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Deaths due to automobile use are not the metric you want to use. By one report, there were 124 deaths and 275 injuries due to the GM ignition switch problem alone. So far, there are credible reports that no deaths are attributed to the Fukushima accidents. though that is a tough example given the Japanese government and Tepco's previous failure to be entirely forthcoming. Chernobyl is an entirely different matter, But still pales compared to GM ignition switch deaths.

It's not a fair comparison, of course, since automobiles are prolific. Even lesser known issues, like GM airbags, cause unnecessary deaths. And there are other automobile design defects that have claimed lives.

Airliner safety is probably similarly not a favorable comparison to nuclear safety. And of course military submarine reactor accidents aren't unknown.

The market for nuclear in China dried up years ago with Fukushima. It's not the tech, it's the cost and risk.

This seems to disagree but it may be baised:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
They just don't seem to be buying much stuff from Westinghouse that may as well be second hand from Fukushima (the AP1000 may as well be a 1970s design).
The energy policy of China at the moment appears to be to get a few of everything including nukes. Both cost and risk have lower priorities than in the west.

If you're just going to fiatly assert unintuitive bullshit like that

If you understand the problem properly, it would be quite obvious. The problem is that you have particles which aren't peacefully lying in their atoms, but freely moving and destroying everything around. You have to put a hard enough coating to stop them. The problem is that they will continue going against whatever material over and over and over, until finally passing through it. You have to increase the chances of the coating to last for as long as possible (+ being able to replace it when required). To not mention a plan B in case that your estimates fail and the particle go throw before expected (e.g., being in a remote place surrounded by hard rock). I see water as pretty much the opposite of a hard wall able to contain a so dangerous reality. Also I know what is the usual proceeding for these cases (as said, isolated rocky places, usually created after having done some digging), what kind of corroborates my assumption. In any case, I can confirm that I haven't done any detailed analysis about the best conditions for a nuclear waste storage.

with no citation or back of the napkin estimates to back it up, I think we're done here.

Up to you. In any case, you might be right and perhaps I should have answered that part differently. Additionally, I found this page which mentions oceans (actually, ocean floors) as a possibility.

Probably. I didn't click it, but if it's some grand and expensive nuclear materials repository then yes, that's moronic.

And the best part is that it cannot even deal with the most dangerous products (the long-lived ones, virtually all what comes from a fission reactor)! Regarding being moronic, I don't know what to say, other than: according to the link above, Spain, together with France, UK, Japan and Sweden, is being moronic just once, Finland twice and the USA 5 times moronic. Lots of morons, hopefully they will learn from you and your comments.

Lock 3 MIT grad students in a room

Pfff...

pharaohs built the pyramids; doesn't mean it helped them out in the afterlife

Pfff, pfff, pfff...

Yes, I think that we should better stop it here.

Let's do a cost comparison as you suggest. Here's a graph of nuclear power generation over the last 45 years. Generation has been about 2300 TWh per year for the last 20 years. The 25 years before that ramped up roughly as a triangle, so call it 2200/2 = 1100 TWh per year average.

This gives us a total of 73,500 TWh generated by nuclear power over the last 45 years. 20*2300 + 25*(2200/2) = 73500.

Using a global average electricity price of $0.20 per kWh, this is $14.7 trillion dollars worth of electricity generated by nuclear over the last 45 years.

Chernoby cleanup costs (current and future) are estimated to total $235 billion, Fukushima is estimated to be around $200 billion. Three Mile Island was about $1 billion. These are the only major commercial nuclear accidents in history, and their total cost is estimated to be $436 billion.

$436 billion / $14.7 trillion = 0.02966. Or about 3%.

So the cleanup costs for nuclear accidents is about 3% of the price of the electricity nuclear generates. Or 0.6 cents per kWh. This is so "excessively more expensive" that it would cost the average American home less than $8/year. (Average American home uses 10,812 kWh/yr * $0.12/kWh average electricity price * 20% of electricity produced by nuclear * 3% cleanup cost = $7.78/yr.)

Insurers refuse to cover nuclear because of how statistics work. The more incidents there are, the narrower the bell curve and the more confident you can be about predicting how many accidents will happen. A 10d50 will be much more likely to yield a result near 55 than a 2d50 is to yield a result near 51. Consequently, even though their long-term mean is almost the same, a bookie will give you better odds on the 10d50 because it's more predictable and thus harder for them to lose money on it.

Nuclear plants generate massive amounts of power. You need about 10 coal plants to equal a single nuclear plant. Several thousand wind turbines. Consequently you need much fewer nuclear plants to meet your energy needs compared to these other power sources. So even though statistically nuclear plants are safer than other power sources (mean accident rate is lower), their small number means there's larger uncertainty about how many accidents will happen. Insurers compensate for this by erring on the safe side (for them) and charging much higher rates. e.g. If there are 100 nuclear plants and the mean says 1 will suffer an accident in 30 years, the insurer may err on the safe side and charge a premium based on, say, 2 or 3 accidents, just in case they get a bad die roll. Whereas if there are 1000 coal plants and the mean says 10 will suffer an accident in 30 years, the insurer can be much more confident that even if they get a bad die roll, they can charge a premium assuming only 15 accidents and still make money.

Start *

* Latest announced year of proposed commercial operation

It really does help to read the fiddly bits.

Matter of fact if you were clever enough to follow the links

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

You would see the number of "PLANNED OR ON ORDER" is actually 160 nuclear reactors

That's one hell of a lot for something no one is building, according to you.

Facepalm.

Nobody is putting money into coal because the risk of insane regulation is too high. You don't want to have a 40 year investment killed in year 10 because some fanatic at the EPA faked data.

As for nuclear try again one we just had one go live

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

There's 60 reactors under construction worldwide

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

The reason more nuclear isn't being built at a high rate are liability issues and nimby.

Iran continues to deny the IAEA access and continues its weapons plans, even after President Obama's "historic" agreement.

The cost of dismantling the nuclear-powerplants.... Please don't just spew out those things..
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

Cost of decommissioning is anywhere from a few hundred million USD up to a few billion... If you take the nuclear-specific tax we have on the plants it has more than fully covered the cost even if the government would do the full job.. Feel free to educate yourself with a bit more information from the following link.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

And you have many places in the world where 8 hours would be far too small..

Say if you go with just solar-cells... 6 hours of sun per day, and that's not too far north, you would need a minimum of 18 hours and enough solar-cells to charge those batteries during those 6 hours of sun...
This does not take days without any sunlight into account....

About a breeder-reactor... You would not get weapons-grade plutonium out of those.. A big, and expensive, refinement process is required to get that...

I do like solar / wind / hydro / geothermal but they all do have big issues in terms of scaling it out at the moment... Until they are a viable replacement spewing out crap about nuclear just makes all renewable-advocates look like crazy hippies...

Right now we have access to a few technologies... Lets use them in the best possible way.....

To start with... Lets replace coal, oil, gas with nuclear/solar/wind/hydro/geothermal to reduce the pollution..... where appropriate..

The cost of dismantling the nuclear-powerplants.... Please don't just spew out those things..
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

Cost of decommissioning is anywhere from a few hundred million USD up to a few billion... If you take the nuclear-specific tax we have on the plants it has more than fully covered the cost even if the government would do the full job.. Feel free to educate yourself with a bit more information from the following link.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

And you have many places in the world where 8 hours would be far too small..

Say if you go with just solar-cells... 6 hours of sun per day, and that's not too far north, you would need a minimum of 18 hours and enough solar-cells to charge those batteries during those 6 hours of sun...
This does not take days without any sunlight into account....

About a breeder-reactor... You would not get weapons-grade plutonium out of those.. A big, and expensive, refinement process is required to get that...

I do like solar / wind / hydro / geothermal but they all do have big issues in terms of scaling it out at the moment... Until they are a viable replacement spewing out crap about nuclear just makes all renewable-advocates look like crazy hippies...

Right now we have access to a few technologies... Lets use them in the best possible way.....

To start with... Lets replace coal, oil, gas with nuclear/solar/wind/hydro/geothermal to reduce the pollution..... where appropriate..

Wrong again. China has big plans for nuclear, including development of full-burnup technology in parallel with building current-generation plants. The primary impetus is their massive air pollution problem.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
The only effect that Fukushima had on the Chinese reactor program was a round of system-wide special safety checks.

China's adding a lot of nuclear capacity instead. Good for China to lead in a reasonable replacement for coal. Not PV or wind, buy nuclear.

• Geothermal's subsidy costs about twice as much (1.25 cents/kWh).
• Wind's subsidy is nearly 9x more expensive (5.25 cents/kWh).
• Solar's subsidy is 161x more expensive than nuclear's cleanup costs (96.8 cents/kWh).

Yes the cost is big. But everything about nuclear is big, including the amount of power generated. Fukushima Daiichi consisted of 6 reactors:

#1 generated 460 MWe from March 1971 to April 2012, or 41.1 years
#2 generated 784 MWe from July 1974 to April 2012, or 37.7 years
#3 generated 784 MWe from March 1976 to April 2012, or 36.1 years
#4 generated 784 MWe from October 1978 to April 2012, or 33.6 years
#5 generated 784 MWe from April 1978 to Jan 2014, or 35.7 years
#6 generated 1100 MWe from October 1979 to Jan 2014, or 34.2 years

Multiply the generating capacity by the time in service and you get 165.7 TWh for reactor #1, 259.1 TWh for #2, 248.1 TWh for #3, 230.9 TWh for #4, 245.3 TWh for #5, and 329.8 TWh for #6. For a total of 1478.9 TWh.

Nuclear's capacity factor in Japan (ratio of actual electricity generated vs peak capacity) started around 46% in the mid-1970s, and had reached 79% by 2001. Assume a linear increase followed by it remaining stable from 2001-2014, and overall capacity factor over this timeframe (which conveniently breaks down into 26 and 13 years) is (26*(.46+.79)/2 + 13*.79) / 39 = 0.68.

So actual electricity generated by the plant would be about 1478.9 TWh * 0.68 = 1005.7 TWh. Round it down and call it an even 1000 TWh.

The average price of electricity in Japan is 26 cents/kWh. Yes the price was lower in the past, but we want the inflation-adjusted total value of electricity generated, so using today's price is valid.

1000 TWh * $0.26/kWh = $260 billion worth of electricity produced over the lifetime of the plant. Even with the second-worst and most expensive nuclear accident in history, the Fukushima Daiichi plant still produced more value in electricity than the cleanup cost.

Now consider that the world generated 2731 TWh with nuclear in 2008. If you go with 20 cents/kWh as a global average electricity price, that's $546 billion worth of electricity generated by nuclear power each year. Add up the cost to clean up Fukushima ($200 billion), Chernobyl ($200 billion), and Three Mile Island ($1 billion). Amortized over the 37 years since the first of those accidents, the cost of cleaning up these nuclear accidents only works out to ($401 billion / 37 years) / (546 billion / 1 year) = 1.98% of the cost of electricity produced.

Basically, the cost of cleaning up nuclear accidents is just 0.4 cents/kWh.

Read!

According to the comic I linked, the allowed dosis for radiation workers in 50 mSv, making the trip to Mars about 7 times it. But this dosis is set to a level that is certainly safe, it doesn't mean that higher than it is certainly unsafe, just that we go into a gray zone where we can't guarantee it's safe, but we do not know whether it is actually dangerous either.

According to this table you need to be subjected to 1000 mSv in a short burst to have a 5% chance of developing a fatal cancer, which would make the 330 mSv over six months seem rather safe. I would be happy, however, if you could find a better source with more detailed information.

Why the fuck would Russia be trying to get more Uranium for weapons? They already have shitloads of already-enriched Uranium, to the point where they've been SELLING IT TO THE UNITED STATES since 1994 after de-enriching it from weapons grade into reactor grade.

Stop talking about things you have no idea about.

I'm not automatically discounting what you say, but do you have a citation? I went looking (for a while, at that) for weights on a likely RTG vs. batteries and solar panels. The best I came up with was fuel mass for the Cassini mission - 4.8 kg producing 110 watts. http://www.world-nuclear.org/i... - (and Plutonium 238 needs the least amount of shielding for any RTG fuel). Can you provide information on the weight of the solar and battery components?

Seriously guys - it's people living in a fantasy world like the above poster that cause things like the waste being left in ponds instead of reprocessed and the remainder stored safely.

No, you learn some science.

I was speaking specifically of fast burner, or fast neutron reactors which are fuel reprocessing. The result of this reprocessing is short half-life isotopes that are far less of a long-term problem than existing waste.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

And what's wrong with you....... Uranium is still a big part of what's left....

http://world-nuclear.org/infor...

The nuclear fuel recycling process is straightforward. It involves converting spent plutonium and uranium into a “mixed oxide” that can be reused in nuclear power plants to produce more electricity.

Please read the table titled "Inventory of separated recyclable materials worldwide" and you can see the distribution after reprocessing.. (and it ofcourse depends on what was put into the reactor to start with)

Just because the new recycled fuel contains plutonium also does not magically remove the unused uranium.

And since you seem to go back to earlier posts to try to find the smallest misstake lets look at what you have written..
1. It's illegal. - No it's not..
2. We will run out of uranium. - No we will not within our lifetime. Current estimates is that we have enough uranium, in known deposits, to last around 90 years.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
Combine this with reprocessing, and more efficient reactors, and we can probably last for at least (speculation since we do not know how our energy-needs will go up) 3 times as long... This will be long enough for us to provide our current energy-need and time to refine alternatives.

If we widen our view to also include other possible fissionable material we can start talking thorium. Then U.S. have enough, stockpiled(!!!), to last the them for 500-1000(!!) years.. Reason why they have it stockpiled you say.. it was a byproduct that was not useful at the time.

Please go out and get a clue... Buy one if nobody wants to donate you one.

And what's wrong with you....... Uranium is still a big part of what's left....

http://world-nuclear.org/infor...

The nuclear fuel recycling process is straightforward. It involves converting spent plutonium and uranium into a “mixed oxide” that can be reused in nuclear power plants to produce more electricity.

Please read the table titled "Inventory of separated recyclable materials worldwide" and you can see the distribution after reprocessing.. (and it ofcourse depends on what was put into the reactor to start with)

Just because the new recycled fuel contains plutonium also does not magically remove the unused uranium.

And since you seem to go back to earlier posts to try to find the smallest misstake lets look at what you have written..
1. It's illegal. - No it's not..
2. We will run out of uranium. - No we will not within our lifetime. Current estimates is that we have enough uranium, in known deposits, to last around 90 years.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
Combine this with reprocessing, and more efficient reactors, and we can probably last for at least (speculation since we do not know how our energy-needs will go up) 3 times as long... This will be long enough for us to provide our current energy-need and time to refine alternatives.

If we widen our view to also include other possible fissionable material we can start talking thorium. Then U.S. have enough, stockpiled(!!!), to last the them for 500-1000(!!) years.. Reason why they have it stockpiled you say.. it was a byproduct that was not useful at the time.

Please go out and get a clue... Buy one if nobody wants to donate you one.

Natural radiation exposure for Denver, CO (5280ft): 12mSv per year.

It gets better...

Naturally occurring background radiation is the main source of exposure for most people, and provides some perspective on radiation exposure from nuclear energy. The average dose received by all of us from background radiation is around 2.4 mSv/yr, which can vary depending on the geology and altitude where people live â" ranging between 1 and 10 mSv/yr, but can be more than 50 mSv/yr. The highest known level of background radiation affecting a substantial population is in Kerala and Madras states in India where some 140,000 people receive doses which average over 15 millisievert per year from gamma radiation, in addition to a similar dose from radon. Comparable levels occur in Brazil and Sudan, with average exposures up to about 40 mSv/yr to many people. (The highest level of natural background radiation recorded is on a Brazilian beach: 800 mSv/yr, but people donâ(TM)t live there.)Several places are known in Iran, India and Europe where natural background radiation gives an annual dose of more than 100 mSv to people and up to 260 mSv (at Ramsar in Iran, where some 200,000 people are exposed to more than 10 mSv/yr). Lifetime doses from natural radiation range up to several thousand millisievert. However, there is no evidence of increased cancers or other health problems arising from these high natural levels. The millions of nuclear workers that have been monitored closely for 50 years have no higher cancer mortality than the general population but have had up to ten times the average dose. People living in Colorado and Wyoming have twice the annual dose as those in Los Angeles, but have lower cancer rates. Source

5 mSv is the additional annual exposure of your typical aircraft crew flying North American routes. Since that industry routinely hits that threshold, shall we shut it down too?

Well of course background radiation can be tolerated to much higher levels because it is natural. Processed, highly concentrated radiation from nuclear power plants is much more dangerous.

Natural radiation exposure for Denver, CO (5280ft): 12mSv per year.

It gets better...

Naturally occurring background radiation is the main source of exposure for most people, and provides some perspective on radiation exposure from nuclear energy. The average dose received by all of us from background radiation is around 2.4 mSv/yr, which can vary depending on the geology and altitude where people live â" ranging between 1 and 10 mSv/yr, but can be more than 50 mSv/yr. The highest known level of background radiation affecting a substantial population is in Kerala and Madras states in India where some 140,000 people receive doses which average over 15 millisievert per year from gamma radiation, in addition to a similar dose from radon. Comparable levels occur in Brazil and Sudan, with average exposures up to about 40 mSv/yr to many people. (The highest level of natural background radiation recorded is on a Brazilian beach: 800 mSv/yr, but people donâ(TM)t live there.)Several places are known in Iran, India and Europe where natural background radiation gives an annual dose of more than 100 mSv to people and up to 260 mSv (at Ramsar in Iran, where some 200,000 people are exposed to more than 10 mSv/yr). Lifetime doses from natural radiation range up to several thousand millisievert. However, there is no evidence of increased cancers or other health problems arising from these high natural levels. The millions of nuclear workers that have been monitored closely for 50 years have no higher cancer mortality than the general population but have had up to ten times the average dose. People living in Colorado and Wyoming have twice the annual dose as those in Los Angeles, but have lower cancer rates. Source

5 mSv is the additional annual exposure of your typical aircraft crew flying North American routes. Since that industry routinely hits that threshold, shall we shut it down too?

Nuclear plants are being decommissioned and not replaced.

False.

I've heard that you can concentrate, extract, and use actinides in what we currently consider spent fuel. How, physically, is that done?

Take a look at this collection of slides by Gus Merwin. You'll find some of your better search terms like there like 'transmutation' (better add 'nuclear' or you might slide into the occult). And an good overview of processing methods and current spent inventories.

When you have long-lived actinides in your spent fuel --- the battle to keep costs down or make energy from them in today's thermal spectrum reactors has already been lost. We've known this all along, it's one of the little reasons the US invested heavily in fast breeders, weapons production being the big reason. Current methods involve separating out plutonium and unburnt uranium into MOX (mixed oxide) fuel for re-use, which reduces most waste volume but the actinides are still there. To deal with them completely you need to hit them with 'fast' neutrons from a fission breeder, maybe making energy while doing so --- splitting them into even nastier (but short lived) or final inert products. You can wind up with something that's walk-away safe in, say, 40 years. The atom stewards of the Cold War said, "Yeah it's a problem. Fast breeders will solve it." Then fast breeders in the US started to shut down after a few years of making weapons, they never got around to burning commercial waste. They said, "Yeah it's a problem. Underground storage will solve it." Then the US Gub'mint failed to deliver on that promise too.

The best way to manage long-lived actinides is to manage not to produce them in the first place. Alvin Weinberg knew this in the 1950s and ultimately sacrificed the remainder of his career in an attempt to convince others this was the way. Weinberg's basic design for a two-fluid LFTR which breeds uranium from thorium and actively processes its fluid to keep long-lived actinides from forming is still the most exciting and viable option for a nuclear future in the opinion of myself and many others. Almost 100% burn in the thermal spectrum, and an extremely small waste volume that is walk-away safe in ~300 years.

___
Please see Thorium Remix, my collected rants on Slashdot and these letters on energy,
  To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
  To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
Also of interest, Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security

actually, nukes are being built all over the world. The west is not, but that is due to too many that do not have a decent science background
 

^^^ This.

Here's an interesting article looking at nuclear power futures from a less west-centric point of view.

From the article link (emphasis mine):

It should not be assumed that reactors will close when their licence is due to expire, since licence renewal is now common. However, new plants coming on line are balanced by old plants being retired. Over 1996-2015, 75 reactors were retired as 80 started operation. There are no firm projections for retirements over the next two decades, but the World Nuclear Association estimates that at least 60 of those now operating will close by 2030, most being small plants. The 2013 WNA Market Report reference case has 74 reactors closing by 2030, using very conservative assumptions about licence renewal, and 272 coming on line, including 108 in China.

Even if half of those planned reactors never get built, that's still a net increase. The west is still pretty spoiled, in that we still have huge tracts of land with relatively few people to worry about. In places where population pressures are more intense, and land is not so freely available, nuclear is absolutely the best (sometimes the only) option if you want to allow people access to any sort of electrical service, not to mention supply the industries that are providing work for your population.

Only because the government has deemed it so. If the government would actually do its job and issue licenses for nuclear power plants then it might not be so expensive.

False. Setting aside the fact that you have no way to demonstrate that the high cost is in any way related to the number of plants being built, the US government has actually been trying to encourage development of civilian nuclear power for the past few decades;

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

If licenses are being withheld it's because of technical and economic deficiencies, not malice.

As opposed to what?

As opposed to renewable alternatives. The elephant in the room is the waste these plants produce, which nobody wants to take responsibility for and we have no reliable way of dealing with. Beyond that, the environmental damage done during the mining and refining of the fuel is often overlooked, as is the immediate local impact of having such a large plant in one location due to thermal pollution.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

I recognize nuclear power as an important component of a sustainable and environmentally conscious future, but it has more than it's fair share of problems that many people are too willing to overlook.

The reason the wall warts are considered inefficient is because they were made cheaper than a more efficient model.

No, the reason wall warts are considered inefficient is because they generally ARE inefficient. Older transformer based units are likely under 50%, while quality switchmode units probably get into the 80% range. That's pretty terrible. Depending on their design they might have horrible power factors, too.

I find your faith in government disturbing. More government is not the solution to every problem.

Neither is deregulation. Of course, if roughly half of the country's population wasn't actively trying to sabotage the government it might actually have a chance to do it s job properly...
=Smidge=

The 100,000 years thing is a scam meant to make the nuclear waste problem look intractable. LONG before that, the "waste" will be no more radioactive than natural rocks laying out in the desert in the U.S.

Not quite. Unless the actinides have been removed by reprocessing the spent fuel does not return to the same level as ore for a few hundred thousand years. The period chosen: 100,000 years is about right - not quite long enough to reach that point, but pretty good. The legacy waste they are dealing with contains actinides and is a nightmare to try reprocess due to its non-standard composition.

Imagining that all waste problems are really that of disposing of nearly non-existent reprocessed fuel waste with all actinides removed is silly. They are dealing with real waste that really needs disposal, not hypothetical types of waste.

BTW: the (quasi*) natural rocks laying out in the desert (tailings) are a significant waste problem since they have been removed from their stable geological context.

*They have been physically and chemically altered.

Which is also has not been subjected to any enrichment by nuclear industry processes. I specifically referred to artificially made elements.

Fission power plant fuel has minor enrichments to the level of 3-4% U-235. Artificially made elements that occur through the transmutation of U-238 and other transuranics in the fuel material are also contained within the cladding. What "artificially made" elements are you referencing? Humans do not come into contact with "artificially made" transuranic elements that are of concern for internal exposure in their daily lives.

Yes I can, I just don't know how much of them Fukushima, Chernobyl or other accidents have released.

Sorry but

Yes: http://science.time.com/2013/0...

You: http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

Can: http://www.who.int/ionizing_ra...

You literally get more radiation living next to a coal power than you would living next to Three Mile Island at the time of the disaster, or presently.

Coal source 1: http://www.scientificamerican....

Coal source 2: http://www.reboundhealth.com/c...

Do you life next to the damaged Fukushima reactor? You have a problem. Do you live 15km away from the Fukushima reactor? You are getting less radiation exposure than living in Colorado. Were you exposed to radionuclides after the Chernobyl disaster in Belarus, Ukraine, or Russia? Take the iodine pills the Soviet Union gave you immediately; after that your biggest health risk is the stress of living in what you "perceive" to be a toxic environment (though it was later proved not!).

Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it's irrational. What you're doing is how social proof spreads ignorance.

Not that I should make an appeal to authority or that you should trust me solely based on my credentials, but since you "called me out" for not understanding it I will inform you that I am a trained nuclear engineer working in the nuclear industry, wasting my time posting on the internet fighting someone like you because the level of misinformation out there is too much to bear. Please listen to experts and stop your conspiracy theories and stop spreading true ignorance of the basic reality.

Of course Nuclear power does not pay for its own catastrophe insurance. That is provided as a hidden subsidy from the state. I live in Japan, and I'm paying the cost of Fukushima in taxes. It bankrupted the power company and the government is now picking up the entire bill, hundreds of billions of dollars, and they dont even know the final cost.

Japan has made mistakes along with any other developed country, but choosing to build out nuclear power was not a mistake. From 1973 onwards these nuclear plants grew to produce ~30% of Japan's electricity overall, and nuclear power made its rapid growth of industry possible. Japan is resource-poor and must import all of its oil and most of its coal. If it were not for nuclear energy you would not see the thriving metropolis today where Japanese-owned businesses manufacture and export. Japan would have been more a people-resource country and foreign corporations would have set up there, owning everything, compensating for the expense of powering those factories in part by granting low wages. Energy IS wealth, and every bit of nuclear energy Japan has produced, along with the energy that did not have to be expended to purchase and import fuel, has made every nuclear plant more precious even than those in the United States. We in the states have always had enough coal whether we use it or not, and coal is what has built our country. Japan has been built (in major part) by nuclear energy. I salute you!

But Japan made a few mistakes with Fukushima. Tragically silly mistakes like putting generators in the basement without water-tight doors, and failing to open the louvers to vent the hydrogen from the buildings which was barely radioactive and would not have harmed anyone.

But the biggest mistake Japan made was giving in to fear and hysteria, and shutting down all nuclear plants in 2012, as if decades of 'free' energy, accident-free operation and prosperity suddenly meant absolutely nothing, and as if Japan's entire nuclear fleet was being and had always been operated by idiots. I think you (collectively) misjudged their character and professional ability and owe them all an apology. In the United States we investigated the causes of Three Mile Island and took steps to ensure scenarios like that would not happen again, but we did not hysterically shut them all down in the following months, though some people wanted to do that. We did not listen to those people, though the US did enter a 'dark age' of madness as nuclear technology has been sidelined,and the delusion that wind and solar could power the world has taken hold. Meanwhile our nuclear plants have been running. Time (and an incredible amount of safe, clean energy) has shown that it was the correct decision. It wasn't even much of a gamble, nuclear energy had already shown itself to be beneficial and well managed.

Japan continues to pay for that mistake, importing around ¥3.8-4 trillion ($40 billion) in fuel to make up for the idle nuclear plants in addition to the amount being spent to clean up and the not so small amounts being directly paid to evacuees of Fukushima Prefecture. Time alone and a great deal of post-accident analysis will tell whether those evacuations were really necessary, and whether compensating 'radiation refugees' to an incredibly greater extent than 'tsunami refugees' was a wise decision. I'm not trying to be condescending in pointing these things out, it's just that they are crucial in coming to grips with the tragedy. I believe Japan has acted in hysteria and the risks of nuclear energy have been grossly overstated by the press. It has been a time of madness! That is true in Japan as it is in the United States.

Please check out the writings of Leslie Corrice at Hiroshima Syndrome . I would have chosen a different name for the site but no matter, the man is a brilliant writ

This is what people don't seem to get. They compare Fukushima to a single wind turbine failure and proclaim wind is safer. Um no, Fukushima's generation capacity was equivalent to about 7,000-10,000 wind turbines.

So much of the story is left untold, thank you for telling. No one ever seems to ask: What is good about Fukushima Daiichi?

Fukushima's first reactor went on-line in March 1971 [cite] and 5 others followed up to 1979. Without accounting for cumulative downtime (hard to find), let's keep it simple, cut everything here by a third if you like, I come up with a combined total of ~159.12 Gigawatt-years of electricity. That's ~636.5 million tons of coal [cite] that did not have to be expensively imported and burned to help resource-poor Japan become the industrial giant it is today. Think of it as ~1.8 trillion tons of CO2 [cite] that did not enter the atmosphere, if you like. That's just one nuclear power plant with reactors that are not big by today's standards. More stats, and the interesting observation on how the hysterical press of Japan does not necessarily reflect public opinion,

"A poll taken in February 2015 by the Mizuho Information & Research Institute of Japan asked whether or not the respondent would use nuclear-generated electricity if the costs were the same or less than they were that month, and 67% said âoeyesâ. Only 32% replied in the negative. This contrasts with a number of media polls with voluntary and hence non-representative participation, and the distortion is compounded by a 2012 news media survey finding that 47 of the 50 most popular press outlets in Japan said they were antinuclear."

Japans few nuclear plants have provided as much as ~30% of Japan's electricity and I am confident they will pass that figure once more. Nuclear has contributed greatly to the country's wealth in ways that no other energy source could have, or ever could. There is a great deal of hidden peril facing the entire human species that is a direct result of stalling the Industrial Revolution --- by sweeping nuclear energy under the rug. As Kirk Sorensen says so eloquently,

"Every time mankind has been able to access a new source of energy it has led to profound societal implications. Human beings had slaves for thousands of years, and when we learned how to make carbon our slave instead of other human beings, we started to learn how to be civilized people. Thorium has a million times the energy density of a cabon-hydrogen bond. What could that mean for human civilization? Once we've learned how to use it at this kind of efficiency, we will never run out. It is simply too common."

The technological problem with nuclear power is that no one has come up with a passively safe design.

Actually, recent generations are passively safe.

Safety systems that depend on human intervention have been shown to be impossible to implement and maintain consistently, at least in a commercial environment.

Code for "profit is evil!" There are 440 commercially operated nuclear plants in the world (as of January 2016) with a safety record spanning about 50 years indicating that they do a pretty good job compared to alternate power sources like hydro, coal, wind, or solar.

We can't even maintain safety and quality control standards during the construction phase. We repeatedly have had nuclear plants fail at least in part because they weren't constructed to spec.

You have yet to demonstrate that the "specs" actually help make nuclear power safer, let us note. A lot of relatively poor choices, extending the lives of old nuclear plants, happens because no one is making enough new plants to specs that the old plants could never achieve.

Is there anything inherent to these designs that prevents rogue owners from inserting U-238 and producing Pu-239? I haven't been able to find any discussion of this except a note about a French MSR design that uses 50 kg of Thorium-232 and 50 kg of Uranium-238 (not a good sign). If the whole world is going to use thorium breeder reactors, we don't want everyone to be able to kick out the inspectors and switch to bomb-making mode whenever they feel like it.

The main experiments were back in the 1960s. There are some proof-of-concepts for future commercial plants from what I've heard and read. There are some being used to provide power to high-use single users like high-energy research labs I think.

Nobody's producing power to sell just yet. It's supposed to be soon, though. A Canadian company has a design they're putting into pre-licensing review in the coming months to hopefully be online around 2020. The US DoE which first developed MSRs (a program which Nixon axed) is helping China build a full-scaled 100 MW preview unit to be operational by 2024.

These things are safer (thorium vs. uranium for the bulk of the fuel, lower pressure inside the reactor), more efficient (higher temperatures transferred to the water/steam so more work gets to the generators), have easier spent fuel requirements (the half-lives are much shorter and it's much easier to keep them from breeding bomb-grade elements). They'll be cheaper to operate and produce cheaper, safer electricity. China's into the hundreds of millions researching building these things. It should happen.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
http://fukushimaupdate.com/tho...
http://www.technologyreview.co...
http://fortune.com/2015/02/02/...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke...

No. France gets about 17% of its electricity from spent nuclear fuel. France's energy sources are nuclear (74.5%), renewables (19.5%). They've simply decided to change the mix so that 40% of the electricity comes from renewable energy sources by adding in more wind and solar by 2025.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

That doesn't mean they are dropping the nuclear power, though -- in fact, they are building a Generation III plant that is much more fuel efficient and has less radioactive waste to boot. It should come online in 2018.

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

The problem in the USA is that we haven't built a nuclear reactor in almost 20 years. The average age of a US facility is 34 years. They were designed to run only 30 to 40 years (licenses expire at 40 years, but they can be extended another 20). They're all older model Gen II reactors.

What we do today is stupid; we spend the fuel in an old, inefficient reactor, then instead of re-using the spent fuel in a breeder reactor, we mix it and encase it in concrete to store for several thousands years. If we built a Gen IV breeder reactor, we could burn uranium and/or thorium and have very little waste which would only need to be stored for a few centuries instead of tens of thousands of years. But, you'll likely never live to see a new nuclear reactor come online in the USA -- it takes decades just to get approval for a site -- mounds of red tape and lots of NIMBYs.

So why don't we recycle the spent fuel? http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

This would make so much more sense. Then we can look at actual waste issues and tackle those in a sane matter (radiated parts, debris, etc). Who actually benefits from a no-recycle policy? Miners? Coal & Gas industry? Do regular people have a net benefit or net loss to a no-recycle policy?
I say save a mountain, recycle spent fuel. Prevent an accident, recycle spent fuel. Prevent storing highly radioactive material, recycle spent fuel.

"... down here on Earth, taking care of the massive pollution and population you've created is the real challenge."
Here is how China is responding:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

1. AP1000 = Gen3, Gen3 != AP1000, though good catch, I did say gen3. Though I'll note that was in a different reply chain.

That's where the 'authorized' ventings are defined. All NPPs vent radio-isotopes into the atmosphere every 2 weeks during normal operations, because they need to. That is a fact of operating the technology.

No, they don't. Venting steam(from the primary loop) is an Emergency event. Citation that they actually vent that often, not that they are merely 'allowed' to. I've searched, and it's not mentioned that I found.

You keep asking me for citations, why? Do you think I am bullshitting you? What does it mean that I provide it? Will you correct your assumptions against this new knowledge or maintain your assuptions in face of the fact?

What I do depends on the qualities of the citations. For example, you haven't provided a source that says NPPs actually vent radioisotopes every two weeks, merely that they *can*. When I ask for citations, it's because from my knowledge it's different. I'm not saying you're lying, but I want to know the source of your knowledge.

No, they are not because you cannot retrofit improvements to a Nuclear reactor, the same way I can install a four valve head where there previously was a 2 valve head,

The scale is different, but you can sure can retrofit improvements into a nuclear reactor. Let's see, safety improvement available, but not installed for Fukushima: Hydrogen recombiners, otherwise known as PARS. From what I remember reading, US reactors have them, having been retrofitted decades ago. Quite a few reactors have been 'up rated', to the point that for quite a while we were actually producing more electricity and increasing nuclear capacity despite not actually building any new reactors, even shutting down a few. Many reactors have been upgraded with more efficient turbines.

Besides all that, you're missing the point I think - I'm not talking about retrofitting improvements, I'm talking about incorporating improvements into the design of NEW plants.

The "refinements' are made to reduce material input costs, specifically, concrete.

That's certainly part of it. Doesn't mean that the containment dome isn't still strong as all heck. They've also reduced the amount of pipping and valves needed, and otherwise simplified and made the systems more robust.

Unless you can provide your own citations you will find that AP1000 is the only one that is approved by law (also very interesting).

Not according to the NRC. There's quite a few certified.

ABWR, System80+, AP600, AP1000, ESBWR. Under review: US EPR, US-APWR, APR1400

These are the 'major' reactors. There are smaller power units around.

"The sheer amount of deaths per terawatts put out by nuclear can give anyone pause on that. "

That would be a grand world total of 51, since the beginning of nuclear as an energy source. No other source, even solar with its distributed installation accidents, has a safety record approaching this.

And the cost picture? If you get to cite a blatantly antinuclear site, I get to pick a site of my own too:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

Because the costs of nuclear are all up front, the most effective strategy for preventing nukes from being built is to impose construction delays.

Does not matter how you count the 96%.

The ignorant idiot is you ... I give you some links:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/N...

Quote: Enrichment
The vast majority of all nuclear power reactors require 'enriched' uranium fuel in which the proportion of the uranium-235 isotope has been raised from the natural level of 0.7% to about 3.5% to 5%.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

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

So? Idiot? You figured it?

It does not matter if you talk about U-235 (which might be 96% burned) or if I talk about U-MOX together, as the number: 96% is conincidentally the same.

If you had any clue about the topic you knew that and had saved your post.

Thanx for your attention.

Does not matter how you count the 96%.

The ignorant idiot is you ... I give you some links:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/N...

Quote: Enrichment
The vast majority of all nuclear power reactors require 'enriched' uranium fuel in which the proportion of the uranium-235 isotope has been raised from the natural level of 0.7% to about 3.5% to 5%.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

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

So? Idiot? You figured it?

It does not matter if you talk about U-235 (which might be 96% burned) or if I talk about U-MOX together, as the number: 96% is conincidentally the same.

If you had any clue about the topic you knew that and had saved your post.

Thanx for your attention.

One issue is that the French nuclear reactors are badly designed. Areva, the French manufacturer, makes HUGE reactors that require extremely large construction equipment. The size of the reactors creates vendor lock-in. Failures can be far more dangerous.

Construction and maintenance is much easier when there are multiple smaller reactors. See, for example, Small Nuclear Power Reactors.

because they haven't yet paid for the eventual disposal of the waste

France reprocesses spent nuclear fuel. So unlike countries where the anti-nuclear lobby has made sure that spent fuel gets classified as "waste" with huge disposal costs to try to make nuclear unattractive and uneconomical, France just turns it into more fuel for its nuclear plants. Only about 3% of what other countries call "nuclear waste" gets turned into actual waste. The rest is converted back into more fuel.

because they haven't yet paid for the eventual disposal of the waste

France reprocesses spent nuclear fuel. So unlike countries where the anti-nuclear lobby has made sure that spent fuel gets classified as "waste" with huge disposal costs to try to make nuclear unattractive and uneconomical, France just turns it into more fuel for its nuclear plants. Only about 3% of what other countries call "nuclear waste" gets turned into actual waste. The rest is converted back into more fuel.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...

The section on improved performance is quite interesting. The US averages 81% utilisation

Again total crock of shit. Australian Uranium export laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.... Not only is mining totally and strictly regulated (no matter who the hell owns the mine, they can not even stick a shovel into the ground until approval is gained from local, state and federal government), it can only be sold to countries the Australian government has specific agreements with and is restricted to energy use only http://www.world-nuclear.org/i....

100% irrelevant to the topic I was discussing, which was ownership of U.S. uranium interests by Russia. Not only is Australia a completely different continent, its politics are also completely different. Similar in some ways, but definitely not the same.

It is the US government that is seeking to directly control the mining and export of 'AUSTRALIAN' Uranium because 31% of worlds resource and Australia already exports Uranium to China and the US. There are a whole bunch of Uranium resources yet to be touched.

Again, completely irrelevant to the topic under discussion. If I lived in Australia, I'd object to sales to China OR the U.S.... but especially China.

Again total crock of shit. Australian Uranium export laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.... Not only is mining totally and strictly regulated (no matter who the hell owns the mine, they can not even stick a shovel into the ground until approval is gained from local, state and federal government), it can only be sold to countries the Australian government has specific agreements with and is restricted to energy use only http://www.world-nuclear.org/i.... It is the US government that is seeking to directly control the mining and export of 'AUSTRALIAN' Uranium because 31% of worlds resource and Australia already exports Uranium to China and the US. There are a whole bunch of Uranium resources yet to be touched.

Actually in identifying some solar/wind promoters as anti-nuclear --- just a few but boy are they shrill --- I think I've hit the nail on the head.

Let's take a look at nuclear power in Japan, shall we. Japan is a small, energy-resource-poor country which has leveraged its technology to become a financial and industrial giant, in many areas out-producing the United States even before we outsourced to China. Some ~50 nuclear reactors were supplying ~30% of the nation's electricity in 2011. But that 30% is a misleadingly small figure in terms of estimable value, for even as rural Japan was finally being electrified those nuclear plants had been powering the factories and steel mills that put it on the world map. From being the first victim of nuclear war to putting its first reactor on-line in 1966, Japan is one of the world's greatest success stories and owes a great deal of its meteoric rise as a world power to those nuclear plants.

The Japanese are aware of this. It is why they responsibly reprocess their spent fuel, it is why they continued to expand their nuclear base even after the US Three Mile Island mishap, even after a pseudo-environmentalist sect (coal barons by proxy) in the United States began to suppress the advancement and innovation of this technology. The Fukushima Daiichi plant went on-line in 1971 and not one person in this part of the world seems to find it appropriate to recognize the many gigawatt-years of service it has contributed. We will honor a retired warship for its years of service, but if a nuclear power plant has fallen on hard times we will kick it like a dying dog and stamp the life out of it. Perhaps my allusion shocks you.

I go even further to describe as twisted and sick the way world press marginalized the unfolding tragedy of ~15,000 deaths to dwell on the minutiae of radiation release, and (worse yet) gathered anti-nuclear celebrities to continually supply worst-case scenarios, most of them absurd, scientifically deceptive and some outright dishonest. It represents a tabloid moment of which the entire human race should be ashamed. And yet? Even in the immediate aftermath of the disaster when all were in shock, merely 70% of Japanese believed that Japan should reduce its reliance on nuclear energy. There is reason to believe that this percentage is falling as the years pass, as they have re-elected a Prime Minister who vows to restore nuclear power to its previous levels. Perhaps the Japanese, for all this tragedy, are possessed of a certain clarity that is slipping away in the United States.

The second issue is nuclear weapons. One reason that the government wants nuclear power is so that it can build weapons at short notice.

Dissing conventional nuclear power on the grounds that it supports weapons manufacture is complicated. Suggesting that it is 'easy' or 'quick' or even 'feasible' (as opposed to refinement of natural uranium) is disingenuous. Rod Adams attempts to dispel this pervasive myth here and more recently here, and it is an uphill battle because politicians take their talking points from anti-nuke celebrities, not scientists or nuclear engineers. When the claim that terrorists could produce true fission weapons from nuclear plants breaks down, many seek refuge in the idea of a so-called 'dirty

Actually in identifying some solar/wind promoters as anti-nuclear --- just a few but boy are they shrill --- I think I've hit the nail on the head.

Let's take a look at nuclear power in Japan, shall we. Japan is a small, energy-resource-poor country which has leveraged its technology to become a financial and industrial giant, in many areas out-producing the United States even before we outsourced to China. Some ~50 nuclear reactors were supplying ~30% of the nation's electricity in 2011. But that 30% is a misleadingly small figure in terms of estimable value, for even as rural Japan was finally being electrified those nuclear plants had been powering the factories and steel mills that put it on the world map. From being the first victim of nuclear war to putting its first reactor on-line in 1966, Japan is one of the world's greatest success stories and owes a great deal of its meteoric rise as a world power to those nuclear plants.

The Japanese are aware of this. It is why they responsibly reprocess their spent fuel, it is why they continued to expand their nuclear base even after the US Three Mile Island mishap, even after a pseudo-environmentalist sect (coal barons by proxy) in the United States began to suppress the advancement and innovation of this technology. The Fukushima Daiichi plant went on-line in 1971 and not one person in this part of the world seems to find it appropriate to recognize the many gigawatt-years of service it has contributed. We will honor a retired warship for its years of service, but if a nuclear power plant has fallen on hard times we will kick it like a dying dog and stamp the life out of it. Perhaps my allusion shocks you.

I go even further to describe as twisted and sick the way world press marginalized the unfolding tragedy of ~15,000 deaths to dwell on the minutiae of radiation release, and (worse yet) gathered anti-nuclear celebrities to continually supply worst-case scenarios, most of them absurd, scientifically deceptive and some outright dishonest. It represents a tabloid moment of which the entire human race should be ashamed. And yet? Even in the immediate aftermath of the disaster when all were in shock, merely 70% of Japanese believed that Japan should reduce its reliance on nuclear energy. There is reason to believe that this percentage is falling as the years pass, as they have re-elected a Prime Minister who vows to restore nuclear power to its previous levels. Perhaps the Japanese, for all this tragedy, are possessed of a certain clarity that is slipping away in the United States.

The second issue is nuclear weapons. One reason that the government wants nuclear power is so that it can build weapons at short notice.

Dissing conventional nuclear power on the grounds that it supports weapons manufacture is complicated. Suggesting that it is 'easy' or 'quick' or even 'feasible' (as opposed to refinement of natural uranium) is disingenuous. Rod Adams attempts to dispel this pervasive myth here and more recently here, and it is an uphill battle because politicians take their talking points from anti-nuke celebrities, not scientists or nuclear engineers. When the claim that terrorists could produce true fission weapons from nuclear plants breaks down, many seek refuge in the idea of a so-called 'dirty

Read the original article again. OLD plants emit as much as 10% - new plants with advanced scrubbers emit no more than 1%. Here's the quote, emphasis mine - search for it:

"Some 99% of flyash is typically retained in a modern power station (90% in some older ones)."

That's not my statistic - if you don't believe it, follow the footnotes in the article.

As for the 50 mg/Nm^3, your limit is higher than ours if the 18.3 mg/Nm^3 is correct. The US burned 850x10^6 tonnes (850x10^9 kg) of coal in the year 2009. Even of we go with the 1% figure nationwide, that's still 11x10^3 kg of uranium and 27x10^3 kg of thorium up the stack. Refer to the quote from the same document, below:

"In the USA, 850 million tonnes of coal was used in 2009 for electricity production. With an average content of 1.3 ppm uranium and 3.2 ppm thorium, US coal-fired electricity generation in that year gave rise to 1100 tonnes of uranium and 2700 tonnes of thorium in coal ash."

This article seems to show that Germany is not so clean after all given the relatively large amount of coal it burns compared to its EU neighbors.

This chart shows Germany using 256 million short tons of coal in 2011. That's 232x10^9 kg. With German coal containing up to 13 ppm of uranium and up to approximately 39 ppm thorium (see the first liked article for the source of those figures), that means:

In 2011 German power plants emitted up to 30x10^3 kg of uranium (232x10^9 x 13ppm x 1%) and up to 90.5x10^3 kg of thorium (232x10^9 kg x 39ppm x 1%).

Note that US coal contains up to 4 ppm uranium while German coal contains up to 13 ppm. From the first article, "US, Australian, Indian and UK coals contain up to about 4 ppm uranium, those in Germany up to 13 ppm ...".

I really can't make it any clearer that ALL coal plants emit fly ash, and because of the vast amounts of coal burnt around the world, that fly ash represents a significant and easily detectable amount of radioactivity (not to mention the chemical toxicity) released into the atmosphere around the plants.

I think I've proven my point with reason and numbers to back it up - all you've contributed is disbelief and scorn.