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“Chernobyl in 1986, the result of extraordinary Soviet bungling, which killed 31 in the accident and perhaps several thousand from cancer, around the same number killed by coal emissions every day.” just that is all I need to know to prefer nuclear to coal.

You shouldn't just count deaths and conclude that a nuclear catastrophy isn't that bad. Far more people had to evacuate their home, having to leave most of their belongings behind. And most times with no or too little compensation. Sure, nuclear is prefferable to coal but that doesn't mean that both shouldn't be gotten rid of.

But that kind of reactor is never going to be built again - its design was very outdated and outright bad. Today we can build reactors where any failure that would result in an explosion of any kind is physically nearly impossible.

Bingo, there’s clearly plenty of progress to be made with nuclear power and plenty made already.

Maybe we won't build those reactor types any more. But they are still operational, and this is what matters. There is a huge incentive in keeping them operational as the major cost of nuclear energy is building the reactor. Already built reactors don't incur that cost any more so they make loads of money for their operators, especially when they are old and "mortage free". Due to this gigantic incentive, every political support of new nuclear plants will be misdirected into prolonging the operational life of existing highly dangerous reactors.

As to your "physically near impossible": people said about the titanic that it was unsinkable. This only led to a major shortage of lifeboats once it sank because why would a unsinkable ship need so many lifeboats.

There are 11 still in operation, and heavily modified to not allow anything like that thirty-year old disaster.

If this bullshit cloud over nuclear got dissolved they'd be replaced with much more safe design. Instead they are forced to continue operation because nothing new can be built. Because of unfounded fears.

That's what caused the Fukushima disaster. No new plants - no decommisioning of old plants - old plants blow up.

> If this bullshit cloud over nuclear got dissolved they'd be replaced with much more safe design.

I've outlined above why this doesn't happen. Japan has been severely pro-nuclear in the 80s and 90s, and built tons of reactors, yet they only decommisioned a single old reactor in the 80s and 90s, according to this list [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors#Japan

> I've outlined above

No, you didn't.

If anything, you supported my line of reasoning - if the insane push against nuclear didn't happen, then the plants would have been modernised or rebuilt and there would not have been a Fukushima.

I wonder whether the tsunami would have been so bad if not for the effects of climate change on sea levels. A literally physical attack on nuclear from fossil fuels.

That exact same argument was made back then.

You need to accept that all trust is lost. You cannot take backsies every few decades and expect people to trust you that this time you really know what you#re talking about.

Do you have a source for that? Because I seriously doubt that anyone made that argument for Chernobyl's reactor design.

> That exact same argument was made back then.

No, it wasn't. Please back it up if you have any proof, but this is not true IMO.

I couldn't find a definite number, but the total number of people who evacuated are somewhere around 100-200k. (Every source has different numbers because the zone kept changing, I guess.)

Meanwhile, coal emission kills ~1M every year, or ~100k every month. (I guess the numbers are just an order-of-magnitude estimate, so take them with a grain of salt.)

So, during the month of Fukushima disaster (the second worst nuclear power disaster in history) it displaced a few times more people than coal killed in that month.

Also, coal mining, especially surface mining, displaces people too.

Thankfully we are using far less coal now in the UK and plan to carry on using less.

Yes coal is terrible and the sooner the world stopa using it the better, but the answer isn't 'if we can't have nuclear then we can only have coal' is a lie.

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk

Should we also get rid of hydro? Because the worst power plant accident in history was Banqiao Dam, which killed 26,000 people by drowning and another 150,000 in the aftermath. The entire area was devastated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

There have been a fair number of other serious hydro accidents as well. In the U.S., Teton Dam wiped out two towns, and Oroville Dam just recently prompted the evacuation of 180,000 people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...

Do you understand that without any energy production the vast majority of humanity also dies?

Electricity isn't some luxury we can get rid of if there are a few thousand deaths here and there associated with the production.

Nuclear may well be better than coal, but coal isn't the plant of choice if you build something today. Coal is more expensive than natural gas, too expensive and slow to turn on and off (which is an increasing requirement as solar and wind become more common) and are opposed by the population for health reasons.

To be a viable alternative beating coal is irrelevant, nuclear would have to be at least better than natural gas. And with natural gas burning much cleaner than coal I'm not so sure nuclear has the advantage

The president of Exelon, a US corporation that operates 23 nuclear power reactors here, has stated that for new nuclear to be competitive with gas in the US the effective CO2 tax would have to be $300/ton or more.

Exelon is focusing on NG w. CO2 capture and renewables/storage for new capacity.

Two points:

1: France is 75% nuclear and has some of the cheapest electricity.

2: there are a ton of small reactor designs that would be substantially cheaper and quicker to build. Problem is that you can't get them out of research labs.

France always also consumes 80% of the known uranium reserves in the world. we just don't have enough uranium to have two Frances!

The way mining works is that when the price goes up due to demand, mines are opened on new and existing deposits.

Uranium is not very expensive right now, so a lot of mines have closed or mothballed. That doesn't mean there's any shortage of the stuff. Australia's known reserves are enormous. Throw a dart at a map of northern Australia and you'll probably hit an orebody.

France is phasing out its nuclear fleet and plans to have retired 1/3 of it by 2025.

Its only new NPP under construction, Flammanville, is 9 years over schedule and over 300% over budget. It is still not certain when it will open due to safety defects that are still being evaluated.

That's because it's a next-gen project, that's what happens with R&D.

That’s not what happens with next-gen renewables —- they are modular and can be built much faster and much cheaper.

New build nuclear is not cost competitive with new build wind and solar (even when you account for firming costs), and the cost of wind and solar is still falling at an astonishing rate.

> New build nuclear is not cost competitive with new build wind and solar (even when you account for firming costs), and the cost of wind and solar is still falling at an astonishing rate.

The future will tell, as it is now, Germany already spent more on renewable than the total French nuclear industry, even when you add decommissioning and with the bad results we know. Maybe countries should learn on the German mistakes? Also the renewables built to replace the nuclear plants in France are pointed out for being far over-budget as well.

The cost studies for renewable tend to remove a lot of external costs in order to make them appear cheaper than they are.

Germany already spent more on renewable than the total French nuclear industry

Source? What does that even mean? Where'd you find an honest assessment of the regulatory and construction costs for France's nuclear power plants, much less a sensible estimate for decommissioning plants that are still running? Does it include research and development in either case? Does it include maintenance, personnel, fuel, cleanup, storage of spent fuel both temporarily and long term?

Germany spent around around 250 billions euros since 2005 on renewables [1]. The french nuclear energy (total) had a cost of 228 billions euros [2]. Renewables are not nearly as cheap as people make you believe, they do have a lot of external costs.

[1] CPI - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303286860_Policy_an... - page 6 in pdf pages or 1 with their numbers.

[2] Cour des comptes - http://cpdp.debatpublic.fr/cpdp-cigeo/docs/docs-complementai... - page 265 pdf / page 270 with their page numbers

The figure given for Germany is 150 billion for 2005-2015.

I can't tell from a quick glance how the French number comes to be, what's included and what isn't and who is the ultimate source.

Given the fraught nature of the subject, I'm taking any number with a grain of salt, especially if it purports to assign a single price tag to things.

Electricity in France is not "one of the cheapest", it is average in Europe and quickly rising. Moreover part of the total related costs (R&D...) was historically paid by the taxpayer. Future decommission and waste-management costs may lead to a financial disaster.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

So in other words, nuclear is the faster way to slash GHG emissions... if you can reform the US nuclear regulatory regime. And how long do you suppose that will take to push through Congress?

In the meantime, we can put out an RFP for a new wind project today and have it online in a year.

Something that depends on hypothetical political developments in a country that shuts down its government because of political gridlock a couple of times a year cannot reasonably be described as the fastest way to do anything.

If you keep comparing nuclear to coal, you have declared yourself the loser.

You have to compare nuclear against the best alternative, not the worst. This is just kindergarten-level debate.

This! Totally correct. Check out the a mount of coal the UK is using for energy generation right now: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk - tiny amounts and that will only get smaller.

The US never had the ability to build affordable nuclear plants. That's a major reason the first nuclear construction boom fizzled out here.

> The US never had the ability to build affordable nuclear plants.

Sure it has. They're just getting used by the Navy, not by civilians. There's no reason why the same methods that have been successfully used to control cost and schedule for those reactors couldn't be used for civilian reactors.

Navy reactors are extremely expensive. They are worth it because of logistics around oil.

Even when comparing to oil, Nuclear is still more expensive. “Specifically, total life-cycle costs would be 19 percent higher for a fleet of nuclear destroyers.” https://www.cbo.gov/publication/41454

Navy reactors are also designed differently due to the confined space in which they typically operate. This is why they use the much more expensive super grade plutonium, as it reduces the amount of heavy shielding required to protect crew who must live very close to their reactors.

Super grade plutonium is for warheads that humans will spend a lot of time near, like those in submarine launched ballistic missiles. But American naval reactors do use highly enriched uranium, which is much more expensive and needs more safeguarding than the low enriched uranium used in power reactors.

They're expensive because of certain design features, yes. But their cost is predictable and we know how to build them on schedule. Those are the key skills that should be just as usable for civilian reactors.

> In 60 years of nuclear power, only three accidents have raised public alarm

I think Windscale would count amongst such accidents, too.

Then you'd have to count all the accidents on every scientific and military reactor, not discounting naval reactors and especially in the early times, up until ~1975.

Can I remind you that that's almost 60 years ago and we're not talking about military?

I disagree. In the public mind, Windscale isn't distinguished as a military accident; a power station was on the same site and the accident caused great public concern. It might be 60 years ago but it is still part of the PR legacy that affects nuclear energy in the UK today.

Others were buried like the SSFL. No doubt many more events buried like soviet submarines. Deaths within a few weeks don’t count all the cancer deaths in the area for generations.

I’m in favor of nuclear research and improvements, but let’s be honest.

And as a result of the Chernobyl accident, southern Germany is sufficently contaminated, that food from the forests, like mushrooms and wild boar are still not completely safe to consume. Each killed animal has to be checked with a radiation detector, whether its radiation is low enough for it to be eaten, otherwise it has to be disposed as radioactive contaminated. With Fukushima, it was increadible luck that e.g. Tokyo didn't get contaminated. The consequences if that had happened don't need to be described. So far, most of the contamination ended up in the ocean, the pacific ocean is really large, so the contamination got quite diluted. We don't know though, whether it doesn't come back to haunt us in some so far unexpected way.

Can we get a citation on the unsafe food in Germany from Chernobyl? That flies in the face of a lot of current progress in understanding the health effects of low-dose radiation. Precisely how high above natural background radiation levels is the stuff in Germany?

Sure, here you are: https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-w...

The short version is, that mushrooms accumulate cesium-137 which contaminates the soil in Bavarian forests. Equally affected are animals eating the mushrooms, mainly wild boar.

Can you read it? I'm looking for quantitative data and see: "Belastung von 0,008 Millisievert zur Folge."

If this is 8 microsieverts... what's the timescale? 8 microsieverts is quite small compared to everyday things like cosmic rays [1].

[1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/

It's for a 200g portion of (relatively highly contaminated) mushrooms, not a timescale.

I'm going to save everyone some time here. acidburnNSA is a reactor scientist (he pops up in most of these nuclear threads). He's leading you on because your information is bad. Fact is that food didn't get to dangerous levels. (I'd trust the domain expert)

Pulling from __ph__'s link (and a google translate).

> The consumption of 200 grams of mushrooms containing 3,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per kilogram results in a load of 0.008 millisieverts. This corresponds to the radiation exposure during a flight from Frankfurt to Gran Canaria.

> In Germany, it is not permitted to market foods with a radio cesium content of more than 600 becquerels per kilogram. For self-consumption, this restriction does not apply.

(may notice here how overly cautious we tend to be with radioactive dosages.)

> If venison or wild mushrooms are consumed in normal amounts, the additional radiation exposure is comparatively low, but avoidable.

To summarize the article:

Wild mushrooms and some wild life may have higher than normal radiation levels. Take caution if you intend to consume vast amounts of quantities. You'll probably be fine, but why risk? If you are only taking "normal" amounts then there is no concern.

I can read the article, I was merely providing the information asked for and letting people come to their own conclusion.

The website I linked is the federal agency for nuclear safety.

Depends entirely what you mean by "dangerous levels". It is contaminated enough, that mushrooms from the forests are not allowed to be sold as food. Yes, a single serving won't have a significant impact on your health, but it is recommended not to eat much of them. The situation is worse with some wild boar, which eat a lot of those mushrooms and accumulate cesioum over many years.

And perhaps a relevant information: the Bavarian forests are about 600 miles from the Chernobyl site.

Dangerous levels has an exact definition. The EU sets them at 20mSv/yr. To put that in perspective, 1Sv is equivalent to a 5% increase in chance of getting cancer during your lifetime (granted, that dose needs to be spread out). So you can see that they keep it REALLY low. Extra safety is used because they use the linear no-threshold model. Yes, the model is linear so you can extrapolate easily.

Those levels that acidburn was talking about, mentioned in the article, are REALLY low. The reason government is overly cautious with radiation is 1) fear 2) you can't control sources so you say "if we set this threshold we'll never put anyone in danger even if they take in large amounts from other sources that we can't control."

Remember, each of those 200g of mushrooms (which looks like an upper limit of measurement, not average nor lower) is like a 5hr plane ride in a non-northern route (8uSv). People take plane rides worse than that several times a week and are safe. (see below for ridiculousness of this "danger")

You also realize that over time these things degrade, right? Not just by radioactive decay, but because organisms and chemical reactions break down the radioactive materials. You seem to be implying that over the many years it is getting worse. Which is just untrue (and frankly should not pass a smell test).

Side note:

200g mushrooms = 0.008mSv (upper limit)

20mSv/(0.008mSv)*200g = 500kg of mushrooms.

That's how many you would need to eat in a year to get to the legal limit. Let's be real here, this is just a ridiculous amount of mushrooms that you have to consume within a year. That's over a kilo a day.

Note that this limit used to also be 50mSv for radiation workers. Astronauts are allowed much more.

tldr: Trust the domain expert over some article you read on the internet.

>You also realize that over time these things degrade, right? Yes, with a half-time of 30 years.

>Not just by radioactive decay, but because organisms and chemical reactions break down the radioactive materials. We are talking about radioactive isotopes. Nothing short of a nuclear reaction is going to "break them down", certainly not organisms or chemical reactions

>You seem to be implying that over the many years it is getting worse. Which is just untrue (and frankly should not pass a smell test). No, I did no such thing. I said that wild boar is contaminated worse as they keep eating mushrooms for years while each mushroom only has a couple of days to aggregate radioactive isotopes.

>tldr: Trust the domain expert over some article you read on the internet. It wasn't "some article" I quoted, but the official information of the federal office for nuclear safety.

First off, fix your formatting. This is hard to read. You need two new lines to form one in HN, but it kinda looks like you already know that.

> Yes, with a half-time of 30 years.

Biological half lives tend to be A LOT shorter. It is something like 90 days in humans (for Cesium). There's also the uptake rate, which IIRC is about 10%.

> Nothing short of a nuclear reaction is going to "break them down", certainly not organisms or chemical reactions

Oh, sorry. I didn't realize that radiation means that electrons will no longer form bonds. That's really interesting. But I have a question. This being true, can you tell me how we get solids? Or are you saying that radioactive materials can only bind to other materials with similar radioactive properties? I can tell you that I never learned this in any of many physics classes nor while I was working as a radiation researcher. If this is a new study done by you I'm excited to see you win the Nobel. Really groundbreaking work.

> No, I did no such thing. I said that wild boar is contaminated worse as they keep eating mushrooms for years while each mushroom only has a couple of days to aggregate radioactive isotopes.

10% uptake, shorter biological half life. This isn't a system with positive feedback. The more degrees the more dilution. The Cs is in the ground, mushrooms eat that (1 degree), boars eat that (2 degrees), humans eat that (3 degrees). Minimum. We are assuming that the Cs is just laying nicely and not being diluted by worms and bugs before it is absorbed by the mushrooms.

> It wasn't "some article" I quoted, but the official information of the federal office for nuclear safety.

You're pulling from much more than that article. Your domain experts in this thread are breaking down that official information and explaining what things mean (note, neither of us have disputed it). For example, what is a Sievert? How dangerous is it? How much is safe? Can this be explained in a way without years of studying atomic physics and nuclear medicine?

What you're doing is reading that and saying "Look how dangerous this stuff is!" We're looking at it and saying "Ah cool, so as long as I don't eat 500 kilos of wild mushrooms in a year I'll be good". There's a big difference between these two points of view. But again, I'm not disputing what is in that documentation. I am drawing from it to demonstrate how safe things are.