I get so frustrated reading anything in the popular press about nuclear power. Everyone commits the same fucking fallacy over and over again: measuring it against an absolute idea instead of anything in the real world. Even here in the HN comments, I see "if it can be made safe." In TFA, it's the explanation that people are afraid of a three mile island or Chernobyl event, that his killer feature is the impossibility of meltdowns.
Here in the real world, you have to measure options against other real world options. The other real world options we have for baseload power on this scale are fossil fuels, primarily coal. Coal plants emit much more radiation than nuclear plants - even old ones. There's lots of research about HOW MUCH more radioactive coal power is, but we're talking about anywhere from 50-200% more. Coal power is responsible for 800,000 deaths per year, WHEN IT'S WORKING PROPERLY. That's the bar nuclear, and any other alternative baseload power source, has to beat. It doesn't have to failure proof, it doesn't have to have zero deaths. It just has to be significantly better than the alternatives.
Refusing to consider a power source unless it has zero deaths, zero radiation, zero side effects for all time, is living in a fantasy world. It's the paradigm promoted by the fossil fuel industry, and bought hook line and sinker by the dumber end of the environmentalist movement. And it keeps us from ever decreasing our power generation carbon footprint.
> The other real world options we have for baseload power on this scale are fossil fuels, primarily coal.
Sure, but... will this be the same in 10 years? 20? 50? Within merely the past 3 years, the amount of battery energy storage has expanded by a few orders of magnitude.
Because when you build a nuclear power plant, it takes a minimum of a decade to go from on paper to operation, and the operational life, which pays off the capex at the beginning, is hopefully, at least 50.
Nuclear power isn't agile. It has poor reactivity to future market changes. It costs billions to get up and running, and isn't modular. You can't commission it in 100MW increments. A solar power plant requires a dozen handy men and a couple of electrical engineers to maintain, a nuclear power plant requires a few dozen nuclear engineers. Solar power doesn't have publicly socialized decommissioning or waste storage costs.
I'm not trying to tell you nuclear doesn't have a future. What I am saying, with the likes of Tesla Energy and the rise in solar + battery storage, is that the energy grid is in for turbulent times in the next few decades. This makes the economics of nuclear questionable - we don't know if it is going to be economically viable in a few decades.
If I had $10b? I wouldn't touch the nuclear energy sector, personally.
> It costs billions to get up and running, and isn't modular.
One of my primary concerns with nuclear power is that it's very much dependent on the actual order of things carrying on as usual, meaning stable Governments, skilled technicians available etc. What would have happened if Syria (a secular state until not that long ago) had had civilian nuclear plants? Answer: they would most probably have fallen under the hands of either ISIS or an Al-Qaida offshoot. We had the same issue after the Soviet Union collapsed. Had the political uncertainty and power vacuum continued for much longer into the '90s then nobody knows what could have happened to their civil nuclear plants.
How is this more concerning than the raw amount of weapons that a lying around everywhere? Giving them access to cheap power or a potential local weapon doesn't seem like that pressing of an issue.
The concern for me is that a nuclear power plant and its associated spent fuel storage pools are a facility that requires an unwavering commitment to maintenance and upkeep by highly specialized personnel—not just for as long as you want power out of it, but for decades beyond.
Coal isn't like this. If you stop needing power, you stop feeding it coal, and the machinery can sit there idle, doing no further harm.
I'm not a coal-booster, but I absolutely see the concern about regime change and commitment to the safety of a nuclear installation. Between Trump and Brexit, how confident are we that even first world nations are capable of taking on the long term responsibility for such a project?
"Between Trump and Brexit, how confident are we that even first world nations are capable of taking on the long term responsibility for such a project?"
This post did nothing to advance the conversation. There's nothing thought invoking, no statistics, and no argument. Please provide substance to your posts in the future.
It also required quite a lot of fissile material and wasn't all that powerful. Dropped on lower Manhattan, it wouldn't even reach midtown Manhattan. See for yourself at http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/. I was actually quite surprised to realize that a "city" in 1940s was something much smaller than what we call a city today.
The point I'm aiming at is that nuclear weapons are (still) something expensive, hard to make, and useful only for nation states with large military budgets. Going for dirty bombs would be a better strategy for terrorists.
The second point I'm aiming at is that nuclear is not as scary as Hollywood seems to have made us believe.
I'd venture to guess that most people would regard the quarter of a million people dead and billions in property damage from an airburst over Manhattan (what that site indicates would happen with a Little Boy-style device) as quite significant. Losing the NYSE might just possibly have a small effect on the overall economy, as well.
> The point I'm aiming at is that nuclear weapons are (still) something expensive, hard to make, and useful only for nation states with large military budgets.
The fissile material is quite expensive, and requires a state-level actor's resources or cooperation to create or obtain. You're not going to take fuel directly out of a reactor and use it in a proper bomb. If that's the point you were trying to make, okay.
On the other hand, a simple bomb is not difficult to make given the necessary, weapons-grade material. I cannot even imagine why you think a terrorist organization would not find such a device useful.
You don't necessarily need to convert the nuclear fuel to weapons, you just need to blow the whole thing up, which ISIS is more than capable of doing, and then see how the winds carry the radio-active clouds 3,000 km away. For example see this map: http://i.imgur.com/zlRGSs3.jpg , more especially Austria.
While the parent comment essentially reflects my view over the last few years, your points above are what I have come to understand more recently, so I am a bit conflicted about what the best way forward is.
In addition, I think that pragmatism requires us to acknowledge that nuclear has too much of an image problem for it to be a serious contender for new investment in many countries. That investment will come up against all sorts of political and social pushback. Such pushback could blow out the time to build a new plant yet again, compounding your point about renewables/storage progress that occurs in the meantime. Germany is shutting down its few nuclear plants in favour of new coal ones. If that doesn't demonstrate an image problem, I don't know what does. It sucks, but it's the reality of the situation.
I think those countries that have succeeded with nuclear power over the last few decades have done well, and should continue. Electricity prices in France are very cheap compared to Germany (I've lived in both places recently), and their emissions from power generation are tiny compared to their neighbours: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/el... . I wish my country, Australia, had jumped on board with nuclear decades ago. We have the uranium, we have the space, and we have a horrid attachment to coal that we need to be rid of.
But for countries like Australia without an existing nuclear apparatus, its difficult to justify the investment when there are much more politically acceptable places for that money to go, with much quicker results. Places which are rapidly decreasing in cost, and are part of an industry currently undergoing massive research and investment across the world, guaranteeing further improvements.
The flip side for me, though, is that even 50 years from now when renewables and storage are prevalent and fantastic, we will still need some form of base load power. We don't want it to be coal. But then, how many governments bother planning for the long term future these days? Mine sure as hell doesn't.
> pragmatism requires us to acknowledge that nuclear has too much of an image problem
That's a cop out or a serious mark against democracy. Energy is fundamental to civilization. Making the wrong move in this domain can put a society at a permanent disadvantage to others. If nuclear is indeed a better option, the pragmatic path is to pitch the evidence.
Representative democracy is all about the acknowledgement of different views, so policies are often compromises or cop-outs. So not only is it both, it is an acknowledgement of recent history and current attitudes in various countries around the world.
More broadly, I can think of two notable examples from the past twelve months where strong democracies made insanely bad decisions despite strong evidence suggesting they shouldn't.
From an Australian perspective, we've had multiple long-term initiatives implemented by a government only to have the opposition rail against them (and eventually, repeal them) for no real reason beyond party differentiation. Long term projects often can't survive election cycles.
With renewables and storage we seem to have an active industry with broad support across the populace, and the only real political differentiation involved is at what pace to set. Having something we can actually do right now seems wiser than trying to get something off the ground which has a strong chance of going nowhere.
Yes, our democracies are quite broken. We need to try and make progress regardless, because we can't sit and wait around until they're working better.
A) Nuclear power is not available to all countries
B) No country operates in isolation. so e.g. if Australia decided to convert 100% to nuclear energy but other countries opposed it, they could impose sanctions (e.g.)
Just a side thought: I wonder if the decommissioning of nuclear power plants might also partially be explained by an (at least perceived) increased risk of domestic terrorism? They're single points of failure, and they fail in spectacular fashion, making them excellent targets for someone wanting to cause havoc and terror.
They are also very well protected. The concrete reactor shields in Germany are designed to contain the core even if a figher jet flies into the reactor building at full speed (and have been designed that way for ages, way before 2001). The power plants and storage sites are more heavily guarded than just about any other areas in the country including military bases, so it's not possible to drive a truck with explosives up to the reactor building either.
It is way easier to commit attacks using chemical weapons or anthrax or conventional bombs, or to set off a dirty bomb with imported radioactive material than to breach a western European nuclear plant.
> It is way easier to commit attacks using chemical weapons or anthrax or conventional bombs, or to set off a dirty bomb with imported radioactive material than to breach a western European nuclear plant.
Unless you happen to be one of the recent terrorists who committed attacks in Europe, and be employed in a nuclear powerplant.
IANANS (..Not a Nuclear Scientist ) but this seems like a feature, not a bug.
While Solar and other renewables are pretty awesome and we should continue investing in them, I also think it makes a LOT of sense to invest in nuclear energy, get off dirty coal completely (e.g. France) and then transition from Nuclear to other sources as and when they become available. Because right now the biggest greenhouse gas emissions (AFAIK) are from coal power plants and vehicles; the latter we seem to have a promising solution (electric vehicles).
Coal is more or less already dead. US production dropped from near 60% in late 80's to under 40% now in part because it's too expensive vs Wind and not flexible. Paying even more per KWH for even less flexible generation is a nonstarter unless it can very quickly respond to shifting demand. Especially with how long these plants need to last.
At this point safety is a non issue with nuclear it just needs dramatically lower costs or somewhat lower costs and vastly increased flexibility. The problem is heat engines cool down when you stop producing power and they both have huge thermal loads vs natural gas.
And why is all that? Red tape and bureaucracy, while the world literally burns. If the same rules applied to coal or even gas burning generators the cost would exceed that.
Nuclear power stations are extremely modular, there are at least twenty of them circling australian waters as I type. I'm going to go out on a limb and venture that you will find less coal and solar powered submarines than that.
These issues are not technical, they are political, and rooted in irrational bullshit propagated by stupid and irresponsible people.
> And why is all that? Red tape and bureaucracy, while the world literally burns.
Can I ask what specific requirements surrounding the development and operation around nuclear plants constitutes red tape in your opinion? My understanding is that most of the regulations concerning operation are in place to ensure the possibility of a disaster is minimized to nil.
> These issues are not technical, they are political
As expressed in my above comment, I would argue that nuclear power's problems are neither technical nor political, but nearly totally economic in nature. It's on the losing side of current trends.
You can start by listing everything required from a nuclear blueprint, that is not required of a coal blueprint. A industry that kills hundreds of thousands of people a year operating within 'acceptable' constraints, as I said. "Minimising disaster to nill" is a absolute and ridiculous fallacy, require the same of coal and see what the costs tally to.
We are past the point where we can entertain fictions like "economics" and "trends" and treat them like they were carved from the gaze of Kek on the buttoks of the whore of Babylon, towering over the trembling spirit of powerless men.
Seriously "trends" "economics" wtf does that even mean ?
A plane hitting a coal plant has a vastly different threat potential than a plane hitting a nuclear fission plant, just as one example where just because both structures are "power plants", it doesn't mean there aren't different safety requirements, even if you remove all the "red tape".
This [0] is an F-4 hitting a concrete wall and was used to inform the design of containment walls around reactors.
Would there be some shitty days for people and things outside the containment wall? You bet! But there wouldn't be any shitty nuclear days. In fact, I suspect radioactivity release would be worse with a coal plant crash as it would release the nasty stuff that we do manage to scrub out of the exhaust.
Does it? Who told you that, or is it simply something you believe because its "obvious".
Chernobyl's second reactor is happily churning away in the middle of a wildlife paradise. If that is what the world's worst nuclear disaster has come to then I think we can have a good hard look at why a nuclear plant costs tens of billions of dollars, the majority costs sunk into compliance. Compliance required and inspired by irrational fears.
How about you start to provide some sources that show that current security measures are indeed purely bureaucratic, irrational vestiges and not actually required. Also, your tone is not appreciated and unnecessary in a discussion like this
> I'm going to go out on a limb and venture that you will find less coal and solar powered submarines than that.
To be fair, submarines are an entirely different use case compared to public energy grid generation. The former requires high power density with low weight. Coal and solar don't tend to deliver that underwater. Nuclear is indeed one of the top choices for a submarine. The economic point I'm making isn't applicable twenty thousand leagues under the sea.
But it is applicable for conventional energy grid generation, and it performs poorly compared to solar and battery storage, so much so that the world is currently building several large nuclear power plant's worth of capacity annually with solar alone.
"Nuclear power isn't agile. It has poor reactivity to future market changes. It costs billions to get up and running, and isn't modular. You can't commission it in 100MW increments."
If you read the article you'll see that this company plans to produce modular reactors starting at only 5 MW.
Many of the innovative new nuclear startups, like ThorCon and Terrestrial Energy have similar plans. Also, since the plan is to mass produce standardized reactors a whole lot of the regulatory burden associated with the current approach of "one off" construction is avoided.
"A solar power plant requires a dozen handy men and a couple of electrical engineers to maintain, a nuclear power plant requires a few dozen nuclear engineers."
The next generation of modular nuclear reactors will require few or no specialists constantly on site. They also don't require water cooling, so siting options are much more flexible.
"Solar power doesn't have publicly socialized decommissioning or waste storage costs."
Solar power does have externalities having to do with mining, processing and manufacturing. Also, solar requires large tracts of land at utility scale, is intermittent, and unsuitable at higher latitudes. It is currently a good bit more expensive than nuclear will be once modular reactors are being produced.
Marine nuclear reactors are pretty small, so you could commission nuclear power in small increments. I guess it's not typically done this way because the red tape overhead for a new nuclear plant is so huge that you want a big reactor to make the effort worthwhile.
As you might guess, highly enriched uranium is trivial to make "dirty bombs" out of and a small step away from actual fission bombs. So it's avoided like plague in nuclear engineering unless it's absolutely performance critical and will be used in a highly secure place - like naval submarines & aircraft carriers.
Not only dirty bombs, but actual nuclear weapons. With the more than 90% highly enriched uranium found in submarines, you can make a Hiroshima-type gun assembly device without much technical sophistication.
But this way of thinking has kept back nuclear Energy for the past 3 decades already. 3 decades have past with no investment in nuclear energy research because 'the next technology is right around the corner'
That is just the biggest amount of misinformation and SV bias I have seen in a long time!
The hole point in nuclear is that it is cheap and fast to implement by GW/h, the first nuclear power plant (Shippingport) became online in 1958, by 1978 15% of all US energy on the grid was from nuclear plants.
It is modular, can be made near the consumption center, it is baseload, high density, virtually zero CO2 equivalence and historically safer than building houses.
No, you are wrong. It takes longer than 10 years to permit/build a new nuclear plant and it costs over $1 billion. It is the exact opposite of cheap and fast.
This is about grid generation, so as I said: by GW/h. With solar and wind you have to store and over provision.. there are lots of studies on the cost of replacing nuclear power with solar and wind (just Google "nuclear vs solar price"), even with the current financing mechanisms that solar and wind have (against the over regulation and interest that nuclear has) nuclear is still a order of magnitude cheaper, that is why China is so heavily invested in nuclear as we speak.
> Coal plants emit much more radiation than nuclear plants - even old ones. There's lots of research about HOW MUCH more radioactive coal power is, but we're talking about anywhere from 50-200% more.
I don't fully understand this argument: A well-maintained nuclear power plant emits next to no radioactivity (compared to the natural background), so a coal plant that emits even a huge factor more radioactivity is still negligible.
I feel like the absolute number (x times more radioactive than nuclear) is really not helpful, if one of the numbers is (just as an example) 0.0001% of natural background, and the other is 0.001% of it.
Failing nuclear plants have contributed far less radiation than working coal plants over the lifetime of nuclear.
The point is that even if you see these failures as inevitable going forwards, coal is the larger radiation threat too, even though the radiation threat from coal is tiny compared to the vast numbers of dead due to respiratory illnesses caused by coal.
Further the fact that nuclear power has to pass a higher safety bar than coal is part of what's making it more expensive.
If we were rational we'd be saying that it's currently too safe and too expensive and we should be compromising on safety to get an overall benefit (through reduced CO2 emissions and reduced radiation from burning coal).
I think at this point it's just considered a dirty word and is probably unrecoverable. If we can make fusion work then the benefit won't just be that it's better but that it's a new brand. There'll still be nuclear waste (you can't prevent radioactivation when you have neutrons), but it'll fusion waste rather than nuclear waste.
>People simply aren't rational. It has been so hard for me to accept that.
You raise an important point: human irrationality is as real as climate change. And probably more challenging.
We might more quickly tackle climate change by simultaneously tackling human irrationality.
It's a shame that more of the best and brightest minds don't enter the (messy)fields of behavioral science - where progress is much less impressive of late than in technology IMHO.
From the air pollution safety on the table, you're right. From a more uncertain Carbon emission climate perspective, natural gas is still terrible compared to non emitting sources like nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar.
Agreed. This is like the calls to ban self driving car technology such as Tesla's autopilot because they sometimes make mistakes.
Completely overlooked is the number of accidents prevented because of the technology.
Just recently when the guy in Florida was killed while the car was driving under autopilot there was news story after news story about the dangers of it, how it should be outlawed.
To have it 'their way' we could never permit self driving cars until there was a 0% chance of malfunction or accident.
That would be like outlawing seatbelts because on 0.1% of crashes they might cause more injury.
Thankfully reason mostly prevailed in the car "autopilot" battle.
Hopefully reason will eventually prevail in the nuclear power battle.
Couldn't agree more. Chernobyl killed 28 and both Three Mile and Fukushima killed 0. Still people are so afraid of nuclear reactors. This and the opposition to GMO food show that pseudoscientific scaremongering is extremely effective in a scientifically illiterate population.
In case it's not obvious this argument is a disingenuous appraisal of current nuclear energy as a power source.
The important facts that are left unsaid are: when current nuclear goes bad it goes VERY bad indeed; the intermittent powers sources of wind and solar are much less intermittent in aggregate when their geographical dispersion is large enough; the costs of both solar and wind are declining rapidly while nuclear costs are not; widely distributed storage batteries will be come more common as their price continues to decrease and the grid will strengthen in proportion.
Solar and wind have the added important advantage that capacity can be added incrementally whereas nuclear is one huge, wildly expensive project at a time.
I'm not against nuclear in principle. The problem is not, as stated, the unreasonable condition that it has to be 100% safe. The problem is that the risks have to be reasonably limited when something does go wrong. Nuclear fails that requirement.
If there was not a viable alternative to nuclear then sure, nuclear would be a necessity. As it is, nuclear's viability window has closed, at least for now.
It's not a disingenuous appraisal; you're overblowing the safety issues.
When nuclear fails, the bad isn't that bad. Fukushima impact was mostly from panic and unnecessary evacuations. Even Chernobyl wasn't that bad (compare to e.g. hydroelectric dam failures).
As for solar power, I hope what you say is true; I still wonder what's their EROI and real carbon footprint, when you correct for the subsidies (which are fine as means to get solar running, but not fine for calculations of impact on climate and energy security).
> When nuclear fails, the bad isn't that bad. Fukushima impact was mostly from panic and unnecessary evacuations.
Doesn't that imply to some degree that the "isn't that bad" is because we have people to stop it from going really bad when it goes bad? I can't help but feel what's missing from the assessment is the various levels of failures of each technology, how much intervention is required if any to keep it to that failure level, and how likely that failure level is. We're all talking about probability of outcomes but we still seem to be leaving out essential information.
We also need to consider that even with the rapidly improving costs of renewbales, the dollars per GwH generated are still beyond nuclear, and require orders of magnitude more space, which not all countries have available. "Wildly expensive" nuclear is simply not true when put in to the perspective of a national grid vs wind+solar+storage.
The space factor is also at play when you look at geographical dispersion. It's one thing for Australia or the US to have enough solar and wind farms around the country where conditions vary, but what about the UK? A cloudy winter with hardly any sun means they are left with wind, and a day with little wind across a geographical area the size of the UK is not uncommon. It has happened for some lengthy periods, in fact: http://euanmearns.com/flat-calm-across-the-uk/. No storage solutions proposed so far have the longevity needed for the odd extended calm+dark spell.
Europe is at least fortunate enough to have an international electricity market across its internal borders to help manage this, but that largely works because of France's nuclear plants. It is the largest electricity exporter in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
Define "very bad". The total deaths attributed to Fukushima (including increased chance of cancer over the next decades) is about 100 people. Chernobyl is surrounded by essentially a thriving nature preserve.
What if the nuclear facility were surrounded by a human-forbidden nature preserve the size of the equivalently producing solar/wind farm?
I believe the "total deaths" argument is dishonest. The death count is so low precisely because we know the danger exists and effect massive evacuation and decontamination programs. Such efforts are very expensive and bring a lot of suffering to those displaced, but those downsides don't register on the "total deaths" scale.
If it bleeds, it leads. The press will always seek to sensationalize any rare events to gain clicks / views.
For this reason, people vastly outweigh the risks of nuclear meltdown, terrorist attack, plane crash, child abduction, etc. So people are easily swayed to oppose nuclear development by fossil-fuel lobbying.
Since the government must give approval for nuclear plants, their development becomes a political issue, replete with fear-mongering and NIMBYism.
You're citing facts and calling for a balance of risk / reward for energy production, which is noble and should convince the HN crowd. But the reality of nuclear power is that it's political, and facts and politics do not cross paths very often :-)
The way to change public opinion is through education, so I suggest every go and watch Pandora's Promise, which is an excellent documentary about nuclear power.
You are wrong. The alternative is not cole, but of course never-ending energy sources like sun, wind, water etc. - many of those technologies are still in a very early stage because lots of government money was put into nuclear power - for only one single reason: to produce nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons are the only stupid reason why we will leave many unsolvable nuclear waste problems to our children - because of psychotic war-fetishists and primitive anti-social whoriticians.
Luckily the discussions are already won around the globe: renewable energy is the future, no matter how retarded any government will be that US citizens choose to lead "their country".
Of course old school lobbyists that have siphoned billions of dollars selling a failed and plain stupid technology will not just disappear, they will do everything to keep their positions selling their old ideas as "new and clean" and will be an extremely annoying obstacle to human progress for a long time, unfortunately.
But every initiative from these old greedy hateful minority will produce an even stronger impulse of reaction by the open-minded and peace-loving young people that are working hard to establish renewable energy systems around the world.
The time of the anti-social egoist-monkey has gone in most parts of the world.
Nuclear weapon production is not helped by civilian reactors, with the one exception of low-burnup Magnox and CANDU. The all-in cost of nuclear is below that of solar and wind.
Coal is under 40% of US electrical generation and dropping fairly quickly relative to 50+ year plant lifetimes.
Peak was near 60% in late 80's and it's dropped 30%. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=25392. Current issue is it's more expencive than wind and not viable as peaking power, just like Nuclear making this a non starter.
I don't think that helps. People are terrible at assessing risk. Just look at flying. There are people who are afraid to fly, some to the point where it's impossible. Compare that to driving, which is far riskier yet where is the equivalent phobia?
I think there's two reasons for this:
1. People trust the familiar.
2. An event with a plane is likely to be catastrophic.
Both of th set factors work against nuclear power too. Between Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, no one is going to trust it or want it in their backyard. That's a problem because nuclear plants need water and that puts them near people.
Then add in distrust of companies to run them properly, th spent fuel storage problem and this logistics chain that creates the opportunity for malfeasance (i.e. Terrorists getting their hand on materials for a dirty bomb) and its almost I,possible.
So it doesn't matter what coal does or doesn't do, people are used to it and catastrophic failure scenarios are greatly diminished.
Renewable sourc s that create fuel you can use elsewhere are currently cost prohibitive (i.e. It's more expensiv than drilling for oil or digging up coal) but the cost is co,king down. This provides a ceiling on just how expensive traditional power generation can get.
I'm very foreign to facts like these about coal. I had always assumed/considered it "dirty energy", but that is all i had known. With that said, my coworker seems to think "coal is far more clean than most people think", and is pro-coal.
Are there some really blatant and easy to digest articles explaining coal? Eg, 800,000 deaths sounds big, and while i don't agree with my coworker, i assume those deaths are far more subtle and debatable. To be clear, i'm not trying to defend coal, i just want to provide him with some clear and irrefutable evidence.
I recently had a discussion with family about nuclear energy. One member was worried about it because the plants would be targets for foreign attacks. I told him we already have plenty of plants operating that could be attacked. Then I quickly pulled up a list of all the nuclear plants in the US. There's already one less then a hundred miles from his home. He still wasn't convinced.
I think a lot of people have irrational fear about nuclear and nothing short of a miracle will change that.
You could use the same argument to justify pushing renewables or even gas. It is pragmatic because it is easy. Nuclear engineering is hard.
Most energy development "in the real world" is financially driven. This applies even when other political objectives exist. The uncertainty in costs of nuclear are a serious issue that makes renewables seem like the pragmatic solution.
This supposed cabal in the fossil fuel industry apparently extends to to the insurance industry. I can insure a gas fired plant, but not a nuke.
Maybe that is due to some fault in the way non-nuclear liability is calculated. Or, just maybe, the environmental and economic destruction that happens when nuclear plants suffer major malfunctions, especially when their operation is extended past the initial designed lifespan, is so large it is impossible to insure in a way that makes economic sense.
> Coal power is responsible for 800,000 deaths per year
Umm... source? Clean Air Task Force puts U.S. deaths at 13K/year.[1]
Obviously the concern with nuclear is not that it needs to achieve "zero deaths". That is a straw man argument. It's Chernobyl, Fukushima, etc. and waste.
I think the 800k figure may be a global number. This 2012 Forbes article has a global average 100,000 deaths _per trillion kWhr_[1]. I have no clue if the the world uses 8 trillion kWhr of coal power in a year though.
Unless you have performed all of the science yourself, all the way "down to the turtles," belief--faith--is involved. You have faith that the chain of science is complete, that each person along the chain has done their part correctly, and that nothing significant has been omitted.
It's especially a matter of belief if you are relying on computer models--nay, the claims about computer models. You trust that these models were written by people with integrity, who would not adjust them to achieve a desired outcome, and who are competent enough to do it correctly. Or do you have access to the source code, and a huge cluster to run it on? If you take these claims at face value, that's faith--by definition.
1) We're releasing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
2) This CO2 does not magically disappear. We can measure it.
3) We know how CO2 interacts with infrared radiation. You can test it yourself with an FTIR machine.
This is all extremely simple. The computer models are just about getting some precision about the broad cause and effect which is utterly obvious to anyone who knows a little physics.
It's extremely simple to measure the greenhouse effect, sure. But climate models are incredibly complex due to complex feedback loops.
If it were simple there would be one model. There are dozens upon dozens.
There is a consensus that some global warming is happening, there really isn't a consensus on how much other than fairly large ranges calculated by the IPCC.
Because anthropogenic CO2 is a tiny fraction of oceanogenic CO2. It's like sneezing into the wind: it does not change the direction of the wind.
We are breaking the equilibrium.
What equilibrium? Equilibrium would imply a stable climate, but the climate has been changing for millions of years, long before humans arrived. Are you saying that the climate wouldn't change without humans?
> Oceans are at present CO2 sinks, and represent the largest active carbon sink on Earth, absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the air.
Next time you want to equivocate, at least try something that can't be falsified by ten seconds of Googling.
FYI: When someone posts factual data, it is poor etiquette to downvote them. Notice that I have not downvoted you even though I disagree with your conclusions. I am not afraid to debate the matter, so I feel no need to try to censor opponents.
I cut them off because they are irrelevant. My point remains: anthropogenic CO2 emissions are approximately 3% of natural emissions. Natural variation in natural emissions utterly dwarfs human emissions. Were the climate so sensitive to +/- 3%, we would not even exist today, because the climate would have gone to an extreme and stayed there millions of years ago. This is a very simple matter of scale and historical data that grossly exceeds human timescales. To think that human CO2 emissions are breaking the planet is ludicrous.
I have a device in my pocket with 1 billion transistors switching on and off a billion times a second. I couldn't possibly check every single one of them, or all the steps that went on its production.
I can, however, check the results it gives me and have a degree of confidence based on its accuracy and consistency.
We do just that with climate data and models.
People choose to challenge some aspects of science when it clashes with their interests or system of beliefs while completely relying on others when it's convenient. Even though the process by which scientific knowledge is produced is the very same. That's not only illogical, that's hypocrisy.
It's actually bizarre to see someone on HN conflate software and hardware. Your argument appears to be, "Hardware can be observed to operate properly, therefore software necessarily gives correct results."
There are a variety of arguments to make here, from the flaws in individual models, to the secrecy of source code, manipulation of data, politics, historical examples of incorrect scientific conclusions, and the general fallibility of humans (who perform the science).
But bother with any of those when you are claiming that, if software exists which ostensibly intends to perform a task, it must necessarily do so correctly. And then you accuse others of illogic and selective acceptance of science. That's just...bizarre. In the context of discussing belief vs. knowledge, that smacks of what one might call a "true believer."
The argument is that software can be used to check hardware, and, more broadly, that one does not need to execute every step of a process in order to have confidence in its results.
Sorry, but how is this point relevant to the discussion?
> more broadly, that one does not need to execute every step of a process in order to have confidence in its results.
That is broad, indeed. I should hope that, before reaching conclusions and making claims and calls to action that would result in the poverty of billions, one would take pains to verify every step of the process used to reach those conclusions.
Of course, what constitutes "verification" is a matter of opinion. To some, the models are sufficient. To others, they are grossly insufficient and have not proven accurate looking forward nor backward. It is a mystery why they continue to be asserted as proof.
One is ideological and almost by definition cannot be observed.
The other one involves things that can be observed where our faith is our trust of the well credentialed individuals who observe them.
You can choose not to have faith in the second one, but that doesn't make it not real.
What you're saying if you're denying global warming is that you don't trust the thousands upon thousands of trained scientists observing it. That doesn't make it not true whether you believe in it or not.
One person observes the universe, believes in God, and orders his life accordingly. Another person observes the universe, believes in science, and orders his life accordingly. (And a third person believes in both, but since we're dichotomizing...) Both persons have faith in things which they have not directly observed nor cannot directly prove, based on what they have heard and seen others claim, many of whom have specialized knowledge that requires years to obtain. What's the difference?
well credentialed individuals who observe them...You can choose not to have faith in the second one, but that doesn't make it not real...thousands upon thousands of trained scientists...
So, we could quibble over numbers, but there are two problems:
1. You're relying on argument from authority. How is this any different from an ancient person trusting the word of a priest? How is a scientist walking in and saying, "My computer model shows x, therefore it is so" different from an ancient priest walking in and saying, "The gods told me x, therefore it is so"? From the perspective of a non-scientist or non-priest, there is no difference; you cannot verify their claims. If you believe them, you operate on faith.
2. As the history of science testifies, science makes many missteps. For all your talk of credentials, one would think you'd give credence to some of the most credentialed scientists in history, who pointed out that science is not a matter of consensus, that only one correct dissent is required to disprove any hypothesis. Given that, how many dissenting scientists do you require to conclude that the matter is not settled beyond debate? There are many highly credentialed scientists who do dissent on this matter.
denying global warming
Finally, this is muddled thinking. The phrase "denying global warming" is both vague and loaded. Besides, isn't the correct term "climate change"?
I don't really know how to take you seriously if you're going to equate scientists with priests. We are at such an incredible disposition that I don't think there is room for persuasive argument. I simply believe that science is put to a much higher rigor and standard than any religion or philosophy out there, period. You obviously don't believe that. We are at an impasse.
The rigor of science says that climate change (global warming) is a real thing. Call it whatever you want.
I did not equate scientists with priests. Read my comment more carefully: From the perspective of one who cannot verify their claims, there is no difference between the claims made by scientists or priests--they are both taken on faith. You are not thinking objectively.
> I simply believe that science is put to a much higher rigor and standard than any religion or philosophy out there, period. You obviously don't believe that.
Your claim is too general to be useful. What kind of science? Carried out by whom? Under what circumstances?
What I believe is simple: 1) Science is carried out by humans; 2) Humans are fallible; therefore 3) Science is fallible. This is supported by even articles posted here on HN recently, which discuss the corruption of the peer review process.
Tell me, do you honestly believe that science is infallible? That we can trust whatever any scientist says about anything? Or do you believe that if the percentage of scientists that claims x is greater than 50% then it must be so? Or some other arbitrary percentage? That would be simply illogical, as history shows many examples of the majority of scientists being wrong about something.
If you believe that science is above corruption, you have greater faith than most religious people do in their religions.
Finally, you completely ignored my second point: "How many dissenting scientists do you require to conclude that the matter is not settled beyond debate?" It's a simple question; will you answer it?
Or, when presented with a point that challenges your presuppositions, will you ignore it instead of wrestling with it? I can't take you seriously if you do the latter.
Yep, science is fallible, but it's far and away the most reliable thing we have to understand our nature and forecast our future. Again, if I have to actually articulate an argument on why this is, I'm afraid were at such different positions that I'm not going to be able to convince you that science is always more reliable than religion.
You're asking for sources and claiming my argument is too general, yet you provided nothing of the sort for your own original argument. I could link you the hundreds upon thousands of scientific reports/sources that support climate change/global warming, but I'm not going to do that and condone the constant goalpost moving you demonstrate in every discussion I've seen you have on HN.
At this point in time, if you aren't taking the minimal amount of responsibility needed to listen to what is likely one of the most important problems of our lifetime, you have your head stuck in the sand. That's a true disappointment because it seems that you have the intelligence necessary to comprehend it.
Me coming up with a few sources isn't going to fix your willingness to be ignorant on this issue and not get with the program. It's too late for you.
This isn't faith. This is common sense and critical thinking.
> Yep, science is fallible, but it's far and away the most reliable thing we have to understand our nature and forecast our future. Again, if I have to actually articulate an argument on why this is, I'm afraid were at such different positions that I'm not going to be able to convince you that science is always more reliable than religion.
Two issues here:
1. You have still missed my point about how faith relates to science and understanding. Please, read it more carefully and try to understand what I'm saying.
2. Regarding your claim that science is always more reliable than religion, you are neglecting a crucial problem: there are issues about which science, by definition, cannot provide answers. I don't know if you are unaware of this, disagree with it, or are just taking it for granted, but you are riding roughshod over this crucially important point. It must not be taken for granted in a discussion about the reliability and utility of science.
> You're asking for sources
I just reread my previous comment, and nowhere did I ask for any sources. What are you talking about?
> and claiming my argument is too general
In the last comment I asked three simple questions:
"What kind of science? Carried out by whom? Under what circumstances?"
In the comment before that I asked another very simple question:
""How many dissenting scientists do you require to conclude that the matter is not settled beyond debate?"
Are you actually unwilling to answer them? These are not trick questions designed to trap you--they are simply intended to clarify the argument so we don't talk past each other. If you refuse to answer them, you must not be willing to have a serious discussion.
> yet you provided nothing of the sort for your own original argument
Please be more specific. I'm willing to have a serious discussion with you, and, within reason, I'm willing to find sources for my claims. (Note: no one else is watching this conversation. It's just you and me now. My only interest is in the truth.)
> I could link you the hundreds upon thousands of scientific reports/sources that support climate change/global warming
There's no need to do that; I'm well aware of how numerous they are. Please understand this: that is not the issue.
Something that is at issue is the vagueness of your claims. For example, "support climate change/global warming" is not a specific claim: do you mean that they support the claim that the climate is changing? That the globe is warming? Or do you mean they support the claim that humans are the primary cause of climate change and/or global warming? These are two distinct claims, and failure to distinguish between them is a chief reason that most discussions about the issue fail to get anywhere.
> but I'm not going to do that and condone the constant goalpost moving you demonstrate in every discussion I've seen you have on HN.
Frankly, when I read this kind of statement from you, I begin to feel like you're not discussing in good faith. I am not digging through your comment history to make ad hominems. I am trying to make specific points, regardless of who I am speaking with. Adding to that the fact that you are ignoring my very simple, specific questions and instead making personal attacks and implying malfeasance on my part--this makes it very hard to give you the benefit of the doubt.
> At this point in time, if you aren't taking the minimal amount of responsibility needed to listen to what is likely one of the most important problems of our lifetime, you have your head stuck in the sand. That's a true disappointment because it seems that you have the intelligence necessary to comprehend it.
Thanks for that backwards compliment! Well, not really, because you also insulted me and made a completely unfounded assumption about me.
You see, by jumping to the conclusion that I have not done any research, and doing so in a way that implies irresponsibility on my part, you have revealed your enormous personal bias on the topic. In your mind, anyone who disagrees with you is willfully ignorant, lacks common sense, and is unable to think critically. These are your words, not mine. This intellectual hubris is quite common today, and it's largely responsible for the inability to have calm, rational discussions and disagreements about anything important.
Please note that I have not insulted you or accused you of failures or flaws in character just because you disagree with me. I have asked simple, straightforward questions, and instead of answering them, you have resorted to personal attacks. Tell me, if you were an impartial observer of our discussion, which one of us would you accuse of willful ignorance and lack of critical thinking? Which one of us would you say was acting close-mindedly?
It just floors me that you imply that you are such a rational, objective, critical thinker, and explicitly accuse me of being the opposite, yet you're the one dodging my questions and refusing to have a simple, calm, rational discussion.
It's an interesting paradox: from one perspective, you have great faith, because you don't consider it necessary to entertain any challenges to your beliefs--you accept them at face value. On the other hand, if you refuse to entertain any challenges to your beliefs, how secure are you in them, really? Do you refuse to challenge them because you have underlying doubts and fear what it would mean if they were found untrue? Are you so emotionally invested in them, are they such a part of your identity, that you cannot see past them?
I don't know what's in your heart; only you do. But if you are really interested in the truth, then I welcome further discussion with you.
They are mentioning doing a fusion reactor but there are no details. Lower down the page they mention that the startup will be actually using a fission-fusion process, so they are not talking about classic self sustained fusion that we haven't been able to maintain yet. They are using the fusion word a bit lightly. Fusion is a big deal.
They're probably using fusion neutrons to kick off fission reactions. People have talked about this idea for years but I don't think anyone's attempted it until now.
By adding uranium you don't need to get net power from fusion alone, which is really hard.
The extremely high-energy neutrons from D-T fusion can fission U238, not just the scarce U235, which means you don't need enrichment and you get very little long-term waste.
By having the fusion reactor as a neutron source, you can use subcritical amounts of uranium, so there's no chance of a runaway reaction. If something goes wrong with the fusion reactor it just stops, and without the fusion neutrons the fission shuts down too.
Well, they are mentioning fusion-fission reactions, which use fusion to trigger fission. But on an ongoing basis. As far as I can understand, stable fusion is not achieved.
This may or may not be a Good Thing - I'm not qualified to make that call. But this article isn't doing the effort any favors. Labelling the technology _exclusively_ as "fusion" comes dangerously close to what's today called "fake news."
I understand from other peoples' comments that the project aims to commercialize some kind of fission-fusion hybrid technology where fission reactions kick-start fusion reactions. That's (potentially) cool, but I'd have expected the article to tell me this.
I'd imagine fusion is a better alternative to fission which in turn is a better alternative to coal.
I still feel sad for the morons who think that the end of the "war on coal" will bring any semblance of Glory back to coal towns. When all is said and done they still need help.
Speed and nuclear power plants don't typically go together: there's a lot of detail, and a lot of dilgence to be done, because the consequences are so awful if it screws up. NuScale just got their modular concept into the approval program, estimated conclusion of that, 2020.
Don't speedy startup types typically get frustrated when faced with the real world?
Sources describe most of X’s public projects — Project Loon, drones, robotics and wind energy kites — as rudderless. [...]
Mike Cassidy, who stepped down from Loon, ran the team “like a fire drill,” a former employee said.
I take these with a grain of salt. Each person's style is different. For some people, working out of 5-9 is something they run away as fast as possible. For some, work is their passion.
The Wikipedia article "Nuclear fusion–fission hybrid" [1] provides some good background. I'm kind of surprised it's taken this long for someone to start talking about a commercial implementation rather than merely researching the idea.
I don't know much about the current nuclear reactors, but reading the wikipedia article about Integral fast reactors[0] paints them in a very positive light. Maybe there are better designs already, but why don't we have more of these?
That' a completely different thing, as it is based on nuclear fission ('normal' nuclear power), whereas the technology metnioned here is nuclear fusion ('what happens in the sun'). According to the German Wikipedia, Integral fast reactors (or breeders) have specific risks, e.g. they use a large amount of plutonium: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutreaktor#Gefahren_und_Gegen...
This startup is about nuclear fusion, which may be able to deliver 'clean, safe, limitless energy" ( https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/02/after-60... ). It has been researched for ages, but it was unclear whether it can deliver. If that works eventually, it would be a big thing.
We don't have them because the Clinton administration cancelled the program shortly before completion, and because the NRC makes life extremely difficult for anything besides conventional light-water reactors.
it was ultimately canceled in 1994 by S.Amdt. 2127 to H.R. 4506, at greater cost than finishing it.
I suppose the article is written from a pro IFR pov, but assuming lobby powers at play I'm sure it could have been worked around for everyone to benefit from a cleaner energy source.
I wonder if this is based on the Bussard polywell design. The Navy was soliciting for bids on development of that as recently as 2008 (1), and Bussard presented at Google at in 2006 (2). A decade seems about right to get from small prototype that blew up to stable prototype. Indeed, other people think this too (3).
In any reactor that contains U238, present day reactors and the hybrid reactors from the article, a neutron is absorbed to form U239. This quickly beta decays into Np239 (23.5 minute half-life). This then beta decays into Pu239 (2.3 day half-life). So, anyplace there is U238 and a bunch of neutrons, you are producing the best material known for the fission explosion that initiates a fusion explosion. At the end of the life cycle of a normal Uranium fuel pellet most of the energy is actually coming from Plutonium. Why do you think there was a push to have Iran's Uranium enriched outside the country? So it could be salted to make the Pu239 unusable with Pu240.
I just think the production of Pu239 should enter the rational discussion of nuclear energy.
Fast fission reactors don't leave much plutonium behind, because they fission it much more efficiently. Hybrid reactors would be even better, because fusion neutrons have such high energy that they fission U238 directly.
The Pu-240 production happens as a side reaction so low-burnup is required. IAEA safeguards have never been exploited, and some include designing reactors to prohibit frequent refuelling.
I take it that by 'exploited' you mean 'circumvented'. I would like to be more assured than "has never happened before." And, "low-burnup is required?" Separation of Pu239 and Pu240 is physically impossible? It may be hazardous and difficult but seems possible. If there is a physical reason Pu240 depletion is impossible, please let it be known.
If you can extract Pu240 why not produce high enriched U-235 instead? Isotope separation is expensive compared to chemical seperation, and has a large footprint. It's not enough to make a nuke: you need to do so covertly or else your enemies will preempt it.
If a footprint to produce reactor grade Uranium already exists, it could mask the footprint for something else. It might be easier to deplete a small percentage of Pu240, than to enrich reactor grade Uranium (4% U235) to a highly enriched form (90% U235). How would the volatility of Pu240 effect separation? Not sure.
Nobody has mentioned nuclear waste disposal as far as I can tell. Everybody is basically saying "yeah, as long as we avoid explosions, nuclear is great", but has disposal been solved? Or is it not as big of a problem as I'm thinking?
It's not as big of a problem as you're thinking. "Waste" can be used in breeder reactors to generate energy. This burns up >90% of the material. The remainder decays relatively quickly, not over geological time scales. Volume wise it's really not much. The entire nuclear industry so far has produced less than a 100kT of waste, a cube with a side length of about 30 meters. This is before putting the stuff in a breeder reactor.
I wish some of these companies would go into fusion/fission for the research of it. Sure, going for a commercially viable model gives you more investment, but all these silicon valley rich guys trying to save the world should also invest on some research.
I get it, you can't start a fusion company without R&D so there will be some anyways, but I feel like the research angle needs some love too. I am pretty sure we haven't understood everything there is to understand, and it won't hurt.
Tangential thought, CERN has crazy amount of data. Do you think Machine Learning has any role in nuclear/particle physics?
As rich as they are, not many have the funds to build a nuclear reactor. Even one's that have been fully designed and based on traditional design still cost billions to build.
Of course, they also said that about rockets and look where SpaceX is, but there definitely are a lot of bears on the road.
> Of course, they also said that about rockets and look where SpaceX is, but there definitely are a lot of bears on the road.
Ehhhhhh....I hate to bring this up repeatedly but SpaceX would not exist without NASA. Which brings us to the role of government in research: its not necessarily to own everything, but it is provide incentives in one way or the other. To create a Market where none existed previously.
I hope he succeeds! This is far better than having the landscape littered with bird killing windmills and solar farms that incenerate birds.
Nuclear is the best source of large scale energy IF safety were guaranteed. The safety of nuclear energy seems like a solvable engineering problem -- a difficult problem certainly, but then again so was manned space flight.
I am not saying solar and wind are worse than fossil fuels -- but I am saying that nuclear could be the future. Combining nuclear generation with advanced batteries seems to be an ideal energy future.
This is the stuff my high school girlfriend's hyper-conservative parents would spit all over the windshield while driving us places. Didn't expect those memories to surface in a HN thread.
As far as I know, these things hit different populations. E.g. domestic cats kill basically no birds of prey, versus for typical small garden birds cats are of course a way larger risk, and they probably are less impacted by wind turbines, since they primarily travel closer to the ground.
which all pales in comparison to birds population loss due to urban, agricultural and industrial development and activities which in turn are enabled by all the forms of energy production. Cats by the way kill rats who is the major consumer of wild birds eggs. Another major consumer of wild birds eggs are humans - all those people in city parks and other places around gathering wild birds eggs for food. And of course there is that old story about wolves supposedly damaging deer population...
> all those people in city parks and other places around gathering wild birds eggs for food.
Really? I've yet to come across a family that's going to the park on Sunday to gather wild bird eggs for food to be honest. I'm sure there's some nature lovers out there that do it but I'm having a hard time seeing the average city dweller making a dent in that statistic.
you don't need everybody doing it. There is not that much birds and nests out there. One person in one pass easily raids all the few tens of small bird nests on an acre of a city park or duck nests on a half mile of bay shore like the one here in Bay Area.
There was some small scale experiments, to have a fully working industrial prototype, the amount of problem to solve is just colossal. I think 40+ years is a much more reasonable guess. The thing is we don't even have a realistic timeline for those, because even that requires more research.
We need way more data to say something about LFTR.
Fusion on the other hand has an estimate timeline. If everything goes well with ITER, DEMO should be operational around 2040-2050+. And actual power plants will use DEMO design.
That's what we know today. With more research, we could find better design and faster ways to get fusion (Wendelstein 7-X) or we can find more trouble along the way.
Here in the real world, you have to measure options against other real world options. The other real world options we have for baseload power on this scale are fossil fuels, primarily coal. Coal plants emit much more radiation than nuclear plants - even old ones. There's lots of research about HOW MUCH more radioactive coal power is, but we're talking about anywhere from 50-200% more. Coal power is responsible for 800,000 deaths per year, WHEN IT'S WORKING PROPERLY. That's the bar nuclear, and any other alternative baseload power source, has to beat. It doesn't have to failure proof, it doesn't have to have zero deaths. It just has to be significantly better than the alternatives.
Refusing to consider a power source unless it has zero deaths, zero radiation, zero side effects for all time, is living in a fantasy world. It's the paradigm promoted by the fossil fuel industry, and bought hook line and sinker by the dumber end of the environmentalist movement. And it keeps us from ever decreasing our power generation carbon footprint.