9 ms·

> “With the goal of completing the decommissioning in 30 to 40 years [...]" Can't decide if it's a success of nuclear or a failure. Leaning towards success: -

• Krasnol 2y ago
  Sound more like a success for the anti-nuclear movement.
  • baq 2y ago
    The anti-nuclear movement succeeded in Germany and they’re reaping the crops now. Nobody will go back to 1800s quality of life willingly if they can help it, be it by burning coal, trash, plastics, tires or paint cans for heat or electricity.
    • Krasnol 2y ago
      Oh, sure they are reaping. 61.5% of Germany's electricity comes from renewable sources[1]. What nuclear generated has been replaced years ago, and they have a law to phase out coal completely. The only weird thing about it is that they're being hated on so much from the nuclear-bubble, while the bubble simultaneously drags the shield of innovation and environment protection. Meanwhile, there is negligible innovation in nuclear and saving the environment 2024 means acting fast. Nothing about nuclear is fast. [2] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/ausbau-erneuerbare-energien-2225808 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/ausbau-erne... PS. because it automatically comes up: no, Germany could not phase out coal before nuclear because there are much more jobs connected to coal and no politician would survive such a fast exit. How important it is, can be seen from the name of the commission tasked with the coal phase out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Growth,_Structural_Change_and_Employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Growth,_Structur...
      • Scarblac 2y ago
        61.5% sounds like a lot, but how much electricity is needed to replace everything that fossil fuel is now used for? I think it needs to increase to 400% or so to do that.
        • ViewTrick1002 2y ago
          We don't need to replace primary energy with electric energy in a 1:1 ratio. An ICE car is 20-30% efficient, an EV is 90% efficient. Generally we are looking at a grid expansion, but it is not massive. See this amazing chart on rejected vs. useful energy: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/
          • WalterBright 2y ago
            > an EV is 90% efficient An EV is 85-90% efficient with power coming out of the batteries. However, the charging efficiency of the batteries is at about 80%. So the overall efficiency is 80% of 90%, or 72%.
            • heavenlyblue 2y ago
              For the sake of replacement, we should not include the charging efficiency, because the context is that of "how kuch energy the car can store" rather than "where it comes from"
              • Scarblac 2y ago
                It's "how much is needed to keep doing the same thing", I don't see why charging would be excluded.
              • WalterBright 2y ago
                It is not about how much it can store. You cannot wish away the charging losses. There are no losses to pumping gas into a tank. Nor can you wish away the losses in the charger itself. Converting AC to DC is hardly 100% efficient.
    • natmaka 2y ago
      > The anti-nuclear movement succeeded in Germany No, the Fukushima accident was decisive. Just before, at the end of 2010, the operating life of nuclear reactors has been extended by law. The Fukushima happened and public opinion reversed, wanting an as-quick-as-possible nuclear phaseout. Not a single political party could save those reactors: https://x.com/HannoKlausmeier/status/1784158942823690561 https://x.com/HannoKlausmeier/status/1784158942823690561
• cyberax 2y ago
  > - OTOH another big earthquake/tsunami can potentially wash it all away and release clumps of radioactive and poisonous metals to the environment...? The reactor itself is high enough to be safe from tsunamis.
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    If the backup generators had been put on a simple platform, the plants would never have melted down.
    • dredmorbius 2y ago
      I suspect that's not the only SPOF in play. Nukes, as with rockets, are complex. Many things have to go right and keep going right for them to operate as intended. (See Rickover's "Paper Reactors" paper for a similar take on this.) Another factor that contributed not only to Fukushima but other inundations following the Tohoku earthquake was that in response to the megathrust-fault slip, the east coast of Japan sank about a meter lower.[1] Engineers building seawalls failed to take this into account, as I understand. I'd first realised that such quakes could lower land on the continental plate of megathrust faults when looking over satellite imagery of Banda Aceh after the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunami. Regions along the coast were flooded long after the tsunami had passed, which I realised must have come from a lowering of the land itself. Seattle and the Pacific Northwest may face similar issue should their Big One occur eventually. ________________________________ Notes: 1. "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038080612000984 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003808061..." <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038080612000984 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003808061...>
      • WalterBright 2y ago
        There are a number of cheap-as-dirt things that could have been done to prevent the disaster. Putting the generators on a platform was one. Venting the hydrogen outside instead of inside, another. Having emergency repair parts on site is a third. Having a gravity-fed way to cool the reactors with external water, a fourth. And so on.
• atomic128 2y ago
  The "super duper radioactive material" you're so afraid of is what's left of the fuel. It's full of energy. The precious fuel is so full of energy that it gets hot ("decay heat"). Without cooling, it melts. Cooling was lost during the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, the fourth most powerful earthquake ever recorded anywhere. The "Great East Japan Earthquake" and its tsunami killed 19,759 people. The earthquake was a terrible tragedy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an... Meanwhile, the precious fuel remained safely entombed within the concrete and steel vessel that was designed to contain it. Without cooling, the fuel got hot ("decay heat") and melted, always safely enclosed within the vessel. Unfortunately, during attempts to cool the fuel in the aftermath of the earthquake, some radioactive fission products were released into the environment: caesium, iodine, xenon, etc. These fission products have been diluted and are harmless. See the section "Radionuclide release" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident How much harm did the radioactive fuel cause? Quoting Wikipedia: No adverse health effects among non-worker Fukushima residents have been documented that are directly attributable to radiation exposure from the accident, according to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Insurance compensation was paid for one death from lung cancer (4 years later), but this does not prove a causal relationship between radiation and the cancer. Six other persons have been reported as having developed cancer or leukemia. Two workers were hospitalized because of radiation burns, and several other people sustained physical injuries as a consequence of the accident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident
  • philipkglass 2y ago
    The "super duper radioactive material" you're so afraid of is what's left of the fuel. It's full of energy. This precious fuel is so full of energy that it gets very hot ("decay heat"). Fresh reactor fuel is even more full of potential energy but it doesn't get hot because uranium 235 and 238 have very long half lives. Fuel that has been used in a reactor gets hot primarily due to fission products (lighter elements formed when fuel atoms split apart) that undergo faster radioactive decay. There's also some decay heat from the production of transuranic elements (elements heavier than uranium, generated by neutron capture). But the fission product decay heat dwarfs the transuranic element contribution until several decades have passed. It makes sense to be more afraid of the super duper radioactive material from spent fuel than the slightly radioactive material in brand new fuel. The radiotoxicity is vastly higher, the heat generation complicates handling/storage, and the chemical composition has gained dozens of elements scattered around the periodic table. In terms of usefulness, a fresh fuel rod is like a clean cardboard box and a used rod is more like a cardboard box that held a hot pizza. It's so dirty that it costs more to recycle it into something usable than to just sequester it and start with fresh material.
• Dalewyn 2y ago
  The Fukushima #1 meltdown was man-made, namely the absolute ineptitude of the Japanese government at the time. As disasterous as the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami were, those were not what ultimately caused the meltdown.
  • teamonkey 2y ago
    The government was no more or less inept than any other organisation - government or private - anywhere in the world. When faced with pressure to save money but still deliver, weighed up against a very low risk of catastrophe in their time, they did the mental math and cut corners, found ways around the safeguarding policies previously put in place and kicked infrastructure spending down the line. The big problem with nuclear is not technological, it’s guaranteeing that whoever is responsible for it will be competent, capable and solvent for hundreds of years.
    • Dalewyn 2y ago
      You literally do not know what transpired. When the tsunami hit and Fukushima #1 lost power and was at risk of meltdown, TEPCO was ready to scuttle the reactors by dumping seawater in them. It would have rendered the reactors unusable, but meltdown would be prevented. The Japanese government at the time, coming from the Prime Minister (Naoto Kan) himself, denied TEPCO from scuttling them because the government wanted the reactors usable. TEPCO was begging for authorization but it was not meant to be. So what happened was the meltdown happened and the reactors became unusable anyway. The blame was then scapegoated on TEPCO, because elite politicians surely can't and shouldn't be prosecuted for their ineptitude. What happened at Fukushima #1 was a human failure that did not have to happen. Bittersweet revenge was that the incumbent party at that time, the Democrat Party of Japan, lost the subsequent general election and the party subsequently fell apart.
      • jborean93 2y ago
        How does that refute what the parent comment was saying? Sounds like you are agreeing that the problem is not the technology but the people and processes in place.
• bamboozled 2y ago
  If you were a Japanese tax payer, would it be a success ? The total cleanup costs were estimated to be between 50.5 and 71 trillion yen ($470 to $660 billion). For the cleanup, only 184.3 billion yen was reserved in the September supplementary budget of prefecture Fukushima, and some funds in the central government's third supplementary budget of 2011.
  • autoexecbat 2y ago
    They don't have to pay for it all this year
    • bamboozled 2y ago
      Very naive comment. It’s still a lot of money. Are you aware about the current economic and demographic situation in Japan ? It’s not good here. That money could’ve went to a lot more useful things. Also remember this was a man made disaster. The plant was not upgraded (as recommended) to meet new safety guidelines, because, as if a mega tsunami would actually happen, right ? Then right after the event the operator was downplaying the extent of meltdown for too long. The PM had to step in and get a proper response team organised.
      • exe34 2y ago
        > The plant was not upgraded (as recommended) to meet new safety guidelines, because, as if a mega tsunami would actually happen, right ? And others on this same thread are trying to use the same disaster to paint nuclear as expensive.
        • natmaka 2y ago
          The Onagawa nuclear plant, albeit more exposed, resisted thanks to a single man (Yanosuke Hirai), deciding in conscience, and the Big Complicated System of Central Authority "controlling everything" failed miserably at Fukushima. Full story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#20... What works is local and managed by a few people, any Big Thing is a colossus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#20... feet of clay collapse is all the more painful. This state of affairs doesn't seem to benefit to nuclear (vs. 'renewable sources').
• foxyv 2y ago
  To add to your point. Disposal of nuclear waste at sea was common up until 1993. There is still a couple hundred thousand tons of such waste sitting in the ocean right now. In addition, about 214 times as much radioactive material was generated by nuclear testing than the Chernobyl breach. Fukushima wouldn't even come close to the waste that has already been released prior to the 1994 ban on Oceanic dumping.
  • portaouflop 2y ago
    What is the point ? That we dumped so much crap into the ocean a little more won’t hurt?
    • otherme123 2y ago
      And then you have to read about how expensive nuclear is today compared with a few decades ago because of the excesive regulations. Regulations that pro-nuclear usually want to relax, to make nuclear more economically viable. No wonder that dumping nuclear waste to river and oceans is cheaper than having to safely store it for at least a couple of centuries.
      • lupusreal 2y ago
        Rivers are a bad idea because they change course, get dredged, dammed, etc. Into the ocean is best, preferably somewhere deep and remote (simply to reduce the risk of people messing with it.) Deep trenches that would fuck with fish nets anyway are a good place for it.
        • troyvit 2y ago
          Sure, but who defines "remote"? We've explored a small percentage of the ocean [1] and most of the places we have explored we've been surprised to find life. In fact NOAA estimates that 91% of species in the ocean have yet to be classified [2]. We'd be dumping what is basically a forever chemical into places that we don't understand. If we can't responsibly keep track of the waste we're producing then we shouldn't produce it. I'm pro-nuclear, and I think we can do it, but we need to be the kind of civilization that can plan beyond the next quarter first. [1] https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/ocean-exploration/ https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/ocean-exploration/, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html [2] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-species.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-species.html