
Why America abandoned nuclear power, and what we can learn from South Korea - mhb
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-us-france-korea
======
industriousthou
So, I've worked in the nuclear industry (just a scaffold builder), so take
this with a grain of salt, but there are a few things I think get left out of
the conversation.

One is how absolutely catastrophic coal fired plants are. People often talk
about hypothetical scenarios with nuclear, but tens of thousands of people are
dying every year as a direct result of coal power and that doesn't even take
into account the long term effects of climate change. We need to be
aggressively pursuing _any_ and _all_ alternatives to coal, in my opinion.
This might sound a little crazy, but I almost feel the situation is urgent
enough to justify the president declaring a national emergency and using the
national guard to unilaterally shut down these facilities. I realize that's
completely unrealistic, but I hope it conveys my sense of urgency.

Another thing I'd like to touch on is the handling of nuclear waste. It's
absolutely problematic, but I'm curious about the marginal cost/risk of
additional waste now that we already have to deal with it. We already have to
devise a solution to the problem, so it seems like that offsets the cost of
dealing with the additional waste of more reactors. Even if we didn't use
nuclear power, we would be generating waste from research reactors, nuclear
medicine, etc, that we would have to deal with. If you have to figure out how
to safely store a ton of material for ten thousand years, does it really cost
twice as much to store twice as much material?

~~~
chrisco255
Can't we just bury the radioactive waste in the desert?

~~~
paavokoya
It's not that simple. Check out the documentary "Into Eternity" on the
impracticability and difficulty of "burying" nuclear waste which remains
deadly for 250,000 years.

~~~
erkkie
That's because you're burying usable fuel, breeder reactors eliminate the
waste problem for all practical purposes, the reason they're not being built
has been entirely political.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reduction)

~~~
jld89
Look at the Breeder reactor controversy section of the article you linked. The
reasons aren't entirely political. But rather financial.

Capitalism is the culprit.

~~~
erkkie
Most of the financial reasons are political. NIMBYism makes nuclear in general
very expensive, even though coal blatantly kills more than even existing
nuclear tech, not to mention potential next gen reactors.

In case of breeders, the 2nd argument that makes them expensive is that
they're an "proliferation risk".

------
apsec112
Everyone is so terrified of nuclear waste, because it lasts "hundreds of
years", which seems like a really long time. Why is almost no one terrified of
chemical waste, which lasts literally forever, or at least until after the Sun
burns out?

Global production last year:

Arsenic (arsenic trioxide): 44,000 metric tons

Mercury: 1,900 metric tons

Selenium: ~3,000 metric tons

Beryllium: 400 metric tons

Lead: 4,000,000 metric tons

Cadmium: 23,000 metric tons

All of this stuff will last literally forever, and is more-or-less impossible
to destroy. This doesn't include all the fun chemicals (eg. cyanide) which are
possible to destroy, but get dumped into the environment before disposal and
so are floating around anyway.

~~~
jeffwilcox
Having visited the Hanford site in Washington State, it's a pretty epic thing
there trying to deal with the waste from WWII.

Actual nuclear waste is a 10,000+ year problem, not hundreds of years. But the
100s of years problem is more about where long-term storage should be (Yucca
Mtn. etc.).

When you tour Hanford, what do you see (free tours for US citizens, BTW)? You
see many ancient reactors - all disabled now except the preserved first
reactor. You see -every single decommissioned nuclear submarine-'s reactor in
long lines. And they remind you: based on ice ages, in 15,000 years or so, it
won't matter... the entire plateau around Hanford will be under water. So it's
going to need to be somewhere else.

Wild stuff.

~~~
trentmb
Dumb question- why not launch it into the sun?

Do the (projected) costs of storing it for 10k+ years exceed the costs of
leaving Earths orbit?

~~~
e12e
Not a dumb question, but as the sibling comment reflects - it has been
pondered before, and it is indeed a "dumb solution", unfortunately.

In addition to cost of launching such huge mass, and the risks of catastrophic
failure (blowing up mid-launch would probably end up being worse than the
chernobyl-distaster -- think a really, really big dirty bomb with areal
detonation) -- there's also the risk of missing the sun, and ending up with a
man-made comet.

------
windlep
If we ignore waste for a minute, this article highlights a key issue for why
nuclear in the USA will _never_ be as cheap as France or South Korea. Those
countries can impose a single builder, single supplier requirement and enforce
it the whole way through. That'd never happen here, everyone would have to get
involved. Blame cronyism and the US lobbyist political system, but _every_
nuclear company would freak out if they weren't the chosen provider, and then
they'd sue.... and then it'd be as expensive as it is now.

~~~
_delirium
Another difference is the legal regime. The U.S. makes much more extensive use
of the courts as a tool for balancing interests, and an indirect way of
regulating industries, which makes projects much slower, riskier, and more
expensive.

In a country like France, you can't normally sue to stop a nuclear plant being
built. Once the government decides to build it, they have sovereign immunity
from suits in their own courts. So if you don't want it, you can agitate for
the government to stop it, but you can't sue the project to stop it (or at
least, there are many fewer ways to do so). The U.S. by contrast has waived
its own sovereign immunity in a lot of cases, setting up a more decentralized
decision-making process where the legislature passes general laws, agencies
like the DOE and EPA are delegated rule-making authority, and courts then
adjudicate disputes. The multiple levels of government (federal agencies,
state agencies, federal courts, state courts) add another complication.

~~~
jklowden
Little known fact: the legal regime in the US shields the utility from
liability in case of accident. Recall the utility wasn't sued after Three Mile
Island.

If utilities were made liable for harm for nuclear disasters, how long do you
suppose it would be before every last one was decommissioned? I suspect all
the cost savings TFA hopefully imagines vanish in comparison to the cost of
liability.

I also note TFA makes no attempt to express the South Korean costs in USD
terms. It wouldn't surprise me, given the state of South Korea's economic
development in 1971, if what the graph depicts is not a miraculous decline in
costs, but a predictable trend toward the global norm.

------
Terr_
I still think the waste is the elephant in the room. Exactly how is the
(indefinite) cost of safely managing it factored into all those kilowatt-hour
costs? Does it include tax-dollars going to projects like Hanford or Yucca
Mountain?

Even if we're now experienced-enough to develop good socio-regulatory systems
for _day-to-day generation_ safety and standards, is the same _really_ true
for the waste? Our collective record is still a sad tale of fraying
"temporary" solutions, leaks, NIMBY reactions, and playing an institutional
game of radioactive-hot-potato.

~~~
coin
The waste issue has already been solved. You turn it into glass then store it
somewhere geologically stable, such as Yucca Mountain. See
[http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html](http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html)

~~~
jeffwilcox
The glassification plant at Hanford is just starting to come online, but Yucca
doesn't want it.

We have a political problem now, not a technical one... and yeah that's going
to be a tough one. I wonder how long until someone figures out ways to let a
3rd world country be the deep bore storage place and allow export?

~~~
ceejayoz
> I wonder how long until someone figures out ways to let a 3rd world country
> be the deep bore storage place and allow export?

I very much doubt that'll happen. Political stability for a waste repository
is going to be just as much a concern as geological stability.

------
m0llusk
This article is really light on the problem of complexity. Even relatively
simple reactors have huge amounts of pipes and wires and such many of which
need to be able to handle unusual temperatures and acidity levels. This is one
of the reasons that Thorium looks great on paper but is doomed in reality. The
sheer complexity of even relatively simple implementations is overpowering and
causes the costs and organizational challenges to make sustainable
alternatives look cheap.

~~~
api
My impression for a while has been that nuclear power is one of those techs
that looks good on paper but fails in practice due to what Elon Musk calls a
high "PITA factor." (Pain in the A$$) I interpret PITA factor as referring to
the existence of a long tail of thorny, hard, nasty, complicated problems that
do not show up on a straightforward "paper" model of the tech. Some don't show
up because they're complex edge case issues, and others (like "black swan
event" risk) are just flat out hard to quantify. I also think wishful thinking
plays into it, since if a tech looks sexy and cool on paper there's a desire
to believe in it and it leads us to overlook less obvious or less
straightforward to analyze issues.

Elon uses high PITA factor when talking about why SpaceX isn't pursuing
hydrogen as a rocket fuel. It similarly looks awesome on paper but results in
higher TCO and higher complexity in practice. It's cheaper (according to
SpaceX) to use kerosene or methane and build a bigger rocket.

For nukes vs. renewables it's likely _overall_ cheaper to just over-build
renewables and storage than to handle the long tail of pain from current-type
nuclear. Spend a few billion dealing with nuclear waste, or spend a few
billion on more generation and storage capacity. The former is sticky and
complicated, while the latter is just straightforward commodity scaling of
stuff everyone already knows how to build and handle. It's stupid and simple
and scalable and if it's not enough just do more of it. In other words: just
build a bigger rocket.

What I say applies to conventional and near-term fission. Fusion and other
exotics might be a different ballgame. Fusion would likely be complex and high
capital cost but it doesn't have the waste and "black swan failure" issues
that pee in the pool for fission.

~~~
pdonis
I think the perceived "black swan event risk" of nuclear is the result of
over-hyping a few incidents rather than doing a rational across the board risk
assessment. When a rational across the board risk assessment is done, nuclear
does less harm per unit of power generated than any other energy technology.
But the harm from other technologies is distributed in space and time (for
example, coal dust in the air and radioactivity in coal ash), so it doesn't
get the big media play.

~~~
api
I don't disagree per se, but I think if you also factor in a lot of other
sticky nasty things about current-generation nuclear power it's one of the
issues that weighs it down.

I also think PITA factor is kind of a death by a thousand cuts -- a "long
tail" as I said.

------
fpoling
As with many article about proponents of power from nuclear fission it totally
misses the cost rise due to future accidents. If past is any indication, those
will inevitably happen increasing the operation cost for all plants. We
literally export the cost of dealing with the mess into the future to get
cheaper prices now.

~~~
BurningFrog
> If past is any indication, those will inevitably happen increasing the
> operation cost for all plants.

What we can learn from the past is that advanced technologies become much
safer over time. I don't have the numbers here, but air travel is maybe 1000
times safer than when it started.

So I'd be very confident assuming the accident rate in the future to be vastly
less than during the first few decades of nuclear energy.

~~~
fpoling
The problem is that total potential harm from a nuclear accident is very big.
It is limited, but if the limit is all fission materials from the reactor
dispersed into the air or used to produce a real nuke by terrorists, then the
cost can be loss of millions human lives. Compare that with aviation where the
worst that can happen is a loss of airplane and few buildings.

Given this potential threat anything that will be discovered to increase its
probability will increase operation cost of reactors in the future. This is
just not the case with planes. There minimizing the risk beyond a certain
threshold is sufficient especially since it is known that an error in
estimation of that threshold is bounded.

~~~
BurningFrog
> the cost can be loss of millions human lives

Can it really? That would be an order of magnitude worse than the Hiroshima
bomb.

------
bluthru
This video provided some downsides to nuclear that I was not previously aware
of:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3nhhOitYmk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3nhhOitYmk)

You can make a lot of PV's in the 14 years it takes to make a fission plant.
I'm all for Thorium research, but fission as it is now has a lot of downsides.

------
Falkon1313
The fear of waste has always struck me as illogical for a couple of reasons:

First, uranium is not some mythic dark magic demon that we conjure from a
hellish fairy land in another dimension. It's a naturally-occurring rock that
we intentionally dig up because it's useful. Another comment mentions lead,
mercury, etc. as being even more terrifying, but again, these are natural
elements that we mine for various uses. They're not new. They've always been
here. Most of the fear is just superstition.

Secondly, fear seems to be predicated on the idea that we need to dump all the
stuff, we need to find a single place to concentrate it all when we dump it,
and we need to leave it there for thousands of years. Of course no one wants
that next door. But why try to find a place to dump all this
lead/mercury/uranium while we're still digging up and refining more? Why not
find ways to use it?

We used to take just the kerosene and dump most of the rest of the oil because
we just didn't know what to do with it. Turns out gasoline, diesel, and jet
fuel did have uses after all. We also didn't know what to do with heavy oils,
oil sands, etc., but we've found ways to process them into something useful.

If we do need to dump some (perhaps because we don't yet have the technology
to filter out impurities), why not just put it back where we got it, or
scatter it around the way that it is found naturally, or better still just
tuck it away for a few decades until it becomes useful? Because it won't be a
problem for a million years or 10,000 years or hundreds of years. It will soon
be a valuable resource.

With nuclear waste it's especially odd. That is by definition mass that
naturally produces energy, and we're most worried about how to get rid of the
stuff that will produce energy for a long time...while we are simultaneously
worried about how we're going to produce enough energy to meet the demands of
the future. Yet people are suggesting that we launch it all into space! How
different would our world be if we had launched all the gasoline and diesel
into space before we knew what to do with it?

------
xufi
Considering this crazy NK guy just issued a threat. We should be on your heels

------
marze
The implicit assumption seems to be that we need nuclear because solar and
wind alone (with presumably cheaper batteries in the future) won't be able to
supply the needed power.

It is hard to prove something like that, that future technology can't do
something, but the author doesn't even try.

~~~
jsmeaton
> There's a compelling argument that the world ought to be building many more
> nuclear power plants.

The writer starts the article with the assumption stated explicitly. He punts
on that question to discuss cost. Whether or not Nuclear is a requirement can
be (and has been) discussed elsewhere. I think that's fine, because it was
still an interesting article.

------
philliphaydon
Is Thoriam a real alternative?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Thorium, and not yet.

~~~
tim333
As far as I can tell the basic problem with Thorium reactors is they would be
more complicated and expensive than conventional reactors. Given that, Thorium
probably isn't going to happen at scale for a long time even though it's
technically doable.

~~~
philliphaydon
Both China and India are investing in it with China claiming it will have it
working within 10 years...

It seems like the Molten Salt Refactor is much safer than a Liquid reactor
will ever be.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor)

~~~
tim333
I just noticed UPower (YC S14) is also working on it

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8195554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8195554)

Dunno how that will go.

------
pluckytree
"Plus, there are thorny issues like how to dispose of radioactive waste and
how to decommission old plants."

The fact is, we're creating tremendous amounts of potentially dangerous waste
and we have no long-term plan, much less the technology to pull it off. We
don't know what the political situation will be in a country 500 years from
now. If we put 1/100th of the money that we put into dangerous technologies
and subsidizing fossil fuels and put them into renewables, we wouldn't even be
having this discussion. Germany is on track to be 100% renewable by 2020.
Including solar. And they are not exactly known for their excess of sun.

~~~
peferron
"Germany is on track to be 100% renewable by 2020"

Do you have a source for this? It seems completely unbelievable.

~~~
melling
No he doesn't because what he said is complete bullshit.

[http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nuclear-
powe...](http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nuclear-power-
germany-renewable-energy)

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/05/new-
study-95-renewable-p...](http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/05/new-
study-95-renewable-power-mix-cheaper-than-nuclear-and-gas/)

"New Study: 95% Renewable Power-Mix Cheaper Than Nuclear And Gas"

Applies to both France and Germany.

~~~
melling
Sounds like we still talking 35 years from now:

"With wind and PV growing to 80 % of total power production in 2050, the study
gives a lot of attention to how – and at what cost – the different regions can
fill the gap when neither the wind nor the sun can meet the demand."

