Inside Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
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https://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/the-sarcophaguss-labyrint...
From wikipedia:
The three other reactors remained operational after the accident but were eventually shut down by 2000, although the plant remains in the process of decommissioning as of 2021. Nuclear waste clean-up is scheduled for completion in 2065
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Before the first few dozen nuclear reactors have been properly decommissioned, within a reasonable timeframe and for a reasonable budget, I think we have absolutely no business building more of them and burdening future generations with them.
Reducing emissions of energy production as fast as possible should be the first priority now, and nuclear can be helpful there. After this problem has been dealt with, then we have plenty of time to switch completely to better alternatives, like renewables.
Even a worst-case scenario like Chernobyl is still way, way less bad for nature than the consequences of climate change. Thanks to lack of humans, the area around Chernobyl is actually doing better biodiversity-wise than before the disaster.
The current politics of energy production and consumption, the state-by-state compartmentalization and lack of wider cooperation hampers cleaner options (spoiled-views NIMBYism and regional politics).
Wind, solar, and hydro coupled with transcontinental UHV power transmission could solve it with much simpler technologies.
Belarus just built a single nuclear power plant that reduces their natural gas consumption in the energy sector by 25% and saves 7 million tons of CO2 annually:
> https://twitter.com/RosatomGlobal/status/1323580827377258507
Just imagine how many wind and solar farms you would need to achieve that.
And, remember, neither wind mor solar provide baseload.
Southern Belarus seems to be pretty well suited for solar power too, which might even be a little bit cheaper than wind turbines.
Nuclear is not terrible for saving CO2, but the benefits are not as dramatic as you make them seem.
That is more of a grind rather than a big bang quick reward.
Think of it like leveling up to make ones character super robust as opposed to a few high power weapons.
Risks go way down, agency improves and future people thank us rather than regret us.
It isn’t a false dichotomy, it is simply the truth:
> https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/WP304.pdf
Germany is phasing out nuclear with the result that their regulator has to ban coal plants from being shut down and start building new gas plants.
Huge timelines too. Many generations of people get exposed to those costs and risks.
I've been hopeful someone would work around this with a clever design, production line style manufacturing, etc. But so far every attempt has floundered. The latest serious one, NuScale, is still going forward, but they've slipped on schedule, price, and have lost a few backers already, so it's not looking great.
Yes, because climate change does not pose a threat to mankind at all, we should waive for the most efficient weapon we have against it.
Of course we might have to reconsider if everyone should commute to some pointlesss office job in an F150 every day... And pergaps having as much electricity available as you need at a fixed low price is also something that we might just not be able to provide without ruining the entire planet.
On nuclear build up timelines, and remember we cannot be rushing it, because we do not have answers to the fuckups and risks and waste, a build out effort like we did for fossil fuels would combat the problem as well and would have the benefits delivering for us a very long time.
Besides, tons of people need work. So we put that work out there, many families see higher standards of living and mere mortals can do the vast majority of that work too.
I arrive at the same conclusion each time I visit the topic.
And I do not blame advocates of this form of power. Advancement is hard, the rewards compelling.
However, I would rather live less, longer, and look over to my young 5 year old granddaughter and know she has a chance at experiencing something like I did, a clean, beautiful world, more harmonious than we know.
We have excluded ourselves from some of it. The coming decades may see us excluded from much more as climate temp rises.
Read about the wet bulb limit. 135F, I believe it is? At or above that temp, we cannot endure, will die a heat death without tech running. Like "Total Recall" and those people needing air, when the fans stop...
I feel we may know enough to be super dangerous, and our skill, resolve to get what we know as right as we can just does not appear to be enough.
Fukushima may melt its way into the water cycle, and is already polluting the oceans. Being real here, the increase is not much, but the timeline on our exposure to changes and risks is so long. Hard to say what it all means, could mean.
It all makes me want to support and be a part of the mother of all clean, renewable energy build outs!
Just switch us over.
We did what it took for fossil fuels. And that work meant income for so many, new tech, opportunities of all kinds, and the returns have been amazeballs!
And we did well, but here we are warming the place. Costs and risks on that are amplifying same as rewards did.
Nuclear happened, and we got to work on that. The returns have been great, but the misalignment between our nature, cost and risk exposure are more severe.
Here we are excluded from parts of our world and we do not really know the longer term outlook for either of these things.
All that effort got us great tech!
And we have an opportunity to build out again, and thr ability to do it, and it appears green energy, renewables can be aligned fairly well to our nature, cost and risk exposure lower, and we just need to find the will to do the work!
Unlike oil and nukes, renewables are more of a grind than loot box, but doing it could mitigate some of what is to come for us, as well as deliver great jobs, good opportunity and all that good stuff.
It will, or is likely to mean we live a bit differently, but so what! We did that before, can again, and it is not like we have to give the others up, so we do have what we made and can use it where we really must.
Lots of work to be done, tons of families raising kids, living lives, planet standing a much better chance at remaining healthy...
And throughout that time, we can continue to improve on that basic misalignment that comes with nuclear and end what is now well understood harm associated with fossil fuels.
Seems like a step backwards. I see it as a pause, step to the side.
A regroup and big push toward a lower cost and risk future.
Future people will thank us. And we will have done well by our world and ourselves along the way.
https://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/wp-content/uploads/slice1...
The way the structure rises above the clouds is an amazing sight:
I will spend some non trivial time reading, looking and thinking.
The externalities involved with nuclear energy are off the charts huge!
And the containment efforts! Stones and chisels, for the most part. Thankfully, we are able to automate enough to allow work to proceed. He showed efforts to execute on a 100 year plan.
Enough to contain the grief, leaving it for others, and ideally we do not exclude ourselves from more of our world or pollute it beyond our ability to cope with the hazard.
Very thought provoking work.
So much so, that I think it worth to mention at least the HBO Chernobyl tv series. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7366338/
Also noteworthy are the games centered around Chernobyl. https://screenrant.com/chernobly-hbo-games-to-play/
There is also a DLC for the Spintires game where you get to drive around Chernobyl. https://www.iskmogul.com/spintires-newest-expansion-heads-to...
I drooled at that picture, I want those. I need those. Can you imagine how many breadboard tests I can achieve with them old resistors and non-electrolytic capacitors that stood the test of time from 80's? And the cables! I. must. have. them. all!!
> The New Safe Confinement was constructed 180 metres (590 ft) west of reactor 4, and slid into place. Sliding of the structure along foundation rails was a difficult process. It was pushed on Teflon pads by hydraulic pistons, and guided by lasers. As of 2018, the New Safe Confinement is the world's largest movable land-based structure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement
Lots of photos and links to drone footage here:
http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/new-safe-...
I do think we should be quicker to decommission and maintain existing reactors. Fukushima was painfully predictable, but the people who should have fixed several issues and/or closed the plant were also in charge of making it profitable. That seems bad.
If you mean debris after a disaster, then yeah, I agree, we aren’t great at cleaning that up e.g. in Fukushima.
Edit: I was reading this page while writing this; maybe the actual source is better than my comment https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...
Transport risks, storage risks are a big deal. Fuck up, and it gets into our system or excludes us from part of the world.
As for storage, I was hired to help with data systems support for 100 to 1000 year engineering.
Rooms get made, people never go into them again. Machine rooms get made to hold the machines, that service the machines... storage rooms get made to hold stuff, and on and on it goes. Once things get hot, they stay hot basically permanently. Space requirements continue to grow as the waste from handling waste grows.
The costs are high. The risks are high. The space requirements are high, so much more than that nice football field package mentioned in the fluff piece.
Human requirements are high. Generations of people will service that waste, and reserve space requirements are high, because nobody has been able to think the problem all the way through and insure success.
It is a big scale problem. Any error makes it bigger. It will outlive generations of people.
From that perspective, nuclear energy is like a high interest loan. The money is good, but servicing it is brutal as is the timeline relentless.
And this is a closed system we live in. Containment is temporary no matter what gets said. And the service is ongoing, no matter what gets said.
On a cost / return basis, investing in green energy is a much better deal. And servicing that means more energy, not so much paying for energy already developed and long gone.
Recycling green energy gear is meaningful today and will improve.
Most importantly, mere mortals can work the problem and not make 100k year toxic problems along the way.
We can do that work now, should have been doing it two decades if not more ago. And as we do it, we improve just like we did for fossil fuels.
Second, you could google recycling if you wanted to. It generates electricity which is cool! We generally don’t do it in the US, but we could if storage became unsafe or expensive.
When I asked what it means, there is more to it than the currently high risk, high labor, high energy input, high cost process.
All of which should be a temporary measure at most!
What does it mean?
A few things:
Major investment in recycling means major investments in nuclear, and that cycle means having to make green energy a priority and that being a lot more difficult than it needs to, and should be.
It also means continuing to produce toxic elements, containment and all that I just discussed.
What it does not mean or lead to is an acceptable end game.
All this talk avoids the fact that we end up with high concentrations of very toxic elements that can be kilo-decade time scales.
What we should do is make the investments in energy and storage we are now getting really good at, and that do not come with the crazy burdens we are just not very well equipped to deal with.
You know smoking generates a buzz, which is cool! Never mind the cancer and other impacts to follow.
You know, a big spoonful of sugar and a shot of caffeine is a big hit, so is adrenaline. Hell of a crash afterword.
We are in a place where we need to get off the fossil fuels.
No matter what we do, we are late, and there is a ramp up time.
Nuclear is a quick hit with high start costs, high risks and a very long burden that will be with us for so long we don't even have the ability to manage the problem with confidence. Hope and cope is where we are at.
Green energy is not as quick, but it will not come with all the downsides, and if we put people to work on a scale like we did for fossil fuels, we can get where we need to be, without that high burden, and in a clean, sustainable way.
High energy, healthy food takes a bit longer to ramp up, but there is no crash and overall labor output is higher, more consistent.
Generating nuclear power also generates major league problems that must be managed for an extremely long time and none of it is sustainable.
I just wrote part of why above.
Green energy is sustainable. And is improving rapidly, will continue to as well. And it comes with tech mortals can use, build, manage, etc...
TL;DR: Advancing nuclear comes at the expense of advancing green, renewable energy.
It prolongs a crutch we need to be rid of and that is highly toxic, high density energy.
Better than living six miles from a coal plant, I suppose.
Personally I would feel safe living near a plant. The u.s. has a very good safety record. And yeah, no toxic fumes and clean energy!