Comment by gip 9 hours ago
Curious how this new design addresses the biggest safety challenge of nuclear reactors (the issue that was the root cause of the Fukushima accident and an indirect cause of Chernobyl): how do we ensure that the nuclear core temperature remains controlled during exceptional events (e.g., earthquakes, structural failures) when the reactor must shut down abruptly?
Edge cases don't count?
The truth is, all reactors ever built were considered safe at their time with whatever definition of safe. No one builds unsafe reactors. Yet they turned out not to be safe.
Nothing is ever perfectly safe and a lack of perfect absolute safety is not a valid objection. All sources of power have associated risks, even renewables. Wind power has 0.04 deaths per terawatt hour and solar has 0.02 [1]. Nuclear power has 0.03 deaths per terawatt hour (safer than wind), and it's worth noting that almost all of those are from Chernobyl, which was considered unsafe even at the time (they knew about the positive void coefficient). I'm not arguing that nuclear power is perfect, mainly because it isn't. But it's not like all other sources of power are idyllic havens of safety. There are always tradeoffs.
Those figures seem very optimistic. Uranium miners die early, often of horrific cancers.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33232447/
But the bottom line is that renewable costs are trending down, hard and fast, battery tech is just getting started, and development time for wind and solar is comparatively fast.
Future nuke costs at this point are speculative, development time is very slow, and even if new reactors were commissioned tomorrow, by the time they came online it's very, very likely solar and wind + storage would make them uneconomic.
IMO the attachment to nukes is completely irrational. There are obvious economic downsides, no obvious economic benefits - and that's just the money side.
They count as a different type of failure.
We knew what to do but screwed up hard is a operational failure and we didn't plan for it is a design/planning failure.
The people who are hurt might not care, but understanding the root cause is important to address them.
> Edge cases don't count?
Constrained edge cases are fine. Particularly when contrasted with coal and natural gas, which are, in practice, what everyone is competing against in America.
The edge case was predicted, but market and political forces chose to ignore it. The GE Type II reactor had known issues. [0]
I should add that I am not strictly anti-nuclear, and it is super interesting that some of the largest funders of anti-nuclear propaganda have been actors from the fossil fuel industry. [1]
[0] https://publicintegrity.org/environment/reactors-at-heart-of...
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...
One of the major reasons thats we have a climate crisis is that we knee capped Nuclear in the 80s and prevent new reactors and new technology development for 40 years. That left the only providers able to fill the gap were fossil based (oil, coal and gas) - which pumped out significant CO2.
Not surprised at all that oil and gas is still trying to protect themselves from competition.
Wild edge cases are to be expected when you do things at scale. If you build 20 buildings in different regions, at least one of them will likely face a once-in-1000-years natural disaster. And it's difficult to estimate how bad that particular kind of once-in-1000-years event can be, because you probably only have a century or two of reliable data.
Let’s not forget that you don’t have to be a socialist/communist nation to decide you want to do the cheaper thing. Without robust regulations I guarantee you a Chernobyl-like disaster could easily happen in the US because of less scrupulous companies cutting corners and choosing the cheaper path. With Chernobyl it was the government instead of a private company.
We can talk all day about how the system incentivized people playing CYA rather than actually trying to solve the problem (true and fair critiques), but when it comes down to it, this happened because the cheaper option was chosen and potential issues were overlooked. That transcends political systems.
I personally find highly hypothetical situations impossible to guarantee but I'm glad you have such a high degree of self certainty for a plausible scenario you have decided to give certain results to.
You should really consider educating yourself on the Chernobyl reactor melt down (read a book or two) to understand the level of calamity inflicted by the communist system. Stop trying to make it sound like that could happen anywhere because the pressures of capitalism could cause the same results. Its pretty eye opening how insane the chernobyl situation was.
The US had Three Mile Island. Japan had Fukushima.
One of the biggest arguments against nuclear is that reactors are insanely complex. Beyond a certain level of complexity, safety and predictability become impossible even with perfect management - which certainly doesn't exist in the nuclear industry.
This is especially true of any nuke system which needs external cooling, because stable water levels aren't a given any more because of climate change. Between floods, droughts, and storm surges, the environment is part of the system - something Fukushima discovered to its cost.
I am actually very familiar with the history of Chernobyl and the meltdown. What I’m saying is human greed and short sightedness do not suddenly go away because a nation decides on a different political/economic system. The implication that it only happened because it was the Soviet Union is what I’m taking issue with because it absolutely could happen in the US without proper guardrails. All it takes is one bad company cutting the wrong corner or firing the one person who spoke out. It’s very easy to see no society is immune to this.
I am not defending the Soviet Union or any of the decisions made during Chernobyl. So you should redirect your indignation/condescension.
You don't need to prevent it. You just need to prevent a catastrophe and even Fukushima did it relatively well - nobody died or will die from radiation. Current benchmark for (future) gen4 designs is having consequences limited to the area of the plant, think of 3MI but as worst case. But imo it's still an overkill, nuclear is one of the safest sources in terms of human deaths/kwh and the stat only gets better with gen3/3+
> You just need to prevent a catastrophe and even Fukushima did it relatively well - nobody died or will die from radiation.
“As of 2020, the total number of cancer and leukemia instances has risen to six cases according to the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).[5] In 2018 one worker died from lung cancer as a result from radiation exposure.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident_cas...
These are small numbers compared to the number that died due to the tsunami and the massive evacuation (to avoid radiation injuries). The frustrating bit is that they could have avoided it all.
The linked to article makes a different claim
" The workers' compensation claims that have been recognized by labor authorities include six cases of workers who developed cancer or leukemia due to radiation exposure "
So compensation has been requested for cancers, of which one death has been reported.
I point to a Forbes opinion piece from a pro-nuclear person https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/09/06/no-the-ca... .
Chernobyl and Fukushima were different accidents and causes. Chernobyl was a systemic failure of the soviet system. Fukushima was a wild edge case that an earthquake and tsunami drained the coolant.