8 ms·

Nuclear Power: Game over (2016) [pdf]

24 points by perfunctory 7y ago

allovernow 7y ago
I don't have time for a point by point refutal right now, and there are some valid points raised in this document, but in sum this really is just shameful propaganda which overstates the problems with nuclear and doesn't seem to acknowledge modern technological developments. The first paragraph of the conclusion really tells you everything you need to know about the author's unreasonable bias: >Nuclear power is a clunky technology borne out of a bygone Cold War era. Its best days are over and it cannot form a key part of sustainable energy policy. The waste problem in particular I think is overstated, and costs are deliberately presented in a way as to appear expensive - neglecting just how much clean power comes from the "1,000,000 each" dry casks - and it is disingenuous to even by implicitly equate this with environmental pollution because this waste is contained and not released into the atmosphere like other forms of dirty power. Hit pieces like this are the reason that we are in climate crisis now - when we could have cheaply and sustainably solved energy needs decades ago with nuclear, with some marginal risk to civilizations thousands of years into the future.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  1. There is no long term storage facility anywhere in the world for nuclear waste. Nuclear proponents don't get to wave away waste until there is an operating long term waste repository or reprocessing facility. Short term on site cask or cooling pond storage doesn't count. 2. Nuclear, even state of the art tech, is not cost competitive against renewables or natural gas [1]. 3. The time to build generators is measured in decades, not months of years. Investors don't want to invest without sovereign guarantees, both on the bonds and the facility itself. An enormous amount of investment is pouring into renewables. It is a fine technology for your military navy, but a terrible technology for commercial electrical generation. Wind, solar, and storage are going to carry us to 100% renewables at this point. China installed almost 12GW of solar PV generating capacity in December 2019 alone [2]. [1] https://www.lazard.com/media/450769/unsubsidized-analysis-certain-100.jpg?width=994&height=442 https://www.lazard.com/media/450769/unsubsidized-analysis-ce... [2] https://reneweconomy.com.au/china-installed-30gw-of-new-solar-in-2019-12gw-in-december-alone-60736/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/china-installed-30gw-of-new-sola...
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    All three of these points are either outright wrong, or misleading. 1. Nevada has a operational storage facility that has space to hold ALL of the waste for the entire United States. It has been rated as stable by geologists for at least the next 700,000 years. Nuclear reactors produce 1 barrel of waste per year. That is an easily manageable quantity. The reason they are not holding more is purely fearmongering polits, it's neither a scientific nor an engineering problem. 2. Nuclear power is not cost competitive because outdated and overzealous regulations and litigious environmental organizations. China, for example, is building 24 state of the art reactors, at a fraction of the cost that western countries are building them - for the exact same internationally approved design. Reactor construction is regularly delayed by local political litigation. This is like pushing someone off of a cliff and then accusing them of being clumsy. 3. I'm not sure what you are comparing to in this point. There is currently NO renewable power plant capable of producing baseload in the quantities we need to avert climate change. If we spent the next 2-3 decades averting climate change by building nuclear power plants, we would be smart. There are currently ZERO renewable projects for building baseload. EDIT: You added some points about renewables storage - the costs of running a grid on 100% renewables with 100% storage capability far far exceed the costs of nuclear power. When you factor things like transmission losses of 35-45%, January solar production at 10% June levels, the intermittent nature of wind power, and the critical requirement that baseload be met 99.95% of the time - you quickly realize that there are absolutely no storage solutions that can get us to a 100% renewable grid (or even a 50% renewable grid).
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      1. Yucca mountain is not operational, and has had no federal funding since 2011 [1]. 2. Even stripping away regulations and environmental requirements, wind and solar are still cheaper at sub 2 cents/kwh utility scale, having no marginal fuel cost. China has set their nuclear price floor at 6.49 cents/kwh [2]. 3. I do not want nuclear reactors built to Chinese standards in my first world country. 4. Storage and renewables aren't an investment, operational, or proliferation risk. EDIT: Transmission losses are minimized with renewables, as generation occurs closer to load centers. Not so with nuclear. Also, storage costs will continue to decline as EV battery manufacturing scales up (see: Tesla's Hornsdale Power Reserve). Nuclear is a solution looking for a problem, when renewables, transmission, storage, and demand response can meet market needs faster. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-energy-nuclear/update-1-china-sets-floor-prices-for-3rd-gen-nuclear-projects-idUSL3N21J12S https://www.reuters.com/article/china-energy-nuclear/update-...
- beders 7y ago
  Re the waste problem being overstated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU https://www.dw.com/en/what-to-do-with-nuclear-waste/a-16755844 https://www.dw.com/en/what-to-do-with-nuclear-waste/a-167558... Interesting tidbit: "The German Atom Forum, comprised of all German nuclear power plant operators, intends to pay as little as possible for storage and rejected shouldering costs for the new site search. In their opinion´”there is no legal basis" for them to pay and all costs should be "financed by taxpayers." Also, how long did it take to clean up after Three Mile Island? (hint: the cost was estimated at $1b) Yes, Nuclear power plants for commercial power generation are done for and rightfully so. Too dangerous, too expensive. Not only building them but de-constructing them and dealing with the waste.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    >Interesting tidbit: ... The German government had told them that they need to shut down their plants by 2022. It's not really surprising that they are unwilling to pay for forcibly closing their business. >Also, how long did it take to clean up after Three Mile Island? (hint: the cost was estimated at $1b) Why does it matter how long the cleanup took? How many dollars of energy did the other reactor generate over that time.
    - beders 7y ago
      To your last point, I'm not sure what you want to say: Nuclear accidents happen and the cleanup can't be that bad compared to electricity generated? Imagine we would have used that $1b for renewables? Any idea how much power THAT would have generated? It's interesting how the mind of nuclear power proponents work: Unwilling to see the larger picture, denying of basic facts (like a failure rate of 1%, brilliant) or the enormous costs being handed to tax payers (on top of their electricity bill). And down-voting facts they don't like.
      - boomboomsubban 7y ago
        >To your last point, I'm not sure what you want to say: Nuclear accidents happen and the cleanup can't be that bad compared to electricity generated? No, mostly that blindly mentioning numbers is meaningless, particularly as a "hint" for how long cleanup took. >Unwilling to see the larger picture, denying of basic facts (like a failure rate of 1%, brilliant) or the enormous costs being handed to tax payers (on top of their electricity bill). There's no consensus on what the "big picture" is, there is a crisis right now and the best way to solve it may not be your ideal solution. I would need to be presented with basic facts to be able to deny them, random numbers or statistics with no context aren't facts. The government can pay enormous costs, I generally view that appeal as a scare tactic.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  > Hit pieces like this are the reason that we are in climate crisis now Please, don't pretend that this rather technical piece has any significant influence compared to the editorial stance of the wall street journal, that actively denied climate change for decades, going at it as late as 2018 [ https://www.sciencealert.com/major-news-outlets-wall-street-journal-climate-denial-opinion-piece https://www.sciencealert.com/major-news-outlets-wall-street-... ].
  - pkulak 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
    - SiempreViernes 7y ago
      Yes, that's exactly what OP is doing? Blaming inaction on climate change on anti-nuclear activists instead of the outright deniers fits the Whataboutism template pretty well.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Oh wow, I feel like there should be a separate idiom for second-order "whataboutism"... my imagination fails me.
        manicdee 7y ago
        The claim was that anti-nuclear sentiment was the sole reason for the current climate crisis. The fact of the matter is that cheap oil and extensive lobbying by the fossil fuel industry is by far the major cause of the current climate crisis, and stationary nuclear power plants would not have significantly contributed to a reduction in emissions. Similarly, the economics of naval nuclear power were disproven by at least one attempt at running a commercial vessel on nuclear power. There are uses for nuclear powered civilian vessels (ice breakers, supply ships operating in sensitive environments) just not in the merchant fleet. The US ship “Savannah” was an economic failure for many reasons, the apologists will claim it was because Savannah was a breakbulk ship built just before the market moved to container ships, but it was also just expensive to build and operate. Savannah was designed as a PR piece, not a serious commercial operation. If we want to encourage a nuclear merchant fleet we need to put a price on carbon (and other air) pollution so that bunker oil is no longer commercially viable.
- Reedx 7y ago
  It's an incredible shame, as we could've had clean power by now. And yet there are many countries and leaders around the world shutting down nuclear or moving in that direction as we speak. You simply can't be serious about solving climate change and be anti-nuclear at the same time.
  - LeoTinnitus 7y ago
    I think the Fukashima plant didn't help selling nuclear power to governments. Japan is very much a leading 1st world nation however the fact that something like that happened really cause a major local environmental issue. The worst part for Japan was that they have a significant chunk of land that is unlivable now. Land is worth more than money in Japan just because of how little of it there is. So not only did they have to deal with the economic issue surrounding a nuclear meltdown, but they also lost a vital resource.
    - m0zg 7y ago
      Fukushima was built in early 70's. Needless to say _a lot_ of progress has been made since then. Today we have reactors which can't blow up, and work on nuclear waste. Russia has been operating one since 2016. China is building one as well. The US? Our great environmentalist Obama has shut down the program in 2016 due to "cost overruns", according to Wikipedia.
      - LeoTinnitus 7y ago
        Yes but that is a nuclear power plant that didn't even operate for 50 years and now completely made the environment uninhabitable, as well as incurred a massive cost to the people to have to rebuild it...again. If that were a coal or natural gas plant, Okuma would still be habitable and everyone wouldn't have needed to been evacuated. Another problem about nuclear power is it's hard to find a reliable resource of uranium. There is a finite amount of it that is not as readily accessible or abundant as all the other resources. Nuclear energy is a pipe dream. Whats the point in even building a cheap reactor (4 million USD) if you need to maintain it and then when demand increases so highly that there isn't enough uranium to go around. What then? Do the people in the north just go cold during the winter? It's no more sustainable than the current system, except there is a definitive projection that it couldn't sustain this population long term. Green renewable energy is clearly the future, however we will never truly be able to convert to it until we can reliable transfer mechanical energy into things like batteries which can power things for a long time. Even major wind farms in Europe only supplement power usage. They cannot keep up with demand since they can only output what the wind gives. We're a long ways out from a green revolution. Energy storage, capacity, 1:1 conversion of energy to power, and reliable power all need to happen first.
- Accujack 7y ago
  Yes. The linked article is propaganda, period. Modern reactor technology is the only way we can provide electrical power in the quantity needed to maintain our present industrial base without contributing to climate change, period. Comparative cost doesn't matter as much as the load type and generation profile. Waste storage needed is minimal, and at present waste is stored on site for commercial reactors. There would probably be even less waste with newer designs. Nuclear proliferation is not a concern with newer designs as well, and has not been for years. Anyone claiming that new power reactors will increase weapons proliferation hasn't been paying attention for decades. The only question is when the voices of unreasoning fear will finally be quiet enough for rational discussions to take place on next steps. Will it be in time to significantly avert climate change? I'd guess not.
- orthecreedence 7y ago
  You can no longer both be an environmentalist and oppose nuclear power. I am comfortable making this absolutist statement and defending it.
- SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  Noteworthy how everyone who disagrees with you is being downvoted. I get the sense Nuclear proponents tend to get heavily invested in being the smartest people in the room, while also being heavily specialized in their own discipline and a bit dismissive of fields a project of that scale would touch. A few key things just seem to consistently get overlooked in the pro-nuclear arguments - cost of capital probably being the one I understand best personally, but I suspect there are others that have a similar impact - and because this faction has so much invested in being right, they spend more time attacking people pointing out weaknesses in their argument than reflecting on whether they might have a point.
  - i_am_proteus 7y ago
    Nuclear engineer here. As far as this article is concerned, appeals to moderation are fallacious. It's propaganda.
- zamalek 7y ago
  > The waste problem in particular I think is overstated, and costs are deliberately presented in a way as to appear expensive Not to mention the reactors we are looking at now that can re-burn this waste (e.g. TWR). > and it is disingenuous to even by implicitly equate this with environmental pollution The radiation damage from coal is, on average, more than that of nuclear power plants for the surrounding area (only doing better briefly after a meltdown). Coal contains thorium and other radioactive elements, which are kicked up into the atmosphere in the ash and land absolutely everywhere.[1] [1]: https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta...
- godelski 7y ago
  Speaking of propaganda, one of the most surprising ones (to me) is VERY apparent here. There's this idea of "nuclear vs green". This is extremely odd to me. We don't say that our grid should be all solar or all wind. The argument is "nuclear vs coal and natural gas". Pro nuclear is "We want a well diversified energy production that matches the needs of areas where power is demanded in a economically and ecologically efficient manner." For example: I am 100% all in favor of southern California (and really the southwest) running off of 100% renewables, predominantly solar and wind. I don't see an issue with that. You don't need much storage. Alternatively, I don't see that working well in the northeast or PNW. Just like building nuclear reactors has environmental impacts, there are environmental impacts to the land usage of wind, solar, hydro (this is more obvious), geo, and the respective storage systems. What to use for the specific area is not an easy calculation. All I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't take a technology off the table before we've considered it's uses.
- zinodaur 7y ago
  What do you make of the articles claim that a world running on 100% nuclear energy would exhaust all known uranium deposits within 25 years? Were they just lying?
  - allovernow 7y ago
    I missed that part, but Here's a good summary rebuttal[1]. Exploration for uranium has been rather limited through history - more importantly, the question of reserves cannot be answered without considering price point. Just like petroleum, at $100/barrel there are far more economically recoverable reserves than $50/barrel, and uranium is currently so cheap in terms of MW/kg that fuel costs are orders of magnitude lower than building and even just operating costs for a plant, such that you can easily double or triple the current price of uranium without impacting generation costs. Moreover, focusing on uranium only is [deliberately?] myopic, as it ignores proven breeder reactor technology as well as alternative sources like Thorium which is far more abundant, requires minimal refinement (and iirc no enrichment) and carries additional benefits including no risk of proliferation. 1.http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.aspx http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.aspx
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      So "peak uranium" was just as false as "peak oil"?
natch 7y ago
I would prefer decentralized options which help me keep my freedom of choice about things like cost, property value impacts from perceived or real risks, sustainability, and individual control of my power sources. And nuclear consumes a lot of cement in construction, a huge source of carbon emissions. Many cement plants are fueled by coal — not even coal generated electricity, but directly by coal on site. Which is more efficient but also helps hide the problem as it keeps their carbon emissions off the radar as they are not included in lists and charts of pollution sources focused typically on power plants. Also I prefer to limit involvement of megacorp / government partnerships in decisions about my future liabilities. So nuclear, while it may be technologically more advanced than it used to be, is not my cup of tea.
- p_l 7y ago
  Small Modular reactors like SVBR-100 fit your model better - that's 100-600 MW that is inherently safe (even if you rupture the reactor vessel), doesn't use much cement (it's mostly metal construction) and is quite small and can be well distributed. Main issue is that they consume a lot of bismuth, which unlike lead (other important ingredient in SVBR-100) doesn't have high production as is.
  - natch 7y ago
    Thanks for including the specific model number. While these may address the cement issue (unless they are further encased) I don’t think they addressed any of the other issues I mentioned, such as perceived risks or decentralized control. Having a high energy device bathed in molten lead and under someone else’s control is not what I would consider an ideal situation.
    - allovernow 7y ago
      What do you think is the risk of such a reactor? They are physically incapable of runaway criticality and molten lead sounds scary but really isn't anything particularly dangerous with respect to industrial chemicals. Depending on fuel choice there also is no risk of proliferation - so worst case a well funded actor could disassemble such a reactor to extract the fuel for a dirty bomb; which is a manageable, worthwhile risk, IMO.
staffanj 7y ago
Around 70% of Australia's electricity is made with coal. This whole report smells like propaganda to keep it like that under the cover that renewables are better than nuclear power. Nuclear is better than coal and if they really want to lower the CO2 emissions they should replace coal with nuclear power. https://www.energy.gov.au/australian-electricity-generation-fuel-mix https://www.energy.gov.au/australian-electricity-generation-... Coal is probably still cheaper than Nuclear. Coal kills a lot of people every year but its not direct so we accept coal.

24 points by perfunctory 7y ago

I don't have time for a point by point refutal right now, and there are some valid points raised in this document, but in sum this really is just shameful propaganda which overstates the problems with nuclear and doesn't seem to acknowledge modern technological developments. The first paragraph of the conclusion really tells you everything you need to know about the author's unreasonable bias: >Nuclear power is a clunky technology borne out of a bygone Cold War era. Its best days are over and it cannot form a key part of sustainable energy policy. The waste problem in particular I think is overstated, and costs are deliberately presented in a way as to appear expensive - neglecting just how much clean power comes from the "1,000,000 each" dry casks - and it is disingenuous to even by implicitly equate this with environmental pollution because this waste is contained and not released into the atmosphere like other forms of dirty power. Hit pieces like this are the reason that we are in climate crisis now - when we could have cheaply and sustainably solved energy needs decades ago with nuclear, with some marginal risk to civilizations thousands of years into the future.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
1. There is no long term storage facility anywhere in the world for nuclear waste. Nuclear proponents don't get to wave away waste until there is an operating long term waste repository or reprocessing facility. Short term on site cask or cooling pond storage doesn't count. 2. Nuclear, even state of the art tech, is not cost competitive against renewables or natural gas [1]. 3. The time to build generators is measured in decades, not months of years. Investors don't want to invest without sovereign guarantees, both on the bonds and the facility itself. An enormous amount of investment is pouring into renewables. It is a fine technology for your military navy, but a terrible technology for commercial electrical generation. Wind, solar, and storage are going to carry us to 100% renewables at this point. China installed almost 12GW of solar PV generating capacity in December 2019 alone [2]. [1] https://www.lazard.com/media/450769/unsubsidized-analysis-certain-100.jpg?width=994&height=442 https://www.lazard.com/media/450769/unsubsidized-analysis-ce... [2] https://reneweconomy.com.au/china-installed-30gw-of-new-solar-in-2019-12gw-in-december-alone-60736/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/china-installed-30gw-of-new-sola...
- koheripbal 7y ago
  All three of these points are either outright wrong, or misleading. 1. Nevada has a operational storage facility that has space to hold ALL of the waste for the entire United States. It has been rated as stable by geologists for at least the next 700,000 years. Nuclear reactors produce 1 barrel of waste per year. That is an easily manageable quantity. The reason they are not holding more is purely fearmongering polits, it's neither a scientific nor an engineering problem. 2. Nuclear power is not cost competitive because outdated and overzealous regulations and litigious environmental organizations. China, for example, is building 24 state of the art reactors, at a fraction of the cost that western countries are building them - for the exact same internationally approved design. Reactor construction is regularly delayed by local political litigation. This is like pushing someone off of a cliff and then accusing them of being clumsy. 3. I'm not sure what you are comparing to in this point. There is currently NO renewable power plant capable of producing baseload in the quantities we need to avert climate change. If we spent the next 2-3 decades averting climate change by building nuclear power plants, we would be smart. There are currently ZERO renewable projects for building baseload. EDIT: You added some points about renewables storage - the costs of running a grid on 100% renewables with 100% storage capability far far exceed the costs of nuclear power. When you factor things like transmission losses of 35-45%, January solar production at 10% June levels, the intermittent nature of wind power, and the critical requirement that baseload be met 99.95% of the time - you quickly realize that there are absolutely no storage solutions that can get us to a 100% renewable grid (or even a 50% renewable grid).
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    1. Yucca mountain is not operational, and has had no federal funding since 2011 [1]. 2. Even stripping away regulations and environmental requirements, wind and solar are still cheaper at sub 2 cents/kwh utility scale, having no marginal fuel cost. China has set their nuclear price floor at 6.49 cents/kwh [2]. 3. I do not want nuclear reactors built to Chinese standards in my first world country. 4. Storage and renewables aren't an investment, operational, or proliferation risk. EDIT: Transmission losses are minimized with renewables, as generation occurs closer to load centers. Not so with nuclear. Also, storage costs will continue to decline as EV battery manufacturing scales up (see: Tesla's Hornsdale Power Reserve). Nuclear is a solution looking for a problem, when renewables, transmission, storage, and demand response can meet market needs faster. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-energy-nuclear/update-1-china-sets-floor-prices-for-3rd-gen-nuclear-projects-idUSL3N21J12S https://www.reuters.com/article/china-energy-nuclear/update-...
beders 7y ago
Re the waste problem being overstated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwY2E0hjGuU https://www.dw.com/en/what-to-do-with-nuclear-waste/a-16755844 https://www.dw.com/en/what-to-do-with-nuclear-waste/a-167558... Interesting tidbit: "The German Atom Forum, comprised of all German nuclear power plant operators, intends to pay as little as possible for storage and rejected shouldering costs for the new site search. In their opinion´”there is no legal basis" for them to pay and all costs should be "financed by taxpayers." Also, how long did it take to clean up after Three Mile Island? (hint: the cost was estimated at $1b) Yes, Nuclear power plants for commercial power generation are done for and rightfully so. Too dangerous, too expensive. Not only building them but de-constructing them and dealing with the waste.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  >Interesting tidbit: ... The German government had told them that they need to shut down their plants by 2022. It's not really surprising that they are unwilling to pay for forcibly closing their business. >Also, how long did it take to clean up after Three Mile Island? (hint: the cost was estimated at $1b) Why does it matter how long the cleanup took? How many dollars of energy did the other reactor generate over that time.
  - beders 7y ago
    To your last point, I'm not sure what you want to say: Nuclear accidents happen and the cleanup can't be that bad compared to electricity generated? Imagine we would have used that $1b for renewables? Any idea how much power THAT would have generated? It's interesting how the mind of nuclear power proponents work: Unwilling to see the larger picture, denying of basic facts (like a failure rate of 1%, brilliant) or the enormous costs being handed to tax payers (on top of their electricity bill). And down-voting facts they don't like.
    - boomboomsubban 7y ago
      >To your last point, I'm not sure what you want to say: Nuclear accidents happen and the cleanup can't be that bad compared to electricity generated? No, mostly that blindly mentioning numbers is meaningless, particularly as a "hint" for how long cleanup took. >Unwilling to see the larger picture, denying of basic facts (like a failure rate of 1%, brilliant) or the enormous costs being handed to tax payers (on top of their electricity bill). There's no consensus on what the "big picture" is, there is a crisis right now and the best way to solve it may not be your ideal solution. I would need to be presented with basic facts to be able to deny them, random numbers or statistics with no context aren't facts. The government can pay enormous costs, I generally view that appeal as a scare tactic.
SiempreViernes 7y ago
> Hit pieces like this are the reason that we are in climate crisis now Please, don't pretend that this rather technical piece has any significant influence compared to the editorial stance of the wall street journal, that actively denied climate change for decades, going at it as late as 2018 [ https://www.sciencealert.com/major-news-outlets-wall-street-journal-climate-denial-opinion-piece https://www.sciencealert.com/major-news-outlets-wall-street-... ].
- pkulak 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Yes, that's exactly what OP is doing? Blaming inaction on climate change on anti-nuclear activists instead of the outright deniers fits the Whataboutism template pretty well.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Oh wow, I feel like there should be a separate idiom for second-order "whataboutism"... my imagination fails me.
      - manicdee 7y ago
        The claim was that anti-nuclear sentiment was the sole reason for the current climate crisis. The fact of the matter is that cheap oil and extensive lobbying by the fossil fuel industry is by far the major cause of the current climate crisis, and stationary nuclear power plants would not have significantly contributed to a reduction in emissions. Similarly, the economics of naval nuclear power were disproven by at least one attempt at running a commercial vessel on nuclear power. There are uses for nuclear powered civilian vessels (ice breakers, supply ships operating in sensitive environments) just not in the merchant fleet. The US ship “Savannah” was an economic failure for many reasons, the apologists will claim it was because Savannah was a breakbulk ship built just before the market moved to container ships, but it was also just expensive to build and operate. Savannah was designed as a PR piece, not a serious commercial operation. If we want to encourage a nuclear merchant fleet we need to put a price on carbon (and other air) pollution so that bunker oil is no longer commercially viable.
Reedx 7y ago
It's an incredible shame, as we could've had clean power by now. And yet there are many countries and leaders around the world shutting down nuclear or moving in that direction as we speak. You simply can't be serious about solving climate change and be anti-nuclear at the same time.
- LeoTinnitus 7y ago
  I think the Fukashima plant didn't help selling nuclear power to governments. Japan is very much a leading 1st world nation however the fact that something like that happened really cause a major local environmental issue. The worst part for Japan was that they have a significant chunk of land that is unlivable now. Land is worth more than money in Japan just because of how little of it there is. So not only did they have to deal with the economic issue surrounding a nuclear meltdown, but they also lost a vital resource.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Fukushima was built in early 70's. Needless to say _a lot_ of progress has been made since then. Today we have reactors which can't blow up, and work on nuclear waste. Russia has been operating one since 2016. China is building one as well. The US? Our great environmentalist Obama has shut down the program in 2016 due to "cost overruns", according to Wikipedia.
    - LeoTinnitus 7y ago
      Yes but that is a nuclear power plant that didn't even operate for 50 years and now completely made the environment uninhabitable, as well as incurred a massive cost to the people to have to rebuild it...again. If that were a coal or natural gas plant, Okuma would still be habitable and everyone wouldn't have needed to been evacuated. Another problem about nuclear power is it's hard to find a reliable resource of uranium. There is a finite amount of it that is not as readily accessible or abundant as all the other resources. Nuclear energy is a pipe dream. Whats the point in even building a cheap reactor (4 million USD) if you need to maintain it and then when demand increases so highly that there isn't enough uranium to go around. What then? Do the people in the north just go cold during the winter? It's no more sustainable than the current system, except there is a definitive projection that it couldn't sustain this population long term. Green renewable energy is clearly the future, however we will never truly be able to convert to it until we can reliable transfer mechanical energy into things like batteries which can power things for a long time. Even major wind farms in Europe only supplement power usage. They cannot keep up with demand since they can only output what the wind gives. We're a long ways out from a green revolution. Energy storage, capacity, 1:1 conversion of energy to power, and reliable power all need to happen first.
Accujack 7y ago
Yes. The linked article is propaganda, period. Modern reactor technology is the only way we can provide electrical power in the quantity needed to maintain our present industrial base without contributing to climate change, period. Comparative cost doesn't matter as much as the load type and generation profile. Waste storage needed is minimal, and at present waste is stored on site for commercial reactors. There would probably be even less waste with newer designs. Nuclear proliferation is not a concern with newer designs as well, and has not been for years. Anyone claiming that new power reactors will increase weapons proliferation hasn't been paying attention for decades. The only question is when the voices of unreasoning fear will finally be quiet enough for rational discussions to take place on next steps. Will it be in time to significantly avert climate change? I'd guess not.
orthecreedence 7y ago
You can no longer both be an environmentalist and oppose nuclear power. I am comfortable making this absolutist statement and defending it.
SuoDuanDao 7y ago
Noteworthy how everyone who disagrees with you is being downvoted. I get the sense Nuclear proponents tend to get heavily invested in being the smartest people in the room, while also being heavily specialized in their own discipline and a bit dismissive of fields a project of that scale would touch. A few key things just seem to consistently get overlooked in the pro-nuclear arguments - cost of capital probably being the one I understand best personally, but I suspect there are others that have a similar impact - and because this faction has so much invested in being right, they spend more time attacking people pointing out weaknesses in their argument than reflecting on whether they might have a point.
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  Nuclear engineer here. As far as this article is concerned, appeals to moderation are fallacious. It's propaganda.
zamalek 7y ago
> The waste problem in particular I think is overstated, and costs are deliberately presented in a way as to appear expensive Not to mention the reactors we are looking at now that can re-burn this waste (e.g. TWR). > and it is disingenuous to even by implicitly equate this with environmental pollution The radiation damage from coal is, on average, more than that of nuclear power plants for the surrounding area (only doing better briefly after a meltdown). Coal contains thorium and other radioactive elements, which are kicked up into the atmosphere in the ash and land absolutely everywhere.[1] [1]: https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta...
godelski 7y ago
Speaking of propaganda, one of the most surprising ones (to me) is VERY apparent here. There's this idea of "nuclear vs green". This is extremely odd to me. We don't say that our grid should be all solar or all wind. The argument is "nuclear vs coal and natural gas". Pro nuclear is "We want a well diversified energy production that matches the needs of areas where power is demanded in a economically and ecologically efficient manner." For example: I am 100% all in favor of southern California (and really the southwest) running off of 100% renewables, predominantly solar and wind. I don't see an issue with that. You don't need much storage. Alternatively, I don't see that working well in the northeast or PNW. Just like building nuclear reactors has environmental impacts, there are environmental impacts to the land usage of wind, solar, hydro (this is more obvious), geo, and the respective storage systems. What to use for the specific area is not an easy calculation. All I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't take a technology off the table before we've considered it's uses.
zinodaur 7y ago
What do you make of the articles claim that a world running on 100% nuclear energy would exhaust all known uranium deposits within 25 years? Were they just lying?
- allovernow 7y ago
  I missed that part, but Here's a good summary rebuttal[1]. Exploration for uranium has been rather limited through history - more importantly, the question of reserves cannot be answered without considering price point. Just like petroleum, at $100/barrel there are far more economically recoverable reserves than $50/barrel, and uranium is currently so cheap in terms of MW/kg that fuel costs are orders of magnitude lower than building and even just operating costs for a plant, such that you can easily double or triple the current price of uranium without impacting generation costs. Moreover, focusing on uranium only is [deliberately?] myopic, as it ignores proven breeder reactor technology as well as alternative sources like Thorium which is far more abundant, requires minimal refinement (and iirc no enrichment) and carries additional benefits including no risk of proliferation. 1.http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.aspx http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.aspx
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    So "peak uranium" was just as false as "peak oil"?

natch 7y ago

I would prefer decentralized options which help me keep my freedom of choice about things like cost, property value impacts from perceived or real risks, sustainability, and individual control of my power sources. And nuclear consumes a lot of cement in construction, a huge source of carbon emissions. Many cement plants are fueled by coal — not even coal generated electricity, but directly by coal on site. Which is more efficient but also helps hide the problem as it keeps their carbon emissions off the radar as they are not included in lists and charts of pollution sources focused typically on power plants. Also I prefer to limit involvement of megacorp / government partnerships in decisions about my future liabilities. So nuclear, while it may be technologically more advanced than it used to be, is not my cup of tea.

p_l 7y ago
Small Modular reactors like SVBR-100 fit your model better - that's 100-600 MW that is inherently safe (even if you rupture the reactor vessel), doesn't use much cement (it's mostly metal construction) and is quite small and can be well distributed. Main issue is that they consume a lot of bismuth, which unlike lead (other important ingredient in SVBR-100) doesn't have high production as is.
- natch 7y ago
  Thanks for including the specific model number. While these may address the cement issue (unless they are further encased) I don’t think they addressed any of the other issues I mentioned, such as perceived risks or decentralized control. Having a high energy device bathed in molten lead and under someone else’s control is not what I would consider an ideal situation.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    What do you think is the risk of such a reactor? They are physically incapable of runaway criticality and molten lead sounds scary but really isn't anything particularly dangerous with respect to industrial chemicals. Depending on fuel choice there also is no risk of proliferation - so worst case a well funded actor could disassemble such a reactor to extract the fuel for a dirty bomb; which is a manageable, worthwhile risk, IMO.

staffanj 7y ago

Around 70% of Australia's electricity is made with coal. This whole report smells like propaganda to keep it like that under the cover that renewables are better than nuclear power. Nuclear is better than coal and if they really want to lower the CO2 emissions they should replace coal with nuclear power. https://www.energy.gov.au/australian-electricity-generation-fuel-mix https://www.energy.gov.au/australian-electricity-generation-... Coal is probably still cheaper than Nuclear. Coal kills a lot of people every year but its not direct so we accept coal.