
What are the safest sources of energy? - simon_acca
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
======
belorn
I would like that people would look at this kind of numbers and agree on the
simple fact that burning fuels that release air pollution is bad and we should
have a steady plan on how to phase it out and ban the practice. Regardless if
people favor nuclear or renewable, we should all agree that coal, oil and gas
do not belong in the energy grid.

Existing power plants that use fossil fuels should be phased out and new ones
should not be legal to build. Pipelines for gas should not be built. If you
don't want nuclear, build the battery and the renewable to fill it. If you
don't want to build the battery, build nuclear. If you don't want the risk of
nuclear disasters, accept the variability of renewable. Don't want to accept
the variability of renewable, build nuclear.

The contention between renewable and nuclear can be good, but only in finding
which one is safest and cheapest in a post fossil fuel energy grid. As long
fossil fuels continue to be allowed the contention mostly serve to split the
movement and pit the nuclear and renewable people against each other rather
than against our main problem of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

~~~
yyy888sss
"we should all agree that coal, oil and gas do not belong in the energy grid."
\- except fossil fuels are cheap, reliable, and energy dense. People want
abundant energy to live developed lives, so until you can improve on these
areas with the alternatives, it's always going to be contentious. Whatever the
energy source, it needs to power 10B people with western living standards.

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natmaka
The conclusion are heavily tainted by hypothesis about the amount of victims.
Chernobyl upper estimate is 965,000, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment)

Don't forget nuke hot waste, left as a gift for future generations. Officially
'managed', yet there is no exploited repository.

Add combustible dependency (not so much known uranium reserves, no mastered
way to obtain it w/o mining, in a not-so-distant future some may have to wage
war in order to obtain some...), and nuclear proliferation.

~~~
karlalexpauls
Check your sources for that Chernobyl estimate. It comes from the European
Greens political party and includes victims of Soviet mismanagement.

The UN's reports on the effects of radiation (UNSCEAR) estimated 4000 future
solid cancers (not deaths) and later dropped that estimate when the data
didn't pan out.

Civil used nuclear fuel has never leaked and is not so dangerous after a few
hundred years. Don't try to confuse us with the issue of weapons as those are
separate programs which predated all municipal atomic power production.

~~~
natmaka
> Check your sources for that Chernobyl estimate. It comes from the European
> Greens

Nope. You may think to the TORCH report. This report is another one. Read
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment#Authors)

Some think that the UN is always right and without any bias. I don't. That's
exactly my point here: there is no consensual way to assess nuke effective
victims.

Don't try to confuse us by pretending that a nuke civilian program doesn't
help nations trying to build a nuclear weapon. That's the root of Iran's
current pertinent project, and "Many UN and US agencies warn that building
more nuclear reactors unavoidably increases nuclear proliferation risks" (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-
use_technology#Nuclear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-
use_technology#Nuclear) )

Don't try to confuse use with "not so dangerous after a few hundred years"
while all pertinent experts and legislation, for example in France and the US,
require that a waste repository must hold it safely for 1 million years, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository#EPA's_rule)

~~~
karlalexpauls
That report (Fairlie, Sumner 2006) was commissioned by the European Greens. If
you clicked once to the Wikipedia reference you're citing you could see that
as well as why they might have been selected to produce that report.

Civilian nuclear energy rarely results in a nuclear weapons program. Today
IAEA monitoring is effective in preventing diversionary pathways and enforcing
international nonproliferation obligations (even where the US is obligated to
not use internationally sourced uranium to produce weapons tritium).

A legislature requiring a million year containment is far from an evaluation
of the waste's toxicity. Otherwise you would be forced to talk about specific
isotopes.

~~~
natmaka
> That report (Fairlie, Sumner 2006)

Please reread my posts here, beginning with the very first. I was writing
about another report, titled "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for
People and the Environment", by Yablokov & Nesterenko. It was not authored by
Fairlie. If you clicked once to the Wikipedia references I provided since my
first post you could see that. Here it is, once again:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment)

You may think that European Greens reports aren't credible, however this is
IMHO a very weak counter-argument, simply the classical ad hominem fallacy at
work.

My argument here is that this "What are the safest sources of energy?" article
contents is highly debatable because it builds upon debatable theories. If the
Chernobyl disaster really caused abut 1 million deaths, as stated by pertinent
scientists in the aforementioned report, then the article's conclusions should
be very different.

> Civilian nuclear energy rarely results in a nuclear weapons program

Iranian and North-Korean nuke weapons programs benefited massively from their
civilian reactors, and this is widely documented ( see for example
[https://isis-online.org/publications/dprk/dprkplutonium.pdf](https://isis-
online.org/publications/dprk/dprkplutonium.pdf) )

Stating that the IAEA, which is an UN agency, has the power to prevent
anything is just an opinion. Nearly all nations, small or huge, routinely
neglect UN injonctions without any consequence.

> A legislature requiring a million year containment is far from an evaluation
> of the waste's toxicity.

This is an opinion. I, for one, cannot see any other reason for those legal
dispositions. Actions aiming at keeping a repository sealed for 1 million
years cost more than those necessary to keep it for "a few" centuries, this
was a deliberate decision.

The Japanese don't seem so happy with dispersed fuel:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup)

------
LessDmesg
What people (including here) tend to whitewash with nuclear is the waste. The
radioactive waste that takes centuries or millenia to neutralize. Yes, it's
kept in concrete bunkers underground and stuff, but no one can guarantee
structural integrity of those silos over centuries. An earthquake might hit. A
strain of concrete-digesting bacteria might eat through the walls. A war might
break out, or simply terrorists. Ultimately, nuclear power contains an
inherent and impossible to calculate, but quite real, environmental risk. And
it's directed not at us, but at future generations who might have to deal with
the cancer and toxicity caused by today's nuclear power. So no, I'm sorry, but
nuclear _fission_ is not clean.

~~~
shadowprofile77
Nobody said that nuclear fission is clean, and nobody with even a bit of
knowledge about it claims it is. Instead, what it is is CLEANER than fossil
fuels and so forth, and this makes a huge difference.

Furthermore, your scenarios for nuclear waste leaking, while not impossible,
are absurdly implausible if even a modicum of responsible engineering is
applied to containing waste byproducts of nuclear fission. For one thing, this
is definitely possible; the world is full of highly vital but very dangerous
materials that are stored quite adequately, and it's also full of critical
infrastructure whose structural integrity can't be absolutely 100% guaranteed
either but which is often used for decades to improve human society in some
way with few to no problems. Likewise for nuclear fission. The precautionary
principle you take to extremes is absurd. Proper storage can be done and even
improved enormously.

Secondly, the combined storage needs of all nuclear waste from every plant
operating everywhere in the world for decades to come are minuscule compared
to the availability of good, firmly sealable sites for doing this and compared
to the sheer amount of waste tonnage created by fossil fuels and even by the
repeat manufacture of long lasting batteries for certain renewable energy
sources, if we want to get nitpicky. You're talking about one very small real
estate/ecological footprint relative to energy output created with nuclear
fission.

Thirdly, all of the above can be improved even further with moderate advances
in how nuclear fission is produced. Even with today's more modern reactors,
over 96% of already-used fissile material is recycled back into uranium-based
and MOX fuel. One other immediate possibility is breeder reactors, which can
in fact use waste from older fission reactors to create more energy. They can
run on U-238 and transuranic elements, which create the absolute majority of
waste byproduct in most current reactors. That's one exceptionally plausible
solution to a part of the waste storage problem. Other even better solutions
are also possible within reasonable development time frames.

In essence, your argument is somewhat similar to saying that nobody should
ever use a microwave oven even while starving because there's always the very
unlikely but not entirely impossible chance that it might give them a brain
tumor, somehow, and let's furthermore ignore all advances in microwave oven
technology to make this even less likely than it barely was earlier..

------
hndamien
This analysis ignores the death potentiality which is the thing that strikes
fear in people with nuclear. Even if the given numbers are true, (note that
the official deaths from Chernobyl are 31 but the upper estimates are 93,000 -
according to HBO), solar has the death potentiality for a few more people to
fall off a roof, a battery to explode etc. These would be single digit
fatalities if at all fatal.

The death potentiality of a Chernobyl/ Fukishima etc could reach the hundreds
of thousands or more. The likelihood of this is probably very low, but non-
zero. The likelihood of solar or wind having a catastrophic fatality event
(that affected uninvolved civilians) is zero.

Given this, if all other things are equal, renewables are the favourable
choice.

~~~
karlalexpauls
Remember that at Fukushima's twin plants 9 reactors were vulnerable and only 3
were lost.

Then the entire world put their nuclear energy under the microscope. South
Korea discovered a parts testing scam. The US demanded more tests for the
AP1000 design and eventually bankrupted Toshiba (thanks Jaczko). The US
industry also designed a process for responding to beyond design basis
accidents: FLEX response.

With renewables all things are not equal because the materials cost is dozens
of times that of nuclear (IEA, Material Efficiency in Clean Energy
Transitions) and the true cost to decarbonize is many times the naive capacity
of wind and solar alone (Caldiera 2018, Geophysical constraints on the
reliability of solar and wind power in the United States).

~~~
hndamien
Of course all other things are not equal. Eg. Political capital required for
deployment is not equal. Economics of scale is not equal. Cost per MW is not
equal. Distribution of power is not equal. The things you have said are not
equal. I think you missed the point of the "if".

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ZeroGravitas
They've updated the stats but the tone stills seems to remain from the old
version. It's not quite caught up with the reality of modern renewables
expanding greatly as their costs decline.

~~~
LorenPechtel
These are deaths per TwH, capacity expanding won't change that.

The one thing that will change the death rate is if the capacity reaches the
point where peak production exceeds demand. (Remember, we have no practical
means of storing large amounts of electricity, the closest we have wastes at
least 1/3 of it.) The thing is the deaths are from construction and
maintenance, not operation, and thus go with nameplate capacity, not power
generated.

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ConcernedCoder
Sunlight?

