Hacker News Reader

Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

Fracking is bad not only because it generates CO2 but it's very polluting as well. This is why it's not popular here. Emissions aren't the only thing. The Netherlands just shut down their gas fields because it's causing too many earthquakes.

And I really applaud Germany's decision, the coal is temporary and will be replaced by renewable too. Nuclear is just too expensive, long-term dangerous and sensitive to mess with. Again, emissions aren't the only thing that counts. And this also plays into the nuclear discussion because nuclear advocates often claim very low death tolls from nuclear, but ignore environmental pollution problems.

View on HN

> the coal is temporary and will be replaced by renewable too. Nuclear is just too expensive, long-term dangerous and sensitive to mess with.

Ok, but keeping plants open a little longer would bave still helped. I see no reason to start building new nuclear plants, but keeping them running a few more years safely and cheaply was doable and would have been a better option for the environment and the economy, making the green shift more palatable.

That's true, I agree with that.

As far as I understand though, it was a bit of a back against the wall thing in that regard because they were mostly coming up on expensive overhauls. The scares with Belgian plants have shown that that can't be postponed forever.

> Nuclear is just too expensive, long-term dangerous and sensitive to mess with.

I'm not so sure about the 'long-term dangerous'. Yes, nuclear produces a small amount of dangerous nuclear waste. But burning fossil fuels also releases lots of waste, and most of that is made up of stable isotopes that don't even have a half life and will be dangerous approximately forever.

> but ignore environmental pollution problems.

What “environmental pollution” are you talking about here?

Fugitive emissions of methane (a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) [1], other gasses which are presumably the reason that people who live near gas fields have higher incidence of cancer, asthma, etc. [2,3], and various chemicals being released into groundwater [4,5], which could also be the causes of the cancer instead of the atmospheric emissions, I don't think there is a strong consensus yet as to which one is responsible and in what proportions.

1. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/frack...

2. https://www.publicsource.org/fracking-proximity-cancer-asthm...

3. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/children-born-near...

4. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-can-cont...

5. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/study-links-fracki...

Unless I misunderstood, GP was talking about nuclear-induced environmental problems.

The widespread pollution from the accidents that have happened in the past. Nuclear cleanup from accidents have been extremely costly projects, not only from Chernobyl (which still has a huge exclusion zone) and Fukishima but there were many other smaller accidents too. And nuclear arms accidents, like the time when the US dumped a few nukes on southern Spain :)

Decommissioning too, very very costly to do it in an environmentally conscious way, the waste is very expensive to store safely. And these costs are generally not even included in the costs. Way too often an energy company vacates a site and the state is left cleaning up the mess which costs billions.

The “widespread pollution” is true in the very short term (as long as you have radioactive iodine floating around), but after that it's pretty much a negligible problem. For instance if you discount iodine-induced thyroid cancer, the cancer rate in the Tchernobyl exclusion zone (for people who refused to flee) isn't higher than in the center of Kyiv (likely because car-induced air pollution is more harmful!).

There are many things that are much more dangerous than the what remains of the fallout from a nuclear accident, that people are perfectly fine living with: air pollution due to ICE-powered cars, pesticide in farm areas, lead fuel near general aviation airfields, or cigarettes, alcohol and even junk food!

People have a very wrong vision of what nuclear fallout actually means, and it's mostly fueled by the nuclear bomb scare in the cold war era. But in the real world even Hiroshima and Nagasaki were quickly re-settled after the bomb with no dramatic effect.

(this is not to say radioactive material is harmless, just that the incorrect perception of its harm lead us to take drastic measures when it comes to nuclear, while we are fine as a society taking little to no measures against much more harmful things)

As for decommissioning, I answered in another comment already, see [1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39287086

The waste that needs to be constantly managed and significantly financed for centuries to come?

As it is the costs of the nuclear waste management are, and will be for a long time, fielded by tax payer and not internalised with the plant builders/operators.

Yeah same with plant decommissioning. This is rarely incorporated into the business model. Even the building of the plants is often heavily sponsored. This made sense during the cold war due to side production of isotopes and general capabilities and expertise (and I believe this is the main reason why nuclear arms countries have such prolific nuclear power as well).

But really these days it makes no sense. The reason these costs are not borne by the operators is because the business model would be impossible if all costs were included. As it is even with all the handouts it's hard to make it work cost-wise.

The thing is: why is nuclear the only industry that has to finance its own decommissioning in the first place?

Why are other industries allowed to just put a locker on the front door and call it a day? Decommissioning and waste processing of solar plants isn't included in the cost either. In most industries it is expected that the site is secured (which, in case of an NPP means removing the old fuel obviously) and then the next guy who wants to use the site pays for the destruction of the buildings (or in practice the taxpayers as subsidies to improve “competitiveness” of the region). But somehow not nuclear.

Industrial countries are filled with old industrial sites with massive amounts of remaining pollution (heavy metal in the soil, asbestos in the buildings), the industrials never paid for decommissioning.

In fact I think that the policy we apply to nuclear is the right one, and for effluents as well (unlike chemical plants that litters the neighborhood with PFAS, NPP reject practically nothing whatsoever), as it is the only sustainable model. But then again why the double standard? Why apply it only to nuclear?

The answer is unfortunately the irrational fear of nuclear that derives from the stigma of the cold war and the fear of the Bomb…

Yes, all industries should need to clean up after themselves.

And in large parts, they are doing that. But I guess details depend on jurisdiction.

All you think you know about nuclear waste is a lie.

First, the amount of waste that last centuries fits in a single room per nuclear country. Also you don't need to manage or finance it at all, you can just leave it there an be fine with it:

In fact when nuclear was still being treated like a regular industry with respect to its pollution, the nuclear wastes from the military and early civilian programs in UK and France were being dumped in the middle of the Channel. Not that I'm saying that this is a good thing, at all, but it's also causing no harm in practice and because the quantities are so small, the environmental impact of doing so is much smaller than the routine wastes of most industries, including IT.

Also, we've known the solution to waste for 60 years now: it's called a breeding reactor. 40 years ago France had one prototype (Phénix) and wanted to scale it up to industrial size (Superphénix) but it was canceled due to pressure from Greenpeace (including a successful campaign to pressure the Swiss government to fight the project)! Then 30 years later Greenpeace is conveniently still using the nuclear wastes argument.

Another thing about waste: burning fossil fuels also produces waste. A colossal amount of waste. That waste is mostly made up of stable isotopes, so has approximately an infinite half-life.

Eg mercury release from burning coal will be dangerous forever.

This. So much.

It always annoy me when people talk about nuclear waste living millions of years. I'm like “you know what's living longer than that? A good chunk of industrial pollutants who actually have an infinite lifetime”.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com