[corban1]

Nuclear is clean, it is safe but it is not cheap. It's safe and clean because of it's moderately priced. I stand by nuclear because it's cleanness and safeness which can't be compared to anything else.

What will we generate electricity with in non-windy cloudy days? Coal? LNG? ESS? Note that all of those options are more dangerous, more expensive and more dirty than nuclear.

[misiti3780]

Not sure about Europe, but nuclear seems to be expensive in the US because construction costs are high because of overcautious regulation[1]. It was considerably cheaper in the 50/60s here, and it seems like mostly a policy issue

[1] https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop

[makomk]

The reason nuclear regulation in the US is stricter these days is because companies used to do things like routing all their supposedly-redundant control and monitoring wiring through the same shared duct, stuffing it full of flammable foam, and then testing that for air leaks using a bare candle whilst the plant is operating. This is not a hypothetical problem - it was apparently standard practice in the era you're talking about and nearly caused a major catastrophe, and the fire regulations that stop practices like this are cited as a major cost making it hard to build nuclear power plants by companies in the business.

[corban1]

That's the point. Nuclear is getting over-regulated to be safe, not to make any mistakes. I don't disagree with the regulators. I disagree with overly cheap nuclear. Overall, no power generation method can replace nuclear's steady output with its level of cleanness and safeness.

[throwaway894345]

On the other hand, nuclear is far, far safer than almost every other kind of energy source. If we allowed nuclear to be as unsafe as coal, how much cheaper might it be?

[pydry]

Nuclear is expensive with a $200 million liability cap for accidents. By comparison, that's roughly 0.2-0.5% of what the total cost of dealing with Fukushima will cost.

If we think it's over-regulated the first regulation that should go should be that $200 million liability cap.

Then perhaps private insurers can decide for themselves what level of safety is required to protect them from a potential $1 trillion cleanup cost they'd be on the hook for.

If the nuclear industry can convince them it's worth it at all, that is.

[corban1]

Do cars pay for the possibility of crude oils spilled in the ocean? Was the Deepwater Horizon insured for the full amount of dealing with the disaster? Does coal energy plants pay for future diseases of people breathing air from their chimney? Does wind turbines pay for people that suffer from low frequency sounds and solar flickers?

All energy sources have uncertainties. We've been using much much more dangerous energy sources than nuclear. So the question is yours; why do you assume the worst only for nuclear when nuclear is the only source that is preparing for the worst?

[misiti3780]

ok, that sounds like a policy issue though - no ?

[throwaway894345]

I wonder how the cost of nuclear stacks up against the cost of fossil fuels when you don't cook the books (externalize the costs of pollution)?

[corban1]

The same applies for others like wind and solar. Do they really calculate all the costs? It was easy for nuclear to cook books in the past. I feel other energy sources are doing it nowadays.

I think in order to set things straight, they should apply the cost of uncertainty to wind and solar.

[throwaway894345]

I doubt the cost figures for wind, solar, and nuclear are off by much, or rather, they could be off by hundreds of percents and still be more accurate than fossil fuels cost estimates which fail to account for pollution entirely.

[Gupie]

Is it safe considering the 1000 square miles of Ukraine that Chernobyl made uninhabitable? How safe are they against terrorist attacks, an attack by a rogue state or in a conventional war?

[corban1]

Yes because we learned from Chernobyl and Fukushima. The reason nuclear is expensive is because they protect themselves from war or terrorist attacks by drills, policies, strengthened structure and alertness.

Actually, if you are in a war or you are a terrorist, there are much more high value targets than a structure with 1.3m thick re-enforced concrete plus 1cm thick steel dome.

[Pyramus]

We didn't really learn (enough) - Fukushima made that very apparent. As an example, Angela Merkel, who used to be pro nuclear, changed position after the disaster.

The reason is that ever since Chernobyl there has been an active debate in Germany pro/contra nuclear (where in some parts there are still consumption limits on certain types of wild mushrooms and game due to contamination with caesium - 30 years later, 1000+ km away!). And the core argument pro was the same it is today: We learned from Chernobyl, nuclear reactors are way safer, Chernobyl will never happen again.

But if you followed Fukushima closely while it happened, the fact that Fukushima wasn't Chernobyl was sheer luck - had the wind blown southwards towards Tokyo (and not eastwards out to the sea like it did) Fukushima would have been worse.

I'm in no way saying that we have not advanced massively in science and technology - in fact, we have - I'm saying there are tricky biases at play here that make it very difficult to estimate whether we have learned enough.

[PeterisP]

Yes, even including Chernobyl and all the other accidents, nuclear power causes less deaths per GWh and less environmental damage than coal (which is the type of electricity used to fill in the gaps when e.g. Germany stopped it's nuclear plants). If you're worried about the habitable land, Hydro power is relatively "green", but each major hydro plant wrecks habitability and ecosystems in an area that's smaller than but comparable on scale with the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Like, this is a reasonable question to ask, but it has been asked and analyzed a lot and the practical answer to it is overwhelmingly against fossil fuels, it's not even close. Coal causes far more cancer than radioactive disasters, but we simply aren't (yet?) holding them accountable for this damage.

[asdff]

If we had any sense we would establish similar perimeters around coal plants. There are also thousands of nuclear power plants around the world and I can't think of any that have suffered from terrorist attacks.