
Want to fight climate change? Build more nuclear power - markmassie
http://csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0828/Want-to-fight-climate-change-Build-more-nuclear-power
======
lispm
Nuclear energy has still some popularity in the US. Especially among technical
people. But technology is only one thing. What are the effects on a society
long term?

Here in Germany it is mostly dead. For us you are discussing positions of
twenty years ago. The US has a very different energy situation compared to us:
large country, nuclear weapons, lots of nuclear technology, extremely high
energy use (more than twice than the average German), much lower population
density, lots of energy sources, ...

Here in Germany we've seen a lot of the negative effects in a country with
higher density in the middle of Europe:

* no plan or place for the waste

* nuclear power plants all over the country

* widespread corruption between politicians and industry

* protests were suppressed with military-like police, escalated almost into civil war

* lots of transport of nuclear materials through the country

* extremely costly research paid by the tax payer

* lots of promises of the nuclear industry just did not materialize: for example our pebble-bed reactor was closed silently, while earlier it was promised to solve a lot of technical problems

* centralization of electricity production in few monopoly-like companies with zero competition

The effects on an democratic society of nuclear technology is at least as bad
as its technological problems. This was seen decades ago in the book 'Der
Atomstaat' and the effects had been shown in Japan, where the Atomstaat was
more advanced than here in Germany. We were able to stop it.

Now we have to build-up renewable decentralized energy during the next
decades. That's the common goal here in Germany.

~~~
abelsson
The problem is that Germany, with its focus on wind and solar, is paying twice
as much as for electricity compared to France - also a country with higher
density in the middle of Europe - while also emitting more carbon dioxide per
capita (9.6 vs 6.1 tons per capita). The difference is that France made the
right decision 30 years ago when they transitioned from oil and coal to
nuclear power for power generation. Solar and Wind are a much more expensive
way of accomplishing the same thing. Der Energiewende is both expensive and
inefficient.

~~~
Perseids
> Der Energiewende

Off topic: I'm always a bit mystified as to why people try to use German
articles in English texts when they obviously don't know the gender of the
word. "Wende" (turn) is female and you thus use "die" as an article. The third
possible article is "das" and used for neutral nouns like "Auto". Given it is
easy to look up [1], I guess you didn't know there are several?

On topic: I won't state my opinion about the short term cost efficiency of
nuclear power, because I don't have the references or raw data at hand to back
it up (I wish a lot of others in this thread in the same situation wouldn't
either). But IMHO the strongest argument against nuclear power is the
uncertainty of long term waste disposal, given that we (currently) can't
realistically predict storage conditions on a geological time frame. A month
ago there was an article on HN about how we fail to come up with a way to
communicate the danger of long term storage to future generations in a
reliable way [2].

Even from an economic point of view the danger of a cost explosion of the
nuclear waste disposal purely because of political struggles is daunting. In
Germany we have a small disposal facility, the Asse, build to test long term
storage in salt mines. Because of the usual combination of human error,
incompetence and cover ups, waste was dumped there even while it was slowly
becoming unstable [3]. Getting it all back out will cost somewhere around 5
billion euros. Guess who's paying for it.

[1]
[https://www.google.de/search?q=dictionary+energiewende](https://www.google.de/search?q=dictionary+energiewende)

[2] [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-
years/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/) ,
corresponding hacker news thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090759)

[3] I'm oversimplifying. See
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-
weighs-o...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-weighs-
options-for-handling-nuclear-waste-in-asse-mine-a-884523.html) for more
background and
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/07/photogalleri...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/07/photogalleries/100708-radioactive-
nuclear-waste-science-salt-mine-dump-pictures-asse-ii-germany/) for pictures.

~~~
shangxiao
There's also the economic cost of decommissioning a nuclear facility. The
decommissioning happening at Sellafield is estimated at over £70bn [1]

[1]
[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/01/sellafiel...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/01/sellafield-
nuclear-clean-up-cost-rises)

------
marze
The obstacles that nuclear power faces are formidable.

One is that two other carbon-free options, solar and wind, are dropping in
cost at a rapid rate at the same time that cost estimates for new nuclear
plants are rising at a similarly rapid rate.

Another is that there isn't anyone who thought their investment in the
existing fleet of nuclear plants in the US was a good investment. They were
uniformly bad investments, which is the primary reason for the 40 year gap
with essentially no new plants ordered.

Furthermore, even completely amortized plants are shutting down in the US.
They can't even cover their operating costs, the few that shut down in the
last year, let alone operating cost plus amortized construction cost.

So even with the federal government guaranteeing 90% of the funds used for new
plant construction (free money) it hasn't been easy to find investors willing
to put up the remaining 10%.

Nuclear power is awesome, especially if it is fusion power, and the reactor is
90M miles away, and anyone can use it for free just by put an inexpensive
fusion power receiving panel outside with a clear view of the sky.

One just needs to project what the wholesale price of PV power will be in 10
years to see the real reason it is difficult to find investors for new nuclear
plants. Why spend $5B on a nuclear plant when you could spend it on five solar
panel plants that each produce 1GW of solar panels, each year, creating
substantially more jobs than the reactor would? Just asking.

~~~
hackuser
My guess is that one reason for nuclear power's relatively high cost is that
they must spend large amounts on safety while their primary competition,
carbon-based power, gets a free ride from the rest of society on their safety
costs, especially climate change. Nuclear pays for its own safety (AFAIK); who
pays for climate change prevention, mitigation, and damage (e.g., hurricanes,
seawalls, droughts, etc.)? The taxpayers.

Make carbon pay to clean up the mess it creates, and nuclear will look much
more attractive.

~~~
ljf
While nuclear pays for site safety, it is the tax payer that covers the
decommissioning and future waste storage / processing. As the costs for this
is just so obscenely high that no private company would be involved if they
had to pay for it from the meager profits they'd made from the electricity
they'd produced. So once again it is the tax payer that covers the damage.

------
sounds
Hopefully there are lots of people here who feel like I do, that building
nuclear plants is a great idea -- just, what kind of nuclear plant should we
build?

1\. You want to use government funding to build nuclear plants. My response:
please look at previous government-funded nuclear operations of all types. It
appears this doesn't work, from a failure to manage the environmental impact
to a failure to keep the project cost-effective. This includes state-
controlled energy companies, since nuclear power is a very tightly controlled
business.

2\. You want to use an unproven technology. My response: there are several
well-proven nuclear options that are being developed by very promising
companies. Please compare your technology with them. Some of the promising
technologies are government-funded, however, which seems like a waste of a
good idea.

3\. You want to keep existing plants alive. This is nuanced. Some existing
nuclear plants are necessary, but hopefully we can shut down the aging and
dangerous and high-level-waste-producing ones in favor of cleaner
alternatives. Doing so shouldn't necessarily cost a lot of money.

4\. You want to reprocess existing nuclear waste and burn it to low-grade
waste while generating clean electricity. My response: if you can show that
you've cleared the regulatory hurdles (a lot of waste is held by governments)
and if you're reasonably transparent about your progress, I'd like to give you
a donation.

~~~
vmp
I'm personally excited about Thorium reactors, suprised that nobody else
mentioned them yet.

I could cite the "pamphlet propaganda" but I feel that I lack knowledge to
lead the thorium discussion, so I'll let somebody else do that. :)

------
brandonmenc
Why is France rarely mentioned in these discussions?

Most of their energy is nuclear. They've also standardized on plant design,
which must have huge benefits - fungible employees and more MTBF being big
ones.

All of our (the United States) plants afaik are bespoke designs, and can't be
cheaper than pumping out cookie cutters.

What are they doing right, and how do we copy it?

~~~
cygx
Keep in mind that not everything is golden in the promised land of nuclear
energy production that is France: If it gets too hot to use river water for
cooling, they have to shut down their nuclear reactors and import electricity
from their european neighbours.

For that matter, they also have problems when it gets too cold: The French
generally use electricity for heating and they cannot meet demand on their
own.

~~~
h1fra
That sentences is only half true.

Yes they river water for cooling, but water is not polluted as it's not in
direct contact.

French use mostly electricity for heating, but we are importing only for some
occasion when temperature are very cold which append maybe 10-20 times a year.
The rest of the year we are heavily exporting to england & italy.

You can see all this in realtime here [http://www.rte-
france.com/fr/developpement-durable/eco2mix/p...](http://www.rte-
france.com/fr/developpement-durable/eco2mix/production-d-electricite-par-
filiere) And number are self explanatory, 1/4 is exported at the time I write
this.

~~~
cygx
> Yes they river water for cooling, but water is not polluted as it's not in
> direct contact.

Which I never claimed. I don't know why you mentioned that.

> we are importing only for some occasion when temperature are very cold which
> append maybe 10-20 times a year

There was a spike in 2009, where France was a net importer for 57 days -
basically, French nuclear plants could not satisfy demand for 2 months.

I stand by my points.

------
discardorama
The people of the areas surrounding Fukushima and Chernobyl may beg to differ.

I'm not anti-nuclear, but the cost of a failure at a nuclear power plant is so
high, that the engineering must be to similarly high standards. Unfortunately,
as we have seen in the cases of 3-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukishima, this
is not the case. We need to really figure that part out before opting for this
route.

And then there's the problem of nuclear waste disposal.

~~~
jlebar
What people don't think about, because it's not an acute disaster like a
nuclear accident, is that coal power plants kill a /lot/ of people.

According to this article, coal power in China killed 300,000 people last
year, which itself is way more than were displaced (not killed) by Fukushima.
Even US coal power, which is much safer than Chinese coal power, is 160x more
deadly per joule than nuclear, and it appears that's not counting climate
change effects.

I don't mean to suggest that nuclear power is without risk -- of course it's
risky business. But we need to compare the risk to the alternatives.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-
de...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-
price-always-paid/)

~~~
Lazare
Germany responded to Fukushima by shutting down their nuclear power plants,
and using more coal. In fact, they've embarked on a program of building new
coal plants across Germany, which is madness by basically any metric you care
to use.

Which has an interesting outcome: The irrational response to Fukushima (in
particular, the shift from nuclear to coal generation) will undoubtedly kill
several orders of magnitude more people than the actual Fukushima disaster
did.

Sometimes it's hard not to get cynical and bitter.

~~~
lispm
Practically every sentence is wrong.

> Germany responded to Fukushima by shutting down their nuclear power plants

Germany did not do that. Some of the oldest were shutdown. Basically Germany
went back to the original plan from 2000, which was made together with the
industry. The last nuclear reactor will be shut down around 2022.

> In fact, they've embarked on a program of building new coal plants across
> Germany, which is madness by basically any metric you care to use.

Germany did not do that. Various coal power plants were planned long ago. Also
many old were and are taken offline. That Germany is using coal is not
actually madness. Germany has basically only one fossil fuel in larger
quantities in the country: coal.

> Which has an interesting outcome: The irrational response to Fukushima (in
> particular, the shift from nuclear to coal generation) will undoubtedly kill
> several orders of magnitude more people than the actual Fukushima disaster
> did.

Germany is on a long missions towards renewable energy. Nuclear energy is not
a part of the plan. Nuclear will be replaced early, since it is a very costly
energy which needs decades to be replaced. So Germany wanted to stop investing
into it very early.

There is no shift to coal. This year for example coal use is going down. What
you think is a shift to coal, is just a temporary effect in a long-term plan.

> Sometimes it's hard not to get cynical and bitter.

If you would be better informed about German plans, you would not need to be
cynical and bitter.

~~~
Lazare
Item 1: Germany shut down 41% of it's nuclear plants following Fukushima, and
greatly accelerated plans to close the remaining ones.

Item 2: Germany is building a raft of new coal plants; something like 30 are
in various stages of planning and building. According to Die Welt, power
generation from brown coal (the dirtiest form) is climbing, at the highest
level since 1990, and projected to increase further. Overall fossil fuel use
for power generation is staying constant. If it wasn't for the decline of
nuclear power in Germany, fossil fuel use could have declined. And according
to Germany's energy regulator, coal fired plants will be essential to replace
the closing nuclear plants.

> There is no shift to coal.

Yes, there is. As you go on to admit, even if you label it a "temporary effect
in a long-term plan". (But given that the coal plants now being built are
projected to be operating for _40 years_ , it's not what I'd call temporary.)

And that shift will result in a net increase in deaths. You seem very
defensive, but you haven't actually disputed any of the underlying facts.

~~~
lispm
> Item 1: Germany shut down 41% of it's nuclear plants following Fukushima,
> and greatly accelerated plans to close the remaining ones.

Those were to close anyway in the very near future. Germany did not greatly
accelerate the plan.

> Item 2: Germany is building a raft of new coal plants; something like 30 are
> in various stages of planning and building.

It does not. 'Planning' is not building. Germany currently discusses the
closing of 50 fossil fuel plants.

> According to Die Welt, power generation from brown coal (the dirtiest form)
> is climbing, at the highest level since 1990, and projected to increase
> further.

It is not. This year coal use is going down.

> Overall fossil fuel use for power generation is staying constant.

Only for a few years.

> If it wasn't for the decline of nuclear power in Germany, fossil fuel use
> could have declined. And according to Germany's energy regulator, coal fired
> plants will be essential to replace the closing nuclear plants.

Fossil fuel plants will be greatly reduced during the next decades.

Already the industry is closing them faster than we want:

[http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/news/rueckzug-aus-der-
kohle-r...](http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/news/rueckzug-aus-der-kohle-rwe-
schliesst-kraftwerke-in-nordrhein-westfalen-2130899.html)

[http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/rwe-strom-
energieriese...](http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/rwe-strom-energieriese-
droht-schliessung-von-kraftwerken-an/8641004.html)

[http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article119000950/RWE-und-E-
on-...](http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article119000950/RWE-und-E-on-schalten-
reihenweise-Kraftwerke-ab.html)

> Yes, there is. As you go on to admit, even if you label it a "temporary
> effect in a long-term plan". (But given that the coal plants now being built
> are projected to be operating for 40 years, it's not what I'd call
> temporary.)

We have a lot of old ones to close.

> And that shift will result in a net increase in deaths. You seem very
> defensive, but you haven't actually disputed any of the underlying facts.

Your so-called 'facts' are mostly wrong. I told you for example that coal use
is going down this year. That's a fact.

~~~
ars
> Only for a few years.

You are including the coal used to build solar cells right?

No, of course you aren't. Germany is just shipping their coal emissions to
China, so that on paper they look good, but are actually making things worse.

Greenwashing at its finest: Country wide and government supported.

~~~
lispm
> You are including the coal used to build solar cells right?

You know that renewable energy is more than solar?

> Germany is just shipping their coal emissions to China

We were not shipping emissions to China. Germany has build a lot of solar cell
plants. Many got financial problems when China entered the market.

> Greenwashing at its finest: Country wide and government supported.

Personally I like our greenwashing more than your greenwashing.

------
lolgas
Important to note that nuclear accounts for only 90 deaths in history, while
providing 17% of the world's power.

source: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-
de...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-
price-always-paid/)

------
cygx
Note that we haven't yet reached the end of the line as far as improvements to
the manufacturing process of solar cells is conscerned, in particular
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/natur...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature13435.html)
. Cheaper solar energy might not be far off.

------
angry_octet
The use of any sort of nuclear power with a well though out multi millenia
waste storage system is irresponsible.

Ideally this would be accomanied by a secret cult of priests of the atom,
charged with defending the sacred temple sites fovever. (Religion being the
one institution proven able to survive millenia.)

------
bayesianhorse
As long as the nuclear waste problem isn't solved, nuclear power can't be the
answer. Also the cost is very high, especially if you factor in risk/insurance
and decommissioning.

------
ihsanyounes90
This is the easy way to get energia. Ok, We have seen that in Canada they use
the dams, but we know that this harms the environment (for salmon). Here we
really need to do research for alternative energy, do not think only about
money and earnings, but think about the future. Otherwise we risk in 2050 to
find the first deserts created by humans because of global warming.

