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Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by Klinky on Saturday April 22, 2017 @11:35AM (#14173003)
Isn't the AP-1000 reactor he is citing about to cause the downfall of Westinghouse and Toshiba due to extreme cost overruns?

Upfront cost, liability and waste disposable with nuclear cannot be overlooked.

He also noted:

> A reactor has a 60-year service life.

Fukushima suggests otherwise. Holding on to old reactor designs has resulted in catastrophic failures.

Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by jimmaswell on Saturday April 22, 2017 @12:20PM (#14173208)
From what I've heard, these cost overruns are due to political causes.

Waste disposal is a non issue, and Fukashima was due to terrible planning. It wouldn't be solar's fault if someone put too many solar panels on a weak roof and they fell through.

Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by anarazel on Saturday April 22, 2017 @07:24PM (#14175470)
> Waste disposal is a non issue,

Sorry, but that's just a ridiculous position. You can argue that it's a soluble issue, that the long-term hazard and security are manageable and affordable. You need storage that's going to stable over 10s of thousands of years, that will need to be protected for the foreseeable future (unless you want people to have plenty material for dirty bombs etc). That's not cheap, and the is cost that's very likely going to be externalized from the company running atomic plants, since there's obviously no guarantee said company is going to stick around for long enough.

I am perceiving an uptick in lay-people (more or less) advocating for fission power generation over the last 2-3 years. There are some good arguments. But in nearly all cases I end up being unconvinced because all the problems (waste, complexity, massive delays, security) are just waved away with arguments like "waste disposal is a non-issue", "cost overruns are due to political causes", "new reactor designs make the risks infinitesimally small", .... It's obviously a complex problem and just deflecting away the problems that have bogged nuclear power in a lot of quite different countries, isn't convincing unless you're already convinced.

Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by mambodog on Saturday April 22, 2017 @01:37PM (#14173623)
Humans have shown time and time again we cannot be trusted to consistently do things right, so the likely outcomes of some realistic percentage of 'terrible planning', as you put it, should be part of any comparison of power generation techniques.

The analogy you make to solar ignores that the failure modes of nuclear are much worse than solar.

Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by jimmaswell on Saturday April 22, 2017 @02:14PM (#14173828)
From the page I found, "more Americans have died from installing rooftop solar than have ever died from the construction or use of American nuclear power plants". On average, nuclear is safer. The likelihood of another Fukashima is even lower now that it's happened and been documented.
Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by mambodog on Saturday April 22, 2017 @02:37PM (#14173982)
I think you mean 'on average, nuclear is safer than rooftop solar'. How about nuclear vs. large scale solar? Large scale solar + wind? These are more realistic equivalents to nuclear.
Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by jimmaswell on Saturday April 22, 2017 @04:08PM (#14174471)
This still seems to just mention rooftop but it's still telling how far US nuclear is below its next runner up, Hydro - .1 to 5 deaths/trillion kWh
Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by jimmaswell on Saturday April 22, 2017 @06:45PM (#14175289)
Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by anigbrowl on Saturday April 22, 2017 @04:55PM (#14174734)
That's certainly a delicious cherry you picked. I'm pro nuclear myself, but ignoring people's legitimate worries about worst-case scenarios is not a great advocacy strategy.
Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by jimmaswell on Saturday April 22, 2017 @06:46PM (#14175293)
It's hardly cherry picking. Look at this chart: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by anigbrowl on Monday April 24, 2017 @05:52PM (#14188689)
The externalities of nuclear disasters/errors don't halt at borders, diffuse though they are.
Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by rawrRAWR on Saturday April 22, 2017 @03:54PM (#14174402)
This can quickly change, when one terrorist attack happens on a single nuclear plant.

Not so much with wind or solar, though ;)

Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by jimmaswell on Saturday April 22, 2017 @04:14PM (#14174492)
From what I'm seeing in this PDF, it's not that much of a concern. http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Publ...
Re:The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people by rawrRAWR on Saturday April 22, 2017 @03:53PM (#14174398)
Waste disposal is an issue for millions of years to come.