Version x1 of Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop uploaded to gordianknotbook.com. This is such a major revision, I'm calling it a new Edition. Please consider downloading this version from gordianknotbook.com and trashing any older versions. Lots and lots of changes, mostly reflecting my own education. The three most important are:
Nobody should be tortured that way twice. Check the changes doc for what's important. The change in the SNT repair period changes the numbers but not the policy implications. The only truly substantial changes are the new chapter on thyroid cancer and the rewrite of Underwriter Certification (new Ch 13). Rest is mostly tidbits amplifying earlier points.
Jack, we face the same problem at Citizendium - an overwhelming amount of information. You might consider doing what we are - a hierarchy of short articles, with lots of links so people can easily find and dig into whatever details most interest them. LNT? You will find that in our article on Fear of Radiation, one of two featured articles linked in the section on Safety, the first of four sections in our top article - Nuclear Power Reconsidered.
Short of re-organizing your whole book, you might consider short rebuttals to some of the nonsense on our Debate Guide pages, with links to your book. Unlike Wikipedia, we do allow advocacy (and rebuttals) on our Debate Guide pages, just not endless debate. Short slam dunk rebuttals with links to your book and other reliable sources make the best summary arguments.
I have noticed on twitter that objections have mostly distilled to waste and cost, Chris Keefer confirmed my sense of this by saying so in a recent Decouple podcast
I had a tweet get a hundred likes making these arguments about waste:
.................
"What about the waste? The volume is so small it's the only energy sector that can
conceivably just bury all of it
90% is reusable as fuel in advanced reactors
After 600 years its radiation is too weak to damage you by contact. At that point it's just
another chemical waste"
.............
I feel that a few cost arguments are:
Mainstream energy systems modeling consistently shows wind, solar and backup system costs ski jump starting at 80% of production share so that nuclear is a necessary low carbon capstone to finish the system even at a high price
Economic analyses greatly discount the value of nuclear past 30 years, when the average plant will still have the majority of its life ahead of it. While these value estimates are useful, there are many countries with 30 year old nuclear plants where they are extremely valued economically and ecologically. The most cost effective carbon reduction option is extending existing nuclear plants (World Bank?) and 30 years from now the most cost effective carbon reduction option will be extending the life of plants we build now
Bad elitist, rich guy thinking. Nuclear at current costs would make humanity poorer. And there's at least 3 billion humans that cannot afford that. The goal is not to beat windsolar. The goal is to enrich humanity by taking full advantage of nuclear's promethean promise. Please see
If you are not cheaper than coal, don't bother. You will kill billions if you force nuclear on them. Repeat after me: expensive nuclear is no where good enough.
I agree and hope that Africa is allowed to build coal. I just seriously doubt that all the rich guys and gals will think twice about whether Africa can really afford to try to industrialize on wind and sun. So if Africa says at least give us nuclear for stability and ability to service smaller grids then 30 years from now they will have amortized plants
I would give a limb for one major country or region to unleash nuclear with a regulatory system like Underwriter's Certification. You never know. Things seem rigid until all of the sudden they really aren't, and then they can change fast
His thinking on LNT had changed in that he thinks spending a lot of time and energy arguing about LNT at low levels of radiation is not productive as it cannot definitively be proved one way or another. He thinks the argument should be more about risk. Relative to many things we accept in our life (driving, flying, alcohol), nuclear is very low risk. Is this a better approach?
I also listened to Chris Keefer’s Decouple podcast with Jacopo Buongiorno (Why is Western Nuclear so Expensive)
I walked away with the thought that safety rules per say were not the biggest driver for expensive nuclear, but in the case of Vogtle, it was not having a completed design and poor supply chain for parts and people. These are nuclear build problems not so much government regulation problems. I think getting a better handle on why the west cannot build nuclear cheaper vs. Russia, China, and South Korea and why the refurbishment of Canada’s reactors is going well is time well spent.
LeClear is wrong. It is easy to show that LNT is nonsense. LNT cannot replicate both the harm we see when a large dose is received in a short time and the lack of harm when the same or much larger dose is received over many years. PLs see
Buongiorno is a fine nuclear engineer but he is part of the nuclear establishment. It is very difficult for these people to cometo the conclusion that the system they have lived in their
whole professional lives, the Goldstandard, is fatally flawed. Dumping the current regulatory system is an absolutely necessary condition if nuclear is to be as cheap as it could be.
which asks the question why do the same people who throw up turnkey coal plants, which are technically at least as demanding, on time and budget turn into bumbling idiots when they try to do a nuclear plant.
I'm literally on the penultimate chapter of the original, which I hoped to finish tomorrow.
A well, back to the beginning with me.
James,
Nobody should be tortured that way twice. Check the changes doc for what's important. The change in the SNT repair period changes the numbers but not the policy implications. The only truly substantial changes are the new chapter on thyroid cancer and the rewrite of Underwriter Certification (new Ch 13). Rest is mostly tidbits amplifying earlier points.
Jack, we face the same problem at Citizendium - an overwhelming amount of information. You might consider doing what we are - a hierarchy of short articles, with lots of links so people can easily find and dig into whatever details most interest them. LNT? You will find that in our article on Fear of Radiation, one of two featured articles linked in the section on Safety, the first of four sections in our top article - Nuclear Power Reconsidered.
Short of re-organizing your whole book, you might consider short rebuttals to some of the nonsense on our Debate Guide pages, with links to your book. Unlike Wikipedia, we do allow advocacy (and rebuttals) on our Debate Guide pages, just not endless debate. Short slam dunk rebuttals with links to your book and other reliable sources make the best summary arguments.
Thanks - this is what I was thinking, but you said it better
I have noticed on twitter that objections have mostly distilled to waste and cost, Chris Keefer confirmed my sense of this by saying so in a recent Decouple podcast
I had a tweet get a hundred likes making these arguments about waste:
.................
"What about the waste? The volume is so small it's the only energy sector that can
conceivably just bury all of it
90% is reusable as fuel in advanced reactors
After 600 years its radiation is too weak to damage you by contact. At that point it's just
another chemical waste"
.............
I feel that a few cost arguments are:
Mainstream energy systems modeling consistently shows wind, solar and backup system costs ski jump starting at 80% of production share so that nuclear is a necessary low carbon capstone to finish the system even at a high price
Economic analyses greatly discount the value of nuclear past 30 years, when the average plant will still have the majority of its life ahead of it. While these value estimates are useful, there are many countries with 30 year old nuclear plants where they are extremely valued economically and ecologically. The most cost effective carbon reduction option is extending existing nuclear plants (World Bank?) and 30 years from now the most cost effective carbon reduction option will be extending the life of plants we build now
Smopes,
Bad elitist, rich guy thinking. Nuclear at current costs would make humanity poorer. And there's at least 3 billion humans that cannot afford that. The goal is not to beat windsolar. The goal is to enrich humanity by taking full advantage of nuclear's promethean promise. Please see
https://jackdevaney.substack.com/p/expensive-nuclear-is-nowhere-good-enough
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/expensive-nuclear-is-no-where-good-enough
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/nuclear-and-windsolar
If you are not cheaper than coal, don't bother. You will kill billions if you force nuclear on them. Repeat after me: expensive nuclear is no where good enough.
I agree and hope that Africa is allowed to build coal. I just seriously doubt that all the rich guys and gals will think twice about whether Africa can really afford to try to industrialize on wind and sun. So if Africa says at least give us nuclear for stability and ability to service smaller grids then 30 years from now they will have amortized plants
I would give a limb for one major country or region to unleash nuclear with a regulatory system like Underwriter's Certification. You never know. Things seem rigid until all of the sudden they really aren't, and then they can change fast
Yesterday I listened to the Fire2Fision podcast with DJ LeClear, aka the rad guy.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fire2fission-podcast/id1689588827?i=1000630950598
His thinking on LNT had changed in that he thinks spending a lot of time and energy arguing about LNT at low levels of radiation is not productive as it cannot definitively be proved one way or another. He thinks the argument should be more about risk. Relative to many things we accept in our life (driving, flying, alcohol), nuclear is very low risk. Is this a better approach?
I also listened to Chris Keefer’s Decouple podcast with Jacopo Buongiorno (Why is Western Nuclear so Expensive)
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decouple/id1516526694?i=1000630997584
I walked away with the thought that safety rules per say were not the biggest driver for expensive nuclear, but in the case of Vogtle, it was not having a completed design and poor supply chain for parts and people. These are nuclear build problems not so much government regulation problems. I think getting a better handle on why the west cannot build nuclear cheaper vs. Russia, China, and South Korea and why the refurbishment of Canada’s reactors is going well is time well spent.
LeClear is wrong. It is easy to show that LNT is nonsense. LNT cannot replicate both the harm we see when a large dose is received in a short time and the lack of harm when the same or much larger dose is received over many years. PLs see
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/lnt-is-nonsense and
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-lnt-is-not-inconsistent-with among other posts.
Moreover the policy implications of dumping LNT are immense
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/replacing-lnt-with-snt
Buongiorno is a fine nuclear engineer but he is part of the nuclear establishment. It is very difficult for these people to cometo the conclusion that the system they have lived in their
whole professional lives, the Goldstandard, is fatally flawed. Dumping the current regulatory system is an absolutely necessary condition if nuclear is to be as cheap as it could be.
Pls see https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/alara and
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/nuclear-is-too-expensive
The book Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop which you can download from
https://gordianknotbook.com goes into these subjects infar more detail.
Education on theses subjects will require more than listening to podcasts.
You might also want to check out
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/nuclears-failure-is-the contractors
which asks the question why do the same people who throw up turnkey coal plants, which are technically at least as demanding, on time and budget turn into bumbling idiots when they try to do a nuclear plant.