I also feel like the industry would do better if it rallied behind specific new technologies so politicians could rally behind molten salt reactors (or what have you) and placate fears about "old nuclear" designs.
"Coal is responsible for over 800,000 premature deaths per year globally and many millions more serious and minor illnesses."
https://endcoal.org/health/#:~:text=Coal%20is%20responsible%....
from the less biased (depending on the metallicity of your hat) World Health Organization:
"Ambient (outdoor) air pollution in both cities and rural areas was estimated to cause 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide per year in 2016; this mortality is due to exposure to small particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5), which cause cardiovascular and respiratory disease, and cancers.
People living in low- and middle-income countries disproportionately experience the burden of outdoor air pollution with 91% (of the 4.2 million premature deaths) occurring in low- and middle-income countries, and the greatest burden in the WHO South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions. The latest burden estimates reflect the very significant role air pollution plays in cardiovascular illness and death. More and more, evidence demonstrating the linkages between ambient air pollution and the cardiovascular disease risk is becoming available, including studies from highly polluted areas.
WHO estimates that in 2016, some 58% of outdoor air pollution-related premature deaths were due to ischaemic heart disease and strokes, while 18% of deaths were due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute lower respiratory infections respectively, and 6% of deaths were due to lung cancer.
Some deaths may be attributed to more than one risk factor at the same time. For example, both smoking and ambient air pollution affect lung cancer. Some lung cancer deaths could have been averted by improving ambient air quality, or by reducing tobacco smoking."
...
"In addition to outdoor air pollution, indoor smoke from household air pollution is a serious health risk for some 3 billion people who cook and heat their homes with biomass fuels and coal. Some 3.8 million premature deaths were attributable to household air pollution in 2016. Almost all of the burden was in low-middle-income countries. Household air pollution is also a major source of outdoor air pollution in both urban and rural areas."
https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ambient-...
a few notes: Coal has two atmospheric externalities: particulates and C02 emissions. As the WHO notes, it can be difficult to attribute deaths to particulate pollution, and it can be even harder to then attribute that death to some source of particulates (they could be released by coal, or diesel engines, or any number of chemical reactions, though coal is particularly dirty when compared to other modern fuels). Climate change will affect lives, but it may be even more difficult to accurately attribute as a cause of death. Did rising temperatures play a role in recent middle eastern conflicts? Probably. Does this mean that climate change has already killed people in Syria and Yemen? That's a difficult question, at least to me.
Well, considering that an actual nuclear bomb going off on Hiroshima killed "only" <150,000 people, I find it pretty unlikely a falling reactor will kill half of Manhattan. So, there.
There are some areas outside that which is also deemed dangerous, but that's the order of magnitude we're talking about.
For reference, Europe covers an area of about 10 million km^2 (almost 4 million sq mi).
Also note that we don't have a good handle on how lower levels of radiation affects us, and there's discussion around if the prevailing method[2] to estimate exposure effects over-estimates the effects at lower exposures.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model#Cont...
They tunneled under the meltdown to stop it from destroying a huge amount of Europe, and I believe everyone involved in the tunneling died.
However it goes back to how "intermediate" levels of radiation affects us. Even if the water had caused the remaining cores to blow up as well[1] then it's still not clear just what the impact would be[2].
[1]: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/485190
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-kno...
This is WHY I support nuclear, because of their safety record. All the people in all the nuclear accidents (or usage) ever that have died is far less than the yearly death from coal or oil or natural gas. As a death per TWhr it is even lower than solar[0]. So I'm a bit confused by the safety concerns. Having worked with nuclear materials, the reason it is so safe is because the safety levels are set to be much stricter than other energy sources, and by a lot. We've seen coal, fracking, and mining all create zones that won't be habitable for thousands of years.
Now we have reactors that produce thousands of times less waste than previous generation reactors. But you should also consider that the amount of nuclear waste is tiny. Over the last 60 years, the estimated total (radioactive and non-radioactive) waste is estimated to be about 445k tons[1] (324k tons need to be stored). In 2014 the US (just the US) produced 130m (that's million) tons of coal ash[2]. We're talking astronomically big differences in waste size. If we do a basic naive comparison that's coal _in the US_ is producing 18 _thousand_ times as much waste per year than the _global waste_ from nuclear. This is RIDICULOUS.
Saying "nuclear produces more waste and/or more damage to the environment and/or people" just signals one not paying attention to the damage caused by other resources. Sure, nuclear is scary, but the data says it is one of the safest, cleanest, and best sources of energy for our environment. And that's why people get up in arms about it, because the data is there and easy to find. And unfair comparisons are being made left and right.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-amount-of-nuclear-wa...
There is no consensus about it.
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...
> The book was not peer reviewed by the New York Academy of Sciences.Five reviews were published in the academic press, with four of them considering the book severely flawed and contradictory, and one praising it while noting some shortcomings.
What you consider as a consensus forms, in fact, a debate.
This is not "some researchers publish, are criticized by the book, then the scientific community condemns the book, forming a consensus".
Nope.
It is in fact "some researchers publish, are criticized by the book, then the criticized researchers try to debunk the book, then the authors of the book answer to them".
One of the critics is Monty Charles. His own work, done for the UNSCEAR (a pro-nuke UN agency) in 2006, is heavily criticized in the book. He then criticized this book.
Proof: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245759797_United_Na...
Another critic was published by Mona Dreicer, who worked for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (another UN pro-nuke agency) and the book criticized her work.
Proof: https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/38-3
Another one is M. Balonov, long-time contributor of reports published by UN-agencies, and the book criticizes his work.
Proof: https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/
S. Jargin, another author of a negative review, sees flaws in each and every publication criticizing a powerful industry. For example asbestos is in his opinion not a concern and its use unduly prohibited.
Proof: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321527973_Asbestos_...
Here is another sample of his research (is it necessary to further comment?) : https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sergei_Jargin/publicati...
His 'debate' with Rosamund Katz and Janette Sherman is surrealistic. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278732482_Who_Is_Af...
The book authors' credentials seems pretty clear to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...
If I had a dollar for every time a pro-nuclear person (not that I'm not) ignored that, or peak uranium...
Spent fuel rods can't be used anymore because about 5% of the uranium has been converted into elements that slow down the reaction. The remaining uranium is still good.
Due to a presidential order by Carter, we waste that uranium. The process for recovering the unused uranium (called "reprocessing") is vaguely similar to the process for making bombs. We'd rather not have lots of countries making bombs. The idea was that by not reprocessing our own fuel, we could set an example and hope that somehow that would keep other countries from making bombs. Yes, that is terrible logic.
Japan does the reprocessing. We could do it too, and it wouldn't suddenly arm the world with nukes.
If the fuel is reprocessed, we could cut our need to mine uranium and cut our need to store radioactive material. It's about a 95% reduction. The uranium itself is the long-lived portion, so we'd clear up that problem too.
We could also recover rare-earth elements from the spent fuel. This is the only practical way to create rare-earth elements.
Of course, that doesn't get rid of 100% of the waste. We don't really have a shortage of great places to store it. The worries about burial are blown way out of proportion. All of the proposed facilities for burial are ridiculous overkill.
> https://orano.group/en/nuclear-expertise/from-exploration-to...
However, I think our optimism regarding the political situation is more misplaced than our optimism regarding the tech.
Here, you criticize Carter's order and present an alternative. A great one, even: Not having the order in place and doing the reprocessing.
But that's not reality, right? It's more likely that we'll have Carter's order and some new dumb order in the next few years. Nuclear is inherently scary and will always be politicized.
I agree somewhat regarding the overblown burial worries. But I could make a really great commercial out of the disaster scenarios involved there. They'll never not be convincing arguments.
Radiation is a silent killer. Nuclear weapons are the worst thing humanity has made. Not being afraid of nuclear power is rational only within a very narrow discussion window, one which most people simply cannot see through.
I guess my frustration here is that the pro-nuclear side constantly uses arguments that don't work and casually dismisses being afraid of the smallest and largest deadly thing. There's lots of "just" and "most" and it all feels so hand-wavy.
"We checked the numbers, we've got the worst thing under control." It's just not a convincing argument to most people. I don't know how to fix this, but it's definitely not another politicized pro/anti divide.
> our optimism regarding the political situation is more misplaced than our optimism regarding the tech
Yeah, living in Germany I am afraid this is going absolutely nowhere. I've given up on seeing nuclear energy help us even a little bit in this emergency, but I do try to still inform people about how out of proportion the fatalities from coal and the fatalities from fission power really are. We're shutting down nuclear before coal? Environmentalists in Germany are handing out stickers for it and you see them on literally every third car or building. It's ludicrous. I've never seen a disinformation campaign more effective than this. It's like fear of flying but without the people claiming it's safe or faster than traditional methods. Not a one in Germany; no one I've spoken to was even neutral about nuclear. Next, when they realize their safety argument isn't logical, they turn to costs. What do they think the costs of extreme weather events, ecosystem collapse, and mass relocations will be?!
I just hope that, with better information, they will at least realize that we have a bigger problem than nuclear power, even if it doesn't mean they become neutral or in favor of building a new nuclear plant to help with the transition.
1. Fuel has to cool in a pond for years (first opportunity for disaster.) 2. Fuel has to be dissolved (second opportunity for disaster.)
Also, Reagan lifted Carter’s ban, but Corporate didn’t lift a finger because no subsidy was given (as usual...)
The density is so high that the US has accumulated just 83,000 tons over several decades operating nuclear power plants:
> https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...
That may sound a lot but compared to coal or, in fact, any other type of power generating plant, the amount is absolutely tiny.
In France, the whole waste of the country's nuclear plant operation fits into one hall:
> https://twitter.com/Orano_usa/status/1182662569619795968
What helps in reducing the waste by large margin is reprocessing the fuel and re-using it in fast reactors as explained here:
so nuclear creates less nuclear waste than PV, wind, or geothermal?
Maybe geothermal creates less waste, since you just need to pipe water into the ground and drive a steam turbine. But most of the world doesn't have access to geothermal power.
Source: https://ree.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/themes/pressions-e...
The advantage of nuclear here, arguably, is that the waste is at least somewhat containable.
By comparison, what is the long term storage plan for fossil fuel emissions?
Q: what is the long term storage plan for fossil fuel emissions?
A: Trees
By comparison we already have a nuclear waste facility built in the US, though it's use was cancelled by Congress (and it wouldn't make sense to put spent fuel there yet, since we would want it for reprocessing), and another site is under construction in Finland [3].
"Bury it underground, in an area with no aquifer" isn't hand wave. Storing nuclear waste really is that simple. The main concern for uranium is water contamination. It's actually a prevalent due to naturally occurring uranium [4]. Place the waste in an area with no aquifer and there is no risk of contamination even in the event that the containment vessels deteriorate.
1. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/07/how-t...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
4. https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/120396/uranium-contaminat....
But it's much better to put it in a known location where it's away from water sources. Naturally occurring uranium is actually a fairly common pollutant in drinking water, putting the uranium back where it came from isn't always a good choice when there are better alternatives.
Note that this is not special to nuclear materials; it's true for a good chunk of industrial chemistry in general as well.
> peak uranium
I'll need to look up some more up-to-date numbers, but going by https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_162.shtml, there's more than enough for couple centuries (and new reactor designs can make one-two orders of magnitude better use of what's available).
But even if we only had 100 years worth of nuclear fuel reserve, that's more than enough to fix the climate problem and fully develop renewables (possibly including orbital collectors). Or who knows, maybe even fusion.
Hmm interesting. Where has this happened on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima? I can't thinking of any exclusion zones in once populated areas caused by industrial chemicals. Is the fact that plants are built near populated areas a factor?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_environmental_disaster...
> Is the fact that plants are built near populated areas a factor?
The thing with big plants in general is that even if they're built in remote areas (like Chernobyl), you want the thousands of plant employees housed nearby, which also means housing their families, who now all need food and healthcare and education and other services, and suddenly you end up with a pretty large town right next to that plant (like Pripyat). And such towns will draw further investments, making once remote area quite populated.
On top of that, power generation unfortunately is pretty special wrt. range of potential contamination because of energies involved - so when things go bad, they go with a bang. That's why I usually mention industrial chemistry when discussing nuclear waste, as this is more of an apples to apples comparison. But then, my mind is often drawn to the oil sands in Canada - particularly to the artificial lakes storing highly carcinogenic toxic waste.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Athabasc...
Now imagine what would happen if that kind of thing ever spilled for some reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
There are also plenty of cities that remain populated despite immense pollution, because of no economic alternatives. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norilsk#Pollution
Hydroelectricity also renders large areas of land uninhabitable due to submersion. Granted, that's a deliberate and planned event. But collapse of dams have displaced tens of millions of people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
Meanwhile burning fossil fuels as designed is going to make the entire planet uninhabitable. It's already unsafe to eat seafood very often because of the mercury content. Smog blankets many cities causing numerous health issues. I haven't even touched on global warming yet...
> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/20/national/beach-...
> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/05/national/evacue...
Looking at the radiation levels, most places are already back to save levels:
> https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/site/portal-english/en02-01...
You have to keep in mind that nuclear contamination can actually be washed off. And the radiation is actually very useful in the cleaning process because you can easily use a detector to safely determine whether your cleaning operation was successful.
Even Chernobyl is mostly safe these days unless you stay at the hotspots for too long.
You could say the exact same thing about a house fire.
https://www.businessinsider.com/chernobyl-volunteers-divers-...
Ignoring the fact that meltdown is not even possible in modern designs, even in a Fukushima total power loss scenario, note that the Bikini atoll is safe to visit at this point and it was the site of repeated nuclear testing. It's hard to see how nuclear power plants, which are designed to avoid any possibility of having a critical mass, could do worse than what was done to the atoll. So becoming uninhabitable for "thousands of years" would pretty difficult, even if someone were trying to do that intentionally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll#Current_habitable...
> peak uranium...
And what of peak oil then? Didn't that happen already?
Also, what's the alternative? We stop using energy to make ammonium, let agriculture scale down to nothing, and leave people starving as food production plummets?
There's only so much of a solar energy budget for the planet, then we have to get it from off world (with transport costs) or use up consumable sources already on the planet like coal, nuclear, etc. The universe loses the fight with entropy eventually no matter what we do, the only question is how long we last.
So we have to have some time horizon for making our decisions, because decisions that are perfect now and forever isn't an actual option for us here and now.
It's not entirely true (they meltdown, but have a drainage tank which is supposed to provide containment).
They remain experimental.
https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Molten_salt_reactor#...
"Core damage incident" instead of "meltdown"?
I'm good with "criticality incident", "core damage incident", or any other descriptive term that makes it clear that it's a deviation from normal behavior. Using a negative term for a non-critical incident is just stacking the deck against the technology.
You realize this claim (of molten salt reactors) is mostly untrue, right?
It's true in the sense that the reactor itself can be drained into a drain tank, but this itself remains highly radioactive and liable to leakage.
It also produces radioactive Tritium which is difficult to contain.
See https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Molten_salt_reactor#...
https://www.powermag.com/blog/molten-salt-reactor-claims-mel...
> There's only so much of a solar energy budget for the planet, then we have to get it from off world
I think the 5 billion years until that is projected to happen gives us a little bit of time to work on solutions.