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Nuclear power must be well regulated, not ditched
- spark3k 6y agoEven when we think things can't go wrong, and we think that we've thought of all the ways they could go wrong if they did, they still manage to go wrong. Everything goes wrong. Why do we need to pick a mind-bogglingly expensive technology where going wrong means catastrophe? You can set your watch by the regularity at which the nuclear lobbies throw a "for the sake of climate change" article in a respected publication.
- mpweiher 6y agoBecause in practice/empirically it is safer than the alternatives even when things do go wrong. And they go wrong very rarely.
- Krasnol 6y agoStatistics won't help you if one of those "every 20 years" disasters hit a highly populated area like Europe. The technology will still look "safe" on paper but you'd have depopulated a huge area and maybe even killed people or keep on killing through cancer.
- mpweiher 6y agoThis is not "statistics" it is simple facts. Japan is highly populated.
- spark3k 6y ago"Very rarely" is not enough to justify thousands of years of uninhabitable square kilometres.
- Mrdarknezz 6y agoThat's not really true. Nuclear kills about as many as RE https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoBut those numbers are essentially cherry-picked. They include just production of energy, like falling into the furnace? Consider about externalities. Mining, shipping. Then add in environmental erosion resulting in lower lifespans around the globe. Then failure/interruptions that endanger folks during cold snaps/heat waves. That's a big one - petrochemical plants can be down 30% of the time (nuclear < 2%) leaving grids endangered. And of course its per-terawatt deaths that are interesting, not totals. Other wise you just have (literally) a heat map!
- Mrdarknezz 6y agoMining and shipping is required for all forms of energy. Of course it's gonna be per twh because that is the only way to measure that makes any sense. Kurzgesagt has a great video explaining everything here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoMining and shipping are very, very different by source - every watt of coal is shipped. Only the machinery for solar is shipped. Nuclear fuel is shipped in pounds not megatons, but they are fantastically dangerous pounds. Etc. Utterly different in effect on risk. The linked chart seemed to list totals. Did it have per TWHr? I missed that.
- Mrdarknezz 6y agoIf you want to talkt about emissions instead here is a great summary from the Swedish Life cycle analysis by energy source: Nuclear: 6g CO2/kwh Hydro: 9g CO2/kwh Wind: 13g CO2/kwh Solar: 24g CO2/kwh This includes everything from construction to mining. The data comes from Swedens state run energy company Vattenfall LCA report https://www.vattenfall.se/foretag/miljo/epd/ https://www.vattenfall.se/foretag/miljo/epd/ and here is a an article that summarizes it https://blog.karnfull.se/blog/kaernkraftslogik-1-klimatsmart https://blog.karnfull.se/blog/kaernkraftslogik-1-klimatsmart
- politician 6y agopaywall
- kwhitefoot 6y agoIt worked for me. I have uBlock Origin I wonder if that helps?
- AniseAbyss 6y agoWow what a genius conclusion. I agree which is why I'm against nuclear. Our society always screws up. When the aviation industry fails in its regulations a few hundred people die- a tragedy to be sure but recoverable.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- misiti3780 6y agoNuclear energy is safer than coal, oil, natural gas. https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106843635-1614009026741-death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh.jpg?v=1614009086&w=740&h=521 https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/106843635-161400902674...
- thepete2 6y agoThat's a strange statistic. Saying it is safer by this statistic alone is misleading.
- Aachen 6y agoWhat other statistic would you use? Deaths per year? Injuries per year? Injuries per TWh? Without further information we can't have a conversation about what wouldn't be misleading (or whether this is misleading in the first place - I don't see why).
- eeZah7Ux 6y agoTotal deaths over 1000 years after a catastrophic release of nuclear material, for example 10 fully-fueled power plants being hit by missiles during a conflict. Also, probability of nuclear waste being unearthed in the next 50.000 years multiplied by the estimated death toll of such event.
- thepete2 6y agoI mean come on, deaths by pollution and accidents is all you look at to declare it as safe? What about the almost existential risk and the unsolved final repository problem? (the US at least still doesn't have one). Maybe the risk is low and until now nothing serious has happened in the US, but the potential for damage is so devastating that you should factor it in somehow. It's just not as simple as one number is probably what I'm trying to say ...
- grecy 6y agoI'm a huge fan of nuclear power, but I took away a different lesson from Fukushima. When it all went wrong (and it inevitably will), there was literally nothing we could do to stop it. People could not get close and we had no robots that could help. All we could do was pump as much water in and hope for the best, knowing full well that contaminated water was going straight into the ocean. We literally built a machine capable of immense destruction that - given the right series of events - we become unable to control. It was a HUGE stroke of luck that it didn't go much, much worse.
- jszymborski 6y agoI'm not going to pretend like I know the answer here, but my gut tells me that this is sort of like accepting the risk of smoking but not accepting the risk of sky-diving. Smoking will almost certainly kill you in the long-run, but there is a rare chance that you might explode into a fine red mist moments after you jump if your chute doesn't unravel. We worry about rare acute disaster, but ignore slow but certain disaster.
- Krasnol 6y agoThe difference here is that you're talking about different people. People who don't want nuclear usually (always?) don't want coal too.
- soperj 6y agoThat's because they're running a 70 year old design. You don't need back-up power for a CANDU reactor which are still old, but not one of the initial designs. You can't build nuclear weapons with a CANDU reactor though, so it's not really in high demand.
- dongobongo 6y agoI was going to mention CANDU, basically the only exception to the above comment about running at too high power density.
- dongobongo 6y ago
- kwhitefoot 6y agoHow can one regulate an endeavour that is so inextricably entwined with the military and government prestige? How do you set up a genuinely independent regulator that has strong enough teeth, one that cannot be leaned on by industry heavyweights lobbying the government? These problems are not unique to nuclear power, of course; Australia seems to have similar problems with coal, and the US with oil.
- bb123 6y agoIs nuclear power particularly an element of Japanese government prestige? I have to say when I think of Japan, nuclear power doesn’t spring to mind. Same goes for the military - is there any evidence that nuclear power is particularly entwined with the Japanese military?
- redis_mlc 6y agoJAXA is basically a Japanese ICBM program, so start there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAXA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAXA
- garmaine 6y agoEnergy independence is a matter of Japanese government prestige. As Japan being a resource-poor nation pretty much led to WW2, becoming energy independent was a major post-war goal. Nuclear was a very essential part of that (not anymore).
- fomine3 6y agoThat's true. 1973 oil crisis was another great reason to go nuclear plants.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> I think of Japan, nuclear power doesn’t spring to mind. It does for me, but that probably has more to do with Godzilla movies. Japan is also unique in its experience with nuclear energy. I think of Japan as a country that has a mature understanding of nuclear power. I would not lecture them on the subject.
- lancewiggs 6y agoThere seem to be a series of pro-nuclear submissions here, driven by articles that are, perhaps, driven by lobbying. That would be an interesting story to dig out. The resulting discussion points out that the cost of nuclear power plants is very high, the long term risks high, the time taken to build and cost overruns extraordinarily high and so on and on. Meanwhile renewables are cheaper, even when adding the batteries required to smooth lumps, and they can be stood up very quickly. Sure keep the old plants and improve regulation, but investors are not going to get returns from nuclear plants when the competition is low capex, free sunlight and almost zero maintenance.
- melling 6y agoI don’t think we currently have the battery technology to carry the base load for the United States.
- bpodgursky 6y agoI think there are far more effective venues for lobbying that posting pro-nuclear links to HN. More likely, it's educated users who don't want to see the world melt by 2100.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>driven by articles that are, perhaps, driven by lobbying Or because people are waking up and realizing that climate change is gonna screw us faster than we can build the tech to prevent that and people are defecting toward nuclear which is relatively shovel ready compared to grid scale solar/wind and the storage they necessitate.
- Krasnol 6y agoThat doesn't make sense. If you feel pressure by time, nuclear is and never was your solution. It takes too long to construct. By the time a single reactor is build, renewables will jump several development steps.
- Hammershaft 6y ago
- simonCGN 6y agoAnother of those propaganda articles.
- quasirandom 6y agoSome problems that Fukushima had: 1950s vintage design, active cooling system, backup power at sea level in a seismically active area. This kind of failure was not just predictable, it was predicted. People travel to Japan from around the world to learn how to build earthquake resistant structures. Their nuclear engineers are top-notch. It was the bureaucracy that failed, not the talent. In short, the problems were human not technical. People get complacent and greedy. They use every procedural tool they have to delay upgrades, maintenance, and improvement. I think that is at the core of most nuclear skepticism. Does anyone honestly think the United States has institutions sound enough to safely manage nuclear power over multiple decades? Or will they neglect basic maintenance and upgrades?
- garmaine 6y ago> Does anyone honestly think the United States has institutions sound enough to safely manage nuclear power over multiple decades? Or will they neglect basic maintenance and upgrades? Objectively, yes. There hasn't been a major nuclear reactor leak in the ~75 years the nuclear industry has existed in the USA. Even Three Mile Island, the worst disaster the US ever saw, was fully contained due to regulator-forced safeguards.
- retrac 6y agoI'm not sure why you're downvoted. After 50+ years of routine operation generating a nontrivial proportion of energy, we can look back at a decent amount of data. And what we see is that nuclear has been remarkably safe. Up here in Canada, coal mine disasters alone have killed far more people. When you start adding in air pollution and other such nasties, it's an enormously vast gulf in lethality. A cynical take. Estimate how many people would have died from air pollution due to a coal power plant generating the same amount of electrical energy as the reactor at Chernobyl that blew up. Estimate how many died from Chernobyl. The reasonable estimates of the high end of the former, and low end of the latter, are overlapping. It's not entirely preposterous to suggest that replacing unscrubbed coal plants with shoddy reactors that simply explode after 20 years of operation could actually save lives in net.
- asddubs 6y agoand then the conservatives come into power and neuter all regulation again
- adamc 6y agoThe potential for it to go horribly wrong gives me great pause. Sure, if we do everything right, it might be fine. But people make mistakes. People get greedy and lazy. The worst case is pretty "worst" here.
- mpweiher 6y agoIt goes completely against what most believe, but out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy And that's including the worst-case accidents.
- Aachen 6y agoWe all seem to get that airplanes are safe and that being afraid to fly is something to overcome. We also know how disastrously it can go wrong if the plane crashes into flats (I'm thinking of the Bijlmer disaster, not a terrorist attack): it's not a theoretical risk, it's just exceedingly unlikely to happen to you. How come this is communicated differently for fission energy? Looking at the data it's a similar situation.
- StillBored 6y agoPlanes are massively more dangerous too. How many actual deaths are a result of nuke accidents? Depending on how you count its possible more people died in a single airplane crashes than have died in all the nuke related energy production incidents, ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123 If you want to include ground based deaths 911 was close to 3k people dead.
- adamc 6y agoMy father, who used to testify at various hearings (he was a physicist) used to make this argument. I think it kind of misses a key point: People would much rather deal with N deaths a year than deal with a range with an average of N - k, but a much, much higher possible number (thicker tail to the distribution). Just because math says it's better doesn't mean that is how people experience the risk.
- cestith 6y agoPower plants designed to be only power plants rather than also fast breeders for military doomsday weapons would certainly help. Molten salt reactors and Candu reactors neither one fail the same way as Fukushima and Chernobyl. Fusion plants, once commercially viable, also will not fail the same way. New light water reactors should probably not be built considering the options.
- Aachen 6y agoDidn't bill gates fund this traveling wave reactor that has this property? I checked Wikipedia but it doesn't say either way. I don't remember for sure but I think this is a thing now, just nobody wants him to build it because brrr scary nuclear let's rather stop advancement of the field.
- marcosdumay 6y agoFast breeders are scary. That Wikipedia page does not mention any breakthrough in passive stability, and unless somebody mentions it, the safe thing to assume is that any fast breeder has none. What means that it can basically blow like the Chernobyl reactor or worse due to failure of equipment.
- Aachen 6y agoI'm no physicist, is this traveling wave reactor a "fast breeder" that you're talking about? From what I read, the stability comes from it not being a runaway reaction that needs active brakes. If something fails, the reaction will stop on its own rather than having a meltdown or explosion. But I'm just parroting what I read in the past (not sure where), I don't do nuclear physics and can't say whether it's snake oil or real.
- marcosdumay 6y agoI'm not an expert. My knowledge of nuclear physics is limited to some liquid model theory at university (what is basically the simplest model you can find and completely useless), and some empiric data. I also just met this design. But I do know some general principles. The Wiki page claims very briefly this is a fast breeder design where it says it uses fast neutrons, also, it doesn't mention moderation, that is the process that converts fast neutrons into slow ones. Now, the thing that makes slow neutron reactions safer is that nothing happens unless the neutrons goes into the moderation medium, so if things deviate from the design, the reaction stops. Fast neutron reactions do not have this property, so any stability must be designed into it. That does not mean that you can't get some passive stability built into it, what it does mean is that it must be actively put into the project, and you must correctly account for any possible failure mode. Thus, a good rule of thumb is that if somebody is talking about fast reactors and doesn't take 90% of the time talking about safety, then that somebody does not have a viable idea.
- 0x1DEADCA0 6y ago"Lessons from McDonalds-- chemicals and fats must be well regulated, not ditched"
- Hammershaft 6y agoCan you enlighten me with a better currently existing alternative to 24/7 baseload power?
- 0x1DEADCA0 6y agoWhy should the power needs of certain people be put above the safety of giant land areas? I am happy to pay a premium for technologies that are less efficient but safer. When did it become acceptable to say that society needs to pursue as much electricity production as possible, all risks be damned?
- mpweiher 6y agoIt goes completely against what most believe, but out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy
- 0x1DEADCA0 6y agoIn what world can you convince me that nuclear is safe when we have Chernobyl and Fukushima? Like are we going to compared it to coal or something of the sort? When nuclear fails, which it will, through accident or terrorism, it fails forever, catastrophically Why cant we all live off solar and wind? Why must you have nuclear?
- hntrader 6y ago"Why cant we all live off solar and wind? Why must you have nuclear?" Is large scale and cost competitive energy storage a solved problem?
- PaulHoule 6y agoThe real trouble with the light water reactor is not the nuclear part but the steam turbine it is attached to. Unfortunately people have a way of driving while looking in the rear view mirror and much of the discussion around nuclear energy revolves around issues of the 1970s. In the 1970s coal burning power plants were the cost king of power plants. There was some concern about making them cleaner, but by the 1980s gas turbine power plants with 10 times the power density (e.g. 1/10 the capital cost) were becoming widespread and people quit building coal plants. (A big literature got left behind about how to drive a gas turbine from coal, on paper it would be lower capital cost than a conventional coal plant, but the technology never got developed at full scale.) Even if the heat was free it would be hard for a steam turbine based power plant to compete with gas turbines. Now it should be possible to build a nuclear power plant based on the brayton cycle using helium or carbon dioxide or some similar gas as a working fluid. You then need to use helium or sodium or lead as a coolant because the pressure would be too high with water. Fast reactors are the best developed option, followed by the prismatic HTGR, then the thorium reactors. Pebble-bed HTGR looked pretty good until an expose came out that a German pebble bed reactor had a difficult time... Turns out pebbles that slide past each other just fine in air will get stuck on each other and crack in helium. When Bill Gates and others go around saying we have to get over the safety issue they are continuing the stigma. Nuclear power is not going to get out of it's funk unless it has a cost story that looks good when everything goes right -- which is not the case with the LWR.
- nickik 6y agoMy favourite current design is by Moltex Energy. Its basically, what happens if you take a Sodium reactor design and instead use molten salt. It basically fixes all the really terrible ideas about sodium reactors and gives you the advantage of molten salt reactors. The problem is, what we are doing now are all things that could and should have been done in the 70-80s.
- ncmncm 6y agoNo one has successfully contained molten salt, although they have tried.
- DavidVoid 6y agoNuclear power, when done right, is good and safe. But right now it's much too financially and politically risky when compared to the alternatives. Look at Finland for example. They're building two new power plants: Olkiluoto Unit 3: Under construction since 2005, commercial operation delayed by at least 13 years now and the initial delivery price of €3 billion is estimated to end up at €8.5 billion. Hanhikivi: Won't be operational until at earliest 2028 and is expected to cost €6.7 billion. 34% of the plant is/will be owned by the Russian state coorporation Rosatom, because all the alternative suppliers were too expensive. If the plant eventually becomes operational then Rosatom will supply 3% of Finland's total electricity production. Would it not have been much more reasonable to spend this money on developing and investing in renewable energy sources?
- StillBored 6y agoCan you give hard reasons for the delay? As in this concrete needed to be poured 6" thicker than originally speced and what the upgrade provides? The couple times I've actually seen these changes described, they are changes enacted to stall the development, not because of a hard technical reason in the design.
- fsflover 6y agoNuclear power would be more competitive if the CO2 tax was implemented.
- Tade0 6y agoBut it is in the EU - there's a cap and trade scheme in place. Over the course of 2018 the price of allowance for 1t of CO2 emissions shot up from ~€8 to €25 and so far hasn't dropped.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rhodozelia 6y agoHanhikivi is 1000 MW and will supply 10% of Finland’s energy needs according to Wikipedia. Olkiluoto is 1600 MW and should therefore supply 16% of Finland’s energy needs. Wikipedia says it will Be online in February 2022. So for 16 billion euro Finland gets 26% of their energy from a firm source with no carbon Emissions. British Columbia is spending 16 billion CAD on a 1000 MW hydro dam callers site C, in a system with a peak load of 16,000 MW that is 90% hydro. 16 billion euros for two nuclear plants that will make Up a quarter of the Finnish system doesn’t seem that bad to me? You need something for the cloudy week with no wind. I’m not saying don’t also pursue renewables, but nuclear is part of the solution. It isn’t an either/or, it’s both.
- nickdothutton 6y agoThe message is don’t use 1940s physics understanding, 1950s design, 1960s construction to build a reactor that is then run for about 50 years and and expect to continue to avoid problems with it.
- croes 6y agoThey will say similar in 50 years about today's technology.
- thereisnospork 6y agoThat's the point, because right now 50 years from now they will still be talking about 100 year old technology because we haven't allowed ourselves to advance.
- nickik 6y agoThe problem if nuclear power is that technology progress has slowed to almost 0 and we are still operating with 60s technology. In the 60s we built many, many test reactors and it was clear that nuclear power had huge potential to revolutionize the world. This is still true, the energy density inherent in nuclear power can transform lots of industries. But unfortunately the regulatory structure built around nuclear material and nuclear deployment is almost impossible to manage. This is partly simply to do with how restrictive the access to the material itself. Forms of regulation that make it almost impossible to do any kind of iterations, you can't even do a small scale test reactor in a practical way. Look at how SpaceX is building Starship. That's how you get revolutionary technology. Not by sitting around for 10-15 years to maybe one day directly building a full scale reactor (that you then have to scale). A fundamental shift in how to think about the potential of nuclear needs to be done. The regulatory structures have to be fundamentally redesigned in pretty much every aspect. The DoE has admitted some of the issues but trying to rationalise the regulation but its like relocating an asteroid. Good regulation will not suddenly make 60s technology competitive today, we need to rethink the process from innovation to operation in a new way.
- polytely 6y agoThere was a really good twitter tread about Fukushima by Dr. Malka Older (great sci-fi writer) who wrote a report on the disaster for the french nuclear safety agency, it gives you an idea about the kinds of problems the engineers working on the reactor faced while the crisis unfolded, very interesting read. https://twitter.com/m_older/status/1366324146901254146?s=19 https://twitter.com/m_older/status/1366324146901254146?s=19
- alexashka 6y agoMaybe science, engineering and social planning should be left to people who actually specialize and work in those fields? Just introduce decapitation for people who turn out to be incompetent idiots. I don't understand what this fear mongering or 'discussion' of science and technology at the level of idiot journalists accomplishes, besides making idiot readers think they can have an opinion on just about anything because they're now 'informed'. If there was a time when idiots knew they were idiots and stayed in their lane, I'd like to go back to it, if not, I'd love for it to be introduced. Otherwise, we'll have populist idiots promising to go to the moon to harvest it for cheese and idiots debating whether we should harvest the moon for cheese or invest in an eternal life elixir.
- kevincox 6y agoThe key thing to remember is that power sources like coal and other fossil fuels have a very real health cost. A large number of people die every year. However a nuclear accident is much more "exciting" news and sticks in people's mind. People dying of cancer, asthma and other conditions are not as direct or as dramatic.
- michaelbarton 6y agoDid a control-F for "kurzgesagt" and saw that it had not been mentioned yet. I really recommend watching this short video which gives a really excellent overview of the dangers of nuclear power in the context of the alternatives. The TLDW is even if a very pessimistic estimate of the dangers of nuclear power is still much better than a very optimistic take on the dangers of fossil fuels once you combine the effects of air pollution and climate change. That includes both Chernobyl and Fukushima. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM
- jillesvangurp 6y agoTrue, however, solar and wind are proving to be the killer technology in the sense that they are forcing coal plants to actually go extinct at a rapid pace. They are being forced out of the market based on cost. Nuclear never had that power of persuasion because it was too expensive. That's why we have so many coal plants. Nuclear is part of the problem, not the solution. To be part of the solution it will have to be vastly cheaper than it is today. Probably by at least one or two orders of magnitude. That's an interesting research problem to work on the next decades. By the time that happens or not, there won't be any coal plants remaining and most gas will be on the way out as well (considering that is already barely competitive today).
- concordDance 6y agoPeople hugely overreacted to Fukishima. It killed no one, unlike climate change which will kill tens or hundreds of millions. Nuclear is hugely overregulated.
- croes 6y agoRadiation has long term effects
- RealityVoid 6y agoPollution has long term effects. It's funny that now when we talk about nuclear we _care_ about the long term effects. Let's be honest, it's simply imprinted in our common consciousness as scary and that is that. Besides, most reactors do not affect a large area unless they go wrong and the examples are quite far in-between.
- croes 6y agoBut it is not either or, but in addition. The radius of effect may be small, but the duration is extreme. Depending on the accident, the radius can be quite large. In Germany there are still areas where it is dangerous to eat mushrooms from the forest because of the radioactivity from Chernobyl. And a study from the Max-Planck-Institute concludes that an accident is to be expected every 20 to 25 years.
- RealityVoid 6y ago> And a study from the Max-Planck-Institute concludes that an accident is to be expected every 20 to 25 years. That is a a small price to pay compared to the alternative.
- croes 6y agoAn unnecessary one because of safer alternatives. None of our technologies is flawless and on top of that there is human greed and incompetence. This means that even if we had clean nuclear energy, we would not be able to operate it faultlessly worldwide for a long time. Or do you know an authority or a company that you would trust with this?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hahahahe 6y agoCorrect me if I am wrong but USSR installed hundreds of nuclear-powered light houses across the arctic coast. Many were neglected. Edit: https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0931jtk/the-nuclear-lighthouses-built-by-the-soviets-in-the-arctic https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0931jtk/the-nuclear-lighthou...
- godelski 6y agoThe neglect was largely associated with the fall of the USSR and their economy. While this should be a scenario we should be concerned about, I don't think it is particularly relevant to the conversation and certainly not a coup d'etat
- RicardoLuis0 6y agoWhile those USSR generators are indeed nuclear-powered, they use a completely different method from nuclear plants. They simply convert the decay heat of a radioactive material into energy, and as such aren't subject to any drastic reactions such as meltdowns. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
- tacocataco 6y agoIs there any solution for nuclear waste yet? The newest generation systems seem much better and safer, but the half life on the waste is huge. There isn't a guarantee the country itself will even be around in that time span. Even though clearly nuclear energy is the future, it's hard to support nuclear energy. More R&D is required IMO. Especially considering how efficient humans are at externalizing costs and consequences.
- Covzire 6y agoI wonder is anyone even allowed to try to do something useful with the waste on a large scale, or is it so regulated ala Schedule 1 natural plants / fungi that research is only able to operate at a snail's pace?
- himinlomax 6y ago> Is there any solution for nuclear waste yet? I remember reading about a possible solution: deep core drilling. Drill a 2km-deep hole, dump the waste in it, fill back in. This is different from previous schemes that are at most a few hundred meters deep. At that depth, it can't interact with aquifers or anything on the surface except at geological timescales. It's also safe from unauthorized access, even if the knowledge of the danger of the waste is ever lost. Not sure what the status of the research on this is though.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.fo/SLoqm https://archive.fo/SLoqm
- SCAQTony 6y agoPerhaps centralized nuclear plants are the biggest existential threat whereas micro-nuclear plants, staggered some miles miles away from each other would produce more energy and smaller scale accidents if one was to occur?
- HPsquared 6y agoI read your comment as "more and smaller scale accidents" Hopefully fewer accidents as well! Small reactors do tend to have better passive safety...
- lamontcg 6y agoEvery time I get into an argument with someone pro-nuclear and bring up the costs, they always blame hippies hamstringing nuclear power with regulations. Around and around the argument goes, meanwhile solar and wind costs keep on dropping, and baseload concerns keep on fading away.
- etiam 6y agoa foreseeable risk Japan’s neutered regulators had failed to foresee Hogwash. The plant was built on a known tsunami basin. The whole calamity from beginning to end was caused by bureaucratic pigheadedness against warnings based on better knowing. Not that I see that as much of an argument for this piece's line of argument because we're still just as bad at having the right people make decisions for the right reasons. And if there was a single crumb of contribution towards that in the opinion piece I must have missed it.
- reason-mr 6y agoNuclear powered steam-engine. That sounds more accurate to what is actually going on with fusion power, I think.
- heyrhett 6y agoIf I've learned anything from a masters degree in nuclear engineering, it's that the internet comments are always right on this topic.
- LatteLazy 6y agoRegulation has failed in the face of expediency time and time again. That's the reason I opposite nuclear. Sure, plants CAN be run safely. But WILL they be run safely? Even in 10, 20, 50 or 100 years? Even under the next 100 years worth of social, economic, and political circumstances? No one has managed that so far. People love coming up with new physics tricks or clever engineering for fission power. But what we actually need is new Political Science or even Political Engineering.
- natmaka 6y agoGood luck trying to make most people believe that some Committee will understand it all, and always take all necessary actions in due time. They already see governments playing this pantomime.
- tinus_hn 6y agoSo in 10 years when the next disaster has happened we can start looking for excuses again. ‘How could this have happened? We’ll never let this happen again! This will never happen to us, surely!’
- KDJohnBrown 6y agoThere’s an irony here. The adamantly pro-nuclear crowd tends to be just as vocally anti-regulation. It’s stranfe that proponents of a “trustless society” are willing to put so much faith in corporations and governments ability to do the right thing, plan for the future or even exist in the future.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoWell-regulated? The site Fukushima was built on was originally much higher than the water. The region had been struck by several equally huge tsunamis in the previous century. Despite that history, the site was carved down to be much nearer the water before the plant was built. Regulations aren't the problem. Humans are - and 60+ years of experience has proven that problem to be insoluble. Add to that the costs, and the available timeline, and: exactly how does nuclear become a solution of any kind?
- cybert00th 6y agoOh for crying out loud, it's precisely because of regulation that it's one of the safest industries in the world! More regulation won't make it safer, just more regulated!
- andrekandre 6y agoone thing that i dont see talked about alot is, what industry players does nuclear favor vs "green" energy nuclear, like coal/oil requires heavy up-front capital costs and favors already large players in the industry what i have heard said is that wind, solar, geo etc can be implemented in more decentralized way and with lower up-front costs which encourage competition, entrepreneurship, innovation (materials, distribution, pricing etc) and potentially more resiliance to central failure personally, im not anti-nuclear (despite having lived through fukushima) but the idea of more competitive, lower capital-costs and decentralized power grids sounds very enticing if its at all possible