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SomeRandomIdi0t t1_j7j78sa wrote

Fun fact: you will be exposed to more radiation living 50 miles from a coal power plant than you would living 50 miles from a nuclear power plant

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mdh431 t1_j7j9dul wrote

More than if you worked in the nuclear plant.

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ansraliant t1_j7jqwzo wrote

if those anti-nuclear environmentalist could read they would be very angry

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strokes_your_nose t1_j7kv3hz wrote

Could you share more on this? Interested to learn.

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WeAreAllFooked t1_j7mfysr wrote

Basically coal contains trace amounts of radioactive elements and those radioactive particles are spread when the coal is burned and the waste gases are dumped in to the air.

1993 article mentioning it: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1002/ML100280691.pdf

2007 article mentioning it: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

A Canadian company wanted to buy up all the coal that was sitting around to extract radioactive isotopes from it and turn it in to nuclear fuel, when the coal companies found out about it, they immediately squashed the sale because of potential optics surrounding coal-fired power plants and the release of radioactive material. I'm trying to find the article that talks about it, but it's been a while since I read it

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Splenda t1_j7o7ssf wrote

Not only that, but the coal plant will poison fish with mercury, making them inedible, for a thousand miles downwind.

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Ksradrik t1_j7jrg00 wrote

Another fun fact: A Nuclear power plant mishap is also substantially more likely to kill anyone near it than a coal power plant mishap.

Its still a worthy risk, but pretending this is the issue most people are concerned about is just disingenuous, and therefore unlikely to actually reach a solution, its just venting.

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helm t1_j7jvggx wrote

It's almost impossible to google now due to Fukushima daiichi dominating everything, but there was a fossil power plant that blew up because of the tsunami in 2011 and it immediately killed more people than were directly killed at Fukushima.

The whole disaster killed some 20k people, and the nuclear accident was a huge headache on top of that, but in the end, the earthquake and tsunami were by far the worst causes of damage.

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WeAreAllFooked t1_j7mhxze wrote

This is patently false. Name me one nuclear accident not named Chernobyl or Fukushima where the reactor failed and lead to widespread contamination or verifiable health issues in the surrounding areas.

Chernobyl was a perfect storm of corruption, extremely poor reactor and containment design, and lax safety standards. Fukushima was caused by collusion, corruption, and inept management between the government of Japan, the regulator, and TEPCO.

Modern reactor and containment design are miles ahead of Chernobyl and Fukushima, and all reactors are designed around negative coefficients to prevent a possible catastrophic failure

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El_Grappadura t1_j7jurl4 wrote

Fun fact: Nuclear power is ~3 times as expensive as renewables

And it takes a lot longer to build, in fact decades which we don't have time for.

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mistressbitcoin t1_j7k1y5a wrote

The chart on that Wikipedia page does NOT support your first conclusion.

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tfks t1_j7klmtk wrote

Rosatom has been pumping out reactors, taking about six years each consistently for a couple of decades. It's not that nuclear reactors take that long to build. It's that our nuclear construction expertise in the West is trash because we've preferred to burn fossil fuels for the past 40 years.

When stating that nuclear costs more than renewables, you'll have to state what metric you're using. Most likely, you're using levelized cost of energy, which is a flawed metric for measuring the economics of power generation of renewables. For dispatchable sources, LCOE is fine. But renewables are not dispatchable (excluding hydro and geothermal, which are dispatchable), so LCOE is not an appropriate measure. You might ask why. Well, the reason is that it doesn't matter if the energy is cheap if it's being produced when you don't need it, which happens pretty frequently with renewables. To make this clear, if you lived in a place where it did not snow and someone came to you saying "hey, I'll clear snow from your property for $10 a year" you would be stupid to take that deal not because the price is high, but because you don't need that service. That company could advertise itself as being the lowest cost snow removal company in the world, and they would be right, but that isn't relevant to whether or not it makes sense to purchase the service. So sure, advocates of renewable energy can say that the cost of the energy they produce is very low, but the conversation doesn't end there. The analysis to determine how cost-effective renewable sources are depends heavily on the climate of a region and the existing grid infrastructure. For example, every degree of latitude you move from the equator reduces the value of solar.

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El_Grappadura t1_j7kms3i wrote

All of your statements need sources.

Olkiluoto 3 was built by Framatom and Siemens, who consistently built new fission reactors in the last decades. You can't say there is no expertise.. Maybe some russian company can pump out reactors which then don't comply with EU or US safety regulations, so that doesn't help anyone..

Also the cost of energy storage is included, so your whole point about energy not being available is wrong.

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tfks t1_j7kyk1n wrote

>Maybe some russian company can pump out reactors which then don't comply with EU or US safety regulations, so that doesn't help anyone..

Prior to war breaking out, Rosatom was building reactors for countries all over the world. This is public information. If you want a source, you can check wikipedia. Providing sources is more important for information that is niche, newer, or isn't readily available on google, none of which is true here.

But if you want a source that actually is news and makes sense to provide a source for, how about the SMR being build in Ontario. It's slated for completion in 2028, just five years from now.

>Also the cost of energy storage is included, so your whole point about energy not being available is wrong.

No, it isn't wrong. Your own source provided above, the wiki article, mentions this:

>Levelized avoided cost of electricity
>
>The metric levelized avoided cost of energy (LACE) addresses some of the shortcomings of LCOE by considering the economic value that the source provides to the grid. The economic value takes into account the dispatchability of a resource, as well as the existing energy mix in a region.

Which is literally what I just tried to explain to you. So you can ask for sources, but if you aren't even reading your own, is there any point? I'm really not trying to be a jerk here... that's an honest question. If someone was standing in front of you with a Harry Potter book in their hand and you said "Harry Potter has a lightning bolt scar" and someone said they didn't believe you and to prove it, how would you react?

Additionally, even if I did provide other sources, the degree to which they would be useful to this conversation depends on your familiarity with electrical engineering. I think a lot of people take electricity for granted because you stick a cable with metal prongs into the wall and stuff automagically starts happening. But the system behind all that is hugely complex. One challenge that isn't addressed at all by levelized cost studies is the reduction of inertia that is associated with replacing conventional generation sources with things connected through inverters like solar panels and wind turbines. Conventional generation sources don't have inverters and their inertial mass is coupled directly with the grid. That has a number of advantages that aren't accounted for at all in LCOE. I mean this with no disrespect, but if you don't understand the significance of what I just said, how is it that you think providing sources is going to help? Unless I can find a Veritasium video or something like that that takes the time to explain concepts like that in a way that is easily digestible, which I doubt exists, then no source I can provide will be helpful.

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Bullstryk t1_j7otafr wrote

Hallo, ich wünsche mir ein paar Quellen und eine konkretere als den Wikipedia-Eintrag, die kann man verschiedene interpretieren

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