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Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

Correct. The right questions to ask is not 'But what about Chernobyl' (which is unlikely in most countries) but instead:

What about decommissioning costs?

Fukushima is a good example of costs from a normal accident we can expect from time to time. Costs are at 200b USD and rising, and they still don't have the reactor site under control.

Even normal decommissioning is incredibly expensive and usually covered by governments and ignored in the costs of electricity.

https://nuclear-news.net/2020/09/24/9-1-2-years-after-meltdo...

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/16/fukushimas-final-costs-...

Nuclear fusion (if we ever get to commercial production), will make nuclear much more attractive again though and cut decommissioning costs a bit (though there is still the question of how to deal with reactor parts).

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"What about Chernobyl" is usually outright dismissed as being an edge case owing its disaster to the Soviet regime, more concerned over image than safety.

The real important question, as you aluded to, is "What about Fukushima" - a disaster occuring in a rich, western nation, Japan; Japan is a nation generally seen as being on the leading edge of technology. If a disaster can occur in Japan, it can feasibly happen anywhere in the west.

Of course the probability is never 0,00%. But it is obvious that the Fukushima accident happened due to geological factors. The same power plant would hum away nicely in Germany to this day, where there is little to no seismic activity and none on the scale of what happened in Fukushima.

But unforeseen factors are always a component of accidents. Otherwise it wouldn't be an accident. Of course boost is planning for this to happen.

The point is that it does happen despite planning. It won't happen in the same way in Germany but something else can happen.

But the problems were very much foreseen!

The chief architect of the Fukushima plant tried hard to convince his bosses that the wall which protects the plant is not tall enough to protect against rare but possible huge tsunami waves, but hasn't been heard. He turned out to be right.

The plant also had emergency cooling pumps, but the pumps were connected incorrectly. This was unforeseen, I can give you that.

In any case, the Fukushima disaster caused one direct human death, or something like that.

In general, modern nuclear stations are no less reliable than fossil fuel plants, and only freak accidents, like a major earthquake and a tsunami, or personnel knowingly switching off all safety systems (the Chernobyl case) lead to catastrophic failures. This still can and should be improved upon, by using reactors with inherently self-contained designs, lack of high-pressure components within the reactor, etc.

That makes it even worse though! If the problems were foreseen but willfully ignored.

It goes to show that even in developed countries corruption happens and this is a major liability to nuclear plants. If it can happen there it can happen anywhere.

And deaths aren't the only measure of accidents. It also caused major pollution.

Were the builders of Fukushima unaware of the geology of Japan?

I would argue that they were aware and still got hit by the risk. I don’t see “well, that specific failure won’t be what gets us in Germany” as especially compelling.

It’s hard to believe they took it fully into consideration. Or more likely someone just said ‘fuck it, just build it’ at some point.

Given the costs involved however, I find it hard to imagine tepco will make the same mistake again in the next 50 years or so.

Your first paragraph is exactly my point. What suggests that the plants being contemplated elsewhere in the world won't be subject to the same "fuck it, just built it" decision-making, whether that's around site safety, engineering, fuel handling, waste disposal, and other topics? (Especially because, at some point, you do have to actually say "judging everything, let's build it" which can look to opponents exactly like "fuck it, just build it".)

(Side note: I am pro-nuclear for baseline load in general. I'm also a realist about how likely problems are to repeat/ryhme.)

They planned for a certain level of tsunami/earthquake, but this particular tsunami exceeded norms.

They could have protected against this, but siting it near the coast is desirable for cooling purposes too (and has been helpful in some ways for cleanup as they've been able to dispose of waste in the ocean), so there are conflicting concerns here.

Things fail from time to time, if that thing failing is catastrophic, it gets very expensive to ensure 100% reliability.

Shoved the critical electrical stuff below the sea level... It's not like the reactors have fallen into a sudden volcano.

Totally unrelated but why the land of rising sun (cannot go east than that) is being called a western nation.

Western as in democratic, high income, economically prosperous, broadly supportive of human rights, etc.

A better term for that is "developed country".

Not really. That implies that a) there's some kind of objective end state for a country and b) they've reached it.

I definitely don't think "western" was the right term for it.

Another chilling moment when I realise that I'm way too old and can perceive slow changes of things (like the meanings of words). Please don't do that.

I highly doubt you are old enough that western did not always have that meaning for the majority of your life. It's a holdover from the Cold War, after all.

“West” is a vague notion that is neither coherent nor consistent. It’s particularly annoying because it’s named after a geographic concept, even though the selection criteria (as much as it exists) is socio-political.

The big giveaway here is that we now consider the great Greek writers as part of the “Western Canon”, while the Greeks and the Romans of the time considered the Greeks to be eastern. Oh and the byzantines are considered mostly considered to be Greek speaking easterners, even though they considered themselves to be Romans and the name “Byzantine Empire” was created long after it fell.

It’s a very confusing thing.

Can you show me the costs associated with decommisioning a hydro electric dam?

This is a hurdle people are only throwing in front of nuclear plants. Nuclear plants can run indefinitely if maintained - just like all major infrastructure.

I think we should be building nuclear everywhere, but it's important to realise the life of a nuclear power plant is between 20 to 40 years.

https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/29402043133.pdf

> It is evident that the average age of power reactors in the IAEA's Member States is increasing. (See accompanying graphs.) By 2000, more than 50 nuclear plants will have been providing electricity for 25 years or longer. Most nuclear power plants have operating life-times of between 20 and 40 years.

> Ageing is defined as a continuing time-dependent degradation of material due to service conditions,including normal operation and transient conditions. It is common experience that over long periods of time, there is a gradual change in the properties of materials. These changes can affect the capability of engineered components, systems, or structures to perform their required function. Not all changes are deleterious, but it is commonly observed that ageing processes normally involve a gradual reduction in performance capability.

> All materials in a nuclear power plant can suffer from ageing and can partially or totally lose their designed function. Ageing is not only of concern for active components (for which the probability of malfunction increases with time) but also for passive ones, since the safety margin is being reduced towards the lowest allow-able level

Surely the same aging effects also affect dams too, though?

The construction materials becoming brittle due to constant bombardment with nuclear emissions? Not noticeable in a hydroelectric dam. The materials becoming brittle and breaking down due to constant exposure to heat? Steam does not normally factor in hydroelectric production.

Nuclear ages faster then thermoelectric, which ages faster than hydroelectric. It's a tradeoff.

Not at all.

The aging effects are largely from radiation and heat.

This study is from 1987. Might it it be slightly outdated?

This article from 2009 addresses the lower age estimates from the 1980’s era, saying reactors could last for 80 years or even more.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-power-pla...

In theory, there is no difference between theory and reality. In practice, there is.

FTA :

"We think we can replace almost every component in a nuclear power plant," said Jan van der Lee, director of the Materials Ageing Institute (MAI), a nuclear research facility inaugurated this week in France and run by the state-owned nuclear giant EDF.

EDF is state owned just as much as nuclear reactor construction company => I wouldn't trust that guy

This is a bit of an edge case. Who else can you ask about the practicality of replacing reactors, other than people who replace reactors?

This study is strongly influenced by when nuclear reactors were built. Of course there aren't any 100-year-old nuclear plants; the technology isn't that old.

Some components certainly do degrade due to use, but it's entirely feasible to reuse large portions of the old plant by replacing the components that have degraded.

> I think we should be building nuclear everywhere, but it's important to realise the life of a nuclear power plant is between 20 to 40 years.

This is simply untrue. Just look at French fleet. 40 years is minimum of their planned lifetime, and they probably will be operated for 50 or maybe even 60 years.

>there is still the question of how to deal with reactor parts

I don’t think this has ever been a question. Put them in a shed for 100 years then recycle the metal.

I would say the largest inherent danger with fusion reactors is the prospect of a tritium leak. D-D fusion reactor designs are not on the horizon. They are a “probably, one day” option. So for now we are aiming for D-T operation. All signs point towards a functional MCF reactor needing to be pretty large and, by extension, have a large recirculating stored energy (roughly 100 MJ). Tokamaks face the prospect of disruptions that slam all of that stored energy into the wall. An event like this would breach the reactor and leak the tritium fuel. The entire reactor and tritium processing facility should be behind a bioshield that shouldn’t leak, but the risk is there and real. It takes extreme care to prevent dire scenarios.

Stellarators don’t have the chance of disruptions, but would still need to rely on tritium.

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