There has been more near misses in the nuclear industry than tsunamis. After Fukushima about all plants in the west had to install independent core cooling because the regulators realized the risk was systemic, even though the cause was special in the case of Fukushima.
A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006 when many of the "defense in depth" layers had been accidentally removed through freak occurrences and upgrades.
Do you think blaming "organizational incompetence" as a one-off is going to relieve constant review and regulation?
*You're arguing against the wrong point.*
Organizational incompetence is an every GREATER inevitability than a tsunami, earthquake, meteor strike, tornado, hurricane, or terrorist attack.
The point is that solid fuel reactors are currently completely fucked from an economic standpoint. They are fundamentally economically noncompetitive. They will hang on until grid storage, geothermal, or (god help us) natural gas turbine + CO2 capture replaces them as grid levelers. No, I don't think pebble bed or other approaches will work.
I love nuclear, it is so cool. I WANT a viable nuclear reactor option, that's competitive and useful. Does it HAVE to be LFTR? No, it's just the only design I see that really addresses all the semi-rational political concerns.
The nuclear lobby does itself no favors, just like you did with your immediate retort. "Death rates are low". "Nobody died from Fukushima". Those are fundamentally losing arguments politically, it will get the nuclear industry nowhere.
Now, as I said, the entire "nuclear lobby" is the "solid fuel legacy nuclear design lobby". They are riding out a loser's hand as long as they can. A switch to a radical new design might as well be the same thing as shutting down every existing nuclear plant. It's the same economic armageddon to them, so they don't care about "nuclear the idea" just "nuclear the profits".
But the dangerous thing is that all the practical nuclear engineering/knowledge that might allow a radical reactor design to succeed won't be around if the nuclear industry just clings to a slowly sinking ship. Everyone will die or retire in a generation, and then nuclear power, the IDEA, has a longer road to viability. Or it may be permanently disabled.
I don't want that. I want the nuclear industry, nuclear lobby, and American research infrastructure to WAKE UP and start really working on economically viable reactors. NOW. I mean, China isn't asleep at the switch.
But I don't see it. I see bullshit astroturfing stories like clockwork here. Which just saddens me.
"Organizational incompetence is an every GREATER inevitability than a tsunami, earthquake, meteor strike, tornado, hurricane, or terrorist attack."
No, that isn't necessarily true. Look at the FAA, which has led to ever greater increases in airline safety, to the point where airline travel in the U.S. is safer than driving a car. Absent the 737 MAX debacle, airline deaths per mile had declined by multiple orders of magnitude since 1980.
SMR technology is being proven a safe and and cost-effective nuclear technology.
Also, the number of deaths from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukishima are orders of magnitude less than current coal or oil fired electrical generation. I don't see what pint you are seeking to make.
Your comment is like a zoo of the nuclear industry's failure.
My point is that managerial incompetence is inevitable and YOU AGREE and that REGULATION IS NECESSARY for solid fuel reactors. But the point of numerous other posts is that REGULATION MAKES NUCLEAR UNECONOMICAL and needs to be reduced. But by your very admission, it can't.
Then, despite me stating the obvious that various nuclear arguments like "average deaths" and "average radiation released" are politically completely ineffective. Particularly since Fukushima. Does anyone in nuclear disagree that, whatever the logical reality of the stats, this argument is worthless? Yet you parrot it here.
I think it is funny you say "well you exclude the 737 MAX". Why would you exclude that from a discussion of managerial incompetence? THE 737 MAX WAS A DIRECT RESULT OF MANAGERIAL INCOMPETENCE. In fact the 737 MAX is a PERFECT example of the additional challenges of managerial incompetence in an age of vastly complex software stacks and control systems. Did anyone on Hacker News not see garden variety software corner cutting in the exposes on the 737 MAX?
Here is another problem with nuclear arguing for less regulation: people's faith in regulation and oversight is fundamentally worse now that it was a generation ago. Perhaps it is because of the republican elite war on government, perhaps it is greater awareness and spotlights from the internet, perhaps it is a result of industry lobbies undermining regulatory agencies and starving them and propagandizing against them for their short-term financial gain.
The public will not trust a for-profit company to:
- run a nuclear plant long term that can melt down
- properly transport the waste
- trust that the waste is secured properly (Yucca or whatever)
They will not. So you need a design that won't melt down (so if the operators screw up, it's not a disaster) and there's no waste transported through neighborhoods (that some scumbag / mobster won't dump on the beaches or in a swamp somewhere).
"oh that would never happen" Um, what did Fukushima do with its irradiated water? That wasn't even the mob.
You know what else happened in Fukushima? The government clammed up and wouldn't release any information. Some of that is Japanese culture, but still it was a cover up. The US Military was releasing more information about radiation release than the Japanese government!
If you want reduced regulation, you need to make a meltdown proof reactor and one that virtually eliminates the waste. As someone that isn't in the nuclear industry and has no economic interest in LFTR/MSR (are there even any companies left working on it in the US?), when I saw those two aspects of LFTR/MSR, that's when I got enthused about nuclear power.
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"SMR technology is being proven a safe and and cost-effective nuclear technology."
> The point is that solid fuel reactors are currently completely fucked from an economic standpoint. They are fundamentally economically noncompetitive.
If all of this is so "fundamental", then why does South Korea manage to build plants for cheap? And why has France managed to have its entire grid be nuclear-based for many decades? Please explain.
> I want the nuclear industry, nuclear lobby, and American research infrastructure to WAKE UP and start really working on economically viable reactors.
Then we must fix the regulatory incentives. That's how capitalism works: corporations chase profit. So if you want them to innovate, you make innovation the profitable option, instead of adding a mountain of regulation to block anything new.
France nuclear share stopped growing because of the terrible policies of François Hollande—the president with low-single-digit approval rating, who singlehandedly turned France's formerly largest political party into small fry, because people hated him so much.
And then Macron decided to continue the insanity by following up on Hollande's unfulfilled promise to close the perfectly functional Fessenheim plant.
Then there are the "market competition" policies. It used to be that the French grid was entirely run by EDF, a state enterprise. And it worked well enough. But then the EU (with buy-in from complicit French politicians) decided to introduce "privatization"—except it's totally fake, as EDF has to sell energy to the private companies at prices set (to much lower than the market price) by the government. This has hurt EDF financially, and combined with other lacks in investment during the past decade or two means that they have lost a lot of organizational competence (skilled engineers are gone).
A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006 when many of the "defense in depth" layers had been accidentally removed through freak occurrences and upgrades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#J...