6 ms·

Nuclear is just cleaner when it's done right. Look at the top producing plants in the US (https://findenergy.com/power-plants/ https://findenergy.com/power-plan

by vonadz 5y ago

Nuclear is just cleaner when it's done right. Look at the top producing plants in the US (https://findenergy.com/power-plants/ https://findenergy.com/power-plants/). All fossil fuels, mostly around 1,000 KGs of CO2/MWh produced. Nuclear is around 15 KGs/MWh. Just for reference, the #1 polluting plant in the US produces more CO2 than all of the passenger vehicles in the US combined.

runeks 5y ago
> Nuclear is just cleaner when it's done right. The question is whether “doing it wrong” (Fukushima) outweighs the benefits of “doing it right”.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  It's hard to say Fukushima was a case of "doing it wrong." You can only protect against a certain level of natural disasters. Even if you get totally paranoid and put the plant deep under earth you can never be sure an earthquake doesn't damage it. We just can't be 100% sure. On the other hand, can we afford not doing it? We don't yet have clean and efficient energy storage technologies that would allow us to switch to renewables completely. So if the alternative is to burn coal and worsen our already bad situation, the nuclear risk seems much smaller.
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    > It's hard to say Fukushima was a case of "doing it wrong." If you tsunami safety plan in a country prone to have tsunamis fits in one page and has not been updated in the last 9 years to include the new scientific data, yes, you are doing it wrong. If your plans calculate less than 6m high waves as a maximum and there is a 14m high wave event. If your calculus failed for more than 50%, not, this is not a good job. You could have done much more. Can blame the nature or the bad luck, or the constellations, but you are just lying to yourself.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      A fair point. Mine is: whatever wave height you plan for, you can be sure a higher one will come. It's not a question of if, only when.
- schaefer 5y ago
  There are designs that are perfectly safe. i.e. the pebble bed reactor. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor
  - nobodyandproud 5y ago
    Looking at the link, it looks like it poses its own challenges: >The most common criticism of pebble-bed reactors is that encasing the fuel in combustible graphite poses a hazard. When the graphite burns, fuel material could be carried away in smoke from the fire. These sound like solvable engineering and process challenges, though, so perhaps in the less anti-nuclear climate we’ll have the will to actually make it work.
- Ginden 5y ago
  > The question is whether “doing it wrong” (Fukushima) outweighs the benefits of “doing it right”. As of 2021, nuclear powerplant accidents killed less than 2 people per year since 1970s. As of 2018, nuclear powerplants produced 10% of energy. WHO estimates that climate change causes 150000 deaths per year.
  - netcan 5y ago
    True, but I don't think this invalidates OP's point. Nuclear disasters are scary in a different way.
    - Galaxeblaffer 5y ago
      I don't know.. poisoning the very air we breathe sounds pretty scary to me, and we're doing it in an immense scale right now
      - Ginden 5y ago
        Climate change due to CO2 emissions is not a form of poisoning. Air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year. Fossil-fuels powerplants produce surprisingly low air pollution due to all required by law filters, technologies etc.
        robin_reala 5y ago
        …in the US / EU.
        MadeThisToReply 5y ago
        Increasing the CO2 concentration in the air we breathe, even by the relatively small amount caused by burning fossil fuels, has been shown to lower human cognitive function. Does that count as poisoning? (Source: it's discussed in the book The Uninhabitable Earth, although I don't have a copy to hand so can't find the exact citations.)
        5y ago
- rimliu 5y ago
  If anything, Fukushima shows that even doing it wrong (not accounting for one-in-the-hundred-years disaster) is still very safe.
- midrus 5y ago
  Problem is that the alternatives, even done right, are worse.
priteau 5y ago
I don't think your last statement is correct. According to the linked page, the James H. Miller Jr. plant produces around 19 million metric tons of CO2 per year, while passenger cars produce around 760 million metric tons per year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235091/us-passenger-car-ghg-emissions-by-vehicle-type/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235091/us-passenger-car...
- vonadz 5y ago
  Yes you are correct, my bad I was misremembering. It's the sum of the top 100 most polluting plants (656 million metric tons in 2020) which is close to the total emission of all passenger vehicles. It was closer in 2019, because 2020 saw a 10% drop in emissions due to COVID.
gefhfff 5y ago
ignores long term storage issues
- midrus 5y ago
  ignores long term survival of life due to lack of better alternatives
  - gefhfff 5y ago
    Actually, there is renewable wnergy
    - arcanon 5y ago
      And it would seem our survival depends on its continued exponential growth if we are going to avoid our temp targets.
- vonadz 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpiK3W-g_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpiK3W-g_0 I actually had this in mind for storage.
- hoseja 5y ago
  Yes, that is what you do. You dump them deep underground and just ignore them, if you're not feeding them into breeder reactors.
flashfaffe2 5y ago
Actually the notion of cleaner should be taken with pinch of salt. I was very pro nuclear until it came out of my mind. Given its construction, the nuclear plan can have an intensive use of the sulfur hexafluoride ( SF6 Gas) Which according to Wikipedia "According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, SF 6 is the most potent greenhouse gas that has been evaluated, with a global warming potential of 23,900 times that of CO 2 when compared over a 100-year period" This puzzled me as pro- nuclear tend not to mention it. Unless new technology come up addressing this issue, I would not judge nuclear as clean for the time being. Page Wiki for additional information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  You have been trolled. See my last post downthread why.
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  How much is released during construction? It sounds fairly toxic - is it captured or in a closed loop circle?
  - flashfaffe2 5y ago
    Unfortunately not captured. Again this depending of how to he nuclear plant has been engineered. Based on the ref below (in French) Up to 2000 kg can be released each year. https://www-boursorama-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.boursorama.com/actualite-economique/actualites-amp/gaz-a-effet-de-serre-le-nucleaire-francais-emet-chaque-annee-1-3-a-2-tonnes-de-sf6-soit-l-equivalent-de-30-a-45-000-tonnes-de-co2-26dc6cfcec136b9947ca8c5f3d51397a https://www-boursorama-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bourso...
    - vonadz 5y ago
      That's still peanuts compared to coal. Largest plant had 18 billion kgs of CO2 released last year. 2000 * 23,900 = 47.8 million kg of CO2 equivalent. Obviously the prior calculation also depends on plant size, etc.

by vonadz 5y ago

runeks 5y ago

> Nuclear is just cleaner when it's done right. The question is whether “doing it wrong” (Fukushima) outweighs the benefits of “doing it right”.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
It's hard to say Fukushima was a case of "doing it wrong." You can only protect against a certain level of natural disasters. Even if you get totally paranoid and put the plant deep under earth you can never be sure an earthquake doesn't damage it. We just can't be 100% sure. On the other hand, can we afford not doing it? We don't yet have clean and efficient energy storage technologies that would allow us to switch to renewables completely. So if the alternative is to burn coal and worsen our already bad situation, the nuclear risk seems much smaller.
- pvaldes 5y ago
  > It's hard to say Fukushima was a case of "doing it wrong." If you tsunami safety plan in a country prone to have tsunamis fits in one page and has not been updated in the last 9 years to include the new scientific data, yes, you are doing it wrong. If your plans calculate less than 6m high waves as a maximum and there is a 14m high wave event. If your calculus failed for more than 50%, not, this is not a good job. You could have done much more. Can blame the nature or the bad luck, or the constellations, but you are just lying to yourself.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    A fair point. Mine is: whatever wave height you plan for, you can be sure a higher one will come. It's not a question of if, only when.
schaefer 5y ago
There are designs that are perfectly safe. i.e. the pebble bed reactor. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor
- nobodyandproud 5y ago
  Looking at the link, it looks like it poses its own challenges: >The most common criticism of pebble-bed reactors is that encasing the fuel in combustible graphite poses a hazard. When the graphite burns, fuel material could be carried away in smoke from the fire. These sound like solvable engineering and process challenges, though, so perhaps in the less anti-nuclear climate we’ll have the will to actually make it work.
Ginden 5y ago
> The question is whether “doing it wrong” (Fukushima) outweighs the benefits of “doing it right”. As of 2021, nuclear powerplant accidents killed less than 2 people per year since 1970s. As of 2018, nuclear powerplants produced 10% of energy. WHO estimates that climate change causes 150000 deaths per year.
- netcan 5y ago
  True, but I don't think this invalidates OP's point. Nuclear disasters are scary in a different way.
  - Galaxeblaffer 5y ago
    I don't know.. poisoning the very air we breathe sounds pretty scary to me, and we're doing it in an immense scale right now
    - Ginden 5y ago
      Climate change due to CO2 emissions is not a form of poisoning. Air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year. Fossil-fuels powerplants produce surprisingly low air pollution due to all required by law filters, technologies etc.
      - robin_reala 5y ago
        …in the US / EU.
      - MadeThisToReply 5y ago
        Increasing the CO2 concentration in the air we breathe, even by the relatively small amount caused by burning fossil fuels, has been shown to lower human cognitive function. Does that count as poisoning? (Source: it's discussed in the book The Uninhabitable Earth, although I don't have a copy to hand so can't find the exact citations.)
        5y ago
rimliu 5y ago
If anything, Fukushima shows that even doing it wrong (not accounting for one-in-the-hundred-years disaster) is still very safe.
midrus 5y ago
Problem is that the alternatives, even done right, are worse.

priteau 5y ago

I don't think your last statement is correct. According to the linked page, the James H. Miller Jr. plant produces around 19 million metric tons of CO2 per year, while passenger cars produce around 760 million metric tons per year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235091/us-passenger-car-ghg-emissions-by-vehicle-type/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235091/us-passenger-car...

vonadz 5y ago
Yes you are correct, my bad I was misremembering. It's the sum of the top 100 most polluting plants (656 million metric tons in 2020) which is close to the total emission of all passenger vehicles. It was closer in 2019, because 2020 saw a 10% drop in emissions due to COVID.

gefhfff 5y ago

ignores long term storage issues

midrus 5y ago
ignores long term survival of life due to lack of better alternatives
- gefhfff 5y ago
  Actually, there is renewable wnergy
  - arcanon 5y ago
    And it would seem our survival depends on its continued exponential growth if we are going to avoid our temp targets.
vonadz 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpiK3W-g_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpiK3W-g_0 I actually had this in mind for storage.
hoseja 5y ago
Yes, that is what you do. You dump them deep underground and just ignore them, if you're not feeding them into breeder reactors.

flashfaffe2 5y ago

Actually the notion of cleaner should be taken with pinch of salt. I was very pro nuclear until it came out of my mind. Given its construction, the nuclear plan can have an intensive use of the sulfur hexafluoride ( SF6 Gas) Which according to Wikipedia "According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, SF 6 is the most potent greenhouse gas that has been evaluated, with a global warming potential of 23,900 times that of CO 2 when compared over a 100-year period" This puzzled me as pro- nuclear tend not to mention it. Unless new technology come up addressing this issue, I would not judge nuclear as clean for the time being. Page Wiki for additional information: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_hexafluoride

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
You have been trolled. See my last post downthread why.
edmundsauto 5y ago
How much is released during construction? It sounds fairly toxic - is it captured or in a closed loop circle?
- flashfaffe2 5y ago
  Unfortunately not captured. Again this depending of how to he nuclear plant has been engineered. Based on the ref below (in French) Up to 2000 kg can be released each year. https://www-boursorama-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.boursorama.com/actualite-economique/actualites-amp/gaz-a-effet-de-serre-le-nucleaire-francais-emet-chaque-annee-1-3-a-2-tonnes-de-sf6-soit-l-equivalent-de-30-a-45-000-tonnes-de-co2-26dc6cfcec136b9947ca8c5f3d51397a https://www-boursorama-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bourso...
  - vonadz 5y ago
    That's still peanuts compared to coal. Largest plant had 18 billion kgs of CO2 released last year. 2000 * 23,900 = 47.8 million kg of CO2 equivalent. Obviously the prior calculation also depends on plant size, etc.