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Comment by skitout | Hacker News Reader

1) The article does not mention consuming less energy/stuff - whether by being mush more efficient for the same result (huge potential there !) or with more sobriety

2) "there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time" was true in 2004, now this totally an option : this is cheaper and faster to deploy than nuclear

3) "Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear" in only partly true... 1% of all nuclear power plant did had a super serious problem (Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl)... And there are other unsolved issues around the short term and long term security

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> 1% of all nuclear power plant did had a super serious problem (Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl)

Are you saying that we have around 300 plants worldwide? Because that’s quite off if I trust https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors:

> As of April 2018, there are 449 operable power reactors in the world [...]

> Additionally, there are 58 reactors under construction and 154 reactors planned [...]

> Over 300 more reactors are proposed

Also note that not all plants are the same, we improved quite a lot since the first generations, in part due to previous disasters. Comparing the number of big disaster to the number of active plants is misleading IMHO.

You are talking about reactors

I am talking about power plant ; one nuclear power plant has generally multiple reactors

A lot of active nuclear power plant are old and based on old design. This article was written before Fukushima !

Many new projects are canceled because nuclear is now too expensive, partly due to the security constraint

> I am talking about power plant ; one nuclear power plant has generally multiple reactors

Thanks for the correction, I wasn't aware of the distinction.

Does (2.) include storage cost? Otherwise wind and solar cannot replace base power, so it does not make sense to compare the electricity production cost alone.

Yes, including cost for balancing the grid :

- electrical storage (increasingly cheap, and providing ancillary services to the grid), but also thermal and mechanical storage

- demand-response (Huge one ! especially if you do investment at the same time you invest in energy efficiency

- a diversified electricity mix, with "oversupply" of cheap renewable energy

Nuclear can help, but is super expensive, super slow to set up, and have more security concerns

To your point number 3: this mirrors my own concerns. It's not the technology per se (which is incredible and modern designs are undeniably safer), but that humanity just seems like it's bad at these complicated extremely long term projects like nuclear power generation with horrific fail states.

> super serious problem (Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl)

Chernobyl ended lives, while TMI harmed bank accounts. You may as well mention Pol Pot and Bernie Madoff in the same utterance.

4) Nuclear is and always was incredibly expensive to set up. There is a reason why nuclear plants are never paid for in their entirety by any private firm/operator and heavily subsidized (at least in the EU)

5) I am still fascinated by the lack of awareness regarding waste (particularly since it is with well educated/smart people)

Yes, I know, there are alternative nuclear power sources where we don't need to safely store nuclear waste for millions of years. But those are not readily available.

We still do not have a real solution for nuclear waste. Just dumping something so dangerous for thousands (or millions) of years is mindbogglingly reckless. And loudly asking to increase this amount by plastering waste-producing facilities everywhere... That's like pouring poison in the floor below your own garden, hoping the next guy will have a solution for it.

But I guess good ol' America, where dumping any waste is not considered a problem, there is simply no awareness for this practice. Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it has no effect.

Dumping. is. not. a. long-term. solution. And just because You don't need to care about it anymore, doesn't mean nobody has to.

All of the used fuel ever produced by the commercial nuclear industry since the late 1950s would cover a football field to a depth of less than 10 yards.

https://www.nei.org/fundamentals/nuclear-waste

Could you store it that way though, or would it start a spontaneous chain reaction?

There would be no spontaneous chain reaction, the waste is depleted below the radioactivity of naturally occurring sources. You can't practically store it that way though because no-one really likes moving waste any distance for fear of spillage.

Without disputing that assertion, you might not have chosen the most unbiased source to back it up.

Upvoted :) I'll concede that point.

Nuclear waste is not a serious problem. It's pretty small by volume and if you're willing to build breeder reactors you can reduce it by 95% or so.

Is nuclear power so very expensive right now? My understanding is that one of the main drivers behind the huge up front costs of nuclear power is that the builder had to take out a loan to cover the cost of construction before the wheels of regulatory approval started turning. After several years approval would be granted and then construction would still take quite a bit more time. And over all this time that initial loan was accumulating interest - often doubling or more the total capital cost of building a new plant.

But these days interest rates are pretty low and I wonder how much this has affected the price of building new nuclear power plants.

"The project completion cost at Hinkley Point C is now estimated at 21.5 billion to 22.5 billion pounds". [1]

Agreed, the project hit some regulatory roadblocks, yet, this is a lot of money. The original cost bid was 18 billion already. Imagine how much solar/wind that would give you. And the costs for operation and waste storage are not even considered.

Also in this article: "The giant atomic project is expensive compared with U.K. wind, for example, where power from the latest offshore auction sold at less than half that from Hinkley" [...] "The additional costs will be borne by EDF [...], though they’re still set to receive 92.50 pounds for every megawatt-hour of power Hinkley generates -- more than double the current market price" [1]

This is a state-of-the-art reactor.

Nuclear is not the solution, particularly not the "cheapest", and particularly not green.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-25/edf-raise...

edit: forgot to cite source

Nuclear waste is not "dumped". It is stored under the strictest safety regulations possible. It is the only energy source where 100% of the waste is captured and securely managed. Yes, even renewables create unmanaged waste.

Nobody has EVER died from nuclear waste, whereas millions (www.who.int/airpollution/en/) of people a year are estimated to die from the effects of fossil fuel waste.

Hm, if you consider storing something for a timeframe that well exceeds everything we are possible to plan ahead "safe". We simply put it in underground storages we consider "safe" for the time being. We have no idea what will happen with this deposits considering such a long timespan.

And this storage does not come for free. All these sites are maintained and must be. Just as much as the (very complicated) transport of the material. Every single castor transport in Germany and France is a huge operation.

And "Nobody has ever died from" is such a great argument. "Nobody has ever died from radiation in space" does not mean we should ignore it, does it?

Yes, I consider storing something in a way that is a demonstrably secure as feasibly possible "safe", regardless of the timespans. Especially when compared to the alternative, which is fossil fuels spewing their waste straight into the air.

And a better analogy would be that what anti-nuclear folk are arguing is like saying we shouldn't go to space at all because there's radiation there.

Nothing can be "demonstrably" secure if we cannot demonstrate it. We simply cannot guarantee control over the depot for the given time-frame. A lot of things can happen in 1 million years.

You should really read this for another view on that "simple" topic: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinero/2019/11/26/the-stag...

Well nothing in this universe is 100% demonstrably true, yet we still must take an evidence-based and scientific approach to making energy policy decisions. The evidence says that the current management process is working. There is no evidence to say that the current process will stop working. We cannot paralyze ourselves with unfounded fears of future unknowns. What we do know is that there is plenty of evidence to say that there are going to be catastrophic consequences should we not clean up our energy production, and currently there is no 100% low-carbon solution that does not involve nuclear.

I'd likewise recommend you read this for a contrasting viewpoint from the same publication: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/19...

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