Reply to Chernobyl on HBO

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As horrible as this incident is, I hope rehashing it in this miniseries is not bad PR for nuclear power.  A lot went wrong in this situation, and a lot has changed since then.  [/quote]

Really? This is your concern? There are, perhaps, millions of individuals dealing with radiation-induced cancers and birth defects related to the Chernobyl disaster. And that's just one incident.

I really hope that nuclear power does not spread. We have other options. I'll take tar sand oil before more nuclear power.[/quote]

Then you really know nothing.  [/quote]

Educate me.

PS - do you work at one of these "public affairs" groups that are trying to shape the narrative online about this mini-series?[/quote]

My spouse is a former nuclear engineer.  I certainly don't understand nuclear power to the depths that he does, but he's been blathering on endlessly about the Chernobyl miniseries, so I pick up a thing here and there.

The type of reactor built for Chernobyl has never been built outside of the USSR.  A Chernobyl type incident couldn't be replicated in the US because we simply don't have reactors like that.  The physics are different.

There's never been a death in 50 years of the US using nuclear power.  There's been three historic incidents in all that time.  The horrible one, Chernobyl. The one where there was some containment leakage and the lasting impact is unknown, Fukushima. And three mile island, where it was completely contained and no one was injured.

The space it takes to run a nuclear power plant is incredibly small compared to the power generated.

Most of the waste is recyclable. The small amount that isn't recyclable is exactly that....small.

[b]It's cheap, [/b]low impact to the environment, safe, and doesn't use land which could best be used for other purposes.  I'll never convince people of all that, of course.  Some people are still afraid of air travel, and the incidents of accidents are historically low...but that's not on the news.        [/quote]Uh, an entire reactor unit at TMI that cost millions to build and millions to clean up (and it's still not entirely clean) has never produced a watt of electricity since.  And the accident could have been prevented if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the company that built the unit had listened to their own employees who warned them of the consequences of a particular malfunction in Babcock and Wilcox nuclear reactors.

Back in the day, they said that nuclear energy would be too cheap to meter but nowadays even plants that haven't had catastrophic accidents are struggling financially because natural gas is a whole lot cheaper than nuclear power.  The Perry Nuclear Plant in Ohio is probably going to close unless it gets subsidies from the government.  That's not what they promised us.  This line about nuclear power being cheap is an old story that never came true.  https://www.news-herald.com/news/ohio/perry-nuclear-power-plant-to-close-in/article_919062bd-55d0-5229-8c43-821f26ddb90b.html [/quote]

Ok.

[img]http://nuclearconnect.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/US-Electricity-Production-Costs0011.jpg[/img][/quote] Yeah, that's what I'd expect you to get from the American Nuclear Society.  Try reading this: https://climatenexus.org/climate-news-archive/nuclear-energy-us-expensive-source-competing-cheap-gas-renewables/

[quote]Nuclear Capacity and the Power Grid
Many nuclear plants are aging and nearing the end of their lifetimes. Fifteen nuclear plants (six that have closed since 2013 and nine that have announced retirement between 2019 and 2025) represent just over eighteen gigawatts of generation and approximately eighteen percent of total U.S. nuclear capacity. [b]They face high operating costs and competition from cheaper gas and renewable energy sources, making the business of running many of the nation’s nearly 100 nuclear plants unprofitable.[/b]

The conventional model for operating the power grid revolved around “baseload” capacity — supplying the grid’s minimum power requirements from plants that need to run continuously because they cannot easily start and stop. There were mostly coal and nuclear power plants. But that model is becoming obsolete as renewables and natural gas supply more and more power to the grid. These technologies can ramp up and down quickly, which is another reason baseload power is becoming obsolete. Innovations like active grid management, regional transmission lines and energy storage provide the coverage that baseload power previously generated. As gas and renewables ramp up and the grid becomes more efficient, the need for large baseload generators drops substantially.[/quote][/quote]

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