
The Murky Future of Nuclear Power in the United States - greglindahl
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/business/energy-environment/nuclear-power-westinghouse-toshiba.html
======
asitdhal
Nuclear energy is clean and to some extent cheap.

But, if a war breaks out and someone bombs a nuclear reactor, it will be messy
to clean up the mess.

~~~
yongjik
> But, if a war breaks out and someone bombs a nuclear reactor, it will be
> messy to clean up the mess.

Still will be environmentally cleaner than a coal plant with no war breaking
out and nobody bombing it.

...Even when we add the war itself to the nuke side.

(...Well, unless we do have a nuclear war. Then all bets are off.)

Edit: What, do I look flippant? Here are statistics:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster)

> A United Nations study estimates the final total of premature deaths
> associated with the disaster will be around 4000, mostly from an estimated
> 3% increase in cancers which are already common causes of death in the
> region.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties)

> Predicted future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the
> population living near Fukushima have ranged in the academic literature from
> none to hundreds.

Compare this with:

[http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-
causes-200000-e...](http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-
causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829)

> Air pollution causes 200,000 early deaths each year in the U.S. (...)
> Emissions from road transportation are the most significant contributor,
> causing 53,000 premature deaths, followed closely by power generation, with
> 52,000.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/asia/china-coal-
hea...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/18/world/asia/china-coal-health-smog-
pollution.html?_r=0)

> Burning coal has the worst health impact of any source of air pollution in
> China and caused 366,000 premature deaths in 2013, Chinese and American
> researchers said on Thursday.

In short, (a year of operating coal plants, without accidents) > (worst
nuclear disaster mankind has witnessed), by an order of magnitude (or two).

~~~
philipkglass
I initially downvoted, undid it, then wrote this reply.

A fleet of many coal plants operating normally kills more people than one
nuclear plant accident. A nuclear reactor that is bombed during war (or
otherwise suffers catastrophic loss of containment) is _not_ environmentally
cleaner than one coal plant of comparable capacity operating normally. Nuclear
power is safe by the numbers, but you have to use the right numbers.

If reactor containment failed more often then reactors wouldn't be any better
for human health than fossil power plants. It's because they are designed and
run with such care that they have such a good environmental and safety record,
on average. I was reacting partially to something that you haven't said that
I've heard all too often in discussions like these: _reactors are so safe, we
should get rid of these burdensome regulations so they can be affordable too._
It's the "burdensome" attention to detail that makes nuclear so safe. If the
nuclear industry had the same cavalier cowboy attitude to safety as the coal
mining industry, it would be an environmental disaster.

But you didn't actually call for deregulation, and just making a poorly worded
numerical comparison isn't enough for a downvote. I apologize for that.

~~~
wbl
We had a massive uncontrolled release of radioactivity at Fukushima and before
then Three Mile Island and Windscale and Chalk River and no one died.

They don't even need exclusion zones as big as they have if you think we
should let people live in Denver.

------
philipkglass
I like to assess energy sources by the numbers, and by the numbers nuclear
power is safe enough ( _far_ safer than continuing to burn fossils). By the
numbers, new reactor builds are also slow and expensive, with the one notable
exception of South Korea's KEPCO. (China and Russia sometimes also get cited
as examples of countries that can still do nuclear power "right," but neither
is particularly transparent with domestic projects nor particularly
inexpensive/quick with projects they offer to build abroad.) Ten years ago
Japan and France looked like they did nuclear right also. Then Fukushima
tanked the Japanese nuclear industry and the ongoing disaster of EPR
construction took France off the list.

France's fame as a country that did nuclear right is also a bit tainted by
recent revelations of problems with component quality and forged quality
control reports: [http://www.powermag.com/frances-nuclear-storm-many-power-
pla...](http://www.powermag.com/frances-nuclear-storm-many-power-plants-down-
due-to-quality-concerns/)

I should probably also mention falsified nuclear documentation in South Korea
that surfaced a few years ago, in fairness to France: [http://www.world-
nuclear-news.org/RS-Indictments_for_South_K...](http://www.world-nuclear-
news.org/RS-Indictments_for_South_Korea_forgery_scandal-1010137.html)

 _Maybe_ small modular reactors will make nuclear power attractive again. Or
_maybe_ even big, expensive, slow reactors will seem relatively attractive
some decades from now after national grids are already saturated with as much
renewable electricity as they can reasonably use. (Though even that is subject
to receding horizons if bulk electricity storage gets cheaper over time.) It's
really hard to see anything that will make nuclear power more competitive over
the next 10 years in Japan, the Americas, Oceania, or Europe. (South Korea,
China, and the Middle East and North Africa -- I expect to see continued if
not particularly fast nuclear growth in these regions.)

I had thought that the AP1000 looked like a pretty incrmental, conservative,
easy-to-build choice for new reactors. Builds are well behind schedule in both
the US and China, and the costs are escalating too. My personal guess is that
the 4 reactors now under construction in the US will not make the 2020
deadline to qualify for the new-reactor tax credits that have been available
since 2005. My guess is also that all the institutions that got burned
building these 4 will dissuade new US orders, so any lessons painfully learned
on this first wave will not ease the construction of another wave of reactors;
the lesson learned will just be "don't try to build reactors."

China's leadership can plan for the long term because there are no electoral
politics nor elections. The same goes for Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt where I
also expect to see nuclear growth. In the heyday of France's nuclear build-
out, there was something similar offering stability: EDF was a state owned
electricity monopoly for all of France, and didn't have to worry about
competition or the short term. Since the monopoly ended in 1999 France has
only started building one new reactor, the disastrously late and over-budget
Flamanville-3. With a monopoly I could imagine this being a painful lesson
that nonetheless eases construction of more EPRs. Without a monopoly I think
that this expensive education will be wasted, like the skills relearned from
the current AP1000 projects will be wasted in the US.

Just add these nuclear industry woes to the very long list of reasons that the
world is not on track to stabilize the climate with emissions cuts alone, and
will need active carbon dioxide removal measures later this century or
sometime in the 22nd, assuming that industrial civilization remains intact.

~~~
olau
Thank you for your well-written comment.

I just want to that I think it's unlikely new big reactors will have a place
in a grid with plenty of renewables. You're going to have a hard time making
the ends meet up if you can't sell all the power the reactor produces, and
that won't happen as it can't beat the marginal costs of wind turbines or
solar panels.

Burning biomass, biogas or some sort of mass storage will be much cheaper.

Regarding the latter, in Denmark the former CTO of Siemens Wind Power has
devised a plan for heated stone storage. So you heat the stone with
electricity to around 600 degrees C and can thus use the heat to drive a
turbine later. Last I heard another company in Denmark recently got EU funding
to build a demonstration plant. (Not saying this will be the future, just
putting it out there for people who think the only alternatives are hydro and
chemical batteries.)

~~~
philipkglass
My personal guess is that you are right and that large reactors will not find
any more popularity after renewable penetration reaches high levels. But I
want to keep alternative scenarios in mind even if I consider them unlikely.
Ten years ago I also thought that fluid hydrocarbon prices (both oil and gas)
were going to stay high, if they didn't just keep climbing, but the shale
revolution upended that expectation. If any of the miraculous-on-paper new
reactor designs being pitched by evangelists ever perform up to expectations
in real life that could make nuclear power a low-cost electricity source
again.

I know that public opinion and environmental activism are often cited as
reasons for nuclear power's failure to thrive in the developed world, and
there's some truth to that. But I also think that if new reactor designs ever
live up to the hype of producing the cheapest electricity around, they will
become widespread despite opposition from activists. For a parallel, again
look at the shale revolution. Fracking is vocally opposed by environmentalists
and celebrities (many ordinary members of the public too), but it still grew
rapidly because it actually delivered lower cost energy to buyers. The fact
that nuclear keeps failing to deliver low costs/predictable construction
schedules is a bigger factor in its weak market prospects than opposition by
Greenpeace. Greenpeace opposes _many_ things and usually fails to stop them.

------
nikdaheratik
I'm not against nuclear power, but the U.S. was a pioneer in this tech and it
still required massive support from the weapons industry to even get as much
implementation as it has. I don't believe this is solely on either the tech or
the anti-nuke power movement, but rather has to do with how large and
distributed the U.S. is geographically, which makes each plant being a custom
build job in many places with not enough nearby consumers to give any savings
from scale.

Add to that, the fact that you have so many levels of government approval
before you can break ground, and the high initial cost to build a plant, and
you're basically left with a system that can only gain traction with some
organisation like the military pushing it through.

------
velodrome
Too bad this article mentions nothing about the future of LFTR reactors
(Thorium).

~~~
Animats
Thorium reactors have too much going on inside the reactor, and a radioactive
chemical plant outside it. The history of nuclear reactors indicates that
plants with anything complex going on inside run into problems. Sodium
reactors have sodium fires. Helium reactors leak. Pebble bed reactors jam.
Boring old water reactors are about all that can be made to work for decades.

Running a radioactive chemical plant usually results in a toxic waste site.
All three US reprocessing plants are now major toxic waste sites.

~~~
DrScump

      Boring old water reactors are about all that can be made to work for decades.
    

A sodium-cooled breeder reactor worked continuously for 30 years and survived
a (planned) _hard power-down of all external cooling apparatus_ in 1986[0] to
demonstrate its design safety.

After being shut down by the Clinton administration in 1994 (as was its
follow-on IFR program), disassembly showed no meaningful wear or damage to its
hardware.

"In controlled testing in 1986, with the EBR-II reactor running at full power
and the emergency shutdown systems disabled, the reactor's supply of
electricity was intentionally turned off, causing the coolant pumps to stop.
This is a worse scenario than what happened in the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster.
(At Fukushima, which began operation in 1971, the emergency shutdown system
turned off the reactor as soon as it detected the earthquake. However the
tsunami destroyed the electric generators powering the coolant pumps, which
needed to continue running after the reactor shutdown. Subsequently, the core
overheated and meltdown occurred.) EBR-II, in contrast, handled the event
without creating a dangerous situation. EBR-II had a negative thermal
coefficient of reactivity that shut down the reactor when the temperature
increased due to loss of the coolant pumps; the time required to heat the
large pool of sodium surrounding the reactor provided a sufficient time buffer
for the passive decay heat removal system to prevent the EBR-II reactor from
melting down. The safe shutdown of the EBR-II relied only on the laws of
physics and did not require operator or control system intervention."

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II)

~~~
cocoablazing
This reactor was 1/50th the scale of a typical power reactor. The radiation,
thermal-hydraulic, and chemical environment of a full-scale reactor is
different. Different stress corrosion interactions, severe oscillating
stresses due to thermal-hydraulic fluctuations at assembly outlets... The
operational record of such reactors hardly supports them as foolproof or
economical versus the best modern water reactors.

------
intrasight
I'll bet that no new nuclear plants will be built in my lifetime nor in my
children's lifetimes.

~~~
toomuchtodo
So strange you're downvoted when you're correct. Why spend billions on a
nuclear plant that'll take a decade to build when you can deploy solar, wind,
and battery storage at a lower cost and a tenth the time?

The economics simply do not work for nuclear, and I'd expect all nuclear
generators in the US decommissioned by 2030.

~~~
Cowicide
It's not strange to see downvotes, IMO. Industry spends a tremendous amount of
money and resources attacking our more sustainable energy future with rampant
FUD. They want to milk their current infrastructure for as long as it's
profitable for them.

Sowing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about alternative, more sustainable energy
sources (and storage) has gone on for decades and has had a very pervasive,
toxic effect on general discourse of the matters.

------
exabrial
Nuclear is still the future, just maybe not the immediate future... Unless we
have a massive breakthrough in transmission and storage. I see it as gap
between solar and wind to meet emergencies and peak loads.

~~~
marze
It is the future in a parallel universe where solar panels don't cost $0.40
per watt and aren't falling at 30% per year.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
That suggests they will be $0.20/watt in two years. That will make them too
cheap to ignore for almost everything.

