Re:Nuclear Power in France
by godelski on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @02:04PM
(#28842969)
> You can claim that todays designs are 99.9999999% safe, but there is no such thing as 100%.
I'm not sure how you wrote this and took it seriously. Should I never leave the house? How do I eat? Eating is more dangerous than that. We can't just live in a bubble. There is never perfect safety in anything you will do in life. You'll always have to make risk/reward trade offs. Historically nuclear shows the safest option.
> Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce.
You seem to be uninformed of how these work. If you care to learn more I suggest reading here[0]. I bet you're also overestimating how much waste there is. Let's look at the total waste of decades worth of France[1] and Russian[2] waste. That's the entire amount of waste since the nuclear programs started till now. France also recycles most of its waste which greatly reduces the rate of waste. Storage also doesn't have to be as long as you think. We tend to have a few orders of safety in nuclear safety. You're also not being fair in your comparisons. You're acting like strip mining and dredging for rare earth materials isn't doing crazy damage to our environment too. Pretending that these also don't pose a significant waste problem as well. Like the previous response, there is a waste tradeoff. Even the IPCC reports will demonstrate that the lifetime emissions and waste is low for nuclear. This is the part that frustrates me most about many of these discussions. People act like solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are perfectly clean and have no problems. Doing so just demonstrates naivety. I'm happy you're passionate. Good. We need passionate people to solve this problem. BUT we can't stay uneducated and expect to solve the most complex problem humans have ever faced in history. I repeat: the most complex problem in human history. I don't pretend to be an expert. No single person can know everything. But to act like it is simple is harmful. And just to clarify, "pro-nuclear" just means keeping it on the table as an option. It does not mean using only nuclear. Energy requires a diverse portfolio of tools. The more we limit ourselves the more challenging the problem is ahead.
> Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive.
I actually agree with this argument.
> Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack.
They also are very hard to attack, never have been, and there's a reason they haven't. It is just never worth it because reactors can shut down. They are designed to take multiple plane strikes.
> Compared to other readily available green power sources, I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels.
Read this[1]. You're vastly overestimating the risk. But that is unsurprising since humans are notoriously bad at it.
> edit: A large number of replies seem to think I am pro-shutdown of plants or pro-coal, but that was never stated. My argument is against further investment into nuclear when there are other more known technologies available, like solar and wind.
That's because that's what your comment implies, even if you don't realize it. Many people do not actually understand the complexities of climate change, how we got here, and how much further we have to go. Most people think green energy is simply a matter of political will. It's far from that. Physics Girl recently did a 4 part series on Hydrogen Fuel [4], Batteries and Fuelcells[5], Storage[6], and CSP[7]. Climate change isn't happening simply because we drive cars and our grid isn't green. Changing those only gets us half way there. And no, the other half isn't switching to a vegan diet, we're just talking about the energy sector. There's still major technical challenges that lie ahead, especially in mass storage.
I'm not sure how you wrote this and took it seriously. Should I never leave the house? How do I eat? Eating is more dangerous than that. We can't just live in a bubble. There is never perfect safety in anything you will do in life. You'll always have to make risk/reward trade offs. Historically nuclear shows the safest option.
> Nuclear waste is difficult to deal with. Our current strategies include finding a secret underground cave, and hoping no one accidentally stumbles onto it. Not to mention we have no plan for dealing with widespread use of nuclear power and the waste that would produce.
You seem to be uninformed of how these work. If you care to learn more I suggest reading here[0]. I bet you're also overestimating how much waste there is. Let's look at the total waste of decades worth of France[1] and Russian[2] waste. That's the entire amount of waste since the nuclear programs started till now. France also recycles most of its waste which greatly reduces the rate of waste. Storage also doesn't have to be as long as you think. We tend to have a few orders of safety in nuclear safety. You're also not being fair in your comparisons. You're acting like strip mining and dredging for rare earth materials isn't doing crazy damage to our environment too. Pretending that these also don't pose a significant waste problem as well. Like the previous response, there is a waste tradeoff. Even the IPCC reports will demonstrate that the lifetime emissions and waste is low for nuclear. This is the part that frustrates me most about many of these discussions. People act like solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are perfectly clean and have no problems. Doing so just demonstrates naivety. I'm happy you're passionate. Good. We need passionate people to solve this problem. BUT we can't stay uneducated and expect to solve the most complex problem humans have ever faced in history. I repeat: the most complex problem in human history. I don't pretend to be an expert. No single person can know everything. But to act like it is simple is harmful. And just to clarify, "pro-nuclear" just means keeping it on the table as an option. It does not mean using only nuclear. Energy requires a diverse portfolio of tools. The more we limit ourselves the more challenging the problem is ahead.
> Nuclear plants take ages to build, and are insanely expensive.
I actually agree with this argument.
> Nuclear is centralized, and vulnerable to attack.
They also are very hard to attack, never have been, and there's a reason they haven't. It is just never worth it because reactors can shut down. They are designed to take multiple plane strikes.
> Compared to other readily available green power sources, I cannot fathom why nuclear is preferred to a safe, distributed, clean grid of solar panels.
Read this[1]. You're vastly overestimating the risk. But that is unsurprising since humans are notoriously bad at it.
> edit: A large number of replies seem to think I am pro-shutdown of plants or pro-coal, but that was never stated. My argument is against further investment into nuclear when there are other more known technologies available, like solar and wind.
That's because that's what your comment implies, even if you don't realize it. Many people do not actually understand the complexities of climate change, how we got here, and how much further we have to go. Most people think green energy is simply a matter of political will. It's far from that. Physics Girl recently did a 4 part series on Hydrogen Fuel [4], Batteries and Fuelcells[5], Storage[6], and CSP[7]. Climate change isn't happening simply because we drive cars and our grid isn't green. Changing those only gets us half way there. And no, the other half isn't switching to a vegan diet, we're just talking about the energy sector. There's still major technical challenges that lie ahead, especially in mass storage.
[0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/risk.html
[2] https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5uN0bZBOic&t=105s
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghIckc7nrY
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWAO3vUn7nw
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHmIVw9etns
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccO0_hSXMyM