evacuations were rapid and deliberately more severe than the situation seemed to warrant. Monitoring was also used to detect elevated radioactive isotopes in drinking water and other secondary effects to prevent them from causing more widespread damage. That said, is it your belief that if the government had taken no action to protect the civilian population, that the impact would have been similar -- "no consequences to humans" as you say? Don't confuse the severity of the scope of the accident with the casualty list; the disaster was very serious and should not be underplayed. And most of all, it should force all of us to reconsider our assessment of the potential damage that can be done by failing nuclear power plants.

by eloff 7y ago

ewzimm 7y ago

I agree that it seems like a massive wasted opportunity, but the most compelling argument I've heard against nuclear power is that it creates a vulnerability. If a nuclear power plant in New York City had been successfully attacked 18 years ago, what would the damage have been? We may need to focus on the security of existing infrastructure before we begin to build the next generation of power.

imiller 7y ago
In US anyway, my understanding is that most of our containment structures should be sufficient to survive a plane impact without loss of containment. [1] [1] https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/proceedings-abstract/PVP2003/1694X/289/291668 https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/PVP/proceedings-abstr...
- bscphil 7y ago
  Yes. Rather famously, the US tested this with a jet smashed directly into a concrete wall, resulting in the video in this article about it. https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-reactor-test https://interestingengineering.com/crashed-jet-nuclear-react...
- ewzimm 7y ago
  I hope that would be the case, but there are other ways to attack infrastructure. Besides physical security vulnerabilities, we have a lot of critical infrastructure that's Internet-connected and running software with known vulnerabilities. Nuclear power plants are some of the most secure in this area, fortunately. There's also the unpatchable problem of the vulnerabilities of the human mind to be swayed by extremists, and young people with career opportunities are constantly targeted. We have procedures in place to protect against these sorts of things, but they are not advancing as fast as our attack surface is increasing, and we rightfully don't want to sacrifice privacy and freedom for security.
dTal 7y ago
Step 1: Don't build nuclear plants in the middle of major cities. Step 2: Build extremely strong containment. Not that hard, just keep pouring concrete. Step 3: Be at peace with the fact that even the worst nuclear incident, while harrowing, would not be the end of the world - which fossil fuels literally are. And it's not like fossil fuels are immune to massive eco-disaster failure points. Deepwater Horizon was far more damaging than Chernobyl - millions of animals perished. Optional Step 4: don't use a reactor design that involves huge piles of flammable radioactive carbon, uncontained - try for something where the reaction stops if anything goes wrong. Then at worst you get a toxic site, instead of vast amounts of atmospheric radiation.
- ewzimm 7y ago
  I agree with all these solutions, and I don't mean to imply that this is an unsurpassable problem, only that our existing security measures for infrastructure are already falling behind as we increasingly rely on them, and these compounding vulnerabilities put pressure on regulators to slow down development.
natch 7y ago
It also creates a vulnerability to crony capitalism, top-down control, corruption, and overtaxation.

nickik 7y ago

> People got scared (somewhat legitimately) Not really. The reality is that most fear is based on totally false believes that exist in popular culture. If people actually understood the real level of dangers they would not nearly be as scared.

eloff 7y ago
The risk is real, but as you say is smaller than other risks we don't even think about, like the people coal has killed with pollution and will still kill through climate change upheaval.

magashna 7y ago

It doesn't help that we have headlines calling them "nukes" which continues that negative spin.

dTal 7y ago

I think it was mostly a failure of human psychology. The over-regulation was simply a manifestation of that - democracy working perfectly. Blunder 1: war. We dropped a nuclear bomb before we ever made a nuclear power plant. Nuclear became inextricably linked with sickness and death instead of power and prosperity. Blunder 2: broken heuristic risk assessment. Radiation is scary because it's "spooky" - it's undetectable, and it kills you in a nasty, body-horror kind of way - a long time after exposure. (Although many environmental toxins also fit this bill and aren't so "spooky", so I'm not sure what's going on there). Fossil fuels just aren't "spooky" in the same way, even though the numbers show them as far more dangerous. Chernobyl is enough to put people off nuclear entirely, but even a hundred Chernobyls would not be as bad as the environmental damage wrought by the carbon industry. A bold claim? We're in the middle of a global mass extinction. A hundred Chernobyls wouldn't be a blip in Earth's biodiversity. Even Chernobyl itself is practically a wildlife sanctuary now. Blunder 3: Status quo bias. Sure, fossil fuels are terrible in many ways. But better the devil you know!

sp332 7y ago
Not sure I agree with #1. Nuclear power had a super utopian vibe going for a good couple of decades. Nuclear power plant orders only started to decline in the early 70's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Age
- dTal 7y ago
  I don't think you can entirely discount the effects of 20 years of Cold War existential threat, accompanied by duck-and-cover videos and the like. People were terrified and fascinated by nuclear technology - this is the era of Godzilla, and of mutant superheroes. Yes, there was a utopian vibe as well, courtesy of a concerted propaganda campaign [1] - but when the eco-movement kicked off in the 70s, nuclear was right in the firing line. That didn't spring from nowhere - it was decades of accumulated fear finding an expression. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace
II2II 7y ago
For the general population, nuclear energy may be spooky. On the other hand, some opponents of nuclear energy are well informed. Claiming that their risk assessment is broken does not help the discussion because chances are that they are assessing different risks and they are looking towards different solutions. From what I have seen, nuclear has earned a negative reputation from far more than its association with weapons and disasters. Many supporters of nuclear also overly enthusiastic in presenting it as the solution rather than as a solution. It makes it sound like the issues with nuclear are being glossed over, or outright ignored. This, in turn, makes supporters of nuclear sound ill informed or as though they have a vested interest. If nuclear power is going to have much hope for adoption, people need to be informed of how it works, what the risk factors are (preferably with other forms of power generation being used as context), and what is being done to address those risks. Even then, there is going to be some opposition because different people will view different risks differently.

andrewla 7y ago

I don't think this can be considered a failure of regulation; that the regulation stopped short of an outright ban is much more of a failure of regulation in some ways. The tail risks involved in nuclear power are just too high. It's not a question of laymen misunderstanding or thinking that radiation is magic or being scared by the specter of Chernobyl. If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's that we underestimate the risk that bad things can happen with nuclear, and we overestimate our ability to engineer around those things. I think it's increasingly likely that in the far future, when energy needs are no longer the bottleneck for progress, we'll look back on the idea of using nuclear fission as a power source as a laughably dangerous concept; on par with using x-rays for shoe sizing [1] or an atomic powered car [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

flaviu1 7y ago
> If there's anything that Fukushima should have taught us, it's that we underestimate the risk that bad things can happen with nuclear, and we overestimate our ability to engineer around those things. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...: > there were no deaths caused by acute radiation syndrome. Given the uncertain health effects of low-dose radiation, cancer deaths cannot be ruled out.[11] However, studies by the World Health Organisation and Tokyo University have shown that no discernible increase in the rate of cancer deaths is expected[12] So basically Fukushima has taught us that over-reacting to nuclear accidents has not yet gone out of fashion? And that even when "radiation releases exceed official safety guidelines", there are still almost no consequences to humans? Comparing fission generation to those other things is unfair. Fission reactors produce gigawatts of power, Shoe-fitting fluoroscopes were gimmicks and the Ford Nucleon was literally a toy.
- andrewla 7y ago
  The severity of Chernobyl was greatly compounded by the fact that the Soviet government went out of their way to conceal the severity. The response to Fukushima had no such operations in place; the response was swift and well-organized and evacuations were rapid and deliberately more severe than the situation seemed to warrant. Monitoring was also used to detect elevated radioactive isotopes in drinking water and other secondary effects to prevent them from causing more widespread damage. That said, is it your belief that if the government had taken no action to protect the civilian population, that the impact would have been similar -- "no consequences to humans" as you say? Don't confuse the severity of the scope of the accident with the casualty list; the disaster was very serious and should not be underplayed. And most of all, it should force all of us to reconsider our assessment of the potential damage that can be done by failing nuclear power plants.