14 ms·

Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?

by croes 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
markhahn 2y ago
"better safe than sorry" is the definition of a slippery slope. but I'm curious: what event do you think taught us that? IMO, there's far mode damage being done to the world by, say, mercury in batteries than by nuclear accidents (of which chernobyl is the only serious one).
- tmpz22 2y ago
  $PROBLEM_2 being worse than $PROBLEM_1 does not mean $PROBLEM_1 is over regulated. Nuclear Waste handling and disposal is a significant regulatory issue and includes many REACTIVE measures that have been hard-learned over the past century at sites like Pennsylvania, Fukushima, and Chernobyl. This blind lashing out at any and all forms of regulation is ignorant. Each of these situations needs to be considered thoughtfully and contextually to find a balance between short term and long term objectives.
  - Hammershaft 2y ago
    We do not thoughtfully balance regulatory costs on nuclear vs say coal... Nuclear regulatory compliance is orders of magnitude more expensive despite being orders of magnitude safer for human health (on top of the climate).
    - KennyBlanken 2y ago
      90% of new electricity generation in the US is solar or wind. Coal generation has generally trended downward since the mid 2000s. We don't need nuclear to replace coal.
      - Recurecur 2y ago
        We certainly do need nuclear to replace coal. Coal and nuclear are both reliable sources of energy, unlike solar or wind. I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Also, as far as "coal trending downward", that isn't the case outside the US. We're going to need a vastly increased energy supply in order to meet the world's needs. Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Beyond that, high density energy sources are highly desirable off-planet. :-)
        myrmidon 2y ago
        > Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Relying on fusion power to clean up electricity generation is highly irresponsible, because in every remotely credible scenario, rollout is MUCH too slow to meaningfully affect climate change. But I'm interested in trying to understand your view, and also which fusion power approach you put your faith in (and generally discussing this). I strongly believe that nuclear power has no future, because it performs very poorly in an energy market where the marginal cost of producing is very frequently near-zero (thanks to renewables). Nuclear power is already quite expensive-- only running the plants half the time ruins cost competitiveness completely. You can see this happening already in countries like France and China, where nuclear and coal power plants are increasingly operating in load-following mode (i.e. not 100% all-the-time), which makes them even less cost competitive than in the past. > I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Tow points here: Intermittency is a problem that actually shrinks at scale: The more spread out your wind parks/panels are, the smaller the periods where they provide unexpectedly little power (=> you need less buffering than you would naively assume). Second point: a 100kWh battery is already affordable for a single household right now (thats basically big electric car battery). Price trends only go one direction there... > Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). From this I assume you believe that nuclear reactors are not cost competitive mainly because of safety regulations, and "simply" fixing those regulations would make them able to compete on cost? This is likely incorrect. Consider: Coal power plants are basically a minimally regulated, built-at-scale, super-simplified variant of a thermal power plant. They are the "ideal" that hyper-optimized nuclear reactor designs will never be able to reach (disregarding fuel costs here!). Even so: They struggle to compete with renewable on price already (disregarding fuel costs!). What are your thoughts on this? My personal favorite: Tax carbon emission, use gas turbines as peaker plants, store energy long term via synthetic hydrogen, which is needed for carbon-free steel production anyway (and can also be used by gas peaker plants). Then just let the market find out which fraction of batteries, wind, solar, carbon-taxed gas/coal, nuclear etc. works best.
adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
Specifically, the current regulatory framework requires not just minimization of accident, but also minimization of radiation (to levels well below that of other powerplant types like coal). There probably could be a pretty notable cost savings in nuclear plant construction if they were allowed to regularly leak as much radiation into the environment to that which we already consider acceptable from other power sources.
- 7952 2y ago
  So if we just do something politically unacceptable and probably morally unacceptable then nuclear will be viable? And of course you could apply the same thing to other sources of energy and they will equally get cheaper. Wind turbines in beauty spots. Remove the air quality equipment from fossil fuel plants. Dam evey river.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    It's the other way around. We should apply equal regulations to coal making nuclear more competing.
  - kergonath 2y ago
    > So if we just do something politically unacceptable and probably morally unacceptable then nuclear will be viable? I think you missed the point. Coal-fired plants leak radiation significantly. If this is not morally unacceptable in one case, why would it be in another? They did not say that nuclear should have a free pass, just that the regulations should be consistent. > And of course you could apply the same thing to other sources of energy and they will equally get cheaper. Different technologies have different downsides and advantages. The parent was talking about 2 technologies having inconsistent expectations for the same metric. Personally, I do not want wind turbines everywhere or a nuclear plant in a city centre, but I think that both technologies (plus solar and hydro) need to be developed, because both have much smaller ecological and human costs than the alternative. > Dam evey river. That is counter-productive as there are diminishing returns, and not every river is worth daming.
Hammershaft 2y ago
Even if you account for chernobyl and fukushima the death count from nuclear is orders of magnitudes less than the death count from coal, oil, solar, etc. We overregulated nuclear because the risk of nuclear disasters feels scarier than the real risk of deaths downstream of airborne particulates. There are tradeoffs to every safety regulation on nuclear and those tradeoffs include more climate induced disasters, a sicker population, long term higher energy costs, etc.
- margalabargala 2y ago
  Tell us more about the death count from solar. Is it all people falling off roofs?
  - dmoy 2y ago
    Pretty much yea. So not exactly a fair comparison because e.g. grid level solar doesn't necessarily involve roof climbing. But given current installation base, it's like 3x more deaths per unit energy than wind.
    - hgomersall 2y ago
      I don't know how reliable it is, but the first link I clicked on contradicts your assertion: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
    - margalabargala 2y ago
      Got a source for that?
- kristiandupont 2y ago
  >nuclear disasters feels scarier I am in favor of more nuclear power and I know very little about the field, but this argument never resonated with me. If the Chernobyl series paints a reasonably realistic image of what could have happened had they not contained the melt down, we are talking "better part of a continent being uninhabitable for thousands of years". When that is the potential risk, comparing death counts from non-catastrophic scenarios isn't what we should be looking at.

Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?

by croes 2y ago

Who decides they are over engineered on safety? Didn’t we already learn better safe than sorry?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

markhahn 2y ago

"better safe than sorry" is the definition of a slippery slope. but I'm curious: what event do you think taught us that? IMO, there's far mode damage being done to the world by, say, mercury in batteries than by nuclear accidents (of which chernobyl is the only serious one).

tmpz22 2y ago
$PROBLEM_2 being worse than $PROBLEM_1 does not mean $PROBLEM_1 is over regulated. Nuclear Waste handling and disposal is a significant regulatory issue and includes many REACTIVE measures that have been hard-learned over the past century at sites like Pennsylvania, Fukushima, and Chernobyl. This blind lashing out at any and all forms of regulation is ignorant. Each of these situations needs to be considered thoughtfully and contextually to find a balance between short term and long term objectives.
- Hammershaft 2y ago
  We do not thoughtfully balance regulatory costs on nuclear vs say coal... Nuclear regulatory compliance is orders of magnitude more expensive despite being orders of magnitude safer for human health (on top of the climate).
  - KennyBlanken 2y ago
    90% of new electricity generation in the US is solar or wind. Coal generation has generally trended downward since the mid 2000s. We don't need nuclear to replace coal.
    - Recurecur 2y ago
      We certainly do need nuclear to replace coal. Coal and nuclear are both reliable sources of energy, unlike solar or wind. I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Also, as far as "coal trending downward", that isn't the case outside the US. We're going to need a vastly increased energy supply in order to meet the world's needs. Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Beyond that, high density energy sources are highly desirable off-planet. :-)
      - myrmidon 2y ago
        > Nuclear fission absolutely needs to be part of that mix, as we work to master fusion and other advanced, safe, and environmentally responsible forms of energy production. Relying on fusion power to clean up electricity generation is highly irresponsible, because in every remotely credible scenario, rollout is MUCH too slow to meaningfully affect climate change. But I'm interested in trying to understand your view, and also which fusion power approach you put your faith in (and generally discussing this). I strongly believe that nuclear power has no future, because it performs very poorly in an energy market where the marginal cost of producing is very frequently near-zero (thanks to renewables). Nuclear power is already quite expensive-- only running the plants half the time ruins cost competitiveness completely. You can see this happening already in countries like France and China, where nuclear and coal power plants are increasingly operating in load-following mode (i.e. not 100% all-the-time), which makes them even less cost competitive than in the past. > I'm sure you're about to go into some battery related hand waving, but that doesn't help in two ways. First, there will be intervals where the lull in production exceeds storage capacity, which means fatalities in many cases. Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). Tow points here: Intermittency is a problem that actually shrinks at scale: The more spread out your wind parks/panels are, the smaller the periods where they provide unexpectedly little power (=> you need less buffering than you would naively assume). Second point: a 100kWh battery is already affordable for a single household right now (thats basically big electric car battery). Price trends only go one direction there... > Second, battery is expensive, so the total system cost can exceed the cost of nuclear (especially with sane regulation and continually improving engineering). From this I assume you believe that nuclear reactors are not cost competitive mainly because of safety regulations, and "simply" fixing those regulations would make them able to compete on cost? This is likely incorrect. Consider: Coal power plants are basically a minimally regulated, built-at-scale, super-simplified variant of a thermal power plant. They are the "ideal" that hyper-optimized nuclear reactor designs will never be able to reach (disregarding fuel costs here!). Even so: They struggle to compete with renewable on price already (disregarding fuel costs!). What are your thoughts on this? My personal favorite: Tax carbon emission, use gas turbines as peaker plants, store energy long term via synthetic hydrogen, which is needed for carbon-free steel production anyway (and can also be used by gas peaker plants). Then just let the market find out which fraction of batteries, wind, solar, carbon-taxed gas/coal, nuclear etc. works best.

adgjlsfhk1 2y ago

Specifically, the current regulatory framework requires not just minimization of accident, but also minimization of radiation (to levels well below that of other powerplant types like coal). There probably could be a pretty notable cost savings in nuclear plant construction if they were allowed to regularly leak as much radiation into the environment to that which we already consider acceptable from other power sources.

7952 2y ago
So if we just do something politically unacceptable and probably morally unacceptable then nuclear will be viable? And of course you could apply the same thing to other sources of energy and they will equally get cheaper. Wind turbines in beauty spots. Remove the air quality equipment from fossil fuel plants. Dam evey river.
- fsflover 2y ago
  It's the other way around. We should apply equal regulations to coal making nuclear more competing.
- kergonath 2y ago
  > So if we just do something politically unacceptable and probably morally unacceptable then nuclear will be viable? I think you missed the point. Coal-fired plants leak radiation significantly. If this is not morally unacceptable in one case, why would it be in another? They did not say that nuclear should have a free pass, just that the regulations should be consistent. > And of course you could apply the same thing to other sources of energy and they will equally get cheaper. Different technologies have different downsides and advantages. The parent was talking about 2 technologies having inconsistent expectations for the same metric. Personally, I do not want wind turbines everywhere or a nuclear plant in a city centre, but I think that both technologies (plus solar and hydro) need to be developed, because both have much smaller ecological and human costs than the alternative. > Dam evey river. That is counter-productive as there are diminishing returns, and not every river is worth daming.

Hammershaft 2y ago

Even if you account for chernobyl and fukushima the death count from nuclear is orders of magnitudes less than the death count from coal, oil, solar, etc. We overregulated nuclear because the risk of nuclear disasters feels scarier than the real risk of deaths downstream of airborne particulates. There are tradeoffs to every safety regulation on nuclear and those tradeoffs include more climate induced disasters, a sicker population, long term higher energy costs, etc.

margalabargala 2y ago
Tell us more about the death count from solar. Is it all people falling off roofs?
- dmoy 2y ago
  Pretty much yea. So not exactly a fair comparison because e.g. grid level solar doesn't necessarily involve roof climbing. But given current installation base, it's like 3x more deaths per unit energy than wind.
  - hgomersall 2y ago
    I don't know how reliable it is, but the first link I clicked on contradicts your assertion: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    Got a source for that?
kristiandupont 2y ago
>nuclear disasters feels scarier I am in favor of more nuclear power and I know very little about the field, but this argument never resonated with me. If the Chernobyl series paints a reasonably realistic image of what could have happened had they not contained the melt down, we are talking "better part of a continent being uninhabitable for thousands of years". When that is the potential risk, comparing death counts from non-catastrophic scenarios isn't what we should be looking at.