[baix777]

I don't see any evidence humans are smart enough to operate nuclear power safely. There are too many examples of humans not fully understanding nuclear, or just being stupid with nuclear. For example, building a nuclear power plant near an earthquake fault line in CA, or where tsunamis occur in Japan. We can't get the basics of safety right here.

[cogman10]

I have a hard time coming to the same conclusion.

All of the problems with nuclear reactors have happened to plants which were designed and constructed in the 1950->1970s. As it turns out, we've learned a ton about safely operating nuclear plants. The problem is upgrading these old plants rarely happens and getting newer plants to replace them is equally daunting.

There are 3 examples of major nuclear plant problems. That doesn't seem like too many.

In contrast, there are hundreds of operating plants. The newer ones are particularly safe because they require positive input to keep the nuclear reaction going. Any sort of earthquake, tsunami, mudslide, etc that causes the plant systems to fail will cause the nuclear reaction to be halted.

Chernobyl, 3 mile island, and fukushima are all impossible in plants built in the last 25 years. (Gen III or newer)

[michael1999]

The US army tried and failed. The US Air Force tried and failed. The marines keep trying. Japan has had several fatal accidents in their civilian program just handling fuel. Even the navy limits them to specialist roles, and their success and safety record might all hinge on the legacy of one gifted man (Rickover).

I support research and trials of the SMRs, but you might want to consider the possibility that it really is hard at the full-system level. The human mind does not readily understand invisible, exponential process like radiation.

[DennisP]

Every power source has accidents. Deaths per TWh for nuclear are comparable to wind and solar. Every form of fossil is much worse. Hydro beats everything for major disasters; Banqaio Dam killed 26,000 people immediately and many more in the aftermath.

[freeflight]

> Deaths per TWh for nuclear are comparable to wind and solar.

A statistic that only works because epidemiological studies into the long term effects of radiation exposure are extremely difficult, complex and time consuming.

Something made even more difficult by the fact that we blasted uranium fallout in the atmosphere that's hanging around to this day, so getting a non-affected control group has become pretty much impossible.

Ain't helping that any research attempting to investigate the problem will very quickly be labeled as highly controversial by pro-nuclear lobbies [0]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696975/

[DennisP]

What makes it even more difficult is natural background radiation. The global average is 2.4 millisieverts/year, with the US averaging 3.1 and Japan averaging 1.5. Medical scans add 0.6 mSv/year. Airline crews get an extra 2 mSv/year.

By comparison, atmospheric nuclear tests added 0.11 mSv at their peak in 1963, declining to 0.005 mSv/year today. Chernobyl added 0.04 mSv in 1986, declining to 0.002 today. The nuclear fuel cycle adds 0.0002 to the global average, and is required to be less than 1 mSv for all members of the public.

The highest natural background radiation is in Ramsar, Iran, with 6.0 mSv/year. Studies are ongoing but the evidence so far shows no negative health effects.

Note that Sieverts are normalized to the health effects on the human body. Any concerns about different types of radioactivity are already accounted for in this measurement.

Chernobyl and Fukushima of course caused larger exposures to nearby inhabitants, and these exposures are accounted for in the statistics I mentioned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert

[michael1999]

I'm sure the Army, Air Force, or Marines would if they practically could. The promise of power density with no logistics tail is magic. They choose not to because of practical, operational reasons.

[jtolmar]

Even with all the disasters included, nuclear power is safer than almost all other kinds (the exception being very large hydro plants), per unit energy.

[quacker]

Interesting. I know nuclear power is far safer than it's general reputation.

Is nuclear really safer than solar?

This[1] has some data and estimations for death rates measured based on deaths from accidents and air pollution per terawatt-hour (TWh), which suggests nuclear has 0.07 deaths per TWh, which is marginally higher than wind (0.04), hydro (0.02), and solar (0.02).

So, it's very close!

1. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

[pfdietz]

At the # of deaths produced by nuclear in normal operation, or by wind or solar, the "deaths" are dominated by the statistical lives due to the cost of energy itself.

The NRC uses a value of $9M for the value of a statistical life. That is, it is worth spending $9M if that will save one expected life.

Nuclear, solar and wind have deaths/energy somewhere in the ballpark of 1 life per 10^10 kWh. So, at $9M/life this cost is roughly $0.001/kWh. This is very small, which says that even minor differences in the cost of energy from various sources will be more important than the direct number of lives lost.

(This would not be true of fossil fuels, though.)

TLDR: it's more important to reduce the cost of energy from these non-fossil sources, and to choose the sources with lowest cost, than it is to make them safer. For nuclear, inherent safety could be useful if it would enable cost to be reduced, but not because nuclear needs to be safer.

[LorenPechtel]

That's bad data. Nuke is getting blamed for the Fukushima deaths that were due to the evacuation--neglecting the fact that the safest option was to stay put. If you replace the evacuation deaths (IIRC ~500) with the stay-put deaths (most likely zero) you about halve the nuke death rate.

The larger deployment of utility-scale solar does seem to have reduced it's death rate. (Many of the solar deaths are from falling off the roof during installation or maintenance. Utility-scale solar is normally on the ground and with better safety measures.)

[jtolmar]

> Nuke is getting blamed for the Fukushima deaths that were due to the evacuation

I think this is fair. /All/ deaths from nuclear and renewable power are due to accidents and bad decisions. Accidents and bad decisions aren't going to go away. It takes a monumentally boneheaded decision to make a nuclear power plant dangerous, but apparently the rate of monumentally boneheaded decisions is one per thirty years at our current level of nuclear power usage.

[freeflight]

> but apparently the rate of monumentally boneheaded decisions is one per thirty years at our current level of nuclear power usage.

That rate is very likely to increase as time goes on and reactors become older and thus more prone to failure/some freak low probability incident happening.

[freeflight]

> or where tsunamis occur in Japan

This one is particularly interesting considering Fukushima wasn't the first time something like that happened. On the other side of Japan is the Kahiwazaki-Kariwa plant [0], the largest of its kind on the planet.

In 2007 that plant was already hit by an earthquake, shaking the plant beyond design basis, it was shut down for 21 months after that.

And even tho it wasn't affected by the 2011 earthquake that blew Fukushima up, it still was shut down to implement safety improvements, it remains shut down to this day with no date for resuming operations.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashiwazaki-Kariwa_Nuclear_Pow...

[sokoloff]

Look at the US Navy operational record for nuclear power. That might convince you that humans can do it.