7 ms·

> one of the plant regularly leaks radioactive material Please share numbers demonstration health hazards. For ex, bananas are radioactive. Should we outlaw ba

> 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.
  - artemonster 3y ago
    Germany?
    - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
      Could be Denmark too.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gelenoto 3y ago
    If you talk about Germany than this has nothing to do with nuclear.
    - Gud 3y ago
      No, this has everything to do with nuclear(and energy politics in general). Since at least the 80s, nuclear power has carried a huge political risk in Northern Europe including Germany. Reactors have been shut down prematurely - instead coal and oil power plants have been kept operational.
      - Ringz 3y ago
        Do you have a source for these claims? A peer-reviewed study would be best? All statistics of the last years indicate that Germany has replaced reactor capacity with renewables. And at the same time, it has cut back on coal. The current negative development has to do with the war and the gas supply stop and not with the dismantling of nuclear power plants.
        tmp20230324 3y ago
        If you are going to ask for a source, would you mind providing sources for your assertions as well? As an outsider, I would be interested in seeing numbers/evidence for both view points. (Although looking at the parent comment, I'm not exactly sure what you would like a peer-reviewed study of.) Also, would you please not copy-and-paste the same response multiple times as you've done in the thread? It comes across less as thoughtful discussion and more as spam. (I'm not trying to be rude, but that's how it came across to me.)
- cyberax 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). That's not quite correct. France deferred maintenance during COVID and scheduled the downtime in advance. The inspections then found potential problems, so other reactors did additional maintenance and checks. They could have been deferred further if needed, but politicians were not willing to make the call. > Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans. Nuclear energy is the one that is actually proven to work and be reliable enough to completely displace fossil generation. Nothing else is coming close to that, including solar and wind. > As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them. Russia is busy exporting nuclear power plants. A nuclear reactor can be built within 6 years, two reactors within ~9 years (they're built in parallel).
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. Some are technically capable but load-following seems to be quite taxing on the equipment due to pressure and temperature cycling. However it is very suitable for base load generation, there's a reason why oil and coal companies lost their marbles in the 50s and astroturfed anti-nuclear into existence. I'm not sure if that's their most-effective campaign ever or if it's a tie with BP's popularization of the carbon footprint, which atomizes responsibility for climate change and has successfully delayed systematic action for decades. And even managed to get greens and climate change activists to do their work for them. Just like with nuclear. It's actually, genuinely incredible.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      > Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. That's not quite the case. You can load-follow with nuclear, but it requires reactors to be designed for that. France does this, for example. You also can simply keep reactors working at a constant level and just dump excess power into their cooling system. This is not as bad as it sounds, because fuel is just about ~5% of the total cost of the produced nuclear energy. Most nuclear power plants do not do this because they don't need to do it.
mech7654 3y ago
To be fair the french have had some massive problems with their fleet recently. There were issues discovered where (IIRC) a supplier that made pressure vessels used steel that was not of sufficient quality and covered it up for decades, only to be discovered recently- this required major downtime and expense. Other issues have resulted in lots of nuclear plant downtime in france as well recently.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  Stuff like this should yield criminal charges.
  - anonuser123456 3y ago
    In France it does.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  I heard almost exactly the same thing about Japanese reactors, are you sure you're remembering right, that it is definitely the French because it seems a bit of a coincidence
  - MezzoDelCammin 3y ago
    Nope, he's got that right. It's been a pretty major recurring story in the news in France through this autumn. I haven't really followed through the details, but the idea was that several reactors were down for a planned overhaul/maintenance for something like this (material defects) through the summer. As the delays ("nuclear projects are never on time") piled up story was "will they make it in time for winter". Pretty nail biting actually, specially if You add up to it the halt on Russian gas
    - polotics 3y ago
      The details: one tube on a safety backup system, so with a 0.1% chance of needing to be used, was shown to have the potential to corrode under strain ("corrosion sous contrainte") this led to all plants using that kind of tube being shut down for months because of extreme care. The irony being that this extreme care is keeping things extremely safe, but somehow in the news it comes out as "nuclear is unsafe". The reality is there are many chemicals plants with much more damaging issues, but much less regulations, and significant accidents over the yeras, often not as bad as Bhopal, but still toxic to neighbours, that somehow don't get to newsworthy...
eric-burel 3y ago
You are making good points, however about the leaks, we obviously shouldn't wait for them to be dangerous to worry. It's hard to prove risks, it's also hard to prove the lack of risks if only for the living ecosystem around the plant. The leaks show issues in the alert system, it's not the first time it happened, and an engineer sued the plant for dangerous mismanagement. Doesn't mean we should drop nuclear energy either.
- lukas099 3y ago
  And of course all risks should be weighed against the known risks and downsides of the alternatives.
Reason077 3y ago
> ”Nuclear has a load factor of 95%” That’s very optimistic. Perhaps an ideal nuclear plant with a perfect operating record might approach 95%, but real-world load factors are lower as most plants end up requiring extended outages for repairs as some point in their lifetime. France’s lifetime load factors for its nuclear plants are around 77%, but that declined sharply in recent years to 72% in 2020-21 and even lower in 2022 due to many plants being taken offline for repairs. In the UK, load factors are even lower: 67% during 1970-2017.
- pydry 3y ago
  I didn't realize it went as low as that. Some wind farms can hit 65% https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-first-floating-offshore-wind-farm-65-capacity-factor https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-first-fl...
  - simonh 3y ago
    True but with nuclear you can usually schedule the downtime well in advance. With wind it just stops whenever, whether you’re ready for it or not.
    - btreecat 3y ago
      Funny enough, this is why you see wind farms where there is a decent prevailing wind. The biggest issue is usually our lack of capacity to store/transmit. They shut of some turbines because they over produce for the Network capacity.
    - pydry 3y ago
      You have to fire up the gas generators either way to fill in the gaps. Scheduled nuclear downtime isnt any greener than the a slow wind day.
    - 7952 3y ago
      But downtime of a turbine only affects one turbine. The rest can carry on as normal and generate power. With nuclear you can lose 1000MW all at once.
emsign 3y ago
I don't know in what parallel reality you live, but France is having massive energy problems due to their reliance on nuclear right now. And it's only getting worse with rivers drying up more and more and power plants needing more and more maintance as they age. Building new plants is hugely expensive unless you lower standards, and security is already worse in reality than in the books as of now, you don't want to go lower than that and cut more corners.

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.
- artemonster 3y ago
  Germany?
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    Could be Denmark too.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Gelenoto 3y ago
  If you talk about Germany than this has nothing to do with nuclear.
  - Gud 3y ago
    No, this has everything to do with nuclear(and energy politics in general). Since at least the 80s, nuclear power has carried a huge political risk in Northern Europe including Germany. Reactors have been shut down prematurely - instead coal and oil power plants have been kept operational.
    - Ringz 3y ago
      Do you have a source for these claims? A peer-reviewed study would be best? All statistics of the last years indicate that Germany has replaced reactor capacity with renewables. And at the same time, it has cut back on coal. The current negative development has to do with the war and the gas supply stop and not with the dismantling of nuclear power plants.
      - tmp20230324 3y ago
        If you are going to ask for a source, would you mind providing sources for your assertions as well? As an outsider, I would be interested in seeing numbers/evidence for both view points. (Although looking at the parent comment, I'm not exactly sure what you would like a peer-reviewed study of.) Also, would you please not copy-and-paste the same response multiple times as you've done in the thread? It comes across less as thoughtful discussion and more as spam. (I'm not trying to be rude, but that's how it came across to me.)
cyberax 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). That's not quite correct. France deferred maintenance during COVID and scheduled the downtime in advance. The inspections then found potential problems, so other reactors did additional maintenance and checks. They could have been deferred further if needed, but politicians were not willing to make the call. > Painting nuclear as a 100% free of problem energy makes people sound as car salesmans. Nuclear energy is the one that is actually proven to work and be reliable enough to completely displace fossil generation. Nothing else is coming close to that, including solar and wind. > As of today, nobody want to finance or insure them. Russia is busy exporting nuclear power plants. A nuclear reactor can be built within 6 years, two reactors within ~9 years (they're built in parallel).
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. Some are technically capable but load-following seems to be quite taxing on the equipment due to pressure and temperature cycling. However it is very suitable for base load generation, there's a reason why oil and coal companies lost their marbles in the 50s and astroturfed anti-nuclear into existence. I'm not sure if that's their most-effective campaign ever or if it's a tie with BP's popularization of the carbon footprint, which atomizes responsibility for climate change and has successfully delayed systematic action for decades. And even managed to get greens and climate change activists to do their work for them. Just like with nuclear. It's actually, genuinely incredible.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    > Nuclear is not really suitable for load-following, at least not the installed capacity. That's not quite the case. You can load-follow with nuclear, but it requires reactors to be designed for that. France does this, for example. You also can simply keep reactors working at a constant level and just dump excess power into their cooling system. This is not as bad as it sounds, because fuel is just about ~5% of the total cost of the produced nuclear energy. Most nuclear power plants do not do this because they don't need to do it.

mech7654 3y ago

To be fair the french have had some massive problems with their fleet recently. There were issues discovered where (IIRC) a supplier that made pressure vessels used steel that was not of sufficient quality and covered it up for decades, only to be discovered recently- this required major downtime and expense. Other issues have resulted in lots of nuclear plant downtime in france as well recently.

notyourwork 3y ago
Stuff like this should yield criminal charges.
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  In France it does.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
I heard almost exactly the same thing about Japanese reactors, are you sure you're remembering right, that it is definitely the French because it seems a bit of a coincidence
- MezzoDelCammin 3y ago
  Nope, he's got that right. It's been a pretty major recurring story in the news in France through this autumn. I haven't really followed through the details, but the idea was that several reactors were down for a planned overhaul/maintenance for something like this (material defects) through the summer. As the delays ("nuclear projects are never on time") piled up story was "will they make it in time for winter". Pretty nail biting actually, specially if You add up to it the halt on Russian gas
  - polotics 3y ago
    The details: one tube on a safety backup system, so with a 0.1% chance of needing to be used, was shown to have the potential to corrode under strain ("corrosion sous contrainte") this led to all plants using that kind of tube being shut down for months because of extreme care. The irony being that this extreme care is keeping things extremely safe, but somehow in the news it comes out as "nuclear is unsafe". The reality is there are many chemicals plants with much more damaging issues, but much less regulations, and significant accidents over the yeras, often not as bad as Bhopal, but still toxic to neighbours, that somehow don't get to newsworthy...

eric-burel 3y ago

You are making good points, however about the leaks, we obviously shouldn't wait for them to be dangerous to worry. It's hard to prove risks, it's also hard to prove the lack of risks if only for the living ecosystem around the plant. The leaks show issues in the alert system, it's not the first time it happened, and an engineer sued the plant for dangerous mismanagement. Doesn't mean we should drop nuclear energy either.

lukas099 3y ago
And of course all risks should be weighed against the known risks and downsides of the alternatives.

Reason077 3y ago

> ”Nuclear has a load factor of 95%” That’s very optimistic. Perhaps an ideal nuclear plant with a perfect operating record might approach 95%, but real-world load factors are lower as most plants end up requiring extended outages for repairs as some point in their lifetime. France’s lifetime load factors for its nuclear plants are around 77%, but that declined sharply in recent years to 72% in 2020-21 and even lower in 2022 due to many plants being taken offline for repairs. In the UK, load factors are even lower: 67% during 1970-2017.

pydry 3y ago
I didn't realize it went as low as that. Some wind farms can hit 65% https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-first-floating-offshore-wind-farm-65-capacity-factor https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/worlds-first-fl...
- simonh 3y ago
  True but with nuclear you can usually schedule the downtime well in advance. With wind it just stops whenever, whether you’re ready for it or not.
  - btreecat 3y ago
    Funny enough, this is why you see wind farms where there is a decent prevailing wind. The biggest issue is usually our lack of capacity to store/transmit. They shut of some turbines because they over produce for the Network capacity.
  - pydry 3y ago
    You have to fire up the gas generators either way to fill in the gaps. Scheduled nuclear downtime isnt any greener than the a slow wind day.
  - 7952 3y ago
    But downtime of a turbine only affects one turbine. The rest can carry on as normal and generate power. With nuclear you can lose 1000MW all at once.

emsign 3y ago

I don't know in what parallel reality you live, but France is having massive energy problems due to their reliance on nuclear right now. And it's only getting worse with rivers drying up more and more and power plants needing more and more maintance as they age. Building new plants is hugely expensive unless you lower standards, and security is already worse in reality than in the books as of now, you don't want to go lower than that and cut more corners.