The nuke industry could hire some of the big tobacco lobbists to educate (as oppssed to misleading) the public. Compared to oil and coal, nuclear power is orders of magnitude cleaner. Closing nuclear power stations means burning coal most of the time, because the coal power stations are already there. The only renewable resources capable of providing base load that can replace some of the nuclear power are geothermal, but to use that you need a suitable site and solar thermal with molten salt storage. Aging coal power stations could be probably converted to biomass as well. But none of these are going to fully replace nuclear power.
No form of energy generation causes zero deaths. Chernobyl was a reckless expirement that went wrong. Fukushima is in no way comparable to Chernobyl regarding the amount of radiation released. We could increase security by stopping to demonize nuclear power and make it possible to build modern plants instead of running decades old designs with known flaws.
Exactly. Let me know when you fix humans, companies and governments, then I'll trust nuclear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States
This seems like the same risk-evaluation glitch that makes people drive long-distance instead of flying, because terrorism, even though driving is orders of magnitude more deadly even with terrorism factored in.
> [... l]et me know when you fix humans, companies and governments[.]
[1] e.g. washing machines that allow ~half of their population (usually women) to have the free time to get an education and contribute to the economy instead of spending all day hand-washing clothes/etc.
http://www.troutmansandersenergyreport.com/2009/02/nrc-requi...
I think the issue is further complicated by the under siege mentality that many nuclear energy proponents feel. If they think that opponents don't appreciate the benefits and exaggerate the risks, then they will tend to publicly downplay risks, and possibly believe their own rhetoric rather than looking for vulnerabilities to the system and engineering in additional safety measures.
Finally, how many designs that we call relatively dangerous now, were called dangerous while being constructed and put on line?
My understanding is that Chernobyl and the Fukushima reactor were both built by cutting huge corners, and that these flaws ended up leading to the disasters.
On the other side of the spectrum, things like planes get built and work because we know that planes falling out of the sky is super bad! Would it not be possible to ,for lack of a better word, be more careful?
But a mistake doesn't cost one generation, it costs many. The odds for an incident are supposed to be ridiculously low, yet I've seen two catastrophic meltdowns just in my lifetime. I don't feel any energy need is worth even risking the rightful inheritance of so many descendants, ...
In that same time:
-- Chinese businesses improperly dumped into a of silicon tetrachloride (and other nasty pollutants) waste from photovoltaic production.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-...
-- Multiple fly ash spills spread heavy metals (arsenic, chromium, mercury, etc) over large areas of land and into major rivers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...
-- An incredible amount of CO2 was released, leading to accelerating risk of catastrophic climate problems.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085030
That's just a handful of problems I can find links for in a few minutes. The impact even from nuclear isn't anywhere close to the same scale of damage that other types of power already did to the environment.
> But a mistake doesn't cost one generation, it costs many.
Even if this was a concern - it's not - we're still talking about a temporary problem, that gets much smaller each half-life. The metals from fly ash are a permanent problem.
No matter, I'm not sure why we're comparing Chernobyl against these and other environmental disasters when they should be lumped together--these are all sins of our species.
The point is not how long "temporary" is. It's incredibly hypocritical to complain that nuclear power has some sort of serious "nuclear waste problem" that must have some type of 10,000 year solution while conveniently ignoring the actual problems in other power sources.
There should even be much nuclear waste in modern breeder reactor designs, but even with the older style reactors that currently exist, the waste still tiny thanks to uranium having millions of times higher energy density[1]. That waste gets less dangerous as it decays, so the "temporary" isn't a consistent danger - it's bad initially, but the long tail is significantly safer.
> why we're comparing
deaths / kWh [2]
Far too many people panic about the "dangers" of nuclear power, while conveniently ignoring the larger dangers from other power sources. Even including Chernobyl, nuclear power is still safer than any[3] other source of energy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densitie...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities
[3] Solar and wind are also very low, although dam failures and the dangers of working on rooftops to install solar cells make them slightly more dangerous than nuclear. We should obviously use these sources as well when possible. I'm sure we can also improve the safety of solar, such as installing during regular building construction instead of retrofitting existing roofs.
Yes, it would be hypocritical if that's what I was doing. Except, instead, I was simply submitting what I felt was an important concern with nuclear energy. Similarly, it's disingenuous to talk of breeder reactor designs and their "tiny" amounts of waste when these remain mostly experimental and undeployed. The original links you posted for some other environmental disasters are very real, otoh.
(Addendum: And, yes, a good amount of money is still being spent to keep this disaster contained: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement)
Yet I don't see a scramble to shut down all hydro plants.
Without sounding like I'm belittling the scale of that disaster, I still think of flood recovery as being relatively "short term" (a decade or two) compared to the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown (decades, possibly hundreds of years). That Chernobyl wasn't(/isn't) a bigger problem is partly due to reasonably effective intervention by an international team. The potential here is frightening enough that I don't think we should need high body counts to weigh the consequences.
Chernobyl wasn't a bigger problem because of the personal sacrifice of the thousands of liquidators that cleaned it up. I strongly recommend watching "Chernobyl 3828"[1], a short (~30min) documentary about that cleanup, by people that were involved in it.
> The potential here is frightening
Which is why the danger - even at Chernobyl - is usually severely overstated. I'm not saying the situation at Chernobyl wasn't a huge problem (see [1]). It just wasn't the insane danger that many believe it to be. For example, many of the liquidators involved in the cleanup are still alive, fighting Russian bureaucracy for the healthcare coverage they were promised in the Soviet era. Cancer is a long term consequence of working as a "bio robot", but modern medicine is making that increasingly survivable.
Fear tends to suppress rationality, so remember to stick to the facts, and remember that reputable sources can be hard to find for any topic.
While slightly clumsy wording on my side, I was trying to say exactly this while trying to encompass the able help of outside experts and agencies that all worked (and still work) to contain this disaster.
>Which is why the danger - even at Chernobyl - is usually severely overstated.
Perhaps by others, but not by me. I was simply saying that the disaster area is still and will likely long remain an unlivable place. I find that an unacceptable risk. You are welcome to disagree.
>Fear tends to suppress rationality, so remember to stick to the facts, and remember that reputable sources can be hard to find for any topic.
This goes both ways. Arguing from the standpoint of reactor designs we're not using and setting arbitrary thresholds for "huge" versus "insane" to decide what's really worthy of our concern and using "modern medicine" as a catchall for improved chances for survival as if it were a solved problem aren't good talking points. The variation in survivorship among the liquidators has as much to do with how much exposure they had working on site. Most of those with larger exposures aren't fighting for healthcare--they're already dead.
Besides, this all stemmed from my original reply about whether there was any evidence for the disaster costing more than one generation. I'll "stick to the facts" by saying it did, it does, and even the very battle against Russian beaucracy for healthcare coverage you mentioned shows that even the care of survivors remain an issue for later generations.
It's also a bit ridiculous to point out the improvement in solar technology, and ignore everything else. Sure solar technology is improving over time. So is nuclear. And it could probably be improving a lot faster if it got the same level of interest. The major accidents everyone thinks of were all by decades old reactors. We know of much safer ways to do things, and we've learned a lot from those events.
Even coal will improve over time. All that discussion of the coming robot revolution surely applies to coal mining.
My prediction is based on Econ 101: the cheapest solution will win.
Nuclear reactors (and coal plants) are long-term investment projects with payback over decades. If you're close to the equator, it doesn't even make sense today. And the increasing cost differential between solar and nuclear/coal will mean that zone is expanding towards the poles.
I'm sorry if you're financially or intellectually invested in nuclear, but that's what i think will happen.
Now, if we use the tech to its fullest extent - meaning U-238 breeder reactors, rather than conventional U-235 ones - then fuel supply is infinite for all practical purposes. It also by and large solves the nuclear waste problem.
The main problem with nuclear isn't price per watt, it's the upfront cost. It requires a massive initial investment before you start getting anything useful out of it, and it requires an even more massive investment to start deriving benefits from scaling up. Solar, on the other hand, can start with a very small investment, and gradually ramp up, with a smooth curve of decreasing cost as scale increases. That makes it more attractive to private sector.
Nuclear is something that pretty much requires very long term planning and subsidies of the kind that only governments are really capable of, and in the era of democratic governments and nuclear scare among the general public, it's just not happening.
Well, except for countries that don't have to care about public opinion. China, for example, is building a lot of new nuclear plants. They aren't ignoring solar, either, and they're making massive investments there as well - but they're not putting all their eggs in one basket.
China's newly installed solar capacity in 2016 was 34 GW and growing fast, they currently have 20 nuclear reactors under construction with a capacity of 20GW. So solar is quickly outpacing nuclear even in China, and the trend is in solar's favor.
The only saving grace that nuclear has at the moment is the lack of massive battery capacity. Electric cars are quickly changing that, and then it will be game over for nuclear.
I think that potential investors of nuclear reactors see this trend now as well, which is why interest in building new nuclear reactors in market-based economies is quickly fading (of course it depends on latitude at which point in time solar/wind dominance is reached). Quite substantial cost overruns are also typical for nuclear power plants, but rare for solar/wind.
The solar improvements are a lot more demonstrable, the nuclear ones are usually more theoretical due to the time and cost of building new reactors.
>In fact it's existed for quite awhile. We could have gotten rid of coal decades ago, if not for irrational fear.
Unsafe nuclear has existed for quite a while. Safe nuclear has yet to prove it's practical, which includes being cost effective against wind and solar.
> And I find this sentiment really hard to understand. Why bet everything on solar?
Parent mentioned wind and solar, and they didn't exclude others like hydro and tidal where appropriate. That's not betting everything on solar.
>All that discussion of the coming robot revolution surely applies to coal mining.
To a large extent it already has. New mines are human intensive to create, but largely automated after they're online.
I hear news about new "revolutionary" batteries every months for at least 20 years. But still, every device uses the same old batteries.
Meanwhile LCOE of wind/solar is challenging that of coal power and closing to nuclear. In 15-20 years it would be way lower.
A windless week in the winter will leave you without power.
EDIT: I see that you were responding to someone who is already sure that storage-backed wind and solar will become the only electricity sources. That's certainly a bolder claim than scaling up to match present-day nuclear penetration levels.
Is it still in question? If you can get to 11% then you can get to 100% with enough geographic distribution and batteries. Wind and solar are now cheaper than coal, even old unsafe nuclear never got to that point.
The bigger part of the problem is nuclear power is a case of "cheap, clean, safe, existing, pick any two".
Given the scale of China's energy projects this isn't a whole lot. While China has more or less a "let's try it all" approach to energy, nuclear doesn't play any major role.
India too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-stage_nuclear_...
Stage 2 is fast breeder reactors and stage 3 is thorium-fuelled reactors. Nuclear is their only realistic option if they want to at least slow the pace at which they're adding more coal-fired generating capacity.
I think there's a problem with how electricity generation issues get reported in the press. When we're talking about electrical power, there are three figures that sometimes get used (incorrectly) interchangeably: installed generation capacity (i.e. nameplate), actual electricity generated, actual electricity generated and consumed.
I'm not going to even bother with the third type, which is the most problematic for solar and wind (as you cannot control when and how much % of capacity you generate), because data is not readily available.
But even for the first vs. second type (installed capacity vs. actual generation), you have as percentages of total installed capacity / total actual generation:
2014-15:
- Renewable 'nameplate' installed capacity == 13.17%
- Renewable actual % total electricity generated == 2.97%
- Nuclear 'nameplate' installed capacity == 2.13%
- Nuclear actual % total electricity generated == 3.27%
2015-16:
- Renewable 'nameplate' installed capacity == 14.18%
- Renewable actual % total electricity generated == 3.09%
- Nuclear 'nameplate' installed capacity == 1.91%
- Nuclear actual % total electricity generated == 3.20%
In other words, renewable installed capacity went from 6.2 times that of nuclear in 14-15 to 7.4 times in 15-16. Yet, over the same period, renewable increased its share of actual electricity generated by a paltry 0.12% (as in, a twelfth of one percent). Nuclear installed capacity was unchanged and contributed 0.06% less to total actual electricity generated (i.e. generated relatively less as other sources added capacity in that year).
I sure hope the relationship between renewable installed capacity and generation are not linear, otherwise we're going to be working on this for a while...
SOURCE (horribly confusing tables and all): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India
This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with short attention span. I am all for higher safety standards on nuclear power. But when population loses interest, even critical technology will lack funding and research.
I wouldn't mind seeing some molten salt reactors[0] though.
On the other hand, China seems to think nuclear power is unavoidable.
"While the construction of new nuclear power plants has mostly stalled in industrial nations, China is pushing ahead to expand its nuclear power generation capacity.
China accounted for six of the eight new reactors where construction began in 2016 and the first three months of 2017."
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor