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Handy reference on why nuclear power might not be such a good idea as some people think: https://www.wien.gv.at/english/environment/ombuds-office/arguments.html

Handy reference on why nuclear power might not be such a good idea as some people think: https://www.wien.gv.at/english/environment/ombuds-office/arguments.html https://www.wien.gv.at/english/environment/ombuds-office/arg...

exdsq 5y ago
> Nuclear waste from power stations can be used as raw materials for nuclear weapons. I imagine it's almost impossible to manufacture nuclear weapons 'quietly' with waste and sanctions/agreements stop this happening, while countries that go against these are able to manufacture nuclear weapons anyway (North Korea). So I don't think this is as big a risk as suggested. The rest seem solvable by focusing on better secure designs and then moving from Uranium to another source. I don't know the difficulty of this but I can't imagine it's insurmountable?
Aachen 5y ago
When an article starts with chernobyl as example of what mistakes we're likely to make when building a new plant today, it makes me itch to just close the tab and dismiss the opinion of the person who linked it. Not sure why I even bothered digging into it, but for example one later point is also misleading: "uranium resources will be depleted by the end of this century". I think I found the source (not that they link it, that would be too easy, but by ducking around for this number): > the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, which can be mined for less than USD 130 per kg, [was found] to be about 4.7 million tonnes. Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand the amount is sufficient for 85 years, the study states. Fast reactor technology would lengthen this period to over 2500 years. > However, world uranium resources in total are considered to be much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of uranium in phosphates the study considers more than 35 million tonnes is available for exploitation. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/global-uranium-resources-meet-projected-demand https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/global-uranium-resource... I'm not sure how the "city of vienna" can read this and summarize it down to say that we'll plainly run out of uranium by 2100. That's just not what the source says. Maybe that's what makes this "reference" "handy" for people with a certain preexisting opinion? The same bullet point continues with some other interesting claims, let alone the rest of the page, but let me quickly close that tab before I feel inclined to go down more of these rabbit holes...
- f_allwein 5y ago
  > Accidents in nuclear power plants can have disastrous implications. As in the case if Chernobyl, large areas around the site remain unusable forever What exactly about this do you not buy? And what is your solution for storing nuclear waste safely for hundreds of thousands of years?
  - Aachen 5y ago
    I should really make template comments. Being asked to explain why Chernobyl is not a realistic scenario in the 2020s, with all the available information and previous discussions, has been getting really old... See https://whatisnuclear.com/chernobyl-main.html#again https://whatisnuclear.com/chernobyl-main.html#again Or even just another comment in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653778 Or the fact that it hasn't happened despite hundreds of active nuclear power plants around the world (not all in countries that you would expect to have high safety standards). Or the safety statistics in general: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy Same with the waste issue. Nobody asks what the proposed solution is for CO2 storage (it will remain for billions of years! The horror!) when proposing to keep open coal/gas plants a bit longer until we have solar/wind/hydro+storage all set up, but with nuclear we need to find more reasons for the phase-out. Here's another info page: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html > If these materials are burnt in fuel through recycling, nuclear waste would only remain radioactive for a few hundred years And that's ignoring that we're also managing to deal with the waste so far just fine, also without recycling. (The tally is at 40 minutes time wasted for these two answer so far, also because most of the previous one was 'researched' and written on mobile. How long did it take to ask the question? This is why I contemplate templates.)
  - cipher_system 5y ago
    You put the waste into containers and bury them deep into a geologically stable mine that you then seal shut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
  - 5y ago

exdsq 5y ago

> Nuclear waste from power stations can be used as raw materials for nuclear weapons. I imagine it's almost impossible to manufacture nuclear weapons 'quietly' with waste and sanctions/agreements stop this happening, while countries that go against these are able to manufacture nuclear weapons anyway (North Korea). So I don't think this is as big a risk as suggested. The rest seem solvable by focusing on better secure designs and then moving from Uranium to another source. I don't know the difficulty of this but I can't imagine it's insurmountable?

Aachen 5y ago

When an article starts with chernobyl as example of what mistakes we're likely to make when building a new plant today, it makes me itch to just close the tab and dismiss the opinion of the person who linked it. Not sure why I even bothered digging into it, but for example one later point is also misleading: "uranium resources will be depleted by the end of this century". I think I found the source (not that they link it, that would be too easy, but by ducking around for this number): > the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, which can be mined for less than USD 130 per kg, [was found] to be about 4.7 million tonnes. Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand the amount is sufficient for 85 years, the study states. Fast reactor technology would lengthen this period to over 2500 years. > However, world uranium resources in total are considered to be much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of uranium in phosphates the study considers more than 35 million tonnes is available for exploitation. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/global-uranium-resources-meet-projected-demand https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/global-uranium-resource... I'm not sure how the "city of vienna" can read this and summarize it down to say that we'll plainly run out of uranium by 2100. That's just not what the source says. Maybe that's what makes this "reference" "handy" for people with a certain preexisting opinion? The same bullet point continues with some other interesting claims, let alone the rest of the page, but let me quickly close that tab before I feel inclined to go down more of these rabbit holes...

f_allwein 5y ago
> Accidents in nuclear power plants can have disastrous implications. As in the case if Chernobyl, large areas around the site remain unusable forever What exactly about this do you not buy? And what is your solution for storing nuclear waste safely for hundreds of thousands of years?
- Aachen 5y ago
  I should really make template comments. Being asked to explain why Chernobyl is not a realistic scenario in the 2020s, with all the available information and previous discussions, has been getting really old... See https://whatisnuclear.com/chernobyl-main.html#again https://whatisnuclear.com/chernobyl-main.html#again Or even just another comment in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653778 Or the fact that it hasn't happened despite hundreds of active nuclear power plants around the world (not all in countries that you would expect to have high safety standards). Or the safety statistics in general: https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy Same with the waste issue. Nobody asks what the proposed solution is for CO2 storage (it will remain for billions of years! The horror!) when proposing to keep open coal/gas plants a bit longer until we have solar/wind/hydro+storage all set up, but with nuclear we need to find more reasons for the phase-out. Here's another info page: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html > If these materials are burnt in fuel through recycling, nuclear waste would only remain radioactive for a few hundred years And that's ignoring that we're also managing to deal with the waste so far just fine, also without recycling. (The tally is at 40 minutes time wasted for these two answer so far, also because most of the previous one was 'researched' and written on mobile. How long did it take to ask the question? This is why I contemplate templates.)
- cipher_system 5y ago
  You put the waste into containers and bury them deep into a geologically stable mine that you then seal shut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
- 5y ago