99.9% of the time, none. They are stored in a bunker far from people.
A large part of why nuclear power is so expensive is because safety is considered so important. It's hard to get good numbers, but chances are more people have died constructing reactors and mining / refining ore etc. than from nuclear accidents. The difference is simply what people are less concerned when a heavy object falls on someone else.
The cost of a nuclear power plant is pretty high, but not because of the dangers. Rather, the expensive part is inherent with all reactors, and has to do with how it is constructed. IIRC, Nuclear reactors need a few years to "warm up" before they begin producing power, so you basically have to pay people to work on (and in) the reactor all the while knowing that they won't be producing anything that can make you money. In short, a big reactor is a very expensive investment, but eventually it pays off.
I'd say 3 incidents in the almost 50 years of solid nuclear power usage is a pretty good track record. These incidents were also relatively "contained", that is, their meltdowns didn't trigger worldwide environmental catastrophe, or even a catastrophe inside their own countries.
I don't see nuclear proponents comparing potential cost (say $10T) against benefit (power produced during plant's lifetime - optimistically $10B (over 30 years). That's 1000:1 against.
By wikipedia, there are about 170 nuclear power plants and have been 6 accidents costing over $1B - approximately 1 in 30 plants have had very expensive accidents.
Those odds don't make sense for any country. Though they might make sense for an investor, knowing that they won't be required to pay those big costs - they might win and (in the event of a disaster) they only loose their investment. Perhaps if they have to guarantee the $10T potential costs, they'd look realistically at the "investment".
Storing spent nuclear fuel (etc) is not a "hidden" cost. It's actually included in the cost of nuclear fuel, at least in the US.
Fukushima, for all the flaws (including some paranoia that led to unnecessary evacuations, etc), still didn't kill anyone even though thousands of people died in the tsunami. That's how safe nuclear is.
True, no one died, but it was immensely expensive. And that is important because one of the main selling points for nuclear is that it is supposed to produce electricity cheaper than any other source.
Nuclear power is expensive in no small part because of the safeguards needed to try to avert catastrophic accidents. Humans are fallible, and our best intentions can be subverted by inadequate training; fatigue; inattention; laziness; or what we used to call "a loss-of-brain accident." As a result, we can f[oul] up at any stage of design, construction, operation, or maintenance of a nuclear reactor.
(Neither Three Mile Island [0] nor Chernobyl [1] would have been so disastrous had it not been for cascading sequences of human error.)
Expecting nominal performance by people or machinery is ... unwise; as Admiral Rickover famously said, "you get what you INspect, not what you EXpect."
All that adds to costs.
Source: Former Navy nuclear engineering officer, qualified as [chief] engineer aboard the eight-reactor aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.
I agree that costs are a major problem with nuclear. It seems to be a problem with all large scale construction projects in the past 20-30 years or so.
On the safety tail risks, IMO it's more of a psychological/perception problem than a problem of actual risk. We've had a number of serious accidents in the history of nuclear power, and none of them have led to anything close to the death toll of a single year of running coal plants.
The cost is a political problem. It's easier for the opponents of nuclear to find support for stricter and stricter safety laws for new reactors. Driving up the cost, making them economically nonviable. Meanwhile the older and far more dangerous reactors are rotting away and cannot be replaced (or are replaced with fossil fuels).
It's been pointed out again, again and again. Coal plants pump out more radioactive waste than is ever released by all the accidents to date, catching a plane will irradiate you more than living next to one, etc. etc.
The safety of nuclear assumes no nuclear accidents.
Also, at the low deaths/TWh of renewables and nuclear w.o. accidents, the "cost of deaths" (at the $9M/statistical life that the NRC uses) is swamped by the direct cost of the produced energy. So renewables continue to beat new nuclear on the cost front, w. cost of deaths added in.
Mainly due to politicians drafting rules to require more safety out of nuclear than any form of other energy solution. Of course it's more expensive if it's 100x more regulated.
> Nuclear waste: Many supposedly safe storage solutions such as in former salt mines have turned out to be unsafe. Gen IV reactors produce less, but not nothing at all
And what damage has these "unsafe" storages caused, especially compared to other forms of energy creation? Coal is basically pumping out the radioactive waste into the air we breathe. It's better to have few concentrated places for the waste rather than spread it all around the air little by little.
You can't just say "nuclear waste" and be done. You have to compare the data between different solutions.
> Security and safety: They're centralized infrastructure, attacking them has catastrophic consequences, unknown unknows like in Fukushima and human errors like in Chernobyl do happen and lead to catastrophes.
Funny you mention Fukushima, where zero people have died or gotten sick due to radiation, and experts say that the toll will probably stay at zero. Overall nuclear has the lowest mortality rate per MWh of any form of energy: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-de...
Can you explain how the total cost of ownership is economic, when you include the cost of managing nuclear wastes for thousands of years? There is such a woeful global record of adequate safety measures not being included in any total cost budgeting for nuclear power. Real safety seems to always be an off-budget item. Not to mention the weapons proliferation risk. No thanks.
Your periodic reminder that - despite the propaganda campaign run by nuclear advocates to make it seem like being anti-nuclear is to be anti-science - nuclear power remains massively expensive and even less safe than people think.
Here's the most comprehensive peer-reviewed survey around:
We summarize the results of a recent statistical analysis of 216 nuclear energy accidents and incidents (events). The dataset is twice as large as the previous best available. We employ cost in US dollars as a severity measure to facilitate the comparison of different types and sizes of events, a method more complete and consistent that the industry-standard approach. Despite significant reforms following past disasters, we estimate that, with 388 reactors in operation, there is a 50% chance that a Fukushima event (or more costly) occurs every 60–150 years. We also find that the average cost of events per year is around the cost of the construction of a new plant. This dire outlook necessitates post-Fukushima reforms that will truly minimize extreme nuclear power risks. Nuclear power accidents are decreasing in frequency, but increasing in severity.
Yes, and those really highlight what the problem in the West is. The cost of nuclear has nothing to do with the physical construction, safety, or operation of Nuclear.
The costs are caused by legal challenges that cause massive delays and interruptions to construction, the transport of fuel and spent fuel, and to storage. There are egregious regulations that place unreasonable and outdated requirements on nuclear plant construction and operation.
Nuclear isn't a science or engineering problem. It's a political and legal problem.
Chernobyl still is a massive cost factor for plenty of countries ( all that are helping out financially with building the new mantle ).
Also look at the large effects of Fukushima.
Every time nuclear power comes up here on HN, there are some fierce defenders.
No matter how 'safe' newer generation plants are and how much it was the oprators fault, the potential for disaster is there. And that's not even mentioning the high lifetime cost when you consider safely storing the material, which often falls to the public.
How much of that cost is associated with the extreme safety measures that have to be put in place? The green movement has instilled the idea that nuclear power is dangerous, which means the general public won't accept anything but the extreme safety measures.
I believe this to be the biggest problem of nuclear power, not the risks of an accident. So while we have cheap energy today, the cost of containment will be paid throughout thousands of years. This doesn't make any sense from the economic perspective.
There's no conspiracy here -- the nuclear safety is just so darn expensive, and for rational reasons.
It is safer, yes, but only once a lot of resources is spent on safety. So nuclear power generation is very inexpensive and expensive at the same time, depending on amount of effort put into its safety (with modern scientific knowledge on fission, I'd say like 90% of a reactor cost is ensuring its safety).
I honestly hoped that NuScale production could reduce some significant fraction of that safety costs by "commoditizing" the production. Kinda like airplanes are very safe in a big part because their production and maintenance processes are streamlined and actively practiced ("economy of scale").
A large part of why nuclear power is so expensive is because safety is considered so important. It's hard to get good numbers, but chances are more people have died constructing reactors and mining / refining ore etc. than from nuclear accidents. The difference is simply what people are less concerned when a heavy object falls on someone else.
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