Chernobyl

[Shaka_Khan]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/04/17/clinic-ukraine-chernobyl-30th-anniversary-health-impact/82892592/

Chernobyl's legacy: Kids with bodies ravaged by disaster

There are 2,397,863 people registered with Ukraine’s health ministry to receive ongoing Chernobyl-related health treatment. Of these, 453,391 are children.

There are 2,397,863 people registered with Ukraine’s health ministry to receive ongoing Chernobyl-related health care. Of these, 453,391 are children — none born at the time of the accident. Their parents were children in 1986. These children have a range of illnesses: respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, eye diseases, blood diseases, cancer, congenital malformations, genetic abnormalities, trauma......
This is still a problem even with children born long after the accident.

[Fragony]

We will always have STALKER

[lars573]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/04/17/clinic-ukraine-chernobyl-30th-anniversary-health-impact/82892592/

This is still a problem even with children born long after the accident.
Allow me to introduce you to an element that didn't exist on the planet before 1945. That is only created by Nuclear fission, Cesium. It's in everything, to the point that they can test sealed things for validity from it's absence (old wines/liquors for example). And one of the two types created by fission has a half life of 30 years. Meaning it will be dangerous to any organic life for 120 years at the minimum (I forget the exact number of half life periods it has to go through before it's not dangerous anymore). As organic life forms absorb the stuff like it's potassium. And shit loads of the stuff was dumped all over Ukraine. Chernobyl aftermath is gonna be a problem in Ukraine for centuries. Much like it has been in Japan. Or Bikini atoll.

[Strike For The South]

But Nuclear power is safe and nothing bad would ever happen.

Before someone inevitability comes along, gnashing their teeth, telling me how the Russians (everything the Soviets did was the Russians fault, remember that) disregarded protocol, telling me how accidents literally never happen (except that one in Japan and that other one in three mile island).

I would simply point out that one of these accidents is catastrophic. You know what happens when a windmill or solar panel explodes? A fire. You know a fire does? It gets extinguished.

Nuclear power is meme propagated but pseudo scientific shutins.

[Gilrandir]

And shit loads of the stuff was dumped all over Ukraine. Chernobyl aftermath is gonna be a problem in Ukraine for centuries.
Not all over Ukraine. In fact, only a comparatively small area of Ukraine was contaminated. It mostly went north and north-west.
17913
17914

[lars573]

Any amount s gonna be bad for public health in the long run.


But Nuclear power is safe and nothing bad would ever happen.

Before someone inevitability comes along, gnashing their teeth, telling me how the Russians (everything the Soviets did was the Russians fault, remember that) disregarded protocol, telling me how accidents literally never happen (except that one in Japan and that other one in three mile island).

I would simply point out that one of these accidents is catastrophic. You know what happens when a windmill or solar panel explodes? A fire. You know a fire does? It gets extinguished.

Nuclear power is meme propagated but pseudo scientific shutins.
To be fair Western reactors are safer than the Soviet ones (provided you use the safety features right, looking at you TEPCO). As the Soviet ones had this super secret flaw (only the KGB was allowed to know about it) that would make them prone to exploding. If you do the exact thing they did in Chernobyl that night in 1986. Cut the power and use the decay heat to power the turbines.

[Kralizec]

My parents have told me a little bit about those times. At the time they had two young children with a third one underway, so they were seriously concerned at first.


But Nuclear power is safe and nothing bad would ever happen.

Before someone inevitability comes along, gnashing their teeth, telling me how the Russians (everything the Soviets did was the Russians fault, remember that) disregarded protocol, telling me how accidents literally never happen (except that one in Japan and that other one in three mile island).

I would simply point out that one of these accidents is catastrophic. You know what happens when a windmill or solar panel explodes? A fire. You know a fire does? It gets extinguished.

Nuclear power is meme propagated but pseudo scientific shutins.

Chernobyl is of an entirely different order than either Three Mile Island or Fukushima.

The latter one is officially the second worst disaster, and to put that in perspective, nobody actually died. Greenpeace activists and other alarmists will grudgingly admit this, but then point out that a lot of locals could have their lifespans shortened by several years. Which is in itself a valid point, but doesn't justify all the hysteria - especially since the earthquake that caused the disaster led to more than 15.000 fatalities.
Germany immediately decided to phase out nuclear power in reaction to the hysteria, something that surprises me to this very day.

I don't oppose phasing out nuclear power eventually, but since green energy still isn't reliable enough to be a primary source it's better than the alternatives - i.e. fossil fuel plants.

[wooly_mammoth]

But Nuclear power is safe and nothing bad would ever happen.

Before someone inevitability comes along, gnashing their teeth, telling me how the Russians (everything the Soviets did was the Russians fault, remember that) disregarded protocol, telling me how accidents literally never happen (except that one in Japan and that other one in three mile island).

I would simply point out that one of these accidents is catastrophic. You know what happens when a windmill or solar panel explodes? A fire. You know a fire does? It gets extinguished.

Nuclear power is meme propagated but pseudo scientific shutins.

Sigh. The Chernobyl disaster was caused by human error and a lack of knowledge concerning all the processes taking place inside a reactor coupled with bad reactor design. Once things went belly up, the reactor had no security systems to either prevent or delay the explosion so it was on a one way trip to dumping radioactive debris straight into the atmosphere. Modern reactors are designed with many types of protective layers between the nuclear fuel/waste and the outside world. They are also designed with automated control systems that kick-in if things go south and keep them from escalating.

Natural events like monster earthquakes or tsunamis can still cause a disaster, but the problem is that right now we don't really have a working option to nuclear fission for our energy supply. I mean sure, the Internet is full of crackpots with wondrous solutions to all the problems of existence, but we are speaking about the real world here.

[Fragony]

We are going to need a lot of these things if electric cars are as much on the rise like they seem to be. We can eventually move on to Deuterium and Thorium

[Greyblades]

But Nuclear power is safe and nothing bad would ever happen.

Before someone inevitability comes along, gnashing their teeth, telling me how the Russians (everything the Soviets did was the Russians fault, remember that) disregarded protocol, telling me how accidents literally never happen (except that one in Japan and that other one in three mile island).

I would simply point out that one of these accidents is catastrophic. You know what happens when a windmill or solar panel explodes? A fire. You know a fire does? It gets extinguished.

Nuclear power is meme propagated but pseudo scientific shutins.

It's been a while since I've seen someone disparage Nuclear power, I didn't expect it to be you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

http://coalitionoffreedom.com/how-many-people-have-died-from-nuclear-accidents

At worst 5400 people have died due to nuclear accident over 60+ years, 5000 of those are estimates based on surrounding exposure and largely uncomfirmed, that is out of 182,156 dead from power production related accidents overall since 1907. To put it in perspective: The 1957 Great Smog of London killed 12,000. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog)

Also there was that time when a hydroelectric dam killed 171,000 people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam). Not sure why it is omitted from the worldwide death toll.

Nuclear power is a beast when things go wrong, but it is less of a beast than previous methods of power production with the added benefit that it doesn't mess things up when it's running perfectly. It is also the only power source with the efficiency and capacity to replace the burden oil and coal bears(save hydro-electric which cant be used everywhere and the consequences of a large scale failure can be biblical, far beyond that of all nuclear accidents thus far).

[Shaka_Khan]

Nuclear power is a beast when things go wrong, but it is less of a beast than previous methods of power production with the added benefit that it doesn't mess things up when it's running perfectly.
Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect world.

[wooly_mammoth]

Well, it's not, but if you live under the fear of impending disasters you may as well just curl up on the ground and quietly await your death. Don't stand in your house because and earthquake might bring it down on you, don't go outside because you may be hit by a car, don't fly in an airplane because you may crash, and don't use nuclear power plants out of the fear that something extremely improbable may cause an accident.

[Greyblades]

Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect world.

Depends what you mean by perfect but lets leave the semantics to the pedants. When it works, which is 99.999999999% of the time, it doesn't release anything into the atmosphere which is more than can be said for combustion based power production.

Even before Chernobyl influenced reforms it took either a huge series of screw ups or an act of god to make nuclear plants fail in any way that affects the world outside a plant.

[Strike For The South]

You gentleman are familiar with the concept of scale, right? One accident endangers millions of lives (the born and the not) for and untold number of years. Putting complete trust in safety features and assuming no human error is usually how bad things happen.

What is the benefit of nuclear energy as opposed solar or wind? Is it even really less harmful to than environment that coal?

[Fragony]

It's just the best right now

[Greyblades]

The benefit is scale: solar and wind production units are individually inefficient;you need huge farms of them to get close to the power output of a single nuclear plant and the production is not reliant on inconsistent sun and wind exposure.

As for enviroment it is rather a non issue; normal operation is clean, it's waste easily contained and stored. When it sufferes failures it can be highly damaging to the operating staff but radiation rarely reach beyond the walls of the plant. When it has a catastrophic meltdown, of which we only have one example: Chernobyl, you make an Exclusion zone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone) about this big (https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zHS3zcbOh27E.kDYv5TU4bGNU&hl=en) and radioactive material is scattered continent wide, though to a fraction of an degree of a nuclear weapon; we wont accidentally cause a nuclear winter through reactor explosions.

When it happened there was a threat that the nuclear material would melt through the ground and reach groundwater, but it didnt reach that and a Sarcophagus, a multilayered shield, was built around the core post explosion to make sure and IIRC a similar construct is now mandatory in power plants today.

The effects on Human usage is enormous, but the enviroment on the other hand, to be frank, doesnt seem to give two shits. Chernobyl is overgrown and filled with wildlife to the point that poachers are a problem in the "dead zone". If the Ukraine wasnt dirt poor they probably could reclaim most of it for human use.

[Fragony]

On top of that, you should be AGAINST wind and solar energy if it's the enviroment is your major issue with nuclear-plants. They do more harm than good.

[Greyblades]

Well they do kill quite a lot of pigeons and make a lot of noise, but I don't think they are that detrimental. Just keep them away from residential areas and don't stick them near any nesting grounds and they'll be fine.

[Fragony]

The sound of windmills literally makes people sick, I got a girlfriend where I sometimes spend the night with near these, there is that low sound-resonation that just never gets away. A lot of people there are really desperate about it they simply can't sleep. In coastal area's it arent photo-models that wash up but utterly confused sea-mammals, it disorientates them. It isn't any good. Solar panels need a lot of mining, so that isn't any good either. All envireromental reasons not to go for nuclear energy is simply bullshit. You never said they weren't, just saying they are

[Greyblades]

Solar panels need a lot of mining, so that isn't any good either. All envireromental reasons not to go for nuclear energy is simply bullshit.
Nuclear power require a significant amount of mining as well.

The issue is that the bang for the buck, as it were, is magnitudes greater with nuclear power than solar or wind and that is not going to change for a long time.
Nuclear energy is a clean, strategically viable and relatively plentiful power source capable of providing for the high energy demands of the modern era and it is the logical choice to keep the world running until renewable energy is developed enough to be a real feasible alternative.

[Kralizec]

The sound of windmills literally makes people sick, I got a girlfriend where I sometimes spend the night with near these, there is that low sound-resonation that just never gets away. A lot of people there are really desperate about it they simply can't sleep. In coastal area's it arent photo-models that wash up but utterly confused sea-mammals, it disorientates them. It isn't any good. Solar panels need a lot of mining, so that isn't any good either. All envireromental reasons not to go for nuclear energy is simply bullshit. You never said they weren't, just saying they are

A lot of this reminds me of that old "power lines cause cancer" trope.

[Fragony]

A lot of this reminds me of that old "power lines cause cancer" trope.

Spend a night near these things. The constant zoom is absokutiky maddening,

[Kralizec]

I've lived near a railroad track, in a house with no soundproofing.

I'm sure it's not nice, but I imagine it would be bearable (especially since it's a constant sound) and I don't buy that it will make you sick.

[Fragony]

I've lived near a railroad track, in a house with no soundproofing.

I'm sure it's not nice, but I imagine it would be bearable (especially since it's a constant sound) and I don't buy that it will make you sick.

There really are complaints, that girlgriend lives in Spakenburg there are several at the other side of the channel, ten or so. It's a constant humming (not everybody notices it) but it absolutily distorts the sleep for some. I got other reasons to not sleep when I am at her place but I wouldn't underestimate what a continious monotone buzz does. You can't get around it, putting something in your ears doesn't help it never goes away

[Husar]

it's waste easily contained and stored.

:laugh4:

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2011/ph241/madres1/


Nuclear reactors produce high level radioactive wastes which present a variety of problems that must be considered for safe disposal. [4] Some waste products will generate considerable heat as they decay while others will remain intensely radioactive for very long time periods. Because of these hazards, disposal regulations require isolation of the wastes from the public and the environment for tens of thousands of years. Some of the most concerning byproducts from spent fuel are Plutonium-239 (half-life 24,000 years), Technetium-99 (half-life 220,000 years), and Iodine-129 (half-life 15.7 million years). [4] Without a permanently safe location for these byproducts, society will have to carry the burden of storing and guarding nuclear wastes for many centuries. This turns the nuclear energy process into a moral issue involving sustainability and the fact that the power consumed today will leave radioactive garbage for future generations. [5] While the nuclear fuel cycle hardly exacerbates global warming, nuclear power still poses globally significant risks. Two that dominate the discussion are the vulnerability of spent nuclear fuel in storage pools to terrorist attack and leakage from geologic repositories that are designed to isolate high level waste from the natural environment. [3] The biggest problem is how to keep radioactive waste in storage when there is nothing that could be built that would be definitively safe until the waste becomes benign after hundreds of thousands of years. A final high level waste deposit must be absolutely reliable, because the quantities of poison are tremendous, and it must be permanently guarded which requires a society with stability that has not yet been demonstrated by humankind. [5]

By the way, there is solar power and then there is solar power, some of it requires a power unit and the mining required to make mirrors.

Check out Desertec: http://www.desertec.org

It requires a huge initial investment to build the necessary infrastructure that noone wants to pay for and then one may have qualms about not all countries in North Africa being good partners for this, but then again we heat many of our homes with Russian gas anyway, so...

The technology is certainly less harmful than burying material below our drinking water that is stored in containers that last a few thousand years but stays poisonous for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. Not that I need to care, but do you like people who poison (their) children?

[Greyblades]

I said contain and store. I said dick about dispose. All we need to do is keep it out of the hands of lunatics until space travel becomes cheap and we can chuck it all in the sun. Methinks the containment can survive that long.

As for an african solar cell, good luck keeping the damn things working. Maintaining delecate electronics in a desert is a nightmare. You'd have to replace half of them within a year.

[Husar]

I said contain and store. I said dick about dispose. All we need to do is keep it out of the hands of lunatics until space travel becomes cheap and we can chuck it all in the sun. Methinks the containment can survive that long.

As for an african solar cell, good luck keeping the damn things working. Maintaining delecate electronics in a desert is a nightmare. You'd have to replace half of them within a year.

What delicate electronics? As I said there is solar power and then there is solar power. I don't think anyone proposed to put photovoltaic cells into the African desert. Too expensive, not enough power. There are better, more low-tech solutions to use on such a grand scale.
So unless a mirror counts as delicate electronics, I assume it will work just fine.

All one needs to do is to go to the desertec site and click on "The Concept" in the menu structure to see the three proposed methods:
- Parabolic trough
- Fresnel collector
- Solar tower

None of them use photovoltaic units.

[Greyblades]

I did visit that website, it is not made for phones as I could barely make it out, it's marketing indeed implying sticking solar panels in the desert.

Regardless, it is currently a pipe dream and the project died in 2009 because of it. Currently the world's highest capacity concentrated solar thermal power station is the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility) in the Nevada desert, It's gross capacity is 392 megawatts which is on the low end of capacity for a single Nuclear core, of which most stations have multiple.

It is under performing, producing in 2014 around half of the power it is specc'd for, which the owners say is down to "clouds, jet contrails and weather" It has improved since then but it is still risking decommission which may be down to the fact that it needs to burn 46,084 metric tons of carbon (in the form of natural gas) a year just getting it thing working each morning.

A nuclear plant doesn't need a kick start, it isn't affected by the weather, save for natural disasters that would absolutely demolish a solar plant, and a single high end core can produce 4 times the electricity of a solar plant at a constant rate, 24/7 365 days a year.

Nuclear also has a competitive start up cost: Ivanpah cost $2.2 billion, the Sizewell B Core (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sizewell_nuclear_power_stations) in Suffolk that produces 3 times the energy at $5.3 billion. It is also profitable, whereas Ivanpah recently asked for a government grant of half a billion dollars to pay off it's start up loan.

[Husar]

I did visit that website, it is not made for phones as I could barely make it out, it's marketing indeed implying sticking solar panels in the desert.

Regardless, it is currently a pipe dream and the project died in 2009 because of it. Currently the world's highest capacity concentrated solar thermal power station is the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility) in the Nevada desert, It's gross capacity is 392 megawatts which is on the low end of capacity for a single Nuclear core, of which most stations have multiple.

Watching 4k movies over the internet was a pipe dream in 1980...noone said we have to have this tomorrow.

As for the capacity, just like you can have several cores in a nuclear power plant, you can also have several solar power plants in a desert, so what's the point?


It is under performing, producing in 2014 around half of the power it is specc'd for, which the owners say is down to "clouds, jet contrails and weather" It has improved since then but it is still risking decommission which may be down to the fact that it needs to burn 46,084 metric tons of carbon (in the form of natural gas) a year just getting it thing working each morning..

Nevada <> Sahara
Desertec <> Ivanpah

That they power Ivanpah every morning with natural gas sounds more like a design decision. Did they even try to store the energy for the next startup during the day?
And even if we assume that this is inevitable, it's not a lot compared to coal power plants and other alternatives.


A nuclear plant doesn't need a kick start, it isn't affected by the weather, save for natural disasters that would absolutely demolish a solar plant, and a single high end core can produce 4 times the electricity of a solar plant at a constant rate, 24/7 365 days a year.

What do you mean by doesn't need a kickstart? What do you think makes all the electronics, safety gear and mechanics in a nuclear power plant work when the reactors are all shut down? And besides, you couldn't start up a nuclear reactor every morning if you wanted to, because it can take days to start it once in the first place and days to shut it down.


Nuclear also has a competitive start up cost: Ivanpah cost $2.2 billion, the Sizewell B Core (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sizewell_nuclear_power_stations) in Suffolk that produces 3 times the energy at $5.3 billion. It is also profitable, whereas Ivanpah recently asked for a government grant of half a billion dollars to pay off it's start up loan.

Dumping plastic in the ocean is also profitable. As I said, the startup costs of a nuclear reactor are irrelevant because they have to run most of the time unless they have to be maintained. You also cannot use them to deal with fluctuations in power usage because they can't change their output quickly, that is why coal and gas power plants still exist because they can be used in a more flexible manner. The startup cost of a wind turbine or water power is also more or less zero and if you use them to start up your solar power plant, then its start up cost is also lower.
And let us not forget that the startup cost or profitability does not include taking care of the nuclear waste for centuries...

[Greyblades]

Watching 4k movies over the internet was a pipe dream in 1980...noone said we have to have this tomorrow.Not having it tomorrow is the point, we need to wean off fossil fuel now, and solar is anywhere from 40 to 200 years away from being a feasible large scale replacement as Ivanpah illustrates.

Nuclear is here, now, and can keep the world turning that 40-200 years but it is squeamishness that keeps the coal fires burning.


That they power Ivanpah every morning with natural gas sounds more like a design decision. Did they even try to store the energy for the next startup during the day?.'
And even if we assume that this is inevitable, it's not a lot compared to coal power plants and other alternatives.

What do you mean by doesn't need a kickstart? What do you think makes all the electronics, safety gear and mechanics in a nuclear power plant work when the reactors are all shut down? And besides, you couldn't start up a nuclear reactor every morning if you wanted to, because it can take days to start it once in the first place and days to shut it down. Sizewell B is turned off for maintenance once every 18 months, before 2006 it could be restarted by Sizewell A and even now it can be started up by any of the other cores on the power grid who had a differing cycle, the non-voltaic solar plants of today cannot alternate operational periods and thus require external power support, of which wind power would be too unreliable to depend on 100% of the time. The only renewable energy that can be harnessed for that duty is water power, and I have noted earlier that it's a good alternative but it can't be used everywhere.

I'm not sure about batteries, the wiki page tells me they require an hours worth of gas power to start so perhaps there isn't an industrial batter large enough to keep them going for that long? The largest industrial battery can power a city, but only for 7 minutes.


Dumping plastic in the ocean is also profitable. As I said, the startup costs of a nuclear reactor are irrelevant because they have to run most of the time unless they have to be maintained. You also cannot use them to deal with fluctuations in power usage because they can't change their output quickly, that is why coal and gas power plants still exist because they can be used in a more flexible manner. The startup cost of a wind turbine or water power is also more or less zero and if you use them to start up your solar power plant, then its start up cost is also lower.
Dumping is not profitable for the one who made the plastic in the first place or the one who used it before it stopped being useful.

Nuclear stations can change their output in terms of what they give to an energy grid, they just cant vary how much fuel is consumed in the process, nuclear materials only having 2 settings: hot and under carbon rod suppression.


And let us not forget that the startup cost or profitability does not include taking care of the nuclear waste for centuries...
The costs are one time only, it's not exactly a high maintenance process putting radioactive material in containers and burying them far away from water.

Or they would be one time only if they could get around to digging the holes, as it is only america and Finland have an operating deep rock depository right now.

Also, some countries make each nuclear plant to set aside disposal funds for the day they are decommissioned to pay that cost.

[Husar]

Not having it tomorrow is the point, we need to wean off fossil fuel now, and solar is anywhere from 40 to 200 years away from being a feasible large scale replacement as Ivanpah illustrates.

Nuclear is here, now, and can keep the world turning that 40-200 years but it is squeamishness that keeps the coal fires burning.

Ivanpah is a single plant in a single location, and the 40 to 200 years sound like a nuclear power fan's pipe dream:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/01/09/countries-leading-way-renewable-energy/
http://qz.com/576437/which-places-have-achieved-100-renewable-power/

Some countries have already reached going 100% renewable, others are working on it. Other plants become less and less important the more is invested into renewables. Of course one question is how much each country is willing to invest or risk.


Sizewell B is turned off for maintenance once every 18 months, before 2006 it could be restarted by Sizewell A and even now it can be started up by any of the other cores on the power grid who had a differing cycle, the non-voltaic solar plants of today cannot alternate operational periods and thus require external power support, of which wind power would be too unreliable to depend on 100% of the time. The only renewable energy that can be harnessed for that duty is water power, and I have noted earlier that it's a good alternative but it can't be used everywhere.

I'm not sure about batteries, the wiki page tells me they require an hours worth of gas power to start so perhaps there isn't an industrial batter large enough to keep them going for that long? The largest industrial battery can power a city, but only for 7 minutes.

Yeah, that was my point, you need another reactor to start up a nuclear reactor and noone would rely on solar or wind alone since that might mean going dark throughout the entire night.

As for batteries, of course you'd bring up the ones with chemical poisons, but there are more ways to store energy:

https://markosun.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/very-innovative-power-station/
http://www.bine.info/en/publications/publikation/windenergie-unter-tage-speichern/
http://inhabitat.com/scientists-unveil-plans-for-first-underwater-storage-power-plant/

There are also ideas to store heat energy in sand, which can then be used at night to keep up the power and probably to restart the solar plant in the morning, at which point the storages would also be refilled again.

Just like nuclear, you may also want to keep biofuel plants around in case of actual shortages. The CO 2 output would still be nowhere near the one of coal power plants and cars.



Nuclear stations can change their output in terms of what they give to an energy grid, they just cant vary how much fuel is consumed in the process, nuclear materials only having 2 settings: hot and under carbon rod suppression.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2013.08.27/hourly.png

So you'd just turn 30-40GW of NPPs off during the night and restart them the next morning? Keep in mind that shutting one off and starting it again takes several days or even weeks...
NPPs are used for the base load while more flexible ones like coal or gas are used to deal with the peak loads. Renewables can use excess power to load up storages and in the long term there can also be more intelligent grids where renewables can be turned off when not needed, it's certainly faster to turn some mirrors away from the sun than to shut down an NPP.


The costs are one time only, it's not exactly a high maintenance process putting radioactive material in containers and burying them far away from water.

Or they would be one time only if they could get around to digging the holes, as it is only america and Finland have an operating deep rock depository right now.

Also, some countries make each nuclear plant to set aside disposal funds for the day they are decommissioned to pay that cost.

Not every country has easily accessible deep rock storage or a desert where there is no ground water people depend on. In the US people can also light their tap water on fire thanks to responsible business methods. The safety of geological storage is also only given for a certain period of time, which means future generations may have to deal with issues again or may not even know of the dangers lying deep within the planet unless you seriously believe this info will never vanish because it's on the internet now.
From the stanford link from earlier:


Neither onsite storage pools nor dry casks are sustainable high level waste disposal techniques, and because of this many alternative concepts have been studied and proposed. Some alternatives include burial in the sub seabed, launching the waste into outer space, and partitioning and transmutation. [4] Although each of these alternatives has benefits, the consensus is that the best and safest long term option for high level waste disposal is geological isolation. The U.S. Department of Energy has studied a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to determine if it could serve as a geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste. At Yucca Mountain, the repository would have the advantage of being in the desert environment where natural geologic features in tandem with engineered barriers could keep water away from the waste for thousands of years. [4] But, as it currently stands, Yucca Mountain would not be able to store all of the U.S.'s spent fuel and radioactive military waste. In 2006 in the United States, the inventory of spent fuel was approximately 62,000 metric tons, and the projected spent fuel from currently operating nuclear power plants will be at least twice this amount over their lifespans. [6] Just the current amount of spent nuclear fuel would put Yucca Mountain almost to its capacity. This means that either Yucca Mountain will have to be expanded or a second permanent storage facility will be necessary to help store the growing quantities of nuclear waste. Table 1 shows that by 2035, the total amount of nuclear waste in the U.S. is expected to increase to an estimated 104,000 tons. [2] Given the success of dry cask storage and the uncertainties around geologic repositories the Yucca Mountain Repository has been temporarily removed as a solution for high level waste. Even though there are uncertainties involved in geologic isolation, the U.S. will almost certainly need at least one in the future to store high level waste. [7] As of 2010, there is not a single geologic repository in operation anywhere in the world.

Whatever you do with it, it is risky and will stay so for hundreds of thousands of years while, as SFTS said, accidents are still a possibility even with all the safety measures.

[Gilrandir]

Chernobyl is overgrown and filled with wildlife to the point that poachers are a problem in the "dead zone". If the Ukraine wasnt dirt poor they probably could reclaim most of it for human use.

In fact, it has never been completely deserted. A couple of days ago I saw a footage on TV about a 70-years old lady who lives in the "dead zone". She had been evacuated in 1986 soon after the accident, but returned the same year. She says she feels fine and doesn't want to leave it. And she is not alone in the village. There are others who returned or the recalitrant who chose to stay back then. It is true, though, that such cases are not numerous.

[Husar]

In fact, it has never been completely deserted. A couple of days ago I saw a footage on TV about a 70-years old lady who lives in the "dead zone". She had been evacuated in 1986 soon after the accident, but returned the same year. She says she feels fine and doesn't want to leave it. And she is not alone in the village. There are others who returned or the recalitrant who chose to stay back then. It is true, though, that such cases are not numerous.

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/5/1025.full


Results Age-adjusted thyroid cancer incidence rates (adjusted to the WHO 2000 world population) have increased between 1970 and 2001 from 0.4 per 100 000 to 3.5 per 100 000 among males (+775%) and from 0.8 per 100 000 to 16.2 per 100 000 among females (+1925%). The relative increase among males (+1020%) and females (+3286%) in ‘high exposure’ areas exceeded increases among males (+571%) and females (+250%) in ‘lower exposure’ areas of Belarus. Dramatic increases in thyroid cancer incidence rate ratios were noted among both males and females and in all age groups. The highest incidence rate ratios were observed among people from ‘higher exposure’ areas ages 0–14 yr at time of diagnosis.

Belarus is the area where a lot of the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl rained down, in case that was not known.
You guys are fooling yourselves if you think ~50 old people "feeling fine" in a radioactively poisoned area means it can or should just be reclaimed for families to live in.

[Greyblades]

Why would there be a should if there is a can?


Ivanpah is a single plant in a single location, and the 40 to 200 years sound like a nuclear power fan's pipe dream:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/01/09/countries-leading-way-renewable-energy/
http://qz.com/576437/which-places-have-achieved-100-renewable-power/

Some countries have already reached going 100% renewable, others are working on it. Other plants become less and less important the more is invested into renewables. Of course one question is how much each country is willing to invest or risk.
"Countries" is pushing it for them and low industrial capacity ones at that. But yes Hydro electricity is a grand thing, aside from the occasional drought it is basically as constant as fossil fuel.

Yeah, that was my point, you need another reactor to start up a nuclear reactor and noone would rely on solar or wind alone since that might mean going dark throughout the entire night.

At this point of development it will mean going dark in the middle of the day. And there is no point in time when all nuclear plants will be switched off, whereas there are plenty when solar and wind simultaneously fail


As for batteries, of course you'd bring up the ones with chemical poisons, but there are more ways to store energy:

https://markosun.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/very-innovative-power-station/
http://www.bine.info/en/publications/publikation/windenergie-unter-tage-speichern/
http://inhabitat.com/scientists-unveil-plans-for-first-underwater-storage-power-plant/

There are also ideas to store heat energy in sand, which can then be used at night to keep up the power and probably to restart the solar plant in the morning, at which point the storages would also be refilled again.

Just like nuclear, you may also want to keep biofuel plants around in case of actual shortages. The CO 2 output would still be nowhere near the one of coal power plants and cars.
Water reserves for a dam, that is definitely a new one.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2013.08.27/hourly.png

So you'd just turn 30-40GW of NPPs off during the night and restart them the next morning? Keep in mind that shutting one off and starting it again takes several days or even weeks...
NPPs are used for the base load while more flexible ones like coal or gas are used to deal with the peak loads. Renewables can use excess power to load up storages and in the long term there can also be more intelligent grids where renewables can be turned off when not needed, it's certainly faster to turn some mirrors away from the sun than to shut down an NPP.
You don't shut down a nuclear plant, you throttle the output, some are capable of raising or lowering output by 15% within the span of a minute. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants)


Whatever you do with it, it is risky and will stay so for hundreds of thousands of years while, as SFTS said, accidents are still a possibility even with all the safety measures.
To say it is not a risk at all is of course foolish but the risk as it stands is minimal, nuclear power plant construction since Chernobyl has been focused on safety far beyond the point of paranoia. The storage of such materials is a problem but one that is potentially solvable and currently containable.

Yes it would be best if we could provide all our power without risk or waste but currently we cannot; hydroelectric dams are limited by limited water availability and excessive if not outright obscene land usage and all other forms of green energy production are woefully unreliable and inefficient in terms of cost to output.

The best course of action with the technology currently available is to do what we can with hydroelectric but also accept that we will still have to use fuel based electricity and cover the remainder of our energy needs for a long time to come. The logical choice is to the one that produces the most amount of energy for least amount of fuel and waste that is simultaneously the easiest to contain: nuclear.

[Gilrandir]

Belarus is the area where a lot of the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl rained down, in case that was not known.

... and that is why the situation in and around Chernobyl seems to be better than in some regions of Belarus.



You guys are fooling yourselves if you think ~50 old people "feeling fine" in a radioactively poisoned area means it can or should just be reclaimed for families to live in.
Who says it should be reclaimed? I just point to the fact that the Zone has never been completely deserted and is not now.

[Husar]

At this point of development it will mean going dark in the middle of the day. And there is no point in time when all nuclear plants will be switched off, whereas there are plenty when solar and wind simultaneously fail

You don't shut down a nuclear plant, you throttle the output, some are capable of raising or lowering output by 15% within the span of a minute. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants)

The question is whether an NPP is still profitable if it runs on 50% capacity for half a day.

As for solar and wind being unreliable, first off that should be less of a problem if you have enough over a wide area and secondly it's why you'd get plenty of storage to take over during a lull. Of course the investment costs are huge, but the running costs not so much.


To say it is not a risk at all is of course foolish but the risk as it stands is minimal, nuclear power plant construction since Chernobyl has been focused on safety far beyond the point of paranoia. The storage of such materials is a problem but one that is potentially solvable and currently containable.

http://www.dw.com/en/german-city-of-aachen-to-sue-belgian-nuclear-power-plant/a-19021423

I wouldn't be so sure, the US even lost a few nuclear bombs, so to trust humans to always be on their best behavior with something very dangerous is maybe not the best idea.


Yes it would be best if we could provide all our power without risk or waste but currently we cannot; hydroelectric dams are limited by limited water availability and excessive if not outright obscene land usage and all other forms of green energy production are woefully unreliable and inefficient in terms of cost to output.

Of course we cannot do it currently, I was talking more about what we should invest in for the future and not about shutting everything down right now. As for the cost to output, you have exactly zero fuel costs for solar, water and wind as nature provides the fuel to you for free.


The best course of action with the technology currently available is to do what we can with hydroelectric but also accept that we will still have to use fuel based electricity and cover the remainder of our energy needs for a long time to come. The logical choice is to the one that produces the most amount of energy for least amount of fuel and waste that is simultaneously the easiest to contain: nuclear.

Then keep the nuclear reactors running and slowly replace everything else with renewables until you can begin replacing the NPPs as well, shouldn't be so hard, or? Funding a project such as desertec might go a long way towards that as I can see how solar is not so useful for half the year around the north pole.

[Fragony]

According to some we already have a basicly limitless option https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium