Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

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Germany has increased the use of renewable energy in a decade from 6 to 16% for the generation of electrical energy. The laws and regulation have been put in place: the EEG. This law has been copied world-wide by dozens of countries.

The goal is to be at 100% with renewable energy in 2050. The closing down of the nuclear power plants is only one milestone on that way. The fossil-based plants will be reduced over time, too. As a bridge technology gas power plants are seen which make it possible to use heat and electricity. Those have an extremely high degree of efficiency. The gas supply is there. New pipelines are being built currently.

Closing down the nuclear power plants is one goal. They are extremely expensive and they need huge amounts of money which we need to invest in renewable energy technology. Also the nuclear industry favors the big corporations who prevent market mechanisms and try to undermine any new energy source. They are also not flexible enough to be used in a future energy mix.

Given that the goal is to go fully to renewable energy in the next 40 years, the nuclear power plants have to go first. The acceptance for them in the German society is also at an all time low.

Keeping old nuclear power plants running is not expensive, building them is expensive. Dismantling nuclear power plants is also expensive but there is no way around those costs, anyway.

See Fukushima for the cost of running nuclear power plants.

The cost of the running power plant is deferred also to a future which then needs to deal with the waste from burned fuel.

Germany has no solution how to deal with the fuel.

The cost for that adds up every day.

How many people died at Fukushima ? 1

How many people die every year because of coal plants working perfectly normally ? 30 000 in the US alone.

See http://squid314.livejournal.com/292620.html

Nuclear waste is a bigger problem indeed, but using Fukushima as an argument against nuclear is both dishonest and stupid.

First, the Fukushima case is not yet closed. Tepco told us today (faz.net), that the three damaged reactors are stiil out of control, at least until end of this year. We will see, what will happen.

Second: don't you ignore the risk of how many people _could_ die, in the case of a big disaster? That would have global conequences for quite some days (ironic).

Even if nobody would die under normal conditions (nuclear and coal), the consequenences of a (more or less probable) big catastrophe (height of fall) are the main counter argument against nuclear power.

>« Even if nobody would die under normal conditions (nuclear and coal »

Except the point of what I was saying and of the link I gave is precisely that under "normal conditions", people die due to coal, whereas it is not the case with nuclear plant.

The reason is that all a nuclear plant releases in the air is water.

> « the consequenences of a (more or less probable) big catastrophe (height of fall) are the main counter argument against nuclear power. »

You must take into account the odds of a probable disaster, such as an earthquake in Japan, but not the consequences of any disaster. It's just unreasonable to assume an improbable disaster will happen. You end up renouncing any technology by thinking that way.

Obviously, Nuclear power plant must be built with security as the main concern. Obviously, a nuclear reactor can be very dangerous. But refusing to use nuclear plants, which are much more efficient than classic ones and a good long-term investment, is idiotic.

We're far more likely to die in a car accident than because of radio-activity, or any other disaster that's on television. Yet, noone is suggesting that a country should be "car free".

Until a better, safer replacement is found, we'll use cars, and nuclear plants.

Until a better, safer replacement is found, we'll use cars, and nuclear plants.

I'd wager the change of mind will happen rather quickly after the first terrorist crashes a plane into an US nuclear facility.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZjhxuhTmGk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7eI4vvlupY

Impressive video. However, I wonder if that test would look as good with a real passenger jet.

According to wikipedia the empty weight of a Phantom F4 is 30,328 lb.

The empty weight of a Boeing 737 is up to 80,000 lb (almost 3x as much). The empty weight of an A380 is 610,000 lb (20 times as much).

Would that the walls of the containment area on the reactors in Fukushima were that thick.

I'm pretty sure a big earthquake followed by a tsunami is more damaging than a plane crash.

The recent review of reactor safety here in Germany found that not a single site would survive a large passenger aircraft crashing into it.

http://www.bz-berlin.de/aktuell/deutschland/kein-deutsches-a...

I don't read German.

>« not a single site would survive a large passenger aircraft crashing into it. »

Now, what does that even mean ? If surviving means "keep on working", obviously not.

If it means destruction of the protection layers of concrete around the reactor, it's more dangerous, but just because the reactor is open, it doesn't mean the radioactive material is going to fly away.

just because the reactor is open, it doesn't mean the radioactive material is going to fly away.

How is the radiation supposed to be contained when your reactor just turned into a burning pile of rubble?

That's exactly why it's dangerous to anyone near the plant, as opposed to a Chernobyl-style or Fukushima-style disaster, where radioactive material is disseminated.

So, your reactor was just turned into a burning pile of radioactive rubble by having something like 150,000 lb of mass smashed into it.

And you say radioactive material will not disseminate?

Not on a comparable scale.

Besides, reactors are a small target that's mostly underground. That should limit the damage.

In any case, may I remind you we're discussing a very hypothetical scenario ?

Not on a comparable scale.

Excuse me? As far as I know the damage to the containment was very limited in Fukushima. And they were very worried about maintaining the cooling in the damaged buildings.

In a plane crash scenario we might be talking about no containment and no cooling at all. Instead we might be left with a pile of radioactive rubble and a kerosine fire.

After all you could be right that the scale would not be comparable...

In any case, may I remind you we're discussing a very hypothetical scenario?

Well, 9/11 did happen, and reactor walls are not built to resist a plane crash. So what exactly is hypothetical about the scenario?

As far as I know the damage to the containment was very limited in Fukushima

Right. Except water from the ocean was going in and out through the few tiny holes, and maybe that was the main problem.

See, uranium doesn't fly away when the reactor is open, but of course, if irradiated water goes right back in the ocean, there's dissemination on a bigger scale than Chernobyl.

« 9/11 did happen »

A huge scale terrorist attack like this is statistically less likely than an earthquake in Japan.

Right. Except water from the ocean was going in and out through the few tiny holes, and maybe that was the main problem.

Where are you getting that from? Afaik they flooded the buildings with seawater on purpose, as a means of cooling. They did that because it appeared to be the lesser of two evils.

See, uranium doesn't fly away when the reactor is open

It does seem to fly pretty well when you add fire. At least that's what the 2600 squaremile no-go zone in chernobyl would suggest.

statistically less likely than an earthquake

That may be true, yet it's bound to happen eventually, right?

How would you rate the socio-economic impact of a single such event in contrast to, say, 9/11?

Chernobyl had no core containment, it used graphite as a moderator, and it wasn't merely fire that disseminated radioactive material, it was a big explosion. Also, the director was incompetent. Note that the impact of Chernobyl remained rather localised. 2600 square miles may sound big, but on a European scale, it's not much, and Europe is the smallest continent.

If you're telling me poor design and incompetence are bad and especially dangerous in security-sensitive contexts, I agree. So ?

Flooding the reactors was indeed the lesser of two evils.

« That may be true, yet it's bound to happen eventually, right? »

No. It may happen.

Chernobyl had no core containment

Can we agree that any given reactor will likely have no core containment either, after a passenger jet crashed into it?

it was a big explosion

Likewise can we agree that there will be a big explosion when a plane crashes into a reactor?

the director was incompetent

And that is unheard of in other reactors?

on a European scale, it's not much

So, which of these areas would you like to evacuate permanently?

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/power-reactors-map-sm....

No. It may happen.

I wonder where you're taking your optimism from. Yes, terrorism may disappear. But it doesn't seem too likely, does it?

Can we agree that any given reactor will likely have no core containment either, after a passenger jet crashed into it?

No. A broken core containment still provides some protection.

I take my optimism from the fact that I'm not too impressed by things that have little chance from happening, which prevents me from being scared of meteor rains, terrorist attacks, or whatever disaster you can think of.

To put things in perspective, again :

There are much less nuclear power plants than there are dangerous pesticide or fertiliser factories. It is also more likely that a pesticide or fertiliser factory will be poorly maintained.

And yet, people who want to shut down nuclear plants are much more numerous and listened to than people who want to shut down chemical plants.

The only reason people are afraid of nuclear power is that it is associated with those bombs so powerful nobody ever dared to use them in a war since 1945.

There is no rational reason to shut down nuclear plants, and get rid of an energy source that's more efficient and cleaner than any other we know of.

A broken core containment still provides some protection.

Have you seen what a plane crash does to a structure?

As far as I know most reactor walls are not hardened to withstand a plane-crash. That means you wouldn't end up with a "broken core containment". You'd end up with a pile of rubble.

not too impressed by things that have little chance from happening

That's a valid opinion. But I think it's an equally valid opinion that terrorist attacks are not as rare as meteor rains. And that terrorists will specifically target these facilities.

The only reason people are afraid of nuclear power is that it is associated with those bombs

Personally my concerns are not related to the bombs.

I merely think the economic equation that makes nuclear plants appear cost-effective will collapse over the first such event.

Your average nuclear plant is said to be profitable to the tune of $500mio USD/yr. The total cost of the chernobyl disaster is estimated at around $235 billion dollars, and counting.

That means all US nuclear plants combined (circa 100) have to run for 10 years in order to break even with a single disaster. And that's under the assumption that a meltdown in the middle of the USA wouldn't be quite a bit more expensive than a disaster in the middle of Ukrainian nowhere.

Thus my conclusion is that the facilities will be shutdown rather quickly when and if such an event occurs.

reactors are a small target that's mostly underground

Not sure where you are getting this idea, but it's not true. The reactors are usually above ground, and they aren't small at all.

Compared to the WTC, it's quite small, and easy to miss from above. It's quite telling that most people identify a nuclear plant by its cooling towers, something that isn't a specific part of their design.

Weeks after Fukushima alleged terrorists were found making their way towards Sellafield in the UK. The obvious viability of this hypothetical attack became apparent after March 11th.

Yes, and ?

Nothing happened.

The fact is that terrorists want to target nuclear plants.

What's unlikely is that any of them should succeed. Terrorism isn't that easy.

It seems about as unlikely as someone flying planes into the world trade center...

But gladly terrorism isn't that easy, right?

Yes, it is probably more unlikely than a big earthquake followed by a tsunami.

How many terrorist attacks of that scale have been successfully conducted ?

Over the last twenty years, only one.

During the same period, there has been a dozen of large-scale earthquakes.

And as I said, you're fare more likely to die from a car accident than from any big disaster you see on television.

Over a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everything drops to zero - and nuclear has a pretty long timeline.

I can hardly imagine a bigger catastrophe than Fukushima... Now, the following facts are from my memory, so they might not be absolutely accurate, but I believe the points stand.

- It was hit by an earthquake with a magnitude 1 point higher than it was built for, and it was perfectly OK.

- Only the following tsunami damaged it, and only because it interrupted the power supply of the cooling pumps.

Let us not forget that the power plant was 20 or so years old. New plants would no doubt be much safer.

They were lucky at Fukushima.

There were no substantial aftershocks that damaged the plant, nor were there any secondary tsunamis.

I can hardly imagine a bigger catastrophe than Fukushima

That's a failure of imagination. Imagine if a comparatively minor secondary tsunami had hit after the containment vessel had been breached. That could spread highly radioactive materials just abotu anywhere - and, worse - could have made it too dangerous to get close enough to the plant for the for the fire engines (!) to spray water to cool the reactors.

'only'?

6 reactors were affected. Four of them are wrecked. There are full pools of spent and active fuel exposed to sunshine.

Tepco had twenty years to build higher walls against a Tsunami. There were already enough complaints about the weak security before it got hit.

That there are earth quake in the sea causing Tsunamis is nothing new for Japan.

They failed.

You might be surprised to hear that there are also Tsunamis in North Europe.

Expenses, not deaths, were the topic of discussion.

We're talking full cost accounting and deaths are a large component in that. (well depends on how many deaths there are of course, in coal plants they're a big part).

Death is the ultimate expense.

In that case, Fukushima is even less relevant to the discussion.

I don’t think the cost for dealing with waste adds up. It stays (pretty much) constant: High fixed costs and very low variable costs.

Dismantling a nuclear power plant doesn’t get more expensive just because they are running longer. When it comes to waste, finding a site and building the infrastructure is expensive, the cost of dealing with additional waste from letting the plants run longer has to be negligible.

Whether or not we have a solution to deal with the fuel is pretty much irrelevant. We have to find a solution anyway, there is no way around it. We might as well keep the plants running longer.

we don't have even a viable intermediate solution. Which would have to be built.

The spent fuels are full and provide a new danger. See Fukushima on the effects of full spent fuel pools in times of an nuclear accident. Reactor five had also recently a loss of cooling for it.

Currently much of the used fuel is stored on site. This has never been planned, costs additional money, and provides new dangers.

Plus, for a storage solution it definitely makes a huge difference if we have to store the nuclear waste of ten reactors running ten years or of twenty reactors running 50 years. The cost is not the same.

This need is there whether we stop in 2022 or 2032. It doesn’t make a difference.

Also: High fixed costs, low variable costs. It’s as simple as that.

Low variable cost? What?

The current experimental Asse II site already cost us BILLIONS of Euros. Plus it is fucked up and needs to been evacuated for a few additional billions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Asse_II

Those are fixed costs. The interesting question is what the marginal cost of adding another kg of nuclear waste is.

It's not just the nuclear fuel that needs storing you know: http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/w/waste-radioac...

Each plant produces a huge amount of waste each year it runs, all of various impact levels, but all of which has a cost to store or process. So yes, there may only be a small amount of extra direct fuel waste, but there is a lot more than that to consider.

Sure, but that gets us no closer to knowing the marginal cost of one additional kilo of nuclear waste (of any description). My suspicion is that the marginal cost is quite low.

All I'm saying is this: You likely can't take the average cost of safely storing one kilo of waste given current levels of waste and calculate the additional cost that results from letting the reactors run a few more years. This is econ 101. I like to use newspapers to explain the concept: The cost of making 10,000 newspapers in nearly the same as the cost of making 20,000 newspapers. This is because nearly all the money that has to be spent is fixed (wages for journalists and staff, buildings and machines, …). The variable costs are very low in comparison (letting the presses run a little longer, additional paper, ink, …).

There is also a variable cost in allowing the old designs to continue to run that you are not accounting for.

Building, dismantling and taking care of waste all costs money and generates no revenue. (Building a nuclear power plant at least brings with it potential future revenue. Power companies have no interest in dismantling plants or taking care of waste, it doesn't make them money.) Running the plant also costs money but also generates revenue. Especially old nuclear power plants (which are already written off) are profitable as hell. Why do you think are power companies interested in keeping them running as long as possible?

Every additional day those nuclear power plants run decreases their cost/kWh.

They are interested in keeping them running as long as possible because that is where their pay checks come from. Every additional day they run increases the risk of catastrophic failure, that is the point I am making. I don't see them as a valid or viable enterprise. The cost/revenue model of accounting is really stretched when it comes to dealing with the timelines necessary for proper nuclear disposal. I see what you are saying about how it is a tiny cost over that huge 30000 year period. Taking that period as given, do you agree that the years where the plant is operational are the most risky?

If the output of waste from a nuclear reactor is still that 'hot', they're doing it wrong. That waste then needs reprocessed for draining more energy out of it, furthering the transmutation to good 'ol lead. It'd be akin to burning gasoline with a 100% conversion output of CO. Guess what: that's incomplete combustion and you just lost a lot of energy. But that's what these reactors do all the time.

If you can't get lead out of it, at least get something that only has a half-life of a few billion years. Then its about as dangerous as lead.

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