Oliver Stone's 'Nuclear now' documentary.

[nctnico]

I have not seen it mentioned on this forum but Oliver Stone made a documentary called 'Nuclear Now' in 2022 outlining how and why nuclear energy can be helpfull to reduce carbon emissions. Now this is a typical Oliver Stone documentary with a somewhat one-sided view but there are many good points made (supported by numbers!) and it also highlights ongoing and new development. I found it interesting to watch.

[tatel]

I didn't watch it; but looking at their web promotion, see this:

"
With unprecedented access to the nuclear industry in France, Russia, and the United States, Nuclear Now explores the possibility for the global community to overcome the challenges of climate change and energy poverty to reach a brighter future through the power of nuclear energy.

Beneath our feet, Uranium atoms in the Earth’s crust hold incredibly concentrated energy. Science unlocked this energy in the mid-20th century, first for bombs and then to power submarines. The United States led the effort to generate electricity from this new source. Yet in the mid-20th century as societies began the transition to nuclear power and away from fossil fuels, a long-term PR campaign to scare the public began, funded in part by coal and oil interests. This campaign would sow fear about harmless low-level radiation and create confusion between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. Looking squarely at the problem, Oliver Stone shows us that knowledge is the antidote to fear, and our human ingenuity will allow us to solve the climate change crisis if we use it.
"

I'm able to recall how the french dumped shiploads of barrels with concrete and nuclear waste in the Bay of Biscay near where our fishermen work. Can't heard anywhere about how they are going to clean it. They do not seem to appear here: www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0037/ML003768507.pdf  Go to page 29 of the document and read about  low level waste ocean disposal. They did it until 1983 and plan to do it again as soon as they are allowed. Did any of you watch "Chernobyl"? Because it's cheaper.

Not to mention how Japan is dumping radiactive shit from Fukushima right now. Technology to 100% clean any radioactive elements contaminating that water, existed in the U.S. at that time, but it was "expensive".  Not one but three reactors melted and reached underground water. There weren't any miners from Tula in Japan at tsunami time, it seems. The japanese weren't able neither to avoid it reaching underground water, nor to capture all the contaminated water, nor to 100% clean the water they captured. Now they  are dumping it into the ocean. Yet Chernobyl is officially still the biggest nuclear "accident". Bollocks.

Yeah, when there's the ability to dump, anywhere, great amounts of waste, that will remain highly toxic for 300 to some 250,000 years, one can get good profits. Being the energy that will save us from climatic change BTW. The icing in the cake, it isn't?

Climatic change is here. No jokes, where my mother lives, some 400 km east from here, 100 km south of Pyrenees range, about New York's latitude, there are now 6 months with temperatures more than 30ºC, with at least 2 months to live at near or above 40ºC. Year after year. It wasn't like that 25 years ago. Then usually were perhaps four months a year  at about 30ºC and fifteen days a year near 40ºC.

Not to speak about the drought. Hydro used to be by far the biggest "green" energy source, but was in 2023 below wind and sun at about 9%. Reservoirs are a grim view in most of Spain year after year.

Some kilometers from me, there's Spain's rainiest weather station. Rain was there over 3000 mm/year 30 years ago, near 3300 probably. Now it's about 2600. Having a heavy snow coat at 2000 meters high on the Pyrinean range is now the exception, not the rule.

I know climatics are studied by making averages over 30-year periods. Well, if the last 30-year change we experienced here, is to be setting trends, we are screwed. Others will follow quite soon. Remember how the rivers almost dried in Europe a couple years ago? France had to stop nuclear plants because there wasn't enough water for refrigeration.

Spain did achieve getting more than 50% renewable energy last year. IIRC, we aren't the only ones in the EU. Didn't bothered to search for a better link, sorry. But I passed it through Google translator for all of you: https://www-epe-es.translate.goog/es/activos/20231212/energias-renovables-espana-record-renovables-mitad-electricidad-95712251?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=es&_x_tr_pto=wapp

So I don't buy what nuclear industry is trying to sneak into us. We don't need nor want nuclear energy here. Yes wind and sun have their problems but no waste from these will ever be radiactive. I think we need to reduce fossil fuels as much as possible and don't think nuclear is the solution, far from it.

Here a guy called Ryan got first kidnapped then killed. I don't endorse terrorism.  But I'm happy not having a nuclear power plant some 100 kms from me. Just saying.

https://es-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mar%C3%ADa_Ryan?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=es&_x_tr_pto=wapp

[Kleinstein]

The nuclear industry it trying hard to get back governmental support, as this is there life-line.  From the economic side nuclear makes no more sense. It is just to expensive and to slow to build, if one looks beyond the marketing promisses. We need to replace fossile energies fast, not in 30 or 50 years. So it does not help to start developing new reactors. They would be available in quantety just to late and it is by no means clear they could deliver on the promisses. The money would be better spend on builing the currently available renewable alternatives. They had there chance, but failed with lots of tax money spend.

It can be Ok to keep the limited number of existing reactor running, as long as they are safe. So I consider the stop of nuclear in Germany a mistake, but starting new nuclear, especially at large scale in other place would be another even larger mistake.

The new nuclear plans are full of BS promisses. A few of the nasty points to consider:
The Uranium supply is too limited to run conventional reactors one a large scale with once through fuel or just partial reprocessing as in France and the UK. The supply may be OK for the current level, but not much more to make a real difference for the climate.

The U - PU breading cycle with fast reactors  could have enough fuel, but is still not fully developed and reprocessing is dirty business and very expensive. So it is far from ready and economic. Safety of the fast reactors is also a bit more tricky. Reprocessing also comes with nuclear proliferation risks. There is also still the waste problem - less concentrated, but more volume and still bad enough to be a problem.

Thorium fuel needs even more reprocessing than the U-PU fast breaders. This is especially the case if the thorium is also recyced (which is really hard and currently set aside as it is way to expensive).
Most of the claims about thorium based reactors are big BS - maybe kind of correct if one takes one claim at a time. In the usual way of safe , cheap, clean,  available  - choose 2.

[nctnico]

The nuclear industry it trying hard to get back governmental support, as this is there life-line.  From the economic side nuclear makes no more sense. It is just to expensive and to slow to build, if one looks beyond the marketing promisses. We need to replace fossile energies fast, not in 30 or 50 years. So it does not help to start developing new reactors. They would be available in quantety just to late and it is by no means clear they could deliver on the promisses. The money would be better spend on builing the currently available renewable alternatives. They had there chance, but failed with lots of tax money spend.

It can be Ok to keep the limited number of existing reactor running, as long as they are safe. So I consider the stop of nuclear in Germany a mistake, but starting new nuclear, especially at large scale in other place would be another even larger mistake.

I don't think it is that black & white. China is building new nuclear power plants at a fast pace to reduce both pollution and CO2 emissions. China is more or less mass producing nuclear powerplants nowadays. https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/how-china-has-become-the-worlds-fastest-expanding-nuclear-power-producer The biggest hurdles of renewable energy are transport and storage. These problems are not solved sooner (more likely later) compared to building nuclear power plants (based on existing, proven technology). Sure renewables will catch up at some point but that will be far after 2050.

Economics are also debatable. The problems countries like China and India are facing is that burning coal is killing people by the thousands due to pollution. For this reason alone there is a big push in these countries to use whatever possible to generate electricity for as long as it isn't coal.

Again, I can really recommend watching the documentary; it looks at energy consumption and generation at a global scale and gives a good insight in the size & scale of the energy related challenges the world is facing in the next 50 years.

[Kleinstein]

The reactors that China is building are still conventional thermal, light water reactors and the pace is not really large   (5 going online in a year as a high-light) - that is maybe enough to replace old reactors going off line in other parts of the world. Replacing more than maybe 10% of world wide coal with such reactors would run into a problem with uranium resources relatively quick.

It is not just renewables , but large scale nuclear would also need storage solutions (for the excess power at night) and a plan B. The current safty concepts assume that the reactors could be shut down and upgraded / fixed if a serious problem is found. This mean 1 type of reactor can not provide reliable power - it needs a backup.

[jbb]

Nuclear is expensive to build. It’s usually over-budget and late.

Nuclear waste is an emotional and political issue. Nuclear waste fiascos such as the Sellafield site have occurred, and I believe some people should be in jail for it. However, how many people have died from ‘coal waste’ such as air pollution and will die from climate change-related destruction?

Large nuclear accidents are very rare but possible. However, how many people have died from coal mining accidents? It’s like air travel; a plane crash is Big News. Meanwhile, there’s a continuous background of car accidents permanently injuring or killing people and it barely makes the news. (My sympathies to anyone who’s lost friends or loved ones to accidents.)

A nuclear plant can generate heaps of electricity. Even in a ‘kalt dunkelflaute’ (“cold, dark, no wind”). Even in a dry year when rivers are low and hydroelectric generation is scaled back. As more people decarbonise their home heating, ie replace fossil fuel burners with heat pumps, we’ll need more power for cold winter nights. And it better be more reliable than ‘hope the wind blows somewhere.’

A nuclear plant is also an amazingly concentrated form of energy storage; I think they’re normally refuelled once a year. No other technology can store a year’s worth of generation. And if you’re really worried about security of supply, you could plausibly order next year’s fuel now and keep it on site.

I think the time is coming when we need to take a hard look at the risks of nuclear power versus the certain damage of fossil fuel generation versus the reliability risks of ‘more wind and solar.’

[nctnico]

Agreed, fear for radiation is largely between our ears. There are so many sources of radiation around us; especially from coal power plants and the gypsum that is made as a byproduct.

Burning coal kills millions of people each year due to the emissions. There really is no contest here; by counting number of deaths versus energy produced nuclear wins hands down. Even wind and solar are more deadly compared to nuclear energy. The WHO did an extensive study into this.

[tatel]

Do you call that "reasons"? Sorry I can't agree.

Millions of people die in war, so we could do anything and still there would be less dead than in just one war, it isn't?

Not even one answer to questions put over the table, like dumping radioactive shit into the ocean. Yeah, sweep it under he rug. Parrot some nuclear industry BS. Please feel free to build a nice echo chamber.

You know, it's moot anyway, we are producing twice those heaps of energy, with solar and wind, at a fraction of the price. Something that people like, say, you, thought it was impossible... because some pro-nuke guy told you so, it isn't. Meanwhile, drought is able to stop NPPs in France. You didn't answer that, either.

But, now I feel better. Just four people were killed here because they were building a nuclear power plant, that's nothing compared with the Charlies that die in accidents. Thank you for that.  Now I can clean my shotgun with peace of mind.

[jbb]

I think it’s legitimate to compare electricity generated by coal with electricity generated by nuclear.

Edit: by which I mean I think it’s legitimate to compare deaths from coal versus deaths from nuclear.

As it comes to terrible waste management, did I not say I think some people should be in prison?

[tatel]

I think it’s legitimate to compare electricity generated by coal with electricity generated by nuclear.

Edit: by which I mean I think it’s legitimate to compare deaths from coal versus deaths from nuclear.

As it comes to terrible waste management, did I not say I think some people should be in prison?

Well, acid rain wasn't a joke, either. In that I agree with you. But if you abandon carbon, you can expect that acid rain to vanish in about a decade, give or take? I had a carbon power plant some 4 kms from my home. So I know a couple things about carbon power plant waste.

But I think you forget that radioactive waste will remain radioactive for hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. That low level waste dumped into the ocean is supposedly containing "just" alpha and beta particles. I invite you to read about what a beta particle can do to your health if ingested.

The french dumped literally shiploads of steel barrels,   reinforced with concrete (inside). Now I live next to the ocean and got how much steel and concrete endure when exposed to salt water. Sellafield, that was fresh water, it was not? Now you know what we can expect. Some day, those barrels will fail and that waste will get out. Then we all will be in for a not-so-funny ride.

So, you should leave some space free into the accounting book for the people that still has to be exposed to what they dumped into the ocean for decades.  Not just the french. All the nuclear nations over the world did it and hope to do it again.

Conclusion: those pro-nuke grifters fooled us once. Shame on them. Should we allow them fool us again, shame on us.

[nctnico]

I think it’s legitimate to compare electricity generated by coal with electricity generated by nuclear.

Edit: by which I mean I think it’s legitimate to compare deaths from coal versus deaths from nuclear.

As it comes to terrible waste management, did I not say I think some people should be in prison?

Well, acid rain wasn't a joke, either. In that I agree with you. But if you abandon carbon, you can expect that acid rain to vanish in about a decade, give or take? I had a carbon power plant some 4 kms from my home. So I know a couple things about carbon power plant waste.

But I think you forget that radioactive waste will remain radioactive for hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.

Without quantification the word radioactive is useless. Everything around us is radioactive!
The reality is that nuclear waste decays to low levels of radiation quickly; within a timespan of 100 to 200 years. Not thousands! After 200 years it no longer poses a serious threat where it comes to radiation levels. Within 1000 to 10000 years, the radioactivity level is back at the original (natural!) level when the material was mined. However, a bigger problem is that besides the radiation, the material is also toxic and remains toxic. But the latter is true for many other materials we can't even destroy like asbestos, mercury or PFAS / PFOS. At some point you just have to consider waste a cost of keeping society going, deal with it the best way we can and most importantly of all: learn from mistakes from the past.

Yes, dumping the waste in sea was not a good idea at all. But nowadays the nuclear waste gets stored underground or on-site where control is much more effective. I much prefer living next to a nuclear power plant than a coal or gas power plant.

In the NL there is an operational nuclear power plant and a big steel mill (far apart from eachother). People living next to the steel mill get sick, those living next to the nuclear power plant do not.

[Someone]

The reality is that nuclear waste decays to low levels of radiation quickly; within a timespan of 100 to 200 years. Not thousands! After 200 years it no longer poses a serious threat where it comes to radiation levels.

Bullshit, out by orders of magnitude.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/489408/how-long-is-spent-nuclear-fuel-radioactive
Would you like a metic ton of uranium ore outside your house? Not even close to typical background levels.

I'm guess you're using some (as usual) unstated version of "low" in some contrived (and still unstated) circumstance.

[tatel]

Here's the quantification: "shiploads" times "decades" times "all over the world". I would like to be more specific but they never, ever, gave the numbers. French dumpings do not appear in US paper linked before, as I said.

More quantification:

Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137

Iodine-131 is the most popular radionuclide. It has a half-life of just 8 days. But the cousin iodine-129 has a half-life of 15 million years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_iodine

IIRC, it's said that after 10 half-lives one could consider there's not a problem anymore. That gives us about three months for the iodine-131 and 300 years for cesium-137. For iodine-129 we are speaking about 150 milion years.

So let's take something about the middle. Plutonium is produced in nuclear power plants and it seems to be basically alfa-emitter, thus could easily be considered "low-level waste". Of course, since it's needed to make the bombs, most of it is carefully collected. But no process is perfect. So, again, it could easily be at least a tiiiiny little bit on each of these barrels, too. But there were "shiploads" x "decades" x "all over the world" of these barrels.

We can bet that non-economical-to-collect amounts of plutonium are effectively there. In that time France's NPPs were trying to do "very advanced things". Like, now we burn uranium, that will make plutonium, then we will burn plutonium, that will make garbanzonium... and so on and on. Nuclear energy was going to be "eternal" IIRC. So who knows exactly what that shit really is. Moreover, they dumped not just their own shit, more about that later.

You can't say there isn't any, either plutonium or garbanzonium, because neither you, nor me, know what's really on those barrels. It was "secret of the State" then and it's still secret now. All we know is: it's nuclear waste, supposedly "low level waste"

What we know for sure is plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24.000 years. Times ten=240.000 years. There weren't so many Homo Sapiens 240.000 years ago. Most cave paintings are from 10.000-15.000 years ago. Just to put things in perspective.

I think you should look again at your numbers. Please don't think I'm cherry-picking, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay

And: https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html

I also think you should really look at the chapter about low level waste ocean disposal I linked previously. You say:

"(...) nowadays the nuclear waste gets stored underground or on site were control is much more effective".

Sorry, but I have to say "Bollocks". And I have to say "Fukushima". Because they are dumping their shit into the ocean right now. Deliberately. Because it's cheaper. So, please think twice before parroting Westinghouse's bullshit. Stored underground? Please don't be naive.

Spain still has perhaps half a dozen nuclear reactors, and that waste goes now to France like it did 40 years ago. No underground storage in Spain. BTW, I'm not really sure the Netherlands have that underground storage, either. France dumped nuclear waste from all Western Europe from the 1960s up until 1983. Because it's cheaper. So, not really much underground storage in most of Western Europe. Or at least it so seems. Perhaps Finland? But, they are just 5 million people. There's more people in Barcelona than in Finland, I would say. So those nice suomis can do with a fraction of the energy other countries need= an easier problem  to solve.

Should the number of NPPs increase, that hyped and so often ficticional underground storage would be quickly overwhelmed. To build these things is not easy, nor fast, nor cheap, to stand up for more time than the pyramids, avoiding leaks by the way. So, as the US paper about ocean disposal states, more ocean disposal will be the "solution". French government didn't cease to authorize dumpings because they were nice guys, but because they were compelled. Now the matter for the nuclear industry is consider we all live in Nemo mode to try and be allowed to do it again. Because it's cheaper. Unfortunately it looks many many  people is really Nemo-alike. Politicians know it well.

If you prefer to live near a NPP, please feel free to do so. So what? Like half a million people living in Bilbo didn't think the same. And there was Altos Hornos de Bizkaia there at that time. In company of Babcock-Wilcox and a whole lot of steel heavy industries.  Don't think this is like all of Spain, olives and wine and flamenco, as you guiris usually think. We have the biggest part of Spain's heavy industries here. In Franco's time industries were allowed to dump anything into the ground, into the water and into the air. So we know well all types of shitty industrial waste here. Yet we prefer non-radioactive shitty waste. Or even better: no shitty waste at all.

So, you can give me your opinion and I can give you the opinion of 2.5 million basques. That guy Ryan? At least he's remembered. The other three? Sic transit gloria mundi.

Those living next to the nuclear power plant do not get sick? Ask the people from Fukushima. BTW, try to calculate what percent of your country would become inhabitable, for how many time, should that reactor go bonkers. Lets say you are right and problem is solved just by waiting 200 years to get back home. No doubt that would be really an incredibly good bargain. Just saying. Not to mention what it would do to the economy of the country.

Nico, I usually listen what you say with a maximum of attention, but I have to say, now your tires are slipping.

[Someone]

IIRC, it's said that after 10 half-lives one could consider there's not a problem anymore.

That is equally misleading and not just a wild simplification but misses the point.

People care about their (statistical) exposure to harm, there is a well used measure for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
to get there from a waste stream you need the activity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel
multiplied by the pathway of exposure, and weighting for both exposure method and energy spectrum

This is done for coal power as a comparison:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096980431300273X

What we dont get is lifecycle numbers for nuclear. The generating plant is relatively benign and inoffensive compared to the mining, reprocessing, and waste (where water contamination pathways into shared/perpetual sources is scary).

[Kleinstein]

I think it’s legitimate to compare electricity generated by coal with electricity generated by nuclear.

Edit: by which I mean I think it’s legitimate to compare deaths from coal versus deaths from nuclear.

The point with the deaths is that they are kind of statistical from polution and from accidents. So neither the numbers for coal no nuclear are easy and free of controversy.
With nuclear one point is that the waste problem is one that can hit us in the future - it is just hard to guess how good the disposal will work in 1000 years. Ideally everything would be fine, but when for some reason (e.g. a pandemic, war or other global desaster) the power-plants are just abandoned, chances are the waste problem would hit future generation hard.

The comparison to coal is also a bit misleading now. We hopefully agree that coal is bad and not an option for the future.  Nobody should build a new coal power plant anymore. The alternatives are more the renewables and maybe natural gas (for a transition period).

In some respect it looks like proposed new and better nuclear power is used as an excuse to keep the old coal power plans running longer and slow down the replacement with remewable sources.
We really need to seriously start with stopping the use of coal fast. If it really gets faster this way one may also build a few nuclear plants, but I don't see them making a big difference and for new designs there is just not enough time around with a rather uncertain outcome and high upfront costs.
Chances are the energy will get more expensive.  Coal burned today is not much better than coal burned in 20 years. So why not start charging it with the environmental costs now - the economy needs the cost pressure to really let go. It kind of has to hurt.

[nctnico]

The reality is that nuclear waste decays to low levels of radiation quickly; within a timespan of 100 to 200 years. Not thousands! After 200 years it no longer poses a serious threat where it comes to radiation levels.

Bullshit, out by orders of magnitude.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/489408/how-long-is-spent-nuclear-fuel-radioactive
Would you like a metic ton of uranium ore outside your house? Not even close to typical background levels.

I'm guess you're using some (as usual) unstated version of "low" in some contrived (and still unstated) circumstance.

The link you provided underlines exactly what I wrote. Note the horizontal line which marks the 'Uranium ore level equavalent' in the graph.

Some info about uranium mining and safety precautions:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/radiation-and-health/occupational-safety-in-uranium-mining.aspx

[nctnico]

The point with the deaths is that they are kind of statistical from polution and from accidents. So neither the numbers for coal no nuclear are easy and free of controversy.
With nuclear one point is that the waste problem is one that can hit us in the future - it is just hard to guess how good the disposal will work in 1000 years. Ideally everything would be fine, but when for some reason (e.g. a pandemic, war or other global desaster) the power-plants are just abandoned, chances are the waste problem would hit future generation hard.

Still you can argue that it looks like the waste problem from burning fossil fuels IS going to hit future generations hard for sure due to global warming (and nitrogen deposits). And thinking about it, it occured to me that I have not brought up the following question for myself: how long is it going to take for global warming to go away (IOW: CO2 levels decreasing and global temperature dropping)? Maybe there is a simple answer to that but I can't recall reading anything about it or somebody bringing it up.

In some respect it looks like proposed new and better nuclear power is used as an excuse to keep the old coal power plans running longer and slow down the replacement with remewable
sources.
We really need to seriously start with stopping the use of coal fast. If it really gets faster this way one may also build a few nuclear plants, but I don't see them making a big difference and for new designs there is just not enough time around with a rather uncertain outcome and high upfront costs.
Chances are the energy will get more expensive.  Coal burned today is not much better than coal burned in 20 years. So why not start charging it with the environmental costs now - the economy needs the cost pressure to really let go. It kind of has to hurt.

I agree with phasing out coal. But I disagree with it needing to hurt financially. The main problem with artificially increasing costs (this is the usual methode) is that it is going to hurt the people who have the least to spend the most -by far-.

In reality renewables are still at an infancy stage. Large scale storage will not be solved / scaled up sufficiently within the next 20 years. And how are countries like China and India going to switch to renewables with all their heavy industry (that got booted out of the US and Europe)? So when countries like China or India bring up a working nuclear powerplant in 5 years which replaces a coal power plant, that is a win in my book. Especially since these countries are the factories of (for) the world.

In the end you need to choose the least bad solution.

[Someone]

The reality is that nuclear waste decays to low levels of radiation quickly; within a timespan of 100 to 200 years. Not thousands! After 200 years it no longer poses a serious threat where it comes to radiation levels.

Bullshit, out by orders of magnitude.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/489408/how-long-is-spent-nuclear-fuel-radioactive
Would you like a metic ton of uranium ore outside your house? Not even close to typical background levels.

I'm guess you're using some (as usual) unstated version of "low" in some contrived (and still unstated) circumstance.

The link you provided underlines exactly what I wrote. Note the horizontal line which marks the 'Uranium ore level equavalent' in the graph.

lol, sticking to your (blind) guns and bluster.

So I've added a line to point out where (that particular waste) drops through the activity of uranium ore. THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Further, as above that's the raw activity in events (Bq) but the more damaging and biologically absorbed Cs and Sr isotopes multiply the weightings compared to Uranium ore.

Uranium ore is not some benign benchmark, it is far above average background radiation which is why workers exposed industrially to it take many precautions and are monitored constantly. Yes, the simple solution is to vitrify nuclear waste and return it to where the ore was extracted.... except for those pesky liquid extraction processes.

[Kleinstein]

Getting down to the Uranium ore equivalent is by far not saying that the material is safe after this. Uranium ores can also be quite different - not all are the same and they are also considered prolematic material, that should be keept in a safe place (geologic barrier) and not spread around.
The horizontal line is just in a sweep spot where it looks like the time is not too long to blow the mind. Shift that line lower by 1 or 2 decades and it takes 100s of thouthands or millions of years.

Comparing the line to the contribution of PU would suggest that the PU would not be an issue at all. So I don't think that horizontal line is a good choice. So 5 TBQ still looks like an awfull stron source that would need quite some permits and training to handle, even only a small fraction of that.


For the excess CO2 the current estimate is that it takes some 28000 years to get absorbed back by faster plant growth. However this number may go up for higher levels of CO2 as there can be saturation.

China is already building and installing a lot of new PV  (some 216 GW) and wind power, way more than the few nuclear plants  (maybe 5 GW) they are also building. It is just cheaper to build PV than nuclear.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-installed-solar-power-capacity-rises-552-2023-2024-01-26/

[.RC.]

At the end of the day for most countries it is going to be nuclear or candles.

You could not run a normal non special first world country on solar and wind and battery storage and expect to maintain the standard of living the citizens currently enjoy.  Whenever you bring it up on internet forums, someone will straight away point to some unusual country that might have large amounts of hydro and a small population and claim that proves everything.

I am yet to come across just the wind, solar and battery capacity required to run a normal run of the mill country fully on renewables.  I was reading earlier some story about some new solar farm.  The article only gave the nameplate capacity then said it could power so many tends of thousands of homes.   They did not say for how long or anything.  Or how many aluminium smelters the facility could run.  It is always so many houses and never for how long it could run so many houses.

Nuclear will be the future.

[nctnico]

Getting down to the Uranium ore equivalent is by far not saying that the material is safe after this. Uranium ores can also be quite different - not all are the same and they are also considered prolematic material, that should be keept in a safe place (geologic barrier) and not spread around.
The horizontal line is just in a sweep spot where it looks like the time is not too long to blow the mind.

As I wrote before, the material itself is toxic forever. But the radiation levels go down from 'lethal within seconds' to 'harmfull after prolonged exposure'. IOW, if people happen to stumble upon nuclear waste after -say 2000 years- and move away from it, it very likely won't harm them in any way. Now some will likely come up with all kinds of doom-scenarios where information about the sites gets lost. But humanity has a pretty good track record of recovering information. Look at how much information we were able to recover about how people lived thousands of years ago (like the Egyptians and Romans).

China is already building and installing a lot of new PV  (some 216 GW) and wind power, way more than the few nuclear plants  (maybe 5 GW) they are also building. It is just cheaper to build PV than nuclear.

I'm afraid the latter is only true if you don't include storage costs. The problem however with solar and wind is that they don't work as a one on one replacement for fossil fuels and/or nuclear without seasonal storage. Renewables are really at an infancy state where we are only starting to get the generation part on the rails. Getting large scale seasonal storage developed and installed is at the very least 20 years away. Right now (seasonal) storage is pie in the sky like nuclear fusion. A lot of development needs to be done.

[Nominal Animal]

Do not forget that burning coal releases more radioactive particles ("radiation") than nuclear power plants, tests, bombs, and accidents combined.

For a layman article about radioactivity in coal ash, see this (Scientific American; by a science journalist, not a nuclear energy proponent).

If we compare coal power plants to nuclear power plants producing the same amount of electricity, the coal power plant produces about ten times as much radioactive waste as the nuclear power plant.

I for one prefer solar and wind energy, but for industry and stability, we need bulk energy production for which currently nuclear is the safest and least polluting option.  At least here in Finland, we're doing something about the spent fuel.  The permanent storage facility, Onkalo, is almost ready for use.  It is designed to last 100,000 years and an ice age.

[woody]

 
<rant>
Nuclear Now?  More like Nuclear in 15 years. As that seems to be the time it takes to build a reactor. And that can only happen if I am willing to pay astonishing amounts of money per MWh. Which I am not. But alas, then some government will happily supplement the difference between what you can reasonably get for a MWh on the market and what that MWh will cost when Hinkley C generated it. For of course, the invisible hand of the market is not allowed to touch nuclear reactors. So in the end I still pay.

Oh, and when we are lucky and these reactors reach their designed end-of-life without mayor problems (usually postponed at least a couple of times, like in Belgium, how's that for safety?) they are moved around as hot potatoes until they end up at, guess where, the government. Who then are responsible for taking them apart. As we right now, see in the Netherlands. With, again, my money.

I am not principally against nuclear power. We certainly must keep researching it and fund that research, for who knows, maybe one day someone will find a way to create a safe, working fusion reactor that runs on seawater. At the same time I see more in learning to harness the gigantic amount of energy that falls on our planet each and every day. For we would be really stupid not to use that as fully as possible.

And if in the mean time aluminum smelters or fertilizer factories or hydrogen generating plants need astonishing amounts of electricity at the drop of a hat, let them invest in their own nuclear power plant. Stop asking society to absorb the brunt of the costs but pencil these in in the price of your product and see for yourself how feasible nuclear powered electricity really is.
</rant>

[tatel]

IIRC, it's said that after 10 half-lives one could consider there's not a problem anymore.

That is equally misleading and not just a wild simplification but misses the point.

People care about their (statistical) exposure to harm, there is a well used measure for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
to get there from a waste stream you need the activity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel
multiplied by the pathway of exposure, and weighting for both exposure method and energy spectrum

This is done for coal power as a comparison:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S096980431300273X

What we dont get is lifecycle numbers for nuclear. The generating plant is relatively benign and inoffensive compared to the mining, reprocessing, and waste (where water contamination pathways into shared/perpetual sources is scary).

Yeah, of course one has either to simplify or wrote a textbook. I'm not a nuclear engineer BTW. And I think that post was more than long enough.

But also think it makes clear that hyped "underground safe storage" is bullshit, and that we are no just speaking about "just less than a hundred years".

These dumped barrels will for sure fail before the shit inside them becomes safe. We haven't been exposed to their waste yet, but will be eventually. The entities that did it will not be there to be hold accountable, however. That's why they think they could be able to get away with it again. Actually they are getting away with it right now in Fukushima.

[Kleinstein]

Even if we pay the high price for nuclear reactors in the way they were build the last decades this will not really solve the energy problem. With conventional reactors there is just not enough Uranium available to replace the current coal consumption for more than a few years. So if we switch magically to 50% nuclear, the reasonable uranium reserves are gone by maybe 2030 or 2040.
The currently availabe reactors are only short time or small contribution at best.

So if at all one would have to look at the fast breeders, and these are really in there infancy and largey failed so far. The fast breaders would need less uranium and could absorb the rather high costs for uranium from see water. So they would have way more reserves available. With conventional reactors the uranium from see water would be too expensive / energy intensive to be practical.

Large scale nuclear would also need storage, as nuclear runs 24/7 to get reasonable costs and lifetime (powering down at night would be extra stress to the plants).

It can make sense to combine some nuclear with largely renewables, so that nuclear could provide some base load and reduce the need for storage. It is generally good to have a mix and not all from one source, as the supply can vary.

[PlainName]

Fukushima

That's a bit different to the norm, isn't it? They are not disposing of waste from the reactor, but contaminated cooling water. They wouldn't've needed to do that without the earthquake, but once that disaster hit they had to keep pumping in water that they couldn't then pump out and had to store on-site. There is a finite limit to how long they can keep doing that, hence why it is now being turfed out.

Of course, the proper solution to all this is to concentrate on fission, and then many billions and decades later we will either be totally renewables or back in caves

[Kleinstein]

The water from Fukishima is more like a small detail from the accident recovery.  Much of the water came in and at a smaller rate still comes in from ground water the is leaking from the outside in the reactor building and from there take up some contamination. They cleaned the water from most contraminations, but not from the relatively low level of tritium. The water they want to release is only slightly contaminated with tritium - somewhat comparable what some CADU reactors in Canada releases in normal operation.

My option on this is that it would be good to add enough salt to the water to make it slightly heavier than the normal see water and than release it to the deep ocean (there is plenty of depth near Japan). Trtium has a relatively short half life (13 years from memory) and chances are most of the water would stay in the deep see for long enough to largely decay before coming up again. The deep see has relatively little life that would be harmed from the relatively small release.

The mess and costs from the cleanup still shows some of the problems with nuclear energy. The accidents happened so far the rate is not that much higher than what is expected from the safty concepts and the risks they are willing to take. With Fukushima they were still lucky that most of the release went to the ocean and not densely populated areas.

[tatel]

Do not forget that burning coal releases more radioactive particles ("radiation") than nuclear power plants, tests, bombs, and accidents combined.

For a layman article about radioactivity in coal ash, see this (Scientific American; by a science journalist, not a nuclear energy proponent).

If we compare coal power plants to nuclear power plants producing the same amount of electricity, the coal power plant produces about ten times as much radioactive waste as the nuclear power plant.

I for one prefer solar and wind energy, but for industry and stability, we need bulk energy production for which currently nuclear is the safest and least polluting option.  At least here in Finland, we're doing something about the spent fuel.  The permanent storage facility, Onkalo, is almost ready for use.  It is designed to last 100,000 years and an ice age.

I don't buy that thing about carbon power plants being more radioactive than NPPs. I lived for 50 years next to a carbon power plant. For sure it was a dirty thing until compelled to put filters on. That waste got into the water instead . That did go unnoticed because the river, and the sea port water, was already saturated with wasted pulp and chemicals from a paper factory and other industries, while used as sewer for about 75.000 people.

That carbon power plant was finally dismantled about 2010 IIRC

But, after all that exposition, I don't see any more bald, sick, throwing guys with burns in the skin, than usual in other places where there has never been a TPP. And nothing like the kids from Chernobyl that used to come here each summer.

Be careful about what you read. That guy needs his work to be funded. The editor need his paper having some support. Remember how many studies were published by "independent" scientist, saying the relation tobacco-cancer couldn't be demonstrated? Yeah, what has been demonstrated is they weren't independent, but funded by the tobacco industry.

IMO, that guy can perfectly go to hell.

[tatel]

My option on this is that it would be good to add enough salt to the water to make it slightly heavier than the normal see water and than release it to the deep ocean (there is plenty of depth near Japan). Trtium has a relatively short half life (13 years from memory) and chances are most of the water would stay in the deep see for long enough to largely decay before coming up again. The deep see has relatively little life that would be harmed from the relatively small release.

While I agree with most of the post I can't see why a private company should be allowed to dump any radioactive waste into the ocean. Of course China, Vietnam, Russia, etc, all disagree also. They have banned japanese fish imports.

Not that governments should be allowed to do that either.  But a pure capitalist venture like Tepco shouldn't be allowed to become a commie thing when business go South. Technology to get that water 100% clean was and still is available on the US. It was just deemed "expensive". 

[nctnico]

The problem is that the public has been brainwashed by anti-nuclear protest groups that any radioactivity is bad.

You can see a similar effect in the US. In the 1950's the population has been brainwashed to be against communism to a point where people Pavlov into socialism = communism = bad . While most Americans are in favour of laws that help establish more equality, as soon as somebody comes around and labels such laws as 'socialist law' everybody is dead set against it. This takes any form of reasoning away from a discussion. It also hampers the US from improving the living conditions of many people.

BTW: Oliver Stone's documentary shows there is a money trail coming from the oil companies towards anti-nuclear protest groups.

[Nominal Animal]

I don't buy that thing about carbon power plants being more radioactive than NPPs.

What you buy or do not is irrelevant; this it is a well-known, well-researched fact.  It is not up to debate.
If you look it up, even governments do openly admit this.
Edited: Here is the relevant data for USA, from epa.gov.

The reason is that to generate the same amount of electricity, you need to burn a huge amount of coal, and all coal deposits have radioactive materials in them; and we do know the range of amounts.

Similarly, when you ingest uranium, it is not the radiation that will kill you, it is the heavy metal toxicity.  (The LD50, or dose that kills at least 50% of subjects, is four times as high for the radiation dose as it is for the chemical toxicity.  The worst kind is aerosolized uranium, for example that generated by depleted uranium projectiles on impact.)

[tatel]

Again I don't buy that, and I laugh at those "stablished facts". I know for sure that's bullshit, because, after 50 years living next to a carbon power plant, I still have to see any radioactive poisoning or even an increase in, say, thyroid cancer or leukemia. Incidence is about the same here that in some little town 100 km south, where never has been any carbon power plant. So calling out that bullshit.

Of course I'm not speaking about lung sicknesses, etc, but about "typical" affections from radiation.

If I understand it correctly, in the 60 years that TPP worked, we could have produced the same energy from nuclear, and even if that nuclear waste would have been in the loose, it would be less than the radiation that got loose from that carbon? No way.

Not the first time I see a so huge whopper. Here in Spain quite a few thousand people got very sick in the 80s.  Symptoms were similar to nervous agent exposition. Many died, most other got impaired for life. Officially the cause was some denatured rapeseed oil and that was sanctioned as "scientific fact" for the WHO. But all the people in the mass media knew the real cause was a pesticide that was, first stored in just a shed under Almeria's summer sun, where it of course got over 40ºC, becoming a nervous agent, then used to kill the worms affecting a plantation of tomatoes, less than 15 days before the harvest. Oil guys were scapegoated anyway, and that remains the "scientific fact" until today.

So, again, that guy from scientific american can go to hell. I don't know how he manipulates the data, but I'm sure he does somehow.

[Nominal Animal]

Again I don't buy that, and I laugh at those "stablished facts".

"I take my belief as the proof of the whole truth, and laugh at your statistics."  Are you sure you're not a politician?

You're not laughing at just one science writer, you're also laughing at the US Environmental Protection Agency and European Environment Agency, plus about half a century of geoscience.  Pretty idiotic, in my opinion.

[nctnico]

Again I don't buy that, and I laugh at those "stablished facts". I know for sure that's bullshit, because, after 50 years living next to a carbon power plant, I still have to see any radioactive poisoning or even an increase in, say, thyroid cancer or leukemia. Incidence is about the same here that in some little town 100 km south, where never has been any carbon power plant. So calling out that bullshit.

Well, there you have your proof that particles with low radioactivity levels have no measurable negative effect on health.

[Nominal Animal]

Well, there you have your proof that particles with low radioactivity levels have no measurable negative effect on health.

Yep.  A good general overview of typical radiation dose sources is in the Wikipedia background radiation article.

People don't seem to understand what the actual risks are, which is why I keep harping about radioactive byproducts of coal use, uranium chemical toxicity, and so on.  For example, radon, a natural radioactive gas, is estimated to be the second most frequent cause of lung cancer in the USA, the most frequent being smoking.  Radon itself is not toxic, as it's basically a very heavy, radioactive noble gas, but its decay products are (as is the ionizing radiation released by the nuclear decay).  As it is much heavier than air, the solution is a simple "radon pump" at the lowest point in the building, slowly pumping air there (and thus any radon gas seeping in) outside.

[Nominal Animal]

Interestingly, if one bothers to check the EPA link, the current way of getting rid of the (slightly) radioactive waste from burning coal is exactly analogous to what is done at Fukushima: it is distributed in various products, including building materials (concrete and roofing), so that the concentration is kept low enough to not pose significant risks.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

On one hand, it is better than nothing, or letting stuff concentrate somewhere.  On the other hand, Onkalo spent nuclear fuel deep geological repository shows there is a better way.  All nuclear waste generated in Finland must be disposed in Finland by law, and this is the (first) site.  Its costs are paid from a fund collected from nuclear energy production, not taxpayers. (I.e., nuclear energy users have paid for the site already.)

[pcprogrammer]

Again I don't buy that, and I laugh at those "stablished facts". I know for sure that's bullshit, because, after 50 years living next to a carbon power plant, I still have to see any radioactive poisoning or even an increase in, say, thyroid cancer or leukemia. Incidence is about the same here that in some little town 100 km south, where never has been any carbon power plant. So calling out that bullshit.

If you had bothered to go through the article and used a bit of common sense you would have concluded that there is no risk of radiation contamination living near a coal fired electricity or any other plant.

To me I feel you are dismissing this information a bit to easily.

According to USGS calculations, buying a house in a stack shadow—in this case within 0.6 mile [one kilometer] of a coal plant—increases the annual amount of radiation you're exposed to by a maximum of 5 percent. But that's still less than the radiation encountered in normal yearly exposure to X-rays.

Going to hospital for an X-ray is worse, according to this and does not harm you if it is not to often. Doctors and nurses on the other hand don't stay in the room and wear lead shields to minimize the radiation. Long term exposure of more elevated radiation will bring harm.

And indeed the normal background radiation everybody is getting every day does not turn us into mutants either.

I would worry more about other forms of pollution in exhausts like heavy metals, fine particals or toxic gasses.

[pcprogrammer]

Another thing in this topic is the talk about costs of nuclear power plants and availability of the raw uranium to feed them. While both may be true, the same goes for al the other solutions that are available at this moment.

Solar takes a lot of resources and costs money. Wind the same. Electric cars the same.

And in its bases as it is now, money is the only resource that will never run out. Since it it no longer bound to gold it just grows with the economy. Unfortunately that is not true for a lot of the other things needed to keep our power and wealth hunger fulfilled.

At some point in time the earth will have be plundered of all its available resources that we desperately need for sustaining the foreseen and wished for growth. If humankind will be around long enough to get that far who knows. Other problems like diminishing crops due to drought or war might wipe us out way before it.

The one sane thing would be to strive for real sustainability, but I don't see humankind capable of that.

So much for my rant.

[Someone]

Getting down to the Uranium ore equivalent is by far not saying that the material is safe after this. Uranium ores can also be quite different - not all are the same and they are also considered prolematic material, that should be keept in a safe place (geologic barrier) and not spread around.
The horizontal line is just in a sweep spot where it looks like the time is not too long to blow the mind. Shift that line lower by 1 or 2 decades and it takes 100s of thouthands or millions of years.

Yes that's the problem with these "comparisons" which look like some scientific and irrefutable thing but only people with significant experience in the domain can cut through and point out the smoke and mirrors. I agree 2x decades further is a pretty reasonable adjustment factor for the biological/human risks I discussed above, and would then put it in the "ballpark" of comparable risk.

[Someone]

I am yet to come across just the wind, solar and battery capacity required to run a normal run of the mill country fully on renewables.

Because that information is so hard to find and definitely not shared widely by our public researchers....
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/energy-data-modelling/gencost

[jbb]

Edit: deleted comment because I didn’t see there’s a second page…

[Someone]

Interestingly, if one bothers to check the EPA link, the current way of getting rid of the (slightly) radioactive waste from burning coal is exactly analogous to what is done at Fukushima: it is distributed in various products, including building materials (concrete and roofing), so that the concentration is kept low enough to not pose significant risks.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

On one hand, it is better than nothing, or letting stuff concentrate somewhere.  On the other hand, Onkalo spent nuclear fuel deep geological repository shows there is a better way.  All nuclear waste generated in Finland must be disposed in Finland by law, and this is the (first) site.  Its costs are paid from a fund collected from nuclear energy production, not taxpayers. (I.e., nuclear energy users have paid for the site already.)

Ensuring the nuclear industry accounts for and takes responsibility for the full lifecycle is most important, no fair trying to compare a "light" scoped nuclear operation with a heavy scoped renewable (pushes to price wind/solar only with backing storage).

As an attempt at looking at the lifecycle you get things like this:
https://cna.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Comparative-Life-Cycle-Analysis-of-Base-Load-Electricity-in-Ontario.pdf
Which puts the radiological output intensity (per unit of energy delivered) from coal as much smaller than nuclear

Radiological pollution is concerning as the cleanup/countermeasures are still poorly developed (chicken and egg) where as the control and containment of known human risks from coal are relatively easier and less uncertain.

[tatel]

Again I don't buy that, and I laugh at those "stablished facts".

"I take my belief as the proof of the whole truth, and laugh at your statistics."  Are you sure you're not a politician?

You're not laughing at just one science writer, you're also laughing at the US Environmental Protection Agency and European Environment Agency, plus about half a century of geoscience.  Pretty idiotic, in my opinion.

Just rebuffing your assertion, which I very much doubt. You just gave a link to "Scientific American". Well, I know for sure that "Scientific American" got clad with something that isn't precisely glory when publishing, say, about the first motor flights in the 1900s. And not only then. They are not like "Nature" o "Science", but more like "Muy interesante" (very interesting) that one can buy in Spain weekly for a few bucks. Somewhat nerdy. AFAIK, Scientific American isn't even a peer-reviewed publication.

So you can't link any article from Scientific American and say it demonstrates the real generally accepted scientific knowledge. That's what fanboys do. You should give quite a few links to publications like "Nature" or "Science". If that knowledge is so widely accepted, you should be able to easily give a whole lot of links, easily. That way, I could perhaps stand corrected.

But, even "Nature" and "Science" published works demonstrating a relation between smoking and lung cancer couldn't be established (and apologized for that not many years ago). So, even then, some scrutiny would be in order, I think.

Please note that even the Smithsonian Institution had for decades a plane  exhibited as the first one that did fly under his own power. It wasn't Wright brothers' Flyer, however. It was Langley's aerodrone. You have seen it in old films: it's the one that lost its wings instantaneously at the very same moment it was catapulted from a barge. But, both "Scientific American" and the Smithsonian were good friends of Samuel Langley and Glenn Curtiss. That aerodrone effectively did a short fly, after being extensively modified by Glenn Curtiss, quite a few years after Flyer I first flight, when Curtiss was desperately trying to steal Wrigth brothers' intellectual property. I call that "fraud" and even the Smithsonian accepted publicly it was so, when, at last, the Flyer I got into aerodrone's place.

So, be careful about what you take as "established facts". Excuse me if I don't take your word at face value. I could easily do, should we were speaking about electronics. But we aren't.

Of course environment agencies are against carbon. It has many harmful effects that become clear much faster than any radioactivity. We are happy here having that TPP dismantled. That doesn't mean we want any NPP at that place.

I find your affirmations about radon particularly laughable. We discussed that extensively on the speleos-fr mailing list, in the 1990s. Do you think a basement is a deep place that lacks ventilation?   

That link from EPA is also laughable. First, I never take anything coming from US government at face value. You know, for decades they said it was perfectly demonstrated we broke their battleship in 1898. Particularly about environment, US as a government is literally nuts. Think about fracking, etc. These are the guys saying climatic change is a scam. EPA is almost always politically motivated, so chrematistically managed. But the really laughable thing isn't what the link says, but the use you try to do from it:

CCRs can contain concentrations of TENORM that are 3-5 times higher than background levels in average soil in the United States.

Well, I'm pretty sure that background level is much higher than 3-5 times the US average background in, say, Niger, where the french got the uranium they needed.

We already had people speaking about uranium ore as something "natural" not to be afraid of. That uranium ore is instead many times more radioactive than "3-5 times average soil in the US". It's outright dangerous. Now you are trying to scare us into thinking that 3-5 times the background radiation is worse than Chernobyl. You should try to agree with each other before try and sell to us any old donkey.

Do you know how many times higher than average background is radioactivity in Chernobyl/Fukushima? You can bet it's more like 3000-5000 times. Even robots break under that radiation. So, your reasoning doesn't hold any water.

there you have your proof that particles with low radioactivity levels have no measurable negative effect on health

If you really think that, please feel free to drink half a liter of iodine-131. In about three months, it will be decayed and you won't need even a leaded coffin.

[Nominal Animal]

Ensuring the nuclear industry accounts for and takes responsibility for the full lifecycle is most important, no fair trying to compare a "light" scoped nuclear operation with a heavy scoped renewable (pushes to price wind/solar only with backing storage).

What?  What does 'a "light" scoped nuclear operation' and 'a heavy scoped renewable' mean?

In Finland, solar and wind power are heavily subsidized.  Nuclear power generation cost has included the cost of long term storage (designed to handle a new ice age with storage time of 100,000 years) for over three decades here.  So yeah, the nuclear industry here is forced to take responsibility for the full lifecycle.

If you want to complain about how somewhere else the industry doesn't have to pay all it's costs, that's wrong and I do agree with you there; but it does not mean all nuclear power everywhere is like that.

As an attempt at looking at the lifecycle you get things like this:

And my point is that the amount of radionuclides released by coal power is higher than that released by nuclear power, accidents, bombs, and tests combined.
The fact that nuclear fuel rods are in most places sitting in storage pools does not mean they're released.

This was also mentioned just below your screenshot, from page 132:

As for criteria air contaminants (CAC), 92 per cent of them came from coal-fired power generation and nuclear’s share was just
0.5 per cent. Nuclear’s share of radionuclide emissions, at 99.8 per cent, was much more than proportional to its generation share. Nevertheless, comparative information from the United States as summarized in Appendix F leads to the conclusion that on a per TWh basis the collective radiation dose from the nuclear life cycle is much lower than the collective radiation dose from the coal-fired life cycle.

Did you intentionally omit the part that repeated my point just so it would look like your reference disagreed with my post, or was it simple ineptitude and not understanding what you read?

[Nominal Animal]

Just rebuffing your assertion, which I very much doubt. You just gave a link to "Scientific American".

Just because I didn't bother to collate a list of sources does not mean I cannot.

Even the Appendix F of the PDF Someone linked to repeats what I claimed.

Here is a question posed in the European Parliament, repeating the "To generate the same amount of electricity, a coal power plant gives off at least ten times more radiation than a nuclear power plant." statement.

Here is a short Science magazine article repeating the same.

The Wikipedia article on radioactive waste puts the exposure to radiation due to coal power plants at 100 times that from nuclear power (but note that this does not include weapons tests, accidents, nor the two nuclear bombs) based on Oak Ridge National Review vol. 26, Nos. 3 & 4, 1993 article Coal combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger by Alex Gabbard.

Feel free to do your own literature search, though.  Just don't do what Someone did, and cut off the paragraph just before the sentence that repeats my own point.

So, be careful about what you take as "established facts". Excuse me if I don't take your word at face value. I could easily do, should we were speaking about electronics. But we aren't.

I'm a physicist, actually, and only a hobbyist in electronics.  My specialization is computational materials physics, and development of (non-QM) molecular dynamic simulations; particularly parallel and distributed simulations.  I ran an IT company and provided custom full-stack solutions for a few years, too.

[Kleinstein]

Comparing the emissions of coal and nuclear power is tricky. Not all nuclear is equal (e.g. CANDU emits quite a lot of tritium, that is hard to compare to other sources). The mining of Uranium is also quite different between mines - some are OK or even good (removing the uranium from phosphate fertilizer), but other can be very dirty, spreading dust and unused low grade ore. Another variable is the waste from fuel reprocessing - this has be traditional rather dirty, e.g. releasing the technetium.

The coal is also quite different and in newer plants the filters catch much of the particles. With the emissions it is also questionalble which natural radioactivity from the dust should count. E.g. Potassium should not, as it is a natural part of soil and even a disired one.

[Someone]

Ensuring the nuclear industry accounts for and takes responsibility for the full lifecycle is most important, no fair trying to compare a "light" scoped nuclear operation with a heavy scoped renewable (pushes to price wind/solar only with backing storage).

What?  What does 'a "light" scoped nuclear operation' and 'a heavy scoped renewable' mean?

In Finland, solar and wind power are heavily subsidized.  Nuclear power generation cost has included the cost of long term storage (designed to handle a new ice age with storage time of 100,000 years) for over three decades here.  So yeah, the nuclear industry here is forced to take responsibility for the full lifecycle.

If you want to complain about how somewhere else the industry doesn't have to pay all it's costs, that's wrong and I do agree with you there; but it does not mean all nuclear power everywhere is like that.

Much of the nuclear debate is around hiding externalities/costs one way or another. I'm pointing to the ways in which the "costs" can be manipulated to suit politics. Like only looking at the effects of generation plant (light/superficial/inadequate), vs looking lifecycle including mining/refining. That extends to comparisons of renewables where people trying to make them look unattractive add external costs like battery storage to provide 7 days of holdover (heavy/excessive/onerous).

Nuclear power isn't economic, it requires market intervention such as government underwriting and financing, and even with all that help doesn't compare well on cost with renewables in most countries. CSIRO GenCost provides that analysis for Australia in an open and well thought out methodology.

As an attempt at looking at the lifecycle you get things like this:

And my point is that the amount of radionuclides released by coal power is higher than that released by nuclear power, accidents, bombs, and tests combined.
The fact that nuclear fuel rods are in most places sitting in storage pools does not mean they're released.

So now you're playing that game of putting some things "in scope" and others "out of scope" just to suit a narrative. Nuclear wastes (such as spent fuel) has to be accounted for in the lifecycle, just because it can be stockpiled on site in the short term doesn't mean its no longer a side effect/cost. It will be released at some point and has to be accounted for.

This was also mentioned just below your screenshot, from page 132:

As for criteria air contaminants (CAC), 92 per cent of them came from coal-fired power generation and nuclear’s share was just
0.5 per cent. Nuclear’s share of radionuclide emissions, at 99.8 per cent, was much more than proportional to its generation share. Nevertheless, comparative information from the United States as summarized in Appendix F leads to the conclusion that on a per TWh basis the collective radiation dose from the nuclear life cycle is much lower than the collective radiation dose from the coal-fired life cycle.

Did you intentionally omit the part that repeated my point just so it would look like your reference disagreed with my post, or was it simple ineptitude and not understanding what you read?

That refers out to a different analysis which used different population impact measures, and comes up with a radically different balance. There is very little available on such an important topic. If Nuclear was so clean and happy it would be in that industries interest to publish and promote that, yet there is a suspicious gap in the literature.

Interestingly that US example estimated the publics exposure from nuclear power mining:refining:generation to have a ratio of 11:21:4. 80-90% of the exposure (in that methodology) would have been missed if the generating plant was taken alone.

[Someone]

The Wikipedia article on radioactive waste puts the exposure to radiation due to coal power plants at 100 times that from nuclear power (but note that this does not include weapons tests, accidents, nor the two nuclear bombs) based on Oak Ridge National Review vol. 26, Nos. 3 & 4, 1993 article Coal combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger by Alex Gabbard.

Feel free to do your own literature search, though.  Just don't do what Someone did, and cut off the paragraph just before the sentence that repeats my own point.

That's all quoting back to the same (1980's) source, which on its mixture of exposure measures for that specific situation makes a number you like. Where as the much more recent Canadian report with their mix of exposure and different situation paints a different picture.

To be more accurate the 100x figure is the obnoxious "let's just exclude all that messy bit of the nuclear cycle and only count the generating plant" thing, lifecycle they came up with 4x which is less sensational.

They may well both be correct. The results can be very geography/technology specific.

[nctnico]

Comparing the emissions of coal and nuclear power is tricky. Not all nuclear is equal (e.g. CANDU emits quite a lot of tritium, that is hard to compare to other sources). The mining of Uranium is also quite different between mines - some are OK or even good (removing the uranium from phosphate fertilizer), but other can be very dirty, spreading dust and unused low grade ore. Another variable is the waste from fuel reprocessing - this has be traditional rather dirty, e.g. releasing the technetium.

Actually, the comparison by itself is not very interesting. The bottom line is that there are many sources of human induced radiation 'emissions' into the environment at harmless levels and nuclear power (including the associated mining + waste processing) is just one of those sources. And yet some people set different standards for reasons for which no supporting data exists. On top of that, there are many other (non radioactive) emissions which are much more harmfull. And no, I'm not saying to just open the floodgates with nuclear waste because the environment is already polluted. I'm only saying more common sense needs to be applied to look past the mis-information and prejudice in order to get a picture of the actual problems at hand and take an unbiased look at the solutions that are available.

[nctnico]

My option on this is that it would be good to add enough salt to the water to make it slightly heavier than the normal see water and than release it to the deep ocean (there is plenty of depth near Japan). Trtium has a relatively short half life (13 years from memory) and chances are most of the water would stay in the deep see for long enough to largely decay before coming up again. The deep see has relatively little life that would be harmed from the relatively small release.

I'd like to see some data on this claim  In the end all life in the sea forms a food chain. If dumping the waste water in a deep area results in the water not being dilluted down by currents, the sea life there can accumulate larger portions of radiation in a local area. Which can then accumulate further higher up the food chain. So to me it seems the best solution is to dump the contaminated water where its gets dilluted down the fastest so local accumulation in sea life is less likely to happen. Overall I'm not a fan of stuffing waste as far away as possible without a very good reason to do so.

[Nominal Animal]

I'm pointing to the ways in which the "costs" can be manipulated to suit politics.

And you do so by taking a screenshot that conveniently excludes the same statement I'm making.  Are you seriously trying to claim that was honest?  You are being obnoxious here, very much so.

How about you and tatel start putting some actual papers and articles behind your assertions, instead of just claiming stuff based on your personal beliefs and conveniently cut screenshots?

And I haven't said nuclear energy is safe.  It isn't.  I've only said it is safer and cleaner than the other fossil fuel alternatives.  While I prefer solar and wind energy, we need also base bulk energy production for industry and basic services when solar and wind is insufficient; and since we don't have fusion power yet, some form of fossil fuel it has to be.  Energy storage will lessen the amount of that base bulk production, but cannot eliminate it yet.

Comparing the emissions of coal and nuclear power is tricky. Not all nuclear is equal (e.g. CANDU emits quite a lot of tritium, that is hard to compare to other sources). The mining of Uranium is also quite different between mines - some are OK or even good (removing the uranium from phosphate fertilizer), but other can be very dirty, spreading dust and unused low grade ore. Another variable is the waste from fuel reprocessing - this has be traditional rather dirty, e.g. releasing the technetium.

True.  Another often overlooked emission is actually radon.  Uranium mines tend to release a lot of it, and it isn't captured.

The coal is also quite different and in newer plants the filters catch much of the particles.

I'm not so sure about that, as I haven't seen enough research on that to be convinced.  Yes, the filters are *better*, but their actual efficiency in catching particulates involved here, especially fine particulates (1-3µm and smaller), and how it is disposed of, is still somewhat debatable.  Definitely better than before, yes.

The difference between USA and Canada could be explained by Canadian coal plants having better filtration systems, for example.

With the emissions it is also questionalble which natural radioactivity from the dust should count. E.g. Potassium should not, as it is a natural part of soil and even a disired one.

Perhaps I should have stated instead that "the average radiation dose an average human receives from current coal plants is much higher than the radiation dose they receive from current nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons testing, the two nuclear bombs, and nuclear accidents combined", because that is specifically what the research indicates.  When put this way, everything released for the energy production has to be counted, for both coal and nuclear power.

A key factor to remember here is that only about half of coal ash is "stored away" or "recycled" in e.g. concrete.  The rest does not just "sit" there and pile up; it gets released.

[Someone]

I'm pointing to the ways in which the "costs" can be manipulated to suit politics

And you do so by taking a screenshot that conveniently excludes the same statement I'm making.  Are you seriously trying to claim that was honest?  You are being obnoxious here, very much so.

How about you and tatel start putting some actual papers and articles behind your assertions, instead of just claiming stuff based on your personal beliefs and conveniently cut screenshots?

I did provide the source/link ahead of the screenshots.

Cant take a fucking middle ground on this matter as both sides will jump on you and argue!-@%

It's not perfect, but it's not immediately deadly. There is some grey area on the environmental aspects which are not clearly siding one way or the other.

Economics however is an immediate fail for Nuclear power as the lifecycle costs are huge.

[tatel]

I'm only saying more common sense needs to be applied to look past the mis-information and prejudice in order to get a picture of the actual problems at hand and take an unbiased look at the solutions that are available.

I agree with that.

I'm going to be quite busy for some time, but I will try to follow this very interesting thread.

I myself am willing to change my position if real reasons make me think that way. I know, when I say I can't be bothered to read something, I sound like one of these green frikies. And I'm not. Nico makes a good point about substituting nuclear for carbon in places like India. But I can't see why we  couldn't substitute gas for that carbon.

I can see you can't be bothered to read what I linked, either. Otherwise I think you'd see where's the hype in that spanish achievement. I said the article wasn't very good. Header is "Spain makes history and this year for the first time will produce more than half of its electricity with renewables" Well, that's true. We are speaking about electric generation. That doesn't include transportation of any goods, except by railroad. A lot of diesel, guys. Half the electricity is quite different from half the energy.

I'm not going to change my very old but trusty Berlingo diesel for any modern vendor-software-locked car, electric or not. So, I'm not a green guy.

But, clearly I don't like nukes.

So far, there have been people here asserting nuclear waste now goes underground, right  when the japanese are dumping into the ocean.

That try to make us understand than nuclear is cleaner than carbon. Presumably because nuclear waste gets again underground, so does not reach anywhere near where we are. That's being said after Chernobyl and Fukushima, the dumpings in the ocean and so on. Come on, man. We heard that before, and we now know it wasn't true. By experience.

Moreover, I'm against carbon too, so I consider the whole point about TPPs being more radioactive than NPPs completely moot. Both have to go.

Still, these are the guys using words like "emotional", "irrational fear" and "idiotic". Do you realize, you sound like "nuke-frikies" even more than I could sound "green-frikie"? Irrational fear after Chernobyl and Fukushima? Sorry, I can't accept that.

If you want me to change my opinion, you have to give much better reasons than the ones given so far. That Science article is dated from Dec, 1978 after all. Before Chernobyl. When we were told any nuke couldn't go bonkers, never, ever. Not even the soviet ones. Thus at the end of the day, you are giving us, again, just the very same good old bullshit, I fear. Someone pointed out the defects in the documentation you linked. This Science article looks very much the same.

BTW, not so much to complain about how Finland is doing. At least they are building their underground storage and plan to keep their waste at their own country. Kudos. Others are much lower than that. But remember, we all had to pay for Chernobyl. That didn't affect the soviets only. Fukushima is affecting more countries than just Japan. So much for these radioactive elements remaining in a safe place, far from any people, forever.

OTOH I can say getting more than 50% renewable electric generation is quite something, but the better part is the amount written in our bills. To give some context, Portugal and Spain are now the Iberian Energy Island and we legally got electric market rules, different from the rest of the EU... and different electricity prices. Experience is: when there is sun and wind, our bills are quite cheaper. When there aren't, combined cycle gas power stations get most of the mix, and we see how our electricity bill goes through the roof, up to German levels.

But there's sun and wind most of the time.

Don't ask me how it does work internally. I don't know. But I mostly care for my wallet, to say the truth.

Now, if you insist in going nuclear, feel free to do so. I still think you'd be better, and cheaper, getting gas, wind and sun instead.

[coppercone2]

I think I support it if they fucking spend money on transmission line infrastructure (nice fat copper and transformers) to put it in a remote place.


Half the problem with nuclear is that the power grid is a piece of shit and they have to put it local. Employees are part of the problem too so you need IMO high speed transport. Not more computers or automation. More like a dedicated bullet train from a good area. I mean like a japanese bullet train that is JUST for the plant.

This might actually make a good power plant that is safe. But it would up the cost. If they try excessive automation to get rid of employees its probobly going to fail. That is the cheapskate solution. The good solution is good transport.


And another problem is that you need better heat exchangers so you can isolate it from water source. Its ridiculous to put these things near rivers IMO. Maybe it means the technology is not there yet to have a isolated nuke plant away from being able to pollute stuff. To date every nuke plant has been done on the real cheap,

I feel like the umbrella corporation could do this.


You get insane stuff like modular reactors because no one considers to upgrade the power system. Yeah put it behind the K-mart and get 18.50 $ / hour 6month trade school grads to run the thing because its 'intrinsically safe by design I swear for real this time'. I think its time to remind people what nuclear (power) proliferation will end up looking like when the MBA get their way because a manufacturer assured them. I am just waiting for Americas first truly radioactive hood after a ice cream truck jacking goes wrong and it crashes into the 'secure' shipping container behind the bon chance bodega. I swear those concepts of shipping containers being loaded as 'for the block' nuclear mini reactors is just 



And the first instance of EMT conduit being used to replace a zircon fuel rod housing because they happened to make it the same dimensions and the handyman from Angie's list heard from a plumber that its a conspiracy by big zircona to sell you zirconium tubes (confirmed by Tiktok 3d and Beta (aka Meta 2)). Seal it with some JB weld (as suggested by the British navy). https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/10qnges/royal_navy_workers_used_super_glue_to_repair/


*engineering analysis can't predict everything unless its extremely dangerous then they know everything AND ITS FAIL SAFE I SWEAR. WE HAVE BETTER MODELS. BETTER MODELS I TELL YOU. PERFECT MODELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE DON'T EVEN TEST OUR SIMULATIONS BECAUSE THEIR SO GOOD!!!! THE COST SAVINGS GO TO THE INVESTORS!!! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW HOW GOOD THE NEW MODELS ARE !!! AI VERIFIED ALL POSSIBILITIES!!! THE LAST ONE MELTED DOWN BECAUSE WE DID NOT USE THE HYPER OPTIMIZED DATA ACCESS NETWORK AI !!!

[f4eru]

Nuclear power is economically obsolete, and also more and more inadapted to todays higher variability of grids.
CO2 reduction by building new nuclear is just B.S., because any investment in renewables displaces _at least_ 4x more CO2 pro $ that the same investment in nuclear electricity...
The global share of nuclear power is slowly falling as a result, and will fall more over time, ultimately trending to zero in long term.

The only valid reason to build nuclear power in 2024 is to build up nuclear bombs -> what happens now in China, where the buildup of nuclear electricity matches exactly the buildup of new nuclear bombs.

https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/China-ICBMs2000-2020_ed.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSTrjwSIiZDTKRlh4CYexHBAf3atxugxXa1ZCsg9ePSRu47mBfs1_Bx6J2tglT0rcHQYho&usqp=CAU
Ahh, the sweet civilian reactors producing absolutely no military weapon plutonium, I swear.....

The reasons that France is unsuccessfully attempting it is to build new nuclear is to maintain jobs, but it does not work, because each kWh produced cost 4-6x more as a result. Expensive wasteful job securing.

[Kleinstein]

For most parts nuclear power turned out quite expensive, but the costs can really vary and are not very predictable. If all would run to plan, with no delays and mishaps in construction the pricing may not be that bad. A problem is that the best plant's got some 95% availablity and worked OK, but quite some also failed, down to the worst case of shut down after a few days of operation because flaws turned up. Nuclear power comes with quite some economic risc, that one may have to give up on a plant because of a flaw / defect that is not repairable.

Overall nuclear was an expensive gamble, with lots of investments in the developement that did not pay out. Especially the fast breeder part did failed on the promisses and without this nuclear power is limited  by the uranium supply.

The new reactors in China are likely not related to nuclear weapons. It is not impossible to use them also for this purpose, but the light water reactors are not well suited for this as it would requite relative frequent shut down / fuel changes. So I don't think that the reactors are motivated by nuclear weapons. The reactor will produce plutonium, but normally low grade material that is not really suited for a bomb. To get better grade plutonium that is suitable for weapons they would need to remove fuel with low burn-up and the tricky part is anyway the reprocessing and not the reactor part.
The possibilty to generate plutonium as a side product is however a good reason to not spread nuclear power to more countries. The troublesome reactors in this respect are more those in Iran.

[nctnico]

For most parts nuclear power turned out quite expensive, but the costs can really vary and are not very predictable. If all would run to plan, with no delays and mishaps in construction the pricing may not be that bad.

Part of the high costs is also setting unrealistic demands for the construction and clever businesspeople creating profits. The Hinkley NPP in the UK is an example of both. Government basically sets the project up for failure, EDF extracts as much money from it as possible. I've read somewhere that 50% of the build costs so far are interest / projected revenue payments. The government officials who made the deal with EDF should be held personally responsible for the financial losses they caused to society; it is criminal negligence.

[PlainName]

In the comparative 'bad for you' and  'how to dispose of it' tables, are they not perhaps missing a quite important point about nuclear: when the shit hits the fan the potential for Bad Stuff far outweighs renewables. What's the worst that can happen for a solar or wind farm? But for a nuke... I appreciate that the risk is small (and should get smaller), but it's not zero.

[pcprogrammer]

What's the worst that can happen for a solar or wind farm?

[nctnico]

In the comparative 'bad for you' and  'how to dispose of it' tables, are they not perhaps missing a quite important point about nuclear: when the shit hits the fan the potential for Bad Stuff far outweighs renewables. What's the worst that can happen for a solar or wind farm? But for a nuke... I appreciate that the risk is small (and should get smaller), but it's not zero.

Wind farms make people sick due to the constant noise and flickering light. In the NL there is quite a bit of uproar from medical doctors who have lots of patients with mental and physical problems which are directly related to having wind turbines built too close to their homes.

The perceived problem with a nuclear accident is that a lot of people get affected at once. But in reality it is like comparing deaths by airplane accidents and car accidents. The fact airplane accidents make the news says a lot about how super safe airplanes are. The same goes for nuclear accidents. The only two ones we know are Chernobyl (40 years ago) and Fukishima (over a decade ago) and only the first one resulted in fatalities.

[woody]

Wind farms make people sick due to the constant noise and flickering light. In the NL there is quite a bit of uproar from medical doctors who have lots of patients with mental and physical problems which are directly related to having wind turbines built too close to their homes.

AFAICS the jury is still out on this one. The medical doctors you mentioned disagree with the outcome of research by Nivel (https://eenvandaag.assets.avrotros.nl/user_upload/PDF/1004508.pdf, excuses for it being in Dutch) that found more or less the opposite.

I always find it remarkable that in my country scores of people complain about the not easily quantifiable nuisance of windfarms (how do you measure fear and stress) which, if a problem only affects a small part of the population, while perfectly quantifiable nuisances of things that affect the lives of millions of people like noise pollution (planes, cars, trains), CO2 (planes, factories, farms, cars), exposure to carcinogens (factories, farms, cars) et cetera is seen as unavoidable. Because hey, we need the work, the profit, the beef, the mobility and the holidays. But hey, we also need the electricity.
 
This is not to say we shouldn't research the health effects of wind turbines. These things are kinda new so there is still a lot to know.

For my country the best way to mitigate these mental and physical problems? Give people who live close to a wind turbine a certain amount of electricity for free. The closer you live, the more free electricity you get. Somehow I think that the price of houses near that turbine will go up 

[nctnico]

Wind farms make people sick due to the constant noise and flickering light. In the NL there is quite a bit of uproar from medical doctors who have lots of patients with mental and physical problems which are directly related to having wind turbines built too close to their homes.

AFAICS the jury is still out on this one. The medical doctors you mentioned disagree with the outcome of research by Nivel (https://eenvandaag.assets.avrotros.nl/user_upload/PDF/1004508.pdf, excuses for it being in Dutch) that found more or less the opposite.

The problem is that for noise level limits they use is dbA and thus don't include low frequency noise. And the study done by Nivel isn't fine grained enough to select people living closest to the wind turbines. IOW: the test methodology used by Nivel is completely unsuitable for the purpose and thus their conclusion is invalid. This is a known problem to many but the law makers are lagging behind.

[pcprogrammer]

The problem is that for noise level limits they use is dbA and thus don't include low frequency noise. And the study done by Nivel isn't fine grained enough to select people living closest to the wind turbines. IOW: the test methodology used by Nivel is completely unsuitable for the purpose and thus their conclusion is invalid. This is a known problem to many but the law makers are lagging behind.

As someone who is very sensitive to noise and particularly low frequency hum, like stationary diesel engines or even lower frequencies, I can say that this can drive you mental when you are susceptible for it and it manifests itself constantly. So yes I can see people suffer from this.

On a site note I read on nu.nl an article about fibromyalgia and that it needs to be taken more serious by the government because a lot of people suffer from the misunderstanding they get from the employees from the social security agencies when they feel to ill to work. Just because of the fact that you can't see it with the available medical tests does not mean it does not exist. As a patient myself I can certainly state it to be real.

I think the same applies for people suffering from subtle noise pollution.

For my country the best way to mitigate these mental and physical problems? Give people who live close to a wind turbine a certain amount of electricity for free. The closer you live, the more free electricity you get. Somehow I think that the price of houses near that turbine will go up 

Financial benefits don't solve these kind of problems. If you, for instance hate your job and suffer under it every day, no amount of money will be enough to keep you in the job. And when you keep on doing it a break down is on your path for sure. Stress is a very powerful enemy.

Some people are more susceptible for it than others of course.

[tatel]

Wind turbines here are placed on ridges, where there is good wind most of the time, and far from any houses. AFAIK, placing them on low terrain with things like houses near, makes the performance quite lower since that affects the wind. In that case one should go to the sea, I'm told. But hey, there are as many scammers  in renewables as in nuclear.

I still don't buy the reasons about Chernobyl/Fukushima being not so bad. If the place can't be populated, etc, for more than, say, a couple years, that can't be accepted. If the costs for lost profit near the place of accident are incredibly huge, that can't be accepted. If the costs to fix environment are incredibly huge, that can't be accepted. Even if there aren't any deaths.

How much, all of us, had to pay for the new cover in Chernobyl? IIRC, even that new cover can't hold in place more than 100 years. How many covers will have to be put in place,  before reaching safety?

IMO all of this makes nuclear not only dangerous but also uneconomical.

Documentation from the 1970s isn't going to cut even butter in 2024. Most of the pro-nuke statement sound simply crazy reckless, so can't be accepted, sorry.

But the main point is, I like mi electricity bills being... well, I'm not going to say cheap, but most of the time, not crazy expensive. While phasing out nuclear and carbon.

With any luck, hydro could again be about 15-20% and that would make things even better. But, being serious, I can't see hydro being again a reliable main source year after year. Right now is the first time in years I see some reservoirs at max level out of the Cantabric (Bay of Biscay) basin. The more you go South and East, the worse it gets. Most of reservoirs in the Atlantic and Mediterranean basins are low and quite a few almost empty. These basins make about 80-90% of the country. Perspective for the future is quite sad.

Last point: subsidies. Nuclear was heavily subsidized here. AFAIK, NPPs got real state for free and public money was a big part of the investment. Now we have to pay an extra fee in our bill for the nuclear moratorium. That has been going on for decades now. It seems we must compensate nuke operators for the money not earned after they didn't build even more NPPs. About the waste, I think it going to France is government business so probably the money paid to France is also taxpayer's money. I could be wrong, but I think it should be easy to make the numbers available in that case. However, just the electricity bill is almost impossible to understand, to the point it's a common joke.

Renewables, instead, while being at first moment heavily subsidized, were left hanging dry I think about 2012. Quite a lot of people got the grass cut right under their feet. Not only subsidies vanished, but the rules did make very difficult to put in place any PV even for auto-production. It was called "sun tax". It has been now abolished and there are some subsidies, but the main part is to make possible/legal to put new installations at work.

[nctnico]

Wind turbines here are placed on ridges, where there is good wind most of the time, and far from any houses. AFAIK, placing them on low terrain with things like houses near, makes the performance quite lower since that affects the wind. In that case one should go to the sea, I'm told. But hey, there are as many scammers  in renewables as in nuclear.

If you visit the Netherlands you'll notice the country is as flat as a pancake. You can basically put wind turbines anywhere and they will produce. In the NL those wind turbines are heavily subsidised as well; the NL government guarantees a minimum price per kWh. In the end any form of energy production (and later on storage), will receive subsidies from the government in order to guarantee ROI to the companies making the investments. In return a certain level of reliability is demanded. In the past governments where solely responsible for energy generation and distribution. But this got handed over to private companies (which remain state owned in some cases) nowadays. But it doesn't mean energy generation and distribution can result in a reliable energy supply without subsidies.

About areas becoming inhabitable; that is not unique to nuclear accidents. Underground coal fires are a serious problem and make large areas of land uninhabitable or at least dangerous to live on due to toxic emissions (CO for example). And think about chemical spills like what happened in Bhopal (India). With large scale energy storage we will also have big accidents affecting the lifes of many. Again, there is a price to be paid for having a highly developed society.

[PlainName]

No idea how bad noise is from windfarms, but I note that Reading UK has a BFO turbine in the middle of a densely populated office area. Been there a long time and AFAIA no-one's demanding it be taken down. Of course, one turbine doesn't make a farm...

But across the road there is an actual solar farm. Worst case with that is they all get blown over or broken up in a hail storm.

Chernobyl is a useful example, I think. Apart from the people dying on the day and they seemingly forever thinking up better containment to put over the old ones, there are a lot of areas where no-one lives and won't do so for a long time. ISTR a bunch of Russians suffering radiation deaths when they chose to use the unpopulated forest around there to dig in (literally). I think that kind of potential is a fair bit worse than solar farms not working, wind turbines toppling over in flames, and even persistent noise from a farm. None of the latter are going to kill you.

The point about aircraft disasters being newsworthy because there are so few is, I think, misleading. There are thousands upon thousands of aircraft, millions if not billions of air miles travelled, so catastrophe per aircraft is stunningly low. In contrast there are very few nuclear power stations, so disasters per installation are correspondingly very high. And the disasters tend to be much more catastrophic.

[tatel]

If you visit the Netherlands you'll notice the country is as flat as a pancake. You can basically put wind turbines anywhere and they will produce.

Yeah, I know. I know also wind has been used to pump water out the polders for centuries.  However it surprised me hear about the noise being annoying. In my experience you need to be quite close to a wind mill to be able to hear the noise. Less than 200 meters I would say. Then having a house(s) so near would probably affect the wind, thus the performance.

About areas becoming inhabitable; that is not unique to nuclear accidents. Underground coal fires are a serious problem and make large areas of land uninhabitable or at least dangerous to live on due to toxic emissions (CO for example). And think about chemical spills like what happened in Bhopal (India). With large scale energy storage we will also have big accidents affecting the lifes of many. Again, there is a price to be paid for having a highly developed society.

You see to imply I'm against affections caused by nuclear energy only. If so you are wrong. BTW, any comparisons with carbon continue to be moot.

Main point is I can't see how capitalism achieved making the common environment they don't own, a place to dump for free the crap resulting from making a money that only they own. Any industries able to create a disaster should a) be strictly controlled and b) either able to pay up until the last penny of compensation, or banned. Call me a commie if you want. I'm just caring for my wallet/health/life.

The point about large storage energy is also debatable, I think. Here we are not using candles at night, you know, and this is a 50-million people country that makes about the fourth economy in the EU.

[PlainName]

Any industries able to create a disaster should a) be strictly controlled and b) either able to pay up until the last penny of compensation, or banned.

How about the operator of a hydro dam? Plenty of scope for financial ruin with that one.

[nctnico]

If you visit the Netherlands you'll notice the country is as flat as a pancake. You can basically put wind turbines anywhere and they will produce.

Yeah, I know. I know also wind has been used to pump water out the polders for centuries.  However it surprised me hear about the noise being annoying. In my experience you need to be quite close to a wind mill to be able to hear the noise. Less than 200 meters I would say. Then having a house(s) so near would probably affect the wind, thus the performance.

No, much further. At least 1 kilometer for a 50m to 100m -ish wind turbine. Even further for the larger ones. I can hear a wind turbine from a kilometer away. Keep in mind that there is a lot of noise during the day but during night, the noise will be much easier to hear. Indoors the noise can even be worse (=amplified) due to resonances.

About areas becoming inhabitable; that is not unique to nuclear accidents. Underground coal fires are a serious problem and make large areas of land uninhabitable or at least dangerous to live on due to toxic emissions (CO for example). And think about chemical spills like what happened in Bhopal (India). With large scale energy storage we will also have big accidents affecting the lifes of many. Again, there is a price to be paid for having a highly developed society.

You see to imply I'm against affections caused by nuclear energy only. If so you are wrong. BTW, any comparisons with carbon continue to be moot.

Main point is I can't see how capitalism achieved making the common environment they don't own, a place to dump for free the crap resulting from making a money that only they own. Any industries able to create a disaster should a) be strictly controlled and b) either able to pay up until the last penny of compensation, or banned. Call me a commie if you want. I'm just caring for my wallet/health/life.

Unfortunately that is not going to happen. Companies get penalised for doing the right thing. When 'the yes men' pranked Dow Chemical (formerly Union Carbide) to release a statement they where going to clean up the Bhopal spill, the stock plummeted https://theyesmen.org/project/dowbbc/behindthecurtain . The Yes Men made a very interesting film called 'The Yes Men Fix the World ' which shows how big companies have the moral compass of a 4 year old. Worth watching! It is both funny and yaw dropping. The film can be watched for free from several places (including Youtube IIRC).

The point about large storage energy is also debatable, I think. Here we are not using candles at night, you know, and this is a 50-million people country that makes about the fourth economy in the EU.

It is not debatable. Large amounts of stored energy in a small space is an accident waiting to happen.

[tatel]

How about the operator of a hydro dam? Plenty of scope for financial ruin with that one.

Of course Actually one of these reservoirs I just mentioned is planned to be increased. But the rock where the dam is anchored is the shittiest thing I have seen in my life. So friable. Should I anchor my rope on that rock, the head wouldn't be just a couple spit but a double triangulation. I would probably need clean underwear after that. Still they are thinking about increasing dam about 20 meter more. There's already documented landslides on the left bank. Those guys are crazy reckless.

There is opposition, so we will see. People here is usually organized. Another dam not so far away was paralyzed for some years. You can see how it's done on the video linked below. Sorry no english subtitles, but you dont't need that to understand what you'll see

Those guys naively surrendered to the police. They should have flee instead, they had more than enough time for that. But they didn't want the Guardia Civil harassing inhabitants. It never occurred to them they would be charged with... kidnapping Fernando the segurata, the one that falls face against concrete in the video. They had to pay full 8 4 years in prison.

As you can see, no jokes here.

[tatel]

It is not debatable. Large amounts of stored energy in a small space is an accident waiting to happen.

Unless it's nuclear energy, of course. Then there wouldn't be the slightest possibility, it isn't?

[pcprogrammer]

... even persistent noise from a (wind) farm. None of the latter are going to kill you.

Don't forget about suicide. Stressed out people can become suicidal.

[nctnico]

It is not debatable. Large amounts of stored energy in a small space is an accident waiting to happen.

Unless it's nuclear energy, of course. Then there wouldn't be the slightest possibility, it isn't?

You didn't get the message. And the message is: whatever energy source or storage system you put in place, there will be accidents and / or emissions causing lots of damage. You are the one dismissing everything but nuclear.

[pcprogrammer]

It is not debatable. Large amounts of stored energy in a small space is an accident waiting to happen.

Unless it's nuclear energy, of course. Then there wouldn't be the slightest possibility, it isn't?

You didn't get the message. And the message is: whatever energy source or storage system you put in place, there will be accidents and / or emissions causing lots of damage. You are the one dismissing everything but nuclear.

I wonder if with the rise of home batteries we will see more house fires?

And how will the fire brigade deal with them. For BEV they have to take other measures then for ICE.

[tatel]

You didn't get the message. And the message is: whatever energy source or storage system you put in place, there will be accidents and / or emissions causing lots of damage. You are the one dismissing everything but nuclear.

Please note we don't have any energy mega-storage here and we don't need it. PV doesn't work at night, but wind, hydro and gas do. You can attribute any fictional needs you want to no-nuclear, that isn't going to change the outcome.

Yeah, nuclear is the only thing that will cause damage for thousands of years. You just said there will be accidents, whatever energy source. So you expect to have nuclear accidents. And, it seems, you think that's acceptable. Crazy reckless, I would say.

At this point, this debate doesn't look serious to me anymore.  I don't know why you posted an apology of nukes on a section that has the word "renewable" on it. Unless, of course, you wanted to troll us a little bit.

[pcprogrammer]

Please note we don't have any energy mega-storage here and we don't need it. PV doesn't work at night, but wind, hydro and gas do. You can attribute any fictional needs you want to no-nuclear, that isn't going to change the outcome.

You seem to overlook that both hydro and gas use mega energy storage too.

One of your own posts is about the risk of a hydro power dam in your country. The amount of water behind the dam has a shitload of energy stored in it. If the dam breaks the havoc the water can wreak is enormous. Sure the aftermath is not as lasting as from nuclear, but still.

Gas needs to be stored in tanks and is transported through pipes. Both are potential hazards. Again, no long lasting effects after an event, but it can still kill many people.

And what about Groningen in the Netherlands, where they have earthquakes caused by the extraction of gas.

Everything humankind does in the race to improve our way of living brings risks with it, only to be seen in a later stage and then new actions are taking to counter the original risks, bringing new risks, and so on.

Take food and (medical) drugs safety. Oh sugar is bad, lets replace it with something synthetic, oh no, the synthetic stuff causes other illnesses, lets find something else to replace it with.

What about the thalidomide scandal (Softenon) or any of those other medical failures. 

[tatel]

You seem to overlook that both hydro and gas use mega energy storage too.

One of your own posts is about the risk of a hydro power dam in your country. The amount of water behind the dam has a shitload of energy stored in it. If the dam breaks the havoc the water can wreak is enormous. Sure the aftermath is not as lasting as from nuclear, but still.

Gas needs to be stored in tanks and is transported through pipes. Both are potential hazards. Again, no long lasting effects after an event, but it can still kill many people.

Yeah, I agree with that. Many things can break havoc. However, only nuclear can last hundreds/thousands of years, hand have effects over a so huge range. Remember, when Chernobyl exploded, just the Iberian Peninsula, of all Europe, escaped by a whisker from getting that radiation. Compared with that, if that dam fails, well, that will be a huge disaster -it goes to the Ebro valley- , but anyway that's much, much less than all of Europe, and rebuilding could begin next day. No need to decontamination, no need to wait some hundred years until radiation decays.

Not that I'm not opposing to make that dam higher, but compared to a big level nuclear accident, those dangers look to me like getting a tooth extracted, against brain surgery.

[schmitt trigger]

Let my add my two cents to the doom and gloom........
The modern World's high standard of living rests solely on the availability of inexpensive, abundant energy. As others have already mentioned, this situation is rapidly reaching an inflection point.

IMHO, the key will be that energy consumption in all its forms, will have to be significantly reduced in the future. For this to happen, energy has to become extremely expensive for humanity to take decisive action.

This is easier said than done. Whole industries will be decimated. Take for instance, tourism. Tens of millions of people worldwide depend on tourism for their main income. Heck, whole countries depend on it. Air travel will plummet, and with it many airlines and the Western World's aerospace industries.
A small sampling was glimpsed during the Covid pandemic.

[nctnico]

You didn't get the message. And the message is: whatever energy source or storage system you put in place, there will be accidents and / or emissions causing lots of damage. You are the one dismissing everything but nuclear.

Please note we don't have any energy mega-storage here and we don't need it. PV doesn't work at night, but wind, hydro and gas do. You can attribute any fictional needs you want to no-nuclear, that isn't going to change the outcome.

Yeah, nuclear is the only thing that will cause damage for thousands of years. You just said there will be accidents, whatever energy source. So you expect to have nuclear accidents. And, it seems, you think that's acceptable. Crazy reckless, I would say.

I never said accidents are acceptable. I'm saying accidents are an inherent cost of a high-tech society as accidents and/or unforeseen effects can never be prevented. I didn't verify Kleinstein's number for the global warming effect to remain for about the next 28000 years, but in what way does that not count for causing damage lasting thousands of years? And not to a small area, but to the entire planet!

And it is also a mistake to think only nuclear accidents are expensive to clean up afterwards. The costs for Fukushima and the Deep water horizon oil spill are in the same order of magnitude (US$ 50 billion to US$ 200 billion).

[nctnico]

It is not debatable. Large amounts of stored energy in a small space is an accident waiting to happen.

Unless it's nuclear energy, of course. Then there wouldn't be the slightest possibility, it isn't?

You didn't get the message. And the message is: whatever energy source or storage system you put in place, there will be accidents and / or emissions causing lots of damage. You are the one dismissing everything but nuclear.

I wonder if with the rise of home batteries we will see more house fires?

Likely that will happen. Or toxic spills in case some chemical is used (like amonia to bind hydrogen). I'm not planning on installing storage any time soon, but as I need a new power cable to the shed I choose a much thicker one which can carry 7kW. I'm also going to put extra piping in the ground to add signalling wiring so I can put the storage system in the shed far from my home.