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Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

They have lots of seismic activity and are in the middle of the Mediterranean. Any reactor leakage would mean disaster for all of Europe and Africa.

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I don't know how big a problem are earthquakes but I personally don't trust my fellow Greeks to drive a car safely without killing anyone. You're talking about a country were rank incompetence runs rampant, where nothing works and nobody can get a job done properly. Everything in this country is done shoddily, in half, and while cutting corners - not for any considerations of economy or efficiency, but just so the project leaders can each pocket their share of the cuttings. Every new plan to develop this or build that, or inaugurate the other, is always introduced with great fanfare, with officials in pretty suits cutting ribbons and shaking hands and smiling for the cameras, and a month later you can see the ribbon still flapping over the rubbish-strewn derelict of the great project as stray dogs piss on its ruins.

Before those social and political, rather than technological, obstacles to progress are resolved, the last thing anyone should encourage Greece to do is install nuclear bloody reactors on our land.

Two words for you: BER and Dieselgate.

Corruption and abuse of power is not just a Greek thing.

Where in my comment does it say that it is? Can you please show me?

Well, if you go a long diatribe "not trusting your fellow Greeks", it implies you trust other people more for these complex projects.

It implies nothing of the sort.

You're just trying your best to misinterpret what I actually wrote.

You start a whole paragraph saying "you don't trust your fellow Greeks", throws the laundry list of problems with Greek society, then concludes with "before those social problems are solved, we shouldn't build any nuclear reactors on our land".

That implies that your problem is specifically with Greece having nuclear plants, and that there are other societies that are capable of managing nuclear reactors on their land. Does it not?

Nope.

Then you just want to complain about Greeks. Which is... your prerogative, but not very helpful?

"not very helpful"? Why?

Do you disagree with what I wrote above, about the situation in Greece?

Because you said that "Corruption and abuse of power is not just a Greek thing". Not "just" a Greek thing, yes? So you must think that it is a Greek thing.

Note, my comment was not only about "corruption and abuse of power", but also about incompetence. See in my comment: "a country were rank incompetence runs rampant". You didn't seem to disagree with that - you only commented about corruption and abuse of power.

So which parts of all this do you disagree with? Can you clarify?

I'm sorry but I have to confess, I'm very confused by the way you choose to communicate. If instead of attacking an opinion I didn't express, you had taken the time to think carefully about what I acturally wrote, and made a comment about that, you could have spared us both a lot of wasted effort. If you didn't have time to think carefully and you just wanted to express your disagreement or frustration at my comment, you could always just downvote my comment. But if you're going to put time in a discussion, then put enough time in it to avoid confusing everyone, including yourself. If I may.

> So which parts of all this do you disagree with? Can you clarify?

I agree that Greece is not the best place to build reactor plants, but I do not agree with the reasons you provided.

There are other countries that also have incompetence and corruption - endemic and systemic - and yet they still promote big enterprises, and I don't see how this is an argument against the project in itself.

Thanks for clarifying! And sorry for the delay in replying.

I understand now your disagreement. Out of curiousity, what is the reason you don't think Greece is not the best place to build reactor plants?

Just look up at the top of the thread and the very first comment that started this conversation: "It is a country with lots of seismic activity and are in the middle of the Mediterranean."

They might have geothermal potential as well on those islands. Otherwise wind might be a good option, along with solar.

In Fuertaventura wind is almost base load power because you have >10 kt most if not all of the time.

Modern nuclear plants can withstand seismic activity.

Current nuclear plants just dont fail in such way as to "threaten all of Europe and Africa"

How "current" was Fukushima, and why could they detect traces of radioactive material in California?

I'm not against nuclear, but can we please not build them in places that present unnecessary risks?

Fukishima was a giant 1960's era GE nuclear plant. Like everything else in the technology world there has been huge evolution since then.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-hope...

And the Titanic was also considered an unsinkable ship...

Sure technology has improved and it is safer, but you know can make it even safer still? Not putting them on places with lots of seismic activity.

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-key-resilient-features-... I suspect small modular reactor units will be safer and can be put back into operation a lot faster and with less fire risk than current Rube Goldberg grid contraptions

having detected traces says that we are very good at detecting traces. It does not mean "threaten all of Europe and Africa".

The death and destruction from tsunami itself was several orders of magnitude more than from nuclear station malfunction. [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11...

Why put it there if it is an avoidable risk?

Same reason why you still breathe despite it being a vector for airborn illnesses.

Because whenbyou do the math of cost benefit, it falls squarely on the benefits side.

"Not breathing" is not an option.

"Not building on places with seismic activity" is.

Please do read about the NuScale reactor. That one is modern, with passive circulation and cooling.

One can also build some of them on a barge and moor it over deep water just like a deepwater oil rig, where it will be protected from earthquakes. The US is currently designing one, the Russians already have one but that's not an option anymore.

Also, smaller the Greek islands are not big energy consumers. A wind farm, solar plus storage might be enough for most if them. Also use the surplus to make hydrogen and store it for burning in a gas generator. Some of them are near the shore and they're already powered by cable.

That does not really answer my question, does it?

Of all the possible places to build nuclear plants, why go put them in a place that has plenty of sunshine and tons of seismic activity?

No matter how favorable the odds, why play those when there are places that could be even better?

I suspect you, like many, are fixated on the idea that solar/wind power is viable as primary energy sources and therefore haven't been taking nuclear seriously.

Assuming the future successful invention and deployment of battery power storage to provide a consistent 11,000 Megawatt-hours per day (a fairly typical large city supply amount), what do you think would happen to those enormous ganged up batteries in an earthquake?

https://battlebornbatteries.com/lithium-ion-battery-puncture...

> fixated on the idea that solar/wind power is viable as primary energy sources

No, absolutely not. I said in the first comments, not against nuclear. What I am against is pushing for unproven designs facing avoidable risks.

I am not necessarily pro-nuclear, but one of the big problems with Fukushima is that it didn't ventilate the hydrogen that was created during the meltdown. It was the hydrogen that created the explosion in reactor for that made it go from bad to ultra-shit.

it has been standard from the late 60s.

I seem to be confusing nuclear disasters. Anyway, the explosions in Fukushima could have been prevented with hydrogen ventilation chimneys that had been standard equipment since the early 70s.

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