The consensus is pretty clear:
[nuclear] will require strong State support (i) to provide a stable regulatory and permitting framework, (ii) to take care of waste management, (iii) to insure against catastrophic damage. Wind power was ... criticized in private conversations for the extravagant subsidies it requires/receives.
Wind power was ... criticized in private conversations for the extravagant subsidies it requires/receives.
Why can´t we be friends, Why can´t we be friends (great song) :)
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
<la la la la, la la la, la la la>
(i) to provide a stable regulatory and permitting framework
to take care of waste management
to insure against catastrophic damage
While I am not sure about this, I'd guess that the reason that states have to help insuring nuclear power plants is that a single disaster, no matter how unlikely, would completely overload the global insurance business. I mean, what company sits on a trillion euros?
And the state doesn't complain as it knows that the probability that it'll ever have to honor the commitment is zero as there won't be any severe accidents.
Any thoughts on this? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
I think we are talking about pretty much the same probabilities. How much would it cost anyway? One accident in 100.000 reactor years, and only one in a hundred of those penetrating the containment. That's one penetrating accident in 10.000.000 reactor years. Even if the accident creates 1 trillion euros of damages that's a yearly cost of 100.000 euros, nothing really.
According to Lennart Hammar, former number two at the Swedish nuclear power inspectorate and chief of the reactor safety department, the IAEA demands are that current reactors must reach a level of safety of one accident (meltdown) in 10.000 reactor years, while new reactors must reach one in 100.000 (all Swedish reactors at least reach the 100.000 level). At least 9 out of 10 accidents must not mean a discharge of any nuclear materials. On top of this all Swedish reactors have an extra filter, essentially a tower filled with crushed stone. This means that in the event of a discharge of radioactive gas, 99,9 % of the radionuclides will be trapped in the tower, never reaching the atmosphere.
According to Areva (page 47)
With the EPR, the probability of an accident leading to core melt, already extremely small with the previous-generation reactors, becomes infinitesimal: smaller than 1/100,000 (10-5) per reactor/year, for all types of failure and hazard, which fully meets the objective set for the new nuclear power plants by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG) with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - INSAG 3 report, smaller than 1/1,000,000 (10-6) per reactor/year for the events generated inside the plant, making a reduction by a factor 10 compared with the most modern reactors currently in operation, smaller than 1/10,000,000 (10-7) per reactor/year for the sequences associated with early loss of the radioactive containment function.
Hey, maybe one could make t-shirts with that logo on? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
But when the Ignalina RBMK plant was evaluated by Swedish experts in the mid nineties it had a risk of core damage of about 1 in 3000 reactor years. The subsequent improvements raised it to 1 in 10.000. But it will always lack a containment, and what really counts is not the number of accidents but the damage on the environment. Without a containment it becomes Chernobyl-esque. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Too many to count, at one single installation of three light-water power reactors in Connecticut USA, alone. The Fates are kind.
Dozens and dozens.
Believe me. Believe them. Or believe the Industry. Your choice. The Fates are kind.
One reason tritium may be "safe" to release is that the Earth's gravity cannot retain tritium in the atmosphere. However, I don't know how long it takes for tritium to escape the atmosphere after it's released. tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker
(in older days, clock industry workers were applying phosphorescent paint on numbers, that was tritium-enhanced, with a paint brush they used to lick to keep the hair straight, and they had terrible cancers... may be the clock bloggers could dig more detailed stories)
Nothing easier: Just sustitute tritium for hydrogen in whatever compound you are making the paint out of.
Suppose THAT persists in the body. Then the tritium persists right along with it for maximal radiological effect. The Fates are kind.
The reactor is on the Hudson River and the idea is to prevent the contaminated water from reaching the river. (Not that this amount of contamination would cause any real problems).
In addition the emergency alarm system continues fail tests and the evacuation plan has not be certified as practical. (Moving about one million people away from the plant over four or five highways is not realistic.)
Finally they have filled up their spent fuel rod storage tanks and are looking to dry storage on site to allow for even more radioactive waste. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
Did that not happen in YOUR universe?
I am so happy for you. The Fates are kind.
By the way, with only 12,000 reactor-years of civilian use and a similar amount of military use you can't justify a figure of one accident per 100,000 reactor years. I should calculate proper confidence intervals for this. tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker
One thing is clear: only the government can bear that risk. with the above uncertainty, that means that government should also keep the upside from that technology; i.e. be the owner and do what it cares to with the available cheap electricity. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I ought to confess here that I am a physicist by training, and perhaps not as opposed to nuclear power as some of the commentators. My main problem with nuclear power (somewhat allied to Mr. Lovins arguments) is the same as I have with all such technologies--there are long lead time in building these large plants; once built we are committed to fifty year lifetimes; and the consequences of failure of such large plants are correspondingly large. Rather I would favor a decentralized system with smaller, but more numerous generators (insert favorite technology here) coupled with a more intelligent power grid than exists today. This minimizes the effects of failure of individual generators and gridlines, and design errors in local implementations. But I suspect that such a scheme is more expensive, and may not allow the large institutional players to maintain their profits.
This may change if the environmental costs of electric power and transportation are internalized. Solar, windpower and microhydro are a good fit to distributed generation; biofuels, perhaps slightly less so.
And then there is the question of time. If Mr. Hansen is correct and the large continental ice sheets have indeed destabilized, we may not have the time, nor surplus resources to build giant new plants, or for that matter, a distributed grid. I rather think that the planners in India and China foresee quite well the results of multiple population migrations on the order of, say, ten million Bangladeshis, every twenty five years.
sidd
