9 ms·

> Micro Chernobyl disaster generator. Nice. It's sad that some people would rather see the climate change than to accept that nuclear is not that dangerous. No

by krasin 2y ago

> Micro Chernobyl disaster generator. Nice. It's sad that some people would rather see the climate change than to accept that nuclear is not that dangerous. Not only Chernobyl had one of the worst designs, which would not be approved today, but its impact is also widely overstated. I grew up in the area affected by Chernobyl (Kaluga oblast) and I had classmates evacuated from Chernobyl itself. For the first 10 years, it was important to have geiger counters when you go shopping on farmer's market, but that's about it. Compare it to the billions affected by the heat today. Nuclear scare is a part of the reason these people suffer. That said - if solar & wind + batteries are cheaper and available in an area, that's a good way to go. Just don't claim that nuclear is bad. And hopefully microreactors are cheaper and faster to deploy than classic nuclear reactors, and they have a chance to be useful for the areas without large reserves of solar and wind.

madaxe_again 2y ago
Also worth noting that orders of magnitude more radiation have been released into the environment from fly ash from coal than all nuclear disasters combined.
anovikov 2y ago
It's a false dichotomy. Worldwide there are about 100 GW of nuclear reactors planned of them about 40 GW actually being constructed and about 10 GW are actually commissioned annually. This is barely sufficient to replacement of reactors that are being decommissioned and there is no growth of nuclear capacity worldwide - we have exactly as much as 15 years ago. Comparatively, renewables are set to add 800GW this year. Yes that will translate to "only" about 130GW of average power which is an energy equivalent of about 150GW of nuclear capacity, but that still means replacing all of the world nuclear (372GW) in 2.5 years. Wind already produces as much overall energy as nuclear (around 2550 TWh/y) and solar, 2/3 as much and will equal nuclear in probably 1 year. And almost all of this capacity has been built in the last 5 years for solar and last year 10 years for nuclear, with deployment speeds fast accelerating. There's simply no comparison. Nuclear has already lost.
- krasin 2y ago
  > Nuclear has already lost. Classic nuclear did lose. Microreactors have a chance unless irrational fear prevents it from entering the game. And yes, it gives me a great pleasure to see the rapid deployment of wind & solar installations.
  - anovikov 2y ago
    Microreactors have no chance at all in the world because nuclear scales very well with size, and as a result, is bound to be very expensive when small. In Russia, they have a bunch of microreactors, they work fine, but very expensive to run and are kept only in remote places with no other way to power them. Niche thing at best. How many microreactors do we need to replace all the world's final energy consumption (ok around 20% will be replaced by heat pumps net energy gain)? That's 11,000 GW of continuous power. A million 10 MW ones? How many people does that take to build and maintain across the entire value chain? Sounds like hundreds of millions people, easily 10 or maybe 20% of entire world's workforce. Not going to happen.
    - krasin 2y ago
      > Microreactors have no chance at all in the world because nuclear scales very well with size, and as a result, is bound to be very expensive when small. Solar is cheap because it has hit the economy of scale. Hell, fences made of solar (sometimes, not even connected!) are now more cheaper than those made of wood (at least, in some countries). While I would not bet my money on the economic feasibility of nuclear microreactors, I would like them to have a fair market trial. If they do succeed, we all win.
      - fsh 2y ago
        Small reactors have lost against GW-class facilities around 60 years ago. This is why they were no longer built. I find it strange to believe that the economy of scale somehow doesn't apply to nuclear power plants, even though history clearly shows it does.
    - 2y ago
jgord 2y ago
You draw a false dichotomy .. its now faster and cheaper to build out wind and solar than new nuclear fission SMRs. Most projections show slow linear growth in fission power .. meanwhile exponential growth in Wind and Solar plants, which is what we need if we ever want to displace gas and coal power plants. If nuclear fission was such a safe and cheap form of power .. why did we build coal and gas power plants over the past 70 years ? If nuclear could have provided most of our power economically .. it would already be widespread and we wouldn't be a +1.5C today. If there were no Chernobyl nor Fukushima .. people might think nuclear was safe.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  > Most projections show slow linear growth in fission power Are these the same projections from places like the IEA that have renewable growth suddenly flattening (something they've hilariously been doing for years)? https://pv-magazine-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/Tam11.png https://pv-magazine-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/... I think a reasonable projection of fission is one of long term decline. Even in China the installed capacity curve for nuclear is flattening.
  - mpweiher 2y ago
    Not true. Nuclear power output expected to break global records in 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/24/nuclear-power-output-expected-to-break-global-records-in-2025 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/24/nuclear-... And that is before any of the turnaround past 2022 has had a chance to take effect. And the turnaround after 2022 has been massive. If you haven't significantly updated your priors since before 2022, you are vastly behind the times. 1. We already had the COP28 declaration to triple nuclear output. https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-declaration-triple-nuclear-energy-capacity-2050-recognizing-key https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-decla... 2. France Until March 2023, expanding nuclear power in France (the "poster child" for nuclear) was actually prohibited by law. Absolute capacity was capped at current levels, and the law mandated a reduction to below 50% of total. This law was repealed in March of 2023. With something like a 75% majority, so overwhelming cross-party support. Which also largely explains why Flamanville was such a disaster. France knows how to build reactors quickly and cheaply: you build lots of the same design in an overlapping fashion, and you do it continuously, so you maintain the industrial capacity and workforce know-how. Flamanville was the exact opposite on all those counts. And the EPR is apparently a bad design. I mean, good once you have it, but way too complicated to build. Which is why it has been discontinued by the manufacturer. There will be no more EPRs, the successor EPR2 is vastly simplified. 3. UK While the anti-nuclear lobbyists "know" that Hinkley Point C proved the non-viability of nuclear beyond any doubt, the UK government apparently didn't get the memo. They announced plans to quadruple nuclear generating capacity in January 2024, so well after the HPC problems were well-known. 4. Poland Is getting into nuclear, in a big way. 2 Westinghouse AP-1000 (the Vogtle disaster) have been ordered, contracts are signed and site preparation work has commenced. That's just the tip of the iceberg, the paperwork for 2 more reactors from South Korea is apparently being finalized and there are a bunch of SMR projects, in part by private companies who want them to directly power industrial processes (process heat?) 5. Japan Was going to get out of nuclear. Now reactivating plants and will build new ones once the existing ones are activated. 6. USA Has identified the need for ~200GW of new nuclear capacity. Is currently figuring out how to create the industrial policy required to make that happen. 7. Netherlands Wanted to build 2 new reacts. Voted in early 2024 to build 4 instead. 8. Sweden Was getting out of nuclear. Now wants to build 10 new reactors. 9. China Tripling of capacity with just what is in the works now (20+ building, 70 planned). Currently accelerating the build out. 10. India On track for tripling of capacity by 2031. 11. South Korea Was getting out, now expanding. 12. Italy Got out of nuclear late 80s. Government policy is to have the legal framework for new nuclear in place by the end of this legislature. I can go on...and on, but I think you get the picture.
metabagel 2y ago
> It's sad that some people would rather see the climate change than to accept that nuclear is not that dangerous. Not only Chernobyl had one of the worst designs, which would not be approved today, but its impact is also widely overstated. The explosion of the reactor at Chernobyl was a gargantuan disaster which still has to be managed. An exclusion zone of roughly 1,000 sq. miles was created. The USSR suppressed information about the disaster, but it killed some thousands of people, we don't know how many, and it cost an unimaginable amount of money and resources to clean up and manage over the decades following. According to Wikipedia [1]: > In 2018, Ukraine spent five to seven percent of its national budget on recovery activities related to the Chernobyl disaster. Granted, Chernobyl was a faulty design, but there was also the disaster at Fukushima, which also required the creation of an exclusion zone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
- preisschild 2y ago
  Fukushima killed zero people due to radiation, and most surrounding areas can already be inhabited again.
  - rthnbgrredf 2y ago
    Sounds convincing, lets have some more Fukushimas then. But to mix it up a bit we should have some Chernobly from time to time.
  - lamontcg 2y ago
    Cleanup costs are likely to hit a trillion USD before it is all done.
preisschild 2y ago
> which would not be approved today It wouldn't even have been approved in the west (maybe Britain would do it, considering what they did with the Windscale piles) when it was originally built in the Soviet Union PWR reactors that were built around that time in the west, which are already physically safer, have strong containment buildings in case something happens. Chornobyl had a more dangerous design no containment building.

by krasin 2y ago

madaxe_again 2y ago

Also worth noting that orders of magnitude more radiation have been released into the environment from fly ash from coal than all nuclear disasters combined.

anovikov 2y ago

It's a false dichotomy. Worldwide there are about 100 GW of nuclear reactors planned of them about 40 GW actually being constructed and about 10 GW are actually commissioned annually. This is barely sufficient to replacement of reactors that are being decommissioned and there is no growth of nuclear capacity worldwide - we have exactly as much as 15 years ago. Comparatively, renewables are set to add 800GW this year. Yes that will translate to "only" about 130GW of average power which is an energy equivalent of about 150GW of nuclear capacity, but that still means replacing all of the world nuclear (372GW) in 2.5 years. Wind already produces as much overall energy as nuclear (around 2550 TWh/y) and solar, 2/3 as much and will equal nuclear in probably 1 year. And almost all of this capacity has been built in the last 5 years for solar and last year 10 years for nuclear, with deployment speeds fast accelerating. There's simply no comparison. Nuclear has already lost.

krasin 2y ago
> Nuclear has already lost. Classic nuclear did lose. Microreactors have a chance unless irrational fear prevents it from entering the game. And yes, it gives me a great pleasure to see the rapid deployment of wind & solar installations.
- anovikov 2y ago
  Microreactors have no chance at all in the world because nuclear scales very well with size, and as a result, is bound to be very expensive when small. In Russia, they have a bunch of microreactors, they work fine, but very expensive to run and are kept only in remote places with no other way to power them. Niche thing at best. How many microreactors do we need to replace all the world's final energy consumption (ok around 20% will be replaced by heat pumps net energy gain)? That's 11,000 GW of continuous power. A million 10 MW ones? How many people does that take to build and maintain across the entire value chain? Sounds like hundreds of millions people, easily 10 or maybe 20% of entire world's workforce. Not going to happen.
  - krasin 2y ago
    > Microreactors have no chance at all in the world because nuclear scales very well with size, and as a result, is bound to be very expensive when small. Solar is cheap because it has hit the economy of scale. Hell, fences made of solar (sometimes, not even connected!) are now more cheaper than those made of wood (at least, in some countries). While I would not bet my money on the economic feasibility of nuclear microreactors, I would like them to have a fair market trial. If they do succeed, we all win.
    - fsh 2y ago
      Small reactors have lost against GW-class facilities around 60 years ago. This is why they were no longer built. I find it strange to believe that the economy of scale somehow doesn't apply to nuclear power plants, even though history clearly shows it does.
  - 2y ago

jgord 2y ago

You draw a false dichotomy .. its now faster and cheaper to build out wind and solar than new nuclear fission SMRs. Most projections show slow linear growth in fission power .. meanwhile exponential growth in Wind and Solar plants, which is what we need if we ever want to displace gas and coal power plants. If nuclear fission was such a safe and cheap form of power .. why did we build coal and gas power plants over the past 70 years ? If nuclear could have provided most of our power economically .. it would already be widespread and we wouldn't be a +1.5C today. If there were no Chernobyl nor Fukushima .. people might think nuclear was safe.

pfdietz 2y ago
> Most projections show slow linear growth in fission power Are these the same projections from places like the IEA that have renewable growth suddenly flattening (something they've hilariously been doing for years)? https://pv-magazine-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/07/Tam11.png https://pv-magazine-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/... I think a reasonable projection of fission is one of long term decline. Even in China the installed capacity curve for nuclear is flattening.
- mpweiher 2y ago
  Not true. Nuclear power output expected to break global records in 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/24/nuclear-power-output-expected-to-break-global-records-in-2025 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/24/nuclear-... And that is before any of the turnaround past 2022 has had a chance to take effect. And the turnaround after 2022 has been massive. If you haven't significantly updated your priors since before 2022, you are vastly behind the times. 1. We already had the COP28 declaration to triple nuclear output. https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-declaration-triple-nuclear-energy-capacity-2050-recognizing-key https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-decla... 2. France Until March 2023, expanding nuclear power in France (the "poster child" for nuclear) was actually prohibited by law. Absolute capacity was capped at current levels, and the law mandated a reduction to below 50% of total. This law was repealed in March of 2023. With something like a 75% majority, so overwhelming cross-party support. Which also largely explains why Flamanville was such a disaster. France knows how to build reactors quickly and cheaply: you build lots of the same design in an overlapping fashion, and you do it continuously, so you maintain the industrial capacity and workforce know-how. Flamanville was the exact opposite on all those counts. And the EPR is apparently a bad design. I mean, good once you have it, but way too complicated to build. Which is why it has been discontinued by the manufacturer. There will be no more EPRs, the successor EPR2 is vastly simplified. 3. UK While the anti-nuclear lobbyists "know" that Hinkley Point C proved the non-viability of nuclear beyond any doubt, the UK government apparently didn't get the memo. They announced plans to quadruple nuclear generating capacity in January 2024, so well after the HPC problems were well-known. 4. Poland Is getting into nuclear, in a big way. 2 Westinghouse AP-1000 (the Vogtle disaster) have been ordered, contracts are signed and site preparation work has commenced. That's just the tip of the iceberg, the paperwork for 2 more reactors from South Korea is apparently being finalized and there are a bunch of SMR projects, in part by private companies who want them to directly power industrial processes (process heat?) 5. Japan Was going to get out of nuclear. Now reactivating plants and will build new ones once the existing ones are activated. 6. USA Has identified the need for ~200GW of new nuclear capacity. Is currently figuring out how to create the industrial policy required to make that happen. 7. Netherlands Wanted to build 2 new reacts. Voted in early 2024 to build 4 instead. 8. Sweden Was getting out of nuclear. Now wants to build 10 new reactors. 9. China Tripling of capacity with just what is in the works now (20+ building, 70 planned). Currently accelerating the build out. 10. India On track for tripling of capacity by 2031. 11. South Korea Was getting out, now expanding. 12. Italy Got out of nuclear late 80s. Government policy is to have the legal framework for new nuclear in place by the end of this legislature. I can go on...and on, but I think you get the picture.

metabagel 2y ago

> It's sad that some people would rather see the climate change than to accept that nuclear is not that dangerous. Not only Chernobyl had one of the worst designs, which would not be approved today, but its impact is also widely overstated. The explosion of the reactor at Chernobyl was a gargantuan disaster which still has to be managed. An exclusion zone of roughly 1,000 sq. miles was created. The USSR suppressed information about the disaster, but it killed some thousands of people, we don't know how many, and it cost an unimaginable amount of money and resources to clean up and manage over the decades following. According to Wikipedia [1]: > In 2018, Ukraine spent five to seven percent of its national budget on recovery activities related to the Chernobyl disaster. Granted, Chernobyl was a faulty design, but there was also the disaster at Fukushima, which also required the creation of an exclusion zone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

preisschild 2y ago
Fukushima killed zero people due to radiation, and most surrounding areas can already be inhabited again.
- rthnbgrredf 2y ago
  Sounds convincing, lets have some more Fukushimas then. But to mix it up a bit we should have some Chernobly from time to time.
- lamontcg 2y ago
  Cleanup costs are likely to hit a trillion USD before it is all done.

preisschild 2y ago

> which would not be approved today It wouldn't even have been approved in the west (maybe Britain would do it, considering what they did with the Windscale piles) when it was originally built in the Soviet Union PWR reactors that were built around that time in the west, which are already physically safer, have strong containment buildings in case something happens. Chornobyl had a more dangerous design no containment building.