Is nuclear energy all that bad?

Great Debates
41

I’m talking next generation designs, largely based on molten salts, where the reactor itself can be about shipping container sized. The idea is that a power plant would have two pits for reactors, with one operating until it runs out of fuel, then the other one takes over while the first cools for some years or a decade, then it is removed and replaced with a new/refurbished one.

Still on paper, but I see no real technical obstacles to making it a reality, only political ones. I’ll be surprised if China is not exporting them within a decade or so.

And that is why they are stupid. They want to protect the environment, but they are not going to do so with what they are doing. Sure, you can make the choice to reduce your carbon footprint. You can choose to only eat the twigs and berries that grow in your yard.

I’m not going to. And most people are not going to. We will not accept stepping back in our quality of life. Just not going to happen. I mean, sure there are ways to make things more efficient, cars get much better gas mileage than they used to, but that doesn’t mean we will use less, just that we will get more out of using it.

Any proposal that starts with the idea that we will decrease our population or our consumption per capita is simply a non-starter. Might as well try to power the world with unicorn farts and rainbows as to get everyone to stop having kids, and only use a KWh per day.

42

How about all the gas which is burnt off from oil wells?

In the Bakken, about a third of natural gas produced through the process of oil extraction is flared. According to a study released this month by Earthworks, $854 million in natural gas has been burned as waste in the Bakken since 2010, enough to pay for solar panel installations in almost every household in Fargo. The 130 billion cubic feet of natural gas burned in just two oil plays — the Bakken and Eagle Ford Shale in Texas — has produced the equivalent of 1.5 million cars’ worth of carbon dioxide emissions.

That’s just in two fields- more CO2 & etc than can be possibly be burned in mining uranium.

43

Life cycle. Not operations. So yes all those things you listed. You can search for
nuclear power life cycle carbon emissions
if you prefer actual analyses over grand pronouncements from internet randos.

44

I don’t think anyone mentioned traveling wave reactors. Their huge advantage is that they don’t leave long life reactor waste. In fact, the get 10 times as much power from a given amount of uranium than do conventional reactors. And in fact, they could even use the waste from conventional reactors as fuel and rid the world of 70 years of nuclear waste.

The downside is that it is new design and would need careful development and approval, which is very expensive and only government funding could it. Buy the US government is allergic to spending money to ameliorate climate change.

45

Wikipedia has a starter article here.

Note that Wikipedia says his and other studies have been criticised for various reasons.

46

It’s considered proliferative any time a fuel pin is open and the fuel can be extracted. So MSRs inherently have a proliferative step in their life cycle.

Not exactly. Much of the hard tech in nuclear weapons design is not directly related to nuclear physics (firing mechanisms etc). And a U-233 bomb is still going to be an implosion-type device, which is already well understood with much of the information being public. So it wouldn’t exactly be reinventing the wheel.

I am not an expert on this, so I’m going to stop plagiarizing knowledge that is above my pay grade anyway, but here is where I got this information. https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html

I’ll go ahead and quote it for convenience:

[quote]
The main political barrier to MSRs is their perceived bomb-factory capabilities. If you talk to non-proliferation people, they will tell you that as soon as the (solid) fuel pins are cut open, a technology is considered proliferative. The problem with MSRs, then, is that the fuel is already completely cut open and melted. You’re halfway to a bomb already, they think. Here’s what they are worried about.

[ul]
[li] Protactinium-233 decays to pure, weapons-grade U-233 — Many Thorium-cycle MSRs have to capture Pa as it is produced, removing it from the system while it decays to U-233 and then reinserting it into the reactor. They have to do this because otherwise the Pa-233 absorbs too many neutrons to maintain a breeding cycle. The problem here is that that ex-core U-233 is basically pure weapons-grade U-233 which could be used to make a bomb. It usually comes with Zr, but separating Pa from Zr is simple. Not many common reactors require such a proliferative step in their fuel cycle. Many MSR concepts do not do this, but LFTRs require it. Therefore, the owner of a LFTR could be producing bombs on the side. Many of the ideas for mitigating this problem (such as U-232 contamination and denaturing) only help against diversion by a nefarious third party. The owners of the plant could side-step these kinds of fixes easily, and that’s really what matters.[/li][li] Inventory tracking is difficult – Because a lot of materials plate out in the reactor and in the chemical plant, it is difficult to keep exact track of all of your actinides. The IAEA puts safeguards in reactors to make sure that all the actinides are accounted for (to verify that no one’s making bombs on the side) but it will be difficult for the IAEA to distinguish plate-out losses from actual proliferative losses.[/ul][/li][/quote]

47

Three Mile Island was, certainly, nowhere near the scale of disaster of Chernobyl nor Fukushima. However, it occurred on American soil, and thus, got the attention of Americans, and support for nuclear power among Americans dropped substantially after the TMI incident.

As this article on History.com notes, support for nuclear power went from an all-time high of 69% in 1977, to 46% in 1979. And, in the 30 years that followed TMI, not a single new civilian nuclear power plant was approved, nor built, in the U.S. (though, apparently, a few new plants have begun construction in the past decade).

48

At a certain point, that is true of anything, including the dirt under your feet that contains trace amounts of U-235.

You’d have to show that they actually make making bombs easier by their existence, not just that it would be possible to do if you put enough work into it.

And knowing exactly how that particular isotope is going to react in the environment of an exploding nuclear bomb.

There are several reasons why that is not a practical thing to do, but, the simplest is the simple fact that there is not enough fissile inventory in a reactor to make bombs. If you drained the whole thing, then you may be able to make one or two, but then you don’t have a reactor anymore. If you siphon it off, then before you are able to make a single bomb, you will not have enough fissile material left in the core to support fission, and your reactor shuts down.

This is not true of all any every MSR design, as being able to have a net breeding is a desirable trait, but it is certainly true of any MSRs that we design specifically for that, which is what we would be shipping to other countries. 'Course, if China beats us, (which seems more and more likely) then we don’t get any control over the proliferation, as they will simply sell whatever it is that they decide to sell, and we will have no say.

At least if we develop it first, we have some control over how the technology is deployed. Not developing it doesn’t mean it doesn’t get developed, it just means that we have no control over it.

Then there is the fact that you are not going to get pure Pa-233, it will have 232 in it as well, which will turn into U-232, which makes a bomb hard to make, both in that it is nasty and radioactive in itself making it hard to work with, hard on any electronics in the bomb, easy to detect, and it will increase the chances of spontaneous fission.

Just so I know where I am going with this discussion, are you against nuclear in general, or MSR’s specifically?

49

Post #24 (non-ironic hyperbole).

That means we urgently need to start building reactors everywhere, starting now, as fast as possible. We don’t need to spend much time dicking around with alternative designs to placate the atom-phobes. Their concern isn’t grounded in reason, so having more reasonable designs isn’t going to persuade them, and that’s why I have little patience for discussions about “what about this great design that will surely convince them”. It won’t. What we have is safe enough, let’s run with it.

However, one very legit concern is weapons proliferation. If we’re going to put reactors everywhere, then they need be be trustworthy by design, more trustworthy than the people who operate them. Any increase in proliferation risk is unacceptable, whether that means denying diversion of P-239 to be used now, or U-233 to be used 30 years in the future.

So I’m not an expert on proliferative risk and I have no special reason to pick on MSR’s, but the language in this source was pretty concerning:

I mean I hear what you’re saying, but that seems to lay out out pretty clearly that some MSR have some exposure to diversion risk. Not all of them of course.

But again my broader point is - we need nuclear urgently, the only legit reason not to run with it is proliferation, so we shouldn’t waste time messing around with unproven tech that might elevate the risk of proliferation.

50

Four of the six largest economies in the world already produce nuclear weapons. That’s a lot of carbon output tied to countries where we can safely ignore proliferation risks.

51

This is the age of natural gas. It is plenty, cheap and has a lot smaller carbon foot print than coal. A natural gas plant also can be started up in lot shorter time (concept to startup) than a nuclear, does not require huge capital investment and cis size flexible from 25MW to 1000s of MW.

There are also other benefits : like a Natural has power plant is easy to integrate with say Solar power plant. For example a nuclear power plant is hard to reduce to 50% capacity during the day and 100% at night (needed for integrating with solar). With natural gas it’s easy.

I will bet that majority of the new power plants built will be natural gas :slight_smile:

52

It might take more processing to turn uranium ore into nuclear-plant fuel than it does to turn coal into coal-plant fuel. But don’t forget to consider the quantities involved. One kg of coal is not equivalent to one kg of uranium. A coal plant can eat a trainload of coal every day, while a nuclear plant can go for decades on one refueling. Even if each kg of coal needs very little processing, it adds up.

53

National Electricity Grids have been designed to connect a few large power stations and distribute the power to consumers in manufacturing and urban centres. That was pretty much the only way to do it when they were built.

That design is inefficient, the distribution systems loses power, the further the generators are from the consumers. It is also inflexible, nuclear requires a lot of water for cooling so needs a river or coastal location, coal and oil train loads of fuel to be transported, hydro can only work where the geographical features are present in the landscape. Renewables also have constraints when done at scale, they take up a lot of land area. Putting huge arrays of wind turbines out to sea is more costly than on land. Gas powered generators are somewhat more flexible, they just need a pipeline. Piplelines don’t leak gas as much as long distance power lines lose electrical power.

However, big power plants are not the only way. If power plants were moves closer to the ares where the power is consumed, that would be a big saving. Combined Heat and Power systems save even more. Changes in building design to add more heat insulation, changes in a lighting to use more efficient LEDs. These change the demand for power. Moreover, EVs will require changes to the distribution system to deliver power to new locations for charging. Along with that comes the emerging technology of grid storage. Localised micro generation is also possible by adding solar panels or small wind turbines to buildings or grounds. There are also smartmeter rollouts that have the potential to moderate power demand and reduce the need for the base load that is most suited to 24/7 nuclear.

An electricity Grid for the 21st century would look very different from those created with 20th century. There is a huge amount of work to be done to adapt to new technology.

Nuclear power technology is just one part of this mix, but it is not essential and this is clear from countries that have decided to remove nuclear from their energy strategy. Despite some its 24/7 capability, it is becoming too expensive compared to the alternatives. Big power nuclear plants require guarantees at government level of the price that will be paid for the power generated for years to come.

In the UK we have just had the Japanese pull out of two nuclear power deals. Another, financed by the Chinese, and to be built by the French, is looking very expensive long term. Decommissioning old nuclear plants is a very expensive liability.

Nuclear is being priced out of the business.

As has been pointed out earlier, the flexibility of Gas is making it a popular choice and it is very important part of the mix energy generation mix. Though that is not without ‘pipeline’ politics. Many countries seem to be adopting a strategy where Gas and Renewables will dominate. Grid storage could be a game changer for renewables.

Is nuclear that bad? Well if it was purely for energy generation, it has some attractive characteristics. But with all the political baggage about nuclear proliferation, safety and the huge costs, it is looking increasingly unattractive. Energy too cheap to meter? It was over sold from the beginning.

Nuclear will remain an option in some countries. It is certainly not going out of fashion in France anytime soon where they sell excess capacity to other countries through DC interconnections.

It does make me wonder how nuclear power would have developed if it were not for its association with ‘The Bomb’. Would we be as blind to the dangers as we were to Coal? :dubious:

54

Even renewable sources don’t pay for the waste they produce, like solar that generates toxic waste that, unlike radioactive waste, doesn’t have a half life.

The poster boy for why nuclear power is bad is Chernobyl, it makes me scream internally.
Chernobyl happened because they took an inherently unsafe, outdated reactor, decided to test what would happen if they disabled the safety features, deliberately create an emergency situation AND they were criminally incompetent in how they went about doing that. The only way it could had been worse is if they had deliberately rigged it to blow up. And what was the result? The worst nuclear disaster ever, involving a type of reactor no sane person would build today (i.e no containment dome) and the total deaths from it, AFAIK, has been less than a hundred; and far from creating wasteland of death for millions of years the area around it now is thriving with wildlife.
I don’t know if someone has done the math, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the Chernobyl reactor would had been an equivalent coal power plant, that coal plant would have killed many more people over its lifetime than the reactor exploding.

55

The thing is it’s assumed that the energy used to drive those processes would come from fossil fuels, when it could come from nuclear power too.

56

I think environmentalists are getting undue criticism regarding their objections to nuclear power.

Nuclear power arose from government financed projects and are totally bound up with nuclear weaponry and kind of devastation that ended WW2. We have lived for decades with a clear and very frightening existential threat of nuclear war and that easily translates into fears about nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants came out of research that was primarily for the military and the two purposes are still conflated whenever nuclear proliferation is debated between nations.

That is about the capability of nations to project power with nukes. A far more powerful imperative than concerns over the environment, which is much more recent trend and apparent only in countries where the opinion of the public matters.

It is interesting to imagine a world where nuclear power emerged unconnected with war. I guess there would have been lot more nuclear accidents. Would they have been regarded as a hazard like a mining disaster. The coal industry (and many other industries) became regulated as a result of disaster after disaster. The toll in lives was very high. If nuclear were to have evolved in the same way, there would have been a lot of Chernobyls.

57

Could you be more specific about this ? You need huge amount of acids to leach the earth because uranium occurs at 0.1% concentration typically for a good source. How would you make the acid with nuclear power ? Or how would you do ore processing like roasting or reducing ?

58

Depends on the acid. Sulfuric? Sure. It’s maybe cheating to start with the towering pyramids of sulfur that were hydrodesulfurized from hydrocarbons, but gotta use them for something. Roast and reduce with resistive heating (or microwaves if you want to get fancy) and ectrolyzed hydrogen.

Not that it matters much, given the current low carbon intensity.

59

Not so sure about safely ignoring proliferation risks. Just because a country already has nuclear weapons doesn’t mean it’s free of bad actors who would like to have a little unaccounted fuel, whether to do some clandestine testing of new designs, or to distribute it on the black market, either for money, or to further some sort of aligned strategic interest.

However, you have indirectly raised the good point that it would be an unmitigated good for the US to lead on nuclear weapons capacity. We produce shit-tons of carbon output, we have every reason to start working on this independently without waiting on others. India is also a huge carbon offender but I do not see them at all as a reliable nonproliferation partner. Pakistan, forget it.

And we can still work on other renewables - where it makes economic sense - but with a bias toward nuclear where it’s a wash, or far too expensive, or the power wouldn’t be reliable without a whole lot of infrastructure work.

60

I don’t think there is actually any country that’s cut nuclear power completely. There might be some that don’t have any nuclear plants inside their borders, but I’ll bet they all buy power sometimes from neighbors that do. And what we really need to see is a country that’s cut both nuclear and coal entirely: Getting rid of nukes is no virtue if you’re just going to replace them with something worse.