This is one aspect of this debate that I think hasn't been covered nearly enough. Nuclear opponents have successfully created an environment in which it is extremely difficult to construct new reactors, and then they are quick to decry failures of obsolete designs. The anti-nuke movement shares culpability in the Fukushima disaster precisely because they have done everything possible to ensure that we are stuck with older, far less safe designs.

If anything, Fukushima is an example of how little attention we should pay to the anti-nuclear movement, because an inevitable side effect of their cause is the prolonging of older reactor's lifespans, when much safer designs could be replacing them.

"If anything, Fukushima is an example of how little attention we should pay to the anti-nuclear movement"

I think the opposite. I recall many many people on this site asserting with absolute certainty that nothing bad could happen at Fukushima immediately after the earthquake. Anyone that suggested otherwise was demonized as an uninformed faermonger.

I'm not anti nuclear, I think it's a better option than coal, but the pro nuke people have done the cause a great disservice with their wrongness and refusal to cop to it.

Reread this for one example, and tell me which side sounds as if it doesn't deserve attention.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326726

Remember: Nobody has died as a result of nuclear electrical generation. Rooftop solar panels are more dangerous than a molten down reactor, and more people die on bicycles.

Is this sarcasm? Rooftop solar panels have never caused an evacuation. Bicycle accidents tie up traffic for a few hours at worst. Yes people die but that's hardly the only dimension of interest.

It is :)

Hacker News nuke threads are almost as puzzling to me as BitCoin threads, but I keep coming back for some reason.

It's sarcasm, but I had to look at his comment history to figure that out.

>If anything, Fukushima is an example of how little attention we should pay to the anti-nuclear movement, because an inevitable side effect of their cause is the prolonging of older reactor's lifespans, when much safer designs could be replacing them.

Unfortunately. if limitations are lifted or eased, we'd immediately get more of the same Fukushimas from the industry, and the anti-nuke movement is the only force keeping it from happening.

I think that both the industry and the anti-nuke forces are keeping nuclear from advancing.

When people like the founder of Greenpeace are pro nuclear, the only people anti-nuclear are radically anti-nuclear. They do not give a damn about old versus new tech.

The nuclear industry just wants to save money by pushing the old tech.

Together they create the false dichotomy of either old or nothing.

I wish we had an anti-nuclear movement which distinguished between old and dangerous and what we could have with new tech. Even if they were against both, if they were at least much more against the old an dangerous, that would be great.

But the current ani-nuclear forces are not that rational.

To support your point, can you link to some information about the new tech? I'd be interested in a layman's comparison to the old tech.

you can Google on your own and there are a lot of different designs in different states, from pure concepts to successfully prototyped. My point is the absence of any significant technological development by the entrenched and monopolized industry (and intentional preventing of others through regulatory machinery - i.e one can't disrupt the industry short of producing the fusion reactor in the garage).

From practical point of view, the most developed, i.e. it was successfully prototyped 40 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment), is Molten Salt Reactor :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

nice quote from the article: " Since it uses raw fuel, basically just a mixture of chemicals, current reactor vendors do not want to develop it. They derive their long-term profits from sales of fabricated fuel assemblies." :)

The principal difference of this type of reactor is that all the stuff (fuel, fission products, etc) aren't piled and accumulated in the reactor core. Instead, it is flows in, burns, flows out, filtered/reprocessed, flows in ...

General scare tactic utilised by the industry to preserve status-quo is expressed nicely here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

"As one director of a U.S. research laboratory put it, "fabrication, construction, operation, and maintenance of new reactors will face a steep learning curve: advanced technologies will have a heightened risk of accidents and mistakes. The technology may be proven, but people are not"

Basically - if you force us to make something new, it will be even more risky and we've warned you.

Another quote from there : "Nuclear engineer David Lochbaum has explained that almost all serious nuclear accidents have occurred with what was at the time the most recent technology. " .

Complete BS - nor Chernobyl, nor Fukushima have nothing to do with their technology being most recent as 1.their technology hasn't been most recent 2.it has to do with morons - Chernobyl, and unplanned for high tsunami - Fukushima and if i remember TMI was also not about new technology.

> the anti-nuke movement is the only force keeping it from happening.

You say that as though the engineers are willing to sign off on any old half-baked plan. Maybe things are different in Japan, but around here, you have to get engineers to approve things personally and there are serious consequences for someone who signs off on something unsafe.

> You say that as though the engineers are willing to sign off on any old half-baked plan.

Yes.

Then you are mistaken. At Fukushima, no less, there were reports about how an engineer held things up until his demands to improve the safety of some system were met. And his demands were met.

Certainly, there are a lot of things we have learned since that plant was designed that could be done better and if it had been just a tiny bit better, there wouldn't have been any leaks at all. But we can make plants a lot stronger these days. And we probably should be doing exactly that.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/fukushima-engineer-... you're talking about this one?

No, it was something else.

> c'mon, these reactors of the basic design dating back to the Manhattan project need to give way.

Absolutely. There's been a ton of research, but too little actually being built. This would be a good time for Japan (and elsewhere) to replace any vulnerable reactors to designs that can work with passive cooling.