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I was under the assumption we were taking about what was required to operate a nuclear power plant while trying to prevent accidents. If accidents are no issue

I was under the assumption we were taking about what was required to operate a nuclear power plant while trying to prevent accidents. If accidents are no issue then I agree that the vigilance/competence bar needn't be very high to operate a plant. I don't see how you would sell that to the general public though and I'm not sure I get your point in that case? It's technically right but not really applicable to running a nuclear power plant in society. Society wants a safely operated plant without serious accidents.

mpweiher 4y ago
> operate a nuclear power plant No. I was talking about whether countries/societies operate nuclear power. Very different. For example, the Bhopal disaster at a chemical plant killed several thousand people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster Germany did not get out of chemicals production afterward, or after Seveso or Flixborough, even though the case for that was a lot stronger than for getting out of nuclear. But of course this does not imply it is fine to run a chemical plant this way. Separate issues. > trying to prevent accidents Key word is trying. You will never be able to prevent all accidents and being 100% certain to prevent all accidents cannot be the standard, and it is not a standard applied anywhere else. And Fukushima showed that a lot of idiocy has to be stacked on top of each other in order to get to an accident, and even then the actual effects of the accident are fairly benign. > If accidents are no issue No. Accidents are issues. But the response to those issues has to be appropriate and proportionate. > Society wants a safely operated plant without serious accidents. Society also wants and needs energy, and nuclear energy is one of the safest/cleanest forms of energy we have, and the safest/cleanest form of reliable energy we have. Not having reliable energy would be a far greater disaster than any nuclear accident to date. In fact, the net effect is highly, highly positive even for fossil fuels.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  Chemical plants serve a different purpose than a nuclear power plant. You can produce electricity in a lot of different ways, you usually can't produce chemicals in a lot of different ways. They're a prerequisite to produce other chemicals or products so not producing them damages your supply chain. Sometimes you can subsitute them for another chemical, usually you can't. Chemical accidents such as the ones you mentioned have for that matter resulted in a lot of new safety precautions. > And Fukushima showed that a lot of idiocy has to be stacked on top of each other in order to get to an accident, and even then the actual effects of the accident are fairly benign. A lot of accidents are considered unlikely, but it doesn't stop them from happening. Even if we accept that the impact on humans has been limited, we still cannot ignore the $100+ billion in additional costs costs. > Society also wants and needs energy, and nuclear energy is one of the safest/cleanest forms of energy we have, and the safest/cleanest form of reliable energy we have. If only it was flexible, that would be something. Unfortunately OpEx is pretty much unchanged when you vary the output.
  - mpweiher 4y ago
    I never claimed there were no differences between these accidents...but we could simply ban those chemicals, or ban the industry from making those chemicals in that way. The point is not that this didn't happen because, after careful deliberation, it was found that this wasn't possible. The point is that it wasn't even considered, despite the very many accidents having vastly more severe consequences. And it's not just this one industry. How about cars? How many people die every year? Do we ban cars? We could. Do we require cars to never go faster than 10 km/h? We could, and in fact that was what Carl Benz wanted. And one of the reasons his company effectively failed and was bought by Daimler. But we do not, because we consider the benefits to outweigh the (substantial) risks. With nuclear, we don't seem to be capable of making such an informed decision, balancing the risks with the rewards. Instead, we demand that the risk be zero. This is obviously irrational. The cost of the Tōhoku earthquake and Tsunami was $235 billion. Do you also count the cleanup costs of all the other technology that was destroyed by the earthquake and Tsunami against that technology. Or do you do that only with nuclear? The $100 billion cost you claim against nuclear was caused by the Tsunami, not by nuclear power, and of course the number is massively inflated due to the overreaction to the accident. So thank you for further proving my point of the massive cost of irrational overreaction to nuclear. Fear of nuclear power has killed more people than nuclear power. And in fact, the number of lives saved by nuclear power is in the many millions.
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      > The point is not that this didn't happen because, after careful deliberation, it was found that this wasn't possible. That is indeed the difference between the two that I explained to you. It is why nuclear power generation isn't strictly necessary since there are alternative ways of generating electricity. > With nuclear, we don't seem to be capable of making such an informed decision, balancing the risks with the rewards. Instead, we demand that the risk be zero. This is obviously irrational. There are plenty of countries that have nuclear power plants and all countries in the world use nuclear radiation in some way or another for other purposes than electricity production so I don't agree with your assessment. > Do you also count the cleanup costs of all the other technology that was destroyed by the earthquake and Tsunami against that technology. Or do you do that only with nuclear? It seems only logical to do that for other dangerous substances as well. If a dangerous chemical was leaked as a result and this needed to be cleaned up then that's on the dangerous chemical. Depending on how it was stored, you could shift the blame more towards the people that made the decision to store it like that or to external factors like an earthquake. Context obviously matters. > The $100 billion cost you claim against nuclear was caused by the Tsunami, not by nuclear power, and of course the number is massively inflated due to the overreaction to the accident. So thank you for further proving my point of the massive cost of irrational overreaction to nuclear. Decontamination costs $35 billion, costs for interim storage of radioactive material $14 billion and costs of decommissioning reactors $69 billion and this gives us $118 billion. [0] What exactly is inflated about these numbers? And what about them isn't related to the nuclear power plant? I left out vague costs such as "victim compensation". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup

mpweiher 4y ago

> operate a nuclear power plant No. I was talking about whether countries/societies operate nuclear power. Very different. For example, the Bhopal disaster at a chemical plant killed several thousand people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster Germany did not get out of chemicals production afterward, or after Seveso or Flixborough, even though the case for that was a lot stronger than for getting out of nuclear. But of course this does not imply it is fine to run a chemical plant this way. Separate issues. > trying to prevent accidents Key word is trying. You will never be able to prevent all accidents and being 100% certain to prevent all accidents cannot be the standard, and it is not a standard applied anywhere else. And Fukushima showed that a lot of idiocy has to be stacked on top of each other in order to get to an accident, and even then the actual effects of the accident are fairly benign. > If accidents are no issue No. Accidents are issues. But the response to those issues has to be appropriate and proportionate. > Society wants a safely operated plant without serious accidents. Society also wants and needs energy, and nuclear energy is one of the safest/cleanest forms of energy we have, and the safest/cleanest form of reliable energy we have. Not having reliable energy would be a far greater disaster than any nuclear accident to date. In fact, the net effect is highly, highly positive even for fossil fuels.

cinntaile 4y ago
Chemical plants serve a different purpose than a nuclear power plant. You can produce electricity in a lot of different ways, you usually can't produce chemicals in a lot of different ways. They're a prerequisite to produce other chemicals or products so not producing them damages your supply chain. Sometimes you can subsitute them for another chemical, usually you can't. Chemical accidents such as the ones you mentioned have for that matter resulted in a lot of new safety precautions. > And Fukushima showed that a lot of idiocy has to be stacked on top of each other in order to get to an accident, and even then the actual effects of the accident are fairly benign. A lot of accidents are considered unlikely, but it doesn't stop them from happening. Even if we accept that the impact on humans has been limited, we still cannot ignore the $100+ billion in additional costs costs. > Society also wants and needs energy, and nuclear energy is one of the safest/cleanest forms of energy we have, and the safest/cleanest form of reliable energy we have. If only it was flexible, that would be something. Unfortunately OpEx is pretty much unchanged when you vary the output.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  I never claimed there were no differences between these accidents...but we could simply ban those chemicals, or ban the industry from making those chemicals in that way. The point is not that this didn't happen because, after careful deliberation, it was found that this wasn't possible. The point is that it wasn't even considered, despite the very many accidents having vastly more severe consequences. And it's not just this one industry. How about cars? How many people die every year? Do we ban cars? We could. Do we require cars to never go faster than 10 km/h? We could, and in fact that was what Carl Benz wanted. And one of the reasons his company effectively failed and was bought by Daimler. But we do not, because we consider the benefits to outweigh the (substantial) risks. With nuclear, we don't seem to be capable of making such an informed decision, balancing the risks with the rewards. Instead, we demand that the risk be zero. This is obviously irrational. The cost of the Tōhoku earthquake and Tsunami was $235 billion. Do you also count the cleanup costs of all the other technology that was destroyed by the earthquake and Tsunami against that technology. Or do you do that only with nuclear? The $100 billion cost you claim against nuclear was caused by the Tsunami, not by nuclear power, and of course the number is massively inflated due to the overreaction to the accident. So thank you for further proving my point of the massive cost of irrational overreaction to nuclear. Fear of nuclear power has killed more people than nuclear power. And in fact, the number of lives saved by nuclear power is in the many millions.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    > The point is not that this didn't happen because, after careful deliberation, it was found that this wasn't possible. That is indeed the difference between the two that I explained to you. It is why nuclear power generation isn't strictly necessary since there are alternative ways of generating electricity. > With nuclear, we don't seem to be capable of making such an informed decision, balancing the risks with the rewards. Instead, we demand that the risk be zero. This is obviously irrational. There are plenty of countries that have nuclear power plants and all countries in the world use nuclear radiation in some way or another for other purposes than electricity production so I don't agree with your assessment. > Do you also count the cleanup costs of all the other technology that was destroyed by the earthquake and Tsunami against that technology. Or do you do that only with nuclear? It seems only logical to do that for other dangerous substances as well. If a dangerous chemical was leaked as a result and this needed to be cleaned up then that's on the dangerous chemical. Depending on how it was stored, you could shift the blame more towards the people that made the decision to store it like that or to external factors like an earthquake. Context obviously matters. > The $100 billion cost you claim against nuclear was caused by the Tsunami, not by nuclear power, and of course the number is massively inflated due to the overreaction to the accident. So thank you for further proving my point of the massive cost of irrational overreaction to nuclear. Decontamination costs $35 billion, costs for interim storage of radioactive material $14 billion and costs of decommissioning reactors $69 billion and this gives us $118 billion. [0] What exactly is inflated about these numbers? And what about them isn't related to the nuclear power plant? I left out vague costs such as "victim compensation". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup