[yazriel]

The article is completely unprofessional. The tone itself is very one-sided - which is bad enough. However, the factual omissions are ridiculous.

Here are a few examples:

the area used for wind turbines is large, but it is usually re-usable for agriculture, or increasingly off shore

official nuclear death are low - but there is a lot of dispute on the "long tail" of long term deaths from the big nuclear disasters of Ukraine and Japan

they (correctly) mention the environmental cost of materials for renewable energy, but ignore the similar pollution of Uranium mining and enrichment

4th generation nuclear reactor are still not even past the design stage. How can anyone even put a price tag on these ?

3rd generation nuclear reactor are more expensive than claimed in the article. The real prices of real reactors in the real world in the past decade are x3 the expected costs.

There is simply not enough uranium for a full build out of 3rd generation nuclear. 4th generation will be required, and it is still in the r&d stage

There is no mention of the huge problem of load-following when using nuclear plants. You cant just assume 90% CF and then ignore this.

Most importantly, IMHO, they completely ignore the learning curve for solar & wind. This is a proven trend, over last decades, appears to be set to continue, and completely changes the discussion.

And on and on....

My own views are pro-nuclear AND pro-renewable. But this requires a scientific and accurate discussion!

[posnet]

> official nuclear death are low - but there is a lot of dispute on the "long tail" of long term deaths from the big nuclear disasters of Ukraine and Japan

Fukushima happened too soon, and it will be a long time before the results of that disaster on the healthy of the surrounding people can be properly analysed.

Chernobyl on the other hand has been studied extensively and considering the scale of the disaster the toll on human life, including increase in cancer rates is lower than expected at the time of the accident.

In particular the Chernobyl Forum's 2005 report found that the increased incidence of thyroid cancer in children had caused 5000 additional cases due to the release of radioactive iodine from Chernobyl.

These are seen as the only additional deaths due to radiation exposure other than the estimated 2000 caused due to directed exposure to clean up workers at the site itself.

You can find an summary of the finding on the World Health organisations website, as well as read the report directly.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/

https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/chernobyl.pdf

[BurningFrog]

Those are very high numbers.

> estimated 2000 caused due to directed exposure to clean up workers at the site itself

The more common numbers you see are under 50.

This Slate article goes over the uncertainty: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2...

[acqq]

> There is simply not enough uranium for a full build out of 3rd generation nuclear

This is really important and is often avoided to be discussed: even if the 10% of all world's energy needs are covered by the nuclear energy at this moment, we know we're using some 70 Ktons of uranium per year. Then to use only nuclear energy we'd need 700 Ktons per year. Currently identified uranium resources total 5.5 Mtons, which would last for less than 8 years of such use. Even if those aren't the exact numbers, that are the orders of magnitude.

That's why the breeder reactors would be needed as a "solution," and at the moment they are still experimental, especially regarding the fulfillment of their major promises.

The current state of FNRs:

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generat...

The two only "commercial" plants currently planned are in Russia (from mid-2020s, U+Pu nitride fuel) and China (from 2028, U-Pu-Zr fuel).

Some problems with the breeders are mentioned in

http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr08.pdf

[bcoates]

It's ignored because it doesn't matter. Mineral reserves only count ore that can be extracted economically at current prices; at current prices we have sufficient uranium for well longer than it takes to find and extract more (so there is no economic incentive to look).

If usage increased greatly and there was some prospect of greatly increased prices lots (hundreds of times current reserves) of marginal ores become available.

This doesn't hurt the economics of uranium fission for power because fuel prices aren't a significant cost. (this is why it's so hard to make breeders economical -- the main benefit is waste disposal and it's hard to compete with a hole in the ground on price.)

[beat]

Only thorium breeders seem feasible for commercial production. Plutonium breeders are terribly unsafe.

[paulsutter]

Could you clarify the "huge problem of load-following" for nuclear power plants? My understanding is that it's mostly a licensing issue rather than a technical issue, and in practice hasn't had a big impact on CF[1]

[1] https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-news/2011/29-2/nea-news-29-2-lo...

"Most of the currently operating Generation II nuclear reactors were designed to have strong manoeuvring capabilities. Nuclear power plants in France and Germany operate in load-following mode."

"The economic consequences of load-following are mainly related to the reduction of the load factor... In France, the impact of load-following on the average unit capacity factor is sometimes estimated at about 1.2%."

"Licensing of load-following is specific to each country. In France and in Germany, for instance,load-following is considered early in the licensing process, and no further authorisation needs to be obtained by the utility to operate in manoeuvring regime. In other countries, load-following restrictions apply: for example in the United States, automatic load-following is not authorised"

[barney54]

Load following is a technical issues--nukes are limited in the amount they can load-follow. But winds cannot load follow at all and solar can help some, but doesn't necessarily help cover peak daily load. For example, yesterday in California the system peak load was at 5:49 pm, but solar PV peak was at 9:44 am. data: http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/20151102_DailyRenewa...

Nukes aren't great for load following, but they can load follow some--which is better than wind and solar. To really load follow, you need hydro or nat gas turbines (though nat gas combined cycle can load follow).

[datenwolf]

There are also physical limitations with load following. In a fission reactor you're dealing with a steady state of influx of fission products (by the primary nuclear reaction) and the delayed decay of those products. In fact a large portion of the heat generated by a fission reactor comes from the delayed decay of the fission products. Furthermore some of the fission products are very efficient neutron catchers; notably Xe135 which is so efficient in catching neutrons, that its buildup in a reactor is called "xenon poisoning"; the accumulation of neutron catchers in a fission reaction is called "neutron poisoning".

What this comes down to is, when you ramp down a fission reactor, there's some internal inertia in its internal workings, that will actively prevent it for some time from being able to ramped up in a safely manner. The quicker the shutdown, the larger the amount of neutron poisoning and the longer you have to wait before ramping it up again. This leaves you with a nice second order differential equation coupling the power output modulation factor with the period of that power modulation.

The period of the power modulation is 24h, following the daily load swings, so for a given reactor that gives you only so much load following capacity to stay within safe margins.

[PolLambert]

Load-following is both license and technical related in a chicken-and-egg-way. You need to incorporate load-following into your reactor design. More specifically: the speed with which a reactor can modulate its output while staying within nominal operational bounds is a design parameter. If licensing doesn't allow load-following, you're not going to give your reactor that feature.

[yk]

Thing is to reduce the electrical output of a reactor, you can either reduce the thermal output, but then the entire reactor core needs to cool, or you have to reduce the efficiency of the electricity generation. In the first case we are talking about a timescale of days and in the second case you are burning fuel for nothing. So NPRs are not designed to do much of the second.

[olau]

The real problem is that to get anything resembling economical use out of a nuclear plant, you need to output 100% almost all the time. New plants are too damn expensive to just let them sit there.

[ageofwant]

You assert that an article of this nature needs to be "professional", why is that ? It was written for the great mass of laypeople that (supposedly) holds the power over our nuclear future. It is intended to challenge the ongoing anti-nuclear narrative and re-educate. It achieves those aims admirably.

While your criticisms may be arguably valid for a different audience they are irrelevant here.

[epistasis]

I didn't mean to downvote you but accidentally clicked on the button and can't go back.

However, I do disagree with your point. I'm pro-nuclear to the degree that it's economical, and found the article to be somewhat insipid due to grandparent's reasons.

Just as there are plenty of people that are irrationally anti-nuclear, being irrationally pro-nuclear is no better at all.

[cb18]

Most importantly, IMHO, they completely ignore the learning curve for solar & wind. This is a proven trend, over last decades, appears to be set to continue, and completely changes the discussion.

By 'learning curve,' I guess you mean the rapidly increasing efficiency curves these technologies are on, and in the case of solar(maybe wind as well, not sure) exponentially so.

I certainly agree with you, this is the most important factor in any discussion of current and future energy generation, and carries great weight for why we should all be highly skeptical and indeed hostile towards any thing like future developments of highly destructive energy projects like fracking, or potentially highly destructive like nuclear.

Things like fracking and nuclear carry huge unaccounted for costs that are totally absent from the bottom lines of the companies developing them. It is absolutely absurd and criminal that fracking companies in particular are allowed to run roughshod over our shared environmental heritage creating negative effects that may last for generations. And it is all the more tragic when one looks at the development curve of renewables and applies a little foresight.

Fracking's huge costs in the form of negative externalities are quite apparent to anyone wanting to look for them today, but nuclear fits quite well into this line of thinking as well. Why would we want to burden our grandchildren with the hassle of nuclear waste?

If we don't clean up our act, it's hard to see how future generations aren't going to look back on us as party guests that showed up on this planet, made a huge mess, poured rum in the aquarium and killed the fish, and left without cleaning it all up.

It may sound a little pollyanna-ish, but as you say, the evidence bears it out, if everybody can just chill for a minute or two and maybe look for ways to make their current energy use more efficient, we're on the cusp of having more than enough energy supplied from sources that are harmonious with our environment rather than destructive of it.

[switchbak]

Equating nuclear (in all it's forms) and fracking is not particularly helpful. They're very different approaches, with radically different considerations, not to mention that some reactor designs can actually consume existing stockpiles of nuclear waste as fuel.

I'm as big a critic of fracking as you're going to find, but being overly emotional and applying the fallacy of equivocation isn't helping anything here - and might be hurting if the appropriate application of modern nuclear technology can actually solve many of our issues (or at least help). For that we do need solid analysis which does take into account the "huge costs in the form of negative externalities" - which is bound to come from outside the pro-nuclear industry.

[bigbugbag]

I concur, this read as some sort of PR propaganda push according to an agenda.

it fails to take into account what actually happens with costs running several times the initial estimates, overdue decommission with no money to pay for it. Look at Olkiluoto 3 in Finland, a first of its kind third gen nuclear plant: building start in late 2005 for 3 billions euros with a starting operational date in 2009. delayed to 2011, then 2012, 2013 and 2014. now it is 2018 with a cost a little under 9 billions.

Then we also have past example of 4th gen reactor, superphenix in France, initial cost under a billion euros, actual building cost and maintenance around 12 billions + 2.5 billions for decommission. building started in 1982, operational in 1984 with an actual load under 10% until a first incident forces to stop it for 2 years, restarts and manage a 11% load early 1989 until another incident forces to purge 400 tons of liquid sodium and stop the plant again, then it restart again in 1994 with a load of 0.1% of the nominal capacity than a change of mission from producing electricity to experimental lab then same year another incident which stops it again for half a year, after a one year hiatus it is restarted and gets its best year of production over 30% load in 1996 and then is stopped for decennial maintenance and decision is made to cut the loss and stop it definitively.

These are not "run numbers" but real world examples of dealing with experimental nuclear plants, which is something else than mass deployment over a whole country as primary source of energy.

Putting unreasonable expectations on nuclear plants as this article does is a recipe for major disaster and public disappointment, this is not helping the nuclear energy production nor the energy issue itself.