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Stung By Scandal, South Korea Weighs Up Cost of Curbing Nuclear Power
mdsolar writes in about an ongoing scandal in South Korea that has rocked their nuclear power program. "It started with a few bogus safety certificates for cables shutting a handful of South Korean nuclear reactors. Now, the scandal has snowballed, with 100 people indicted and Seoul under pressure to rethink its reliance on nuclear power. A shift away from nuclear, which generates a third of South Korea's electricity, could cost tens of billions of dollars a year by boosting imports of liquefied natural gas, oil or coal. Although helping calm safety concerns, it would also push the government into a politically sensitive debate over whether state utilities could pass on sharply higher power bills to households and companies. Gas, which makes up half of South Korea's energy bill while accounting for only a fifth of its power, would likely be the main substitute for nuclear, as it is considered cleaner than coal and plants can be built more easily near cities."
It is South Korea. If you have a culture that will fuck up safety certificates at nuclear plants, do you think they are suddenly going to be better with natural gas plants?
Fix the fucking culture and kill the corruption. The technology was never the problem.
Seriously, the scandal is less of an issue with nuclear power, it could have happened to ANY of the generating systems they want to switch to as well. Privatizing power generation doesn't work. Its been proven by TEPCO, in the US, and now in South Korea, because the companies will skirt the law anywhere they can as long as they can until they finally get caught. Don't switch to fossil fuels like Gas or Coal, keep the Nuclear and take the plants away from the corporations and put them under strict government control.
I don't get it either. This is a problem of corruption, not technology.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I'm not so sure the right wants nuclear. They've been letting the left crush it by proxy for decades.
Long term coal is not the answer, but current technology nuclear power is not either. We'd never make any progress on nuclear power itself if there is no incentive in pushing new generation technologies. Let's stop subsidizing nuclear power accident liability costs: either you manage to design it to be safe enough to be privately insureable, or it's not safe enough to get built.
You mean exactly like hydro does as a matter of design? From the wiki: "However, the dam flooded archaeological and cultural sites and displaced some 1.3 million people, and is causing significant ecological changes, including an increased risk of landslides."
Just build the nuclear plants in remote locations with an unpopulated safety buffer around them. Prohibit people from settling within that buffer. Best case (if there's no accident) nuclear is better than hydro because local wildlife and access to archeological sites is unaffected. Worst case (if there is an accident) it's slightly better than hydro - the worst of the radiation will disappear in a few decades, while a dam's catch-basin will always be there as long as the dam is in operation.
Why the double standard where it's acceptable with hydro but not with nuclear? Because water is safer than radiation? Drowning is one of the leading causes of accidental death, and the death and destruction from the one major hydroelectric dam failure far, far exceed anything from Chernobyl and Fukushima combined. If that's your argument against nuclear power, then you should be even more strongly against hydroelectric power.
Sure thing. We'll just build a few coal plants instead. They're privately insurable despite killing people and destroying the environment when operating normally, since unlike nuclear no one expects them to pay for their externalities. Or we could build a hundred large solar plants, which together equal about one reactor as long as sun shines from cloudless skies. That shouldn't require any subsidies, and if it does, it's okay because it's not nuclear. Of course, they'll still need those coal plants for backup, but that's okay because dying from microparticle-induced cancer is a lot better than dying from radiation-induced cancer, amirite?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Ah, the scientifically illiterate nukefan. Always focusing on single, small ideas and unable to see the bigger picture, or understand how we have already solved these problems.
Installing renewable capacity isn't just about building wind, wave, hyro, solar thermal, geothermal and biomass plants, or installing solar PV on buildings. It's about reducing energy consumption by making buildings more efficient and building a smart grid that can manage the load and store energy.
It's actually cheaper to save energy than add new capacity of any kind, and it makes everyone's lives better too. Some people baulk at the idea of anything so socialist, but just keep in mind that you are going to pay for it one way or another. Your choice is give the money to a power company to build some big plant that pollutes and damages your health while lining their pockets, or spend less money making your own life better.
Coal and gas do have a role to play as interim measures before we get very high levels of renewables, and even beyond that point to help smooth capacity. The caveat is that we need to build clean coal and gas plants with carbon capture. It works by capturing all the carbon and other emissions from the plant and storing them underground long term, much like nuclear waste. Of course, it has many of the same problems as nuclear waste does, but being realistic we will need that kind of bridge in the medium term.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC