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Comment by Teknoman117 | Hacker News Reader

The largest sticking point for me with nuclear is the whole bigger is better mentality. I'm all for it if we're going with passively safe designs. In theory this could help the whole decentralized grid ideas along. I think it would go a long way to ease public fear if we actually built reactors that can't melt down under any circumstance.

I'm just scared of the big reactors. Nothing on this Earth is going to passively remove 1.5 GW of heat coming from something the volume of a hot water heater.

We also need to be recycling our waste like the other nations which use nuclear power, not just chuck what's still 90% useful material in a holding tank for eternity.

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> The largest sticking point for me with nuclear is the whole bigger is better mentality.

Historically, bigger reactors (and bigger turbines etc.) have been one of the few things that have reduced the $/kWh.

Now, if you have followed developments in the nuclear sector, you are surely aware that SMR's (small modular reactor) are all the rage these days. There are certainly good engineering reasons behind them as well; more series production in factories with less built on-site, easier to provide passive safety due to smaller size, etc., but so far they have not been deployed in reality, so it remains to be seen whether they will be able to provide a lower $/kWh in reality. But certainly they are an interesting development, we'll see if they become a commercial success as well.

As for recycling, with current uranium prices being so low it doesn't make economic sense. But I can certainly see the appeal (breeder reactors are catnip for physicists).

People think about this completely upsides down IMO.

Nature is killing more people every year than have been killed by nuclear in all its time. The sun is killing more people than dies of nuclear (Melanomas and skin cancer) I could go on.

Nuclear isn't as dangerous as it's been claimed and with never reactors the actual security procedure is physical. On top of that investments into thorium and fusion could have gotten us much further.

It's not that bigger is better it's that bigger is safer from a number of perspectives.

Nuclear is by far the safest, greenest, most scalable, reliable energy source we know how to use and it's many times safer than the very mother nature everyone seems to want to save.

Nature doesn't give us a safe, friendly environment we then make unsafe it gives us a hostile and dangerous environment which we then make safe.

Funny how disagreement in this always gets met with downvotes rather than at least argument or reasoned disagreement.

Why is it so hard for people to disagree about this without it turning into a downvote competition?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1514492/20-years-on-...

https://www.guernicamag.com/the-fallout/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

The problem with nuclear has always been trust, and repeated breaches of trust - often in regards to weapons proliferation, from which fission can never really be separated. See the ongoing efforts to prevent Iran's nuclear programme, for example.

It also has a nasty habit of cost overruns, because projects don't scale down. How overrun is Hinckley Point C now again?

Whereas solar cells scale down to the level of a few square milimeters on a watch or calculator. The great lesson of silicon valley - AWS and everything else - is that "big bang" projects always get beaten by things that can start tiny and scale incrementally.

We need to deploy solar and wind now. Maybe in the 25 year lifetime of a solar panel we can get a nuclear plant finished. Maybe fusion will work. Maybe someone will find a way to stop Thorium reactors dissolving their own plumbing.

That's not a problem with nuclear that's a problem with people.

Cost overruns come from extreme security legislation and the fact that we haven't built enough so those are simply not proper arguments.

Add on top of that that solar will never, as in never ever be able to deliver cheap (at scale), clean, plentiful and consistent energy which is the minimum requirement for any type of energy any sane person would support.

Promoting something that is currently not providing more than 1% of the worlds energy being heavily favored politically and with plenty of subsidies and which will never support maybe more than 10% of the worlds energy needs which is being very generous sounds like something the world will look back at in a hundred years and think "What the hell were they thinking".

> That's not a problem with nuclear that's a problem with people.

This is very much the "true communism has never been tried" argument, isn't it? Unless you know a way of building it without people?

No its not at all the same cause thats not what i mean. I mean that people are ignorant to the dangers not that its dangerous. Has nothing to do with communism, wind and solar on the other hand do.

>Has nothing to do with communism, wind and solar on the other hand do.

Showing your hand there.

No but you are.

Having no problem with misrepresenting what other say.

I was replying to this:

"This is very much the "true communism has never been tried" argument, isn't it? "

Which you very well know. So yeah thanks for showing your hand.

Well, if that is the level at which you would like to discuss this, I turned around and touched the ground already, so no backsies.

Blowing off real problems with breezy, unsupported denial is not helping your credibility. If your goal is effective advocacy you should be acting like a nuclear engineer, acknowledging the problems, and talking in detail about how they’re being addressed in-depth. I generally agree that we need nuclear power but that’s because I’ve read those articles rather than what you’re posting in this thread.

What is unsupported in what i have said?

Here’s an example: “The amount of nuclear waste that actually exist is microscopic”

It’d be wonderful if it’s true but you didn’t exactly cite sources or otherwise explain how a claim which has been not true to a degree which has factored into national politics is no longer true.

I don't have to cite anything. It was claimed there where a lot but not actually demonstrated. Why should I prove a negative?

Because your goal is to be an effective advocate?

> The problem with nuclear has always been trust, and repeated breaches of trust - often in regards to weapons proliferation, from which fission can never really be separated.

There are lots of countries with civilian nuclear power, but no weapons. And also, there are nuclear weapon states with no civilian nuclear power program in sight (e.g. North Korea). And AFAIK, no nuclear weapon state have done it by reprocessing civilian spent nuclear fuel. There are much easier and cheaper ways of doing it.

Now, it's theoretically possible to build a weapon from reactor grade Pu (i.e. by reprocessing spent civilian nuclear waste). And that's why we have international safeguards to prevent nuclear waste falling into the wrong hands. Nothing is foolproof of course, but it's a tradeoff. IMHO it's less bad than continuing to use fossil fuels.

In the end, acquiring nuclear weapons capability is a political decision. An existing civilian nuclear power capability doesn't make it noticeably easier. Heck, even a backwards isolated 3rd world country like NK is able to acquire weapons, suggesting that pretty much any state which really wants one can get it, if they want it bad enough that they are prepared to endure economic sanctions and becoming an international pariah state by doing it.

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