6 ms·

Nuclear energy languished largely because of fear, I think. Our failure to invest in nuclear the past several decades was a huge mistake that future generation

by Reedx 7y ago

Nuclear energy languished largely because of fear, I think. Our failure to invest in nuclear the past several decades was a huge mistake that future generations will rightfully scorn us for.

natmaka 7y ago
After a bunch of mishaps (Fukushima being the more recent) it becomes more and more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. It justifies fear. Moreover the waste management problem is not solved. During the last decades more and more citizen are less and less willing to pay for nuke plants. In democracies imposing is pretty difficult, and IMHO it's a good thing. In the same timeframe wind, and even more during the last decade, solar plants costs quickly declined, and even more so nowadays. Meanwhile nuke specialists experienced in building and running plants retire. https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/May/Renewable-power-generation-costs-in-2018 https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/May/Renewable-power-...
- Reedx 7y ago
  Except nuclear energy is the safest form of power: https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy As for Fukushima, more died as a result from it being shut down than in the disaster: https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japans-reactors-deadlier-than-the-fukushima-disaster https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japan... Furthermore, it lead to a surge in imports of dirty fuels. More coal and oil.
  - natmaka 7y ago
    Once the last reactor decommissioned and the last nuke waste inert we may try to evaluate the impacts. Until them everything can happen, even the worst. As for Fukushima there are many hypothesis about the real impact until now, and even more for the future. Believing the effects are already fully known is at best 'weird'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... Thinking that we can only replace fossil fuel with nuke is not even funny, as solar and wind soar. In Europe solar and wind already produce as much electricity than nuke plants, and sail around while nuke plants are shutting down. Storage is indeed a challenge, and the real choice is between our capacity to lower nuke-induced risk (waste, disasters...), which seems low after decades of efforts, and on the other hand our capacity to further enhance existing other energy 'sources', which are progressing at a very fast pace.
    - kortilla 7y ago
      Stop comparing solar and wind to nuclear. That’s a cudgel to ignore the fact that being anti-nuclear means being pro-fossil fuels. Bringing online solar and wind does not displace nuclear because they do not provide a stable base. You highlight that storage is a challenge, but it’s the entire blocker at this point. Until storage is solved, solar/wind do nothing more than displace some peaker plants.
      - natmaka 7y ago
        Nuclear power generation also implies using fossil-fuels powerplants. Even in 'all-nuke' France 7 to 11% of the powergrid is produced by fossil-fuel plants. This could be alleviated thanks to decentralized production (small units). Granted, this is theoretically true for nuclear and solar/wind alike, however civilian practical small solar/wind units do exist, nuclear units don't. Many write just as if nuclear plants may really solve our climate-related problem. They neglect that gridpower is a small portion of the total energy (about 17%), therefore a fully 'cleanly'-produced gridpower (by whatever method, nuclear and/or other) lets us, on the sole 'energy' side of the matter (there are other ones), with at the very least 60% of the climate-related problem at hands.
        cm2187 7y ago
        France could have gone 100% nuclear, french nuclear reactors can adapt their load to the demand intra-day. It is not a technical decision.
        natmaka 7y ago
        No, nuke is for base-load, it cannot be started/stopped in 10 minutes (in France, as in many countries, hydro dams are used as buffers).
        erentz 7y ago
        Parent is talking about load following. Nuclear power plants can absolutely load follow the diurnal predicted demand closely. Most power demand is forecast very accurately with only small amounts of new generation dispatched or load shedded to account for the smaller variances, or when outages happen on some part of the grid.
  - davidwihl 7y ago
    That report excludes renewables like hydro, solar, etc.
- roenxi 7y ago
  > more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. Nobody can pretend that nuclear plants aren't dangerous. The argument is that a Fukushima somewhere in the world once every 20 years would be substantially less dangerous than a coal fired plant in every country operating for 20 years. And it doesn't seem to be likely that we get a Fukushima every 20 years. So why is Fukushima used as a reason to use coal plants??? The logic is barely coherent, and even then only assuming that someone has no understanding of the background risk they face every day. I've lived in a coal mining region. I would have statistically better health outcomes if I had lived next to Fukushima. EDIT And you linked the Fukushima outcomes page - it says that even only considering Japan the lives saved from not using coal probably outweighed hypothetical maybe-deaths from Fukushima that cannot be detected. Footnote 75. > Moreover the waste management problem is not solved. It is kinda difficult to describe a scenario where nuclear waste causes much more damage than say a tailings dam failure at a heavy metals mine. Or a gas leak in a built up area. Or a bad wildfire. There is not a lot of nuclear waste and there is a lot of desert out there if it comes to it. People have largely been ignoring the waste for 40 years and that strategy is working pretty well.
  - drran 7y ago
    So, we should stop both nuclear AND coal plants and use solar, hydro and wind plants. What the problem with that? Batteries? Let's spend cost of 1 nuclear plant at electric batteries or pumped-hydro or compressed-air storage units and solve this problem.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      Solar probably has a worse waste problem than nuclear (and probably a higher risk of actually harming me in the case of retail solar). Batteries and storage do too. The damage from a hydro failure is higher. Wind might be a solid par technically. It does kill more people than nuclear though; that is a big negative. Better displaced than dead. There isn't an option here that is obviously better. It would be pretty sensible to loosen the environmental restrictions on new nuclear plants, protect them from NIMBYs and then leave it to the market to go with whatever is cheapest. Could be anything, I have no particular horse to back as long as the race is fair; although I would like to see more nuclear because it just looks to me like the technically best option.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Coal kills far more people than nuke does - both from direct accidents - and secondary effects.
buzzkillington 7y ago
It's rather bold of you to assume that future generations will be around to scorn anyone with the apocalyptic climate change we've already locked in.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Not really bold at all. The climate change we are on track for is very disruptive but even the worst case doesn’t show anything that would threaten civilization itself. We could lose 90% of the human population and be back to the numbers of when the US became a country.

by Reedx 7y ago

Nuclear energy languished largely because of fear, I think. Our failure to invest in nuclear the past several decades was a huge mistake that future generations will rightfully scorn us for.

natmaka 7y ago

After a bunch of mishaps (Fukushima being the more recent) it becomes more and more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. It justifies fear. Moreover the waste management problem is not solved. During the last decades more and more citizen are less and less willing to pay for nuke plants. In democracies imposing is pretty difficult, and IMHO it's a good thing. In the same timeframe wind, and even more during the last decade, solar plants costs quickly declined, and even more so nowadays. Meanwhile nuke specialists experienced in building and running plants retire. https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/May/Renewable-power-generation-costs-in-2018 https://www.irena.org/publications/2019/May/Renewable-power-...

Reedx 7y ago
Except nuclear energy is the safest form of power: https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy As for Fukushima, more died as a result from it being shut down than in the disaster: https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japans-reactors-deadlier-than-the-fukushima-disaster https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/11/07/was-shutting-japan... Furthermore, it lead to a surge in imports of dirty fuels. More coal and oil.
- natmaka 7y ago
  Once the last reactor decommissioned and the last nuke waste inert we may try to evaluate the impacts. Until them everything can happen, even the worst. As for Fukushima there are many hypothesis about the real impact until now, and even more for the future. Believing the effects are already fully known is at best 'weird'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... Thinking that we can only replace fossil fuel with nuke is not even funny, as solar and wind soar. In Europe solar and wind already produce as much electricity than nuke plants, and sail around while nuke plants are shutting down. Storage is indeed a challenge, and the real choice is between our capacity to lower nuke-induced risk (waste, disasters...), which seems low after decades of efforts, and on the other hand our capacity to further enhance existing other energy 'sources', which are progressing at a very fast pace.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Stop comparing solar and wind to nuclear. That’s a cudgel to ignore the fact that being anti-nuclear means being pro-fossil fuels. Bringing online solar and wind does not displace nuclear because they do not provide a stable base. You highlight that storage is a challenge, but it’s the entire blocker at this point. Until storage is solved, solar/wind do nothing more than displace some peaker plants.
    - natmaka 7y ago
      Nuclear power generation also implies using fossil-fuels powerplants. Even in 'all-nuke' France 7 to 11% of the powergrid is produced by fossil-fuel plants. This could be alleviated thanks to decentralized production (small units). Granted, this is theoretically true for nuclear and solar/wind alike, however civilian practical small solar/wind units do exist, nuclear units don't. Many write just as if nuclear plants may really solve our climate-related problem. They neglect that gridpower is a small portion of the total energy (about 17%), therefore a fully 'cleanly'-produced gridpower (by whatever method, nuclear and/or other) lets us, on the sole 'energy' side of the matter (there are other ones), with at the very least 60% of the climate-related problem at hands.
      - cm2187 7y ago
        France could have gone 100% nuclear, french nuclear reactors can adapt their load to the demand intra-day. It is not a technical decision.
        natmaka 7y ago
        No, nuke is for base-load, it cannot be started/stopped in 10 minutes (in France, as in many countries, hydro dams are used as buffers).
        erentz 7y ago
        Parent is talking about load following. Nuclear power plants can absolutely load follow the diurnal predicted demand closely. Most power demand is forecast very accurately with only small amounts of new generation dispatched or load shedded to account for the smaller variances, or when outages happen on some part of the grid.
- davidwihl 7y ago
  That report excludes renewables like hydro, solar, etc.
roenxi 7y ago
> more difficult to pretend that nuke plants aren't dangerous. Nobody can pretend that nuclear plants aren't dangerous. The argument is that a Fukushima somewhere in the world once every 20 years would be substantially less dangerous than a coal fired plant in every country operating for 20 years. And it doesn't seem to be likely that we get a Fukushima every 20 years. So why is Fukushima used as a reason to use coal plants??? The logic is barely coherent, and even then only assuming that someone has no understanding of the background risk they face every day. I've lived in a coal mining region. I would have statistically better health outcomes if I had lived next to Fukushima. EDIT And you linked the Fukushima outcomes page - it says that even only considering Japan the lives saved from not using coal probably outweighed hypothetical maybe-deaths from Fukushima that cannot be detected. Footnote 75. > Moreover the waste management problem is not solved. It is kinda difficult to describe a scenario where nuclear waste causes much more damage than say a tailings dam failure at a heavy metals mine. Or a gas leak in a built up area. Or a bad wildfire. There is not a lot of nuclear waste and there is a lot of desert out there if it comes to it. People have largely been ignoring the waste for 40 years and that strategy is working pretty well.
- drran 7y ago
  So, we should stop both nuclear AND coal plants and use solar, hydro and wind plants. What the problem with that? Batteries? Let's spend cost of 1 nuclear plant at electric batteries or pumped-hydro or compressed-air storage units and solve this problem.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    Solar probably has a worse waste problem than nuclear (and probably a higher risk of actually harming me in the case of retail solar). Batteries and storage do too. The damage from a hydro failure is higher. Wind might be a solid par technically. It does kill more people than nuclear though; that is a big negative. Better displaced than dead. There isn't an option here that is obviously better. It would be pretty sensible to loosen the environmental restrictions on new nuclear plants, protect them from NIMBYs and then leave it to the market to go with whatever is cheapest. Could be anything, I have no particular horse to back as long as the race is fair; although I would like to see more nuclear because it just looks to me like the technically best option.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Coal kills far more people than nuke does - both from direct accidents - and secondary effects.

buzzkillington 7y ago

It's rather bold of you to assume that future generations will be around to scorn anyone with the apocalyptic climate change we've already locked in.

kortilla 7y ago
Not really bold at all. The climate change we are on track for is very disruptive but even the worst case doesn’t show anything that would threaten civilization itself. We could lose 90% of the human population and be back to the numbers of when the US became a country.