I have a personal theory, that I haven't really been able to confirm or deny. Here it is.
After Hiroshima and during the cold war nuclear energy was associated with death and destruction. Hiroshima for obvious reasons, and the cold war because the population of the western world was constantly reminded how The Soviet Union had thousands of missiles with nuclear bombs pointing at us, ready to go. Western governments used nuclear weapons to picture the threat and to terrify populations into spending more on defense against the Soviets. There were scary videos of mushroom clouds, scary instructions on how to survive a nuclear blast, and scary stories of how a nuclear winter would pan out.
This, obviously, made people scared of nuclear bombs, and nuclear energy in general. Through decades the population was told by the government that nuclear radiation was the evil silent killer.
The byproduct of all this cold war propoganda was that people are now irrationally scared of nuclear radiation from power plants.
If you look at the numbers you'll see that nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest scalable energy source we've got. It's the energy source that has the fewest deaths per MWH produced, it doesn't produce CO2, etc. etc. Yet we think of it as getting power from the devil.
I blame the cold war propoganda for our irrational fear of nuclear energy.
> Through decades the population was told by the government that nuclear radiation was the evil silent killer.
Well, two out of three's not bad: it is silent, and it can kill.
> people are now irrationally scared of nuclear radiation from power plants
You may not fear nuclear energy, but it's not irrational to do so.
Even the current generation of reactors rely on active safety systems, and can't just be shut down. Even with multiple redundant systems of this sort, things will go wrong, since making these systems truly independent — including in the face of floods, earthquakes, human error, etc. — is effectively impossible.
So plants will continue to melt down from time to time, irradiating large areas of land. Bad luck if those areas are near you: in the best case, you'll have to leave your home and neighbourhood for decades.
Sure, it's a low probability event for each of us, but in my opinion those consequences are unacceptable for essentially any probability of occurrence.
> Sure, it's a low probability event for each of us, but in my opinion those consequences are unacceptable for essentially any probability of occurrence.
This is not rational fear. The non-nuclear energy industry is not perfectly safe. Coal mining results in many deaths both from the dangers of mining and the pollution caused. Oil mining results in some deaths and a fair few major ecological disasters. Solar power and wind power kill people as well (falling from a roof or having a turbine fall on you are both potentially life-ending).
According to this site (http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener...), Nuclear is the safest in terms of human death by far. This is just a blog post, so grain of salt, but it illustrates that your "unacceptable for essentially any probability" claim is not rational.
I find it similar to the risk of an airplane death. Both of those are deemed by 'rationalists' as irrational fears, as airplanes are by and large, safer than driving cars. However, considering the outcomes the fear is not as irrational; there are a significant chance of surviving a car accident, but almost none at all of a plane one. It also comes with a bonus of a few minutes of horrifying fall into your inevitable doom, too.
Nuclear plants can be safe, but when they fail the results are often catastrophic. People prefer to live with many small dangers rather than one giant but very unlikely one, and while it may be called out as irrational in the strictest definition of reason, it's perfectly human.
there are a significant chance of surviving a car accident, but almost none at all of a plane one.
I think this demonstrates the overarching point well because the chances of surviving an air related accident are surprisingly high.
The NTSB figures for people involved in commercial airline accidents between 1983-2000 show that 95.7% of people survived: http://boingboing.net/2012/11/05/surviving-a-plane-crash-is-... .. even narrowed down to only the "worst accidents", the overall rate was 76.6%.
Which highlights the problem with fear - when you look down the list of leading causes of death, you basically have a million terrible diseases (cancer, heart disease, alzheimer's etc.)... but once you get out of the "disease" territory, the big killer? Cars.
Probably the most avoidable, most pointless way to die... but we think nothing of driving everywhere, of putting our kids in cars (children don't get much in the way of heart disease or alzheimers, so automotive accidents are pretty close to the top for them).
So yeah, I have trouble respecting the public's perception of danger.
I'm old enough to remember chernobyl. at the time, we were assured it was a dodgy old design, and that they future models would be foolproof. Then fukushima, and we started hearing the same soothing stories of fantasy designs that could never cause such havoc.
Ever since day one, this industry has over-promised and under-delivered. Remember "power too cheap to meter"?
It's right and appropriate that we make decisions based on the realities of the industry's present day detriments, not their promises for tomorrow.
Well 4 nuclear plants were affected at Fukushima, 3 of which had been operational and melted down, the 4th had used fuel cells right near exploding gantries... and zero deaths, zero illnesses.
This is a stark, stark constrast to Chernobyl (which was a Soviet weapons production design quickly converted for power generation use with very little, if any, regard for passive safety principles) and should if anything reinforce what people were saying about the uniqueness of Chernobyl.
The Fukushima plants were the "dodgy old designs", by the way. Fukushima Dai-Ni's 2 operational reactors were hit by the same tsunami, only a few km down the same shoreline from the afflicted reactors, and both achieved safe shutdown... they were of a slightly less old dodgy design.
The design improvements are not fantasy. They've already happened, have been around for years, but no one builds them but India and China.
Better designs aren't "just around the corner". They're 25 year in the past.
We aren't building them because people are too afraid to build new plants. We're keeping plants based on 50 year old designs around because we need the power. These plants require weapons grade uranium. They are inefficient. They are expensive to run. They are physically able to melt down. They produce more waste than needed. Their waste can be used to make weapons.
These are all solved problems. They were solved decades ago. It's about time that they werer implemented.
and, whats the bet the industry's supporters will be offering that same unhelpful rationalisation, come the next reactor failure.
I don't accept that the significant disqualifications you raise are all 'solved problems'. some are solved. some mitigated. I do accept the scenario I think you're describing: the US[a] is choosing to extend licenses to old plants instead of building safer ones.
But beyond the US[a], I'm concerned we're illogically facilitating development of more conventional reactors that offer none of these benefits, in part under the cover of promises that the industry is moving in the right direction. That's the disconnect I see between promises and realities.
It's likely more than that. Chernobyl had a great impact on people's idea of nuclear. Also its damage, when occurring, is done in a spectacular way by something invisible. Radiation poisoning is dramatic, horrific and you can't see, smell or feel. That scares the living hell out of most people and the fact that is statistically unlikely becomes irrelevant as soon as it becomes an irrational fear.
There are things that cause more deaths by cancer, slowly and steadily, that don't (or didn't) scare anyone - tobacco was an example. Junk food may be another.
unlike some of the other risks to life listed,
ionizing radiation can cause genetic damage.
An impact that is passed on to future generations.
I propose that's a factor for the special place the nuclear industry has in so many hearts.
how's that nonsense?
That is a theoretical possibility, and a highly unlikely and unobserved possibility at that. Real life mutations aren't like in children's cartoons. Most of the genetic material in a multicellular organism do not belong to germ cells, and most mutations caused by ionizing radiation either cause death of the cell or no effect at all, especially in eukaryotic chromosomes. Cancer, highly unlikely itself, is many orders of magnitude more likely than any inheritable effect.
Studies of the Chernobyl disaster have not found evidence of teratogenic effects in humans [1], and neither have studies of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings [2].
The malevolent-sounding yet meaningless phrase "fades your genes" is nothing short of nonsense, especially in reference to inheritable teratogenic effects. The number of special places in hearts can do nothing to alter that judgement.
Good thing no life forms are exposed to radiation such as UV, cosmic rays, or naturally-occuring radioactive elements such as Carbon-14, Potassium-40, or Uranium then, we'd be screwed after only a few generations! Oh, wait...
what's your point? people do get old and sick.
the fact that radiation exists naturally in the environment doesn't mean its good for you, and doesnt mean that more won't pose an increased health hazard
On the other hand, it does mean that we were evolved to at least be able to procreate in the presence of a constant radiation flux.
There's such a wide gulf in possible levels of radiation exposure that radiation health physicists are to this very day still unsure whether constant exposure to low levels of radiation is actually harmful at all. They haven't even been able to rule out that it's not beneficial.
But either way, if you're worried about exposure to radiation you should be more worried about coal plants than nuclear plants; coal plants emit so much radioactivity to the environment that their exhaust would generate more power in a nuke plant, if it could be harvested properly.
yes we can procreate in the presence of some radiation:
could you set a lower compliance bar for any pollutant?
beneficial impacts are pretty much fringe science.
FWIW, there has been experimental demonstration of minimal ionizing radiation causing mutation in a single cell.
and most regulatory standards around the world continue to reduce 'acceptable limits'. I think the most recent example is the reduction in exposure to radon exposure that has been recognised in a number of national standards. I read that as showing that people who understand the science more than myself are still, decades later, finding more cause for caution.
Radiation hormesis is not "fringe science". As only one example, consider http://www.jpands.org/vol13no3/cohen.pdf which is an overview from 2008 of some of the issues raised against the linear no-threshold dose model. You'll note that it was not published in some 'quack journal', and draws its references from many other non-quack entities.
In addition you're assuming that changes in regulatory setpoints are purely based on proven safety effects, but that's not the case here. Indeed, regulatory changes happen frequently that are not based on safety (e.g. yellow light timings).
What is true is that if you assume, as most health physics societies and regulatory organization do, that radiation exposure should be kept ALARA ("as low as reasonably achievable") then you should reduce regulatory thresholds for no better reason than that it becomes possible to do at all.
In other words even if you find a 'safe' level below which you can't appreciably detect an increase in cancer risk, you'd still set the regulatory threshold far below that if you could (and keep dropping it as technology improves), because regulatory commissions are operating under the assumption that any exposure to radiation represents some additional risk of later cancer.
But it's important to keep in mind that it is an assumption, a convenient and conservative model that is used for ease of regulation, work planning, etc.
That doesn't mean the model is accurate, and the actual biological response to radiation of different types and exposures continues to remain debated at low levels of exposure.
After all, if what you claim is true then frequent flyers, air crew, and pilots should be dying at a ponderously higher rate of cancer incidence, as should residents of high-altitude areas who are exposed to higher cosmic ray flux, as should residents of Ramsar Iran who are exposed to high levels of background radiation from uranics in the soil and water.
But none of these people seem to be as effected by radiation as they should be. The question is why and yes, it's still a question.
It sounds like you're at least interested in the topic so I'd highly recommending researching further. For instance if you do so you would find out why mutation in a single cell is not at all the crisis you think it is, or even that surprising, because you would know how the body handles such cells (which occur all the time from multiple different sources).
fair call re status of the hormesis theory.
what I get from this is that the LNT theory holds more sway; regulators choose precautionary adherance to ALARA. Let's not ignore the obvious fact that there is a powerful industry tugging in the other direction ...
The nuclear industry honestly couldn't give one shit about whether regulators choose LNT/ALARA or "hormesis". If anything hormesis would make their work planning more difficult as then they'd possibly have to worry about ensuring their workers have enough exposure. ALARA is simple and easy and would remain used for work planning.
But either way, nuclear emits less radiation than coal, so if you're worried about public health effects then we're again in the situation that the power company doesn't really have to care either way; if they want less radiation overall they should build a nuke, if they believe in hormesis then coal would probably be preferred, but even assuming a Fukushima-style triple meltdown would not be a large public health disaster.
they don't care? so you may say,
my experience is that the industry includes some players who duck and weave to try to evade application of existing regulatory radiation limits.
and again the coal/nukes false dichotomy.
the fact that this is fundamentally flawed thinking is highlighted by your conclusion that more nuclear plants reduce public radiation exposure.
The only people who think thermal power generation is a false dichotomy are those who haven't tried to spec out power generation schemes that rely completely on unreliable renewables. Specifically, renewables have a much different capacity factor than thermal power designs (like coal or nuclear) and therefore require a very heavy investment in energy storage schemes, especially if the plan is to go 100% renewable.
Even in Germany, which is the example everyone points to, 80% of the shift away from nuclear has been towards coal. Even natural gas would be better than shifting to coal! And despite only shifting 20% of that generation to renewables there have been increasing problems with frequency variation and brief power interruptions on the grid due to the much higher variability in power output from renewable.
I have a much simpler theory. Everytime an "event" occurs, nuclear scientists tell us, everything is ok, it is all handled, and then shortly thereafter, leaks are discovered to be worse than reported, handling of waste is done very poorly, or things just implode, as they did in Fukishama.
But the thing is, this is no worse than how "events" in other areas are handled. I don't trust reports of nuclear accidents any less than I trust reports of refinery or offshore oil-well or chemical plant or ... accidents.
>It's the energy source that has the fewest deaths per MWH produced
Source?
I want to remind that the nuclear material needs to be mined somewhere. I never worked in a Uranium mine but it's probably not the healthiest job in the world. Then the material needs to be transported, transported a long way. During this way it gets enriched, used, cooled down. Maybe even re-enriched, used, some part get stuck in walls, pipes ("contamination") etc. At some point it gets stored, somewhere in the ground. During this long way radiation and material gets emitted. Nuclear dust is cancerogenous for the lungs, radiation in general is suspected of boosting leucemia rates.
But the worst part in my opinion is this: NO insurance company in the world will insure a nuclear power plant.
> NO insurance company in the world will insure a nuclear power plant.
This is hardly a meaningful claim. Insurance companies in the US won't write flood insurance policies, either. This doesn't mean that your house is very likely to get washed away in a flood. It means that the business is not profitable because no one wants to pay the premiums required to insure for the worst-case, nor do insurance companies want to sit on the piles of cash necessary to insure these sorts of events.
As a counter-point, hydroelectric power plants are also not insured for worst-case scenarios. And when hydroelectric dams fail, the results can be orders of magnitude worse than Nuclear meltdown. e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
Note that nuclear is significantly safer than even hydro and solar.
I think your fear of uranium mines is overblown, as these numbers are included in the calculations. Many more people die in coalmines.
Did you know that a coal plant emits significantly more radiation than a nuclear plant because coal is radioactive and isn't shielded like nuclear power plants?
What about nuclear waste though? You end up with some tons of radioactive material which you have to store in high-security underground facilities with the hope that in some time in the future humanity will find a way to dispose it in a safer way.
G'day mate,
here in australia we're leading the world in nuclear waste storage. After giving our best scientists 30 years to spend on the question, we've finally brought it to a head, and are in the process of unveiling a state of the art solution.
here's what we've done:
found a remote and isolated spot of land in the middle of a 3000km long highway. we've paid a pittance and reminded the small local indigenous community who actually own the land that they don't have any political, economic or social power. Their economic disempowerment was exacerbated a couple of years after they were targetted, when new apartheid-style laws quarantined welfare to natives. Their political disempowerment was reinforced by unprecedented laws that negate their rights as land owners and remove any possible legal obstacle to the dump plan.
Right, so with the social engineering out of the way, let's get into the nuts and bolts:
we're gonna grade a dirt road onto a dry patch of land, and build a barbed wire shed. to hold the most highly radioactive nuclear wastes we produce.
I'm sure before too long the rest of the world will get on side to endorse the engineering, and of course site selection.
"The idea that the best way to promote economic advancement in the Northern Territory is to post six of the loneliest security guards in the country to guard against people tampering with radioactive waste for the next three centuries absolutely beggars belief. They waved around a $12 million cheque in the community, north of Tennant Creek, which wanted a decent road and some community education support for their kids. That $12 million cheque was dangled in their faces in exchange for hosting what they thought was going to be a rubbish dump."
In exchange for clean, constant, domestically sourced, almost unlimited energy for an entire year, each person must dispose of or store their waste, which is the size of...
A pill of aspirin.
You could just put it in a little lead jar. That's all the waste. The alternative is fossil fuel waste, which would be...
10 tons of CO2 (volume = 5 American houses) which floats into the atmosphere, plus 2 tons of coal ash.
Of course, everyone can just pool their resources and put all the radioactive waste together. I don't consider it to be a very serious or unsolvable problem.
For baseload power? There effectively isn't. Renewable energy generation requires a substantial investment in energy storage systems if you don't have thermal power generation (such as nuclear or fossil-fueled plants), as having rolling blackouts just because the wind unexpectedly isn't blowing as hard is not good for business.
The thing is that nuclear isn't really good at this. Nuclear plants don't have much in the way of a throttle - they're just "on" or "complete shut-down and it will take substantial measures to start it up again". Fossil fuels or some sort of capacitive system (even just using the peak surpluses to pump water into a reservoir above a turbine) would do that task better.
The panicky nay-sayers of nuclear power are too obsessed with the risks of radiation, but there are a lot of other legitimate reasons that it might not have a place in our future. Uranium just isn't that plentiful, for example.
> Nuclear plants don't have much in the way of a throttle - they're just "on" or "complete shut-down and it will take substantial measures to start it up again".
Well, this is exactly what we need. Power demand is fluctuating, but mostly averages out to something constant. It's easier to throw in a little buffering to compensate demand fluctuations than to wake up with half the power in the grid because it suddenly got cloudy. You'd have to store very large amounts of power, which is this "substantial investment in energy storage systems" GP was writing about.
> The thing is that nuclear isn't really good at this. Nuclear plants don't have much in the way of a throttle - they're just "on" or "complete shut-down and it will take substantial measures to start it up again".
Nuclear can certainly be designed to ramp power output up or down in response to demand. After all there are many applications of nuclear technology in fields that require rapid and immediate changes in power output.
Nuclear power generation plants are not typically designed to do this, but it's not because nuclear can't, it's because nuclear doesn't have to. The plants are built by the utility companies to act as baseload power generation and can normally afford to take hours to change power output if they wish. But if utility plants wanted a nuke plant that would change power output quicker, that could be arranged as well.
It's likely that baseload and renewables will meet half way. Supposedly, adding a small amount of battery capacity to wind turbines dramatically increases their power output predictability.
Well, the really radioactive parts of the waste will decay after a fairly short number of years. With regards to the less radioactive, slower decaying part I'm not sure why we worry about it so much more than naturally occurring radioactive substances. There are streams in Colorado that are measurably radioactive because they interact with natural Uranium deposits but the levels are low enough to not pose a real public health hazard. I don't see why buried man-made radioactive substances are unacceptable when buried natural radioactive substances aren't.
Because for example plutonium has that nasty tendency to go boom once you amass a kilo or so, so safe storage is required to keep all lunatics at bay. It's also a very potent poison. It's also not found in natural deposits.
Nuclear waste is stored very, very deep and secure. I cannot imagine future humans having the technology to open these up, without knowing what is in there. Either we lose all of our knowledge and no soul will ever see that site, or we stay an advanced civilization and we are warned of the dangers before opening the nuclear waste facilities.
Don't forget that uranium is found naturally in the ground, in geologically vastly more unstable regions, with water flowing through it. What we're doing is concentrating the radioactivity, and putting it deeper and safer. If you're afraid of mankind finding these waste sites in the future, are you not afraid of them finding uranium in their drinking water?
> Nuclear waste is stored very, very deep and secure.
Ideally it would be. But in many cases in practice, that isn't the case, because those facilities have either not been built, or not opened. In the U.S., since the long-planned Yucca Mountain facility has never opened, most nuclear waste is stored on-site at the reactor complex, in above-ground facilities. For the first few years it's immersed in cooling pools [1], and then subsequently is parked in metal/concrete cylinders [2]. This is considered interim storage awaiting final burial in geologically stable vaults, but without Yucca Mountain the "interim" storage has become de-facto permanent.
In Germany half is currently stored in an old salt mine which is at risk of water breaking in (in a region with seismic activity) ... the other half sits in bright daylight under tin roofs (not my definition of very very deep ... :)
Even worse - the risk is not water breaking in, since that's already happening. The risk is total collapse and contamination of the ground water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine
So now the plan is to retrieve all the waste and store it - this time better at an estimated cost of at least 4 - 6 billion Euro.
The general problem I have with nuclear power is that it's all fine and dandy as long as everything goes as planned. If not, then everything goes boom in a big way. And where humans and profits are involved, plans tend not to involve all failure modes: The explosions in fukushima could have been avoided using catalytic recombinators which are for example mandatory in germany [1].
You can't make this argument in a vacuum. You need to compare it to the alternatives - most energy today is generated by burning fossil fuels, which might be the way to a global environmental apocalypse. An old mine containing dangerous chemicals seems pretty mild compared to depopulating Mexico.
Now obviously 100% clean means like wind and solar are preferred, but are those really viable at a global level?
> If you look at the numbers you'll see that nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest scalable energy source we've got. It's the energy source that has the fewest deaths per MWH produced, it doesn't produce CO2, etc. etc.
How about nuclear waste though? Where do we put that? I'm with you, it seems like humanity at large is hysterical beyond reasonable levels about radiation. However, it's not like it's completely harmless or unproblematic either.
Maybe - just maybe - we should just use less energy, so that the renewables suffice. Just a crazy idea.
Nuclear power really is a darn good solution to our energy problems, and is more feasible and entirely more humane than using less energy. Our growing energy demands are not just a result of us being spoiled, they are a direct result of our need to sustain more and more people. Cut down on the energy, and you quickly fund yourself cutting down on progress and on the welfare of the poor.
Progress has created a lot of problems, but we can't really slow down in any significant way. Our only hope is to use our momentum to find solutions.
That surprised me, but I didn't mean to say that fossil fuel power plants are a great alternative.
> Progress has created a lot of problems, but we can't really slow down in any significant way. Our only hope is to use our momentum to find solutions.
I'm not saying we should go back to not having energy at all. But it seems like there's quite a bit of potential for saving energy without seriously lowering anyone's quality of life.
For instance, does 50% of the population have to commute in a big car every day? That doesn't sound like progress to me.
The US's per capita energy consumption is more than twice that of the UK [1], is there really no way to save some of that?
Related to your link, Not propaganda, but a weird pseudo-documentary drama about nuclear devastation over Sheffield: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads
It's a "fun" watch, probably the most frightening piece of film I've ever seen.
There is a lot of sense in this. From youth we've been trained that nuclear radiation is associated with cancer, Godzilla and mutant fish. My own irrational hate of Nuclear Fission plants comes from the hard learned lessons of Civilization 3; which teaches one to avoid building Nuclear plants due to the incredible rate of meltdowns and the subsequent massive death count and many turn loss of productive tiles. And global warming. Given all that, the level of trepidation around them should not come as a surprise. And if that isn't bad enough, fission plants are like airplanes. Crashes I mean.
People are afraid of Airplanes despite their incredible safety record because failure is spectacular and newsworthy. Consequence is concentrated and easily compartmentalized vs the more background event of the relatively near constant death from cars/coal (I wonder if this is leakage due to the brain reusing the smell cancellation modules on abstract frequencies like death rate). Similarly, the impact of meltdowns can be more viscerally felt in terms of relocation and ghost towning - even if they lead to little to no measured cancers or ill health (the worst case of incompetency in the form of Chernobyl is a fraction of the time integral health/death/radiative burden of coal plants to locals and workers). And to top it off, damage can be easily visualized in terms of three eyed fish, Godzilla and those ugly, ugly orange tiles. Shiver. Availability Heuristic at work.
At the same time I believe there is some cause for apprehension. It has to do with what the state current US infrastructure suggests on the real risks of a plant; failure of which might trigger an AI Winter type event at the worst possible time. The risk of Fission Plants is mainly in human competency and complacency. Will there be any corners cut in design and will operators become complacent due to extended runs of non-events? Will vital maintenance be done? I have not seen evidence that much of the world is ready for that kind of thing. The west is yes, mostly, but as the rest of the world comes online it would be preferable to have clean energy that doesn't jump to 50% chance of meltdown during revolts. So looking at alternative replacements at the same time as - instead of just focusing on -Nuclear is worthwhile.
A single large failure and human reaction to that kind of thing will lead to cascading moving away from Nuclear at just the time when it is most needed. It is thus in my opinion, better to do limited roll outs on newer incompetency resistant designs before any universal switching. Education on the nature of different types of radiation and their effects (focus on neutron vs bio, halflives vs waste), drastically reduced dangers to workers of nuclear vs coal plants, unloading the weighting on the bomb aspect of nuclear, probability theory, and shining a clarifying light on the stellar safety record of nuclear plants; will all go a long way towards solving the world's future energy problems.
As for me, while (I think) Civ 5 doesn't have that stupid penalty, the damage is already done. I will always recommend Solar and Hydro in place of Nuclear.
"Many technologies and materials associated with the creation of a nuclear power program have a dual-use capability, in that they can be used to make nuclear weapons if a country chooses to do so. "
"I blame the cold war propoganda for our irrational fear of nuclear energy."
That's interesting, certainly very complicated, but consider an occams razor explanation like "Dumb people almost always viciously hate whatever they don't understand, and (intentionally?) not too many people understand nukes, so ... "
So now we're all back to "nuclear power is perfectly safe and cheap." The article fails to take into account that radiation is not like poison where you either die or don't. It's a statistical effect and how large the effect is can only be answered in a couple of decades. I'd not want to bet my life on that. Also, the radiation spills are not over yet. Radiated water still leaks from the reactors and flows into the ground and the sea - how and when those leaks can be plugged is yet unknown. Nobody has any idea how to treat the huge volumes of radiated water that have been captured so far.
Cleanup costs and storage/disposal costs for the nuclear waste are usually also ignored when looking at the costs of nuclear power - as well as the environmental impact of mining uranium. Let's just not talk about the additional dangers associated with nuclear proliferation. Nuclear power generates elements that are extremely dangerous and extremely difficult to handle - unlike solar, wind or even coal power.
Every single statement you made, with the exception of handling radioactive waste, applies more to coal than it does to nuclear power.
Coal pollution doesn't "kill outright" - but does so slowly, over many years, and many, many more people than nuclear power.
Coal waste continues to leak into the air, and into water systems.
I'm not arguing that Nuclear power is "safe" (nothing, is - even solar power kills many people a year, mostly installers) - but I am suggesting we stay rational, and realize that there are consequences to any of our energy choices.
If it turns out that C02 will have an outsized impact on global warming, that alone, will likely suggest that Coal powered energy systems are fairly bad for the environment - in a much greater way than the discretely managed radioactive waste put off by nuclear power plants - which can be buried underground without changing the earths environment.
I always love it when coal is used as a comparision. Because:
Coal isn't the alternative, solar and wind are
Furthermore:
Nuclear energy has a fairly high CO2 output, if you count it all together. So this argument against coal is itself an argument against nuclear energy.
Most importantly: We can't manage nuclear waste. There is just no feasible scenario which makes sure for future generations that the nuclear waste we produce now won't be the mulch of the society after us. This point is what seems to seperate the people pro and against the sharpest, some seriously believing we could manage that.
It's disingenuous to call "solar and wind" an alternative on the same level as nuclear and coal.
For one thing, it's an incomplete alternative; it needs to be paired with some form of country scale battery for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
This is covered in the excellent book Without Hot Air[1] which breaks down power usage and generation potential (using UK figures), primarily to discuss weaning the country off of fossil fuels.
Reading through estimates of what will be required ignoring cost, the sheer scale of what it would really take to power a country off of renewable energy quickly becomes apparent.
And it's written by a physicist who strongly argues for the need to move off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. He just doesn't have his head in the sand about how difficult that will be.
I tend to agree with that viewpoint but I'm skeptical we'll get there without pairing it with a significant boost in energy efficiency, ala Reinventing Fire[2].
> it needs to be paired with some form of country scale
battery
This isn't true, as distributed power networks are actually preferable. I'd much rather have uninterrupted power supply at the home than try and rely on an entire network to provide it for me.
At least in the United States, if the Grid goes down, then your home solar system (including battery supply) is automatically shut down as well for safety reasons.
Solar and wind are ways off replacing nuclear and fossil fuels.
There is no way we could switch to solar/wind without moving to the 1800's. There are many technological and economic issues with large scale solar/wind. We need to build better grids, we need storage for when sun doesn't shine and wind doesn't blow...
Realistically we are at least 20 years from the point where renewables could overcome fossil. And that is assuming optimistic scenario.
If we plowed all this funding into nuclear power research we would get far more out of our investment.
e.g.: You can use (advanced) nuclear power anywhere, while solar and wind are less than suitable for outer space applications, etc.
This is why I feel that people that support "green" agenda are hurting environment and our species.
"There is no way we could switch to solar/wind without moving to the 1800's."
That is false in that the system currently cannot do it because we've promised 100% uptime and all the users have designed around perhaps 99% uptime. Lower uptime on the coasts, much higher in civilized areas (Dang near 100% by the great lakes, for example, where interestingly AC power has been much more reliable than UPS/generator transfer switches)
That is, obviously, a stable and profitable system design.
Multi-generationally, we could move to a system that can insta-shed perhaps 99% of load. Suddenly its not so hard.
I've done stuff with CAD/CAM machines. They don't like power interruptions because ignoring the problem is simpler than dealing with them. There's no technological reason why a next gen system can't have a functionality like "Hey, your power is shutting off in 5 seconds, so go into controlled shutdown mode and prepare to instantly come out of power saving mode momentarily". This isn't someone from the outside speculating but someone from the inside describing.
I would imagine a reasonably intelligent HVAC system talking to a smart enough grid could coordinate such that during worst case intervals they're off.
My phone has 8 or so hours at night to do its 30 minute or so top off charge, so why does it draw full power when the grid is stressed? Yeah that's just a couple watts, but 400 million 10 watt phones and tablets adds up to quite a draw. Laptop draw is even more impressive.
Why isn't every installed UPS legally or contractually required to be a smart grid controllable grid tie inverter on demand?
I sympathize that its harder to design an aluminum refinery to insta drop. Too bad, do it anyway. That limited hydro power is going to be needed by the hospital patients, traffic lights, SOME telecom gear, etc. Interestingly the improved insulation and control and dumping gear has the opportunity to lower overall energy use and possibly increase safety if done right.
(edited to add that only EEs are going to understand what this means, but a law that any plug in device with an effective negative resistance must implement full remotely controllable high speed low latency smart grid tech would go a heck of a long way toward grid stability in a renewables situation)
Why isn't every installed UPS legally or contractually required to be a smart grid controllable grid tie inverter on demand?
Probably because that would be really freaking expensive. Why go to all the expensive failure-prone trouble of making it easier to interrupt people's work and lives, instead of taking the cheaper, easier route of building reliable base load power generation? That's just another case of making the public bear the costs of a centralized benefit, just like fossil fuels' externalized costs.
Coal provides something like 25% of the world's energy production. Solar and wind more like 2%.
The more nuclear plants we build the more coal ones we can shut down.
The more wind and solar we build, the more coal we can shut down too, but it will take a lot longer and a lot more money to replace coal with wind and solar than with nuclear.
Look at germany. Alternative energy doesn't have to be used that little.
On a worldwide scale, it is even a different thing. You can't simply replace coal with nuclear energy worldwide, even if you were absolutely convinced that nuclear energy is safe when properly used and you have a concept for the nuclear waste produced like shooting it into space. Because many countries are just too instable, poor and iniffecient to consider building a nuclear plant. It wouldn't be safe at all. Also, don't overestimate the availability of uranium, which is estimated to only reach till 2080 (depends on who you ask probably).
In Germany, where they are shutting down their nuclear power plants, more than 80% of the shut down nuclear power has been replaced with coal power plants,[26] which release 100 times as much radiation as a nuclear power plant of the same wattage
In 2012, member firms of the Verband der Industriellen Energie- und Kraftwirtschaft (VIK) reported power failures of several seconds duration, combined with a rise in frequency fluctuations. These were reportedly caused by network overloads due to the shutdown of nuclear power plants, and an increase in wind power generation.
See, none of the plants that were shut down so far has been shut down due to the plan to phase out nuclear power. End 2011 all of germanys nuclear plant were switched off - either due to scheduled maintenance or due to (minor) accidents. The plan is so slowly fade out nuclear power over the next decade - so any short term fluke has to be regarded as what it is - a short term and pretty normal fluctuation in local power production, something that the european grid was built to handle.
Quote from the article "The problem may intensify with the approaching winter." and "The coming winter can be critical,". The article dates vom october 2012 and the winter is over, no large-scale blackout in europe so far.
Renewable energies require updates to the network infrastructure - granted - but should that be a reason not to push technology and try to improve?
You're reading something I'm not saying. Germany is investing billions in its own networks to handle those issues, for example into 6 new large scale distribution lines from north to south. So yes, we want to change what energy we're using but we're paying the cost. And then, it's not like germany isn't the largest net-payer in the European Union. Certainly a small part of those subsidies could be invested in energy networks in need of technological updates - currently we're already paying to bring old east-block nuclear plants to more modern safety levels, so a couple of cables shouldn't be too much of a big deal.
You'll get a lot of comments regarding the grid's immaturity to handle a variable load of renewable sources, but the the path of building new nuclear power plant designs as well as forecasts of the ability to store waste for their planned cost has even less maturity.
Living in Southern California, I've been watching the botched upgrade of the San Onofre plant power generation system. There was a well understood, existing design being upgraded with modern engineering under a regulatory watch of the NRC. Nobody in any quarter of that case wanted the upgrade to fail, but despite best efforts and intentions, there was a critical failure in the equipment.
The cost of storing nuclear waste falls under similar uncertainty, efforts to build long term storage facilities in the US and UK have huge cost growth, pointing at the immaturity of the ability to plan, cost-estimate, and technically achieve the goal.
Sure. When calculating the CO2 output, it happens too often that not the real numbers are used. Nuclear energy shines in that regard when focussing only on the power generation itself. But if you count it all together: Mining uranium, building the power plant, transporting to the uranium to the plant, operating the powerplant (from workers who drive to that plant) and in the end, shipping the nuclear waste to an endlager which needs to be build as well (which germany doesn't have, so that one is open ended), the costs as well as the CO2-output of nuclear energy are very high.
Add the CO2 used for disaster prevention and management and from decomissioning the power plants.
The energy costs you are talking about are laughably small compared to nuclear plant's power capacity.
You need quote some good sources to convince me that a nuclear plant wouldn't be able to power uranium mines, transportation trains and all its supporting infrastructure by itself and still have over 99% of its capacity left for other purposes.
And BTW, wikipedia claims [1] that California has plans to use up to 180 square miles to generate 7.3GW of energy. This is slightly less power than capacity planned for Fukushima after building two new reactors in 2016 and slightly more area than has been permanently closed after Fukushima plant failure.
So you can take area intended for a solar plant, build a nuclear plant instead, cover the rest with forest and have:
1. Higher power output.
2. Probably negative CO₂ balance, thanks to big forest.
3. No evacuation even in case of Fukushima-size disaster.
4. You can even allow tourists to use this forest for recreation as long as the plant hasn't failed, and most plants have never faled in their history. Try letting tourist into a solar plant.
That is not what we were talking about. We talked about the CO2-output of nuclear energy, and I added small remarks to costs. Power capacity wasn't mentioned at all. I don't see your point?
Power capacity matters because it means that the "CO₂ cost" of nuclear power is epsilon and if you are looking for CO₂ reduction your efforts would be better spent elsewhere, like finding ways to run cars on nuclear power (because cars have too small area to power themselves from the Sun).
Becuase you need to look at the CO2/MW not the CO2/Plant, If a given plant type produces half the CO2 and half the MW of another plant type you will need two of the former to replace one of the latter, therefore the CO2 output remains them same.
As noted in another comment, right now solar and wind are not a viable alternative. Hopefully in time, though I'm not sure it will ever be possible to completely do away with location-agnostic power generation (coal, nuclear).
> We can't manage nuclear waste.
But it is tightly regulated and under close scrutiny, unlike coal ash contamination.
I work in the smart grid industry, and have watched and studied several years of the Stanford Energy Seminars [1]. I totally agree that Solar/Wind are the future - but we know how to supply our electrical needs with Coal (and Natural gas in part of the United States) and Nuclear power today. It's going to take 20+ years to transition to a Wind/Solar future, so the real question is not whether we should transition to wind/solar (we should) - but what do we invest our resources in while we transition to that future? Do we build (A) More coal plants or (B) More nuclear plants. (Throw in the curveball (C) start fracking more and exporting natural gas - which comes with it's own environmental costs)
I've just spent the last two weeks in the UK working on various Low Carbon smart grid projects, and the challenges of Distributed Generation (mostly wind right now in the UK) are significant - the large one being building the Transmission/Distribution network to handle this somewhat erratic source of power.
So - the future is clear, but the journey is still in question. I vote nuclear power - The impact to future generations of carefully buried waste will be much, much less than the impact of global warming.
Solar and wind might be the alternative for powering your TV and AC. They will not power the advanced scientific and engineering projects of the future. For instance the Large Hadron Collider uses twice as much electricity in a year as the entire city of Geneva. It's possible to conceive of a physics experiment that uses orders of magnitude more. What if we discover that "warp drive" is possible, but takes enormous amounts of energy? Wouldn't you want to try to do it?
If we want a Star Trek future--spaceships, advanced materials, anti-gravity, incredible new technologies, etc.--we are going to need to iteratively develop denser and more powerful energy sources. These will also have denser and more powerful failure modes. So our engineering also needs to get iteratively better.
Remember the episode on DS9 when the Ferengi travelled through time into the 1950s? They were even disgusted by those primitive humans destroying their own planet with radiation (their gadgets didn't work anymore because of this).
See, most energy consumed is actually not consumed as electricity but for heat, for traffic etc. Nuclear power produces a mere 13%-14% of the worlds energy (less than hydro power btw.) and by no means can replace all uses of coal (or generally fossil fuel) unless you pop a nuclear plant in every city or village. A lot of coal plants in germany for example produce electricity as well as heat for buildings - something that a nuclear plant can in theory do, but it's just not something you'd want to stick to the edge of the city.
If you want to save on CO2 and energy, there's far better ways than building new coal or nuclear plants: reduce energy consumption and - most importantly - reduce it where it can be cheaply done. Go to developing countries and replace inefficient stoves, air conditioning and fridges. It's dead cheap compared to what we can squeeze out here - but it's a political nightmare. It's simple to support buying an efficient freezer in germany or better insulation for buildings or solar collectors on the roof, it's very hard to do so in africa.
I agree that that solar and wind are currently no perfect solution and alone probably will never be, but that's no reason not to invest money and do research. The progress that has been made so far is impressive. We're nerds, we all love a good challenge.
Additionally, I recall that there are some problems with the estimate. For example it assumes that there are no more major accidents after Chernobyl. And he uses the WHO study, which may underestimate cancer fatalities by an order of magnitude. For a nice discussion of the problems of studies of Chernobyl see:
Apologies for half-remembered hearsay but weren't there conclusions from long-term Chernobyl studies that were basically "we might have seriously overestimated long-term effects of radiation"?
I think you're talking about the Academy of Sciences, in their review of the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation report. Here's my layman understanding: for many years, this authoritative basis for nuclear safety regulation recommended a precautionary adherance to LNT (linear no-threshold), a heuristic that states that small doses of radiation carry smalll risk, corelating to the linear relationship measured at higher doses. The latest review of this important report admitted doubt over the validity of linear models at low doses.
I'm not certain how relevant this is to the fukushima disaster. Certainly, many people are today living in radiation levels well above those which defined the Chernobyl exclusion zone. I guess the abandonment of LNT has fed into the WHO calculations, that actually don't say there will be no deaths, just that the deaths due to the fukushima reactor disasters will not be discernable from cancers expected to occur in the population over the next lifetime due to other causes.
The question how many people have died will probably not be answered in a couple of decades. The problem is, that the sample size is limited and disentangling various reasons for diseases is quite hard. For example the highest radiation dosage after Chernobyl was in Belarus, but the population there did also go through the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The article reads as if it was commissioned by Tepco directly. Nuclear power is not risk-free. Plants need to be operated with competent designs under the watchful eyes of competent engineers. None of which was the case at Fukushima. The argument that nuclear reactors are safer than coal is correct but misleading: it doesn't mean people get to ignore the dangers.
Contrary to what the article tries to evoke, the Fukushima meltdowns were a huge catastrophe that severely impacted a whole region. Ask the people who live(d) there if they think the impact of this thing was overstated in the media - they're likely to tell you if anything consequences were buried not exposed. Even if these very first statistics are true, there is likely to be more impact further down the road. There will be shortened lifespans as a result of exposure. There is massive economic damage as well. People's lives were severely affected. And let's not forget the destroyed reactors still aren't safe. There are very likely huge unpleasant surprises yet to be revealed.
I don't get why everything related to nuclear power gets discussed with this much emotion and propaganda. Let's not overreact, but let's also not underreact. Somewhere here there is a middle ground supported by facts and scientific judgement.
But the article mentions the facts and scientific judgements:
> the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has drawn on 80 scientists from 18 countries to produce a draft report that concludes: "Radiation exposure following the nuclear accident at Fukushima-Daiichi did not cause any immediate health effects. It is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future among the general public and the vast majority of workers.
What you've done is read (or not) an article discussing the findings of a bunch of independent commissions, decided that there must be something missing, and bemoaned the fact that people are applauding nuclear energy.
How about we assume that I've read the article before commenting on it, and while we're at it, how about doing away with the vitriol even when you don't like someone or their opinion?
> decided that there must be something missing, and bemoaned the fact that people are applauding nuclear energy.
I have indeed, for myself, decided there is something missing and I put my doubts out there for people to judge, and I believe I explained where I see the problems. I did express some reservations about the completeness of the picture as it is being rendered in the article and I do believe some measure of caution is advisable, yes.
> and while we're at it, how about doing away with the vitriol even when you don't like someone or their opinion
Fair enough. Sorry for the way I wrote what I wrote.
What I was trying to convey is that calling the article out for being misleading, because we can't yet know, goes against what the stated research determined. Admonishing commenters for cheering on nuclear power just because you don't think the research is complete seems suspect.
I don't think anyone is saying "but there was no damage done, yay for a perfect energy source". What they're saying is "it's the best we've got and scare campaigns against nuclear power are ridiculous - thankfully someone has exposed them".
What happened was terrible. But tearing down the nuclear power plants across the globe is not the correct reaction.
Contrary to what the article tries to evoke, the Fukushima meltdowns were a huge catastrophe that severely impacted a whole region. Ask the people who live(d) there if they think the impact of this thing was overstated in the media - they're likely to tell you if anything consequences were buried not exposed. Even if these very first statistics are true, there is likely to be more impact further down the road. There will be shortened lifespans as a result of exposure. There is massive economic damage as well. People's lives were severely affected. And let's not forget the destroyed reactors still aren't safe. There are very likely huge unpleasant surprises yet to be revealed.
Vice Japan did a fascinating story about a man who's been living inside the exclusion zone[1] and has yet to feel any ill effects of being exposed to radiation (though in the article, he was described as being a freak of nature in that regard).
The argument that nuclear reactors are safer than coal is correct ... there is a middle ground supported by facts and scientific judgement
There's really no such thing as a 'correct' argument on these issues.
Maybe coal has fewer expected deaths per MW generated on average, but a nuclear plant's worst-case scenario is clearly substantially worse. Facts and scientific judgment can't really tell us in that case which is better: that's really only something that informed democratic deliberation can do (informed by science, economics, ethics, etc.).
> Facts and scientific judgment can't really tell us in that case which is better: that's really only something that informed democratic deliberation can do (informed by science, economics, ethics, etc.).
Again, I'm really not sure what the point is besides being contrarian ;) I'm certain that you are not telling me facts and scientific judgement don't matter? Or that popular opinion, informed by a host of factors, is somehow preferable to doing the right thing? Keep in mind I'm not even "taking sides" pro or con nuclear here, just advocating an informed discussion.
Um, Fukoshima went very, very wrong, and there were Zero deaths/sickness. That was the point of the article. And these were the worst reactors currently in service.
That leaves us with safer, more productive reactors. The future holds even safer reactors. This seems like a good trajectory for everybody.
I disagree with 'zero' deaths. the UNSCEAR report does not say zero deaths. it says that the increased cancer deaths due to the reactor disaster over the coming decadrs will not be statistically discernable. That's not zero deaths.
> I'm really not sure what the point is besides being contrarian
All I'm saying is that you can't settle this question (or many others) with facts and science alone. Sure, you've got to weigh the facts, but often, including in this case, those have got to feed in to an ethical judgment which is everybody's (not just scientists') to make.
I'm still unclear on what that actually means. Surely we can agree that every death or injury is one too many? So is it more ethical to run a well-designed nuclear reactor than a well-designed coal power plant? I think so, and I believe so do you. But that doesn't mean we can shrug off the inherent dangers and drawbacks. Acknowledging these issues does not make a person anti-nuclear per se.
Exclaiming, as the article does, "see, not a single person got hurt, everything is just awesome!" while people in Japan are burying contaminated top-soil from school yards under their front lawn, while everyone carries a dosimeter to gauge how long they can stay outside today, and while thousands of people have lost their homes strikes me as very bad judgement - even if the health statistics have not been manipulated.
By saying that facts and scientific understanding are essential to decision-making, I'm not insinuating these decisions can only be made by scientists. Instead I'm advocating a better scientific/factual understanding by and for everybody. Clearly that is not how things are working right now, but I think it's an important goal to have.
to me, a worst case scenario is that one or more of the nutcases who leapfrog a weapons program off the back of the materials, technologies, facilities and expertise developed thru their power program, decides to test a bomb. or shake it angrily. or drop it.
Can anyone here remember going to war because we though the other crazy guy -might- have a coal bomb?
there's more nuclear actors than ever before, and it only takes one of them to have a bad day for all of us to have a bad day.
Thankfully, the designs that can be used to produce weapons grade material are also the ones that are the least safe. If people opt for the old designs, it will be obvious what their intentions are.
the concern is not just about a single power reactor being misused to produce bomb fuel, but about the picewise contribution a nuclear power program makes to the nation's capacity to achieve their weapons ambitions
Contrary to what the article tries to evoke, the Fukushima meltdowns were a huge catastrophe that severely impacted a whole region. Ask the people who live(d) there if they think the impact of this thing was overstated in the media - they're likely to tell you if anything consequences were buried not exposed.
I don't think anyone is trying to argue that there wasn't a huge catastrophe that affected the region least of all this article. It was very clear on the thousand deaths that the evacuation caused beyond those caused by the Tsunami. What it argues is that the radiation from the disaster wasn't a huge catastrophe that people worried it was.
Never mind that coal mining kills almost 6000 people a year, or that populations of coal-mining areas have death rates about 10 per cent higher than non-mining areas, or that coal emissions drive global warming.
I'm fully in favour of nuclear power but using partial evidence and misleading comparisons to back up arguments does not help the cause.
You can't compare the death toll of mining coal to the death toll of a nuclear accident and prove one is more dangerous than the other. They are completely different things having no common factors.
How many people died mining Uranium? How many people die per MW produced for both fuels? How many people die in disasters at Coal Power plants?
Nuclear power is by far the safest form of energy on earth - it even beats solar power. It is so very very very stupid we don't get 80% of our energy from it.
Yes there are no common factors between mining a product and an industrial accident occurring when using a product.
Agreed, they are all part of the mix when comparing the overall life-cycle dangers of different fuels, but the Author of the article is not comparing like-with-like. If you're comparing Coal vs Nuclear, you can only compare the death toll of mining coal with the death toll of mining uranium. Or the health effects from coal burning vs uranium fission.
An article claiming BMW's are safer than Volvos because nobody ever dies during their manufacture whereas Volvo's are dangerous because 1000 people crash and die in them per year would hold no wieght.
That article would indeed be a problem, but only if it ignored either Volvo manufacturing deaths or BMW driving deaths. An article comparing total Vovlo and BMW related deaths as a measure of the make's cost to society would present a valid argument. Granted, generally when someone calls and automobile make "safe," they mean safe to drive, and that's what matters to car buyers, but part of the point of this article is that's not what matters when discussing power plants, which are payed for by 'society' rather than individual buyers.
Total deaths from Coal power generation vs Nuclear Power generation is indeed a meaningful comparison.
That article would indeed be a problem, but only if it ignored either Volvo manufacturing deaths or BMW driving deaths
Which is exactly what that article does. I see no reference to the deaths from uranium mining, or the deaths from industrial accidents at coal power plants.
I'm not saying these figures don't exist and certainly not suggesting they suggest nuclear isn't quite so squeaky clean. Other HN commenters have supplied links suggesting uranium mining is much safer.
My original point was that misleading comparisons, like the one mentioned, don't help pro nuclear arguments because they are frankly desperate, sensational and don't hold up to scrutiny.
Not really. I think you try to shift who has to give sources for what, evading to try to disprove my articulated doubt of your citation with another source, like by citing which numbers were used.
That is not what I wanted to do. Thing is: The article cited is spotty in that regard, I pointed that out (you don't need sources for that) and I didn't and still don't understand your answer to that comment of mine. I don't want to discuss meta nor personal, so that's it for me.
See It is hard to take any of your statements seriously as your reading comprehension is so bad, that you don't even notice that you are arguing with the wrong guy.
You don't know what reading comprehension means. Hint: Remembering a small username not even visible when replying to a comment deeper down in a thread has nothing to do with it.
The argument is wrong because coal is as bad as nuclear power. Both are limited, both are centralized systems and both have huge environmental impacts. Mining, transport, energy production, and also exhaust and waste.
It should also be noted that coal mining is done the worst conditions you can think of. I'm very glad that by 2018, Germany will stop its coal production completely and not only because it is very expensive to get the coal in Germany.
This is btw something you have with all fossil and nuclear sources. With time it will get more expensive to get to the fuel needed. And according to the German government, nuclear fuel comes only partially from mining. So mining is currently not delivering the fuel for all nuclear power plants running. The rest comes from old nuclear weapons and other sources, according to the German government.
Also it should be noted that nuclear power was never really profitable. It might be with old plants now but with newer plants I think it is unlikely to earn a dime with nuclear power unless you get some kind of subsidy. The new EPR currently being build in Finland already costs 100% more than expected. With that money you could have installed enough windmills to cover those 1600 MW the EPR might provide.
Nuclear power was used for about 50 years, it will leave us with waste for the next 100,000 to 1,000,000 years.
How many of you who think Nuclear power is safe will
Visit within 10, 5 miles of Fukoshima power plant ?
Take your kid(s) there?
Eat any food produce there in next 5, 10, 20 year?
Won't move or leave the area if the government give order to evacuate?
Won't file any lawsuit against the power company when something happen?
Or will knowing buy a house, start a family within evacuation zone (20, 30 miles) to Japan coastal nuclear power plant if it 30, 40, 50% cheaper for similar house AND if you can afford not to?
Won't object at all after you purchase a house and some company decide to build a nuclear power plant within 20 miles of your house?
I am an engineer and also think it is safe, but it can't be in my backyard or within 100 miles of silicon valley. It is perfect safe, good for the environment and produce a lot less CO2 - in Japan.
I would have thought that the evacuation response and the ability to restore water supply to the fuel rod cooling pools would have had a bit more to do with the lack of deaths than the safety of radiation disaster..
I support nuclear as An energy source but it really seems like we are doing it wrong at the moment - it costs too much, seems like we are, or have been using reactor designs that we probably shouldn't (ie they have meltdown risk in disasters vs other newer designs).
However it speaks volumes about the changed political environment, and our environmental sensitivity these days, that a response to Japan's tsunami and nuclear shutdown was also the shutdown of German reactors and fast-tracked plans to transition away from nuclear from them and other countries.
One is the safety of radiation. This is a medical question. It can be tested in the laboratory, but we have enough "field experience" with it by now to know that it is indeed Very Bad News(tm) in high doses.
The second is the safety of nuclear power. This has many factors including the first issue and also including things such as evacuation response. Our ability to recognize threats (such as plainly unsafe radiation) and react effectively and rapidly is itself a reason that nuclear power is safe.
Properly regulated nuclear power is safer than nuclear power that is not. Sort of like how cardiac arrest in Seattle is safer than it is in Detroit, since the EMS response time is about 1/3rd the time.
Nobody dead or sick, yet tens of billions spent decommissioning nuclear reactors around the planet -- with all the environmental costs associated with that.
The reason the world continues to pollute more than necessary for the energy we desire has much more to do with the irrationality of people than the physics of energy production.
I'm all for renewable energy. In fact, I own/operate a 200kWp solar plant. I put my money where my mouth is.
Having said that, in the mid-term I'm also pro-nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is one of the greenest, least polluting energy sources right now. It's the only technology that emits zero CO2 and can be used as baseload. All other technologies, be it CCGT/natural gas, fuel cells using natural or bio gas, coal powered plants, etc. produce CO2 and other GHG. As much as I wish the world run entirely on wind, water and sunlight, we are very far from this happening. Nonetheless I think it will be possible.
The main issue with renewable energy right now is its production volatility: the wind blowing, the sun shinning, dams to 100% capacity, etc. The need for a stable, non-CO2 emitting, energy production is nuclear. No doubt doubt about it.
When you negatively say
> billions spent decommissioning nuclear reactors around the planet
implying that the cost of decommissioning is a big downside, let me clarify a few things:
1. decommissioning (from cleaning to storage) costs are priced in the energy cost, still making it far cheaper than oil and gas sources even without CCS technologies.
2. the cost of decommissioning is provisioned by the company running the plant, meaning that decommissioning is no extraordinary cost to the operator/consumer/citizen.
3. today's nuclear technology is nowhere as archaic as it was in the 70's/80's, when many errors were made trying out different technologies. Many people make the mistake of brining up the case of Chernobyl, but people are unaware that this plant was an R&D plant, built for the production of nuclear weapons, and not built for energy production.
4. the environmental impact of running nuclear plants today is extremely small (if not insignificant) compared to running the same energy capacity and production on fossil fuels, where CO2 and other harmful gasses are causing increase in temperatures, melting of icecaps, decimating thousands of species, and the list goes on.
I do agree that with you on
>The reason the world continues to pollute more than necessary for the energy we desire has much more to do with the irrationality of people than the physics of energy production.
There is plenty of educating still to be done on energy, its consumption and user behaviour, and I hope the anti-nuclear sentiment focuses more on the bigger picture, rather than blaming nuclear for the sake of sounding environmentally friendly.
The "cost" of decommissioning is in the destruction of production capacity. If you decommission a plant that has 20 years at 800MW lifetime yet, it's not the fixed amount to actually demolish the plant that's the problem (this money is, as you correctly say, already set aside for this purpose), it's the cost of getting those 20y x 800MW from somewhere else, both in purely financial terms, but also environmental: The only way Germany can replace their nuclear capacity is with coal and gas.
You are 100% correct. My comment did focus on the financial cost, but your "cost" implying a change in the generation mix towards CO2 emitting technologies is probably a far bigger one. Thanks for bringing this up.
The nice thing about this place is that you don't have to be arguing to reply to a post. We sometimes have discussions where participants agree with one another, or even change their minds about things.
It's a unique feature, so don't feel bad if it takes a while to get used to.
I'm not feeling bad, in fact, it seems that I had two more weeks of getting used to than you, looking at when our accounts were created, :)
The post to which I replied has been edited. Where it now says "I do agree" it used to say "However, I disagree with you on..." or something similar, and also in other places.
In that case, I apologize - I possibly misread "do agree" as "disagree" the first time, based on which I had a mental image of what the post said, and on a second, more careful reading it seemed changed.
I don't think he was saying what you think he was saying.
My interpretation was that he was bemoaning the political backlash that lead to shutting down nuclear power in various countries, with the related financial cost and environmental cost due to the increase in coal and gas power generation that was required to make up the gap. All because of an incident that hasn't killed anybody.
Fukushima happened a mere 2 years ago, isn't it a bit soon to draw conclusions when you know that nuclear-induced cancers and illnesses can sometimes be triggered dozens of years later? I am not an expert about that particular subject by any means, but it does seem a bit premature at this point.
What are two years compared to a gigantic pollution of products that will stay dangerous for 300 years?
What a pro-nuclear disinformation article!
That's a shame but so classic of general disinformation on this subject. Costs, dangers, reality of contamination, waste dangers, ... just listen to real independent scientists and concerned actors.
The writer and its commissioners don't live in contaminated areas, and they probably don't care about future of these populations.
Listen to real people there, for example search for "Women of Fukushima" videos : www.women-of-fukushima.com
A few simple facts :
27 years after Tchernobyl, 3 children out of 4 are ill in Bielarus.
2 years after Fukushima, twelve children of Fukushima have confirmed thyroid cancer et 15 are suspected.
I wonder exactly how much access the scientists had to the raw data - TEPCO has lied before.
I would offer the journalist, all-expenses paid including food (and fed by fish caught in the general area), internet, housing, to live within 10km of the plant, for 1 year with his wife and children.
The title of the story is "Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick".
6 (?) workers died. Maybe not from poisoning or ionization but from something else caused by the accident. What exactly happened with the "Fukushima 50" is also unclear.
Obviously people are smart enough to carry Dosimeters and to protect themselves from radiation as appropriate and possible.
But please, saying that "nobody died/got killed (yet) from radiation => nobody died/got killed => nobody died because of Nuclear accident" is just naive. The people died because even after the power plant became unusuable, they needed to manage radiation and spreading of nuclear material. You don't exactly have that problem when dealing with non-nuclear plants. Most of the times can just run and wait. In case of a nuclear plant you need to stay on site or else...
None dead, because it doesn't matter how many decontamination workers die from leukemia or heart problems, it is never officially related to radiation.
None sick, because the increase in cancer that even the article mentions means nothing.
The thyroid cancer rate of Fukushima children is 79 times higher than usual. But "none sick". Yeah, whatever.
>Researchers at Fukushima Medical University, which has been taking the leading role in the study, have so far said they do not believe that the most recent cases are related to the nuclear crisis.
After Hiroshima and during the cold war nuclear energy was associated with death and destruction. Hiroshima for obvious reasons, and the cold war because the population of the western world was constantly reminded how The Soviet Union had thousands of missiles with nuclear bombs pointing at us, ready to go. Western governments used nuclear weapons to picture the threat and to terrify populations into spending more on defense against the Soviets. There were scary videos of mushroom clouds, scary instructions on how to survive a nuclear blast, and scary stories of how a nuclear winter would pan out.
This, obviously, made people scared of nuclear bombs, and nuclear energy in general. Through decades the population was told by the government that nuclear radiation was the evil silent killer.
The byproduct of all this cold war propoganda was that people are now irrationally scared of nuclear radiation from power plants.
If you look at the numbers you'll see that nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest scalable energy source we've got. It's the energy source that has the fewest deaths per MWH produced, it doesn't produce CO2, etc. etc. Yet we think of it as getting power from the devil.
I blame the cold war propoganda for our irrational fear of nuclear energy.
Here's one of the old propaganda videos from the US, "Duck and cover" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4MVJIU0gFk