# Latest anti-nuclear activist: former chair of Nuclear Regulatory Commission **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 17, 2019, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113 "2019-05-17T12:51:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2019, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/21 "2019-05-17T23:43:18Z")
Nuclear power can be done safely as long as the extremely robust safety regulations, along the lines of the very strict oversight Naval Reactors performs, are maintained. Due to the extreme risks, IMO it pretty much requires massive government involvement. But with such oversight, IMO it’s the most powerful weapon against climate change in terms of energy. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2019, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/22 "2019-05-18T00:02:25Z")
The piece doesn’t mention things like thorium based reactors which would be much, much safer than current uranium based systems. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2019, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/23 "2019-05-18T16:36:22Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Related to the evacuation, not ‘radiation-related’, which they go into later on. I wonder how many related deaths there were from the other evacuation? What do you think? 😛 Sometimes, what I or anybody else “think” doesn’t matter because there is data to refer to. Factual matters are separate from matters of faith- believe what you must, but the numbers won’t change, and so the numbers are what ultimately matter. We can acknowledge weaknesses in data collection and the margin of error in things and apply human judgement to form a picture of a situation, but still it is best to keep things impersonal and rooted in the data we all share. So let’s take a look at **Shodan** ’s cite, mmmkay? > [@](#): > > For long-term displacement, many people (mostly sick and elderly) died at an increased rate[15] while in temporary housing and shelters. Degraded living conditions and separation from support networks[17] are likely contributing factors. As of February 27, 2017, the Fukushima prefecture government has tallied 2,129 “disaster-related deaths” in the prefecture.[18][16][19][20] This value exceeds the number that have died in Fukushima prefecture directly from the earthquake and tsunami.[21] “Disaster-related deaths” are deaths attributed to disasters and are not caused by direct physical trauma, but does not distinguish between people displaced by the nuclear disaster compared to the earthquake / tsunami. As of year 2016, among those deaths, 1368 have been listed as “related to the nuclear power plant” according to media analysis.[22] Reports have pointed out that many of these deaths may have been caused by the evacuation period being too long, and that residents could have been allowed to return to their homes earlier in order to reduce the total related death toll. So, 2129-1368=761. 761 deaths in the area in question were from “that other evacuation”. Not really what I “think”, but what the (human-collected) data tells us. > [@](#): > > So, your argument in this post seems to be that very few people died from radiation (despite what I assume is you either not reading the Wiki closely or trying to spin it that way), but the cleanup costing a lot of money. For a one time event. The event of which cost MANY hundreds of billions more to clean up. Yeah, that’s the thing…the event that actually triggered Fukushima seems to often get overlooked in these discussions. Dude, you can stop with the strawmanning right now. I am aware that there was a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan. That is, yanno, why there was a nuclear disaster in Fukushima in the first place. I think just about everybody knows this. Yeah, you could say (part of) my argument is that “very few people died from radiation”, depending on your sense of “very few” lives. The thrust of my comments was that **Shodan** was minimizing the damage, both in terms of lives lost and economic/cleanup/environmental damage. Thing about radiation pollution though is that it can take decades for it to kill people. So, if someone gets zapped in their twenties, and dies of an ultra-rare cancer in their forties, and this happens at a highly statistically unlikely rate, wouldn’t you say, another decade from now, that those people also died from radiation? Or would you prefer to narrow the discussion to the number of people killed by the concrete blown off the roof in the explosion, since that much is obvious and it helps the discussion lead to your desired result? Because I just want to be real about things. Now, estimates for the full cost of the Fukushima cleanup run to a trillion dollars. In the end maybe it will “only” be $500 billion? Who knows? Did the entire tsunami disaster cost that much? I really don’t know. All I am saying is that Fukushima presents us with a real-world example of the downside risks presented by nuclear power. Why would we want to exclude such a thing from the discussion? Me, I am all for including the risks of coal, oil, gas, wind, solar, geothermal, wave power and so on, the advantages and drawbacks of them all, so that we can make an informed decision on how to proceed. I mean, look at my handle. If we aren’t making an informed decision, what kind of decision are we making? > [@](#): > > I wasn’t going to reply to this thread, as it seems like the same old same old to me. In fact, it IS the same old same old. The guy in the OP is basically an anti-nuke, and has been one for a long time. Reading the article, he has all sorts of reasons for this stance, but a lot of them are the same old bullshit. Basically, nuclear is bad. It’s expensive and lots of plants that were started never got finished (which is pretty ironic, considering his own role in some of that) so it wasted all that money of the good people who just wanted power! Fukushima! Chernobyl!!! Clearly, nuclear is bad for the planet because of these two events. Plus, wind and solar will save us! Maybe a veteran of these discussions like you becomes weary of seeing the same points raised again and again, and they start to seem like bs. If p then q. So, if the same old same old, then bs. Got it. Argument from pathos- your “feelings” are that you are “tired” because of the repetition, and this sort of dyspeptic reaction colors your judgement such that the conclusions reached are “bs”. I found the article in the OP to be far more persuasive than your ham-handed, dismissive summary FWIW. > [@](#): > > The thing is, this level of horseshit would normally get batted down on this site as ridiculous, but because it’s nuclear it’s actually taken seriously. If this was about vaccines, say, and we were talking about the cost to benefit of them in terms of the few percentage of folks who will have bad reactions and might even die verse the millions who WILL be saved, people would be ripping into this. Instead, what we have is stuff like pointing out that 1368 died (ignoring the part that says ‘many of these deaths may have been caused by the evacuation period being too long, and that residents could have been allowed to return to their homes earlier in order to reduce the total related death toll’ as well as ignoring the fact that this happened pretty much all along the east coast of Japan because of that whole tsunami thingy that coincidentally also happened around the same time) as if this proves…something? What level of horseshit are you talking about? You’re mostly ranting and angry at the discussion. Sorry you’re having a bad day? So the evacuation period might have been too long. So what? It was a freaking nuclear accident. Know why they evacuated 100,000 people in the first place? Because they were going to get hurt or killed, because of the nuclear accident. Can’t we let this be part of the discussion, neither minimizing nor exaggerating it? > [@](#): > > Even if 10 times that number died directly from the nuclear power plant the cost to benefit would still be there…even if it cost 10 times the amount to clean up. Especially since we are talking about something that has happened exactly once in Japan since 1966. Know how many people die each year due to fossil fuel use? And, can you guess what the continued use of the stuff is going to cost us all in terms of environmental damage, storms and the like? It happened exactly one time since 1966? A trillion dollar, 30-year disaster? Should every nation in the world accept one of these in that kind of timeframe? Maybe three or four for the US and China since they are so much bigger? Trillions in downside for everybody, and potentially orders of magnitude more deaths due to radiation if the kind of cloud that flew out to sea and poisoned the poor kids on the Ronald Reagan were to fly over, say, Beijing or Los Angeles? One Fukushima in every European country, every African country, Australia, maybe the Philippines and Venezuela, and so on, all over the world, just one teensy little nuclear accident per country per 75 years or so is what you are willing to accept? Dude, I get it that the discussion takes place against the backdrop of climate change, and in the context of competing forms of power generation. Instead of just throwing all these things on the table in a sort of a fit, could you maybe pull it together into a coherent argument please? > [@](#): > > As for wind and solar, yeah, they can’t scale up to meet our needs for constant and steady power. And they won’t be able to for the foreseeable future. I’m unsure why this is still being brought up. Until and unless we have a way to store that energy, this will always be the case and they will remain niche energy sources. That’s important and necessary, but it leaves a large gap. And if we don’t have nuclear, then we will have something fossil fuel related to fill that gap. Sure, we are making great strides putting in wind and solar, and we’ll continue to do so. But that just means that fossil fuels use goes from 70% (the estimated global fossil fuel production currently) to…what, maybe 60%? If we are lucky? Oh, in some small countries with dense populations that might change, but not in countries like the US…or China. China, of course, IS building more nuclear reactors (how stupid they must be…they should read this thread to find out how stupid that is!), but they are still over 50% fossil fuel for production. The US is a lot less of course…35-40% is what I’m getting from mainly coal and natural gas. Without nukes (which will be diminishing from around 20% to 0 in the next few decades) we could drop that to…30%? Maybe 25%? If we are lucky. > That’s good and all, and hopefully that will be enough, but unless there is some major tech breakthrough that’s about as good as it’s going to get. Cite? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but this all looks like bar napkin calculation to me. Look at what the nuclear expert in the OP’s article says about Japan: > [@](#): > > For years, my concerns about nuclear energy’s cost and safety were always tempered by a growing fear of climate catastrophe. But Fukushima provided a good test of just how important nuclear power was to slowing climate change: In the months after the accident, all nuclear reactors in Japan were shuttered indefinitely, eliminating production of almost all of the country’s carbon-free electricity and about 30 percent of its total electricity production. Naturally, carbon emissions rose, and future emissions-reduction targets were slashed. > > Would shutting down plants all over the world lead to similar results? Eight years after Fukushima, that question has been answered. Fewer than 10 of Japan’s 50 reactors have resumed operations, yet the country’s carbon emissions have dropped below their levels before the accident. How? Japan has made significant gains in energy efficiency and solar power. It turns out that relying on nuclear energy is actually a bad strategy for combating climate change: One accident wiped out Japan’s carbon gains. Only a turn to renewables and conservation brought the country back on target. Why should I trust your raving over the verifiable statements of the OP’s nuclear expert? > [@](#): > > There is, currently, one technology that could scale up to meet our needs for constant and steady production. Nuclear. It could easily be brought up in the US to take that 35-40% load, making us a hell of a lot greener, and by extension along with the new wave of battery powered cars make us greener across the board. But we won’t do it because it’s too risky and costs too much. But this is the same sort of risk analysis and cost to benefit that anti-vaxxers use, with exactly the same flaws. Propping up your conclusion like this makes you seem childish. Anti-vaxxers are completely unrelated to the discussion, and I am not just like them. You certainly haven’t _shown_ that, or much else about your views on nuclear. Would you please make your point in a more convincing way? > [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > The piece doesn’t mention things like thorium based reactors which would be much, much safer than current uranium based systems. I have heard of those, and some other, newer designs as well, but don’t know much about them. What makes the thorium reactors so much safer? How are they on cost? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/24 "2019-05-19T02:34:54Z")
> [@Try2B Comprehensive](#): > > So let’s take a look at Shodan’s cite, mmmkay? Um…no. I don’t think we shall. For one, his cite wasn’t anything special or definitive, so I’m unsure why we’d simply use that and not, oh, say google it ourselves. A quick Google search turns up…well, a lot of nothing. I did find [this](http://time.com/5388178/japan-first-fukushima-radiation-death/) Time article interesting (it’s dated 2018): > [@](#): > > The Japanese government has recognized for the first time that a worker at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has died as a result of radiation exposure. The power plant suffered a severe meltdown during the devastating Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. > The man, who was in his 50s, died of lung cancer as a result of being exposed to radiation, Japanese national broadcaster NHK reports. He had been measuring radiation levels at the plant in the immediate aftermath of the meltdown. It is not known when he died. > On Friday, Japan’s health ministry said the man, who continued working at the plant until 2015, would be eligible for workers’ compensation, according to NHK. > The ministry said he had been exposed to about 195 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation. The International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends avoiding more than 1-20 mSv per year, and according to Reuters, exposure to 100 mSv a year is “the lowest level at which any increase in cancer risk is clearly evident.” > [@](#): > > Japan’s government has previously given compensation to four other workers who had developed leukemia and thyroid cancers as a result of radiation, but this is the first time a death has been acknowledged. According the BBC, the worker’s lung cancer was diagnosed in 2016. Now, true, the Japanese government could be hiding the additional 760 (761-1, using your figures :p) deaths, or perhaps they are denying them compensation, or maybe they have taken them all out and secretly shot them or something, but this seems to indicate that your math is just a bit off. We are talking about direct radiation deaths here, and, frankly, there weren’t very many (or any). Now, you might be talking about potential future deaths, of which there will certainly be a few due to increased chances of cancer. This could, indeed, be 700 or so down the road, though it’s all probability as they haven’t died as yet. But, perhaps we should do another Google search (instead of relying on the one Shodan provided) to see if, maybe, there are any similar deaths due to coal in Japan? That seems reasonable. [Here](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/10/09/reference/japan-continues-rely-coal-eyes-coal-fired-plants-despite-global-criticism/#.XOC8WfZFyHs) is an article discussing it: > [@](#): > > According to an estimate based on a 2017 study by Daniel Jacob, an atmospheric chemistry professor at Harvard University, pollutants emitted from coal-fired power plants currently operating in Japan lead to the premature death of 1,117 people every year. And that number is expected to increase to 1,572 if new power plants come into service. This is, of course, an ANNUAL (estimated) death toll. So, let’s do the math here, shall we? If we assume you are right, and the Japanese government has, indeed, covered up over 700 deaths, and if we assume that this has happened every year since Fukushima (the Japanese government is notorious for such large scale coverups), then it looks to me as if nuclear energy has, at a minimum, killed over 400 less people per year. Of course, this is ridiculous…because, the fact is, it hasn’t killed those 700 even one time, let alone each year, while coal in Japan has. And this is the NORMAL operating condition for coal…not a fluke once in a millennium situation such as Fukushima, which was a golden BB wrt an improbable chain of events. As a poster up thread stated, no one should be criticizing nuclear as long as one coal power plant continues. And, the thing is, Japan has few actual options EXCEPT coal as an alternative to nuclear. If they could have switched to wind and solar (which they have tried) they would have, since they get a lot of shit about them moving back towards coal…and rightfully so. I’ve actually heard, though I can’t be bothered to look it up, that they are starting to rethink their move away from nuclear…quietly, of course. Maybe that’s true, and maybe it’s something I heard but isn’t backed up by facts. But since we are talking about facts, your extrapolation of deaths from a Wiki article is…well, wrong. And, seriously man, it’s trivially easy to have looked this up for yourself. You can, of course, find articles that support some huge death toll from nuclear radiation for Fukushima…in the same way you could find articles supporting an anti-vaxx stance, or some other CT on the internet. > [@](#): > > Cite? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but this all looks like bar napkin calculation to me. Look at what the nuclear expert in the OP’s article says about Japan: Perhaps if you read it closer it wouldnt’ have been raving? I wasn’t talking about Japan, but the US. In the US, we have 20% of our power production done by nuclear. So, replacing that means…well, 20% more power from somewhere needed. I can sort of do this calculation in my head, but if you want me to go through it I can. I’m positing there that in the next few decades, with the current trajectory, we won’t have any nuclear plants left. Again, this seems fairly simple…we aren’t making new ones, ones currently being used are aging and will eventually go to end of life and be shut down…something has to replace them. I’m saying I HOPE that this would be wind and solar, but it can’t possibly replace all of it because, again, wind and solar don’t produce energy consistently as we need it too. Perhaps in that time frame large scale batteries or some other magic tech will come along, but today it can’t. Now, if you need cites for this…well, no, I don’t think I’m going to do the prove water is wet thingy here. What you cited from the expert doesn’t do anything at all to address what my actual point was, and if you don’t want to trust a ranter on the internet, that’s fine. 😛 No, I wasn’t having a bad day, and yeah, I’m kind of tired of this. It gets old seeing the same things brought up over and over. There are real, solid arguments against nuclear. Cost is the best one. But using the cost of cleanup for a one-off disaster? Or trying to conflate the deaths to some ridiculous level that STILL doesn’t come close to the regular operating costs in terms of death to the alternative that is actually in use and will be for the foreseeable future? Basically, not even sure why you bother with those silly arguments…or really any. Your side won! Rejoice in your victory! Your side has saved us all from the evils and massive danger of nuclear energy! Go team! ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/25 "2019-05-19T04:13:52Z")
I’ve made this argument a few times. It’s usually been ignored as “futuristic thinking” even though the reality on the ground is it’s happening. Look beyond the past just a little bit. Stop arguing over exactly how many people were killed, or what the risks of nuclear power actually are or might be. It’s actually not relevant. As an **engineering optimization problem, renewables are outright winners.** Why is this? The reason is that without the risk of a catastrophic release of fission products, you need a _fraction_ of the safety inspections or paperwork or component by component analysis and justification. Solar panels and their associated electrical systems do need some level of engineering to them, but they can be mass manufactured by automated systems and built as self-contained modular units that require minimal skill or labor to install. It’s possible to optimize every single penny out of the production and installation pipeline because if you save a penny and later something goes wrong, the primary risk is just early failure of the device. No release of fission products, no huge fire, just the solar panel or inverter or battery bricks itself. Or, at worst, catches fire, but you enclose the fireprone components in metal boxes (this is why Tesla battery installations are _separate_ metal cabinets - it limits fires to one box destroyed) and greatly limit the damage. There’s also other tricks - wind turbines don’t seem to be cost optimized to shave every penny, instead, modern turbines are just much, much bigger, so that all the expensive equipment they use generates more energy for the capital cost. As a side note, this also applies to comparing renewables to fossil fuels. With renewables, once a site is selected and bought and prepared, costs remain very consistent forever. Components need to be replaced as they fail, and there are warranties, but that’s it. No difficult effort involving geologists and special equipment for fracking the next well site as you slowly burn all the easy to access fossil fuels and have to keep drilling in ever more difficult and technically complex areas. Also, with renewables the primary hazard is just electrical fires and falls, things that are far easier to prevent than the dangers involved with storage/handling of massive amounts of flammable liquids and gasses. A wind farm or solar park will continue to produce as long as the failed modules are periodically replaced. Also, the maintenance tasks are very much automatable. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/26 "2019-05-19T04:20:46Z")
So, renewables are going to **keep getting cheaper** over time. There are additional levels of automation that haven’t been done yet - fully automated delivery, installation, manufacturing, and mining isn’t here yet but it will be. I think there is at least another 10x worth of cost reduction in renewables that is feasible with the latest advances in machine learning/robotics. (once these advances are pushed to production software systems and mass deployed, automating most of the global mining/manufacturing/transport/warehousing/installation/maintenence). Oil and gas and nuclear do not benefit as much from these advances in automation because each well site is unique and because robotic systems won’t be perfectly reliable and thus trustworthy enough to maintain and run a nuclear reactor. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/27 "2019-05-19T16:58:29Z")
Except you haven’t solved the key issue, that being that both wind and solar are variable while our requirements are for steady power 24/7/365. So, you are still going to need something to do that and to fill in the gaps and maintain the load. Which, if you are discounting nuclear, means fossil fuels. As long as you and everyone accepts that this is the reality, then sure…we should be building wind and solar. I think you are handwaving away some of the costs, as there is maintenance on both systems that will be ongoing, and with solar there is degradation of the panels over time and with wind there is degradation of the turbines, both systems will need constant maintenance and down cycles, and solar is pretty land intensive whether we are talking a distributive system or a central one. But none of that is insurmountable…it’s just more than you are portraying it to be in your apples to orangutans comparison between wind/solar and nuclear. There really is no comparison at this time because of what I said in the first sentence…so, that’s where you need to put your mad engineering skills, not to the back end. Until and unless that changes, nuclear can only be compared to the fossil fuel power generation systems, because only they can meet the requirement. Maybe down the line Tesla or someone else will be able to provide city scale battery systems that can keep an entire city running 24/7/365 with stored energy from wind and solar, but that doesn’t exist today and isn’t likely to do so for decades if not longer wrt scaling it to every city and town and community even in the US, let alone world wide. When you see LA, say, or New York or London with such a system then you can say we might be 10 years or so away from such a system. Hopefully we’ll have that sort of time to give into this irrational fear of nuclear and play along hoping for technical solutions to make wind and solar meet our critical needs. We shall see. And with that, I think I’m out of here unless something new or interesting pops up. Ado. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/28 "2019-05-19T17:23:53Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Except you haven’t solved the key issue, that being that both wind and solar are variable while our requirements are for steady power 24/7/365. So, you are still going to need something to do that and to fill in the gaps and maintain the load. Which, if you are discounting nuclear, means fossil fuels. As long as you and everyone accepts that this is the reality, then sure…we should be building wind and solar. Nuclear…also has this problem. When you say “base load” what you don’t realize is that with enough wind, geographically spread out, the probability that all wind everywhere is 0 is also 0. There will be some base supply of power. The flaw with renewables **and** nuclear is that _neither_ is dispatch-able. The reason is that with nuclear, the economics require that each operating reactor be running at as close to 100% power as possible all of the time. In fact, there are some technical limitations that prevent the turbines from running below 50% power or so - this is the reason why most nuclear plants can’t generate their own backup power with reactor heated steam. So, practical nuclear installations will have no dispatch-able power to offer. Whenever the power grid has a large increase in demand, something else has to make up the difference. Obviously, as you note, batteries are so expensive that they can really only be sized to meet “short tail” requirements - battery pack facilities need to be sized to where they are discharging a significant amount of their capacity to the grid at a premium price basically every day. What is the long term solution? Well, fossil fuels are a great way to store very large quantities of energy in high density, liquid forms. One option would be to use excess solar + wind energy to convert atmospheric C02 back to methane or methanol. The trouble with this is the first part, concentrating the CO2, is very energy intensive. Another is demand shaping. The so-called “smart grid”. Every time there is a sudden demand for electricity, in reality the cost to most users is low if they don’t get all the energy they demand at that instant. Most residential and commercial demand is for air conditioning, which can be slowed or paused. Factories that are robotic can pause many operations until more power is available. Aluminum electrolysis plants can in principle reduce power (they need to keep the metal molten but they don’t have to electrolyze at full speed). Electric cars can pause recharging. These days, large farms of computer chips being used for machine learning runs can also be paused or downclocked, they are presumably going to be an increasing part of the energy grid. Anyways, with a smart grid where pricing is variable and users have equipment able to reduce energy consumption when the pricing is high, it would be possible to use mostly renewables. Obviously, data centers handling economically valuable real time transactions (real time stores, stock trading) and hospitals would all need backup generators. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/29 "2019-05-19T18:43:31Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Except you haven’t solved the key issue, that being that both wind and solar are variable while our requirements are for steady power 24/7/365. So, you are still going to need something to do that and to fill in the gaps and maintain the load. Which, if you are discounting nuclear, means fossil fuels. So much for giving the victory to others… 🙂 In any case, I’m not discounting nuclear, but there are very good reasons and evidence to report that even with current technology we can use both solar and wind to deal with the issue. > **[Study: wind and solar can power most of the United States | John Abraham](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/mar/26/study-wind-and-solar-can-power-most-of-the-united-states)** > > John Abraham: Wind, solar, and storage could meet 90–100% of America’s electricity needs > [@](#): > > With this information, the researchers considered two scenarios. In scenario 1, they imagined wind and solar installations that would be sufficient to supply 100% of the US electrical needs. In the second scenario, the installations would be over-designed; capable of providing 150% of the total U.S. electrical need. But the authors recognize that just because a solar panel or a wind turbine can provide all our energy, it doesn’t mean that will happen in reality. It goes back to the prior discussion that sometimes the wind just doesn’t blow, and sometimes the sun isn’t shining. Important to notice here is that I have seen many times criticism that claims that researchers are not seeing the limitations (sun does not shine all the time, wind does not blow all the time, etc) when in reality they do. > [@](#): > > With these two scenarios, the authors then considered different mixes of power, from all solar to all wind. They also included the effect of aggregation area, that is, what sized regions are used to generate power. Is your power coming from wind and solar in your neighborhood, your city, your state or your region? > > The authors found that with 100% power capacity and no mechanism to store energy, a wind-heavy portfolio is best (about 75% wind, 25% solar) and using large aggregate regions is optimal. It is possible to supply about 75-80% of US electrical needs. If the system were designed with excess capacity (the 150% case), the US could meet about 90% of its needs with wind and solar power. > > The authors recognized that sometimes these systems generate too much power to be used. Under this situation, you could store the energy for later use. Imagine a solar panel generating excess energy during the day and able to store that power for night use. Power can be stored in several ways, for example in batteries or by pumping water into elevated tanks and then letting the water fall at night and turn a turbine. > > The authors modified their study to allow up to 12 hours of US energy storage. They then found that the 100% capacity system fared even better (about 90% of the country’s energy) and the optimal balance was now more solar (approximately 70% solar and 30% wind). For the over-capacity system, the authors found that virtually all the country’s power needs could be met with wind, solar, and storage. > > This study considered only wind and solar. \*\*If other sources, such as hydroelectricity, biofuels, or even nuclear power were added, it would be relatively straightforward to reach 100% clean energy. \*\*Furthermore, people are learning to use energy more wisely, either by using more efficient products or purchasing electricity during off-peak hours. These behavioral changes can also help us reach a 100% clean energy target. > > \*\*The point is, the use of clean energy to power an entire country (or a group of countries) is achievable. It’s no longer viable to say “we can’t.” > \*\* So, the point I made many times before stands, we can do it easily with nuclear on the mix\* but doing so with other sources is less easy but not impossible at all. _(Hence why I do support standardization and government deployment of nuclear as free enterprise is dropping the ball, just like vaccines_\* are seen now many times as a loss by the pharmaceutical industry now.) \*\* And really, pharmaceutical companies are doing such dick moves because of economics, but it would be an even bigger dick move if they claimed that they are dropping vaccines because of what antivaxxeers are doing. And as an aside, it has been very insulting from you to equate anti-vaxxers with the ones opposing nuclear power, they are loopy of course; but they have very plausible reasons for their opposition and not completely and absolutely insane ones like the anti-vaxxers do. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/30 "2019-05-19T19:38:36Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > So, the point I made many times before stands, we can do it easily with nuclear on the mix\* but doing so with other sources is less easy but not impossible at all. Gigo, how many years do you think we are from mass deployment of robotic systems able to do any repetitive task with a reliably measurable short-term goal\*? With such systems, mass deployment to 100% capacity would just be a matter of time. \*I can define this pretty exactly if you need ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/31 "2019-05-19T19:44:14Z")
Remember, robotic workers do not make nuclear cheap or easy - they don’t remove the need for government inspections or vast piles of paperwork or planning. Or very complex engineering work to design reactors. While solar installations and battery installations in particular can be made very cost effective with robotics. The very linear rows of panels or battery packs make it easy for a robotic system to roll up and down the rows. The modular nature of each panel, inverter pack, or battery box means that modular maintenance is possible. Government inspections are much cheaper - for a given site, if the government approves N panels using a particular solution, N+1 is just a rubber stamp. (the automated system doesn’t diagnose like a human technician does - each node is self-diagnosing and also able to diagnose faults in neighboring nodes. For example, a breaker box node can tell a connected inverter node is faulty because no current is flowing from it. Once a fault is identified, a robot just goes and yanks the entire faulty module for recycling/refurbishment by other robots in a facility elsewhere) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/32 "2019-05-19T20:04:32Z")
One other point on grid responsiveness is that hydroelectric is very responsive, very cheap, and green. There’s a maximum amount of energy you can get out of any given facility over the course of a year or so, but that amount of energy can be distributed during the year in many different ways. If smart metering can get the variation in demand below the total averaged output of hydro plants, then the hydro plants can take it the rest of the way. The biggest catch is that, due to global warming, there are a lot of places where we don’t really know what that maximum yearly amount of energy is. We used to know, based on past history, but now rainfall patterns are different from what they used to be. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/33 "2019-05-19T20:41:40Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > One other point on grid responsiveness is that hydroelectric is very responsive, very cheap, and green. There’s a maximum amount of energy you can get out of any given facility over the course of a year or so, but that amount of energy can be distributed during the year in many different ways. If smart metering can get the variation in demand below the total averaged output of hydro plants, then the hydro plants can take it the rest of the way. > > The biggest catch is that, due to global warming, there are a lot of places where we don’t really know what that maximum yearly amount of energy is. We used to know, based on past history, but now rainfall patterns are different from what they used to be. Hydro also doesn’t scale with population or industrial growth. The closest tech equivalent is I think flow batteries, where tanks of somewhat toxic chemicals are serving the same purpose, just using a different mechanism and with higher density. Obviously, flow batteries can be built anywhere in any quantity, so long as the materials used to make the liquid reagents are available at a economical prices. While leaks of toxic chemicals aren’t great, in principle, flow batteries can be recycled forever, especially since they are kept in central locations. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2019, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/34 "2019-05-19T21:29:22Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Hydro also doesn’t scale with population or industrial growth. Pumped hydro can be built in places where normal hydro would not. There are still limits, but the water needs are lower than most dams. Personally, I think the argument is over: renewables have won already. We aren’t getting more coal plants, and we aren’t getting more nuclear plants. Natural gas will survive for a while but it’ll lose the cost war against renewables. For my money, the reason isn’t just cost, but _capital_ cost. And specifically, the vast cost overruns that we see in $B+ projects. When a nuclear project fails, you get nothing. You get less than nothing, actually–you get an abandoned structure that now has to be dismantled. A solar or wind farm project (already less likely to have an overrun) doesn’t have the same problem. You might get fewer panels or turbines out of it, but it still works. Instead of nuclear, we should be building out the grid, with massive transcontinental DC links. As you note elsewhere, it’s always blowing somewhere. And while the sun _does_ sometimes set on the US empire, having the entire latitude of the US available broadens the times of day in which solar is producing, as well as compensating for cloud cover. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2019, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/35 "2019-05-23T15:46:37Z")
So, I thought I’d post [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9AGx2q_F_0) video about reasons for nuclear, by Michael Shellenberger. I don’t agree with everything he’s saying here, but basically this is a good video showing most of my own thoughts on this subject for anyone who is interested. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2019, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/36 "2019-05-23T18:13:47Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Gigo, how many years do you think we are from mass deployment of robotic systems able to do any repetitive task with a reliably measurable short-term goal\*? > > With such systems, mass deployment to 100% capacity would just be a matter of time. > > \*I can define this pretty exactly if you need I’m not GigoBuster, but it sounds like you are suggesting mass robotic manufacturing of solar panels from construction to transportation to in situ mounting and hookup and all the rest. Is that correct? If so, the approximate answer is ‘never’, in the sense that if we ever get to the point where we could do something like that, the world will be so different that the arguments we are having here will be moot. For one thing, such automated manufacturing would apply to everything from nuclear plants to CO2 scrubbers. Even inside factories we haven’t figured out how to automate 100% of the activities. Even auto plants which have been automated heavily still require many workers to do the stuff the machines just aren’t capable of doing. I have visited a lot of automated plants, since I used to work in factory automation. All of them are teeming with humans. Remember when Elon Musk announced that he was going to be building ‘lights out’ automated factories with no people in them? That didn’t happen. He grossly overestimated our ability to automate things. And the factory floor is the \*easiest place to automate. Today there is little to no on-site automation of installations, because there isn’t enough site-to-site consistency to automate a process. Installing a solar panel on a roof always results in problems that it takes human judgement to solve, just as installing plumbing or wiring does. You don’t see a lot of robots on job sites, and you won’t for a long time unless they are doing menial tasks (like a robotic mixture stirrer, or a robotic nail gun or something). The day may eventually come when you can order an installation of some sort and have robots deliver it and install it, but if that day comes it won’t be for decades, and it will bring with it so many changes to the world that all the numbers we’re using today are moot. Now, you could see technologies like 3D printing bring down costs, and those are available now and could be scaled up to 3D print buildings or large concrete or steel support structures and the like. But then, those technologies could also be used to build other types of energy installations. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2019, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/37 "2019-05-23T18:33:51Z")
> [@Dr. Strangelove](#): > > Personally, I think the argument is over: renewables have won already. We aren’t getting more coal plants, and we aren’t getting more nuclear plants. Natural gas will survive for a while but it’ll lose the cost war against renewables. Seriously, what do you base this on?? We ARE getting more coal plants…China is building gobs of the things, and so are many other countries. Natural gas will ‘survive’?? It’s expanding and nothing is looking to be able to replace it. Renewables have ‘won’?? Based on what? I just don’t know where some of you guys get this stuff from. Renewables have certainly expanded their deployment footprint, and percentage of the overall production, but not by enough to say they have ‘won’ anything. And they won’t, either, until the fundamental issue of the intermittent nature is solved. And it’s not going to be as simple as ‘well, we’ll just build them all across the country and ship power wherever we want’, because it doesn’t work that way. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2019, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/38 "2019-05-23T19:55:12Z")
Here’s the other thing: If time is really of the essence and we have to transition within 12 years, doe anyone here _seriously_ believe that this can be done with primarily wind and solar? If hou do, you are living in a fantasy land. The scale of engineering that is required to change over the Earth’s power grids to intermittant wind and solar power is immense. If we engaged in the most rapid shift to those power sources as is politically feasible, say at the speed of Germany, we might be able to add another 10-20% of total renewable capacity by that time. Unfortantely, we will also have increased our global energy requirements by 10-20% in that time, so we’ll still be burning approximately as much fossil fuel as we are now. Nuclear power buildout could be accelerated dramatically simply by cutting the most expensive regulations and putting moratoriums on lawsuits demanding environmental reviews and such once a license to construct a plant has been given. China can build nuclear plants in four or five years for about $5 billion dollars. They haven’t had a major accident with one yet. France gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear power and has some of the lowest electricity prices in Europe. Sweden gets 40% of its electricity from nuclear. So we know it can be done. It’s not pie-in-the-sky. We just have to be levelheaded about risks. It’s time to try something different than "tax fossil fuels, and subsidize renewables’. It’s not working. For one thing, the taxes are being rejected decisively by voters everywhere they have been implemented. Ontario voted in a carbon tax, and that government was kicked out. Alberta voted in a carbon tax, and that government was voted out. Our Prime Minister implemted a carbon tax, and he’s now polling well below the opposition. Australia just defied the polls and put the Liberals in power in a majority on an election that was seen as primarily a referendum on climate policy. Furthermore, the carbon taxes currently being implemented are too low to make much of a difference. Energy consumption is very inelastic and doesn’t respond quickly to price signals. Higher gasoline prices don’t translate into lower consumption until people buy new cars, which on average takes about a decade. And if people are rejecting these taxes at this low level, imagine what they’d do if the tax REALLY hurt, as it would have to if you want to change short-term consumption patterns. A winning, lower carbon policy that has a chance of actually succeeding is ‘all of the above’, with nuclear taking the lead and being the largest percentage of new construction. Where solar makes sense and the people want it, by all means build solar. If your town is situated near a mountain pass with sustained high winds, by all means build a wind plant. Wind is cost-competitive in the most suitable regions, but there aren’t enough of those regions left undeveloped for wind to be more than maybe 20-30% of power. Solar can make up another 10-20% perhaps, and perhaps we can keep the grid stable with that much intermittent power by adopting smart metering and such. That’s doubtful, though. Today, places like Germany and South Australia are having grid stability problems at about 25% of total power coming from intermittant renewables. What’s feasible in the medium term (a couple of decades) would be a transition to a grid that contained maybe 50% nuclear, 25% Wind and 10% solar, with 15% natural gas for load-following and in distant locations where the population doesn’t warrant larger plants. Many northern communities for example. If the environmental movement is going to continue to insist on 100% renewables, be prepared for CO2 emissions to at best remain about where they are for the next 50 years. And if they insist on imposing carbon taxes on people without a solid plan for fixing the problem, be prepared for the election of a lot more conservative governments. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2019, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/39 "2019-05-23T21:10:54Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Seriously, what do you base this on?? We ARE getting more coal plants…China is building gobs of the things, and so are many other countries. Natural gas will ‘survive’?? It’s expanding and nothing is looking to be able to replace it. In the context of my post, “we” is the United States. I’ll eat my hat if another coal plant is ever built in the US. You can see planned US electrical capacity expansions on [this summary page](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37952). 64% is wind+solar. 34% is natural gas. And that’s under a Republican administration that’s as friendly as can be toward CO2 emissions. Renewables are already dominating, but they would be even more dominant if natural gas plants paid for their emissions. The page also lists planned retirements. Coal and natural gas make strong showings. Unfortunately, nuclear plants are being decommissioned as well. Notably absent from the retirement chart are wind+solar. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2019, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113/40 "2019-05-23T21:25:18Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Nuclear power buildout could be accelerated dramatically simply by cutting the most expensive regulations and putting moratoriums on lawsuits demanding environmental reviews and such once a license to construct a plant has been given. You’re the one living in a fantasy land if you think any of this can be done in the US. Realistically, it’s just not going to happen. Also, you forgot to add: massively subsidize nuclear plants by having the government act as an insurer of last resort. We aren’t going to enter a low-carbon future without disruption. It’s too late for that. Fortunately, in a few decades, renewables will dominate generation whether or not they get subsidized. We can speed it up by stopping CO2 subsidies, and reduce disruption by building out the grid, but it won’t make a difference in the long term. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/latest-anti-nuclear-activist-former-chair-of-nuclear-regulatory-commission/834113.md?page=3)