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I am living in southern Germany, about 1000km west of Chernobyl. It is not safe to eat mushrooms from the local forests and every wild animal shot has to be scanned for radioactivity before being allowed to be eaten (and often enough they have to be destroyed). This is not going to change in my lifetime and beyond.

As a physicist, I am certainly not afraid of "nuclear" and "radiation" in the abstract. But seeing the country you live in to be contaminated for so long just because a single operator error is quite sobering. Solar has its challenges on the technical level, as the power output depends on the daytime and weather, but that is not killing anyone. "And who say that batteries can't explode?" - well even if they would, you would have a ruined battery, perhaps a building. That can be rebuild. The damage done by Chernobyl cannot be fixed for centuries.

The good news in all of this is: by now solar has become cheaper than building new, safe and modern nuclear reactors. And as a lot of the grid load in California comes from air conditioning, I fail to see how solar would not be the perfect solution for these kind of loads.

> It is not safe to eat mushrooms from the local forests and every wild animal shot has to be scanned for radioactivity before being allowed to be eaten (and often enough they have to be destroyed).

What a bullshit. Please provide an official source for this claims.

Mushrooms in the Central Europe were contaminated, but only for a first few months after the disaster.

Here is the link to the federal office for radiation protection: https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-w...

It is Ceseium-137 which still contaminates mushrooms and all animals regularly eating those. Occasional consumption is possible but not recommended. And that is 30 years after Chernobyl.

I was in Munich months after the disaster. A great deal of uncertainty, in the public.

I remember one particularly scary item: Wild mushrooms from Eastern Europe, e.g. Poland.

Only, you didn't have to go that far to have real risk. At that time, some measurements had mushrooms concentrating relevant radioactive isotopes by circa 400 times, IIRC.

Weather patterns and geography created particular hot spots in the more immediate area. For some reason, the Tirol sticks in my mind, for one.

Not authoritative, maybe, but there's this: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/radioactive-boars-a...

and this: http://qz.com/258731/radioactive-wild-boars-still-run-wild-i...

Both say the contamination comes from mushrooms.

Agreed.

The OECD estimates that the probability of an accident at a Gen. II or higher reactor that results in significant casualties is approximately one per one million years.

All of the accidents in the history of nuclear power have caused fewer deaths than the failure of a single hydroelectric dam. Combined these disasters resulted in an estimated 60,000 deaths.

That number pales in comparison to the 288,000 people who die every year from particulate inhalation due to fossil fuels.

As much as I agree and support the use of nuclear power to meet our energy requirements, I think the most obvious downside when a nuclear plant fails also happens to help remind the public of what a nuclear failure can create.

The only two Level 7 nuclear events in the world — Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi — have have rendered large swaths of land unusable for a significant amount of time. Whether or not the exclusion zones surrounding these two areas need to be as large as they are can be argued. However, when a hydroelectric dam fails more people die initially, but as the cleanup happens and the reporters fade away, the event fades into the background. With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind.

"With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind."

We could make movies about dams that collapse, too and we have. I'm not even sure there are more about nuclear accidents (nuclear war, yes, but accidents?). Even if there are, I think the movies are a symptom of the problem, not its cause. The invisible danger of radiation being held back by walls of concrete just looks more dangerous to us than the visible danger of a wall of water being held back by walls of concrete.

And Chernobyl? A nature reserve. I can see someone writing a SF story about cultures that protect existing nature by the controlled disposal of radio-active material.

If the damage done by Chernobyl was limited to the restricted area around the town, that wouldn't be so bad. But in fact, as I wrote in my other comment, large parts of western Europe have been contaminated too. Not to the level where one cannot live there any more, but to the level, where it makes it dangerous to eat wild mushrooms and game (which has to be checked for radioactivity before being considered edible). And this will be an issue for many decades to come.

> I think the most obvious downside when a nuclear plant fails also happens to help remind the public of what a nuclear failure can create.

1. It's out-of-the-ordinary. Nobody would pay attention to the monthly news report that coal burning has, yet again, damaged the environment to the same degree as a meltdown.

2. Our monkey brains are incredibly bad at realizing that gases can be more dangerous than those scary barrels with scary warning symbols. Instead of being hidden away underground, gasses conveniently "disappear" into the air.

While I do agree with the broader point that nuclear power is probably a good idea, an estimate like "1 per million years" is, by definition, absolute bullshit.

There is no way to reliably estimate an event that rare. And to publish such an estimate at all is insanely irresponsible.

Actually, if you have the data, estimating failure rates of reactors is fairly straightforward. Just use a Poisson distribution, the same as calculating MTBFs for other rare events.

It's the same way one calculates the probability of being struck by lightening, for example.

Do you have a link for this? I really want to be able to link directly to the information.

Oh, yes. My apologies, I didn't see this before.

The risk analysis is here: http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2010/nea6862-comparing-r...

In it, the probabilistic risk of a major nuclear accidents are calculated. It's a bit difficult to parse without a stats background, but if you Google the title there are some good summaries.

Most of the data is presented in graphs common in probabilistic risk analysis, but the authors do examine an example of the anyhow burg Nuclear Powerplant in Switzerland.

This is a very low baseline. The plant consists of Gen. II boiling water reactors, built in 1967. The reactor core has multiple cracks in the core shroud.

Even with this design, the authors describe how the risk analysis demonstrates that the probability of a major accident (deaths > 2000) is less than one per one million reactor years.

The risk graphs demonstrate that for reactors newer than Gen. II, the risk is greatly reduced, to the point that modern reactors are 1,600 safer than Muhlenburg.

My two main arguments against nuclear: 1. Have we solved the waste problem satisfactorily yet? This includes accounting for war, tectonic movements, water safety and a host of other factors. 2. Are fines and punishment for not building nuclear facilities high enough as to be effective in enforcing regulations?

Iff those two are satisfied, go nuclear. Before, nope.

But even if they are satisfied: nuclear is a stopgap. Solar and wind are solutions. So I emotionally welcome everything which pushes those forward

If you want to oppose power plants on the basis of safety, fine, but do not exempt the types currently unchallenged. Coal-fired plants kill more than 13,000 Americans every year [0]. Nuclear plants could kill 0. Their worst accident killed 4,000 [1].

Climate change aside, it's hard for me to see anti-nuclear activism (to the extent that it results in coal plants continuing to operate) as anything other than mass murder.

[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053-600-fossil-f...

[1]http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/04/25/chernoby...

Why do people like you try to outweigh one bad thing for another? Yes, coal plants are bad, too. But how is that an excuse for nuclear plants?

It's like saying: Army A is better than army B, because army B is causing more deaths in this war.

BTW. The Chernobyl and Fukushima desasters are still harming society. These desasters are still in progress.

Because nuclear plants can replace coal plants. Replacing a bad thing with a less bad thing is a good thing.

>how is that an excuse for nuclear plants?

Because if anti-nuclear activists were to back down and let us replace coal with nuclear, tens of thousands of lives would be saved. The death toll might not be 0, but it would almost certainly be lower.

eh, Coals CO2 might even be spun into carbon tubes one day, still waiting for that feet to hapen to fuel rods

> Coals CO2 might even be spun into carbon tubes one day

Link? I'm also very curious what can be done with after carbon sequestration if you have any links for that…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=kQBlpENiFzo

Thanks!

I'd flip this argument around. Have we adequately solved energy storage and base power load problems with renewables yet? That is, can they feasibly serve as a primary power source or do renewables have to be coupled with sources like goal and gas?

If that's the case, sure, go full-tilt renewables. If not, then we have to weigh nuclear waste is a bigger problem than contributing to CO2 levels. I'm inclined to say no -- if only because nuclear waste can be a reasonably localized problem, whereas climate change from CO2 is global.

The main power loads are during daytime. So solar is a pretty good match to that, especially, if you like the US have large desert regions, where weather related changes are unlikely to reduce the solar efficiency a lot. Add to that wind power, which runs around the clock, you have a pretty good cover of the load. Of course you need also storage. That can be batteries on the small scale (also a good way to reuse old electrical car batteries), and hydro on the large scale. Just limiting the Hoover dam to produce electricity as a backup to solar should cover quit a bit of the storage requirements. If the remaining gaps are filled with natural gas, its a good balance. Natural gas produces much less CO2 than coal. And if only 10% of the energy load is done with gas, we should no longer worry about the CO2 too much.

> 1. Have we solved the waste problem satisfactorily yet?

Technically speaking? Yes, for sure. Politically speaking? Hahahahahahahaha no, nowhere close.

Not to mention spent nuclear fuel will soon be "renewable" in the future in terms of being used again to produce more energy where as it was once considered waste.

> Building some nuclear plants will be able to feed anyone almost forever. Unlike solar energy that you need to keep in batteries for the night.

I completely agree that we should be ramping up nuclear generation, but nuclear alone also has a timing issue that requires either batteries or a hybrid approach to generation. Unlike fossil fuels where the plant can be dialed up and down to cope with demand, the output of a nuclear reactor is generally fixed (at least on the timescales relevant to demand fluctuation).

Solar can be a big help here, because demand tends to be higher during the day and lower at night. Some sort of energy storage technology would likely still be needed even with a full nuclear/solar grid, since energy usage in developed nations tends to peak in the early evening.

What you're describing is only true of previous generation nuclear plants, where there was no need to implement load following.

There is nothing inherent in nuclear power that makes it impossible to throttle and indeed there are currently operating plants designed with load following capabilities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuc...

Some nuclear plants, including the largest in the world (Bruce NGS in Canada), have steam bypass systems allowing electrical output be curtailed without reducing thermal output. You just dump the thermal energy into a lake.

On a plant near the ocean, any surplus power could be used for desalination, solving two problems, one of them for free.

Please dont take this the wrong way, but I'm genuinely curious from a linguistic perspective. What is your native tongue?

As a non-native speaker myself (Italian), I too often notice what seem to be patterns in other non-native speaker's English writing that seem to be typical of some larger geographical area (eastern Europe, northern Asia, southern Asia). Though I can't put my finger on it and say exactly what those patterns look like, nor pinpoint where the writer's mother tongue is, I can usually tell that something is off in a certain location-specific way. It's interesting and, to a certain extent, a fun exercise. It's a pity that I'm too lazy to sit down and compare samples of writing from different areas and come up with an organic and formal description of what I'm noticing, assuming that's even feasible without being a linguist and well-versed in all the languages involved.

No offense intended for the author of the parent comment, I hope he won't take this the wrong way either!

Russian

This specific reactor has some very significant earthquake risks. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulne... for an introduction.

Regardless of what you think of the industry of nuclear power, this specific reactor, at Diablo Canyon, is precarious and dangerous.

That there is an earthquake risk doesn't mean it isn't properly dealt with. The plant is built to withstand significant seismic risk, 10 times more than the faults around it could produce. That's right there in the wikipedia article you linked to.

OK, I presumed that wikipedia article would be better. Anyway, there's dissenting opinions within the NRC that disagree with PG&E and allegations that the safety reports were done poorly.

Under renewed scrutiny, PG&E is due to release ground-shaking safety reports in 2017 for the renewal of its lease in 2024 after some newish (last 7 year) USGS surveys suggested there may be more threats and that the fault lines may have not been properly characterized.

Also there was a whistleblower case against PG&E in the early 2000s claiming that safety concerns were routinely minimized (think deep water horizon) and expressing great concern for the accuracy of the claims of safety. (http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id...)

Anyway, there's serious safety concerns regarding this particular plant and that it could be the US Fukushima given its location and the fault line proximity.

These are baseless associations. Perhaps Diablo Canyon and PG&E aren't flawless and honest, but you aren't establishing risk. Do you have some reason to believe there is a meltdown risk?

I don't really think a reactor being retired at 40 is the worst thing (though I'm sure it could be run longer), but have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state (think the numerous oil refinery explosions that occur regularly worldwide)? What about oil train explosions (think the other oil train explosions)?

People express serious concern for some of the most outlandish, obscure risks on any project if it somehow involves the word 'nuclear.' Every project. A lot more lives could be saved if the same effort was used to create real safety standards on oil, coal, and gas.

You've asked a lot of things here. Let me try to address them:

1. Do you have some reason to believe there is a meltdown risk?

No. I've read and heard from qualified people who do. I can't speak for them beyond saying they exist. I was trying to summarize their positions, but I probably missed some things.

2. Have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state?

Diablo canyon popped up on my radar due to a podcast (TUC radio) which had a 2-part series: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/77429 and http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/77528. I found the case for the shutdown of this specific site quite persuasive - you may be more skeptical...

3. What about oil train explosions?

No. Again, this is a specific case. The focus is on the safety of this one thing.

You can look at my comment history, I don't believe I'm an alarmist. The concerns of the suitability of the plant seemed valid outside of any anti-nuclear concern.

> but have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state

I share GPs concerns about Diablo Canyon and, yes, I've spent lots of time concerned about oil refineries in the state (both seismic and other issues) having spent several years living near several of them, and having a family member who worked in several of them. And about oil train safety, for some of the same reasons.

Actually, I've observed that there is a considerable overlap in California between people who are concerned with nuclear safety and those concerned with oil industry safety, and considerable overlap between the people unconcerned each of those, even though those unconcerned with nuclear safety will wave around things like oil (or coal or gas) industry safety when nuclear safety is raised (but generally not in any other context.)

And, in the particular case of PG&E, part of the reason for concern about them is they don't exactly have a spotless record of nonfeasance and malfeasance regarding gas infrastructure safety, too.