Japan Turns to Coal After Closing Nuclear Power Plants | Hacker News Reader

Japan Turns to Coal After Closing Nuclear Power Plants

bloomberg.com

122 pointsjseliger138 comments

A disaster.

I'm opposed to the construction of new nuclear plants (still open to possibility of new fusion plants at some in the future) but from an environmental standpoint it makes far more sense to maintain the existing nuclear plants - at least for now.

The biggest drawbacks of nuclear power (expensive and slow plant construction) are off the table with existing plants! Hardening existing plants against possible future catastrophe is probably far cheaper in both economic and human terms than new coal plan construction.

Japan already does pretty good job (relatively speaking) with solar power, but it could do much better with the money it will spend on new coal plants if it built more wind power and fixed up existing nuclear plants.

> maintain the existing nuclear plants

In Japan and wait for the next major earthquakes?

> Hardening existing plants against possible future catastrophe is probably far cheaper

Probably not. That's the case in Japan where several reactors will never be restarted again.

Earthquake hasn’t caused any problems in nuclear plants in Japan

A tsunami that killed over 10,000 people caused some minor problems. That’s like saying you got a puncture in a multi car pileup.

the government of Japan estimates the Fukushima nuclear plant cleanup costs are at least 80 billion dollars, private think tanks have suggested numbers closer to 400-600 billion. The cleanup is going to take 30-40 years, involving a lot of manpower and expertise so one can imagine the additional opportunity cost. Then you can add to this the amount of land that is permanently unusable and the future and current property value destroyed. I think you need to adjust your definition of 'minor problem' a little.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/clearing-the-radi...

>Earthquake hasn’t caused any problems in nuclear plants in Japan

Earthquake caused the Tsunami.

>A tsunami that killed over 10,000 people caused some minor problems. That’s like saying you got a puncture in a multi car pileup.

"The disaster was the most severe nuclear accident since the 26 April 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the only other disaster to be given the Level 7 event classification of the International Nuclear Event Scale."

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

Realistically, even Chernobyl is more of an economic issue than a loss of human life one. There were 54 immediate deaths, and they believe that up to ~4000 people will die earlier than they would have otherwise due to cancer and other complications from radiation exposure.

This sounds like quite a bit, until you realize that in the US alone 13,000 people die every year from cancer and other complications related to exposure from coal pollution.

Chernobyl and Fukshima are tragic, but you cannot examine the fallout (literal and figurative) in a vacuum - you must compare it to where things stand today. Much of the world's energy is produced from sources that are far more harmful in normal operation than either were in worst case failure modes. We have significantly better technology for nuclear now, as well.

Wind turbines are bad for birds, and really NEED to be placed outside of migration paths. Photovoltaic panels create tons of toxic waste in manufacturing. Concentrated solar plants are pretty great, where they work. Geothermal is great where it can work. We should be exploring all of these where we can, work on further minimizing the downsides and solving the problems - a diverse energy strategy is a good one. But this demonization and avoidance of modern nuclear reactors is nuts, as it is one of the highest energy production options we have. They could make a huge impact in the goal of being carbon neutral. And they could do so in a way that is quite safe, especially compared to existing coal and LNG plants. I think arguing against nuclear is short-sighted and costs us one of our best tools at fighting climate change today.

In 2010 Japan had 54 nuclear reactors.

In June 2011 Japan had 0 working nuclear reactors!

In early 2019 Japan had 42 reactors (12 were closed) and of those 9 were working.

A single earthquake caused the shutdown all those reactors for many years.

And you tell us "Earthquake hasn’t caused any problems in nuclear plants in Japan". In reality the single earthquake caused massive economic damage and a huge loss of electricity production capacity.

I would expect (just my guess), that several of the 33 shutdown reactors will also never be restarted - adding to the economic damage.

These shutdowns are largely political, not due to structural damage to the reactors from the earthquake. These reactors weren't shut down because there was fear the earthquake had damaged them, and calling them non-working is only accurate in that they aren't online and doing work - outside of issues from lack of use while shutdown, they are fully functional.

Fukushima was not properly built to withstand a tsunami of that magnitude. It withstood the earthquake proper just fine.

How can you realistically say that? A country and its nuclear safety inspectors have declared several reactors to be unfit to run, but YOU claim that it is political?

You claim that the plant 'withstood' the earthquake just fine. On what base? An inspection to make such an assessment takes months. It has not been done. How did you know that there were no cracks in the reactor facilities, etc.

There were lots of reasons to close some reactors. You simply have failed to even consider that.

Once one knows more about the risks of a certain reactor, than its simply a new decision whether a reactor is considered to be safe enough. The fukushima reactor was considered safe just before the earthquake and tsunami. It was thought unlikely that such an event happens and with such strength,

Now Japan is having the constant danger of earthquakes and the impact has been underestimated for several reactors. Their sites are now seen to have a higher risk of a strong earthquake causing severe damage.

You claim that it is political. That's the same safety culture which lead to the Fukushima meltdowns: proponents of nuclear power downplaying the risks.

Fukushima was just one of the many "not properly built" power plants. The problem with nuclear is that you can't just say "this plant is clearly a safety hazard, lets upgrade to the newest design" like you can do with software. Security problems will stay until you shut the plant down and build a new one. That means the only way to make nuclear viable is by making smaller modular reactors where replacing a single one doesn't cause the economics to no longer make sense.

There is also the need to maintain infrastructure. When you build a fleet of 20 nuclear plants you need an additional factory or two but once the fleet is complete those factories will no longer have any customers. 40 years later the nuclear plants need to be replaced but there is no factory that can build replacements. You end up paying a lot more if you build designs in batches than if you build 20 small reactors every year for 40 years and gradually replace the unsafest part of the fleet.

Yeah all the nuclear proponents don't even think about small reactors, they just want to shill their snowflake giant Gen IV reactors that are expensive to build and decommission.

Small reactors make a ton of sense, but they're an even harder sell to the general public, because there's even more NIMBYism. With larger plants you can put them a bit out of sight, out of mind, but a large fleet of smaller reactors ends up being distributed over a much more diverse area.

The primary problem with the big plants is that these older designs don't fail safe. The newer generations will. Catastrophic failure means "We stop making power", not "We irradiated everything close to us"

That's why people are "shilling" for Gen IV designs.

I'm not sure there's "many" plants that are unsafe due to natural disasters like this one. It isn't like we have hundreds of plants in an area where there are 100 year natural disasters that can take them out - otherwise we'd see these things happening all of the time. There are unsafe plants out there. For sure. But we haven't lost as many lives to every nuclear accident ever as we have to coal power generation in the US alone. We know there is a path to safety for nuclear designs, we know they are a very efficient method of power generation, and we know they're not going to cause the global temperature to rise. The failures are more spectacular in appearance than the normal operation of our current primary sources of energy, and that's the primary issue, even though the death count still swings spectacularly towards the normal operation of coal power plants.

We should be building modern nuclear reactors. I personally don't care if they're big Gen IV plants or small neighborhood ones - I just think the Gen IV designs are more likely to come to fruition.

This argument causes some of the problems this argument tries to avoid.

> I'm opposed to the construction of new nuclear plants

The technology involved in nuclear plants has evolved tremendously, both in terms of efficiency and in terms of safety, but the technology of the new generation is fundamentally different.

> The biggest drawbacks of nuclear power (expensive and slow plant construction) are off the table with existing plants!

Old plants use outdated designs. Nobody would tolerate the 1972 Internet infrastructure nowadays, and yet Chernobyl was created that year, and is still in use.

The main reason old plants stick around instead of being replaced is that Greenpeace and Green parties influence each other into lobbying against building correct reactors.

Take Superphénix: a French Gen IV reactor started construction twelve years before the Chernobyl accident. Its design is still considered next-gen and highly favorable today.

Activists literally fired rocket-propelled grenades at it while it was being built. It got so bad that they had to shut it down.

They tried building a similar Gen IV reactor recently, ASTRID, that improved tremendously even compared to the advanced Superphénix, and it got cancelled six months ago because of lobbies.

So all that remains are old plants… designs that were essentially initial drafts meant to be replaced by better technology, but that never gets shut down because every replacement gets lobbied against.

Those old designs have awful properties, so yeah, we get Chernobyl and Fukushima. We would have had neither if people had let replace the oldest generation. But because of Greenpeace, people died, and fear rose, when all this was unnecessary.

I don't follow what you're saying about 'GEN IV' reactors. AFAIK, that's reactors of a type that won't be online until at least 2030: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

The primary failure at Fukushima was a sea wall too low for the tsunami that occurred. How is the reactor design relevant?

Also regarding Superphénix, your telling of this seems a bit biased - The rocket attack occurred in 1982 and it was shut down in 1997 by the prime minister due to excessive cost.

As for whether fast breeder reactors are 'still considered next-gen and highly favorable' see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superphénix

"a group of 80 physicists from the Lyon Physics Institute wrote an open letter about the risks of breeder technology, and in February 1975, about 400 scientists signed their name to an expanded letter."

The argument boils down to nuclear is safe and cheap, except that we only have unsafe designs because of ignorant people, it’s expensive because regulation (of the old, unacceptable designs), and waste totally isn’t a problem because someday we’ll figure it out.

I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that the Fukushima reactors require active cooling at all times, and they become dangerous if there is no available electricity, whereas modern reactors can be stable without active cooling.

> I don't follow what you're saying about 'GEN IV' reactors. AFAIK, that's reactors of a type that won't be online until at least 2030

As I mention, Superphénix is a Gen IV, and was finished building in 1981.

> the primary failure at Fukushima was a sea wall too low for the tsunami that occurred. How is the reactor design relevant?

Fukushima melt down because the water destroyed the backup generators. The generators are used to power the pumps. The pumps force coolants to flow, removing heat and therefore avoiding an increase in temperature beyond what is structurally sound.

A typical Gen IV reactor would naturally cool down without need to keep coolant running. For instance, Superphénix immerses the breeder in a liquid sodium coolant that has an effectively unreachable boiling point, tremendous heat capacity, and no corrosion.

Superphénix: During 11 years, the plant had 53 months of normal operations (mostly at low power), 25 months of outages due to fixing technical problems of the prototype, and 66 months spent on halt due to political and administrative issues.

It was then closed early.

>As I mention, Superphénix is a Gen IV, and was finished building in 1981.

No, it isn't and wasn't. The Gen IV FBR types are only GFR, SFR, LMFBR and SCWR.

From the link I provided earlier 'In January 2018, it was reported that "the first installation of the pressure vessel cover of the world's first Gen IV reactor" had been completed on the HTR-PM.'

> , it isn't and wasn't. The Gen IV FBR types are only GFR, SFR, LMFBR and SCWR.

Superphénix is an SFR. Its first version, Phénix, is literally cited in the official Gen IV description of what an SFR is[0].

Historically, it has not been labeled Gen IV, but only because the Gen IV nomenclature didn’t exist at the time.

[0]: https://www.gen-4.org/gif/jcms/c_9361/sfr

> The primary failure at Fukushima was a sea wall too low for the tsunami that occurred

Loss of emergency electricity for the reactors. Needs for large amounts of electricity for cooling of reactors and spent fuel pools. No quick electricity from the outside for the reactors. Hydrogen explosion damaging the building. Cooling only possible with water from the outside. Structural damage due to water on the building. Spent fuel pools high in the building - hard to reach. Lots of spent fuel on the site, because a lack of storage sites. Radioactive water leaking to the environment. Possibility of severe damages on the building by further earthquakes...

There were many many problems with the site.

You're right, thank you.

The technology is better but the costs are too high.

Also (the surviving units at) Chernobyl have been shut down for several years.

The cost is too high? The monetary cost will be quite besides the point once climate change wipes out the coast cities on four continents.

All in cost on solar and wind is cheaper on a per-megawatt basis.

It's a false dichotomy. The options are not 'nuclear or climate change'. You also have numerous renewables and (almost always entirely ignored in these discussions) reduction of energy demand.

reduction of energy demand

Personally I'd go further and say there's no substantial mitigation of climate change without degrowth amongst wealthy nations. Not popular around here of course, being against the religious beliefs prevalent in tech circles.

Japan pretty much imports all of its energy. Its an Island nation with limited flat-land that is densely populated - the Solar production is limited and cannot significantly contribute to its energy needs. Off-shore wind may help, but Japan going forward will assemble one of the most diverse energy portfolios.

Sigh... we really need more functional nuclear plants that aren't built to use technology from the 70s. I suspect that one reason Bernie is against new nuclear plant creation is the absolute debacle that was Vermont Yankee[1]. Even a lot of pro and pro-ish nuclear folks in Vermont got pretty disheartened by the whole affair.

These plants cost insane capital to get running and mismanagement can cause serious problems, so economic pressures tightening belts (or just greed for higher profits) is a constant force fighting against safety... Newer reactor designs contain much safer critical failure outcomes that could allow them to safely operate - even within the constant profit pressure of modern culture.

1. General information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_P...

List of articles from VTDigger on the topic: https://vtdigger.org/tag/decommission-vermont-yankee/

Same thing happened in Germany. This is a really hard problem. I consider myself pretty pro-nuclear but it can never be 100% safe. I can't blame Japan for wanting out after Fukushima, but at the same time there has to be some kind of approach that balances short-term safety against the long-term consequences of carbonization.

Safety is not necessarily the concern, though clearly important. It's also the huge task of decommissioning afterwards. Even "safe" nuclear power stations require the disposal of all sorts of irradiated mundane things like PPE. Contrary to popular belief its not all spent fuel rods. When you dismantle it's even more difficult because you have to use specialised equipment to take buildings apart room by room. We're still not good at decommissioning, it's an active research area (lots of funding though) and it's going to be like this for decades.

There is also the fact that no country on Earth can truly guarantee they can properly store the waste for the timelines required.

Unlike coal power plants, where every country guarantees the radioactive, planet harming, human health harming, output is safely stored for as long as necessary, in a single place we can all easily avoid... right?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

A common argument used to be that at least the amount of uranium is finite, so we can simply plan where to put it. Another interesting aspect is that we only have a few centuries of nuclear power left at current reserve and consumption rates. Uranium is absolutely a non renewable fuel.

This could change with breeder reactors or the various fancy things being researched, but I think there is a public perception that uranium is unlimited.

Uranium mined on earth is a finite quantity - but I think the carve-outs you included in your statement are quite wide. We may find a way to artificially produce a high energy substance to use in place of Uranium, and other high number elements may provide alternatives for the primary fuel - additionally space may be an option to find new sources of Uranium if we really want to stick with it.

"Peak oil" has been a vague concern for a great many years, with the deadline around the corner but that goalpost was repeatedly moved back as previously uneconomic sources became viable - like tar sand extraction. Similarly the available volume of natural gas was increased drastically with refined fracking techniques. All of these things are finite in quantity, but, if we're reliant on it, then efficiency of extraction and conversion will go up - it's actually an interesting contrast to fission, there really isn't that much research going on since the economic investment of each plant is so heavy.

there are other fission fuel sources, thorium for example is a relatively abundant possible fuel

And actually, to this point, molten salt reactors[1] are one of the reactor search paths that looks pretty promising for better safety outcomes. Especially when compared against boiling water reactors[2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor

Absolutely, the key phrase is "current usage and reserves". There will almost certainly be ways developed to stretch or augment or displace uranium as a nuclear fuel.

Thorium salt reactors look promising. But unfortunately there has been lack of political will to fund research and it's only recently that its being investigated seriously again. And this is a common story with virtually all the interesting nuclear technologies. Sounds great, but who's paying for the fundamental research?

My point is that people often compare nuclear and coal as if radioactive ore - which today does mean uranium - is some infinite resource, just because it isn't made of fossils.

The idea of "oh well, we'll just mine more as it gets economic to do so" isn't a sustainable solution to clean energy.

TerraPower claims that their Traveling Wave Reactor could "sustain 80% of the world's population at U.S. per capita energy usages for over a millennium" by using the global stockpiles of depleted uranium [1]. The other upside would be that the new nuclear waste would be dangerously radioactive for a much shorter time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor

No energy source is 100% safe. People die when working on windmills and hydroelectric disasters are way more deadly than nuclear disasters. I think 100% safe is an unreasonable requirement.

I'd much rather be involved in a hydro-electric disaster than a nuclear one though...

Are you really? If you’re involved in nuclear accident, you get to live anywhere from days to months to years to decades. Even in the worst of the worst cases (you literally touched the fuel rod), you will have time to say farewells to the family, perhaps even write a will.

With hydroelectric accident you drown. The end.

I'm not scared of dying. I am scared of dying slowly and painfully as I burn from the inside out.

Hydro disasters can be dams bursts and are no joke! Thousands dead, towns wiped away, stuff like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Machchhu_dam_failure

Luckily not that common especially with well-maintained dams. But it was a huge fear with the Mosul dam in Iraq, which was expected to put over a million lives at risk during the ISIL insurgency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam

I'm not anti-hydro at all! But it's important to understand how powerful these dams are...

GP was saying, I think, that they'd prefer a quick violent water surge over slow radiation poisoning. You can say good bye, but you might have to do nothing else but saying good bye for an awful low of time (perhaps to similarly doomed people).

I don't have data but I assume that most immediate dam breach deaths are from acute force trauma (and then drowning) rather than from just drowning. Less similar to the slow death of being without a boat in the middle of an ocean than to the hypothetical of getting stomped by the Terry Gilliam foot in Flying Circus.

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

Suddenly, Chernobyl doesn't sound that bad anymore.

When you consider that the elephant’s foot nearly contaminated the water table, it sort of does.

if a windmill falls/explodes, the area wouldn't be unliveable and contaminated for centuries...

If a dam fails the area below it can be unlivable for quite some time.

Coal pollution kills more people per day globally[1] than all nuclear disasters combined[2] ever have. Pollution kills between 7500 and 52000 annually just in USA. The range is wide because it's hard to measure.

That's 20/day dead from pollution just in USA.

Nuclear disasters are verified at about 2400 deaths over 41 years. Around 1/week.

Yeah ... crazy hard to make a safe energy source.

1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-...

0 deaths for 3 Mile Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_Nuclear_Gene...

142 deaths for chernobyl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

2203 deaths for Fukushima (2202 of which were due to the evacuation itself) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

PS: the "more per day than nuclear ever" bit comes from The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace

The death from coal pollution is cumulative over time. By that, I mean that they absorb chemicals over time that is believed to have contributed to the dying.

20 / day are not killed in coal plant explosions ever day.

Yet the numbers you compare are from nuclear disasters. As far as I know, there are no numbers for the number of people killed in coal plant explosions and they certainly would not be 20/day

Now, how to count the number of people impacted by Chernobyl.

Do the numbers include the increase in cancer deaths in the north of Norway? The radiation in the moss that reindeer eat meant the meat could not be eaten for quite a long time and it is still not over.

I think that is more like comparing apples to apples, than explosions vs long term exposure.

Banqiao Hydroelectric Dam, China, was breached Aug. 8 1975 killing more than 85,000 people that day. A study conducted by eight Chinese water science experts who probably had access to censored government reports, estimated the number of total dead — from flooding and the resulting epidemics and famine — at 230,000.

https://www.ozy.com/flashback/230000-died-in-a-dam-collapse-...

> Same thing happened in Germany.

Germany turned to coal? It didn't happen. Germany actually turned to renewables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...

... And to Russian natural gas. [1]

For every MW of nuclear that was turned down, a MW of natgas was turned up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:...

Renewables 2019: 46%

Renewables 2000: 6%

Coal + Gas 2019 40%

Coal + Gas 2000 59%

Fact: Germany reduced fossil fuels coal+gas and increased renewables massively. Gas itself has increased.

The graph shows 36% coal and 13% natural gas for 2016, meaning coal and gas for 2016 is 49%.

There is the question of what this would look like if they didn't shut off their nuclear plants. It's my expectation that the nuclear would have replaced coal and natural gas.

EDIT: Changed incorrect 2019 reference to 2016.

https://strom-report.de/strom/

Share of electricity production in Germany in 2019:

Coal 19.5% + 9.5%

Gas 10.5%

19.8 + 9.5 + 10.5 = 39.8%

Interesting. The graphs on that website do not agree with the ones on Wikipedia. For example, for coal in 2016 Wikipedia says ~220 TWh but Strom says ~135 TWh.

EDIT: I see my mistake. I did not add both brown (~135 TWh) and black coal (~100 TWh) together (surprised to see those broken out, but it's a valid difference). In that case, the numbers still do not agree, but at least they are comparable.

[0] https://strom-report.de/strom/#stromerzeugung-deutschland-20...

I don't see it. Strom-report says for 2016:

150 TWh Braunkohle + 110 TWh Steinkohle. For electricity production.

> surprised to see those broken out

Braunkohle has domestic production, Steinkohle no longer.

Another chart... Note some stats are percentage of consumption, others are percentage of generation. These differ due to imports and exports.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

Black coal is basically dead while brown coal might survive economically without carbon pricing.

This assumes that the nuclear reactors could ramp up and down on a daily basis. Germany's reactors weren't capable of load following to the extent required.

In fact brokdorf was taken offline early due to a failure during a load following experiment. It was only ramping by a small percentage of load.

It's more likely that keeping the reactors online would have made the coal phaseout negotiations harder, and made it easier for the big four power companies to prevent renewables from being deployed.

In my view it's more important to build up industry capable of constantly deploying new zero carbon generation, and exporting this technology, than to keep the reactors running for more than 35 years (the phase out agreement).

It did happen. Germany has shut down most of its nuclear power generation and is phasing the rest out by 2022. So far, 'researchers [..] found that nuclear power was mostly replaced with power from coal plants, which led to [..] about a 5 percent increase in emissions.'

https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-poweran...

Here are numbers:

Renewables 2019: 46%

Renewables 2000: 6%

Coal + Gas 2019 40%

Coal + Gas 2000 59%

Are the obnoxious wood pellets that spread fine dust included in the renewables?

Give me nuclear any day.

wood pellets are basically not used for electricity production in Germany.

Those are used for heating.

Phrase it how you will, but this chart shows it clearly.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

Is this supposed to be a joke? How could you make an article about a 5% increase in 2020 when Germany has had the largest drop in emissions since a decade in 2019? It managed a 6.5% drop in total emissions even though the only thing that dropped were the CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. Just think about it. A rising population (influx of refugees), increased emissions in transport, industry, agriculture and somehow they almost managed a 7% drop while simultaneously increasing emissions by 5% in the electricity sector? No, the reality is that emissions dropped massively thanks to the introduction of renewables. Not as fast as many Germans want but it did happen.

That article is just pure bullshit that isn't backed by any numbers. If they had picked 2015-2018 then maybe it would make sense but 2019? That's either pure incompetence or there is an agenda behind the article.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/rising-carbon-pric...

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/transport-and-heating-t...

"Turned to renewables" while burning 36% coal according to your graph.

Yes, if they've always been using coal, I guess technically they didn't "turned to" coal, but how is it better?

Meanwhile neighboring France, with its 70%+ energy generated from nuclear, generates about half as much CO2 per capita as Germany. Right now, and in the foreseeable future.

Germany sits on a huge pile of coal as its main domestic energy source. France doesn't.

Germany's industrialization has largely been driven by coal.

> Meanwhile neighboring France, with its 70%+ energy generated from nuclear, generates about half as much CO2 per capita as Germany. Right now, and in the foreseeable future.

In the foreseeable future France is reducing its share of nuclear and adds renewable. Reason: nuclear is too costly, too slow to build.

Germany has invested in renewable, since that scales better now and in the future. By investing into renewable Germany has also created a huge export market for this technology, that will have a large positive impact.

The same thing did not happen in Germany. The increase in renewables more than made up for the decrease in nuclear.

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

Also interesting, between 2000 and 2010, before Fukushima, Japan had a large increase in coal use.

Japan has been increasing its year over year coal consumption since like, the 70's, and while I'm sure "more coal" isn't a good thing, ~20 Mt a year jumping up to ~21 Mt a year isn't exactly dramatic.

If you happen to take a peek at the coal consumption metrics from around the world, you'll notice a small country a few miles to the west of Japan which currently has the distinct honor of being the only country in the world to measure its annual coal usage in billions of tons instead of millions of tons (although to be fair, India is pretty close to breaking into their first Bt). Thats probably what I'd look into first.

Future generations will equate this logic to that of the people who healed all ailments with leeches.

This is worse than leeches. It's more like arsenic.

Provided that there will be future generations.

There are aiment where leach treatment is suitable, generaly related to restoring blood flow. So mostly frostbite, transplantation and reconnecting of severed tissue (eq. an accidentally cut off ear, etc.)

There are problems where fossil fuels are suitable, related to how dense and stable they are to store. So mostly emergency power and/or remote areas (eq. power's down in a remote mountain village, etc.)

Knowledgeable nuclear folks:

Is there a way of designing safe nuclear plants in safe places in the world and efficiently exporting that energy to other parts within that same region?

Thank you for your answers. I know v little on the subject but am a big believer in the inherent power that nuclear generates and its’ cost effectiveness.

This isn't so much a nuclear question as a power transmission question. Here is a link that could help:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad...

I would look at France's history, they are one of the most nuclear centric countries, with (relatively) few major accidents.

In general, build a not-fancy light water reactor away from the ocean and major fault lines.

We have the most experience with LWRs, and they are pretty safe except for the impact of major natural disasters.

There are other reactor designs, but we really need more experience with them.

Yes let's look at France, closing down 14 reactors and investing in renewables: https://phys.org/news/2018-11-france-nuclear-reactors-macron...

Time and money has ran out for nuclear.

It's a beautiful exercise in circular logic you have going here. If time and money have run out for nuclear, it's only because of the anti-nuclear activism people like you have been ignorantly spouting for decades. Your point is less of an argument and more an instance of gloating.

The anti-nuclear activism in France? You got any proof for that anywhere?

The money run out because the technology itself is expensive, the waste disposal is expensive, the costs for repairs were skyrocketing for years (not to mention the costs for buying energy from Germany because of the break downs) and the costs for decommissioning are not even priced in. Also, they recently shut down research there too because...you probably guessed it: too expensive.

I like it when nuclear fans come in, downvote me and the only comment is full of advertisement phrases and lack of information but somehow it must be about me...

Ok, lets build the modular nuclear reactor designs your international factory is churning out. Surely there must be at least one country on this planet that is doing so? It can't be that every country including china is abandoning nuclear without considering such an obvious design.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=canada+small+modular+reactor&t=ffs...

Once you're past the distance where transmitting electrical power is feasible, you would probably have to store the energy chemically. In principle you could charge gigantic banks of lithium batteries and then ship the batteries, but that would require infeasible (probably ludicrous) amounts of lithium, and lithium batteries are a pretty inefficient way to chemically store energy.

Alternatively, it probably isn't cost-effective with current technology, but on a fundamental level, you could use a nuclear reactor to power a system that chemically recombined atmospheric CO2 and water back into hydrocarbon fuels. Unlike fossil-derived hydrocarbons, these hydrocarbons would be carbon-neutral since you'd be sourcing all the carbon from the same atmosphere that it would eventually be dumped back into. This is probably going to make sense for things like vehicles, aircraft, rockets, etc. long before it makes sense for power generation, but there are definite benefits. We already have all the necessary technology to burn hydrocarbons, meaning that any improvements in synthesizing hydrocarbon fuels can potentially eliminate the need to switch these things over to batteries or whatnot. Which may be extremely helpful if we run into serious resource constraints over lithium, or if we grow increasingly concerned with the environmental byproducts of lithium battery production.

> past the distance where transmitting electrical power is feasible

A 1,100 kV link in China was completed in 2019 over a distance of 3,300 km with a power of 12 GW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

It is feasible to transmit electrical power over far greater distances than most people imagine. For reference Barcelona to Moscow is a 3,000 km flight.

Sure, but if you want to be safe and resilient against earthquakes and other natural disasters, those are potentially going to take out long distance transmission lines, too.

Then build them to be resilient against that.

Sure, whatever. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to build long distance transmission lines, I just wanted to write about a different option because I figured the other subthreads on this post adequately covered the transmission line idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current can reach far, compared to conventional transmission lines, with the added benefit of making the grid less fragile, because it can't be built other than 'smart'.

Another possible bonus of your scenario could be https://phys.org/news/2020-01-chemists-product-nuclear-power... wherin the use of an depleted uranium catalyst could be plugged somewhere into that to produce ethylene.

You can convert electricity, water and CO2 to fuels, such as hydrogen and natgas. These fuels can then be transported.

There are significant energy losses if all you want on the other end is electricity. But not so bad if you're burning it for heat.

In theory a nuclear reactor could produce both electricity and heat to produce synthetic fuels, making it more cost effective than renewables.

For electricity only it looks like renewables are significantly cheaper however.

This is just sad, I thought the regression of civilization described in Foundation by Issac Asimov was far fetched BS.

How wrong I was! This is the exact example he uses in his books.

Sort of, but not really. Asimov worried about us losing the knowledge of nuclear power, and whilst there's a little of that what's really lead to its demise is that as we've learnt more about what's needed to build and operate it over the years it's become less and less viable.

> it's become less and less viable.

isn't it because of some unnecessary regulation and some materials technology being behind.

nuclear fission is the second densest form of energy, It is absolutely worthwhile to improve it for the future humanity, IMHO.

I think most countries and national bodies are just giving up on nuclear all together.

Nuclear seems like the best hope for humanity, really a shame people are so afraid of it. Although, I guess the fear is justified given how many disasters there have been.

https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htm... casts doubt on the future of Nuclear growing anywhere near enough to be a best-hope; scaling it up to world energy production of 15TW seems infeasible - burning through the available Uranium supplies in ~5 years - even scaling it up to 1TW would stretch many resources used in nuclear reactor construction such as rare elements.

I would assume the numbers would look very differently if breader reactors and alternative nuclear fuel sources (thorium) would be considered.

Thorium is mentioned in the article; availability of halfnium, beryllium, and other rare metals for the containment shielding "is a new argument that Abbott puts on the table, which places resource limits on all future-generation nuclear reactors, whether they are fueled by thorium or uranium."

These arguments are silly. It would be like arguing against renewables based on tech from half a century ago.

But fearmongering and people being incapable of understanding just how harmful coal is even in comparison to the worst nuclear disasters (which people frequently overestimate the harm from) has lead to significant regulations and cuts in funding, to the point where you're arguing about tech from the 70s.

There's tons of promising research, and without all of the fear, we would not be talking about uranium based BWR. We would have entire other classes of fuel, and some of the Gen4 designs that have been researched could burn all actinides.

You can create nuclear power from a lot more than just uranium.

As of [Dec 9, 2019], there are nine reactors officially in operation.

Another six reactors have made improvements to meet the new, post-3/11 quake safety standards and have received NRA approval to restart.

What about the future for nuclear power in Japan?

The government’s long-term energy policy for 2030 calls for nuclear power to make up around 20 to 22 percent of the nation’s energy mix, and it is pushing hard for the restart of as many idled reactors as possible.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/09/reference/japan...

Has there been a new development where the Japanese government "abandoned nuclear energy" sometime in the last two months?

Something doesn't add up here.

Why would Japan, who is facing a declining population and hardly has a growing manufacturing industry require twenty new coal plants?

Seems like there might be a conspiracy involved here if this is true. Maybe someone in the Government has a vested interest in pushing this ?

Right now Japan runs on very little Nuclear, I can't imagine it would take 20 new plants to replace a few older dying reactors, they seem to be coping now just fine.

Once the Tokyo Olympics is a disaster from the extreme heat waves and one strong typhoon after another, people won't be happy about this policy. People in Japan are really starting to get concerned about climate change after the lack of snow this season which has seriously affected tourism and is an obvious wake up call for many people in the country side.

How backwards and disappointing this new is.

One thing this article doesn't cover which was a big part of this decision was nuclear waste. Nobody wants nuclear waste sites in their prefectures. There was a plan to use breeder reactors, but that hasn't gone anywhere, and the waste is just piling up at the reactor sites with absolutely no place to dispose it. When the mayor of Osaka even hinted at making an underwater waste site the backlash was huge. I doubt any other politicians will step up after that (nor will their parties allow it). So with waste being in this deadlock state for decades, there's just no way forward for nuclear here.

> this decision

What decision? This appears to be a Bloomberg opinion piece, I see not a single reference or statement from the Japanese government.

"Another six reactors have made improvements to meet the new, post-3/11 quake safety standards and have received NRA approval to restart."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/09/reference/japan...

As recently as December last year reactors had restart approval.

This is the perfect example of cutting off one’s nose to spite the face.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22262467

Environmentalists just can’t get out of their own way. Solar and wind were never viable alternatives to replace nuclear in Japan. It was always going to be coal.

But when good is the enemy of perfect this is what you get. So let’s raise our glasses to the next decade of coal energy in Japan. Congratulations environmentalists, you won! You killed nuclear!

Was it the “environmentalists” who won here?

That’s just a label, and you’re using it to group an unknown mass of people together, assume they have identical views, and criticize them. Let me guess - everything that’s gone wrong in the world is also the fault of “the liberals?”

In reality, Japan had an unfortunate nuclear catastrophe and it scared people, rightfully. The public put pressure on the government to ensure the catastrophe didn’t happen again.

Meltdown scare is the major downside of nuclear outside of waste management. I think a lot of people aware of the science of energy generation consider nuclear a very reliable, green solution compared to the alternatives.

But asking the general public to ignore the big scary elephant in the room is like asking people to stop freaking out about flying on planes (while they have no fear of the objectively less safe alternative of driving).

And that's not to forget the large quantities of contaminated water that are rapidly increasing at the Fukushima site. Now they want to release them into the ocean...

Meltdown is scary, but so are the thoughts of dumping radioactive water into the oceans (and we eat a lot of seafood here in Japan!).

Scary.

Well it's scary in the abstract. Which is why to make a rational assessment you need details (of relevant half-life, volumes, ocean dispersal directions & rates, etc). Hard for us laypersons to assess, so it's easier to be scared (if you're anti-nuclear inclined) or complacent (if you're reflexively pro tech).

in situations of doubt there's the Precautionary Principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

Whether that's relevant depends on the source of the doubt, and the relative payoffs.

The primary source of doubt in this case (ie. something with no numbers attached being thought of as 'scary') is ignorance. If that doubt remained after expert consultation, and the negative payoff from the release had a potential to be high, sure, it would be reasonable to apply the principle.

But only after that process, not before.

Nonsense. "Environmentalists" (a crude & politically inactive umbrella term) can't even get nations to do the minimum necessary for long-term survival (stop catastrophic rates of wetland & forest destruction even in wealthy nations, reduce CO2 emissions, etc, etc, etc). Greens (for example) hardly get elected anywhere outside of a couple of European nations.

It is true there is public resistance to nuclear power, almost everywhere. And the very same citizenries which don't want nuclear power also vote against action on climate change, for the corporatacracy, & for the generalised sacrifice of the biosphere for fake 'economic growth'.

People don't want nuclear power because they are scared of it being near them (rightly or wrongly). This has zip to do with environmentalism.

Nonsense. Fear or nuclear is a result of decades of lobbying and fear mongering by anti nuclear environmentalists.

Nothing to do with them there accidents, eh.

It's a witch!

There also were decades of lobbying and mismanagement that made the fear mongering possible. Nuclear has a bad reputation because it deserves one.

This argument only sounds good if you deliberately omit the geothermal, tidal, and offshore wind potential of Japan.

Offshore wind potential alone is 1600Gw, with 600Gw of that in easy reach.

Tidal is progressing well with some ideal straights locations with consistent, high flow.

I have to wonder if this is a deal with China, since it makes Japan less energy independent and the leading political party is known for nonstop corruption scandals and some ties to China. China will likely be a big seller of that coal and profit off this big time, same as they will with the recent bizarre casino legalization plan.

The world production of coal is dominated by the People’s Republic of China with 47.4% of global production. China also dominates the global consumption of coal with 51.6% of the world demand in 2017.

http://energyatlas.iea.org/#!/tellmap/2020991907

China has no coal to spare to sell to Japan, they need it all. As the world's fastest growing major economy their electricity and thus coal demand will go up, not down.

Most of Japan's electricity is from imported LNG, so doesn't make much difference to independence. They already import this energy.

I'm generally in favor of nuclear power but the overruns and delays for constructing units 3 and 4 of the Vogtle nuclear plant is frustrating, especially since rate payers rather than investors are footing most of the extra cost. Shamefully the exact same thing happened during construction of units 1 and 2.

There's another solution to the problem of the environmental cost of energy production: reduce consumption. Is there anyone who would not agree that we, humans, are over-consuming?

Reducing consumption on a meaningful scale is completely impractical, particularly when you include emerging economies, who need to increase their energy consumption in order to attain a reasonable standard of living.

Japan and Germany should be ashamed of themselves. Tragic.

Funny how quickly this Bloomberg article manages to segue into "Bernie Sanders doesn't want poor people to have electricity"

What’s safer at this point, nuclear or coal?

A meltdown is terrible, burning coal which intensifies climate change is spelling the end of civilization.

I don’t really think it’s optional anymore. Shut the coal down, move with other technologies.

Fukushima reactor design was terrible. Like legit bad. I wonder if open source nuclear power plants plans are the future.

Looking forward to the GitHub issue about the color of the plant's bike shed.

This.

"Open Source" in this context would be largely meaningless, because there's so few people that contribute at that level.

There is quite a few of them actually. Nuclear engineering a legit field of study.

I'm a big advocate of open source but if a nuclear reactor based on an open-source project would be opened close to me, I'd pack up and move as far as I could.

> I'm a big advocate of open source but if a nuclear reactor based on an open-source project would be opened close to me, I'd pack up and move as far as I could.

I'm also a big Open Source proponent, but that is such an absurd claim; first, where the hell are you going to get enriched Uranium to do any of the testing?

I'm pretty sure even in the depths of DNMs any such listings are a honey pot for Interpol or CIA/FBI or something.

The US sends other Nations into abject poverty via sanctions for trying to have civil use of Nuclear Energy, you think they won't level your entire neighborhood if they even suspected anyone playing with a reactor?

Oddly enough, the NRC/NRA let decommissioned plants store used spent fuel in poorly made casks along the CA coast:

https://www.ocregister.com/2019/07/06/the-safe-transfer-of-s...

Open source in this context would mean that the design is open for public review, not that random people get commit rights to the design data. An open source project could easier combine energineering efforts by several professional sources than a design created by a single company though.

I'm sure the people in charge were aware of these problems but what did you expect them to do? Shut it down before anything goes wrong? (didn't happen) Shut everything down after something goes wrong? (did happen) It's not like you can just do `npm update` on your nuclear plant and get the latest version for free.

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