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Comment by janmalec | Hacker News Reader

May I introduce you to our lord and saviour nuclear energy.

I'm genuinely curious, why are there so many extraordinarily pro-nuclear people on this forum? And how many of them have greater than zero experience with nuclear anything? I worked in the nuclear power industry for a decade and people in the industry are not as maniacally pro-nuclear as the people in this forum.

This forum has lots of highly intelligent individuals and nuclear power is the most intelligent energy source to switch to so we can stop relying on fossil fuels.

Perhaps you were working with people who don't feel the need to talk about how great nuclear is all the time because you all work in the industry and understand that already.

I think it's because the enormous costs of plant construction are not well understood. Or maybe, we think these costs can be reduced greatly.

The latter. Costs are artificially high. Indeed in a weird roundabout way they are mandated to be high. It has nothing to do with actual needs.

It's weird, isn't it? There's a lot of nuclear cheerleaders, and it makes me suspicious when they're also anti-renewables rather than "yes, and".

Essentially everyone has forgotten the arguments of the nineties: nuclear weapons proliferation, waste dumping, and covering the entirety of western Europe in a thin layer of airborne radioactive particles. As well as the more practical cost overruns. Personally I think it would be worth someone giving SMR a go, but in a different country from me and at their own expense.

"nuclear weapons proliferation,..." Seems like we got that anyway thanks to the military industrial complex without getting much in the way of nuclear energy generation.

Lots of places built dual-purpose reactors? The initial UK nuclear program (Windscale) was weapons-first. The famous French reactor programme and their independent nuclear deterrent are also linked.

Also, this is why people are reluctant to let some of the world's larger carbon emitters, the oil states in the middle east, build nuclear reactors. Iran has a small, heavily monitored fleet.

Fair enough, but my point is that nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons development are two different things and one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. In other words one can be against a particular use of a technology without being against the technology itself.

By definition then, those people have experience with decades-old technologies and installations?

The enthusiasm is largely for newer nuclear designs that address the FUD that gets thrown around whenever nuclear is mentioned.

That's a "yes, and" kind of thing. We can't build nuclear fast enough yet. So we need both. I'd argue that wind and solar is much more important at this point since the growth of those is now faster than nuclear has ever been. And fast growth of non-fossil energy sources is priority #1 right now. We can free up some land later with nuclear. Wind and solar isn't going to push any species to extinction, so any damage is reversible.

Though I'm a bit wary of nuclear given there are studies indicating that the heat energy added by thermal power plants contributes surprisingly much to global warming. If we can replace all thermal power plants with renewables that's a nice contribution to reducing global warming. On the order of CO2 emissions from planes if I remember correctly.

I'm sure we could "afford" the heat from thermal power plants if we didn't have so many greenhouse gases. But when we're already so close to the edge of the cliff, every little bit counts.

If we produced a gigawatt of energy by cleanest way possible, where do you think this gigawatt ends up? Some "energy dumpyard" somewhere outside the solar system?

In the long term .. yes?

The temperature is a balance between energy incoming from the sun and energy being radiated off into space. Wind and solar don't change that balance directly, although the lower reflectivity of solar panels makes a small local difference. Ultimately it's the transmissibility spectrum of the atmosphere that matters. Which is why we care about CO2 in the first place.

Nuclear energy is a little scary to me because I suspect it makes it more economical to build nuclear weapons.

-Many more people become atomic experts, and they may be hired by weapons programs in the future.

-We will learn how to deal with nuclear materials more efficiently - good for energy, but maybe also good for building weapons.

-With more nuclear material being manufactured for energy, will it be easier to hide weapons manufacturing in the mix?

I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking from ignorance here. I don't know much about nuclear technology.

Nuclear weapons aren't that tough on a nation-scale to produce. It's generally thought that places like Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, etc. could make a nuclear weapon in a few months if they really wanted.

The barriers are more geopolitical than anything.

Nuclear weapons have very little to do with nuclear energy.

Can you elaborate on that? Are the processes for making fuel for energy so different from the processes for bomb material that one doesn't help the other at all?

The people who are concerned about wind turbines killing birds also tend to not want nuclear power plants.

And by wanting nuclear, within the context of the build pace of nuclear is to support the status quo - ie oil and gas.

It's the same conclusion as hydrogen car investment. It's easy to maintain ice technology, but the generation, storage, trabsport, use are riddled with issues.

It blows up though.

Yeah and planes crash and it's spectacular, but they're still the safest means of transportation by far.

Planes are fast though. Even if less safe that cars we would still use them.

And nuclear is cheap. It is literally free energy.

If someone gifts you the facility and the staff work for free then maybe.

Generally it does not. Makes a lot of people upset if things don’t work out, sure.

Agree. Usually it doesn't blow up but sometimes does. When it does, all of the squirrels in the area get 3 eyes and 5 legs.

More accurately they suffer defects and die.

Then there is Chernobyl which now has healthier and more diverse wildlife than much of the world because humans have evacuated.

Chernobyl was good then?

In the micro, no, see the part about death.

In the macro, it created a nature preserve that humans will barely visit, won't hunt in, won't deforest; and requires no active enforcement to keep that way.

You have a strange, anti human morality.

So positive NPV in a sense?

How often does such incident occur?

Not often but sometimes.

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