Should we consider nuclear energy to be clean ?

https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy

Big ups to Hannah Ritchie

I’m not well enough informed to give a valid opinion, but the WHO estimates 6.7 million deaths per year from air pollution, mostly caused by burning fossil fuel. Some studies think that number is too conservative. So that’s what we should be comparing nuclear against.

I think you haven’t to forget that a chunk of the Sellafield (insert previous names here) site legacy is because it started as a production site to urgently produce nuclear weapon raw materials with electricity generation as a useful by-product (with very little consideration of the waste generated). This was then followed by various good ideas for power generation that never quite made it to widespread acceptance. I’ve no idea how this compares to the waste from current designs, but unfortunately it all now needs dealing with.

Our eldest is one of a wide ranging PhD cohort working on some of the current and future problems from this legacy. So I’m slightly encouraged that at least they aren’t ignoring it and actively addressing the need to home grow the future workforce to continue dealing with what they have created.

Can’t keep burying the waste. It’s too dangerous a substance to be ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and takes so long to decay its likely there wont be a human race to say thats it ok now.

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At least fusion reactor power is only 20 years away…

Dpfr has the nail on the head, we have a serious amount of energy needs in the next 25 or so years and we need to invest in EVERYTHING if we want to be able to produce what we need.

Full disclosure, I’m in the industry, technical now but was previously a plant operator. You have no idea how tightly regulated we are, a lot of that low level waste (that incidentally is bloody useless for a dirty bomb, you’d be better stuffing fireworks into a dog shit bin) and emissions is lower activity than households and industry chuck out every day and we have to account for all of it. Hands up who ever threw a smoke alarm in the bin? Yeah, that Americium-241 is nuclear waste and has to be sent to Drigg even if it came out the canteen.

Gen 2? Things have moved on a lot and what we (as in the UK) have is a lot more robust than a PWR with no automatic shutdown system. Yes, SMRs are in the pipeline and some of the more conventional PWR types are going through GDA (Generic Design Assessment), there’s an LFR (Lead Fast Reactor) been put forward for Justification (basically DEFRA decide whether that reactor type would be allowed to be developed. No, I have no idea why they are involved.) which looks pretty cool and has obvious safety benefits.

So yeah, it’s not a case of one or the other, we need everything and we need it yesterday.

Afaik, nuclear power isn’t the carbon neutral panacea.

By the time the Uranium is mined and processed, it’s generated an equivalent amount of co2.

After a wee sojourn to Amsterdam in march, I’d say that UK road traffic will require a staggering amount of electricity, but the Dutch approach to transport is long overdue.

Can’t keep burying the waste. It’s too dangerous a substance to be ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and takes so long to decay it’s likely there wont be a human race to say thats it ok now.

I tend to agree. I remember watching a program on Horizon (or similar) many years ago which was explaining the plans for designing a nuclear waste storage site and how to stop future access in 100,000 years when you might not have any currently known languages and they might not know the hazard symbols etc we currently use.

despite filtration, some emissions of radioactive material to air

Like Cornwall, for example? Houses there have to be properly vented due to radioactive emissions from the granite underneath.

Fusion must be just around the corner. Surely by now.

Have a read of this, see what you think; this popped up yesterday.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/two-seconds-of-hope-for-fusion-power/

This is not a place of honor…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages

Fusion is still in the realms of sci-fi. Even if someone manages to prove that it is technically possible to produce a self-sustaining fusion reaction that is a net producer of energy, there are even more technical barriers involved in scaling it up to being commercially viable that are just as big as the ones that so far have taken us 60+ years to solve.

Currently living in the down under home of climate change deny….nuclear is being proposed as clean power…I had a nuclear power no thanks sticker on my first car and recall following the early 80’s Sizewell B inquiry…one of the longest public enquiries ever I believe. We were promised waste wouldn’t be an issue…technology would fix it…

For me interest –

To generate the same amount of electricity, a coal power plant gives off at least ten times more radiation than a nuclear power plant.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2022-003567_EN.html#:~:text=Studies%20show%20that%20ash%20from,than%20a%20nuclear%20power%20plant.

Out of interest, how many of the ‘very against’ posters have deliberately chosen a nuclear free green tariff? (As opposed to a green tariff that may include some nuclear) And who does them

Good Energy do one. I’m not ‘very against’ but that’s the leccy tariff I’m on. Quite expensive as they’re not bound by the cap (bah) but on the other hand, very good customer service at least!

Sellafield is the consequence of a nuclear arms race, not atomic energy. I don’t think you can count it towards “nuclear power is evil” in that regard.

Works fine in France. Wouldn’t be bothered about having one in my back yard from a safety perspective, nor any concern about living near a nuclear waste storage site. Although I don’t know why you’d want to store it since dropping it into the sea in a subduction zone would recycle it nicely.

The most convincing idea I’ve heard is burying it deep enough that geothermal heat is sufficient to deter access (eg 80-90C).

@kramer

well, someone turned the entire wtc complex into dust on 9/11.

Regular background radiation levels, but an abundance of tritium.

tbh, there’s something inherently spooky about nuclear fusion…levitation, ‘pulling’ atoms from out of ‘nowhere’, etc.

As well as mirroring the claims of medieval alchemy, it makes the claims of ‘free energy’ seem relatively mundane in comparison.

well, someone turned the entire wtc complex into dust on 9/11.

Yes, by flying two planes into it and then it collapsed.

The David McKay book that @dfpr has suggested is brilliant. I read it prior to starting my MSc in Sustainability. Like he says, it’s a great overview of Energy in the UK. Fairly sure @dfpr is a Professor with expertise in Nuclear, so probably a good poster to listen to on this subject!

designing a nuclear waste storage site and how to stop future access in 100,000 years when you might not have any currently known languages and they might not know the hazard symbols etc we currently use.

A fascinating problem, 100,000 years is difficult to imagine but 100 000 years ago early ‘humans’ were just about leaving Africa.  Because of the language issues mentioned by J4amie it has been suggested that a ‘religeous’ order be set up to live above a deep waste facility, the Atomic Priesthood being a proposed system of communicating the history, infrastructures, and science of nuclear waste materials on geologic timescales through the use of ritual, allegory, and superstition…………………..

If you bury it deeply enough, only civilizations with advanced technology will be able to access it. They will understand what it is.

One thing with nuclear waste is that the most radioactive stuff has a very short half-life so it will be harmless within decades. The stuff with long half-lives is much less radioactive, that’s the stuff that will still be around in tens of thousands of years.

Half-serious, half-joking question: if there’s so little atomic waste, can’t we just fire it off on a rocket into space?

he most radioactive stuff has a very short half-life so it will be harmless within decades. The stuff with long half-lives is much less radioactive, that’s the stuff that will still be around in tens of thousands of years.

So Finland is wasting millions in building a long term waste facility then???????

Half-serious, half-joking question: if there’s so little atomic waste, can’t we just fire it off on a rocket into space?

Have you seen how much fuel a rocket burns?

Half-serious, half-joking question: if there’s so little atomic waste, can’t we just fire it off on a rocket into space

No one wants to pay for that when you can just bury it or ship it to a different area.

Elon Musk is missing a trick here.

So Finland is wasting millions in building a long term waste facility then???????

Of course not. But the stuff that takes millions of years to decay is much less radioactive than the stuff that decays in a few years.

They’ve been talking about burying it for decades, but it never seems to happen because it’s so damn difficult and expensive…..

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/15/dismantling-sellafield-epic-task-shutting-down-decomissioned-nuclear-site

A single reactor like HPC is an order of magnitude worse than all the offshore wind turbines that all of norther Europe have installed.

Not forgetting the vast public subsidy required to make it economically viable, with a strike price getting on for twice that offered for offshore wind.

By the time the Uranium is mined and processed, it’s generated an equivalent amount of co2.

Not accepting that without facts, “AFAIK” isn’t good enough. You could fit the core of an EPR into a very small cube and only partly refuel it every 18 months. That’s a lot of fossil fuels.

One thing with nuclear waste is that the most radioactive stuff has a very short half-life so it will be harmless within decades.

But the stuff that takes millions of years to decay is much less radioactive than the stuff that decays in a few years.

Not true. You’re thinking of intermediate level waste like the graphite core and stringer bits. That’s your 70-100 years timescale hence why AGRs and Magnox take so long to deconstruct. There is some high level stuff that decays away fast but that gets addressed either post-trip or in the fuel route after it gets sent to the ponds. The actual stuff in the fuel besides the uranium and plutonium is the geological scale stuff and is highly radioactive.

If you don’t believe me look at the table of nuclides, you can use it to plot the decay path from Pu or U all the way to stability.

https://www-nds.iaea.org/relnsd/vcharthtml/VChartHTML.html

Bill’s having a fair stab at it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower

Breeder reactors aren’t new, it’s what France has been trying to develop for over 20y in order to reduce their nuclear waste stockpile.  It’s what we had a Dounreay (weapons research) in a smaller form and it’s what the Indians, Russians and Chinese now have the lead in, but, it’s still not commercially capable. They’re loosely referred to as Gen IV reactors.

I was all for nuclear if the UK Gov had been willing to invest in that technology.  It decreases the current waste and relies less upon new fissile material as it’s capable of using “spent” fuel.

Saying that, even Gen III reactors are rare, so can you imagine what it would’ve cost the tax payer?

Dounreay isn’t a weapons research facility, the only military activity up there is HMS Vulcan next door who develop reactors for submarine propulsion.

Gen III isn’t that rare either, they’ve been knocking them out since the late 90s.

On breeders, Superphenix was actually commercially proven by the time they got it working but it got canned for political reasons, most of the later downtime was down to politics rather then technical difficulties.

I’m quite a believer in nuclear energy, I view the fact it’s a zero carbon form of grid energy is more important than whether it meets the more loose definitions of ‘green’ or ‘clean’.

I think main the arguments against include are the safety piece, but here in the UK we have some of the most stringent regulations in the world and have never had a major radiation incident in either a commercial reactor or a submarine. Windscale is often cited but it was so long ago when nuclear theory was less understood in a rushed military plant. Chernobyl was a completely different design to modern PWRs and even then operator error/procedure was a primary cause. Fukushima took a Tsunami and earthquake to cause issues which could have been avoided by better identification/management of the flood risk.

Then you have the waste question, which is tricky but honestly to me boils to down asking whether future generations would they rather some waste stored deep underground or an increase in the impact of climate change, and the former to me is the better choice. This does need proper investment however into suitable storage.

I think the most valid argument against nuclear power is that it has a high CAPEX compared to most renewables and that could be money better spent elsewhere. I think that does have some legs though I also think nuclear power is immensely useful in a zero emission grid to act as that base load. In the UK we lack the hydroelectric or geothermal resources that can do that, though I am also very frustrated the Swansea Tidal lagoon was scrapped, and tidal should be something explored more.

Gen III/3+ is still pretty rare.  There are are only 2, maybe 3 non Chinese developers of Gen III and there are very few western installations of them anywhere.  I think HPC will be the 3rd in Europe and the previous two (Finland and France) were 7years late, vastly over budget and incurred several compromises on their way to commissioning.

For Dounreay, I meant military, not weapons.

EDF have stated that the Gen 3+ is prohibitively complicated for them to make commercially viable at current power generation costs/rates.  That in itself says plenty.

ABWR as built by the Japanese and Koreans is Gen III as are plenty of Russian VVERs, there’s a wiki list which shows who has built what. EPRs and AP1000’s are Gen III+.

For Dounreay, I meant military, not weapons.

And it’s still not that, the military site is HMS Vulcan next door. Dounreay was a civil research facility.

Wasn’t the Swansea tidal project a massive grift? I think private eye wrote extensively about it.

I view the fact it’s a zero carbon form of grid energy

Its not.  Its lower carbon but not zero.  a lot of pollution in the lifetime of the plants.

and have never had a major radiation incident in either a commercial reactor or a submarine

We have had several serious radiation spills and still have loads of reactors to dismantle yet.

Works fine in France.

Up to a point. It’s heavily reliant on imports and exports from other sources (and countries) to balance the grid, and is vulnerable to high river water temperatures in heat waves.

 Its lower carbon but not zero.  a lot of pollution in the lifetime of the plants

The same is true for solar and wind. Don’t make perfect the enemy of good.

co0rrect.  But understanding all energy comes at a carbon cost stops greenwashing.  the only sustainable solution is use less energy.

The only sustainable solution is use less energy.

When is it that the EU/UK/US want to go fossil fuel free for transport and so on?

Using less energy as a nation that is growing, is not going to be an option!

Gigadeath then.  those are your choices