US assessing reported leak at Chinese nuclear power facility | Hacker News Reader

US assessing reported leak at Chinese nuclear power facility

cnn.com

31 pointsdaegloe26 comments

oh great, it's an EPR

if there's a significant incident then that really is the end of the nuclear industry

That would be a direct hit to the Paris Accord.

It is interesting how much France is invested in nuclear power. I wonder how prepared they are to ramp up nuclear tech globally.

I hope there's no accident of course. That said, Tchernobyl and the cost of managing that disaster is seen by many historians as the event that bankrupted the USSR and ended its communist regime for good. If a disaster does happen one can only hope for a similar silver lining ...

They exchanged communism for an oligarchy that openly steals from the people, syphoning wealth abroad. It's not an improvement.

3.6 Roentgen, max.

I cannot see how nuclear power is worth the risk.

There are usually a large number of pro nuclear comments on articles related to nuclear power on HN.

Events like this help to confirm my point of view.

Edit: Here we go, downvoting begins.

It’s not clear what the event is yet. But it’s already somehow confirmed something for you, which maybe means you should question how you’re assessing the risks. And what evidence would ever change your mind on them. Lots of HN commenters are pro nuclear because once you put aside your preconceptions and biases and learn about it you learn it’s one of the safest, cleanest, and most reliable forms of power we’ve ever created, in spite of the big headline accidents.

My view is accidents will always happen.

With nuclear, the potential for harm _when_ these accidents occur, is too great.

Is it though? The risk for continuing using coal, oil and gas is a lot higher through global warming, and no accident is necessary, it's a certainty.

Renewables are of course the holy grail, but storage solutions for renewables are a problem, as are supply. Renewables won't supply 100% of energy for the foreseeable future.

No one is unaware that the risk exists for nuclear, its a comparison of risks though.

I think one of the problems with nuclear is the accidents are localised and make headlines, the deaths from fossil fuels are spread out and harder to attribute.

You're making a false dichotomy.

It's obviously not a question of either coal or nuclear.

Renewables will provide a better solution. Solving the problems you've identified, would lead to far better line of attack.

The problem is getting from A to B. Nuclear is proven and works all the time, renewables are variable at the moment, you keeps saying the same thing without facts. If you want to go to 100% renewables what is the path? A path to nuclear is clear, nuclear is a lot safer than fossil fuels, renewables are a bit safer than nuclear (ref. 1). So what's the path without nuclear?

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

I agree! Nuclear FUSION is very promising, still a ways off though.

No. The problem is ending up with an amount of waste that will hang around for longer than we do, _while_ we get to B.

> My view is accidents will always happen.

interesting, now its waste is the problem

It's not _the_ problem. It's another problem.

Even without the inevitable accidents (which apparently won't happen with new generation plants) .. we are left with waste.

You're describing nuclear fission as a stop gap solution.

If we take this view, the very fact the waste produced is going to hang around for a much, much longer time makes the whole idea untenable.

> You're describing nuclear fission as a stop gap solution.

Well yes, so was oil, so is gas, until we have antimatter and fusion this will have to do.

All these problems will have solutions eventually, you can dump waste down a big hole. It's not like radiation is something that never existed before, dump it a couple of miles under ground, problem solved.

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-c...

No doubt at some stage we'll have an energy source that will enable us to convert high level waste into coffee, in the mean time we can just hide it in the ground. https://www.reutersevents.com/nuclear/high-power-sylos-laser...

Like we have an urgent problem now! we need to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere now! Nuclear can do this now. I don't like it either, I don't want to live near a nuclear reactor but we're out of options.

Really any issues with nuclear have technological fixes, or will have in the near future.

Edit: like if we treat fission as a temporary solution for say 50 years until other stuff works then we're sweet and the planet won't burn up. Sure there's a small chance of an accident that might damage a very small part of the planet, but, what's the chance if we keep using fossil fuels of things going bad - 100%

Edit 2: and the waste products from coal and oil are awful and spread out, at least with nuclear the waste products are localised.

Just because something has been buried, doesn't mean it will stay buried.

I appreciate we're in a bind, but nuclear has huge conceptual and practical problems.

It would be more sensible to reduce usage and rely on 100% renewables.

Not possible? The public appetite isn't there? ... Perhaps, but if that's the case we probably deserve to die out.

> Just because something has been buried, doesn't mean it will stay buried.

It does for a long time at least 1000 years

> I appreciate we're in a bind, but nuclear has huge conceptual and practical problems.

Which are?

> It would be more sensible to reduce usage and rely on 100% renewables. Not possible? The public appetite isn't there?

Thats not going to happen and there's no need

> ... Perhaps, but if that's the case we probably deserve to die out

your choice, not mine

We're not likely to agree.

If small pockets of rock, mineral, gas and oil can be found above the surface; it stands to reason that your 1000 year prophecy is optimistic.

You never know, I used to be against nuclear energy, now I'm pro - I was a member of CANE - the campaign against nuclear energy in my youth :-). The most significant problem is disposing of the waste, there's some reading on it here [1]. 1000 years is tomorrow in geologic terms, in [1] they're talking about a single canister failure in 150,000 years. Imagine the tech we'd have available by then if we're still around. There's a lot of low level waste to when you have to pull a reactor to bits - all the buildings are a bit radioactive, but its easy enough to put in a hole. The one thing you don't want is the groundwater to be contaminated by radiation leaking out, vitrification seems to be the best current solution - turning it into glass. Have a read, you never know.

[1] https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pile...

Rhetoric can be used to sell almost anything.

Fundamentally; we have no solution for the waste other than bury it.

> 1000 years is tomorrow in geologic terms

Think what the human race was actually doing 1000 years ago, and then try to make that statement again with a straight face.

The geology does not care. The terms that are important are human.

> Imagine the tech we'd have available by then if we're still around.

Technology will not save us. Ego and the desire for progress at any cost is going to kill us far sooner.

>Rhetoric can be used to sell almost anything.

Sure, but these are facts, not sure why you're having this discussion here if you want something else.

Ultimately, there are some very inconvenient problems which are difficult to solve.

The jeapody involved is being downplayed.

I would love to know what you mean - you keep saying these vague things with no facts to back them up.

Scroll up!

* Accidents will happen.

* The degree of hazard involved in a nuclear accident is very high.

* We have no solution for waste other than bury it.

A large issue is the reluctance, especially in the US, of approving new designs in nuclear. We tested a molten salt reactor in Idaho once in the 80s and it worked as expected. It can not melt down even in power loss because of the heat transference properties of using molten salt as a coolant and can not build pressure like a more conventional water cooled reactor. But rolling it out into production was killed in the water due to chernobyl and the public response to anything with the word 'nuclear' in it afterwards. We can mitigate a lot of risk now, but it takes lawmakers who don't understand physics or engineering to "bless" it for production. There are some reactor designs that can also reuse already spent nuclear fuel (TERRAPOWER's lightwave reactor). We probably shouldn't also build reactors in areas were earthquakes will occur fairly often and can create tsunamis.

Renewables are great, but that is a long term solution that still needs a lot more iteration. If we are looking to reduce our carbon footprint massively with respect to the electrical grid in 30 years, nuclear is the only viable option to garuntee this.

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