Comment by Moldoteck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Moldoteck | Hacker News Reader

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So a scenario where humans will not do anything to stop a fire? Sorry that's not realistic. Chernobyl's fire was stopped because of human intervention, otherwise it would have taken longer. And again - such thing can't happen in western units.

Yes, in Fukushima it would have been much better, even if there was fuel rod fire, due to... better plant design...

Fukushima costs are blown out because Japanes govt wanted it this way. Just like JP govt forced long term evacuation even if the doses both during and after event were not life threatening.

"Seriously, why are we doing things like this when we have cheaper, faster and safer options? Why are we not instead going for the options?" - like what? Renewables firmed by gas and coal like in Germany? You are aware it spent on it's transition so far much more than France spent on nuclear while achieving worse results, while killing thousands from coal pollution in the meantime? So Germany spent more, achieved much less in much longer time. And on top it plans further gas expansion to firm renewables. This is not a cheaper/faster/safer way. It's the exact opposite in all directions.

"It will require so much batteries" Yes. So let's get started, we can build as many batteries as we need 10 times over. "Synth fuels are inefficient", yes, but that doesn't matter when the electricity is close to free." - electricity for synth will not be free and bess will eat into it's economics. Synth fuel infra isn't cheap either. Using H2 for firming is a pipedream pushed by fossil industry to justify expanding gas infrastructure.

It has to be nuclear + renewables. That's the difference - we already know it works good looking at Sweden and France. Others that tried to follow pipedreams ended up worse

>So a scenario where humans will not do anything to stop a fire? Sorry that's not realistic.

You seriously can't imagine people fleeing instead of sacrificing their lives? You can't imagine an ongoing war or natural disaster making it impossible to stop a fire? You can't imagine anyone wanting to sabotage a plant as a terrorist act?

We are very lucky then that the people actually in charge of nuclear power have better imagination!

>Yes, in Fukushima it would have been much better

Only in the sense that it wouldn't have spread as far as Chernobyl's waste did. It would still have meant hundreds of thousand dead in Japan, and probably made it impossible to stop the groundwater contamination, leaving large areas of Japan uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.

Again, you seem to be woefully uninformed, or even misinformed, about the actual dangers involved because you only look at what has happened so far.

The gun was fired, the victim was hit in the shoulder, and the hospital patched him up - your conclusion is "guns are not dangerous". This is the wrong conclusion.

I can only reiterate that you need to look at what COULD happen, not what DID happen.

>You are aware it spent on it's transition so far much more than France spent on nuclear while achieving worse results, while killing thousands from coal pollution in the meantime?

France is nowhere done spending money on nuclear. They got a 64 bn "forgotten bill" just 4 years ago, it has happened before and will happen again.

The truth here is that France basically pretends to have cheap electricity by hiding a large part of the electricity bill in general taxes, that is not only paid by taxpayers today but will be paid for generations to come.

As for Germany, since they closed the 3 remaining nuclear plants in 2023 they have added approx 3x as much power generation in TWh from solar than those plants produced.

So they could never have reached the same amount of power production by going for nuclear instead. No chance.

Now - one might argue that they should not have decided to close the existing plants when Russia was about to attack Ukraine, and I certainly agree with that!

Maybe they too suffered from lack of imagination?

Countries do have armies where ppl sacrifice their lives, Ukraine's war being a proof, so no, I can't imagine a Chernobyl situation being worse in this regard.

Wth are you saying about Fukushima? It would not have been such a catastrophy- Fukushima is a direct proof that even under extreme conditions of tsunami and earthquakes a proper design leads to better results. And situation got much better after that due to adapted regulations

What kind of terrorist sabotage you think of? Don't be ridiculous. And even if it magically happened it would still not be as bad as Chernobyl

It looks more like you are spreading fear mongering trying to portray nuclear more dangerous that it is. The data is clear. We know what can happen with a twrrible design. We know what can happen under extreme conditions.

France is nowhere near being over with nuclear- but this doesn't disprove my argument. What a nonsense are you implying? What do you mean with a forgotten bill? Germany is spending 18bn/y on eeg and 6bn/y on transmission subsidies. And has still much worse emissions.

The statement about pretending to have cheap electricity is total bullshit and you know it, sorry. EDF debt to ebitda ratio is fine. Household prices are lower than Germany despite EEG. Emissions much better since 90s.

I don't care how much Germany added in renewables after phaseout. I care that Germany shut down nuclear before coal and gas and is planning gas expansion to firm renewables

Germany should not have closed nuclear in general, not because of russian war. Closing nuclear before fossils is a terrible mistake in itself

>It looks more like you are spreading fear mongering trying to portray nuclear more dangerous that it is.

Every country operating nuclear power has rules, regulations and action plans that match what I am saying about the dangers of nuclear power plants.

If I'm spreading anything it's knowledge that's agreed upon by every expert in the field.

Your arguments rest on the idea that nuclear is harmless because the harm hasn't happened yet, and that's simply not good enough.

>The statement about pretending to have cheap electricity is total bullshit and you know it

No it's not BS. I assumed you were familiar with ARENH but apparently not - in short, France decided that nuclear electricity should be sold at 42 euros per MWh, but it turned out that was not enough to sustain the plants and keep them in good shape. It ended with France having to let taxpayers cover the EDF debt and renovations.

Once the nationalization was done, the new price is 70e per MWh.

This means exactly what I said - during all of ARENH, nuclear power "pretended" to be cheaper than it actually was, but there was a hidden cost that ended up having to be paid for by taxpayers decades later.

If 70 is the true cost or just a less bad price than ARENH dictated remains to be seen, but there is one fact we know already - the price for electricity in France is often less than 70 euros. And when it is, the taxpayers in France take the loss.

A similar hidden cost is brewing in Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, the US, and it has surfaced in Japan (bigtime) and Korea.

I want you to study other sources than the ones you have studied so far, and widen your knowledge about the topic. But you are clearly annoyed with me so it's probably counterproductive to argue this further here.

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