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Well, the summary you gave in the first paragraph is wrong. I'm running out of ways to say the same thing over and over again. I DON'T WANT TO CONVINCE YOU TO B

Well, the summary you gave in the first paragraph is wrong. I'm running out of ways to say the same thing over and over again. I DON'T WANT TO CONVINCE YOU TO BE OK WITH RARE EVENTS. I don't want to change your risk-tolerance. Look at this comment thread. You're the only one who's raised points against yourself. You surmised what you thought I would say, and then got mad at me for it. I keep telling you I wouldn't say those things, but you just don't want to hear it. You're arguing with yourself.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
And this is disingenuous on several fronts. You're packaging several assumptions into your framing and refusing to allow them to be examined, then responding to any attempt to point them out as if it is irrational fear or a subject change. Firstly that Fukushima was a severity 5 event rather than a severity 2 event. Even chernobyl and mayak had most of the consequences narrowly avoided by acts of heroism and dumb luck. Secondly that Gen III+ reactors already eliminate severity 5 events or whatever Gen IV reactor you're imagining will do so once it meets reality in spite of that being the exact same story we were given about Gen II and Gen III. This can only happen if the physical assumptions about the reactor's normal operational state hold, which can only happen if defense in depth is followed and there is no complacency or corruption and there are no black swan events. This assumption is incompatible with a world in which there isn't constant and strenuous objection and externally imposed accountability to the nuclear industry and sufficient attention to cover all malfeasance in depth. It is only barely compatible with the world we have now. Thirdly that the severity 2 events with likelyhood of 100% are non-existent, when they have been constant, and the ones that happened 70 years ago are only just having their financial and health consequences felt now. Then on top of that you're bundling in a bunch of assumptions about upsides that don't exist, and framing any objection based on those as the same allegedly unfounded fear of the same type of failure. You are the one who is claiming any objection is irrational fear and refusal to accept new information. Refusing to accept any objection that is different is entirely circular.
- deleted 4y ago
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- marmetio 4y ago
  > Fukushima has severity 5 risks > Firstly that Fukushima was a severity 5 event rather than a severity 2 event. What are you angry about this time? A 5 is any risk we don't want to accept in the future. Unless you're ok with Fukushima and Chernobyl happening again, they're all a 5. I'm trying to give vocabulary for establishing risk requirements. If you don't want the bad thing to happen, it's a 5. Doesn't matter if it should be a 10. 5 is the threshold of being unacceptable. If it's 5+, then it's just 5. If the new proposal only changes the likelihood but doesn't reduce the severity, then it doesn't meet the requirement. That's it. It's just a framework to dispassionately discuss risk. Gen IV technology? Has severity 5 risks. Doesn't meet the requirements. We agree. Relying on operational controls? Can never be 100% foolproof. Only changes the likelihood anyway. Severity is still a 5. Doesn't meet the requirements. We agree. We agree, but you're still arguing with me. Why?
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    If you wanted a good faith discussion about potential ways of making nuclear acceptable, then maybe don't open with "as soon as they hear the word "nuclear", panic really hard and refuse to receive any new information that would actually address their concerns". All of your other comments have been fairly well indistinguishable from the standard gaslighting most advocates of mass expanding Gen III+ burner reactors spout. If I take this definition of a 5, then reactor design (in the context of current fission concepts) is barely relevant, because the 5s start at the mine site (or in the case of breeders, in the reprocessing facility). Examples are Sellafield, La Hague, Kadapa, Serpent River, Rossing, Kakadu, Mayak and many others. One Fukushima is better than one La Hague. One chernobyl is preferable to a terawatt worth of La Hagues, Kadapas, and Sellafields. At the other end there are unsustainable Kr-85 and other gaseous emissions during fuel handling for which there is no attempt at containment, fission product laden reprocessing effluent that is barely below safe thresholds for an entire continent's coast whilst only generating a few GW worth of fuel, long lived twice-cycled Pu240 and Pu241 for which there is no attempt at a clean reprocessing process, lost weapons grade plutonium, and (in the context of wantonly using as much energy as we please) waste heat cooking the planet directly. Other 5s include at one end all small countries being locked into a small handful of fuel suppliers because plutonium separation and enrichment facilities are gatekept, or at the other end unlimited weapons proliferation. Worth noting is in this context the current renewable industry has plenty of 5s but there are easier to see pathways to eliminating them (and many of them are eliminating themselves simply because highly polluting mines and slaves have a minimum cost marginally higher than abundant materials and full automation). Some variation on a TRISO-style pellet based pebble bed reactor that somehow used natural uranium at high enough burnup that mining could be kept under control would be the vague shape of addressing as many of the 5s as possible. In this context there is still a near certainty of someone doing a Chevron and quietly dumping a few hundred tonnes of spent fuel somewhere it would begin leaking and be impossible to clean up in a few decades, as well as cumulative low level medium lived radioactive emissions with a similar risk profile (although different mechanisms and harms) to CO2 or methane emissions (ie. Harmless at low levels but terrible in aggregate). It's difficult to imagine a scenario where the number of 5s in a fission reactor is preferable to the alternatives. You'd need a breeder that could take U238/Th232 and breed/burn all of the Am,Cm,Np,Pu until only fission products were left as well as some way of vitrifying all of the fission products including tritium and noble gases on site with no effluent whilst never having a weapons grade fissile/fertile ratio in any of the weaponisable elements. Even then there would probably be one or two quite nasty long alpha decay chains with at least one medium lived step due to the number of opportunities for transmutation. Even if that last were solved, it's still inferior to solar for building a civilisation on due to waste heat. Such a device is also far more scifi than an anuetronic direct conversion He3 fusion reactor which also solves that last to about the same extent solar can (but has a more difficult pathway to being built from abundant materials).

Schroedingersat 4y ago

And this is disingenuous on several fronts. You're packaging several assumptions into your framing and refusing to allow them to be examined, then responding to any attempt to point them out as if it is irrational fear or a subject change. Firstly that Fukushima was a severity 5 event rather than a severity 2 event. Even chernobyl and mayak had most of the consequences narrowly avoided by acts of heroism and dumb luck. Secondly that Gen III+ reactors already eliminate severity 5 events or whatever Gen IV reactor you're imagining will do so once it meets reality in spite of that being the exact same story we were given about Gen II and Gen III. This can only happen if the physical assumptions about the reactor's normal operational state hold, which can only happen if defense in depth is followed and there is no complacency or corruption and there are no black swan events. This assumption is incompatible with a world in which there isn't constant and strenuous objection and externally imposed accountability to the nuclear industry and sufficient attention to cover all malfeasance in depth. It is only barely compatible with the world we have now. Thirdly that the severity 2 events with likelyhood of 100% are non-existent, when they have been constant, and the ones that happened 70 years ago are only just having their financial and health consequences felt now. Then on top of that you're bundling in a bunch of assumptions about upsides that don't exist, and framing any objection based on those as the same allegedly unfounded fear of the same type of failure. You are the one who is claiming any objection is irrational fear and refusal to accept new information. Refusing to accept any objection that is different is entirely circular.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
marmetio 4y ago
> Fukushima has severity 5 risks > Firstly that Fukushima was a severity 5 event rather than a severity 2 event. What are you angry about this time? A 5 is any risk we don't want to accept in the future. Unless you're ok with Fukushima and Chernobyl happening again, they're all a 5. I'm trying to give vocabulary for establishing risk requirements. If you don't want the bad thing to happen, it's a 5. Doesn't matter if it should be a 10. 5 is the threshold of being unacceptable. If it's 5+, then it's just 5. If the new proposal only changes the likelihood but doesn't reduce the severity, then it doesn't meet the requirement. That's it. It's just a framework to dispassionately discuss risk. Gen IV technology? Has severity 5 risks. Doesn't meet the requirements. We agree. Relying on operational controls? Can never be 100% foolproof. Only changes the likelihood anyway. Severity is still a 5. Doesn't meet the requirements. We agree. We agree, but you're still arguing with me. Why?
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  If you wanted a good faith discussion about potential ways of making nuclear acceptable, then maybe don't open with "as soon as they hear the word "nuclear", panic really hard and refuse to receive any new information that would actually address their concerns". All of your other comments have been fairly well indistinguishable from the standard gaslighting most advocates of mass expanding Gen III+ burner reactors spout. If I take this definition of a 5, then reactor design (in the context of current fission concepts) is barely relevant, because the 5s start at the mine site (or in the case of breeders, in the reprocessing facility). Examples are Sellafield, La Hague, Kadapa, Serpent River, Rossing, Kakadu, Mayak and many others. One Fukushima is better than one La Hague. One chernobyl is preferable to a terawatt worth of La Hagues, Kadapas, and Sellafields. At the other end there are unsustainable Kr-85 and other gaseous emissions during fuel handling for which there is no attempt at containment, fission product laden reprocessing effluent that is barely below safe thresholds for an entire continent's coast whilst only generating a few GW worth of fuel, long lived twice-cycled Pu240 and Pu241 for which there is no attempt at a clean reprocessing process, lost weapons grade plutonium, and (in the context of wantonly using as much energy as we please) waste heat cooking the planet directly. Other 5s include at one end all small countries being locked into a small handful of fuel suppliers because plutonium separation and enrichment facilities are gatekept, or at the other end unlimited weapons proliferation. Worth noting is in this context the current renewable industry has plenty of 5s but there are easier to see pathways to eliminating them (and many of them are eliminating themselves simply because highly polluting mines and slaves have a minimum cost marginally higher than abundant materials and full automation). Some variation on a TRISO-style pellet based pebble bed reactor that somehow used natural uranium at high enough burnup that mining could be kept under control would be the vague shape of addressing as many of the 5s as possible. In this context there is still a near certainty of someone doing a Chevron and quietly dumping a few hundred tonnes of spent fuel somewhere it would begin leaking and be impossible to clean up in a few decades, as well as cumulative low level medium lived radioactive emissions with a similar risk profile (although different mechanisms and harms) to CO2 or methane emissions (ie. Harmless at low levels but terrible in aggregate). It's difficult to imagine a scenario where the number of 5s in a fission reactor is preferable to the alternatives. You'd need a breeder that could take U238/Th232 and breed/burn all of the Am,Cm,Np,Pu until only fission products were left as well as some way of vitrifying all of the fission products including tritium and noble gases on site with no effluent whilst never having a weapons grade fissile/fertile ratio in any of the weaponisable elements. Even then there would probably be one or two quite nasty long alpha decay chains with at least one medium lived step due to the number of opportunities for transmutation. Even if that last were solved, it's still inferior to solar for building a civilisation on due to waste heat. Such a device is also far more scifi than an anuetronic direct conversion He3 fusion reactor which also solves that last to about the same extent solar can (but has a more difficult pathway to being built from abundant materials).