5 ms·

It is expensive because of the regulatory burdens associated with making it unreasonably safe. By unreasonably safe I mean that harms predicted by radiation mod

• oneshtein 1y ago
  Nuclear power plants require international laws and international cooperation for insurance, because one serious incident, such as Chornobyl, can wipe a continent. In Ukraine, profits from all nuclear plants will cover damages, caused by Chornobyl, in 1000-5000 years IF nothing more will happen to Chornobyl or other an other nuclear power plant in those years, which is unlikely.
  • looofooo0 1y ago
    What kind assumptions is this based on?
  • close04 1y ago
    We can make nuclear safe (enough) but after one big incident nobody wanted the political career suicide to push for this. So we are stuck with criticizing stone-age level nuclear power because we never took it further. The West never stopped doing something just because the USSR didn’t do it properly. If we did the same with commercial air travel after the first disasters we’d still cross the oceans in boats. Car accidents kill 10-15 times more people every year worldwide than Chernobyl did but we don’t give up on cars either. Heck, smoking kills 7-8 times more people than cars every year (that’s 80-100 Chernobyls worth every year) and we still allow it. The reasons are political not technically or financially insurmountable obstacles. We didn’t shut down nuclear in Europe for “green” reasons or because we can’t improve it, or because it kills too many people, but because enough Russian money went into politicians’ pockets to do this.
    • oneshtein 1y ago
      You arguments boils down to «it's OK to wipe a continent once in a while, because nuclear energy is the safest energy option per megawatt produced».
      • dpassens 1y ago
        No, the argument is that it didn't "wipe the continent" and in fact caused far less damage than other things we're totally fine with. I don't see GP saying that they want an incident like this to repeat, just that, if it did, the consequences would be far less severe than "wiping the continent".
      • YawningAngel 1y ago
        We have had several serious nuclear incidents and none have destroyed either a continent or the people on it
        • natmaka 1y ago
          Most Russian Roulette games have many 'clicks' before the 'bang'.
          • 0-_-0 1y ago
            these were the bangs
            • natmaka 1y ago
              Maybe. Maybe not. Nobody knows for sure, however after each of these click/bang the "there will be no more problem!" thesis seems less and less prominently published.
        • Kon5ole 1y ago
          That it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it couldn't happen in the future. We have never had a worst case event but we do know pretty well what the consequences of a worst case event could be. The worst case consequences of Chernobyl were stopped because people literally risked their lives to prevent it. The fire was put out, the steam explosion was prevented, and countless lives were saved as a result. Even so, many countries spent billions, over several decades, to minimize the consequences. As far as 2000 miles away, animals are still to this day fed special foods and managed to avoid prolonged grazing in contaminated areas. Think about it for a second - over 2000 miles away, almost 40 years later, this still requires active management. Despite best efforts to handle the situation when it happened. Now consider that every reactor carries it's own copy of the risks, and they only generate around 10 TWh of electricity per year. That's just way too little electricity for such a risk. It makes no sense. Meanwhile solar and storage is deployed at a rate equivalent to a new reactor every month as we speak. Faster, cheaper, and comparatively risk-free.
  • justsomehnguy 1y ago
    > can wipe a continent Sorry, but no. Chernobyl exclusion zone is less than a single area of the Agent Orange usage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1996.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chernobyl_radiation_map_1... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial-herbicide-spray-missions-in-Southern-Vietnam--1965-1971.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial-herbicide-spray-mi...
    • aydyn 1y ago
      Again, Chernobyl was not the worst case scenario. Everyone knows the story, some heroes sacrified their lives to prevent it.
      • Integer 1y ago
        You mean, everyone watched the TV story which has little basis in fact. Chernobyl was the worst case scenario - there's no way to build a reactor that would produce worse radiation effects when destroyed than to use a pile of graphite.
        • aydyn 1y ago
          Only about 20-40% of the radioactive contaminants were spread before the fire was put out by firefighters wearing no protection. On top of that only 1 reactor burned, but it shared facilities with another reactor. So if the fire was not put out, it could have easily been 5x worse. There were 4 reactors total, so in the absolute worst case it could've been 10x worse.
  • pqtyw 1y ago
    Still, though, if nuclear continued growing at the same pace it was until the 80s we'd be in a massively better spot climate change wise. Sure, these days its too expensive in relative terms but switching back to fossil fuels due to all the Chornobyl/Three Mile panic (but mainly likely because of the cost) might end up being one of the bigger mistakes in human history.
• Angostura 1y ago
  > harms predicted by radiation models are unscientific, Where are your scientific alternative models?