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there is pretty strong evidence that Nuclear energy is significantly safer than most energy production with the exception of wind & solar which are similarly as

there is pretty strong evidence that Nuclear energy is significantly safer than most energy production with the exception of wind & solar which are similarly as safe. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

jayd16 2y ago
Well ok, they're as safe as long as we're extremely vigilant but does it then follow that we should be more relaxed about safety concerns? I don't think showing the stats is all that convincing to people when the worst case scenario is so impactful. My guess is we'll need to see newer safer designs before public options shift.
- foxyv 2y ago
  I would not describe the current nuclear power regulatory system as "Extremely Vigilant." More like "Extremely Litigious." I think lawyers have made more on nuclear power than concrete companies and nuclear engineers combined.
tourmalinetaco 2y ago
And unlike wind and solar can be used on-demand akin to coal, making it an extremely attractive option to run alongside renewables, especially year round. Solar panels are literally useless 75% of the year in at least 1/3rd of the US and we still rely on coal because of that. Sure, batteries may exist in the future that can handle solar, and maybe panels will exist in the future that will be more efficient, but we have technology now that can outpace renewables consistently and on-demand.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  Which means nuclear and renewables are the worst possible companions imaginable. Nuclear and renewables compete for the same slice of the grid. The cheapest most inflexible where all other power generation has to adapt to their demands. They are fundamentally incompatible. For every passing year more existing reactors will spend more time turned off because the power they produce is too expensive. Let alone insanely expensive new builds. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-prices-negative-france-solar-panel-wind-renewable-nuclear-green-2024-6 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-... Batteries are here now, and delivering nuclear scale energy day in and day out in California. https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/ https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
  - exe34 2y ago
    do you happen to know why we can't dump the energy into something like smelting, desalination or other heavy industry?
    - amonon 2y ago
      I am uniformed on this, but those industries likely take time to scale up. A large scale desalination plant requires a significant amount of infrastructure.
      - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
        The question is also: Where are you building it? No one will want anything from your desalination plant in Norway, and shipping water is not a thing because it becomes too expensive. The next problem is energy cost vs. duty cycle. The less you run due to only utilizing cheap prices the higher the impact of fixed costs on your business.
        mrguyorama 2y ago
        >shipping water is not a thing because it becomes too expensive. Except for a significant portion of the GDP of Fiji
    - MisterTea 2y ago
      Smelting cant base their production on when excess energy might be available. They need that energy now. Desalination might be a good sink but again, if water is needed now and there's no excess then what? That's why we have base load.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Because every industry has capital costs that you want to repay by using it as much as you can. There is a very small amount of people working on low-capital industries (normally with higher operational costs), and they seem to be close to some gain here or there. But almost all of our knowledge is biased against turning things off.
- dawnerd 2y ago
  Solar panels can still generate year round even when cloudy. It’s not as efficient sure but it’s not useless. That’s why you have a blend of renewables.
  - modo_mario 2y ago
    What renewable starts to produce more towards the winter to compensate for this especially since that's when energy consumption also rises?
    - butlike 2y ago
      Could it be possible to harness the weight of the snowfall, ice, or something else to power a turbine?
    - layer8 2y ago
      Luckily it’s summer in one hemisphere when it’s winter in the other. Unfortunately a global grid seems infeasible in the foreseeable future.
  - chickenbig 2y ago
    > It’s not as efficient sure but it’s not useless. In the UK I've seen a system which produced 0.5kWh/day in mid-winter and 35kWh/day in summer. That kind of variation is hard to overbuild for. > That’s why you have a blend of renewables. Yes, we then have to build wind turbines, plenty of under-utilised transmission (because wind is in the wrong place), methane CCGT/OCGT backup (and they need to receive capacity payments to keep them in business) and perhaps eventually electrolysers to convert excess electricity to H2 (which then have to operate at low utilisation). The overall system seems quite complicated and more complex than the first step of deploying cheap solar panels so save a bit of methane.
- iSnow 2y ago
  That basically means nuclear is the main competitor to renewables. Nuclear has extremely high Capex, so want to run as much as possible. Renewables are dependent on the weather and want to produce when the sun is out or the wind is blowing. I believe both have their uses, but I don't buy they go together well.
ViewTrick1002 2y ago
The difference is who gets harmed. For solar and wind the general public generally can’t be affected by any accidents because the deaths are general work place hazards coming from working aloft with heavy equipment. For nuclear power the public is on the hook for cleanup fees from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars and the large scale accidents we have seen caused hundreds of thousands to get evacuated. It is not even comparable. If I chose to not work in the solar and wind industry my chance of harm is as near zero as it gets. Meanwhile about all consequences from nuclear power afflicts the general public. Both in terms of costs, injuries and life changing evacuations.
- mgfist 2y ago
  Better to compare to fossil fuels, which kill far more people and animals both directly (eg. explosions) and indirectly (emissions).
  - mythrwy 2y ago
    100,000 people dying one at a time over the course of a decade seems to have a lower public relations impact then 1000 people dying in a once-in-a-century spectacularly tragic accident. Even though the total casualties are higher. Fentanyl is a prime example. I believe (from memory) over 100,000 people die of it each year in the in the US. Everyone knows it's a problem. We should "do something". But, we don't. Nobody cares enough (except as a platitude come election time). However if 1000 people died in a bomb attack (or similar) it would be top news for weeks and they would be scrambling the military and make us take our wedding rings off for scanning at airports.
    - wordpad25 2y ago
      It's also who is impacted, right, Fentanyl deaths are self inflicted
      - mythrwy 2y ago
        True. Maybe substitute car accidents. If 10% of people who died in auto accidents each year were to perish in one horrible spectacular event it probably would be "transformative" as far as public policy.
rtkwe 2y ago
The evidence of safety isn't the issue it's that nuclear accidents however rare have huge implications so stick in people's minds. We're bad, mentally, at appreciating low level dangers that are diffuse like minor pollutants which kill slowly or degrade people's health over time. What does stick in our minds well are singular big events like terror attacks, Chernobyl or Deep Water Horizon. Even our legal systems address singular events better than low level harms because it's harder to deflect blame because the damages are so immediately identifiable; Fukushima and Chernobyl destroyed their closest cities and areas overnight in ways that they'll likely never recover from and the effects of their poisons are rapidly identifiable.
Kon5ole 2y ago
This is a common argument in discussions about nuclear power but it doesn't work. You can't claim that nuclear is safe based on history, you have to consider the potential. A gun is dangerous even if it hasn't killed anyone yet. We know that if you point the gun at someone and pull the trigger they die, hence it is considered dangerous. We knew this even before the first gun killed the first human. Similarly, we know that nuclear power plants can cause immense disasters in a worst case scenario, even though it hasn't happened yet.
- LorenPechtel 2y ago
  The thing is we do know it can't happen. We had Chernobyl. It's the worst case for a runaway reactor. Did it cross the prompt critical line or not--I don't think this will ever be resolved but it doesn't matter. We saw what happens--power level through the roof, destroys the reactor, other than the radioactivity it didn't do much. It's also the worst case for a China Syndrome. Nothing happened, as a lot of the more sane people thought would be the case. The molten reactor core burned through the reactor floor but was no longer in an ideal configuration and thus no longer critical. (And it could not be critical as the moderators were destroyed, which would inherently take it subcritical.) Note that this is inevitable--the margin between critical (below which you don't get the heat to burn into the ground) and prompt critical (where it destroys itself and thus ceases melting) is very narrow. It's also the worst case for a radioactive spill. No containment dome, fire in the reactor contents. The supposed thousands of radiation deaths simply did not show up. We have about 90 that are clearly caused by the accident. We have a huge variation in the estimated numbers since then, the first that looks reasonable is the UN estimate of 4,000--to a large degree in the people Russia sent in to deal with the situation without proper safety equipment. For comparison the largest coal disaster was 1,500 dead--and I doubt you've ever heard of it.
  - Kon5ole 2y ago
    >The thing is we do know it can't happen. We had Chernobyl. >It's the worst case for a runaway reactor. No it was not. The worst case would have been that anyone involved with Chernobyl ran for their lives and abandoned the plant leaving it to burn to the ground, no sarcophagus was built, nobody spent billions on treating farmland all over europe, nobody destroyed animals unsuitable for human consumption for decades and nobody started screening for the excess cancer cases (which occurred everywhere in europe as well as behind the iron curtain) leaving them untreated until too late. None of that happened, luckily, but it could. Instead people gave their lives at the scene and others have worked their entire careers since to prevent Chernobyl from actually becoming a "worst case scenario". It is also a mistake to think that Chernobyl is a disaster in the past, it is not over yet. The latest sarcophagus was built not even a decade ago at a cost of over 2 billion USD. Why do you suppose that was deemed necessary? Also, it is currently in a warzone.

jayd16 2y ago

Well ok, they're as safe as long as we're extremely vigilant but does it then follow that we should be more relaxed about safety concerns? I don't think showing the stats is all that convincing to people when the worst case scenario is so impactful. My guess is we'll need to see newer safer designs before public options shift.

foxyv 2y ago
I would not describe the current nuclear power regulatory system as "Extremely Vigilant." More like "Extremely Litigious." I think lawyers have made more on nuclear power than concrete companies and nuclear engineers combined.

tourmalinetaco 2y ago

And unlike wind and solar can be used on-demand akin to coal, making it an extremely attractive option to run alongside renewables, especially year round. Solar panels are literally useless 75% of the year in at least 1/3rd of the US and we still rely on coal because of that. Sure, batteries may exist in the future that can handle solar, and maybe panels will exist in the future that will be more efficient, but we have technology now that can outpace renewables consistently and on-demand.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Which means nuclear and renewables are the worst possible companions imaginable. Nuclear and renewables compete for the same slice of the grid. The cheapest most inflexible where all other power generation has to adapt to their demands. They are fundamentally incompatible. For every passing year more existing reactors will spend more time turned off because the power they produce is too expensive. Let alone insanely expensive new builds. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-prices-negative-france-solar-panel-wind-renewable-nuclear-green-2024-6 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/energy-... Batteries are here now, and delivering nuclear scale energy day in and day out in California. https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/ https://blog.gridstatus.io/caiso-batteries-apr-2024/
- exe34 2y ago
  do you happen to know why we can't dump the energy into something like smelting, desalination or other heavy industry?
  - amonon 2y ago
    I am uniformed on this, but those industries likely take time to scale up. A large scale desalination plant requires a significant amount of infrastructure.
    - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
      The question is also: Where are you building it? No one will want anything from your desalination plant in Norway, and shipping water is not a thing because it becomes too expensive. The next problem is energy cost vs. duty cycle. The less you run due to only utilizing cheap prices the higher the impact of fixed costs on your business.
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        >shipping water is not a thing because it becomes too expensive. Except for a significant portion of the GDP of Fiji
  - MisterTea 2y ago
    Smelting cant base their production on when excess energy might be available. They need that energy now. Desalination might be a good sink but again, if water is needed now and there's no excess then what? That's why we have base load.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Because every industry has capital costs that you want to repay by using it as much as you can. There is a very small amount of people working on low-capital industries (normally with higher operational costs), and they seem to be close to some gain here or there. But almost all of our knowledge is biased against turning things off.
dawnerd 2y ago
Solar panels can still generate year round even when cloudy. It’s not as efficient sure but it’s not useless. That’s why you have a blend of renewables.
- modo_mario 2y ago
  What renewable starts to produce more towards the winter to compensate for this especially since that's when energy consumption also rises?
  - butlike 2y ago
    Could it be possible to harness the weight of the snowfall, ice, or something else to power a turbine?
  - layer8 2y ago
    Luckily it’s summer in one hemisphere when it’s winter in the other. Unfortunately a global grid seems infeasible in the foreseeable future.
- chickenbig 2y ago
  > It’s not as efficient sure but it’s not useless. In the UK I've seen a system which produced 0.5kWh/day in mid-winter and 35kWh/day in summer. That kind of variation is hard to overbuild for. > That’s why you have a blend of renewables. Yes, we then have to build wind turbines, plenty of under-utilised transmission (because wind is in the wrong place), methane CCGT/OCGT backup (and they need to receive capacity payments to keep them in business) and perhaps eventually electrolysers to convert excess electricity to H2 (which then have to operate at low utilisation). The overall system seems quite complicated and more complex than the first step of deploying cheap solar panels so save a bit of methane.
iSnow 2y ago
That basically means nuclear is the main competitor to renewables. Nuclear has extremely high Capex, so want to run as much as possible. Renewables are dependent on the weather and want to produce when the sun is out or the wind is blowing. I believe both have their uses, but I don't buy they go together well.

ViewTrick1002 2y ago

The difference is who gets harmed. For solar and wind the general public generally can’t be affected by any accidents because the deaths are general work place hazards coming from working aloft with heavy equipment. For nuclear power the public is on the hook for cleanup fees from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars and the large scale accidents we have seen caused hundreds of thousands to get evacuated. It is not even comparable. If I chose to not work in the solar and wind industry my chance of harm is as near zero as it gets. Meanwhile about all consequences from nuclear power afflicts the general public. Both in terms of costs, injuries and life changing evacuations.

mgfist 2y ago
Better to compare to fossil fuels, which kill far more people and animals both directly (eg. explosions) and indirectly (emissions).
- mythrwy 2y ago
  100,000 people dying one at a time over the course of a decade seems to have a lower public relations impact then 1000 people dying in a once-in-a-century spectacularly tragic accident. Even though the total casualties are higher. Fentanyl is a prime example. I believe (from memory) over 100,000 people die of it each year in the in the US. Everyone knows it's a problem. We should "do something". But, we don't. Nobody cares enough (except as a platitude come election time). However if 1000 people died in a bomb attack (or similar) it would be top news for weeks and they would be scrambling the military and make us take our wedding rings off for scanning at airports.
  - wordpad25 2y ago
    It's also who is impacted, right, Fentanyl deaths are self inflicted
    - mythrwy 2y ago
      True. Maybe substitute car accidents. If 10% of people who died in auto accidents each year were to perish in one horrible spectacular event it probably would be "transformative" as far as public policy.

rtkwe 2y ago

The evidence of safety isn't the issue it's that nuclear accidents however rare have huge implications so stick in people's minds. We're bad, mentally, at appreciating low level dangers that are diffuse like minor pollutants which kill slowly or degrade people's health over time. What does stick in our minds well are singular big events like terror attacks, Chernobyl or Deep Water Horizon. Even our legal systems address singular events better than low level harms because it's harder to deflect blame because the damages are so immediately identifiable; Fukushima and Chernobyl destroyed their closest cities and areas overnight in ways that they'll likely never recover from and the effects of their poisons are rapidly identifiable.

Kon5ole 2y ago

This is a common argument in discussions about nuclear power but it doesn't work. You can't claim that nuclear is safe based on history, you have to consider the potential. A gun is dangerous even if it hasn't killed anyone yet. We know that if you point the gun at someone and pull the trigger they die, hence it is considered dangerous. We knew this even before the first gun killed the first human. Similarly, we know that nuclear power plants can cause immense disasters in a worst case scenario, even though it hasn't happened yet.

LorenPechtel 2y ago
The thing is we do know it can't happen. We had Chernobyl. It's the worst case for a runaway reactor. Did it cross the prompt critical line or not--I don't think this will ever be resolved but it doesn't matter. We saw what happens--power level through the roof, destroys the reactor, other than the radioactivity it didn't do much. It's also the worst case for a China Syndrome. Nothing happened, as a lot of the more sane people thought would be the case. The molten reactor core burned through the reactor floor but was no longer in an ideal configuration and thus no longer critical. (And it could not be critical as the moderators were destroyed, which would inherently take it subcritical.) Note that this is inevitable--the margin between critical (below which you don't get the heat to burn into the ground) and prompt critical (where it destroys itself and thus ceases melting) is very narrow. It's also the worst case for a radioactive spill. No containment dome, fire in the reactor contents. The supposed thousands of radiation deaths simply did not show up. We have about 90 that are clearly caused by the accident. We have a huge variation in the estimated numbers since then, the first that looks reasonable is the UN estimate of 4,000--to a large degree in the people Russia sent in to deal with the situation without proper safety equipment. For comparison the largest coal disaster was 1,500 dead--and I doubt you've ever heard of it.
- Kon5ole 2y ago
  >The thing is we do know it can't happen. We had Chernobyl. >It's the worst case for a runaway reactor. No it was not. The worst case would have been that anyone involved with Chernobyl ran for their lives and abandoned the plant leaving it to burn to the ground, no sarcophagus was built, nobody spent billions on treating farmland all over europe, nobody destroyed animals unsuitable for human consumption for decades and nobody started screening for the excess cancer cases (which occurred everywhere in europe as well as behind the iron curtain) leaving them untreated until too late. None of that happened, luckily, but it could. Instead people gave their lives at the scene and others have worked their entire careers since to prevent Chernobyl from actually becoming a "worst case scenario". It is also a mistake to think that Chernobyl is a disaster in the past, it is not over yet. The latest sarcophagus was built not even a decade ago at a cost of over 2 billion USD. Why do you suppose that was deemed necessary? Also, it is currently in a warzone.