“We've been operating over 500 reactors for over 70 years. That's some pretty good statistical power.”
I was correcting the statistical power comment. People estimate their quite safe, but essentially we ran the test once without problems which doesn’t say anything. 70 years ago there weren’t 500 reactors even today theirs less than 450 at probably under 200 sites. Thus the odds of any specific one having a problem next year is low, but the odds of any one having a problem next year is 200x as high and the odds of anyone having a problem in the next 50 years is ~50 * 200 times that. Or to put it another way they could be more dangerous than nuclear reactors but we just don’t have enough data to get signal from random noise.
As to why these estimates might not be meaningful, they ignore things like active sabotage which is why real world data is more meaningful.
I disagree. Nuclear reactors have been very safe for a long time now, but between high profile incidents with old reactors, the link with nuclear weapons, and misinformation, the public perception is that they are unsafe.
The point being that in the 30 years since Chernobyl we have had no serious accidents involving any modern nuclear reactor models and one serious accident involving a reactor older than Chernobyl. We may just have too little data, but at least so far the data all points to the argument that modern reactors are safer being reasonably likely to be true.
The only reason we don't have clear evidence either way is that the risks even with the older models is very low.
I'm old enough to remember chernobyl. at the time, we were assured it was a dodgy old design, and that they future models would be foolproof. Then fukushima, and we started hearing the same soothing stories of fantasy designs that could never cause such havoc.
Ever since day one, this industry has over-promised and under-delivered. Remember "power too cheap to meter"?
It's right and appropriate that we make decisions based on the realities of the industry's present day detriments, not their promises for tomorrow.
This isn't really predictive of the future though. So far we 've had very good luck that all the catastrophic failures of nuclear have resulted in minimal loss of life. A bad nuclear meltdown could kill thousands or worse. There is no path to solar or wind suddenly becoming exponentially more dangerous than it currently is.
Current reactors are extremely safe compared to fossil if you look at the stats. 3 orders of magnitude safer in a deaths/TWh basis. The new designs (which are actually all revivals of 1960 designs) may be safer and cheaper but we have yet to prove that.
I'm in the middle of writing an elaborate history of the quest for economical nuclear power to help with this discussion.
Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening
That premise requires more convincing evidence for me. Nuclear reactors have an incredible safety record, given that most current reactors have their design roots in the 60s, and have been operated for longer than initially anticipated, on MBA-style shoestring budgets. Given that scenario, yes, accidents are bound to happen. But where are the improved designs you mention? What processes have been adapted to improve reactor safety since the 60s? Which reactors have been safely decommissioned at the end of their planned lifetime instead of running beyond their age?
What we have now is the result of thirty years of political (and economic) languishing: no firm decision had been made either way. I applaud Angela Merkel for finally making a firm decision on that subject, but I also think the decision was the wrong one. I applaud India's decision to actually develop and build 90s-era reactor designs.
whatever means you put up to prevent catastrophic events, they will never be enough
As evidenced by the impending climate catastrophe, you are correct. But even ten Tsjernobyl meltdowns will be less impactful than what we are facing now.
we have yet to find a working way to handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k years
No, we already have that solution: Gen-4 breeder reactors, another 90s-era reactor design. We just never had the political will to build them, thereby perpetuating our 10k-100k year problem.
Although I'm generally pro more nuclear, this argument isn't massively compelling to me. The failed reactors of the past were considered safe when they were built.
When people claims newer designs have "dramatic safety and proliferation advantages" they make it sound like existing reactor technology is subject to poor safety record and proliferation problems.
We just isn't true.
The nuclear reactor technology that's been in use for the past 50 years has killed fewer people per kilowatt hour than any of solar, wind, or hydro power [1].
And despite all the proliferation concerns there are only 9 states states with nuclear weapons[2]. You don't magically get nuclear weapons by having domestic nuclear power.
I don't know how much nuclear reactors have advanced. But I can understand the fear in the someone's back of their mind: What if something goes wrong?
I see this risk = Fallout x Probability. Even though the proponents argue that the tech is much more safer, the fallout is so huge and generational that its it neutralises the low probability of any accidents.
When people say "nuclear reactors are safe," they mean advanced modern designs with computers everywhere and precise engineering, not a Bronze-age clay kiln filled to the brim with enriched material.
I'm just not convinced by the argument "Nuclear power is safe as long as we don't make any of the mistakes of previous generations".
Chernobyl didn't make the mistakes of Windscale; Fukushima didn't make the mistakes of Chernobyl; and future nuclear power stations won't make the mistakes of Fukushima (hopefully).
It's possible that the track record for nuclear plants, and handling radioactive waste, is getting better, but it's also possible that on the scale of hundreds of years, there will be new things that go wrong which we didn't predict.
I'm not asking for perfection, though. All I'm saying is that nuclear energy has a history of costing more and being more deadly than its proponents claim, and it's already too expensive to build (both generation and waste storage) at scale, safely, and on time in nearly all countries.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting to build 1960s soviet designed nuclear power plants. It’s like pointing at the safety record of the DC-3 and claiming in 2019 that aviation is unsafe.
People always bring up that it was out of date reactors that had issues. But a large number of the operating reactors in the world are these out of date models, and newer safer models are prohibitively expensive to build, are still unlikely to be 100% safe (what have humans ever built that never fails), and leaves the problem of nuclear waste.
It might be that nuclear power is a sensible choice (at least short term) in the face of climate change, but there are real risks and the claim that opposing nuclear power is akin to being a flat-earther is massive stretch.
I'd be interested in whether your position is that there will be no further nuclear accidents, or that the occurrence of future nuclear accidents is worth it.
There's an easy way to avoid future Fukushimas that has nothing to do with any change in nuclear reactor design: don't site your backup power switchgear in a place that could get inundated with water. (Note that all of the other reactors at the Fukushima site had this--and none of them had any problems after the earthquake and tsunami.)
"Ticking time bombs" is not a valid description of any commercial nuclear plant. Building newer, safer designs in the future is great, but even without considering any of those designs, nuclear energy is by far the safest form of energy per unit of energy generated. Imagine if we had been smart in the 1970s and 1980s and started building nuclear reactors everywhere to replace coal and oil. We could be in a position now where no fossil fuels needed to be burned anywhere on the planet. To deny ourselves this because "Fukushima!" is foolish.
Every design will be old after a few decades. If, when these old designs were being built, people were saying "they're not so safe, but in a few decades we'll have a much safer design" and are now saying that we have a safer design, then, it seems reliable. However, if people were saying a few decades ago, "These new designs are much safer than the old ones" and are now saying "Well, THESE new designs are much safer than the old ones" and in a few decades when these designs are old will be saying, "But really, THESE NEW designs are much safer than those old ones" than it's not surprising that there's so much fear and uncertainty from the general public.
Most people aren't experts in nuclear plant design and regulations. They rely on authorities, but when accidents that aren't supposed to happen end up happening, they (rightfully) start to distrust the ability of the authorities to provide them with proper risk assessment. If you tell someone that one Fukushima type disaster will happen every 30 years and that occurs, then they can at least judge the risk and decide whether or not it's worth it. If you tell someone there's little chance of that kind of disaster and then it happens, they're naturally going to be skeptical of your later pronouncements that "Of course that happened to THAT plant, but now there's REALLY little chance of that happening."
People might make a bad decision because of this, but the concern isn't irrational.
That’s fair and understandable. If you look at the safety claims of the past as equivalent to the claims of today it makes sense to be mistrustful. I think it’s fairly tragic and misguided to conclude that, though. The new plants are actually quite different (at least that’s what it appears; I’m not a nuclear engineer, so I’m trusting what seem like qualified nuclear engineers to describe the new systems).
The big difference is the need for active cooling in both Fukushima and Chernobyl. The new ones don’t need that.
I know that sounds like the same thing as “an rbmk reactor cannot explode”, but that’s very dismissive of decades of work since then by people completely unrelated to those responsible for past disasters. All major nuclear disasters or near disasters like three mile island were from old systems which used active cooling.
The energy output of nuclear is unmatched, its safer than it used to be, and I’m pretty sure most of the expense comes from red tape. I think its good to have learned some hubris from past mistakes, but abandoning that technology would be like abandoning spaceflight. The star trek motto is not “to responsibly stay where we already are.”
When it comes down to the raw physics, I don’t see how most renewables can compete. It seems like the cost effectiveness is being distorted by subsidies for renewables and red tape for nuclear. If renewables actually are cost competitive now or close too it and can legitimately be used without requiring energy rationing and causing grid problems, thats great, but I don’t really see how that’s possible.
At the end of the day I don’t really care whats generating power, I just think it’s foolish to not try to have as much as possible, and I don’t see how something as energy dense as nuclear wouldn’t be massively beneficial.
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