8 ms·

The real reason to fight nuclear power has nothing to do with health risks

30 points by rosser 13y ago

dendory 13y ago
I see a lot of arguments there going against nuclear plants but very little about alternatives. Of course I'd rather we all use solar panels, but until that becomes viable on a large scale, we need to move off the coal burning plants that currently produces almost all our grid's energy.
- rdl 13y ago
  Natural gas is a pretty good option in much of the US (particularly for peaking), combined with existing nuclear, plus hydro (largely maxed out in the US), and expanding solar and wind. Replacing coal with natural gas is a win overall, particularly for pollution other than CO2.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
  > Of course I'd rather we all use solar panels, but until that becomes viable on a large scale Nuclear plants take tens of years to build, and it looks like solar will become viable on a large scale faster than that.
shin_lao 13y ago
I think it's impossible to really estimate how much an energy costs, because you could argue that you need to include the cost of potential accidents or the incertity of raw materials costs or the cost of not being able to produce energy when you need it, etc. For solar, you need sun, for wind, you need wind. The real issue to solve is being able to store electricity. Once you have that, a lot of issues disapear, because you can procude when you can, consume when you need. In the long term I really think nuclear is optimal, after all that's what the universe chose... In a way, solar energy is fusion based. ;)
- StavrosK 13y ago
  You think the universe is optimal? :p
  - shin_lao 13y ago
    Well, for now we didn't do any better. :D
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  If we could figure out economical nuclear fusion, we wouldn't be arguing right now. We are always 20 years from figuring it out also. Once we have fusion, producing hydrogen liquid fuel should be cake.
  - welterde 13y ago
    Or about 80bn EUR away from figuring it out.. would be a more useful scale imho (that's at least the number that the local plasma physics institute estimated iirc), as the ETA will keep changing if you change the yearly budget.
  - hetman 13y ago
    The problem with fusion is that in the form accessible to us here on Earth (deuterium-tritium), it still creates radioactive waste. It is not the sort of long lived waste you would see from Uranium based nuclear fission, it is more comparable to Thorium based fission reactors. In other words we already have a pretty decent alternative. The real holy grail would be Hellium 3 fusion, but first we have to figure out how to import the fuel back to Earth from places like the surface of the Moon or from Jupiter.
    - sillysaurus 13y ago
      Interesting. The moon has Helium 3, but the Earth doesn't?
      - welterde 13y ago
SamReidHughes 13y ago
Okay. Tax coal to compensate for its externalities and then we'll see how the economics work out.
- schainks 13y ago
  this.
jongraehl 13y ago
Reads like propaganda. If it's true that nuclear is just too expensive (and how would I know?), then all he needs to do is to advocate that operators post bonds (or pay pretend interest on a state-funded equivalent) for decommissioning costs.
- gmac 13y ago
  Actually, I'm pretty sure he's spot on. And on your second point, fine: let's make operators post bonds, and watch as they scramble not to build new nuclear plants even faster than before. The general run of things in the UK as I understand it seems to be: 0. Many billions are invested in public nuclear R&D. Electricity market is then privatised. 1. Nobody builds new nuclear (and nobody wants it on their doorstep either, especially in a country this small). 2. Government skews market in favour of nuclear by taking on liabilities for decommissioning (and de facto also disasters, which although rare are catastrophically expensive). 3. Operators/investors still aren't sure they can make a profit. 4. Government skews market further by offering a floor price for nuclear-generated electricity (additional public subsidy). 5. Operators/investors are still somewhat uncomfortable regarding risks and public opinion, so government gets into protracted negotiations to give them whatever the hell they want. So nuclear here is essentially being subsidised three ways, and is still struggling to secure an investor.
  - josephlord 13y ago
    Don't forget decades after nuclear power started a long term waste storage site has not been decided so still needs to be designed, planned, built etc. before it can be used.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  How would you post a bond covering decommissioning in a fair way? I assume that some degree of maintenance is going to be required for the waste dump for the next few millennia. Has anyone calculated the full end cost of nuclear power per unit energy? I've searched before, but I assume the answer isn't simple as keeping the waste is a long term problem.
hetman 13y ago
Until we figure out how to make large scale energy storage economical, we are still going to be stuck with the problem of providing a base-load for the grid. As far as environmental impact, nuclear fission still seems like the best option to me to fill that need. If his analysis is correct it certainly does indicate there's a place for both renewable and nuclear to coëxist in the short term.
- brazzy 13y ago
  > there's a place for both renewable and nuclear to coëxist in the short term. Except that there is absolutely nothing short therm about nuclear. If you build it, you're stuck with it for decades or have to swallow huge write-offs. And of course the waste stays with you for centuries or millenia.
  - hetman 13y ago
    I think we're talking about different periods of time when referring to the "short term". My short term is probably your medium term. While there are some technologies to dispose of the waste, such as breeder reactors, even burying the highly stabilised waste in a small area surely seems favourable to dumping it over large geographic areas as traditional fossil fuels do. It's not like there's a dearth of radioactives in the Earth's crust already.
    - welterde 13y ago
      The radioactive elements in fossil fuels is less of a problem than you think, because a) coal plants, etc. have to filter these out (at least in germany they do) b) they have short half-times. And storing the radioactive waste for a few thousand years is by no means an easy/cheap task.. just look at the two experimental radioactive waste sites in germany.. both turned out to be a huge disaster in less than 100 years. Also I am not convinced that breeder reactors help you that much to get rid of thousands of tons of radioactive reactor assembly.
qznc 13y ago
I wonder if another kind of costs of wind and solar (and hydro!) is included? In Germany, we have to spend billions to build additional transmission lines. Since wind/solar/hydro energy is a lot more unstable in its output, a lot more energy has to be moved around the country. Also it cannot be produced near the heavy consumers (e.g. hydro energy from the north sea to heavy industry the Ruhr area). The instability of output also leads to more activity for coal-fired power plants, because they can bridge short solar energy lows (nuclear plants are too slow). I found that article encouraging that wind/solar/hydro energy might hit break even, but I am not convinced that we are already at that point. Polluting nice landscape with windmills is another downside. Although that is probably not that big of a problem in the US, since you have a lot more uninhabited space there compared to Germany.
- guelo 13y ago
  FTA: "Yes, the utility industry will need to update the century-old hub-and-spoke architecture of the grid to accommodate high levels of variable and distributed renewable power, but that needed to be done anyway. Yes, there are important questions to be addressed about dispatchability—the degree to which the power generator can be fired up at will, as needed—voltage regulation, service level guarantees, and the evolution of utility business models and regulatory environment, which I have written a series of articles about"
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    > but that needed to be done anyway Why? Hub and spoke is a pretty well-proved model. And I don't see industrial process plants getting smaller.
nhebb 13y ago
They're working with current electricity prices, but prices are already slated to go higher in the next few years in some parts of the US. PJM International electricity auction prices for parts of the Midwest and Northeast US are shown here: http://www.pjm.com/~/media/about-pjm/newsroom/2013-releases/20130524-pjm-capacity-auction.ashx http://www.pjm.com/~/media/about-pjm/newsroom/2013-releases/...
jacques_chester 13y ago
Nuclear is very capital intensive. Historically very much so, since a large amount of the current fleet are all individual designs. The economics might change when China start stamping them out like a print factory. As for wind and solar: once you factor in the costs of transmission, storage and duplication, they suck too. Duplication is particularly wasteful. To provide baseload-ish power, you need multiple installations to cover that different areas receive power at different times in a stochastic fashion and you need backup plants just in case your multiple solar farms are shady or the wind stops in multiple places. Plus, as climate change rolls on, you will need to keep moving the solar farms and wind farms as distributions of clouds and wind changes. You know which dog is winning this fight? Natural gas. It's flexible, relatively quick to build, relatively low risk and gas prices have dropped like a stone in the past few years thanks to shale and fracking. Personally I'd like to have lived in the future where the 1970s energy crisis caused a bootstrapped orbital solar power station industry. Oh well.
- kintamanimatt 13y ago
  There's still the issue with emissions with methane though. Better than coal though.
  - rfvtgb123 13y ago
    And all the issues with fracking.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Coal's emission profile depends a lot on the coal. Anthracite burns very hot and produces almost pure CO2 (instead of more noxious byproducts), but few deposits are anthracite. For example: here in Australia, the New South Welsh are burning high grade anthracite coal in the Hunter Valley [1]. Meanwhile in Victoria they burn lignite [2]; it's basically ambitious peat moss. The NSW plants produce more CO2 per ton of coal burnt, but their environmental impact is lower -- they produce more KWh per ton of CO emitted. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater_Power_Station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater_Power_Station [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station,_Victoria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station,_Victor...
FALCK 13y ago
Even if nuclear power is to expensive (something I don't agree with. Wind is still only producing ~1/7 of nuclear power in USA, and is only producing ~1/7 of wind... 2011, numbers but I doubt there have been any miracles since then. http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_7.pdf http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_7.pdf
WatchDog 13y ago
How much could the cost of building nuclear plants be reduced if we were building them on a larger scale. It seems to me that the high cost of nuclear plants is largely because no one is building nuclear plants. Regulatory requirements and safety overkill probably play a large role too.
danbruc 13y ago
To me this article feels so wrong. I couldn't care less if nuclear power is a bit more expensive than its alternatives if it offered advantages over them. But there is a single point that makes nuclear power so unattractive - if something goes seriously wrong, you are really screwed.
- camperman 13y ago
  That depends on the design. Molten salt and pebble bed reactors for example cannot fail catastrophically - it's physically impossible for either of those designs to do so. But I agree with you on the economics. The alternative to not going nuclear energy is running out of oil or not being able to afford it. The initial expense is irrelevant in that light.
  - welterde 13y ago
    You might want to read up on the AVR reactor (an pebble bed reactor). The reactor assembly is so radioactive that it will be stored for 60 years first, before they can safely dismantle it. And as for pebble bed reactors cannot fail catastrophically.. AVR almost did (water leaked into the He primary cooling cycle).
    - camperman 13y ago
      Damn - that's depressing. Thanks for the heads up. The safety report that I've now just read on the AVR says: "A safe operation at hot gas temperatures near to those suitable for process heat applications can currently not be guaranteed by pebble bed reactors, even if a gas tight containment is present."
  - rfvtgb123 13y ago
    >Molten salt and pebble bed reactors Both failed miserably due to extreme safety problems with every design tried. Stop reiterating propaganda and read up on what actually happened.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  > But there is a single point that makes nuclear power so unattractive - if something goes seriously wrong, you are really screwed. No, that's exactly what the author tells you is not true: "And they [pro-nuclear crowd] are probably right that the risks of radiation have been historically overblown as “junk science” wormed its way into popular culture." Nuclear power is the safest power generation tech we have so far [0]. It's actually hydro that can screw you really hard when it fails (and your design sucked) [1]. [0] - http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties
spikels 13y ago
The problem is that the overhyped risks of nuclear power have driven the costs way up. For decades almost all effort has gone into increasing safety not reducing costs which utilities have little incentive to control because they are passed on to customers.
schainks 13y ago
some good points, and while i haven't read his other articles, i don't think he grasps the gravity of what "baseline supply" means on the power grid. these are powerplants that are on 24/7 -reliably- always supplying ~40% of energy on the grid. coal, hydro, and natural-gas based facilities do "baseline load" well, although in many places, natural-gas facilities are used for spinning reserve, since generation costs (in $/kw) are higher than the coal and nuclear. renewables are cool, zero carbon, etc., but NONE of them can generate reliable, 24/7 power. what we really need is energy storage tech to move renewable energy generation from when it's available to when it's needed. i wish we could see more research in alternative nuclear technologies. why is India the only country trying out thorium reactors? our entire nuclear infrastructure is based on tech that could use waste fuel to make bombs. time to move on to a more practical strategy.
andy_boot 13y ago
I find energy generation a really difficult topic. I really want to remain unbiased and reach my own conclusions based on solid data but there seem to be so many reports and cost estimates that come to opposing views it makes it very difficult to do that without spending a long time in research. Hence I worry that even analytical people seem to give up and choose what 'feels right' to them. Its like the global warming debate all over again.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Normally, if you face a really complicated economic optimisation problem, you can cheat a "good enough" answer by seeing what the market has come to favour. But the energy market is a very political market. So there's really no way to get a good feel for it any more. As I said elsewhere, for the medium term I see gas winning. It's "greener" than coal and it's cheaper and more compatible with existing systems than solar/wind.
- rfvtgb123 13y ago
  In this case it's really easy. Nuclear fission is 1) not a solution. Uranium is finite and breeders don't work reliably due to fundamental design problems. 2) outrageously dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years 3) more expensive than solar and wind (see article)
ben0x539 13y ago
It can't be allowed to do to the scrolling ~UX~ what this page does...
NickPollard 13y ago
Disclaimer: I'm pro-nuclear. I'd happily pay twice as much for my electricity as I do now if it meant less poisonous hydrocarbons being pumped into the atmosphere. I'm not in favour of Nuclear because it's sudddenly going to eliminate energy costs, I'm pro-Nuclear because it means we can have cleaner air again, and less people dying from coal and gas related pollution. Factor in human life and the economics make a lot of sense.
- rfvtgb123 13y ago
  RTFA. PV and Wind are cheaper than nuclear. So you can have what you want (no more people dying from coal pollution) without the immense risks of nuclear (The article makes very weak point about these being irrelevant. They are not.)
  - mpyne 13y ago
    If you're talking about PV/wind vs. nuclear, you're not really "fighting" nuclear. Everyone thinks this even after being reminded about energy storage, the wild fluctuation in capacity factor, etc., and I don't understand why.
angersock 13y ago
So, decades-long smear campaigns against nuclear successfully drive up costs, and lo-and-behold the author complains about the cost. The author also then goes on to ignore the externalities of solar, happily paid by the Chinese people on behalf of everyone else. The costs of refitting distribution infrastructure and whatnot are similarly handwaived.

30 points by rosser 13y ago

I see a lot of arguments there going against nuclear plants but very little about alternatives. Of course I'd rather we all use solar panels, but until that becomes viable on a large scale, we need to move off the coal burning plants that currently produces almost all our grid's energy.

rdl 13y ago
Natural gas is a pretty good option in much of the US (particularly for peaking), combined with existing nuclear, plus hydro (largely maxed out in the US), and expanding solar and wind. Replacing coal with natural gas is a win overall, particularly for pollution other than CO2.
SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
> Of course I'd rather we all use solar panels, but until that becomes viable on a large scale Nuclear plants take tens of years to build, and it looks like solar will become viable on a large scale faster than that.

shin_lao 13y ago

I think it's impossible to really estimate how much an energy costs, because you could argue that you need to include the cost of potential accidents or the incertity of raw materials costs or the cost of not being able to produce energy when you need it, etc. For solar, you need sun, for wind, you need wind. The real issue to solve is being able to store electricity. Once you have that, a lot of issues disapear, because you can procude when you can, consume when you need. In the long term I really think nuclear is optimal, after all that's what the universe chose... In a way, solar energy is fusion based. ;)

StavrosK 13y ago
You think the universe is optimal? :p
- shin_lao 13y ago
  Well, for now we didn't do any better. :D
seanmcdirmid 13y ago
If we could figure out economical nuclear fusion, we wouldn't be arguing right now. We are always 20 years from figuring it out also. Once we have fusion, producing hydrogen liquid fuel should be cake.
- welterde 13y ago
  Or about 80bn EUR away from figuring it out.. would be a more useful scale imho (that's at least the number that the local plasma physics institute estimated iirc), as the ETA will keep changing if you change the yearly budget.
- hetman 13y ago
  The problem with fusion is that in the form accessible to us here on Earth (deuterium-tritium), it still creates radioactive waste. It is not the sort of long lived waste you would see from Uranium based nuclear fission, it is more comparable to Thorium based fission reactors. In other words we already have a pretty decent alternative. The real holy grail would be Hellium 3 fusion, but first we have to figure out how to import the fuel back to Earth from places like the surface of the Moon or from Jupiter.
  - sillysaurus 13y ago
    Interesting. The moon has Helium 3, but the Earth doesn't?
    - welterde 13y ago

SamReidHughes 13y ago

Okay. Tax coal to compensate for its externalities and then we'll see how the economics work out.

schainks 13y ago
this.

jongraehl 13y ago

Reads like propaganda. If it's true that nuclear is just too expensive (and how would I know?), then all he needs to do is to advocate that operators post bonds (or pay pretend interest on a state-funded equivalent) for decommissioning costs.

gmac 13y ago
Actually, I'm pretty sure he's spot on. And on your second point, fine: let's make operators post bonds, and watch as they scramble not to build new nuclear plants even faster than before. The general run of things in the UK as I understand it seems to be: 0. Many billions are invested in public nuclear R&D. Electricity market is then privatised. 1. Nobody builds new nuclear (and nobody wants it on their doorstep either, especially in a country this small). 2. Government skews market in favour of nuclear by taking on liabilities for decommissioning (and de facto also disasters, which although rare are catastrophically expensive). 3. Operators/investors still aren't sure they can make a profit. 4. Government skews market further by offering a floor price for nuclear-generated electricity (additional public subsidy). 5. Operators/investors are still somewhat uncomfortable regarding risks and public opinion, so government gets into protracted negotiations to give them whatever the hell they want. So nuclear here is essentially being subsidised three ways, and is still struggling to secure an investor.
- josephlord 13y ago
  Don't forget decades after nuclear power started a long term waste storage site has not been decided so still needs to be designed, planned, built etc. before it can be used.
lostlogin 13y ago
How would you post a bond covering decommissioning in a fair way? I assume that some degree of maintenance is going to be required for the waste dump for the next few millennia. Has anyone calculated the full end cost of nuclear power per unit energy? I've searched before, but I assume the answer isn't simple as keeping the waste is a long term problem.

hetman 13y ago

Until we figure out how to make large scale energy storage economical, we are still going to be stuck with the problem of providing a base-load for the grid. As far as environmental impact, nuclear fission still seems like the best option to me to fill that need. If his analysis is correct it certainly does indicate there's a place for both renewable and nuclear to coëxist in the short term.

brazzy 13y ago
> there's a place for both renewable and nuclear to coëxist in the short term. Except that there is absolutely nothing short therm about nuclear. If you build it, you're stuck with it for decades or have to swallow huge write-offs. And of course the waste stays with you for centuries or millenia.
- hetman 13y ago
  I think we're talking about different periods of time when referring to the "short term". My short term is probably your medium term. While there are some technologies to dispose of the waste, such as breeder reactors, even burying the highly stabilised waste in a small area surely seems favourable to dumping it over large geographic areas as traditional fossil fuels do. It's not like there's a dearth of radioactives in the Earth's crust already.
  - welterde 13y ago
    The radioactive elements in fossil fuels is less of a problem than you think, because a) coal plants, etc. have to filter these out (at least in germany they do) b) they have short half-times. And storing the radioactive waste for a few thousand years is by no means an easy/cheap task.. just look at the two experimental radioactive waste sites in germany.. both turned out to be a huge disaster in less than 100 years. Also I am not convinced that breeder reactors help you that much to get rid of thousands of tons of radioactive reactor assembly.

qznc 13y ago

I wonder if another kind of costs of wind and solar (and hydro!) is included? In Germany, we have to spend billions to build additional transmission lines. Since wind/solar/hydro energy is a lot more unstable in its output, a lot more energy has to be moved around the country. Also it cannot be produced near the heavy consumers (e.g. hydro energy from the north sea to heavy industry the Ruhr area). The instability of output also leads to more activity for coal-fired power plants, because they can bridge short solar energy lows (nuclear plants are too slow). I found that article encouraging that wind/solar/hydro energy might hit break even, but I am not convinced that we are already at that point. Polluting nice landscape with windmills is another downside. Although that is probably not that big of a problem in the US, since you have a lot more uninhabited space there compared to Germany.

guelo 13y ago
FTA: "Yes, the utility industry will need to update the century-old hub-and-spoke architecture of the grid to accommodate high levels of variable and distributed renewable power, but that needed to be done anyway. Yes, there are important questions to be addressed about dispatchability—the degree to which the power generator can be fired up at will, as needed—voltage regulation, service level guarantees, and the evolution of utility business models and regulatory environment, which I have written a series of articles about"
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  > but that needed to be done anyway Why? Hub and spoke is a pretty well-proved model. And I don't see industrial process plants getting smaller.

nhebb 13y ago

They're working with current electricity prices, but prices are already slated to go higher in the next few years in some parts of the US. PJM International electricity auction prices for parts of the Midwest and Northeast US are shown here: http://www.pjm.com/~/media/about-pjm/newsroom/2013-releases/20130524-pjm-capacity-auction.ashx http://www.pjm.com/~/media/about-pjm/newsroom/2013-releases/...

jacques_chester 13y ago

Nuclear is very capital intensive. Historically very much so, since a large amount of the current fleet are all individual designs. The economics might change when China start stamping them out like a print factory. As for wind and solar: once you factor in the costs of transmission, storage and duplication, they suck too. Duplication is particularly wasteful. To provide baseload-ish power, you need multiple installations to cover that different areas receive power at different times in a stochastic fashion and you need backup plants just in case your multiple solar farms are shady or the wind stops in multiple places. Plus, as climate change rolls on, you will need to keep moving the solar farms and wind farms as distributions of clouds and wind changes. You know which dog is winning this fight? Natural gas. It's flexible, relatively quick to build, relatively low risk and gas prices have dropped like a stone in the past few years thanks to shale and fracking. Personally I'd like to have lived in the future where the 1970s energy crisis caused a bootstrapped orbital solar power station industry. Oh well.

kintamanimatt 13y ago
There's still the issue with emissions with methane though. Better than coal though.
- rfvtgb123 13y ago
  And all the issues with fracking.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Coal's emission profile depends a lot on the coal. Anthracite burns very hot and produces almost pure CO2 (instead of more noxious byproducts), but few deposits are anthracite. For example: here in Australia, the New South Welsh are burning high grade anthracite coal in the Hunter Valley [1]. Meanwhile in Victoria they burn lignite [2]; it's basically ambitious peat moss. The NSW plants produce more CO2 per ton of coal burnt, but their environmental impact is lower -- they produce more KWh per ton of CO emitted. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater_Power_Station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater_Power_Station [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station,_Victoria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station,_Victor...

FALCK 13y ago

Even if nuclear power is to expensive (something I don't agree with. Wind is still only producing ~1/7 of nuclear power in USA, and is only producing ~1/7 of wind... 2011, numbers but I doubt there have been any miracles since then. http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_7.pdf http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_7.pdf

WatchDog 13y ago

How much could the cost of building nuclear plants be reduced if we were building them on a larger scale. It seems to me that the high cost of nuclear plants is largely because no one is building nuclear plants. Regulatory requirements and safety overkill probably play a large role too.

danbruc 13y ago

To me this article feels so wrong. I couldn't care less if nuclear power is a bit more expensive than its alternatives if it offered advantages over them. But there is a single point that makes nuclear power so unattractive - if something goes seriously wrong, you are really screwed.

camperman 13y ago
That depends on the design. Molten salt and pebble bed reactors for example cannot fail catastrophically - it's physically impossible for either of those designs to do so. But I agree with you on the economics. The alternative to not going nuclear energy is running out of oil or not being able to afford it. The initial expense is irrelevant in that light.
- welterde 13y ago
  You might want to read up on the AVR reactor (an pebble bed reactor). The reactor assembly is so radioactive that it will be stored for 60 years first, before they can safely dismantle it. And as for pebble bed reactors cannot fail catastrophically.. AVR almost did (water leaked into the He primary cooling cycle).
  - camperman 13y ago
    Damn - that's depressing. Thanks for the heads up. The safety report that I've now just read on the AVR says: "A safe operation at hot gas temperatures near to those suitable for process heat applications can currently not be guaranteed by pebble bed reactors, even if a gas tight containment is present."
- rfvtgb123 13y ago
  >Molten salt and pebble bed reactors Both failed miserably due to extreme safety problems with every design tried. Stop reiterating propaganda and read up on what actually happened.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
> But there is a single point that makes nuclear power so unattractive - if something goes seriously wrong, you are really screwed. No, that's exactly what the author tells you is not true: "And they [pro-nuclear crowd] are probably right that the risks of radiation have been historically overblown as “junk science” wormed its way into popular culture." Nuclear power is the safest power generation tech we have so far [0]. It's actually hydro that can screw you really hard when it fails (and your design sucked) [1]. [0] - http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so... [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties

spikels 13y ago

The problem is that the overhyped risks of nuclear power have driven the costs way up. For decades almost all effort has gone into increasing safety not reducing costs which utilities have little incentive to control because they are passed on to customers.

schainks 13y ago

some good points, and while i haven't read his other articles, i don't think he grasps the gravity of what "baseline supply" means on the power grid. these are powerplants that are on 24/7 -reliably- always supplying ~40% of energy on the grid. coal, hydro, and natural-gas based facilities do "baseline load" well, although in many places, natural-gas facilities are used for spinning reserve, since generation costs (in $/kw) are higher than the coal and nuclear. renewables are cool, zero carbon, etc., but NONE of them can generate reliable, 24/7 power. what we really need is energy storage tech to move renewable energy generation from when it's available to when it's needed. i wish we could see more research in alternative nuclear technologies. why is India the only country trying out thorium reactors? our entire nuclear infrastructure is based on tech that could use waste fuel to make bombs. time to move on to a more practical strategy.

andy_boot 13y ago

I find energy generation a really difficult topic. I really want to remain unbiased and reach my own conclusions based on solid data but there seem to be so many reports and cost estimates that come to opposing views it makes it very difficult to do that without spending a long time in research. Hence I worry that even analytical people seem to give up and choose what 'feels right' to them. Its like the global warming debate all over again.

jacques_chester 13y ago
Normally, if you face a really complicated economic optimisation problem, you can cheat a "good enough" answer by seeing what the market has come to favour. But the energy market is a very political market. So there's really no way to get a good feel for it any more. As I said elsewhere, for the medium term I see gas winning. It's "greener" than coal and it's cheaper and more compatible with existing systems than solar/wind.
rfvtgb123 13y ago
In this case it's really easy. Nuclear fission is 1) not a solution. Uranium is finite and breeders don't work reliably due to fundamental design problems. 2) outrageously dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years 3) more expensive than solar and wind (see article)

ben0x539 13y ago

It can't be allowed to do to the scrolling ~UX~ what this page does...

NickPollard 13y ago

Disclaimer: I'm pro-nuclear. I'd happily pay twice as much for my electricity as I do now if it meant less poisonous hydrocarbons being pumped into the atmosphere. I'm not in favour of Nuclear because it's sudddenly going to eliminate energy costs, I'm pro-Nuclear because it means we can have cleaner air again, and less people dying from coal and gas related pollution. Factor in human life and the economics make a lot of sense.

rfvtgb123 13y ago
RTFA. PV and Wind are cheaper than nuclear. So you can have what you want (no more people dying from coal pollution) without the immense risks of nuclear (The article makes very weak point about these being irrelevant. They are not.)
- mpyne 13y ago
  If you're talking about PV/wind vs. nuclear, you're not really "fighting" nuclear. Everyone thinks this even after being reminded about energy storage, the wild fluctuation in capacity factor, etc., and I don't understand why.

angersock 13y ago

So, decades-long smear campaigns against nuclear successfully drive up costs, and lo-and-behold the author complains about the cost. The author also then goes on to ignore the externalities of solar, happily paid by the Chinese people on behalf of everyone else. The costs of refitting distribution infrastructure and whatnot are similarly handwaived.