This is terrible news. Nuclear power, while not perfect, is one of the best alternatives we have to carbon-emitting power plants. If there are no companies left to build them, the already impossible task of fighting climate change will get that much harder.
Every time I've look into it seems like this isn't the case. Nuclear plants are simply too expensive, have too many production bottlenecks, and take too long to construct (too name but a few issues). No serious analysis I've seen of how we meet emissions goals has ever placed a big emphasis on nuclear power. Probably one of the biggest parts of meeting the goals will be increased energy efficiency, but a lot of nuclear advocates I've seen seem to be under the mistaken impression that it's all about 100% carbon free electricity generation (something that's not going to happen either way).
I think only having power sources cheaper than carbon will fix it. Which could potentially include sources cheaper because a carbon tax forces carbon prices to include their externalities.
Studies show that efficiency initiatives can reduce emissions[1][2]. It's not going to solve everything, but as I said, it's going to be a major component, as will alternative energy sources like wind and solar (you won't be able to get 100% wind and solar, but you don't have to). Any serious analysis of ways to fight global warming looks at a variety of different actions. They don't pretend that there's a single component ("Have all electricity generation done by [X Type Power Plant]") that solves everything.
This is one of the things I've noticed about a lot of nuclear advocacy. Though there's often appeals to science and reason, the main driver appears to be an emotional one. There's the claim that the real interest is in combating global warming, but many advocates have shown no interest in learning about the best ways to combat global warming. Their interest seems to start and stop with advocacy for their preferred solution, whether or not it's even a good solution to the problem.
Global emissions are up, despite efficiency improvements. The proper level to look at the system is the whole earth. Those reports look at local instances.
Don't get me wrong. I think efficiency is good. I'm just not sure it actually can reduce emissions globally.
The huge risks (both financial type and "boom" type) with building and supporting nuclear reactors seems like pretty solid evidence that they are not "one of the best alternatives".
"best" is relative; what is better, that can scale up sufficiently to meet the world's energy demand?
Perhaps renewables can scale up, but last I heard that wasn't realistic on the time scale humanity needs. Does anyone have good information on that question?
Renewables haven't scaled yet, even if they are making progress.
Nuclear is interesting in that we have around 70-90 thousands years of fuel for the plants, which can only get cheaper/safer over time as the technology gets better. Currently, their capital requirements (they are expensive to build even if they are cheap to fuel) and waste problems make them fairly unviable. Couple that with being even less on demand than coal...
Oh come now. 70,000-90,000 years? If the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has accurately estimated the planet's economically accessible uranium resources, reactors could run more than 200 years at current rates of consumption.
The article specifically mentions that pretty much every major builder of nuclear plants outside of China are in trouble and/or downsizing/restructuring in big ways.
Nuclear generates a lot more kilowatt-hours per square-foot than renewables, especially in places that aren't very sunny or windy. I am not advocating for a 100% nuclear grid, but I don't see how we can get rid of coal without a decent number of nuclear plants.
It's very relevant, because a) we need to reserve enough area for people to live, and for growing the food we need, and hopefully for a few parks as well, and b) transmission and storage of electricity across long distances is not trivial. It isn't feasible to, for example, cover the entire surface area of Africa with solar panels and use that energy to power the rest of the world.
That entire thinking is flat out wrong - even if we were 100% solar the idea we won't have any land left to live on is insane [1]. Solar will get more efficient and more dense, to what peak we don't know but even at current efficiency we could more than power the world in unused and unlivable land.
> pretty much every major builder of nuclear plants outside of China are in trouble and/or downsizing/restructuring in big ways.
The proximate cause AFAIK is lack of demand, which depends on politics, which depends on public perception of its danger. It doesn't depend on economics, or at least that's not the immediate problem.
It's okay China and France are still doing wepl I think. China especially seems quite bullish on nuclear so I guess there's still hope. Korea, India and Canada are still doing okay too.
France is doing so well that during last November's cold snap they were considering cutting power to industry and rolling power outages for the population because too many of their ancient, brittle nuclear power plants were out of commission and the import capacity from neighbouring countries was at its limit.
(Reuters claims that there wasn't enough spare capacity in Germany; in fact the transfer capacity of ~2 GW was the limiting factor; http://www.iwr.de/news.php?id=32860)
For what it's worth, I think the temperatures improved before the more drastic measures had to be implemented. And of course people are free to argue that taking those French plants down for review was an overreaction by an overly critical nuclear regulation regime.
Seems to me like the problem there stems from the French government skimping on maintenance, rather than their decision to use nuclear plants in the first place.
Built upon the technology of Germany's AVR[1]. We're still cleaning up that mess. "The total AVR decommissioning costs are expected to be in the order of 1.5 – 2.5 billion €, all public funds, ie to exceed its construction costs by far."
Nuclear power has no excuses. The cost of accidents is astronomical and uninsurable. That's not a regulatory cost unless you think a risk of that magnitude should "go naked" in some free-market fantasy of handling uninsurable risks.
It sure would be nice if there was a grid-scale power source that emitted no CO2. But it's not anyone else's fault but the nuclear industry that we don't have such a thing.
I'd much rather deal with fossil fuels than the catastrophic risks uniquely posed by nuclear power generation.
The excuse for incidents like Fukushima are "Well, they made these mistakes...". Personally, I'd rather not risk zero-notice forced evacuations, permanent quarantine zones, and making significant portions of populated land uninhabitable for centuries on some people not making mistakes.
For those who write this off, there are some very tragic photo essays from Pripyat and Fukushima that can make this impact feel very real. Do you want to risk that happening to your area?
That comparison is based on properly functioning nuclear power plants and coal. I daresay when you throw in the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, the balance shifts dramatically in the opposite direction. Also, the radiation from nuclear disasters is highly concentrated, while that from coal is distributed at far lower concentrations.
No, even including Chernobyl (an inherently dangerous design that would have been illegal to build anywhere except the Soviet Union) nuclear has been far, far safer than coal. As mikeash pointed out in another comment, "Put another way: coal kills about as many people each year as nuclear has in its entire history if you include the bombs dropped on Japan."
>...Also, the radiation from nuclear disasters is highly concentrated, while that from coal is distributed at far lower concentrations.
The radiation emissions from a properly working coal plant are high enough that the plant would be shut down if the NRC regulated coal plants. But the real danger from coal plants is the massive amounts of CO2 that they emit which is one of the biggest contributors to climate change that might end up destroying our future. It is pretty obvious which power source is more dangerous.
Although it's oil not coal, the deepwater horizon accident was probably worse than Fukushima from both an environmental standpoint and number of lives lost. The most tragic failure of a power generating facility of all time was probably the Banqiao Dam disaster, not Chernobyl.
Certainly true from a direct-deaths standpoint. There were zero killed by the Fukushima explosions, and zero acute deaths due to the radiation release. (It's a lot harder to settle on long-term chronic radiation sickness effects.) 11 were killed at Deepwater Horizon.
Not sure how you could quantify the respective environmental damage, either financially or ecologically.
But there is another effect to consider: total monetary damage. Deepwater Horizon cost BP $62 billion pre-tax[0]. The total cost of Fukushima including victim compensation is currently estimated at about $180 billion[1], but the estimate has skyrocketed over the past 6 years, so one could suspect further escalation.
>And it isn't like coal is immune from having zero-notice forced evacuation, and making land uninhabitable.
From your link:
>the spill caused a mudflow wave of water and ash that covered 12 homes, pushing one entirely off its foundation, rendering three uninhabitable, and caused some damage to 42 residential properties. [...] Though 22 residences were evacuated, nobody was reported to be injured or in need of hospitalization. [...] [T]he spill [...] covered an area of 300 acres (1.2 km2).
42 homes were damaged, 4 to the point of destruction, and 22 homes were evacuated. There was zero human injury from this incident.
Although Wikipedia tries very hard to make it sound like the spill was massive, if you look at the real area affected, 300 acres is less than half of a single square mile, and that area can be cleaned up (if it hasn't been already). People can walk on the ground affected without having to watch a geiger counter, and no exclusion zone is required.
For reference, Fukushima's exclusion zone is about 12 sq miles and Chernobyl's exclusion zone is 1,000 square miles. (both numbers from the relevant Wikipedia entries)
Are you really trying to compare this minor accident to large-scale international incidents that have made caused the permanent evacuation of entire cities? Humans will not safely be able to live in those areas for decades.
The point is not that industrial accidents never happen or that they're pleasant or inconsequential when they do happen. The point is that the cost associated with nuclear accidents is massively higher, and it's entirely reasonable to find that risk unacceptable v. more controllable risks like greenhouse gas emissions.
Even dam breakage, which is about the next-largest threat profile for industrial disasters, won't create a permanently uninhabitable radius of literally-irradiated land. Maybe the land gets too wrecked to rebuild on? OK, but you're not going to get cancer by going to check it out.
It's silly to pretend like you can't tell the difference. Nuclear may be safe while it works, but the question "What happens when it stops working?" is just as important, if not more.
Fossil fuel emissions and other pollutants build up gradually and can be controlled. You're not going to get kicked out of your home and neighborhood forever because of a malfunction at the coal plant.
And nuclear power generation also emits a very dangerous pollutant: nuclear waste.
I think you have a different definition of the word "emit" than I do.
Nuclear waste is stable, does not migrate when handled properly in containment pools, and can be reprocessed if required. All existing spent nuclear fuel in the united states is stored on-site. It's been that way since the beginning of the industry.
In contrast, particulate and greenhouse gas (including CO2) emissions from coal-fired plants migrate with the wind, often polluting areas far from the plant.
I don't see how you can compare the two.
It's true that spent fuel is very toxic but every single attempt to deal with this issue has been stymied with rampant NIMBYism and non-science based fear mongering.
You can control the operational risks associated with nuclear power. Doing so with fossil fueled plants is not nearly as easy.
That's the crux of the nuclear issue. Everything works great in the theoretical world where everything is handled properly, all factors are properly accounted for, and all tradeoffs were wisely made. That is simply not how the real world works, and Fukushima reminds us of that.
No matter how many failsafes you put in place, they will, at some point or another, be breached. The question is then "What happens when every failsafe fails, and is that risk acceptable compared to the alternatives?"
So long as it's stored in stable geologic formations, or controlled by stable human institutions. Where "stable" is a period of time longer than human history in many cases.
>does not migrate when handled properly in containment pools
Which are dependent on active management and security indefinitely. This is challenging as the service life of the plant where the pool is located and revenue is generated is less than indefinately.
Obviously you haven't looked into the cost of enriching nuclear waste. It is prohibitively high for all but dedicated nation-state actors, who if have the technology to enrich radioactive materials to weapon-grade material aren't going to use nuclear waste.
Worst case for proliferation is being used in a dirty bomb, which just kind of spreads the waste across a limited area. Even then you're looking at alpha-emitting particles that won't cause any radioactive damage unless you ingest it. Take a shower and you'll be fine.
>We've had not one but several nuclear disasters in the past several decades and in each case the sky hasn't come crashing down.
Unless of course you're one of the people who lived in the nuclear exclusion zones created by Chernobyl and Fukushima, in which case, yes, everything you own and possess, very potentially including your long-term health, were destroyed in a matter of hours. Those residents can never go back for more than a quick temporary visit, and they can not take back their belongings because they've been irradiated. They will always be asking themselves if they got enough of a dose of radiation to cause early disease.
Call that localized and controllable all you want, and if you propose building these plants in areas with no nearby inhabitants for many sq miles, maybe it works OK. The current system, where we say "Don't worry, it's all perfectly safe, we double-pinkie-promise that we won't make the mistakes those guys in Ukraine or Japan made, and if you disagree you're an idiot who hates science" is just not going to fly.
This is not general alarmism about being unable to mitigate every risk in life. This is a comparative analysis of the potential risk profiles of fossil fuels and nuclear, and fossil fuels being much better because the cost of a catastrophic non-nuclear failure is much smaller than the cost of a catastrophic nuclear failure.
I would argue that if you compared the risk profiles of fossil fuels vs nuclear power you'd come to the conclusion that nuclear has and continues to have, by a wide margin, the safest profile of ANY energy source except maybe wind and solar. I'm only excluding solar because I don't think we fully understand all of the safety impact of the construction of large windmills all over the windiest parts of the planet nor do we fully understand the impact of solar panel manufacturing.
When you account for the full lifecycle of fossil fuels, from the extraction, refining, transportation, and ultimate consumption and measure that impact in both short-term impact (coal-mining deaths) vs. long-term impact (climate change, pollution, cancer) you'd find that nuclear is the best option.
I'd risk a %0.00001 chance of dying by cancer sooner living next to a nuclear plant vs. a 1.0% chance of dying in a road collision with a fuel tanker or a 0.05% chance of dying sooner with emphysema by living close to a coal-fired plant. (I made those numbers up by the way; but my order of magnitude is spot-on)
As a person who worked in this industry, understands the economics of it, and has compared the costs of coal/wind/gas/nuclear, I can confidently say that nuclear can be safe and affordable as an energy source if we are committed to safe and conscientious use of it.
(BTW, for a month, I slept next to a nuclear reactor that was approximately 500 feet away from my bunk. My total radiation dose for that trip was less than I'd get in the same time hanging out at Grand Central Terminal (a location that would it to be certified as a functioning nuclear reactor would be out of specification as emitting too great a dose of radiation to those who work there)
>if we are committed to safe and conscientious use of it.
Ding ding ding. This is always the caveat tucked away in nuclear discussions. "It will be fine, as long as everything is going fine." Things don't always go fine. When they don't go fine at a coal plant, things are bad, but they are recoverable; they can be cleaned up, and that land can be repurposed, even if its prior purpose is no longer feasible due to structural changes or pollution. There is no permanent, decades-long exclusion zone.
>I'd risk a %0.00001 chance of dying by cancer sooner living next to a nuclear plant vs. a 1.0% chance of dying in a road collision with a fuel tanker or a 0.05% chance of dying sooner with emphysema by living close to a coal-fired plant. (I made those numbers up by the way; but my order of magnitude is spot-on)
Not going to nitpick your made-up numbers, but the difference is that this is a bigger thing "than I want to take this risk". This is taking the risk that the area become a nuclear wasteland (from radiation, not explosion) for the next 100 years, an area that no person can enter without risking their immediate health just by being present. If you get too close to the hotspots without the right gear and monitoring, you will die quickly.
Are other things dirty? Do other things have tradeoffs and downsides? Is there even some risk that nearby property will be damaged or destroyed? Sure. I'm not trying to say that other industrial accidents are no big deal. But nuclear is the only thing that can, almost instantly, take a big chunk of land and permanently and irrevocably irradiate it for 100 years (and, that's just the most severe risk with nuclear power generation; there are others that haven't been discussed).
You can say that greenhouse gasses have the same potential non-local impact, which is fine, but quite the inverse of nuclear power, greenhouse gas emissions take decades to effect this impact and are measurable and controllable. We know it's coming and can do things to stop it.
As far as I know, the most catastrophic failure at a conventional plant would impact local air quality temporarily. The most catastrophic failure at a nuclear plant can impact everything about the surrounding area (for loose values of "surrounding"; Chernobyl created a 1000 sq mile no-go zone) for generations. Those failures can and do happen overnight.
Risk assessment of probability of an incident and impact of an incident.
Chernobyl happened. Fukushima happened. If a similar incident happened at the plant just north of NYC, the evacuation zone would include hundreds of thousands or millions of people.
> You're not going to get kicked out of your home and neighborhood forever because of a malfunction at the coal plant.
Until we get a couple more of degrees globally and we'll see floods in many coastal cities. Not to mention destroying the stability of weather we had for ~12,000 years and allowed farming to thrive.
"Coal plants are the nation’s top source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the primary cause of global warming. In 2011, utility coal plants in the United States emitted a total of 1.7 billion tons of CO21. A typical coal plant generates 3.5 million tons of CO2 per year2."
Ever wonder why you read that you should avoid eating fish because of mercury?
"...Every state in America has issued health
advisories warning people to limit or avoid eating certain species of fish due to toxic mercury contamination, many of which cover every waterbody in the state.
...Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of mercury contamination in the U.S., responsible for
approximately 50% of human-caused mercury emissions."
These are long terms effects of burning coal - in the short term tens of thousands die each year from the air pollution from coal plants.
The failure of government is that we allow coal and natural gas to be burned when there are alternatives that are much better for the environment and much better for the general health.
In hindsight, yes they should not have built a nuclear power plant in an earthquake-prone area like Japan. But there are plenty of places that are completely safe to build nuclear reactors, and given the alternatives, we should lend the advantages credence. Hopefully the whole debate will be moot when either solar/wind gets to a certain point or we figure out nuclear fusion.
The location of the plant, next to the ocean, placed it in greater danger from the tsunami. Had the plant been located up higher, above the centuries-old tsunami warning stones, then there maybe would have been a different outcome.
My understanding is that the plant was built seaside to make use of the ocean water for cooling. There are definitely alternatives to this, but in the cost analysis, how many other tradeoffs re: the expediency and safety of nuclear technology are we making that are going to prove to have been in the wrong direction? What is the failure cost going to be?
No place is "completely safe" to build a nuclear power plant (or anything else!). If nothing else, no matter where you build it, it is not 100% proof against attack by military action or evildoers.
This narrative holds only so long as one completely disregards the potential extinction-level event that continues at Fukushima. The simple fact of the matter is no technology exists to adequately and safely address the worst-case failure scenarios. We would do better to pump more CO2 into the atmosphere, whilst reversing deforestation during a transition to solar than to build even one more nuclear plant.
The Fukushima incident is very far from potentially extinction level. You provide no numbers just do the usual empty nuke-bashing. Germany does what you described. They are so green they emit more CO2 since they went green. I guess when it will turn out that pumping more CO2 wasn't the best idea it will also be nuclear industry's fault.
>Germany does what you described. They are so green they emit more CO2 since they went green.
In case people are curious about this claim the reason Germany's "renewable energy" releases so much CO2 is because a large portion of their 'renewable energy' is burning wood.
Most tree farms don't let trees grow 100 years either.
>Based on consumption trends in our region, using wood to generate power here or to make fuel pellets for power generation in Europe is projected to produce higher levels of atmospheric carbon(300%) than fossil fuels for 35 to 50 years. After that time, carbon levels will begin to fall as regrowing forests absorb CO2 from previous combustion, but it is likely too late to avoid irreversible effects on the climate system.
Ad hominem much? Try doing your own research rather than casting aspersions. Mutant fish turning up in the Pacific. Japanese fishermen unable to catch fish. Deleting that food source has very strong repercussions for the survival of the human race, let alone a highly radioactive payload that is god knows where and likely in the water table.
There was nothing ad hominem in my previous post, but now here is some: I'm talking about nuclear industry, but it seems you are talking about captain planet or teenage mutant turtles...
Mutations happen regardless of nuclear spills. They are a driving force of evolution.
Now more seriously:
The human race would easily survive without seafish. Maybe in smaller numbers, but for example in the inlands people eat much less seafish, as they don't have seas nearby ;) A century ago not much seafish was available in the inlands, yet the European inland population was comparable in numbers to the current population.
Radioactive materials were in the ground already, and have been solved into water, which people drank, and had comparable life expectency (shorter, but also due to numerous other factors).
Poisoning the wells and ocean is not very good, especially for business, as many people are irrationally afraid of radiation, and even suspicion of possibility of radiation hurts just as much as actual hazardous contamination to the sales of a product. Apart from that it would truly cause large economic problems, as large areas would have to be excluded from agricultural use, yet nothing like extinction would happen. Even after Chernobyl some people are still alive in Eastern Europe. Even animals live mostly happily in the zone...
>The human race would easily survive without seafish. Maybe in smaller numbers, but for example in the inlands people eat much less seafish, as they don't have seas nearby ;)
If you really want to go down that route then the human race can easily survive without clean air, water, ground or any animal life on this planet. Why would we need any of that? We, at least a few of us, could just as well be living in sealed underground bunkers powered by thermal energy while eating mushrooms all day and recycling our pee and sweat. Doesn't that sound like a lovely future? ;)
>A century ago not much seafish was available in the inlands, yet the European inland population was comparable in numbers to the current population.
They didn't need seafish because they did have enough land for agriculture, many other places, especially insular nation states and Asia in general, did not and do not have that luxury. I also doubt that current European inland population numbers are in any way comparable with the population numbers of a century ago, back in 1900 global population didn't even break 2 billion, now we are at over 7 billion.
Some local contaminations (Chernobyl, Fukushima) are not going to contaminate the whole planet, at most few hundred thousand square kilometers each. This is not in any way a desired event, and if nuclear technology would be developed, and not demonized, its probability could be far smaller, as many technologies are already available to avoid such accidents, which have all happened on old power plants.
The German population is about 30% larger than it was 100 years ago. The industrial revolution resulted in a population boom, which has had most if its effect already in Europe by that time, that is why I referred to Europe. On one hand the world wars have resulted in many lost lives, yet the population boom since then happened mostly in the developing world since then.
Now while this is not a desired development in human history, but inlands of continents could support life in large enough numbers to have civilization(s) survive, even if the net number of humans would be smaller than currently.
Please rest assured, we will not be forced to live in bunkers because of Fukushima, and even if another such tragedy would happen, we could mostly keep out lifestyles, until the global warming caused problems would cause much more changes in it.
Many a little makes a mickle, as such those "some local contaminations" can add up very quickly to a very large scale, especially considering how long these contaminations last.
> This is not in any way a desired event, and if nuclear technology would be developed, and not demonized, its probability could be far smaller, as many technologies are already available to avoid such accidents, which have all happened on old power plants.
There are still hundreds of these "old power plants" active, you want to replace them all with the magical new wonder power plants which never fail and are immune to human error? How is that supposed to work, considering the costs for decommissioning and long-term waste storage?
>Please rest assured, we will not be forced to live in bunkers because of Fukushima, and even if another such tragedy would happen, we could mostly keep out lifestyles, until the global warming caused problems would cause much more changes in it.
I never claimed that we'd be all forced to live in bunkers because of Fukushima. I merely took issue with your flippant statement of "humans can survive without seafish" because that's as much of a slippery slope as it can get, thus the "surviving in a bunker just eating mushrooms" example. Humans might be just fine without eating seafish, tho the rest of this planet's ecosystem (on which we still depend to function properly) probably wouldn't. As such I don't consider the "let's just poison the oceans because humanity can survive without seafish" approach as viable.
> potential extinction-level event that continues at Fukushima
That's an exaggeration. Even if containment were to fail completely on all reactors at Fukushima, the release of radioactive products would make some area uninhabitable and cost a lot of money, but won't lead to even a large loss of life, let alone extinction.
