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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Or nuclear. Sad that this isn’t seen as an option any longer

Is anti-nuclear sentiment consistent across Europe?

It is here in Germany. Nobody here likes nuclear. My ex is a PhD in bioinformatics and argues against nuclear using quite outdated information, even.

Nuclear is a non-starter for many. Too many people afraid of another Chernobyl or nuclear waste handling without understanding what caused the former or not being informed about how we deal with the latter, today.

You must mean tomorrow, because today, we just keep the stuff around in intermediate facilities.

The thing is, we know how to store nuclear waste in such a way that it's a solved problem forever. Literally gone and not a worry for any generation from now until forever.

It's called deep borehole disposal[0]. Drill a hole all the way down to Earth's crust, put your waste there = it's not coming back on anything shorter than geological timescale. " It is estimated that only 800 boreholes would be sufficient to store the entire existing nuclear waste stockpile of the USA"[0]

From what I understand it isn't being done for two reasons:

1) cost

2) once stored this way it's almost impossible to retrieve. Spent nuclear fuel is kept around partially because we know we might be able to recycle it into fresh fuel in the future. If we dump it in a hole deep in the ground it's gone forever.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal

The problem is that there's no place where not anyone's backyard. Even the big US failed for Yucca Mountain.

You can live on top of the borehole though, no issues. It's not like the area has to be cordoned off forever.

Technically true, but not work for most people's feelings.

Doesn't seem much different then designating space for landfills and other forms of waste. Sewage treatment plants aren't pleasant but provide great benefit to society.

We can currently refine waste down to levels safe enough to keep out of containment facilities, and can dispose of it by landfill in a way that will have zero ecological risk or impact, forever.

So no, not "tomorrow".

In Germany, today, there is no refinement. I'd be interested about how much refinement is happening as a percentage of waste generated, globally. At first glance, the US doesn't do it, either, for example.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brennelement

> how we deal with the latter, today

News and images like this https://www.thelocal.de/20141010/one-third-of-barrels-leak-a... (2014) don't exactly help restore confidence.

(If you can't get that to load, here's the same in German https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Loechrige-Atom-Faesser-entdeckt-...)

Edit to add, the infamous old picture of a loader dumping barrels into a pit in the Asse II salt mine: https://static.dw.com/image/16445664_303.jpg - while this happened decades ago, the mine is an ongoing problem that makes the news every year with new leaks or progress of the remediation effort, lack of progress, or predictions of collapse before the remediation can be completed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asse_II_mine).

From the first article:

> “The chambers are secure and there is no danger for the personnel or the local population,” Vattenfall said in a statement released on Thursday

I don't see how that has... anything to do with anything. Proper inspection revealed this problem and it's been rectified. Mission accomplished.

> the infamous old picture of a loader dumping barrels into a pit in the Asse II salt mine

> while this happened decades ago

Right, again, I don't see how this is relevant to modern nuclear handling. That's a cleanup effort from poor procedures from decades ago, and it's been pretty well contained. Compare that to the current cleanup efforts of decades of fossil fuel burning, and the effects that has had.

I don't see how any of this is an argument against nuclear.

The inspections caught it after almost half the barrel was gone from rust. That doesn't inspire confidence. Neither does the way Asse II is being handled currently.

People also tend to not believe "no danger" claims - such claims, especially when coming from the companies running those plants, provide very little information, as we have learned that we should expect to hear the same claims even if a reactor core is currently melting its way through the containment (both in Chernobyl and Fukushima, false reassurances were given long after the people in charge knew of the seriousness of the accident).

Likewise, officials claim that nothing is leaking from Asse and it is safe, yet there is an unexplained but very significant (p<0.01) increase in various cancers.

Even if this was just feelings (and I disagree with that - seeing partial failures that get caught by other layers of a multi-layered safety system does provide information about the risk that one day the "holes in the Swiss cheese" [1] will line up), it explains why people in Germany are so opposed to nuclear.

Fukushima was particularly devastating for public trust, because Japan is seen as a developed, industrialized, "orderly" nation, so if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. Additionally, nuclear power plants in developed countries were portrayed as absolutely safe, so it's a "fool me once, fool me twice" situation. (Since this is usually countered by "they couldn't expect the Tsunami": that just means that when an unexpected event - e.g. a 300 year flood event, as has recently happened in Germany - comes, we should expect a similar outcome and similar attempts from the people in charge to weasel out of the blame. Again, not helpful for trust.)

In short, people - me included - don't believe that the plants will be operated to the claimed safety standards. The trust in the industry is gone, and people don't want to take the gamble, even if rationally, it may be the lesser evil than e.g. coal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

Nothing, especially sentiments, are consistent across the entirety of Europe.

I think Fukushima killed much of the remaining enthusiasm, but really it's the high cost of building new nuclear plants across Europe that's keeping it from being an option. If building a new plant was cheap, I'm sure you'd see a lot more happening.

> it's the high cost of building new nuclear plants

https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html

If markets valued the low-CO2 nature of nuclear, they’d be doing better

So would renewables, but even without that they are becoming the cheapest option.

> If building a new plant was cheap, I'm sure you'd see a lot more happening.

Not only that, but running it. No private company insures a nuclear power plant (at least in the densely populated Central Europe). We're talking about dozens of billions each year.

Currently the operator does a token insurance of a few hundred million but if things really go south it's essentially up to the society to absorb the costs of the aftermath.

If you can't socialize the risks and have to pay market price the "cheap" goes out of the window fast.

France gets 70% of its power from safe nuclear energy.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/462535/nuclear-share-ele....

So does Switzerland, but the opinion is already shifting against it.

In Czech republic, there is an ongoing project to extend one of the two nuclear power plants. Although there is some debate whether to do it at all, it focuses most on the high costs.

The bigger issue in the public debate are the national safety and strategic concerns. At the moment, it seems Russian and Chinese companies will be banned from bidding.

So, the sentiment is definitely not consistent. CZ is much more favorable towards nuclear than DE or AT, but it's still a complicated topic.

I think it generally depends on whether or not you're downwind of Pripyat.

mostly in Germany...

In Sweden there is only one 'major' political party (The Liberals) really advocating for nuclear power, and they're currently at less than 3% in the polls.

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