All French Nuclear Reactors Deemed Unsafe 493
hweimer writes "A new study by a French government agency, commissioned in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, found that all French nuclear power plants do not offer adequate safety when it comes to flooding, earthquakes, power outages, failure of the cooling systems and operational management of accidents. While there is no need for immediate shutdown, the agency presses for the problems to be fixed quickly. France gets about 80% of its power from nuclear energy and is a major exporter of nuclear technology."
As the French would say... (Score:5, Funny)
MERDE !
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It saves time. They only have to add an R if things don't get fixed.
Re:As the French would say... (Score:4, Interesting)
the east of France is also threatened of earthquakes since Basel, a border city in swizerland was once almost completely destroyed in 18..hundred-something and there are also power plants using the border river rhine to cool their systems
Re:As the French would say... (Score:5, Informative)
the east of France is also threatened of earthquakes since Basel, a border city in swizerland was once almost completely destroyed in 18..hundred-something
That quake was on october 18th, 1356.
Re:As the French would say... (Score:5, Interesting)
false: there are several sismic places in France, because of the growth of pyrenees and alps. There were huge eathquakes in pyrennes and alps with lot of victims during the 19th century. In Alsace, in Rhone Alpes, many nuclear powerplants are on sismic zones, and even the big ITER project is on a sismic zone. The calm of the underground activity is recent in France: the volcanos of the "massif central" were active just 6000 years ago.
Re:As the French would say... (Score:5, Insightful)
I also would like to see your 90% efficiency electricity storage system that can store 1MWh, let alone few dozens 1GWh. You've got yourself a Nobel prise in physics right there!
As for Fukushima, Chernobyl and similar, count the deaths they caused. Then look at Banqiao dam and coal miners deaths during past 25 years (and don't look at respiratory diseases caused by fossil burning). Suddenly it's not so dangerous.
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Do you own a car? If yes, then you should better shut up about respiratory diseases. A car burns fossil fuels and creates particular matter that cause lung cancer both in the motor and through tire and brake wear. Over 80% of particulate matter in the cities is caused by transport, not by coal power plants.
Also, nuclear fuel has also to be mined and uranium mining has caused more than enough deaths.
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Yeah, way to ignore facts.
Physics can be scaled up, but topography can't. The only feasible way we have of converting electricity to stored energy and back again for more than an hour with anything like 90% efficiency is pumped hydro - and we already use all of the feasible sites in the UK.
There are lots of other good ideas floating around, but no-one quite knows how to make them work well. So, yes, if you come up with a way to store 1GWh of electricity for a week at 90% efficiency, a Nobel prize in physi
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Increase pump capacity to meet increased waste? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's not confuse things. Nuclear, wind, or geothermal... there's no space for fundamentalists, fanatics, and intentionally confusing people.
Energy expands to fill the waste available. A transportation executive told me of a simplified cost analysis for transportation that is roughly
1 for water/ship transport,
10 for rail/train
100 for road/trucking,
1000 for plane/air transport.
That's actually costs, but it does reflect labor, fuel and energy consumption. So to get more free energy (and reduce your national costs), encourage rail and ship transportation.
Policies are for decisions, technology is for implementation.
There's no reason to not adopt a policy of reducing waste. There is plenty of work that can be done more intelligently, reduce waste, and increase work output and capacity. That's just policy, and it can be implemented. As any change, it requires changes, and there will be resistance from whatever sectors that will lose business and money. Unavoidable, reducing waste implies someone reducing consumption of something. They will try and cloud the issue, create lots of confusion and barriers.
Once decided, structure taxes on one energy form to subsidize another, that will modify their market prices, and motivate the industry to seek the lower cost forms. It's simple. Even though some people don't want it to be.
Without analyzing numbers, facing the opposition, and reducing waste, we're going nowhere. That'll give more time to research more technology, and allow that research to go on without so much policy confusion.
The way it's looking, Europe is separating these issues better than most areas, and facing up the challenge to change - though they are also still quite slow.
Re:As the French would say... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the topic of Three Mile Island - why do Anti-nukes even bring it up? It's a meaningless historical event - nothing bad happened at TMI (well, some investors lost their investment). I used to think TMI was "something" because people always talk about it, but I started looking into it, and I can't find anything scary or bad about TMI - it showed that even when there was operator error, and they did the exact wrong thing, the containment still worked, the meltdown was stopped on the floor of the containment, and the public wasn't harmed.
"The price of the energy input is free and unchanging."
The price of the land, Wind Turbines, and additional long-distance low-loss transmission lines is very expensive. When you look at the cost of the "input" of a nuclear plant, it's almost free too - the fuel is a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of nuclear power - it's the plants themselves that are so darn expensive (which is the same situation as wind).
If you actually compare the cost [wikipedia.org] of
Wind and Nuclear, Nuclear and On-land wind have similar costs (Wind is slightly cheaper according to the DOE estimates), while off-shore wind is much more expensive than either.
As for the waste, what are terrorists and terrorist supporting governments going to do with waste? You generally don't build bombs from nuclear waste, because it's a harder problem than building a bomb from enriched Uranium, or Plutonium bred in special purpose reactors (the plutonium in nuclear "waste" is "poisoned" by other isotopes of Plutonium which make it bad for bomb use; in theory, you might be able to seperate out the other isotopes, but enriching highly-radioactive waste is a very hard problem, from what I understand, and hard to hide from spy satellites).
"Nuclear power stations never leak and it wouldn't matter anyway because radioactive waste is not really all that harmful."
Your statement is so vague as to be useless. It depends on the type and quantity of radioactive material leaked - the small quantity of tritium which has leaked at a number of reactors (and which got quite a bit of press) really is a pretty harmless sort of leak. Tritium is very weak to begin with, the quantities of the leaks are pretty small, and it very quickly dillutes to completely harmless levels in ground water, rivers, lakes, etc.
Outside a few small hotspots in Japan, the increase in radiation level in most of the evacuation zone is still less than the background radiation at a lot of other places on Earth where people have been living for thousands of years.
But, the anti-nukes can't ever seem to grasp such nuance. Nuance is hard. Fear is easy.
As for those hotspots I mentioned, we now know ways to clean up those hotspots. There are techniques like phytoremediation and bioremediation which can potentially remove the Cesium using plants and have the land safe again in relatively short time.
That said, I think we can do better than current designs (though they have a really impressive safety record, despite Chernobyl and Fukushima). There are newer reactor concepts which can dramatically reduce the small remaining risks, such as passively cooled light water reactors (that is, reactors which stay cool without backup power), Molten Salt Reactors, and liquid metal reactors. I'm particularly a fan of Molten Salt Reactors - they appear like they would be almost perfectly safe in almost all circumstances. Liquid metal reactors I'm a bit more skeptical about, because the "most popular" design for such seems to use liquid Sodium metal, and Sodium is pretty flammable, so salts seem a wiser choice to me.
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I never said that all nuclear power generation should be shut down, nor did I claim that they contained the deadliest materials known to man. I'm sure most people would recognize that a power plant using smallpox as it's fuel would be incredibly dangerous. You are arguing against yourself.
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Feasible maybe depending on what costs you call feasible, more like possible, but efficient, no.
When you transmit power over lines, you loose efficiency.
I have seen numbers in the 20-40% range at the turbine.
Loss due to transmission is about 7% from what I have just read. It was my understanding that it was exponential or at least directly proportionate to the distance to which the electricity travels, which is the reason why we can't just make all our power generation in one place and just ship it all over
Wait! I know this one (Score:5, Funny)
The only alternative is coal. Nucular and coal is all there is. And coal is worse. Coal ash has more radioactive emissions than nucular plants, and arsenic and landslides too.
There is no geothermal. Don't look at geothermal.
Re:Wait! I know this one (Score:4, Informative)
There is no geothermal. Don't look at geothermal.
The problem with your argument is reality. We are still building new coal fired plants today. Not just not shutting down old plants, building new plants. Because it's known, cheap, and legal.
So let's go with your argument that geothermal is better than both coal and nuclear for a second. That doesn't change the fact that nuclear is better than coal, does it? So until we shut down all the coal fired plants, any talk about shutting down existing nuclear plants is an instance of defective prioritization.
Natural Gas from Russia (Score:5, Interesting)
The only alternative is coal. Nucular and coal is all there is. And coal is worse. Coal ash has more radioactive emissions than nucular plants, and arsenic and landslides too. There is no geothermal. Don't look at geothermal.
In Europe I believe the backup plan is buying more natural gas from Russia.
I hope you are joking and not just dim (Score:2, Interesting)
I see this comment a lot. It looks like the education cuts since Reagan left their mark.
One professional liar better known for writing books about classic cars writes a propaganda piece in a Oak Ridge Labs newsletter (Alex Gabbard: Soldier, Scientist and Author Extraordinaire!) and suddenly people think coal is more radioactive than the impurities of small amounts sand in it that actually contain those radioactive trace elements. Do the banana dos
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That'll be why coal-fired power stations have radiation detectors all over the place, then. Do you know how "hot" the ash coming from these plants is?
Re:I hope you are joking and not just dim (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that a well-run nuclear plant essentially does not release any radiation into the environment unless there's a serious accident.
Therefore, coal is *more* radioactive. That doesn't mean that it's *dangerously* radioactive, just that it is more radioactive. You seem to be deliberately misinterpreting the argument.
Ultimately, coal plants are disgusting compared to nuclear plants.
Barring massive breakthroughs in geothermal, nuclear is our only viable hope to cleanly power our future. The sooner we implement some safe plant designs on a very large scale, the better. We also need to learn from the french and start reprocessing.
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you have traced sources incorrectly (Score:5, Informative)
The data doesn't come from an Oak Ridge Labs newsletter or Alex Gabbard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Human-caused_background_radiation [wikipedia.org]
It was already published in Science magazine in 1978.
Coal plants cause more deaths due to radioactivity (statistically) than nuclear plants. Even in this year, with Fukushima blowing up.
No, per gram fly ash doesn't contain more radioactivity. But coal plants emit a lot more fly ash in a year than nuclear plants consume fuel.
Re:you have traced sources incorrectly (Score:4, Informative)
You americans learn the "wrong definition of waste" for some reasons.
Waste is everythinig that needs to be stored save away, not only fissionable material.
Right now we have worldwide 400,000 metric tons of waste. That does not include the waste produced in uranium mining.
Reprocessing causes to have more waste to store than not reprocessing. Reprocessing only reuses uranium / plutonium to make new rods. Rest materials and chemicals used for it get contaminated and need to be treated as nucelar waste as well. For some reasons americans ignore this or don't get this tought in school. Bottom line every reprocessing cycle increases the amount of waste by a factor of roughly 10.
Geothermal is very big in France. (Score:5, Interesting)
false: the geothermal is very big in France: all the "bassin Parisien" ( about 30 million people) is a big hot water undergroung area. Some cities near Paris just heat their citizens with this. The big building in Paris " maison de la radio" is entirely heated with a thermal source at just 400/600 meters deep, since the sixties ! but this resource is unexploited. Other big geothermal areas: Brittany, bassin Aquitain, Alps, massif central...
Another unexploited very big ressource in France is "hydrauliennes" ( big watermills in the sea streams), because most of France is surrounded by coast with huge sea streams. Both geothermal and tidal/sea streams energy are 24/24 and 365/365 energies, with very few impact on ecology. But banksters prefers nuclear.
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Geothermal has a widely known and very negative impact on ecology. It's called geothermal depletion and is what happens when you start using geothermal seriously instead of a few showcases.
Re:Wait! I know this one (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no geothermal. Don't look at geothermal.
Geothermal is not automatically safe any more than nuclear is automatically unsafe. In the USA, where we have the world's most geothermally active region on the planet, we have a geothermal power plant that is perpetually under production and over budget. Calpine's steam plant at The Geyers, CA, has also been the source of a superfund site; when one of the massive turbines gets encrusted with deposits coming out of the vent, they position them above a concrete pit and pressure-wash the blades clean. The water is permitted to evaporate off and the remainder sits in open ponds. When the pond fills up with this material, they cap it over with concrete. The material contains a lot of heavy metals including some radioactives. In the past, they used to just put the slurry into drums and then bury the drums. This naturally contaminated the local water and we had cows born with two heads and that sort of fun stuff. Not being especially interested in Brahmin ranching, the locals made a stink and eventually it was all dug up and reburied with a rubber liner which will eventually fail and cause the same problem all over again, for our descendants.
Unfortunately, the concrete layer cake of heavy metals and radioactives at the site is just waiting for some major seismic activity to break apart and become a hazard itself. And because of its layered nature, even if the slurry were reprocessable into useful elements (which it isn't, at least not cost-effectively, or they would do this instead of storing it) it will be horrendously hazardous and expensive to clean it up later.
Geothermal is cool when you're talking about a cute little geo tap used to heat some water with a heat pipe. It's not so cool when you're talking about power generation on a grand scale. There are not very many places well-suited to such a facility, so it can never produce a significant amount of our current consumption. And it is not inherently clean as many people think. About the only technology we have for power generation that doesn't necessarily have a massive impact is solar. We can install it where we want shade. Oh, and wind, now that we know how to build windmills that won't kill birds even if you put them right on a migration path like a greedy tool.
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What are your thoughts about EGS geothermal?
Too soon to tell, but so far, I am not encouraged. There was to be a project at The Geysers but the drilling choked several times and the same type of drilling may have been responsible for seismic activity elsewhere (significant similarities exist between the materials involved in both cases) and they stopped the drilling here pending, AFAICT, reduced public interest.
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Re:Wait! I know this one (Score:5, Informative)
Geothermal is downright dangerous when used too much (read on geothermal depletion for example). Wind has severe issues with material science, specifically we do not possess materials that are sturdy enough to survive the massive grind of a wind turbine long enough to even pay for themselves, and are enormously work-intensive to maintain.
Solar, in addition to obvious problems with "must have Sun visible", "must have as little atmosphere between Sun and panel" and others also suffers from massive problems with material technology as well. We simply do not have material technology to convert sun rays to energy efficiently enough for panels to ever pay for themselves (beyond the manufacture in places where energy and materials are dirt cheap because they're produced on coal/nuclear energy and materials mined in conditions that no one that can afford to buy a panel would ever work in).
Essentially current wind and solar are not only not "cost-effective" but simply lack necessary materials.
The one realistic third option we do have is hydro. Unfortunately it's very location-specific, and in many countries pretty much all places you could make a hydro plant on are already dammed up. So again, we're left with only coal and nuclear for places that can't be reliably supplied by hydro, or are small enough and are sitting in a place where small scale geothermal operation can reliably supply the demand without causing depletion.
Last option is burning various fossil fuels, from oil to natural gas.
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Just because you say so doesn't make it so. Because just a few weeks ago, english edition of Spiegel ran a nice article on these new German offshore wind farms. Latest tech, those things. Google for it.
Still, same mechanical problems because stuff just doesn't last under that stress. Materials aren't strong enough. Same problems with ridiculous maintenance requirements. Still same problems with not functioning all the time due to both too strong and too weak winds. Etc.
Re:Wait! I know this one (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope. (Score:3)
The relevant issue here is cost. If we wanted to, we could build enough windmills to supply twice the power we need. Then we could user the power to generate hydrogen, which we could store and burn in combined cycle plants when the power is needed. It is absolutely possible to do this. But we'd need to spend time and effort doing it, and people don't seem to want to.
Re:Wait! I know this one (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the reason that the Nuclear advocates don't mention alternative energy, why should they? What's the point of arguing against something that doesn't exist?
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Re:Wait! I know this one (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear isn't "proven bad."
Coal is "proven bad," because it has continued to consistently kill people en masse. Nuclear has not, short of accidents caused by huge natural disasters and ancient primitive soviet technology.
Germany must be pissed (Score:4, Informative)
That's unfortunate - France's nuclear power plants were a key part of Germany's decision to go non-nuclear but still buy tons of nuclear-based power from France. [slashdot.org]
Re:Germany must be pissed (Score:5, Interesting)
[citation needed]
Their plan is to replace most of their nuclear power with renewables as part of a programme to develop the technology so that it can be exported. Having the option to buy power from France means they can get by with less spare capacity but in the medium to long term they do not want to be dependent on it regularly.
Re:Germany must be pissed (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it interesting that you call coal "renewable," though now that I think of it hydrocarbons are much more renewable than isotopes.
Re:Germany must be pissed (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the opposite is the case: France used to import nuclear power from Germany and now has problems to satisfy its needs.
( http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tagesschau.de%2Fausland%2Ffrankreich440.html )
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Funny that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Funny that (Score:5, Informative)
TFA says they just need a more robust diesel generator backup. Doesn't sound very panic-worthy to me, but that's the media for you...
Re:Funny that (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, it's a Fukushima lesson. Their cooling systems were designed for 7 magnitudes, took a 100 times stronger quake, SURVIVED but diesel generators running power for those systems got flooded by tsunami that followed the quake.
So it certainly makes sense to install more flood protection on the generators.
Re:Funny that (Score:5, Insightful)
The current situation, as exposed by the checks after the Fukushima debacle show exactly the opposite -- insufficient planning, insufficient risk assessments, inadequate procedures, etc, and that happens in the most advanced countries - Japan, Germany, now France. I'm scared to think what's the situation in countries that traditionally uphold highest safety standards like China, India or Russia.
Re:Funny that (Score:4, Insightful)
And that is the problem with nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)
If a coal power plants fails, it is just a big fire, annoying and hard to put out BUT controllable. A hydro dam that breaks will NOT cause the water to shoot up stream. Sure it sucks for the people down stream and there might be a lot of people downstream but the risk is calculable and limited.
Chernobyl and Fukishama have now both shown that nuclear incidents are ALWAYS worse then estimated and even worse then admitted to afterwards by the nuclear lobby. You can build again on a flood plain, but radiated soil will be unusable for decades.
It is not as nuclear technology can't be made safe but since about the only argument in the past has been that it is cheap, costs are going to have to be cut in the hope that "it" never happens. That is not a very reliable method to prevent accidents. Or at least not reliable enough. The public might want safe power but they are not willing to pay the price of 1 nuclear accident every couple decades.
Nuclear energy is the same as oil drilling, techs that for many reasons are necessary but nobody wants in their back yard OR simply spend enough money on to make it safe. And when it fails, it fails so enormously that people lose all sense of proportion. Hey Japan, sure you lost a sizable area of your country BUT you build your economy on cheap electricity. Surely it is worth it because you thought it was worth it back then when you decided to build them? Oh, that is not how voters think? How unexpected.
Nuclear tech doesn't fit in a capitalist democracy. You can't have reactors build by the lowest bidder at the whim of voters with no accountability.
Re:And that is the problem with nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, coal power causes thousands of premature deaths per year under normal operating conditions, not to mention the significant contribution to global warming.
As for dam failure, it has been far more catastrophic [wikipedia.org] than nuclear power disasters.
Re:And that is the problem with nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes but the deaths are nicely spread out so no one notices them. It's like car accidents vs train or plain crashes. By most statistics more people get killed in the former but what sticks in our minds is the big ones of the latter we see on the news.
It's just a human failing, if one that our addiction to a constant stimulus of easily digestible news nuggets only re-enforces.
It's also one many unscrupulous people exploit for their advantage, drumming up public support for something based on some newsworthy incident that everybody knows about, to push through laws or policies to further their own advantage , but thats a failing of our current democratic system.
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On the other hand, coal power causes thousands of premature deaths per year under normal operating conditions, not to mention the significant contribution to global warming.
Right, but the accidental deaths are mostly in developing countries where health and safety are somewhat lacking. I don't think many people would advocate giving those countries nuclear technology.
The deaths from pollution are a good reason to stop using coal, but again nuclear is not an option in many countries and not the only (or best) solution either.
Keep an eye on Libya. Expect to see solar thermal plants springing up (like the one in Spain) - free pollution and fuel free power 24/7 all year round. Exp
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Yeah, kinda like the gas from Asia gets cut off all the time or oil stops flowing from Africa and the Middle East on a regular basis. Oh, except that doesn't happen.
Why do you think France and the UK decided to help Libya out? The same reason that the US decided to help Kuwait. From the moment the EU starts getting power from Libya they will be backed up by the full military force we can muster. No-one will dare do anything to mess with the supply of electricity.
Re:And that is the problem with nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it appropriate here to point out that the past tense should not be used in describing either the Fukishima or the Chernobyl incidents. Fukishima is a long way from being contained or even put into a "cold shutdown" state. It is known that Chernobyl's sarcophagus will fail, maybe in decades, maybe next year (there are too many unknowns, too much pure guesswork, in the projections to know what to expect).
At this point, the problems with understanding these situations appears to be as much chemical as nuclear. No one has done any serious hands-on research on the chemistry of corium, that constantly changing compound that forms when fuel rods melt, puddle, and interact chemically with casing material, coolant and coolant contaminates, concrete and whatever was in the stone of the aggregate, ground water, water vapor from slowly cooking the aquifer below the corium, etc. We do know from the naturally occurring nuclear reactors [wikipedia.org] that aqueous chemistry is capable of concentrating nucleotides (and moderating neutrons) sufficiently to reawaken chain reactions in sites that had been dormant for geologic periods of time. Things will probably happen much quicker in these man-made corium deposits.
Just exactly how one would do serious hands-on research on the chemistry of corium is left as an exercise for the student.
Re:And that is the problem with nuclear (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Driving_on_with_Fukushima_roadmap_1711111.html
Re:And that is the problem with nuclear (Score:5, Informative)
There are approximately 2300 coal plants worldwide [worldcoal.org]. Pollution from coal plants is estimated to kill 1 million people worldwide each year, or 435 per plant per year. Chernobyl is estimated by the World Health Organization to have caused/will cause 4,000 long-term deaths. So on average, a coal plant operating normally (without any big fires) will kill as many people as Chernobyl every 9 years.
The worst power-generation related accident in history was the failure of a series of hydroelectric dams [wikipedia.org]. Nearly a quarter million people killed. Equal to about 50 Chernobyls.
Have you looked at the land requirements for the different technologies? Japan has about 47.3 GW of nuclear power generating capacity. Nuclear has a capacity factor of 0.9, meaning it generates an average 42.6 GW for them throughout the year.
Solar has a capacity factor of about 0.15. If you're using 15% efficient panels (125 W/m^2), that means you're getting an average 19 W/m^2 throughout the year. To get an average 42.6 GW throughout the year, you'd need to cover 2.27 billion square meters of solar panels, or 2270 km^2. The evacuation zone around Fukushima is pi*(20km)^2 = 1256 km^2. If Japan replaced their nuclear capacity with solar, it would permanently make more land unusable for agriculture than the Fukushima accident.
Three Gorges Dam in China generates about 80 TWh per year, which works out to an average of 9.1 GW. The reservoir behind it is 1045 km^2. So for every GW of power it generates, that's 115 km^2 of land was flooded and made permanently unusable for agriculture. Dividing Fukushima's evacuation zone by Japan's nuclear power generation comes up with only 29 km^2 of land made unusable per GW of power generated.
So if your concern is km^2 of soil being made unusable for agriculture, you should be even more critical of solar and hydro than nuclear.
The safety of any technology has to be assessed based on the severity of the danger(s), multiplied by the likelihood of accident, normalized by the amount of power generated. This can be simplified to number of people killed per unit of energy generated. The exoticness of the death is not a factor. Whether you're killed by radiation poisoning, a thrown turbine blade, a wall of water, or lung cancer, you're still dead.
When you analyze safety this way, nuclear turns out to be the safest power source [nextbigfuture.com]. i.e. If you wish to generate X amount of energy generated, the technology which can do so with the fewest casualties is nuclear.
The notion that nuclear power is dangerous and we can't make it safe is a myth. Its incredible power density and the exotic nature of its dangers mean we are much more careful with it than with other technologies. This has resulted in (based on statistics from decades of operation) the safest form of power generation man has ever invented. If you use a different measure of safety, like number of people inj
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And that is the problem with nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with this is, and I have pointed this out numerous times here on slashdot, that the 4000 deaths for Chernobyl are not very realistic and are the very lowest number and estimation one can find anywhere. While also not very believable, I could just take the numbers of a few million deaths, that others supposedly observed. There are, for example, Russia estimates of nearly a million killed. So that one accident killed as many as your 2300 coal plants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment [wikipedia.org]
In addition to deaths, radiation also causes lot's of non-terminal cancer, although the same may be said about coal.
What I really mean to say is: Don't get all your numbers from nuclear fan boys and realize that the picture is not even close to the black-and-white you portrayed here
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose what you are saying is that people ALWAYS exceed the speed limit unless the speed limit exceeds the reigning land speed record, but that such a speed limit could never be adopted by any social process even though Germany has in fact adopted something not entirely different.
When the sun finally goes red giant, I'm not entirely sure the damage to the planet from nuclear energy will actually be worse
Re:And that is the problem with nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)
A hydro dam that breaks will NOT cause the water to shoot up stream. Sure it sucks for the people down stream and there might be a lot of people downstream but the risk is calculable and limited.
The Banqiao Reservoir Dam killed an estimated 171,000 people [wikipedia.org]
The Vajont Dam caused around 2,000 deaths [wikipedia.org]
The St. Francis Dam killed more than 450 people [wikipedia.org]
The Johnstown Dam killed 2,200 people [go.com]
This incomplete list lists 23 dam failures between Chernobyl and Fukushima. (Well, one of them was caused by the same tsunami/earthquake and killed more than the nuclear incident.)
So yes the risk is calculable and limited, it just happens to be that it fails more often and kills more people than nuclear power. I guess we are still gong to build more dams, because you know, it's not nuclear.
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I'm sorry, but this post isn't insightful.
Fukishima was an accident, but they really should have had a backup backup generator that was protected against flooding. And even in a rather extreme case it managed to survive the earthquake with relatively minor damage and contain the worst of it.
Chernobyl is a really good example of why I'm not worried about nuclear energy. Chernobyl was taken down by what can only be described as deliberate sabotage by the technicians running the plant. It was known at the time
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Chernobyl and Fukishama have now both shown that nuclear incidents are ALWAYS worse then estimated and even worse then admitted to afterwards by the nuclear lobby. You can build again on a flood plain, but radiated soil will be unusable for decades.
Total deaths from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami: about 19,000. Total deaths from the Fukushima nuclear disaster: 0.
Ecologically, the Chernobyl meltdown was a mixed bag. Some species were harmed, but many species benefited from it. The beneficial effects came because humans left the area. Dense human habitation is the worst possible thing that can happen to any ecosystem.
Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
"Give us more money"
I'm not against the concept of nuclear power per se, but eveything I've read about the industry and its practices makes me think they're rather untrustworthy and greedy.
Maybe the French industry is different, I don't know.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not against the concept of nuclear power per se, but eveything I've read about the industry and its practices makes me think they're rather untrustworthy and greedy.
If by "the industry" you mean "the energy industry" then I'm right with you.
This isn't pro-nuclear or pro-anything either: I'm just saying that any large-scale energy production has looked corrupt to me. They're all subsidized too.
The way it all appears to suck reminds me of the construction industry.
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Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for a large scale nuclear generator and we're certainly not subsidized by anyone.
Oh, so you're at a U.S. plant that's started buying insurance in the private market then, and are paying whatever the going free market rate is for your liability insurance?
No?
So in other words, you're being heavily subsidized by the taxpayers already with sweetheart rates for government-run liability insurance. And when there's a catastrophic accident near a major city, the government fund that nuclear power plants have been paying into - for decades - doesn't have enough money in it to begin to cover the liability. Which means more money will be stolen from the taxpayers to clean up your mess.
I'll believe nuclear power is safe and practical when the nuclear industry can buy private liability insurance - from an adequately capitalized insurer, one who has the resources to actually pay out in case of a disaster or two - and still turn a profit.
I'm not holding my breath.
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And you have a low liability cap set by the government. Funny how you left that fact out - as if you were a less-than-honest apologist for nuclear power, or something.
Huh, interesting.
I wonder what my car insurance would cost if there was a federal law limiting my liability to $500 for an accident - would probably cost about as much as insurance for a smartphone.
Remove that cap and mandate that the plant manager live in the shadow of t
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All correct facts and logical surmises until:
Which means more money will be stolen from the taxpayers to clean up your mess.
I'll believe nuclear power is safe and practical when the nuclear industry can buy private liability insurance
No part of the energy industry runs unsubsidised or is practical. Nuclear has government insurance. Oil seems to have limited liability. Both oil and coal have a large license to pollute. None of the other technologies are mature yet.
You could of course argue that all f
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I'll let you in on a little secret: do you know what's the single best investment in our small nordic country of Finland? It's not Nokia, it's not huge steel industry, it's not huge paper industry.
It's the first nuclear plant complex we had built. It's followed on that list by second one.
Do you know why? Because nuclear power plants, while costing a lot to build, are extremely reliable and produce large amounts of needed resource. As a result it's easy to secure financing at terms beneficial to the plant op
Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)
How likely is it for there to be an earthquake in France? Why should earthquake protection matter when other bad things are much more likely?
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One in 1909 measured 6 on the Richter scale. Nothing of note since then. I would expect that mechanical failures and flooding are orders of magnitude more likely, and a deliberate attack is also possible.
Stunning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Funny)
This can easily be mitigated by adding new labor laws that prevent meteorites from ever going on strike.
It's France, that'll never happen.
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In related news, all nuclear reactors were deemed unsafe againt a meteorite strike.
Well, yes, as a matter of fact they are. You bring up a good point.
As an engineering challenge, I'd like to see someone come up with a design for a nuclear plant such that the plant can be completely pulverized and still not cause radiation/contamination to spread to the surrounding area.
I don't know if such a thing is anywhere near possible, but until someone comes up with something like that, nuclear will be regarded as riskier than many of its competitors.
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Do pebble bed reactors meet this requirement? From what I understand (and IANA Nuclear Physicist) that you can remove the control rods and shut off the coolant pumps, and all that happens is the reactor vessel gets really, really hot.
Of course, you said "pulverized", so in reality I don't think any reactor will survive that and not contaminate the surrounding area.
Re:Stunning (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that's kind of the whole point of pebble-bed reactors. The "pebbles" are designed so that when they get hot, they expand and move the fissionable materials apart from each other, limiting the maximum reaction rate. If you're pulling heat out of the system then the reaction will increase in an attempt to reach this stable state. As soon as you stop blowing dry nitrogen through the reactor it will heat up and idle.
In theory, you could handle the pebbles with thick gardening gloves and not actually die if it was a real MacGyver-level emergency.
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Informative)
The "pebbles" are designed so that when they get hot, they expand and move the fissionable materials apart from each other, limiting the maximum reaction rate.
No. It's way cooler than that. The physical expansion isn't all that great (though may serve if it is very, very close to critical), and not great enough to provide real stability.
The effect used for stability is actually Doppler boradening. Pebble bed reactors use slow neutrons (like most nuclear reactors except for fast breeders) for fission. The high temperature makes the fissile nuclei move fast, increasing the relative speed of the neutrons and therefore reducing the rate of the reaction. In other words, the hotter it gets, the less fission occurs.
As for handling pebbles, fresh ones made from Uranium are probably OK. Even pure U235 is not very radioactive.
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"I don't know if such a thing is anywhere near possible, but until someone comes up with something like that, nuclear will be regarded as riskier than many of its competitors."
Seriously? How many zeros are needed behind that 1:x00.... probability chart?
Chance of meteor hitting earth x chance of it hitting land x chance of it hitting the miniscule % of land where nukes are x chance it is big enough to "pulverize" the plant.
As opposed to the known side effects on health from pollution from coal & oil.
Riddle me this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is worse:
Taking the risk of a few nuclear catastrophes during the next couple of centuries, or to keep dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere ignoring the fact that it pretty darn definitely has some effect in the long term...
Wild prediction: People 200 years from now are going to look upon us like idiots who thought relocating people due to a nuclear accident was harder than getting all that 'effing carbon dioxide back where it belongs and restoring the climactic balance to a reasonable degree.
Re:Riddle me this... (Score:5, Informative)
PS. TFA does say that they apparently aren't planning to close, only upgrade the plants, which sounds quite sensible.
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Taking the risk of a few nuclear catastrophes during the next couple of centuries, or to keep dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere ignoring the fact that it pretty darn definitely has some effect in the long term...
Based on the projected risks predicted in the IPCC report, CO2 would probably be less risky. It depends on what kind of nuclear catastrophes you're talking about, though. 3 mile island, no problem. Chernobyl, bad bad.
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Based on the projected risks predicted in the IPCC report, CO2 would probably be less risky. It depends on what kind of nuclear catastrophes you're talking about, though. 3 mile island, no problem. Chernobyl, bad bad.
If we can develop the technology to repair damage caused by ionizing radiation, and that's a big if, then the CO2 might be a bigger problem. Most wildlife has shortish lifespans, long lived humans have bigger issues of course. But we really have a pretty poor idea how we are changing the planet, so I think trying to use less energy and avoiding oil/coal makes sense until we have better alternatives.
I don't claim to be informed, just blabbering here. ;)
Re:Riddle me this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is worse:
Taking the risk of a few nuclear catastrophes during the next couple of centuries, or to keep dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere ignoring the fact that it pretty darn definitely has some effect in the long term...
Nuclear power is far more expensive than coal power - especially if the plants were forced to buy private liability insurance. Even if a country the size of the United States replaced all of its coal burning plants with nuclear power plants, all that would accomplish would be to lower the price of coal, providing an incentive for poorer countries to build scores of coal fired plants.
So the idea that nuclear power is somehow going to save us from the horrors of global warming is an economic fantasy. You'd be better served praying to Zeus - at least that wouldn't waste a ton of energy building useless, dangerous nuclear power plants, ultimately increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses pumped into the atmosphere.
The best way to prevent global warming is to use less energy by boosting energy efficiency as quickly as possible. The next best way is by continuing research into alternative sources of energy which are carbon neutral. Finally, money that would otherwise be wasted on deploying nuclear power (and dealing with its dangerous waste) could instead be invested in researching and deploying better ways to sequester the CO2 emitted by plants which burn fossil fuels.
Re:Riddle me this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear power is far more expensive than coal power
Rubbish.
especially if the plants were forced to buy private liability insurance.
Ah, so you support only subsidising coal, then? After all coal plants don't have to pay for the cost of dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
Once all forms of power have to pay for all costs then you can compare them on an equal footing. However, your post reeks of bias. Appratntly you believe that by reducing coal burning by using nuclear will increase greenhouse gas emissions, but reducing coal burning by increasing efficiency won't.
Economics lesson for you: the price of coal doesn't care why usage is reduced, only that it is.
And do you really have even the slightest shred of evidence to support your claim that reducing coal usage will increase coal usage, or are you just speculating?
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Nuclear power is far more expensive than coal power
Rubbish.
Tautology.
Of course nuclear is far more expensive than coal, even if you're only looking at containment costs, which go out many thousands of years.
So, a false dichotomy with a side order of Chewbacca Defense?
"a few" (Score:2)
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Or the plot to 'Fallen Angels.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(science_fiction_novel) [wikipedia.org]
The ongoing problem... (Score:3)
There are engineering problems that are simply at the outer bounds of present technology and inherently risky. For most everything else, though, the heart of the problem has more to do with some combination of lousy risk assessment, active dishonesty, or the fact that it isn't hard to take risks so that the rewards accrue to you and the consequences to somebody else.
This is why I'm somewhat pessimistic about our ability to innovate our way into safety: team science, and their applied brethren in engineering, have enormously expanded the scope of what we can do; but have had relatively little effect on the fact that we basically want it fast and cheap and the 'we' doing the choosing frequently aren't the 'we' doing the living next to it...
Re:The ongoing problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a very fair comment to make about a very immature technology.
Even taking a look at the more mature technology of later designs we've got decisions such as planning construction of a whole lot of AP1000 reactors when the first prototype has not been activated yet. Even that is still a 1980s design.
It's not really a nuclear problem but a management one. The current unbuilt designs that the fanboys pretend are the status quo should be built as a prototype and tested, and then we can move on from there to something viable and worth producing in large numbers. Instead there's been the rush to deploy worse than the state of the art yet still unproven.
One problem is the economic model for civilian nuclear power mostly grew out of being the peaceful side of the bomb but inherited some of the worst problems of defence procurement. When something doesn't actually have to work very well for the players to get their money and competition is almost non-existant you get the stagnation that dominated the US nuclear industry until Westinghouse adopted the current state of the art from Japan (Toshiba). Whether nuclear power is a good idea or not becomes irrelevant when far more is spent on lobbying and advertising than on R&D - you'd end up with a crap product in any emerging technology with that sort of mismanagement.
Told you so (Score:2)
This editor should be shot! (Score:5, Informative)
This report isn't saying that France's plants are unsafe. The editor should be shot. In my opinion, Fukushima was a success. These plants were due to be taken out of service within a year, they were very very old, old design and old in age. Yet, even with a massive earth quake, and a beyond design basis fault that wasn't understood during their design phase, no-one died due to radiation and contamination is well controlled and understood. It's also worth noting that all the modern PWRs in Japan surrounding Fukushima all shut down properly with no issues.
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Now, bear in mind that this area of the world is not susceptible to the kinds of earthquakes Japan
We don't know how susceptible that area of the world is to enormous earthquakes. We know they don't happen frequently, but we also know large quakes do happen hundreds - and in some cases thousands - of miles from plate boundaries, and at infrequent intervals. The New Madrid quakes that hit the middle of the United States in the 1800's are a prime example. Such events are infrequent, but because of the natur
Re:This editor should be shot! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a limit to what you should plan for.
These nuclear reactors are not built to withstand a magnitude 10+ quake, for example. Nor can they withstand the impact of a major asteroid, or an attack with a nuclear bomb or super heavy conventional ordnance. These events are simply too rare, and also the destruction caused by the event likely dwarfs the destruction caused by the nuclear reactor's problems. The latter argument can also easily be applied to the Fukushima plant.
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Don't bring your logic and knowledge to /.
It's frowned upon.
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no-one died due to radiation
It's a bit too early to say that. Cancer can take decades to develop.
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OK, I'm a reactor operator for a nuclear reactor [...]
In my opinion, Fukushima was a success. [...]
Ok, unfair quotation. But still, I am afraid...
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In my opinion, Fukushima was a success.
I know that in some circles, it is now a sign of success if you can dump hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money down the drain and require government bailout, but I still prefer different measures of success ...
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A natural disaster of unimaginable scale that nobody thought was possible hit a nuclear power plant and not one person died.
You're right; it was a total failure.
electricity != all power (Score:4, Insightful)
From the summary:
France gets about 80% of its power from nuclear energy and is a major exporter of nuclear technology.
No. France generates almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear energy. Not its overall power.
I'm sick of this consistently sloppy reporting about energy usage in the mass media. And sick of the idiots who think that electricity consumption is the big issue (oh noes! we need solar to make teh watts, and CFLs to save teh watts!). Dumbshits.
France's planes, ships, trucks, cars, and more still run on OIL. Not nuclear. Do the math. Electricity is relatively small component of power usage.
Re:electricity != all power (Score:5, Informative)
This is a chart from 2004, but even when you count all energy sources (gasoline included) nuclear is still 40%. Electricity is around 50% of power usage, I had no idea that half started being "relatively small."
How much will you pay for safety? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the plants can be made safer. Everything can be made safer. We could all wear crash helmets 24/7. All cars could be made crash proof (take the wheels off). "All the dams in France bursting at once and flooding the plants", if that happens the least of your problems is the nuclear reactor. Just like the problems at Fukushima were the least of the worries of the 20,000 killed by the earthquake and tsunami. No industry in the world spends money on preventing staggeringly unlikely events causing harm like the nuclear industry has to. Do you want to double your electricity bill so that the chances of a disaster move from 1 in 10 million years to 1 in 20 million according to the design calcs? Humans are staggering bad at risk assessment and the nuclear (and terrorism) panic proves it conclusively. You would think that a bunch of geeks could figure some basic stats.
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Wind and solar aren't economical, and solar has toxic waste problems of its own.
Coal is dirty, contributes to global warming, and is a dependence on fossil fuels.
Natural gas is better, but has a lot of the same issues.
Geothermal is hypothetically pretty cool, but it's expensive and there's that annoying problem with earthquakes.
Hydro probably will never be able to cover close to all of the world's energy needs, and floods places.
Fusion is thirty years away,