5 ms·

FWIW, I'm a fan of nucear, but ... they don't have to counter that argument. It doesn't have to be earthquakes - it can be 1 of 100 problems. Japan knew they ha

FWIW, I'm a fan of nucear, but ... they don't have to counter that argument. It doesn't have to be earthquakes - it can be 1 of 100 problems. Japan knew they have to deal with earthquakes and didn't. What should make people more comfortable that Germany will be able to safeguard against their known risks?

metadat 4y ago
What are the remaining 95 potential uncontrollable problems beyond earthquake, fire, flood, war, human incompetence? Given appropriate attention and care, these can be accounted for through planning processes and protocols.
- nosianu 4y ago
  See France and its maintenance issues with not just one but many of their power plants, accumulated over decades and now greatly contributing to the European energy problems. (https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/10/13/frances-nuclear-reactors-will-not-work-as-normal-any-time-soon https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/10/13/frances-nuclear-...) Some issues I see are accountants, management, laziness, "somebody else's problem", etc. Those are businesses and they will try all the well-known ways to save money. Which the politicians will also encourage, because nuclear power will need to be justified continuously (like all other forms). There also are water issues, not just river temperature (France, this summer), we also had a lot of European rivers with barely enough or not enough for most of the normal uses of those rivers this summer - and predictions are we'll have more such extremes. So, ensuring water supplies will be adequate at all times will become harder too, and much more expensive. Not to mention that Russia - Rosatom - will again play a big role in Western European energy when it comes to nuclear. (https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2022/russias-multi-million-euro-nuclear-exports-untouched-by-eu-sanctions/ https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2022/russias-multi-mill...) Air plane and human space flight accidents are extremely rare but they still occur despite all the rules and regulations and the training and the many levels of precautions, but nuclear has to be even better.
  - belorn 4y ago
    > Not to mention that Russia - Rosatom - will again play a big role in Western European energy when it comes to nuclear. Good thing that 1), nuclear fuel storage in europe tend to have almost decade long stockpiles, 2), there are plenty of alternative to Rosatom to buy nuclear fuel from, 3), nuclear fuel is fairly easy to import compared to massive amount of natural gas. Sweden is only a stone throw away and they have nuclear fuel production that they sell as exports. They also acquired the design and patents to produce nuclear fuel that fit power plants from Rosatom. Those 20% of fuel that Russia sell is a solvable problem, but as with anything it would cost money, investments and a bit of time to ramp up production.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    And France having maintenance issues is in large part because of the anti-nuclear campaign that increasingly started to attempt to move away from nuclear. For a while even in France they basically just wanted to run the reactors out and switch to renewables. So the politics goes like this, cause maintenance delay, condemn nuclear for maintenance delay. Seriously, these delays are being handled in a reasonable time-frames and most of the reactors will be back when they are really needed. Consider that with the age of these reactors, wind-farms would have to be mostly rebuilt to a larger degree. Also, if we actually made progress on technology then we could have had moved on to air-cooled designs but sadly we can't have nice things.
- karamanolev 4y ago
  Just take a brief look at the list of nuclear accidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident... There's various kinds of human errors (and humans will continue to make errors), equipment malfunctions, problems during equipment maintenance and so on. Can you call "human incompetence" something to be planned for? Yes, sure, you have to plan for it. Can you plan it well enough so that it simply doesn't happen? Doesn't seem to have happened so far. Does it concern me too much? No. But do other people have to have the same risk tolerance? Also no. It's been proven that people are averse to rare-but-acute risks and can more easily accept frequent small risks (i.e. radiation and contamination from coal plants). All that is to say that if people are concerned, it's on us to understand the reasons, not just shout into that void that "nuclear is SAFE!!!"
  - metadat 4y ago
    A good reactor design would account for the human factor, and perhaps this is the truly difficult problem with practical nuclear power.
    - karamanolev 4y ago
      Agreed. "A good reactor design" to that definition is enormously hard though - I'll be incredibly happy if that gets solved, hopefully with a modular "built in a factory" design that can be easily replicated and remain very safe.
      - panick21_ 4y ago
        No bad reactor designs get built or have been built in the West in many decades. Better designs would have been here long ago if we actually had continued with this technology, but its not that current reactors are truly bad designs. The problem with them is more that they don't fit into how energy markets and energy investments are made and have been made. That goes for both the US and Europe.
avgcorrection 4y ago
1 of 100? Compared to the alternatives? Because that’s what matters here. Does nuclear have one-hundred times the problem? Of course these obvious problems are not mentioned by name. Which makes one think that there are one-hundred unnamed ones beyond once the initial one-hundred would have been dealt with.
JohnBooty 4y ago
What should make people more comfortable that Germany will be able to safeguard against their known risks? The safety of nuclear power plants isn't exactly some great unknown. There are ~450 plants currently operating in the world, with an average age of multiple decades. Plus all the ones that have been retired. That's a lot of data. You don't really have to take anybody's word for it. They're safe. They are not zero-risk, because literally nothing is. We also absolutely know the risks of fossil fuels (the planet is burning, and buyers potentially become dependent on hostile countries like Russia) and the current limitations of renewable energy sources. So, to answer your questions: that is how you judge their potential safety in Germany or anywhere else.
- grecy 4y ago
  The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad. We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable. We were extremely lucky with Fukushima all the radiated water just went into the ocean. When it was going down there was nothing we could do but stand back and watch how bad it got. Of course on a regular day nuclear is safe, but every now and then things go extremely badly, and sooner or later we’re not going to get so lucky. We will simply have to watch and retreat from death.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    > The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad Deepwater horizon was really bad. Plenty of coal accidents are real bad. Not having energy is really bad. Nuclear is the safest form of energy - and catastrophic failures are found in other forms of energy production.
    - grecy 4y ago
      The difference is even when coal or oil goes “worst case scenario” bad, it’s still entirely manageable. We have tools, equipment and people to put out oil rig fires, clean up oil spills and all that. Obviously Exxon Valdez was very, very bad. So was deep water horizon. Now imagine they were nuclear plantS that went bad and we didn’t get lucky like in the past. It would be many orders of magnitudes worse, for tens of thousands of years.
DarknessFalls 4y ago
All is takes is sabotage of the nuclear plant, perhaps by those sympathetic to Russia and upset with Germany over their increased defense budget in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

metadat 4y ago

What are the remaining 95 potential uncontrollable problems beyond earthquake, fire, flood, war, human incompetence? Given appropriate attention and care, these can be accounted for through planning processes and protocols.

nosianu 4y ago
See France and its maintenance issues with not just one but many of their power plants, accumulated over decades and now greatly contributing to the European energy problems. (https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/10/13/frances-nuclear-reactors-will-not-work-as-normal-any-time-soon https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/10/13/frances-nuclear-...) Some issues I see are accountants, management, laziness, "somebody else's problem", etc. Those are businesses and they will try all the well-known ways to save money. Which the politicians will also encourage, because nuclear power will need to be justified continuously (like all other forms). There also are water issues, not just river temperature (France, this summer), we also had a lot of European rivers with barely enough or not enough for most of the normal uses of those rivers this summer - and predictions are we'll have more such extremes. So, ensuring water supplies will be adequate at all times will become harder too, and much more expensive. Not to mention that Russia - Rosatom - will again play a big role in Western European energy when it comes to nuclear. (https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2022/russias-multi-million-euro-nuclear-exports-untouched-by-eu-sanctions/ https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2022/russias-multi-mill...) Air plane and human space flight accidents are extremely rare but they still occur despite all the rules and regulations and the training and the many levels of precautions, but nuclear has to be even better.
- belorn 4y ago
  > Not to mention that Russia - Rosatom - will again play a big role in Western European energy when it comes to nuclear. Good thing that 1), nuclear fuel storage in europe tend to have almost decade long stockpiles, 2), there are plenty of alternative to Rosatom to buy nuclear fuel from, 3), nuclear fuel is fairly easy to import compared to massive amount of natural gas. Sweden is only a stone throw away and they have nuclear fuel production that they sell as exports. They also acquired the design and patents to produce nuclear fuel that fit power plants from Rosatom. Those 20% of fuel that Russia sell is a solvable problem, but as with anything it would cost money, investments and a bit of time to ramp up production.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  And France having maintenance issues is in large part because of the anti-nuclear campaign that increasingly started to attempt to move away from nuclear. For a while even in France they basically just wanted to run the reactors out and switch to renewables. So the politics goes like this, cause maintenance delay, condemn nuclear for maintenance delay. Seriously, these delays are being handled in a reasonable time-frames and most of the reactors will be back when they are really needed. Consider that with the age of these reactors, wind-farms would have to be mostly rebuilt to a larger degree. Also, if we actually made progress on technology then we could have had moved on to air-cooled designs but sadly we can't have nice things.
karamanolev 4y ago
Just take a brief look at the list of nuclear accidents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident... There's various kinds of human errors (and humans will continue to make errors), equipment malfunctions, problems during equipment maintenance and so on. Can you call "human incompetence" something to be planned for? Yes, sure, you have to plan for it. Can you plan it well enough so that it simply doesn't happen? Doesn't seem to have happened so far. Does it concern me too much? No. But do other people have to have the same risk tolerance? Also no. It's been proven that people are averse to rare-but-acute risks and can more easily accept frequent small risks (i.e. radiation and contamination from coal plants). All that is to say that if people are concerned, it's on us to understand the reasons, not just shout into that void that "nuclear is SAFE!!!"
- metadat 4y ago
  A good reactor design would account for the human factor, and perhaps this is the truly difficult problem with practical nuclear power.
  - karamanolev 4y ago
    Agreed. "A good reactor design" to that definition is enormously hard though - I'll be incredibly happy if that gets solved, hopefully with a modular "built in a factory" design that can be easily replicated and remain very safe.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      No bad reactor designs get built or have been built in the West in many decades. Better designs would have been here long ago if we actually had continued with this technology, but its not that current reactors are truly bad designs. The problem with them is more that they don't fit into how energy markets and energy investments are made and have been made. That goes for both the US and Europe.

avgcorrection 4y ago

1 of 100? Compared to the alternatives? Because that’s what matters here. Does nuclear have one-hundred times the problem? Of course these obvious problems are not mentioned by name. Which makes one think that there are one-hundred unnamed ones beyond once the initial one-hundred would have been dealt with.

JohnBooty 4y ago

What should make people more comfortable that Germany will be able to safeguard against their known risks? The safety of nuclear power plants isn't exactly some great unknown. There are ~450 plants currently operating in the world, with an average age of multiple decades. Plus all the ones that have been retired. That's a lot of data. You don't really have to take anybody's word for it. They're safe. They are not zero-risk, because literally nothing is. We also absolutely know the risks of fossil fuels (the planet is burning, and buyers potentially become dependent on hostile countries like Russia) and the current limitations of renewable energy sources. So, to answer your questions: that is how you judge their potential safety in Germany or anywhere else.

grecy 4y ago
The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad. We were extremely lucky with Chernobyl that young men sacrificed themselves, else a large chunk of Europe would be uninhabitable. We were extremely lucky with Fukushima all the radiated water just went into the ocean. When it was going down there was nothing we could do but stand back and watch how bad it got. Of course on a regular day nuclear is safe, but every now and then things go extremely badly, and sooner or later we’re not going to get so lucky. We will simply have to watch and retreat from death.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  > The problem is when they go bad, it gets really bad Deepwater horizon was really bad. Plenty of coal accidents are real bad. Not having energy is really bad. Nuclear is the safest form of energy - and catastrophic failures are found in other forms of energy production.
  - grecy 4y ago
    The difference is even when coal or oil goes “worst case scenario” bad, it’s still entirely manageable. We have tools, equipment and people to put out oil rig fires, clean up oil spills and all that. Obviously Exxon Valdez was very, very bad. So was deep water horizon. Now imagine they were nuclear plantS that went bad and we didn’t get lucky like in the past. It would be many orders of magnitudes worse, for tens of thousands of years.

DarknessFalls 4y ago

All is takes is sabotage of the nuclear plant, perhaps by those sympathetic to Russia and upset with Germany over their increased defense budget in response to the invasion of Ukraine.