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Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes
MTorrice writes "NASA researchers have compared nuclear power to fossil fuel energy sources in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution-related deaths. Using nuclear power in place of coal and gas power has prevented some 1.8 million deaths globally over the past four decades and could save millions of more lives in coming decades, concludes their study. The pair also found that nuclear energy prevents emissions of huge quantities of greenhouse gases. These estimates help make the case that policymakers should continue to rely on and expand nuclear power in place of fossil fuels to mitigate climate change, the authors say."
It isn't the deaths we are most worried about.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I am still wanting to see a viable long term storage solution for the waste, with at least one example of a spent rod finding a final and safe resting place. Otherwise the tail risk of nuclear power is just a myth.
They are light years ahead of the West, as they have announced they are going to be restarting reactors.
nasa is now doing studies for kim jong un ?
That's a pretty precise attempt at a measurement for a very nebulous idea. Now we wait for the "other" study from the Fossil Fuel's industry groups I guess. This sort of wildly speculative "guess" at something that is basically unmeasureable due to the large number of variables and assumptions only makes it more difficult to get the public to believe the results of more meaningful and relevant studies when that time comes.
It also take a lot of upfront cash. So as nice as it would be to have more nuclear energy; the window of opportunity is gone. Renewable energy sources will be far cheaper by the time a new nuclear plant opens
I would argue that it's not waste..It's valuable raw material we don't currently use
Since there are already to many humans, isn't that another strike against nuclear power?
Free smokes for all!
ssshh... (they forget to mention that the nuclear industry will continue to kill people for thousands of years after the fallacy has been realised and people realise that it is as foolish as lead water pipes)
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I would say we should just hold out for dilithium crystals; but then I remembered their impact in terms of human trafficing.
Nuclear power has the lowest deaths per TWh of any form of energy -- and that includes things like Chernobyl and Fukushima, the latter of which had a curious focus given that far, far, far more people were injured, displaced, or killed by the actual tsunami as opposed to any radiation events, now or in the future.
Direct deaths from fossil fuel sources -- including even naturally occurring radiation from conventional fossil fuel energy sources -- far outstrip any deaths that have ever occurred, or even will occur with even the most extreme statistical projections, from any nuclear power source, including accidents. That's right: there are more deaths from "radiation" from the byproducts of fossil fuel sources than there are from nuclear power, including accidents and waste.
This is what we should be worried about:
"Outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total, according to a new summary of data from a scientific study on leading causes of death worldwide. Figured another way, the researchers said, China's toll from pollution was the loss of 25 million healthy years of life from the population."
There is a reason China has 30 nuclear plants under construction, while the US just approved its first new plant in 30 years.
bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Working in a nuclear plant, ive received less exposure than i would spending the summer outside at the beach.
Do the same as with other toxic waste: Dump it into an appropriately prepared landfill. Problem solved for the next millennium.
Simple as changing from Uranium to Thorium as a fuel supply. It consumes a small amount of Uranium to keep it's reaction going (which is why it can't go boom ) and burns with 99.9 % efficiency. Most of the remaining waste only remains radioactive for 10 years while a small amount the size of a coke can per MW remains radioactive for 300 years instead of Uranium's 10,000 years. It also is hugely less possible to proliferate than Uranium at the same time. In addition Thorium is so abundant and easy to refine that it appears easy compared to mining coal. It would cost us 1.6 Trillion in capital cost to convert all coal plants to LFTR Reactors (starting in about a 5 year time frame, once we have made the investment (23 Billion ) to overcome the inner containers materials problem. All other problems have been solved. In fact India will have their first full scale Thorium test reactor online THIS YEAR. A 500MW boohemoth! Within 3 years they will have 6 more that will follow for COMMERCIAL USE. So why not the US? I will leave it with this note there is other types of reactors that burn spent Uranium in larger quantities so consideration of them is also is an important feature to getting rid of long term waste.
Slow poisons that work over generations, for which there is no effective 'cure'. Brought to you by the same people who say there isnt enough solar power to go around.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one! - Spock
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Well someone's a shill for Big Nuclear.
Genocide also prevents more deaths than it causes. All the people killed would have died years layer, and produce no children. That doesn't necessarily sell the practice.
Whats happening is right now is our nuclear power plants are getting older and older and we are too scared by the cost to improve or replace them. Given enough time, that will lead to an accident.
The only way they can keep the price down is to nationalize it, and even then you have to have a very specific regulatory and business culture (like France) to make it work in abundance. Otherwise, the exclusive private club financing the construction of nuclear power plants will find ways to jack up the prices, essentially holding the ratepayers hostage once the community has made a commitment to having the new plant. IOW, nuclear literally puts too much power in too few hands to the extent that it gets abused immediately.
The war mongers (neoconservatives) love nuclear power the most because while they promote the scamming of consumers at home, they spread fear about its development in any country that has not put itself up for sale to Wall St. or become a client state to US military contractors.
I see this sort of propagandized research as a good reason for embracing James Hansen's coming departure from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at NASA. While I agree with the main conclusion of the paper, that nuclear power has in general saved more lives than it has lost, I think he goes about it again in a haphazard fashion, heavily biased to nuclear power production.
For example, there is no breakdown of the data or consideration of alternative strategies. What's the break down of the various sources of deaths from fossil fuel burning? In particular, I was curious how many deaths he would attribute to elevated levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. As far as I can tell, it's not there in his research though I probably could figure it out eventually from a detailed analysis of his references.
Here's another big question. How effective would implementing other strategies, like pollution controls on coal power plants, be? If most of those lives can be saved merely by scrubbing coal power plant exhaust, then that's not a strong argument for nuclear power (and would become another propaganda element of the paper).
And once again, he exaggerates the risks of carbon dioxide emissions (in his "Implications" section).
I have no problem with Hansen putting out biased research. Just don't do it with public funds.
Give me one that can:
1) Generate base load, as in it doesn't vary with the time of day or weather.
2) Provide for power in all parts of the world, from northern latitudes to the equator.
3) Is cost effective.
You can't. That isn't to say other power generation methods aren't useful in some areas. Solar rules in the desert for peak load (when it is the hottest, you need the most energy for cooling and it is also outputting the most usually). However you are going to need something for base load. Nuclear is the best option.
If you think we could just go solar and/or wind and that would be all we need, well you haven't researched the grid very well.
My feelings tell me that nuclear power is bad and scary!
I came for a discussion, but all I found was a flame war.
Fuck I hate politics. Can we at least debate the merits of the study?
Old News: Environmental Case for Nuclear Power: Economic, Medical, and Political Considerations
"PV solar definitely creates more pollution per MWHr"
Really? Citation needed.
" wind would be site dependant"
So it would produce dangerous byproducts in one place but not in another? How does that work?
" Hydro is probably 80-90% tapped"
Probably nowhere near 80%.
"Geothermal causes earthquakes"
Fracking. Mining uranium. Nuff said.
The only entities that can afford to build a nuclear power plant such as Entergy, Duke, PG&E always end up doing the double whammy of cutting back on maintenance just as the plants start to age out. Then, they quickly spin off the plant ownership to a separate division, then a separate DBA, then quietly sell it or convert it to a wholly separate no-liability company just as the expensive chickens of total rebuilt or shutdown come home to roost.
As an aside, the folks running SONGS for PG&E decided to redesign the tube bundles when they had to be replaced. They arrogantly redesigned them - without even telling the NRC, mind you - to get more [Jeremy Clarkson] Power! [/JC], but only managed to make them wear out in mere months due to so much vibration the tubes eroded each other.
So nuclear power does make sense, if it weren't the actual short-term greedy bastards that own and run them.
that all 20 years a major accident occurs. Chernobyl broke the neck of russia and Fukushima will pull down the Japanese. Also in Fukushima if the fuel will reach the groundwater or if the fuel pond cooling fails then Tokio will have to be evakuated. The financial disaster of this is really the smallest problem. :-)
Given the fact that some things can't be monetarized nuclear fuel is really a bad option if you have rewnewable energies at hand. Which is nuclear fuel from a tried and tested nuclear reactor. And if this reactor blows up we won't have any problems anymore
On a Wyoming Ranch, Feds Sacrifice Tomorrow’s Water to Mine Uranium Today
http://www.propublica.org/article/on-a-wyoming-ranch-feds-sacrifice-tomorrows-water-to-mine-uranium-today
What I found the most intriguing was that Russians prefer to mine in Wyoming and pollute there rather than do it at home.
I thought they might compare it to the mining deaths from coal, the war deaths from oil, heck even the installation accident deaths from wind and solar...that's impressive.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There are two nuclear reactors and they've been 14 years in build-up and still not ready.
That's AFTER the assessments, consultations, etc.
This says more about how dirty fossil fuels are than about how safe nuclear is. There are other options.
suffering from pronoia
If the negative externalities of fossil fuel usage (up to $1,600 per person annually) were properly internalized into the price of electricity as economists say should be done (with the revenue going to hospitals to pay for health care for respiratory patients), nuclear energy would suddenly become much more cost-effective than it is today.
But sadly, we live in an age of privatizing profits and socializing losses.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Isn't nuclear energy, but rather budgets. We try and spend the least possible to make these facilities, and I do believe at the expense of the actual safety we need for the environment around the facility and ourselves. As for nuclear waste, I'm kinda wondering why we aren't using it in itself as an energy source, we know how to do it and we have the tech.. What gives?
You might say "so far". More births = more deaths so it is a zero sum game, unless long term radiological releases get high enough to create a long term drop in reproduction and then it is like the passenger pigeon. A huge increase in numbers based on increased resources and then a just as dramatic plunge leading to extinction.
So nuclear power kills less people than fossil fuels? I have to say I'm not surprised at all. Consider how dangerous it is to mine, transport and burn coal then add the environmental issues and there is NO DOUBT that nuclear power is safer.
I would add that nuclear power actually releases LESS RADIATION than a similar sized coal plant even if you consider the whole life cycle, from construction, operation though decommissioning. Burning coal efficiently requires that it be crushed, usually into fine powder that can be blown into the fire box. This grinding process releases a lot of radon gas (and other stuff) that produces radiation. The exposure levels can be quite high for people working around the crushing equipment.
Somebody will bring up the long term storage of spend fuel assemblies and claim these are high level waste that will produce radiation for thousands of years. While it is true, this ignores the fact that the problem here is regulatory and not with the technology. Much of the high level and long lasting radioactive components in light water reactor spent fuel could be reused and eliminated if reprocessing of fuel was allowed. Regulations and international agreements prevent us from reprocessing and burning down this high level waste even though the technology exists to eliminate a significant percentage of the radioactive materials (by size/bulk) and greatly reduce the amount of time the remaining material remains dangerous.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
How about taking that money and using it on something else, like, oh, I don't know, space exploration perhaps, instead of instead of on studies to tell us something that we already know.
Baseload is the load you should build for if you can't make power that takes 24+ hours to start or stop.
If you don't have power stations that need 24+ hours to start or stop, you don't need massive baseload power.
I've got quite a few friends who are anti-nuclear power and they constantly site Chernobyl, 3-mile Island and Fukushima...
The problem is that they refuse to travel to enjoy the fresh air" in Beijing. I spent 3 weeks there in February, and let me tell you, after about 3 days there my nose was constantly congested. Within about 4 days of returning to the US, it cleared up. That air is not too fresh.
Also on the few days when it is clear there, the Japanese complain because all the smog has blown it's way into Japan.
We the people have democratically run services that work reliably and cheaper than privatized alternatives. Yet in this age of corporate controlled messaging, we are not allowed to let our democracy manage anything new because private dictatorships are the only allowed solution... Anybody speaking reasonably is labeled a Marxist - ironic that a nation that professes democracy (representative; shut up trolls) and the letting people govern themselves is opposed to it in everything except the few established footholds.
In the last decade, we even have popular successful programs under attack like Social Security, Medicare and the USPS - despite extremely high public approval. Some foolish citizens have allowed their water and roads to be privatized despite the fact every example shows those to end up costing more.
Monopoly situations can't be free markets (water, sewer, roads, power, phone.) Privatized essential services can't perform as well (police, fire, power, SS, healthcare.) These are places where the public can collectively run them better; that is, where the majority of the voting public isn't retarded and elects traitors who sabotage the peoples' government. (Perfect example is the GOP in 2006 with the USPS.)
I seem to be the only person upset that the IAEA is also the an industry lobbyist. Unless we allow fuel reprocessing, the USA is out of nuclear fuel. We used to have the most but now we import it because we used it up. Peak nuclear fuel has happened already. I don't know when the next peak is; but I doubt prices will ever drop and solar power is already cheaper today (excluding grid storage costs... which is something we should invest in heavily.)
I've seen a bit of business corp culture and I've seen a bit of political management culture. They both waste big time; they are different and yet similar... Both are perception rackets, except one you have input (theoretically) and the other only short-term investors do.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Nuclear power does not prevent deaths. Not a single one. In fact, it causes quite a few deaths. It is just plain wrong to attribute lives saved by not burning coal to nuclear power.
However, that does not mean that the 0.04 people assumed to die per terawatthour of nuclearly produced electricity isn't the lowest of all possible sources of power, as this less propagandaish source states:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Or this one:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
And it also doesn't mean that switching to more nuclear power would continue this trend. Furthermore, it does not mean that all fossil plants/mining cause that many deaths.
This is bullshit territory.
0x or or snor perron?!
nuclear provides solid, reliable baseline power with fewer deaths per kWh than any other scheme in existence
At least 2 mistakes here.
First, nuclear proponents keep making the mistake, deliberately it seems, of measuring safety by numbers of deaths. By that measure, a small passenger airplane crash could be more disastrous than a big, strong hurricane hitting a major population center. You can't ignore the hazards of radioactive contamination of large areas of land. You can brush off Chernobyl as a sloppy operation run by a reckless Communist society, but Fukushima was not that.
And second, they were comparing nuclear power to coal only. You broadened that to "any other scheme in existence". I agree that nuclear power is preferable to coal. But is it preferable to wind, water, and solar? I think not.
Fukushima was a demonstration that corruption and greed can undermine any safety measures, with disastrous consequences. We as a society had decided how much risk we were willing to accept in exchange for the benefits of nuclear power, and then these operators cut corners. Thanks to them, we were taking much greater risks than we knew. They knew, knew, that the plant could not withstand an earthquake, but instead of fixing the problems, they tried to cover it up and hope no earthquake would strike. When disaster did strike, they kept trying to cover, claiming the plant could have handled an 8.0 quake, but this at 9.0 was of unprecedented magnitude. Lies. There was precedent for such large quakes, but they ignored it. It is also standard practice to engineer in safety margins. That excuse of "unprecedented magnitude", even if it were true, is no excuse at all. It should have been able to withstand an even greater magnitude quake. Oil operators have done similar things time and time again. Deepwater Horizon was another example of a corner cutting, rush job that went bad, and confirmation of fears over the dangers of offshore oil drilling. The Exxon Valdez was another on more than one level. It was a single hull tanker. Now tankers are double hull. It had not been properly maintained, and radar intended to detect impending collision was not functional. The crew also was overworked, tired and rushed. Then there was the emergency equipment that was supposed to be on hand to respond to such a disaster. Turned out, much of that equipment existed only on paper.
I don't mind a gamble with eyes open, but I'm not interested in a rigged game with such extreme negative consequences, and that's what nuclear power looks like. Should operators be trusted? No way! Can we even trust that regulators won't be subverted, gamed, or fooled? Sadly, no. To properly asses the real risks of nuclear power, we have to account for these human factors. A dam failure is bad, but relatively short lived. Incompetent and corrupt handling of such a facility is a peril we can live with. The affected land can be cleaned up and put back to use the moment the waters recede. Not so with radioactive contamination, in which we might have to wait centuries before the contaminated land is safe to use again. Even oil spills, which can have effects spanning many years, are not as bad. If we greatly improve our ability to clean up radiation, so that contaminated land can be made safe in a few years, instead of centuries, then, sure, use nuclear power. But until such advances are in hand, no.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
With nuclear waste, at least we can choose what do with it. This is not the same as coal, where the waste goes into the atmosphere and we couldn't reverse it even if we wanted to. Sure, we need to solve the waste problem -- but at least we have the option to solve it, long after the waste has been created.
https://xkcd.com/1162
it's just like an airline industry: a lot safer than driving your own car, but when something does happen the consequences are pretty severe.
The only way they can keep the price down is to nationalize it,.
How do you figure that? crude oil isn't nationalized, has had as many high profile ecological disasters as nuclear, and remains affordable.
Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes
Why won't anyone think of the atoms?!
The authors are Kharecha and Hansen. James Hansen is world famous for supplying warmists with NASA stamped ammo since the early 1980's
You can say a lot of things about Hansen but shilling for nukes is just not plausible. But hey, if you want to discredit one of the most credible AGW celebrities in the world go right ahead.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Seems like there are lots of neglected secondary effects in this analysis - otherwise, why are people so upset about Iran's nuclear energy program?
I would be fine with nuclear power if two problems were resolved. (Please note, disposing of waste is not in my view a technical problem, and is a solvable political problem). The first problem is nuclear weapons. The fuel cycle needs to be re-jiggered so it's impossible or at least impractical to steal fuel or waste and make weapons. The second problem is that current fuel cycles are limited by mineral supplies. If we switched to some sort of breeder cycle the whole thing would make sense, but any new fuel cycle would still have to avoid the weapon problem. I completely agree that rational decision would be very useful in the public discourse about nuclear power. Nobody ever seems to worry about the killer smog in China or the deaths and shortened lives of coal miners.
Because unless you're saying I spend all summer outside at the beach, your heading is wrong and the body makes a different claim.
I am still wanting to see a viable long term storage solution for the waste, with at least one example of a spent rod finding a final and safe resting place. Otherwise the tail risk of nuclear power is just a myth.
Why store it when you can use it again:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-wasteland
Just like the "three Rs" for household 'waste', spent rods can be recycled and re-used.
There are too many people who are afraid of nuclear power to ever use it as a long term power source. There has been no real research into nuclear power in 50 years. For example: molten salt reactors promise to be much safer and cheaper to build than current nuclear reactors. Research? All research goes into the single, 60 year old design that wasn't chosen so much for safety as for its ability to create weapons of mass destruction, oh and also create electricity. There was a single opportunity to create a molten salt reactor in 1974 which most scientists at Livermore labs wanted, but the current US secretary of Defence offered them termination slips if they suggested even building a research reactor. Every reactor built is based on the single 60 year old design. They tweak it, and make minor improvements, but its like tweaks to a gasoline engine. Its always an Otto cycle engine, never a Sterling engine or something really radical. Canadian heavy water reactors are more efficient than American light water reactors, but comparing something that is 17% efficient against something that is 15% efficient is still only 17% efficient. A molten salt reactor is at least 85% efficient. No research means no progress means no advancements which means more of the same.
Yes but with nuclear comes some inherent risks that could easily transform the 1.8 Million lives saved to millions of lives ended. Terrorism target, waste spills/leaks, natural disasters, technical malfunctions, etc, etc...Yes these are the same brilliant scientists that have sent 135 shuttle missions into space over the three decades. But remember they also had catastrophic failure on two of those.
So a few square miles of land are tainted to prevent us from ruining the entire planet with fossil fuels.. so what? Are you seriously trying to say this is a more major problem than the one fossil fuels are causing for us? I mean, unless you don't believe in global warming, of course.
The only way they can keep the price down is to nationalize it, and even then you have to have a very specific regulatory and business culture (like France) to make it work in abundance. Otherwise, the exclusive private club financing the construction of nuclear power plants will find ways to jack up the prices, essentially holding the ratepayers hostage once the community has made a commitment to having the new plant. IOW, nuclear literally puts too much power in too few hands to the extent that it gets abused immediately.
The war mongers (neoconservatives) love nuclear power the most because while they promote the scamming of consumers at home, they spread fear about its development in any country that has not put itself up for sale to Wall St. or become a client state to US military contractors.
Karma, baby.
Someone couldn't muster an intelligent reply, but in my experience pro-nukes don't have any good rebuttals to the above arguments.
Nowhere do I see the love for nuclear power that I see here. I am no expert, but on the handful of occasions I've gone out to research the claims I read here, the sentiment that "it's so obvious and safe to do" doesn't hold true.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Here. Refined nuclear fuel has roughly a million times as much energy per gram as any chemical source. Even counting the ore and refining, you just have to move much less stuff to get your energy - 1/100 to 1/1000 as much.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I take it that you were born after the cold war...
That's very insightful, except for the fact it's apparently also totally wrong:
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_debate#Indirect_nuclear_insurance_subsidy, if the nuclear industry was forced to pay its own insurance instead of letting the taxpayer pay all accident damage above a certain ceiling, then nuclear would make less financial sense than solar.
In other words, it's subsidized.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
The airline industry has a much better safety record than the nuclear power industry.They can tout the millions of people they don't kill each year because they intentionally work on safety. The nuclear industry argument is much the same argument that NASA used to launch Challenger. Just because it hasn't blown up yet means it's safe. We still haven't come up with a solution to deal with the tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel sitting in cooling pools at nuclear power plants all over the US. Sure can pretend that clean up of Fukushima and Chernobyl won't take decades if not centuries and will be off limits to human habitation for the same amount of time. But are you aware of all the nuclear accidents, military and civilian? Not to mention the worst nuclear contamination in US and Mexican history involving the recall of thousands of tons of contaminated steel. But you guys keep fucking that radioactive chicken.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
But those people will still die... just not yet. So in essence, it just means they are less likely to die of nuclear accidents than they are of something else. If something else doesn't kill them, then something further else still will just a little later.
And look at the Thermal mass that is need to build a reactor. You could build a highway hundreds of miles instead of in one spot. And think of all the jobs that would create.
According to wikipedia anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies
Maybe it is time to put conditions on the nuclear subsidies to focus on modern reactor designs.
Blar.
1) So you are comparing tech to corruption in Fukushima. That's great.
2) The Johnstown dam flood killed about 2,200 people, and the Banqiao Dam killed about 26,000. I think that's more than nuclear accidents.
Don't confuse regulations and oversight with technical safety. Stop cherry picking your facts.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
When your 1 ton of uranium waste means 1000 tons of low level waste and to get that ton of urainium required 30 tons of uranium and that 30 tons of uranium required sifting 10,000tons of ore, your calculations requirement of "only the 1 ton of high level waste" seems rather cherry picked, doesn't it.
We need to rethnk how we create electricty. We are still heating water to spin a turbine. Other than choice of fuel this method is unchanged since the early 1800's.
With increased safety levels, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (a.k.a. LFTRs) would have even better results.
Then, take another step: Consider the Cost-Effectiveness of LFTRs, from construction to safe storage of waste, per Mega-KWH of electricity produced.
Now, what's the best choice, out of these 3 alternatives...?
Baseload is NOT the power that is cheaper.
It is the averaged power required for 24 hours to supply. That 24 hours is picked because that is what large efficient nuclear/coal stations require to start or stop.
It is also defined as:
"Baseload (also base load, or baseload demand) is the minimum amount of power that a utility or distribution company must make available..."
Not "cheap in marginal cost".
IF that were the case, then the renewables would be the baseload by a massive margin.
It isn't, but there we go.
PS you can't turn off a nuclear power station for part of a day. It takes hours to change output, generally a full day or more to go from 0% to 100% or back again. Please stop making mocking the nuclear fluffers so easy.
The public and insurance companies seem to prefer predictable risk over a lower average risk with a bumpier profile. The long-term average risk of nuclear power plants may indeed be lower than the alternatives, but it's a "spiky" kind of risk: occasional big scary events and then decades of quiet.
In investing, a premium is given to a smoother risk profile even if the average long-term payout is lower; and perhaps the same allocation logic and philosophy can apply to power generation. Stability matters.
Table-ized A.I.
And you have to worry about the nuclear figures. The death rate for a city build of the same size would show a very very similar rate of death building it to the hoover dam and almost every other construction "except nuclear". Which, apparently, has never had a death.
Rather odd.
You'd think if they could build a full size nuclear plant with zero casualties, they could manage a large mall without one too, but apparently not, only malls get deaths whilst building.
Does that not sound at least a little bit fishy to you?
so two cowboys, called mr.fossil and mr.nuke both shot their guns straight up
in happiness.
the bullet of mr.fossils gun drops and kills someone.
mr.nukes guns are bigger and the bullets heavier and bigger too. they go .. they haven't droped ... yet
much further
Why is Slashdot now so full of ignorants who understand nothing, you have the AW120 wastes because you tweaked civil power reactors to make Plutonium for bombs ... you didn't need to, but the Green Gang effectively stopped reactor investment in the US for 40 years. You can burn that AW120 wase to AW60 ash with a short half life, that is how you safely get rid of it not by having never-ending court battles.
India, and China are both developing Thorium designs that will do that and perhaps they will sell some to you, like they do everything else.
Idiots, MFG. omb
All of this has been obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells not sold to some lobby group.
The reasons that nuclear is so disliked is not polution, it is danger. When a coal or gas plant blows up, tough luck for anyone inside. When a nuclear plant blows up, tough luck for everyone within many miles.
That, and the fact that we still don't know what to do with the radioactive waste.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
New conditions on nuclear power designs? Why bother? The US hasn't build a new nuclear generator in over 30 years. The terrified low information anti-nuclear groups have enough power to keep the politicians (who only care about getting voted in yet again) from permitting one to be built. Ban a plant, get 3 additional votes, it's a done deal.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
heck, it even emits less radiation than most of the others (flue gases from coal-fired plants emit more than a nuclear station would be allowed to). Now, the residual problems after de-commissioning, well...
Storage of nuclear waste. Now France seems to have the right idea - reprocess it and react it again and again. This cuts down on the total amount of waste too.
But I'd like to see the U.S. and the world move toward thorium cycle power. It's much safer than the BWR designs operating now. And thorium cycle burns the fuel more completely without a lot of nasties left over.
But my understanding is that some of the materials needed to build a nuclear power stations are not common enough to power the world with nuclear power.
If the average nuclear plant has a lifespan of 50 years, and its fuel must be stored safely for 50,000 years, we are making a strange and selfish bargain with future generations on Earth. We don't have safe storage in our own era. What is 1000 x (unknown risk)? Is this a bargain we want to make with the future?
Personally, I believe in a mixed solution. Do something similar to spain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Spain making all new buildings) have mandatory solar PV to cover a large amount of residential usage and then use nuclear to provide the rest while researching other energy sources.
Here's how the trick works - ignore mining, ignore waste, assume a perfect plant for no accidents and no waste and due to a divide by zero error you get something infinitely better than anything else.
It's that sort of counterproductive bullshit that killed the thorium reactor research in the USA and stretched out the time taken to develop the synrok nuclear waste disposal method by about thirty years more than if it had continuous funding. When you have loud idiots pretending something is perfect before it is good enough then it doesn't get to be good enough.
See above. One gram of uranium can replace a thousand kilograms of any chemical fuel.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Yeah, I read about it; thanks for the link, though, and I hope interested people read the article. If you read my comment you'll have noticed I didn't gloss over the fact that mining uranium is problematic, as is coal. Neither one thrills me. Are there ways to improve it? I don't know.
Look, right now _every_ way we know to generate electricity, to take just that one thing, has problems, some of them hefty. Further, we tend to shy away from doing anything even approaching a more complete accounting of various kinds of costs.
There is no such thing as "clean" power. Metals? Gotta mine 'em. Fuel, to run the mining machines. Fuel, to run all the steps of refining, alloying, manufacturing fuel elements; all the electricity used to do anything, ditto all the steps to arrive at building and turning the generators. Check out the process for making cement, for instance. Photovoltaics? Just for grins, backtrack all the ingredients, and come back, tell me how clean it is. Look, we've been playing short-sighted stupid mind games about all this stuff since day one right back to the Industrial Revolution and before about how we get stuff, how we make stuff, what we do with it when we're done with it. And what it costs.
At least with nuclear power (with my previous caveats) the middle part, the part where it generates electricity, is, in today's game, a pretty sweet deal. The getting there, and the cleanup after, is still roughly par with the rest.
You are correct.
With an LFTR, you get these advantages:
1. It uses thorium-232 (plentiful supplies out there!) dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salts as fuel, something that is cheap to make.
2. You can reprocess spent uranium fuel rods and even plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons to be dissolved in molten sodium fluoride salts as reactor fuel, eliminating a major nuclear waste storage problem.
3. It doesn't require an expensive pressurized reactor vessel.
4. Shutting down the chain reaction is just dumping the liquid fuel out of the reactor into a holding tank.
5. By using closed-cycle Brayton turbines to generate power, you eliminate the need for expensive cooling towers or locate the reactor near a large body of water for cooling purposes.
6. The radioactive waste generated is very small, and only has a radioactive half-life of under 300 years. This means cheap waste disposal--if the nuclear medicine industry doesn't grab it first!
In short, the US Department of Energy should right now do an aggressive LFTR development program to commercialize the technology, which will make it possible to phase out many of the obsolete coal-fired power plants in the eastern USA.
As long as there is a remote chance we'll all get irradiated, who cares if the poor have to die underground in the dark?
The comparison between two old technologies doesn't give any clues for the future. The argument to continue using nuclear energy since there are better energy sources like solar and wind power. Germany shut down eight nuclear reactors after the Fukushima accident. The cost of electric energy did decrease and Germany exports more electrical energy than ever before, despite Cassandras that it would all break down without nuclear. The comparison should be between nuclear and a mix of renewable and modern, efficient gas power plants.
I'd like to point out that the world's coverage by buildings is significantly less than 1%, or even what you'd need to satisfy 100% of our electrical needs, as opposed to total power demand(heating, transportation, chemical engineering, etc...)
As an aside, I once calced that if every car in the USA transitioned to an electric vehicle, the average household usage of electricity would go up 50% - using average EV miles per kwh, average household electricity usage, average miles, etc...
Also, not every building is in a spot where solar panels would work. Sometimes they're obscured by other buildings, geographical features, just too far north(especially in the winter), etc...
We want a MIX of power. Energy storage at the scales you'd need is simply too expensive with no end to that in sight. Realistically speaking, without said storage you're not going to see more than 20% of total electricity usage being solar. Day use of electricity is ~50% higher than night. Day=3, night =2, increase=1, 1/5=20%
I don't read AC A human right
Don't forget the increased capital cost for your solar thermal plant because you need to:
1. Build and fill a large enough salt facility to hold the necessary amount of hot salt to provide continuous power. You're looking at a minimum 12 hours supply, 16 would be more likely, with 36 being a definite option so they can last through a cloudy day.
2. Build approximately 3X as many reflectors in order to provide the heat production to keep the salt at operating temperature while running the turbines 24 hours a day at a steady rate.
3. Buy/lease even more land to put your reflectors on.
I don't read AC A human right
Might as well be. In the word of Garret Hardin, stop looking at power production in terms of shortage. Look at it from the other direction: a 'longage,' which means too much demand for the available supply. Why do we assume we, humanity, society, governments, etc, is required to meet the demand? A lot of power generated is used for things like cooking, heating, air conditioning, making medicine, educating children, and feeding bunnies. All nice things. But a lot of energy is generated so some jerk can speed down my street 2 times an hour on a screaming motorcycle, so yahoos can watch stupid tv shows about Kim Kardasian, or lurk on websites like /.
If we cut out non-essential energy use, the skies would be clear and people would go outside, meet other people, re-learn to socialize, and, once Civilization Collapse occurs, become Civil again.
In the meantime, let's recognize most energy use for what it is: para-masturbatory predation, destroying the ecosystem for low-life entertainment.
Proposal: make electric and gas bills cheap for enough to not freeze in the winter, cook food, wash cloths, etc. , with a rapidly increasing charge to prod people into using less energy.
That is my rant, and I'm sticking too it.
Save the bunnies!
Anonymous coward: what? you expect me to sign this thing?
Consider either of the twin towers up against the deaths from Fukushima. Heck, look at the difference between plane strikes on non-reinforced buildings(twin towers) and a semi-reinforced building like the pentagon.
A nuclear reactor is an even smaller target than the pentagon, the fuel pool is far harder than even that, while the reactor's containment building is far more reinforced than the Pentagon.
Remember that Fukushima happened in the midst of a earthquake and tsunami. Emergency services were strained and broken from that. If it had just been the reactor, it would have been easy to get supplimental cooling there.
Doesn't mean that I don't want to replace the current reactors with newer, safer ones. Fukushima opened in 1971, making it older than TMI(1974).
Basically, I'd LOVE to see the terrorists attempt to target a nuclear reactor. Odds are they'll do less damage that way than attacking pretty much any city center.
I don't read AC A human right
"Although the concentration of Uranium and Thorium in coal is extremely low, a typical 1000 MW coal fired plant burns about 4 million tons of coal every year. This results in an unregulated release to the environment of 5.2 tons of Uranium along with 12.8 tons of Thorium from a single coal plant each year. This does not include the large amounts of radium, radon, polonium and potassium-40 that is also released from coal plants."
There are 7000 coal power plants in the world with many more planned making alternative energy solutions completely insignificant. Consider that in the US almost twice as much uranium is released into the environment by coal plants than is used, stored in fused glass and buried by nuclear plants!
Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish!!!
So sad...
Of course those dam failures contributed to more deaths than nuclear accidents! But I said deaths is not a good measure. Didn't you read?
Put it this way: Amount of land rendered uninhabitable by dam failures is 0. Amount of land rendered uninhabitable by nuclear accidents is 2800 sq km. Therefore dams failures are less disastrous than nuclear power plant failures.
Or, put it another way: Damage from all dam failures ever is very roughly $20 billion. Damages from Fukushima alone is roughly $60 billion. Dam failures are less damaging than nuclear accidents.
Finally, the Johnstown dam failure occurred in 1889, long before we had nuclear power. Ought to account for that by looking at damages on an annualized basis. Doing that shows dams in an even better light when compared to nuclear power plants. Might also consider that technology has come a long ways since 1889. As for Banqiao Dam, that, like Chernobyl, suffered from reckless top down dictatorial Communism which forced through substandard design and construction over the protests of engineers.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
The storage solution for the waste is to gather it and dissolve it into molten salt to extract the wasted energy from it and make electricity. As is described in this generally ignored slashdot submission although it is a timely topic and has not been directly featured on slashdot before, video. Yeah, that one.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes?
very dubious claim.
http://thoughtmaybe.com/the-nuclear-comeback/
Goes the sound of sarcasm, floating along in harmless steam clouds generated by cooling towers, right over your head.
That's ridiculous. Nuclear power hasn't finished killing people with the accidents that have already happened, and won't for countless lifetimes.
Somebody please hang a sign on the sun that says "STOP ME BEFORE I KILL AGAIN!
That TED debate has a quote from Stuart Brand that stries me as very insightful, going straight to the heart of the matter:
"I am not so much pro-nuclear as I am pro-arithmetic."
The "sunny days when the wind is blowing energy" folks just won't do the arithmetic.
So, I've started calling them "Arithmetic Deniers".
...it is the power of Satan! This is what keeps Hell so hot!
If anyone uses nuclear power, even 1 watt, they are going straight to damnation.
Instead, you must all use my church-approved solar panels, guaranteed to float up to the sun with you when the Rapture comes...
"...But hey, if you want to discredit one of the most credible AGW celebrities in the world go right ahead..."
That's true.
He is a criminal, a liar and a fraud. All his utterance have been disproven numerous times - like his assertion that the sea level rise will accelerate and reach 250ft. But in AGW company, that does indeed make him one of the most credible celebrities. Compared, for instance, to Mann...
I must have struck a nerve. Well, I suppose it could have been the KFTRC remark. I will have to use it more often. Regardless, I'm not against nuclear power, but I'm not blind to its hazards and the very very long term consequences our descendants tens of thousands of years from now will be dealing with for what we have done with nuclear power and weapons over the past hundred. We must be very conservative in how we use and deploy it.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
How about this for a LONG TERM plan?
1) Start phasing out fossil fuels as much as possible and replacing them with renewables like solar and wind etc.
2) Build nuclear plants that produce Hyrdorgen at the plant
3) Run everything else (cars, power plants, industry, etc) on Hydrogen.
4) Once the Hydrogen economy is built, start phsaing out nuclear and replacing it with a wide mix of renewables.
People always say that the problem with Hydrogen is that it takes enegry to produce and there is no delivery infrastructure. But nuclear can generate tons of electricity on-site to make the Hydrogen, and the infrastructure can be built slowly - start with large industrys (aviation, factories, heavy equipment) and gradually expand the network to towns (fueling/"gas" stations) and finally homes. Hydrogen is the cleanest fukle in the universe and the most abundant element, and they are constantly discovering new ways to separate it. It also doesn't stop on cloudy/windless days.
So the solution in this instance is to not use molten salt reactors in Alaska. You are trotting out the tired argument that this solution doesn't cover 100% of the use cases therefore it should be thrown in the trash. This is highly illogical. You use the best tool for the job. That datacenter you mentioned is running real servers instead of commodity desktop pc's. To follow your line of reasoning then desktop pc's should be thrown away and everyone should have a server at home so that in the event they need 10,000 simultaneous email connections they will be able to do so. Do you not see the silliness in this line of reasoning? If a power plant needs alot of sun to function then you obviously don't build it somewhere that doesn't have that! Look at how absurd it would be if there was only one vehicle available for any task. We'd all be driving greyhound busses with 60 foot flatbeds attached! Luckily it seats 100 passengers and all their homes comfortably and with a variety of onboard attachments can drill a well, haul coal to the coal plant, AND pave the highway at the same time it is bulldozing, tunneling, and landscaping it! Now that I think about it, from a preteen boy's perspective this would be a pretty badass vehicle. From a more realistic veiwpoint though all of that is entirely useless when all we are actually gonna do with it is haul one guy and his man-purse to work twice a day.
USE THE BEST TOOL FOR THE JOB! Why people have to constantly repeat that to the supposedly better educated slashdot denizen though I will never know. It makes me sad.