> Nuclear is very safe and reliable.
How do we stop fukushima-like disasters?
How do we stop fukushima-like disasters?
In the case of Fukishima, only one person died directly because of it. About 2000 more deaths can be related to the nuclear accident, for example because they were displaced and living in worse conditions [2]. Since this is the kind of event that every few decades (we have to go back to Chernobyl for something similar) I would say that it is not a reason for worrying.
For comparison, that is 1/10 of people that died in Japan because of the Tsunami that caused it, and it is less than the number of people that die every year for traffic accidents in Italy, so if I was Italian (wait, I am!) I would be more worried about the road traffic than a nuclear accident.
[1] https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2024/07/two-engineers-h...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cas...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
As one of the worst Nuclear accidents in history (caused by one of the largest earthquakes to hit Japan along with a tsunami), an awfully small amount of people died.
If anything, Fukushima shows how safe Nuclear actually is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident#Pri...
Your link shows a deeper root cause
> TEPCO admitted that it had failed to take necessary measures for fear of inviting lawsuits or protests against its nuclear plants
Scientific and engineering reports don’t solve that one
No tell me why we are still building hydroelectric plants?
Hint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
Improving continuously, having strict but not restrictive regulation, addressing risks before they become a problem.
Nuclear power is extremely cost effective, even with the current plants.
The individual plants are currently expensive, because they are large and produce huge amounts of power. Since that means you only have a fairly small number of plants, that means the risk is higher than preferable.
However, even with existing designs, building a common design multiple times and overlapping the build times brings down risk, build-time and costs tremendously.
The German Konvois were built for DM 5.8 billion in less than 6 years, and we were just getting started.
China is currently building their version of the passively safe Westinghouse AP-1000, the CAP-1400, in 5 years for $ 3.5 billion.
Even in China, two orders of magnitude more PV comes online each year compared to nuclear (nameplate power, adjust by a factor of maybe 4 for levelized power).
Nuclear advocates defending the fantasy you are espousing here have to resort to universal conspiracy theories to explain away this unpleasant reality. But how are supposedly omnipotent greens and public fear supposed to be hindering nuclear's rollout in China?
Nuclear may benefit from experience, but that means that as rollouts are scaled back, experience decays away and nuclear gets more expensive. Below a certain (and probably pretty large) rate of installs, nuclear just regresses. It's not clear even China can avoid this at the current install rate.
First, you need to compare actual output, not installed capacity. Once you take into account capacity factors, it's not looking so good any longer.
Second, if it were true that nuclear is being "out-competed", then nobody in their right mind would expand their nuclear capacity. Yet almost everyone except a few crazies and countries that are too small are doing exactly that: expanding their nuclear capacity.
Let's see who has decided to get into nuclear / reverse exits / expand capacity:
1. Italy just decided to reverse their exit.
2. Japan had decided to exit, and actually shut down their plants. They are now restarting those plants.
3. South Korea had also decided to exit, but not shut down any plants yet. They have reversed that exit. And are expanding.
4. Poland has decided to start a nuclear program, first 3 reactors are ordered, budgeted and construction has started at the site. There are a lot more planned. The vote for financing the new projects was nearly unanimous in parliament.
5. The UK is so incredibly unhappy with Hinkley Point C that they have just started work on 2 more reactors at Sizewell C, have sited another 2 in Wales and have a policy of expanding nuclear capacity by a factor of 4.
6. The US effectively built no new new plants since the TMI accident. They are now reactivating everything possible, are even planning to finish the two AP-1000s at Virgil C. Summer and have a goal of tripling their nuclear capacity by adding another 200 GW.
7. Sweden has reversed their exit and wants to build 10 new plants
8. The new government in Belgium has reversed their exit, has extended at least one (or was it two?) plant by another 10 years, is trying to save a few more that are/were due to be decommissioned and is looking to build more.
9. France had a ban on expanding their nuclear generating capacity beyond the currently installed capacity. This was lifted in March of 2023 with > 2/3 majority in parliament.
10. The Netherlands originally wanted two new nuclear reactors. They have now decided on 4 large reactors, in addition to the single small one they currently operate. This will be a 10x expansion of their nuclear capacity.
11. India is on track to triple their capacity by 2031.
12. China is currently starting 10 new reactors a year, and the rate is still increasing. Why aren't they doing more? Well, one reason is that nuclear power plants last for a really long time, currently estimated at least 80-100 years for most of the well-maintained plants. If you build 10 per year and they last 100 years, that implies a fleet of 1000 reactors. That's a lot of reactors!
France made this mistake, they built around 50 reactors in only 15 years, due to vastly overestimating electricity demand. The result was that they the nuclear industry they built up had essentially no plants to build for a good number of decades, and so that know-how and capability was lost and had to be re-acquired at great cost (see Flamanville 3).
Countries have learned from this and are pacing themselves. No need to rush.
13. The Czech Republic is betting on both large reactors from South Korea (the APR-1400, IIRC) as well as SMRs from Rolls Royce. In fact, they took a 20% in Rolls Royce.
14. Switzerland has begun the process of undoing their exit decision
15. Even Norway and Denmark are considering nuclear
16. The UAE, with ideal conditions for solar (desert), has recently completed a 4 reactor power plant, and is considering adding more.
... and so on and so forth ...
Why are all these countries expanding nuclear? Is the entire rest of the world stupid? Crazy? Only Germany knows what they're doing?
No.
What they know is that a nuclear + renewable mix is significantly cheaper and more reliably than any attempt to do 100% intermittent renewables, even if that were feasible, which is more than uncertain.
It is only (mostly?) in Germany where this crazy notion that nuclear and renewables are mutually exclusive has taken hold. They are not. They complement each other.
As soon as the bill hits the political discussions tend to turn.
See for example the Polish example:
> Poland plans to support this investment through:
> - (i) an equity injection of approximately €14 billion covering 30% of the project's costs;
> - (ii) State guarantees covering 100% of debt taken by PEJ to finance the investment project;
> - (iii) a two-way contract for difference (‘CfD') providing revenue stability over the entire lifetime of the power plant of 60 years.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
The subsidies to get a single reactor starting construction are absolutely bisarre.
The first Polish plant is not a "single reactor". It is 3 reactors.
The poles haven’t spent money, that is an application for the EU commission to review the subsidies.
Not a single final investment decision is taken.
Even the French are postponing the EPR2 program due to the horrific costs. Now it might begin in 2026, if they can politically agree to the mindbogglingly large subsidies.
https://www.power-technology.com/news/poland-14-7bn-nuclear-...
Of course they haven't spent the money yet.
> Even the French are postponing the EPR2 program due to the horrific costs
Completely untrue.
And French nuclear is not subsidized. Unlike renewables.
It is a program championed by the previous hard right authoritarian government with not as enthusiastic interest by the current polish government.
> And French nuclear is not subsidized. Unlike renewables.
Why do you keep making stuff up which is easily findable? Is accepting reality that hard?
The EPR2 program hinges on absolutely massive subsidies. The French auditing agency said that even assuming insanely low capital costs and profit margins it makes a large loss.
Taking real figures it just becomes stupid.
The French auditing agency recommended to postpone the EPR2 program due to the low value and incredibly high costs.
https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2025-01/20250114...
What they said about EPR2 is that they were refused the information to even make an estimate of its profitability. Translation (using DocLingo) from page 25:
"In its 2020 report on the EPR sector, the Court recommended that EDF 'calculate the projected profitability of the Flamanville 3 reactor and the EPR2 and ensure its monitoring' (recommendation no. 6). EDF has deliberately and persistently refused to provide the Court with information on the projected profitability and production costs, which leads to considering this recommendation as not implemented. work.
Based on the information at its disposal, the Court's calculation predicts a poor profitability for Flamanville 3. For its part, the EPR2 program is still characterized by the absence of a finalized estimate and a financing plan."
Any claims of profitability of EPR/EPR2 should be taken with heavy skepticism, given that the official auditors have been stonewalled.
The French auditors said that Flamannville 3, the solitary EPR prototype, will be "marginally" profitable. This is one of the most catastrophic builds in recent history. And it will still be more profitable than any of the intermittent renewable projects in Europe.
EDF does in fact, receive subsidies from the French government. For their renewables projects. Not for their nuclear projects. Which pay for all this nonsense.
Compared to the EPR, the EPR2 is vastly simplified, for better buildability. The complaint there was that they were moving too quickly for the auditors, as they didn't have all the documentation they would like to have.
Compare this with the absolutely devastating report of the Bundesrechnungshof, the German auditors, on the failed German Energiewende.
And climate change can have very sudden and unpredictable results too as we've seen all over the world in recent years.
Look at what happened here in Spain in Valencia only a few months ago. Unprecedented in the region's recorded history. Yet it keeps happening more and more.
But I can see how the way I worded it suggests I meant that yes. I should have been clearer. What I did mean to say is that recorded history is like a microsecond in geological time and I wouldn't put too much confidence in predicting based on that short period.
But they are two different risks. Over exacerbated by climate change, the other indeed not.
It's a lot like trusting your private data to a company. Sure, Google in 2007 is pretty great, but maybe you have some doubts about their integrity in 2025. Too late, they have what they have, forever.
Is this guaranteed to work? The Chernobyl disaster was caused by grossly-improper maintenance, so… :shrug:. No matter how many physical safety mechanisms you have, a determined mechanic could remove them – but at that point, it becomes deliberate sabotage, which is rare, detectable, and not unique to nuclear power plants. (You could probably kill more people by destroying the right dam in the middle of the night.)
At scale, in the long run, you will get grossly improper maintenance. I feel comfortable asserting that without feeling like a total cynic.
It's not just nuclear either, this is also a problem with dams.
And that's before you take into account second order risks like people dying because they can't afford to heat properly during winter.
The damage from Fukushima has been so small that it wouldn't make it past regional headlines if it didn't involve the scary word "nuclear".
One solution is to house government officials and their families close-by so they're incentivized to never cheap out.
How many times did this happen in 80 years? according to [1] not many times.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nuclear_disasters_and...
And this is including very early technology and government (e.g. the Russian one) that I wouldn't trust with anything.
The consequences of a nuclear incident are very high, and can be more or less permanent for an area. It's a lot to ask for a technology to be absolutely resilient to mismanagement or even sabotage.
Now apply this logic to many other power sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
You can see online, nuclear power is actually one of the safest methods of energy generation, behind solar and ahead of wind, because sometimes dudes fall from the tops of the windmills.
Could you start looking at the second-order effects of the meltdown to get a higher death toll? Probably, but you could probably also look at all of the pollutants generated by solar panels, and the fact that they get shipped to Africa and crushed up and thrown in the ground to make solar's death toll look higher too.
And with Fukushima we were kinda lucky. It was still a double meltdown with several hydrogen explosions and could have been much worse.
The WHO says there will be no detectable health effects.
Anyway, let me steelman what you're aiming at here. I think you want to argue not that hundreds of deaths won't occur, but that hundreds of deaths don't matter that much. These are statistical deaths, so it's appropriate to treat them using the "statistical value of a human life". This is the value of a life to be used for policy purposes (like deciding if a safety measure is needed, if spending on a medical treatment is appropriate, etc.) In the US, it's around $12M per life. So, 200 (say) deaths would have a value of $2.4B. This is not enormous compared to overall cost of the accident, even to the utility. It could be reasonable to treat radiation releases as at Fukushima by fining the polluter by an amount related to this value.
Under this sort of regulatory regime, the purpose of regulations is not to avoid all releases, but to keep the releases small enough that the utilities would have the resources to pay the fines. So, no 100,000 death accidents. Nuclear power plants designed to this concept could allow some small radiation release in accidents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUnik4gxrtM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor
> MSRs eliminate the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water-cooled reactors because the fuel mixture is kept in a molten state. The fuel mixture is designed to drain without pumping from the core to a containment vessel in emergency scenarios, where the fuel solidifies, quenching the reaction.