Not the parent, but I don't think you can seriously argue that all political decisions are for the good of the many. Most decisions have a vocal minority and the majority doesn't care left or right, which means the minority has sway.
And, it's generally accepted that carbon life cycle studies show nuclear has the least carbon footprint, including everything from uranium mining to waste disposal. Wind and (especially) solar has a larger footprint than nuclear, but wind can come close in some studies. The biggest reason for this is because the energy in nuclear fuel is so enormously concentrated that so little is required, that it offsets the carbon footprint from construction, waste management and everything else, while wind and solar power consume quite a bit of energy during construction (and mining for raw materials).
> Not the parent, but I don't think you can seriously argue that all political decisions are for the good of the many.
If anybody comes here with the argument that it's a political decision without bringing any proof, he can't expect that others will assume an exceptional case. Especially not in a topic like this where it's about serious money and a very clear opinion of the majority.
> And, it's generally accepted that carbon life cycle studies show nuclear has the least carbon footprint
Just as it is generally accepted that we've drowned too much money into this, that this money invested into renewables decades ago would have made coal unnecessary by now, that the technology is very dangerous, that the overdue reactors should have been gone by now, that we don't know what to do with the thousands of tons of radioactive waste, that all that artificial hype around nuclear even though there is nobody in the civilized western world who wants to pay for a reactor these days which may be there in a decade and eat up ridiculous amounts of money producing expansive power is purely an lobbyist effort by a industry which can't face the fact that their technology is dead.
So please...please...spare me the phrases you copied elsewhere. I've read them before you guys are repeating them on and on without thinking one step further into the reality out there and it even stopped being amusing. You make me sad.
Not the parent, but if you look at what's currently replacing nuclear power world-wide it seems to be gas. Gas extraction is also not very environmentally friendly and releases a lot of nasty toxins into the air and surrounding areas, just not as much as coal mining does. I think the point still stands.
A hydro power plant can't be used as a battery, it must be purposely built as a pumped storage plant. The cable in question allows Norway to sell hydro power to Germany (and if Germany has a surplus, they can sell electricity back). There's no storage solution in it, though.
It's sort of a battery, you just can't charge it with electricity. If you oversize the generators, you then can discharge the battery when renewable generation is low, and let it charge when renewable generation is high.
Yes, but by using that definition all baseload power generation (coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, etc.) are "energy batteries", which makes the term meaningless. By "energy batteries" when talking about the electric grid, people normally mean different kinds of large scale rechargeable energy storage solutions, such as pumped storage, molten salt, etc.
With oversized generators hydro provides an extra storage that can last weeks and even months at the pick usage depending on reservoir capacity. This is the battery effect that cannot be matched with molten salt.
As I just stated, yes, that's called baseload power. It applies equally to hydro power, nuclear, coal, gas and all other baseload types. If you make them larger they can produce more. "Energy batteries" when talking about the electric grid are generally rechargeable, because as I stated otherwise the term is meaningless and just means "baseload power" in general.
Increasing capacity at hydro power stations or other baseload stations isn't as easy as just "putting a larger generator in". Everything needs to be considered and sized up: turbines, piping, outlets, new environmental assessments, etc., just as in any other type of power plant.
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because production in a gas power plant is simply regulated by burning more or less gas. If you need more gas, you can likely buy more. While production in a hydro power plant can be brought up and down by draining the reservoir faster or slower, a hydro plant has a lot of external factors that a gas power plant hasn't.
The current water level in the reservoir, expected drainage and rainfall over the year, environmental regulations concerning water discharge and intake levels, fish, etc. all play into it. Note that a hydroelectric power plant doesn't just generate electricity, it also regulates water levels pretty far up- and downstream from the plant.
> These events release a lot more radiation than coal plants.
Unless you have data that supports this statement, I'd state the opposite. It's easy to think nuclear accidents release a lot of radiation, but the actual accumulated dose from nuclear power (including accidents) for the average individual over time is very low. Coal, on the other hand, continuously spews out radioactive ash in large quantities.
Granted, other sources of radiation (radon, cosmic rays, medical x-rays, etc.) are a lot larger, but if comparing the two I'd guess coal is the larger culprit even when including nuclear accidents.
> the actual accumulated dose from nuclear power (including accidents) for the average individual over time is very low.
This is only because nobody's living in nuclear disaster zones. If people were carrying on their daily lives in the Chernobyl or Fukushima then their accumulated dose would be much much higher.
As you say, the levels from coal are small enough that other naturally occurring sources are more significant, and thus it has little practical effect on people's lives. On the other hand, nuclear accidents take large areas of land out of use for time scales long enough that they effect several generations.
Wait, how did you arrive at that conclusion? All nuclear accidents so far have resulted in very low doses to the average individual. Of course this doesn't apply to plant workers in the direct vicinity of e.g. the Chernobyl accident, but since those are very few compared to the population of a country, the number of estimated cancer cases should go down.
Let's consider the risk of cancer from radiation as a function of the radiation dose. This is some function, call it f. If I am receiving a dose r, and then get an additional does dr, then the additional risk is f(r+dr)-f(r). Or, this is f'(r)dr, where f' is the slope of f at r.
This is simple calculus. For LNT, f(r) is assumed to be a linear function of r, so the slope is the same everywhere. In this case, we don't need to know the actual dose someone gets, just the increment; an increment of dr in the dose causes the same risk of cancer. This allows the risk to a population to just be computed from the total population incremental dose.
But if f is NOT linear, the slope will be higher in some places than LNT would imply (this again is a simple theorem from calculus). For example, suppose f'(r) is higher at very low dose, but less than LNT above some threshold dose level (that is, the curve us concave downward). In this case, the risk of cancer from some extra dose dr will be higher down in that low dose area.
Is this plausible? I don't think it's ruled out. Radiation apologists would have us believe in radiation hormesis, in which radiation induces repair mechanisms. Under that hypothesis, the slope of the curve below a threshold at which this induction occurs could be steeper than LNT would imply.
> But if f is NOT linear, the slope will be higher in some places than LNT would imply (this again is a simple theorem from calculus).
What does that even mean? That is junk maths, I don't believe there is such a theory. A line can have any gradient and I can always come up with an arbitrary curve that has a lower or equal gradient at every point that matches the line.
A model that matches LNT exactly to some threshold then the risk drops to 0, for example. Not higher than the LNT anywhere in any negative sense.
It's a consequence of the Mean Value Theorem. Suppose a differentiable function f has f(0) = 0 and f(1) = 1. Then, either f is linear (f(x) = x), or there is some point y for which f(y) != y. If f(y) > y, then by the MVT there must be some point z betwenn 0 and y for which f'(z) >= f(y)/y > 1. If f(y) < y, then again by the MVT there is some point z between y and 1 for which f'(z) > (1 - f(y))/(1 - y) > 1.
That isn't making a sensible point. f(x) is the risk at dose x. If f(x) = x under the LNT and g(x) = {0: x<0.5, x: x>0.5} then the Mean Value Theorum is satisfied and the non-linear g() is equal to or less risky than the LNT for any dose.
g(x) is a linear-with-threshold model by the way. The steeper slope (infinte, in fact) found in the model would be a huge theoretical positive for nuclear.
OF course it's making a sensible point. If the dose response function is not linear (and is a differentiable function, as any physically real function must be) then it will have a point where the derivative is greater than for LNT.
Your example is discontinuous. This is not physically realistic. Any "real" function, describing the response of a population with random individual exposures and differences, will be smoothed, and so be better behaved.
It also misses the point that when you abandon LNT, you don't also get to say "and now we'll assume the function is even more favorable to my political agenda". Sure, it's possible the actual function makes it better for nuclear advocates. But it's also possible it makes it worse. Are the policy makers going to be on your side just because?
> Your example is discontinuous. This is not physically realistic. Any "real" function, describing the response of a population with random individual exposures and differences, will be smoothed, and so be better behaved.
Eh. If you like. If you use a continuous analogue the argument doesn't change at all.
> It also misses the point that when you abandon LNT, you don't also get to say "and now we'll assume the function is even more favorable to my political agenda". Sure, it's possible the actual function makes it better for nuclear advocates. But it's also possible it makes it worse. Are the policy makers going to be on your side just because?
I actually do get to say that. There is no evidence that insignificant doses of radiation do any damage. In the absence of evidence of harm after 40 years of study, we can safely assume that the harm is undetectably small and can be ignored.
People can wave around numbers from a model, but the model is stupid and there is no reason to believe it. In the absence of a good model, I get to assume that we should make decisions based on the observed evidence.
> OF course it's making a sensible point.
As far as I've been able to determine, your mathematical argument is the gradient of a non-linear function is not constant. There is room for improvement in your explanation; unless that is your point in which case it is not a sensible point. The argument is that we should abandon the LNT model in favour of empirical evidence, ie, no harm done.
> There is no evidence that insignificant doses of radiation do any damage.
A single high energy photon causes DNA damage which is easy to replicate. The theory you are supporting refers to rates of cancer, but has zero direct evidence from cancer rates to support it. And that’s the problem, science defaults to the older theory which in this case is the linear model.
> A single high energy photon causes DNA damage which is easy to replicate.
Which is relevant but unpersuasive; for me to agree +-1 photon to make any difference to getting cancer I'd have to suspend everything I know about statistics. We get hit by an ungodly number of high energy photons. If one cases cancer, there are probably others.
At some point, the doses become to small to matter.
> science defaults to the older theory
No it doesn't. Science defaults to the simplest/most likely theory and chooses the balance between those two things based on evidence. Age of the theory has nothing to do with it.
We have evidence that the flat earth theory is wrong, for example. Nobody can claim it is a serious contender despite being an ancient theory.
Similarly, there is evidence that the LNT is stupid. So while people can claim it is a contender because the evidence is weaker than for the globe it shouldn't be a default. The default should have a threshold below which we admit we've seen no evidence of any harm and people have been looking for decades. There is a lot of cancer out there naturally.
And even then the most likely truth of the matter is that nuclear accidents are good for cancer outcomes because it makes people actually screen for cancer. Then they catch all the non-nuclear related stuff.
It’s a default specifically when you have no evidence to replace the existing theory. Flat earth fails on evidence, radiation threshold fails for lack of evidence to support it over an older theory. It’s a very different situation.
It’s known that it takes multiple mutations to get cancer, but people are constantly getting cancer thus there must exist people that have almost gotten cancer and will get it from a single unlucky photon in a specific location. And other people who will get every other mutation eventually.
Thus from all known evidence we have the minimum threshold for extra radiation causing cancer and everything else being equal is exactly one photon. Calculating specific odds is much more difficult, but any theory that has some radiation level as absolutely safe is wrong.
That’s not to say it’s a pure linear relationship, but the slope can’t be zero.
Note, I am not saying a linear model is accurate and I doubt it is. But the threshold has both massive theoretical issues and zero direct support. Putting it next to string theory as an interesting theory, but completely untested science.
> Flat earth fails on evidence, radiation threshold fails for lack of evidence to support it over an older theory.
We've got oodles of evidence. People have been looking to black-eye the nuclear proponents for 40 years after Chernobyl and nobody has turned up any evidence. At some point, maybe 20 years, maybe 30 years or even 40 years the overwhelming lack of any evidence of harm becomes evidence that none was done.
> That’s not to say it’s a pure linear relationship, but the slope can’t be zero.
Well no that isn't true. Stepping out of the nuclear realm, this is very similar to arguing that a railgun will blast a hole in a building, a wrecking ball will knock a smaller hole in a building and therefore enough youths punching buildings will statistically knock one over.
That isn't going to happen. If that logic works out we are talking a seriously troubled building. A building that a stiff breeze could knock over, and a building that is almost surely knocked over before the youths get to it to punch it. The slope becomes indistinguishable from zero - in fact, it probably is zero. I doubt you'll want to contest that but if you do I would encourage some reflection on what a feeble hill that is to fight on vs real-life policies that actually matter for bringing energy to millions of humans and saving a measurable number of lives vs coal power or even solar installation.
This argument that thresholds are impossible is taking no cues from all the other forces, where there are clear thresholds below which no damage is done. An equivalent number of spaced out flicks deals nowhere near the damage of a punch, and there is a threshold below which force does no practical harm. Your argument we shouldn't take cues from the other forces is the first people to look at the problem drew a straight line through the data and therefore you don't want to accept that vanishingly small forces are probably irrelevant. An opinion held in an unscientific defiance of the preponderance of evidence, I cheerfully add.
There is zero direct evidence for departure from the LNT at the doses that would be relevant for the larger population in a nuclear accident. The reason is simple: for any individual, the extra chance of cancer would be so small that it could not be detected in the very large background of cancer from all sources.
Suppose a vending machine gives 20 soda for 20$. If someone walks up and inserts 1$ and can get 0 soda, but if they insert an extra 19$ they get 20 soda.
If that’s true then for some amount between 1$ and 20$ inserting an extra 1$ must let you get more than 1 soda in order for it to be handing out 20 soda at 20$.
PS: Back to cancer, if it’s 19 cancer at 20x then you can keep a 1:1 relationship at 2+x and 0 cancer at 1x. Then again if you can’t tell if it’s 19 cancer or 20 cancer then it might just be 21 cancer.
It’s the linear model which suggests those low doses are mostly safe, it may be a more accurate model means average adults are at say 1/2 the risk of linear models. But, say children are at 10x risk, babies are at 100x risk, and Fedus are at 1,000x higher risk than those linear models suggest. Thus because of a high risk to a significant population it’s even more dangerous.
It’s very easy to find some way a specific model is wrong in one direction, but hard to say if that’s the only adjustment you need to make. Ex: Counting better cancer treatments making nuclear safer while ignoring longer lifespans making it more dangerous.
That's true, but I think most other models assume there's a lowest dosage which is totally safe? For very low doses, even if LNT predicts a very low rate, it still a lot of cancer cases for a population of several million. Even if there would be very vulnerable groups, it's hard to imagine a model that predicts more cases than LNT for very low doses.
There are a huge range of models, it’s not clear which ones are correct. Nuclear proponents tend to push threshold models suggesting there are safe doses.
On the other hand: “Approximately 38.4% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes (based on 2013–2015 data).“
That makes it very hard to validate small changes and any reasonable study size is going to fall below the noise floor. In other words people pushing those models lack any direct evidence to support them.
Yes, due to radon gas from the ground which is really a big problem in Scandinavia. Just making sure nobody thinks a big part of the accumulated dose when living here is due to Chernobyl.
We've got the same problem over here in Sweden, granite in a lot of places. We also, just for good measure, constructed a lot of buildings in the 50s and 60s from radioactive autoclaved aerated concrete made from alum shale containing high concentrations of uranium. Fun days. Apparently there's still half a million homes here exceeding the radon limit of 200 Bq/m3 indoors.
You're ignoring one of the largest problems with renewables: they're not actually replacing fossil fuels, they're replacing nuclear power which was almost carbon neutral to begin with. The intermittency of wind and solar means the profitability of nuclear plants goes down (because the capital costs are enormous, they should be run close to max capacity 24/7).
Baseload power is still needed, just as before, but the new source replacing nuclear seems to be gas. This means, unfortunately, that the current trend prioritizing wind and solar power will mean a larger net carbon footprint when we need to reduce it. This is really bad for the future.
Don't forget Russian gas. Eastern Europe is still heavily reliant on Russia for gas supplies, and Germany is heavily expanding its use (look at the Nord Stream pipelines). Nuclear power phase-out means more reliance on Russian gas and Russia extending its sphere of influence. As a European, I really don't like that scenario.
Not the parent poster, but you should add what's actually being built: a lot of gas plants. They're cleaner than coal, but lets be honest, still not particularly good for the environment.
To be fair, that statement was in the grandparent and not the post I replied to. However, I'd argue
> Large steam thermal baseload plants are increasingly uncompetitive, coal or nuclear.
is generally wrong, since gas power plants are "large steam thermal baseload plants" and they're very much competitive. Large baseload plants are just as necessary now as they used to be since we'll still need power when the wind doesn't blow. The problem is nuclear needs to run at max power all the time to be profitable.
There's ways that you can not run at max power with nuclear reactors. Especially if you include advances from modern reactors (i.e. reactors that weren't designed 50 years ago).
You can also use that energy to charge batteries or pump water uphill the same way you would with excess solar and wind power. Doing so means you need a lower baseload.
Also, another idea, why not use that excess energy to sequester carbon? We do need to be carbon negative.
Technically, there are ways to run nuclear reactors at below full power. But economically, it's ruinous to do so. Almost all the costs of a nuclear plant are fixed. The already poor levelized cost of the plant's output becomes even worse.
You could charge batteries with nuclear output, but why do so, when other sources are cheaper? And the battery charging can be moved around in time, so the intermittency of those sources is less of a problem.
Similarly, why use expensive energy to sequester carbon when cheap energy could be used instead?
No, you are mistaken. CC plants have a steam bottoming cycle, but 2/3rds of the power comes from the combustion turbine front end. This gives them a very large advantage over systems where all the power has to go through the steam. And simple cycle plants require no heat exchangers, steam cycle, or cooling water at all.
To my knowledge, this depends on the dam in question
For large dams in developed countries it's relatively easy to contain that risk (move people a few kilometers away from thedanger zone) in contrast to a nuclear plant.
Large chemical industries have no problems getting insurance as far as I know -or do you have credible sources stating otherwise?
I've never heard of countries considering the entire danger zone from a large hydroelectric dam uninhabitable. They're so large that it's simply not feasible. Take the largest hydro station in Sweden for example, Harsprånget[1]. The government assessment for what happens when that dam breaks assumes it takes out a very large geographical area, among other things the entire city of Luleå (which is near the coastline).
No large chemical industry handlng dangerous chemicals, in developed countries or otherwise, has an insurance large enough to pay for huge expensive spills. That's why the company usually defaults when it happens and leaves the cleanup for the government later on. This has happened on numerous occations in the US, Europe, and over here in Sweden.
And, it's generally accepted that carbon life cycle studies show nuclear has the least carbon footprint, including everything from uranium mining to waste disposal. Wind and (especially) solar has a larger footprint than nuclear, but wind can come close in some studies. The biggest reason for this is because the energy in nuclear fuel is so enormously concentrated that so little is required, that it offsets the carbon footprint from construction, waste management and everything else, while wind and solar power consume quite a bit of energy during construction (and mining for raw materials).