I'm not anti-nuclear, but using decades to measure substances with half lifes on the order of tens or hundreds of millenia isn't very helpful.
The (legitimate) concern is that even low frequency accidents are frequent enough on the timescale of human civlization that they could present semi-permanent damage to the biosphere.
Burning coal, gas or oil present immediate, virtually permanent (at least on a human time scale) damages to the biosphere; hydro electric power already killed at least two more orders of magnitude people than even the most delirious casualty estimations of nuclear power accidents; and air pollution is estimated killing millions of people per year.
At some point, people should start learning to count.
(not saying that hydro is a bad choice; it looks to be the best when possible thanks to load following and ability to double as storage)
For example, how much methane compared to one cow?
All relevant points. I didn't mean to suggest that nuclear power is less safe than alternatives, just that the risk profile is different. The risks of nuclear power are in a long tail of infrequent but potentially large accidents so we can only understand its risks properly by looking at a long timeframe.
If you're accusing people of not learning to count, maybe you should look at the cost of solar, wind, and energy storage systems - and realize that nuclear is being phased out because it's too expensive, and that's despite nearly a century of heavy government subsidization.
It is, in fact, getting more expensive, while wind and solar get less expensive.
That's not a false choice, there is also hydro (unfortunately my country is more or less saturated there), solar (OK if you're a really sunny country and only need electricity during the day, not so great otherwise) and wind (30% average load factor, risible cost efficiency, huge surface required, needs to be rebuilt every ~10 years).
> maybe you should look at the cost of solar, wind, and energy storage systems - and realize that nuclear is being phased out because it's too expensive,
Tell me then, is that why Germany, after sinking dozens of billions over dozens of billions of euros in renewable, is still producing electricity with carbonation level closer to Bulgaria & Poland than France or Belgium, AND has to buy them electricity whenever there is no wind, and sell it at low price when there is too much wind?
But yes, please, show me these numbers.
Offshore is way better, up to .6
> risible cost efficiency
This is not true, see the LCOE:
> huge surface required
Offshore solves this and also offers quasi-sanctuaries to our over-exploited seas.
> needs to be rebuilt every ~10 years
https://www.tvindkraft.dk/en/history/the-first-40-years
Moreover the are more and more efficiently recycled.
Germany nowadays reduces its emissions faster than France, while losing its industry at a way slower pace. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
With an average at 560 gCO2/kWh vs. 47 gCO2/kWh, the opposite would be surprising.
CO2 emissions per capita: France 5.82t Germany 10.14t
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prod-cons-co2-per-capita?...
Comparing derivative doesn't make much sense if the starting point is wildly different.
When do you think Germany's emissions per capita will be lower than France?
Indeed, however this is commonly done and I only state that upon this criteria things aren't exactly what they seem.
Moreover this is heavy industry: there is quite an inertia, therefore Germany (starting later with an immature approach (renewables) while dumping existing equipment (nuclear)) is facing an ordeal.
> When do you think Germany's emissions per capita will be lower than France?
This is difficult to predict because it is tied to future decisions and their results, however if France bets 100% on new reactors (either deliberately or because building new reactors continue to sucks too much money while not delivering) and doesn't tackle its current industrial crash it may be done by 2040.
As it stands, I would leave the markets, since apparently they're sooo effective, choose what power source would fill in the gaps.
The "Cultural Revolution" began in 1966.
In such a context an otherwise avoidable catastrophe may happen.
This Revolution followed the "Great Leap Forward" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward ), with famines. "In the subsequent famines of the early 1960s popularly attributed to the Great Leap Forward, Henan was one of the hardest hit and millions of lives were lost." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era .
Moreover all this came after a civil war and a violent Japanese invasion, during which dams were bombed, causing "massive flooding in Henan" (same source).
Then a typhoon hit and many dams collapsed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#The_c... )
During decades predicting and adverting this catastrophe was possible, even when it unfolded people had days to react... but given such a context nobody was able to do so. One may wonder what an active nuclear reactor will become in such a context.
Estimations of nuclear power disasters are highly disputed, and some claims are very high ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the... )
Also: you compare nuclear to fossil fuels, neglecting renewables.
The longer the half-life, the less radioactive something is. By definition.
Something with a half-life of "tens or hundreds of millenia" is not very radioactive.
Something with a half-life of infinity is not radioactive at all.
The really dangerous stuff tends to be isotopes like iodine-131 (half-life 8 days, accumulates in the thyroid gland), strontium-90 (half-life of about 29 years, accumulates in the bones).
Any such concern, if legitimate, should at least be fleshed out with some basic assumptions and numbers. What is the (rough, estimate) probability distribution of the number of deaths that this will cause? Then we can compare it with the danger of fossil fuels. Otherwise we're left with hand-wavy expressions like "accidents" and "frequent enough". What are we to do with such statements?
Solar is already CHEEEEEAP and getting cheaper. Nuclear is expensive and not getting any cheaper, in fact quite the opposite.
Market forces are already making this apparent (money talks), but there are still pro nuclear lobbies DESPERATE to hold on.
> there are still pro nuclear lobbies DESPERATE to hold on.
First, caps don't make right. I believe NREs help in getting emissions down to a point, but since you need backup power I am not seeing it working at 80% production share. In order to emissions to get to zero I believe nuclear makes sense on the longer term.
An "international market" doesn't help with electricity: you can't transport electricity feasibly across oceans.
Underwater electricity links do exist, and many are planned. https://eepublicdownloads.entsoe.eu/clean-documents/Publicat...
However some existing links are encouraging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed
Projects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable#Proposed...
The underlying approach is not new and is rather rather quickly adopted and improved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects
There are more than a few countries nobody in their right mind would ever want to tie their power grid to.
That’s all. Nothing else.
Revealed preferences today show that it is a solution, given countries are currently happy to be dependent on other nations for the energy source via oil and gas imports. If importing oil and gas is acceptable, then importing solar should be equally acceptable, if not even more acceptable given you can import from more reliable allies instead of authoritarian rogue states that will engage in energy blackmail.
Your point of view seems to be that of wealthy or semi-wealthy and relatively stable nations, without massive rampant corruption. And sure, for those, it may very well work. Who am I to even have an opinion on that?
But who will accept to connect their power grid to that of those countries who are still having weekly, if not daily, blackouts?
The kind of country where corrupt officials accept being paid to get chemical waste dumped into their laps, and consider it a grand idea to dump those into their country’s power plants crude oil?
The kind of country where people just randomly plug themselves into power lines, without any consideration for safety, and regularly burn down a whole block because of it, and shut down power for an entire city in the process?
The kind of country currently facing a war, civil or otherwise, and who’s grid’s instability would affect anybody connected to them?
Nobody in their right mind would willingly expose themselves to such risks.
So sure, like you so eagerly anticipate, rich and stable countries will happily link their power grids together in some grand international energy market, and maybe it will, as you surmise, solve all their problems. I really have no opinion whatsoever on that.
But where do the others fit?
I'm with you except for this. Fear mongering about nuclear ("incredible risk") is inaccurate and isn't the way forward. We should save the fear mongering for fossil fuels where it belongs. Renewables are better than nuclear due to the lower cost, and that's mostly it, there aren't other differentiating factors that matter all that much.
Just extrapolating the sequence, the next disaster will take place in a generation 3 reactor.
The gen 1 disaster left land uninhabitable, the gen 2 disaster just took some cleanup, therefore the gen 3 disaster will be a non-issue.
So at this point, we are concerned if the remains of people who would be killed by the asteroid, would also be slightly radioactive? An the 'remains' are being probably like finely pulverised ashes?
Like the containment building is basically a bunker, and the reactor vessel is like a thousand tons of steel. If any asteroid gets through that, the neighbourhood is already gone.
So many people pointed out Fukushima to me, and most of them did not know that the tsunami killed 10,000 people and radiation killed zero.
Nuclear power plants take decades to build and turn on.
Nuclear power has a non-zero risk of very, very bad things happening.
We have no long term strategy for storing nuclear waste.
And in the time it would take to build a single new nuclear reactor we're going to add a massive, massive amount of large scale storage. It's already well underway.
How far along is the next nuclear reactor?
No it's not. Maybe for the first plant of its kind.
1) It's ridiculously expensive. LCOE is 5x the cost of solar and wind: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/wind/st...
2) Yes, still a lot more expensive once you take storage into account. Even for the most inefficient forms of storage: https://theecologist.org/2016/feb/17/wind-power-windgas-chea...
3) It takes about 12-20 years to build new plants. Solar/wind is 1-4 years.
4) 5x is an understatement. It's even more expensive if you properly account for insurance. Dealing with Fukushima cost $800 billion. This is unaccounted for in LCOE and taxpayers will be fully on the hook for whatever the next Fukushima.
5) New power plants aren't being built because it's too expensive. So, old ones are having their lives extended (the latest law in congress was about this). Older plants = more danger. Fukushima happened in large part because it was old.
6) Despite this many countries still build nuclear power. Why? Two reasons: 1) it shares nuclear military costs 2) it lets you build a bomb quickly.
China will probably make it cheap given the pace they're going building out nuclear plants.
What nations who currently invest into solar and wind are doing is to also invest in a lot of fossil fuel reserve energy, like natural gas. This is the official strategy of Germany, and is also the primary strategy of UK. In combination this is what caused the insane energy prices that Europe suffered this winter.
This is why I want a EU ban against building new fossil fuel capacity, especially natural gas. Solar and wind is great, but not if they are combined with natural gas, oil or coal. I loose a lot of trust in politics when green party politicians are advocating to maintain programs to subsidizes fossil fueled power plants while at the same time advocating to shut down nuclear power plant.
Unlike Poland, who quietly powers itself with 80% coal and attracts very little flak because 1) it didn't make the nuclear industry look unnecessary 2) it preferred to burn coal over gas from America's main geopolitical rival.
Decarbonised? They still have the worst CO2/KWh in Western Europe, and among the worst in Europe:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...
After literally decades of massive renewables investments and subsidies.
That's literally bullshit. Main import sources of uranium in France are Kzakhstan, Australia, and Canada. Please stop spouting Russian and/or Greenpeace propaganda.
What Poland really does now is quite different: https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/02/03/polands-second-larges...
There is also a huge loss of public trust when green party politicians are advocating to keep subsidizing fossil fuel plants. If environmentalist want to keep oil and natural gas plants, then how will the public be convinced of climate change? The strategy need to be clear and fossil fuel free, and if that solution is wind, solar and storage then that plan need to be up front and part of the budget discussions. It should not be the argument from environmentalists that we should be using natural gas because it happen to be cheaper that nuclear.
It seems like you already know why it's not realistic. Fossil fuels fulfill the role of a marginal power source very well, neither renewables nor nuclear can replace that role as of yet. There are still plenty of issues that need to be solved towards electrification, lets not make it unrealistically difficult for ourselves.
It is however not a policy I would advocate or vote for. I rather oppose fossil fuels especially when they are being subsidized through taxes. Europe can also not really handle an other winter, especially if the weather would not be exceptional mild. Bailouts can only be paid so many times before it becomes unrealistic.
This winter and perhaps the one after that as well will be interesting for sure, after that the major natural gas risk should be mitigated by having enough LNG terminals and supply. There is still quite a bit of leeway to reduce taxes on electricity, but when you're short on supply you might not want to incentivize electricity use.
Trying to disincentivize electricity use during periods of low supply do not work. Governments feel forced to step in if factories has to shut down or people can't heat their homes. Those not willing gets voted out, as was also demonstrated this winter.
All this is a local maximum where every action is rational but the result is terrible for everyone involved. Paying through taxes does not actually make the energy price low, and the massive cost to the environment will have to be paid at some point in the future.
More LNG terminals and more fossil fuel plants will not make the situation better. Demand through electrification is growing faster than the economic savings from using even more fossil fuels, and when winter comes the same scenario as last will occur. The only ones who will profit is those countries that export fossil fuels.
Why would you want this? Fossil fuels are very important for a working electricity grid. Natural gas is flexible and it outcompetes worse energy sources like coal or oil so it actually reduces the CO2 output compared to what it was before. Your suggestion would give us high electricity prices.
That's actually an interesting point. Japan etc. can raise that magnitude of funds, but the whole world benefits from countries that run on nuclear instead of coal and gas. Should we not all pay for that? For already-built reactors that's a bit late, but:
If there were a global standard for new reactors (which would obviously have to meet the minimum requirements of the most stringent participating country), multinationals could build to that spec without a lot of reinventing the wheel per regulatory environment as we do today, everyone would agree it's safe enough (presuming a safe environment; I don't know if a place like Afghanistan can provide that today), and everyone is equally (by GDP or so? TBD) on the hook for helping out if one of them has an incident.
Based on Fukshima being the only INES level >=5 incident in the past 30 years, and one of four since nuclear energy tech became somewhat established in the 1950s, on the hundreds of nuclear power plants that are still in service around the world (I don't know how many have been cumulatively, probably around 1-2k?), that would be stupidly cheap insurance per kWh produced.
It… really doesn't. Even someone with full control of a modern plant, who actively wanted to cause as terrible an accident as possible, would not be able to cause nearly that much damage. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are poisoning people right now
Maybe just me, but I would gladly take that risk vs the whole world becoming uninhabitable due to global warming, not to mention the possible nuclear fallout from WW3 due to global unrest.
The greatest political disappointment I've felt in recent years was when the Merkele government decided to shut down a bunch of Nuclear power-plants. It made up for it by burning coal.
She (and Schroeder) wasn't some puppet put there by Putin, the German people voted for her, several times over actually. It's their fault and their responsibility for the choices they made. That's how democracy works.
Next time choose your leaders more wisely, but sadly, I feel like no lessons have been learned in Germany and the voters will double down on their flawed ideology over reality.
So no matter what you vote for, it won't change anything.
The only country I know where there's a way to vote for particular issues is Switzerland.
Then Fukushima happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany#Closu...
The coal replaced the gas and french nuclear.
https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-alw...
If there were, I don't think they'd tell anyone. So maybe it's a trust thing. People know for sure that a wind turbine can't poison nearby communities to death no matter what goes wrong. Personally I'd prefer nuclear, but also this kind of distrust is the only way we can get more transparency.
Excuse me, what? There are quite literally ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents at this very moment. The fact that they started decades ago is hardly a consolation.
This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the pro-nuclear crowd. Maybe if we could manage to contain the waste we've already created (or at the very least if pro-nucs would admit we can't), I might have some faith in our ability to contain the waste we make in the future.
> This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the pro-nuclear crowd. Maybe if we could manage to contain the waste we've already created (or at the very least if pro-nucs would admit we can't), I might have some faith in our ability to contain the waste we make in the future.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
GP specifically referenced "submarines and aircraft carriers"; Hanford is neither.
There is a cleanup at Hanford, which is understandable for one of the earliest reactors. I think calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation.
Again, GP:
"We've learned so much since the mid-20th century."
Nothing is going to be perfect. All the data I've seen is that nuclear power is safer and has fewer casualties. Picking one of the earliest sites from 70 years ago ignores everything since, as well as comparison to fatalities due to other forms of power generation.
To paraphrase you, "This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd."
> calling it "ongoing military nuclear reactor incidents" is misleading, since it was the normal operation.
I can't tell what you mean by "it was the normal operation". I can assure you that the plant was not designed to be in a state of constant leakage and need billions of dollars of continuous investment per year to facilitate its cleanup process for decades without end.
Well, that's a bit of a lie. The plant was designed to leak radioactive waste into the Columbia River under normal operation. But that was considered safe, at that time. Just as many nuclear things are now considered safe, at this time. For instance the Monticello leak less than 6 months ago, which was covered up for months before the news finally got out. Perfectly safe, at this time.
If we've really learned so much since whenever, let's use that knowledge to clean up all the messes we made along the way first. Once we know we can do that well, perhaps we can take on more projects. Until then we're the Junior Dev hopping from greenfield project to greenfield project leaving giant steaming piles of shit behind at every stop and telling ourselves "welp, I definitely learned from that experience! no way I'm doing that again!"
> This kind of wool-pulling makes it very hard to trust the _anti_-nuclear crowd.
I'm not asking anyone to trust me, I'm not an energy expert and never claimed to be. I'm just asking them to not lie in order to push a nuclear agenda. In general, if a concept is truly with pursuing, it should be able to be presented via a convincing argument without lies.
Or you don't understand why people wouldn't want to be left holding the cleanup bill after the company running a power station or mine or mill declared bankruptcy before finishing decomissioning?
Or you don't understand why people wouldn't support ecocide, corruption and worker exploitation in Niger or Uzbekistan to line the pockets of a uranium mining oligopoly?
The article is a bit light on numbers and facts, unfortunately. Hard to tell if this is a serious study or paid "study" by some lobby with an agenda. I suspect the latter. It certainly seems to be very selective in what it talks about. And it would explain the hand waviness of the reported "findings".
It kind of makes a big point of avoiding talking about investments in renewables because "In 1985, the closure of reactors in Tennessee Valley prompted a spike in coal use". That's nearly four decades ago. Most of those coal plants have probably been closed by now. And conveniently, wind and solar investments were not a thing at the time.
Have we? There is a nuclear plant being shelled in Ukraine and the US is still arguing over where to dump its waste. Japan is looking to release a million tons of radioactive water into the sea. Those are the ones I can think of that are happening right now. There are plenty more in and out of the news.
I don’t think knowledge is cumulative, it has to be re-learned ever so often.
In relation to the US navy - here is an accident that was covered up 16 years ago. I do not believe there have been none since.
Understood about the concern that if they tried to hide a problem once, they’ll probably try to hide one again. But 16 years ago isn’t accurate with the link you shared.
I understand the public as a whole is afraid because they remember events like Chernobyl and Fukushima, but those were pre-Generation-III reactors (Chernobyl was generation 1, Fukushima was generation 2). Modern designs are far safer. We've learned so much since the mid-20th century.
Micro-reactors in particular could become a huge boon to society. All US submarines and aircraft carriers have been nuclear-powered for decades; and it's been decades without any military reactor-related incidents.
The conspiracy theorist in my head wants to blame it on *someone* in the US government/industrial complex who stands to make a lot of money from selling other energy sources. :-/