4 ms·

Nice, now I can visualize how much more I'm paying after the shutdown of Indian Point nuclear plant in favor of expensive fossil fuels.

thaway2839 5y ago
Will you be factoring in the cost of an accident (you can adjust the rarity of the accident to get your expected value) destroying the entire economic engine of the state? A lot of nuclear closures make no sense. Germany's indiscriminate shutting down of all the nuclear power plants in the country without waiting for renewable alternatives to be online was a bad idea. However, specific shutdowns do make sense. A nuclear plant situation upstream of the biggest city in the US, right by the entire city's water supply is very high up in the list of existing nuclear shutdowns that make sense.
- johnnyb9 5y ago
  Sure, like Fukushima, which is rare, and had a single death?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    The economic damages of a 30km exclusion zone that close to NYC might be significant, even without deaths.
    - mikeyouse 5y ago
      Also the Japanese government is projecting a total of somewhere between $200 billion and $600 billion to clean up the mess left behind -- amortizing that on the $/MWh produced by the power plant would probably lead to slightly more expensive power... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radioactive-rubble-heap-that-was-fukushima-daiichi-7-years-on/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi...
      - powerbroker 5y ago
        The proper way to make the accounting is to sum the cleanup for Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, and then divide by the 120-180 operating nuclear plants and further divide by the 25-35 years of continuous operation: ∑ accidents --------------------------- ∑ fleet x years operated
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Will you be factoring in the healthcare costs associated with burning more diesel and natural gas? (Not even getting into the externalities of climate change.) --- I thought Kurzgesagt did a pretty good job of breaking this down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM. Basically, no matter how you look at it, nuclear is among the safest forms of energy we have, behind only solar, wind, and hydropower. Admittedly, deaths ≠ costs, but I imagine the numbers would be similar.
  - cupofpython 5y ago
    nuclear is also incredibly hard to build an accurate model for because the concern tends to revolve around the risk of human stupidity causing major issues. on top of that, i feel like there is a lot of hand waving involved with the waste. if we really industrialized nuclear fuel worldwide - we would be creating a lot of nuclear waste. theoretically, this isnt a problem. what id like to see, and may do one day if i run out of projects, is at what risk factor does nuclear equal fossil fuels. not, look how much better it is, but "this is about how dumb we would need to be in our handling of nuclear plants to cause about the same damage as our current system does" making it apples to apples like that would make it much clearer.. % risk of this or that is tough to internalize for a lot of people. but is active sabotage of 1 out of every 10 plants necessary to be as bad as current energy? or is just 1 plant failing enough to make nuclear worse and we are just saying the likelihood of just 1 plant failing is astronomically small
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      Fossil fuels have enormous global risk, so that's not bad for nuclear. The problem is that nuclear is competing against renewables, not fossil fuels. So, new nuclear needs an argument for why it's better than renewables, not why it's better than something that's on its way out anyway. The usual arguments, intermittency of renewables and land use, don't work well when examined closely, at least when justifying new nuclear power plants.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago

thaway2839 5y ago

Will you be factoring in the cost of an accident (you can adjust the rarity of the accident to get your expected value) destroying the entire economic engine of the state? A lot of nuclear closures make no sense. Germany's indiscriminate shutting down of all the nuclear power plants in the country without waiting for renewable alternatives to be online was a bad idea. However, specific shutdowns do make sense. A nuclear plant situation upstream of the biggest city in the US, right by the entire city's water supply is very high up in the list of existing nuclear shutdowns that make sense.

johnnyb9 5y ago
Sure, like Fukushima, which is rare, and had a single death?
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The economic damages of a 30km exclusion zone that close to NYC might be significant, even without deaths.
  - mikeyouse 5y ago
    Also the Japanese government is projecting a total of somewhere between $200 billion and $600 billion to clean up the mess left behind -- amortizing that on the $/MWh produced by the power plant would probably lead to slightly more expensive power... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radioactive-rubble-heap-that-was-fukushima-daiichi-7-years-on/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi...
    - powerbroker 5y ago
      The proper way to make the accounting is to sum the cleanup for Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, and then divide by the 120-180 operating nuclear plants and further divide by the 25-35 years of continuous operation: ∑ accidents --------------------------- ∑ fleet x years operated
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Will you be factoring in the healthcare costs associated with burning more diesel and natural gas? (Not even getting into the externalities of climate change.) --- I thought Kurzgesagt did a pretty good job of breaking this down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM. Basically, no matter how you look at it, nuclear is among the safest forms of energy we have, behind only solar, wind, and hydropower. Admittedly, deaths ≠ costs, but I imagine the numbers would be similar.
- cupofpython 5y ago
  nuclear is also incredibly hard to build an accurate model for because the concern tends to revolve around the risk of human stupidity causing major issues. on top of that, i feel like there is a lot of hand waving involved with the waste. if we really industrialized nuclear fuel worldwide - we would be creating a lot of nuclear waste. theoretically, this isnt a problem. what id like to see, and may do one day if i run out of projects, is at what risk factor does nuclear equal fossil fuels. not, look how much better it is, but "this is about how dumb we would need to be in our handling of nuclear plants to cause about the same damage as our current system does" making it apples to apples like that would make it much clearer.. % risk of this or that is tough to internalize for a lot of people. but is active sabotage of 1 out of every 10 plants necessary to be as bad as current energy? or is just 1 plant failing enough to make nuclear worse and we are just saying the likelihood of just 1 plant failing is astronomically small
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    Fossil fuels have enormous global risk, so that's not bad for nuclear. The problem is that nuclear is competing against renewables, not fossil fuels. So, new nuclear needs an argument for why it's better than renewables, not why it's better than something that's on its way out anyway. The usual arguments, intermittency of renewables and land use, don't work well when examined closely, at least when justifying new nuclear power plants.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago