https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
So, what about mining fissile materials? How clean is that, particularly with regard to tailings and wastewater?
Are there any studies out there without a bias on this? I mean, it's okay to be biased against coal, any non-metallurgical uses really put the "fossil" in fossil fuels.
But I know there are all sorts of weird edge cases. Like we're going to want to continue to collect and burn hydrocarbons that we collect from landfills, since the methane is so much more potent of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. We should continue to burn that. Hydropower will continue to be a happy side-effect of flood control.
I worked with Rio Tinto (mining corporation) for some time, and happened to know a few people in management positions at the Ranger Uranium Mine. I can assure you it was one of the most environmentally conscious operations the group was managing, and super-senior management seemed to take the whole thing very seriously. It was a source of much frustration, because as a company we had a good grasp of what acceptable mining practice looks like and Ranger was beyond the standard of reasonable. I dunno, what can you do? Follow the Environmental Management Plan.
Anyway, any comparison is a bit academic, because we can exhaustively list everything that has ever gone wrong in the nuclear industry but the renewables are too diverse for there to be a fair comparison. Which is why I suspect the environmental damage done by renewables is being glossed over.
I used to work for Western Mining Corp (early 90s), and am familiar with how 'patchy' adherence to environmental principles can be across a large organisation. I'm not implying malfeasance (or any other explicit cause).
A few other instances where Rio's failed to hold itself (or its subsidiaries) to the highest standards: Lassing, Austria [1]; Panguna, PNG [2].
[0] http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=926
[1] http://www.industriall-union.org/archive/icem/austrian-mine-...
[2] https://www.smh.com.au/world/billiondollar-mess-a-major-disa...
I guess it's unsurprising that uranium operations run a lot cleaner than fossil fuel extraction, given the politics involved.
I'm not against fission power itself, but being in California makes me kind of a NIMBY on the issue. All you need is somewhere with water and without active fault lines, and nope, not seeing a good spot. The evacuation plans for San Onofre involved moving one to eight million people, or about eight million ways something could go wrong.
The TerraPower design, and many other of the next-gen designs, don't require water cooling. That greatly expands siting options.
You could have the plants out in the desert, or on other less desirable real estate.
"The evacuation plans for San Onofre involved moving one to eight million people, or about eight million ways something could go wrong."
I'm originally from the area, and was sad to hear of San Onofre closing. However, its siting was terrible.
Given California's stance on climate issues, it should be the world's largest promoter of next-gen nuclear power.
Several very interesting designs are being pursued, I'm hopeful the government will eventually adopt a better policy stance. Bill Gates looks to be helping a lot there!
In other ways, the Democratic coalition in California is so big that they can afford to annoy one end of the base. But at the same time, pro-nuclear is not a natural stance for an administration trying to balance environment and housing development.
My perspective is as as a former meteorologist and climate scientist, and currently involved in the Democratic party. We're in such an oil town that the high school colors are black and gold, the birthplace of Unocal -- but people are so anti-oil here now that we'd love to make a switch. You know, as long as gas prices at the pump don't increase.
I've talked to enough people that I think the politics is doable but hard, but the capital man, I dunno. Maybe that comes from Bill Gates.
Parent noted distinction between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. I'm assuming here you're talking about nuclear fission exclusively.
In any case, how sure are you that the footprint for nuclear is tiny?
As I understand it the construction / commissioning costs are enormous - more than a coal or gas plant (eg. a breathtaking volume of concrete). The costs of acquiring fissionable material seem to often be overlooked, but mining (currently) requires fossil fuels.
That's before you get to decommissioning costs (which may not be within the 'footprint' category) or waste management.
The UK's recent experience [1] trying to get one nuclear fission plant up and running provides an abject lesson.
[1] https://jeremyleggett.net/2018/08/22/why-the-uk-nuclear-rena...
The construction costs are high predominantly as a result of inefficient (or in this case purposely obstructive) legal requirements. The government has literally been known to change the requirements a new reactor must be built under after the portion of the reactor subject to those requirements has already been built. This predictably leads to cost overruns, but it is also an artificial problem.
> The costs of acquiring fissionable material seem to often be overlooked, but mining (currently) requires fossil fuels.
It's overlooked because it's tiny. The energy produced through fission from one pound of uranium is the same as from burning 2.7 million pounds of coal. In other words, the weight of coal vs. uranium to operate a coal fired power plant for an hour would run a nuclear reactor for more than 300 years.
Moreover, the fuel rods we already have sitting around at existing reactor sites that we don't know what to do with? Can be used as fuel in newer generation reactors. Plus all we have from decommissioned nuclear weapons that we also need to get rid of.
Everyone currently alive will die of old age before we have to mine any more uranium for newer generation reactors.
> That's before you get to decommissioning costs (which may not be within the 'footprint' category) or waste management.
Decommissioning costs are a thing invented to make nuclear seem more expensive by counting it in one place but not the other. Do you know how much it costs to clean up the superfund sites left at the mining operations for coal and the raw materials that go into solar panels?
And long-term waste management is only a thing for legacy reactors. The newer reactors use their "waste" as fuel, solving both problems.
This seems unlikely given a) several western governments are dead keen on nuclear renaissance, b) the high construction costs are historically, and in recent times, seen in each country dabbling with new nuclear fission plants, and c) the absence of claims from construction companies and investors in new nuclear fission plants about this alleged obstacle.
(Aside - Jeremy Legget's site has some great resources for cost and scheduling blowouts. He's partisan, but I've found no reason to doubt his sources or conclusions.)
> The energy produced through fission from one pound of uranium is the same as from burning 2.7 million pounds of coal.
I wasn't suggesting a disparity in source fuel volumes - I'm aware of how both burning stuff and fission works.
My point was that obtaining clean high quality fissionable material is non-trivial (if it weren't the case we'd probably all be dead).
I'm unconvinced that existing fuel rods can be used to power newer model fission reactors -- unless you're talking about MSR's, which I thought went out of favour last century, and we don't really have any 'modern' plants built (yet). Again, I refer to some of Leggett's work analysing some of the new UK plant constructions - way over cost and time expectations, and likely about to be abandoned by investors.
> Decommissioning costs are a thing invented to make nuclear seem more expensive by counting it in one place but not the other.
I don't understand. Are you suggesting it shouldn't be counted, or the comparison costs to renewables is being misstated?
Comparing it to coal mines is disingenuous, unless you think I'm pushing coal (I am not).
Comparing it to mines for 'raw material that go into solar panels' is more interesting, but I highly factoring that in would shift the balance sheet in favour of fission.
> And long-term waste management is only a thing for legacy reactors. The newer reactors use their "waste" as fuel, solving both problems.
If you're talking thorium and MSR's here, it's not strictly true, is it? Apart from the absence of any existing viable reactors, thorium reactors need, and produce, rare isotopes of uranium, with longer half lifes than say 235 or 238.
I'm at the edge of my knowledge here, to be sure, but ultimately the ramp-up times to build MSR's, the sheer volume required to replace the existing fission reactors, the experiences around the world of cost / schedule blow-outs, the trend for wind, solar thermal, storage, and and even solar PVC -- all seem to indicate fission isn't really a sensible option now.
Wind turbines need a lot of mechanical components mounted 50 meters (up to 150) off the ground. Needless to say, these components aren't what anyone would call roomy. One component is a big gearbox, or as the technicians call it a "meatgrinder" [2].
TLDR: Nuclear: 0.1 deaths/PWh (US) 90/PWh (global). Wind: 150 deaths/PWh Solar: 440 deaths/PWh [3]
Note that Coal and Oil numbers exclude health impact of the intoxication that is highly visible in places like India and China, but really also plays in many US cities. Even if they're not quite at the point where the sky turns brown and acutely toxic.
Only Hydro power is even remotely competitive with nuclear power in deaths.
(global for nuclear means believing the numbers claiming Chernobyl caused more deaths than 2 US nuclear bombs, or you could more reasonably interpret it as including all deaths due to nuclear weapons. You can freely add in all deaths due to radiation research (low 3 digits), it won't affect the numbers)
In a way it's funny. Solar has already killed more people than nuclear (realistic Chernobyl numbers), including the 2 bombs. And will pass the threshold of adding all numbers together just after this decade ends. Somehow that's never mentioned.
So taking the most pessimistic numbers, Nuclear is 60% safer than Wind turbines, and a staggering 500% safer than solar power. If taking the optimistic numbers for nuclear ... it's absolutely ridiculous.
[1] https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20171019/corona/corona-50th... [2] https://www.healthandsafetyatwork.com/content/siemens-techni... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
It should be obvious when you think about it; if "it'll never happen" (because it can't or hasn't happened) is true, then insurance actuaries could establish that and there would be no problem with insuring the "safest source of power", but governments have to wave the responsibility for full liability instead. There is a real probabilistic risk of great and persistent tragedies from nuclear plants, the more there are the greater that risk.
Fortunately wind, solar and storage are cheaper already than nuclear [1] and their prices are continuing to drop fast. There may be a good case for improving safeguards on these industries too - it should not be as expensive as trying to fully safeguard nuclear has been.
[1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
Recognising that this is a minor portion of a larger post - there are a lot of industrial companies that couldn't possibly cover the damage if something goes badly wrong (eg, explosives supplier flattens a major port, 3rd world mining accident, electrical utility causes wildfire, most mid-sized building companies if a skyscraper collapses, etc). Even many insurance companies won't pay out if a flood or fire hits a city, because they can't afford to cover large-scale disasters. Contamination in drinking water is also a pretty big risk. At that level of probability, the only way of dealing with these threats is government. No other organisation else has the manpower or resourcing to deal with rare catastrophes.
It is a fact that liability for a nuclear catastrophe would overwhelm a companies ability to pay. However, we do a lot of things that are more risky and more costly at that level of probability. The fact that there is risk is a very real consideration. That fact we can't insure it is not - there are too many things where, if a rare event happens, the liability cannot be shouldered by a corporation.
Fukushima cleanup, one of the worst disasters we've seen in 30 years, seems to have cost about $15 billion damages + $60 in compensation [0][1] vs $250 billion due to the actual disaster that caused the nuclear plant to fold (the tsunami). And this is as an unexpected, low probability, cost. If a corporation can't handle this, it is tiny bikkies to a government to cover the $15 billion in actual cleanup. And the probability of the government needing to act is tiny to start with. The risks here are so small we don't even talk about them outside the context of nuclear power.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup#Cos... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-fiv...
Of course this is why in developed countries they are required to buy insurance. Insurance companies exist which can take on extremely large liabilities for industry, the point is that Nuclear has never been able to afford the size of premiums which would make the full risk of its liabilities profitable to cover.
Fukushima was by no stretch an example of the worst nuclear event liable to occur. A bad accident or attack on any one of the worlds hundreds of nuclear plants CAN seriously irradiate many thousands, even millions of people in some locations, poison water tables and make land unlivable for decades - continuing harm to many creatures even if people are able to avoid it.
After each disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima we don't just have a new "rate of deaths so far" line to work with, that average line is a one dimensional extremely simplistic measurement. Scientists and engineers who have taken it and as a valid summary of hazard should really know better.
Calculating an actuarial probability was never the problem. You can't know the lower bound on the probability of something that has never actually happened, but you can calculate an upper bound based on the period of time it hasn't happened, which is all you really need. They can calculate what the premiums should be.
The issue is that you're asking them to carry a hundred billion dollars in insurance, but insurance companies have capitalization requirements. AIG's market cap is less than seventy five billion. They can't write an individual policy they don't have the resources to pay out on in the event of a claim, regardless of the probability that it actually happens.
So the problem isn't the risk calculation, it's the amount of insurance you want them to carry. The solution is to find someone who could actually pay out a claim that large in the unlikely event that it comes to that, which could only be the government, so that's what they did.
> Calculating an actuarial probability was never the problem.
Of course is wasn't - revealing and paying the resultant premiums is the problem, which is why governments make alternative arrangements for nuclear.
[1] - https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/largest-insurance-compan...
I think you mean two thousand billion. Which is problematic since there are more than twenty nuclear power stations in the US (each of which would need to be insured), even if that wasn't revenue.
Insurance companies are competitive. If they take in a hundred billion dollars, they pay out more than ninety in claims the same year. They can't pay a claim using the money they're already using to pay other types of claims.
> Of course is wasn't - revealing and paying the resultant premiums is the problem, which is why governments make alternative arrangements for nuclear.
The resultant premiums wouldn't be that bad if it was only the risk of a nuclear disaster they had to account for.
But a smart insurance company is going to take into account that US courts have a way of connecting sympathetic victims to deep-pocketed or well-insured corporations, even when there is only a tangential relationship with them, when it's the only way to save a devastated community. For example, if Fukushima had happened in the US, there is a decent chance that courts would have tried to tack a lot of the cost of the damage from the tsunami on the plant operators. Or for another example, PG&E and the recent wildfires in California.
That's a different kind of risk, but it's one an insurance company that doesn't want to go bankrupt has to account for, and it's also the one that makes buying that amount of insurance prohibitively expensive in the private market.
This statement > "which is problematic since there are more than twenty nuclear power stations in the US" shows a misunderstanding about the insurance business. It is not necessary to have assets to cover worst case events everywhere simultaneously. I expect you do understand that but have not given this subject your best attention.
Because they expected to. If you take in $145B in premiums and pay out $135B in claims, everything is fine. If one year they took in $145B in premiums and paid out $235B in claims, where does the rest of the money come from?
In theory they could collect the premiums and accumulate them over time so that by the time there is a claim there is the money to pay it, but that allows you to pay a single claim of that size in year 50, what is covering it in year one?
> Nuclear plants liability are capped in north america at 13 billion USD the nuclear industry is simply exempt from arranging full cover - unlike other industries.
What other industries? I don't see oil and coal companies each having to be insured against claims for billions in damages from climate change. PG&E isn't covering the full liability from the camp fire, they're filing for bankruptcy.
> This statement > "which is problematic since there are more than twenty nuclear power stations in the US" shows a misunderstanding about the insurance business. It is not necessary to have assets to cover worst case events everywhere simultaneously. I expect you do understand that but have not given this subject your best attention.
That's assuming you can consider them all to be independent. The problem with very low probability events like this is that if they do happen the cause is often another very low probability event. You get something like the Yellowstone Supervolcano or a coordinated terrorist attack and all the claims come at the same time.
Or even at the same time as other types of claims -- you get damage to a nuclear plant or three from a ten thousand year storm or an 8.5 magnitude earthquake and now you're paying that claim on top of the disaster claims from what caused it. Insurance companies want to pool risk, not assume 100% of the damages from a massive disaster with a single dependent cause.
The idea of holding oil companies liable for climate change has a ring to it, but insurance wont cover it because there is no legal precedent. There is legal precedent to claiming damages on industrial accidents and nuclear industry accidents. If one nuclear plant fails badly for any number of reasons and fallout is blown towards a city or across valuable farmland, the claims could easily exceed 13 billion USD.
Rarely in the amount of the theoretical maximum amount of damage they could possibly do. In practice when a company has more liability than insurance coverage, they end up in bankruptcy and it's the insurance policies of the victims that end up paying out, or some kind of government assistance. This is especially true for very rare and very large claims, because nobody really carries that much insurance.
For example, Boeing no doubt has insurance, but their worst case failure mode is something like the hypothesized worst-case scenarios for the Y2K or Y2038 bug where some integer rolls over and every plane they've ever made crashes into the ground at the same time. There is no way they have enough insurance to cover that -- it would be a trillion dollars. But neither do we expect them to, because it's very unlikely even though it could theoretically actually happen.
The same kind of thing could happen to a major auto company, or really any company that runs the same software on a million different pieces of industrial hardware. A company could sell a million pacemakers and have them all fail at once, or elevators, or emergency dispatch equipment. None of them are insured for that amount of liability.
The oil companies are rare in the sense of having extremely deep pockets, enough to cover a major claim like that on their own, but they're about the only instance of that. And even they would be completely bankrupt if the courts ever start allowing claims against them for the damage from climate change.
What does ”uninsurable” mean? If nuclear power plants are uninsurable Silicon Valley is uninsurable.
Silicon Valley is insurance because the liability exposure is substantially less.
It is easy to bring up problem after problem with alternatives. It is not easy to show why the status quo is somehow better, because it is not.
A death is a death. Someone dieing because they fell off a roof is equally as bad as dieing due to radiation.
I do support an alternative solution: making rooftop installs safer, and more utility scale ground mount solar. Both are infinitely more tractable as problems than properly managed nuclear power. The US is already on track to install more utility scale solar this year (~150GW) than total existing nuclear generating capacity, even accounting for capacity factor. One year!
By this logic people should be deathly afraid of coal and what it puts into the air.
People misunderstand the risk. The amount of radiation you need to be exposed to for a 50% chance of getting cancer would be a fatal dose from radiation poisoning. The way people end up with cancer isn't by one person getting a large dose, it's by a million people each getting a small dose, so that they each have a one in ten thousand chance of getting cancer and then a hundred of them do.
Which is exactly the same thing that happens with coal -- not least because coal is radioactive and burning it puts the radioactive materials into the air.
Except that coal does it as a consequence of normal operation rather than only in the event of a catastrophic failure.
About the only practical way to do that is to eat them, at which point you're in the same category as any other adulterated food. How is caesium any scarier than prions or mercury or various pesticides or a thousand different chemical carcinogens?
Fukashima was a level 7 nuclear distaster, so that is as bad as it gets. The actual damage done is objectivly not that bad compared to a lot of things we have accepted in the past with only increased safety regulation (like dam failures). 2 lvl 7 accidents in 35 years; and design standards generally go up in civilised countries. The footprint of nuclear is so tiny that might be competitive with renewables, accounting for the fact that the reacion to nuclear disasters is paranoid but the response to environmental damage by renewables is basically to ignore it. Renewables need materials, which are mined, and need to be installed, which creates hazards, and use land/airspace, which is costly. I believe some highly questionable rare earths are used too where the environmental impacts are not usually accounted for because it happens in China.
Purely in non-human terms, the land clearing for a solar plant is definitely worse than a nuclear disaster, because a level 7 nuclear disaster is net-positive for biodiversity ("suggest biodiversity around the massive radioactivity release has increased" [0]). Ie, humans are worse than a nuclear disaster if they happen to want space for their own use.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disas...