
Save the nuclear power plants that generate 50% of America’s clean electricity - jseliger
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/5/10/17334474/nuclear-power-renewables-plants-retirements-us
======
mlazos
This needs to be said, and I’m glad Vox is finally saying it. The nearly
100ish nuclear power plants in the US generate almost 1/5 of the total
electricity output. It irks me beyond belief when environmentalists try to
close them down just for existing. There have not been any major incidents in
the US (apart from Three Mile Island), and if Congress got its shit together
and sacrificed a single mountain in Nevada for waste disposal we could finally
stop all of the _actual_ damage that the coal/oil industry has inflicted over
generations.

------
klondike_
People seem to overstate the risk of nuclear waste. Surely a few tons of
radioactive waste is better than millions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Nuclear could provide a solution to our energy needs NOW instead of having to
wait around for solar and grid storage to be reliable on a nationwide scale.

Right now radioactive waste is stored in pools on site at the reactor. If the
US government would actually fund the Yucca Mountain project [1] the risk
would be negligible.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository)

~~~
majewsky
When you have too much CO2, there's a pretty obvious fix for that: plant a ton
of trees.

When you have nuclear waste, you're stuck with it for at least a few thousand
years, probably longer.

~~~
sjwright
Assuming neither gets "fixed" to your satisfaction—we couldn't physically
plant enough trees anyway—I'd rather deal with a few piles of inconvenient
material over a planet-wide fucked up atmosphere.

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makomk
The fundamental problem with nuclear power plants is that, even if you do
count them as clean power, they're not an economically viable way of
generating it in the modern renewable era. They have the same flexibility and
operating cost issues that are killing coal, only more so, and there's no real
way around this.

Sure, it's possible to operate them in load-following mode somewhat (though US
regulations don't allow it), but even French energy giant EDF doesn't think
that's going to be enough to cope with a grid with high levels of renewable
generation; their proposed solution is to change the rules so solar and wind
power has to shut down instead of the nuclear plants. (I think it may only get
you to coal-power-plant levels of output modulation at best.) Output
modulation also reduces plant lifespan and increases operational complexity;
not good for something that's already too expensive to build and operate.
Similarly, large-scale storage would substantially increase the price of
nuclear power.

There just isn't any avoiding the fact that nuclear power is expensive, and
the only to make it viable is to put up everyone's power bills substantially,
whether it's by increasing the cost of other generation options via taxes and
less favourable operating rules for renewables or just outright putting a tax
on electricity that's paid straight to nuclear operators.

~~~
fulafel
> They have the same flexibility and operating cost issues that are killing
> coal

Do you have any references for this?

The common characterization that you hear is just the opposite: nuclear is
expensive in upfront investments but cheaper to operate than coal.

In the future when the production mix gets more unpredictable, always-on
generation should get a profitability boost. A producer who can promise 24/7
production is in a strong position on a market that is largely based on
unertain producers trying to sell future uncertain output to producers whose
demand is inflexible.

~~~
makomk
Hmmm. I can't get up-to-date operating cost figures for coal specifically, but
US nuclear is barely cheaper to operate than fossil-powered steam generation
in general these days:
[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html)
(Coal is generally cheaper than the average.) The nasty catch here, of course,
is that most of the fossil fuel costs are from fuel and most of the nuclear
costs are operation and maintenance. Heavy load following decrease fuel costs
but increases operation and maintenance costs - it's more complex to operate a
nuclear plant that way, the added thermal stresses increase wear accelerate
failures, and the total power generated is lower. That's why nuclear is
usually treated as always-on baseload power; not because it's the only way it
can be operated, but because it's the most economically viable one.

~~~
fulafel
In that table, "Fossil steam" is 42.2% more expensive to operate than
nuclear[1], that's pretty significant.

In jurisdictions that have already joined the carbon trading traties, there's
an additional big operating cost in the emission credits that would make the
coal position significantly worse still. USA and other lagging countries will
have to join too soon or we'll all pay a vastly higher price in the form of
deterioration of living conditions.

[1] "Total" value for the most recent available year is 25.36 for nuclear,
36.08 for fossil steam

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hansthehorse
In over 28 years in Nuclear Plant Operations I've never seen, or heard of, an
incident that could be attributed to cost cutting. If anything nuke plants
could be more profitable if they did cut some costs. Control room operators
are, in some ways, over trained after obtaining a licence from the Feds to
operate that plant. They then, and forever, spend one week in 6 in 40 hours of
training. That could easily be halved after holding a license for 5 years or
more. The admin size of each plant has ballooned over the years, in some cases
more than tripled. Again, cost cutting is not on the list of nuclear plant
troubles.

------
plankers
Nuclear reactors won't be politically feasible unless either a) we find a
country that will sell us the rights to dump our nuclear waste there or b)
launching nuclear waste into the sun becomes economically feasible. I just
don't think it's possible to convince the lay American that nuclear waste can
be stored permanently and safely (I'm not so convinced myself).

Not sure about a) but b) probably won't happen until all the reactors running
today have been retired.

------
jagermo
For me, it boils down to this: do you trust the persons responsible for the
security and maintenance to do more than the bare minimum?

Do you trust the company execs to not cut corners and try to save a little
more by switching to cheaper materials/labor/waste management?

Are you sure that the architects and engineers had enough foresight and put in
enough wiggle room for changes in the enviroment?

How much are you willing to pay with your taxes when something goes wrong?

------
hennsen
How is nuclear power „clean“ with all the radioactive waste that needs to go
somewhere when burnt down?

~~~
krastanov
When the used fuel rods are properly stored, even the primitive nuclear
reactors we use today release quite a bit less radiation than burning coal
(not event mentioning CO2 and so on). Even after including all major nuclear
accidents, nuclear plants have saved lives compared to coal plants (and they
have pretty good track record when compared against even renewable sources).

However, storing the fuel rods properly is borderline impossible due to
politics, so your questions probably still stands.

~~~
hennsen
I admit i don’t know much about the coal burning radiation output. And im even
further away from knowing the perfect solution to the worlds energy needs. So
i have many questions, driven by the wish to live in a intact environment and
leaving it to those who come in a good state.

Where and how exactly is the radiation release of coal plants happening? I can
imagine its maybe a difference if a smaller dose of radiation is put out
slowly and spread more (in time and space terms)than if it’s concentrated on
one point? Radiaton is anywhere thats clear... but we rarely get strong
radiation caused illnesses from just catching cosmic radiation do we?

And how exactly are politics preventing proper storage?

I definitely don’t wanna promote coal, but where are these numbers proving
coal killed and harmed more people than Fukushima and Tchernobyl and the many
smaller incidents?

Also i often wonder - where could science of reusable energy and reduced
consumption be if the billions invested in nuclear research were invested
there instead?

~~~
sjwright
Mortality rate in deaths per trillion kilowatt hours:

    
    
      Source       Rate
      -----------------
      Coal      100,000
      Oil        36,000
      Biofuel    24,000
      Gas         4,000 
      Hydro       1,400
      Solar         440
      Wind          150 
      Nuclear        90
      -----------------
    

[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/#5a58db18709b)

~~~
zeristor
How are people being killed by Solar?

Panels dropped on heads? Pollutants from production? A proportion of deaths
from mining and refining silicon?

~~~
majewsky
Why is this downvoted? I have the same question.

~~~
zeristor
I like to think the up button is small, and it was an accidental downvote, its
happened to me a few times.

~~~
majewsky
I don't know, there's the "unvote"/"undown" buttons to correct these kinds of
mistakes, but I guess most people won't double-check.

------
sebazzz
The problem with nuclear power is not the techniques. The problem is the human
part. At some point, some director of manager wants to save money, which can
often be at the expense of safety. If you look at all indicents in nuclear
reactor, one of the causes is often not having the money or the desire to safe
some money.

Nuclear power is not a toy, and every expense should be made so that it is
safe. You can't always prevent evidence, but with something so risky as
nuclear power, having an indicent where money is (one of) the causes is just
really stupid.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _At some point, some director of manager wants to save money, which can
> often be at the expense of safety._

This is true in any system. The downsides with nuclear don't seem to be as
grave as the downsides that come with fossil fuels. (On a kilowatt-hour
adjusted basis, at least.)

> _having an indicent where money is (one of) the causes is just really
> stupid_

Money is _always_ a factor. Money represents resources. Finite resources. No
problem can be worth infinity because we don't have infinity to play with.

~~~
eurleif
I'll bet you could get California to vote for a ballot measure banning all
finite things with a little work.

~~~
qbrass
Finite things contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause
cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

------
naranja
No – nuclear is not "clean" energy. It's one of the messiest form of them. And
coal is "clean" neither.

------
tehabe
Nuclear power plants are not clean. Far from it. Radioactive waste is still an
unsolved problem.

~~~
Lazare
Here's a solution: You take the nuclear waste, and then you put it in a small
pile somewhere geologically inactive, and then you don't touch it.

Problem solved.

The issues with nuclear are almost entirely related to _cost_.

~~~
tehabe
But where can you find such a place? In Germany people believed to found such
a place in an old salt mine, now they have to get the stuff back before the
mine is completely flooded with water and will contaminate the area around it.
And that wasn't high radioactive waste. You need to store is from 100,000 to a
million years and you need to inform people about it. Which isn't easy b/c we
couldn't really understand the writings on the Pyramids in Egypt which were
build just a few thousand years ago. Nuclear power is also dangerous because
you can't easily tell apart if a country use it to generate power or build a
bomb.

~~~
TomMarius
What about space? And we're talking about plants in the U.S., I don't think
there will be the problem with bombs.

~~~
EvilTerran
> What about space?

Great in principle, but sending nuclear waste hurtling through the upper
atmosphere strapped to a tank of rocket fuel seems like a _really_ bad idea in
practice. You'd be one mishap away from spreading radioactive dust over a huge
area.

Some kind of railgun-like launch system big enough to achieve escape velocity
could work, I guess - but that technology's not there yet.

~~~
TomMarius
We can store it on Earth until the technology is there, we don't need to wait
until it breaks down

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TheRealPomax
Keep them, but calling them "clean" is pure grade A bullshit. Sure, they're
"cleaner" but they are absolutely not clean, yielding a waste product that
stays a danger to every single living thing near it for tens of thousands of
years.

~~~
Ygg2
It has fewest deaths per TWh, and zero carbon emissions.

It's safest the same way, airplane is safest form of transportation.

~~~
TheRealPomax
Pretty sure solar, wind, and hydro have fewer deaths per terawatthour, which
also happens to be an absolute nonsense x/y plot to be looking at.

I am 100% pro nuclear power, but I'd love to see proper new approaches that
don't lead to barrels of radiating waste that transporters seem to keep
fucking losing, or dump in the ocean, or do any number of illegal other things
with. I prefer to stay grounded in reality and look at the entire pipeline
rather than naively just looking at what happens after the plant's been built,
and only looking at the plant's site and not a millimeter beyond its
perimeter.

