This may be a “hot” one, considering lots of people do not like anything nuclear. If you would want to know my “bias”, well I have always been “pro nuclear”. So if you want to take this claim with huge mountains of salts, feel free to do so.
Here is a relevant wiki article for radiation hormesis. This is a proposed effect that certain amounts of radiation exposure may even be beneficial instead of harmful as LNT may suggest.
TL;DW for folks who do not want to watch video (I have not included examples or numbers)
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Radiation from natural sources (like radioactive bananas you eat, or from soil or space) are always present.
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Most nuclear safety guidelines consider that there are no “safe limits” of exposure to radiation. For example, there are safe limits of some metals in our body, there is no limit for mercury or lead exposure. There is a required amount of vitamins you need, but there is also a limit beyond which they are not safe. Radiation is treated like mercury in guidelines.
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If it has no safe limits, then due to natural exposure, places with higher background exposure must have naturally higher rates of cancers developing - but the thing is, experiments and data collected does not match.
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Your body has natural means to repair damage done by radiation, and below a certain limit, your body can withstand (and arguably benefit, see the linked article) the radiation.
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Over estimating danger due to radiation leads to large scale paranoia, and leads to general public be scared of nuclear disasters, when they are not as bad ast they may seem.
And pre-emptively answering some questions I am expecting to get
- Do you support nuclear bombs? Hell no. We should stop making all kinds of bombs, not just nuclear.
Are there not better means of renewable energy generation like
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solar? - no, you still need rare erath metals, you need good quality silicon, and you need a lot of area. Until we have a big “stability” bump in perovskite solar cells, it is not the best way. is it better than fossil fuel? everything is better than fossil fuel for practical purposes.
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wind? geothermal? - actually pretty good. but limited to certain geographies. if you can make them, they are often the best options.
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hydro? - dams? not so much. There are places where they kinda make sense, for example really high mountains with barely any wildlife or people. otherwise, they disturb the ecosystem a lot, and also not very resistant to things like earthquakes or flooding, and in those situations, they worsen the sitaution.
This is a brilliant documentary from 2006, made by the BBC, on the topic of our fear of radiation, at the end it explains the LNT model and talks about the issues with it.
Please enjoy:
Thanks! My husband and I I watched this while we were in the UK for our wedding that year.
We opened up this Kyle Hill a few days ago to watch it since he’s in our regular rotation and stopped it in the intro, looked at one another and said “Oh shit! The J-curve thing!”
I love how Kyle covers this too. He’s great.
Jesus Christ I’m so tired of this shit. “What if climate change is actually good because you can grow food in colder climates? Then we wouldn’t have to change anything, which I really don’t want to anyway.” “What if masks actually make you more likely to contract COVID? Then I wouldn’t have to wear one, which I really don’t want to anyway.” And now, “What if exposing yourself to radiation is actually good for you?”
This is absolute nonsense. The Wikipedia article is full of “[unreliable source?]” and “highly controversial,” and the video starts out with stuff like, “Actually, all the experts agree with me, they’re just afraid of speaking up,” which instantly destroyed any willingness to suspend my disbelief on this nonsense.
Yes, there is a tiny amount of radiation in a banana that isn’t enough to cause harm. But that has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear reactors. The difference between “harmless” and “extremely lethal” with radiation can change drastically depending on factors like distance, in ways that are not intuitive to most people. Treating radioactive material and radiation produced by a reactor with extreme caution is the best practice regardless, because if things go wrong, they can go very, very wrong. You cannot mishandle a banana in such a way that it destroys a city, which is a something I never thought I would have to explain.
Furthermore, your dismissal of other forms of green energy is outdated, it may have been true 20-30 years ago but the technology has advanced and will keep advancing and with the massive upfront cost of reactors it doesn’t usually make sense to build new ones (although keeping existing ones running is often reasonable imo).
If you’re gonna push this then at least present actual evidence.
… And now, “What if exposing yourself to radiation is actually good for you?”
you are using a guilt by association argument. yes the claim challenges what is currently percieved to be a appropriate model for nuclear damage (lnt).
I have no comments about your 2nd para. i partly agree. presenting your argument as it was done in video feels wrong.
but, what about the example studies. the town in iran, recieveing roughly 10-40 times radiation of currently considered safe limit.
Treating radioactive material and radiation produced by a reactor with extreme caution is the best practice regardless
I have written that very thing in other comments as well. idea is not to drop safety protocols. just change the fear of things by saying - you have not recieved a unsafe dosage.
here is an example of a very similar thing - consider vaccines which use weaker/incapable strains of virus. or consider the very first vaccine, where they used the “pus” from a cow, to effectively use the cow virus to develop immunity in humans. if you think about it, example kinda matches well - in very low amounts virus is not that deadly. in very large amounts, it caused a pandemic. does that mean that it also follows a linear model (no, afaik, it has more of a network effects thing, so it is sigmoidal).
I am repeating what i have said in other comments - “do not drop safety limits, spread awreness that it is not that bad”
Furthermore, your dismissal of other forms of green energy is outdated
I have completed my bachelors this year. I am by no means a expert, but i think i know enough to say that i am not 20-30 years behind. i am 5-10 behind at best (roughly the time studies take to actually be taught in courses). (yes i have studied energy).
I am very willing to actually listen things i said which are very out dated, but i would like to hear them, instead of a blanket - my information is outdated.
The up front cost of nuclear is largely all the red tape caused by fear mongering.
Which is wild because coal plants release more radiation per kW generated than nuclear.
Renewable tech has gotten far better in even the last 5 years.
It won’t ever be able to handle 24/7/365 base loads, but they’ve already proven far more robust in developing places like Texas that cannot keep their fossil fuel plants running reliably in inclement weather.
Jokes aside, seriously, the answer is, and always will be nuclear + renewables.
Are there not better means of renewable energy generation
Well, if you’re going to claim that, I’ll have you know that in our infinite wisdom to create an energy market, energy needs to be cheap to produce as well.
No current nuclear power plant where I live (cost seems to be rather location dependant) is creating cheap energy, they’re always more expensive than renewables. That’s why the investments in them has increased so much over the last few years while nuclear is just trudging along in the race to replace fossil fuels.
that by itself was not a claim, i knew there would be comparisons with other forms of renewable energy, so i wrote why some of them may or may not work, so it is meant to be read like
“Are there not better means of renewable energy generation like solar?”
“Are there not better means of renewable energy generation like wind?”
where I live (cost seems to be rather location dependant) is creating cheap energy
mostly becuse in most places, nuclear does not recieve subsidies. most other forms of energy (renewable or not) are subsidised a lot. And most politician would not want to add subsidies because it hurts their popularity. it is always taboo to do anything nuclear. there are reasons why nmri became mri, nuclear fusion research project just goes by fusion research.
I’m pretty sure it’s not subsidies, but safety standards. I’m not trying to pretend to understand Lazards “levelized cost of electricity”, and their graphs are seem to be off by 20 or I don’t read them correctly, but they are at least very clear that subsidies are taken out when they make their comparison. Nuclear is still the most expensive no matter how you slice it (except rooftop residential solar, but I think that gets around paying energy providers or something). Anyway, I’m more willing to trust them than the world nuclear association on if nuclear is price competitive.
I’ll grant you a better argument for next time: Nuclear is incredibly safe compared to other energy sources, but is uniquely held to a way higher safety standard than anything else. And reducing the cost of nuclear by reducing safety standards actually is unpopular, so politicians don’t do it and the cost keeps rising.
I’d still disagree on loosening safety restrictions, but at least that would be true, instead of blaming subsidies.
I’d still disagree on loosening safety restrictions, but at least that would be true, instead of blaming subsidies.
Why not? I’m assuming you watched the video in the OP. A lot of the safety standards are based on a model that just doesn’t work. It’s all designed to keep dirty energy more profitable. Why do you disagree with removing standards that are unnecessary? I’m assuming you do agree there is some unnecessary regulations, right?
And reducing the cost of nuclear by reducing safety standards actually is unpopular
i have said the same in other comment, but we are not suggesting raise the limits, but make it to public that tiny amounts of radiation is not bad. so someone who protests building a nuclear power plant because they get an additional 1mSv of radiation (safe limitt currently is aroun 5mSv), it does not mean their risk of getting cancer has increased by 20% or something.
in case there is a small nuclear spill away, there is no need to a town/state wide lockdown, which completey brings all economic activity of that state to halt. plus the paranoia, and additional cost to handle increased medical vists. i am not trying to normalise spillaways, just that if it is contained, then there is no need to be paranoid.
Sorry, that part was not meant to imply you specifically want to reduce safety standards, just that if you want to have it be competitive on the energy market, you would have to do something about that, or subsidise it by an absurd amount.
But the point still stands, nuclear energy is expensive, and it’s not because of subsidies to other energy sources. Please don’t claim so next time.
mostly becuse in most places, nuclear does not recieve subsidies.
This is just not true. Nuclear plants receive subsidies in the US and most European countries. The big exception being Germany, where the current government tried to reenter nuclear energy production, but they could find any private sector partners that wanted to build new plants without significant subsidies.
Subsidies for nuclear plants are usually payed out during construction and decommission of plants, but that’s still subsidies.
Nuclear plants receive subsidies in the US and most European countries.
but in most places, the official policy is not to expand their infra. it is either maintainance only, and/or decommision at end of life.
Subsidies for nuclear plants are usually payed out during construction and decommission of plants, but that’s still subsidies.
true.
but for other renewables, the actual material is subsidised. for example, in many places, solar panel installation recieve govt subsidies - 10-50%.
A lot of the cost is because of things like LNT. We require them to be absurdly cautious, beyond reason, and require tons of bureaucracy that drive the cost and time line to ridiculous levels. This is on purpose. This is all manufactured to prevent nuclear power from out competing dirty energy. We need to remove a lot of this so it can compete on even footing. We don’t require the same oversight for coal plants, even though they produce more radioactive waste, for example. It isn’t reasonable to compare the costs, as they are in the US, to each other.
1: every professional knows LNT is wrong, but there isn’t an agreed alternative.
2: there are safe limits set for people who work with radiation, so the LNT model isn’t actually used there at all.
The main issue with nuclear is that it just doesn’t make economic sense. It’s far too expensive to build and it takes ages to get running too.
Second problem is that due to the variability in output of other renewable sources, anything that intends to be the “backup power” has to be very variable as well. Nuclear can’t quickly scale up and down, and even if it could it’d make nuclear even less economically viable. It’s why currently gas plants are used as backup: they’re cheap and can scale up/down very quickly.
And then there’s the big advantage that solar has, which is that people can own the power generation themselves, saving a lot of money and in some cases even making money. It’s also decentralized: an accident or attack at a nuclear plant would have huge consequences for electricity availability (not to mention other safety problems). Solar is also dirt-cheap and getting cheaper every year, faster than most scientists predicted it would.
Nuclear can’t quickly scale up and down
It can though. Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are designed to have maneuvering capabilities in the 30-100% range with 5%/minute slope.
Historically, they were built as baseload plants without load following capability in order to keep the design simple which led to many anti-nuclear activists claiming this. It’s just not true though.
even if it could it’d make nuclear even less economically viable
Why?
It’s why currently gas plants are used as backup: they’re cheap
No. They’re not. The costs are just externalized and safety is, comparitively, neglected.
Modern nuclear plants with light water reactors are designed to have maneuvering capabilities in the 30-100% range with 5%/minute slope.
In the power grid of today (and even more so in the future), that’s fairly slow. On good days wind and solar already produce more than 100% in several countries, so it needs to be able to drop to 0%. Worse however is that nuclear is already expensive, and shutting it down means it’s just a hunk of a building costing money. It’s why private investors have largely shunned nuclear in the modern days: it’s not econonically viable anymore, or even if it is it’s just not profitable enough. And that picture seems to be getting worse and worse every year.
The costs are just externalized and safety is, comparitively, neglected.
Sure, but the power companies don’t pay for that so to them it’s cheap, which was the point.
In the power grid of today (and even more so in the future), that’s fairly slow.
Not really. Reciprocating gas engines are specifically designed for balancing loads with renewables and have maneuvering capabilities in the 25-100% range with the state of the art at ~25%/minute slope.
Startup time is 15min-1hr for gas, 30min-2hr for nuclear.
You’re correct that gas is better on all these metrics, but it’s far more comparable than you’re making it out to be.
Also needs to be mentioned that these are very oversimplified metrics and things look better for nuclear the deeper in the weeds you go imo.
it needs to be able to drop to 0%.
That’s not how any kind of turbine works.
shutting it down means it’s just a hunk of a building costing money.
The same could be said of solar. ‘It’s a very expensive capitol investment and as soon as the sun goes down it’s just a stupidly expensive roof costing money’.
The same could be said of solar. ‘It’s a very expensive capitol investment and as soon as the sun goes down it’s just a stupidly expensive roof costing money’.
Solar is significantly cheaper. Like it’s not even funny how much cheaper it is. This means that other than the sun going down, they’re always going to be producing because it’s by far the cheapest power available. And because they easily earn back what they cost, it’s perfectly fine if they don’t operate at 100% efficiency.
For nuclear to remain economically viable in these market conditions it has to be similarly profitable, and it just isn’t.
The point wasn’t to denigrate solar, but to demonstrate the fallacious beliefs you’re operating under.
Yes, the plant owner will want to maximize the profit of their investments and get as quick a return as possible.
If gas/coal was held to the same exact safety, environmental and waste disposal standards as nuclear, and they should, then those would also need to be run at max throttle to justify the initial expense and have significantly shorter lifespans. It’s a “plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit” type issue.
Nothing you have said is an argument against a solar in the day + nuclear at night type of setup. It would certainly be a huge improvement over building out more CO2 based generators.
it’s not econonically viable anymore, or even if it is it’s just not profitable enough.
That’s just an issue with capitalism, not with nuclear energy itself. Placing solar panels everywhere may be easier and cheaper short-term, but it’s far from optimal. Ideally we’d like to have a bit of both.
You’d have similar problems doing this under communism tbf. It’s expensive under any economic system. Solar at least has the advantage that any Joe Shmoe can put it on their roof and produce their own power, not being dependent on big energy corpos.
China seems to be proving this false. They are building the molten salt reactors that we designed in the '60s and never tested. Two major bonuses of molten salt reactors are that they are physicsly impossible to melt down, and they don’t really create nuclear waste. In fact China will probably start selling us nuclear waste disposal contracts since those reactors can use our waste as fuel.
They do create some waste, but the half-life of said waste is like 6 week/months, so it is safe after a few years.
China is investing more in solar. But China is also very power-hungry, so any energy they produce will get sold to the market, so their market looks significantly different. Their economy is different and so is their power usage.
True, that advantage of solar is very beneficial and I think it’s great because of it. Independence is worth a lot.
Though the point about nuclear doesn’t make sense to me. Of course, it’d be just as expensive regardless of the economic system in place. The problem here is, capitalist economies often focus on short-term profits instead of investing into long-term infrastructure. Which can be seen in thorium reactors research.
At this point, it’s practically confirmed that thorium power plants will meet our expectations. China already has one operational (though it’s a relatively small one) and several under construction. No western country invested any significant resources into this research, because it didn’t align with quick and easy gains that capitalists love. This is the problem.
Just a quick point on the cost of nuclear. A large part of the cost of nuclear is due to the very intense safety systems which have been added on a little at a time. Each small safety thing has increased the cost but nobody has taken all of the intentions of those changes and integrated them into a stable and safe system without the need for all the little safety features.
The best example I can give is cars. Adding air bags, lane change detection, car in front detection, ABS, and so on each makes cars safer, but never questions the underlying adduction that cars are good. Why not trains?
In rectors we can have passive safety systems where the moderator is a liquid which is blocked in by a solid plug. The solid plug is frozen moderator and sits at the bottom of the system. If the power is cut or fails the plug stops being cooled and melts, draining the moderator. Without the moderator the neutrons are going too fast to trigger the chain reactions and everything stops. No sensors or control systems are needed, it just passively stops and cools naturally, while also being way cheaper.
But as long as there are BLUE dogs with the facial features of BEARS in Pripryat, I’m gonna stay on the side of caution and avoid such places.
no, you still need rare erath metals, you need good quality silicon
That does not compare in the least to the environmental damage and resource depletion that mining uranium causes. Unlike solar or wind power plants, nuclear power plants must constantly be fed a fuel that is only available in limited quantity, while the power source for renewables is realistically infinite (for our purposes). Uranium-235 is way scarcer than natural gas or oil, so power generation through nuclear fission is almost by definition less sustainable than even fossil-fuel power generation.
Finally, there is the matter of nuclear waste, which accumulates over the lifetime of a power plant and does not get smaller, but rather larger every year that the power plant is in operation. Getting rid of this waste is so difficult because it will radiate for thousands of years, and you can’t guarantee that its containers will last that long, so you need geological structures that are 100% known to remain stable into the far future. These are difficult to find. I want to underline that this problem is already here, and for every new fission power plant you build, it gets worse. There is no reverse direction this process can be taken.
Thus, I would even go so far to say that this statement of yours: “everything is better than fossil fuel for practical purposes.” Is wrong. Even natural gas would be preferable over nuclear, FAR preferred, in fact. In Germany, nuclear fission was successfully phased out for cleaner natural gas, without adverse effects on power grid stability, and with cost savings in the long run (natural gas comes with its own problems, I am aware, especially with regard to the supply chain, but that is not much different with regard to uranium).
That does not compare in the least to the environmental damage and resource depletion that mining uranium causes.
please look up energy density of uranium. yes it still needs to be mined, but it is just so energy rich, that for equivalent energy production, it requires roughly 100x lower mining than coal. and just to say, we have a lot more uranium than coal (or any other fossil fuels, combined).
Unlike solar
just a side note, but solar panels have a life expectancy of 20-25 years. they also need replacement. and they can not be recycled well.
Uranium-235 is way scarcer than natural gas or oil
just the particular 235 isotope is rare, not all uranium. we do enrichment to concentrate the 235. and uranium is not the only element - there is plutonium, thorium. yes thorium reactors are always 5 years away, but that is partly because there is no interest for building more nuclear.
geological structures that are 100% known to remain stable into the far future.
this is kinda a solved problem. you essentially just drill 1 or so km deep, on lands which are far from tectonic boundaries. just put your waste, add cement/or rocks. then bury with dirt you mined. A great solution? no, but it works
In Germany, nuclear fission was successfully phased out for cleaner natural gas, without adverse effects on power grid stability, and with cost savings in the long run
which resulted in increased reliance over russia’s cheap oil, which after the ukraine conflict started, meant much increased costs. in same period, france, which has a strong nuclear network, did not have an increased demand.
