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`Nuclear "just works"` No it doesn't. Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk and nuclear waste is not paid for. So nuclear operators are freeloa

`Nuclear "just works"` No it doesn't. Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk and nuclear waste is not paid for. So nuclear operators are freeloading on society for decades making billions of profits [0]. To make nuclear "work", one would need to adjust insurance and establish a trust to pay for nuclear waste facility operation for the next hundres of years. But then, no one would operate them nuclear plants from the building costs to the operating and insurance costs. As a car driver I need to insure my car, so the insurance company pays people I hit. Nuclear operators do not need to insure their plant to any significant risk level. And if you think a disaster is not happening, well I also don't intend to have a car accident, so why do I need to pay insurance? [0] Fukushima is around $80B-$200B, the US nuclear insurance coverage is $15B. Chernobyl was around $200B.

atoav 3y ago
The nuclear waste thing is my pet peeve. Maybe this works in sparsely populated countries where you just dump it in a remote area, but in Europe producing a ton of nuclear waste means you have a ton of radiating toxic waste that you have to guarantee to store safely in a densely populated landmass for the next 10.000 years. There isn't many options to do that and all of them ain't even cheap today. Unless you want to socialize the costs while you privatize the gains the cost for those 10.000 (in some cases 100.000) years has to be paid for in advance — unless we are just closing your our and expect future generations will happily do that. Now I don't say there isn't a scenario (irreversible climate change?) where doing precisely that could make sense — what I say is that no fan of nuclear power managed to explain that part to me in a way that convinced me yet. I want more than a "trust me bro" or handwaving optimism.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  Pls read abt how france is reprocessing waste or how breeding reactors work
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Some of it, the French nuclear waste, goes to Germany for "storage". Not all goes to breeding reactos. Regarding treaent, feel free to move next to Sellafield or similar sites. You might want to google the environmental impact of those first.
    - Moldoteck 3y ago
      yes, France should build more reprocessing, but it's not like they don't know what to do with the waste. They know and they've done this for decades. Can you specify exactly about what impact you are talking about? The CO2 emissions or what?
      - hef19898 3y ago
        What kind of emissions and polution could come from a nuclear reprossesing site? Hmm... Radiation, maybe? https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-waste-decommissioning https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-wa... Sellafield is infamous for radioactive polution, reprocessingnof nuclear waste is dangerous, dirty and not always economically feasible. Or do you thonk anybody would buy new fuel rods if reprocessed ones were cheaper?
        Moldoteck 3y ago
        so you say that something that is done like shit have shit consequences? Somehow La Hague is doing much better so maybe reprocessing/storage is not that a big problem and humanity should just get their sh* together?
        hef19898 3y ago
        You know what else could be done, if we got our shit together and cooperated? A proper energy transition away from fossil fuels to clean alternatives. One thing so: France, or rather all French goverents, are as pro-nuclear as it gets. And even they only built one reprocessing plant. Should tell you something.
- m2fkxy 3y ago
  Here is a visualisation of of all the high-level nuclear waste produced in France over the last 60 years, superimposed over the port of Marseille. https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633?lang=en https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633?lang...
  - achenet 3y ago
    What about the not so high level nuclear waste? Is that not also dangerous? How much of that is there?
    - mplewis 3y ago
      You’re the one arguing against nuclear power; where are your sources for its damage? What about the “not so high level” waste from coal which results in trillions of dollars of health issues worldwide?
      - achenet 3y ago
        I'm not. I'm actually French, and generally prefer nuclear over coal. I'm simply pointing out that this graphic may be somewhat misleading, because it only focuses on a part of nuclear waste. Obviously coal is pretty awful as well, from air pollution to mercury in the oceans.
    - m2fkxy 3y ago
      - Very-low activity (TFA): 30% of total volume, negligible activity, they are stored in soft containers. - Low- and medium-activity, short-life (FMA-VC): 60% of total volume. They are compacted and poured in concrete, then stored. - Low-actiity, long-life (FA-VL): 6% of total volume, disposal method is under study. The two categories below represent >99% of total radioactivity: - Medium-activity, long-life (MA-VL) 3% of total volume, they are compacted. - High-activity, long-life (HA-VL): 0.2% of total volume, they are vitrified. MA-VL and HA-VL are then stored in stainless steel caskets, to be disposed in deep, geologically stable repositories (Cigéo in France, Onkalo in Finland, ...).
hef19898 3y ago
The pro-nuclear growd (funny how easy it is for otherwise smart people to be sold on mere talking points) has a point so: during generation a nuclear power plant doesn't emit CO2. What people willfully (?) ignore is the simple fact that a) we don't have enough nuclear capacity installed, and never did and b) you cannot just wish nuclear power plants into existence. The latter being the main blocking point. Just how you can jump from that to opposing renewables build outs is beyond me. And honestly, nobody is lobbying for new coal plants, except the operators and owners of those plants. And boy, do they have a lobby...
- adev_ 3y ago
  > Just how you can jump from that to opposing renewables build outs is beyond me. No you do not get it I think. The world need Nuclear AND Renewable energy. Working hand to hand to accelerate decarbonization, as fast as you can. We need low carbon electricity production. And try to achieve that exclusively with renewable due to (close to) religious beliefs is an extremely dangerous bet on humankind. I am not aware of many lobbies arguing that we need a world 100% nuclear. However, I know many old world lobbies (like Greenpeace) that would prefer to die on the hill of climate change instead of admitting that the world need nuclear energy.
  - natmaka 3y ago
    > Nuclear AND Renewable energy It cannot be done because it financially condemns new nuclear plants. "The rates at which conventional power plants are utilized will continue to decrease as competitive pressure from near-zero marginal cost solar photovoltaic and onshore wind power, and battery energy storage continue to grow exponentially worldwide." Eye-opening video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg
    - adev_ 3y ago
      It is does not. LCOE is a metric from the Lazard institute has been debunked many time alreayd because it does not take into consideration the cost of the capacity guarantee of the grid. If you had that, Nuclear become competitive. If you had that and tax properly coal and Gas plant proportionally to the emission they really do. Nuclear become even incredibly cheap, specially if we consider its hydrogen co-generation capabilities.
epups 3y ago
Nuclear waste is a problem, but it is nothing compared to the waste from gas and coal, which we release to the atmosphere daily. It kills thousands every year and will kill millions in the future. And you may think: well there you go, let's get rid of all of that and just use renewables then. But we can't, as the parent comment demonstrates. Some days you just need a stable energy source, and your only realistic choice for the next 20 years is hydro (already maxed out at most places), nuclear, gas or coal. Pick your poison.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Agree, CO2 emissions are big problem, a life threatening one for some people. Nuclear is a problem too, just not a global obe. You know, both things can be true at the same time. Again, what would be your alternative way forward? Coal and oil burning has to go, that much is sure. We still need electricity so, hence we need clean sources. And we need them fast, because as a species we were asleep at the wheel for way too long. Also, we need a lot of those clean sources. So what is your proposal? A realistic one, please, not a scenarion of "we should have done X decades ago", but one that can be worked on right now, on the basis we have.
  - katbyte 3y ago
    There is none except hydro and nuclear for base load. Unless you want to burn gas (co2) or coal (co2 and radioactive emissions that cause more cancers in the us then nuclear has world wide) Renewables outside hydro cannot, and will never, be able to provide a a stable base load for the grid, battery storage isn’t there and has all sorts of issues, pumped storage requires even more rare conditions then hydro, as does geothermal, so we are left with nuclear as the only real clean and reasonable path forward that we would have done decades ago if not for oil and gas doing everything to prevent it. So what is YOUR proposal to provide a stable base load?
    - andyjohnson0 3y ago
      > There is none except hydro and nuclear for base load. I'm not the person you're replying to, and I mostly agree with your points, but I think its necessary to point out that nuclear and hydro have long lead times to build the infrastructure. And we basically don't have enough time left to build it. I don't have good answers. Solar + interconnectors, maybe? So that areas in daylight can power areas that aren't? But this obvs requires cooperative behaviour.
lm28469 3y ago
If we start taking such arbitrary metrics then literally nothing works ever
mplewis 3y ago
I advise not building nuclear plants on a coast next time.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Or near fault lines. Or near rivers if those risk running dry in summer. Or near densly populated areas.
raverbashing 3y ago
> Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk and nuclear waste is not paid for. Are Coal plants insured for the environmental damage they cause?
benj111 3y ago
What's the cost of a once a generation nuclear incident v ongoing pollution from coal plants? Maybe they are under insured, but the whole fossil fuel industry is too
- hef19898 3y ago
  Sure, nuclear is maybe better than coal. We get it, even greenpeace and the green party in Germany does. That point has been discussed, and agreed upon.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Nuclear is clean in that it doesn't have the same amount of CO2, but taking everything into consideration, it's expensive.
adev_ 3y ago
> [0] Fukushima is around $80B-$200B, the US nuclear insurance coverage is $15B. Chernobyl was around $200B. So you speak about $400B, lets consider it upper bound and even up to $500B by adding the cost Three Miles island incident and the various minor ones around the world. Spread over 60 years of the humanity nuclear power usage, that makes us an insurance cost of 8.3 billions dollar per year at world scale. So the risk cost $8.3B per year at world scale for a source of energy that generate 25% of the world low-carbon electricity [1] and make us save around 470 millions tons of CO2 per year [2]. To put things into perspective: the US spend $150B in natural disaster cost coverage per year alone [3] The EnergyWende of Germany alone cost around $40B per year. And the cost of the death related to fossil fuel emissions in modern history is estimated at $1.7T in the OECD alone [4]. So I think it is fair to qualify $8.3B/year for a nuclear energy insurance cost to be pretty cheap deal at humanity scale. I would even qualify it to be ridiculously cheap. Your sentence "Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk" is pretty typical of the anti-nuclear argumentation: Mainly based on feelings not on facts. Based on facts, it is currently plain wrong. [1]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... [2]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... [3]: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2022-us-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters-historical https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2022... [4] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d1b2b844-en.pdf?expires=1700223005&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=DB09C5BE1BF2728B8F15789BCF8AC207 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d1b2b844-en.pdf?expi...
- gimili 3y ago
  I like the calculation; makes things more clear. However, to your last point: You are saying that nuclear power plants then are insured to risk. Can you point me in your sources to the place where it is shown how nuclear power plant operators today then are insuring "to risk" the risk of nuclear disaster and all costs and risks of the disposal?
  - lesuorac 3y ago
phil21 3y ago
> So nuclear operators are freeloading on society for decades making billions of profits Funny. I have the opposite take. Society has freeloaded off of nuclear for a generation or two by ignoring the wider social benefits and putting all the risk on the operators. Cheap, clean, reliable power matters. That we made it expensive via some made up social construct isn't very material to me in the bigger picture. > As a car driver I need to insure my car, As a car driver you pay a tiny fraction of your externalized costs to society. Most folks recognize this and are ok with the situation because of the wider social benefits overall.
- manonthewall 3y ago
  cheap, clean, reliable -- under current conditions you only get to pick 2
- i8comments 3y ago
  Nuclear is not cheap.

atoav 3y ago

The nuclear waste thing is my pet peeve. Maybe this works in sparsely populated countries where you just dump it in a remote area, but in Europe producing a ton of nuclear waste means you have a ton of radiating toxic waste that you have to guarantee to store safely in a densely populated landmass for the next 10.000 years. There isn't many options to do that and all of them ain't even cheap today. Unless you want to socialize the costs while you privatize the gains the cost for those 10.000 (in some cases 100.000) years has to be paid for in advance — unless we are just closing your our and expect future generations will happily do that. Now I don't say there isn't a scenario (irreversible climate change?) where doing precisely that could make sense — what I say is that no fan of nuclear power managed to explain that part to me in a way that convinced me yet. I want more than a "trust me bro" or handwaving optimism.

Moldoteck 3y ago
Pls read abt how france is reprocessing waste or how breeding reactors work
- hef19898 3y ago
  Some of it, the French nuclear waste, goes to Germany for "storage". Not all goes to breeding reactos. Regarding treaent, feel free to move next to Sellafield or similar sites. You might want to google the environmental impact of those first.
  - Moldoteck 3y ago
    yes, France should build more reprocessing, but it's not like they don't know what to do with the waste. They know and they've done this for decades. Can you specify exactly about what impact you are talking about? The CO2 emissions or what?
    - hef19898 3y ago
      What kind of emissions and polution could come from a nuclear reprossesing site? Hmm... Radiation, maybe? https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-waste-decommissioning https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-sellafield-nuclear-wa... Sellafield is infamous for radioactive polution, reprocessingnof nuclear waste is dangerous, dirty and not always economically feasible. Or do you thonk anybody would buy new fuel rods if reprocessed ones were cheaper?
      - Moldoteck 3y ago
        so you say that something that is done like shit have shit consequences? Somehow La Hague is doing much better so maybe reprocessing/storage is not that a big problem and humanity should just get their sh* together?
        hef19898 3y ago
        You know what else could be done, if we got our shit together and cooperated? A proper energy transition away from fossil fuels to clean alternatives. One thing so: France, or rather all French goverents, are as pro-nuclear as it gets. And even they only built one reprocessing plant. Should tell you something.
m2fkxy 3y ago
Here is a visualisation of of all the high-level nuclear waste produced in France over the last 60 years, superimposed over the port of Marseille. https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633?lang=en https://twitter.com/laydgeur/status/1433463215321669633?lang...
- achenet 3y ago
  What about the not so high level nuclear waste? Is that not also dangerous? How much of that is there?
  - mplewis 3y ago
    You’re the one arguing against nuclear power; where are your sources for its damage? What about the “not so high level” waste from coal which results in trillions of dollars of health issues worldwide?
    - achenet 3y ago
      I'm not. I'm actually French, and generally prefer nuclear over coal. I'm simply pointing out that this graphic may be somewhat misleading, because it only focuses on a part of nuclear waste. Obviously coal is pretty awful as well, from air pollution to mercury in the oceans.
  - m2fkxy 3y ago
    - Very-low activity (TFA): 30% of total volume, negligible activity, they are stored in soft containers. - Low- and medium-activity, short-life (FMA-VC): 60% of total volume. They are compacted and poured in concrete, then stored. - Low-actiity, long-life (FA-VL): 6% of total volume, disposal method is under study. The two categories below represent >99% of total radioactivity: - Medium-activity, long-life (MA-VL) 3% of total volume, they are compacted. - High-activity, long-life (HA-VL): 0.2% of total volume, they are vitrified. MA-VL and HA-VL are then stored in stainless steel caskets, to be disposed in deep, geologically stable repositories (Cigéo in France, Onkalo in Finland, ...).

hef19898 3y ago

The pro-nuclear growd (funny how easy it is for otherwise smart people to be sold on mere talking points) has a point so: during generation a nuclear power plant doesn't emit CO2. What people willfully (?) ignore is the simple fact that a) we don't have enough nuclear capacity installed, and never did and b) you cannot just wish nuclear power plants into existence. The latter being the main blocking point. Just how you can jump from that to opposing renewables build outs is beyond me. And honestly, nobody is lobbying for new coal plants, except the operators and owners of those plants. And boy, do they have a lobby...

adev_ 3y ago
> Just how you can jump from that to opposing renewables build outs is beyond me. No you do not get it I think. The world need Nuclear AND Renewable energy. Working hand to hand to accelerate decarbonization, as fast as you can. We need low carbon electricity production. And try to achieve that exclusively with renewable due to (close to) religious beliefs is an extremely dangerous bet on humankind. I am not aware of many lobbies arguing that we need a world 100% nuclear. However, I know many old world lobbies (like Greenpeace) that would prefer to die on the hill of climate change instead of admitting that the world need nuclear energy.
- natmaka 3y ago
  > Nuclear AND Renewable energy It cannot be done because it financially condemns new nuclear plants. "The rates at which conventional power plants are utilized will continue to decrease as competitive pressure from near-zero marginal cost solar photovoltaic and onshore wind power, and battery energy storage continue to grow exponentially worldwide." Eye-opening video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udJJ7n_Ryjg
  - adev_ 3y ago
    It is does not. LCOE is a metric from the Lazard institute has been debunked many time alreayd because it does not take into consideration the cost of the capacity guarantee of the grid. If you had that, Nuclear become competitive. If you had that and tax properly coal and Gas plant proportionally to the emission they really do. Nuclear become even incredibly cheap, specially if we consider its hydrogen co-generation capabilities.

epups 3y ago

Nuclear waste is a problem, but it is nothing compared to the waste from gas and coal, which we release to the atmosphere daily. It kills thousands every year and will kill millions in the future. And you may think: well there you go, let's get rid of all of that and just use renewables then. But we can't, as the parent comment demonstrates. Some days you just need a stable energy source, and your only realistic choice for the next 20 years is hydro (already maxed out at most places), nuclear, gas or coal. Pick your poison.

hef19898 3y ago
Agree, CO2 emissions are big problem, a life threatening one for some people. Nuclear is a problem too, just not a global obe. You know, both things can be true at the same time. Again, what would be your alternative way forward? Coal and oil burning has to go, that much is sure. We still need electricity so, hence we need clean sources. And we need them fast, because as a species we were asleep at the wheel for way too long. Also, we need a lot of those clean sources. So what is your proposal? A realistic one, please, not a scenarion of "we should have done X decades ago", but one that can be worked on right now, on the basis we have.
- katbyte 3y ago
  There is none except hydro and nuclear for base load. Unless you want to burn gas (co2) or coal (co2 and radioactive emissions that cause more cancers in the us then nuclear has world wide) Renewables outside hydro cannot, and will never, be able to provide a a stable base load for the grid, battery storage isn’t there and has all sorts of issues, pumped storage requires even more rare conditions then hydro, as does geothermal, so we are left with nuclear as the only real clean and reasonable path forward that we would have done decades ago if not for oil and gas doing everything to prevent it. So what is YOUR proposal to provide a stable base load?
  - andyjohnson0 3y ago
    > There is none except hydro and nuclear for base load. I'm not the person you're replying to, and I mostly agree with your points, but I think its necessary to point out that nuclear and hydro have long lead times to build the infrastructure. And we basically don't have enough time left to build it. I don't have good answers. Solar + interconnectors, maybe? So that areas in daylight can power areas that aren't? But this obvs requires cooperative behaviour.

lm28469 3y ago

If we start taking such arbitrary metrics then literally nothing works ever

mplewis 3y ago

I advise not building nuclear plants on a coast next time.

hef19898 3y ago
Or near fault lines. Or near rivers if those risk running dry in summer. Or near densly populated areas.

raverbashing 3y ago

> Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk and nuclear waste is not paid for. Are Coal plants insured for the environmental damage they cause?

benj111 3y ago

What's the cost of a once a generation nuclear incident v ongoing pollution from coal plants? Maybe they are under insured, but the whole fossil fuel industry is too

hef19898 3y ago
Sure, nuclear is maybe better than coal. We get it, even greenpeace and the green party in Germany does. That point has been discussed, and agreed upon.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

Nuclear is clean in that it doesn't have the same amount of CO2, but taking everything into consideration, it's expensive.

adev_ 3y ago

> [0] Fukushima is around $80B-$200B, the US nuclear insurance coverage is $15B. Chernobyl was around $200B. So you speak about $400B, lets consider it upper bound and even up to $500B by adding the cost Three Miles island incident and the various minor ones around the world. Spread over 60 years of the humanity nuclear power usage, that makes us an insurance cost of 8.3 billions dollar per year at world scale. So the risk cost $8.3B per year at world scale for a source of energy that generate 25% of the world low-carbon electricity [1] and make us save around 470 millions tons of CO2 per year [2]. To put things into perspective: the US spend $150B in natural disaster cost coverage per year alone [3] The EnergyWende of Germany alone cost around $40B per year. And the cost of the death related to fossil fuel emissions in modern history is estimated at $1.7T in the OECD alone [4]. So I think it is fair to qualify $8.3B/year for a nuclear energy insurance cost to be pretty cheap deal at humanity scale. I would even qualify it to be ridiculously cheap. Your sentence "Nuclear power plants are nowhere near insured to risk" is pretty typical of the anti-nuclear argumentation: Mainly based on feelings not on facts. Based on facts, it is currently plain wrong. [1]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... [2]: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... [3]: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2022-us-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters-historical https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2022... [4] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d1b2b844-en.pdf?expires=1700223005&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=DB09C5BE1BF2728B8F15789BCF8AC207 https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d1b2b844-en.pdf?expi...

gimili 3y ago
I like the calculation; makes things more clear. However, to your last point: You are saying that nuclear power plants then are insured to risk. Can you point me in your sources to the place where it is shown how nuclear power plant operators today then are insuring "to risk" the risk of nuclear disaster and all costs and risks of the disposal?
- lesuorac 3y ago

phil21 3y ago

> So nuclear operators are freeloading on society for decades making billions of profits Funny. I have the opposite take. Society has freeloaded off of nuclear for a generation or two by ignoring the wider social benefits and putting all the risk on the operators. Cheap, clean, reliable power matters. That we made it expensive via some made up social construct isn't very material to me in the bigger picture. > As a car driver I need to insure my car, As a car driver you pay a tiny fraction of your externalized costs to society. Most folks recognize this and are ok with the situation because of the wider social benefits overall.

manonthewall 3y ago
cheap, clean, reliable -- under current conditions you only get to pick 2
i8comments 3y ago
Nuclear is not cheap.