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Nuclear power is too safe

101 points by imgabe 4y ago

eecc 4y ago
That’s backwards: it actually means that protecting against nuclear hazards is astronomically expensive, that nukes are borderline unmanageable in the long term
- bboygravity 4y ago
  Yeah, that was not what I read in that text. The point the author is trying to get accross is that nuclear is being made unnecesarily expensive. Not nececarily expensive like you seem to claim with no substantiation.
  - eecc 4y ago
    A point that is a spin on the data. In the 60s they also used to cover homes in asbestos and lead, do we need to do that again? Also flying airplanes was much cheaper, and safety systems were much more crude; should we go back to LOS navigation? I am not making any unsubstantiated claim, it’s a fact that over the decades risk analyses have determined that such measures were necessary. You’re the ne claiming it was just tree-hugging hysteria.
- epups 4y ago
  We have had very few nuclear hazards in the past, with very limited impact as shown in this article. Nuclear plants that were really old rarely failed as well, before we added all this regulatory overhead. Weird how something "borderline unmanageable" causes way less damage than the alternatives.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Depends on if you count the $2T cleanup cost for Fukushima as limited. After Fukushima about all plants in the west had to install independent core cooling because the regulators realized the risk was systemic, even though the cause was special. A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006 when many of the "defense in depth" layers had been accidentally removed through freak occurrences and upgrades. It is still impossible to get private third party insurance for a nuclear plant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#July_2006_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#J...
    - illiarian 4y ago
      > the $2T cleanup cost for Fukushima as limited. Let's ignore the earthquake and tsunami that happened and pretend that all that cleanup is only due to Fukushima. > A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006 Severe as in: exploded? people died?
      - Gwypaas 4y ago
        > Let's ignore the earthquake and tsunami that happened and pretend that all that cleanup is only due to Fukushima. Typical nuclear proponents, trying to shift blame. The $2T is for the nuclear side of things.
        illiarian 4y ago
        Typical nuclear fearmongers throwing nonsensical number about. "Japan has spent roughly 1 trillion yen ($7.3 billion) annually on the damage caused by the meltdowns at the Fukushima " That amounts to 84 billion dollars. That includes everything, including compensations and decomissioning. The cleanup itself is roughly 30 billion dollars. While the costs are still huge, note: this is for a plant that was both hit by an earthquake and flooded by unprecedented tsunami. Also note: even with all that in mind only one person died as the result of direct radiation exposure, and radiation levels in Fukushima region are normal or below average levels.
        Gwypaas 4y ago
        Lying with numbers? We should rely on the Japanese government instead of random HN:ers defending their pet technology. > The cost of dealing with the aftermath of the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant will reach 21.5 trillion yen, roughly double the government's initial prediction of 11 trillion yen, preliminary calculations released on Dec. 8 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry have shown. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161209/p2a/00m/0na/009000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161209/p2a/00m/0na/00... > While the costs are still huge, note: this is for a plant that was both hit by an earthquake and flooded by unprecedented tsunami. Read again what I said. The cause was special, while the risk was systemic. All western countries require independent core cooling today because there have been too many near-misses with causes related to power failures. > Also note: even with all that in mind only one person died as the result of direct radiation exposure, and radiation levels in Fukushima region are normal or below average levels. Who said anything about radiation? We are talking about cost. The alternative is renewables, which are vastly safer and more economical than nuclear. Again, typical blame shifting. You are not doing nuclear power any service with coal based whataboutism.
jsiepkes 4y ago
If you think maintenance is expensive you should try an incident.
- _cenw 4y ago
  This. Any serious malfunction is likely shutting down your block on the order of months to for good.
- perbu 4y ago
  Let's rule out Chernobyl and look at TMI and Fukushima. - Three Mile Island had cleanup costs of $1B (1982, so maybe $2-3B in todays money). - Cleanup costs after Fukushima seems to be about $500B+ So, even though reactor prices seems to have tripled, cleanup costs seems to have no upper limit.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Was the 500B entirely of radiation, or also the well tsunami. As if we want to lover the later we must remove all people from coast forcibly and maybe make some kinds of zones patrolled by armed guards to prevent people entering there.
epups 4y ago
If nuclear power was invented today, it would have been considered a breakthrough capable of changing the course of climate change dramatically. Since it exists for long and people formed an emotional reaction to incidents that were not that serious, while dying constantly from things they cannot see (like air pollution from coal), we are in this weird scenario where otherwise educated people say absolutely stupid things and refuse to see the evidence. Yes, nuclear is way too safe. Regulations keep piling on, adding costs and construction time, with no measurable benefit other than political expediency.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > while dying constantly from things they cannot see (like air pollution from coal) Air pollution from coal has many problems. But invisibility is not one of those problems. You can see it.
  - eftychis 4y ago
    Not 100% true. Here is a counter-example. First, guess what is one of the most abundant element on earth. Uranium. [1] Now consider what is a common pollutant when we mine coal or burn it. Uranium. [2,3, 6] Saying that we should burn coal because we are afraid of nuclear/radioactive waste is ad absurdum. And unlike nuclear plants it is questionable if we process the radioactive waste in question [4 & 5 show the contradiction in assuming if the post-processing is done correctly or not] [1]: https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-fuel-facts-uranium https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-fuel-facts-uranium [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... [3] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/langsdorf2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/langsdorf2/ [4] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-po... [5] https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta... [6] http://large.stanford.edu/publications/power/references/hvistendahl/ http://large.stanford.edu/publications/power/references/hvis...
s5300 4y ago
It would be really, really nice if we lived in a world where people new nuclear power mostly just means heating water (like many methods of power generation…)
- coldtea 4y ago
  Yeah, heating water with radioactive material. And then having to dispose toxic byproducts that can kill millions for thousands of years.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    >that can kill millions Did the inverse square law stop working recently or do they all take turns touching it?
    - ArnoVW 4y ago
      it's not the irradiation that people are worried about. It's the pollution, in the litteral sense. In the case of a fire (to take an all but too common example), all the radioactive material is distributed as tiny particles that get into the air we breathe and the water we drink. So no, they do not take turns. The live 1000 km away, and just buy a fish that swam 100 km away from the fire.
      - RC_ITR 4y ago
        I suggest you do your research about fallout. It decays about 1 order of magnitude for every 7^n of time. That’s the idea behind fallout shelters, you wait until the fallout is no longer dangerous. The atmosphere is a very harsh place for radioactive particles. We’ve gleaned this from real world testing. Please don’t be afraid of made up things. Be afraid of real things like climate change.
        coldtea 4y ago
        Similar non-chalance and assurances about previous technologies is how climate change came about..
coldtea 4y ago
LOL. He laments how billions are spent for nuclear reactor safety and then uses the casualty numbers based on those billions being spent [1], to calculate the casualty impact of building nuclear factories with more abandon and without such spending (as if the numbers would be the same). Also hidden in the small print, the assumption that future accidents would be "no worse" that previous ones. Because, you know, that's a given or something. Not to mention that even the numbers he uses for casualties from prior accidents and later cancers are doctored by governments who had accidents on their watch trying to look good, and by research funded and astroturfed by the nuclear industry to make itself look better.
- rocqua 4y ago
  No, he uses numbers from an old regime of rules. Argues those were incredibly safe, and hence the newer stricter rules are unnecessary.
- danw1979 4y ago
  Also not to mention that we’d have an additional 26 exclusion zones around blown up nukes. I’d like to see the authors back-of-the-envelope maths for the economic impact of the two or three in the UK alone.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    Radiation releases don't mean exclusion zones. Note that he included Three Mile Island amongst the radiation releases. Where's the exclusion zone?? It's not even a matter of cost, just look at the risks. You're at the fence of the reactor when it happens, you decide to walk away. Let's see how far you get before the risk of the trip exceeds the risk of staying. You come to a street--end of trip. It's more dangerous to cross the street than to stay put. (Admittedly, that's assuming an average crossing of an average street and streets vary. It's a lot safer to cross a 25 mph residential street than a 45 mph main street.)
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  He says 'only' 26 more Fukushima/Chernobyl type accidents. Exclusion zones all around the world. Not many people died hopefully, but you can't go back to your home either.
vpaulus 4y ago
I never understand why the "man in the street" with their zero knowledge will decide if which type of power plant is safe/sustainable/economical. Imagine if they would be also allowed to tell your car mechanical what is wrong and how to fix that.
- perbu 4y ago
  Democracy. Sounds banal, but it's all we got. Nuclear triggers some primal fear. The safety regulations have become table stakes, unfortunately.
  - xeyownt 4y ago
    > Nuclear triggers some primal fear. Rightfully so.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    Some people might be fearful but the real problem remains: Nuclear can be safe, cheap and built quickly. Pick two at best.
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      So if we had let's say 20 or 30 years ago started with the safe and cheap. Where would we be now with CO2 emissions? Or would have it been even slower? If it can be cheap and safe shouldn't we have started massive scale yesterday?
      - goodpoint 4y ago
        It already started 50 years ago, and the results are here for everybody to be seen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File:3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#... The chart is clear. Nuclear is in no way competitive. Not to mention all the other issues around nuclear proliferation, centralization of power, risks in case of war and terrorism. And lack of cooling water due to climate change etc.
tooltower 4y ago
The problem is perception. It has the word "nuclear" which, along with the mechanism, associates it with nuclear bombs. Not to mention, we react to large incidents with lots of fatality much more strongly than the same fatality spread out over time.
- majoe 4y ago
  A bit of trivia about that: In Germany, which had a rather vivid nuclear energy discussion for decades due to historical reasons, nuclear energy proponents often use the word "Kernkraft" (literally "nuclear power"), while opponents call it "Atomkraft" (literally "atom power"). That's because nuclear bombs are called "Atombombe" in German and the proponents try to avoid that association.
_cenw 4y ago
While I agree that humans are generally way too critical of nuclear power, when they seem fine with radioactive coal ash being blown into the atmosphere, measuring nuclear safety on the order of directly attributable deaths is really stupid. And as someone already mentioned. Nuclear needs to be very reliable, because malfunctions, while they may not cause armageddon, can kill entire blocks and make the cleanup even more costly than a normal decomissioning. You absolutely want to build these things to last and be reliable. Just look at Greifswald Unit 5 partially melting down less than a month into operation. In fact, Greifswald and their numerous close calls are a great example for where "less safe nuclear" would lead us.
a_shovel 4y ago
A comment from the author I found interesting (with some minor edits, mainly for spelling): > "All the evacuations at Fukushima were unnecessary, and in the case of the frail [or] elderly murderously so. If there had been no evacuations, few members of the public would have received more than 1 mSv/day peak and some 1600 lives would have been saved, and some 100,000 less lives sadly disrupted. Even the EPA now counsels shelter-in-place rather than evacuation. > At Chernobyl, it probably made sense to evacuate the 45,000 non-workers from Pripyat for a month or so. (Most of the plant workers never left. ) All the other evacuations were tragically unnecessary. The 1990 evacuations were completely senseless as is making the Exclusion Zone off-limits when the dose rates almost everywhere in the zone are below average planet wide and have been for a very long time."
- rocqua 4y ago
  Those statements (not yours) are quite surprising, and seem falsifiable. Anyone have the expertise to judge whether the factual claims are true?
  - Vecr 4y ago
    I don't know about Chernobyl, but there should not have been any nuclear related evacuations for Fukushima. People who wanted to leave on their own could. Evacuations might have been a good idea in some places for the worst flooding and earthquake zones, but I don't know that it was even possible to get that information in advance, and even if it was the Japanese government would probably not act on it, then or now.
osobo 4y ago
It's not just about life-years. It's about the risk of making significant stretches of land uninhabitable for a serious amount of time. 26 Chernobyl-like releases would have punched some serious holes in the map of the Western world. Furthermore, the 30-year argument sounds disingenuous ("LNT-Worshipping"? Really?) and the CO2 waste issue is mentioned where the nuclear waste issue is not. Honestly, the whole thing feels like cheap propaganda.
- danw1979 4y ago
  Imagine two or three 30km radius circles taken out of the UK and how much that would cost.
- illiarian 4y ago
  First, we'd need to have 26 Chernobyl-level incidents that you assume are a given. Second, there's very little issue with nuclear waste. Way, way, way less than the media make it out to be
netjiro 4y ago
Somehow we collectively forget/ignore that coal power releases many times the radioactivity of nuclear power, and that is just dumped directly into the air. The numbers are not directly apples to apples but absolutely lead to more life/health loss from fossil nuclear radiation contamination than fission nuclear radiation contamination. E.g: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/43/035/43035329.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta...
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  The author said scaling up nuclear would result in 26 more disasters, so if you're trying to beat coal in the radiation department then scaling up nuclear is a good way to do it.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Now do it again but add a bar for Kadapa a bar for sellafield and a bar for la hague rather than comparing the outside of a nuclear plant that is not being refueled and (unlike most of them) is not leaking tritium. Then consider that the people you're trying to pull this straw man against want coal even less.
calderknight 4y ago
Can someone spoon feed me here? I read the article but didn't notice the part where the author explains why nuclear power is too safe.
- sonzohan 4y ago
  A great example is radiation testing for plant workers. Consider under current regulations the allowable radiation levels for entering/leaving the plant is so low that workers have sounded radioactivity alarms for eating bananas.
- rdiddly 4y ago
  He means too costly, because of the level of safety we demand.
  - calderknight 4y ago
    Thanks
  - mpweiher 4y ago
    And because it's too costly, we use other forms of energy production that are far less safe instead. So making nuclear ultra-extra-special safe actually kills more people and is more costly than having slightly less safe nuclear would. Or as I tend to put it: fear of nuclear is far deadlier than nuclear.
choeger 4y ago
Is that the new hot take after "costs are too high because scale is too small"? There are many issues with the economics of nuclear power but too much safety isn't one of them. The Chernobyl comparison conveniently ignores the liquidators by only looking at residents. Residents that have been evacuated, mind you. Even if radiation is not as harmful long-term as the LNT model makes us believe, which might very well be the case, we have to keep in mind what the forced evacuation of, say, New York, or Singapore would cost. On top of that, nuclear power needs a lot of water. This means they can become less reliable, especially once they age. And while coal power plants are on their way out, it is important to note how they have improved in terms of exhausts. Filters are a thing nowadays. Finally, we have to compare NPPs with the alternative and that's not coal but PV and wind power combined with a large battery storage. Such a system is so much easier to deploy and starts production pretty much immediately. Whatever the economics of an idealized NPP are, that last fact alone will be hard to beat. All that being said, it's important to note that NPP are an option to combat climate change. Like hydrogen, they are a technology that doesn't look as good as renewables, but that doesn't mean we don't need them. In the end, we need to put a price on a ton of carbon dioxide and then done everything that is cheaper than that price to avoid it.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  Not only does it need water, but the water can't stop for any reason without resulting in a disaster. You have to keep that spent fuel cool otherwise it'll burn itself.
  - synecdoche 4y ago
    > On top of that, nuclear power needs a lot of water. This means they can become less reliable, especially once they age. > Not only does it need water, but the water can't stop for any reason without resulting in a disaster. You have to keep that spent fuel cool otherwise it'll burn itself. I'd say your information is incomplete. Nuclear power does not necessarily need water. Modern reactor designs do not use water at all, for example molten salt reactors that use salt for cooling instead of water. Unlike wind power there are several ways to construct nuclear power plants, which eliminate the possibilities of several, if not all, of the scary failure modes, such as spontaneous meltdown, as is the case for the aforementioned reactor type. Instead of spontaneous meltdown of nuclear material, spontaneous lessening of nuclear activity is part of its design, in case total loss of control.
nyokodo 4y ago
The anti-nuclear lobby won because nuclear has scary failure modes that have been hyped for decades and in general people aren’t good at assessing risk. Unfortunately, I don’t see that changing. But, the climate change luminaries almost unanimously have been behind that opposition to nuclear for decades despite nuclear being the only viable non-fossil-fuel option for cloudy and not very windy geographies. I cannot give a pass on good risk assessment to people whose mission is to spread awareness of climate change risk and who say that risk is literally existential and who do not promote nuclear regardless of the relatively small chance of failure. I can only conclude that they either don’t believe their own rhetoric or they don’t want/care if the decarbonization effort succeeds, or they are ignorant of suitable geographies for renewables. No matter what it’s a total credibility destroyer.
xeyownt 4y ago
Nuclear fission reactor are intrinsically dangerous, no matter what amount of safety procedure or technology you throw at it. Touting nuclear is safe is like saying asbestos is safe. I don't understand the motivation of some trying to argue that nuclear is safe, while ignoring all the obvious and huge risks that must be continuously addressed either in the technology, in the procedure or even in laws (eg. trading of nuclear material). I guess the same will argue that nuclear is as safe as solar or wind, which is like comparing apples to oranges.
- illiarian 4y ago
  Fukushima was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. While the earthquake was below the plant's design basis, the tsunami was significantly above. There's 1 (one) death that is the direct result of the Fukushima incident. The plant was built in 1982. I don't think we have anything as safe as nuclear plants.
  - lispm 4y ago
    But still most of the reactors were taken offline and a lot are not coming back. I would invest into a technology which would not take out all similar systems for months and years on a strong earthquake - something which is to expect in Japan.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      The reactor was built in 1982. 40 years ago Are you in all seriousness implying it wasn't built to withstand earthquakes?
      - lispm 4y ago
        > Are you in all seriousness implying it wasn't built to withstand earthquakes? The question is to what kind of earthquake they were built to withstand and with what knowledge of earthquake risks? Also taking into account the level of corruption and the attempts to avoid extremely expensive building costs. It's a complex risk calculation - one won't build for arbitrary strong earthquakes, that would be very expensive. The Fukushima site had inspections and was considered safe, only later being exposed to have multiple systemic risks: not enough protection from a tsunami, loss of power backup, loss of outside power, high-risk spent-fuel pools in need of extensive cooling, spent-fuel pools not being easily accessible, no cooling strategies for spent-fuel pools under loss of electrical power, building weakened due to cooling with seawater, no facility to clean cooling water, melted cores, no technology to investigate buildings with melted cores, hydrogen explosion in buildings, ... and much more. Some of the reactors in Japan were built on fault lines with high risk of strong earthquakes. After a strong earthquake it could take many years to bring a nuclear power plant back online, if ever. This is what happened.
minebreaker 4y ago
I'm pretty sure nuclear power plants are safe if operated properly. I'm pretty sure they are not and will not be operated properly. Especially in Japan, where I live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents
- illiarian 4y ago
  Note how the total deaths directly attributable to Japan's worst nuclear incidents (including Fukushima) is... three.
  - ainiriand 4y ago
    Sad thing is that some consequences are only seen after a decade, like cancer incidence in a population. A similar thing happened in East Palestine derail, mortality is 0 by the accident itself and the long-term consequences are ignored. I guess you cannot produce an argument in favor of just not maintaining rail tracks just because nobody dies from those accidents... But I guess all of that tends to be forgotten by the media.
    - fomine3 4y ago
      So let's see the result after a decade ago. https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2020_2021_2.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2020_2021_2....
    - illiarian 4y ago
      > But I guess all of that tends to be forgotten by the media. But not by scientific community. Because what you are parroting is exactly what the media is saying. 30 years after Chernobyl https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899336/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899336/ Most affected are the crews on site. Even people in the evacuation zone "received low radiation doses equivalent to approximately one whole-body computed tomography (CT) scan". The rest of Europe? "in Europe number almost 600 million people, with radiation exposure doses comparable to one annual background radiation dose"
Animats 4y ago
If plants were still being built to 1960s standards, we'd have many Fukushima type reactors that can't survive a loss of plant power. The US still has some of those, Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania being the best known. There's a lot to be said for a big, strong containment vessel. That's why the Three Mile Island meltdown was an expensive accident but didn't injure anyone. Maybe if the industry just got better at big, strong containment vessels cheaply...
- illiarian 4y ago
  Even at Fukushima one person died as a direct result of the accident. Evacuation killed more people.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Tell us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are without telling us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      Tell us you don't know that even scientific community is in agreement about this (and Chernobyl) without telling you don't know
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Yes the scientific community is absolutely in agreement with evacuation from the plume being unnecessary /s
        illiarian 4y ago
        Yes, the scientific community is in agreement about the overstated risk of these incidents.
uecker 4y ago
As a physicist and full professor in medical imaging I can ensure you somewhat authoritatively: You can simply disregard every clown on the internet who dismisses linear no threshold out of hand. This is fairly sure sign that this person relies on pseudoscientific sources, also promoted by certain industries and shills which generally lobby against anti-pollution laws and sadly adopted by some pro-nuclear lobbyists. (of course, nuclear is far better than coal and one can make very reasonable arguments for nuclear, but simply dismissing LNT puts you directly into the pseudoscience world)
- elcritch 4y ago
  Okay great, you've established some measure of credibility. But given the number of medical treatments and established methods of with zero actual backing evidence, could you cite some decent support for LNT? Currently TFA links to some interesting arguments in favor of a time-rate dependent factor that incorporates cellular repair mechanisms. At first glance that seems plausible, especially below a certain threshold. There appears to be no statistical evidence of higher cancer rates around many nuclear areas, etc. LNT is not a topic I've dived into but seen pop up a few times so I'm curious why LNT is considered unassailable.
  - synecdoche 4y ago
    Claims based on arguments similar to "because I said so, and I should know" are dubious in my opinion, because how is one supposed to distinguish those claims from mere opinion? Instead arguments should point to evidence that provide new information or counter examples, if they are to have a chance to be convincing.
    - 7952 4y ago
      It is particularly difficult with nuclear as there are so many different professions involved. You may hear from a nuclear engineer about safety. But they are not a materials expert, or a human factors specialist, or a geologist, or a hydrologist. And safety depends on all of these things. And it depends on intimate understanding of the specific design and practices of a power station. Much of which will be confidential.
psychoslave 4y ago
Premises exposed in the first paragraph feels completely out of touch with reality to me. You can not compare death by, say accident in building construction, with those caused by a major nuclear incident. If anything, deaths caused by such a punctual event is marginal compared to the global effect of nuclear industry, its mines, its million year wastes and the awfully embarassing target it provides in military conflicts. Find me any other industry that is comparable in term of geopolitical risks and ecological impact, and then you can maybe start to make some relevant points. I will buy that nuclear plants are too safe when we have a tracking record of absence of any major incident for a duration of plutonium half-life period. All the said, I'm not fundamentally against use of nuclear energy. But let's not pretend any arbitrary conclusion can be supported by flawed premises.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Puts 4y ago
According to Wikipedia there is about 422 commercial reactors in the world and so far in history about 18 meltdowns. So statistically 4% of reactors will have a meltdown. To me that is crazy, and does not sound safe. Even if these accidents have not lead to direct deaths each one is an environmental catastrophe that is impossible to clean up. And that is just meltdowns - the most serious of all accidents.
- _cenw 4y ago
  That doesn't say much about the viability of the technology. Almost all of these reactors are 40+ years old by now. The safety improvement we could get from just iterating on that tech with our current knowledge is huge. Also, meltdowns are bad, but they are accounted for, even in most of those old designs.
- Krssst 4y ago
  422 in operation. You should divide by the total amount of reactors that have ever run for some significant amount of time, including those that have stopped operating.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  The question is how serious the incidents are. Three Mile Island was a partial meltdown--and harmed nobody.
bjornsing 4y ago
This conclusion (i.e. that nuclear power is too safe) could very well be correct. But I’d like to see it underpinned with more solid economic reasoning. For example, while few people die from nuclear accidents they tend to be enormously costly. It may not be rational to spend billions of dollars to prevent one death, but it may well be worth billions of dollars to prevent the Fukushima disaster.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  But they're mostly so expensive because of irrational overreaction. Just like the (vast) majority of negative health effects from both Chernobyl and Fukushima were from the evacuation, not from the radiation. Fear of nuclear is far deadlier than nuclear.
- illiarian 4y ago
  > but it may well be worth billions of dollars to prevent the Fukushima disaster. Let's see about "Fukushima disaster". Built in 1982. In 2012 was hit by a 9.0–9.1 undersea megathrust earthquake (preceded by a 7.2 foreshock two days before, three 6 earthquakes on the same day, and hundreds of aftershocks in the next days) and immediately after by a 14-meter-hight tsunami. The earthquake exceeded plant tolerances (ground g-forces of 0.56, 0.52, 0.56 vs the seismic reactor design tolerances of 0.45, 0.45, and 0.46) and the tsunami (built to withstand 10-meter tsunamis, tsunami was 14 meters high). So, the disaster is literally a black swan by definition. The aftermath is: 1 person dead due to actual incident, 2000 dead due to evacuation. Now imagine if some other power sources were approached this way: Th Banqiao and Shimantan Dams disaster of 1975 killed at least 240 thousand people. We should never build another dam again, it's too dangerous.
  - hollandays 4y ago
    People have preferred ways of dying. Dam flood vs nuclear radiation. Human driver vs robot. It's a legitimate trade-off between how much you value likeliness vs method. It's annoying that many people don't (or won't) separate those ideas.
    - 4y ago
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This guy is going to be so happy when he learns about wind and solar power. It can do better than nuclear's really low death counts and cost less, leaving more money to fund vaccines etc.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Ah the old "it'd be cheap if you'd just let us try and kill you". If your business model requires hundreds of emergency workers to heroically dive on the grenade once every couple of years to stop the disaster getting orders of magnitude worse than merely destroying a country's economy for decades, then it's going to start getting very hard to find people to keep diving on the grenade.
- illiarian 4y ago
  Here's your reasoning: Every few years we throw people at the disaster that is dams. And still: Banqiao and Shimantan Dams failure with 240 000 dead, Machchu-2 Dam failure with 5000 dead etc. clearly show us how dangerous this technology is, and how we should never, ever use it again.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Yeah, every single one of those people in Banqiao had to volunteer in order to stop it killing ten times more. Hiding behind victims of other disasters is absolutely disgusting.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      Bo one is hiding behind victims of other disasters. What you are doing though is unsubstantiated fear mongering. And I just applied your unsubstantiated fear mongering to a different power source. For some reason you didn't like it.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        What you are doing is called whataboutism. Nobody is arguing for making dams less safe on purpose. Nor are they the topic.
        illiarian 4y ago
        Don't use terms you don't understand. Here are your words: "If your business model requires hundreds of emergency workers to heroically dive on the grenade once every couple of years to stop the disaster..." I just applied that same fear-mongering reasoning to a power source whose model is quite literally what you described. Not as whatsboutism, but yo show how flawed and weak your readoning is.
credit_guy 4y ago
A bit tangential, but this week I discovered an interesting tidbit about nuclear waste. We keep hearing that nuclear waste is an intractable problem, that the Yucca Mountain repository could never be approved, and there is no alternative, etc. What I learned this week is that in the US (and worldwide) more waste was produced by weapons programs than by the civilian reactors. Roughly speaking the civilian reactors have produced about 120k tons of spent fuel in the US. Weapons programs created 100 million gallons of waste [1], which is in liquid form. I can't find the density, but I doubt is lower than that of water, and most likely it is much higher (Uranium is an extremely dense metal). In any case, at a minimum this is 380k tons, which dwarfs the waste from civilian sources. All this waste was or will be stored at a facility similar to the one envisioned for Yucca Mountain, called WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) [2], located in the desert in New Mexico. By a law passed by Congress, only waste from the weapons programs is eligible to be stored there, but there's no technological reason to not add civilian waste to the program. WIPP is an underground long term storage facility in a massive salt mine. The video in link [2] is quite informative. My personal conclusion is that nuclear waste disposal is a solved problem, both from the technological point of view and the political one. [1] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-weapons-production-waste https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-weapons-production-waste [2] https://www.wipp.energy.gov/ https://www.wipp.energy.gov/
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  ...SNF and waste are not the same thing. This is incoherent.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    Why do you think they are not the same thing? Waste is more than spent nuclear fuel, that is true. But the long-lived waste that people worry about is either spent nuclear fuel, or processed spent nuclear fuel. Nuclear weapons are made with Plutonium-239, which is created by running a regular reactor that burns U-235 and U-238. U-238 can capture one neutron and become Pu-239, but that can capture one more neutron and become Pu-240, which is not good for weapons. So, to produce weapons-grade Pu-239 you need to run a reactor for very little (in technical terms the burnup is ultra low), take the Uranium rods out of the reactor and dissolve the in some chemicals and extract Pu-239 out of that liquid. The remaining liquid is the one that's being disposed at the WIPP facility. What exactly is bothering you in this description?
chkaloon 4y ago
I think what is missed here is the perceived function curve of deaths avoided vs spending. For most of those programs, people think things are more or less linear - the more you spend, the better things get, smoothly. Easy to find an equilibrium. For nuclear, it is perceived to be more of a step function - you decrease spending until something bad happens, and then it is REALLY bad. So the tendency is to spend to stay as far away from that step as possible.
- 7952 4y ago
  I think that approach could be explained by the inherent difficulty in modelling risk for complex systems.
xony 4y ago
[dead]
cwkoss 4y ago
Was this article written with the intention of nerd sniping? Starts with an obviously ridiculous thesis, arguments with a bunch of numbers that don't quite make valid comparisons. Cynically, I wonder if the author actually believes the thesis or is intentionally putting this forward for attention.

101 points by imgabe 4y ago

eecc 4y ago

That’s backwards: it actually means that protecting against nuclear hazards is astronomically expensive, that nukes are borderline unmanageable in the long term

bboygravity 4y ago
Yeah, that was not what I read in that text. The point the author is trying to get accross is that nuclear is being made unnecesarily expensive. Not nececarily expensive like you seem to claim with no substantiation.
- eecc 4y ago
  A point that is a spin on the data. In the 60s they also used to cover homes in asbestos and lead, do we need to do that again? Also flying airplanes was much cheaper, and safety systems were much more crude; should we go back to LOS navigation? I am not making any unsubstantiated claim, it’s a fact that over the decades risk analyses have determined that such measures were necessary. You’re the ne claiming it was just tree-hugging hysteria.
epups 4y ago
We have had very few nuclear hazards in the past, with very limited impact as shown in this article. Nuclear plants that were really old rarely failed as well, before we added all this regulatory overhead. Weird how something "borderline unmanageable" causes way less damage than the alternatives.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Depends on if you count the $2T cleanup cost for Fukushima as limited. After Fukushima about all plants in the west had to install independent core cooling because the regulators realized the risk was systemic, even though the cause was special. A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006 when many of the "defense in depth" layers had been accidentally removed through freak occurrences and upgrades. It is still impossible to get private third party insurance for a nuclear plant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#July_2006_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#J...
  - illiarian 4y ago
    > the $2T cleanup cost for Fukushima as limited. Let's ignore the earthquake and tsunami that happened and pretend that all that cleanup is only due to Fukushima. > A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006 Severe as in: exploded? people died?
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      > Let's ignore the earthquake and tsunami that happened and pretend that all that cleanup is only due to Fukushima. Typical nuclear proponents, trying to shift blame. The $2T is for the nuclear side of things.
      - illiarian 4y ago
        Typical nuclear fearmongers throwing nonsensical number about. "Japan has spent roughly 1 trillion yen ($7.3 billion) annually on the damage caused by the meltdowns at the Fukushima " That amounts to 84 billion dollars. That includes everything, including compensations and decomissioning. The cleanup itself is roughly 30 billion dollars. While the costs are still huge, note: this is for a plant that was both hit by an earthquake and flooded by unprecedented tsunami. Also note: even with all that in mind only one person died as the result of direct radiation exposure, and radiation levels in Fukushima region are normal or below average levels.
        Gwypaas 4y ago
        Lying with numbers? We should rely on the Japanese government instead of random HN:ers defending their pet technology. > The cost of dealing with the aftermath of the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant will reach 21.5 trillion yen, roughly double the government's initial prediction of 11 trillion yen, preliminary calculations released on Dec. 8 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry have shown. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161209/p2a/00m/0na/009000c https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161209/p2a/00m/0na/00... > While the costs are still huge, note: this is for a plant that was both hit by an earthquake and flooded by unprecedented tsunami. Read again what I said. The cause was special, while the risk was systemic. All western countries require independent core cooling today because there have been too many near-misses with causes related to power failures. > Also note: even with all that in mind only one person died as the result of direct radiation exposure, and radiation levels in Fukushima region are normal or below average levels. Who said anything about radiation? We are talking about cost. The alternative is renewables, which are vastly safer and more economical than nuclear. Again, typical blame shifting. You are not doing nuclear power any service with coal based whataboutism.

jsiepkes 4y ago

If you think maintenance is expensive you should try an incident.

_cenw 4y ago
This. Any serious malfunction is likely shutting down your block on the order of months to for good.
perbu 4y ago
Let's rule out Chernobyl and look at TMI and Fukushima. - Three Mile Island had cleanup costs of $1B (1982, so maybe $2-3B in todays money). - Cleanup costs after Fukushima seems to be about $500B+ So, even though reactor prices seems to have tripled, cleanup costs seems to have no upper limit.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Was the 500B entirely of radiation, or also the well tsunami. As if we want to lover the later we must remove all people from coast forcibly and maybe make some kinds of zones patrolled by armed guards to prevent people entering there.

epups 4y ago

If nuclear power was invented today, it would have been considered a breakthrough capable of changing the course of climate change dramatically. Since it exists for long and people formed an emotional reaction to incidents that were not that serious, while dying constantly from things they cannot see (like air pollution from coal), we are in this weird scenario where otherwise educated people say absolutely stupid things and refuse to see the evidence. Yes, nuclear is way too safe. Regulations keep piling on, adding costs and construction time, with no measurable benefit other than political expediency.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> while dying constantly from things they cannot see (like air pollution from coal) Air pollution from coal has many problems. But invisibility is not one of those problems. You can see it.
- eftychis 4y ago
  Not 100% true. Here is a counter-example. First, guess what is one of the most abundant element on earth. Uranium. [1] Now consider what is a common pollutant when we mine coal or burn it. Uranium. [2,3, 6] Saying that we should burn coal because we are afraid of nuclear/radioactive waste is ad absurdum. And unlike nuclear plants it is questionable if we process the radioactive waste in question [4 & 5 show the contradiction in assuming if the post-processing is done correctly or not] [1]: https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-fuel-facts-uranium https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-fuel-facts-uranium [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-... [3] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/langsdorf2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/langsdorf2/ [4] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-power-plants https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-wastes-coal-fired-po... [5] https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta... [6] http://large.stanford.edu/publications/power/references/hvistendahl/ http://large.stanford.edu/publications/power/references/hvis...

s5300 4y ago

It would be really, really nice if we lived in a world where people new nuclear power mostly just means heating water (like many methods of power generation…)

coldtea 4y ago
Yeah, heating water with radioactive material. And then having to dispose toxic byproducts that can kill millions for thousands of years.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  >that can kill millions Did the inverse square law stop working recently or do they all take turns touching it?
  - ArnoVW 4y ago
    it's not the irradiation that people are worried about. It's the pollution, in the litteral sense. In the case of a fire (to take an all but too common example), all the radioactive material is distributed as tiny particles that get into the air we breathe and the water we drink. So no, they do not take turns. The live 1000 km away, and just buy a fish that swam 100 km away from the fire.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
      I suggest you do your research about fallout. It decays about 1 order of magnitude for every 7^n of time. That’s the idea behind fallout shelters, you wait until the fallout is no longer dangerous. The atmosphere is a very harsh place for radioactive particles. We’ve gleaned this from real world testing. Please don’t be afraid of made up things. Be afraid of real things like climate change.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        Similar non-chalance and assurances about previous technologies is how climate change came about..

coldtea 4y ago

LOL. He laments how billions are spent for nuclear reactor safety and then uses the casualty numbers based on those billions being spent [1], to calculate the casualty impact of building nuclear factories with more abandon and without such spending (as if the numbers would be the same). Also hidden in the small print, the assumption that future accidents would be "no worse" that previous ones. Because, you know, that's a given or something. Not to mention that even the numbers he uses for casualties from prior accidents and later cancers are doctored by governments who had accidents on their watch trying to look good, and by research funded and astroturfed by the nuclear industry to make itself look better.

rocqua 4y ago
No, he uses numbers from an old regime of rules. Argues those were incredibly safe, and hence the newer stricter rules are unnecessary.
danw1979 4y ago
Also not to mention that we’d have an additional 26 exclusion zones around blown up nukes. I’d like to see the authors back-of-the-envelope maths for the economic impact of the two or three in the UK alone.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  Radiation releases don't mean exclusion zones. Note that he included Three Mile Island amongst the radiation releases. Where's the exclusion zone?? It's not even a matter of cost, just look at the risks. You're at the fence of the reactor when it happens, you decide to walk away. Let's see how far you get before the risk of the trip exceeds the risk of staying. You come to a street--end of trip. It's more dangerous to cross the street than to stay put. (Admittedly, that's assuming an average crossing of an average street and streets vary. It's a lot safer to cross a 25 mph residential street than a 45 mph main street.)
bottlepalm 4y ago
He says 'only' 26 more Fukushima/Chernobyl type accidents. Exclusion zones all around the world. Not many people died hopefully, but you can't go back to your home either.

vpaulus 4y ago

I never understand why the "man in the street" with their zero knowledge will decide if which type of power plant is safe/sustainable/economical. Imagine if they would be also allowed to tell your car mechanical what is wrong and how to fix that.

perbu 4y ago
Democracy. Sounds banal, but it's all we got. Nuclear triggers some primal fear. The safety regulations have become table stakes, unfortunately.
- xeyownt 4y ago
  > Nuclear triggers some primal fear. Rightfully so.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  Some people might be fearful but the real problem remains: Nuclear can be safe, cheap and built quickly. Pick two at best.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    So if we had let's say 20 or 30 years ago started with the safe and cheap. Where would we be now with CO2 emissions? Or would have it been even slower? If it can be cheap and safe shouldn't we have started massive scale yesterday?
    - goodpoint 4y ago
      It already started 50 years ago, and the results are here for everybody to be seen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#/media/File:3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#... The chart is clear. Nuclear is in no way competitive. Not to mention all the other issues around nuclear proliferation, centralization of power, risks in case of war and terrorism. And lack of cooling water due to climate change etc.

tooltower 4y ago

The problem is perception. It has the word "nuclear" which, along with the mechanism, associates it with nuclear bombs. Not to mention, we react to large incidents with lots of fatality much more strongly than the same fatality spread out over time.

majoe 4y ago
A bit of trivia about that: In Germany, which had a rather vivid nuclear energy discussion for decades due to historical reasons, nuclear energy proponents often use the word "Kernkraft" (literally "nuclear power"), while opponents call it "Atomkraft" (literally "atom power"). That's because nuclear bombs are called "Atombombe" in German and the proponents try to avoid that association.

_cenw 4y ago

While I agree that humans are generally way too critical of nuclear power, when they seem fine with radioactive coal ash being blown into the atmosphere, measuring nuclear safety on the order of directly attributable deaths is really stupid. And as someone already mentioned. Nuclear needs to be very reliable, because malfunctions, while they may not cause armageddon, can kill entire blocks and make the cleanup even more costly than a normal decomissioning. You absolutely want to build these things to last and be reliable. Just look at Greifswald Unit 5 partially melting down less than a month into operation. In fact, Greifswald and their numerous close calls are a great example for where "less safe nuclear" would lead us.

a_shovel 4y ago

A comment from the author I found interesting (with some minor edits, mainly for spelling): > "All the evacuations at Fukushima were unnecessary, and in the case of the frail [or] elderly murderously so. If there had been no evacuations, few members of the public would have received more than 1 mSv/day peak and some 1600 lives would have been saved, and some 100,000 less lives sadly disrupted. Even the EPA now counsels shelter-in-place rather than evacuation. > At Chernobyl, it probably made sense to evacuate the 45,000 non-workers from Pripyat for a month or so. (Most of the plant workers never left. ) All the other evacuations were tragically unnecessary. The 1990 evacuations were completely senseless as is making the Exclusion Zone off-limits when the dose rates almost everywhere in the zone are below average planet wide and have been for a very long time."

rocqua 4y ago
Those statements (not yours) are quite surprising, and seem falsifiable. Anyone have the expertise to judge whether the factual claims are true?
- Vecr 4y ago
  I don't know about Chernobyl, but there should not have been any nuclear related evacuations for Fukushima. People who wanted to leave on their own could. Evacuations might have been a good idea in some places for the worst flooding and earthquake zones, but I don't know that it was even possible to get that information in advance, and even if it was the Japanese government would probably not act on it, then or now.

osobo 4y ago

It's not just about life-years. It's about the risk of making significant stretches of land uninhabitable for a serious amount of time. 26 Chernobyl-like releases would have punched some serious holes in the map of the Western world. Furthermore, the 30-year argument sounds disingenuous ("LNT-Worshipping"? Really?) and the CO2 waste issue is mentioned where the nuclear waste issue is not. Honestly, the whole thing feels like cheap propaganda.

danw1979 4y ago
Imagine two or three 30km radius circles taken out of the UK and how much that would cost.
illiarian 4y ago
First, we'd need to have 26 Chernobyl-level incidents that you assume are a given. Second, there's very little issue with nuclear waste. Way, way, way less than the media make it out to be

netjiro 4y ago

Somehow we collectively forget/ignore that coal power releases many times the radioactivity of nuclear power, and that is just dumped directly into the air. The numbers are not directly apples to apples but absolutely lead to more life/health loss from fossil nuclear radiation contamination than fission nuclear radiation contamination. E.g: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/43/035/43035329.pdf https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/... https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-stations-produce-radioactive-waste/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/do-coal-fired-power-sta...

bottlepalm 4y ago
The author said scaling up nuclear would result in 26 more disasters, so if you're trying to beat coal in the radiation department then scaling up nuclear is a good way to do it.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Now do it again but add a bar for Kadapa a bar for sellafield and a bar for la hague rather than comparing the outside of a nuclear plant that is not being refueled and (unlike most of them) is not leaking tritium. Then consider that the people you're trying to pull this straw man against want coal even less.

calderknight 4y ago

Can someone spoon feed me here? I read the article but didn't notice the part where the author explains why nuclear power is too safe.

sonzohan 4y ago
A great example is radiation testing for plant workers. Consider under current regulations the allowable radiation levels for entering/leaving the plant is so low that workers have sounded radioactivity alarms for eating bananas.
rdiddly 4y ago
He means too costly, because of the level of safety we demand.
- calderknight 4y ago
  Thanks
- mpweiher 4y ago
  And because it's too costly, we use other forms of energy production that are far less safe instead. So making nuclear ultra-extra-special safe actually kills more people and is more costly than having slightly less safe nuclear would. Or as I tend to put it: fear of nuclear is far deadlier than nuclear.

choeger 4y ago

Is that the new hot take after "costs are too high because scale is too small"? There are many issues with the economics of nuclear power but too much safety isn't one of them. The Chernobyl comparison conveniently ignores the liquidators by only looking at residents. Residents that have been evacuated, mind you. Even if radiation is not as harmful long-term as the LNT model makes us believe, which might very well be the case, we have to keep in mind what the forced evacuation of, say, New York, or Singapore would cost. On top of that, nuclear power needs a lot of water. This means they can become less reliable, especially once they age. And while coal power plants are on their way out, it is important to note how they have improved in terms of exhausts. Filters are a thing nowadays. Finally, we have to compare NPPs with the alternative and that's not coal but PV and wind power combined with a large battery storage. Such a system is so much easier to deploy and starts production pretty much immediately. Whatever the economics of an idealized NPP are, that last fact alone will be hard to beat. All that being said, it's important to note that NPP are an option to combat climate change. Like hydrogen, they are a technology that doesn't look as good as renewables, but that doesn't mean we don't need them. In the end, we need to put a price on a ton of carbon dioxide and then done everything that is cheaper than that price to avoid it.

bottlepalm 4y ago
Not only does it need water, but the water can't stop for any reason without resulting in a disaster. You have to keep that spent fuel cool otherwise it'll burn itself.
- synecdoche 4y ago
  > On top of that, nuclear power needs a lot of water. This means they can become less reliable, especially once they age. > Not only does it need water, but the water can't stop for any reason without resulting in a disaster. You have to keep that spent fuel cool otherwise it'll burn itself. I'd say your information is incomplete. Nuclear power does not necessarily need water. Modern reactor designs do not use water at all, for example molten salt reactors that use salt for cooling instead of water. Unlike wind power there are several ways to construct nuclear power plants, which eliminate the possibilities of several, if not all, of the scary failure modes, such as spontaneous meltdown, as is the case for the aforementioned reactor type. Instead of spontaneous meltdown of nuclear material, spontaneous lessening of nuclear activity is part of its design, in case total loss of control.

nyokodo 4y ago

The anti-nuclear lobby won because nuclear has scary failure modes that have been hyped for decades and in general people aren’t good at assessing risk. Unfortunately, I don’t see that changing. But, the climate change luminaries almost unanimously have been behind that opposition to nuclear for decades despite nuclear being the only viable non-fossil-fuel option for cloudy and not very windy geographies. I cannot give a pass on good risk assessment to people whose mission is to spread awareness of climate change risk and who say that risk is literally existential and who do not promote nuclear regardless of the relatively small chance of failure. I can only conclude that they either don’t believe their own rhetoric or they don’t want/care if the decarbonization effort succeeds, or they are ignorant of suitable geographies for renewables. No matter what it’s a total credibility destroyer.

xeyownt 4y ago

Nuclear fission reactor are intrinsically dangerous, no matter what amount of safety procedure or technology you throw at it. Touting nuclear is safe is like saying asbestos is safe. I don't understand the motivation of some trying to argue that nuclear is safe, while ignoring all the obvious and huge risks that must be continuously addressed either in the technology, in the procedure or even in laws (eg. trading of nuclear material). I guess the same will argue that nuclear is as safe as solar or wind, which is like comparing apples to oranges.

illiarian 4y ago
Fukushima was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. While the earthquake was below the plant's design basis, the tsunami was significantly above. There's 1 (one) death that is the direct result of the Fukushima incident. The plant was built in 1982. I don't think we have anything as safe as nuclear plants.
- lispm 4y ago
  But still most of the reactors were taken offline and a lot are not coming back. I would invest into a technology which would not take out all similar systems for months and years on a strong earthquake - something which is to expect in Japan.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    The reactor was built in 1982. 40 years ago Are you in all seriousness implying it wasn't built to withstand earthquakes?
    - lispm 4y ago
      > Are you in all seriousness implying it wasn't built to withstand earthquakes? The question is to what kind of earthquake they were built to withstand and with what knowledge of earthquake risks? Also taking into account the level of corruption and the attempts to avoid extremely expensive building costs. It's a complex risk calculation - one won't build for arbitrary strong earthquakes, that would be very expensive. The Fukushima site had inspections and was considered safe, only later being exposed to have multiple systemic risks: not enough protection from a tsunami, loss of power backup, loss of outside power, high-risk spent-fuel pools in need of extensive cooling, spent-fuel pools not being easily accessible, no cooling strategies for spent-fuel pools under loss of electrical power, building weakened due to cooling with seawater, no facility to clean cooling water, melted cores, no technology to investigate buildings with melted cores, hydrogen explosion in buildings, ... and much more. Some of the reactors in Japan were built on fault lines with high risk of strong earthquakes. After a strong earthquake it could take many years to bring a nuclear power plant back online, if ever. This is what happened.

minebreaker 4y ago

I'm pretty sure nuclear power plants are safe if operated properly. I'm pretty sure they are not and will not be operated properly. Especially in Japan, where I live. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accidents

illiarian 4y ago
Note how the total deaths directly attributable to Japan's worst nuclear incidents (including Fukushima) is... three.
- ainiriand 4y ago
  Sad thing is that some consequences are only seen after a decade, like cancer incidence in a population. A similar thing happened in East Palestine derail, mortality is 0 by the accident itself and the long-term consequences are ignored. I guess you cannot produce an argument in favor of just not maintaining rail tracks just because nobody dies from those accidents... But I guess all of that tends to be forgotten by the media.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    So let's see the result after a decade ago. https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2020_2021_2.html https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2020_2021_2....
  - illiarian 4y ago
    > But I guess all of that tends to be forgotten by the media. But not by scientific community. Because what you are parroting is exactly what the media is saying. 30 years after Chernobyl https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899336/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899336/ Most affected are the crews on site. Even people in the evacuation zone "received low radiation doses equivalent to approximately one whole-body computed tomography (CT) scan". The rest of Europe? "in Europe number almost 600 million people, with radiation exposure doses comparable to one annual background radiation dose"

Animats 4y ago

If plants were still being built to 1960s standards, we'd have many Fukushima type reactors that can't survive a loss of plant power. The US still has some of those, Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania being the best known. There's a lot to be said for a big, strong containment vessel. That's why the Three Mile Island meltdown was an expensive accident but didn't injure anyone. Maybe if the industry just got better at big, strong containment vessels cheaply...

illiarian 4y ago
Even at Fukushima one person died as a direct result of the accident. Evacuation killed more people.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Tell us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are without telling us you don't know what short lived fission products and a very very lucky turn of wind are.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    Tell us you don't know that even scientific community is in agreement about this (and Chernobyl) without telling you don't know
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Yes the scientific community is absolutely in agreement with evacuation from the plume being unnecessary /s
      - illiarian 4y ago
        Yes, the scientific community is in agreement about the overstated risk of these incidents.

uecker 4y ago

As a physicist and full professor in medical imaging I can ensure you somewhat authoritatively: You can simply disregard every clown on the internet who dismisses linear no threshold out of hand. This is fairly sure sign that this person relies on pseudoscientific sources, also promoted by certain industries and shills which generally lobby against anti-pollution laws and sadly adopted by some pro-nuclear lobbyists. (of course, nuclear is far better than coal and one can make very reasonable arguments for nuclear, but simply dismissing LNT puts you directly into the pseudoscience world)

elcritch 4y ago
Okay great, you've established some measure of credibility. But given the number of medical treatments and established methods of with zero actual backing evidence, could you cite some decent support for LNT? Currently TFA links to some interesting arguments in favor of a time-rate dependent factor that incorporates cellular repair mechanisms. At first glance that seems plausible, especially below a certain threshold. There appears to be no statistical evidence of higher cancer rates around many nuclear areas, etc. LNT is not a topic I've dived into but seen pop up a few times so I'm curious why LNT is considered unassailable.
- synecdoche 4y ago
  Claims based on arguments similar to "because I said so, and I should know" are dubious in my opinion, because how is one supposed to distinguish those claims from mere opinion? Instead arguments should point to evidence that provide new information or counter examples, if they are to have a chance to be convincing.
  - 7952 4y ago
    It is particularly difficult with nuclear as there are so many different professions involved. You may hear from a nuclear engineer about safety. But they are not a materials expert, or a human factors specialist, or a geologist, or a hydrologist. And safety depends on all of these things. And it depends on intimate understanding of the specific design and practices of a power station. Much of which will be confidential.

psychoslave 4y ago

Premises exposed in the first paragraph feels completely out of touch with reality to me. You can not compare death by, say accident in building construction, with those caused by a major nuclear incident. If anything, deaths caused by such a punctual event is marginal compared to the global effect of nuclear industry, its mines, its million year wastes and the awfully embarassing target it provides in military conflicts. Find me any other industry that is comparable in term of geopolitical risks and ecological impact, and then you can maybe start to make some relevant points. I will buy that nuclear plants are too safe when we have a tracking record of absence of any major incident for a duration of plutonium half-life period. All the said, I'm not fundamentally against use of nuclear energy. But let's not pretend any arbitrary conclusion can be supported by flawed premises.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Puts 4y ago

According to Wikipedia there is about 422 commercial reactors in the world and so far in history about 18 meltdowns. So statistically 4% of reactors will have a meltdown. To me that is crazy, and does not sound safe. Even if these accidents have not lead to direct deaths each one is an environmental catastrophe that is impossible to clean up. And that is just meltdowns - the most serious of all accidents.

_cenw 4y ago
That doesn't say much about the viability of the technology. Almost all of these reactors are 40+ years old by now. The safety improvement we could get from just iterating on that tech with our current knowledge is huge. Also, meltdowns are bad, but they are accounted for, even in most of those old designs.
Krssst 4y ago
422 in operation. You should divide by the total amount of reactors that have ever run for some significant amount of time, including those that have stopped operating.
LorenPechtel 4y ago
The question is how serious the incidents are. Three Mile Island was a partial meltdown--and harmed nobody.

bjornsing 4y ago

This conclusion (i.e. that nuclear power is too safe) could very well be correct. But I’d like to see it underpinned with more solid economic reasoning. For example, while few people die from nuclear accidents they tend to be enormously costly. It may not be rational to spend billions of dollars to prevent one death, but it may well be worth billions of dollars to prevent the Fukushima disaster.

mpweiher 4y ago
But they're mostly so expensive because of irrational overreaction. Just like the (vast) majority of negative health effects from both Chernobyl and Fukushima were from the evacuation, not from the radiation. Fear of nuclear is far deadlier than nuclear.
illiarian 4y ago
> but it may well be worth billions of dollars to prevent the Fukushima disaster. Let's see about "Fukushima disaster". Built in 1982. In 2012 was hit by a 9.0–9.1 undersea megathrust earthquake (preceded by a 7.2 foreshock two days before, three 6 earthquakes on the same day, and hundreds of aftershocks in the next days) and immediately after by a 14-meter-hight tsunami. The earthquake exceeded plant tolerances (ground g-forces of 0.56, 0.52, 0.56 vs the seismic reactor design tolerances of 0.45, 0.45, and 0.46) and the tsunami (built to withstand 10-meter tsunamis, tsunami was 14 meters high). So, the disaster is literally a black swan by definition. The aftermath is: 1 person dead due to actual incident, 2000 dead due to evacuation. Now imagine if some other power sources were approached this way: Th Banqiao and Shimantan Dams disaster of 1975 killed at least 240 thousand people. We should never build another dam again, it's too dangerous.
- hollandays 4y ago
  People have preferred ways of dying. Dam flood vs nuclear radiation. Human driver vs robot. It's a legitimate trade-off between how much you value likeliness vs method. It's annoying that many people don't (or won't) separate those ideas.
  - 4y ago

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

This guy is going to be so happy when he learns about wind and solar power. It can do better than nuclear's really low death counts and cost less, leaving more money to fund vaccines etc.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Ah the old "it'd be cheap if you'd just let us try and kill you". If your business model requires hundreds of emergency workers to heroically dive on the grenade once every couple of years to stop the disaster getting orders of magnitude worse than merely destroying a country's economy for decades, then it's going to start getting very hard to find people to keep diving on the grenade.

illiarian 4y ago
Here's your reasoning: Every few years we throw people at the disaster that is dams. And still: Banqiao and Shimantan Dams failure with 240 000 dead, Machchu-2 Dam failure with 5000 dead etc. clearly show us how dangerous this technology is, and how we should never, ever use it again.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Yeah, every single one of those people in Banqiao had to volunteer in order to stop it killing ten times more. Hiding behind victims of other disasters is absolutely disgusting.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    Bo one is hiding behind victims of other disasters. What you are doing though is unsubstantiated fear mongering. And I just applied your unsubstantiated fear mongering to a different power source. For some reason you didn't like it.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      What you are doing is called whataboutism. Nobody is arguing for making dams less safe on purpose. Nor are they the topic.
      - illiarian 4y ago
        Don't use terms you don't understand. Here are your words: "If your business model requires hundreds of emergency workers to heroically dive on the grenade once every couple of years to stop the disaster..." I just applied that same fear-mongering reasoning to a power source whose model is quite literally what you described. Not as whatsboutism, but yo show how flawed and weak your readoning is.

credit_guy 4y ago

A bit tangential, but this week I discovered an interesting tidbit about nuclear waste. We keep hearing that nuclear waste is an intractable problem, that the Yucca Mountain repository could never be approved, and there is no alternative, etc. What I learned this week is that in the US (and worldwide) more waste was produced by weapons programs than by the civilian reactors. Roughly speaking the civilian reactors have produced about 120k tons of spent fuel in the US. Weapons programs created 100 million gallons of waste [1], which is in liquid form. I can't find the density, but I doubt is lower than that of water, and most likely it is much higher (Uranium is an extremely dense metal). In any case, at a minimum this is 380k tons, which dwarfs the waste from civilian sources. All this waste was or will be stored at a facility similar to the one envisioned for Yucca Mountain, called WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) [2], located in the desert in New Mexico. By a law passed by Congress, only waste from the weapons programs is eligible to be stored there, but there's no technological reason to not add civilian waste to the program. WIPP is an underground long term storage facility in a massive salt mine. The video in link [2] is quite informative. My personal conclusion is that nuclear waste disposal is a solved problem, both from the technological point of view and the political one. [1] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-weapons-production-waste https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-weapons-production-waste [2] https://www.wipp.energy.gov/ https://www.wipp.energy.gov/

Schroedingersat 4y ago
...SNF and waste are not the same thing. This is incoherent.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  Why do you think they are not the same thing? Waste is more than spent nuclear fuel, that is true. But the long-lived waste that people worry about is either spent nuclear fuel, or processed spent nuclear fuel. Nuclear weapons are made with Plutonium-239, which is created by running a regular reactor that burns U-235 and U-238. U-238 can capture one neutron and become Pu-239, but that can capture one more neutron and become Pu-240, which is not good for weapons. So, to produce weapons-grade Pu-239 you need to run a reactor for very little (in technical terms the burnup is ultra low), take the Uranium rods out of the reactor and dissolve the in some chemicals and extract Pu-239 out of that liquid. The remaining liquid is the one that's being disposed at the WIPP facility. What exactly is bothering you in this description?

chkaloon 4y ago

I think what is missed here is the perceived function curve of deaths avoided vs spending. For most of those programs, people think things are more or less linear - the more you spend, the better things get, smoothly. Easy to find an equilibrium. For nuclear, it is perceived to be more of a step function - you decrease spending until something bad happens, and then it is REALLY bad. So the tendency is to spend to stay as far away from that step as possible.

7952 4y ago
I think that approach could be explained by the inherent difficulty in modelling risk for complex systems.

xony 4y ago

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cwkoss 4y ago

Was this article written with the intention of nerd sniping? Starts with an obviously ridiculous thesis, arguments with a bunch of numbers that don't quite make valid comparisons. Cynically, I wonder if the author actually believes the thesis or is intentionally putting this forward for attention.