straight dope on some nuclear facts?

Factual Questions
41

From the replies to this thread like the one above, it seems that few people understand how risk is assessed. Risk evaluation is not just based on the probability of the occurrance of a failure, and certainly not from posterior probability based upon a very limited data set. Risk has to be assessed based also on the extent and persistence of a hazard resulting from failure. The few number of deaths directly resulting from the explosion at Chernobyl #4 has been bandied about as an example of the low consequence of even a worst case failure. However, this argument fails to take into account several factors:
[ul]
[li]Chernobyl isn’t a “worst case” event; it is only the worst event that has occurred to date (arguably); the Windscale fire had the potential to create a long term persistent contamination of the environment if environmental factors had been slightly different, and the extent of morbidity and mortality from the 1957 Kyshtym disaster is still not accurately known thanks to Soviet coverup of this failure[/li][li]The Chernobyl plant was located in a remote area, with the only nearby town being Pripyat, which was purpose-built for workers at the plant and was readily evacuated; a commercial plant located adjacent to a more populated area (as with Fukushima) would have had a much greater impact[/li][li]While the number of deaths at Chernobyl were relatively few (and limited to workers attempting to contain the fire), the economic cost and political impact were so great that it both accelerated the insolvency of the Soviet economy and derailed many of the initiatives by Gorbachev to reform the Soviet economy and normalize relations with the West (including the ongoing strategic arms reductions); similarly, remediation of the Fukushima fire will cost vastly more than the value of energy produced by the plant[/li][/ul]

The level of “paranoia” with regard to the potential failures from nuclear power are based upon the impact and persistence of a catastrophic failure, which are much greater than food poisoning, a mine collapse, or even a large conventional explosion. You simply can’t look at the few number of deaths that have resulted from nuclear accidents to date and conclude that nuclear power is inherently safe. Of course, there is significant emotionality in regard to this topic on both sides of the issue, largely by people who are not familiar with the actual hazards and impacts, or the means to prevent or mitigate a failure. Such emotions are not useful in analysis, but they are unfortunately a part of the human condition, the perspective from which is totally inadequate to natively comprehend a system as complex as a nuclear power plant.

The notion of “out of sight, out of mind” for storage of hazardous waste is a prime example of the kind of “somebody else’s problem” thinking that has resulted in many ecological catastrophes. Even when the storage and containment methods are technically adequate, as with the storage of toxic waste in Love Canal by the US Army and later Hooker Chemical and Plastics Company, unmonitored long term storage can result in a loss of “tribal knowledge” and inadvertent exposure and contamination. Even if our current knowledge of the geological stability of a proposed repository indicates that it is geologically stable and any leakage is unlikely to contaminate the water table, the magnitude of hazard should a lack of containment occur over the tens of thousands of years the waste is radioactive bears strong consideration.

If we are going to produce waste from power generation, we should also have and use the means to evaluate and mitigate the persistent hazards of the waste. This applies of course not only to nuclear fission but fossil fuel combustion. With fission, we do have a potential means to process and remediate waste, including making use of it to produce far more energy than current methods. Dumping waste into a hole in the ground, or in a fragile desert ecosystem is not a responsible or conscionable manner of dealing with waste.

This statement is so distant from reality I question that you even have enough knowledge of the topic to express an informed opinion. Nuclear fission is far from “old” (i.e. mature) technology, and there are vast improvements that can be made over the current Generation II operating reactors, and even revolutionary improvements over the advanced Generation III planets. Current systems, even those that are passively safe, require constant monitoring and maintenance for safety and reliability, and as anyone who performs reliability analysis knows people are inevitably the weakest link in any reliability chain. Whatever your emotional or political position is on nuclear fission power, an knowledgable position is that there are dramatic improvements in safety, reliability, and efficacy that can and should be applied.

Stranger

42

The biggest non-issue is the safe storage of nuclear waste. Sweden has been storing theirs for years, in deep mines drilled into granite-which has been stabble for 300 million years.
the anti-nuclean crazies have successfully blocked the use of safe storage sites in the USA, so as to keep the issue going.

43

Indeed, even coal, a very mature technology, is continually improving and advancing.

44

It’s not out of sight out of mind. It’s putting the material in plain sight away from populated areas and water tables. There is no logical reason to drill to the center of the earth to store nuclear waste. Warehouse it in a secure location and monitor for leaks.

That’s nothing but semantic bullshit. The basic design of nuclear plants have matured to the point they do not require further refinement. Once a site has been selected it shouldn’t take more than 7 years to construct one.

But hey, lets spend the next 50 years talking about [del]global warming[/del] climate change or whatever term it’s morphed into by then.

45

I can only conclude by this statement that that you either know essentially nothing about nuclear fission power plant development and technology, or are so polarized on this issue that you are willfully ignorant. As has been repeatedly stated in this thread, there are many nascent improvements to the basic technology that will reduce waste from both the fuel extraction and refinement cycle to fuel utilization and remediation, not to mention essential safety and reliability of a plant. The current generation of plants, even with improvements, are maintenance intensive systems that are extraordinarily expensive (even neglecting regulatory costs) and are not readily scalable to smaller energy requirements. There are proposals for more efficient, scalable, lower maintenance, and more robust designs that could be realizable with comparatively modest development effort, but to say that we should just copy and paste the existing configurations–which are essentially updates of 'Sixties era core designs with modern control technology–is missing the opportunity to reduce cost and hazard downstream.

Stranger

46

I can’t conclude anything from your posts. Every single product sold today has a technological improvement in the works. That doesn’t stop the current level of technology from being produced. There is nothing inherently wrong with the latest nuclear power designs that warrants shelving them for something better down the road.

Either we need to cut down on Co2 now or we don’t. It is that simple.

47

Actually, this gives me an idea. What would happen if we could dig a deep enough hole to dump it into a magma flow? I mean, I imagine if we put it in the wrong magma flow it would eventually be spewed all over the countryside by a volcano, but…

48

If we can tap into magma, why not skip the nuclear part and just use the geothermal?

49

So let’s not built massive mega watt plants then? Let’s build completely standardised micro-nukes. The nuclear power plants of submarines of a class are standardized right?
Couldn’t a safe passive design be standardized that fits in a standard shipping container? Say enough to power 5000 homes?

You then build them in one factory and ship them pre-built to where they are needed on trains or semi-trailers.

50

Let’s try a different tack:
The basic design of gasoline internal combustion engines have matured to the point they do not require further refinement. Once an engine has been designed it should work for any car, any time. Why change the Model A?

51

There are several issues with these, some of which Cecil touched on in a column. But three of the largest ones are:

  1. Security - each one of these micro plants needs the same security as a major plant.

  2. Licensing - the last I heard from the DoE, each one of these micro-nukes was going to have to go through the same licensing procedure as a major nuke. So you spend the same $10M up front for 1/100 the benefit.

  3. NIMBY - the average idiot American goes marching in the streets over wind farms, with people claiming everything up to and including they’re causing the “epidemic” of things like autism. Just try and get your micro-nuke sited near those homes. And if you don’t and put it way out in the middle of nowhere, then you have a much greater cost for T&D infrastructure, same zoning problems, etc.

Usually at this point some “helpful” person chimes in with “but…but…we’ll just use superconductors for all the wires” and then I know it’s time to leave.

52

again these are all “business as usual” thinking and also specific to US and western culture. Let assume for whatever reason martial law is declared and we HAVE to roll out nuclear. It’s one standard container sized design mass produced by the 10’s of thousands, lets say directly based off a Nuke sub design.

Could we roll out enough of these to replace coal globally in 10 years?, 15? 20?

53

My favourite story about nuclear power was the suggestion by Atomic Energy Canada, once upon a time, of putting a small, noncritical nulcear reactor in a building to use for heat. Basically each apartment building would have a nuclear reactor in the basement, and Joe the Janitor would also be the nuclear technician. (or was it Homer?)

Actually, to be fair, the AEC Slowpoke design would create only hot water, not steam; so the need for pressure containment etc. would be a lot less. Plus, they would be sealed and need minimal attention. But even before 9-11 security was a major concern.

I agree though - instead of building a behemoth installation, why not have a relatively standard design (minor updates every few years?) and build 10 or 20 little units on the same site. The impact of any maintenance shutdown would be less, and mass production and proof of concept would reduce the odds of engineering flaws which typically accompany one-off designs. The whole plant does not have to fit on a trailer but maybe the core should not be too big for that sort of transport.

54

You’ve got it ass backwards. If we wait for the new and improved model then nothing ever gets built. Again, every product ever produced has a better design on the table when it rolls out the door. I’ve got one of the early pilot reactors less than 20 miles from me. It ran for 3 years as part of a test program. It was the Model A of reactors.

We either have a Co2 problem NOW or we don’t.

55

I take it that you are not familiar with the reactors used in nuclear submarines, which are not passively safe, not maintenance free, and certainly cannot fit in a CONEX container. Nor is the US Navy program an example of how to operate commercial power generating reactors; the navy has maintained its nuclear safety record though rigorous application of the Operational Reactor Safeguard Examination (ORSE), a periodic surprise evaluation of reactor contingency operations. Failure to pass the exam is a black mark for junior officers, and usually a career ender for command and senior engineering officers. The NRC has nothing similar in terms of rigor or consequence, nor would it be practical to impose that discipline on civilian operators. The smallest demonstrated reactors that are suitable for commercial power production are roughly the size of a missile silo and require an external heat sink. There are smaller reactors for portable or propulsion applications, but they are not anywhere near efficient or fail-safe enough for commercial use.

In addition to the astute points made by Una Persson, there are also other reasons which so-called micro-reactors are not particularly a great solution. Efficiency of scale improves significantly with larger reactors. The difficulty of tracking maintenance on a large number of smaller reactors grows in proportion to the number and geographic distribution of the reactors. A design flaw discovered after deployment may be very expensive to fix or remediate for a large number of units, and without a body of operational history on a design such problems may be difficult to predict. And the US power grid is not really configured for load balancing based upon a wide distribution of small facilities. (Admittedly, one of the first things we should do is rebuild the electricity transmission infrastructure from the ground up, which will reduce loss and make the system more robust against cascade failures, but that is a very expensive program in and of itself.)

When I say that nuclear fission power technology is not at an adequate state of maturity, this is what I mean; we can use it to generate power, but not without substantial safety, reliability, and pollution issues. The idea of modular, maintenance free reactors that can be manufactured on a production line and shipped out on railcars to be installed by commercial construction crews is just not reflective of the state of the technology at this point. Deploying the existing inefficient and marginally safe technology en masse will strain the technical base for support (especially as nuclear engineering programs have had flat growth and the kind of highly ski.led labor needed to construct such facilities has been in decline), resulting in a higher potential for accidents and greater eventual cost when the bill comes due for remediating facilities at their end of lifecycle. A better approach would be to mature the technology via a program of focused development until it is reasonably mature, mostly automated, and reduces the cost and waste of the existing fuel production and use cycle.

Stranger

56

I think you’re missing magiver’s point. He’s not suggesting that Henry Ford should have kept producing Model A’s and never continued to improve the engineering. He’s suggesting that that Henry Ford did the right thing by continuing to produce Model A’s while he was designing better-engineered vehicles for future models. And that the current attitude toward nuclear reactors is equivalent to telling Henry he should shut down his assembly lines until he’s ready for them to start rolling out the perfect car.

(I don’t know if that’s a good point or not. But your criticism is irrelevant to it, either way.)