No, absolutely decommission old and out-of-date plants to avoid anything catastrophic. There is an argument for keeping some of the ones that are there now and even building new ones, but what is happening with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is souring me on the idea of nuclear power in general. Not when a war could cause a catastrophe. You can’t really war-proof every nuclear power plant.
I don’t like that Russia is using the ZNPP as more-or-less a dirty bomb threat against Europe, but at the end of the day the VVER-1000 reactors there are relatively modern GenIII pressurized water reactors. An intentional or accidental meltdown there would not create a Chernobyl-like event. It’d probably end up being more like Fukushima, which if I remember correctly lead to a couple orders of magnitude more deaths due to the stress of evacuation than it’s anticipated to create from radiation exposure.
Bottom line, when you’re talking about reactors that aren’t pants-on-head stupid designs like the RBMK the actual health risk of radiation exposure due to accident is lower than the health risks of most other forms of power, including some non-fossil-fuel alternatives. Long term storage of spent fuel is another issue, but one that’s reasonably solvable as long as we treat fission as a transitional base load power source as other alternatives like storage and/or fusion power become more viable.
what is happening with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is souring me on the idea of nuclear power in general
The problem with nuclear power is that it can cause very large problems very quickly if a plant is mismanaged. By contrast, coal plants cause marginal problems played out over 30-50 year lifespan of the facility. One makes for big scary flashy headlines and the other is just a drip-drip-drip of under-the-radar bad news.
Also, it should be noted that nuclear power is too efficient. When you turn on a nuke plant, the amount of new electricity tanks the market. This is awful for cartels and profit-seeking energy retailers. By contrast, gas plants allow you to generate energy on a marginal scale (MWhs instead of GWhs) and only sell into the market when the price is peaking. ERCOT has turned Texas gas plants into absolute gold mines, as electricity selling for $25/MWh in the morning surges to $3000/MWh by late-afternoon.
Solar and Wind plants have similar problems. They generate when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, rather than when the price of electricity is peaking.
So while nuke/solar/wind plants are efficient, they are also economically self-defeating. They don’t function well in a cartel. They don’t let you fix prices and maximize the cost for retail consumers. And they don’t help you corner the market to press out competition.
This isn’t a problem for Ukrainians (who are lucky to have any amount of electricity any time of day). But its a huge problem for stable western nations inside the imperial core, who need continuous economic growth to justify expanded military budgets with higher tax revenues.
No, absolutely decommission old and out-of-date plants to avoid anything catastrophic. There is an argument for keeping some of the ones that are there now and even building new ones, but what is happening with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine is souring me on the idea of nuclear power in general. Not when a war could cause a catastrophe. You can’t really war-proof every nuclear power plant.
I don’t like that Russia is using the ZNPP as more-or-less a dirty bomb threat against Europe, but at the end of the day the VVER-1000 reactors there are relatively modern GenIII pressurized water reactors. An intentional or accidental meltdown there would not create a Chernobyl-like event. It’d probably end up being more like Fukushima, which if I remember correctly lead to a couple orders of magnitude more deaths due to the stress of evacuation than it’s anticipated to create from radiation exposure.
Bottom line, when you’re talking about reactors that aren’t pants-on-head stupid designs like the RBMK the actual health risk of radiation exposure due to accident is lower than the health risks of most other forms of power, including some non-fossil-fuel alternatives. Long term storage of spent fuel is another issue, but one that’s reasonably solvable as long as we treat fission as a transitional base load power source as other alternatives like storage and/or fusion power become more viable.
Ootl… What’s going on with that particular power plant?
It’s being fought over by Ukraine and Russia and somebody (Russia, but they blame Ukraine) keeps shelling it. It’s incredibly dangerous.
You’d think they of all people would appreciate that.
Oh good Lord. Fuckin idiots.
The problem with nuclear power is that it can cause very large problems very quickly if a plant is mismanaged. By contrast, coal plants cause marginal problems played out over 30-50 year lifespan of the facility. One makes for big scary flashy headlines and the other is just a drip-drip-drip of under-the-radar bad news.
Also, it should be noted that nuclear power is too efficient. When you turn on a nuke plant, the amount of new electricity tanks the market. This is awful for cartels and profit-seeking energy retailers. By contrast, gas plants allow you to generate energy on a marginal scale (MWhs instead of GWhs) and only sell into the market when the price is peaking. ERCOT has turned Texas gas plants into absolute gold mines, as electricity selling for $25/MWh in the morning surges to $3000/MWh by late-afternoon.
Solar and Wind plants have similar problems. They generate when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, rather than when the price of electricity is peaking.
So while nuke/solar/wind plants are efficient, they are also economically self-defeating. They don’t function well in a cartel. They don’t let you fix prices and maximize the cost for retail consumers. And they don’t help you corner the market to press out competition.
This isn’t a problem for Ukrainians (who are lucky to have any amount of electricity any time of day). But its a huge problem for stable western nations inside the imperial core, who need continuous economic growth to justify expanded military budgets with higher tax revenues.