13 ms·

The debate about nuclear power and climate change

66 points by runeks 5y ago

worik 5y ago
There is a lot of "over regulation is causing the sky high price of nuclear" here in the comments. Consider the counterfactual: Would you like to have a lightly regulated nuclear power plant near you and your family? Nimbyism? Or caring for your family. It all depends on your POV.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  Yes I would like less regulation of nuclear. The NRCs 15mrem per year requirement is nonsense. It means that a person living on site year round, growing all food on site, and drinking the groundwater must receive less radiation than eating 3 bananas per year. It’s an unscientific requirement. The ban on reprocessing is stupid, and results in more waste. The ban on long term storage outside of Yucca Mountain is dumb. Prehistoric salt deposits are far better and cheaper to maintain. Requiring waste storage that won’t expose a hypothetical persons 10k years in the future to more than 15mrem per year is also stupid. It’s all based on the linear no-threshold model which isn’t supported by evidence. We know from experience that 35 mrem dental x-rays and 70mrem chest x-rays don’t pose any risk to the average person over their lifetimes, for example. Adhering to the 15mrem standard is insanely costly. Especially since it can be super difficult to separate from background radiation that’s at times 2 orders of magnitude higher. You’d get 600mrem standing in Grand Central In NYC all year, and more on a flight to Europe.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    What ban on reprocessing? The one Carter created that was removed by Reagan? We aren't reprocessing in the US not because of some "ban", but because reprocessing is economically senseless. It literally costs more than it saves. The separated plutonium has negative value -- it costs more to convince someone to put it into MOX fuel than it saves in enriched uranium.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      The ban was lifted in 81 but the closure of the facilities required investment in order for them to restart. So the ban continued in a de facto sense. I’m willing to concede that this isn’t my strongest point. What I’m aiming at though, is that it strongly mitigates the waste issue.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        Reprocessing makes the waste issue worse. Instead of all the stuff nicely sealed up in fuel rods, it's now spread all through the reprocessing plant. The volume of contaminated material will increase greatly. And it doesn't really reduce the volume of underground storage needed (from heating due to alpha decay of higher actinides.) BTW, your comment about LNT is also misguided. There is no good evidence that LNT is wrong, and without LNT you might instead get a "precautionary" approach: assume radiation has the worst damage not ruled out by evidence. This would be much WORSE for nuclear than LNT, as it would increase the presumed damage from low doses. LNT is nuclear's friend; it is looked askance at by some of the anti-nuclear people for that reason.
        ch4s3 5y ago
        I was referring primarily to reprocessing through IFR, but I can see you point that the proceeding steps carry risk. I think the issue with LNT is that is ISN'T supported by evidence and observationally in real life it seems to be wrong. I would prefer a PRA based approach that is focused on minimizing probable real world risks.
        pfdietz 5y ago
        LNT is consistent with the evidence. And it's a simple theory, and it makes sense mechanistically. What more do you want? You could concoct a more complicated theory, but Ockham's Razor says no. I also wonder why you think this approach would be a good thing for nuclear. There's an assumption in these pro-nuclear LNT arguments that LNT would be replaced by something (hormesis or whatever) that would make radiation less dangerous. But there's no reason to think that would happen. Radiation is not a criminal defendant that will be presumed innocent until proven guilty. BTW, the NRC recently denied petitions to reconsider LNT. Their responses to the arguments are worth reading. https://www.regulations.gov/document/NRC-2015-0057-0671 https://www.regulations.gov/document/NRC-2015-0057-0671
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  One of my offices in grad school had an experimental nuclear reactor (run by students!) in the next building, maybe 25 or 30 feet away. Didn't bother me a bit. And I still even have the regulation number of heads and other appendages.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Probably a TRIGA reactor, which wasn't experimental. These have U-Zr hydride fuel with such a strong instantaneous negative temperature feedback that one could instantly remove all the control rods from the reactor and it would still settle down to steady power output without catastrophe. I don't think they're suitable for power production though (I think the burnup the fuel can support is too low?)
pfdietz 5y ago
No, it isn't.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  What makes you say that? If we reprocess uranium fuel, a person’s lifetime energy waste would be barely larger than a soda can and mostly only emitting alpha radiation. You lifetime energy waste from renewables and batteries would be much more voluminous and far more dangerous, being full of lithium.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    Lithium and other metals will be recycled and it is trivial to do so. Currently the volume is too low: except for manufacturing/design defects, no automotive lithium battery has reached EOL yet.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      Lithium is very poisonous and dangerous to recycle. It’s also poorly regulated. Solar panels have life spans of ~30 years and presently they mostly go into landfills without anyone recovering the materials that may be dangerous in the environment. That doesn’t really matter much though. Uranium isn’t dangerous by itself, and has the highest energy density of any existing source.
      - mantaraygun 5y ago
        > Uranium isn’t dangerous by itself Well.. it's not a huge deal but don't eat it. I have a bit of uranium ore on my bookshelf, but I avoid handling it and wash my hands after I do. Besides the alpha radiation, which isn't good for your insides, it's also toxic.
      - pfdietz 5y ago
        The LD50 of lithium carbonate in mice is 500 mg/kg. That's not very poisonous. In comparison, the LD50 of arsenic oxide is 8 mg/kg.
LinuxBender 5y ago
Best vs Worst? That doesn't feel like the right way to look at things. Nuclear is probably an appropriate medium term solution for some locations until battery storage is better and more affordable at mass scale. Being a pragmatic minimalist I believe all options should be on the table and grab what option suits your geographic location and load requirements best, factoring in initial costs, time to deploy, cost to support, cost to tear down, environmental impact, local politics, operational longevity... all of these things being complicated topics on their own that vary wildly by location.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  A lot of those costs come from over cautiousness on the part of regulators. Requiring that radiation exposure on site all the way to the fence line must be not more than 15mrem per year is just silly. You get more than that walking into a granite building or taking the subway. Remediation requirements also bizarrely require remediation to far below background levels. Former uranium mines in NV have the lowest measurable radiation levels in the whole state.
  - cannaceo 5y ago
    Funny how that can work. We can’t use natural fruit puree for cannabis edibles because they won’t pass pesticide testing.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      Yeah, it’s really wild. You get more mrems per year living down wind of a coal plant than you would living in a nuclear plant’s control room. You get more from eating bananas.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Battery storage is already sufficient and inexpensive enough for deployment today at costs less than nuclear. A 3x overbuild of solar+wind in an optimal mix, along with a continental grid and 3 hours worth of batteries is all you need for 99.99% reliability: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
imwillofficial 5y ago
Yes it is. When properly managed, it can be a powerful tool while other safer alternatives become less reliant on precious minerals and improve their recycling story. The US Navy has never had a major nuclear accident for a reason.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  > The US Navy has never had a major nuclear accident for a reason. The Air Force, on the other hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash
  - mantaraygun 5y ago
    The US Navy has lost/dropped some nuclear bombs too. But what he means is they've never had a serious reactor accident. They've lost two nuclear submarines, but neither was due to a problem with the reactor. Fumbling a nuclear bomb is obviously very concerning, but I don't think it reflects poorly on their ability to run reactors safely. They have several thousand reactor-years of safe operating experience, that doesn't happen by accident.
    - imwillofficial 5y ago
      Exactly, Navy Nuclear training and management is exceedingly stringent. This shows in the track record.
  - korantu 5y ago
    This is discussion about nuclear power generation, not of nuclear weapons, though. Quite different things. Nuclear, esp. thermonuclear weapons are indeed designed to inflict untold damage.
    - johnchristopher 5y ago
      Sure, but since someone brought the military as an argument for an example of safe nuclear power generation and since AFAIK military forces never did civil nuclear power generation then I believe it's fair game to bring a counter-example to that ^^.
baby 5y ago
I just got recommended this French comic on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/miracle-%C3%A9nerg%C3%A9tique-d%C3%A9rive-climatique-French-ebook/dp/B09DGTDZCT/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Le+Monde+sans+fin&qid=1639186327&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/miracle-%C3%A9nerg%C3%A9tique-d%C3%A9... from a nuclear engineer who's also an ecologist.
- ericd 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the print version is apparently sold out all over France. Interesting that they're trying to sell a kindle version of a comic.
- hadrien01 5y ago
  I've just finished it, it's excellent. It's about more than just our energy sources, and it's drawn by the author of Quai d'Orsay, another excellent graphic novel about "a" foreign affairs minister in 2003.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  The church of Janco :). I recently grabbed it and was surprised to read he was the one who coined the concept of “bilan carbone”. When that guy says nuclear is an option, green parties should really listen.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Of course it is. For some reason it gets a huge share of fearmongering by the so-called 'greens' who want to shut down nuclear plants and replace them with coal ones. I wonder who funds those greens...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 5y ago
  Please do not take HN threads into flamewar. That's just what we don't want here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sebow 5y ago
Yes
r-bryan 5y ago
[flagged]
Tarsul 5y ago
I know nuclear power comes up on HN quite often and is viewed quite positively. On the other side I've read the following articles[1][2], from people who know the industry inside out, which are less enthusiastic mainly because building new reactors takes too much time for our climate crisis and is too expensive compared to solar/wind + batteries, especially taking into account how prices will probably develop in the next years (solar and batteries get cheaper and cheaper, whereas nuclear will not). My personal opinion is that we should look much more into reducing our energy needs and also into load management (e.g. using energy when the sun shines etc.) than into new nuclear plants. [1]https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2021-07-08/nuclear-energy-will-not-be-solution-climate-change https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2021-07-08/nuclear-e... [2]https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-climate-mycle-schneider-renewables-fukushima/a-56712368 https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-climate-mycle-schneider-renewa...
- nitrogen 5y ago
  whereas nuclear will not Why not? Why wasn't there a nuclear module (SMR) 20 years ago that can be installed in banks of multiple modules, just like a solar array made of multiple solar cells? Why should every single nuclear plant be semi-bespoke for that particular area? reducing our energy needs In some sense, human development can be measured in energy available per capita. We definitely want to make each activity we do as efficient as is reasonable (e.g. a washing machine that uses 0.5gal less water per cycle, but costs $3000 more is unreasonable), but the goal really ought to be to maximize energy used per capita, while minimizing energy used per activity.
  - p_l 5y ago
    Because for last ~25 years there was no funding to finish the SMRs that we did have good base design for, nor to expand necessary metal production for their coolant loops (or finalize the variants that didn't need those). It all boils down to will.
  - Gwypaas 5y ago
    Why not? Why wasn't there a nuclear module (SMR) 20 years ago that can be installed in banks of multiple modules, just like a solar array made of multiple solar cells? Why should every single nuclear plant be semi-bespoke for that particular area? Because the idea was instead a larger standardized reactor to rule them all. Spread the fixed costs per reactor core as thin as possible. This has evidently failed and thus the nuclear industries new thing is "SMR" because lets do opposite and hope we get another 20 years of funding.
immmmmm 5y ago
The article touches the point that nuclear energy requires water, and a lot of it, for cooling (which is often omitted in such discussions). This is important as the water cycle will drastically change in the next decades, to an extent that is very hard to predict with the present resolution and accuracy of climate models. Nuclear reactors need cooling even after being stopped, there are 4 plants (14 reactors) along the Rhone downstream Geneva and French authorities don't like too much when we reduce the Rhone's flow to keep the lake at sane level. From what i have read these last years, experts usually advocate rather for an energy mix (some regions might be more adapted to others for some modality) rather than a single solution. I used to be rather against nuclear energy, for one main reason: this sector is always managed in full secrecy, mostly by military or ppl close to those circles. It is also a sector with heavy subcontracting, i have seen a documentary where ppl in France were entering into a reactor while fearing for their lives (the dose they said) and being paid minimal wages.
- vondur 5y ago
  I believe one of the key features of the new power plant being built in Wyoming and sponsored by Bill Gates/Dept. Of Energy doesn't use water as a coolant.
- yholio 5y ago
  There is nothing intrinsic about the nuclear cycle that demands large quantities of water. Nuclear plants, like all thermal generators, require a cool sink where the turbines can dump the waste heat. This is usually and most economically a large body of water, which is sucked in, heated by a few degrees and dumped back out, left to cool of back into the environment. Water is not "consumed" and remains available for any other use. Powerplants that don't have access to significant water reservoirs can use cooling towers where a much smaller quantity of water is forced to evaporate, providing the same cooling but with a somewhat lower efficiency. Using this principle, nuclear plants have been constructed in the desert, see Palo Verde nuclear generating station.
  - immmmmm 5y ago
    it's true that evaporating water is pretty efficient at cooling stuff. still according to [0] it's 3m^3/s water consumption on average for this station, doable in many place indeed, until there is a mega drought where basically you'll need 10 trucks per minutes to keep things in control. [0] https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/02/25/palo-verde-nuclear-water-use/ https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/02/25/palo-verde-nuclear...
mwattsun 5y ago
As a former US Submarine nuclear reactor tech, I used to think when we pulled into port that our submarine could power the entire city while we sat there. I don't know why we don't put reactors on large barges that sat offshore where there is plenty of cooling water and transmissions line wouldn't be too much of a problem. Navy ships don't worry about dumping slightly radioactive water overboard, but fortunately there isn't much of it from the closed circulation systems. Of course the spent fuel is disposed of properly once every 15 years or so.
- twelve40 5y ago
  > I don't know why we don't put reactors on large barges it is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    Exactly. Thanks! There other advantage is that if there's an accident that can't be fixed the solution of towing it out to sea and sinking it into a deep trench is far more preferable than having it contaminate the surrounding land area like Chernobyl.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      Even Chernobyl isn’t that dangerous. The background radiation in the exclusion zone is lower than in Finland. No additional cancer has been found among nearby villages, the number of cigarettes consumed there is a far greater danger. Moreover a Chernobyl like accident couldn’t happen again. Outside of the USSR no one was building graphite pile reactors after maybe 1955, and no reactors without containment buildings.
socialdemocrat 5y ago
Great article. Nuclear power should be back in the debate but we must accept that current reactor designs are not cutting it. They are way too slow to build. Instead regulations should be revamped to allow speedier development of small modular reactors based on molten salt or gas cooling. Molten Salt Reactors in particular can burn current nuclear waste which make them an attractive solution to many of our waste problems. They are also inherently safer. Our insistence to keep building large nuclear reactors is akin to NASA building an enormously expensive SLS rocket which cannot even be reused while SpaceX has demonstrated years ago that reusable rockets is the way to go. Ariane kept developing single use rockets while it was clear , reusable rockets was the future. In few years it will look really foolish that we continue to push old over-engineered monster reactors. The problem with the Nuclear industry is the same as the rocket industry. It is dominated by companies stuck in the past while those with new fresh visions are lacking resources and political support.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  This is nonsense. Why should the time required to build even be a relevant factor in anything other than how soon to begin? Unless you’re complaining that nuclear isn’t profitable enough, you don’t have a point. And if you’re just complaining about not being able to profit from it, you still don’t have a point. Is your priority to reduce the rate of climate change or to preserve the rate of profit???
zahma 5y ago
What really frustrates me in this whole debate is the question asked so to dismiss nuclear by asking about what to do with nuclear waste. As if it’s insurmountable or somehow worse than fossil fuel pollution. For decades we’ve been kicking the can down the road by ignoring the toll of fossil fuel waste. That bill is coming due both for our climate and our bodies. Enough is enough. We will leave nuclear waste for another day as we try to pull ourselves out from underneath a century of fossil fuel addiction.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  It's not necessary to point to nuclear waste (or safety) to dismiss nuclear. Cost is sufficient. Construction of new nuclear power plants is simply far too expensive to be a good way to contribute to CO2 emission reduction.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    The national deficit over the last 10 years has increased by 18 trillion. How much of that would have been required to go completely nuclear. Maybe not even a trillion?
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      US primary energy consumption is about 3 TW. If a 1 GW(e) reactor has 33% thermal efficiency, that's 3 GW of primary energy production. So, ballpark, about 1000 reactors, or about $10 T.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    "Far too expensive" in what context? For whom? Short-sighted profit-seeking, growth-oriented capitalism got us into this mess and it certainly won't get us out.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Far too expensive compared to other non-fossil alternatives. For a long time, nuclear supporters just ignored the cost issue, since they felt they were the only real non-fossil alternative. Yes, they'd be expensive, but society had no choice. In the last decade this changed. Renewables are now far cheaper on a levelized basis, cheap enough that even with the cost of dealing with intermittency they are likely to come out cheaper than nuclear. This is why so much new capacity in the world (and in the US) is renewables. It's not because of green mind control, it's because of brute economics. Nuclear is in dire shape competitively, in comparison.
jimmySixDOF 5y ago
Bring back the Eisenhower era Atoms for Peace program !
- ncmncm 5y ago
  Bring back massive government propaganda programs? Surprise, they never went away! They just hype other things now.
credit_guy 5y ago
> Another limitation of nuclear power is that it is not a long-term solution, in one crucial respect: it depends on fissile materials that are nonrenewable, namely uranium-233, uranium-235, and plutonium. This does not make sense. Uranium-233 and Plutonium do not exist in nature. They are created anew each time we use them, the first from Thorium, the second from Uranium. Separately, it is incorrect that nuclear power depends on fissile materials. It can be (and is) done with fertile materials, like U-238. It can also be done with Thorium (another fertile material), and China just started such a Thorium plant [1]. The total reserves of Uranium and Thorium together could be enough for thousands of years. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w

66 points by runeks 5y ago

There is a lot of "over regulation is causing the sky high price of nuclear" here in the comments. Consider the counterfactual: Would you like to have a lightly regulated nuclear power plant near you and your family? Nimbyism? Or caring for your family. It all depends on your POV.

ch4s3 5y ago
Yes I would like less regulation of nuclear. The NRCs 15mrem per year requirement is nonsense. It means that a person living on site year round, growing all food on site, and drinking the groundwater must receive less radiation than eating 3 bananas per year. It’s an unscientific requirement. The ban on reprocessing is stupid, and results in more waste. The ban on long term storage outside of Yucca Mountain is dumb. Prehistoric salt deposits are far better and cheaper to maintain. Requiring waste storage that won’t expose a hypothetical persons 10k years in the future to more than 15mrem per year is also stupid. It’s all based on the linear no-threshold model which isn’t supported by evidence. We know from experience that 35 mrem dental x-rays and 70mrem chest x-rays don’t pose any risk to the average person over their lifetimes, for example. Adhering to the 15mrem standard is insanely costly. Especially since it can be super difficult to separate from background radiation that’s at times 2 orders of magnitude higher. You’d get 600mrem standing in Grand Central In NYC all year, and more on a flight to Europe.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  What ban on reprocessing? The one Carter created that was removed by Reagan? We aren't reprocessing in the US not because of some "ban", but because reprocessing is economically senseless. It literally costs more than it saves. The separated plutonium has negative value -- it costs more to convince someone to put it into MOX fuel than it saves in enriched uranium.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    The ban was lifted in 81 but the closure of the facilities required investment in order for them to restart. So the ban continued in a de facto sense. I’m willing to concede that this isn’t my strongest point. What I’m aiming at though, is that it strongly mitigates the waste issue.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Reprocessing makes the waste issue worse. Instead of all the stuff nicely sealed up in fuel rods, it's now spread all through the reprocessing plant. The volume of contaminated material will increase greatly. And it doesn't really reduce the volume of underground storage needed (from heating due to alpha decay of higher actinides.) BTW, your comment about LNT is also misguided. There is no good evidence that LNT is wrong, and without LNT you might instead get a "precautionary" approach: assume radiation has the worst damage not ruled out by evidence. This would be much WORSE for nuclear than LNT, as it would increase the presumed damage from low doses. LNT is nuclear's friend; it is looked askance at by some of the anti-nuclear people for that reason.
      - ch4s3 5y ago
        I was referring primarily to reprocessing through IFR, but I can see you point that the proceeding steps carry risk. I think the issue with LNT is that is ISN'T supported by evidence and observationally in real life it seems to be wrong. I would prefer a PRA based approach that is focused on minimizing probable real world risks.
        pfdietz 5y ago
        LNT is consistent with the evidence. And it's a simple theory, and it makes sense mechanistically. What more do you want? You could concoct a more complicated theory, but Ockham's Razor says no. I also wonder why you think this approach would be a good thing for nuclear. There's an assumption in these pro-nuclear LNT arguments that LNT would be replaced by something (hormesis or whatever) that would make radiation less dangerous. But there's no reason to think that would happen. Radiation is not a criminal defendant that will be presumed innocent until proven guilty. BTW, the NRC recently denied petitions to reconsider LNT. Their responses to the arguments are worth reading. https://www.regulations.gov/document/NRC-2015-0057-0671 https://www.regulations.gov/document/NRC-2015-0057-0671
Turing_Machine 5y ago
One of my offices in grad school had an experimental nuclear reactor (run by students!) in the next building, maybe 25 or 30 feet away. Didn't bother me a bit. And I still even have the regulation number of heads and other appendages.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  Probably a TRIGA reactor, which wasn't experimental. These have U-Zr hydride fuel with such a strong instantaneous negative temperature feedback that one could instantly remove all the control rods from the reactor and it would still settle down to steady power output without catastrophe. I don't think they're suitable for power production though (I think the burnup the fuel can support is too low?)

pfdietz 5y ago

No, it isn't.

ch4s3 5y ago
What makes you say that? If we reprocess uranium fuel, a person’s lifetime energy waste would be barely larger than a soda can and mostly only emitting alpha radiation. You lifetime energy waste from renewables and batteries would be much more voluminous and far more dangerous, being full of lithium.
- coryrc 5y ago
  Lithium and other metals will be recycled and it is trivial to do so. Currently the volume is too low: except for manufacturing/design defects, no automotive lithium battery has reached EOL yet.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Lithium is very poisonous and dangerous to recycle. It’s also poorly regulated. Solar panels have life spans of ~30 years and presently they mostly go into landfills without anyone recovering the materials that may be dangerous in the environment. That doesn’t really matter much though. Uranium isn’t dangerous by itself, and has the highest energy density of any existing source.
    - mantaraygun 5y ago
      > Uranium isn’t dangerous by itself Well.. it's not a huge deal but don't eat it. I have a bit of uranium ore on my bookshelf, but I avoid handling it and wash my hands after I do. Besides the alpha radiation, which isn't good for your insides, it's also toxic.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      The LD50 of lithium carbonate in mice is 500 mg/kg. That's not very poisonous. In comparison, the LD50 of arsenic oxide is 8 mg/kg.

LinuxBender 5y ago

Best vs Worst? That doesn't feel like the right way to look at things. Nuclear is probably an appropriate medium term solution for some locations until battery storage is better and more affordable at mass scale. Being a pragmatic minimalist I believe all options should be on the table and grab what option suits your geographic location and load requirements best, factoring in initial costs, time to deploy, cost to support, cost to tear down, environmental impact, local politics, operational longevity... all of these things being complicated topics on their own that vary wildly by location.

ch4s3 5y ago
A lot of those costs come from over cautiousness on the part of regulators. Requiring that radiation exposure on site all the way to the fence line must be not more than 15mrem per year is just silly. You get more than that walking into a granite building or taking the subway. Remediation requirements also bizarrely require remediation to far below background levels. Former uranium mines in NV have the lowest measurable radiation levels in the whole state.
- cannaceo 5y ago
  Funny how that can work. We can’t use natural fruit puree for cannabis edibles because they won’t pass pesticide testing.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Yeah, it’s really wild. You get more mrems per year living down wind of a coal plant than you would living in a nuclear plant’s control room. You get more from eating bananas.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
Battery storage is already sufficient and inexpensive enough for deployment today at costs less than nuclear. A 3x overbuild of solar+wind in an optimal mix, along with a continental grid and 3 hours worth of batteries is all you need for 99.99% reliability: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify

imwillofficial 5y ago

Yes it is. When properly managed, it can be a powerful tool while other safer alternatives become less reliant on precious minerals and improve their recycling story. The US Navy has never had a major nuclear accident for a reason.

johnchristopher 5y ago
> The US Navy has never had a major nuclear accident for a reason. The Air Force, on the other hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash
- mantaraygun 5y ago
  The US Navy has lost/dropped some nuclear bombs too. But what he means is they've never had a serious reactor accident. They've lost two nuclear submarines, but neither was due to a problem with the reactor. Fumbling a nuclear bomb is obviously very concerning, but I don't think it reflects poorly on their ability to run reactors safely. They have several thousand reactor-years of safe operating experience, that doesn't happen by accident.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    Exactly, Navy Nuclear training and management is exceedingly stringent. This shows in the track record.
- korantu 5y ago
  This is discussion about nuclear power generation, not of nuclear weapons, though. Quite different things. Nuclear, esp. thermonuclear weapons are indeed designed to inflict untold damage.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    Sure, but since someone brought the military as an argument for an example of safe nuclear power generation and since AFAIK military forces never did civil nuclear power generation then I believe it's fair game to bring a counter-example to that ^^.

baby 5y ago

I just got recommended this French comic on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/miracle-%C3%A9nerg%C3%A9tique-d%C3%A9rive-climatique-French-ebook/dp/B09DGTDZCT/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Le+Monde+sans+fin&qid=1639186327&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/miracle-%C3%A9nerg%C3%A9tique-d%C3%A9... from a nuclear engineer who's also an ecologist.

ericd 5y ago
Unfortunately, the print version is apparently sold out all over France. Interesting that they're trying to sell a kindle version of a comic.
hadrien01 5y ago
I've just finished it, it's excellent. It's about more than just our energy sources, and it's drawn by the author of Quai d'Orsay, another excellent graphic novel about "a" foreign affairs minister in 2003.
johnchristopher 5y ago
The church of Janco :). I recently grabbed it and was surprised to read he was the one who coined the concept of “bilan carbone”. When that guy says nuclear is an option, green parties should really listen.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Of course it is. For some reason it gets a huge share of fearmongering by the so-called 'greens' who want to shut down nuclear plants and replace them with coal ones. I wonder who funds those greens...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
Please do not take HN threads into flamewar. That's just what we don't want here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sebow 5y ago

Yes

r-bryan 5y ago

[flagged]

Tarsul 5y ago

I know nuclear power comes up on HN quite often and is viewed quite positively. On the other side I've read the following articles[1][2], from people who know the industry inside out, which are less enthusiastic mainly because building new reactors takes too much time for our climate crisis and is too expensive compared to solar/wind + batteries, especially taking into account how prices will probably develop in the next years (solar and batteries get cheaper and cheaper, whereas nuclear will not). My personal opinion is that we should look much more into reducing our energy needs and also into load management (e.g. using energy when the sun shines etc.) than into new nuclear plants. [1]https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2021-07-08/nuclear-energy-will-not-be-solution-climate-change https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2021-07-08/nuclear-e... [2]https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-climate-mycle-schneider-renewables-fukushima/a-56712368 https://www.dw.com/en/nuclear-climate-mycle-schneider-renewa...

nitrogen 5y ago
whereas nuclear will not Why not? Why wasn't there a nuclear module (SMR) 20 years ago that can be installed in banks of multiple modules, just like a solar array made of multiple solar cells? Why should every single nuclear plant be semi-bespoke for that particular area? reducing our energy needs In some sense, human development can be measured in energy available per capita. We definitely want to make each activity we do as efficient as is reasonable (e.g. a washing machine that uses 0.5gal less water per cycle, but costs $3000 more is unreasonable), but the goal really ought to be to maximize energy used per capita, while minimizing energy used per activity.
- p_l 5y ago
  Because for last ~25 years there was no funding to finish the SMRs that we did have good base design for, nor to expand necessary metal production for their coolant loops (or finalize the variants that didn't need those). It all boils down to will.
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  Why not? Why wasn't there a nuclear module (SMR) 20 years ago that can be installed in banks of multiple modules, just like a solar array made of multiple solar cells? Why should every single nuclear plant be semi-bespoke for that particular area? Because the idea was instead a larger standardized reactor to rule them all. Spread the fixed costs per reactor core as thin as possible. This has evidently failed and thus the nuclear industries new thing is "SMR" because lets do opposite and hope we get another 20 years of funding.

immmmmm 5y ago

The article touches the point that nuclear energy requires water, and a lot of it, for cooling (which is often omitted in such discussions). This is important as the water cycle will drastically change in the next decades, to an extent that is very hard to predict with the present resolution and accuracy of climate models. Nuclear reactors need cooling even after being stopped, there are 4 plants (14 reactors) along the Rhone downstream Geneva and French authorities don't like too much when we reduce the Rhone's flow to keep the lake at sane level. From what i have read these last years, experts usually advocate rather for an energy mix (some regions might be more adapted to others for some modality) rather than a single solution. I used to be rather against nuclear energy, for one main reason: this sector is always managed in full secrecy, mostly by military or ppl close to those circles. It is also a sector with heavy subcontracting, i have seen a documentary where ppl in France were entering into a reactor while fearing for their lives (the dose they said) and being paid minimal wages.

vondur 5y ago
I believe one of the key features of the new power plant being built in Wyoming and sponsored by Bill Gates/Dept. Of Energy doesn't use water as a coolant.
yholio 5y ago
There is nothing intrinsic about the nuclear cycle that demands large quantities of water. Nuclear plants, like all thermal generators, require a cool sink where the turbines can dump the waste heat. This is usually and most economically a large body of water, which is sucked in, heated by a few degrees and dumped back out, left to cool of back into the environment. Water is not "consumed" and remains available for any other use. Powerplants that don't have access to significant water reservoirs can use cooling towers where a much smaller quantity of water is forced to evaporate, providing the same cooling but with a somewhat lower efficiency. Using this principle, nuclear plants have been constructed in the desert, see Palo Verde nuclear generating station.
- immmmmm 5y ago
  it's true that evaporating water is pretty efficient at cooling stuff. still according to [0] it's 3m^3/s water consumption on average for this station, doable in many place indeed, until there is a mega drought where basically you'll need 10 trucks per minutes to keep things in control. [0] https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/02/25/palo-verde-nuclear-water-use/ https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2020/02/25/palo-verde-nuclear...

mwattsun 5y ago

As a former US Submarine nuclear reactor tech, I used to think when we pulled into port that our submarine could power the entire city while we sat there. I don't know why we don't put reactors on large barges that sat offshore where there is plenty of cooling water and transmissions line wouldn't be too much of a problem. Navy ships don't worry about dumping slightly radioactive water overboard, but fortunately there isn't much of it from the closed circulation systems. Of course the spent fuel is disposed of properly once every 15 years or so.

twelve40 5y ago
> I don't know why we don't put reactors on large barges it is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Exactly. Thanks! There other advantage is that if there's an accident that can't be fixed the solution of towing it out to sea and sinking it into a deep trench is far more preferable than having it contaminate the surrounding land area like Chernobyl.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Even Chernobyl isn’t that dangerous. The background radiation in the exclusion zone is lower than in Finland. No additional cancer has been found among nearby villages, the number of cigarettes consumed there is a far greater danger. Moreover a Chernobyl like accident couldn’t happen again. Outside of the USSR no one was building graphite pile reactors after maybe 1955, and no reactors without containment buildings.

socialdemocrat 5y ago

Great article. Nuclear power should be back in the debate but we must accept that current reactor designs are not cutting it. They are way too slow to build. Instead regulations should be revamped to allow speedier development of small modular reactors based on molten salt or gas cooling. Molten Salt Reactors in particular can burn current nuclear waste which make them an attractive solution to many of our waste problems. They are also inherently safer. Our insistence to keep building large nuclear reactors is akin to NASA building an enormously expensive SLS rocket which cannot even be reused while SpaceX has demonstrated years ago that reusable rockets is the way to go. Ariane kept developing single use rockets while it was clear , reusable rockets was the future. In few years it will look really foolish that we continue to push old over-engineered monster reactors. The problem with the Nuclear industry is the same as the rocket industry. It is dominated by companies stuck in the past while those with new fresh visions are lacking resources and political support.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago
This is nonsense. Why should the time required to build even be a relevant factor in anything other than how soon to begin? Unless you’re complaining that nuclear isn’t profitable enough, you don’t have a point. And if you’re just complaining about not being able to profit from it, you still don’t have a point. Is your priority to reduce the rate of climate change or to preserve the rate of profit???

zahma 5y ago

What really frustrates me in this whole debate is the question asked so to dismiss nuclear by asking about what to do with nuclear waste. As if it’s insurmountable or somehow worse than fossil fuel pollution. For decades we’ve been kicking the can down the road by ignoring the toll of fossil fuel waste. That bill is coming due both for our climate and our bodies. Enough is enough. We will leave nuclear waste for another day as we try to pull ourselves out from underneath a century of fossil fuel addiction.

pfdietz 5y ago
It's not necessary to point to nuclear waste (or safety) to dismiss nuclear. Cost is sufficient. Construction of new nuclear power plants is simply far too expensive to be a good way to contribute to CO2 emission reduction.
- ryan93 5y ago
  The national deficit over the last 10 years has increased by 18 trillion. How much of that would have been required to go completely nuclear. Maybe not even a trillion?
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    US primary energy consumption is about 3 TW. If a 1 GW(e) reactor has 33% thermal efficiency, that's 3 GW of primary energy production. So, ballpark, about 1000 reactors, or about $10 T.
- pphysch 5y ago
  "Far too expensive" in what context? For whom? Short-sighted profit-seeking, growth-oriented capitalism got us into this mess and it certainly won't get us out.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Far too expensive compared to other non-fossil alternatives. For a long time, nuclear supporters just ignored the cost issue, since they felt they were the only real non-fossil alternative. Yes, they'd be expensive, but society had no choice. In the last decade this changed. Renewables are now far cheaper on a levelized basis, cheap enough that even with the cost of dealing with intermittency they are likely to come out cheaper than nuclear. This is why so much new capacity in the world (and in the US) is renewables. It's not because of green mind control, it's because of brute economics. Nuclear is in dire shape competitively, in comparison.

jimmySixDOF 5y ago

Bring back the Eisenhower era Atoms for Peace program !

ncmncm 5y ago
Bring back massive government propaganda programs? Surprise, they never went away! They just hype other things now.

credit_guy 5y ago

> Another limitation of nuclear power is that it is not a long-term solution, in one crucial respect: it depends on fissile materials that are nonrenewable, namely uranium-233, uranium-235, and plutonium. This does not make sense. Uranium-233 and Plutonium do not exist in nature. They are created anew each time we use them, the first from Thorium, the second from Uranium. Separately, it is incorrect that nuclear power depends on fissile materials. It can be (and is) done with fertile materials, like U-238. It can also be done with Thorium (another fertile material), and China just started such a Thorium plant [1]. The total reserves of Uranium and Thorium together could be enough for thousands of years. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w