6 ms·

Are you taking into consideration advancements in reactor technology? The state of the art is hardly comparable to Chernobyl. And it's not like we just don't kn

by lvh 13y ago

Are you taking into consideration advancements in reactor technology? The state of the art is hardly comparable to Chernobyl. And it's not like we just don't know yet how badly current-gen would fail; we have pretty strong physics and engineering arguments that show it doesn't fail that way.

ensignavenger 13y ago
The State of the Art when Chernobyl was built was far beyond Chernobyl- but corners were cut, just like Fukushima.The question isn't can we build (and maintain) very safe Nuclear reactors, the question is, will we? Just to be clear, I am of the opinion that modern Nuclear is a great option for our present energy needs.
- ori_b 13y ago
  Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen. It had no containment, a design that caused a spike in output when the control rods were driven in to reduce output (the tips on the control rod were the issue), and even then, the accident only happened when the engineers deliberately caused a fault. It's like a car that was designed with no airbags or crumplezones had it's brake lines deliberately cut, and then it was driven into a wall at full speed to see what would happen. No surprise that someone got hurt. And Fukushima? It had containment, but it was using a design that predated Chernobyl, and sacrificed safety for the ability to produce material that you could use to build bombs. Nuclear is far from perfect, but compared to the damage we're doing with fossil fuels, I'd welcome a change to the relatively safe and clean nuclear power, especially with modern, safe designs.
  - iSnow 13y ago
    The problem with nuclear is not the reactors - they can be reasonably safe with today's technology. The problem is nuclear waste. No matter what nuclear technology you use, it leaves behind tons of waste that will be hazardous in tens of thousands of years.
    - ori_b 13y ago
      The more dangerous nuclear waste is, as a rule, the faster it decays. And the amounts of it that are produced are, by the scale of most industrial processes, tiny. It's a very difficult problem to deal with -- politically. Technically, it's not a non-issue, but it is easier to deal with than, say, the horribly toxic tailings ponds that you get from most mining processes, or the residues from the tar sands. And those, unlike nuclear waste, are produced in massive quantities, and do not decay naturally.
      - dalke 13y ago
        I think you mean "the more radioactive nuclear waste is, as a rule, the faster it decays". "Danger" is function of half-life, decay mode, and pharmacokinetics, and some longer-lived isotopes are more dangerous than some shorter-lived isotopes. It's a minor detail which doesn't really distract from your major point.
    - garric 13y ago
      As I understand it, that's very outdated information. These designs have been passively safe as of twenty years ago when they were pioneered by the integral fast reactor. The plant can lose all power and will not ever melt down; liquid metal reactors just don't work that way. One of the key advantages that recommends fourth generation nuclear reactor technology is that the design eliminates much of the existing "waste" (it's really just ~$50T worth of unspent fuel we have laying around that could power the entire world for ~1000 years) that's been produced by past and current light water reactors. A better estimate would be in the 200 to 400 year range now. That's right; we're actually capable of getting rid of nuclear waste with nuclear reactors. Yes that's still a good number of years, but estimates for global deaths per year caused just by particulate pollution from coal power plants range from a conservative 100,000 up to 3,000,000. How many people per year is nuclear currently killing? I was pretty incredulous to find this out, but the answer is zero. And given that they produce negligible CO2 as compared with fossil fuels, they are recommended by the climatologist who is largely responsible for drawing attention to climate change since the 1980s, James Hansen. The conclusion (begins on page 116 of this .rtf file) in his 2009 book is worth reading: http://ge.tt/5GTotjQ1/v/0 http://ge.tt/5GTotjQ1/v/0 Ironically, traditional environmentalist movements that indiscriminately protested and continue to protest against any nuclear power technologies have effectively greenwashed the "clean coal" (wtf) mantra into existence because fossil fuel plants are the only other alternative for baseload. To me, this seems eerily similar to the protestation of tobacco companies that their products were causing cancer. We're still building coal power plants, but the CO2 sequestration they're currently talking about would require burning ~25% more coal to power the process, making it so uneconomical that it won't ever happen. And since sodium-cooled fast reactors can also run on decommissioned nuclear weapons, decreasing the risk of nuclear proliferation, we have every reason to be using these technologies for baseload power and zero reasons not to. Given the choice, I'd rather live near a nuclear power plant than any other type. Perhaps I'd finally be able to get an electric car that would then be functionally carbon neutral, though maybe not avoiding the ecological damage externalized in the building such massive batteries. (That's something I still need to look into for myself. Anyone have any academic sources other than the Union of Concerned Scientists/Lobbyists?)
- btilly 13y ago
  The question isn't can we build (and maintain) very safe Nuclear reactors, the question is, will we? The answer to that is no. When people believe something to be safe, they cut corners. This continues until it is demonstrated to not be safe by disaster. A disaster then causes people to be safety conscious until they forget.
  - rtpg 13y ago
    That's a pretty reductionist argument. Look at planes. Considering the number of planes in the air the fact that we have so few accidents is pretty astounding. We were able to build an entire manufacturing process that very strictly avoids cutting corners. Then again, maybe we don't really think about planes as being safe.
    - btilly 13y ago
      Aviation has taken the attitude of every plane crash being a major disaster. Hence crashes per mile may be low, but we have enough disasters and near misses to keep attention focused on continuous improvement. There is no technology that I am aware of which comes with risk of disaster, and does not suffer a major disaster at least once every generation or two.
      - dalke 13y ago
        That's a tough one - and an interesting challenge! Almost everything I could think of either didn't come with a risk of disaster (or at least, no risk of major disaster), or has had major disasters. The best I came up with was determining longitude based on the lunar distance. It could be disaster for a single ship that got it wrong, but I don't think there were major disasters during the 80 years (2-3 generations) it was in service. I can think that a fleet might have ended up in the wrong place (like the Scilly naval disaster of 1707), so there could be a major disaster, but a fleet also has enough independent people doing their own reckonings that it would be self-correcting. I looked through the UK and French lists of ship disasters, but found no multi-ship disasters based on location errors during 1767 to ~1850. (If you want a physical technology, rather than mathematical technique, then Hadley's octant, integrated with Vernier's scale, which made the octant precise enough that sailors could use to judge longitude usefully. In turn, it was effectively replaced in the 1800s by the sextant.) But I don't know enough about nautical history to know if there were major disasters caused by octant/sextant use which were comparable to pre-lunar distance methods.

by lvh 13y ago

ensignavenger 13y ago

The State of the Art when Chernobyl was built was far beyond Chernobyl- but corners were cut, just like Fukushima.The question isn't can we build (and maintain) very safe Nuclear reactors, the question is, will we? Just to be clear, I am of the opinion that modern Nuclear is a great option for our present energy needs.

ori_b 13y ago
Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen. It had no containment, a design that caused a spike in output when the control rods were driven in to reduce output (the tips on the control rod were the issue), and even then, the accident only happened when the engineers deliberately caused a fault. It's like a car that was designed with no airbags or crumplezones had it's brake lines deliberately cut, and then it was driven into a wall at full speed to see what would happen. No surprise that someone got hurt. And Fukushima? It had containment, but it was using a design that predated Chernobyl, and sacrificed safety for the ability to produce material that you could use to build bombs. Nuclear is far from perfect, but compared to the damage we're doing with fossil fuels, I'd welcome a change to the relatively safe and clean nuclear power, especially with modern, safe designs.
- iSnow 13y ago
  The problem with nuclear is not the reactors - they can be reasonably safe with today's technology. The problem is nuclear waste. No matter what nuclear technology you use, it leaves behind tons of waste that will be hazardous in tens of thousands of years.
  - ori_b 13y ago
    The more dangerous nuclear waste is, as a rule, the faster it decays. And the amounts of it that are produced are, by the scale of most industrial processes, tiny. It's a very difficult problem to deal with -- politically. Technically, it's not a non-issue, but it is easier to deal with than, say, the horribly toxic tailings ponds that you get from most mining processes, or the residues from the tar sands. And those, unlike nuclear waste, are produced in massive quantities, and do not decay naturally.
    - dalke 13y ago
      I think you mean "the more radioactive nuclear waste is, as a rule, the faster it decays". "Danger" is function of half-life, decay mode, and pharmacokinetics, and some longer-lived isotopes are more dangerous than some shorter-lived isotopes. It's a minor detail which doesn't really distract from your major point.
  - garric 13y ago
    As I understand it, that's very outdated information. These designs have been passively safe as of twenty years ago when they were pioneered by the integral fast reactor. The plant can lose all power and will not ever melt down; liquid metal reactors just don't work that way. One of the key advantages that recommends fourth generation nuclear reactor technology is that the design eliminates much of the existing "waste" (it's really just ~$50T worth of unspent fuel we have laying around that could power the entire world for ~1000 years) that's been produced by past and current light water reactors. A better estimate would be in the 200 to 400 year range now. That's right; we're actually capable of getting rid of nuclear waste with nuclear reactors. Yes that's still a good number of years, but estimates for global deaths per year caused just by particulate pollution from coal power plants range from a conservative 100,000 up to 3,000,000. How many people per year is nuclear currently killing? I was pretty incredulous to find this out, but the answer is zero. And given that they produce negligible CO2 as compared with fossil fuels, they are recommended by the climatologist who is largely responsible for drawing attention to climate change since the 1980s, James Hansen. The conclusion (begins on page 116 of this .rtf file) in his 2009 book is worth reading: http://ge.tt/5GTotjQ1/v/0 http://ge.tt/5GTotjQ1/v/0 Ironically, traditional environmentalist movements that indiscriminately protested and continue to protest against any nuclear power technologies have effectively greenwashed the "clean coal" (wtf) mantra into existence because fossil fuel plants are the only other alternative for baseload. To me, this seems eerily similar to the protestation of tobacco companies that their products were causing cancer. We're still building coal power plants, but the CO2 sequestration they're currently talking about would require burning ~25% more coal to power the process, making it so uneconomical that it won't ever happen. And since sodium-cooled fast reactors can also run on decommissioned nuclear weapons, decreasing the risk of nuclear proliferation, we have every reason to be using these technologies for baseload power and zero reasons not to. Given the choice, I'd rather live near a nuclear power plant than any other type. Perhaps I'd finally be able to get an electric car that would then be functionally carbon neutral, though maybe not avoiding the ecological damage externalized in the building such massive batteries. (That's something I still need to look into for myself. Anyone have any academic sources other than the Union of Concerned Scientists/Lobbyists?)
btilly 13y ago
The question isn't can we build (and maintain) very safe Nuclear reactors, the question is, will we? The answer to that is no. When people believe something to be safe, they cut corners. This continues until it is demonstrated to not be safe by disaster. A disaster then causes people to be safety conscious until they forget.
- rtpg 13y ago
  That's a pretty reductionist argument. Look at planes. Considering the number of planes in the air the fact that we have so few accidents is pretty astounding. We were able to build an entire manufacturing process that very strictly avoids cutting corners. Then again, maybe we don't really think about planes as being safe.
  - btilly 13y ago
    Aviation has taken the attitude of every plane crash being a major disaster. Hence crashes per mile may be low, but we have enough disasters and near misses to keep attention focused on continuous improvement. There is no technology that I am aware of which comes with risk of disaster, and does not suffer a major disaster at least once every generation or two.
    - dalke 13y ago
      That's a tough one - and an interesting challenge! Almost everything I could think of either didn't come with a risk of disaster (or at least, no risk of major disaster), or has had major disasters. The best I came up with was determining longitude based on the lunar distance. It could be disaster for a single ship that got it wrong, but I don't think there were major disasters during the 80 years (2-3 generations) it was in service. I can think that a fleet might have ended up in the wrong place (like the Scilly naval disaster of 1707), so there could be a major disaster, but a fleet also has enough independent people doing their own reckonings that it would be self-correcting. I looked through the UK and French lists of ship disasters, but found no multi-ship disasters based on location errors during 1767 to ~1850. (If you want a physical technology, rather than mathematical technique, then Hadley's octant, integrated with Vernier's scale, which made the octant precise enough that sailors could use to judge longitude usefully. In turn, it was effectively replaced in the 1800s by the sextant.) But I don't know enough about nautical history to know if there were major disasters caused by octant/sextant use which were comparable to pre-lunar distance methods.