Yeah, it does. The anti-nuclear crowd has a case of circular reasoning where they put a lot of effort into getting nuclear power crippled by overregulation, then they point to the costs of overregulation as just the inherent nature of nuclear and therefore a reason that it should be abandoned altogether. That changes how an article like this should be read.
And unfortunately the anti-nuclear efforts haven't even managed to stop nuclear proliferation. We seem to have negotiated our way to a world where everyone is going to need to have the weapons but might skip the benefits of nuclear science (though China might make up for the West's failures, hope springs eternal).
On the contrary, most of the arguments for increased nuclear safety have actually come from the nuclear industry.
The whole classification of commercial nuclear power plants into multiple generations, for instance, with the big difference between each gen being safety - that came straight from the nuclear industry.
When the nuclear renaissance of the 2000s happened, it was the nuclear industry who chose not to put forward existing battle-tested designs, but instead insisted on the "newer, larger, cheaper (hahaha), safer" GenIII+ (eg. EPR) with all their concomitant delays and cost-overruns.
And now those have proven to be a yet another nuclear boondoggle, we're hearing about SMRs - and, once again, it's the nuclear industry who are talking about increased safety (see the last SMR story that made the HN front page as a prime example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477559).
The "nuclear isn't economic" folk aren't pushing any of this. They'd be happy enough with something like a Westinghouse SNUPPS or the French P4/N4, lightly modernised with the best of the post-Chernobyl enhancements (see Sizewell B in the UK as a good example) if only the price was right. Those are well-understood, fairly reliable, have no known major safety issues, and are generally good enough. Trouble is that the price isn't right - even those old GenII designs would still cost far too much to build and operate.
And the nuclear industry know this. They have no answer to the "it's too expensive" argument so are advertising increased safety as the only selling point they've got.
"The anti-nuclear crowd" well, that is needlessly inflammatory. Did you ever realize that -- at least a part -- of their arguments might have a stance?
We have tons of political decisions to do in every country where the answer is not totally clear. Often it's a preference. Should we tax the rich? Or take from the middle class? Should Belgium support an army, or creches? Things like that.
IMHO nuclear energy usage is in a similar ball park. It has real risks, and real benefits. And so, if you see one that thinks the risks are more important than the benefits, there is ZERO need to use inflammatory speech.
BTW; I also tend to be an opponent. Many reasons:
- Germany still doesn't have an answer to the permanent storage of the waist
- with existing reactor types the worst imaginable accident is really, really bad. Especially for a densely populated country like mine
- nuclear power is quite expensive. The electric power prices at the customers are only so low because there are open and hidden subsidies in place (e.g. no atomic power plant in Germany has to pay full insurance. Or they don't need to pay for the 20000+ year long storage --- that's all "socialized", e.g. the tax payers pay for it
- nuclear power needs at the end reliably cooling. Look at the rivers --- in Germany we had to stop nuclear power plants, because the summer drough was so intense that not enough cooling water was available. That happened several times in France, too.
- these days, the electric power companies of Germany don't want to build nuclear power plants. In "Manager Magazin" --- not your usual leftist or eco magacine --- they layed out that this is economically infeasible.
- most countries don't have uran mines. My own one used to have, but that is depleted. Interestingly, the russian atom sector owns a lot of the uran infrastructure worldwide, even when abroad (e.g. they own things in Australia or Canada). We just learned the hard way that depending on Russia --- or USA with their toll war --- is an extremely bad idea
I know that for some of these problems there are theoretical answers. E.g. since about 20 years there is the idea to use breeder reactors to convert highly radioactive material with a long half-life into something with a shorter half-life time. But ... they didn't materialize. And Germany's tryout of a breeder was so expensive (both building and operation cost) that the project was terminated.
Personally, I like the idea of renewable energy. We get the energy for free, we don't have to pay Russia (gas, oil, uran). Or the USA (LNG). Or some wahabitic islamistic scheichs (Saudi-Arabia). And if the billions of euro that we invested into nuclear reasearch would go to long-term storage (like iron-oxyde-powder batteries, reflow batteries etc) than we would have something that is cheaper to build, cheaper to operate, has little risk to the neighbourhood AND doesn't funnel money into the hand of reckless power hungry leaders.
So, and now call me "anti-nuclear crowd". Or refute me at an intellectual level, maybe I can learn a thing!
Oh: and if we don't "overregulate" then we have perhaps another Chernobyl. That happened exactly because the regulation AND the execution of the regulation was too lax.
nuclear power needs at the end reliably cooling. Look at the rivers --- in Germany we had to stop nuclear power plants, because the summer drough was so intense that not enough cooling water was available. That happened several times in France, too.
I find it darkly humorous that a reason to not use nuclear power is the environmental devastation wrought by decades of not using nuclear power
Could you look out the window in a westerly direction? There’s a country there that is powered 80% by nuclear and it has much cheaper electricity than other Western European countries.
The fact is, only nuclear can provide a clean baseload that runs 24x7. I’m a big fan of wind, batteries and solar, but they can’t handle a reliable base load that always runs.
We have no option but nuclear, meaning we have to solve the problems of waste management, making it cheaper and so on.
And happily, people are tackling this. Britain’s Rolls-Royce is developing a small nuclear reactor that can be manufactured in a factory and assembled on site like an ikea project. There are other companies trying the same. I’d much rather read a 2026 article about trying to solve a problem than a 2015 article saying a problem is unsolvable.
If you think being called anti-nuclear is a shallow dismissal of your views; then I might suggest reading my post on the assumption I'm not talking about you? The anti-nuclear crowd might object to "anti-nuclear" in the sense they'd rather be called "pro-something" like the anti-abortion crowd being pro-choice, but they're hardly going to take "anti-nuclear" as a slur.
Someone who thinks being anti-nuclear is shameful won't choose to be anti-nuclear.
Or refute me at an intellectual level, maybe I can learn a thing!
I assume you're serious, so by way of unsolicited advice - write shorter posts and lead with the top 1 or two best arguments you think you have. A good refutation is normally longer than the post it replies to, so when you post the kitchen sink you aren't going to get a good refutation.
Although in this case I'd recommend looking up ... pretty much any online argument about nuclear power in the last 30 years. Those all have standard intellectual refutations.
Oh: and if we don't "overregulate" then we have perhaps another Chernobyl. That happened exactly because the regulation AND the execution of the regulation was too lax.
What we did instead has people sometimes yelling at me that we're going to get millions to billions of people killed, destroy the planet and doom us all to violence and war. I got "burning my future" once which I thought had a ring to it. A Chernobyl every decade or so would be an enormous improvement over what we have actually done.
But they don't consider the anti-abortion label to be much more than a theoretical problem and bad marketing. They can't reasonably arc up at "anti-abortion". They think the dial should be turned towards the end of the spectrum where there are less abortions.
If the anti-nuclear crowd want a different label they can pick one. Part of the problem they have is I'm sure they'd love to rebrand as pro-safety but they know exactly how the conversation will go if they try that one.
The public is listening to the anti-nuclear experts, like M. V. Ramana. But one has to understand that for M. V. Ramana, no nuclear power plant is safe enough. For him only a world without nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons is safe enough.
"Without nuclear power plants" because any nuclear power plant can be used to breed plutonium which can used to make a nuclear weapon.
The primary risk of nuclear technology for M. V. Ramana is not radiation induced cancers, it's nuclear proliferation. For him nuclear power plants could be safe, only if they could not be used to make plutonium.
- Germany still doesn't have an answer to the permanent storage of the waist
The best solution for the high level nuclear waste (the nuclear waste most spoken about) would to have a common European permanent storage not a permanent storage in each country, because the amount of high level nuclear waste is very small and probably the most stable geology is old granite bedrock in Sweden and Finland.
Germany is currently operating the world biggest permanent storage for dangerous waste UTD Herfa-Neurode. Contains at least 690,000 tons of waste containing dioxins and furans, 220,000 tons of waste containing mercury, 127,000 tons of waste containing cyanide, and 83,000 tons of toxic waste containing arsenic. Nuclear waste is currently excluded, but I think it would not make a difference, especially because the after 400 years fission products decay away and only Plutonium and minor actinides stays. Mercury, arsenic, dioxins and furans stay forever.
- with existing reactor types the worst imaginable accident is really, really bad. Especially for a densely populated country like mine
All places where large amounts of energy can be released are dangerous. The biggest disaster was not nuclear, but the failure of the 1975 Banqiao Reservoir Dam and other dams in Henan Province, China. The disaster killed an estimated 171,000 people and 11 million people lost their homes.
- nuclear power is quite expensive. The electric power prices at the customers are only so low because there are open and hidden subsidies in place (e.g. no atomic power plant in Germany has to pay full insurance. Or they don't need to pay for the 20000+ year long storage --- that's all "socialized", e.g. the tax payers pay for it
No hydro power plant pays full insurance, because dam failures are extremely rare and at the same time extremely devastating, the governments bears the costs of the failure, like for many other kinds of civil infrastructure.
Germany is already paying permanent storage for chemical waste, UTD Herfa-Neurode.
Subsidies, we could look into EEG-Umlage, Kohlepfennig.
- nuclear power needs at the end reliably cooling. Look at the rivers --- in Germany we had to stop nuclear power plants, because the summer drough was so intense that not enough cooling water was available. That happened several times in France, too.
We have to adapt our whole infrastructure, see the disruptions in Rhine shipping.
Nuclear power plants can be adapted to work dry environments, for example Palo Verde nuclear power works in a desert. But this adaptations cost money, when most European nuclear power plants were build in 70s,80s, there were not seen as necessary. In Europe, for example Jaslovske Bohunice and Mochovce NPP use evaporative cooling. French NPPs will have to be retrofitted.
- these days, the electric power companies of Germany don't want to build nuclear power plants. In "Manager Magazin" --- not your usual leftist or eco magacine --- they layed out that this is economically infeasible.
Nobody will invest in building nuclear power plants in Germany for decades. The political risk that current government or next current government, or over next government will stop operation of a nuclear power plant, is too large. The electric power companies know this.
- most countries don't have uran mines. My own one used to have, but that is depleted. Interestingly, the russian atom sector owns a lot of the uran infrastructure worldwide, even when abroad (e.g. they own things in Australia or Canada). We just learned the hard way that depending on Russia --- or USA with their toll war --- is an extremely bad idea
There are many countries with substantial uranium reserves.
Breeder reactors could reuse already mined depleted uranium, they could use much more common thorium, they can run on nuclear waste from older PWR, BWR reactors. Some of breeder reactor concepts have already been tested.
But breeder reactors but they didn't materialize because:
1. Breeder reactors need nuclear reprocessing, this rises risks of nuclear proliferation. (Nuclear reprocessing is also strongly opposed by M. V. Ramana)
2. The building of nuclear power plants stopped in the West. Why invest in new technology if it will not build?
3. Uranium is currently very cheap. Most of the costs in producing fuel for nuclear reactors is not the uranium, but the enrichment of uranium and manufacturing of the fuel rods.
Chernobyl, thing of the past.
Bad design (positive void coefficient, instabilities at low power levels)
Bad manufacturing (no containment, slow control rod movement, manual controlling without computers)
Bad operation (ignoring safety regulations, insufficient training).
Comments
Not sure this takes away from his arguments? If anything the Wikipedia article sets him up as an expert on the subject?
Yeah, it does. The anti-nuclear crowd has a case of circular reasoning where they put a lot of effort into getting nuclear power crippled by overregulation, then they point to the costs of overregulation as just the inherent nature of nuclear and therefore a reason that it should be abandoned altogether. That changes how an article like this should be read.
And unfortunately the anti-nuclear efforts haven't even managed to stop nuclear proliferation. We seem to have negotiated our way to a world where everyone is going to need to have the weapons but might skip the benefits of nuclear science (though China might make up for the West's failures, hope springs eternal).
On the contrary, most of the arguments for increased nuclear safety have actually come from the nuclear industry.
The whole classification of commercial nuclear power plants into multiple generations, for instance, with the big difference between each gen being safety - that came straight from the nuclear industry.
When the nuclear renaissance of the 2000s happened, it was the nuclear industry who chose not to put forward existing battle-tested designs, but instead insisted on the "newer, larger, cheaper (hahaha), safer" GenIII+ (eg. EPR) with all their concomitant delays and cost-overruns.
And now those have proven to be a yet another nuclear boondoggle, we're hearing about SMRs - and, once again, it's the nuclear industry who are talking about increased safety (see the last SMR story that made the HN front page as a prime example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477559).
The "nuclear isn't economic" folk aren't pushing any of this. They'd be happy enough with something like a Westinghouse SNUPPS or the French P4/N4, lightly modernised with the best of the post-Chernobyl enhancements (see Sizewell B in the UK as a good example) if only the price was right. Those are well-understood, fairly reliable, have no known major safety issues, and are generally good enough. Trouble is that the price isn't right - even those old GenII designs would still cost far too much to build and operate.
And the nuclear industry know this. They have no answer to the "it's too expensive" argument so are advertising increased safety as the only selling point they've got.
"The anti-nuclear crowd" well, that is needlessly inflammatory. Did you ever realize that -- at least a part -- of their arguments might have a stance?
We have tons of political decisions to do in every country where the answer is not totally clear. Often it's a preference. Should we tax the rich? Or take from the middle class? Should Belgium support an army, or creches? Things like that.
IMHO nuclear energy usage is in a similar ball park. It has real risks, and real benefits. And so, if you see one that thinks the risks are more important than the benefits, there is ZERO need to use inflammatory speech.
BTW; I also tend to be an opponent. Many reasons:
- Germany still doesn't have an answer to the permanent storage of the waist
- with existing reactor types the worst imaginable accident is really, really bad. Especially for a densely populated country like mine
- nuclear power is quite expensive. The electric power prices at the customers are only so low because there are open and hidden subsidies in place (e.g. no atomic power plant in Germany has to pay full insurance. Or they don't need to pay for the 20000+ year long storage --- that's all "socialized", e.g. the tax payers pay for it
- nuclear power needs at the end reliably cooling. Look at the rivers --- in Germany we had to stop nuclear power plants, because the summer drough was so intense that not enough cooling water was available. That happened several times in France, too.
- these days, the electric power companies of Germany don't want to build nuclear power plants. In "Manager Magazin" --- not your usual leftist or eco magacine --- they layed out that this is economically infeasible.
- most countries don't have uran mines. My own one used to have, but that is depleted. Interestingly, the russian atom sector owns a lot of the uran infrastructure worldwide, even when abroad (e.g. they own things in Australia or Canada). We just learned the hard way that depending on Russia --- or USA with their toll war --- is an extremely bad idea
I know that for some of these problems there are theoretical answers. E.g. since about 20 years there is the idea to use breeder reactors to convert highly radioactive material with a long half-life into something with a shorter half-life time. But ... they didn't materialize. And Germany's tryout of a breeder was so expensive (both building and operation cost) that the project was terminated.
Personally, I like the idea of renewable energy. We get the energy for free, we don't have to pay Russia (gas, oil, uran). Or the USA (LNG). Or some wahabitic islamistic scheichs (Saudi-Arabia). And if the billions of euro that we invested into nuclear reasearch would go to long-term storage (like iron-oxyde-powder batteries, reflow batteries etc) than we would have something that is cheaper to build, cheaper to operate, has little risk to the neighbourhood AND doesn't funnel money into the hand of reckless power hungry leaders.
So, and now call me "anti-nuclear crowd". Or refute me at an intellectual level, maybe I can learn a thing!
Oh: and if we don't "overregulate" then we have perhaps another Chernobyl. That happened exactly because the regulation AND the execution of the regulation was too lax.
I find it darkly humorous that a reason to not use nuclear power is the environmental devastation wrought by decades of not using nuclear power
Could you look out the window in a westerly direction? There’s a country there that is powered 80% by nuclear and it has much cheaper electricity than other Western European countries.
The fact is, only nuclear can provide a clean baseload that runs 24x7. I’m a big fan of wind, batteries and solar, but they can’t handle a reliable base load that always runs.
We have no option but nuclear, meaning we have to solve the problems of waste management, making it cheaper and so on.
And happily, people are tackling this. Britain’s Rolls-Royce is developing a small nuclear reactor that can be manufactured in a factory and assembled on site like an ikea project. There are other companies trying the same. I’d much rather read a 2026 article about trying to solve a problem than a 2015 article saying a problem is unsolvable.
If you think being called anti-nuclear is a shallow dismissal of your views; then I might suggest reading my post on the assumption I'm not talking about you? The anti-nuclear crowd might object to "anti-nuclear" in the sense they'd rather be called "pro-something" like the anti-abortion crowd being pro-choice, but they're hardly going to take "anti-nuclear" as a slur.
Someone who thinks being anti-nuclear is shameful won't choose to be anti-nuclear.
I assume you're serious, so by way of unsolicited advice - write shorter posts and lead with the top 1 or two best arguments you think you have. A good refutation is normally longer than the post it replies to, so when you post the kitchen sink you aren't going to get a good refutation.
Although in this case I'd recommend looking up ... pretty much any online argument about nuclear power in the last 30 years. Those all have standard intellectual refutations.
What we did instead has people sometimes yelling at me that we're going to get millions to billions of people killed, destroy the planet and doom us all to violence and war. I got "burning my future" once which I thought had a ring to it. A Chernobyl every decade or so would be an enormous improvement over what we have actually done.
Anti-abortion people prefer “pro-life”.
But they don't consider the anti-abortion label to be much more than a theoretical problem and bad marketing. They can't reasonably arc up at "anti-abortion". They think the dial should be turned towards the end of the spectrum where there are less abortions.
If the anti-nuclear crowd want a different label they can pick one. Part of the problem they have is I'm sure they'd love to rebrand as pro-safety but they know exactly how the conversation will go if they try that one.
The public is listening to the anti-nuclear experts, like M. V. Ramana. But one has to understand that for M. V. Ramana, no nuclear power plant is safe enough. For him only a world without nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons is safe enough.
"Without nuclear power plants" because any nuclear power plant can be used to breed plutonium which can used to make a nuclear weapon.
The primary risk of nuclear technology for M. V. Ramana is not radiation induced cancers, it's nuclear proliferation. For him nuclear power plants could be safe, only if they could not be used to make plutonium.
The best solution for the high level nuclear waste (the nuclear waste most spoken about) would to have a common European permanent storage not a permanent storage in each country, because the amount of high level nuclear waste is very small and probably the most stable geology is old granite bedrock in Sweden and Finland.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Europe_g...
Germany is currently operating the world biggest permanent storage for dangerous waste UTD Herfa-Neurode. Contains at least 690,000 tons of waste containing dioxins and furans, 220,000 tons of waste containing mercury, 127,000 tons of waste containing cyanide, and 83,000 tons of toxic waste containing arsenic. Nuclear waste is currently excluded, but I think it would not make a difference, especially because the after 400 years fission products decay away and only Plutonium and minor actinides stays. Mercury, arsenic, dioxins and furans stay forever.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untertagedeponie_Herfa-Neurode
https://radioactivity.eu.com/articles/radioactive_waste/acti...
All places where large amounts of energy can be released are dangerous. The biggest disaster was not nuclear, but the failure of the 1975 Banqiao Reservoir Dam and other dams in Henan Province, China. The disaster killed an estimated 171,000 people and 11 million people lost their homes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
No hydro power plant pays full insurance, because dam failures are extremely rare and at the same time extremely devastating, the governments bears the costs of the failure, like for many other kinds of civil infrastructure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi_collapse
Germany is already paying permanent storage for chemical waste, UTD Herfa-Neurode.
Subsidies, we could look into EEG-Umlage, Kohlepfennig.
We have to adapt our whole infrastructure, see the disruptions in Rhine shipping.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/rhine-water-hit...
Nuclear power plants can be adapted to work dry environments, for example Palo Verde nuclear power works in a desert. But this adaptations cost money, when most European nuclear power plants were build in 70s,80s, there were not seen as necessary. In Europe, for example Jaslovske Bohunice and Mochovce NPP use evaporative cooling. French NPPs will have to be retrofitted.
https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2015/12/29/palo-verde-nuclear...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S15552...
Nobody will invest in building nuclear power plants in Germany for decades. The political risk that current government or next current government, or over next government will stop operation of a nuclear power plant, is too large. The electric power companies know this.
There are many countries with substantial uranium reserves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...
Breeder reactors could reuse already mined depleted uranium, they could use much more common thorium, they can run on nuclear waste from older PWR, BWR reactors. Some of breeder reactor concepts have already been tested.
But breeder reactors but they didn't materialize because:
1. Breeder reactors need nuclear reprocessing, this rises risks of nuclear proliferation. (Nuclear reprocessing is also strongly opposed by M. V. Ramana)
2. The building of nuclear power plants stopped in the West. Why invest in new technology if it will not build?
3. Uranium is currently very cheap. Most of the costs in producing fuel for nuclear reactors is not the uranium, but the enrichment of uranium and manufacturing of the fuel rods.
Chernobyl, thing of the past.
Bad design (positive void coefficient, instabilities at low power levels)
Bad manufacturing (no containment, slow control rod movement, manual controlling without computers)
Bad operation (ignoring safety regulations, insufficient training).
We used to drive cars without seat belts.