Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant?
Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw...
Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP.
Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not survive the tsunami because said tsunami overcame the tidal wall in front of it, and then the backup generators got flooded. But for that one event, if the generators were placed up on higher ground, the outcome would have been so much different.
I have first-hand knowledge, due to..
1) Knowing the area. I lived in my Japanese father-in-law's mountain house, situated 1.5km out of Miyakoji-machi, Tamura-shi. That town was just inside the 20km evacuation zone from the power plant, the mountain house was just outside at 21km - myself and my family lived in our own house in the outskirts of Koriyama city.
2) My (now deceased) Japanese father-in-law was president of the Hitachi subsiduary company which built Fukushima Dai-ich No.4 reactor, which wasn't operating at the time of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami but did suffer an explosion thought due to hydrogen gas from the spent fuel situated in the Spent Fuel Pool in its upper level.
3) Mentioned in point (1) above, I owned a house in Tobu New Town on the Eastern outskirts of Koriyama city, and I was working at Flextronics in Koriyama at the time the M9 quake occurred - things got a tad 'exciting' at the time. I should write a book.
My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account - in Fukushima Dai-ichi's case, for some reason (possibly financial?), it was decided that the tsunami barrier was sufficient (it wasn't) for the job, and at some point in time it was decided that placing backup generators underneath the buildings was sufficient - that unfortunately did not turn out to be the case :/
And lastly, I still fully support the idea of nuclear power.
> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account
I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s.
Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And the latter is something that might be tolerable in less densely populated countries or locations (Chernobyl), but in very densely populated ones it would be a major catastrophe.
And so far we've only seen disaster scenarios caused by human error and force of nature, and there's a third one (human malice), which thankfully hasn't happened yet, but which is impossible to guard against.
So my conclusion from reality is that no, we can't make nuclear power completely safe: The consequences of a disaster are too great, the monetary incentives are all wrong (it's not the nuclear companies which pay in case of the disaster, the state takes over; and the costs of the risk are not factored in into the actual running costs; and safety measures are expensive, so economics will always lead to, say, putting the backup generators NOT on the hill, because that would have cost more).
And then there's the problem that in some countries using nuclear energy and producing nuclear waste, the problem of actually storing that waste safely for the next few centuries is still not solved. Even after 50 years of producing it. And that is just insane.
I wish we could make nuclear safe. It would be a great way to reduce carbon emissions. Looking at reality, I can only conclude that we can't, and it's wishful thinking. (Yes, I know, that opinion is not popular, and the nuclear fanboys will be all over me, but so be it).
> in Fukushima Dai-ichi's case, for some reason (possibly financial?), it was decided that the tsunami barrier was sufficient (it wasn't) for the job,
Plate tectonics was not understood or scientifically described until 65-67. It was not a widely accepted theory until later, at least the 70s. By that point, Fukushima had already been permitted and built.
Without plate tectonics to create the plate shift earthquake which resulted in the tsunami which caused the disaster, the only mechanism to create tsunamis known was underground rockfalls from steep slopes. Afaik the builders of the plant studied the bathymetry around the area, and saw limited risk of tsunamis.
The primitive science of the time ruled out the possibility of a tsunami overcoming a tsunami wall that was X feet tall. So they built a tsunami wall that was X+k feet tall, and called it a day. When later scientific theory showed that larger tsunamis were not just possible, but inevitable, the plant was not retrofitted to deal with the new reality. Oops.
I grew up near Chernobyl. My parents still work on CNPP (which was closed in 2000 but still needs personnel).
In my opinion nuclear is the only reallistic solution to solve global warming. Per kw produced it is safer than even solar or wind and modern reactors are even safer.
I now live in bay area and have high end solar panels. While this is a nice thing, looking at their output - it is just not enough (covers our family consumption at about 70%, this is house plus electric cars, but, obviously, not including products consumed and long distance travel. And this is California)
I'm pretty pro-nuclear. Nuclear power has proven to be extremely safe relative to the alternatives. In this specific case though, to say that there was one design flaw is failing to go beyond the first why.
The second why is "why does the reactor require an uninterrupted supply of electrical power in order to not melt down? Gen 2 nuclear power is inherently dangerous, and is only made safe through active safety systems. If the reactor trips, the cooling pumps must run or decay heat will cause a meltdown. Gen 3 reactors tend to incorporate a lot more passive safety systems or at least ones that don't require electricity.
* building reactors in areas with severe earthquakes and tsunamis was the main design flaw
* flood protection too low, even though this was known
* backup-generators not safe against flooding
* loss of outside electricity over a long period of time -> powerlines were not working, other sources of electricity on the grid were offline due to earthquake
* too long time to restore electricity, we are talking about many MWs for cooling and other purposes -> generators were difficult to bring in with further problems making them work
* various damage due to earthquake on reactors, buildings and infrastructure around the plant
* too much spent fuel in pools, required large amount of electricity for cooling
* spent fuel pools high in the buildings, hard to reach
* no cooling capability in case of days-long loss of electricity -> then needs to be cooled with seawater pumped with vehicles with concrete pumps (which were flown in from remote places, even from the US) -> caused structural damages to buildings and spread radiation
* no idea what to do with the contaminated cooling water
* no protection in main buildings against the explosions that happened
* no technology existed for a decade or more to deal with molten cores
* ineffective security/safety process -> the plant had checks a few months before the accident with no consequences
* unwillingness to invest major amounts of money into upgrades
* life extension for outdated reactors, due to economical pressure
* no independent controlling instances for the nuclear industry
That may all very well be true, but it still means that the power plant was unsafe.
All the time nuclear power fans tell us that "this time we've learned and current design are safe".
And all the time bad things happen and they have to admit "well, not when X happens". Or "not when A and then B happens".
Just as you did here. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived an earthquake, but the tsunami isn't a freak accident, it's actually a common cause thing.
It's nice that Fukushima could have survived both the earthquake and the tsunami, had it been built differently.
But it hadn't. And that's why all this "This time everything is safe" is just as unbelievable as over the last decades.
Now, you can certainly say that decarbonization is worth the risk, and I might even be on the fence about it.
But please don't insult the general public's intelligence by ever telling us again that nuclear power is safe and it was only those stupid Russians who totally mismanaged their power plant.
> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account
To be honest, you could probably make that argument for anything under question in any scenario. But even if we were to skip the logical loopholes ("We took it into account, but we decided the benefits outweighed the costs because of <fill in any reason>"), let's just look at the raw numbers or simply just historical facts. Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries? OK, take one step back. Would those disasters have occurred if "all disaster scenarios [were] taken into account"?
The reality is that we have no one good and practical energy solution for the world. And even though I believe that there's no practical solution that can beat a tried and tested solution like nuclear in terms of efficiency, I also believe that there's been no tried and tested solution that's been worse in terms of failure.
The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard opposition of the locals, which leads, at least in a democracy, to a political compromise for the location (to see this in action, look at the story for long term storage in Germany). If I have to chose between nuclear power and democracy, my vote is on the latter.
Your post makes it sound like Fukushima failed in a catastrophically unsafe manner. I think it’s important to be explicit about the casualties that resulted from the disaster. The death toll currently stands at... maybe 1. A plant worker died of lung cancer in September 2018–over 7 years after the incident—and the government thinks it might have been caused by the plant.
My opinion is that you might underestimate the magnitude of potential nuclear accidents. I think that Germany's decision to decommission over time their nuclear power plants was pretty well studied. Please see: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/...
Let me argue that there's at least one more design flaw: backup generators are generally not very reliable. So for any given plant, there's a comparatively high risk that they don't work when you need them. This risk is non trivial even when the generators are well taken care of (both maintenance and regular test runs) but it's very easy to skimp on the tests.
My knowledge is from another industry that relies heavily on backup generators.
And yet, very few companies (in the U.S. at least) want to build them. It's because the worst case scenario they're planning for is very bad indeed, so they have to spend all this expense to keep it from happening. Compared to every other renewable energy technology, it is more risky and has a much higher cost to get up and running.
And that's setting aside the other problem which is that many of the countries that are still growing, and will need new, clean sources of power are countries that don't have as much nuclear expertise to begin with. And some of them are countries that the West has tried to actively keep from having nuclear capability.
Better solar, wind, etc., has fewer risks than better nuclear tech in the long run.
Also the generators were originally situated in a raised location but had been moved to the ground level after their installation. If the generators had not been moved they would have functioned through the tsunami.
Even if you were right the spent fuel ponds were not safe. Just let an airplane crash there - the reactor may survive it the ponds will not and they may very well be the bigger problem. The amount of radioactivity stored in these ad-hoc structures globally is staggering. Increasing the problem by further investing in nuclear is not a good idea.
How many times do we have to hear this "1 in 10,000 year accident!" Argument (3? This guy wants 4!) Before we realize that the idiots designing nuclear power plants don't understand probability?
I am flabbergasted that some commenters here argue against nuclear because of waste and accidents, while ignoring that
- coal produce radioactive waste too
- it kills a lot more persons (without taking into account global warning) due to air pollution
- the economic cost of nuclear may be underestimated, but this is nothing
compared to the economic cost of global warming.
Renewable (wind and solar) are extremely important, but nuclear replace coal and gas. Renewable alone are not enough, especially since we will need a lot more electric energy for transport and to decarbonise the atmosphere; so both are needed.
It boggles my mind that Germany made a great effort on renewable, and used
this extra energy to close nuclear plants rather than coals ones. (At the
beginning they even had to open more coal plants!) This means that Fukushima
(which made Germany close its nuclear plants) killed a lot more people in
Germany than in Japan.
People's priority are wrongly aligned: first close coals and gas plants
using renewable, and then think about reducing nuclear plants once we have
good storage technology.
Recall that coal is 1000 times more deadly than nuclear per unit of energy
(including the nuclear accidents). Taking global warming into account, this
is way worse; if nothing is done we are talking about billions of
death to total collapse of human civilisation.
Compared to that, the human and economic cost of nuclear waste and a few
potential large nuclear explosions due to accident/malice is trivial.
Nuclear energy is a vital tool against global warming, and I am very
concerned for the future of my children that even well educated people (I have these same
arguments with my university colleagues) don't realise that.
Renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear, or will be imminently.
Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with nuclear (eg. waste transport and storage), and the potential for cost blowouts due to acute disasters like Fukushima (estimated cost to taxpayers: USD $100 Billion).
The fact tax money is going towards Fukushima highlights another problem with nuclear power: the agency problem. The individuals and organizations that planned and built Fukushima are not directly shouldering the full cost of the problem it created. You can extrapolate from this to many other problems and risks associated with nuclear power, because the timeframe is long relative to the life of a human. If the average human lifespan was 200 years or more, maybe this would be less of an issue, but as it is now, profits now will inevitably trump responsibility tomorrow (and by tomorrow, I mean 30+ years from now).
There's also the risk of weaponization, which increases as the number of plants increase, particularly if those plants are built in countries which currently do not possess much technical nous. It's not a technology that should be disseminated, because the risks are real, and catastrophic in their consequences. If this sounds paranoid, Warren Buffett had this to say about the threat of cyber, biological, nuclear, or chemical attack on in the US:
"“What’s a small probability in a short period approaches certainty in the longer run. (If there is only one chance in thirty of an event occurring in a given year, the likelihood of it occurring at least once in a century is 96.6%.) The added bad news is that there will forever be people and organizations and perhaps even nations that would like to inflict maximum damage on our country. Their means of doing so have increased exponentially during my lifetime. “Innovation” has its dark side.
There is no way for American corporations or their investors to shed this risk. If an event occurs in the U.S. that leads to mass devastation, the value of all equity investments will almost certainly be decimated.
No one knows what “the day after” will look like. I think, however, that Einstein’s 1949 appraisal remains apt: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”"
[Source: 2016 annual letter to Berkshire shareholders]
One of the biggest advantages renewable energy has over both nuclear and mega-dams is that the size of project required to achieve the commonly quoted LCOE (levelized cost of energy) is much, much smaller. 50 MW or perhaps less per site, versus 1000+ MW.
This means:
1. no mega projects that attract similarly sized public opposition
2. 1-2 year construction timelines instead of 10+
3. much, much less financial and regulatory risk
4. if an individual project goes off the rails because of bad management, it just gets cancelled instead of being pushed forward with endless public dollars because of sunk cost fallacies
The private sector is well able to stomach the risk level of wind and solar and finance and build it on their own, whereas nuclear and mega hydro essentially require government financial backing, which again contributes to the agency problem.
We know we can build 1,000s of MW of wind and solar per year in a safe and cost-effective way because we're already doing that. Every single nuclear or dam project in North America right now is a delayed, over-budget financial and project management boondoggle.
It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Even if you could guarantee 10 year build time at a fixed cost today (which you can't), by the time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is today. The cost curves are simply too favorable for any private market to favor nuclear over solar currently. Everyone in this thread keeps talking about the technology, but it's purely about the economics. Solar+storage at grid-scale will be cheaper than basically all other forms of power generation within 5 years based on current cost curves. Within 10 years the cost of new solar+battery will be cheaper than the operational cost of nuclear, not even accounting for the billions in construction costs over decades.
If the billions spent on nuclear plants now was instantly diverted to solar, we'd have way more clean energy in the grid on a way shorter timeline. That's the reality today. It's time to stop arguing and stop wasting money. Nuclear is dead.
It's also interesting to note the headline is "Nuclear power is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions.."
Even if the US was totally committed, and decided to build a brand new reactor right now, how long would it take? A decade?
We can slap up renewables in a fraction of that time, and spend the next decade reaping the rewards, not sitting around waiting for the magical payoff of a reactor that will cost billions to build and operate, and doesn't do us a lick of good for an entire decade!
The most important question is if wind and solar capacity can come online sooner than nuclear in order to slow down stop global warming, which is estimated to cause 250,000 deaths/year worldwide 2030-2050 by the WHO. Solar and wind were only 9.2% of the U.S. total in 2018 and the US has very good conditions for them. Solar energy will have a harder time replacing base load plants. It might work out fine in the US but how about other countries? I think both renewables and nuclear will be needed. Carbon caputre technology would need to be ~5 times cheaper than currently to be viable.
If the US can build reactors at 1/10th the cost they do right now.
That’s the solution. Not the much cheaper clean energy sources that already exist and are being built out in record numbers...
Nuclear is great. It just loses out because it’s too expensive and worse, it gets more expensive with time.
If the reasoning behind that is based on irrational human fears then first propose a solution for irrational community fears. You’ll also be able to solve the SF housing and homelessness crisis at one go then.
Generation III+ reactors are orders of magnitude safer than everything else that was built before the turn of the century. China is actually leading the charge right now, with AP1000 reactors under construction. One of the plants just went live last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanmen_Nuclear_Power_Station
The US needs to find a way to make building reactors affordable.
> The US needs to find a way to make building reactors affordable.
Early reactors were hailed as paragons of safety too. Fukushima, remember, had a triply-redundant (or whatever) power supply to ensure that cooling power could be provided even in the event of a simultaneous meltdown and grid failure. Oops.
I mean, look. It's... fine. Go nuclear. I agree with you, that these are probably safe designs and are probably not going to poison anyone due to misanalyzed failure modes. Nuclear is carbon free power and preferable to coal and gas for sure.
But in a world where we can build out solar and wind as cheaply as we can gas plants and handle the grid buffering with batteries, I just don't care much anymore. If we run out of ridgeline real estate and still need more power, we'll call you.
The US doesn't "need" to do anything with nuclear, at all. The nuclear industry (and its geek proponents here on HN) needs to find a way to make itself worthwhile on a balance sheet.
I'm not sure how they can calculate safety levels that represent anything measurable or measured accurately. Nuclear plants are black swans, they should be built deep below.
Nuclear is a political non-starter. No one wants to live near a nuclear power plant, and people tend to fight tooth and nail to fight the placement of nuclear power anywhere near them. The result of this is that nuclear power plants get foisted onto communities that don't have the political clout to fight them, or get thrown where there isn't anyone to fight. What ends up happening is that power plants get placed by politics instead of by science and engineering.
Further, it appears (at least to me) that proponents of nuclear underestimate the degree to which we (as a species) underpredict the likelihood of catastrophic events. In general, we're pretty bad at assessing the risk of so-called "black swans," but when the downside is so high, I understand why people are skeptical.
I personally am pro-nuclear, for many of the reasons described in the article, though I don't think the case is as clear cut as most nuclear proponents. On a rational level, I can understand that the likelihood of disaster is vanishingly small. I still don't want to live anywhere close to a nuclear power plant.
>Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country wasn’t also retiring nuclear plants early.
Why doesn't the article explain why the Germans are retiring their plants? I think these articles should go more in-depth regarding the pro's and con's. From what I read and hear Nuclear power is a great source of energy but I feel when convincing other people of this you need to portray the good and the bad.
Well, the nuclear renaissance since 2010 is marked by a decline in the number of reactors [0] and we just do not the capacity to build more, because the production of pressure vessels is severely limited. Plus most nuclear reactors are around 30 years old [1], so many will be decommissioned over the next 20 years.
Therefore it is simply not possible to build up the share of nuclear in the power generation mix, except with extending the operation time of light water reactors (from a design lifetime of 30 years), or build reactors without a pressure vessel, that is something akin to an RMBK.
Right now, over the next 20 years the clean alternatives are solar, wind and hydro. Nuclear power can at the earliest be expanded in the late 2030, at which point it has to compete with fusion, and hopefully orbiting solar.
A key overlooked aspect of Nuclear is that it is the big government, centralized, big industry, big bureaucracy, anti-freedom, anti-self-determination option.
Renewables like solar and wind can be local, scaled down to the needs of a single family property, and kept under the sole control, if desired, of an individual owner. Nuclear is fundamentally not that way.
If this article isn't it already, expect to see in the near future that the powerful elite subset of climate deniers will pivot to accept climate change while advocating for nuclear as a solution, all because their cronies stand to benefit from massive construction projects and associated safety, security, and control projects.
Strong public policy can save the world. Nuclear can help. But, without public policy, nothing will happen. So call it cap-and-trade, or green new deal, or cap-and-dividend, but we need it now.
Nuclear power is nothing that can be trusted with private companies, the long term nature is directly incompatible with an entity that can go bankrupt and "die". Renewables connected with battery/pumped/hydrogen storage is by far our best bet.
The question is What is the fastest way?, not what is possible in the future. People disagreeing in this thread fail to address the reasons stated in the article why renewables alone are not complete solution and why nuclear is good choice to compensate.
Germans made attempt to increase renewables only but ended up increasing coal use because rationing electricity was not an politically feasible option when renewable electricity production was low.
Without nuclear energy you can increase renewable usage up to 50% economically if you build better grid and add some overcapacity and recharge car batteries at night, but you must fire up coal or natural gas electricity plants for the nighttimes and exceptionally cold or hot time periods.
If you build nuclear plants they will not throttle down for days or when renewable energy is plenty and electricity price goes negative. This decreases the profitability of both renewables and nuclear.
In some time in future, it's possible to go full renewables but you need very robust smart grid, large scale energy storage (not lithium-ion) etc. That's possible but it's not the fastest way. Building more nuclear power is the fastest way to drive down CO2 in addition with renewables.
I am Japanese, who was in Japan and experienced Fukushima melt down in 2011(although I was not in Fukushima, Tokyo). From my perspective, people in HN village are missing a very crucial point. Nuclear power is not a problem of engineering or math, it is a problem of human nature. Yeah, I can understand the technology can control nuclear reaction 100% well, but who operate reactors? Who decide how reactors should be operated? Who develop software to control reactors? The answer is people! People in HN are so smart and very rational, so they cannot see sometimes irrational decisions are made(as happened in Fukushima) and they cannot understand some idiots do terribly stupid things(as happened in Tokaimura JOC accident).
As long as human beings are involved, nothing can be perfect and safe.
Also, I see in some comments people think impacts of nuclear accidents and wastes can be limited and localized. In Japan, as of 18/08, 60000 people still live in temporary housing due to Fukushima incident. We still struggle to remove debris out of nuclear power plants, and it's said it will take around 30-40 years.
For me, the impact of this disaster is anything but "trivial".
The 1.6 gigawatt Olkiluoto 3 EPR has cost 5.5 billion and the building has taken 14 years so far (it's not ready yet). And this is happening in a high functioning low corruption country.
The lightbulb wasn't the real invention - it was the lightbulb making machine that had the real impact on the world.
The same way, we need a way to safely, quickly and cheaply build and operate nuclear power plants. The way might be small modular reactors, something like 200 megawatt sized. They can be built in well controlled circumstances in a factory. Installation on site should be fast. Currently, a nuclear power plant construction requires lots of welding and concrete casting. In these projects it is slow and expensive because of extra safety needs and regulations. On site construction should be minimized instead.
One could run multiple smaller reactors in one site so safety areas would not be greatly increased. Emergency and maintenance shutdowns would have smaller impact on the grid than currently with multiple gigawatt sizes.
With smaller reactors, innovation and experimentation should also be a lot faster. If you build one reactor every 20 years, you don't get a lot of incremental innovation.
How about we put the reactors in the middle of the desert, then there is no danget of killing a city and no risk of nuclear material leaking into the sea. You really don't need that many people to staff a reactor and if you really do, you can always build a train so people don't need to live close. I know power transmission is an issue. But we have gotten a lot better at that as well, with things like that big DC underwater powerline from scandinavia to the middle of europe.
About deaths: The author says nuclear causes fewer deaths than the rest. Maybe that's true, but he (voluntarily?) omits to take into consideration long term health issues related to incidents. The Tchernobyl accident released radioactve cloud that affected many people that died of cancer or are having health issues related to it. Worse than that, it's almost impossible to track who got sick because of those clouds.
So yeah, maybe just a "small set" of people died DIRECTLY following nuclear incidents, but long term effects cannot be ignored just for the sake of the argument.
Next, the waste. "stored in a walmart, that degrade over time". Again, the author omits to say the duration ... over time is an understatement here, you will be long gone before that "waste" is not dangerous for environment.
I stopped reading after that. The post is written in a way to force you to accept his arguments by omiting half of the true story. That's not journalism.
I find the view that nuclear is the only clean option very odd when we have countries which are 100% renewable right now. And a number of countries which are very nearly there already.
I see people raising issues about batteries but I'm not sure that a lot of the countries doing 100% or nearly so are using batteries at all. That looks like a straw-man to me
[+] [-] scarygliders|7 years ago|reply
Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw...
Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP.
Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not survive the tsunami because said tsunami overcame the tidal wall in front of it, and then the backup generators got flooded. But for that one event, if the generators were placed up on higher ground, the outcome would have been so much different.
I have first-hand knowledge, due to..
1) Knowing the area. I lived in my Japanese father-in-law's mountain house, situated 1.5km out of Miyakoji-machi, Tamura-shi. That town was just inside the 20km evacuation zone from the power plant, the mountain house was just outside at 21km - myself and my family lived in our own house in the outskirts of Koriyama city.
2) My (now deceased) Japanese father-in-law was president of the Hitachi subsiduary company which built Fukushima Dai-ich No.4 reactor, which wasn't operating at the time of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami but did suffer an explosion thought due to hydrogen gas from the spent fuel situated in the Spent Fuel Pool in its upper level.
3) Mentioned in point (1) above, I owned a house in Tobu New Town on the Eastern outskirts of Koriyama city, and I was working at Flextronics in Koriyama at the time the M9 quake occurred - things got a tad 'exciting' at the time. I should write a book.
My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account - in Fukushima Dai-ichi's case, for some reason (possibly financial?), it was decided that the tsunami barrier was sufficient (it wasn't) for the job, and at some point in time it was decided that placing backup generators underneath the buildings was sufficient - that unfortunately did not turn out to be the case :/
And lastly, I still fully support the idea of nuclear power.
[+] [-] dirkt|7 years ago|reply
I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s.
Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And the latter is something that might be tolerable in less densely populated countries or locations (Chernobyl), but in very densely populated ones it would be a major catastrophe.
And so far we've only seen disaster scenarios caused by human error and force of nature, and there's a third one (human malice), which thankfully hasn't happened yet, but which is impossible to guard against.
So my conclusion from reality is that no, we can't make nuclear power completely safe: The consequences of a disaster are too great, the monetary incentives are all wrong (it's not the nuclear companies which pay in case of the disaster, the state takes over; and the costs of the risk are not factored in into the actual running costs; and safety measures are expensive, so economics will always lead to, say, putting the backup generators NOT on the hill, because that would have cost more).
And then there's the problem that in some countries using nuclear energy and producing nuclear waste, the problem of actually storing that waste safely for the next few centuries is still not solved. Even after 50 years of producing it. And that is just insane.
I wish we could make nuclear safe. It would be a great way to reduce carbon emissions. Looking at reality, I can only conclude that we can't, and it's wishful thinking. (Yes, I know, that opinion is not popular, and the nuclear fanboys will be all over me, but so be it).
[+] [-] nwallin|7 years ago|reply
Plate tectonics was not understood or scientifically described until 65-67. It was not a widely accepted theory until later, at least the 70s. By that point, Fukushima had already been permitted and built.
Without plate tectonics to create the plate shift earthquake which resulted in the tsunami which caused the disaster, the only mechanism to create tsunamis known was underground rockfalls from steep slopes. Afaik the builders of the plant studied the bathymetry around the area, and saw limited risk of tsunamis.
The primitive science of the time ruled out the possibility of a tsunami overcoming a tsunami wall that was X feet tall. So they built a tsunami wall that was X+k feet tall, and called it a day. When later scientific theory showed that larger tsunamis were not just possible, but inevitable, the plant was not retrofitted to deal with the new reality. Oops.
[+] [-] option|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cameldrv|7 years ago|reply
The second why is "why does the reactor require an uninterrupted supply of electrical power in order to not melt down? Gen 2 nuclear power is inherently dangerous, and is only made safe through active safety systems. If the reactor trips, the cooling pumps must run or decay heat will cause a meltdown. Gen 3 reactors tend to incorporate a lot more passive safety systems or at least ones that don't require electricity.
[+] [-] lispm|7 years ago|reply
* building reactors in areas with severe earthquakes and tsunamis was the main design flaw
* flood protection too low, even though this was known
* backup-generators not safe against flooding
* loss of outside electricity over a long period of time -> powerlines were not working, other sources of electricity on the grid were offline due to earthquake
* too long time to restore electricity, we are talking about many MWs for cooling and other purposes -> generators were difficult to bring in with further problems making them work
* various damage due to earthquake on reactors, buildings and infrastructure around the plant
* too much spent fuel in pools, required large amount of electricity for cooling
* spent fuel pools high in the buildings, hard to reach
* no cooling capability in case of days-long loss of electricity -> then needs to be cooled with seawater pumped with vehicles with concrete pumps (which were flown in from remote places, even from the US) -> caused structural damages to buildings and spread radiation
* no idea what to do with the contaminated cooling water
* no protection in main buildings against the explosions that happened
* no technology existed for a decade or more to deal with molten cores
* ineffective security/safety process -> the plant had checks a few months before the accident with no consequences
* unwillingness to invest major amounts of money into upgrades
* life extension for outdated reactors, due to economical pressure
* no independent controlling instances for the nuclear industry
[+] [-] Tomte|7 years ago|reply
All the time nuclear power fans tell us that "this time we've learned and current design are safe".
And all the time bad things happen and they have to admit "well, not when X happens". Or "not when A and then B happens".
Just as you did here. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived an earthquake, but the tsunami isn't a freak accident, it's actually a common cause thing.
It's nice that Fukushima could have survived both the earthquake and the tsunami, had it been built differently.
But it hadn't. And that's why all this "This time everything is safe" is just as unbelievable as over the last decades.
Now, you can certainly say that decarbonization is worth the risk, and I might even be on the fence about it.
But please don't insult the general public's intelligence by ever telling us again that nuclear power is safe and it was only those stupid Russians who totally mismanaged their power plant.
[+] [-] ilitirit|7 years ago|reply
To be honest, you could probably make that argument for anything under question in any scenario. But even if we were to skip the logical loopholes ("We took it into account, but we decided the benefits outweighed the costs because of <fill in any reason>"), let's just look at the raw numbers or simply just historical facts. Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries? OK, take one step back. Would those disasters have occurred if "all disaster scenarios [were] taken into account"?
The reality is that we have no one good and practical energy solution for the world. And even though I believe that there's no practical solution that can beat a tried and tested solution like nuclear in terms of efficiency, I also believe that there's been no tried and tested solution that's been worse in terms of failure.
[+] [-] davrosthedalek|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abtinf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radu_crisan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] john61|7 years ago|reply
It is impossible for us to take all disaster scenarios into account. Our knowledge is very limited.
[+] [-] smueller1234|7 years ago|reply
My knowledge is from another industry that relies heavily on backup generators.
[+] [-] samstave|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] differentView|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _ink_|7 years ago|reply
It's still not solved. As long as that is the case, I think nuclear energy is not an option.
[+] [-] nikdaheratik|7 years ago|reply
And that's setting aside the other problem which is that many of the countries that are still growing, and will need new, clean sources of power are countries that don't have as much nuclear expertise to begin with. And some of them are countries that the West has tried to actively keep from having nuclear capability.
Better solar, wind, etc., has fewer risks than better nuclear tech in the long run.
[+] [-] a2tech|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imtringued|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heisenbit|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skookumchuck|7 years ago|reply
There were other design flaws, too, like venting hydrogen inside the building rather than outside.
[+] [-] systemBuilder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gondolin|7 years ago|reply
- coal produce radioactive waste too
- it kills a lot more persons (without taking into account global warning) due to air pollution
- the economic cost of nuclear may be underestimated, but this is nothing compared to the economic cost of global warming.
Renewable (wind and solar) are extremely important, but nuclear replace coal and gas. Renewable alone are not enough, especially since we will need a lot more electric energy for transport and to decarbonise the atmosphere; so both are needed.
It boggles my mind that Germany made a great effort on renewable, and used this extra energy to close nuclear plants rather than coals ones. (At the beginning they even had to open more coal plants!) This means that Fukushima (which made Germany close its nuclear plants) killed a lot more people in Germany than in Japan.
People's priority are wrongly aligned: first close coals and gas plants using renewable, and then think about reducing nuclear plants once we have good storage technology.
Recall that coal is 1000 times more deadly than nuclear per unit of energy (including the nuclear accidents). Taking global warming into account, this is way worse; if nothing is done we are talking about billions of death to total collapse of human civilisation.
Compared to that, the human and economic cost of nuclear waste and a few potential large nuclear explosions due to accident/malice is trivial.
Nuclear energy is a vital tool against global warming, and I am very concerned for the future of my children that even well educated people (I have these same arguments with my university colleagues) don't realise that.
[+] [-] wiggler00m|7 years ago|reply
Proponents of nuclear tend to ignore the long-run costs associated with nuclear (eg. waste transport and storage), and the potential for cost blowouts due to acute disasters like Fukushima (estimated cost to taxpayers: USD $100 Billion).
The fact tax money is going towards Fukushima highlights another problem with nuclear power: the agency problem. The individuals and organizations that planned and built Fukushima are not directly shouldering the full cost of the problem it created. You can extrapolate from this to many other problems and risks associated with nuclear power, because the timeframe is long relative to the life of a human. If the average human lifespan was 200 years or more, maybe this would be less of an issue, but as it is now, profits now will inevitably trump responsibility tomorrow (and by tomorrow, I mean 30+ years from now).
There's also the risk of weaponization, which increases as the number of plants increase, particularly if those plants are built in countries which currently do not possess much technical nous. It's not a technology that should be disseminated, because the risks are real, and catastrophic in their consequences. If this sounds paranoid, Warren Buffett had this to say about the threat of cyber, biological, nuclear, or chemical attack on in the US:
"“What’s a small probability in a short period approaches certainty in the longer run. (If there is only one chance in thirty of an event occurring in a given year, the likelihood of it occurring at least once in a century is 96.6%.) The added bad news is that there will forever be people and organizations and perhaps even nations that would like to inflict maximum damage on our country. Their means of doing so have increased exponentially during my lifetime. “Innovation” has its dark side.
There is no way for American corporations or their investors to shed this risk. If an event occurs in the U.S. that leads to mass devastation, the value of all equity investments will almost certainly be decimated.
No one knows what “the day after” will look like. I think, however, that Einstein’s 1949 appraisal remains apt: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”"
[Source: 2016 annual letter to Berkshire shareholders]
[+] [-] eigenvector|7 years ago|reply
This means:
1. no mega projects that attract similarly sized public opposition
2. 1-2 year construction timelines instead of 10+
3. much, much less financial and regulatory risk
4. if an individual project goes off the rails because of bad management, it just gets cancelled instead of being pushed forward with endless public dollars because of sunk cost fallacies
The private sector is well able to stomach the risk level of wind and solar and finance and build it on their own, whereas nuclear and mega hydro essentially require government financial backing, which again contributes to the agency problem.
We know we can build 1,000s of MW of wind and solar per year in a safe and cost-effective way because we're already doing that. Every single nuclear or dam project in North America right now is a delayed, over-budget financial and project management boondoggle.
[+] [-] BluSyn|7 years ago|reply
It makes absolutely no sense to start building nuclear now. Even if you could guarantee 10 year build time at a fixed cost today (which you can't), by the time it is operational solar+storage will be even more economical than it is today. The cost curves are simply too favorable for any private market to favor nuclear over solar currently. Everyone in this thread keeps talking about the technology, but it's purely about the economics. Solar+storage at grid-scale will be cheaper than basically all other forms of power generation within 5 years based on current cost curves. Within 10 years the cost of new solar+battery will be cheaper than the operational cost of nuclear, not even accounting for the billions in construction costs over decades.
If the billions spent on nuclear plants now was instantly diverted to solar, we'd have way more clean energy in the grid on a way shorter timeline. That's the reality today. It's time to stop arguing and stop wasting money. Nuclear is dead.
[+] [-] grecy|7 years ago|reply
Even if the US was totally committed, and decided to build a brand new reactor right now, how long would it take? A decade?
We can slap up renewables in a fraction of that time, and spend the next decade reaping the rewards, not sitting around waiting for the magical payoff of a reactor that will cost billions to build and operate, and doesn't do us a lick of good for an entire decade!
[+] [-] BurningFrog|7 years ago|reply
Renewable energy at that scale is still theoretical and hasn't shown its downsides yet.
Nuclear has shown all its downsides, and they have been 95% corrected. It's a mature, known technology.
[+] [-] zone411|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] addicted|7 years ago|reply
If the US can build reactors at 1/10th the cost they do right now.
That’s the solution. Not the much cheaper clean energy sources that already exist and are being built out in record numbers...
Nuclear is great. It just loses out because it’s too expensive and worse, it gets more expensive with time.
If the reasoning behind that is based on irrational human fears then first propose a solution for irrational community fears. You’ll also be able to solve the SF housing and homelessness crisis at one go then.
[+] [-] jjordan|7 years ago|reply
The US needs to find a way to make building reactors affordable.
[+] [-] ajross|7 years ago|reply
Early reactors were hailed as paragons of safety too. Fukushima, remember, had a triply-redundant (or whatever) power supply to ensure that cooling power could be provided even in the event of a simultaneous meltdown and grid failure. Oops.
I mean, look. It's... fine. Go nuclear. I agree with you, that these are probably safe designs and are probably not going to poison anyone due to misanalyzed failure modes. Nuclear is carbon free power and preferable to coal and gas for sure.
But in a world where we can build out solar and wind as cheaply as we can gas plants and handle the grid buffering with batteries, I just don't care much anymore. If we run out of ridgeline real estate and still need more power, we'll call you.
The US doesn't "need" to do anything with nuclear, at all. The nuclear industry (and its geek proponents here on HN) needs to find a way to make itself worthwhile on a balance sheet.
[+] [-] threeseed|7 years ago|reply
And nobody wants to build lots of them because in most countries nuclear is extremely unpopular and there are issues with disposal of waste.
[+] [-] superpermutat0r|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vbezhenar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jinfiesto|7 years ago|reply
Further, it appears (at least to me) that proponents of nuclear underestimate the degree to which we (as a species) underpredict the likelihood of catastrophic events. In general, we're pretty bad at assessing the risk of so-called "black swans," but when the downside is so high, I understand why people are skeptical.
I personally am pro-nuclear, for many of the reasons described in the article, though I don't think the case is as clear cut as most nuclear proponents. On a rational level, I can understand that the likelihood of disaster is vanishingly small. I still don't want to live anywhere close to a nuclear power plant.
[+] [-] fakwandi_priv|7 years ago|reply
Why doesn't the article explain why the Germans are retiring their plants? I think these articles should go more in-depth regarding the pro's and con's. From what I read and hear Nuclear power is a great source of energy but I feel when convincing other people of this you need to portray the good and the bad.
[+] [-] jseliger|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yk|7 years ago|reply
Therefore it is simply not possible to build up the share of nuclear in the power generation mix, except with extending the operation time of light water reactors (from a design lifetime of 30 years), or build reactors without a pressure vessel, that is something akin to an RMBK.
Right now, over the next 20 years the clean alternatives are solar, wind and hydro. Nuclear power can at the earliest be expanded in the late 2030, at which point it has to compete with fusion, and hopefully orbiting solar.
[0] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/facts-and-f... (has actually just the total electricity number,
[1] http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power...
[+] [-] natch|7 years ago|reply
Renewables like solar and wind can be local, scaled down to the needs of a single family property, and kept under the sole control, if desired, of an individual owner. Nuclear is fundamentally not that way.
If this article isn't it already, expect to see in the near future that the powerful elite subset of climate deniers will pivot to accept climate change while advocating for nuclear as a solution, all because their cronies stand to benefit from massive construction projects and associated safety, security, and control projects.
[+] [-] skrap|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlebar|7 years ago|reply
Humanity's inability to understand basic math will be our downfall -- perhaps already has sealed our fate.
[+] [-] _lbaq|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|7 years ago|reply
Germans made attempt to increase renewables only but ended up increasing coal use because rationing electricity was not an politically feasible option when renewable electricity production was low.
Without nuclear energy you can increase renewable usage up to 50% economically if you build better grid and add some overcapacity and recharge car batteries at night, but you must fire up coal or natural gas electricity plants for the nighttimes and exceptionally cold or hot time periods.
If you build nuclear plants they will not throttle down for days or when renewable energy is plenty and electricity price goes negative. This decreases the profitability of both renewables and nuclear.
In some time in future, it's possible to go full renewables but you need very robust smart grid, large scale energy storage (not lithium-ion) etc. That's possible but it's not the fastest way. Building more nuclear power is the fastest way to drive down CO2 in addition with renewables.
[+] [-] warabe|7 years ago|reply
Also, I see in some comments people think impacts of nuclear accidents and wastes can be limited and localized. In Japan, as of 18/08, 60000 people still live in temporary housing due to Fukushima incident. We still struggle to remove debris out of nuclear power plants, and it's said it will take around 30-40 years.
For me, the impact of this disaster is anything but "trivial".
*edit: grammer
[+] [-] Gravityloss|7 years ago|reply
The lightbulb wasn't the real invention - it was the lightbulb making machine that had the real impact on the world.
The same way, we need a way to safely, quickly and cheaply build and operate nuclear power plants. The way might be small modular reactors, something like 200 megawatt sized. They can be built in well controlled circumstances in a factory. Installation on site should be fast. Currently, a nuclear power plant construction requires lots of welding and concrete casting. In these projects it is slow and expensive because of extra safety needs and regulations. On site construction should be minimized instead.
One could run multiple smaller reactors in one site so safety areas would not be greatly increased. Emergency and maintenance shutdowns would have smaller impact on the grid than currently with multiple gigawatt sizes.
With smaller reactors, innovation and experimentation should also be a lot faster. If you build one reactor every 20 years, you don't get a lot of incremental innovation.
[+] [-] desuyone|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dav43|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cx42net|7 years ago|reply
About deaths: The author says nuclear causes fewer deaths than the rest. Maybe that's true, but he (voluntarily?) omits to take into consideration long term health issues related to incidents. The Tchernobyl accident released radioactve cloud that affected many people that died of cancer or are having health issues related to it. Worse than that, it's almost impossible to track who got sick because of those clouds. So yeah, maybe just a "small set" of people died DIRECTLY following nuclear incidents, but long term effects cannot be ignored just for the sake of the argument.
Next, the waste. "stored in a walmart, that degrade over time". Again, the author omits to say the duration ... over time is an understatement here, you will be long gone before that "waste" is not dangerous for environment.
I stopped reading after that. The post is written in a way to force you to accept his arguments by omiting half of the true story. That's not journalism.
[+] [-] peterashford|7 years ago|reply