> Can you build a nuclear reactor in less than a decade cheaper then storage and renewables? The evidence indicates no. But if you can, the world would love that, just demonstrate it's possible.
Sure, the USA got to the moon in less time, in the 60s. As a technical problem it's easily doable. Even in quantity it could probably be done. (There are some questions of making many of the larger parts at once, such as the containment vessel, and if enough factories remain which are capable of it - in the USA. If it was worldwide, that's not an issue because China now has that capability.)
On the political side, it's either impossible or pretty easy, depending on the motivation. It's currently impossible because of the nuclear boogeyman and all of the obstacles that opponents can throw out. (It is implied that these obstacles have no ultimate merit.)
However, if we had a focus on pollution-related deaths, which are like a never-ending global pandemic - 10k deaths per week from coal pollution alone - then we'd probably find the will to fix it.
Considering that (estimated lifetime) deaths by all Nuclear (including Chernobyl and Fukushima, but excluding bombs) are less than one week of pollution deaths, it'd be an easy sell if we actually looked at numbers.
In the Lazard study, do you see what they budgeted for non-panel costs in utility-grade solar? In residential the cost of the panels is often quite a lot less than the total system cost.
> Until then, it's hydro, batteries, renewables, and demand response full speed ahead.
Hydro is almost tapped out, and not carbon neutral. But I agree we should build it everywhere possible because it is dependable, and comparatively cheap.
Batteries are not gonna happen for grid-scale power. A few terawatt hours (a minimal estimate for the USA's storage needs) would be every battery produced in ten years, even with a ramp-up, and the pollution from the mining and manufacture would be huge. They're a great solution for certain storage solutions though because they're solid state unlike flywheels and pumped hydro storage. Places where convenience weighs heavily will adopt batteries.
Renewables are absolutely the answer - as much as they are. Any generation that can be peaky, should be solar and wind if possible. Like if we built desalination plants they'd be a great use of intermittent power. Or if they're just charging the storage layer. Neither is free of pollution though, like batteries they merely front-load it and appear green when operating.
You're 100% right though about full speed ahead. I'd rather start on solar today, which I don't fully believe in, than spend years arguing and be stuck where we are today.
> Considering that (estimated lifetime) deaths by all Nuclear (including Chernobyl and Fukushima, but excluding bombs) are less than one week of pollution deaths, it'd be an easy sell if we actually looked at numbers.
Than again, if Chernobyl or fukushima had experienced their worse-case scenarios, it's possible that nuclear would have caught up with pollution-related deaths instantaneously. Which illuminates the poor risk-assessment ability of the average person in regards to black swan events.
Worst operating failure, or worst engineerable outcome?
I mean if you took the nuclear fuel and fed it to people one lethal does at a time - yes. You could kill tens of millions.
But both reactors experienced almost the worst possible operating failure and this is how low the casualties were. Fukushima is leaking into the ocean and still not expected to cause a single radiation-based death.
Vastly more people have been (/will be) killed by runoff ponds of coal ash slurry rupturing and running into rivers than from radiation from power plants or spent fuel.
At 10k pollution deaths per week, for even just ten years, no. A nuclear reactor couldn't meet that (5M deaths) even if you left the switch in 'boom' mode and went home for the night.
You just took what you originally said, and said it again. Did you expect a different result?
If the worse-case engineering disaster happened in either case, millions would have died. If you want to dig into this point, great, happy to. If you want to repeat your original point ad-infinitum, pass.
> You just took what you originally said, and said it again
Only half of the last sentence, the conclusion, was repeated. But with space not being at a premium, I would happily restate something from up-thread because it can make it easier to read and reply to.
> If the worse-case engineering disaster ... millions would have died.
No, I don't think so. I think you'd need an engineered, as in intentional, disaster for that. Like terrorists.
And engineering disaster (improper planning) is what Fukushima had. That's very unlikely to be improper enough to kill an entire city because engineering mistakes tend to be planned for to some degree and mitigated by building redundant systems.
Very unlikely to cause a disaster, as in almost impossible even if you tried to form the same materials into a bomb.
Oh I see the problem: it doesn't seem like you know what you are talking about.
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were critically close to absolute disaster.
Chernobyl was a potential kiloton-level steam explosion that would have jettisoned enormously radioactive material into the atmosphere and made country-sized swaths of land unusable for generations. They also exposed 600,000 people (the "liquidators") to direct contact with life-limits of radiation in the clean up. I also love the nukers going hand in hand with the oppressive soviet-era government in covering up the immense toll of Chernobyl, because it suits their argument.
In Fukushima's case, it was the fact they had decades worth of spent fuel rods that if they weren't able to keep them cool (which was a possibility in the first weeks after the disaster) would have ignited, once again releasing ungodly amounts of radiation. This practice of storing spent fuel rods onsite is also very common in the US, and it is a huge problem waiting to happen.
Great excerpt from suppressed Japanese report on Fukushima:
"A report delivered to then Prime Minister Kan Naoto on March 25 warned that if the situation at the plant spun completely out of control, authorities would have to issue mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders for all people living within 250 kilometers (155 miles) of the plant - a zone including greater Tokyo (population 35 million, the world's top city in terms of GDP) and the major cities of Sendai (pop. 1 million) and Fukushima (pop. 280,000)." source: https://apjjf.org/-Asia-Pacific-Journal-Feature/4706/article...
Gee, evacuate Tokyo. Oh well, at least we have our totally earth-friendly nuclear power!
> Oh I see the problem: it doesn't seem like you know what you are talking about.
Sorry, I couldn't afford your webinar.
> Chernobyl was a potential kiloton-level steam explosion
No, the building doesn't appear to have been structurally sound enough to have enabled a larger pressure explosion than it suffered.
> They also exposed 600,000 people (the "liquidators") to direct contact with life-limits of radiation in the clean up.
Well, closer to 250k were actually sent to the site. But do you think they all died? Or got cancer? Because they're being examined by international scientists working on the effects of radiation on people. If thousands of them died or went missing they'd know.
> I also love the nukers going hand in hand with the oppressive soviet-era government in covering up the immense toll of Chernobyl, because it suits their argument.
Let's say that you were right, that there were 600k (not 250k), and that they all died (as opposed to ~70), that's still only 60 weeks of normal pollution deaths. Even if you were right, it's not as big a number as you think it is. And that's in one of the more primitive countries that has nuclear, when it was going through it's financial and political death throws.
> In Fukushima's case, it was the fact they had decades worth of spent fuel rods that if they weren't able to keep them cool (which was a possibility in the first weeks after the disaster) would have ignited
No, it's that they had these spent fuel rods in the reactor building. It seemed easier because they didn't have to be moved as far, but proved to be a really bad idea once the reactor building was irradiated.
But it was never near the china-syndrome levels you describe. There was a plan to basically poke a hole in the wall with a really long crane, and then just fill the pools through the hole in the wall. They did equivalently dangerous work at the time and nobody get more than trivial exposure.
> This practice of storing spent fuel rods onsite is also very common in the US, and it is a huge problem waiting to happen.
Not so much. The Fukushima problem was storing them in the reactor building. If they were stored next to the plant, but not in it, there wouldn't have been a problem at all. Most plants store spent fuel outside the plant. (Often there's short-term storage next to the reactor waiting ~1y for much of the the fission byproducts to decay, then the fuel is moved to the nearby pool.)
> Great excerpt from suppressed Japanese report on Fukushima:
You know, most suppressed reports are really just wrong, and were not released because of that. Sadly, because conspiracy theories are fun.
The report was from 2011, when they were in the midst of it, and knew comparatively nothing. They now know that even the minimal evacuation zone wasn't needed and people even a few km away would have been safer staying at home.
> Gee, evacuate Tokyo.
No, that's ridiculous. That's at the level of an engineered disaster, where you take all the fuel and light it on fire and then let it continue to burn. That's not a realistic failure mode. Yes, a plant could catch fire (Chernobyl) but by the nature of a large containment rupturing explosion, you've usually got a place to pour fire retardant in. And we now know that meltdowns tend to create an elephant's foot type of barely-warm slurry by their nature. As they melt into the concrete and steel they naturally dilute and eventually don't have the heat to continue melting through the containment. Fuel geometries mean that an explosion would likely not remove even a large minority of the fuel from the reactor building, and fuel ejected from a reactor is unlikely to burn - whereas fuel in a critical configuration in a reactor, would. Such as in Windscale in the UK.
In so many ways, Fukushima was never close to a worse disaster. Further, many existing (by the time of the accident) safety designs would have already protected the plant. Spent fuel should have been outside, and the generators should have been nearby on the hill as opposed to barely above sea level in the basement. The electrical room (incoming power to run the backup pumps) should have been above ground, allowing the generators to be bypassed if they failed (or were flooded, like this time).
> Well, closer to 250k were actually sent to the site.
"According to the WHO, 240,000 recovery workers were called upon in 1986 and 1987 alone. Altogether, special certificates were issued for 600,000 people recognising them as liquidators." Perhaps you may just now be getting the sense that nuclear disasters don't just last 2 years? The clean up was long and dangerous, and you didn't get the certificate unless you were somehow exposed.
> ... No, that's ridiculous. That's at the level of an engineered disaster, where you take all the fuel and light it on fire and then let it continue to burn...
You have no clue what you are talking about. I literally gave you the source and it was from a report by the Japanese government. I'm sorry if you don't like facts that don't agree with your precious world view. Spent fuel rods remain radioactive and hot for years to decades, if they are not constantly and actively cooled, they shortly get hot enough to ignite their casings. Maybe you are just now learning that nuclear power is dangerous? Do you know how many thousands of spent fuel rods are sitting around in cooling pools onsite with reactors around the world? Better hope nobody has an OOPS.
> The steam explosion would have resulted if they were unable to prevent the core from melting through the floor to water below.
But it only creates a significant explosion if the building is intact, which it wasn't at that point. You were talking about a kiloton level blast. Had they not drained the basement it would have made the disaster worse, but nowhere near as much so as you think.
> Perhaps you may just now be getting the sense that nuclear disasters don't just last 2 years?
The part of it that would give liquidators a lethal does in a few minutes, no that didn't last two months, let alone two years. The first few weeks of running onto the roof and pushing a few shovel-loads of debris back over the edge into the reactor room before being replaced by the next guy were much different than the people calmly walking through the woods looking for bits of ejected core. Still dangerous, but orders of magnitude less.
> You have no clue what you are talking about. I literally gave you the source
Your source wasn't worth anything. It was nonsense they came up with before they knew the scope of the problem. Evacuate Tokyo. Lol! Not even close. Not even if all reactors had been impacted. It was redacted because it was wrong, not badly covered up so that people like you could find it as part of some strange conspiracy.
> Spent fuel rods remain radioactive and hot for years to decades
Many fission byproducts have a halflife and minutes to months. The first day/week/month/year of a spent fuel rod's afterlife are the most dangerous. If rods sit for a while (6m - 2y generally) they're safe enough to transport to a secondary pool.
> Maybe you are just now learning that nuclear power is dangerous?
No, I knew radiation was dangerous when I first read about the demon core accident. But nuclear power is still about 100,000 times safer than traditional power. You just refuse to value distributed deaths such as miners and pollution sufferers.
> But it only creates a significant explosion if the building is intact, which it wasn't at that point
Totally clueless. Unlike you, I'm not just making stuff up. If you drop gigawatts of thermal energy into a body of water, you don't need a containment vessel to create a large steam explosion.
Perhaps read the source I linked you? But we both know you won't do that, right. It's obvious at this point you only read or comprehend sources of information that confirm your worldview. How 2020.
The redacted Japanese one, or the Wikipedia article?
The Wikipedia article doesn't contradict me. It says "serious explosion", but nothing about kilotons, and says "would eject more material" but nothing about a large area. That's a reasonable estimate.
> you don't need a containment vessel to create a large steam explosion.
You said a "kiloton level" explosion. That does require containment.
> If you drop gigawatts of thermal energy into a body of water
Before it melted entirely through, the concrete it was melting would be hot enough to boil the water on the other side. That steam would have been uncontained and would have vented out of the entrances to the basement, blowing doors open if needed. Based on how slowly the molten core was progressing downward this likely would have removed a fair bit of water before it actually melted through and began boiling the water rapidly.
And then, have you ever seen someone stick their hand (quickly) in liquid nitrogen or molten lead (done with a wet hand)? The Leidenfrost effect limits the contact with a layer of steam. You can't transfer those gigawatts straight into the water all at once. And while you're waiting, the steam is venting up through the new hole in the ceiling.
Without a sudden, contained, steam generation event the further core ejection would be limited if it happened at all.
> The steam explosion would have resulted if they were unable to prevent the core from melting through the floor to water below.
They drained the water and installed a heat exchanger. But this turned out to be unnecessary, since the core did not melt through the concrete flooring.
Sure, the USA got to the moon in less time, in the 60s. As a technical problem it's easily doable. Even in quantity it could probably be done. (There are some questions of making many of the larger parts at once, such as the containment vessel, and if enough factories remain which are capable of it - in the USA. If it was worldwide, that's not an issue because China now has that capability.)
On the political side, it's either impossible or pretty easy, depending on the motivation. It's currently impossible because of the nuclear boogeyman and all of the obstacles that opponents can throw out. (It is implied that these obstacles have no ultimate merit.)
However, if we had a focus on pollution-related deaths, which are like a never-ending global pandemic - 10k deaths per week from coal pollution alone - then we'd probably find the will to fix it.
Considering that (estimated lifetime) deaths by all Nuclear (including Chernobyl and Fukushima, but excluding bombs) are less than one week of pollution deaths, it'd be an easy sell if we actually looked at numbers.
In the Lazard study, do you see what they budgeted for non-panel costs in utility-grade solar? In residential the cost of the panels is often quite a lot less than the total system cost.
> Until then, it's hydro, batteries, renewables, and demand response full speed ahead.
Hydro is almost tapped out, and not carbon neutral. But I agree we should build it everywhere possible because it is dependable, and comparatively cheap.
Batteries are not gonna happen for grid-scale power. A few terawatt hours (a minimal estimate for the USA's storage needs) would be every battery produced in ten years, even with a ramp-up, and the pollution from the mining and manufacture would be huge. They're a great solution for certain storage solutions though because they're solid state unlike flywheels and pumped hydro storage. Places where convenience weighs heavily will adopt batteries.
Renewables are absolutely the answer - as much as they are. Any generation that can be peaky, should be solar and wind if possible. Like if we built desalination plants they'd be a great use of intermittent power. Or if they're just charging the storage layer. Neither is free of pollution though, like batteries they merely front-load it and appear green when operating.
You're 100% right though about full speed ahead. I'd rather start on solar today, which I don't fully believe in, than spend years arguing and be stuck where we are today.