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zmix | 2 years ago
You can't just switch off and oon a nuclear plant. It is not good as a backup solution.
> But turning off perfectly fine reactors that have already been paid for and are producing tons of CO2 free electricity in a so-called "climate emergency" is incompetence that's indistinguishable from malice.
Well, while this is by no means scientifically sound, between 2011 (the year Merkel decided to get rid of the nuclear power plants) and 1954 (the year the first such power plant got available for civilian production) there were two worst accidents and one half. Using this data there was a catastrophic accident every 22.8 years, luckily not in our neighbourhood.
mpweiher|2 years ago
That turns out not to be the case. For example, the French stations are built so they can easily manage a much larger range.
However, this is backwards. Or as I put it elsewhere: if the logical choice in a particular situation is a really stupid choice, you need to examine the decisions that got you in that situation.
Although turning nuclear power plants on and off again is possible, it is stupid. Just keep them running! The illogical choice that gets you in the situation that nuclear is "a bad fit" is making an unreliable, unpredictably intermittent power source your primary. That just makes no sense whatsoever.
> two worst accidents and one half.
1. Even with those accidents, nuclear is still among the safest power sources.
2. The negative effects of the accidents were far less than is generally assumed in the wider public.
3. The Tchernobyl reactor was inherently unstable. We don't have any inherently unstable reactors in the West. And last I checked the RMBK-1000 was retrofitted to no longer have the instability. And Ukraine is not just keeping nuclear power, but is among the states that have pledged to expand it 3-fold.
4. The Fukushima reactor was damaged by an unprecedented Tsunami that killed 15000 people. Whereas the reactor accident itself killed zero. We don't have Tsunmais in Europe, and if we ever get one, the reactors will be our smallest problems. Just like the reactor was the smallest problem with the Tsunami in Japan. Oh, and Japan has also pledged to expand its nuclear generating capacity 3-fold.
5. The deadliest accident of a power-generating technology was a dam that broke in China in 1975. It killed >15000 people, destroyed upwards of 4 million homes and displaced 11 million people. Not only did no country whatsoever get out of hydro-power, the accident is virtually unknown in the West.
6. The Bhopal chemical accident killed upwards of 4000 people and injured half a million. No country disbanded their chemical industry as a result.
lispm|2 years ago
A single earthquake took out the ENTIRE Japanese reactor fleet for many years. Even today many of the reactors are not running, have been closed forever or are not save (-> the affected reactors at Fukushima). 12 reactors have resumed operations, out of 54.
If there is a severe earthquake, I bet the surviving people want to have electricity. Zero of the Japanese nuclear power plants produced electricity after the earthquake. Instead they needed electricity&cooling, to not melt. In Fukushima there was not enough cooling, so cores did melt. Now they are needing several decades to keep the melted cores under control. Costs pile up...
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Fukushima-Anniversary/Fuku...
The government has a conservative cost estimate of >200 billion USD for the Fukushima accidents.
> Oh, and Japan has also pledged to expand its nuclear generating capacity 3-fold.
The Japanese nuclear generating capacity is very low. Less than 1/4 of their reactors are allowed to run.
"Japan" here means "the Japanese nuclear industry".
"Introducing the current situation in Japan, Uetake (Senior Managing Director of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF)) said, “Due to the Fukushima Daiichi accident, nuclear power—which had previously accounted for about 30% of total electricity generated in the country—fell to zero percent. However, with 12 years having passed since the accident, some 12 reactors have resumed operations, and another five have passed the new regulatory standards and are preparing to resume operations.” He also pointed out that ten reactors are currently under review, and “if all of them were to be restarted, the total number of reactors in Japan would be 27, or three times the number of nine reactors in operation as of 2020.”"
Where your "3-fold" means far below the state of the nuclear industry before Fukushima. 27 reactors are half the number of what they had operating before Fukushima. They have 54 reactors. "3-fold" just means, that they want to restart some of the old reactors.