Lots to unpack here. For the record I am pro-nuclear.
Mini and micro nuclear systems are terrifying. One of nuclear power's big problems is the potential for low probability/high loss events. Scattering thousands of small reactors around the countryside vastly increases the likelihood of one of these occurring. As does putting them under the management of anybody but a consummate professional. What we need is a few large reactors that we can inspect every inch of the construction and operation of. We have a power grid for distributing the output. Much safer than trying to regulate, inspect, and secure thousands of small, independent reactors.
All that said, I am excited to see some of the new reactor designs getting off the ground.
NEI is an industry-slanted website that's as biased in its own direction as Green Peace would be to the opposite. It's good at providing context-free factoids that, while strictly true, have little to do with the truth. Take this one for example. It's true that the total mass of nuclear waste produced to date is less than that produced by a coal-fired power plant in an hour. For a given value of nuclear waste. And ignoring that the two types of waste are vastly different and that one is much more dangerous. They'd have done a better job pointing out the fact coal kills far more people than nuclear ever has for far less energy and that you'll take ten times the radiation does living next to a coal-fired plant than you will to a nuclear reactor.
Fuel recycling makes good sense so long as you can keep people from weaponizing the transuranic by-products. The potential for concentrating Plutonium and its friends and diverting them to weapons programs makes nuclear fuel recycling a touchy subject.
For a given value of "short-term". Existing resources could run our entire power grid for millennia. The climate crisis that fossil fuels has produced needs fixing within decades. OK, decades ago, but you get the sense of immediacy. We can implement nuclear now or we can suck back another few decades of CO2 emissions as the sea levels rise. Those may not be palatable options to you but they're what's on the table for our energy-hungry society.
That should terrify you. It means that you're surrounded by an ageing fleet of nuclear power plants that were built largely using slide rules by the same luminaries that gave you DDT, leaded gasoline, and thalidomide. You should be championing the construction of fast neutron reactors that would allow us to simultaneously remove old, last century reactors from service, reduce carbon emissions, and destroy much of the existing nuclear waste that we've already generated. It's clear that you don't like nuclear power, but building nuclear "incinerators" that consume nuclear waste is the only sensible solution for that mess. Sticking it in a hole in the ground is incredibly unreliable and just begging to make it the next generation's problem.
(March 10, 2022 at 7:34 pm)Spongebob Wrote: For those who seem wary of the safety of future nuclear power projects, take a look at this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxXlD4e-wTE
Mini and micro nuclear systems are terrifying. One of nuclear power's big problems is the potential for low probability/high loss events. Scattering thousands of small reactors around the countryside vastly increases the likelihood of one of these occurring. As does putting them under the management of anybody but a consummate professional. What we need is a few large reactors that we can inspect every inch of the construction and operation of. We have a power grid for distributing the output. Much safer than trying to regulate, inspect, and secure thousands of small, independent reactors.
All that said, I am excited to see some of the new reactor designs getting off the ground.
(March 12, 2022 at 12:23 am)Rev. Rye Wrote: Also worth noting, America’s entire nuclear power program has made about as much waste in 60 years as the average coal plant emits in less than an hour. Yes, you read that correctly, our entire fleet of nuclear power plants creates .0002% of the waste of a single coal plant.
And the kicker is that a lot of that waste (96%, specifically) can still be recycled. and we know this because France has been doing exactly that for decades.
NEI is an industry-slanted website that's as biased in its own direction as Green Peace would be to the opposite. It's good at providing context-free factoids that, while strictly true, have little to do with the truth. Take this one for example. It's true that the total mass of nuclear waste produced to date is less than that produced by a coal-fired power plant in an hour. For a given value of nuclear waste. And ignoring that the two types of waste are vastly different and that one is much more dangerous. They'd have done a better job pointing out the fact coal kills far more people than nuclear ever has for far less energy and that you'll take ten times the radiation does living next to a coal-fired plant than you will to a nuclear reactor.
Fuel recycling makes good sense so long as you can keep people from weaponizing the transuranic by-products. The potential for concentrating Plutonium and its friends and diverting them to weapons programs makes nuclear fuel recycling a touchy subject.
(March 11, 2022 at 5:59 pm)Jehanne Wrote: Like fossil fuels, nuclear fuel is non-renewable. It's just another short-term fix.
For a given value of "short-term". Existing resources could run our entire power grid for millennia. The climate crisis that fossil fuels has produced needs fixing within decades. OK, decades ago, but you get the sense of immediacy. We can implement nuclear now or we can suck back another few decades of CO2 emissions as the sea levels rise. Those may not be palatable options to you but they're what's on the table for our energy-hungry society.
(March 11, 2022 at 10:10 pm)Jehanne Wrote: No new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States since the 70s, and I hope that such will continue to be the case.
That should terrify you. It means that you're surrounded by an ageing fleet of nuclear power plants that were built largely using slide rules by the same luminaries that gave you DDT, leaded gasoline, and thalidomide. You should be championing the construction of fast neutron reactors that would allow us to simultaneously remove old, last century reactors from service, reduce carbon emissions, and destroy much of the existing nuclear waste that we've already generated. It's clear that you don't like nuclear power, but building nuclear "incinerators" that consume nuclear waste is the only sensible solution for that mess. Sticking it in a hole in the ground is incredibly unreliable and just begging to make it the next generation's problem.
