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I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. If I had a dolla

• rectang 6y ago
  Every time I've seen one of these threads on HN asserting that nuclear is safer than the alternatives and I've looked more closely into the claims, I've wound up unconvinced because of omissions like the one you've identified. It's gotten to the point that I tend to tune out pro-nuclear arguments on HN. :( I'm sure there are good arguments in there somewhere, but I don't have the bandwidth to sort them out from the misleading ones.
  • eecc 6y ago
    I still haven't heard a convincing protocol for long term storage of spent fuel. That's even worse than a remotely possible nuclear disaster: because unless a solution is found, it's a certainty.
    • burfog 6y ago
      The real answer is mostly "don't do that". Spent fuel rods can't be used anymore because about 5% of the uranium has been converted into elements that slow down the reaction. The remaining uranium is still good. Due to a presidential order by Carter, we waste that uranium. The process for recovering the unused uranium (called "reprocessing") is vaguely similar to the process for making bombs. We'd rather not have lots of countries making bombs. The idea was that by not reprocessing our own fuel, we could set an example and hope that somehow that would keep other countries from making bombs. Yes, that is terrible logic. Japan does the reprocessing. We could do it too, and it wouldn't suddenly arm the world with nukes. If the fuel is reprocessed, we could cut our need to mine uranium and cut our need to store radioactive material. It's about a 95% reduction. The uranium itself is the long-lived portion, so we'd clear up that problem too. We could also recover rare-earth elements from the spent fuel. This is the only practical way to create rare-earth elements. Of course, that doesn't get rid of 100% of the waste. We don't really have a shortage of great places to store it. The worries about burial are blown way out of proportion. All of the proposed facilities for burial are ridiculous overkill.
      • cbmuser 6y ago
        France does reprocessing, too, and they're very good at it: > https://orano.group/en/nuclear-expertise/from-exploration-to-recycling/world-leader-in-recycling-used-nuclear-fuels https://orano.group/en/nuclear-expertise/from-exploration-to... > https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968
        • makomk 6y ago
          France seems to be the only country that's very good at it - nuclear reprocessing everywhere else has a pretty poor safety record, with widespread radioactive contamination and an unfortunate tendency to irradiate workers. (It's also, as I understand it, the exact same process used to produce weapons grade plutonium for bombs, not merely similar.)
          • corty 6y ago
            Well, you separate the spent fuel into chemical components by suitable chemical processes. One of those components is plutonium salts. So, yes, reprocessing is a rather direct way to nuke materials.
            • jabl 6y ago
              There are reprocessing schemes like pyroprocessing that are less useful for producing bomb materials. But yes, currently at industrial scale the method of choice is PUREX, which AFAIK is the same process which is used for producing Pu for weapons. Although when reprocessing high burnup spent fuel from commercial reactors you get Pu with an isotopic composition poorly suited for weapons.
      • rriepe 6y ago
        It's this line of thinking that ultimately pushes me to being pro-nuclear. However, I think our optimism regarding the political situation is more misplaced than our optimism regarding the tech. Here, you criticize Carter's order and present an alternative. A great one, even: Not having the order in place and doing the reprocessing. But that's not reality, right? It's more likely that we'll have Carter's order and some new dumb order in the next few years. Nuclear is inherently scary and will always be politicized. I agree somewhat regarding the overblown burial worries. But I could make a really great commercial out of the disaster scenarios involved there. They'll never not be convincing arguments. Radiation is a silent killer. Nuclear weapons are the worst thing humanity has made. Not being afraid of nuclear power is rational only within a very narrow discussion window, one which most people simply cannot see through. I guess my frustration here is that the pro-nuclear side constantly uses arguments that don't work and casually dismisses being afraid of the smallest and largest deadly thing. There's lots of "just" and "most" and it all feels so hand-wavy. "We checked the numbers, we've got the worst thing under control." It's just not a convincing argument to most people. I don't know how to fix this, but it's definitely not another politicized pro/anti divide.
    • dtech 6y ago
      No one is saying underground storage is perfect, but it's sacrificing a small portion of earth's volume for energy instead of our current strategy of dumping all our waste product in the atmosphere causing enormous damage.
    • cbmuser 6y ago
      Nuclear waste is actually the best kind of waste because of its very high density and the fact that it's solid. The density is so high that the US has accumulated just 83,000 tons over several decades operating nuclear power plants: > https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... That may sound a lot but compared to coal or, in fact, any other type of power generating plant, the amount is absolutely tiny. In France, the whole waste of the country's nuclear plant operation fits into one hall: > https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968 What helps in reducing the waste by large margin is reprocessing the fuel and re-using it in fast reactors as explained here: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlMDDhQ9-pE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlMDDhQ9-pE
      • bob29 6y ago
        > compared to coal or, in fact, any other type of power generating plant so nuclear creates less nuclear waste than PV, wind, or geothermal?
        • corty 6y ago
          Yes. Producing semiconductors or rare earth magnets is not a very clean process, Silicon Valley has a lot of uglyness left over from such processes. Cheap renewables supplies produced in the far east are certainly not clean in that regard, and you need a lot more in mass and volume than with nuclear.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • manfredo 6y ago
          Absolutely. The entirety of the nuclear waste from US power generation fits in a volume the footprint of an American football field, and 10 meters high: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-nuclear-fuel https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... Maybe geothermal creates less waste, since you just need to pipe water into the ground and drive a steam turbine. But most of the world doesn't have access to geothermal power.
    • rsynnott 6y ago
      Coal, of course, is far simpler; the waste can be conveniently stored in peoples’ lungs, and occasionally spilled into rivers. The advantage of nuclear here, arguably, is that the waste is at least somewhat containable.
    • manfredo 6y ago
      Bury nuclear waste underground in an area with no aquifer. The scenarios where this results in contamination are borderline hyperbole, usually entailing the loss of all records of the waste's locations due to some sort of societal collapse followed by a future civilization digging up the waste for an inexplicable reason. By comparison, what is the long term storage plan for fossil fuel emissions?
      • afiori 6y ago
        If we allow similar levels of hand-waving for both problems then: Q: what is the long term storage plan for fossil fuel emissions? A: Trees
        • manfredo 6y ago
          Great, now come back to me with a plan to plant the trees required to offset carbon emissions. This is going to be challenging, because you'll need to reforest an area roughly the size of the continental United States to reduce atmospheric CO2 to levels from a century ago [1]. In order to actually do this, you'd need to desalinate massive amounts of water to feed trees in areas without vegetation. Generating the energy for desalination and pumping it inland would release massive amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere, necessitating more tress, necessitating more water, and so on. You'd probably have better chances sequestering carbon through an algae bloom in the oceans, but that too has drawbacks (namely, when the algae dies off it'll just release the carbon again). By comparison we already have a nuclear waste facility built in the US, though it's use was cancelled by Congress (and it wouldn't make sense to put spent fuel there yet, since we would want it for reprocessing), and another site is under construction in Finland [3]. "Bury it underground, in an area with no aquifer" isn't hand wave. Storing nuclear waste really is that simple. The main concern for uranium is water contamination. It's actually a prevalent due to naturally occurring uranium [4]. Place the waste in an area with no aquifer and there is no risk of contamination even in the event that the containment vessels deteriorate. 1. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/07/how-to-erase-100-years-carbon-emissions-plant-trees/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/07/how-t... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... 4. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminates-water-california-central-valley#:~:text=Fram%20and%20her%20colleagues%20believe,is%20used%20to%20irrigate%20crops https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminat....
  • stjohnswarts 6y ago
    The argument is that the human race gets to survive and progress, unlike the one where we destroy our planet with a run-away carbon dioxide greenhouse effect.
    • DangitBobby 6y ago
      You're missing some. For example, nuclear is implemented on a wide scale, but it's far too late to mitigate catastrophic climate change, and we are unable to prevent meltdowns in the insuing decline, accelerating the decline.
      • evilos 6y ago
        One of the requirements for modern nuclear reactor design is that they are fail safe, ie cannot meltdown due to a loss of power or other malfunction.
• deleted 6y ago
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• dmm 6y ago
  Anti-nuclear people like to ignore the fact that the status quo _will_ result in many equatorial regions being uninhabitable for thousands of years.
  • rriepe 6y ago
    Carbon's a doomsday cult
• TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years Note that this is not special to nuclear materials; it's true for a good chunk of industrial chemistry in general as well. > peak uranium I'll need to look up some more up-to-date numbers, but going by https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_162.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_162.shtml, there's more than enough for couple centuries (and new reactor designs can make one-two orders of magnitude better use of what's available). But even if we only had 100 years worth of nuclear fuel reserve, that's more than enough to fix the climate problem and fully develop renewables (possibly including orbital collectors). Or who knows, maybe even fusion.
  • jayd16 6y ago
    >Note that this is not special to nuclear materials; it's true for a good chunk of industrial chemistry in general as well. Hmm interesting. Where has this happened on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima? I can't thinking of any exclusion zones in once populated areas caused by industrial chemicals. Is the fact that plants are built near populated areas a factor?
    • fastaguy88 6y ago
      You might google Superfund sites in Montana [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Montana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Mon... ]. There is no shortage of towns that have been made uninhabitable, but perhaps not in densely populated areas.
    • TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Can't think of a well-known industrial exclusion zone, but the "Industrial" subsection here lists some pretty nasty incidents, involving contaminating entire surrounding communities, next to significant ecological damage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disasters#Industrial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disaster... > Is the fact that plants are built near populated areas a factor? The thing with big plants in general is that even if they're built in remote areas (like Chernobyl), you want the thousands of plant employees housed nearby, which also means housing their families, who now all need food and healthcare and education and other services, and suddenly you end up with a pretty large town right next to that plant (like Pripyat). And such towns will draw further investments, making once remote area quite populated. On top of that, power generation unfortunately is pretty special wrt. range of potential contamination because of energies involved - so when things go bad, they go with a bang. That's why I usually mention industrial chemistry when discussing nuclear waste, as this is more of an apples to apples comparison. But then, my mind is often drawn to the oil sands in Canada - particularly to the artificial lakes storing highly carcinogenic toxic waste. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Athabasca_oil_sands.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Athabasc... Now imagine what would happen if that kind of thing ever spilled for some reason.
• matwood 6y ago
  > I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. Meanwhile burning fossil fuels as designed is going to make the entire planet uninhabitable. It's already unsafe to eat seafood very often because of the mercury content. Smog blankets many cities causing numerous health issues. I haven't even touched on global warming yet...
• cbmuser 6y ago
  Just look at Japan, most of the region around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has actually been reopened to the public already: > https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/20/national/beach-fukushima-prefecture-reopens-first-time-since-2011-disasters/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/20/national/beach-... > https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/05/national/evacuees-can-return-next-week-parts-okuma-host-fukushima-nuclear-plant-likely/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/05/national/evacue... Looking at the radiation levels, most places are already back to save levels: > https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/site/portal-english/en02-01.html https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/site/portal-english/en02-01... You have to keep in mind that nuclear contamination can actually be washed off. And the radiation is actually very useful in the cleaning process because you can easily use a detector to safely determine whether your cleaning operation was successful. Even Chernobyl is mostly safe these days unless you stay at the hotspots for too long.
  • Teever 6y ago
    > Even Chernobyl is mostly safe these days unless you stay at the hotspots for too long. You could say the exact same thing about a house fire.
    • fomine3 6y ago
      No. That's how radiation affects for human.
    • MagnumOpus 6y ago
      You could also say that about Bondi Beach. Stay out in the hot zone too long and you will get radiation burns from the unshielded nuclear reactor hanging over your head.
  • DangitBobby 6y ago
    Neither Fukushima nor Chernobyl were worst-case-scenario.
    • readams 6y ago
• Natsu 6y ago
  > nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years. Ignoring the fact that meltdown is not even possible in modern designs, even in a Fukushima total power loss scenario, note that the Bikini atoll is safe to visit at this point and it was the site of repeated nuclear testing. It's hard to see how nuclear power plants, which are designed to avoid any possibility of having a critical mass, could do worse than what was done to the atoll. So becoming uninhabitable for "thousands of years" would pretty difficult, even if someone were trying to do that intentionally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll#Current_habitable_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll#Current_habitable... > peak uranium... And what of peak oil then? Didn't that happen already? Also, what's the alternative? We stop using energy to make ammonium, let agriculture scale down to nothing, and leave people starving as food production plummets? There's only so much of a solar energy budget for the planet, then we have to get it from off world (with transport costs) or use up consumable sources already on the planet like coal, nuclear, etc. The universe loses the fight with entropy eventually no matter what we do, the only question is how long we last.
  • corty 6y ago
    Nuclear weapon use in the atmosphere, especially when not near-ground, is orders of magnitude cleaner than reactor accidents. A few hundred kg vs. tens of tons of isotopes released.
  • rriepe 6y ago
    Did you just slippery-slope all the way to entropy? I agree with you and I'm "on your side" in the inane political sense. Just acknowledging the drawbacks.
    • Natsu 6y ago
      Entropy is inevitable. I don't see that as a slippery slope but more of another way of saying "in the long run, we're all dead." So we have to have some time horizon for making our decisions, because decisions that are perfect now and forever isn't an actual option for us here and now.
  • DangitBobby 6y ago