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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 i

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.
  - bottlepalm 4y ago
    Modern? They’ve been talking about ‘modern’ fail safe designs for decades. Where are they? The problem is none of the existing 400 reactors are fail safe and none are being built. Don’t use fantasy reactors that don’t exist to support the status quo.
    - synecdoche 4y ago
      The Oak Ridge National Laboratory MSRE that produced power safely from 1965-1969 is no fantasy, but a counter example, both to the fantasy claim and the water claim.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Except the design has countless flaws that make it impossible to actually deploy and when producing a meaningful amount of power (carefully avoided during the self described dog and pony shows) skates on the edge of prompt criticality which would destroy the building well before the freeze plug melted.
        synecdoche 4y ago
        Again, no water. Educate us. How does it do those bad things? Where can we read about them?
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Nah buddy. It's your garbage claim. It's on you to show that they won't go prompt critical, you have a plan for fuel separation that actually works, you have a way of containing the fission products (including the gaseous ones) and you have a solution to corrosion (good luck when the industry can't even get hot water that isn't the direct source of neutrons right). Otherwise it's just a fantasy. Like claiming 47% PV panels and 1kWh/kg batteries will be everywhere because they happened in a lab once.
    - LorenPechtel 4y ago
LorenPechtel 4y ago
Coal plants need a lot of water, also. Both coal and nuclear make power the same way--boil water, use the steam to run a powerplant. Nuke is set a bit cooler for safety reasons and thus uses a bit more water. And note that the safety numbers (coal roughly 1000x as dangerous) are based on current standards, it used to be much worse. As for PV + battery--get back to us when we have the batteries and the safety numbers involved. We don't, the comparison can't even be made. The closest we can come is solar + wind backed up with gas--something for which I have never seen the safety numbers. Note that the need for multiple generators makes this option a lot more expensive than straight gas.

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.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  Modern? They’ve been talking about ‘modern’ fail safe designs for decades. Where are they? The problem is none of the existing 400 reactors are fail safe and none are being built. Don’t use fantasy reactors that don’t exist to support the status quo.
  - synecdoche 4y ago
    The Oak Ridge National Laboratory MSRE that produced power safely from 1965-1969 is no fantasy, but a counter example, both to the fantasy claim and the water claim.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Except the design has countless flaws that make it impossible to actually deploy and when producing a meaningful amount of power (carefully avoided during the self described dog and pony shows) skates on the edge of prompt criticality which would destroy the building well before the freeze plug melted.
      - synecdoche 4y ago
        Again, no water. Educate us. How does it do those bad things? Where can we read about them?
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Nah buddy. It's your garbage claim. It's on you to show that they won't go prompt critical, you have a plan for fuel separation that actually works, you have a way of containing the fission products (including the gaseous ones) and you have a solution to corrosion (good luck when the industry can't even get hot water that isn't the direct source of neutrons right). Otherwise it's just a fantasy. Like claiming 47% PV panels and 1kWh/kg batteries will be everywhere because they happened in a lab once.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago

LorenPechtel 4y ago

Coal plants need a lot of water, also. Both coal and nuclear make power the same way--boil water, use the steam to run a powerplant. Nuke is set a bit cooler for safety reasons and thus uses a bit more water. And note that the safety numbers (coal roughly 1000x as dangerous) are based on current standards, it used to be much worse. As for PV + battery--get back to us when we have the batteries and the safety numbers involved. We don't, the comparison can't even be made. The closest we can come is solar + wind backed up with gas--something for which I have never seen the safety numbers. Note that the need for multiple generators makes this option a lot more expensive than straight gas.