5 ms·

I think it's the main tragedy of the human race is not staying with nuclear and going all in. Unfortunately the fad of being afraid of nuclear will probably be

by dham 5y ago

I think it's the main tragedy of the human race is not staying with nuclear and going all in. Unfortunately the fad of being afraid of nuclear will probably be the downfall of the human race. We would have had energy solved by the 80's. Almost sickening to think about.

simonh 5y ago
I don't know, early reactor designs were pretty unsafe and I'm not sure a lot more of them would have been better. Sometimes taking time to mature a technology, even one that's hugely beneficial in the long term, works better than just piling in quickly and risking finding that you invested in a developmental dead end. Having said that now nuclear does seem to be a mature technology with significant benefits.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  The airborne reactor was our ticket to the future but it didn't produce plutonium.
- twofornone 5y ago
  >I don't know, early reactor designs were pretty unsafe and I'm not sure a lot more of them would have been better There have been what, 5 events in the last 50 years that released a significant amount of radiation, only one catastrophic meltdown (Chernobyl), out of thousands of plants running continuously for decades? Seems pretty safe to me...
  - simonh 5y ago
    I agree the impact of and response to accidents is often exaggerated out of proportion. Except for Chernobyl. That one was a monster. However if you take the long term impact and costs of those accidents and add them to the cost of nuclear power overall, it's not a pretty picture. I would not have supported significantly more nuclear 40 years ago, some but not massive. I do support it now though. We've learned a lot.
    - mdavis6890 5y ago
      Chernobyl was hardly a monster. According to Wikipedia, 30 people died immediately, and probably another 30 due to the radiation aftermath. Maybe a few thousand more someday due to long term effects. Highest estimates are 60k deaths.
      - stjohnswarts 5y ago
        Chernobyl could have been so much worse, so much worse. You should look that up as well. We definitely do not want to do more Chernobyl style nuke plants. There are much much safer designs available.
  - Krasnol 5y ago
    So every 10 years a major accident. How does that sound safe to you? We've been lucky that none of those was in densely populated areas somewhere in Europe for example.
    - twofornone 5y ago
      Chernobyl was the only "major" accident, perhaps you could put Fukishima into that category, but again you're disregarding the denominator, thousands of plants operating for decades without issue. That sounds very safe to me, especially when weighted against emissions reduction.
      - Krasnol 5y ago
        Which one is supposed to work "without issue"?
ganzuul 5y ago
Those who campaigned against it, ostensibly on behalf of the environment, irreversibly damaged the reputation of environmentalists by letting themselves be duped. Now people think that putting the atmosphere on the free market through CO2 scrubbers is a good idea, although the market's intelligence can never replicate what a billion years of genetic evolution has produced. We will suffocate ourselves in the race to the bottom. I'd gladly wallow in the shame of global despot if it meant we could reverse this madness of irresponsibility. :p
akamaka 5y ago
Not really true, because electricity generation is only a fraction of energy usage. Most of our greenhouse gas emissions come from other sources like transportation, industrial processes, and agriculture, so there are actually a quite a wide range of technological problems that need to be solved beyond just deploying more nuclear.
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  Sure, but more solutions are feasible if power is cheap and plentiful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nestorD 5y ago
  But, we now how to convert most of those process to electric. The engineering challenges have been solved. It is just not cost effective at the moment because you would have to update manufacturing process for all the things you want to change and that takes money. But with cheap electricity, oil/gas becoming more expensive and political incentives...
- lkbm 5y ago
  In the 1970s, the US had plans to build 1,000 nuclear power plants. If they were the average size, I believe would come to double our current electrical generation capacity. Where would we be with cheap, plentiful, carbon-neutral electricity? "Electricity and heat" has been the dominant source of emissions in the US since at least 1990[0]. Even if most of that is the "heat" part, we can heat much more efficiency with electricity than with gas nearly the entire year in all our climates, and in the rare cases where that's not true, resistance heating can cover the offset. The only reason we use gas is because it was cheaper. Second on the list is transportation, much of which is finally hitting viability for electrification right now. Again, if we'd had cheap, plentiful electricity, that would have spurred on development and implementation much earlier. Maybe not the 1980, but a decade or two sooner definitely seems believable. There are likely some industrial processes that we can't easily switch over, but I think given a cost incentive, we'd find a way for most things. I am kind of assuming the switchover would mean "cheap" electricity. Maybe we'd have plentiful expensive electricity, but I'd expect market forces to push the price down. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#annual-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#annual-greenh...
timeon 5y ago
The fad of being afraid of nuclear was not real issue as it was already pointed here - electricity generation is not only issue. But even if we are talking about electricity generation - there are countries that had loads of coal so they stayed with coal-fired power stations. Why there is no nuclear power plant in Poland? Because of people being afraid of nuclear? That seems bit naive.
cycomanic 5y ago
What would it have meant to go all in? The reasons for not going all in, were certainly not because of the environmental movements. Also if we extrapolate from the nuclear accidents that we had, with the current number of power plants we had a major incident every 20-30 years or so. If we would have wanted to supply all our power from nuclear it would have meant at least a tripling of reactors (more like 5 times or so, given the developing world), so given the rate of incidents we would have a major incident every 10 years at least. Considering that they tend to render large areas completely uninhabitable in 50 years significant areas on all continents would be uninhabitable. The shame is that we haven't gone all in on renewables and storage much earlier.
- DennisP 5y ago
  We've had three major incidents that come to everyone's mind: - Chernobyl, involving a reactor that didn't even have a containment dome, and in which the reaction rate sped up as the fuel got hotter. (The opposite is true of all modern reactors.) - Fukushima, which failed due to a major earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of people, while the radiation release didn't kill anyone. The exclusion zone there is only 20 square kilometers. And this was with a reactor design from the 1970s; a nearby plant ten years newer faced the same challenges and did fine. - Three Mile Island, in which containment worked very well and radiation never went above background levels. Aside from Chernobyl that seems like a pretty decent safety record to me. By comparison, nobody worries about hydropower, despite hydro having the worst accident of any power plant ever: Banqaio Dam, which killed 26,000 people immediately and another 150,000 or so in the aftermath. The reason we didn't go all in on renewables earlier was that they were too expensive in the 20th century. Nuclear was not, as proven by France, which converted to 80% nuclear over the course of a couple decades.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    3MI vented a huge amount of radioactive krypton gas, which is never, ever counted. That stuff runs downhill like fluffy water, and hugged the shores of the river all the way to the ocean.
999900000999 5y ago
Until the local government cuts funding to the nuclear plant. Then maintenance goes undone, and eventually you're leaking radioactive waste into the local environment. If you build a wind farm in the desert, and in 40 years it's abandoned, it's not really a big deal. I guess you're unlucky, one of the turbines might fall on someone, but you're not going to have dangerous nuclear waste to dispose of. >How antiquated, you ask? In Washington, there is a pipe break every day. And according to EPA data, thousands of water and sewer systems across the country may be too old to function properly -- so old, in fact, that some were built during the Civil War. https://www.zdnet.com/article/despite-civil-war-era-pipes-americans-resist-water-infrastructure-renovation/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/despite-civil-war-era-pipes-am... Assume that anything you build today, may be abandoned in a few generations.

by dham 5y ago

simonh 5y ago

I don't know, early reactor designs were pretty unsafe and I'm not sure a lot more of them would have been better. Sometimes taking time to mature a technology, even one that's hugely beneficial in the long term, works better than just piling in quickly and risking finding that you invested in a developmental dead end. Having said that now nuclear does seem to be a mature technology with significant benefits.

ganzuul 5y ago
The airborne reactor was our ticket to the future but it didn't produce plutonium.
twofornone 5y ago
>I don't know, early reactor designs were pretty unsafe and I'm not sure a lot more of them would have been better There have been what, 5 events in the last 50 years that released a significant amount of radiation, only one catastrophic meltdown (Chernobyl), out of thousands of plants running continuously for decades? Seems pretty safe to me...
- simonh 5y ago
  I agree the impact of and response to accidents is often exaggerated out of proportion. Except for Chernobyl. That one was a monster. However if you take the long term impact and costs of those accidents and add them to the cost of nuclear power overall, it's not a pretty picture. I would not have supported significantly more nuclear 40 years ago, some but not massive. I do support it now though. We've learned a lot.
  - mdavis6890 5y ago
    Chernobyl was hardly a monster. According to Wikipedia, 30 people died immediately, and probably another 30 due to the radiation aftermath. Maybe a few thousand more someday due to long term effects. Highest estimates are 60k deaths.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      Chernobyl could have been so much worse, so much worse. You should look that up as well. We definitely do not want to do more Chernobyl style nuke plants. There are much much safer designs available.
- Krasnol 5y ago
  So every 10 years a major accident. How does that sound safe to you? We've been lucky that none of those was in densely populated areas somewhere in Europe for example.
  - twofornone 5y ago
    Chernobyl was the only "major" accident, perhaps you could put Fukishima into that category, but again you're disregarding the denominator, thousands of plants operating for decades without issue. That sounds very safe to me, especially when weighted against emissions reduction.
    - Krasnol 5y ago
      Which one is supposed to work "without issue"?

ganzuul 5y ago

Those who campaigned against it, ostensibly on behalf of the environment, irreversibly damaged the reputation of environmentalists by letting themselves be duped. Now people think that putting the atmosphere on the free market through CO2 scrubbers is a good idea, although the market's intelligence can never replicate what a billion years of genetic evolution has produced. We will suffocate ourselves in the race to the bottom. I'd gladly wallow in the shame of global despot if it meant we could reverse this madness of irresponsibility. :p

akamaka 5y ago

Not really true, because electricity generation is only a fraction of energy usage. Most of our greenhouse gas emissions come from other sources like transportation, industrial processes, and agriculture, so there are actually a quite a wide range of technological problems that need to be solved beyond just deploying more nuclear.

robotresearcher 5y ago
Sure, but more solutions are feasible if power is cheap and plentiful.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nestorD 5y ago
But, we now how to convert most of those process to electric. The engineering challenges have been solved. It is just not cost effective at the moment because you would have to update manufacturing process for all the things you want to change and that takes money. But with cheap electricity, oil/gas becoming more expensive and political incentives...
lkbm 5y ago
In the 1970s, the US had plans to build 1,000 nuclear power plants. If they were the average size, I believe would come to double our current electrical generation capacity. Where would we be with cheap, plentiful, carbon-neutral electricity? "Electricity and heat" has been the dominant source of emissions in the US since at least 1990[0]. Even if most of that is the "heat" part, we can heat much more efficiency with electricity than with gas nearly the entire year in all our climates, and in the rare cases where that's not true, resistance heating can cover the offset. The only reason we use gas is because it was cheaper. Second on the list is transportation, much of which is finally hitting viability for electrification right now. Again, if we'd had cheap, plentiful electricity, that would have spurred on development and implementation much earlier. Maybe not the 1980, but a decade or two sooner definitely seems believable. There are likely some industrial processes that we can't easily switch over, but I think given a cost incentive, we'd find a way for most things. I am kind of assuming the switchover would mean "cheap" electricity. Maybe we'd have plentiful expensive electricity, but I'd expect market forces to push the price down. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#annual-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#annual-greenh...

timeon 5y ago

The fad of being afraid of nuclear was not real issue as it was already pointed here - electricity generation is not only issue. But even if we are talking about electricity generation - there are countries that had loads of coal so they stayed with coal-fired power stations. Why there is no nuclear power plant in Poland? Because of people being afraid of nuclear? That seems bit naive.

cycomanic 5y ago

What would it have meant to go all in? The reasons for not going all in, were certainly not because of the environmental movements. Also if we extrapolate from the nuclear accidents that we had, with the current number of power plants we had a major incident every 20-30 years or so. If we would have wanted to supply all our power from nuclear it would have meant at least a tripling of reactors (more like 5 times or so, given the developing world), so given the rate of incidents we would have a major incident every 10 years at least. Considering that they tend to render large areas completely uninhabitable in 50 years significant areas on all continents would be uninhabitable. The shame is that we haven't gone all in on renewables and storage much earlier.

DennisP 5y ago
We've had three major incidents that come to everyone's mind: - Chernobyl, involving a reactor that didn't even have a containment dome, and in which the reaction rate sped up as the fuel got hotter. (The opposite is true of all modern reactors.) - Fukushima, which failed due to a major earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of people, while the radiation release didn't kill anyone. The exclusion zone there is only 20 square kilometers. And this was with a reactor design from the 1970s; a nearby plant ten years newer faced the same challenges and did fine. - Three Mile Island, in which containment worked very well and radiation never went above background levels. Aside from Chernobyl that seems like a pretty decent safety record to me. By comparison, nobody worries about hydropower, despite hydro having the worst accident of any power plant ever: Banqaio Dam, which killed 26,000 people immediately and another 150,000 or so in the aftermath. The reason we didn't go all in on renewables earlier was that they were too expensive in the 20th century. Nuclear was not, as proven by France, which converted to 80% nuclear over the course of a couple decades.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  3MI vented a huge amount of radioactive krypton gas, which is never, ever counted. That stuff runs downhill like fluffy water, and hugged the shores of the river all the way to the ocean.

999900000999 5y ago

Until the local government cuts funding to the nuclear plant. Then maintenance goes undone, and eventually you're leaking radioactive waste into the local environment. If you build a wind farm in the desert, and in 40 years it's abandoned, it's not really a big deal. I guess you're unlucky, one of the turbines might fall on someone, but you're not going to have dangerous nuclear waste to dispose of. >How antiquated, you ask? In Washington, there is a pipe break every day. And according to EPA data, thousands of water and sewer systems across the country may be too old to function properly -- so old, in fact, that some were built during the Civil War. https://www.zdnet.com/article/despite-civil-war-era-pipes-americans-resist-water-infrastructure-renovation/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/despite-civil-war-era-pipes-am... Assume that anything you build today, may be abandoned in a few generations.