3 ms·

Do you trust that any of today's politicians will not be poor at nuclear reactor design and management?

qwe----3 4mo ago
Do you trust today's politicians with tall buildings, or bridges, or chemical plants, or guns, or fighter gets, or ammunition production?
- crote 4mo ago
  No? That's exactly the point. Today's politicians can't even be trusted to maintain critical infrastructure, leading to things like the Ponte Morandi collapse, or the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, or the Carola Bridge collapse, and so on and so on. They can't even properly maintain fairly trivial infrastructure, routinely leading to at most a few dozen deaths per incident. Why would you assume they'd do any better with nuclear reactors - where a second Chernobyl is the potential result of an incident?
mjmas 4mo ago
No, but they aren't the ones designing them. Politicians normally aren't engineers.
- pocksuppet 4mo ago
  Do you trust today's politicians to hire competent engineers? Do you trust today's politicians to provide all the money the engineers ask for? Besides an engineering problem, they are also a political problem for as long as they exist, and even longer. Remember how Russia bombed Chernobyl in the Ukraine war?
  - Moldoteck 4mo ago
    they dont hire engineers either. Those are hired by companies that design/build reactors. How many died from Chernobyl bombing in Ukraine?
    - pocksuppet 4mo ago
      Nothing happens until it does. Chernobyl was the safest reactor until it wasn't.
      - api 4mo ago
        Did anyone ever say Chernobyl was the safest reactor? It didn’t even have a containment building. I recall reading that the Soviet designs were regarded as poor at the time. I don’t totally disagree though. You can reduce it to economics. Nuclear has a safety profile whose far tail becomes exponentially expensive. It also has a lot of hidden costs that often get hand waved away. There have been much worse industrial accidents than Chernobyl in terms of life lost, like Bhopal which I think is still the record. But I believe Fukushima may have even passed Chernobyl as the most expensive industrial accident in history. For the cost of one Fukushima cleanup, Japan could have built wind solar and batteries equal to many Fukushima plants combined output. That’s really the problem. Amortized over the whole fleet over decades, and also including either waste disposal or recycling (which is also expensive), nuclear may just not be cost competitive. Fission power is a tech that looks spectacular on paper. I’m talking about fission of course. If we make fusion work that will be different. It isn’t dangerous to those outside the plant and produces a tiny fraction of the waste. (It would make some due to neutron activation but much less and much less “hot.”)
throw0101c 4mo ago
> Do you trust that any of today's politicians will not be poor at nuclear reactor design and management? As someone who lives in Ontario, Canada, where 50% of all electricity currently comes from nuclear power: * https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply I have no problem with getting more CANDU reactors (which is the current plan).
- bryanlarsen 4mo ago
  As an Ontarian, I love CANDU. As an Ontarian, the thought of spending $500B on a couple of reactors makes me furious. Ontario is not going to become competitive again with the most expensive electricity in the world.
  - throw0101c 4mo ago
    Ontario nuclear is cheaper than Ontario solar and wind (Table 2): * https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb-EN.pdf https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb... Until a few years ago it was cheaper than methane/natural gas: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20231019.pdf https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023... At least when it comes to refurbishment, the independent (reports to provincial parliament) FAO found: > Overall, despite near-term Nuclear Price increases, the Plan is projected to provide ratepayers with a long-term supply of relatively low-cost, low emissions electricity. * https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb-EN.pdf https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb... Their projections go to 2064. New-nuclear is worthy of discussion, but given we have stood up supply chains via the refurbishment process, there's a lot of knowledge out there. My current largest complaint with the new-nuclear plans is the SMRs.
    - bryanlarsen 4mo ago
      That's some impressive financial engineering to go from $500B for a few gigawatts of power to "reasonably priced".
Moldoteck 4mo ago
politicians dont manage nor design reactors. With all it's flaws nuclear is one of the safest sources of power

Do you trust today's politicians with tall buildings, or bridges, or chemical plants, or guns, or fighter gets, or ammunition production?

crote 4mo ago
No? That's exactly the point. Today's politicians can't even be trusted to maintain critical infrastructure, leading to things like the Ponte Morandi collapse, or the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, or the Carola Bridge collapse, and so on and so on. They can't even properly maintain fairly trivial infrastructure, routinely leading to at most a few dozen deaths per incident. Why would you assume they'd do any better with nuclear reactors - where a second Chernobyl is the potential result of an incident?

mjmas 4mo ago

No, but they aren't the ones designing them. Politicians normally aren't engineers.

pocksuppet 4mo ago
Do you trust today's politicians to hire competent engineers? Do you trust today's politicians to provide all the money the engineers ask for? Besides an engineering problem, they are also a political problem for as long as they exist, and even longer. Remember how Russia bombed Chernobyl in the Ukraine war?
- Moldoteck 4mo ago
  they dont hire engineers either. Those are hired by companies that design/build reactors. How many died from Chernobyl bombing in Ukraine?
  - pocksuppet 4mo ago
    Nothing happens until it does. Chernobyl was the safest reactor until it wasn't.
    - api 4mo ago
      Did anyone ever say Chernobyl was the safest reactor? It didn’t even have a containment building. I recall reading that the Soviet designs were regarded as poor at the time. I don’t totally disagree though. You can reduce it to economics. Nuclear has a safety profile whose far tail becomes exponentially expensive. It also has a lot of hidden costs that often get hand waved away. There have been much worse industrial accidents than Chernobyl in terms of life lost, like Bhopal which I think is still the record. But I believe Fukushima may have even passed Chernobyl as the most expensive industrial accident in history. For the cost of one Fukushima cleanup, Japan could have built wind solar and batteries equal to many Fukushima plants combined output. That’s really the problem. Amortized over the whole fleet over decades, and also including either waste disposal or recycling (which is also expensive), nuclear may just not be cost competitive. Fission power is a tech that looks spectacular on paper. I’m talking about fission of course. If we make fusion work that will be different. It isn’t dangerous to those outside the plant and produces a tiny fraction of the waste. (It would make some due to neutron activation but much less and much less “hot.”)

throw0101c 4mo ago

> Do you trust that any of today's politicians will not be poor at nuclear reactor design and management? As someone who lives in Ontario, Canada, where 50% of all electricity currently comes from nuclear power: * https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply https://www.ieso.ca/power-data?type=supply I have no problem with getting more CANDU reactors (which is the current plan).

bryanlarsen 4mo ago
As an Ontarian, I love CANDU. As an Ontarian, the thought of spending $500B on a couple of reactors makes me furious. Ontario is not going to become competitive again with the most expensive electricity in the world.
- throw0101c 4mo ago
  Ontario nuclear is cheaper than Ontario solar and wind (Table 2): * https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb-EN.pdf https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb... Until a few years ago it was cheaper than methane/natural gas: * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-20231019.pdf https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-report-2023... At least when it comes to refurbishment, the independent (reports to provincial parliament) FAO found: > Overall, despite near-term Nuclear Price increases, the Plan is projected to provide ratepayers with a long-term supply of relatively low-cost, low emissions electricity. * https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb-EN.pdf https://fao-on.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Nuclear-Refurb... Their projections go to 2064. New-nuclear is worthy of discussion, but given we have stood up supply chains via the refurbishment process, there's a lot of knowledge out there. My current largest complaint with the new-nuclear plans is the SMRs.
  - bryanlarsen 4mo ago
    That's some impressive financial engineering to go from $500B for a few gigawatts of power to "reasonably priced".

Moldoteck 4mo ago

politicians dont manage nor design reactors. With all it's flaws nuclear is one of the safest sources of power