3 ms·

I'm pro nuclear, but it's also the only power generation system we have where the risk remains long after the power is generated. Calling nuclear safe seems unf

I'm pro nuclear, but it's also the only power generation system we have where the risk remains long after the power is generated. Calling nuclear safe seems unfair, given many millenias of time it's byproducts will have to be dealt with across.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
genocidicbunny 4y ago
I don't think that's really accurate. We can reprocess most nuclear waste into forms that are far less long-term radioactive, and a few hundred years is nothing considering the lasting effects of pollution from coal and gas, or how long it would take for all those decommissioned solar panels or wind turbines.
- rektide 4y ago
  We can potentially reprocess used nuclear fuel, but that has so many problems. The reactors are much more advanced designs, and the US and much of the world has been focused the opposite direction: on very simple, very safe, lower cost designs. Making a fast neutron reactor is just a different class of beast, and it's unclear where the appetite is for it. (Which is a shame.) Japan, China, India, and Russia are the only countries to have started new breeder reactors projects since Franc'es last reactor Superhenix in 1985. Most breeder reactors use a reprocessing mechanism that is somewhat akin to the enrichment used for weapons. It's goal is to extract the good & enriched stuff & leave the rest of the fission product out (which still have hundreds of years to be dealt with). There's still justifiable hesitancy about developing such technology further. Even if we feel like we can use it safely in X Y and Z countries, once the technology becomes more proven (particularly if it can be shown to be cost effective) it's hard to imagine it won't become more available, and that has a real & scary risk. Ask yourself how many of the above countries that started breeder reactors do we want making new nuclear weapons? And note how many have kicked out nuclear weapons inspectors (Russia, China). One of my favorite candidate designs was the Integral Fast Reactor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor), began in 1984 as a faster fast reactor which was considerably safer by default, and which was capable of a lower-refinement (lower proliferation concern) burning of already spent fuel (including a wide range of medium-lived/longer-lived transuranic wastes). But almost all indicators are that we try for simpler & dumber designs, not to improve & refine what we could do. I also think it's a huge disservice only identify short half-life products as dangerous. Yes they have the most immediate threat, but we generate plenty of other wastes that are severely scary, particularly among the transuranics, and plenty of even the "low" nuclear wastes will quickly ruin an area & spread if mistakes happen. The variety of different nuclearly active chemical wastes we have to deal with is vast (those pesky transuranics). I'd love to be talked down here some, I think this is one place I'm best able to be convinced with good science, but my reading of information like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio... is that there is just so much to be dealt with, such a pesky variety. And yes fast reactors help a lot here, if we can deploy them at scale effectively, but again I just question whether on a cost basis that will happen. I agree with you in principle that nuclear has amazing potential to be handled well. But in fact, most of the world takes the shortest route they can & thinks nothing of how much or what kind of waste is generated. It's a network externality, foisted off onto the government to deal with. Even in France, the one beacon of breeder reactors, there's been scant investment in improving iterating or refining what mechanisms they have; continuing to use one centralized PUREX refining center to do most of the work. Meanwhile we have few positive indicators elsewhere about good nuclear. IFR derived designs like PRISM, S-PRISM and Versatile Test Reactor have repeatedly stalled. To provide some counter to my own general thread, Japan has shown again and again a willingness to try & try hard that I respect. They recently started working with TerraPower on a PRISM/IFR based design that could potentially go somewhere. But this is a faint ray of hope in a gloomy low-tech unglorious nuclear landscape. https://neutronbytes.com/2022/02/03/terrapower-teams-up-with-japanese-fast-reactor-experts/ https://neutronbytes.com/2022/02/03/terrapower-teams-up-with... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35430993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35430993
  - genocidicbunny 4y ago
    > Ask yourself how many of the above countries that started breeder reactors do we want making new nuclear weapons? And note how many have kicked out nuclear weapons inspectors (Russia, China). This to me is the single biggest reason to pursue the tech. The genie is out of the bottle.
    - rektide 4y ago
      Who do you think should pursue it? Governments? Public/private enterprise? How should it happen? Who is going to pursue very very expensive speculative possibly interesting technology? Should we pursue the China/Russia/India pro-proliferation version, or should we follow a profileration-safe and risk-safe'er IFR version? Right now there's not success. To say the genie is out of the bottle ignores how new these experimental Russian, Chinese, & Indian reactor projects are. Most are not online. How well they operate now or will operate as they really go online unknown. How refined their refinement is is unknown. How much would these authoritarian entities share with the rest of the world? If heavy-industrialists like GE Hitachi & others start cranking out ultra-successful PUREX breeder reactors, find how to make them cost efffective, and then really many many nations start having these capabilities, doesn't that worry you, just a bit?
      - genocidicbunny 4y ago
        > ignores how new these experimental Russian, Chinese, & Indian reactor projects are. The Russian projects I know of are 60+ years old now. They've been plenty successful. > How much would these authoritarian entities share with the rest of the world? If heavy-industrialists like GE Hitachi & others start cranking out ultra-successful PUREX breeder reactors, find how to make them cost efffective, and then really many many nations start having these capabilities, doesn't that worry you, just a bit? Not any more than it concerns me that the nations that already have these capabilities do. The non-authoritarian entities of today are the authoritarians of tomorrow and vice-versa. Eventually, this technology will make it out there in a cost-efficient and easily-reproduced manner, it's mostly just a matter of time. And even if some less-than-friendly nations get access to this, and use it to make nuclear weapons, and then deploy them, unless we're talking about the deployment of a world-ending number of nuclear weapons (an arsenal that would need to really rival the current major nuclear powers) should not lead to a global nuclear exchange. Or more correctly, if it does lead to a global nuclear exchange, we deserve it for being so stupid as to escalate like that.
idontwantthis 4y ago
Coal ash remains forever and there are piles of it all over that are just waiting for a flood to wash their toxins into our drinking water.
himinlomax 4y ago
You're overestimating the risks of nuclear waste. Properly processed, it's in the form of a tough ceramic that can't leak and is stable for millions of years. Unless you start grinding it and inhaling it, it's not going to kill anyone.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > Properly processed, it's in the form of a tough ceramic that can't leak and is stable for millions of years. Is proper processing free or profitable? Nuclear is already unprofitable, in fact, in the history of nuclear energy, it has never been profitable. This is why it requires nations to build nuclear power plants, and investors are only interested in taking the money from selling electricity and not in building the plants, storing the waste, security for storing the waste, being responsible for decommissioning old power plants, and thus it is highly unlikely they'd be interested in paying for properly processing nuclear waste into tough ceramics. Pro-nukes love to waste their time arguing about this and that. But they only need to do one thing to have all the nuclear power they can use: make it profitable. Nothing else matters, not NIMBYS, not the safety, not the waste, only economic viability.
  - himinlomax 4y ago
    > Is proper processing free or profitable? It's included in the price of operation. Is the processing of CO₂ emissions included in coal or gas generation? Of course not, because it's dumped in the atmosphere. > Nuclear is already unprofitable French electricity is cheaper than Germany's. Also the government has been taking EDF's money for decades to cover budget shortfalls, so it's not even subsidised, quite the opposite in fact.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

genocidicbunny 4y ago

I don't think that's really accurate. We can reprocess most nuclear waste into forms that are far less long-term radioactive, and a few hundred years is nothing considering the lasting effects of pollution from coal and gas, or how long it would take for all those decommissioned solar panels or wind turbines.

rektide 4y ago
We can potentially reprocess used nuclear fuel, but that has so many problems. The reactors are much more advanced designs, and the US and much of the world has been focused the opposite direction: on very simple, very safe, lower cost designs. Making a fast neutron reactor is just a different class of beast, and it's unclear where the appetite is for it. (Which is a shame.) Japan, China, India, and Russia are the only countries to have started new breeder reactors projects since Franc'es last reactor Superhenix in 1985. Most breeder reactors use a reprocessing mechanism that is somewhat akin to the enrichment used for weapons. It's goal is to extract the good & enriched stuff & leave the rest of the fission product out (which still have hundreds of years to be dealt with). There's still justifiable hesitancy about developing such technology further. Even if we feel like we can use it safely in X Y and Z countries, once the technology becomes more proven (particularly if it can be shown to be cost effective) it's hard to imagine it won't become more available, and that has a real & scary risk. Ask yourself how many of the above countries that started breeder reactors do we want making new nuclear weapons? And note how many have kicked out nuclear weapons inspectors (Russia, China). One of my favorite candidate designs was the Integral Fast Reactor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor), began in 1984 as a faster fast reactor which was considerably safer by default, and which was capable of a lower-refinement (lower proliferation concern) burning of already spent fuel (including a wide range of medium-lived/longer-lived transuranic wastes). But almost all indicators are that we try for simpler & dumber designs, not to improve & refine what we could do. I also think it's a huge disservice only identify short half-life products as dangerous. Yes they have the most immediate threat, but we generate plenty of other wastes that are severely scary, particularly among the transuranics, and plenty of even the "low" nuclear wastes will quickly ruin an area & spread if mistakes happen. The variety of different nuclearly active chemical wastes we have to deal with is vast (those pesky transuranics). I'd love to be talked down here some, I think this is one place I'm best able to be convinced with good science, but my reading of information like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio... is that there is just so much to be dealt with, such a pesky variety. And yes fast reactors help a lot here, if we can deploy them at scale effectively, but again I just question whether on a cost basis that will happen. I agree with you in principle that nuclear has amazing potential to be handled well. But in fact, most of the world takes the shortest route they can & thinks nothing of how much or what kind of waste is generated. It's a network externality, foisted off onto the government to deal with. Even in France, the one beacon of breeder reactors, there's been scant investment in improving iterating or refining what mechanisms they have; continuing to use one centralized PUREX refining center to do most of the work. Meanwhile we have few positive indicators elsewhere about good nuclear. IFR derived designs like PRISM, S-PRISM and Versatile Test Reactor have repeatedly stalled. To provide some counter to my own general thread, Japan has shown again and again a willingness to try & try hard that I respect. They recently started working with TerraPower on a PRISM/IFR based design that could potentially go somewhere. But this is a faint ray of hope in a gloomy low-tech unglorious nuclear landscape. https://neutronbytes.com/2022/02/03/terrapower-teams-up-with-japanese-fast-reactor-experts/ https://neutronbytes.com/2022/02/03/terrapower-teams-up-with... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35430993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35430993
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
  > Ask yourself how many of the above countries that started breeder reactors do we want making new nuclear weapons? And note how many have kicked out nuclear weapons inspectors (Russia, China). This to me is the single biggest reason to pursue the tech. The genie is out of the bottle.
  - rektide 4y ago
    Who do you think should pursue it? Governments? Public/private enterprise? How should it happen? Who is going to pursue very very expensive speculative possibly interesting technology? Should we pursue the China/Russia/India pro-proliferation version, or should we follow a profileration-safe and risk-safe'er IFR version? Right now there's not success. To say the genie is out of the bottle ignores how new these experimental Russian, Chinese, & Indian reactor projects are. Most are not online. How well they operate now or will operate as they really go online unknown. How refined their refinement is is unknown. How much would these authoritarian entities share with the rest of the world? If heavy-industrialists like GE Hitachi & others start cranking out ultra-successful PUREX breeder reactors, find how to make them cost efffective, and then really many many nations start having these capabilities, doesn't that worry you, just a bit?
    - genocidicbunny 4y ago
      > ignores how new these experimental Russian, Chinese, & Indian reactor projects are. The Russian projects I know of are 60+ years old now. They've been plenty successful. > How much would these authoritarian entities share with the rest of the world? If heavy-industrialists like GE Hitachi & others start cranking out ultra-successful PUREX breeder reactors, find how to make them cost efffective, and then really many many nations start having these capabilities, doesn't that worry you, just a bit? Not any more than it concerns me that the nations that already have these capabilities do. The non-authoritarian entities of today are the authoritarians of tomorrow and vice-versa. Eventually, this technology will make it out there in a cost-efficient and easily-reproduced manner, it's mostly just a matter of time. And even if some less-than-friendly nations get access to this, and use it to make nuclear weapons, and then deploy them, unless we're talking about the deployment of a world-ending number of nuclear weapons (an arsenal that would need to really rival the current major nuclear powers) should not lead to a global nuclear exchange. Or more correctly, if it does lead to a global nuclear exchange, we deserve it for being so stupid as to escalate like that.

idontwantthis 4y ago

Coal ash remains forever and there are piles of it all over that are just waiting for a flood to wash their toxins into our drinking water.

himinlomax 4y ago

You're overestimating the risks of nuclear waste. Properly processed, it's in the form of a tough ceramic that can't leak and is stable for millions of years. Unless you start grinding it and inhaling it, it's not going to kill anyone.

Maursault 4y ago
> Properly processed, it's in the form of a tough ceramic that can't leak and is stable for millions of years. Is proper processing free or profitable? Nuclear is already unprofitable, in fact, in the history of nuclear energy, it has never been profitable. This is why it requires nations to build nuclear power plants, and investors are only interested in taking the money from selling electricity and not in building the plants, storing the waste, security for storing the waste, being responsible for decommissioning old power plants, and thus it is highly unlikely they'd be interested in paying for properly processing nuclear waste into tough ceramics. Pro-nukes love to waste their time arguing about this and that. But they only need to do one thing to have all the nuclear power they can use: make it profitable. Nothing else matters, not NIMBYS, not the safety, not the waste, only economic viability.
- himinlomax 4y ago
  > Is proper processing free or profitable? It's included in the price of operation. Is the processing of CO₂ emissions included in coal or gas generation? Of course not, because it's dumped in the atmosphere. > Nuclear is already unprofitable French electricity is cheaper than Germany's. Also the government has been taking EDF's money for decades to cover budget shortfalls, so it's not even subsidised, quite the opposite in fact.