
The Necessity of Nuclear - nikhizzle
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/divest-update/
======
Vomzor
Is nuclear waste even still a problem? We have been storing nuclear waste for
more than 60 years in ‘temporary facilities ’ while we’re looking for
permanent solutions. As far as I know, nothing happened in that time. Let’s
just drop the ‘temporary’ label, keep doing what we’re doing and stop worrying
about hypothetical scenarios where society will collapse and some farmer 1000
years from now will get radiation poisoning.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
I'm a good few miles from Sellafield, but well within the "you're screwed"
radius in the event of major leak.

On waste it depends what you call "still a problem". Sellafield still has
pools storing the spent Magnox fuel resulting from running Britain's nuclear
stock flat out through the 1973 miners strike. Those are decaying "nicely".
Risk of fuel fires has been mentioned more than once. Sellafield is a
reprocessing plant, that hasn't yet touched the 45 year old waste.

Yes I'd say nuclear waste is still a problem. I'm far enough outside London
that politicians probably think it's perfectly fine.

Photos:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/sellafie...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/29/sellafield-
nuclear-radioactive-risk-storage-ponds-fears)

~~~
roenxi
> Yes I'd say nuclear waste is still a problem.

Can you elaborate on what the problem is? I see a photo of a pond with the sun
shining, grass growing and seagulls bathing. Authorities say it is safe.

I have friends who live next to an explosives manufacturing plant. They are at
a much higher risk then it sounds like you are. I don't see nuclear fuel as
being different from any other hazardous industrial material we deal with.

Those are tiny ponds, by the way. I reckon they could have a 2nd set as a
backup somewhere near by if it came to it. You should see the size of a mine
tailings pond, when they fail it causes real problems.

~~~
didbfkf
Authorities lie, seagulls get cancers too, and there are superfund everywhere
you find a nuclear industry.

Temporary storage on site is a very bad idea. Leaks, non uniform site
security, drums that were designed for a few decades now being called to serve
for a century.

Either have long term storage, or drop nuclear. There’s no in between

~~~
roenxi
> Authorities lie, seagulls get cancers too, and there are superfund
> everywhere you find a nuclear industry.

So based on information that you don't have but assume exists there is a
problem? There is actual evidence of known problems that nuclear solves. Like
air pollution from coal.

I don't want to sound unsympathetic, the government does lie and I also
subscribe to a couple of out-there conspiracy theories. It is just there is a
lot of evidence that the nuclear threat is way overblown.

> Either have long term storage, or drop nuclear. There’s no in between

You could move them in to new decade-long storage once a decade. As mentioned,
those are small ponds. The world is not made up of absolutes.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
We do have evidence, and we have a distinct pattern of behaviour from the many
public inquiries and investigations into the standard of management at
Seascale / Windscale / Sellafield / THORP.

To be glib, that's why there were so many renamings. To bury the inept
history.

------
jacquesm
I absolutely love Brian Eno's music. Apollo and The Pearl are engraved in my
memory and will stay with me until my last day. But I really don't see why I
would take Brian Eno's ideas on why we need nuclear power any more serious
than some sports person talking about politics or a computer programmer
talking or writing about the finer bits of mechanical engineering.

This whole 'famous person speaks about subject they have little knowledge
about with authority' thing goes right past me, it's weird how we seem to
project all kinds of magical properties onto those who manage to get name
recognition. As though fame somehow automatically bestows instant expertise on
a hundred unrelated fields on the famous.

I'd love to hear Brian Eno write and say more about music though, like
Vangelis, Tomita, Jean-Michel Jarre and Klaus Doldinger he managed to make
electronic music sound organic, which was - given the tools at hand - a
magnificent accomplishment.

Renewables are sorted out, massive deployment is more of a political problem
than a technical one. Better batteries would be useful but windpower doesn't
need batteries as much as solar does. Better transmission lines, that would
make a big difference.

Creating more nuclear power plants is a dead end economically, the power
produced is going to be more expensive than the same amount of power produced
using renewable energy. On top of that you will _still_ have to deal with the
waste and the eventual decommissioning, assuming you get the license to
operate the thing in the first place and your budget overruns won't kill the
project.

So regardless of what - insert favorite famous musician - who was against
nuclear power for all the wrong reasons and now is pro nuclear power - also
for all the wrong reasons - thinks we are on a different path now and just
maybe it will be possible to get through the eye of the needle without relying
on nuclear technology. And if it has to be nuclear, then let's hope that
fusion will finally be delivered, that would be a game changer.

~~~
shin_lao
Where did you see that "renewables are sorted out"? Or that windpower "doesn't
need batteries as much as solar does".

What if you don't have wind? Sun? Is that also sorted out?

~~~
jacquesm
I've worked on a number of renewable energy projects and these hold true for
any scale. We can make turbines rated > 10 MW now, and solar panel production
at scale is a solved problem. We're looking at logistics issues now, not at
manufacturing, reliability or basic physics issues.

As for why wind does not need batteries: Wind power fluctuates on short time
scales, these are not a good match for batteries. There are some interesting
solutions to these problems that involve superconducting material (in actual
production, not lab level stuff).

For solar with a 24 hour cycle batteries are much more important.

------
spenrose
It is an abject failure of our amplification systems, notably HN and Stewart
Brand's Long Now, that we are listening to two Baby Boomer musicians debate
energy policy. Who cares what Eno and Byrne think about nuclear power?

------
KingMachiavelli
> I am now pro-nuclear—at least as an intermediate technology until we really
> get renewables, and, as you say, BETTER BATTERIES, sorted out.

> An argument I haven’t seen before is that no other clean energy source can
> scale up as quickly as nuclear—IF the reactors are standardized.

Isn't this why we _won 't_ get nuclear power? It's always been my impression
than nuclear is more financial challenging than technical, it takes forever to
recoup the initial cost of the reactor and by the time it does, we will want
to move onto 'cleaner/safer' renewables.

Perhaps if public perception changed considerably and we were willing to have
our base energy load (what coal & natural gas* provide today) come from
nuclear. I just don't think nuclear makes financial sense currently if it's
only intended to be temporary.

~~~
xyzzyz
So far, we don’t have any technology even in design phase, much less in the
deployment stage, to deal with the storage problem. For our current needs,
lithium batteries simply will not do, and we do not have enough viable sites
or water for pumped storage either. There is nothing suggesting we’re going to
solve the storage problem in our lifetimes, so nuclear is really the only
viable solution to get off fossil fuels completely.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
Flow batteries, thermal salt storage and simple overcapacity + long-distance
transmission are all possibilities.

There's an 800 MWh / 200 MW Vanadium flow battery being built in Dalian,
China, for example. Thermal salt storage is already coupled to thermal solar
plants in Spain, but could be run with a heat pump, using any power source.

There are actually several promising technologies. It's not as dire as you're
suggesting.

~~~
Gibbon1
You could just keep the combined cycle peeking plants around for a while while
figuring out the load cycle and storage. It's pretty simple since they are
already built.

------
mch82
TLDR: Extrapolating current trends in renewable power generation, by the time
we’re able to complete construction of new nuclear plants those plants won’t
be necessary.

There are six significant flaws in most recent pro-nuclear arguments I’ve
read. To me, these flaws undermine the pro-nuclear case.

1\. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7
years).

2\. Authors focus on the percentage of energy production contributed by clean
sources (solar, wind, etc.) TODAY, but ignore the growth trend (which matters
since reactors take so long to bring online).

3\. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future
generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years.

4\. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to
be wasted.

5\. Authors ignore energy efficiency trends (electronics get more efficient
over time).

6\. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely under-
reported.

[1]: [https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-
nucle...](https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-
reactor), “Quora”

[6]: [https://youtu.be/rUeHPCYtWYQ](https://youtu.be/rUeHPCYtWYQ), “Chernobyl
Podcast”

Edit: added TLDR. I’ll update with references for points 2-5 later. Slow
internet connection now.

~~~
missosoup
> 1\. Authors ignore how long it takes to bring a new nuclear plant online (>7
> years).

Most of the wait time is due to lack of demand, e.g. it takes multiple years
to build a pressure vessel but this production could be ramped up 10-100x if
need be. The Quora source you cite actually says 48 months for modern reactors
so I'm not sure where >7 years came from.

> 3\. Authors ignore the waste storage problem, which is a debt future
> generations will be saddled with for hundreds or thousands of years.

There is no waste storage problem. This is a myth that should have died a
decade ago. Vitrified nuclear waste is inert and harmless. Modern reactors are
also able to consume most of current waste. We already tolerate far worse
waste products from e.g. the coal industry where it's a non-newsworthy
occurrence for toxic tailings to completely destroy river systems.

> 4\. Authors ignore the power storage problem, which causes lots of energy to
> be wasted.

The energy (not power) storage problem is unique to unreliable peaky power
sources like solar and wind. Nuclear power plants provide a consistent and
diallable power output. Energy storage is also a big impediment to large scale
rollout of renewables because energy storage costs are superlinear with
respect to demand.

> 5\. Authors ignore energy efficiency trends (electronics get more efficient
> over time).

Increase in efficiency does not lead to decrease in consumption. It does the
opposite. Look up induced demand.

> 6\. Authors ignore the safety data and that safety incidents are likely
> under-reported.

Nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer and cleaner than anything else that
exists including renewables.

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

This comment is entirely misleading and the author is seriously misinformed
about nuclear power. This should not be top comment on any discussion of
nuclear power. This is just perpetuating FUD and myths that have all been
deconstructed years ago.

~~~
mdorazio
_Your_ comment is entirely misleading, based on outdated data, and whitewashes
the hell out of nuclear power. The fact you're trying to claim the parent post
is bad is not cool.

1\. Please look at actual data for power plant construction times. [1]
provides an overview. Estimates are useless - if we look at how long things
actually take to build... "The mean construction time of 441 reactors in use
today was 7.5 years."

3\. Are you actually serious right now? Radioactive waste sitting in temporary
pools that will be an environmental catastrophe for hundreds of years if they
leak isn't a problem? No, just because we tolerate other ecological disasters
doesn't make this one ok.

4\. This is no longer true, and will _definitely_ not be true in another 5
years. Battery costs are decreasing at a reliable rate year over year. Power
plants are already being built making use of them. Here's one going up now
with 300MWh of storage [2].

5\. No, _you_ look up per capita demand. Here: [3]. It’s been dropping for a
decade.

6\. Your link does not report solar farm deaths because as far as I can tell
there haven't ever been any. Unless you count birds. Rooftop solar is
"dangerous" because installers fall off roofs.

[1] [http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-
nucle...](http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-
power-plant/)

[2] [https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/10/08/the-sun-shines-
only-a...](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/10/08/the-sun-shines-only-at-
night/)

[3]
[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212)

~~~
missosoup
> Radioactive waste sitting in temporary pools

Spent fuel is sitting in _cooling_ pools because it emits enough residual heat
to melt if not in water. Spent fuel will typically sit in these pools for
around a decade. At which point the residual heat is low enough to process it
via vitrification (turning it into chemically inert glass) and then moving it
to a permanent storage site. Vitrified spent fuel is radiologically and
chemically safe. The only way it can become a danger is if somehow liquefied
or aerosolised. The volume needed to store a century worth of all humanity's
spent nuclear fuel is less than a single large landfill site, of which we have
hundreds of thousands.

> that will be an environmental catastrophe for hundreds of years if they leak

If what leaks? Do you actually know what's in those pools and why? Spent fuel
pools are harmless. You can go for a swim in them and receive a lower
radiation dose than background. There's nothing to leak. The only failure mode
is if water is not supplied to them and eventually evaporates.

> This is no longer true, and will definitely not be true in another 5 years

Cite this. Show that at any point in the foreseeable future the cost of energy
storage with regard to total capacity is not superlinear. China would love to
hear from you since they're stuck unable to use renewables at large scale
because of this issue.

> No, you look up per capita demand. Here: [3]. It’s been dropping for a
> decade.

Per capita is not a relevant number, The number that is being discussed is
total demand. The number that matters, since power sources need to supply a
total demand not a per capita demand, whatever that would even mean. The
number that's rapidly increasing.[1]

Actually take the time to read up on induced demand, then you will understand
that it results in a per-capita decrease in consumption (since higher
efficiency) and a paradoxical higher total consumption, since now there are
more consumers who were previously priced out.

GP post is bad and your post is bad. Sorry. If you don't understand the very
eli5 basics of nuclear power like the purpose of cooling ponds (and the fact
that most modern reactor designs don't need them), then be aware that you're
perpetuating a bunch of myths every time you talk about it. Energy science is
not a topic where all opinions are equal.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Trend...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Trends)

~~~
mdorazio
Here we go again, downplaying risks and ignoring facts that aren't supportive
of your argument.

What do I think is in the pools? Radioactive waste that will have a mini
meltdown if the pools leak enough water to expose the waste to air. You know,
the kind of leak that can result from a natural disaster, terrorist attack, or
just plain old maintenance negligence [1]. But that's ok, we'll just pretend
Fukushima never happened, I guess.

I already provided a link to a renewable power plant that's going up, backed
by battery storage for non-generating hours. Perhaps you didn't like it?
Here's a report on how costs of batteries are dropping fast enough to make
them cost competitive with traditional sources [2]. You probably won't like
that, either, since you're hung up on the whole "linear with demand" thing,
which no one actually cares about. What they do care about is total cost per
reliable kWh, _taking into account all negative externalities_. But I guess
we'll just pretend nuclear accidents don't occur, especially small ones [3],
and that the whole long-term storage problem doesn't exist because that whole
Yucca Mountain thing is just needless worrying.

I like how you focus on total demand globally because if you look at total
demand in the West, it's been flat for years. You conveniently don't point out
that the places demand _is_ increasing are in the developing world, which is
_the last place we should build nuclear plants_. Do you want more accidents
due to poor maintenance or operating procedures? Because that's how you'll get
them.

And I understand induced demand perfectly - my whole point of showing per
capita consumption is to point out that it's bullshit in this case.
Electricity has been plentiful in the US and EU for decades, but per capita
use peaked 9 years ago. Induced demand is only relevant in developing markets
where there is latent demand, which again is back to the developing world
where I will never agree we should build nuclear.

You like nuclear, I get it. It's a good power source. It's just not the best
one anymore and it's time to recognize that. But it's clear you have already
made up your mind on the issue, so I won't be engaging in any more discussion
with you on this.

[1] [https://thebulletin.org/2017/08/pushing-the-storage-horse-
wi...](https://thebulletin.org/2017/08/pushing-the-storage-horse-with-a-
nuclear-waste-cart-the-spent-fuel-pool-problem/)

[2] [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-
levelize...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelized-
cost-of-energy-for-lithium-ion-batteries-bnef)

[3] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/09/indian-
point...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/09/indian-point-
nuclear-plant-close-new-york)

~~~
missosoup
> Induced demand is only relevant in developing markets where there is latent
> demand

...Yeah. And since the topic of this entire post is climate change, the
developing nations and induced demand are all that matters. No one gives a
fuck about per capita energy consumption in the US, the question is about the
total energy demand of the planet and how it's supplied.

What the developed world does from here on out is irrelevant in terms of first
order effects on climate change. It's already done the bulk of the damage it
was going to do. Switch all of the developed world to fairy-powered zero
emission fusion overnight, or anything else you want, it won't make a
difference.

The deciding factor for climate change is how China and India will power
themselves, and if the answer isn't nuclear, then we're all screwed. Just like
TFA states.

------
imtringued
Nuclear power suffers from piss poor economies of scale. If you want your
country to invest into nuclear then it should be prepared to build dozens of
identical plants at the same time. Of course this will require at least a
trillion dollars of funding but the upside is that costs per plant will go
down significantly after the learning phase.

~~~
nickik
Exactly, its to efficent. Switerland for example has a couple of plants, and
once you build them you don't need to build more for like 40-50 years.

And because nuclear is so country-by-country you don't get global economics of
scale.

------
etamponi
Unfortunately, nuclear is just too far away from being a popular option for it
to be considered by politicians, policy-makers, or anyone else that makes
important enough decisions. Politicians will continue to silently approve the
creation of new nuclear centrals (because they know we need them) but won't
publicly push for them. Public opinion has been biased so much against nuclear
that no one of those people sees a benefit _for themselves_ to solve the
environmental crisis with nuclear.

Which brings me to the core point of this post: a lot of people care about the
environment, and would like to help as much as they can, learning what's best
to pursue. But politicians, policy-makers, and public personalities in general
are not among the ones that really want to help the environment. For them,
being an environmentalist is just a _mean_ to capture some votes, some money,
some power. _That_ is what the seek. Paradoxically, I think they will attempt
to delay the solution to the problem as much as they can, because that would
mean they lose their power.

~~~
brighteyes
At least one presidential candidate does support some form of nuclear,

[https://www.yang2020.com/policies/nuclear-
energy/](https://www.yang2020.com/policies/nuclear-energy/)

but yes, it's a rare position.

------
tekkk
It's been my view for a long time that Green Party has been unreasonably
stupid being generally so hard core anti-nuclear that they can't even think
about logically anymore. Like it's one of the best clean energy sources out
there, works in any climate and location and the waste is quite trivial to
store away for time being - until we find out a way to use it. But no, they
rather stoke fear with doomsday scenarios scarier than another and advocate
building expensive wind turbines and solar panels in places where they just
can't support the energy demands of the whole country.

It's just dumb. They are too stuck emotionally with their idealism on "non-
polluting" things. Everything pollutes, nuclear waste albeit worse than the
normal garbage can be taken care of quite easily. I'd rather have that than
coal plants. Sure it would be nice to not to have even the nuclear waste, but
sometimes you have to be pragmatic. That's what engineering is about.

Here's a fun story I heard about the woefully famous Finnish Olkiluoto 3
nuclear power plant. As some of you might know it was the most expensive
building in the world for a while costing 8.5 billion euros (it seems some
hotel complex in Mecca is now more expensive with 12 billions). Why you might
ask? Well Olkiluoto 3 is a nuclear plant with 1600 MW output consisting of
only a single reactor, unlike no other plant. Commonly nuclear plants are
built in sets of 2 reactors, so that they are easier to maintain (one is still
running when the other is offline) and in general easier to build than one
massive reactor. But why only 1 reactor you ask? Well, as some Nokia engineer
told me in sauna, the administration at the time consisted of multiple parties
one of them being the Green Party. And Green Party was terribly afraid of
nuclear energy, and the decision to build a new nuclear power plant really
didn't sit well with them. Everybody knew that Finland needed a new power
source and nuclear power plant was the only viable option. But Green Party
just didn't. want. the. nuclear. plant.

So a compromise was made. Green Party agreed to allow the building of a new
nuclear plant _but only_ with one reactor. Dumb idea, but I guess they thought
that 1 nuclear reactor was less scarier than 2. What the other parties then
decided to? Well in order to supply the energy demands Finnish industry
required, they said "hey let's build a reactor that in fact has the power of
two reactors". Which was never done before, and the results are now well-
known.

In the end, what Green Party gained from this? A nuclear power plant with only
a one reactor, but which is double the size of regular one and whole thing
billions of euros over-budget and everyone generally unhappy. But hey, only
one reactor.. I'm not even sure does it produce the same nuclear waste as two
reactors would. A major success nonetheless.

~~~
hannob
> Well, as some Nokia engineer told me in sauna

That sounds like a very reliable source. Thanks for enlightening us.

~~~
tekkk
So you think he was lying then? Jesus christ what an attitude, do you want me
to find some news to support my claim? Should I put disclaimer marks around my
text that I have not researched this with a notebook in my hand? I can't
believe how arrogant one can be, to write-off my whole reply while subjective,
well explained, because that I couldn't verify the sources of what somebody
said to me and which is only a story to validate my original point - that
Green Party doesn't seem to be capable thinking about nuclear power
rationally.

EDIT: Really, downvotes? It's easy to disagree but to do so without
contributing anything constructive is just worthless. I'm not changing my
mind, frankly it's doing the opposite. It's a fact that Green Party was in the
administration at the time the Olkiluoto 3 was decided, but I'm not going to
research it any further than that.

It's just so low-effort for you to press down or just write a two sentence
snarky reply. Should I then return the favor and do the same for any
reasonable anti-nuclear comment that I just don't disagree with? That is what
a petty person would do, but I'm fine with my downvotes. I think it's just
reinforcing my point.

------
spentatom
Uranium is the most energy dense material on this planet, check out energy
density of various fuels on wiki. Uranium like any fossil fuel ie crude and
coal has waste issues, its also, due to its energy density, more of a hazard
that a tank full of coal or gasoline. Saying that in the 50's nuclear aircraft
were built and tested but the risk of fallout from any number of potential
aviation incidence put paid to that idea becoming common place. Smaller
nuclear reactors are still used in secure trusted locations though, like
submarines, ships and even the US embassy in London (you'll need to analyse
metadata to find that out). I do sometimes wonder if the eco warriers are
Nazi's hiding under the green banner, wanting to send everyone back to the
stone age or whether they just like acting as the brake on technological
developments that could otherwise rush off into the sunset. Any country would
be sensible to have a range of electrical power generation technologies, the
isotopes from nuclear fuel can be used in medicines, depleted uranium in
military armour (tanks) and ballistics. In fact when the US dropped the nukes
on Japan, the ensuing scientific knowledge gained spawned the radiotherapy
developments in cancer treatments, after it was observed that nuclear
radiation killed stem cells in bone marrow and the spleen. Doctors even worked
out the minimum amount of stem cells and spleen cells to kick start the immune
system as a result of the WW2 nukes.

So its hard for many to quantify the benefits of nuclear power and military
experiments, but the problems still remain, how to deal with the waste. Robots
need to be made nuclear proof, there is a spill over into space technology
here as space is highly irradiated, so solving things like Fukashima and
Chernobyl will benefit space exploration even more. And there is the
attainment of knowledge which gets us closer to understanding and importantly,
controlling fusion.

Besides waste disposal could be made into the fastest fault lines of two
plates of the earth crust, effectively sending the radation back into the
earth's core. If people are worried about radiation, they should look up Radon
and granite rocks. That kills more people than uranium waste.

------
air7
Imo, the fact that the world didn't put a huge dent in global warming by
building lots of nuclear plants is one of the saddest "misses" of our recent
history.

This I feel is due to irrational, emotional public opinion. Nuclear is the
safest cleanest and most stable energy source we have so far but it's also
"scary" because radiation is spooky and invisible. Coal is simple and local
and it just silently kills millions through pollution. It's similar to the
common fear of flying vs the common non-fear of driving.

Even today when people talk about the "cons" of nuclear power (spent fuel
management, risk of catastrophe, terrorist target, etc) they are usually
oblivious to the fact that there are 450 active NPPs today, and they are
supplying 10% of the worlds energy and things are going great.[0] So even if
these were acute concerns (and they're not) we would only have needed to
increase them by a max factor of 10 to get 100% non polluting energy. That's
not a lot, and definitively worth the "hassle". Even in Chernobyl (which was
the main reason for the doom the nuclear effort) the number of casualties due
to radiation, including long term effects, are estimated to be in the
thousands, not millions as most people assume. [1] In Fukushima that number is
1. [2]

The number of NPPs were growing exponentially until suddenly plateauing
globally since 1987 til today [0]. This is because building a new NPP is very
expensive, time consuming, and since Chernobyl, headline-grabbing. Keeping an
existing one running on the other hand is almost free, and a non-issue.

The other culprit is the fact that it seems that NPPs are not dominantly cost-
effective as of now [3]. If they were, then maybe savvy entrepreneurs would
have found a way to circumvent the public opinion and convince governments to
build them. But as it stands, no one has the incentive to push this agenda:
Not businesses, and not politicians who couldn't stand the backlash (on the
contrary, France, who leads the world with 75% reliance on nuclear power,
wants to reduce that number to 50% by 2035 because that's the will of the
people [4])

In a (better) parallel world, the people would demand _more_ nuclear power and
get the governments to subsidence the costs to make it cost effective and
removing the reliance on coal. Instead we're building wind turbines and solar
panels that are so unreliable they stop producing energy when there's no wind
or it's cloudy/night. I think it's quite clear that these green technologies
can't really be effective at a large scale (at least without some major break-
throughs), but it's what the people demand, so it's what we do while we
continue to burn coal.

[0] [https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-
an...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-
generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx) [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties)
[3] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/537816/why-dont-we-
have-m...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/537816/why-dont-we-have-more-
nuclear-power/) [4] [http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-
clarifies-...](http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-clarifies-
French-energy-plans)

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spsrich2
Brian Eno's full name: Brian Peter George De La John Sieur LaBaptiste Roger
Farfisa Schweppes Lea Bernard Fancourt Richard Peter Loonhouse De La Salle Eno

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pmoriarty
But is he willing to live next to a nuclear power plant or a nuclear waste
storage facility?

~~~
mlyle
I'm willing to live moderately close. I don't really want to be in the shade
of a cooling tower; I wouldn't want to be next door to a coal-fired power
plant or a gas turbine, either, or even really a wind farm.

But if you want to put it in an industrial area a few blocks away, sure, I'm
good with it. I'm not sure we have a great source of cooling water here,
though, except up in the hills which is really not a wonderful siting for a
nuclear plant.

~~~
pjc50
I want to live outside the leak permanent evacuation radius. Unfortunately
that can be pretty huge and I think my city is already in one.

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brazzy
Nuclear power plants are not safe, never have been, and never will be. That's
because no matter how great your technology and redundant safety systems are,
it's all still run by humans who are fallible, often stupid, and _very_ often
greedy.

If you can make a buck by cutting corners and shirking security regulations,
someone will.

Air travel is nowadays pretty safe, but this has been achieved over decades of
trial and error, with each major error costing dozens if not hundreds of lives
- not something we can affords with nuclear technology. And as the 737 MAX and
its insights into Boeing company culture and the FDA shows, people can and
will piss away already gained safety improvements.

~~~
mlyle
Maybe not, but we can bound the number of people they kill at much lower than
other forms of power generation.

~~~
brazzy
WTF? That is pretty much the _exact opposite_ of reality.

~~~
mlyle
_Electricity Generation and Health, Markandya & Wilkinson, The Lancet, 2007._

It finds a death rate of 0.074 deaths per terawatt-hour for nuclear, compared
to 24.5 for coal, 18.4 for oil, and 2.8 for gas. The edges of the nuclear and
gas confidence interval get somewhat close to each other but do not overlap.

While there was not enough data for the author to estimate the rate for solar
and wind, subsequent estimates are about 2 for solar and 10 for wind.

Of the 0.074, 0.003 deaths are non-occupational from accidents; 0.022 are
total deaths from accidents. The vast majority of this 0.022 is not
radiological, but instead ordinary industrial and mining accidents where
people are in traffic accidents, asphyxiate, are killed by hot steam, or
crushed to death.

The rest is from various kinds of air pollution impacts in the nuclear fuel
and transportation chain. Even if we have a horrid accident that has 1000x the
impact of previous accidents, we will not reach the death rates associated
with other sources of power.

