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Comment by leonidasrup | Hacker News Reader

Nuclear reactors are regularly maintained, tested and checked. When possible, old plants are upgraded to new safety standards.

You can upgrade certain components, and safety systems. However things like the containment structure or pressure vessel can't be changed. You for example can't retrofit a core catcher, but you could improve the turbines, I think Steam Generators as well, replace PLC's, Tsunami proof your site by building a larger tsunami wall / making your backup generators flood proof...

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Belgium's reactors are really old, and have lots of issues. They have been dragging their feet for decades on the subject and instead of building new reactors 10-20 years ago, they are now un-decomissioning older reactors..

    > Belgium's reactors are really old, and have lots of issues.

I want to point out that Belgium has the (global) gold standard of nuclear regulation. They have annual reviews, 5 year major reassessments, and 10 year Periodic Safety Review (PSR). The purpose of the PSR is to build a plan to keep all nuclear plants up-to-date with state of the art safety mechanisms. Each PSR has mandatory upgrades. If operators fail or refuse these upgrades, they are forced to shutdown. There is no one other country who does nuclear safety quite like Belgium.

old!= bad. You fix stuff and you operate it safely. Running existing units for as long as possible is sensible.

Right, and ultimately Japan has decided the safest and I assume cheapest route with these reactors wasn't to rebuild but rather to decommission.

These reactors can be made safer, but they all still have a foundational design flaw which means the ultimate goal should be replacing rather than continually spending money reinforcing.

On the contrary, Japan is changing it's energy policy and restarting it's nuclear reactors.

"Japan’s Energy Plan: New Policy Shifts Nuclear Power Stance from Reduction to Maximization"

https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01195/

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...

Hmm, I may have been too vague. When I stated "these" I was talking specifically about the Fukushima plants and not Japan's policy for reactors nationally.

Are they planning on restarting the Fukushima plants? I didn't think they were.

The Fukushima plants were completely destroyed by the meltdowns and subsequent Hydrogen explosions that were caused by the Tsunami.

There was never any chance of "restarting" them, so not sure why you brought that up.

Because I'm confused at to what the

> On the contrary

was about. Contrary to what?

Contrary to your claim Japan is not shutting down its nuclear reactors. It is restarting them.

Not a claim I made.

> These reactors can be made safer, but they all still have a foundational design flaw which means the ultimate goal should be replacing rather than continually spending money reinforcing.

This was about the Fukushima reactors that were completely destroyed? In response to a discussion of Belgian reactors that are completely different?

Fukushima units were dismantled more from fear of public opinion. They could have operated unaffected units further safely with proper fixes

All nuclear reactors are massively safer than coal power plants though. If you excluded climate change and Co2 emissions entirely and measured harm/deaths adjusted by the amount of power generated the difference would be astronomical.

> measured harm/deaths adjusted by the amount of power generated

In this case, we find that nuclear nuclear reactors are 2 orders of magnitude more dangerous than gas and coal power plants.

do you account for all the air pollution and downstream health effects coal power plants cause?

Or you know, just build renewables and storage. Displace vastly more coal faster with a death per kWh where the only injuries comes from traditional construction and mechanical industry work.

No need for any special casing.

> where the only injuries comes from traditional construction and mechanical industry work.

Still count.

They do count, but look at it from a societal perspective.

For the general public no harm can come their way.

Unless they through some mechanical failure manage to walk underneath a wind turbine shedding or collapsing.

Same with solar. Which is even less risky.

For nuclear power the about all effects from a large scale failure will impact society through either radiation or life changing evacuations.

And then society is on the hook to pay for the entire cleanup work.

For renewables the only people who get harmed are those who work in the industry. The risk for the general public is zero.

evacuation in Fukushima was forced. They could have stayed just as well - dose was too small. Statistically nuclear is great. Even more so considering fossil firming strategy in many countries

Here your blind conviction always praise nuclear power lost you the plot. All based on hindsight.

Knowing the outcome that happened and perfectly slicing the decisions to fit that.

How do you expect to be the politician ordering not to evacuate when you have a nuclear plant in unstable condition undergoing hydrogen explosions while you’re flying blind about the true state of things. You know, the hindsight.

Radiation data was known. Due to sensors outside of the plant area. Jp govt ignored it.

Even more so, after the accident when the situation was certain, evacuation orders weren't immediately cancelled to let people back into their homes despite the dose being very low, in some cases even below natural background radiation levels in other areas of Japan

Unnecessary evacuation killed over 2.3k people. That's half of waht are expected to die fron Chernobyl accident over a century per UN or about 5 times more vs nr of expected deaths per updated UNSCEAR reports. Fear of nuclear killed more people than nuclear itself ij this case

You’re still missing the point.

Radiation data was known. But that assumes that it can’t change.

How can you assume that nothing will change for nuclear plant undergoing hydrogen explosions which you’ve lost all control over?

I think you know this, which is why your stuck in hindsight and trying to shift the discussion to other topics.

There's no need to do such harsh rushed evacuation even if situation was much worse as Chernobyl proves. Many that died from evacuation were old or sick people that wouldn't have had symptoms even if it was as bad as Chernobyl (even though it would be physically impossible to have uranium burning into clouds there like in Chernobyl due to design difference)

What's worse, after situation was known and stabilized, government didn't cancel evacuation orders but kept them for years even though the dose was small.

I'm not shifting the discussion but telling the reality, a reality that killed many people even though they could have lived https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014919702...

Which is again hindsight trying to downplay what was at hand.

How do you know it wouldn’t become worse than Chernobyl when you have lost control?

This is all hindsight speaking trying to downplay what risks nuclear power poses, because accepting them means letting go of your precious.

All nuclear planes plan ahead. Evacuation zones. Handing out emergency radius, iodine tablets.

When faced with a situation that is out of control you execute the plan. You don’t second guess if it is actually needed.

That for the incident report to specify, and then update the plan.

The response to Fukushima was even wider evacuation plans. Stress testing them. Better resiliency for the plants.

We did change. But not in the direction you want when attempting to downplay Fukushima.

Why are you so afraid of renewables and storage?

Because you can't have Chernobyl by design. Like physically.

Nobody is downplaying the risks- not evacuating sick people and old people would have done far less damage regardless of the incident outcome. They just wouldn't have lived enough or a very small nr would have been affected

And as said, what's worse. When incident was tackled and radiation levels known, govt didn't rush to lift the orders causing even more deaths.

I'm not afraid of renewables and bess and never said that, don't put words in my mouth. I just realize that without nuclear countries will be bound to expanding gas firming if they dont have hydro, just like Germany. We can make a bet that even in 30y German emissions per kwh will still be worse than french ones due to this firming. In other words due to antinuclear policy in 50y of energiewende Germany will still have worse emissions vs France which did the job in about 20y of Messmer

Still. What the industry learnt after Fukushima was to tighten the and stress test the plans. An even stronger mandate to "within this area always evacuate".

Looking at what is happening gas usage is cratering all over Europe. What you are saying is someone assuming nothing will ever change. Even though BESS and renewables are completely reshaping the markets.

Justifying your standpoint by that the renewable industry in the early 2000s didn't deliver enough results.

But you do realize that we live in 2026 right? That is an entirely different beast. That is the industry that is delivering all new capacity globally and causing Indias and Chinas coal usage to decline in absolute terms.

And that industry will continue to scale. While you're stuck advocating for the technology that doesn't even complement it.

... and add a pipe to vent the hydrogen gases outside instead of accumulating it inside the reactor building!

Those old reactors in Belgium have already had several issues.

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