France Shuts Down Oldest Reactors, But Nuclear Power Still Reigns (yahoo.com) 112
An anonymous reader shares a report from Agence France-Presse (AFP): France will start closing its oldest atomic power plant on Saturday after 43 years in operation, the first in a series of reactor shutdowns but hardly a signal the country will reduce its reliance on nuclear energy anytime soon. Unplugging the two reactors at Fessenheim, along the Rhine near France's eastern border with Germany and Switzerland, became a key goal of anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011. Experts have noted that construction and safety standards at Fessenheim, brought online in 1977, fall far short of those at Fukushima, with some warning that seismic and flooding risks in the Alsace region had been underestimated. Despite a pledge by ex-president Francois Hollande just months after Fukushima to close the plant, it was not until 2018 that President Emmanuel Macron's government gave the final green light.
The first reactor will start being shut down on Saturday and the second on June 30, though it will be several months before they go cold and the used fuel can start to be removed. France will still be left with 56 pressurized water reactors at 18 nuclear power plants -- only the United States has more reactors, at 98 -- generating an unmatched 70 percent of its electricity needs. The government confirmed in January that it aims to shut down 12 more reactors nearing or exceeding their original 40-year age limit by 2035, when nuclear power should represent just 50 percent of its energy mix. But at the same time, state-owned energy giant EDF is racing to get its first next-generation reactor running at the Flamanville plant in 2022 -- 10 years behind schedule -- and more may be in the pipeline.
The first reactor will start being shut down on Saturday and the second on June 30, though it will be several months before they go cold and the used fuel can start to be removed. France will still be left with 56 pressurized water reactors at 18 nuclear power plants -- only the United States has more reactors, at 98 -- generating an unmatched 70 percent of its electricity needs. The government confirmed in January that it aims to shut down 12 more reactors nearing or exceeding their original 40-year age limit by 2035, when nuclear power should represent just 50 percent of its energy mix. But at the same time, state-owned energy giant EDF is racing to get its first next-generation reactor running at the Flamanville plant in 2022 -- 10 years behind schedule -- and more may be in the pipeline.
Sad to think about it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad to think about it. (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, nonsense! One of the operators died. Seven years after the tsunami, but he died.
Which clearly proves that nuclear power is the deadliest technology ever developed, since the second worst nuclear disaster in history killed...one guy. And it only took seven years to finish him off....
Re:Sad to think about it. (Score:4, Funny)
So stop with your misleading BS FUD, its people like you that have set us back in the global warming fight.
Re:Sad to think about it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Swoosh
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And why is my parent post modded troll?
Unpleasant truth?
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Design wise, we can build safe plants, provided best practices are followed, not building in unsafe areas, good oversight is done, etc.
Even setting aside that anything idiotproof will be countered by better idiots, as you mention, the above will never happen. Corners will always be cut, contingencies will always be ignored or underestimated, and mistakes will be made. There is no reason to expect a truly safe plant to be built, with measures baked in place to safely handle the life and decommissioning and disassembly of the plant without harm to the environment. There is, however, a lot of reason to expect false claims to be made about
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Thanks for the SNL, it was just the laugh I was after.
Re: Sad to think about it. (Score:2)
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Proponents of nuclear energy always conveniently exclude two major issues with nuclear energy:
1. The as of now still unresolved issue of long-term storage of nuclear waste.
Nuclear waste is an extremely dangerous substance, that has to be cooled and managed for decades. This cooling process produces even more nuclear waste in the form of radioactive water and other substances than in turn also have to be managed... a generation-spanning challenge for which there is still no long-term solution with acceptable
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I thought there were ways to reprocess existing nuclear waste so it could be reused in different reactor designs, or perhaps it was different reactor designs altogether that allowed for more fuel reuse and less waste.
As for the dismantling cost, maybe if we commit to nuclear power in a location, we plan that site large enough that it is considered a perpetual nuclear plant location, with enough real estate that the same site can host a new nuclear plant down the road. So that over time, you've got three pl
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Nuclear plants have a pretty long life span -- the one near me I looked up has been in operation for almost 50 years, so the idea of a "permanent" nuclear plant doesn't seem that outrageous.
Not until you have adequate materials technology that can resist the neutron bombardment making the steel reactor core brittle and cracking.
Until that problem is solved the limitation of the reactor life will be about 50years before they become to dangerous to operate even with a reduced output.
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Right, the idea isn't that the same reactor gets used indefinitely, it's that we accept that the *site* will always be a nuclear facility, so why not just use the same site to build new reactors as the old ones age out?
It takes a lot of pressure off the timeline needed for decommissioning and has a lot of other advantages.
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Right, the idea isn't that the same reactor gets used indefinitely, it's that we accept that the *site* will always be a nuclear facility, so why not just use the same site to build new reactors as the old ones age out?
Because the energetic investment into building the reactor facility *itself* (measured in petajoules, about 70 IIRC) is a significant portion of the energy a plant will generate over its service life. On the decommission side they are also energetically intensive to dismantle (about the 30 - 35 petajoule range IIRC).
The reason to pursue advancements in materials technology for reactor vessels is so that they can be run for longer service lives to increase the utilization of the reactor, in terms of energ
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The as of now still unresolved issue of long-term storage of nuclear waste.
I don't understand why vitrification wouldn't solve the problem. Specifically,
After one pass, the radioactive material would be diluted a thouand to 1.
After two passes, a million to 1.
After three passes, a billion to 1.
After four passes, a trillion to 1.
And so on. It seems to me th
Re: Sad to think about it. (Score:2)
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What is the biggest cost facing Vogtle?
The biggest cost is interest.
Nuclear plants are expensive to build but cheap to run. So the costs are incurred up-front and then those costs are paid down over the life of the plant. But if the project is delayed, interest accrues while the plant sits half constructed.
The delays are for many reasons. Most big projects are approved with unrealistic schedules and prices to streamline the approval process, but with a contract that allows the schedule to slip and the price to be jacked up later. But the del
Law regarding Nuclear debt and interest (Score:4, Informative)
What is the biggest cost facing Vogtle?
The biggest cost is interest.
Nuclear plants are expensive to build but cheap to run. So the costs are incurred up-front and then those costs are paid down over the life of the plant. But if the project is delayed, interest accrues while the plant sits half constructed.
That is not the whole story. Again I refer to The U.S Atomic Energy Act [house.gov] as the primary act of law controlling funding policy decisions for Nuclear Power (considering you are talking about Westinghouse and Vogtle).
The delays are for many reasons. Most big projects are approved with unrealistic schedules and prices to streamline the approval process, but with a contract that allows the schedule to slip and the price to be jacked up later.
Delays in construction are covered by SEC. 638 STANDBY SUPPORT FOR CERTAIN NUCLEAR PLANT DELAYS of the Acts, specifically section (c)(1)(A) (...and others) where those costs are covered by ratepayers and taxpayers.
But the delay and cost overrun were even worse than expected, leading to litigation between the power company and primary contractor. So the primary contractor quit, and Westinghouse took over the job.
Again SEC. 638 (d)(1) and (2) the Secretary shall pay (A) 100 percent of the covered costs of delay
You fail to point out that Toshiba owned Westinghouse at that point in time and the cause of the fracas was *because* Westinghouse declared bankruptcy. Why?
Then Westinghouse went bankrupt. The long and painful saga continues.
Westinghouse are using bankruptcy to avoid baring the cost of contractual obligations for decommissioning retired nuclear reactor plants they were required to do. By declaring bankruptcy they instead get to offer that expertise to the government and put the cost onto the taxpayer whilst avoiding billions of dollars in debt liability to their parent company Toshiba.
That's why you always have to have a deeper look at these situations to determine what is really going on.
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ok, so what is really going on? What is the biggest cost they are facing?
I can't speak to costs. However without a doubt the biggest liability isn't interest, it's insurance liability.
Nuclear power is un-insurable without Price Anderson Act which protects it from hundreds of trillions of dollars of property damage by capping damage to 12-13 Billion for all 104 reactors in the US raised by the industry itself. A paltry sum that Fukushima has already exceeded and the US taxpay was also liable for under SEC. 605 Incidents outside the United States. If the Nuclear industry wa
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Nuclear is not dying because of environmental FUD. It is dying because of economics.
Economic problems brought on by environmental FUD. They keep giving lies that nuclear power produces as much CO2 as coal, or that it spreads radiation, or that uranium mining is destroying the environment. If you want to see an environmental disaster then let these idiots pave over cropland with solar panels, and pour big concrete anchors to hold up windmills.
Nukes are still being built in China and India, and they are experimenting with some new tech like MSRs.
Which proves the economics are fine for nuclear power if removed from the environmentalist FUD.
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Economic problems brought on by environmental FUD.
Not really. Public opposition makes permitting difficult, but once a project is approved, that is not what drives up costs. The delays and cost overruns at Hinkley and Vogtle are not because of environmentalists.
Nukes are still being built in China and India, and they are experimenting with some new tech like MSRs.
Which proves the economics are fine for nuclear power if removed from the environmentalist FUD.
Nukes in China and India are heavily subsidized as "prestige" projects.
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Nuclear is not dying because of environmental FUD. It is dying because of economics.
Economic problems brought on by environmental FUD.
Economic problems are bought on from construction delays. Environmentalist have no input into the placement or construction of nuclear power plants. It seems your saying that a bunch of hippies waving placards in front of a construction gate means the end of the world for nuclear power because it's so fragile.
nuclear power produces as much CO2 as coal, or that it spreads radiation, or that uranium mining is destroying the environment.
Nuclear produces as much CO2 as natural gas. I recently learned that Gas produces significant amounts of radioactive waste in brine water which, because it is produced by the oil industry, a comple
Re:Sad to think about it. (Score:4, Interesting)
You are mostly correct.. Natural Gas is what is killing nuclear, the wind and solar sources are not. It's economics, pure and simple.
With the advent of fracking, we are literally awash in proven domestic natural gas supplies. Natural gas is going to be cheap for the foreseeable future too, there is no way we can use all we can produce.
So it always amazes me that the environmentalists are all alarmed about Nuclear power, often cheer it's demise, but don't seem to care one whit about what is replacing it.
Oh, one more thing... I think Nuclear *could* be cheaper to operate, but the current regulatory environment is just not allowing it. Right now there is zero investment in Nuclear because the regulations and the uncertainty of their likely getting changed multiple times before a plant could rise off the drawing board and produce power. A new plant would likely take more than a decade to plan and build bring into operation and would draw a lot of political attention in the process. Such attention would cause every decision to be nit picked to the Nth degree, involve multiple court cases and risk a billion or more dollars. This is way too much risk for most companies who are already straining to make profits in the face of price controls imposed by state and local authorities.
So, the easy way to make money is build that Natural Gas plant instead.. It's a sure thing because very few environmentalist care and they know the useful idiots in the public are not easily scared by a natural gas powered plan. The FUD around nuclear is huge, folks fear what they don't understand and that "radiation" exposure thing sure sounds scary.
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Once again, proving that it can be done and that it makes sense. A few first of a kind struggles are not a reason to abandon a proven technology, and the ONLY reliable (power when you need it) clean air technology we have.
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Gas has an import cost and related politics.
France still has productive export production lines to run 24/7.
Re "but that did not happen" France got and will get decades of productive energy use on its own terms.....
Re: Sad to think about it. (Score:2)
There is another issue though. Pretty much all of the Uranium used by EDF comes from a single mine in Niger. Which is in a region awash with Islamist terrorists. Did you see any major uptick in French (and US) military ops in the Sahel recently? Make the connection yet?
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China is cranking out nuclear reactors like there's no tomorrow. One plant takes them about 5 years, $2 billion USD, and they have 11 under construction (generally 10-15 concurrently), and over 40 operational.
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China also built the Shanghai-Beijing high-speed rail in 3 years for $8 billion.
America needs $90 billion and 30 years to build the SF-LA line which is 30% shorter.
Just because something can be done in China doesn't mean it will work in America.
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Just because something can be done in China doesn't mean it will work in America.
Well indeed. American (and the UK) have to worry about not shooting people who don't want to move out of the way of the proposed path.
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I don't know why they don't just build it elevated in the median of US-1 or 101 or something similar. That's mostly away from areas with sound considerations, doesn't require permitting for new land, and still allows for side-tracks running inland if they like. Or run it up I-5 even.
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The Chinese just offered to build the UK's High Speed 2 line for 5bn in 5 years. The projected cost if we do it ourselves is about 100bn and it will take 30+ years.
Clearly the Chinese think they can built the line here, meeting all the UK standards and regulations, much cheaper than we can. It's not that surprising really, the UK is really really bad at building infrastructure and contractors love to rip the government off.
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Re: Sad to think about it. (Score:2)
I live close to that plant, in fact I can see it from the train station pretty much every morning. The paranoid locals have moaned about it for 20 years, but I am not scared. Maybe this will calm down the whiners and idiots who block the highway every once in a while to protest.
Now the town will have its economy wiped out and soon I cant go over the border to France with my bike to shop there, the supermarket has much better fish and variety of fresh produce than in Germany.
The town mayor had an int
Re: Sad to think about it. (Score:3)
That's precisely why yours truly, whose lifestyle can't be any greener (in contrast to many self proclaimed 'activists') never was a member or supported any green movement or party.
These people handed the whole 20th century on a gold pressed lathinum plate to Gas and Oil.
There's no atonement for this.
WE MUST DO ANYTHING TO STOP CLIMATE CHANGE (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WE MUST DO ANYTHING TO STOP CLIMATE CHANGE (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing we should do is improve our electric grids. Other than that, any "eggs in one basket" approach is not a great idea.
Nuclear power plants are gawdawfully expensive to decommission; just imagine what happens fifty years after we undertake a crash program to solve all our energy problems with nuclear power. Imagine what happens if we discover a serious problem with design we choose -- it might be politically impossible to even admit that a flaw might exist, for fear of having a basket with *no* eggs.
You want to spread your bets, and the one thing all those bets will have in common is a better grid. The same grid that will allow you to site a nuclear power plant far from its users will also wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, OTEC, and maybe even a few advanced fossil fuel plants far from users.
Vote accordingly. (Score:5, Informative)
If you believe in this issue then you should be voting for people willing to tax pollutants like CO2 emissions. This will force the hand of energy companies (and people alike) to embrace nuclear technology or pay out the nose to avoid it.
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Isn't that sort of what we want though? To reduce CO2 emissions overall. If taxing CO2 emissions means that those nuclear plants that emits high levels of CO2 have to change their practices or close, then isn''t that a good thing?
A lot of the arguements in favour of nuclear power are based on how clean it is compared to fossil fuels (arguments that I'm all in favour of, as is happens). Surely therefore nuclear power ought to stand or fall on that measure.
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Yes, we want to reduce CO2. I'm just saying that doing so does not necessarily favour nuclear.
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Isn't that sort of what we want though? To reduce CO2 emissions overall. If taxing CO2 emissions means that those nuclear plants that emits high levels of CO2 have to change their practices or close, then isn''t that a good thing?
They did change their practices to reduce their CO2 emissions. They went from using diesel to crush hundreds of tons of rock to extract ore bodies and switched to in situ leach [wikipedia.org] mining which is arguably worse because it produces mega litres of radioactive sulfuric acid
A lot of the arguements in favour of nuclear power are based on how clean it is compared to fossil fuels (arguments that I'm all in favour of, as is happens). Surely therefore nuclear power ought to stand or fall on that measure.
I've covered this in a previous post [slashdot.org] that may answer your questions.
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If any of this has the slightest bit to do with stopping climate change, then you would have a point. But it doesn't - it's an excuse to enforce world government and then wealth distribution.
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The abundance of solar and wind there is causing periodic negative energy rates, which is an indication of the problem.
That is for fuck sake not a problem.
How dumb are you americans?????
You produce energy for nothing ... have it for free ... and then you complain you even can consume it and get extra money on top?
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The topic was negative power prices, not midnight. ... they don't need much power or even no power at all that time.
Believe it or not: most people are sleeping at midnight
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It's not like refrigerators run, or computers, or cable modems, or cell phones recharge, or street lights work, or EVs recharge, or... And of course hospitals, police stations, telecom stations, internet switch centers, grocery stores, logistics warehouses, and more don't operate at night, right?
So if you want to position solar/wind as a replacement for nuclear or natural gas or coal - you have to include costs to provide power during this time. You HAVE to factor in the cost of backup capacity in the cas
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If you're a small island nation, nuclear downtime is a potential issue. If you have more than 5-10 power plants, not so much.
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He's saying that there is a problem in that electricity is being generated when there's no demand for it, and can't conveniently be stored for later, when demand increases and generation capacity decreases.
A thin coating of slow glass over solar panels would do the trick, but instead we'll probably be pumping water uphill and compressing air, for the potential energy, heating up stuff to tap for heat, and charging batteries.
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Climate change is an urgent and critical problem. If we want to solve it quickly, we need to use the technologies available to us now, not 50 years from now. That might mean we have to buy more expensive energy production until we can produce batteries in quantity to use them. The alternative is to burn coal or natural gas, which we need to stop doing IMMEDIATELY.
Why are you people all total and complete liars? Is this some fundamental character defect? Or are you just completely incompetent and have absolutely no clue what you are talking about?
Clean, reliable and scalable energy storage tech is about 150 year old. It just has to be build at scale. This will be a lot faster than building new nuclear.
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In 2013, total energy consumption was 108 Petawatt hours[1]. Electricity consumption was 19.5 PWh. Therefore, electricity was 18% of power consumption. In 2018, Solar and wind combined were 7% of total power production. Therefore, solar and wind account for 1.2% of total energy consumption (7% of 18%).
If we want to power the world completely via ren
Re: WE MUST DO ANYTHING TO STOP CLIMATE CHANGE (Score:2)
I'm fucking tired to repeat facts for every ignoramus that never reads beyond catchy title...
Just Google 'methane slip', will ya?
Add to that the methane losses during transport.
BTW it's my job to measure this and report to companies and the government. Very likely I'm the most informed person on /. on this topic...
It's a HUGE problem and we are just beginning to ramp up usage of gas worldwide.
Just point an IR detector over any LNG installation...
Do you still want to kill all the cows whose belching will dis
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You may find this interesting [rollingstone.com]
Aaaah! Zoomies bad! *warding sign against evil* (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with nuclear power, and our implementation of it not being perfect is no reflection on it's value.
We can make better, safer nuclear power plants.
For fuck's sake, if we had this attitude with regards to human flight and the space program, we wouldn't have planes and we would never have gone to orbit, let alone the Moon!
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Actually, the implementation is _everything_, because it happens to be what makes it into the real. We cannot make save nuclear power plants, history has shown that to the satisfaction of anybody who can do basic numbers. (Ever wondered why nuclear power plants cannot get insurance? Simple: Insurers can actually do math!) We cannot make cost-effective nuclear power plants. They are far too expensive compared to all alternatives and that does not even take the costs of decommissioning the buildings, storing
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Of course, we can make safe nuclear power plants. Already built quite a lot of them.
What was the worst nuclear power plant disaster ever? Chernobyl. After a concentrated effort of station personnel led by its own management, disabling multiple safety controls and doing dangerous experiments on the live reactor, the station finally blew up in the worst way possible: everything that could fly flew away; everything that couldn’t -
thrown into the air by fires and flew anyway. Can’t do worse even wit
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Of course, we can make safe nuclear power plants. Already built quite a lot of them.
Nope. We can only make ones that did not have a major accident yet. TMI, Windscale, Fuckupshima and a lot of near-misses. All impossible or "1 in a million years" according to the nuclear industry. Then they happened. Then people like you come up with new lies.
Re: Aaaah! Zoomies bad! *warding sign against evil (Score:1)
Wait, what? Chernobyl and Fukushima were near misses, not terrible disasters? While I agree about not being so terrible, could you elaborate on how they could go worse?
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Wait, what? Chernobyl and Fukushima were near misses, not terrible disasters? While I agree about not being so terrible, could you elaborate on how they could go worse?
How about a plutonium fire that wipes out all human life in the northern hemisphere of Earth. Fukushima was *very* close to being an extinction level event if the foundations of the spent fuel pool at unit 3 collapsed. Packed with over 1400 spent fuel rods, would you expect them to behave differently *outside* a reactor, without a moderator and packed together. Concrete rubble would not do anything but melt.
People who are happy with nuclear power are so because the impact of risks like this aren't clea
Re: Aaaah! Zoomies bad! *warding sign against evi (Score:1)
Iâ(TM)m sorry, but I have to call bullshit on your âextinction eventâ scare.
WNA estimates that Chernobyl threw away 5% of its 200 tons of nuclear fuel, 10 tons. Plus some radioactive byproducts, gases, etc. The exclusion zone around the site is 30 km in radius, and it is quite far from being a wasteland. Life is abundant there. Some people refused to leave their homes - and many of them are still alive.
Fukushimaâ(TM)s 1400 fuel rods of 200 kg each weigh 280 tons. Let's assume it is 200 t
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Iâ(TM)m sorry, but I have to call bullshit on your âextinction eventâ.
You asked: could you elaborate on how they could go worse? so I answered.
WNA estimates that Chernobyl threw away 5% of its 200 tons of nuclear fuel, 10 tons. Life is abundant there.
There is a reason why you don't expose young living beings to radionuclides. Genetic mutations and transgenic disease manifest in subsequent generations. That's why animals live there and humans do not. Humans, with cognitive processes, understand the unseen danger. The point you raised is a strawman.
Let's assume it is 200 tons of nuclear fuel, 20x times the amount of Chernobyl event. 20 Chernobyl exclusion zones wouldn't come close to covering even Japan itself.
Your assumption about the mass and mechanism is incorrect. First Unit 3 was filled with just over 4000 tons of spent fuel. Thanks to
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I have to call bullshit again and again.
First, you literally wrote ”plutonium fire that wipes out all human life in the northern hemisphere. Feel free to take it back, but do not pretend you didn’t say it. This is exactly what you said.
Second, nuclear fuel uses uranium oxide as a fissile material. Sometimes plutonium oxide added to it, and some plutonium is produced from uranium oxide during the work cycle. Again, do not hesitate to prove me wrong, but all plutonium in the fuel is already oxidiz
Characteristics of a Plutonium fire (Score:2)
First, apologies for the previous subject header, someone else annoyed me and I took it out on you, sorry about that.
I wish I was, however the fact remains that the Unit 3 foundations at Fukushima are compromised and a failure mode that involves the foundations of a spent fuel cooling pool containing MOX fuel rods collapsing is well outside conditions the plant was designed for. That damage has been confirmed by Japanese Civil Engineers and the foundations had co
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I’m a bit tired of repeating myself, so I’ll limit this comment to the single point.
MOX fuel is ”Mixed OXide”. It is not a mix of pure metals, it is a mix of uranium oxide and plutonium oxide. Nuclear reactions in this fuel convert part of the uranium to plutonium, but it STAYS OXIDIZED. You can heat plutonium oxide to whatever temperature you want, but it would not catch fire because it already connected to all the oxygen it could use.
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MOX fuel is ”Mixed OXide”. It is not a mix of pure metals, it is a mix of uranium oxide and plutonium oxide. Nuclear reactions in this fuel convert part of the uranium to plutonium, but it STAYS OXIDIZED. You can heat plutonium oxide to whatever temperature you want, but it would not catch fire because it already connected to all the oxygen it could use.
Thanks for the correction regarding the oxide fuel. The fact remains that the spent fuel rods are being kept cool to prevent them becoming critical, if they do that in open air the scenario ends up in the same place. It changes very little if the fuel is already oxidized and the cladding melts/ignites/burns and spent fuel becomes supercritical whilst crushed under concrete. How hot would it get without water to moderate it?
The EXACT same amount of pu02 would end up in the environment with very little a
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Oh gee some Sierra Club person had a mod point to burn, I'm so hurt.
Perhaps they don't like your use of bold text to make unsupported assertions?
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Perhaps I don't give a fuck if they don't like the way I write, just like I don't give a fuck if YOU don't like it.
If you didn't give a fuck, you wouldn't have responded.
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The fundamental problem with nuclear is the cost. Everything is cheaper and some of those options are cleaner too.
Actually the other fundamental problem is that you can't solve the world's energy needs with nuclear because you can't deploy it in many places. Sometimes the geography is a problem, sometimes the politics are. So if it really is the only solution then we are screwed.
Fortunately it's not the only option, in fact at this point it's really just a question of how quickly we want to move past it.
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Also I think you're thinking of massive nuclear power plants, instead of the small-scale reactors they've been building.
Then there's fusion power.
And who knows what else they'll come up with.
If we really have to litter the entire planet with solar panels and battery banks just to get by then we're screwed anyway. Eventually everyone will become a NIMBY for that, too, as it encroaches on everything everywhere. People will never reduce
Re:Aaaah! nukkers bad! *warding sign against dumb* (Score:2)
Nothing else I'm aware of has the energy density of nuclear reactions.
You are probably also unaware that we need appropriate materials technology to achieve the burn up rates required to access the energy density of nuclear reactions within nuclear reactors because we currently utilize less than 1% of the energy density with our current technology.
Also I think you're thinking of massive nuclear power plants, instead of the small-scale reactors they've been building.
Small nuclear power plants are *the* dumbest idea I've ever heard for nuclear power. How do you propose to remove them at the end of their service life?
Then there's fusion power.
How will that burn the 80,000 tons of spent fuel we have?
And who knows what else they'll come up with.
I'm betting we will h
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Also you sound like you're operating on old information, having closed your mind to the subject a long time ago.
I suggest you go update yourself.
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You sound angry. Why are you angry?
You sound like you're attempting to project your emotional state because your social proof is failing to generate the kind of outrage you had hoped.
Also you sound like you're operating on old information, having closed your mind to the subject a long time ago.
Sounds like you don't know what you're talking about. I did provide updated information, it used to be 70,000 tons of pu-239.
I suggest you go update yourself.
Any specific areas your expertise would guide me to? How about you start with a critique my understanding of nuclear law [slashdot.org] and then we'll move onto more complex subjects like ASP, BDI, neutron bombardment, reactor burn up rates and other t
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Nothing else I'm aware of has the energy density of nuclear reactions.
Is there a need for very high energy density? I mean it doesn't seem like we are running out of space, especially given that nuclear can only be built in certain locations for geological, logistical and political reasons where as renewables tend to be a lot more flexible that that regard.
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Also as just said to someone else: your information may be out of date. There are new developments in nuclear power technology. Go update yourself.
I am not anti-solar. I just don't think it's the end-all, be-all, Magic Bullet solution to all our problems, and I think that the NIMBYs will turn on solar soon enough too (and in some cases already are). The equivalent solar tak
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Also as just said to someone else: your information may be out of date. There are new developments in nuclear power technology. Go update yourself.
I am that someone- specifically which information are you referring to Rick?
Do we have a reactor that burns spent nuclear fuel in production approved by the NRC? What is it? Reactor technology takes decades to develop and how are you supposed to retrofit "new developments" in reactor technology on hundreds of those that are in service? About the best advancement I've heard of lately is to use nano technology to upgrade the heat carrying capacity of water used as coolant.
So, unless you can point to
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Strange, in Europe on-shore AND off-shore wind is now subsidy free, where as nuclear is still getting absolutely insane subsidies.
If nuclear is cheaper why do we have to subsidise it so heavily just to get it built? Even with the massive subsidies in the end no-one wanted to do Hinkley C, they had to beg the French to do it with investment from the Chinese. Every watt generated will cost about double what offshore wind does.
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Strange, in Europe on-shore AND off-shore wind is now subsidy free, where as nuclear is still getting absolutely insane subsidies.
I've corrected you on this before - that is false [europa.eu]. Solar and wind enjoy forced purchase agreements (meaning you MUST buy the power, even if you don't want it), at guaranteed profit rates (meaning you WILL get a profit from your forced sale, even if the customer does not want it). Additionally you benefit from extremely low - if not free - loans, as well as other grants.
if you look at the link I sent, you'll see the EIA breaks out the LCOE pre AND post subsidies. Once the subsidies are factored in, solar
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The fundamental problem with nuclear is the cost. Everything is cheaper and some of those options are cleaner too.
That's more of a fundamental problem with other things. Coal isn't cheaper so much as you can force other unrelated people to pay. I doubt the overall costs will come out cheaper at all. You could of course put this down as a politics problem.
Actually the other fundamental problem is that you can't solve the world's energy needs with nuclear because you can't deploy it in many places. Sometimes
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I was thinking more about renewables and storage. You can deploy them in basically all countries because there are no major issues with proliferation, waste, safety etc.
of course they can be safer, however cost (Score:2)
Know what's really going to kill our species? Our own caveman superstitions, and the assholes who use fear as a weapon to further their own stupid agenda. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with nuclear power, and our implementation of it not being perfect is no reflection on it's value. We can make better, safer nuclear power plants.
Yes we can. The issue is that the nuclear industry does not want to spend the money to do so. This is the primary reason nuclear is well suited to communist and socialist economies where they are not obliged to produce a profit. This is why they are suited to state oriented countries such as France where Électricité de France is mostly owned by the government. Electrical power forms an economic input to the country provided by the government.
Simple modifications, from a perspective of
France understands (Score:2)
Not strange and changing political import costs for a lot of energy use.
No other nation setting the price of energy for France in some other currency.
No having to face more costs after any political embargo on oil.
Local jobs and nuclear exports.
Mil use is never going to be a propblem.
someday will never come it's all the same day (Score:2)
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Fusion is coming online someday, isn't it?
No, it's not. Not likely within the lifetime of anyone reading this in 2020 anyway.
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Considering the alternative, fossil fuels, nuclear fission may be the best answer until fusion comes online. Fusion is coming online someday, isn't it? I've already waited ten years past the thirty year time frame I heard about fifty years ago.
This could be the year of the Linux desktop OR for commercially successful Fusion power plants... Both are about as likely
Actually, economics are driving us to Natural gas. We have a HUGE domestic supply and prices are not going to rise much for a decade or more. Natural Gas is the low risk, low cost way to generate power. Nuclear is way too expensive and risky economically. I'm not saying it's not safe, but that there is way too much risk from changing regulations and political forces that make buildin
Ah La Belle France (Score:5, Insightful)
France will be the one shining light in Europe at the end of all this.
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France will be the one shining light in Europe at the end of all this.
They certainly seem to have had the most vision coming out of WW2 and into the nuclear age. A cheap, clean, robust energy grid, a modern nuclear navy and a small nuclear deterrent capability as well.
Sadly that vision is gone, I would not hold them out as a beacon anymore.
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They already are: The year 2019 on electricityMap [europe] [youtube.com]. Let's just hope they continue to be.
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Well, /sarcasm (is it or is it /ignorance?) is like vitriol.
you are obviously not aware that France is shifting to renewables much faster than Germany did.
Your
In 30 years or so there wont be any nuke in Europe, and most likely no coal or gas plant either.
why are you not working on your problems "getting green" instead of insulting countries you know nothing about?
How may BWR's in the USA? (Score:1)
Big deal (Score:2)
I live close to that plant, in fact I can see it from the train station pretty much every morning. The paranoid locals have moaned about it for 20 years, but I am not scared. Maybe this will calm down the whiners and idiots who block the highway every once in a while to protest.
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Maybe this will calm down the whiners and idiots who block the highway every once in a while to protest.
Isn't blocking the highways in protest pretty much the standard Tuesday afternoon recreational activity in France?
Somebody irradiate BeauHD already (Score:1)
and make the world a better place