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As a French not expert in the matter but living near nuclear plants: - one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material - rivers are getting too hot to

As a French not expert in the matter but living near nuclear plants: - one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material - rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly - nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) - the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants (References are easy to find if you want confirmation) I am not against nuclear power, but it has to be done properly and safely, which is certainly not the case around here. Edit: it seems the fusion (no pun) of regulation organisms has been rejected by the senate. Still annoying to see this law discreetly pass, with no parliament debate outside of the senate, during a political crisis

kvgr 3y ago
How can it leaks? Do you have any source? Well you had some of them turned off for maintanance, that happens.
- eric-burel 3y ago
  Look for the Tricastin plant I don't know enough to answer precisely but it has leaked recently and a few years ago. Of course it doesn't leak uranium, but other byproducts, which not a sign of a well managed plant. Some were stopped not just maintenance but the discovery of micro-breaches caused by maintenance decades ago. That's actually a sign of proper management, but a counter-argument to reliability.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    - "one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material" - "Look for the Tricastin plant I don't know enough to answer precisely but it has leaked recently and a few years ago. Of course it doesn't leak uranium" So, your original statement was an untruth. Or "alternative facts" > of micro-breaches caused by maintenance decades ago. That's actually a sign of proper management, but a counter-argument to reliability. So you mean microbreaches were made decades ago, the plant has operated for decades with no issues, and you call that unreliable?
    - polishdude20 3y ago
      This thread is a great example of how the meanings of words can be taken differently by different people. "Unreliable" is less of a description and more of a flag. Either it is or isn't. But the original commenter's threshold for unreliable = true is much much lower than most people's as illuminated in this discussion. It seems like this is a daily occurrence online and in person.
      - formerly_proven 3y ago
        I'm guessing "micro breaches" refers to hydrogen-induced cracks. Media likes to talk about it in bigly, threatening terms such as "THOUSANDS OF CRACKS FOUND IN REACTOR VESSEL" - of course anyone with half a brain starts to wonder "aren't these PWRs?". Much like people like to write headlines such as "HUNDREDS OF NUCLEAR INCIDENTS AT NPP XYZ", where "nuclear incident" means "reported event", which includes such dramatic incidents as "a backup valve in some secondary circuit had to be replaced because it was stuck" or "a bird flew into the transformer, tripping protection and taking a block offline".
        Brusco_RF 3y ago
        Reminds me of the hysteria surrounding microplastics. I saw an article that once that said there are X many thousands of microplastic particles in a cubic meter of seawater at certain locations. They were actually counting individual particles! Why? because expressing plastics as a % of total mass or volume makes it so negligible as to not be a headline.
        sundvor 3y ago
        That's like reading headlines about TESLA RECALLS every time they do an OTA update that fixes a minor compliance issue.
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    Yep, a 1980 PWR... sounds about right. Modern reactor designs are so much better. They are also basically nonexistent because everyone stopped building reactors :(
    - formerly_proven 3y ago
      Even the old PWRs can be operationally unproblematic if you do it right. The German Pre-Konvoi and Konvoi fleet had pretty good stats. I'm not sure if Grohnde (shut down in 2021) is still the NPP block with the highest total production (500 TWhr) or if another block managed to lap it. Overall capacity factor of these was around 90 %. The US fleet is similar iirc. The French fleet has been running around 65-70 % CF for years, pretty bad, but clearly not root caused by the tech branch.
- Lacerda69 3y ago
  [dead]
- blibble 3y ago
  all nuclear power stations emit small amounts of liquid and gas radwaste as part of normal operation mostly tritium and tritiated water that has been activated in the coolant circuits (practically impossible to separate) but some other isotopes (carbon-14, caesium-137) here's the environmental permit for the UK's most modern power station: https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/nuclear/consultation-on-the-variation-of-permit-xb3538dh-t/results/xb3539dh-v007decisiondocumentshortform-finalversion.pdf https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/nuclear/consultati... solid radwaste is kept under lock and key though and the total volume of radioactive waste produced is WAY WAY WAY less than that produced burning fossil fuels (turns out coal is reasonably radioactive)
  - fsh 3y ago
    No, coal is barely radioactive at all. The small traces of Thorium and Uranium are completely negligible. An old study from 1978 has estimated that nuclear reactors emit somewhat more radiation than coal power plants, but the levels are overall insignificant [1]. This is only about emissions though. The radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants has many many orders of magnitude more activity than the emissions. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.202.4372.104...
    - blibble 3y ago
      > This is only about emissions though. The radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants has many many orders of magnitude more activity than the emissions. yes I should have probably said "emission" not waste > No, coal is barely radioactive at all. but you need to burn orders of magnitude more of it, producing literal mountains of coal ash and exhaust emissions whereas for nuclear the waste is an extremely small volume, of which almost 100% of is captured scrubbing technologies have also improved since 1978, and scrubbing not-very-much thoroughly is a much easier than scrubbing vast amounts not-very-well
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        The radioactivity mobilized by U mining for LWRs is about an order of magnitude more than that mobilized by coal combustion, per unit of work produced.
tarr11 3y ago
I wasn’t aware of the nuclear problems in France. Here is some explanation of the problems. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/why-nuclear-powered-france-faces-power-outage-risks-2022-12-09/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/why-nuclear-powered-...
- eric-burel 3y ago
  Regarding the government response the article omits the plan to simplify legislation around building new plants. This law might not even be debated in parliament, only senate.
CodeCompost 3y ago
Somebody I know who works for an emergy company talked to me about Thorium reactors that sounded very promising. I'm too dumb to explain it but it seemed cleaner and more efficient.
- philipkglass 3y ago
  Thorium based reactors have largely the same benefits and risks as uranium fueled reactors. See this page written by reactor physicist and HN poster acidburnNSA: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
illiarian 3y ago
> nuclear plants are very unreliable You mean, they are the most reliable base load and load-following power sources we know. > References are easy to find if you want confirmation It's just as easy to find confirmation that all the problems you listed are the result of neglect and politics of the past 20-30 years. > it has to be done properly and safely, which is certainly not the case around here. As in: France has 56 operable reactors that provide 75% of France's electricity... And you call that neither safe, nor reliable, nor...
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  Nuclear proponents when trying to sell nuclear love to shout about how successful France is. Someone from France is telling you that actually, it's really not that great...and now France's nuclear program is terrible and the result of 20-30 years of neglect and politics? Also, which part of "nuclear plants are sensitive to environmental changes" didn't you get? If there's no cooling water, or the water is too hot, the plant can't run. How many times do people need to be told that with all the renewables coming onto the grid, we don't need more base load? We need storage. Also, wind keeps working just fine when the sun goes down. Do any of you geniuses realize that it's a lot more difficult for the grid to accommodate the injection of tens of gigawatts of power, than it is to handle tens of gigawatts of highly distributed generation and storage across a large region?Guess where utility companies are spending their money? Hint: not on nuclear. Nuclear is the most expensive form of electrical generation while wind and solar are the cheapest. Nuclear capacity takes a minimum of ten years, more like 20, to come online and then takes decades longer to go carbon-neutral. Solar and wind take months to deploy and are carbon neutral within a few years. Nuclear plants require a continuous, expensive, complicated supply chain and hundreds of people supervising and maintaining it. Solar farms require maintenance that just about any asshole with an electrician's license can handle, the panels last for decades, and can be recycled. Wind turbines require more maintenance but it's standard industrial electrical/mechanical stuff, just on a tall stick.
  - realusername 3y ago
    Sure, France has it's own issues but they are not really related to the tech itself. Point me any other energy company which could have survived basically 20 years without proper investments and forced to sell back electricity to their competitors. I would even say that the tech is what made the grid still standing against all odds.
realusername 3y ago
> - nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) Why we don't talk like that about renewables though? While the nuclear production was down to 65% capacity, renewables were down in the same time to ... 8%. To be fair, the renewable production was lacking even more than the nuclear one at that time, despite being the worst maintainance event during the past 40 years.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
Agreed, there are many concerns. But there are many concerns with every kind of energy generation, and for any of them, problems have to be solved and the system maintained. We, the people, have to take our own responsibility to hold our governments and companies accountable, if we care about the consequences. ....we could also choose to just use less energy and become more efficient. but my guess is nobody would accept it :D
- llsf 3y ago
  Very true, and important to understand. Any energy transformation would result in production of stuff we do not like (trash). The Sun generates tons of trash (luckily for us for most localized on the Sun). Nothing is magically 100% clean. Reducing the energy consumption could be done, but few government would like it, as there is a direct relationship between energy consumption and GDP. If you want to produce anything (even services) you need energy. Cheap and abundant energy will make your economy thrive. If we want to power the next GPT and our current life style, we would need lots of cheap energy. I can see how nuclear could be tempting to use to boost the GDP with a minimal environmental impact.
  - oceanplexian 3y ago
    Nuclear waste isn’t even trash, it’s a resource. Anything that’s energetic enough to be radioactive is also a massive source of untapped energy when processed and burned. In fact a hundred years from now we might be digging up the “trash” as a cheap source of fuel.
    - eric-burel 3y ago
      Fun fact, we do send some of this trash to Russia, that is able to recycle it and send back enriched uranium.
chronicsonic 3y ago
Aren’t the reactors there too old and being operated above the original build age? Not sure so was wondering
- llsf 3y ago
  France had to stop some reactors after detecting defected pipes. This was not due to age, but manufacturing issue. Plants are constantly being monitored and pieces are replaced. After 50 years, very few pieces are original. That is why US and France keep pushing the retirement age of their plants as they function fine.
- tremon 3y ago
  That's mainly in Belgium. Most of France's reactors are from the 1980s, so they are nearing end-of-life but are not past their designed lifetime.
lawrenceyan 3y ago
Nuclear fusion will be the answer to baseload energy requirements without the need to worry over meltdown concerns. There will be no need to do city or urban planning around radioactive fallout or leaks because fusion simply doesn't have those problems.
- mathiasgredal 3y ago
  How does nuclear fusion solve the issue of rivers getting too hot, such that the plant has to shut down?
  - m_a_g 3y ago
    There are fusion reactor designs that don't use water. They directly convert to electricity with magnetic fields.
    - llsf 3y ago
      Are you sure about this ? Not heat is produced ? Cold fusion has been controversial in the 80's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion) and never really escape the lab.
      - willis936 3y ago
        They're likely referring to p+B11 fusion which is a potentially viable reaction that emits all its energy as accelerated charged particles (a current), which can, in theory, be slowed down by inducing a current in a coil (direct conversion). This skips the thermal cycle of electricity generation. There would still be heat, but it would be contained to the plasma with some amount of leak/waste. There are a great number of asterisks on this. We are not close to making a p+B11 reactor.
        llsf 3y ago
        Interesting. But I suspect it would take quite some time to get something like that in production. Nonetheless, we should keep do research, it could be the next generation of fusion reactors.
retrac 3y ago
Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Activated water with tritium in it has been released accidentally a number of times, and small amounts of tritium and other gasses are released by any reactor, but no unapproved leaking besides that has ever been made public. There are of course ecological problems with the heat, but all the reactors use one of the Great Lakes as a heat sink and water supply itself isn't a problem. The CANDU design can be fuelled online and most of the reactors have been online over 80% of the time, including refuelling, maintenance and refurbishment projects. The later designs hover around 90%. They were expensive to build, and the last plant was really expensive. This was due to various reasons, including post-Chernobyl reviews, and pausing construction for over a year due to a labour dispute, and high interest rates. Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province, after hydroelectric. Government is casting around for replacement options as the reactors are retired over the coming decades, but nothing concrete in the short term.
- Retric 3y ago
  That’s an accurate but misleading description of what’s going on because Ontario is part of a much larger grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss... It’s like saying a town next to a nuclear power plant is 90% nuclear, that’s “true” but only works because other areas don’t rely on 90% nuclear. Just like the town, Ontario exports power to other areas and imports non nuclear power. If everyone used 50-60% nuclear there wouldn’t be anyone to export that power to on low demand weekends etc which would drive up prices. The area also has a great deal of hydroelectric power which reduces the need for peaking power plants. Nuclear has already played a significant role in reducing climate change, but it just can’t economically scale to supply nearly as much power as wind and solar. And much worse when you have a high percentage of Wind and Solar adding Nuclear to the mix just doesn’t work very well because base load power becomes less valuable.
  - retrac 3y ago
    It's not just about the cost. The mix of nuclear and locally-available gas and hydroelectric makes for a self-sufficient energy strategy, and that has always been a major concern. Yes, Ontario is synchronized with the US grid but it could disconnect if necessary. Electricity is a valuable but not critical export economically. As with France, a substantial influence on historic policy was to build surplus generation for economic security reasons. Could have just imported coal and oil. But Ontario does not have much coal or oil. Same with Quebec and hydroelectric. Renewables provide the same sort of decentralized benefit, of course.
MikeCapone 3y ago
France has been mismanaging its fleet and signally for years that they want to move away from it, under-investing in it, etc. It's not the technology's fault. Germany had some of the best managed plants in the world -- until they decided to shut them down, leading to more coal being burned and more dependence on other countries like Russia...
- throwbadubadu 3y ago
  Did you had a look at what Europe didn't stop importing from Russia due to lacking alternatives... cough cough. I also don't get how an article can claim a global solution if nuclear currently is at 10% and we cannot keep up with supply and plants and and and.. this wont scale to 100%, not even 50 or even 20% of future global needs, would deplete cheap enough enable resources too quick... and what also is always forgotten: our world will likely have more, not less conflicts, unfortunately. Have fun managing this plants with wars all around and rivers going empty. Yeah yeah all the issues happening and brought up again is just stupid people, mismanagement, etcetc.. But that unfortunately is humanity :/ Just no :/ especially as there are good enough and more sustainable other alternatives. > Germany had some of the best managed plant Better than France, likely agrees.. but still awful and that sentence is a joke. If that is your bar, good night. German infrastructure is currently rotting at record pace, happy we got those plants out there.
- uecker 3y ago
  Germany is exiting both nuclear and coal. In the time from 2010 to 2022 where 14/17 of nuclear plants were shut down generation from coal was reduced from 263 TWh per year to 181 TWh. Renewables increased from 105 TWh to 254 TWh. I also would have preferred to leave the nuclear plants running longer and exit coal faster, but in the overall scheme of things it does not matter too much. Nuclear is basically irrelevant. It is too expensive and slow to build. In reality, renewables will take over everything very quickly. Gas and coal imports from Russia stopped completely. But guess what still depends on Russia: The nuclear industry in Europe and the US.
  - illiarian 3y ago
Nodraak 3y ago
> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Please share numbers demonstration health hazards. For ex, bananas are radioactive. Should we outlaw bananas? > rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly That's wrong. In 2022, the power output had to be reduced by 0.18% (not a typo) (https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1645696906327388160 https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1645696906327388160). In addition, Nuclear plants can work even in the desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_... > nuclear plants are very unreliable That's also wrong. Please share numbers. Nuclear has a load factor of 95% and its down time can be scheduled (maintenance). Wind has a load factor of 30-40% (and output is unpredictable), solar has a load factor of 20%, hydro requires mountains. > the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants When controls are too tight, nuclear is too slow ; when controls are too loose, nuclear is dangerous. Face je gagne, pile tu perds. The goal is less CO2, and for that any low carbon energy source is good.
- otherme123 3y ago
  By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled). Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans. As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them. As soon as you say "ok, build them reactors if they are so perfect", nuclear advocates want the state to jump in and asume the costs, the consumers to pay an extra price, the safety regulations back to 1960 and the future people to deal with the residues.
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    > the consumers to pay an extra price The (botched) green energy transformation has given the country I live in top 3 highest electricity prices in the world and it's not even particularly green at all. Literally cannot get worse. And it seems to me that one half doesn't understand how incredibly bad high energy prices are both for people and industry, while the other half cheers at the prices because it causes deindustrialization and pushes towards degrowth - mainstream talking points of the current generation of climate activists here.
Manuel_D 3y ago
- one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material In quantities not relevant to safety. We can detect extremely small amounts of radiation, down to 1.0001% higher than backrgound levels. - rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly Not quite: the flow of rivers was low enough that they would exceed the 28C temperature limit (ostensibly to protect fish, but no adverse impact from higher temperatures has been observed). It was entirely possible to cool the plants, if this restriction were not in place. Perhaps the solution here is to ask for better evidence on the supposed adverse ecological impact of higher river temperatures, and examine whether it outweighs the global catastrophe of greenhouse gas emissions. - nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) Quite the contrary: Nuclear plants have some of the highest capacity factors [1] of any energy source. France's reactors were taken down for maintenance, much of it actually scheduled in advance. This is, intentionally or not, cherry picking a year with a particularly low capacity factor. - the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants Correct, and since nuclear thus far as proven to be one of the safest power sources [2] it's a reasonable change to accelerate the fight against climate change. Nuclear is one of the few sources of decarbonized energy that is both non-intermittent, and geographically independent. Solar, wind, and hydro, are all either geographically dependent, intermittent, or both. Plans for a grid based on solar and wind almost invariably assume that a nearly-free form of energy storage will be invented in order to make these generation systems feasible. Unfortunately, such as system has yet to be produced. The heat engine made modern industrialized society possible, and it's easier to switch to a different source of heat than to restructure all of society around intermittent energy sources. 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
- q1w2 3y ago
  They are referring to the leaking of tritium, which, while "technically" radioactive, regular water contains some tiny amount of tritium and deuterium naturally. They are barely radioactive, and you can actually buy them on Amazon - they are not regulated. To say that the reactor is "leaking radioactive material" because of tritium is extremely dishonest.
throw-4e451c8 3y ago
"I am not against nuclear power" - this is litterally the calling card of a tactical hit, forum-wise. It very obviously means the opposite of what it says. I generally look at how people perceive things like this as an IQ test. At the moment the HN visitors upvoting/downvoting things in this thread have failed my baseline IQ test. How I wish all presumably well-intentioned but badly informed and ill-educated people who very often seem to have.. let's say, bad luck when thinking would just stop trying to spread their gospel via forums in this destructive way. Looking at you, vaguely-informed "friends of the planet".
- eric-burel 3y ago
  :( no really I try to stay open-minded and found contradictory answers interesting, if only because they are well documented. My reply is also to the initial article, which is on the contrary way too optimistic. Nuclear energy is not black or white, I think sharing personal experience as someone living near a plant, in a country relying mostly on nuclear energy, is relevant.
  - throw-4e451c8 3y ago
    Oh no! "as someone living near a plant" My first 18 years: I lived 45 km from a nuclear power plant. It helped me getting interested in physics because of some in hindsight exceptionally well performed guest lectures from a physicist working there, in grades 7-8.
  - q1w2 3y ago
    You misrepresent tritium coming from a plant as a "radioactive leak". That's just dishonest nonsense.
    - throw-4e451c8 3y ago
      Please remember; Eric is very open to both the positives and the negatives. But do keep in mind the negatives. Also, did you know that french nuclear power plants sometimes are taken down for maintenance. That seems super sketchy, doesn't it? /s This f*****g thread.
kyrra 3y ago
For too much radtion, I recommend reading: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-regulatory-council-nrc-energy-regulator-radiation-climate-change-11632257020 https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-regulatory-council-nrc-... (https://archive.is/LITQT https://archive.is/LITQT). I'm not sure how France treats radiation levels, but in the US, the guidelines we have set are non-nonsensical.
- acdha 3y ago
  > He is now co-founder of fission energy company ThorCon, which is developing liquid fuel fission power plants to generate electricity cheaper than coal, to solve the world climate/energy/poverty crises. I think nuclear will have an important part of dealing with climate change but he has a massive financial stake in this. I wouldn’t trust that more than I’d trust the Exxon guys who told us climate change was a liberal myth for half a century.
  - kyrra 3y ago
    The problem is that in government, you are rarely if ever punished for being top strict with your regulation. You are only ever chastised if you are too lenient (or the appearance of it). People like scapegoats and will use lax regulations anytime they can. The problem is, a regulator never gets in trouble for being top strict. The incentives are totally wrong here and lead to bad regulations. I trust this guy more than the bureaucrat covering their butt.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Given that misjudgments would have such long half-lives, I’m pretty sure that’s not the only possible interpretation.
      - kyrra 3y ago
        Do you know we could keep people safer if we set car speed limits to 10 mph everywhere. We can make everybody wear safety helmets all the time. Maybe we could just prevent everyone from interacting with others, and we can just shut down all public spaces, and then disease would not spread. Guess what, there's risk to everything we do. The science for radiation seems to contradict with the US government has dictated. But keeping the policy strict and in contradiction to what we know about radiation doesn't get people fired.
flavius29663 3y ago
> - one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material You need to quantify whenever talking about radiation, otherwise it's meaningless. Granite countertops also leak radiation, same as bananas. Also, coal powered plants leak radiation every time they burn coal...because coal is radioactive too. They also release mercury, which is why we can't eat too much tuna fish.
- eric-burel 3y ago
  I mean, accidental leak and nuclear plants are not my fav word combination, even when it's limited quantities of tritium
  - evilos 3y ago
    You'd hate to be anywhere near a coal plant then. They absolutely spew radiation and don't even really try to contain it. Fact is, every kind of energy is dirty in some way. Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest kinds of energy we have by far. It's just people have been taught to have an irrational fear of radiation. They don't realize they are constantly surrounded by it already.
froh 3y ago
in Germany more than 40% of the total water consumption is cooling water evaporation. btw how does France deal with nuclear waste?
ohgodplsno 3y ago
Répondre en anglais serait impossible pour un tel niveau de mauvaise foi et de malhonnetteté intellectuelle. > one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Je suppose qu'il s'agit du Tricastin, ou il y a de temps en temps des petits rejets de Tritium détectés, parce qu'il n'y a pas vraiment d'autres centrales proches de Montpellier qui ont des emmerdes. "Regularly" est un mensonge, et omet aussi les quantités qui fuient. Oui, c'est un problème qu'il y ait une fuite, et le CRIIRAD bosse dessus des que ca arrive, mais on parle de radioactivité non seulement très minimes, mais extrèmement diluées aussi. >rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly Non. On décide de ne pas rejeter de l'eau chaude dans les rivières parce qu'elles sont déjà très chaudes et qu'on a des normes pour éviter d'endommager la vie aquatique qui sont extrèmement basses, et basées sur une moyenne de temperature annuelle. Dans la pratique, on pourrait faire monter largement les temperatures des cours d'eau sans danger encore, mais on ne le fait pas justement pour éviter des surprises. Et c'est oublier que ce problème n'existe que pour les centrales n'ayant de pas de tours aerorefrigerantes, auquel cas _il n'y a aucun probleme de refroidissement_ >nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) Jean-José Mauvaise Foi frappe fort la. 60 ans de production sans aucun incident majeur, il aura fallu trois vagues de covid + des conditions météorologiques défavorables + un problème structurel relativement mineur (mais corrigé du coup) qui a causé un alignement des arrêts de centrales. >the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants Fallait pas donner une majorité relative aux tarés. Bref, comme d'hab, finir sur un "je suis pas contre le nucléaire hein" tout en donnant des arguments dignes du pire article de Reporterre.
evilos 3y ago
> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Probably just Tritiated water which is essentially harmless. Basically water with extra neutrons and it is very weakly radioactive. So weak that you can't detect it with a Geiger counter. Since it is water it does not accumulate in organisms. Tritium is also naturally created in the atmosphere by cosmic radiation.
- q1w2 3y ago
  That's exactly what it is - which is why the comment above is so profoundly dishonest. You can buy tritium on Amazon - it's harmless.
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    > That's exactly what it is - which is why the comment above is so profoundly dishonest. Please, could you explain why US, EU and Canada governments have set narrow legal upper limits for Tritium presence on drinking water if is soo totally harmless? And why is recommended "extended strong medical/therapeutic intervention" [1] in some cases of accidental exposure to Tritium if is not dangerous? If you define the qualities of a chemical by the stuff sold on Amazon prepare yourself for a nasty surprise when meeting the real deal. Leaking Tritium in some obscure dose is a problem just because 1. the dose is unknown and 2. we are mostly made of water. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22349318/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22349318/
    - evilos 3y ago
      There's been so few serious Tritium exposures in humans so we don't know how much it would take to cause serious harm in humans. There have been some limited studies done on things like yeast and mice which suggest you'd have to ingest an extreme concentration of it to see increases in cancer rates. Here's a chart with various drinking water limits included: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FplBOWxWAAAT_Jz?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FplBOWxWAAAT_Jz?format=jpg&name=... Backing study: https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015 https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015 > Leaking Tritium in some obscure dose is a problem just because 1. the dose is unknown and 2. we are mostly made of water. NRC regulates and monitors tritium spills quite actively. Here's an excerpt from their page on Tritium: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/t... > As an example, drinking water for a year from a well with 1,600 picocuries per liter of tritium (comparable to levels identified in a drinking water well after a significant tritiated water spill at a nuclear facility) would lead to a radiation dose (using EPA assumptions) of 0.3 millirem (mrem). That dose is: - at least 2,000 to 5,000 times lower than the dose from a medical procedure involving a full-body CT scan (e.g., 500 to 1,500 mrem from a CT scan) - 1,000 times lower than the approximate 300 mrem dose from natural background radiation - 50 times lower than the dose from natural radioactivity (potassium) in your body (e.g., 15 mrem from potassium) - 12 times lower than the dose from a round-trip cross-country airplane flight (e.g., 4 mrem from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles and back)
Herz 3y ago
"Not expert in the metter" So why are you talking? Seriously, why? Lol

kvgr 3y ago

How can it leaks? Do you have any source? Well you had some of them turned off for maintanance, that happens.

eric-burel 3y ago
Look for the Tricastin plant I don't know enough to answer precisely but it has leaked recently and a few years ago. Of course it doesn't leak uranium, but other byproducts, which not a sign of a well managed plant. Some were stopped not just maintenance but the discovery of micro-breaches caused by maintenance decades ago. That's actually a sign of proper management, but a counter-argument to reliability.
- illiarian 3y ago
  - "one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material" - "Look for the Tricastin plant I don't know enough to answer precisely but it has leaked recently and a few years ago. Of course it doesn't leak uranium" So, your original statement was an untruth. Or "alternative facts" > of micro-breaches caused by maintenance decades ago. That's actually a sign of proper management, but a counter-argument to reliability. So you mean microbreaches were made decades ago, the plant has operated for decades with no issues, and you call that unreliable?
  - polishdude20 3y ago
    This thread is a great example of how the meanings of words can be taken differently by different people. "Unreliable" is less of a description and more of a flag. Either it is or isn't. But the original commenter's threshold for unreliable = true is much much lower than most people's as illuminated in this discussion. It seems like this is a daily occurrence online and in person.
    - formerly_proven 3y ago
      I'm guessing "micro breaches" refers to hydrogen-induced cracks. Media likes to talk about it in bigly, threatening terms such as "THOUSANDS OF CRACKS FOUND IN REACTOR VESSEL" - of course anyone with half a brain starts to wonder "aren't these PWRs?". Much like people like to write headlines such as "HUNDREDS OF NUCLEAR INCIDENTS AT NPP XYZ", where "nuclear incident" means "reported event", which includes such dramatic incidents as "a backup valve in some secondary circuit had to be replaced because it was stuck" or "a bird flew into the transformer, tripping protection and taking a block offline".
      - Brusco_RF 3y ago
        Reminds me of the hysteria surrounding microplastics. I saw an article that once that said there are X many thousands of microplastic particles in a cubic meter of seawater at certain locations. They were actually counting individual particles! Why? because expressing plastics as a % of total mass or volume makes it so negligible as to not be a headline.
      - sundvor 3y ago
        That's like reading headlines about TESLA RECALLS every time they do an OTA update that fixes a minor compliance issue.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  Yep, a 1980 PWR... sounds about right. Modern reactor designs are so much better. They are also basically nonexistent because everyone stopped building reactors :(
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    Even the old PWRs can be operationally unproblematic if you do it right. The German Pre-Konvoi and Konvoi fleet had pretty good stats. I'm not sure if Grohnde (shut down in 2021) is still the NPP block with the highest total production (500 TWhr) or if another block managed to lap it. Overall capacity factor of these was around 90 %. The US fleet is similar iirc. The French fleet has been running around 65-70 % CF for years, pretty bad, but clearly not root caused by the tech branch.
Lacerda69 3y ago
[dead]
blibble 3y ago
all nuclear power stations emit small amounts of liquid and gas radwaste as part of normal operation mostly tritium and tritiated water that has been activated in the coolant circuits (practically impossible to separate) but some other isotopes (carbon-14, caesium-137) here's the environmental permit for the UK's most modern power station: https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/nuclear/consultation-on-the-variation-of-permit-xb3538dh-t/results/xb3539dh-v007decisiondocumentshortform-finalversion.pdf https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/nuclear/consultati... solid radwaste is kept under lock and key though and the total volume of radioactive waste produced is WAY WAY WAY less than that produced burning fossil fuels (turns out coal is reasonably radioactive)
- fsh 3y ago
  No, coal is barely radioactive at all. The small traces of Thorium and Uranium are completely negligible. An old study from 1978 has estimated that nuclear reactors emit somewhat more radiation than coal power plants, but the levels are overall insignificant [1]. This is only about emissions though. The radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants has many many orders of magnitude more activity than the emissions. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.202.4372.1045 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.202.4372.104...
  - blibble 3y ago
    > This is only about emissions though. The radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants has many many orders of magnitude more activity than the emissions. yes I should have probably said "emission" not waste > No, coal is barely radioactive at all. but you need to burn orders of magnitude more of it, producing literal mountains of coal ash and exhaust emissions whereas for nuclear the waste is an extremely small volume, of which almost 100% of is captured scrubbing technologies have also improved since 1978, and scrubbing not-very-much thoroughly is a much easier than scrubbing vast amounts not-very-well
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      The radioactivity mobilized by U mining for LWRs is about an order of magnitude more than that mobilized by coal combustion, per unit of work produced.

tarr11 3y ago

I wasn’t aware of the nuclear problems in France. Here is some explanation of the problems. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/why-nuclear-powered-france-faces-power-outage-risks-2022-12-09/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/why-nuclear-powered-...

eric-burel 3y ago
Regarding the government response the article omits the plan to simplify legislation around building new plants. This law might not even be debated in parliament, only senate.

CodeCompost 3y ago

Somebody I know who works for an emergy company talked to me about Thorium reactors that sounded very promising. I'm too dumb to explain it but it seemed cleaner and more efficient.

philipkglass 3y ago
Thorium based reactors have largely the same benefits and risks as uranium fueled reactors. See this page written by reactor physicist and HN poster acidburnNSA: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html

illiarian 3y ago

> nuclear plants are very unreliable You mean, they are the most reliable base load and load-following power sources we know. > References are easy to find if you want confirmation It's just as easy to find confirmation that all the problems you listed are the result of neglect and politics of the past 20-30 years. > it has to be done properly and safely, which is certainly not the case around here. As in: France has 56 operable reactors that provide 75% of France's electricity... And you call that neither safe, nor reliable, nor...

KennyBlanken 3y ago
Nuclear proponents when trying to sell nuclear love to shout about how successful France is. Someone from France is telling you that actually, it's really not that great...and now France's nuclear program is terrible and the result of 20-30 years of neglect and politics? Also, which part of "nuclear plants are sensitive to environmental changes" didn't you get? If there's no cooling water, or the water is too hot, the plant can't run. How many times do people need to be told that with all the renewables coming onto the grid, we don't need more base load? We need storage. Also, wind keeps working just fine when the sun goes down. Do any of you geniuses realize that it's a lot more difficult for the grid to accommodate the injection of tens of gigawatts of power, than it is to handle tens of gigawatts of highly distributed generation and storage across a large region?Guess where utility companies are spending their money? Hint: not on nuclear. Nuclear is the most expensive form of electrical generation while wind and solar are the cheapest. Nuclear capacity takes a minimum of ten years, more like 20, to come online and then takes decades longer to go carbon-neutral. Solar and wind take months to deploy and are carbon neutral within a few years. Nuclear plants require a continuous, expensive, complicated supply chain and hundreds of people supervising and maintaining it. Solar farms require maintenance that just about any asshole with an electrician's license can handle, the panels last for decades, and can be recycled. Wind turbines require more maintenance but it's standard industrial electrical/mechanical stuff, just on a tall stick.
- realusername 3y ago
  Sure, France has it's own issues but they are not really related to the tech itself. Point me any other energy company which could have survived basically 20 years without proper investments and forced to sell back electricity to their competitors. I would even say that the tech is what made the grid still standing against all odds.

realusername 3y ago

> - nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) Why we don't talk like that about renewables though? While the nuclear production was down to 65% capacity, renewables were down in the same time to ... 8%. To be fair, the renewable production was lacking even more than the nuclear one at that time, despite being the worst maintainance event during the past 40 years.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

Agreed, there are many concerns. But there are many concerns with every kind of energy generation, and for any of them, problems have to be solved and the system maintained. We, the people, have to take our own responsibility to hold our governments and companies accountable, if we care about the consequences. ....we could also choose to just use less energy and become more efficient. but my guess is nobody would accept it :D

llsf 3y ago
Very true, and important to understand. Any energy transformation would result in production of stuff we do not like (trash). The Sun generates tons of trash (luckily for us for most localized on the Sun). Nothing is magically 100% clean. Reducing the energy consumption could be done, but few government would like it, as there is a direct relationship between energy consumption and GDP. If you want to produce anything (even services) you need energy. Cheap and abundant energy will make your economy thrive. If we want to power the next GPT and our current life style, we would need lots of cheap energy. I can see how nuclear could be tempting to use to boost the GDP with a minimal environmental impact.
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  Nuclear waste isn’t even trash, it’s a resource. Anything that’s energetic enough to be radioactive is also a massive source of untapped energy when processed and burned. In fact a hundred years from now we might be digging up the “trash” as a cheap source of fuel.
  - eric-burel 3y ago
    Fun fact, we do send some of this trash to Russia, that is able to recycle it and send back enriched uranium.

chronicsonic 3y ago

Aren’t the reactors there too old and being operated above the original build age? Not sure so was wondering

llsf 3y ago
France had to stop some reactors after detecting defected pipes. This was not due to age, but manufacturing issue. Plants are constantly being monitored and pieces are replaced. After 50 years, very few pieces are original. That is why US and France keep pushing the retirement age of their plants as they function fine.
tremon 3y ago
That's mainly in Belgium. Most of France's reactors are from the 1980s, so they are nearing end-of-life but are not past their designed lifetime.

lawrenceyan 3y ago

Nuclear fusion will be the answer to baseload energy requirements without the need to worry over meltdown concerns. There will be no need to do city or urban planning around radioactive fallout or leaks because fusion simply doesn't have those problems.

mathiasgredal 3y ago
How does nuclear fusion solve the issue of rivers getting too hot, such that the plant has to shut down?
- m_a_g 3y ago
  There are fusion reactor designs that don't use water. They directly convert to electricity with magnetic fields.
  - llsf 3y ago
    Are you sure about this ? Not heat is produced ? Cold fusion has been controversial in the 80's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion) and never really escape the lab.
    - willis936 3y ago
      They're likely referring to p+B11 fusion which is a potentially viable reaction that emits all its energy as accelerated charged particles (a current), which can, in theory, be slowed down by inducing a current in a coil (direct conversion). This skips the thermal cycle of electricity generation. There would still be heat, but it would be contained to the plasma with some amount of leak/waste. There are a great number of asterisks on this. We are not close to making a p+B11 reactor.
      - llsf 3y ago
        Interesting. But I suspect it would take quite some time to get something like that in production. Nonetheless, we should keep do research, it could be the next generation of fusion reactors.

retrac 3y ago

Nuclear power supplies about 50 - 60% of electric energy in Ontario, with 18 reactors currently operating, built 1970s - 1990s. Activated water with tritium in it has been released accidentally a number of times, and small amounts of tritium and other gasses are released by any reactor, but no unapproved leaking besides that has ever been made public. There are of course ecological problems with the heat, but all the reactors use one of the Great Lakes as a heat sink and water supply itself isn't a problem. The CANDU design can be fuelled online and most of the reactors have been online over 80% of the time, including refuelling, maintenance and refurbishment projects. The later designs hover around 90%. They were expensive to build, and the last plant was really expensive. This was due to various reasons, including post-Chernobyl reviews, and pausing construction for over a year due to a labour dispute, and high interest rates. Still, amortized over more than half a century they've ended up being the second-cheapest source of power in the province, after hydroelectric. Government is casting around for replacement options as the reactors are retired over the coming decades, but nothing concrete in the short term.

Retric 3y ago
That’s an accurate but misleading description of what’s going on because Ontario is part of a much larger grid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmission_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss... It’s like saying a town next to a nuclear power plant is 90% nuclear, that’s “true” but only works because other areas don’t rely on 90% nuclear. Just like the town, Ontario exports power to other areas and imports non nuclear power. If everyone used 50-60% nuclear there wouldn’t be anyone to export that power to on low demand weekends etc which would drive up prices. The area also has a great deal of hydroelectric power which reduces the need for peaking power plants. Nuclear has already played a significant role in reducing climate change, but it just can’t economically scale to supply nearly as much power as wind and solar. And much worse when you have a high percentage of Wind and Solar adding Nuclear to the mix just doesn’t work very well because base load power becomes less valuable.
- retrac 3y ago
  It's not just about the cost. The mix of nuclear and locally-available gas and hydroelectric makes for a self-sufficient energy strategy, and that has always been a major concern. Yes, Ontario is synchronized with the US grid but it could disconnect if necessary. Electricity is a valuable but not critical export economically. As with France, a substantial influence on historic policy was to build surplus generation for economic security reasons. Could have just imported coal and oil. But Ontario does not have much coal or oil. Same with Quebec and hydroelectric. Renewables provide the same sort of decentralized benefit, of course.

MikeCapone 3y ago

France has been mismanaging its fleet and signally for years that they want to move away from it, under-investing in it, etc. It's not the technology's fault. Germany had some of the best managed plants in the world -- until they decided to shut them down, leading to more coal being burned and more dependence on other countries like Russia...

throwbadubadu 3y ago
Did you had a look at what Europe didn't stop importing from Russia due to lacking alternatives... cough cough. I also don't get how an article can claim a global solution if nuclear currently is at 10% and we cannot keep up with supply and plants and and and.. this wont scale to 100%, not even 50 or even 20% of future global needs, would deplete cheap enough enable resources too quick... and what also is always forgotten: our world will likely have more, not less conflicts, unfortunately. Have fun managing this plants with wars all around and rivers going empty. Yeah yeah all the issues happening and brought up again is just stupid people, mismanagement, etcetc.. But that unfortunately is humanity :/ Just no :/ especially as there are good enough and more sustainable other alternatives. > Germany had some of the best managed plant Better than France, likely agrees.. but still awful and that sentence is a joke. If that is your bar, good night. German infrastructure is currently rotting at record pace, happy we got those plants out there.
uecker 3y ago
Germany is exiting both nuclear and coal. In the time from 2010 to 2022 where 14/17 of nuclear plants were shut down generation from coal was reduced from 263 TWh per year to 181 TWh. Renewables increased from 105 TWh to 254 TWh. I also would have preferred to leave the nuclear plants running longer and exit coal faster, but in the overall scheme of things it does not matter too much. Nuclear is basically irrelevant. It is too expensive and slow to build. In reality, renewables will take over everything very quickly. Gas and coal imports from Russia stopped completely. But guess what still depends on Russia: The nuclear industry in Europe and the US.
- illiarian 3y ago

Nodraak 3y ago

> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Please share numbers demonstration health hazards. For ex, bananas are radioactive. Should we outlaw bananas? > rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly That's wrong. In 2022, the power output had to be reduced by 0.18% (not a typo) (https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1645696906327388160 https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1645696906327388160). In addition, Nuclear plants can work even in the desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_... > nuclear plants are very unreliable That's also wrong. Please share numbers. Nuclear has a load factor of 95% and its down time can be scheduled (maintenance). Wind has a load factor of 30-40% (and output is unpredictable), solar has a load factor of 20%, hydro requires mountains. > the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants When controls are too tight, nuclear is too slow ; when controls are too loose, nuclear is dangerous. Face je gagne, pile tu perds. The goal is less CO2, and for that any low carbon energy source is good.

otherme123 3y ago
By reliability he refers to french nuclear plants stopped for months due to mantainance and repairs (mainly leaks that couldn't be scheduled). Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans. As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them. As soon as you say "ok, build them reactors if they are so perfect", nuclear advocates want the state to jump in and asume the costs, the consumers to pay an extra price, the safety regulations back to 1960 and the future people to deal with the residues.
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  > the consumers to pay an extra price The (botched) green energy transformation has given the country I live in top 3 highest electricity prices in the world and it's not even particularly green at all. Literally cannot get worse. And it seems to me that one half doesn't understand how incredibly bad high energy prices are both for people and industry, while the other half cheers at the prices because it causes deindustrialization and pushes towards degrowth - mainstream talking points of the current generation of climate activists here.

Manuel_D 3y ago

- one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material In quantities not relevant to safety. We can detect extremely small amounts of radiation, down to 1.0001% higher than backrgound levels. - rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly Not quite: the flow of rivers was low enough that they would exceed the 28C temperature limit (ostensibly to protect fish, but no adverse impact from higher temperatures has been observed). It was entirely possible to cool the plants, if this restriction were not in place. Perhaps the solution here is to ask for better evidence on the supposed adverse ecological impact of higher river temperatures, and examine whether it outweighs the global catastrophe of greenhouse gas emissions. - nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) Quite the contrary: Nuclear plants have some of the highest capacity factors [1] of any energy source. France's reactors were taken down for maintenance, much of it actually scheduled in advance. This is, intentionally or not, cherry picking a year with a particularly low capacity factor. - the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants Correct, and since nuclear thus far as proven to be one of the safest power sources [2] it's a reasonable change to accelerate the fight against climate change. Nuclear is one of the few sources of decarbonized energy that is both non-intermittent, and geographically independent. Solar, wind, and hydro, are all either geographically dependent, intermittent, or both. Plans for a grid based on solar and wind almost invariably assume that a nearly-free form of energy storage will be invented in order to make these generation systems feasible. Unfortunately, such as system has yet to be produced. The heat engine made modern industrialized society possible, and it's easier to switch to a different source of heat than to restructure all of society around intermittent energy sources. 1. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/what-generation-capacity 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

q1w2 3y ago
They are referring to the leaking of tritium, which, while "technically" radioactive, regular water contains some tiny amount of tritium and deuterium naturally. They are barely radioactive, and you can actually buy them on Amazon - they are not regulated. To say that the reactor is "leaking radioactive material" because of tritium is extremely dishonest.

throw-4e451c8 3y ago

"I am not against nuclear power" - this is litterally the calling card of a tactical hit, forum-wise. It very obviously means the opposite of what it says. I generally look at how people perceive things like this as an IQ test. At the moment the HN visitors upvoting/downvoting things in this thread have failed my baseline IQ test. How I wish all presumably well-intentioned but badly informed and ill-educated people who very often seem to have.. let's say, bad luck when thinking would just stop trying to spread their gospel via forums in this destructive way. Looking at you, vaguely-informed "friends of the planet".

eric-burel 3y ago
:( no really I try to stay open-minded and found contradictory answers interesting, if only because they are well documented. My reply is also to the initial article, which is on the contrary way too optimistic. Nuclear energy is not black or white, I think sharing personal experience as someone living near a plant, in a country relying mostly on nuclear energy, is relevant.
- throw-4e451c8 3y ago
  Oh no! "as someone living near a plant" My first 18 years: I lived 45 km from a nuclear power plant. It helped me getting interested in physics because of some in hindsight exceptionally well performed guest lectures from a physicist working there, in grades 7-8.
- q1w2 3y ago
  You misrepresent tritium coming from a plant as a "radioactive leak". That's just dishonest nonsense.
  - throw-4e451c8 3y ago
    Please remember; Eric is very open to both the positives and the negatives. But do keep in mind the negatives. Also, did you know that french nuclear power plants sometimes are taken down for maintenance. That seems super sketchy, doesn't it? /s This f*****g thread.

kyrra 3y ago

For too much radtion, I recommend reading: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-regulatory-council-nrc-energy-regulator-radiation-climate-change-11632257020 https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-regulatory-council-nrc-... (https://archive.is/LITQT https://archive.is/LITQT). I'm not sure how France treats radiation levels, but in the US, the guidelines we have set are non-nonsensical.

acdha 3y ago
> He is now co-founder of fission energy company ThorCon, which is developing liquid fuel fission power plants to generate electricity cheaper than coal, to solve the world climate/energy/poverty crises. I think nuclear will have an important part of dealing with climate change but he has a massive financial stake in this. I wouldn’t trust that more than I’d trust the Exxon guys who told us climate change was a liberal myth for half a century.
- kyrra 3y ago
  The problem is that in government, you are rarely if ever punished for being top strict with your regulation. You are only ever chastised if you are too lenient (or the appearance of it). People like scapegoats and will use lax regulations anytime they can. The problem is, a regulator never gets in trouble for being top strict. The incentives are totally wrong here and lead to bad regulations. I trust this guy more than the bureaucrat covering their butt.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Given that misjudgments would have such long half-lives, I’m pretty sure that’s not the only possible interpretation.
    - kyrra 3y ago
      Do you know we could keep people safer if we set car speed limits to 10 mph everywhere. We can make everybody wear safety helmets all the time. Maybe we could just prevent everyone from interacting with others, and we can just shut down all public spaces, and then disease would not spread. Guess what, there's risk to everything we do. The science for radiation seems to contradict with the US government has dictated. But keeping the policy strict and in contradiction to what we know about radiation doesn't get people fired.

flavius29663 3y ago

> - one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material You need to quantify whenever talking about radiation, otherwise it's meaningless. Granite countertops also leak radiation, same as bananas. Also, coal powered plants leak radiation every time they burn coal...because coal is radioactive too. They also release mercury, which is why we can't eat too much tuna fish.

eric-burel 3y ago
I mean, accidental leak and nuclear plants are not my fav word combination, even when it's limited quantities of tritium
- evilos 3y ago
  You'd hate to be anywhere near a coal plant then. They absolutely spew radiation and don't even really try to contain it. Fact is, every kind of energy is dirty in some way. Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest kinds of energy we have by far. It's just people have been taught to have an irrational fear of radiation. They don't realize they are constantly surrounded by it already.

froh 3y ago

in Germany more than 40% of the total water consumption is cooling water evaporation. btw how does France deal with nuclear waste?

ohgodplsno 3y ago

Répondre en anglais serait impossible pour un tel niveau de mauvaise foi et de malhonnetteté intellectuelle. > one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Je suppose qu'il s'agit du Tricastin, ou il y a de temps en temps des petits rejets de Tritium détectés, parce qu'il n'y a pas vraiment d'autres centrales proches de Montpellier qui ont des emmerdes. "Regularly" est un mensonge, et omet aussi les quantités qui fuient. Oui, c'est un problème qu'il y ait une fuite, et le CRIIRAD bosse dessus des que ca arrive, mais on parle de radioactivité non seulement très minimes, mais extrèmement diluées aussi. >rivers are getting too hot to cool down nuclear plants correctly Non. On décide de ne pas rejeter de l'eau chaude dans les rivières parce qu'elles sont déjà très chaudes et qu'on a des normes pour éviter d'endommager la vie aquatique qui sont extrèmement basses, et basées sur une moyenne de temperature annuelle. Dans la pratique, on pourrait faire monter largement les temperatures des cours d'eau sans danger encore, mais on ne le fait pas justement pour éviter des surprises. Et c'est oublier que ce problème n'existe que pour les centrales n'ayant de pas de tours aerorefrigerantes, auquel cas _il n'y a aucun probleme de refroidissement_ >nuclear plants are very unreliable, we almost got out of power this winter and next winter will be equally tough (only an abnormally hot winter avoid cuts...) Jean-José Mauvaise Foi frappe fort la. 60 ans de production sans aucun incident majeur, il aura fallu trois vagues de covid + des conditions météorologiques défavorables + un problème structurel relativement mineur (mais corrigé du coup) qui a causé un alignement des arrêts de centrales. >the government wants to simplify control organism and laws around building new plants Fallait pas donner une majorité relative aux tarés. Bref, comme d'hab, finir sur un "je suis pas contre le nucléaire hein" tout en donnant des arguments dignes du pire article de Reporterre.

evilos 3y ago

> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Probably just Tritiated water which is essentially harmless. Basically water with extra neutrons and it is very weakly radioactive. So weak that you can't detect it with a Geiger counter. Since it is water it does not accumulate in organisms. Tritium is also naturally created in the atmosphere by cosmic radiation.

q1w2 3y ago
That's exactly what it is - which is why the comment above is so profoundly dishonest. You can buy tritium on Amazon - it's harmless.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  > That's exactly what it is - which is why the comment above is so profoundly dishonest. Please, could you explain why US, EU and Canada governments have set narrow legal upper limits for Tritium presence on drinking water if is soo totally harmless? And why is recommended "extended strong medical/therapeutic intervention" [1] in some cases of accidental exposure to Tritium if is not dangerous? If you define the qualities of a chemical by the stuff sold on Amazon prepare yourself for a nasty surprise when meeting the real deal. Leaking Tritium in some obscure dose is a problem just because 1. the dose is unknown and 2. we are mostly made of water. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22349318/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22349318/
  - evilos 3y ago
    There's been so few serious Tritium exposures in humans so we don't know how much it would take to cause serious harm in humans. There have been some limited studies done on things like yeast and mice which suggest you'd have to ingest an extreme concentration of it to see increases in cancer rates. Here's a chart with various drinking water limits included: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FplBOWxWAAAT_Jz?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FplBOWxWAAAT_Jz?format=jpg&name=... Backing study: https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015 https://academic.oup.com/jrr/article/62/4/557/6256015 > Leaking Tritium in some obscure dose is a problem just because 1. the dose is unknown and 2. we are mostly made of water. NRC regulates and monitors tritium spills quite actively. Here's an excerpt from their page on Tritium: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/t... > As an example, drinking water for a year from a well with 1,600 picocuries per liter of tritium (comparable to levels identified in a drinking water well after a significant tritiated water spill at a nuclear facility) would lead to a radiation dose (using EPA assumptions) of 0.3 millirem (mrem). That dose is: - at least 2,000 to 5,000 times lower than the dose from a medical procedure involving a full-body CT scan (e.g., 500 to 1,500 mrem from a CT scan) - 1,000 times lower than the approximate 300 mrem dose from natural background radiation - 50 times lower than the dose from natural radioactivity (potassium) in your body (e.g., 15 mrem from potassium) - 12 times lower than the dose from a round-trip cross-country airplane flight (e.g., 4 mrem from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles and back)

Herz 3y ago

"Not expert in the metter" So why are you talking? Seriously, why? Lol