4 ms·

Ouch, you've just triggered the die-hard nuclear energy fans on HN. I've seen countless debates on this topic. The first thing that will be mentioned is that C

Ouch, you've just triggered the die-hard nuclear energy fans on HN. I've seen countless debates on this topic. The first thing that will be mentioned is that Chernobyl is an absolut outlier, an event that can never ever happen again or is so unlikely to happen again that it basically equals never in practice. The second point typically raised is that Chernobyl wasn't as catastrophic as the public remembers. Despite the fact that a significant number of the 600k liquidators who worked on the cleanup received radiation doses that resulted in cancer one or two decades later with a statistical much higher chance, when compared to the overall population. Then, they will argue that while green energy is beneficial, we need a combination of energy sources due to storage challenges. They often cite France as a perfect example, highlighting its successful use of nuclear energy alongside renewable sources.

dale_glass 2y ago
I'm of the opinion that nuclear is done for due to economical reasons, but yes, Chernobyl is very not relevant to any discussion of modern nuclear power. Chernobyl only happened due to the way that particular reactor type was made, and even back then nobody but the USSR did it that way, and the accident ensured nobody else ever did. Its failure mode is not inherent to nuclear but specific to the RBMK design. This new design has nothing to do with the RBMK.
- rthnbgrredf 2y ago
  Well, I don't think the reactor design mattered all that much to the many liquidator that died from cancer, but as you pointed out this is very not relevant to any discussion of modern nuclear power. For this reason I will leave it as that.
  - dale_glass 2y ago
    > Well, I don't think the reactor design mattered all that much to the many liquidator that died from cancer Maybe not to them personally, but the reason they were needed, and died at all was the design. The RBMK's design was uniquely awful in that it had a positive void coefficient that lead to it blowing its top off, lacked a containment building to contain the mess, and the graphite moderator burns in the air and spews radioactive material into the air. That's a whole lot of things that could have been done far better, and are done better in modern designs. Better designs can still melt down, yes, but they lack such an awful failure mode. Liquidators were needed because the burning reactor was contaminating everything around it every second it was burning and uncovered. Better designs are less prone to failure in the first place, and when they fail it's more on the side of being a very expensive problem. They destroy the reactor but they don't require throwing lives at the problem to contain it.
    - rthnbgrredf 2y ago
      The key point I want to emphasize is that the specifics of reactor design become secondary given the multitude of other risks involved. Consider the example of Fukushima, which, despite having a modern and robust reactor design, still succumbed to disaster. Similarly, the potential risks to a nuclear power plant located in a conflict zone, such as Ukraine. Human factors further complicate safety measures, as the potential for human error or intentional sabotage (e.g., a terrorist attack) remains a constant threat. Moreover, natural disasters are indifferent to the technology used; they can devastate any facility, especially with increasing likelihood in the context of climate change. The only rational approach is to acknowledge that incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are, in a sense, 'normal'. They fall within the middle of the probability spectrum, which explains why they have occurred. The critical question is whether we are prepared to accept these kinds of accidents as a normal part of nuclear energy production. Much like car crashes, which no one wants, they happen despite all safety measures and are, statistically speaking, normal occurrences.
- metabagel 2y ago
  I think Fukushima shows that reactor accidents will happen from time to time, and when they happen, it's a disaster. Sure, you can say that the operators at Fukushima were negligent (they were), but that is something you have to account for. Negligence happens. Earthquakes happen. Hurricanes and tornadoes happen. Tsunamis happen. Wildfires happen. Terrorism happens.
  - rthnbgrredf 2y ago
    Fukushima only happened due ... Fukushima was not as bad as perceived ... Lets continue nuclear energy, just look at france. Don't get me wrong. I'm not intending to troll. I'm honestly interested in new arguments, not the same copy and paste all over again.
  - cesarb 2y ago
    > I think Fukushima shows that reactor accidents will happen from time to time, and when they happen, it's a disaster. IMO, the most important thing about Fukushima is not how much damage it might or might not have caused. The most important thing about Fukushima, is that it counters the argument that "Chernobyl could only happen because it was a bad Russian design" (often with an implied emphasis on it being a Russian design, instead of just being a bad design). The Fukushima reactors were not of a "bad Russian design", and yet the containment was breached and radioactive isotopes escaped. That is: before Fukushima, one could dismiss Chernobyl with a "this can't happen here". After Fukushima, it's harder to make that argument.
chickenbig 2y ago
[dead]
hnbad 2y ago
FWIW if you're going to argue for non-renewable energy as a solution for filling in when renewable energy sources dip, nuclear energy doesn't help with any of that. It's important to understand the way different kinds of power plants deliver energy: - renewables (wind, solar, tides) are highly variable in their output and the amount of energy produced by each individual wind power plant or solar panel is very small; the output can be dialed down by turning off individual power plants but the amount to which it can be dialed up depends on the weather and is outside of human control - fossil fuels (gas, coal, lignite) and bio fuels are highly dynamic in their output because you can literally just add or remove fuel to control it, making them very predictable; they are however also literally just burning fuel, i.e. producing energy by producing CO2, and usually have some costs associated with restarting (i.e. reheating) after being fully turned off - nuclear reactors are extremely stable and can generate a consistent large amount of energy highly predictably; however shutting them off and turning them back on can take literal days and they usually need constant water supply for cooling in order to operate In other words, water-cooled nuclear reactors are a bad choice in any region that may experience frequent droughts (which may be hard to predict with the changing climate) and they can best be understood as an "offset" for the baseline production. A real-life energy grid is in constant flux. Loads change as appliances and machines get turned on or off, frequencies drift all the time and need to be readjusted and renewable production supply can change at a moment's notice. If there is a high baseline that is currently served by fossil fuels, nuclear is worth considering as a replacement for that. But in most places where nuclear would be an option, that baseline can already be easily served mostly by renewables. What's needed is a way to time-shift the overproduction to a later time when renewable production drops. That means storage technologies, not power plants. And as a stop-gap fossils are better suited for filling in the gaps by idling at a low output and being boosted up as the output from renewables drops.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  [dead]
- hnbad 2y ago
  A dead account replied to this in good faith so let me address this as I can't comment directly: > [Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station] uses sewage; people are very regular at producing waste water. Not really, no. Germany for example ran very successful campaigns for limiting water use in the 1990s and earlier and a lot of household appliances (shower heads, faucets, toilets) were made "more efficient". As a consequence some municipalities had issues from sewers running dry due to too little waste water and had to flush them with (clean) water to continue operating them. This likely won't turn into a problem in the US in the near future but if your plan hinges on consumers being excessively wasteful with resources, you might run into some snags as soon as those resources become more limited or more expensive. > Pumped hydro can work very well to smooth out variability from the baseload. Yes, that's an energy storage technology that isn't a battery. The reason Switzerland makes heavy use of it is that it only works when you have a landscape with a lot of changes in altitude (i.e. large hills or mountains). It doesn't help in very flat regions. It's a great solution but it's just one solution. We need more. And we also need to improve the grids themselves.

dale_glass 2y ago

I'm of the opinion that nuclear is done for due to economical reasons, but yes, Chernobyl is very not relevant to any discussion of modern nuclear power. Chernobyl only happened due to the way that particular reactor type was made, and even back then nobody but the USSR did it that way, and the accident ensured nobody else ever did. Its failure mode is not inherent to nuclear but specific to the RBMK design. This new design has nothing to do with the RBMK.

rthnbgrredf 2y ago
Well, I don't think the reactor design mattered all that much to the many liquidator that died from cancer, but as you pointed out this is very not relevant to any discussion of modern nuclear power. For this reason I will leave it as that.
- dale_glass 2y ago
  > Well, I don't think the reactor design mattered all that much to the many liquidator that died from cancer Maybe not to them personally, but the reason they were needed, and died at all was the design. The RBMK's design was uniquely awful in that it had a positive void coefficient that lead to it blowing its top off, lacked a containment building to contain the mess, and the graphite moderator burns in the air and spews radioactive material into the air. That's a whole lot of things that could have been done far better, and are done better in modern designs. Better designs can still melt down, yes, but they lack such an awful failure mode. Liquidators were needed because the burning reactor was contaminating everything around it every second it was burning and uncovered. Better designs are less prone to failure in the first place, and when they fail it's more on the side of being a very expensive problem. They destroy the reactor but they don't require throwing lives at the problem to contain it.
  - rthnbgrredf 2y ago
    The key point I want to emphasize is that the specifics of reactor design become secondary given the multitude of other risks involved. Consider the example of Fukushima, which, despite having a modern and robust reactor design, still succumbed to disaster. Similarly, the potential risks to a nuclear power plant located in a conflict zone, such as Ukraine. Human factors further complicate safety measures, as the potential for human error or intentional sabotage (e.g., a terrorist attack) remains a constant threat. Moreover, natural disasters are indifferent to the technology used; they can devastate any facility, especially with increasing likelihood in the context of climate change. The only rational approach is to acknowledge that incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are, in a sense, 'normal'. They fall within the middle of the probability spectrum, which explains why they have occurred. The critical question is whether we are prepared to accept these kinds of accidents as a normal part of nuclear energy production. Much like car crashes, which no one wants, they happen despite all safety measures and are, statistically speaking, normal occurrences.
metabagel 2y ago
I think Fukushima shows that reactor accidents will happen from time to time, and when they happen, it's a disaster. Sure, you can say that the operators at Fukushima were negligent (they were), but that is something you have to account for. Negligence happens. Earthquakes happen. Hurricanes and tornadoes happen. Tsunamis happen. Wildfires happen. Terrorism happens.
- rthnbgrredf 2y ago
  Fukushima only happened due ... Fukushima was not as bad as perceived ... Lets continue nuclear energy, just look at france. Don't get me wrong. I'm not intending to troll. I'm honestly interested in new arguments, not the same copy and paste all over again.
- cesarb 2y ago
  > I think Fukushima shows that reactor accidents will happen from time to time, and when they happen, it's a disaster. IMO, the most important thing about Fukushima is not how much damage it might or might not have caused. The most important thing about Fukushima, is that it counters the argument that "Chernobyl could only happen because it was a bad Russian design" (often with an implied emphasis on it being a Russian design, instead of just being a bad design). The Fukushima reactors were not of a "bad Russian design", and yet the containment was breached and radioactive isotopes escaped. That is: before Fukushima, one could dismiss Chernobyl with a "this can't happen here". After Fukushima, it's harder to make that argument.

chickenbig 2y ago

[dead]

hnbad 2y ago

FWIW if you're going to argue for non-renewable energy as a solution for filling in when renewable energy sources dip, nuclear energy doesn't help with any of that. It's important to understand the way different kinds of power plants deliver energy: - renewables (wind, solar, tides) are highly variable in their output and the amount of energy produced by each individual wind power plant or solar panel is very small; the output can be dialed down by turning off individual power plants but the amount to which it can be dialed up depends on the weather and is outside of human control - fossil fuels (gas, coal, lignite) and bio fuels are highly dynamic in their output because you can literally just add or remove fuel to control it, making them very predictable; they are however also literally just burning fuel, i.e. producing energy by producing CO2, and usually have some costs associated with restarting (i.e. reheating) after being fully turned off - nuclear reactors are extremely stable and can generate a consistent large amount of energy highly predictably; however shutting them off and turning them back on can take literal days and they usually need constant water supply for cooling in order to operate In other words, water-cooled nuclear reactors are a bad choice in any region that may experience frequent droughts (which may be hard to predict with the changing climate) and they can best be understood as an "offset" for the baseline production. A real-life energy grid is in constant flux. Loads change as appliances and machines get turned on or off, frequencies drift all the time and need to be readjusted and renewable production supply can change at a moment's notice. If there is a high baseline that is currently served by fossil fuels, nuclear is worth considering as a replacement for that. But in most places where nuclear would be an option, that baseline can already be easily served mostly by renewables. What's needed is a way to time-shift the overproduction to a later time when renewable production drops. That means storage technologies, not power plants. And as a stop-gap fossils are better suited for filling in the gaps by idling at a low output and being boosted up as the output from renewables drops.

chickenbig 2y ago
[dead]
hnbad 2y ago
A dead account replied to this in good faith so let me address this as I can't comment directly: > [Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station] uses sewage; people are very regular at producing waste water. Not really, no. Germany for example ran very successful campaigns for limiting water use in the 1990s and earlier and a lot of household appliances (shower heads, faucets, toilets) were made "more efficient". As a consequence some municipalities had issues from sewers running dry due to too little waste water and had to flush them with (clean) water to continue operating them. This likely won't turn into a problem in the US in the near future but if your plan hinges on consumers being excessively wasteful with resources, you might run into some snags as soon as those resources become more limited or more expensive. > Pumped hydro can work very well to smooth out variability from the baseload. Yes, that's an energy storage technology that isn't a battery. The reason Switzerland makes heavy use of it is that it only works when you have a landscape with a lot of changes in altitude (i.e. large hills or mountains). It doesn't help in very flat regions. It's a great solution but it's just one solution. We need more. And we also need to improve the grids themselves.