It is also true that
> When you hit a nuclear plant with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded, then immediately follow that with a twenty foot high tsunami, and then it explodes, it still kills fewer people than an average coal plant does every single year when everything goes perfectly.
And yet, we don't hear people screaming to shut down coal power plants nationwide. We don't hear this, despite the fact that they are demonstrably more dangerous than nuclear power plants.
This is one of the reasons people are irked by folks who try to use Fukishima to claim that nuclear power generation is super-dangerous-mmkay.
I'm not going address your tsunami-deaths vs. radiation-deaths comment. A close and careful re-reading of ggreer's comment should help you to understand why.
But of course, you got the nukes so you needn't bother with paying for your share of the climate change damages.
Coal has a massive human cost in human health that makes it absurdly expensive overall.
Personally, I would like to see and end to coal and nuclear power.
But the nuclear power plant takes up to 2 days to startup. It's not sustainable for the daily life where consumption change every hour.
That's why there is the need for more agile power plant, where fuel, gas, and coal are suitable. Gas being the most agile but the less efficient, fuel and coal being used as the middle between gas and nuclear, depending of the price of each resource.
This is an engineering constraint before anything else.
Last I checked, the majority of the US's power comes from coal-fired power plants. If there was the political will and public understanding, we could likely replace pretty much all of that with nuclear plants, reserving coal-fired, or oil-fired (or pumped-storage hydro, or flywheel storage, or...) plants to meet peak power demands.
The European power grid is very tight and well-meshed, this is why we can let our nuclear power plant and sell electricity to Switzerland, Germany or Netherlands or buy it.
I guess it's not as well interconnected in the US, so that states can't easily lend power which disable the use of nuclear power plant for many states ?
I've -very recently- heard people making the claim that Texas has its own grid, but that's news to me. Maybe the situation in Texas is that they have all the power gen capacity that they need within the state, and are also hooked into the national grid. shrug
> I know heavy infrastructure like these often have a sound design respectively to their constraints (which can be absurd).
Anti-nuke hysteria is toxic to sound planning and design. :(
East, West and Texas.
It would makes sense.
> Obviously, throwing power across the whole damn continent is far less efficient than just throwing it across a state.
For now. With the future high-temperature supra-conductive cabling we will be able to do wonders of efficiency on large distance.
Sure, the whole process of storing electricity is lossy. Thermodynamics guarantees it. But the point isn't to try and store enough generation capacity to meet our demand. You just need enough storage capacity to deal with the peaks.
There is of course the argument of "pumped storage isn't practical for meeting all of our peaking demands". Of course it isn't. Neither is nuclear suitable for meeting all of our baseline demands. They are both just tools available.
/me puts on pedant hat and mad engineer jacket:
Are you sure about this? The US is huge and has an enormous amount of uninhabited space. If we covered -say- the north-western quarter of Nevada in the best batteries available today, would that cover base and peaking power during slack production time for -say- the surrounding states?
/me removes pedant hat
(Do bear in mind that I feel both that anti-nuke hysteria is hugely damaging to the planning and deployment of new nuclear power plants in the US, and that it's fairly clear that of the currently available non-hydroelectric base-load generation tech, nuclear power is the only good option. [Though, solar power beamed down from orbit is a really intriguing idea.])
But if you're really convinced this problem is unsolvable, lets just do this: we'll generate enough power (with fission, or whatever you want) to meet peak demand all the time. As long as we're near the coast there is a convenient way to get rid of all that surplus energy: desalination plants. I can think of a few areas that would jump at this idea, like California. Even if you wind up with too much freshwater, just start dumping it back into the ocean. The salt is generally worthless and is dumped back into the ocean. This will actually help offset the fact that the oceans are desalinating due to the ice caps melting.
Electricity prices will go up as a result of this, but you'll be subsidizing the fact that the grid is now greener as a result.
Stopping to 0% is not needed in normal load variation, thanks to toaster usage patterns.
The surplus could be used to pump water up damns or charge batteries. Or even to just pull co2 out of the air to compensate for car emissions.
It could provide very cheap night power for electric car owners. Worst case we could just waste the energy.
Once you accept that co2 emissions are an existential threat to the world, small inefficiencies are a small cost.
All of the other alternatives cause more deaths. All of them. Dam disasters have been mentioned several times. Wind requires people working on high towers (and sometimes falling off). Solar electric uses extremely nasty semiconductor processes, and requires that people climb on roofs. Passive solar -- roofs again. Oil production and distribution is dangerous. Natural gas production and distribution is dangerous. Coal production and distribution is horrific (though not nearly as bad as it once was, it's still pretty bad).
Nuclear power has the lowest death rate per kWh generated of any energy production method known. By far.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml
And I should say that Sustainable Energy is the best book on this topic you can find and that it's free online.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromerzeugung#/media/File:Ene...
Nuclear plants are really good base-load plants. I guess that you can design a national power grid that's supplied largely by renewables, but I suspect that it's very hard and not cheap.
That also describes nuclear power.
2) As I understand it, the hard part of nuclear power isn't the engineering and construction; that's a solved problem. The hard part is fighting pervasive, irrational anti-nuclear-power sentiment.
Of course, one could argue that overly strict regulations (which may only exist because of public concerns) are the reason for these problems. But the reason for the safety of the existing reactors are these strict regulations, so I think loosening these rules is not a good idea.
So, the engineering and construction of the power plant is a solved problem. The political problem of what to do with the fission products is -sadly- not a solved problem in the US.
> All new plants have construction delays and cost overruns.
Cost overruns are -sadly- a symptom of our not-infrequently-nuts-as-shit federal bidding process. Construction delays are a symptom of our failure to enact a system similar to some other countries where -after a lengthy plan-scrutinization and public comment period- approved public works projects become law and are immune to construction delays due to public outrage, outcry, legal challenge, or general meddling.
None of that is unique to fission power plan construction. :)
I think you're confused. He means delays due to engineering/construction issues, not political issues. If you are claiming these do not exist, then you are out to lunch and not talking seriously.
Furthermore, politics is a factor in nuclear safety. Consider that the Fukushima plant life was extended beyond its advisable lifespan. This was almost certainly because the idea looked like the cheaper one at the time, since shutting down a nuclear plant is a lengthy and expensive process. Keeping it running is politically a very tempting option, and such human factors will dominate safety considerations long after anything has been "solved".
I'm not. ju-st is implying either that we don't know how to build power plant sized fission reactors, that we've never built and operated one successfully and safely for decades, or both.
All projects in the US have delays and cost overruns. I addressed this in my reply to his comment. That doesn't mean that the design and construction of the thing being constructed isn't a solved problem.
> Consider that the Fukushima plant life was extended beyond its ["advisable"] lifespan.
And yet:
> When you hit a nuclear plant with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded, then immediately follow that with a twenty foot high tsunami, and then it explodes, it still kills fewer people than an average coal plant does every single year when everything goes perfectly. [0]
Nuclear power is less dangerous than even solar power, hydroelectric power, or wind power!
> Rooftop solar power has a per terawatt death rate ten times worse than nuclear power because of - I kid you not - people falling off roofs when installing the panel. Hydroelectric power has a worse fatality rate because of dams bursting and flooding people. Even wind power has a worse fatality per terawatt rate - seventy three people have died in windmill related accidents. [0]
Are you accounting for very-low-probability catastrophic scenarios? People are notoriously bad at that.
Is this the study that took all roof-related deaths as solar-panel-related?
Can you seriously not tell the difference between the danger of centuries-long contamination and waste that is dangerous for thousands of years, vs the very regular, understandable, and limited liability of everyday accidents?
Are you a part of the nuclear lobby?
Do you like to waste money?
Because ju-st stated "I think the engineering and construction [of fission reactors] is not a solved problem" [0]. This is untrue. We have well-tested fission reactor designs and know how to put them together. This is a solved problem.
> Is this the study that took all roof-related deaths as solar-panel-related?
I can't parse this. Would you be so kind as to restate the question? :)
I'm not sure why the fact that a nuclear plant (that's been -as you say- running past its optimal design life) that
* Got hit with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded
* Then got hit immediately after by a twenty foot high tsunami
* Then exploded
* Then melted down
kills fewer people than a single average coal-fired power plant [1] kills every year as a part of normal operation, fails to significantly increase the cancer risk of the majority of on-site containment workers, and fails to create centuries-long contamination [2] fails to make you question your assumptions about the failure modes of these power generation devices.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10259794
[1] According to http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_04_01.html , there were 300 such coal plants in the US in 2013. :)
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/04/fukushima-rice_n_64... Four-and-a-half years is far less than 100 or 200 or 500. :)
Is this the study that took all roof-related deaths as solar-panel-related = Is this the study that assumed that all roof falls were due to installation of solar panels
> Then exploded Then melted down
Um, am I supposed to exclude nuclear explosions from the list of risks of a nuclear reactor?
Not sure why you keep talking about coal. You think I want coal?
I don't know what study that is but it doesn't appear to be this one. Scott Alexander's blog post links to [0], which takes a completely reasonable approach to calculating the number of deaths due to solar panel installation. Search for "Falls are the leading cause of fatalities in the construction industry." and read on from there.
> Designing reactors is not the problem. Running them safely and building and decommissioning them efficiently is.
There have been two accidents that caused serious damage of any kind in nuclear power generation's 61 year history, [1] Fukushima and Chernobyl. As I mentioned before, Fukushima was hit by the fifth-largest earthquake ever recorded, and a twenty-foot tsunami, and has managed to only maybe kill two people (those guys died of blood loss, rather than radiation poisoning), and might contribute to ~150 cancer deaths as the years go by. This puts Fukushima's worst-case death rate at ~3.75 deaths per year.
What's more, -as I linked upthread- the area is now producing food that's 100% safe to eat. We're a substantial way down the road to recovering from the second largest disaster in nuclear power's history and it only took four years.
An absurdly pessimistic estimate of all deaths and potential deaths due to increased cancer risk related to fission power plant operation over the past 61 years puts the number at ~4,500. Even though this is a silly and inappropriate metric, that's ~73 deaths per year. If we look at deaths in just the US, choking on one's own food is an order of magnitude more hazardous than that.
> ...am I supposed to exclude nuclear explosions from the list of risks of a nuclear reactor?
Yes.
No power generation reactor has ever undergone a nuclear explosion. No currently operating power generation reactor, nor any such reactor that would be approved for construction can undergo a nuclear explosion. What's more, modern reactor designs (that is, reactor designs a fair bit newer than those at Fukushima) fail-safe in any conditions, short of deliberate sabotage by super-strong, radiation-proof superheroes that are able to enter the reactor vessel while it's in operation and intelligently tamper with the fuel rods contained within.
Not even Chernobyl underwent a nuclear explosion. [2] The explosion at Chernobyl was its steam piping exploding due to overpressure. The Chernobyl reactor was housed in an unhardened structure [4] that was more suited to storing goods and foodstuffs than containing fires and explosions. The steam explosion wrecked the containment structure, allowing the smoke from the flaming irradiated carbon control rods to escape into the surrounding countryside.
> You think I want coal?
I -charitably- think that you want safe power generation. I don't see why you're spending so much time and effort on combating something that has -worst case- over 61 years killed 15% of the the people power generation with coal-fired plants kills just in the US every single year.
Fight the big fights first: Decommission fossil-fuel-powered power plants. Dramatically increase the standards for hydroelectric dam design, construction, and maintenance. Institute programs that ensure that all workers who work at dangerously high elevations are properly secured against falls. Design and deploy helper bots to recognize and deliver aid to those who are choking on their own food.
Once all that's done, move on to shutting down something that's less hazardous than crossing the road or eating one's dinner.
[0] http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener...
[1] This is the first commercial power generation fission reactor. It ran from mid 1954 until mid 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obninsk_Nuclear_Power_Plant
[2] Even though a undergraduate-level physics student can design a bomb capable of undergoing a nuclear explosion, it requires deliberate effort to design and precise engineering to make such a thing. [3] You cannot turn a fission reactor into a nuclear bomb, unless you remove its fuel rods and use those to make a bomb. But then, we're talking about fission reactor safety, not the general safety of fissile materials.
[3] Note that a bomb that undergoes a nuclear explosion is very different from a "dirty bomb". A dirty bomb is made by wrapping conventional explosives with radioactive material. The explosives are used to spread the material around as far as is possible. No nuclear explosion takes place.
[4] This was widely regarded as a bad idea at the time. No power generation reactor in operation today is housed in an unhardened structure.
It's only relevant if you weigh two options against each other. So comparing coal to nuclear is kind of valid, except that coal is not the only alternative to nuclear power. Also, if you really want to nitpick, then you'd also have to count the lives that could have been saved with the money that now goes into cleaning up Fukushima, and so on and so on.
Tsunami deaths are not an alternative to radiation deaths, so the comparison is bullshit.
Edit: I would like to reply to your comments, but HN doesn't let me post more comments atm. Fwiw, I don't think you are correct in claiming nobody campaigns against coal power. For a recent example, look at Elon Musks presentation of their battery. Also, remember global warming? I seem to remember a lot of articles about that, which tend to mention fossil fuels as culprits.