[obpacheco]

I don't know if I would call that a good alternative. How many places on the Earth can you no longer go due to radiation? Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island and the list will go on. Also it seams very short sided in terms of planning for out of control cosmic events such as asteroids or coronal mass ejections which could wipe out our grid, leading to nuclear leaks worldwide. If we were to get something like the Carrington Event of 1859 [1] we would be much worse off for centuries if we rely on nuclear energy rather then finding a safer fuel source.

[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-would-happen-if-sol...

[bzbarsky]

You can go to Three Mile Island just fine as long as you don't go inside the Unit 2 containment vessel itself. The meltdown was fully contained inside said containment vessel. Unit 2 has since had its core removed from the site entirely and has had its electrical generator moved to another reactor (in North Carolina), so it's not like people haven't been going in it either. Unit 1 (the other reactor right next to the one that had a meltdown) has remained a fully operational power station and is used as such today; people go there all the time.

Chernobyl and Fukushima I will grant (especially Chernobyl!) but Three Mile Island has a no-go zone that's far smaller than most people think. And it's only sort of no-go at that.

> which could wipe out our grid, leading to nuclear leaks worldwide

Sorry, but citation needed for the causal mechanism via which the grid going down would lead to "nuclear leaks".

[obpacheco]

I admit a little bit of that is pessimism from what happened at Fukushima from when the plant lost power to run the cooling pumps. from Scientific American

> Pushing water past the core means pumps that are generally run by electricity. What happens when a reactor gets disconnected from the grid? There are emergency diesel generators. You also have a battery system to keep instruments running, but that can also provide power to safety systems [which prevent a meltdown by cooling the reactor core]. It's all meant to provide defense in depth. First you rely on the grid. If the grid is no longer available, you use diesel generators. If there is an issue with the diesels, you have a battery backup. And the batteries usually last long enough for you to get the diesels going. [1]

All I'm saying is that we have a very short term understanding of cosmic events and extreme space weather events [2] and maybe a good percentage of nuclear power plants could withstain these types of events, but I don't see it as a viable long term option.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-cool-a-nuc...

[2]https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...

[bzbarsky]

Right, at Fukushima it wasn't just loss of power that was the problem, it was the loss of all the backup power sources too, _combined_ with a design that required power to operate the cooling system.

I agree that this is something we should be keeping in mind as we build new reactors. And people have in fact kept it in mind. Modern reactor designs use passive cooling systems that don't need power to operate properly.

The single best thing we could do for nuclear safety, including from extreme space weather effects, is replace decades-old plants with modern ones. Unfortunately, people tend to react to that with "we shouldn't build any new nuclear plants, even if we're replacing old and less safe ones".

Just to put this in perspective, the first ever commercial nuclear plant was opened in 1956. Fukushima construction began in 1967, finished in 1971, 40 years before the meltdown. We've learned a good bit about safety in reactor design in the 50+ years that have passed since Fukushima was designed...

[umanwizard]

Better a hundred Chernobyls than what will happen to the earth if we continue using fossil fuels at the current rate.

[halbritt]

Death toll from Chernobyl is presently at 31 with an estimated number of 4000 premature deaths.

So, yeah.

[A2017U1]

15,000 died from the tsunami that caused Fukushima, radiation exposure killed 1 volunteer cleanup worker.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

TMI has already been addressed in sibling comments but I just wanted to point out that both Fukushima and Chernobyl were outdated reactor designs with active cooling. A modern reactor has much safer failure mode - but the hysteria about nuclear means that they don't get built and we keep these dangerous old designs running instead.

[glenneroo]

There are currently zero reactors worldwide which are using up-to-date designs i.e. Gen IV, as it is still being designed with the first reactor expected to be built by ~2030. All reactors worldwide are Gen II (designed in the 50s), Gen II+ (updated Gen II with a end-of-life extension to 60 years instead of Gen II's 40) or Gen III, which have relatively minor differences according to the World Nuclear Association[0]. The last Gen I reactor finally went offline in 2015.

> Due to the prolonged period of stagnation in the construction of new reactors and the continued (but declining) popularity of Generation II/II+ designs in new construction, relatively few third generation reactors have been built. Generation IV designs are still in development as of 2017, and are not expected to start entering commercial operation until 2020–2030.[1]

[0]: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor#Reactor_types

[TheSpiceIsLife]

> wipe out our grid, leading to nuclear leaks worldwide.

I don’t understand how nuclear leaks could be a result of grid failure.

Also, I read recently that CME could cause DC charge to occur on very long power lines, but that modern systems can handle this. There was a HN thread about this couple days ago, can anyone find it?

[hexane360]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379734