Energy Discussion

[sevenhelmet]

I'm OK with bridging the gap, but any tech that requires you to manage waste for centuries like fission does and will continue to do so, spanning the rise and fall of countries, needs to be a gap bridge only.

That's all I'm suggesting. Fission's ability to power (part of) our civilization would necessarily be on a shorter historic timescale (similar to fossil fuels, and for many of the same reasons.)

However, fundamentally, our civilization isn't driven by sustainability or that sort of long-term thinking. Time will tell where we wind up, and what we need to do to survive.

 

[Brett327]

Fukushima was not 50-60 years ago.

Yeah, but the reactor design was. That’s germane to the safety discussion. It’s a bit like comparing a 40 year old Oldsmobile without seat belts to a modern car with air bags, crumple zones, and collision avoidance technology.

 

[taxi1]

Yeah, but the reactor design was. That’s germane to the safety discussion. It’s a bit like comparing a 40 year old Oldsmobile without seat belts to a modern car with air bags, crumple zones, and collision avoidance technology.

You can retrofit and Oldsmobile with seat belts or change how you operate. Similar for Fukushima. How old is the oldest B-52 flying?

The complexity of fission power, with the layers of systems interoperating to generate the power and avoid the bad corners of the state=space envelope, and the monster impact when it comes out wrong, both technically and socially, lend themselves to Black Swan events:

• Unpredictable: They are unexpected and fall outside the realm of normal expectations, meaning they were not widely foreseen before they happened.
• Major impact: They have severe and wide-ranging consequences, such as causing financial market crashes,
• Rationalized in hindsight: After the event occurs, explanations are created that make it seem as though it was predictable all along.

You can see all of those at work post-Fukushima.

 

[Brett327]

You can retrofit and Oldsmobile with seat belts or change how you operate. Similar for Fukushima. How old is the oldest B-52 flying?

To an extent, but you cannot completely mitigate the safety risks inherent in a bad design... not the point though---> New Rx are (can be) inherently safer, so the "what about Fukushima" arguments lose relevancy.

Big picture, renewables and nuclear will be important elements of our power generating capacity, and those who paint them as boogey men are usually bad faith actors. This goes equally for the no nukes leftists and the bizarre aversion to solar and wind on the right.

 

[Swanee]

The Texas grid collapse is responsible for 246 deaths- mainly from hypothermia, some from medical equipment failure, and some are related via things like carbon monoxide poisoning from people trying to heat themselves in dumb ways.

How many deaths did Fukushima cause? So far, it's less than one.

A 1960s reactor design broke and no one died.

I don't understand why anyone thinks comparing these is anything other than wankery.

"Let's not build F/A-XX because of the design flaws and mishap rates of the A-7, F-8 and F-4."

Let's learn from the past and continue to build better equipment.

 

[taxi1]

The Texas grid collapse is responsible for 246 deaths- mainly from hypothermia, some from medical equipment failure, and some are related via things like carbon monoxide poisoning from people trying to heat themselves in dumb ways.

How many deaths did Fukushima cause? So far, it's less than one.

I think you need to look at the impact of Fukushima rather than just body count. Impact on energy policy in Japan and other countries, land lost due to exclusion zone, roll up into economics, etc.

When you read about Fukushima and Chernobyl you see that there were failures in the technical systems (designed by humans) and failures in how operated (by humans) and in the overarching regulatory environment (humans).

For a democracy, you are one crazy election away from having a 20-something year old dude who goes by Big Balls running the whole regulatory agency firing people willy-nilly, or the right donors suggesting too much regulation is hindering progress. In non-democracies, all bets are off. Maybe war comes to a country with nuclear energy generation, what could go wrong?

To an extent, but you cannot completely mitigate the safety risks inherent in a bad design... not the point though---> New Rx are (can be) inherently safer, so the "what about Fukushima" arguments lose relevancy.

We've absolutely driven down the probability of failure fission tremendously, but the problem is the outcome when you get a failure tends to be catastrophic and enduringly impactful, dwarfing things like Bhopal or even Deepwater Horizon.

I'm not a decider in any of this, and I have folks that do a lot of work on Navy, DOE, and commercial nuke things. I remind them often to not fuck it up.

 

[Brett327]

failure tends to be catastrophic

I've seen some essentially fail safe designs out there... ones that cannot run away, lose cooling, or melt down. Assuming that is possible, that seems like an obvious choice.