I wish one person who mentioned the long game would also mention that nuclear accidents can make a place uninhabitable for thousands of years.
If I had a dollar for every time a pro-nuclear person (not that I'm not) ignored that, or peak uranium...
If I had a dollar for every time a pro-nuclear person (not that I'm not) ignored that, or peak uranium...
> 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.
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
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.
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...