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This is really saddening. I am baffled by world leaders repeatedly suspending, cancelling, or shutting down nuclear reactors. Even after Fukushima Daiichi, nuc

This is really saddening. I am baffled by world leaders repeatedly suspending, cancelling, or shutting down nuclear reactors. Even after Fukushima Daiichi, nuclear energy remains in Japan and worldwide the (1) safest by far [deaths/kWh], (2) lowest emissions on average, (3) most reliable source of energy generation. Every plant shut down / suspended / whatever you want to call it effectively increases the number of people who die in accidents each year because the production is offset by increased coal/solar/gas/hydro generation, and usually it's coal, which is the worst by far - which also means more air pollution, more deaths due to air pollution (already a gargantuan problem in Asia), and more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere (for which it is also the worst by far, even 4x worse than natural gas). Every politician or leader who moves to build more coal plants instead of nuclear or at least renewables (which are much much safer and cleaner than coal) or natural gas (which is also safer and cleaner) should be criticized by their people. If you can build ANYTHING that isn't coal, you're saving lives and reducing the climate change problem. Coal is the worst. Also, if you're under the impression coal is "cheaper" - forget about unit cost, and look at the real world data. German electricity is about 2x the price of French electricity - a coal / renewables mix vs. a nuclear majority. Ontario electricity ranges from 5-10x cheaper than German electricity as well - also a nuclear majority grid. This isn't even including the significant externalized costs that the air pollution and GHG emissions from coal plants place on society, or the costs of the thousands of people who die due to coal power accidents.

Fej 7y ago
Here's a source for your claim that nuclear is cleaner than (just about) everything else: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex-iii.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5... if anyone wants. It blew my mind that nuclear is more than three times cleaner than solar, and on par with wind. (This was posted elsewhere here on HN.) Those numbers don't include batteries, which afaik is an unsolved problem anyway, so if you include those then nuclear becomes cleaner than everything else.
- johnmorrison 7y ago
  Thankyou! These are some really great points. I think it's always important to look at the full supply chain life cycle effects of energy sources - keeping in mind that they need to be built from processed materials, potentially repaired, and decommissioned after a lifetime. Once you account for the emissions of material throughput in building power plants and renewables, the sheer volumetric density of nuclear energy compared to all other sources pushes it far ahead in terms of cleanliness. You need a lot less concrete and steel per kWh generated. Also your point about batteries is really important, because we would need to scale production many (many) orders of magnitude in order to reliably power a modern grid with majority renewable energy, and we don't really understand how that supply chain is going to look. Unlike processing and manufacturing industries which generally have positive economies of scale, the problem with resource extraction (esp. with metals) is that the cost to extract has a negative forcing function driven by our prioritization of the most profitable reserves. If you mine all the cheap reserves first, you will eventually be left with only the expensive ones.

Fej 7y ago

Here's a source for your claim that nuclear is cleaner than (just about) everything else: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex-iii.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5... if anyone wants. It blew my mind that nuclear is more than three times cleaner than solar, and on par with wind. (This was posted elsewhere here on HN.) Those numbers don't include batteries, which afaik is an unsolved problem anyway, so if you include those then nuclear becomes cleaner than everything else.

johnmorrison 7y ago
Thankyou! These are some really great points. I think it's always important to look at the full supply chain life cycle effects of energy sources - keeping in mind that they need to be built from processed materials, potentially repaired, and decommissioned after a lifetime. Once you account for the emissions of material throughput in building power plants and renewables, the sheer volumetric density of nuclear energy compared to all other sources pushes it far ahead in terms of cleanliness. You need a lot less concrete and steel per kWh generated. Also your point about batteries is really important, because we would need to scale production many (many) orders of magnitude in order to reliably power a modern grid with majority renewable energy, and we don't really understand how that supply chain is going to look. Unlike processing and manufacturing industries which generally have positive economies of scale, the problem with resource extraction (esp. with metals) is that the cost to extract has a negative forcing function driven by our prioritization of the most profitable reserves. If you mine all the cheap reserves first, you will eventually be left with only the expensive ones.