Deaths from electricity production, some more data

[Loren Pechtel]

https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy/

Unfortunately lacking information on renewables. Nuke is 40x better than anything else used on a large scale.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And this is why Loren lives within 5 miles of a Nuclear Power Plant.

 

[bilby]

What if nuclear power was invented today?

Its history of being linked to nuclear weapons, and its arrival on the scene just as enthusiasm for scientific progress was being replaced by Luddite environmentalism, in an era before global warming was understood has made it a target of propaganda from both entrenched fossil fuel interests and their main opponents, the tree-hugging environmentalists.

Today, the big gas producers hardly need to worry about the fact that they are despoiling the planet - they can rely on the likes of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club to oppose the only solution that doesn't lead to higher gas consumption, and they hardly need to lift a finger.

Right now, the biggest threat to the environment is environmentalist opposition to nuclear power. The big gas, coal and oil barons are in it for the money, and would happily invest in nuclear plants and uranium mines instead, if they were likely to supplant fossil fuels. But the hippies are as likely to change sides as the Jehovah's witnesses - and are just as fact-based in their beliefs.

And while 'green' lobbyists keep the regulatory burden to the construction and operation of fission plants absurdly high, the coal companies have nothing to fear; and the gas companies just love wind and solar power, because they make CCGT plants super profitable.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Nuclear power and on and on and on...

You're still right on the issue. Have been for some time. Your conversations with arkirk some time back amended my position. Your's is also the perfect example of beating a dead horse. If you could convince the rest of the world, that'd be great. Barring that happening and assuming the world continues with the quick easy to set up less complicated and fast becoming cost effective renewables...
Renewables ain't bad and are getting better now that we've finally let them. Recently there's a story of Alphabet's X lab scaling up their renewable energy storage (salt) facility, which looks promising on an economical level. More and more I'm seeing renewables holding their own. This is the surest indication that this will be the way forward.
And I won't even mention the security concerns.

 

[LordKiran]

What if nuclear power was invented today?

Its history of being linked to nuclear weapons, and its arrival on the scene just as enthusiasm for scientific progress was being replaced by Luddite environmentalism, in an era before global warming was understood has made it a target of propaganda from both entrenched fossil fuel interests and their main opponents, the tree-hugging environmentalists.

Today, the big gas producers hardly need to worry about the fact that they are despoiling the planet - they can rely on the likes of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club to oppose the only solution that doesn't lead to higher gas consumption, and they hardly need to lift a finger.

Right now, the biggest threat to the environment is environmentalist opposition to nuclear power. The big gas, coal and oil barons are in it for the money, and would happily invest in nuclear plants and uranium mines instead, if they were likely to supplant fossil fuels. But the hippies are as likely to change sides as the Jehovah's witnesses - and are just as fact-based in their beliefs.

And while 'green' lobbyists keep the regulatory burden to the construction and operation of fission plants absurdly high, the coal companies have nothing to fear; and the gas companies just love wind and solar power, because they make CCGT plants super profitable.

I think Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are the reasons why people oppose nuclear power. While Three Mile Island didn't kill anyone, if you actually look into the incident, what caused it, and how the company that owned the plant dealt with the situation, you can't be blamed for saying "Fuck this shit."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are the reasons why people oppose nuclear power. While Three Mile Island didn't kill anyone, if you actually look into the incident, what caused it, and how the company that owned the plant dealt with the situation, you can't be blamed for saying "Fuck this shit."

Three Mile Island was a very minor incident until the NRC stepped in. There were some regulators on site when it happened and they're the ones that fucked it up.

Despite that the safeties worked, the threat level was basically zero.


Chernobyl shows that you need reasonable oversight--something that's sorely lacking in dictatorships. Chernobyl could never happen in the US because if someone tried to be that stupid there would be a bunch of people on the phone to the NRC long before he blew up the plant. The operators knew things were totally out of hand but the single path of authority system meant they couldn't do anything about it.

 

[J842P]

Nuclear power and on and on and on...

You're still right on the issue. Have been for some time. Your conversations with arkirk some time back amended my position. Your's is also the perfect example of beating a dead horse. If you could convince the rest of the world, that'd be great. Barring that happening and assuming the world continues with the quick easy to set up less complicated and fast becoming cost effective renewables...
Renewables ain't bad and are getting better now that we've finally let them. Recently there's a story of Alphabet's X lab scaling up their renewable energy storage (salt) facility, which looks promising on an economical level. More and more I'm seeing renewables holding their own. This is the surest indication that this will be the way forward.
And I won't even mention the security concerns.

Oh, that's great. Alphabet is working on it. Well, when we could have avoided ecological catastrophe if people had just not been idiots, **and listened to the man beating the dead horse**, then maybe this would really be great. Instead, we'll get too little, too late, and 3-5 degrees in less than a century.

I sure as hell am not having kids.

 

[bilby]

Nuclear power and on and on and on...

You're still right on the issue. Have been for some time. Your conversations with arkirk some time back amended my position. Your's is also the perfect example of beating a dead horse. If you could convince the rest of the world, that'd be great. Barring that happening and assuming the world continues with the quick easy to set up less complicated and fast becoming cost effective renewables...
Renewables ain't bad and are getting better now that we've finally let them. Recently there's a story of Alphabet's X lab scaling up their renewable energy storage (salt) facility, which looks promising on an economical level. More and more I'm seeing renewables holding their own. This is the surest indication that this will be the way forward.
And I won't even mention the security concerns.

The security concerns are, for the most part, nonexistent. Another propaganda lie.

It's very hard to make weapons grade materials from power plant fuel. It's very easy to make weapons from gasoline, but nobody is going to ban cars for security reasons.

I rail against couterfactual and harmful beliefs; whether that is Christianity or Islam; anti-Vaccination or anti-GMO; or anti-nuclear or climate denial. That you are prepared to tolerate stupid people fucking up our world in this one instance is a shame, and I decline your invitation to join you in your apathy.

 

[bilby]

What if nuclear power was invented today?

Its history of being linked to nuclear weapons, and its arrival on the scene just as enthusiasm for scientific progress was being replaced by Luddite environmentalism, in an era before global warming was understood has made it a target of propaganda from both entrenched fossil fuel interests and their main opponents, the tree-hugging environmentalists.

Today, the big gas producers hardly need to worry about the fact that they are despoiling the planet - they can rely on the likes of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club to oppose the only solution that doesn't lead to higher gas consumption, and they hardly need to lift a finger.

Right now, the biggest threat to the environment is environmentalist opposition to nuclear power. The big gas, coal and oil barons are in it for the money, and would happily invest in nuclear plants and uranium mines instead, if they were likely to supplant fossil fuels. But the hippies are as likely to change sides as the Jehovah's witnesses - and are just as fact-based in their beliefs.

And while 'green' lobbyists keep the regulatory burden to the construction and operation of fission plants absurdly high, the coal companies have nothing to fear; and the gas companies just love wind and solar power, because they make CCGT plants super profitable.

I think Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are the reasons why people oppose nuclear power. While Three Mile Island didn't kill anyone, if you actually look into the incident, what caused it, and how the company that owned the plant dealt with the situation, you can't be blamed for saying "Fuck this shit."

I think you are right; but that's like saying that the watergate scandal is why people dislike democracy, and concluding that we are better off with Stalinism instead.

Nuclear power is the most dangerous way of making electricity we have, apart from all of the others.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The security concerns are, for the most part, nonexistent. Another propaganda lie.

It's very hard to make weapons grade materials from power plant fuel. It's very easy to make weapons from gasoline, but nobody is going to ban cars for security reasons.

I rail against couterfactual and harmful beliefs; whether that is Christianity or Islam; anti-Vaccination or anti-GMO; or anti-nuclear or climate denial. That you are prepared to tolerate stupid people fucking up our world in this one instance is a shame, and I decline your invitation to join you in your apathy.

If you can make weapons grade material out of power plant fuel you can make it out of raw uranium.

However, that's not what they're worried about. Rather, the spent fuel will contain plutonium and that is going to get separated out. That's what they're scared of--someone making off with that plutonium. However, there are two reasons it's not a problem:

1) The stuff has been sitting around in the reactor for too long. The desired reaction is U₂₃₈ + neutron -> U_239[ + decay (23.5 minutes) -> Np₂₃₉ + decay (2.35 days) -> Pu₂₃₉. However, when you let it sit around you get Pu₂₃₉ + neutron -> Pu₂₄₀. Pu₂₄₀ is a neutron emitter that tends to cause your bomb to fizzle if you have too much of it. (Basically, you have two processes at work. The explosives have fired and are sending the bomb core in on itself. The imploding core is in a race with the fission reaction that starts once it goes critical and is hit by neutrons, producing heat that will blow the core apart. If the implosion wins the race you kill a city. The more it loses the race by the more energy is robbed from the blast. This race is why all the complex engineering of the bomb.)

2) You can change how you do the reprocessing. Most of the fission products are irrelevant as far as the reactor is concerned, there's no need to remove them. All that actually matters is a few neutron-absorbing isotopes that poison the reaction. Take them out but don't separate out the rest. Just make new rods with the waste inside. The result will be just about as lethally hot as the rods that were pulled out of the reactor. Both the reprocessing plant and the reactor facility are set up to remotely handle the hot rods, it's no big deal for them. It's a very big deal indeed for a prospective thief, though. The thief can't possibly carry an adequate shield to keep from setting off alarms, or to even survive hauling the rod away. Even a suicidal thief has to act pretty quickly or they'll die before they can get it away.

 

[fromderinside]

The reason we fear nuclear power is the same reason we fear NK will missile us with one. We lump the two memes together into one. Nuke is nuke and nuke is a mushroom shaped cloud that will make us proud that we hate south africans.

 

[Derec]

The stuff has been sitting around in the reactor for too long. The desired reaction is U₂₃₈ + neutron -> U_239[ + decay (23.5 minutes) -> Np₂₃₉ + decay (2.35 days) -> Pu₂₃₉. However, when you let it sit around you get Pu₂₃₉ + neutron -> Pu₂₄₀. Pu₂₄₀ is a neutron emitter that tends to cause your bomb to fizzle if you have too much of it.

As aside, the RBMK (Chernobyl was one of those) design allowed replacement of fuel rods without the reactor being shut down. That allowed for frequent fuel rod replacement, making sure that not enough Pu240 accumulated.

 

[TV and credit cards]

You're still right on the issue. Have been for some time. Your conversations with arkirk some time back amended my position. Your's is also the perfect example of beating a dead horse. If you could convince the rest of the world, that'd be great. Barring that happening and assuming the world continues with the quick easy to set up less complicated and fast becoming cost effective renewables...
Renewables ain't bad and are getting better now that we've finally let them. Recently there's a story of Alphabet's X lab scaling up their renewable energy storage (salt) facility, which looks promising on an economical level. More and more I'm seeing renewables holding their own. This is the surest indication that this will be the way forward.
And I won't even mention the security concerns.

The security concerns are, for the most part, nonexistent. Another propaganda lie.

It's very hard to make weapons grade materials from power plant fuel. It's very easy to make weapons from gasoline, but nobody is going to ban cars for security reasons.

I rail against couterfactual and harmful beliefs; whether that is Christianity or Islam; anti-Vaccination or anti-GMO; or anti-nuclear or climate denial. That you are prepared to tolerate stupid people fucking up our world in this one instance is a shame, and I decline your invitation to join you in your apathy.

I was thinking more along the lines of dispersed solar and wind power generation with storage as being more secure and reliable.

Here in the US, nuclear power generation can not remain competitive with fracked natural gas. There are existing plants receiving subsidies, others asking for them and abandoned projects.

While renewables are not accounted for in the op link, I think it would be fair to say they would be in the lower end of the chart. I suppose windmill maintenance worker accidents would be the leading contributor most of which could probably be mitigated by safe climbing practices.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The reason we fear nuclear power is the same reason we fear NK will missile us with one. We lump the two memes together into one. Nuke is nuke and nuke is a mushroom shaped cloud that will make us proud that we hate south africans.

Or if you live near one, the damn plant is always in the newspaper because of this or that violation.

 

[bilby]

The security concerns are, for the most part, nonexistent. Another propaganda lie.

It's very hard to make weapons grade materials from power plant fuel. It's very easy to make weapons from gasoline, but nobody is going to ban cars for security reasons.

I rail against couterfactual and harmful beliefs; whether that is Christianity or Islam; anti-Vaccination or anti-GMO; or anti-nuclear or climate denial. That you are prepared to tolerate stupid people fucking up our world in this one instance is a shame, and I decline your invitation to join you in your apathy.

I was thinking more along the lines of dispersed solar and wind power generation with storage as being more secure and reliable.

Here in the US, nuclear power generation can not remain competitive with fracked natural gas. There are existing plants receiving subsidies, others asking for them and abandoned projects.

While renewables are not accounted for in the op link, I think it would be fair to say they would be in the lower end of the chart. I suppose windmill maintenance worker accidents would be the leading contributor most of which could probably be mitigated by safe climbing practices.

Gas is only competitive because the cost of emitting carbon dioxide is externalised.

How competitive could nuclear power be if the waste was just chucked in a nearby river for someone else to worry about?

Coal, gas and oil burners are allowed to just squirt their waste into the air, and leave it to everyone else to deal with. No wonder they appear cheap; they only pay for half the job.



IIRC, fatalities per TWh for on-shore wind power are only fractionally greater than for nuclear power; but of course wind has other problems, particularly intermittency and asynchrony, which makes it unsuitable for use without fossil fuel or nuclear backup.

Indeed, it is the adoption of wind and solar power that is a major driver of the push to more and more gas power plants.

 

[Treedbear]

...
Indeed, it is the adoption of wind and solar power that is a major driver of the push to more and more gas power plants.

Explain.

 

[J842P]

...
Indeed, it is the adoption of wind and solar power that is a major driver of the push to more and more gas power plants.

Explain.

Because there has to be base-load generators to back-up all the non-baseload generators (i.e. wind and solar). This was fleshed out in a previous thread about how, paradoxically, adding *more wind and solar* can have the effect of overall increasing carbon emissions, unless the *base load* is low carbon. Well, our base-load is now coal and gas, in the US.

We (the US) needed to have gotten onto nuclear decades ago, like the French. That an a fleet of electric cars, which actually are effective only when the energy is being generated by carbon-clean sources.

Instead, Germany is replacing nuclear with gas - the renewables are a red-herring - and France is set to roll-back on nuclear too. People are stupid. But your generation won't be around to suffer the consequences of this folly. So I guess it's not surprising that no one seems to care.

Remeber the much ballyhooed news about Germany deriving most of it's power form renewable sources in 2016? Well, that guess what? Emissions went up in 2016.

 

[bilby]

...
Indeed, it is the adoption of wind and solar power that is a major driver of the push to more and more gas power plants.

Explain.

Gas power can be brought online very rapidly. Wind and Solar are intermittent; clouds, calms and nighttime all require rapid replacement of their output from somewhere else - and that somewhere else tends to be gas power, because it's typically more expensive to keep coal or nuclear plants on 'idle standby' - and in some cases, rapid changes in output from those plants are not achievable at all without damaging the plants themselves.

So the wide adoption of solar and wind has led to a big demand for gas power plants that can kick-in as soon as the power supply from these other sources drops off. In California, the setting of the sun coincides with the evening peak demand for electricity, and this leads to a massive spike in demand for non-solar power at that time each day; This gives a massive boost to Gas in the current economic climate. In Germany, Wind is more common than Solar (the southernmost point in Germany is more than 47 degrees North latitude), and their power supply therefore relies even more on fossil fuel backup - long periods of high pressure in the winter are common, when both windspeeds and temperatures can be very low for a week or more at a time - and gas fills the gap, because idling gas plants are much cheaper than idling coal plants (although Germany does still burn a lot of coal). Of course, Germany also buys some surplus nuclear power from France; France is the only European nation outside Scandinavia whose CO₂ emissions are routinely below 50gCO₂eq/kWh - and all of the countries worldwide that achieve that goal rely on Nuclear, Hydro, or a mix of the two.

See https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=map for real time information on CO₂ emissions and the types of power generation that contribute to it.

 

[Treedbear]

...
Indeed, it is the adoption of wind and solar power that is a major driver of the push to more and more gas power plants.

Explain.

Because there has to be base-load generators to back-up all the non-baseload generators (i.e. wind and solar). This was fleshed out in a previous thread about how, paradoxically, adding *more wind and solar* can have the effect of overall increasing carbon emissions, unless the *base load* is low carbon. Well, our base-load is now coal and gas, in the US.

That strikes me as ridiculous. Whatever portion of electricity generation comes from wind and solar is essentially carbon free. If all of the increase in supply came from coal and gas then carbon emissions will increase. The extra capacity needed in coal and gas (or apparently mainly gas, per bilby) is idled during average wind and solar generation periods.

We (the US) needed to have gotten onto nuclear decades ago, like the French. That an a fleet of electric cars, which actually are effective only when the energy is being generated by carbon-clean sources.

Electric cars are a separate issue.

Instead, Germany is replacing nuclear with gas - the renewables are a red-herring - and France is set to roll-back on nuclear too. People are stupid. But your generation won't be around to suffer the consequences of this folly. So I guess it's not surprising that no one seems to care.

You need to include personal insults in your argument? You don't know me but if you want me to care about you and your generation start by losing the Trumpian rhetorical style. If I didn't care why would I even consider paying more for wind and solar when we have all that coal and tar sands oil? Sheesh.

Remeber the much ballyhooed news about Germany deriving most of it's power form renewable sources in 2016? Well, that guess what? Emissions went up in 2016.

In March 2017, preliminary calculations by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) showed a slight emissions increase in 2016, due to colder weather and rising emissions in the transport sector.

Explain.

Gas power can be brought online very rapidly. Wind and Solar are intermittent; clouds, calms and nighttime all require rapid replacement of their output from somewhere else - and that somewhere else tends to be gas power, because it's typically more expensive to keep coal or nuclear plants on 'idle standby' - and in some cases, rapid changes in output from those plants are not achievable at all without damaging the plants themselves.

I didn't know that about coal and nuclear plant's standby mode. Thanks for explaining. I haven't been following posts on this topic much.

So it seems that with wind and solar you need gas. Whereas with nuclear and coal you don't. So it seems building wind + solar + gas is one path to burning less coal. That sounds good to me because that cuts down on the worst carbon emitter and can be done relatively quickly. Which is essential. And there's the strong possibility of eventually implementing electricity storage and phasing out the gas plants entirely, except as an emergency backup. Whereas with nuclear we have waste storage issues that are unlikely to be resolved, at least in the US due to our notoriously untrustworthy politiicians who like to sweep problems under the rug rather than deal with them. But building more wind and solar doesn't in itself rule our nuclear. Why has this become some kind of vendetta?

So the wide adoption of solar and wind has led to a big demand for gas power plants that can kick-in as soon as the power supply from these other sources drops off. In California, the setting of the sun coincides with the evening peak demand for electricity, and this leads to a massive spike in demand for non-solar power at that time each day; This gives a massive boost to Gas in the current economic climate. In Germany, Wind is more common than Solar (the southernmost point in Germany is more than 47 degrees North latitude), and their power supply therefore relies even more on fossil fuel backup - long periods of high pressure in the winter are common, when both windspeeds and temperatures can be very low for a week or more at a time - and gas fills the gap, because idling gas plants are much cheaper than idling coal plants (although Germany does still burn a lot of coal). Of course, Germany also buys some surplus nuclear power from France; France is the only European nation outside Scandinavia whose CO₂ emissions are routinely below 50gCO₂eq/kWh - and all of the countries worldwide that achieve that goal rely on Nuclear, Hydro, or a mix of the two.

See https://www.electricitymap.org/?wind=false&solar=false&page=map for real time information on CO₂ emissions and the types of power generation that contribute to it.

Again, the extra capacity needed in gas power plants doesn't represent more carbon emissions except during the periods when wind and solar are down. And they would be needed then anyway.

 

[J842P]

...
Indeed, it is the adoption of wind and solar power that is a major driver of the push to more and more gas power plants.

Explain.

Because there has to be base-load generators to back-up all the non-baseload generators (i.e. wind and solar). This was fleshed out in a previous thread about how, paradoxically, adding *more wind and solar* can have the effect of overall increasing carbon emissions, unless the *base load* is low carbon. Well, our base-load is now coal and gas, in the US.

That strikes me as ridiculous. Whatever portion of electricity generation comes from wind and solar is essentially carbon free. If all of the increase in supply came from coal and gas then carbon emissions will increase. The extra capacity needed in coal and gas (or apparently mainly gas, per bilby) is idled during average wind and solar generation periods.

Yes, that is precisely my point. We needed a low-carbon base-load generation like two decades ago. At the very least, we need it NOW. Instead, we are going head-first into renewables, but the problem is that as long as renewables have to be supported by gas/coal, any positive effects get dampened, or indeed, can even get reversed, because of the underlying base-load source. We do not have the time for baby steps. Renewables, in certain geographic locations, are excellent solutions. But in most of the world, this is not the case if you are burning coal and gas to make up for the poor dynamics of intermittant renewables.

Again, the devil is in the details. But wherever renewables make sense, by all means: full steam ahead. But we need nuclear as base-load NOW. Or else, renewables are not going to make a sufficient impact in time. So, while gas is better than coal, that is a very low bar, probably too low.

We (the US) needed to have gotten onto nuclear decades ago, like the French. That an a fleet of electric cars, which actually are effective only when the energy is being generated by carbon-clean sources.

Electric cars are a separate issue.

That was an aside - the point I was making is that we needed nuclear power yesterday!

Instead, Germany is replacing nuclear with gas - the renewables are a red-herring - and France is set to roll-back on nuclear too. People are stupid. But your generation won't be around to suffer the consequences of this folly. So I guess it's not surprising that no one seems to care.

You need to include personal insults in your argument? You don't know me but if you want me to care about you and your generation start by losing the Trumpian rhetorical style. If I didn't care why would I even consider paying more for wind and solar when we have all that coal and tar sands oil? Sheesh.

I wasn't insulting you, I was calling the French and German policy makers who are shutting down nuclear plants and replacing them with coal/gas stupid. And I stand by that.

Also, my generation - the left and right wing - is overwhelmingly against Trump. So if we are going to be criticizing a generation for Trumpism, then the millennial generation is not it.

But if my rhetorical style were sufficient to get you to not care about the disastrous effects we are having on the environment, then you are a lost cause anyway. And while I am glad you are even willing to pay more - have a cookie - that is more than made up for in your resistance to nuclear.

All of the possible downsides of nuclear power, even their worst-case scenarios, are nowhere near as bad as what is being caused by coal and gas. Even issues of waste disposal are orders of magnitude lower for nuclear than for what passes as status quo for coal/gas, including radiation.