Australian Politics Forum

On 30 April, the Indian Point nuclear power plant 30 miles north of New York City was shut down. For decades the facility provided the overwhelming majority of the city’s carbon-free electricity as well as good union jobs for almost a thousand people. Federal regulators had deemed the plant perfectly safe.

New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, a key figure behind the move, said that the shuttering of Indian Point brought us “a big step closer to achieving our aggressive clean energy goals”. It’s hard to reconcile that optimism with the data that’s recently come out. The first full month without the plant has seen a 46% increase in the average carbon intensity of statewide electric generation compared to when Indian Point was fully operational. New York replaced clean energy from Indian Point with fossil fuel sources like natural gas.

It’s a nightmare we should have seen coming. In Germany, nuclear power formed around a third of the country’s power generation in 2000, when a Green party-spearheaded campaign managed to secure the gradual closure of plants, citing health and safety concerns. Last year, that share fell to 11%, with all remaining stations scheduled to close by next year. A recent paper found that the last two decades of phased nuclear closures led to an increase in CO2 emissions of 36.3 megatons a year - with the increased air pollution potentially killing 1,100 people annually.

Like New York, Germany coupled its transition away from nuclear power with a pledge to spend more aggressively on renewables. Yet the country’s first plant closures meant carbon emissions actually increased, as the production gap was immediately filled through the construction of new coal plants. Similarly, in New York the gap will be filled in part by the construction of three new gas plants. For the Germans, investment in renewables did eventually pay dividends, but it largely replaced the old nuclear plants’ output rather than reducing existing fossil fuel consumption. The carbon intensity of German electricity is higher than the EU average.

However, even a more aggressive investment in renewable energy wouldn’t have solved Germany’s problem. There are just a handful of large economies that have already mostly decarbonized their grids; all of them have a foundation of nuclear or hydroelectricity (or both), and then to greater or lesser degrees add renewables like wind and solar on top. This is because nuclear and hydro are able to provide electricity whenever we need it. These “firm” sources of clean electricity do not need to wait for the sun to shine or the wind to blow to power the ventilators in our hospitals. Batteries and other forms of energy storage are great, and we need much more funding of research and development to make them even better, but until huge technological leaps occur, sustainables are hindered by the need for cooperative weather.

Elsewhere around the world, even where we’ve been investing in renewable technology, without nuclear or the right geography that allows hydroelectricity, we’ve had no choice but to rely on fossil fuels to fill the gap.

So why, given the stakes of global warming, is there still so much hostility to nuclear power?

Some of the paranoia is no doubt rooted in cold war-era associations of peaceful nuclear power with dangerous nuclear weaponry. We can and should separate these two, just like we are able to separate nuclear bombs from nuclear medicine. And we should also push back against popular narratives around Chernobyl and other disasters that simply aren’t replicable with modern technology. Advanced reactors and many existing ones are designed with passive safety systems – they don’t need active intervention by humans or a computer to deactivate in case of emergencies. Instead these plants use natural forces such as gravity to disable them, while maintaining active monitoring as a backup. ...

There are some legitimate concerns about nuclear waste, but the public perception is driven by outdated information. The amount of waste produced by plants has been reduced dramatically, and most of what remains can be recycled to generate more electricity. These worries are not particularly unique to nuclear, either. Renewable energy produces waste of its own – solar, for example, requires heavy metals like cadmium, lead and arsenic, which unlike nuclear waste don’t lose their toxicity over time. As an article in Science points out: “Current electric vehicle batteries are really not designed to be recycled” and could pose public health problems as battery cells decay in landfills.

Other objections to nuclear power, like its reliance on mining, are also not unique to nuclear. Renewables require destructive extraction to unearth lithium and other critical minerals. The answer to those concerns is simple: we should demand environmental and labor regulations from the state and defend good working conditions as our primary consideration. But opposing socially necessary extraction as a matter of principle simply isn’t compatible with wanting to live in a world that can meet basic human needs.

On the political left, in particular, where opposition to nuclear first catalyzed decades ago, there seems to be a shift underway. After initial hesitation, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez has said her Green New Deal leaves the door open for nuclear power.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/21/fight-climate-crisis-clean-energy-nuclear-power

So why, given the stakes of global warming, is there still so much hostility to nuclear power?

Personally I don't have a problem with the generation of nuclear power or the storage of nuclear waste. My understanding is that for Australia the spread out nature of our cities etc didn't make it economically viable.

Nuclear power is safe, efficient and environmentally friendly. Far more so than any other source. It's only a fear mongering campaign led by rabid environmentalists and vested interests that has kept it off the table in Australia, and unfortunately the same fear has taken root overseas as well.

Nuclear power suffers from problems of security, disposal of waste material and of course, the danger of accidents. Tsk, tsk. ::) ::)

Belgarion wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 1:07pm:

Notice though you havent mentioned economics there.

Brian Ross wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 1:44pm:

Nuclear power suffers from problems of security, disposal of waste material and of course, the danger of accidents. Tsk, tsk. ::) ::)

Thorium power would be 1000 times safer
if they could get it happening.

https://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1519823686/0#0

Brian Ross wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 1:44pm:

Nuclear power suffers from problems of security, disposal of waste material and of course, the danger of accidents. Tsk, tsk. ::) ::)

Problems of security? Some terrorist is going to attack the power station and make off with the reactor core and make a bomb?

Disposal of waste material? The vast majority of waste can be recycled. Very little is actual 'waste' and that can be stored safely. Future technology will most likely see that small amount recycled as well.

Danger of accidents? A nuclear power plant is far safer than any other type of power generation. They will shut down automatically in the impossibly remote circumstance the human operators fail to respond to a problem in a timely manner.

Ill informed fear mongering Brian. ::)

Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 1:59pm:

Belgarion wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 1:07pm:

Notice though you havent mentioned economics there.

Far cheaper in the long run that so-called 'renewables'.

Belgarion wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 8:11pm:

Brian Ross wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 1:44pm:

Nuclear power suffers from problems of security, disposal of waste material and of course, the danger of accidents. Tsk, tsk. ::) ::)

Tell that to the victims of the various nuclear disasters that the world has witnessed, Belgarion. The danger exists of an accident, and then you lose an entire county/state/nation/continent... ::) ::)

Study after study in top scientific journals find that nuclear power plants are far and away the safest way to make reliable electricity. Why then are we so afraid of them?
The most common answer to this question is that the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima frightened people.

And yet the accidents proved the relative safety, not relative danger, of nuclear energy. Nobody died from radiation at Three Mile Island or Fukushima, and fewer than 50 died died from Chernobyl in the 30 years since the accident.
How, then, did everyone come to see those nuclear accidents as so catastrophic?

The answer is because of how governments responded to them. Instead of encouraging the public to stay calm and carry on, governments freaked out, and evacuated hundreds of thousands of people.

“Between five and ten times too many people were moved away from the Chernobyl area between 1986 and 1990,” a team of top scientists wrote last week in the peer-reviewed journal, Process Safety and Environmental Protection.

As for the 2011 nuclear accident in Japan, the scientists said they found “it difficult to justify moving anyone away from Fukushima Daiichi on grounds of radiological protection.”

In other words, it was the over-reaction to the accidents — not the accidents themselves — that resulted in popular fears of the technology.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/06/11/if-nuclear-power-is-so-safe-why-are-we-so-afraid-of-it/?sh=1fa82e836385

Nuclear power is not the way for Australia to go. :(

Brian Ross wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 11:01pm:

Belgarion wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 8:11pm:

Brian Ross wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 1:44pm:

Nuclear power suffers from problems of security, disposal of waste material and of course, the danger of accidents. Tsk, tsk. ::) ::)

What 'victims' Brian? As Frank has noted above, there were no victims of radiation at Three Mile island or Fukushima and just a handful at Chernobyl. The anti nuclear movement is based upon lies and fearmongering.

Read this for a balanced and rational view: https://www.powermag.com/end-the-war-on-nuclear-power-start-with-radiation/?fbclid=IwAR0eXlqBhR8xRRKTds3dxLMOvpqm4h-ojcItSTrDTk5Su9UXn-0EwXagVRE

Belgarion wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 8:41am:

Brian Ross wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 11:01pm:

Belgarion wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 8:11pm:

Brian Ross wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 1:44pm:

Nuclear power suffers from problems of security, disposal of waste material and of course, the danger of accidents. Tsk, tsk. ::) ::)

Direct death from radiation exposure is I agree a minor danger. Long term contamination is something no wants to face. The people of Fukashima cannot return to their homes. The people of Chernobyl are forever exiled. If that something you would want to wish on anybody, Belgarion? The increased risk of cancers, with every thing you eat, the increased risk of mutation. These are the real dangers which occur with a nuclear accident... ::) ::)

Belgarion wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 8:11pm:

A nuclear power plant is far safer than any other type of power generation.

don't know how you can make that claim. ::)

Belgarion wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 8:41am:

and just a handful at Chernobyl.

there are still MANY dying as a result of illnesses suffered due to Chernobyl, decades after the blast ... those number will never be added to the death toll.

John Smith wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 5:52pm:

there are still MANY dying as a result of illnesses suffered due to Chernobyl, decades after the blast

Link? And don't use the "novel mathematical model" results. ;)

John Smith wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 5:50pm:

Belgarion wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 8:11pm:

A nuclear power plant is far safer than any other type of power generation.

don't know how you can make that claim. ::)

Do you travel on planes?

John Smith wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 5:52pm:

Belgarion wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 8:41am:

and just a handful at Chernobyl.

there are still MANY dying as a result of illnesses suffered due to Chernobyl, decades after the blast ...

Name one.

Frank wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 11:05pm:

John Smith wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 5:52pm:

Belgarion wrote on Jun 23^rd, 2021 at 8:41am:

and just a handful at Chernobyl.

there are still MANY dying as a result of illnesses suffered due to Chernobyl, decades after the blast ...

Name one.

It will kill for a long time:

Nuclear waste takes too long to decay.

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

Some common nuclear waste half lives:

Plutonium 239 half life    24,110 years.
Americium 241 half life       432 years
Radium 226    Half life    1,600 years
Uranium 236 Half life 15 million years.
Plutonium 244 Half life 80 million years
Uranium 235 Half life 704 million years
Uranium 238 half life    4.5 billion years

Australian Politics Forum
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl Member Run Boards >> Environment >> The Guardian - Nuclear power http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1624327929 Message started by lee on Jun 22^nd, 2021 at 12:12pm