Public's Dread of Nuclear Power Limits Its Deployment

https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/may/nuclear-power-limits.html

by undefined1 • 7 years ago

129 236 7 years ago

cmu.edu

imglorp• 7 years ago

The public also dreads vaccines, dihydrogen monoxide, and planetary alignments.

The solution to all of these problems is solid education to make informed citizens.

umvi3• 7 years ago

The solution to all of these problems is solid education to make informed citizens.

Easier said than done. Even if you drop a world class school with world class teachers into a poor neighborhood, you still won't guarantee everyone gets a "solid education". Education is tightly coupled not just to public schools, but private family life as well, and the latter is much more difficult to solve.

cameronbrown6• 7 years ago

I disagree - the education system itself is deeply unforgiving in how it functions. From even the most basic level of school scheduling being directly at odds with teenage biology, all the way to how students are ranked and filed purely based on test scores. These kids in poor neighborhoods usually (statistically) don't have the support that even the best students need to get through school. Of course there are always exceptions, but this is just what I've observed.

jwr6• 7 years ago

I have conflicted thoughts on this. On one hand, nuclear energy seems to be the only way we have right now to at least try to avoid the oncoming climate catastrophe. On the other hand, I'm reading "Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies" by Charles Perrow and it's scary. Really scary. The combination of very complex systems with interactions that no one understands and greed, poor oversight, and other human behaviors results in something we should be afraid of. And yet, we might have no choice but to use nuclear power.

By the way, official statistics are one thing (I used to love quoting them as well), but if you look at the number of "close calls" that we had and if you look into the causes behind various incidents, a different picture emerges and you might lose some of the confidence.

I also now think that anyone taking part in the discussion should read Perrow's book.

One thought I had while reading the book is that these days it might make sense to try to model these complex systems and run simulations to at least try to discover the unexpected interactions and mitigate them. Similar to (for example) how FoundationDB was developed. Simulations on that scale were likely difficult or impossible at the time when most nuclear plants were designed, but with modern computing power we might have better ways of reducing the problem domain.

dv_dt6• 7 years ago

I find it very likely to be wrong when statements say xxx is the "only" way to do something. Particularly with nuclear which has strong evidence in the US, France and China that plants can't be built in sufficient time to make a difference at this point, while it's pretty clear that renewables and storage are not only feasible, but more cost effective and faster to rollout, as well as to advance technologically vs nuclear.

Robotbeat7• 7 years ago

I agree that nuclear isn’t technically the only option, but statements like “Can’t be built fast enough to make a difference” is also not true, particularly if you use historical examples YES in France.

We’re going to need deep decarbonization, and actually the most likely scenario is it will take decades, so there’s actually substantial time for nuclear to make a difference. It doesn’t HAVE to take a long time to build a nuclear power plant.

I’m firmly in the “every zero carbon option now, as fast as possible.” And nuclear is definitely part of that. I’ve become worried about the stalling solar power deployment rate in the US (and other places). It hasn’t stopped, but it no longer appears to be on the same exponential growth curve we needed it to be on. We’re going to need everything we can get.

belorn4• 7 years ago

Storage is talked about in the similar ways as molten salt reactor. It is a nice concept but I don't know any nation which energy grid uses it.

It would be great if Germany replaced all their natural gas power plants in favor of storage. It is the perfect solution and it would end the nuclear power discussion rather quickly if nations would actually start to use it rather then building more gas based power plants.

I am in the political camp that says we should ban all burning of fossil fuels today. Doing so would create all the incentives needed to answer the question of storage vs nuclear in a very short time.

gwbas1c• 7 years ago

As a huge renewable energy fan, I need to point out that your viewpoint is factually incorrect.

For example: I built a very low carbon home a year ago, with giant solar panels sized to charge two electric cars, and to heat the house with heat pumps.

I live in the Northeast US, where it gets cold in the winter. The reason why it gets cold in the winter is because the days are very short.

Because the days are shorter in the winter, the solar panels do not generate enough electricity to heat the house, so I end up using a lot of grid electricity in December and January.

And, what really stinks is that April was unusually cloudy this year. So, when I should have generated excess, I ended up pulling from the grid.

In contrast, I have a lot of excess power in the summer when the days are long. (Air conditioning doesn't use as much electricity as heating.)

Now, comes the facts:

We don't have technology that can store the energy that I generate in the summer for use in the winter. Batteries are great for short term storage: Charge at noon when the panels generate the most power, discharge at night.

Even worse, my very expensive Powerwall can't run my heat pump, nor could it hold enough charge to heat my home overnight. Even if I doubled my panels and had a few more Powerwalls, I'd need to pull from the grid in some of the rather bad cold snaps we had this winter.

This is why people say that Nuclear can solve the problem now. Renewables are a great long-term solution, but we still need a lot of R&D to solve the problem of storing energy in the summer for use in the winter. In contrast, the nuclear power plant 15 miles from my home can run my heat pump in the dead of winter, without requiring any new storage technology.

pdonis18• 7 years ago

We already know how to safely operate nuclear power plants: the US Navy has been doing so for decades with no incidents. We could have imposed a similar level of discipline on civilian nuclear power plant operators back in the 1970s, when commercial plants started being built in the US in quantity. Or we could have done it after Three Mile Island (which harmed no members of the general public but clearly showed inadequacies in the way civilian nuclear plants were operated). The fact that we didn't is a political problem, not a technical or operational problem.

Furthermore, even the operational problem is now nonexistent with newer reactor designs. Older designs, like the reactors at Three Mile Island, required the operators to correctly execute a fairly complex procedure in the event of a problem to prevent the reactor from being severely damaged or destroyed; the TMI operators failed to do that. Also, as Fukushima showed, older reactor designs require reliable backup power for decay heat removal. Newer designs have neither of those requirements; you can literally pull the shutdown switch and walk away and there will be no problem.

So while I don't disagree with what you say about complex systems in general, I don't think nuclear reactors, with today's designs, are even that complex. We know how to design and build them so that it is impossible to operate them unsafely. We just don't have the political will to do it.

newsoul2019• 7 years ago

> civilian nuclear power plant operators

Maybe you just solved the problem. The Navy should operate the civilian nuclear power plants.

onli3• 7 years ago

There are actually a bunch of US navy incidents related to nuclear power listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid.... It's a sound assumptions that there are many more we would not hear about.

sq_• 7 years ago

If anyone wants a deeper look at an operational group of reactors that are designed to be as safe as possible and difficult to operate unsafely, I highly recommend checking out Canada's CANDU reactors [0].

This video [1] is a pretty interesting and reasonably short look at their safety systems/precautions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx_XoqXNtRM

jwr6• 7 years ago

no incidents

I would respectfully suggest that you read the book I quoted. I also thought there were "no incidents". The book is from 1983, so it specifically describes the 70s and early 80s. There were plenty of incidents and accidents, it's just that few of them resulted in major releases of radioactive material. My take on this after reading about some details is that we were just lucky.

Some might say it is outdated — but I followed up on some of the stories described there and checked more recent developments. Specifically, the San Onofre plant which gets a mention in the book. You can read about it on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_... — now tell me that we know what we're doing and that we "know how to safely operate nuclear power plants" after reading things like:

On investigation, the replacement steam generators from 2011 in both units were found to show premature wear on over 3,000 tubes, in 15,000 places.[47] Plant officials pledged not to restart until the causes of the tube leak and tube degradation were understood.

Other honorable mentions:

"The firm Bechtel was ... embarrassed in 1977, when it installed a 420-ton nuclear-reactor vessel backwards" at San Onofre
In 2008, the San Onofre plant received multiple citations over issues such as failed emergency generators, improperly wired batteries and falsified fire safety data.

Again, I am not against nuclear power. I'm just pointing out that we have way too much hubris and the rosy picture of "no incidents" is not entirely true.

Also, which newer designs do you mean?

stephenr2• 7 years ago

Has the US Navy worked out what no one else has yet? What to do with all the toxic waste?

Hiding it in a mountain and hoping for the best is hardly a solution.

The US Navy also has effectively as much money as it ever needs to “decommission” reactors. How many private reactors have their decommissioning costs adequately covered? Everything I’ve read says most estimates from time of construction were woefully inadequate and thus any money that may have been squirrelled away to pay for decommissioning will fall way short of what’s required.

mimixco16• 7 years ago

I know of no technology that would allow a plant operator to simply walk away. Even spent fuel rods have to be cooled for years in a swimming pool (with constantly added fresh water) or they too will heat and catch fire.

Care to explain your "carefree" nuclear or give an example of a plant that has solved this problem?

gpm2• 7 years ago

the US Navy has been doing so for decades with no incidents.

The USS Seawolf, Theodore Roosevolt, Swordfish, Proteus, Puffer, and Long Beach all had publicly known incidents involving the release of radioactive material... and given the navy's (legitimate) tendency to classify stuff I see little reason to believe this is the extent of the issues.

http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html#subs

bassman9000• 7 years ago

the US Navy has been doing so for decades with no incidents

On reactors less than 200MWe. 1GWe is another game when vessel is huge and pressurized. MSR is the way to go.

bigbadgoose2• 7 years ago

We could have imposed a similar level of discipline on civilian nuclear power plant operators ... when commercial plants started being built in the US in quantity ... Three Mile Island (...clearly showed inadequacies in the way civilian nuclear plants were operated). The fact that we didn't is a political problem, not a technical or operational problem.

Scaling any operation is going to introduce error. It's exponentially harder to control 1,000 outcomes in a civilian operation than 10 outcomes in a military operation. And when the failure scenario is nuclear debris beyond sovereign borders, it gets dicey.

So the real political problem seems to be, "I don't want to be any part of Chernobyl, USA"

opo2• 7 years ago

I agree with your main point that reactor designs today are safer designs than those from the 1960s. Though you also wrote:

...Or we could have done it after Three Mile Island (which harmed no members of the general public but clearly showed inadequacies in the way civilian nuclear plants were operated). The fact that we didn't is a political problem, not a technical or operational problem.

All indications are that much was learned by industry and the NRC after TMI:

"...The NRC said the TMI accident also led to increased identification, analysis and publication of plant performance information, and recognising human performance as “a critical component of plant safety”. Key indicators of plant safety performance in the US have improved dramatically. Those indicators show:

• The average number of significant reactor events over the past 20 years has dropped to nearly zero.

• Today there are far fewer, much less frequent and lower risk events that could lead to a reactor-core damage.

• The average number of times safety systems have had to be activated is about one-tenth of what it was 22 years ago.

• Radiation exposure levels to plant workers have steadily decreased to about one-sixth of the 1985 exposure levels and are well below national limits.

• The average number of unplanned reactor shutdowns has decreased by nearly ten-fold. In 2007 there were about 52 shutdowns compared to about 530 shutdowns in 1985."

https://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2009/03/23/three-mile-is...

sadris3• 7 years ago

The US military has lost 8 nuclear warheads. To say "no incidents" might be a bit of a misnomer.

petre2• 7 years ago

The US Navy is a military organization, they are disciplined and have very clear procedures. Even so, accidents do happen. Also naval scale reactors are safer. Commercial utility size reactors are upscaled versions of naval or laboratory reactors, where you cannot make the same safety guarantees. Take it from Alvin Weinberg:

https://youtu.be/iW8yuyk3Ugw

Also, in the case of an accident, the ship usually goes down and the reactor is naturally cooled and shielded by water. Then the accident us probably classified, because we don't want Russia recovering an US sub, like the CIA did at great taxpayer expense.

I think that SMRs are a way forward, even if it's a temporary solution until other safer, non pressurized reactors are developed. They draw from navy reactors and can be produced in a factory under strict QA, transported on site by truck and installed by qualified staff using clearly documented and reproductible procedures.

dkarl• 7 years ago

It's sad, but significant, that nuclear disasters seem small to us in retrospect. A dozen Chernobyls would cause far less disruption and far less death and suffering than we'll get from climate change even if we act fast now.

diafygi2• 7 years ago

nuclear energy seems to be the only way we have right now to at least try to avoid the oncoming climate catastrophe.

Fortunately, within the past few years, this is no longer true. Renewables + storage are now cheaper than nuclear as a carbon free and dispatchable resource. They are actually not only winning bids for new generation, they are actually starting to win power purchase agreements over _existing_ coal power plants and expecting to start beating existing gas plants within 5-10 years.

It's truly remarkable how fast solar, wind, and batteries have scaled up and started competing on price in the base load markets over the past few years.

The current expectation in the utility industry is that by the time next gen nuclear is commercialized, the grid will already be >90% carbon free. So even if we missed the boat on nuclear, there are other carbon free alternatives that are scaling up to meet decarbonization needs.

Robotbeat7• 7 years ago

90% isn’t enough, and being able to decarbonization all of it is super helpful, so yeah, even if new nuclear helps just with that last 10%, that’s still hugely important. Remember, we’re going to have to be carbon NEGATIVE because of how much time we’ve wasted.

We need every resource at our disposal.

agentultra• 7 years ago

I'm curious what the external effects will be for disposal of EOL solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. They don't have the same regulation as nuclear and it seems to be ignored in these discussions -- solar panels leech extremely toxic chemicals into the water table if not properly disposed of... which we have no regulation for yet as far as I'm aware.

Nuclear has far more regulation and decades of operational experience. Newer designs are incredibly safe and offer far more power, constantly, than renewables alone.

I think we can all agree that a mix is in our future however I think the article is probably spot on that fear of nuclear technology, however misplaced, is a significant contributor to its slow adoption and greater expense.

PunksATawnyFill2• 7 years ago

Storage? You have to generate the energy to store it. Where is it coming from? Renewables don't come close to fulfilling the USA's power needs.

opo2• 7 years ago

...Renewables + storage are now cheaper than nuclear as a carbon free and dispatchable resource.

Trying to rely only on intermittent power sources has huge storage requirements due to weather along with daily/seasonal variations. For example, one estimate is that Germany would need about 6,000 pumped storage plants which is 183 times their current capacity:

...Based on German hourly feed-in and consumption data for electric power, this paper studies the storage and buffering needs resulting from the volatility of wind and solar energy. It shows that joint buffers for wind and solar energy require less storage capacity than would be necessary to buffer wind or solar energy alone. The storage requirement of over 6,000 pumped storage plants, which is 183 times Germany’s current capacity, would nevertheless be huge.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144985/1/cesifo1_wp5...

...The current expectation in the utility industry is that by the time next gen nuclear is commercialized, the grid will already be >90% carbon free.

What is your industry source for this? Getting the grid to be >90% carbon free is a huge undertaking and won't be done anytime soon.

lopmotr• 7 years ago

if you look at the number of "close calls" that we had and if you look into the causes behind various incidents, a different picture emerges

Surely you're not comparing the rate of near misses in nuclear to the rate of actual deaths in coal? Every industry is full of sloppy practices, and that's why ships occasionally sink and bridges occasionally collapse. That's not unique to nuclear.

Part of the fear might be that a nuclear accident could harm "innocent" ordinary people who don't work there, but mining accidents feel more acceptable because we're not miners and it's their decision to do dangerous work, and we don't have to worry for them because it'll never affect us.

jwr6• 7 years ago

Surely you're not comparing the rate of near misses in nuclear to the rate of actual deaths in coal?

I wasn't comparing anything of the kind. Please read my comment again.

brycesbeard2• 7 years ago

It’s such an interesting debate, because while I think we have solved the technological safety issues (which is what us engineers think of), we have not solved the human issues.

I’m reading Midnight in Chernobyl, and while the reactor design was flawed, the problem was created and compounded by just how stupid us humans actually are. Things like the builders not being able to get quality cement, for example - is that a technical problem or a human one?

FWIW, I am pro nuclear. The problem w renewables is they are focused on meeting current energy demand. But growth is based on innovation which is tied with energy use.

In other words, what could we accomplish if we could consume 100x our current amount of energy (with the caveats of clean energy and safety)?

I don’t think renewables are going to get us there.

pfdietz29• 7 years ago

The problem w renewables is they are focused on meeting current energy demand.

What does that even mean? That renewables run into some hard limit beyond current energy consumption? That would be wrong.

PaulHoule• 7 years ago

I have mixed feelings about Perrow's book.

Sometimes he leaves out details in his stories that make the behavior of the people involved seem less perverse.

Some of his predictions were also wrong, like the one that problems with aviation safety and marine safety were going to get worse.

jwr6• 7 years ago

I am halfway through and I definitely have reservations, too. He does have an angle and it shows. That said, I'm concentrating on the facts and the nature of the systems involved, and that alone makes me question the hubris of saying "we know how to safely build and maintain nuclear plants".

mbell• 7 years ago

There seems to be something much deeper about nuclear fear. If ones concern is 'worst case scenarios' then they should be at least, if not more, afraid of hydro power or dams in general.

Dam failures are nasty, the Banqiao Dam failure killed ~200,000 people alone. While nuclear may be more 'complex', both are subject to human failure and I don't think the protection systems for dams are nearly as automated as they are for nuclear. IMO with modern nuclear power the most likely cause of a major incident is a natural problem (earthquake) leading to failure which I think is also true of dams (rainfall). With climate change looming I'm actually a little more concerned about dams, there were several fairly close calls in the last few years alone caused by rainfall amounts the dams were barely able to handle. e.g. Oroville Dam had 180,000 people in danger, the dam in Lynchburg, VA, Bell Falls Dam in Quebec a month ago, etc.

EForEndeavour• 7 years ago

Banqiao Dam failure

I can't believe I'd never heard of this tragedy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

According to the Hydrology Department of Henan Province, approximately 26,000 people died in the province from flooding and another 145,000 died during subsequent epidemics and famine. In addition, about 5,960,000 buildings collapsed, and 11 million residents were affected. Unofficial estimates of the number of people killed by the disaster have run as high as 230,000 people

keldaris• 7 years ago

Taking into account close calls is a fine idea, but they have to weighed by not merely how close to disaster they actually came but also by the magnitude of the potential consequences. Very few (but not zero, granted) of the known close calls in the civilian nuclear industry had any chance whatsoever of becoming disasters comparable to something like Chernobyl. Meanwhile, you would also have to take into account similar close calls in other complex industries with the potential for mass casualty failure modes - hydroelectric dams, chemical plants, oil refineries, etc. Note that despite a litany of such cases, no one's seriously talking about abolishing any of the industries I've mentioned, except nuclear power.

I think the title of the article is exactly right - nuclear power is just the usual plane vs car safety fallacy scaled up, with potentially devastating consequences for our civilization.

cameronbrown6• 7 years ago

Nuclear power is the only real option we have to limit climate change, that we can put into motion right now. The downsides are the politics associated, glacial construction times, and the fact we still lack proper disposal sites.

Critical thinking skills and more statistics education is something the world sorely needs.

option• 7 years ago

waste disposal is not as big of a problem for modern reactors

p_l2• 7 years ago

You don't need waste disposal sites if you have full reprocessing chain. Which was made nearly-illegal and an invitation for us-sanctioned airstrike for several decades even if you abide by NPT, so...

cameronbrown6• 7 years ago

My apologies, I was under the impression that waste was an order of magnitude lower on modern designs, but I was unaware it's effectively eliminated.

pfdietz29• 7 years ago

Given its cost, nuclear is a less plausible alternative to limit climate change than renewables. This would not have been true even ten years ago, but times change. And some people have not adjusted their mental models to reflect that change.

cameronbrown6• 7 years ago

Ten years ago I didn't even have an opinion on this. Evidence has lead me to this conclusion. Renewables have their own set of problems which need solving first, like battery storage. I think that's a much larger challenge than replacing coal with nuclear.

RcouF1uZ4gsC3• 7 years ago

I am becoming more convinced that we as a civilization will not cut CO2 emissions in time and we will need some type of carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is going to horrendously energy intensive and we will need something like nuclear power to provide that kind of energy.

beat2• 7 years ago

I agree we'll probably need some sort of carbon sequestration. I disagree that nuclear is the only possible power source for that (or for that matter, that sequestration is going to be that energy-intensive).

gizmo686• 7 years ago

How can sequestration not be energy intensive? Carbon is diffused throughout the atmosphere as relativly low energy statw molecules. Even assuming 100% efficiency, what end state of sequestration would not require significant energy just from conservation of energy.

NeedMoreTea• 7 years ago

If we prove unwilling to spend on cutting CO2, what makes you think we will prove more willing to spend on carbon capture?

RcouF1uZ4gsC3• 7 years ago

Because at that time, the worst predicted effects of climate will have become reality. It’s why people won’t eat better and exercise, but will get a heart stent after having a heart attack.

makerofspoons• 7 years ago

Carbon sequestration is built into the IPCC RCP scenarios, it is required to reach a tolerable future temperature.

mistrial9• 7 years ago

Is it coincidental, that something so complex, and multi-faceted, with both huge potential risks and benefits, attracts floods of simple-minded and "I told you so" comments, from even this very intelligent crowd

kikoreis3• 7 years ago

I don't think it's actually that multi-faceted. It's simple. 1. We have a coal problem. Fixing that would buy us critical space in the climate change equation. 2. Nuclear is the only viable short-term alternative. 3. Nuclear has a bad reputation, but new information has come to light (modern reactor design, handling of waste, total impact proportional to coal). We need a lot of active debate on this.

cesarb2• 7 years ago

Nuclear is the only viable short-term alternative.

One of the arguments against nuclear is that it's not a short-term alternative; nuclear power plants take decades to build. For instance, the latest nuclear power plant in my country is under construction for over 30 years, and is still not complete; the other reactors in the same complex took 12 years and 24 years to build, according to Wikipedia.

floatingatoll2• 7 years ago

I would have worded this headline differently, in a way that focuses on what I see to be the core issue:

Public's Dread of Nuclear Power Management Limits Its Deployment

It's not that we're afraid of nuclear power, it's that we're afraid that nuclear power will be managed as poorly as our other basic infrastructure is.

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

HN may care about the difference between nuclear power and management/operation thereof but the general public does not draw that distinction.

imtringued9• 7 years ago

Pretty much every failure of nuclear power can be summed up as a management problem.

Reedx2• 7 years ago

... there remains a gulf in understanding the difference between the technology's statistical risks and the dread it evokes ... that dread about nuclear power leads respondents to choose 40% less nuclear generation in 2050 than they would have chosen in the absence of this dread."

Education on nuclear statistics and modern nuclear technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor) would be useful.

Though I wonder if we're stuck for a similar reason many are afraid of flying, but not of driving - despite driving being significantly more dangerous statistically - the idea/story of a plane crash is vastly scarier than a car crash.

the8472• 7 years ago

Have there been any commercial deployments of Gen IV reactors? You can't cite statistics of things that haven't been in operation for a reasonable fraction of their expected lifecycle.

kikoreis3• 7 years ago

Gen IV you're right. Gen III (and "III+") reactors already bring significant safety changes ("passive nuclear safety", though that is a spectrum) and we've had a few of those running for a while now, the longest for 20+ years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_III_reactor#Generat...

keiferski• 7 years ago

Correct me if I’m wrong, but nuclear energy fundamentally requires a strong state, at least one capable enough of maintaining facilities and disposing of the waste.

Looking at human history, the assumption that some state power will always be able to manage it seems rather naive. There have been long stretches of feudalism, warfare, and all-out anarchy and indeed the current relatively stable forms of government are not the norm historically. If all it takes to cause a nuclear meltdown is a brief lapse in order or relative peace, then that doesn’t strike me as very anti-fragile.

Furthermore, nuclear power requires and perpetuates government control over things in a way that say, solar energy, doesn’t. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your political persuasion, of course.

That said, one could probably also make the opposite argument that nuclear power would lead to more incentives for peace and stability, in the same way that arguments for Mutually-Assured-Destruction argue that nuclear weapons prevent warfare.

RcouF1uZ4gsC3• 7 years ago

There have been long stretches of feudalism, warfare, and all-out anarchy and indeed the current relatively stable forms of government are not the norm historically. If all it takes to cause a nuclear meltdown is a brief lapse in order or relative peace, then that doesn’t strike me as very anti-fragile.

If that happens, the death caused by nuclear power will be the least of your concerns. A descent into anarchy would result in millions or tens of millions of deaths resulting from the collapse of civilization. A few hundred or thousand deaths from any nuclear power plants would be a rounding error in the calculation.

amanaplanacanal• 7 years ago

Since other systems are also fragile, we shouldn't care about adding one more? I'm pretty sure I'm against that line of thinking.

pfdietz29• 7 years ago

If the world descends into horrific disorder, I want our descendants to have lots of easily accessible plutonium so they can come out on top. :)

NickM• 7 years ago

Conversations about public perception ignore the bigger problem of cost. Why build big expensive nuclear plants that frequently have to be subsidized and bailed out, when solar/wind/storage are already cheaper and continue to drop in cost? Even if we never have another meltdown again, and even if we never have a containment breach of the waste for the next 10k years, the economics just don't make sense.

CountSessine6• 7 years ago

Because there are only a few sites in the world that can supply reliable wind power in the megawatts, and the scales of storage required to provide even minimal backup power for solar to make it useful at the 3TW of power used by the United States are probably impossible (the figure I've heard for pumped water, e.g., is that every lake in the US would have to be raised 400m).

Solar/wind/storage means getting by with orders of magnitude less energy usage. Maybe we should? I just think that asking people to vote for that is even more impossible than getting them to vote for nuclear.

Vinnl2• 7 years ago

I just think that asking people to vote for that is even more impossible than getting them to vote for nuclear.

GP still has a point: asking people to vote for nuclear sounds hard because of the perceived risks, but even if there was no perception of risk, it'll still be very hard to justify the costs to voters.

ourlordcaffeine• 7 years ago

Needing massive amounts of storage to make renewable work is an often repeated myth. Large reductions in carbon output are achievable with current storage with a mixture of wind, limited solar and the right price/balancing incentives.

Meandering2• 7 years ago

The economics of building nuclear power plants is directly affected by the availability of tooling and volume of the production.

The reduced number of new plants has resulted in increased costs for the parts required to build a plant. If we build more plants, capital costs will be reduced.

I agree that solar, wind, and other alternative energy sources are ideal for smaller installations. Although, battery technology, manufacturing capacity, and available raw resources will not be capable of supporting radical change anytime soon.

New nuclear can be a solution. Or, at least, it will need to be part of the process if we are going to replace large scale carbon emitting power production facilities.

pfdietz29• 7 years ago

It doesn't need to be part of the process. As renewables build out, it's less and less clear how nuclear can fit in at all. Renewables crash the price of power too often for nuclear to compete.

StreamBright2• 7 years ago

Just one pic:

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/05/hypothetical-numb...

SECProto• 7 years ago

"Over 11000 people will die PER YEAR if we switch to nuclear energy!!"

Despite that, I use a similar argument to that graph on the (rare) occasions I've discussed nuclear energy with friends and family.

eeZah7Ux2• 7 years ago

The calculation completely ignores any risk of nuclear disaster.

It's simply based on historical data, which is hugely misleading and dishonest.

Each existing barrel of nuclear waste has been causing risk for few decades at max but will cause risk for thousands of years.

(Not to mention all the waste that has been dispersed in the environment)

This is like driving a car for a 30 seconds and claiming that it's safe.

mercutio2• 7 years ago

This is not how radioactivity works.

There’s lots of construction material that has isotopes with a long half life. But the long half life means it’s barely dangerous (less dangerous than background levels of radiation in many habited places in the world).

The stuff that’s actually dangerous for humans are isotopes with short half lives. Those isotopes, by definition, don’t last long.

StreamBright2• 7 years ago

So does coal waste. Handling nuclear waste is not improving because humanity gave up on using tis energy. There are reactor types which “burn” nuclear waste from traditional plants and make them less dangerous. All of the problems you mention are solvable: safety, radioactive waste etc if we commit to it. Fire and burning is 400.000 years old, nuclear power is 70-80. We have technology ready to make it safe just as we did with fire.

imtringued9• 7 years ago

Honestly those numbers are quite depressing. Even if we assume those 5 million people are all Americans we could only afford to build 10 nuclear reactors per year in the entire world if we seized all of their wages and used them to build nuclear power plants. I expected nuclear power to at least be worth the number of lives it is saving but unfortunately this isn't the case.

instabird• 7 years ago

I am in no way near an expert on this topic, but from what I know and given nuclear's track record, nuclear energy is probably mankind's only way out of total climate breakdown.

maxander• 7 years ago

I'm generally in favor of nuclear power, but I recognize that there's some reasonable ground for opposing its development on grounds of potential catastrophe or radiation leakage risk. What gets me, rather, is that while we as a society have rejected nuclear power plants as too dangerous, we're still sitting on thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons- and still building more in the present day! [0] The failure of anti-nuclear activists to address the kind of nuclear technologies which can actually be catastrophic, while instead focusing on those which are constructive and at least generally safe, is maddening.

[0] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-nuclear-weapons-moderniz...

0xffff24• 7 years ago

The grounds really aren't that reasonable. Nuclear has potential for catastrophe, but coal and other fossil fuels are a constant ongoing catastrophe by their very nature even if you disregard climate change. It would take many, many nuclear disasters for nuclear to come even remotely close to killing as many people as fossil fuel energy generation already has.

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-...

pfdietz29• 7 years ago

Arguiung that we should stick with nuclear because it's cleaner than coal is like saying we should continue with gasoline fueled cars because they're cleaner than horses. It's looking at the wrong competition.

thrillgore• 7 years ago

Stop trying to make nuclear power a thing. It's not happening. We're all concerned about the state of the aging plants in the US and many are not hardened enough for the impact of climate change.

mimixco16• 7 years ago

The whole industry is dying, all over the world, and must now reply on PR puff pieces such as this one that continue to haul out the "climate will kill us!" bogeyman.

Perhaps nuclear advocates haven't considered that, given enough time, the Earth's cyclical climate will kill us anyway. Personally, I'd rather wait for that than have nuke plants speed up the death toll and pollute the land with uranium tailings and contaminated water. But that's just me.

zaq_xsw3• 7 years ago

Earth's cyclical climate will kill us anyway

Why? The reason climate change is dangerous is not because it'll get too hot or cold for us, but because the temperature is changing too fast. It's the gradient that's the problem.

imtringued9• 7 years ago

Well this is an interesting perspective. I not against maintaining old nuclear power plants because the already paid off the capital expenses but if all this fearmongering about climate change is just a way to line the pockets of power companies then they might as well go to hell in my opinion.

cwbrandsma• 7 years ago

We have a "safety at any cost" mentality in society, which limits development in multiple areas. This was not the case 50 years ago, but it is today. There is a healthy respect for safety, but what we have now is constant fear mongering across society. Not just nuclear power, but immigration, stranger danger, helicopter parents, etc. All brought to you by the 24 hours news cycle that makes money by making sure everyone stays paranoid.

zaq_xsw3• 7 years ago

It's worse than that though, because, for example, nuclear power is significantly safer than other technologies currently in use[1][2], and as another example, immigrants (including illegal immigrants) are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens in the United States[3][4], at least for several generations (they asymptotically approach native levels).

So I think we're fighting a couple of battles here: fear-mongering and misinformation/ignorance, and I guess they go hand-in-hand.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/05/hypothetical-numb... [2] Kharecha Pushker A, 2013 [3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/107808741770497... [4] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul...

PunksATawnyFill2• 7 years ago

WTF? Where's the actual study?

If you go here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

Once again there's no link to the study. And if you go here: https://s100.copyright.com/AppDispatchServlet?publisherName=...

"Read the article" isn't an option! Now the question is: Were public funds used in the study? If so, we own it and should have access.

howard941• 7 years ago

Public funds were used:

This work was supported by the UC San Diego Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Program; the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy; the Electric Power Research Institute; and the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making at Carnegie Mellon University, which is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (SES-094970).

Unfortunately I had to use a site available at a Taiwan hostname to view the funding source info.

sampo3• 7 years ago

Where's the actual study?

Scientific articles can nowadays be found Sci-Hub:

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.03.0...

srs_sput• 7 years ago

One of the most interesting things I've learned this past week is that Ukraine generates almost 50% of it's electricity from nuclear reactors.

I think it's impressive a country can suffer the worst nuclear accident but still overcome the fear of using it.

mimixco16• 7 years ago

When states impose their will on the people, public sentiment doesn't matter. The idea that a former Soviet state would submit nuclear power to a democratic vote is simply farcical.

781• 7 years ago

Ukraine is not the kind of place where you need to fight 5 years in court to demolish an old laundromat to build a new building.

sadris3• 7 years ago

The other Chernobyl units continued to operate commercially until 1998.

abalone• 7 years ago

Crucially, the researchers showed all respondents information about the number of deaths that had historically occurred in the worst accident associated with the technology. This is important for nuclear power, since accidents are rare but can have dire consequences if they do occur.

This seems like a flawed study. It implies that previous nuclear accidents are sufficient data to form a precise “statistical risk” level. And if people don’t decide based on those statistics alone they must be irrational and just “anxious”.

That is not a scientific conclusion. Nuclear accidents are rare, but potentially extreme. Just one more major accident, or the first case of terrorism, could significantly change the statistics. Thus It is possible that people are being rational when they recognize that we have too few data points to form a precise risk model for nuclear power.

bigbadgoose2• 7 years ago

The issue is that failures are catastrophic, and not under your control. And while systems and protocols can be perfectly designed, human administration is the weak link.

kikoreis3• 7 years ago

When plans fail and crash, it's a catastrophe. And yet we trust technology and process to fly everywhere all the time. We need to put nuclear in the same place in our hearts.

(I think the root cause of why it's not is irrational fear of radiation, which is why I love https://xkcd.com/radiation/ so much)

ElijahLynn• 7 years ago

A plane crash doesn't have the ability to destroy an entire region.

HocusLocus• 7 years ago

From my 2016 letter on Energy to Candidate Trump,

https://archive.org/download/20160422TrumpEnergyLetterSC/201...

QUOTE

We must finish taming fire.

It is no longer enough to raise sensible children without an irrational fear of nuclear energy. They must become aware at a young age that there is a silent war on and they must, in order to ensure the continued survival of modern civilization, begin to oppose and publicly ridicule anyone exhibiting this fear. This may range from a gentle instruction and chiding of those who express misgivings honestly and openly, to a direct and aggressive attack on the greatest dangers of our time — the ones who deliberately cloak their anti-nuclear sentiment in Byzantine ways intended to derail debate and parry the subject to other 'alternative' approaches.

It is unethical to see no clear path to unbounded Energy as anything but an existential threat.

Sound familiar? That is similar to the tactic fronted by frenetic climate alarmists who are trying to push a dozen pet agendas and several for-profit agendas crafted specially for them, all at once — rallying the people over a global average temperature signal that is presently buried in noise, and a CO2-to-temperature causation that may turn out to be nil or even backwards. Unfortunately there is an international scam in progress and the scammers are clever, they have seized the moral high-ground because it had been left unoccupied and undefended. Those who praise humanity and progress for its own sake, and would remind others we should never judge ourselves in haste, must have wandered off somewhere.

There is also a scuffle on the Global Warming moral high-ground as the folks who run nuclear power plants are kicked in the face and tossed off the mound. They expected to be welcomed with open arms because nuclear energy will help save the planet from CO2. They did not realize the movement is rife with people whose irrational fear of radiation exceeds any commitment to the environment. Anyone who even mentions nuclear power gets a feral and brutal response. I've taken pity on the nuclear industry and have tried to explain the phenomenon but they're not taking it very well. Like the Amish, our nuclear power industry needs staunch defenders surrounding it. They're just too polite for their own good.

Unfortunately, we have passed beyond peak politeness. To force Energy debates to address practical solutions, bullies are needed. We must rout the occupiers and re-take the moral high-ground because we place a high priority on survival, and for the children's sake. And because ... well ... "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals..." And other such stuff.

imtringued9• 7 years ago

Honestly if your proposed technology requires the brainwashing of children then maybe it simply isn't good enough? Also at current construction time frames of 10-20 years per plant our children will be the ones who will finish the construction of those plants even if they were born this year.

jrjrjrjr• 7 years ago

Totally safe nuclear reactor operations are easily defined by placing a mandatory employee daycare center in the containment.

Public's Dread of Nuclear Power Limits Its Deployment

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