5 ms·

It is amazing. But two major incidents within 30 years time range are not so amazing. When we continue in that rate we will have a serious problem. And with agi

by oaiey 5y ago

It is amazing. But two major incidents within 30 years time range are not so amazing. When we continue in that rate we will have a serious problem. And with aging reactors and instability everywhere it does not look good.

jpxw 5y ago
One incident caused by a natural disaster that would never happen in a European country like Germany, the other caused by mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Edit: in response to the large number of people bringing up BER and other infrastructure failures in Germany: yes, BER and others may have been bad, but a completely different kind (and magnitude) of incompetence than that which led to the Chernobyl meltdown. They really aren’t comparable.
- smarx007 5y ago
  Yes, although never say never...
  - jpxw 5y ago
    Well nothing is risk-free. But in my opinion in any case the risk of allowing climate change to rampantly continue vastly outweighs the infinitesimal risks of nuclear.
    - donio 5y ago
      "infinitesimal risk" would be something that is unlikely to happen once in a million years or even the lifetime of the planet which is clearly not the case. It's "acceptable risk" or "justifiable risk" at best.
- la_fayette 5y ago
  This summer a large part of germany was completely flooded. This was a natural disaster, which might happen at higher frequencies nowadays. The alarming systems in place competely failed and around 200 people drowned in Germany. There are so many things which could happen and countries like Germany are not prepared for.
  - junon 5y ago
    Which is exactly why geologists do surveying before they build a nuclear power plant...
    - la_fayette 5y ago
      This is ridiculous! The house owners were convinced that there couldn't take place a flooding in that area! Most of them had no insuranced for flooding either. No specialist of any kind has predicted such a scenario...
      - junon 5y ago
        Those houses aren't nuclear reactors. The safety measures were exponentially less stringent.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    > This was a natural disaster, which might happen at higher frequencies nowadays. You don't build nuclear power plants in narrow valleys with known flood events though. I mean, you also don't build wind turbines in swamps and hope they don't fall over, or put solar panels on your roof and don't fasten them.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Building a castle in a swamp can work, though.
      - gnabgib 5y ago
        Certainly by the time you get to the fourth one, the strongest castle in these islands
    - la_fayette 5y ago
      https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/770/flooding-nuclear-plants https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/770/floodi...
- yardstick 5y ago
  Accidents will always happen, even in Germany [1]. And don’t forget their WW2 bomb detection isn’t perfect [2]. Nor are they free from corruptive practices [3]. 1. https://www.itv.com/news/2016-02-09/a-history-of-german-train-disasters https://www.itv.com/news/2016-02-09/a-history-of-german-trai... 2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59487910 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59487910 3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34324772 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34324772
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Floodings are going to be much more frequent than they were in the past. If you want to take a look at where those nuclear reactors are located and explain how they were to be operated safely and cost effectively in the next decade or two I think the Germans would be all ear. Germany has this right: do it now, and deal with it, rather than to continue to kick the can down the road for later generations to solve the problems, a kind of temporeal externalization.
- hyperman1 5y ago
  Jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence is unfortunately quite common once economic pressure makes the correct way of running things untenable. Everybody starts cutting small corners everywhere, assuming it doesn't matter much as all the other people are still doing their job. One day, a corner too many gets cut, and the slack in the system is too small to catch what should be a minor problem. Don't trust the public facade and official reports, they have been filtered by PR departments and by people not wishing to report bad news to their managers and peers
- IiydAbITMvJkqKf 5y ago
  > mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Are we talking about the same Germany? Edit: I should probably give some examples: Suttgart 21 train station, BER airport
- An0nymousC0ward 5y ago
- wildmanxx 5y ago
  > jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Hahaha! Haha! Ha. #sad
- neartheplain 5y ago
  >the other caused by mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Are you sure? One example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48527308 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48527308 >BER has become for Germany not a new source of pride but a symbol of engineering catastrophe. It's what top global infrastructure expert Bent Flyvbjerg calls a "national trauma" and an ideal way "to learn how not to do things".
vlovich123 5y ago
Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse (just from production and ignoring all the pollutants in the air and even ignoring that coal plants regularly emit more radiation into the air than have ever died from nuclear power generation). In fact, mortality from nuclear power generation is closer to solar and wind. Yes the incidents are scary and news grabbing but that’s it. The actual data is that it’s safe (look at mortality as a function of megawatt hours produced). Not to mention that in the 60-80 years since those plants were designed (Fukushima and Chernobyl are basically the same design if I recall correctly), we’ve gotten much better at designing plants that withstand natural disasters. This is also ignoring the fact that we can do a better job of locating power plants further away from disaster-prone areas due to advances in power distributions systems (eg HVDC). The problem with nuclear is that there’s a lot of fear still lingering around it from Cold War era propaganda. Any issues just play into and reinforce those fears. The real problem is that education is the only effective tool we know of to fight fear but it’s slow and not up to the challenge that nuclear fission faces. That’s because on top of the fears are actual opponents who will fight any real evidence-based education efforts by playing up the FUD (very old tactic). Fossil fuel companies don’t want it because nuclear presents an existential threat to their existence. US national security interests are worried about proliferation if we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt. It also presents a serious threat to US hegemony if countries are able to establish their own energy independence.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse That may very well be true but it's completely irrelevant for future choices. Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead. EDIT: For all the downvoters, see the fourth chart (Gross power production in Germany 1990-2021, by source (non-stacked)) on https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... and explain to me how they're building more fossil fuel power plants over the years while building zero nuclear power plants.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
davidhariri 5y ago
This is so wrong. If you look at the death rate from those incidents and compare them to the death rates of literally any other source of energy (including other renewables), they are much much lower. Nuclear is proven to be our most safe, clean and renewable source of energy. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
- errantmind 5y ago
  It isn't about averages, it is about perceived tail risk.
- wildmanxx 5y ago
  Maybe convince somebody then to have final storage for nuclear waste anywhere close to where they live. Once this crap is in your backyard, the armchair philosophers find excuses really fast. Similar with wind turbines, but at least those are so small scale that you can convince closeby towns fast by just letting them participate in the profits. Different story for leaking barrels stored underground. (And yes, that's how this crap ends up. Just google Asse II and then let's discuss German cleanliness again.)
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Who likes the poisoning of areas around coal mines?
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Or plants. Need to remember how many cities used to look... Not pretty with all the particulates...
WalterBright 5y ago
Fortunately, we didn't abandon airline travel after a few terrible accidents.
kortex 5y ago
We have never had a significant disaster of any gen >=3 reactor. TMI, Fukushima, Chernobyl were all gen 2, and gen 1 is all prototypes. Anything built after 1972 has not had anywhere near this level of incidents. Also Chernobyl had severe safety flaws due to its origin as an early model breeder reactor (and my head canon is that the test that caused the disaster was in some way related to surreptitious fuel changing to run breeding experiments. The RBMK reactors were designed for rapid fuel shuffling.... In other words, safety was compromised to keep the door open to the possibility of sneaky weapons grade material production). Also also, Chernobyl had some other bone-headed flaws, such as a positive void coefficient and positive scram coefficient (read: trying to rapid shutdown during an emergency made the reaction increase). Humanity has learned a ton since then.
- Zigurd 5y ago
  80%+ of nuclear power comes from gen 2 reactors. There are still 8 RBMK reactors in operation, all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed, with the same widespread contamination. IF new generation reactors can prove to be safe and not create waste and decommissioning problems, and if they can be built economically, then they are worthy of consideration. But power is fungible. If the cheapest next watt-hour is solar or wind, then why spend on anything else?
  - garaetjjte 5y ago
    >all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed Not exactly, changes were made to RBMK design after the accident: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/appendices/rbmk-reactors.aspx#ECSArticleLink2 https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
    - Zigurd 5y ago
      What they cannot change is the lack of a containment structure.

by oaiey 5y ago

jpxw 5y ago

One incident caused by a natural disaster that would never happen in a European country like Germany, the other caused by mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Edit: in response to the large number of people bringing up BER and other infrastructure failures in Germany: yes, BER and others may have been bad, but a completely different kind (and magnitude) of incompetence than that which led to the Chernobyl meltdown. They really aren’t comparable.

smarx007 5y ago
Yes, although never say never...
- jpxw 5y ago
  Well nothing is risk-free. But in my opinion in any case the risk of allowing climate change to rampantly continue vastly outweighs the infinitesimal risks of nuclear.
  - donio 5y ago
    "infinitesimal risk" would be something that is unlikely to happen once in a million years or even the lifetime of the planet which is clearly not the case. It's "acceptable risk" or "justifiable risk" at best.
la_fayette 5y ago
This summer a large part of germany was completely flooded. This was a natural disaster, which might happen at higher frequencies nowadays. The alarming systems in place competely failed and around 200 people drowned in Germany. There are so many things which could happen and countries like Germany are not prepared for.
- junon 5y ago
  Which is exactly why geologists do surveying before they build a nuclear power plant...
  - la_fayette 5y ago
    This is ridiculous! The house owners were convinced that there couldn't take place a flooding in that area! Most of them had no insuranced for flooding either. No specialist of any kind has predicted such a scenario...
    - junon 5y ago
      Those houses aren't nuclear reactors. The safety measures were exponentially less stringent.
- luckylion 5y ago
  > This was a natural disaster, which might happen at higher frequencies nowadays. You don't build nuclear power plants in narrow valleys with known flood events though. I mean, you also don't build wind turbines in swamps and hope they don't fall over, or put solar panels on your roof and don't fasten them.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Building a castle in a swamp can work, though.
    - gnabgib 5y ago
      Certainly by the time you get to the fourth one, the strongest castle in these islands
  - la_fayette 5y ago
    https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/770/flooding-nuclear-plants https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/770/floodi...
yardstick 5y ago
Accidents will always happen, even in Germany [1]. And don’t forget their WW2 bomb detection isn’t perfect [2]. Nor are they free from corruptive practices [3]. 1. https://www.itv.com/news/2016-02-09/a-history-of-german-train-disasters https://www.itv.com/news/2016-02-09/a-history-of-german-trai... 2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59487910 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59487910 3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34324772 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34324772
jacquesm 5y ago
Floodings are going to be much more frequent than they were in the past. If you want to take a look at where those nuclear reactors are located and explain how they were to be operated safely and cost effectively in the next decade or two I think the Germans would be all ear. Germany has this right: do it now, and deal with it, rather than to continue to kick the can down the road for later generations to solve the problems, a kind of temporeal externalization.
hyperman1 5y ago
Jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence is unfortunately quite common once economic pressure makes the correct way of running things untenable. Everybody starts cutting small corners everywhere, assuming it doesn't matter much as all the other people are still doing their job. One day, a corner too many gets cut, and the slack in the system is too small to catch what should be a minor problem. Don't trust the public facade and official reports, they have been filtered by PR departments and by people not wishing to report bad news to their managers and peers
IiydAbITMvJkqKf 5y ago
> mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Are we talking about the same Germany? Edit: I should probably give some examples: Suttgart 21 train station, BER airport
An0nymousC0ward 5y ago
wildmanxx 5y ago
> jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Hahaha! Haha! Ha. #sad
neartheplain 5y ago
>the other caused by mismanagement and frankly jaw droppingly pigheaded incompetence which would also never happen in a country like Germany. Are you sure? One example: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48527308 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48527308 >BER has become for Germany not a new source of pride but a symbol of engineering catastrophe. It's what top global infrastructure expert Bent Flyvbjerg calls a "national trauma" and an ideal way "to learn how not to do things".

vlovich123 5y ago

Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse (just from production and ignoring all the pollutants in the air and even ignoring that coal plants regularly emit more radiation into the air than have ever died from nuclear power generation). In fact, mortality from nuclear power generation is closer to solar and wind. Yes the incidents are scary and news grabbing but that’s it. The actual data is that it’s safe (look at mortality as a function of megawatt hours produced). Not to mention that in the 60-80 years since those plants were designed (Fukushima and Chernobyl are basically the same design if I recall correctly), we’ve gotten much better at designing plants that withstand natural disasters. This is also ignoring the fact that we can do a better job of locating power plants further away from disaster-prone areas due to advances in power distributions systems (eg HVDC). The problem with nuclear is that there’s a lot of fear still lingering around it from Cold War era propaganda. Any issues just play into and reinforce those fears. The real problem is that education is the only effective tool we know of to fight fear but it’s slow and not up to the challenge that nuclear fission faces. That’s because on top of the fears are actual opponents who will fight any real evidence-based education efforts by playing up the FUD (very old tactic). Fossil fuel companies don’t want it because nuclear presents an existential threat to their existence. US national security interests are worried about proliferation if we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt. It also presents a serious threat to US hegemony if countries are able to establish their own energy independence.

jhgb 5y ago
> Mortality from existing fossil fuels is significantly worse That may very well be true but it's completely irrelevant for future choices. Not building more nuclear plants doesn't mean you'll be building more fossil fuel plants instead. EDIT: For all the downvoters, see the fourth chart (Gross power production in Germany 1990-2021, by source (non-stacked)) on https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c... and explain to me how they're building more fossil fuel power plants over the years while building zero nuclear power plants.
- Ekaros 5y ago

davidhariri 5y ago

This is so wrong. If you look at the death rate from those incidents and compare them to the death rates of literally any other source of energy (including other renewables), they are much much lower. Nuclear is proven to be our most safe, clean and renewable source of energy. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

errantmind 5y ago
It isn't about averages, it is about perceived tail risk.
wildmanxx 5y ago
Maybe convince somebody then to have final storage for nuclear waste anywhere close to where they live. Once this crap is in your backyard, the armchair philosophers find excuses really fast. Similar with wind turbines, but at least those are so small scale that you can convince closeby towns fast by just letting them participate in the profits. Different story for leaking barrels stored underground. (And yes, that's how this crap ends up. Just google Asse II and then let's discuss German cleanliness again.)
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Who likes the poisoning of areas around coal mines?
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Or plants. Need to remember how many cities used to look... Not pretty with all the particulates...

WalterBright 5y ago

Fortunately, we didn't abandon airline travel after a few terrible accidents.

kortex 5y ago

We have never had a significant disaster of any gen >=3 reactor. TMI, Fukushima, Chernobyl were all gen 2, and gen 1 is all prototypes. Anything built after 1972 has not had anywhere near this level of incidents. Also Chernobyl had severe safety flaws due to its origin as an early model breeder reactor (and my head canon is that the test that caused the disaster was in some way related to surreptitious fuel changing to run breeding experiments. The RBMK reactors were designed for rapid fuel shuffling.... In other words, safety was compromised to keep the door open to the possibility of sneaky weapons grade material production). Also also, Chernobyl had some other bone-headed flaws, such as a positive void coefficient and positive scram coefficient (read: trying to rapid shutdown during an emergency made the reaction increase). Humanity has learned a ton since then.

Zigurd 5y ago
80%+ of nuclear power comes from gen 2 reactors. There are still 8 RBMK reactors in operation, all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed, with the same widespread contamination. IF new generation reactors can prove to be safe and not create waste and decommissioning problems, and if they can be built economically, then they are worthy of consideration. But power is fungible. If the cheapest next watt-hour is solar or wind, then why spend on anything else?
- garaetjjte 5y ago
  >all capable of failing the same way Chernobyl failed Not exactly, changes were made to RBMK design after the accident: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/appendices/rbmk-reactors.aspx#ECSArticleLink2 https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
  - Zigurd 5y ago
    What they cannot change is the lack of a containment structure.