Comment by almet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by almet | Hacker News Reader

It's frightening to see how the nuclear power debate is done nowadays.

Yes, nuclear energy is generating less CO2 than some other forms of energy, but saying it's saving lives seems sketchy at best, and to be used as a "hammer argument". Because it's "saving lives", it's good.

All energy producing less CO2 than the current mix is "saving lives" in a way. So yes, we should aim for less production of CO2. There is no question here.

But I believe that in order to have a opinion on the matter we need to understand the whole picture.

- *Waste* : we don't really know what to do with them. We pile them up and try to protect humans from them, but really we don't know what to do more than that.

- *War risk* : if a plant is a military target, it might cause big trouble to the population around, and to the nature…

- *Dismantling* : we still don't know how to dismantle a nuclear power plant and we don't know the energetic cost of doing so. Still, we have many nuclear plants that are coming to their end of lives, and we still don't know how to so properly.

- *We don't have sufficient sources of uranium* : it seems that we lack some uranium in order to produce enough energy in a sustainable way.

- Also, uranium extraction is complex geo-politically and seems to creates a geographic context keen to a war on resources, especially if we don't have enough.

So, it might "save lives" wrt CO2 emissions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a clean energy, nor that's the energy of the future, in my opinion.

> Waste : we don't really know what to do with them. We pile them up and try to protect humans from them, but really we don't know what to do more than that.

We know exactly what to do with it: bury it underground, in bedrock, like what Finland is doing [1]. For countries like the USA that don't reprocess nuclear waste, it represents a future source of fuel so burying it is wasteful. There's also an incredibly small amount of waste: all nuclear waste from electricity generation in the USA fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high [2].

> War risk : if a plant is a military target, it might cause big trouble to the population around, and to the nature…

The risk posed by nuclear power plants in wartime is drastically lower than the actual war itself. The vulnerability of power plants are also overstated: reactors are essentially inside of bunkers, protected by meters of reinforced concrete. The Ukraine war has demonstrated the resilience of nuclear plants: none have been breached.

> We don't have sufficient sources of uranium : it seems that we lack some uranium in order to produce enough energy in a sustainable way.

Existing terrestrial reserves are more than enough for centuries, or longer with reprocessing. Uranium seawater extraction affords an effectively unlimited supply [3].

Nuclear power represents the only non-intermittent source of carbon-free energy besides geographically limited sources like geothermal or hydroelectric power. For that reason, it's going to be the backbone of most countries' decarbonization efforts unless a massive breakthrough in storage is made.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...

2. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-...

3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/07/01/uranium-s...

The fact that your solution for long-term storage isn't even operational yet renders the confidence in your line of arguments ad absurdum. The fact that you try to defuse the GPs concerns with short-sentenced bullet points says it all - you're dismissive and strongly opinionated, while the concerned are asking very valid questions. That's bad intellectual culture, to say the least.

Finland has operated the VLJ repository in Olkiluoto since the 1990s [1]. The linked facility is an additional one being constructed (also in Olkiluoto) to accommodate future waste.

There's also a site in Korea that's operational: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolseong_Low_and_Intermediat...

These examples are easily obtained via Google: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository

The risks posed by nuclear waste is vastly overstated. A little known fact: the USSR and the United Kingdom dumped most of their nuclear waste into the ocean until the 1990s [2]. There were no adverse affects observed due to this dumping. Yet we're worried about waste buried in bedrock?

1. https://www.tvo.fi/en/index/production/nuclearwastemanagemen...

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactiv...

No one has ever extracted uranium from seawater. Why not? Because it costs a lot more. But nukes are already not economically competitive. Making the fuel cost more makes them even less attractive.

From the linked article:

> Fortunately, the cost of uranium is a small percentage of the cost of nuclear fuel, which is itself a small percentage of the cost of nuclear power. Over the last twenty years, uranium spot prices have varied between $10 and $120/lb of U3O8, mainly from changes in the availability of weapons-grade uranium to blend down to make reactor fuel.

> So as the cost of extracting U from seawater falls to below $100/lb, it will become a commercially viable alternative to mining new uranium ore. But even at $200/lb of U3O8, it doesn’t add more than a small fraction of a cent per kWh to the cost of nuclear power.

And yes, demonstrations of seawater extraction have been done. Again, this is covered in the article.

I don't think it's lower CO2 emissions that saves lives. It's likely reduced air pollution.

Gas power plants probably have similar properties. (Not that I would advocate for gas)

In any case, most the problems around nuclear are lack of political will and economies of scale.

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