20 ms·

Nothing like this will be built again (2002)

411 points by arethuza 5y ago

arethuza 5y ago
In my first job in the late 1980s I had a colleague who tailgated someone through the security gates at Torness and had real difficulties getting out again as he hadn't officially entered... He had been through security and issued a pass so there probably wasn't a security risk. Took him a few hours to get out.
spuz 5y ago
When was this article written?
- arethuza 5y ago
  It's reasonably old - couldn't find a year to add it to the title. Torness is still operating though the other AGR plant in Scotland, Hunterston, recently closed down. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-59894688 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-59894688
- iqanq 5y ago
  2002: https://web.archive.org/web/20021226021504/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/rant/torness.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021226021504/http://www.antipo...
  - arethuza 5y ago
    Thanks, I've added that to title.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
le-mark 5y ago
Always a treat to read something by Charles Stross. Seems like Accelerando was required reading for the previous generation, is it still? I was not familiar with the UK advanced gas cooled reactors, which use CO2 to cool the core and transfer heat to the steam. From the name it seems to be gas and not supercritical CO2 although I may have that wrong. Power generation is the one topic that makes thermodynamics crystal clear imo. Energy goes into steam, steam does work, lowering the steam temperature and pressure, heating and cooling at different point can increase efficiency. It’s a topic I wish I’d have learned about sooner!
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Supercritical is the state of the CO2 gas. Smoothly intermediate from a regular gas to a liquid.
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    The coolant in these reactors would not normally be considered supercritical as its pressure (2.66 MPa max) is well below its critical pressure (7.38 MPa.) https://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C08/E3-06-02-05.pdf https://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C08/E3-06-02-05.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_carbon_dioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_carbon_dioxide
- dls2016 5y ago
  My old man was a Navy nuke turned instrument tech at Three Mile Island... he can go on and on about steam tables. I worked there one refueling outage while lazing about after college. Highlights include: sweeping river muck out of the empty cooling towers, scrubbing pipes for x-ray analysis, standing "fire watch" since doors were propped open, taking a smoke break on top of the Unit 2 control room building (that Unit 2), staring at the humongous, partially-disassembled turbine (they may have replaced it that year), spotlighting deer at the end of the island. I also remember a very strange feeling while listening to radiation monitors go crazy when the spent fuel was being removed... if you walked a few dozen feet past the warning tape you were probably dead.
  - darkteflon 5y ago
    Great anecdotes - only on HN. Cheers for sharing.
  - boringg 5y ago
    I'm getting flashbacks of the engineering problems I had to solve at school with all this talk of steam look up tables. Not sure if its enjoyable or suppression nostalgia :)
    - 5y ago
JonathanBuchh 5y ago
Archive: https://archive.is/TTX4g https://archive.is/TTX4g
- soneca 5y ago
  I could not pass its Captcha. It just reloaded the Captcha page and I would never reach the article
- camtarn 5y ago
  The last paragraph was truncated for me. I had to look at the page source to read it! Reproduced here for those on mobile browsers: "It's a weird experience, crawling over the guts of one of the marvels of the atomic age, smelling the thing (mostly machine oil and steam, and a hint of ozone near the transformers), all the while knowing that although it's one of the safest and most energy-efficient civilian power reactors ever built it's a a technological dead-end, that there won't be any more of them, and that when it shuts down in thirty or forty years' time this colossal collision between space age physics and victorian plumbing will be relegated to a footnote in the history books. 'Energy too cheap to meter' it ain't, but as a symbol of what we can achieve through engineering it's hard to beat."
6LLvveMx2koXfwn 5y ago
The Ferranti mainframes mentioned in the article are probably Argus 700 machines developed in 1968/9 [1] Amazing that such tech was still running important infrastructure only a decade ago. 1. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/16225/Ferranti-Argus-700/ http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/16225/Ferranti-Argus-...
- arethuza 5y ago
  The training simulators used custom hardware from Marconi Simulation as well - a long long time ago I didn't get to job to work on them at Torness. Mind you I did end up on an academic project that included modelling of Hunterston, so I got the "behind the scenes" tour there that Charlie got for Torness. The Project Manager from Scottish Nuclear had worked on the construction of Torness and he lots of interesting stories.
- mcphage 5y ago
  > Amazing that such tech was still running important infrastructure only a decade ago. 2002 was 2 decades ago now ;-)
- Closi 5y ago
  They absolutely are Argus 700's, and a lot of the design of the systems is in the public domain. > The computer system consists of a network of computer nodes, based on the Ferranti Argus 700 range of computers, assigned to each reactor unit, except where common station facilities are required. For each reactor unit, the computer system provides both data processing and automatic control functions. For essential data capture, control and display to the CCR operators, the processor hardware is duplicated. These are termed Level 1 systems and are shown in Figures 1 and 2. Single processor systems which collect data not considered essential for continued unit operation are termed Level 2 systems. Figure 3 illustrates the Level 2 computer system for both units. Torness NFS probably has the most complex computer configuration of any operating nuclear power station. The auto control "supersystem" consists of, per reactor, ten input multiplexing computers ("muxes"), eleven control computers (CCOI, CCO2 to CCI 1) and a dual online/ standby supervisory computer ("CS"). Each of these computers is a node in the hierarchical control supersystem shown schematically in Figure 2. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/26/077/26077326.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... http://www.wjhill.net/Torness.pdf http://www.wjhill.net/Torness.pdf
nickcw 5y ago
> ...although it's one of the safest and most energy-efficient civilian power reactors ever built it's a a technological dead-end, that there won't be any more of them, and that when it shuts down in thirty or forty years' time this colossal collision between space age physics and victorian plumbing will be relegated to a footnote in the history books. "Energy too cheap to meter" it ain't, but as a symbol of what we can achieve through engineering it's hard to beat. Fantastic article. Well worth a read.
stevespang 5y ago
damir 5y ago
Helluva memory this guy has... Halfway down the article I could not stop thinking "how on Earth can he write all this from memory?" I'm sure those engineers have a story or two to tell too... Great read, thank you.
- m4tthumphrey 5y ago
  I imagine this sort of experience is something most of us would not forget and that we'd be in awe the entire time.
- JabavuAdams 5y ago
  If you're a visual person, you can basically just fuzzily re-walk the tour. Also, he presumably wrote this right after the tour, not weeks later.
ArtWomb 5y ago
"nothing like this will be built again" ITER / DEMO / PROTO plants planned to eclipse everything previous in scale. And with nuclear fission now classified as green tech by the EU, maybe the political will is finally here ;) https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220109-europe-nuclear-plants-need-500-bn-euro-investment-by-2050-eu-commissioner https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220109-europe-nuclea...
- bocytron 5y ago
  I don't know about DEMO/PROTO, but even if ITER is successful, it won't be able to produce a single Watt of net energy (energy out - energy in)[0] I'm not saying we should not keep investing in fusion research, but at the current state of things, it is still somewhat science fiction. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
- wolfram74 5y ago
  The fact fission is classified as green /might/ impact fusion's future classification, but who knows. I was listening to a podcast and a disillusioned engineer said "environmentalists favorite nuclear power plant is always one that doesn't exist, as soon as it's ready to be built it's ready to be protested". Probably an instance of many groups under one label acting disparately, but I get the sentiment :/
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    Nuclear reactors are just bigger pains than even the coal plants they might replace. Especially to replace enough fossil fuel one would have to scale up the problems with mining, waste disposal, and risks of accidents or malicious interference. I know this isn't a popular idea here, but there also lots of physicists who don't believe in nuclear fission as a mid-term or near-long-term solution.
    - schnitzelstoat 5y ago
      This is also true for solar panels too though - they require rare earth materials. And large scale wind farms can have accidents and fires and harm wildlife. Doing anything at scale is difficult.
bocytron 5y ago
French power grid agency RTE made a report[0] forecasting 2050 France energy mix, and because of loss of knowledge and increased security measures, even with strong political will, France won't be able to maintain its 70% nuclear power electricity share. Most nuclear-intensive scenario in this report is max 50% nuclear energy. [0]https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Energetiques-2050-principaux-resultats.pdf#page=17 https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Ene... in french
- jhgb 5y ago
  Even if you didn't have loss of knowledge or increased security measures, unless future French nuclear power can lower its costs, it will inevitably have a lower share in the French energy mix.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    The CO2 cost is low though. You don’t need to fire coal and gas power plants when it’s dark and not windy.
    - mdorazio 5y ago
      One would hope that by 2050 energy storage and/or long-range transmission will be a non-issue for renewables, rendering this argument moot.
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        I hope too.
      - foobiekr 5y ago
        Given the latency for big projects we’d likely have at least a somewhat clear idea of what that storage would be approximately now. Do we?
        caoilte 5y ago
marcodiego 5y ago
I miss images.
- willhinsa 5y ago
  > (Note: there are no photographs; nor did I take a notepad, so I'm writing this from memory. Cameras were verboten -- not because of security, but as an operational precaution. For starters, some embedded controllers in racks in the auxilliary deisel generator control rooms have EPROMs which have been known to be erased by camera flashes in the past, triggering a generator trip; for seconds, we had to wear protective clothing -- try explaining to a visitor that their expensive Nikon has been contaminated and needs to be left behind!)
- tim333 5y ago
  Daily Mail has better images but worse text https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2927910/You-radiation-flying-standing-reactors-Secrets-nuclear-power-station-revealed-tour-plant-health-safety-notices-NEVER-ignored.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2927910/You-radiati...
- parenthesis 5y ago
  https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9618605,-2.4075562,3a,75y,18.62h,91.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxTcKGrOW57xWlApW6e--yQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9618605,-2.4075562,3a,75y,18... https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9631304,-2.4105157,3a,75y,34.4h,93.58t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOpW6ofLemSKCZgKyaxm3Eg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9631304,-2.4105157,3a,75y,34... https://www.google.com/maps/@55.964952,-2.4163361,3a,75y,51.76h,97.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sq-TL1EX-QOjqd5Bk0fFM6Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.964952,-2.4163361,3a,75y,51....
overcast 5y ago
How is a site comprised nearly of just text so overloaded by HN? It's a total 110KB.
- baggachipz 5y ago
  Wordpress.
  - fmajid 5y ago
    I thought it was Movable Type?
    - baggachipz 5y ago
      My mistake, it is. Not sure then.
- m4tthumphrey 5y ago
  From PaulAJ's comment: > Just to point out that Stross's blog is running off an elderly PC in his office, so no surprise that when it makes the front page on HN (twice in two days now) it gets slashdotted.
Zigurd 5y ago
This plant is exceptional. It is a vintage Ferrari among power plants. If hundreds of these were built, and then operated by the typical management competency of a large natural monopoly, would you bet they would all be as safe as this plant? That's the context of nuclear safety. Big, bureaucratic, lowest-bidder contractors, bosses that are most competent at career management, lax oversight, privatized profit cushioned by socialized risk, ineffective whistleblower protection.
teh_klev 5y ago
This excellent article reminds me of the time in the early 80's when I got to visit the Dounreay nuclear reactor complex[0]. Now we didn't quite get to see all the guts of the power station as Charlie did, but nonetheless even as a young teenager I was impressed by the scale and complexity of the engineering. The thing that really made the hairs on the back of my neck activate was standing right above the reactor itself. We also got a tour of the labs where radioactive components and other "hot" things were manipulated by remote control arms and grippers behind very thick glass. We even got to have a go, though obviously not with anything too dangerous :) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dounreay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dounreay
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  I'm in the nuclear industry and have chatted with some old timers from Dounreay. What a wonder it was!
  - teh_klev 5y ago
    I know that it's a good thing it's being decommissioned and cleaned up, but there's a certain fondness I have of the site because we spent many a holiday camping and B&Bing in the area when I was a youngster. That and the sound of the Scrabster(?) fog horn.
PaulAJ 5y ago
Just to point out that Stross's blog is running off an elderly PC in his office, so no surprise that when it makes the front page on HN (twice in two days now) it gets slashdotted.
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Meanwhile, in China: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HTR-PM-connected-to-grid https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HT...
- thehappypm 5y ago
  210 MW? That’s rather small, no?
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    It's a demonstration plant. Testing small proof of concept first, I guess.
  - baking 5y ago
    Demo and pilot plants tend to be small because they are intended to prove the technology to be feasible and economic. The next step would be a commercial scale plant.
  - p1mrx 5y ago
    I think the point is that the reactor modules are small enough to transport by truck.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Wouldn't more small reactors be better for management of power production? If one of 20 needs maintenance, you still have the other 19 to supply consumers with electricity. While if you need to power down a huge reactor for maintenance, its backup must be of the same huge capacity.
og_pixel 5y ago
> (Not that there's ever been a spontaneous failure of that kind at an AGR, but current disaster planning tends to emphasize scenarios such as a fully-fuelled 747 flying straight into the plant at full speed -- can't think why.) This bit made me chuckle
otrahuevada 5y ago
One thing I've always wondered is, who cleans this things? Is normal, run of the mill cleaning personnel expected to be careful enough to not accidentally toss something out alignment, or is there some kind of Nuclear Plant Grade Cleaning industry I never heard about?
- retzkek 5y ago
  There are dedicated staff for cleaning, and they do an amazing job, not a speck of dust or grime anywhere people routinely go (for good reason). Where I worked they even had special titles: NPSA, nuclear plant service attendant.
- joshvm 5y ago
  The only real difference is that there's also a decommissioning aspect. Typically any consumables that get used in a nuclear environment get collected, put in a barrel and then sent off to a warehouse for later disposal (generally unspecified...). A lot of "nuclear waste" is lightly contaminated PPE.
jareklupinski 5y ago
"some embedded controllers in racks in the auxilliary deisel generator control rooms have EPROMs which have been known to be erased by camera flashes in the past" echoes of the Raspberry Pi camera flash reboot story, 13 years apart :) https://hackaday.com/2015/02/08/photonic-reset-of-the-raspberry-pi-2/ https://hackaday.com/2015/02/08/photonic-reset-of-the-raspbe...
- fredoralive 5y ago
  Being apparently able to erase old style glass top EPROMs with a camera flash is perhaps a bit less surprising than random power components messing up. UV light exposure is how you erase them normally, although you normally use lower light levels for longer, not a short bright camera flash. I do think they need to buy higher grade sticky labels to cover the window with though. :-)
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Enough bright flashes and it adds up. Musea tend to forbid the use of flash near paintings to avoid fading the paint.
beckingz 5y ago
Seeing a massive 500 megawatt turbine in the generator hall of a nuclear powerplant is an incredible experience, dwarfed only by the knowledge that there are 3 more at the facility.
joshvm 5y ago
On safety - one of the places I had the opportunity to visit had a car park where you were only allowed to reverse in. I'm not sure if it was a holdover from a previous establishment, but I think they kept something on site that was volatile enough (like a lot of gas) that if a swift evacuation was required, they didn't want people futzing around getting out of spaces.
- tonyarkles 5y ago
  I spent some time at an active petroleum refinery a few years ago and one of the safety things that surprised me a little was that every vehicle inside the complex must have the keys in the ignition at all times. Not turned on, but in the event of an evacuation they didn't want anyone to have to futz around looking for keys.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    I think part of what's wild about that for me is just imagining the risk analysis that would lead to that kind of thing. Like, obviously not an explosion that's over in seconds, but everyone would be dead anyway. And not a normal fire because then you'd just evacuate as usual and carpool if you can't find your keys. But there's a class of refinery-specific disasters where I guess you have tens of seconds to get out, where looking for your missing keys could well mean the difference between escaping or now.
    - akiselev 5y ago
      A refinery can leak explosive gasses that form a plume in or around the refinery that rises off the ground. Once detected, there's a fairly high chance that one small spark will set it off but it could be many seconds or minutes until it's ignited and it could take multiple smaller explosions to mix in enough oxygen to cause the big one. This gives the staff "plenty" of time to evacuate but it's still an emergency situation where arguing about carpools or knocking things down frantically looking for keys (causing that spark) will eventually get people killed for no benefit.
tim333 5y ago
Some photos https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Torness&tbm=isch&chips=q:torness,g_1:power+station:VRCerDl09m4%3D&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjA0omG_qn1AhUQaBoKHW3CBAsQ4lYoAXoECAEQHg&biw=960&bih=509 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Torness&tbm=isch&chips=q:t...
- hkt 5y ago
  Does the east coast mainline railway pass that? It looks familiar.
  - tim333 5y ago
    It would seem it does.
callumprentice 5y ago
My dad who passed away some years ago on my 50th birthday, worked on the design for the AGR for many, many years. Fond memories of him picking me up from school and excitedly telling me the interesting problems he had to solve that day on the walk home. A lovely way to start my day - thank you for sharing.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  What sort of problems?
  - callumprentice 5y ago
    He worked on the steam turbine portion of the plant and the stories I remember involved clever ways of routing the incredible amount of pipework containing steam, coolant and who knows what else, to the right place and dealing with the extreme pressures. I also remember him gleefully describing how robust the containment shell was and just like the piece in the article, being able to easily withstand a fully laden jumbo jet crashing into it. My young mind couldn't comprehend why anyone might do that and how utterly unlikely it was that someone might use an aircraft as a weapon.
eggfriedrice 5y ago
I went on a tour round Torness a couple of years ago and it's a fantastic engineering marvel to mosey around. A few things stand out, like the old-tech ring binders and Windows 95 screensavers on CRTs. The safety focus was clear. Nothing was done without a risk assessment, and the young apprentice who was helping with our tour was given a telling off by the tour staff as he wasn't holding the handrails - as had clearly been drummed into them. What really struck me was how many people were involved in running the plant. I don't know how it compares to similarly sized gas plants, but there were hundreds and hundreds of people employed - mostly in project management/safety roles. I wonder how it compares to how many folk are employed in renewables, we have a lot of wind power here now. It's a shame that cracks have started to form in the reactors so the plants will be shutdown earlier than planned. It looks like tours are suspended for Covid, but go round if they open up again before shutdown!
- arethuza 5y ago
  The central cylindrical space in what was the Scottish Nuclear headquarters was designed to be the same size as an AGR reactor (each AGR plant having two reactors) - which I thought was rather cool.
- caoilte 5y ago
  windfarms need someone to check any migrating birds aren't near and someone to man the control room (can and is job shared with other windfarms). So one and a tiny bit people. Plus occasional inspections i suppose.
tda 5y ago
I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami. What are the odds of an unknown event that will affect all generators? Think of EMP, contaminated fuel, a large cloud of C)2 suffocating the engines... All seem highly unlikely, but how do you plan for the unknown unknowns? The most likely (and I think underestimated) risk for Nuclear plants is a systemic change due to a large (climate?) crisis and/or war. Think of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that definitely increased risk and reduced maintenance budget for a few Nuclear plants. Any significant sea level rise, drought or flood could very well trigger such events (even if the reactor is not affected directly, the society around it will be). That is why I think nuclear is a risky option to reach net-zero; every plant you build is a bet on the future stability of society for at least 75 years (time until the plant will be safely decommissioned by future generations). I would feel much safer in a world covered in solar panels, wind turbines and transmission lines (and highly variable spot pricing) than in one with nuclear plants that require constant care by experts and that even in the best case incur a huge cost on society to safely decommission. > In 2016 the European Commission assessed that European Union's nuclear decommissioning liabilities were seriously underfunded by about 118 billion euros, with only 150 billion euros of earmarked assets to cover 268 billion euros of expected decommissioning costs covering both dismantling of nuclear plants and storage of radioactive parts and waste. France had the largest shortfall with only 23 billion euros of earmarked assets to cover 74 billion euros of expected costs [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning
- konschubert 5y ago
  I agree with your risk assessment, but I have to say that given the choice between a climate apocalypse and a nuclear power buildout, I would choose the latter.
  - tda 5y ago
pavlov 5y ago
How does Torness compare to new European nuclear construction like Olkiluoto 3 in Finland, activated last month? Olkiluoto 3 is a 1600 MW reactor, so on paper it's a much bigger unit than the 600 MW reactor described here.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Totally different principle of operation (boiling water versus gas cooling).
  - credit_guy 5y ago
    In that case how about the Helium-cooled reactors that were just hooked to the grid in China 3 weeks ago? [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HTR-PM-connected-to-grid https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HT...?
Julesman 5y ago
dandotway 5y ago
> The two reactors at Torness have a combined electricity output of 1200 MW If they bumped 1200 MW to 1210 MW they'd have the 1.21 GW they need to operate a Flux Capacitor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-77xulkB_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-77xulkB_U
voz_ 5y ago
I do not understand the argument for nuclear. The risk never seems worth the reward. Clean now? Yes. Cheap now? Yes. Potentially catastrophic? Yes. This feels like an unnecessary risk to take on. The lessons of three mile island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima seem to be forgotten too quickly.
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  I'm sure you understand the argument for commercial flight being safer per mile than most other forms of travel despite the potential catastrophe of a plane crash. The argument for nuclear is identical. The combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]). Chernobyl directly killed between 60-80 with acute radiation syndrome and caused up to 4000 cancer deaths [2]. Fukushima radiation killed between zero and one person, depending who you ask [3]. TMI killed zero. [1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 [2] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html [3] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html So, running the numbers, you see that fossil + biofuel kill the entire death footprint of the entire commercial nuclear industry very 7.5 hours and counting. Thus, from a safety perspective, nuclear is a no-brainer, despite the fact that it seems overly hazardous due to the way the stories come out.
  - voz_ 5y ago
    I am not sure this is a good argument, if only because the upper bound potential for damage is so much higher. > the combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]). Your link is on air pollution, NOT fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are gross, dirty, and far-too-lobbied. However, even in your own link, there is reference to cook fires, and I would be willing to bet that a lot of that pollution is from industrial processing and lack of regulation as opposed to just fossil fuel. > Chernobyl directly killed between 60-80 with acute radiation syndrome and caused up to 4000 cancer deaths [2]. Fukushima radiation killed between zero and one person, depending who you ask [3]. TMI killed zero. The numbers you site are not in your link. It says 6,000 children with thyroid cancer, and I would be willing to bet the actual damage is way, way higher than reported. Esp due to the nature of the soviet union and the fallout and radiation spread across Eastern Europe cannot have a counterfactual for cancer rates. The real issue is that the potential of Nuclear is to make whole swaths of the planet uninhabitable. This is also where your flight analogy falls apart. The upper bound of death for a single plane crash is ~300 people on the flight + (a few thousand, god forbid) if it hits something critical as it falls. The upper bound for nuclear is... unimaginable? Edit/afterthought. In your profile, I saw that you are a nuclear scientist. I think you should disclose that career bias when you argue for this.
yodelshady 5y ago
AGRs also perfectly demonstrate some of the more perverse elements of the nuclear economy. They can be (at least were designed to be) refuelled online. An operator's dream - 100% uptime! And for the same reason, a security nightmare. So no exports.
njarboe 5y ago
One can hope that the complexity, size, potential hazards, and expense of getting power from nuclear reactions can be greatly reduced in the future. Like Charles Babbage's difference engines [1] that were replaced by a whole new way of doing calculations with electronics, I don't think there is any first principle reason small and safe nuclear powers sources couldn't exist. The big problem in discovering/inventing them is the regulations and public fear around radioactive materials. Radioactivity is dangerous but so are a lot of technologies when they first were discovered. Steam power, chemical explosives, oil refining, etc. No one can really tinker around nuclear materials, try new things, and iterate quickly. The US could really help jump start new nuclear tech if they would designate an isolated location where the rules and regulations around handling radioactive material was greatly relaxed. The former test site in Nevada might be a good place. Fully informed consent for the people working there with each lab spaced out to confine any unexpected high exposures to the people working on their own experiments. A certain portion of the population desires doing dangerous and risky things. Look at all the extreme sports these days. It would be great to create a way to allow them to take dangerous risks that are deeply meaningful, intellectually challenging, potentially financially lucrative, and productive for society at large.
dayofthedaleks 5y ago
Mr. Stross was kind enough to pop into the discussion but too much of a gentleman to plug his new book, so I’ll do it: The new Laundryverse book, _Quantum of Nightmares_, was released today.
- dayofthedaleks 5y ago
  My kindle edition has a tag at the beginning stating it's DRM-free!
nickdothutton 5y ago
You get a nice view of the buildings from the train on the East Coast Main Line. The plant is still controlled by Ferrani Argus 1980s-era computers running CORAL.
jacquesm 5y ago
Great article, this bit jumped out at me: "the anti-truck-bomb obstacles (on the entrance only -- no self-respecting truck bomber would ever think of driving in through the exit, would they?)" This is the sort of thing that never stops to amaze me, usually when visiting some installation or other there is a detail like this that jumps out. The best example that I have of this was a perfectly sealed isolation ward in a hospital that merged both intake and exhaust of the isolation ward with the general wards because they ran out of budget for another air system so they plumbed it into what was already there. It totally floored me that this was done consciously as a cost saving measure, I'll leave the failure modes as a homework exercise ;)
mcguire 5y ago
"(Which isn't likely; in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working.)" I've heard that before, somewhere.

411 points by arethuza 5y ago

In my first job in the late 1980s I had a colleague who tailgated someone through the security gates at Torness and had real difficulties getting out again as he hadn't officially entered... He had been through security and issued a pass so there probably wasn't a security risk. Took him a few hours to get out.

spuz 5y ago

When was this article written?

arethuza 5y ago
It's reasonably old - couldn't find a year to add it to the title. Torness is still operating though the other AGR plant in Scotland, Hunterston, recently closed down. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-59894688 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-59894688
iqanq 5y ago
2002: https://web.archive.org/web/20021226021504/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/rant/torness.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021226021504/http://www.antipo...
- arethuza 5y ago
  Thanks, I've added that to title.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

le-mark 5y ago

Always a treat to read something by Charles Stross. Seems like Accelerando was required reading for the previous generation, is it still? I was not familiar with the UK advanced gas cooled reactors, which use CO2 to cool the core and transfer heat to the steam. From the name it seems to be gas and not supercritical CO2 although I may have that wrong. Power generation is the one topic that makes thermodynamics crystal clear imo. Energy goes into steam, steam does work, lowering the steam temperature and pressure, heating and cooling at different point can increase efficiency. It’s a topic I wish I’d have learned about sooner!

Robotbeat 5y ago
Supercritical is the state of the CO2 gas. Smoothly intermediate from a regular gas to a liquid.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  The coolant in these reactors would not normally be considered supercritical as its pressure (2.66 MPa max) is well below its critical pressure (7.38 MPa.) https://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C08/E3-06-02-05.pdf https://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C08/E3-06-02-05.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_carbon_dioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_carbon_dioxide
dls2016 5y ago
My old man was a Navy nuke turned instrument tech at Three Mile Island... he can go on and on about steam tables. I worked there one refueling outage while lazing about after college. Highlights include: sweeping river muck out of the empty cooling towers, scrubbing pipes for x-ray analysis, standing "fire watch" since doors were propped open, taking a smoke break on top of the Unit 2 control room building (that Unit 2), staring at the humongous, partially-disassembled turbine (they may have replaced it that year), spotlighting deer at the end of the island. I also remember a very strange feeling while listening to radiation monitors go crazy when the spent fuel was being removed... if you walked a few dozen feet past the warning tape you were probably dead.
- darkteflon 5y ago
  Great anecdotes - only on HN. Cheers for sharing.
- boringg 5y ago
  I'm getting flashbacks of the engineering problems I had to solve at school with all this talk of steam look up tables. Not sure if its enjoyable or suppression nostalgia :)
  - 5y ago

JonathanBuchh 5y ago

Archive: https://archive.is/TTX4g https://archive.is/TTX4g

soneca 5y ago
I could not pass its Captcha. It just reloaded the Captcha page and I would never reach the article
camtarn 5y ago
The last paragraph was truncated for me. I had to look at the page source to read it! Reproduced here for those on mobile browsers: "It's a weird experience, crawling over the guts of one of the marvels of the atomic age, smelling the thing (mostly machine oil and steam, and a hint of ozone near the transformers), all the while knowing that although it's one of the safest and most energy-efficient civilian power reactors ever built it's a a technological dead-end, that there won't be any more of them, and that when it shuts down in thirty or forty years' time this colossal collision between space age physics and victorian plumbing will be relegated to a footnote in the history books. 'Energy too cheap to meter' it ain't, but as a symbol of what we can achieve through engineering it's hard to beat."

6LLvveMx2koXfwn 5y ago

The Ferranti mainframes mentioned in the article are probably Argus 700 machines developed in 1968/9 [1] Amazing that such tech was still running important infrastructure only a decade ago. 1. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/16225/Ferranti-Argus-700/ http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/16225/Ferranti-Argus-...

arethuza 5y ago
The training simulators used custom hardware from Marconi Simulation as well - a long long time ago I didn't get to job to work on them at Torness. Mind you I did end up on an academic project that included modelling of Hunterston, so I got the "behind the scenes" tour there that Charlie got for Torness. The Project Manager from Scottish Nuclear had worked on the construction of Torness and he lots of interesting stories.
mcphage 5y ago
> Amazing that such tech was still running important infrastructure only a decade ago. 2002 was 2 decades ago now ;-)
Closi 5y ago
They absolutely are Argus 700's, and a lot of the design of the systems is in the public domain. > The computer system consists of a network of computer nodes, based on the Ferranti Argus 700 range of computers, assigned to each reactor unit, except where common station facilities are required. For each reactor unit, the computer system provides both data processing and automatic control functions. For essential data capture, control and display to the CCR operators, the processor hardware is duplicated. These are termed Level 1 systems and are shown in Figures 1 and 2. Single processor systems which collect data not considered essential for continued unit operation are termed Level 2 systems. Figure 3 illustrates the Level 2 computer system for both units. Torness NFS probably has the most complex computer configuration of any operating nuclear power station. The auto control "supersystem" consists of, per reactor, ten input multiplexing computers ("muxes"), eleven control computers (CCOI, CCO2 to CCI 1) and a dual online/ standby supervisory computer ("CS"). Each of these computers is a node in the hierarchical control supersystem shown schematically in Figure 2. https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/26/077/26077326.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... http://www.wjhill.net/Torness.pdf http://www.wjhill.net/Torness.pdf

nickcw 5y ago

> ...although it's one of the safest and most energy-efficient civilian power reactors ever built it's a a technological dead-end, that there won't be any more of them, and that when it shuts down in thirty or forty years' time this colossal collision between space age physics and victorian plumbing will be relegated to a footnote in the history books. "Energy too cheap to meter" it ain't, but as a symbol of what we can achieve through engineering it's hard to beat. Fantastic article. Well worth a read.

stevespang 5y ago

damir 5y ago

Helluva memory this guy has... Halfway down the article I could not stop thinking "how on Earth can he write all this from memory?" I'm sure those engineers have a story or two to tell too... Great read, thank you.

m4tthumphrey 5y ago
I imagine this sort of experience is something most of us would not forget and that we'd be in awe the entire time.
JabavuAdams 5y ago
If you're a visual person, you can basically just fuzzily re-walk the tour. Also, he presumably wrote this right after the tour, not weeks later.

ArtWomb 5y ago

"nothing like this will be built again" ITER / DEMO / PROTO plants planned to eclipse everything previous in scale. And with nuclear fission now classified as green tech by the EU, maybe the political will is finally here ;) https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220109-europe-nuclear-plants-need-500-bn-euro-investment-by-2050-eu-commissioner https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220109-europe-nuclea...

bocytron 5y ago
I don't know about DEMO/PROTO, but even if ITER is successful, it won't be able to produce a single Watt of net energy (energy out - energy in)[0] I'm not saying we should not keep investing in fusion research, but at the current state of things, it is still somewhat science fiction. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
wolfram74 5y ago
The fact fission is classified as green /might/ impact fusion's future classification, but who knows. I was listening to a podcast and a disillusioned engineer said "environmentalists favorite nuclear power plant is always one that doesn't exist, as soon as it's ready to be built it's ready to be protested". Probably an instance of many groups under one label acting disparately, but I get the sentiment :/
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Nuclear reactors are just bigger pains than even the coal plants they might replace. Especially to replace enough fossil fuel one would have to scale up the problems with mining, waste disposal, and risks of accidents or malicious interference. I know this isn't a popular idea here, but there also lots of physicists who don't believe in nuclear fission as a mid-term or near-long-term solution.
  - schnitzelstoat 5y ago
    This is also true for solar panels too though - they require rare earth materials. And large scale wind farms can have accidents and fires and harm wildlife. Doing anything at scale is difficult.

bocytron 5y ago

French power grid agency RTE made a report[0] forecasting 2050 France energy mix, and because of loss of knowledge and increased security measures, even with strong political will, France won't be able to maintain its 70% nuclear power electricity share. Most nuclear-intensive scenario in this report is max 50% nuclear energy. [0]https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Energetiques-2050-principaux-resultats.pdf#page=17 https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Ene... in french

jhgb 5y ago
Even if you didn't have loss of knowledge or increased security measures, unless future French nuclear power can lower its costs, it will inevitably have a lower share in the French energy mix.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  The CO2 cost is low though. You don’t need to fire coal and gas power plants when it’s dark and not windy.
  - mdorazio 5y ago
    One would hope that by 2050 energy storage and/or long-range transmission will be a non-issue for renewables, rendering this argument moot.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      I hope too.
    - foobiekr 5y ago
      Given the latency for big projects we’d likely have at least a somewhat clear idea of what that storage would be approximately now. Do we?
      - caoilte 5y ago

marcodiego 5y ago

I miss images.

willhinsa 5y ago
> (Note: there are no photographs; nor did I take a notepad, so I'm writing this from memory. Cameras were verboten -- not because of security, but as an operational precaution. For starters, some embedded controllers in racks in the auxilliary deisel generator control rooms have EPROMs which have been known to be erased by camera flashes in the past, triggering a generator trip; for seconds, we had to wear protective clothing -- try explaining to a visitor that their expensive Nikon has been contaminated and needs to be left behind!)
tim333 5y ago
Daily Mail has better images but worse text https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2927910/You-radiation-flying-standing-reactors-Secrets-nuclear-power-station-revealed-tour-plant-health-safety-notices-NEVER-ignored.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2927910/You-radiati...
parenthesis 5y ago
https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9618605,-2.4075562,3a,75y,18.62h,91.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sxTcKGrOW57xWlApW6e--yQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9618605,-2.4075562,3a,75y,18... https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9631304,-2.4105157,3a,75y,34.4h,93.58t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOpW6ofLemSKCZgKyaxm3Eg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.9631304,-2.4105157,3a,75y,34... https://www.google.com/maps/@55.964952,-2.4163361,3a,75y,51.76h,97.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sq-TL1EX-QOjqd5Bk0fFM6Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.964952,-2.4163361,3a,75y,51....

overcast 5y ago

How is a site comprised nearly of just text so overloaded by HN? It's a total 110KB.

baggachipz 5y ago
Wordpress.
- fmajid 5y ago
  I thought it was Movable Type?
  - baggachipz 5y ago
    My mistake, it is. Not sure then.
m4tthumphrey 5y ago
From PaulAJ's comment: > Just to point out that Stross's blog is running off an elderly PC in his office, so no surprise that when it makes the front page on HN (twice in two days now) it gets slashdotted.

Zigurd 5y ago

This plant is exceptional. It is a vintage Ferrari among power plants. If hundreds of these were built, and then operated by the typical management competency of a large natural monopoly, would you bet they would all be as safe as this plant? That's the context of nuclear safety. Big, bureaucratic, lowest-bidder contractors, bosses that are most competent at career management, lax oversight, privatized profit cushioned by socialized risk, ineffective whistleblower protection.

teh_klev 5y ago

This excellent article reminds me of the time in the early 80's when I got to visit the Dounreay nuclear reactor complex[0]. Now we didn't quite get to see all the guts of the power station as Charlie did, but nonetheless even as a young teenager I was impressed by the scale and complexity of the engineering. The thing that really made the hairs on the back of my neck activate was standing right above the reactor itself. We also got a tour of the labs where radioactive components and other "hot" things were manipulated by remote control arms and grippers behind very thick glass. We even got to have a go, though obviously not with anything too dangerous :) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dounreay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dounreay

acidburnNSA 5y ago
I'm in the nuclear industry and have chatted with some old timers from Dounreay. What a wonder it was!
- teh_klev 5y ago
  I know that it's a good thing it's being decommissioned and cleaned up, but there's a certain fondness I have of the site because we spent many a holiday camping and B&Bing in the area when I was a youngster. That and the sound of the Scrabster(?) fog horn.

PaulAJ 5y ago

Just to point out that Stross's blog is running off an elderly PC in his office, so no surprise that when it makes the front page on HN (twice in two days now) it gets slashdotted.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Meanwhile, in China: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HTR-PM-connected-to-grid https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HT...

thehappypm 5y ago
210 MW? That’s rather small, no?
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  It's a demonstration plant. Testing small proof of concept first, I guess.
- baking 5y ago
  Demo and pilot plants tend to be small because they are intended to prove the technology to be feasible and economic. The next step would be a commercial scale plant.
- p1mrx 5y ago
  I think the point is that the reactor modules are small enough to transport by truck.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Wouldn't more small reactors be better for management of power production? If one of 20 needs maintenance, you still have the other 19 to supply consumers with electricity. While if you need to power down a huge reactor for maintenance, its backup must be of the same huge capacity.

og_pixel 5y ago

> (Not that there's ever been a spontaneous failure of that kind at an AGR, but current disaster planning tends to emphasize scenarios such as a fully-fuelled 747 flying straight into the plant at full speed -- can't think why.) This bit made me chuckle

otrahuevada 5y ago

One thing I've always wondered is, who cleans this things? Is normal, run of the mill cleaning personnel expected to be careful enough to not accidentally toss something out alignment, or is there some kind of Nuclear Plant Grade Cleaning industry I never heard about?

retzkek 5y ago
There are dedicated staff for cleaning, and they do an amazing job, not a speck of dust or grime anywhere people routinely go (for good reason). Where I worked they even had special titles: NPSA, nuclear plant service attendant.
joshvm 5y ago
The only real difference is that there's also a decommissioning aspect. Typically any consumables that get used in a nuclear environment get collected, put in a barrel and then sent off to a warehouse for later disposal (generally unspecified...). A lot of "nuclear waste" is lightly contaminated PPE.

jareklupinski 5y ago

"some embedded controllers in racks in the auxilliary deisel generator control rooms have EPROMs which have been known to be erased by camera flashes in the past" echoes of the Raspberry Pi camera flash reboot story, 13 years apart :) https://hackaday.com/2015/02/08/photonic-reset-of-the-raspberry-pi-2/ https://hackaday.com/2015/02/08/photonic-reset-of-the-raspbe...

fredoralive 5y ago
Being apparently able to erase old style glass top EPROMs with a camera flash is perhaps a bit less surprising than random power components messing up. UV light exposure is how you erase them normally, although you normally use lower light levels for longer, not a short bright camera flash. I do think they need to buy higher grade sticky labels to cover the window with though. :-)
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Enough bright flashes and it adds up. Musea tend to forbid the use of flash near paintings to avoid fading the paint.

beckingz 5y ago

Seeing a massive 500 megawatt turbine in the generator hall of a nuclear powerplant is an incredible experience, dwarfed only by the knowledge that there are 3 more at the facility.

joshvm 5y ago

On safety - one of the places I had the opportunity to visit had a car park where you were only allowed to reverse in. I'm not sure if it was a holdover from a previous establishment, but I think they kept something on site that was volatile enough (like a lot of gas) that if a swift evacuation was required, they didn't want people futzing around getting out of spaces.

tonyarkles 5y ago
I spent some time at an active petroleum refinery a few years ago and one of the safety things that surprised me a little was that every vehicle inside the complex must have the keys in the ignition at all times. Not turned on, but in the event of an evacuation they didn't want anyone to have to futz around looking for keys.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  I think part of what's wild about that for me is just imagining the risk analysis that would lead to that kind of thing. Like, obviously not an explosion that's over in seconds, but everyone would be dead anyway. And not a normal fire because then you'd just evacuate as usual and carpool if you can't find your keys. But there's a class of refinery-specific disasters where I guess you have tens of seconds to get out, where looking for your missing keys could well mean the difference between escaping or now.
  - akiselev 5y ago
    A refinery can leak explosive gasses that form a plume in or around the refinery that rises off the ground. Once detected, there's a fairly high chance that one small spark will set it off but it could be many seconds or minutes until it's ignited and it could take multiple smaller explosions to mix in enough oxygen to cause the big one. This gives the staff "plenty" of time to evacuate but it's still an emergency situation where arguing about carpools or knocking things down frantically looking for keys (causing that spark) will eventually get people killed for no benefit.

tim333 5y ago

Some photos https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Torness&tbm=isch&chips=q:torness,g_1:power+station:VRCerDl09m4%3D&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjA0omG_qn1AhUQaBoKHW3CBAsQ4lYoAXoECAEQHg&biw=960&bih=509 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Torness&tbm=isch&chips=q:t...

hkt 5y ago
Does the east coast mainline railway pass that? It looks familiar.
- tim333 5y ago
  It would seem it does.

callumprentice 5y ago

My dad who passed away some years ago on my 50th birthday, worked on the design for the AGR for many, many years. Fond memories of him picking me up from school and excitedly telling me the interesting problems he had to solve that day on the walk home. A lovely way to start my day - thank you for sharing.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
What sort of problems?
- callumprentice 5y ago
  He worked on the steam turbine portion of the plant and the stories I remember involved clever ways of routing the incredible amount of pipework containing steam, coolant and who knows what else, to the right place and dealing with the extreme pressures. I also remember him gleefully describing how robust the containment shell was and just like the piece in the article, being able to easily withstand a fully laden jumbo jet crashing into it. My young mind couldn't comprehend why anyone might do that and how utterly unlikely it was that someone might use an aircraft as a weapon.

eggfriedrice 5y ago

I went on a tour round Torness a couple of years ago and it's a fantastic engineering marvel to mosey around. A few things stand out, like the old-tech ring binders and Windows 95 screensavers on CRTs. The safety focus was clear. Nothing was done without a risk assessment, and the young apprentice who was helping with our tour was given a telling off by the tour staff as he wasn't holding the handrails - as had clearly been drummed into them. What really struck me was how many people were involved in running the plant. I don't know how it compares to similarly sized gas plants, but there were hundreds and hundreds of people employed - mostly in project management/safety roles. I wonder how it compares to how many folk are employed in renewables, we have a lot of wind power here now. It's a shame that cracks have started to form in the reactors so the plants will be shutdown earlier than planned. It looks like tours are suspended for Covid, but go round if they open up again before shutdown!

arethuza 5y ago
The central cylindrical space in what was the Scottish Nuclear headquarters was designed to be the same size as an AGR reactor (each AGR plant having two reactors) - which I thought was rather cool.
caoilte 5y ago
windfarms need someone to check any migrating birds aren't near and someone to man the control room (can and is job shared with other windfarms). So one and a tiny bit people. Plus occasional inspections i suppose.

tda 5y ago

I bet the Fukushima backup power system would have fit this explanation perfectly: > in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working. Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami. What are the odds of an unknown event that will affect all generators? Think of EMP, contaminated fuel, a large cloud of C)2 suffocating the engines... All seem highly unlikely, but how do you plan for the unknown unknowns? The most likely (and I think underestimated) risk for Nuclear plants is a systemic change due to a large (climate?) crisis and/or war. Think of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that definitely increased risk and reduced maintenance budget for a few Nuclear plants. Any significant sea level rise, drought or flood could very well trigger such events (even if the reactor is not affected directly, the society around it will be). That is why I think nuclear is a risky option to reach net-zero; every plant you build is a bet on the future stability of society for at least 75 years (time until the plant will be safely decommissioned by future generations). I would feel much safer in a world covered in solar panels, wind turbines and transmission lines (and highly variable spot pricing) than in one with nuclear plants that require constant care by experts and that even in the best case incur a huge cost on society to safely decommission. > In 2016 the European Commission assessed that European Union's nuclear decommissioning liabilities were seriously underfunded by about 118 billion euros, with only 150 billion euros of earmarked assets to cover 268 billion euros of expected decommissioning costs covering both dismantling of nuclear plants and storage of radioactive parts and waste. France had the largest shortfall with only 23 billion euros of earmarked assets to cover 74 billion euros of expected costs [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning

konschubert 5y ago
I agree with your risk assessment, but I have to say that given the choice between a climate apocalypse and a nuclear power buildout, I would choose the latter.
- tda 5y ago

pavlov 5y ago

How does Torness compare to new European nuclear construction like Olkiluoto 3 in Finland, activated last month? Olkiluoto 3 is a 1600 MW reactor, so on paper it's a much bigger unit than the 600 MW reactor described here.

jacquesm 5y ago
Totally different principle of operation (boiling water versus gas cooling).
- credit_guy 5y ago
  In that case how about the Helium-cooled reactors that were just hooked to the grid in China 3 weeks ago? [1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HTR-PM-connected-to-grid https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HT...?

Julesman 5y ago

dandotway 5y ago

> The two reactors at Torness have a combined electricity output of 1200 MW If they bumped 1200 MW to 1210 MW they'd have the 1.21 GW they need to operate a Flux Capacitor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-77xulkB_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-77xulkB_U

voz_ 5y ago

I do not understand the argument for nuclear. The risk never seems worth the reward. Clean now? Yes. Cheap now? Yes. Potentially catastrophic? Yes. This feels like an unnecessary risk to take on. The lessons of three mile island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima seem to be forgotten too quickly.

acidburnNSA 5y ago
I'm sure you understand the argument for commercial flight being safer per mile than most other forms of travel despite the potential catastrophe of a plane crash. The argument for nuclear is identical. The combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]). Chernobyl directly killed between 60-80 with acute radiation syndrome and caused up to 4000 cancer deaths [2]. Fukushima radiation killed between zero and one person, depending who you ask [3]. TMI killed zero. [1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 [2] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html [3] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/fukushima.html So, running the numbers, you see that fossil + biofuel kill the entire death footprint of the entire commercial nuclear industry very 7.5 hours and counting. Thus, from a safety perspective, nuclear is a no-brainer, despite the fact that it seems overly hazardous due to the way the stories come out.
- voz_ 5y ago
  I am not sure this is a good argument, if only because the upper bound potential for damage is so much higher. > the combustion of fossil fuels regularly kills 4.2 million people per year, year after year and counting. The combustion of renewable biofuel kills 3.8 million/year (WHO numbers [1]). Your link is on air pollution, NOT fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are gross, dirty, and far-too-lobbied. However, even in your own link, there is reference to cook fires, and I would be willing to bet that a lot of that pollution is from industrial processing and lack of regulation as opposed to just fossil fuel. > Chernobyl directly killed between 60-80 with acute radiation syndrome and caused up to 4000 cancer deaths [2]. Fukushima radiation killed between zero and one person, depending who you ask [3]. TMI killed zero. The numbers you site are not in your link. It says 6,000 children with thyroid cancer, and I would be willing to bet the actual damage is way, way higher than reported. Esp due to the nature of the soviet union and the fallout and radiation spread across Eastern Europe cannot have a counterfactual for cancer rates. The real issue is that the potential of Nuclear is to make whole swaths of the planet uninhabitable. This is also where your flight analogy falls apart. The upper bound of death for a single plane crash is ~300 people on the flight + (a few thousand, god forbid) if it hits something critical as it falls. The upper bound for nuclear is... unimaginable? Edit/afterthought. In your profile, I saw that you are a nuclear scientist. I think you should disclose that career bias when you argue for this.

yodelshady 5y ago

AGRs also perfectly demonstrate some of the more perverse elements of the nuclear economy. They can be (at least were designed to be) refuelled online. An operator's dream - 100% uptime! And for the same reason, a security nightmare. So no exports.

njarboe 5y ago

One can hope that the complexity, size, potential hazards, and expense of getting power from nuclear reactions can be greatly reduced in the future. Like Charles Babbage's difference engines [1] that were replaced by a whole new way of doing calculations with electronics, I don't think there is any first principle reason small and safe nuclear powers sources couldn't exist. The big problem in discovering/inventing them is the regulations and public fear around radioactive materials. Radioactivity is dangerous but so are a lot of technologies when they first were discovered. Steam power, chemical explosives, oil refining, etc. No one can really tinker around nuclear materials, try new things, and iterate quickly. The US could really help jump start new nuclear tech if they would designate an isolated location where the rules and regulations around handling radioactive material was greatly relaxed. The former test site in Nevada might be a good place. Fully informed consent for the people working there with each lab spaced out to confine any unexpected high exposures to the people working on their own experiments. A certain portion of the population desires doing dangerous and risky things. Look at all the extreme sports these days. It would be great to create a way to allow them to take dangerous risks that are deeply meaningful, intellectually challenging, potentially financially lucrative, and productive for society at large.

dayofthedaleks 5y ago

Mr. Stross was kind enough to pop into the discussion but too much of a gentleman to plug his new book, so I’ll do it: The new Laundryverse book, _Quantum of Nightmares_, was released today.

dayofthedaleks 5y ago
My kindle edition has a tag at the beginning stating it's DRM-free!

nickdothutton 5y ago

You get a nice view of the buildings from the train on the East Coast Main Line. The plant is still controlled by Ferrani Argus 1980s-era computers running CORAL.

jacquesm 5y ago

Great article, this bit jumped out at me: "the anti-truck-bomb obstacles (on the entrance only -- no self-respecting truck bomber would ever think of driving in through the exit, would they?)" This is the sort of thing that never stops to amaze me, usually when visiting some installation or other there is a detail like this that jumps out. The best example that I have of this was a perfectly sealed isolation ward in a hospital that merged both intake and exhaust of the isolation ward with the general wards because they ran out of budget for another air system so they plumbed it into what was already there. It totally floored me that this was done consciously as a cost saving measure, I'll leave the failure modes as a homework exercise ;)

mcguire 5y ago

"(Which isn't likely; in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working.)" I've heard that before, somewhere.