Use of nuclear technology gets green light in Rwanda(newtimes.co.rw)
newtimes.co.rw
Use of nuclear technology gets green light in Rwanda
https://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/use-nuclear-technology-gets-green-light-rwanda
121 comments
To be fair to the MP, however, he said it’s “like” living by a bomb, it was a metaphor. And there are examples in history of accidents at nuclear power plants that have caused damage to their surroundings. So his statement may not be indicative of misunderstanding the fundamentals of nuclear power.
A time-traveller from a thousand years in the future abducts you. You are informed that you will be dumped at one of two spacetime coordinates, but you'll be allowed to choose which – right outside Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant at 1:22am local time on 26 April 1986, or an equivalent distance from ground zero in Hiroshima at 8:14am local time on 6 August 1945. Which do you pick?
Neither choice is good, but the odds of survival are much higher with the first choice than the second. Nuclear power accidents and use of nuclear weapons are not really comparable – as bad as nuclear power accidents are, use of nuclear weapons is far more deadly.
Neither choice is good, but the odds of survival are much higher with the first choice than the second. Nuclear power accidents and use of nuclear weapons are not really comparable – as bad as nuclear power accidents are, use of nuclear weapons is far more deadly.
Chernobyl should be fine if you run away from it reasonably fast & ideally not downwind.
Hiroshima on the other hand - you dont want that. Last year we visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial museum and it was a very very heavy experience...
Hiroshima on the other hand - you dont want that. Last year we visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial museum and it was a very very heavy experience...
I'd choose Hiroshima.
"A millisecond of brilliant light and we're vaporized. Much more fortunate than the millions who'll wander sightless through the smoldering aftermath. We'll be spared the horror of survival." - WarGames, 1983
"A millisecond of brilliant light and we're vaporized. Much more fortunate than the millions who'll wander sightless through the smoldering aftermath. We'll be spared the horror of survival." - WarGames, 1983
How accurate was the Chernobyl mini-series wrt damage caused by radiation, specifically to the firefighters? If it was accurate at all I think I might pick Hiroshima, at least it would be over quick.
Firefighters are staying put to fight the fire. If they'd ran away from the disaster as fast as they could, they would have received less radiation exposure, and would have had greater chance of survival.
There is some limited public imagery of radiation injuries sustained by the firefighters. Its no where near the pepperoni pizza shown in the show but if you got it badly enough it is a three dimensional sunburn that kills you from the inside and waits for your body to catch up. I don't think there is any publicly available photography of the way acute radiation affects the skin but the phenomenon has been written about.
In true Soviet fashion some libraries had all material on radiation removed after the accident.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident (famous story which has become something of a creepypasta but does contain)
If you drink the FSB tea, I'd suggest finding a tall building.
In true Soviet fashion some libraries had all material on radiation removed after the accident.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident (famous story which has become something of a creepypasta but does contain)
If you drink the FSB tea, I'd suggest finding a tall building.
This is publicly available, report of the nuclear incident in Georgia done by IAEA:
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81...
Basically, 3 lumberjacks went into the woods, found a strange metallic thing that was warm to the touch, slept next to it. The report has incredibly graphic images of how their skin looked due to radiation exposure, don't scroll down to that section if you cannot look at gore. But essentially - the issue wasn't the initial damage, the issue was that the affected areas just wouldn't heal no matter how many skin transplants were done, literally rotting away while alive.
https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81...
Basically, 3 lumberjacks went into the woods, found a strange metallic thing that was warm to the touch, slept next to it. The report has incredibly graphic images of how their skin looked due to radiation exposure, don't scroll down to that section if you cannot look at gore. But essentially - the issue wasn't the initial damage, the issue was that the affected areas just wouldn't heal no matter how many skin transplants were done, literally rotting away while alive.
If they had a basic understanding of radioactivity, they would have realised the object was likely radioactive (any strangely warm or glowing object probably is), stayed away from it, and they would have been in a far better place. Their injuries were from choosing to expose themselves to it for hours on end (as a heat source), as opposed to the brief initial exposure of discovery.
When I was a kid my dad told me a story about people finding glowing objects and taking them home and giving their whole family radiation poisoning. (In hindsight, I think he was probably describing the Goiânia accident in Brazil in 1987, which would have been recently in the media at the time he warned me). Like most people, I never found any glowing object but if I ever did I would have known to leave it be, get the hell out of there, and then call the authorities.
When I was a kid my dad told me a story about people finding glowing objects and taking them home and giving their whole family radiation poisoning. (In hindsight, I think he was probably describing the Goiânia accident in Brazil in 1987, which would have been recently in the media at the time he warned me). Like most people, I never found any glowing object but if I ever did I would have known to leave it be, get the hell out of there, and then call the authorities.
Yeah it's crazy since it happened "recently" - only in 2001. I'm guessing that if they were growing up in Georgia in 60-70s, they received very little to no education. Still, it's mind boggling that someone would find a randomly hot object in the woods and not think it's at least a little bit dangerous. There's nothing in normal life that behaves like this, it should ring that self preservation alarm bell.
>In true Soviet fashion
In true American fashion they paid a bit of money, and said come back in 5 year's everything will be totally normal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll
In the cold war, both sides where just disgusting, in fact the US was most of the time the aggressor and the soviets had to be on the defense side (because near absence of money flow)
In true American fashion they paid a bit of money, and said come back in 5 year's everything will be totally normal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll
In the cold war, both sides where just disgusting, in fact the US was most of the time the aggressor and the soviets had to be on the defense side (because near absence of money flow)
I wasn't making any comparison in particular I just think that not allowing doctors to access the material needed to help their patients in order to suppress the flow of information is a good microcosm of soviet society.
The US was no saint during the Cold War but the Soviet Union was so much worse. Trivial Example: Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen are still alive, but the people they betrayed were executed in the basement of the Lubyanka - without trial.
>because near absence of money flow
Communism giveth, communism taketh away.
The US was no saint during the Cold War but the Soviet Union was so much worse. Trivial Example: Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen are still alive, but the people they betrayed were executed in the basement of the Lubyanka - without trial.
>because near absence of money flow
Communism giveth, communism taketh away.
>Communism giveth, communism taketh away
See that's the problem, extreme capitalism is absolutely the same..talking about supporting the UAE, attacking Irak (because OIL...not Human rights) the US is the example of a absolute extreme money and might centrist Kingdom (with a better marketing than the soviets)
PS: Please ask the Vietnamese people if the US the French or the Soviets are the worst
PPS: And the US eats his children (witch are good ones) alive...what a shitty society you made, russia is just a tick worse nowadays. You as a nation had the chance to make this planet a better place, but no you spit out billionaires like a assembly line.
See that's the problem, extreme capitalism is absolutely the same..talking about supporting the UAE, attacking Irak (because OIL...not Human rights) the US is the example of a absolute extreme money and might centrist Kingdom (with a better marketing than the soviets)
PS: Please ask the Vietnamese people if the US the French or the Soviets are the worst
PPS: And the US eats his children (witch are good ones) alive...what a shitty society you made, russia is just a tick worse nowadays. You as a nation had the chance to make this planet a better place, but no you spit out billionaires like a assembly line.
MANY victims of Hiroshima died like those firefighters died. Not all were vaporized instantly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
(I know the premise you were responding to was standing right next to ground zero, where you would have been vaporized, but I think it's worth mentioning that not all of the people killed died like that.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
(I know the premise you were responding to was standing right next to ground zero, where you would have been vaporized, but I think it's worth mentioning that not all of the people killed died like that.)
Since it's pedantic HN nuclear day again, actually it was an airburst.
Well since we're being pedantic, I didn't say anything about groundbursts. "Ground zero" in the context of Hiroshima refers to the hypocenter.
> In the case of an explosion above the ground, ground zero is the point on the ground directly below the nuclear detonation and is sometimes called the hypocenter (from Greek ὑπο- "under-" and center).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_zero
> In the case of an explosion above the ground, ground zero is the point on the ground directly below the nuclear detonation and is sometimes called the hypocenter (from Greek ὑπο- "under-" and center).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_zero
It’s an awful metaphor once you actually look into the statistics.
Right, and that's the more compelling rebuttal. The public health effects of fossil fuels are broadly underrated.
> Right, and that's the more compelling rebuttal. The public health effects of fossil fuels are broadly underrated.
I agree, the externalities are seldom felt in real time; in fact some of us were/are addicted to the smell of 103 Octane, it burns sweet. And the cancerous nature of them is often never a big concern, even from someone like myself who worked in a lab diagnosing Leukemia and Lymphoma at one point; but the key difference is that we can undo the green-house emission and carbon footprint through effective infrastructure, optimized utilization and prioritization of it as wel ultimately transitioning to EV.
Just look at how much better the air quality is from people WFH, this can be reduced even further if we simultaneously undertook a large enough planting of trees and plants in Urban areas with CO2 requisitioning centric crops, like hemp, to remediate soils and our air.
With Nuclear getting it wrong once, be it from Natural causes or Human error, has dire consequences that can't be undone even if its deemed to be 'contained': just look at Chernobyl during the fires this year. We were in no way ready to deal with that issue given a simultaneously dreadful pandemic sweeping the Planet.
When it comes to Energy usage, I think we have to move away from solely a short-sighted quick profit based calculus, and look at it more through risk assessment approach. Where rather than think about spending money in some study looking at the affects of near extinct squirrels we see this for what it is: a very volatile planet that is hostile to Man's infrastructure with ever-changing variables.
I think that's the biggest underrated opinion of all as it shatters the conveniences of modernity in the West we've all come to expect.
I agree, the externalities are seldom felt in real time; in fact some of us were/are addicted to the smell of 103 Octane, it burns sweet. And the cancerous nature of them is often never a big concern, even from someone like myself who worked in a lab diagnosing Leukemia and Lymphoma at one point; but the key difference is that we can undo the green-house emission and carbon footprint through effective infrastructure, optimized utilization and prioritization of it as wel ultimately transitioning to EV.
Just look at how much better the air quality is from people WFH, this can be reduced even further if we simultaneously undertook a large enough planting of trees and plants in Urban areas with CO2 requisitioning centric crops, like hemp, to remediate soils and our air.
With Nuclear getting it wrong once, be it from Natural causes or Human error, has dire consequences that can't be undone even if its deemed to be 'contained': just look at Chernobyl during the fires this year. We were in no way ready to deal with that issue given a simultaneously dreadful pandemic sweeping the Planet.
When it comes to Energy usage, I think we have to move away from solely a short-sighted quick profit based calculus, and look at it more through risk assessment approach. Where rather than think about spending money in some study looking at the affects of near extinct squirrels we see this for what it is: a very volatile planet that is hostile to Man's infrastructure with ever-changing variables.
I think that's the biggest underrated opinion of all as it shatters the conveniences of modernity in the West we've all come to expect.
Humans have a really hard time balancing consistent, boring risk against low frequency high impact risk.
> It’s an awful metaphor once you actually look into the statistics.
Have you ever lived near a Ppwer Plant? I have, the worst one in the US actually, and it leaked so much that it had to be shut down after continual incompetence, corruption and violations. I actually think its an apt metaphor, if only due to Human error.
Worst yet is that most are built around coastal areas and the infrastructure is such that there is only one way in, and without any connecting freeways around the area for many miles. I was trapped in my car coming back home several times during massive fires with no way to get home other than to stay on that freeway for 7 hours inhaling smoke all the way there, my hair smelled like a bbq pit for a week.
In the case of a melt down, as San Onofre is both on the Pacific coast line as well as along the San Andreas fault line so it was just a matter of time, we would all die. Some slower than others, but death was the most likely outcome due to radiation exposure as an evacuation plan would fail.
When you see this as soon as you walk out the door, and can't tell why and how to react that is then you can comment on what is an awful metaphor or not, until then you have no real idea what it feels like:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
I also know people from Fukushima, they came to our town in 2011 to warn us, and my friends wife is from Fukushima prefecture and was close enough from the plant to be affected by the Tsunami, it wiped away her family business and home, and all of these people feel the same.
Statistics are only a cursory form of understanding a subject and hardly comprehensive.
Nuclear technology is fine for non-terrestrial purposes, like Mars colonization, we have so many better options on this planet that it baffles me why such short shortsightedness prevails, other than abject greed.
Hell, Elon refuses to use it on Mars, and would rather have a football fields worth of solar farms, which may be a mistake due to weather based outages that are likely to occur, but is also a keener insight as to how myopic this technology is in the Hands of Humans from one of the most cunning people on this Planet.
Have you ever lived near a Ppwer Plant? I have, the worst one in the US actually, and it leaked so much that it had to be shut down after continual incompetence, corruption and violations. I actually think its an apt metaphor, if only due to Human error.
Worst yet is that most are built around coastal areas and the infrastructure is such that there is only one way in, and without any connecting freeways around the area for many miles. I was trapped in my car coming back home several times during massive fires with no way to get home other than to stay on that freeway for 7 hours inhaling smoke all the way there, my hair smelled like a bbq pit for a week.
In the case of a melt down, as San Onofre is both on the Pacific coast line as well as along the San Andreas fault line so it was just a matter of time, we would all die. Some slower than others, but death was the most likely outcome due to radiation exposure as an evacuation plan would fail.
When you see this as soon as you walk out the door, and can't tell why and how to react that is then you can comment on what is an awful metaphor or not, until then you have no real idea what it feels like:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
I also know people from Fukushima, they came to our town in 2011 to warn us, and my friends wife is from Fukushima prefecture and was close enough from the plant to be affected by the Tsunami, it wiped away her family business and home, and all of these people feel the same.
Statistics are only a cursory form of understanding a subject and hardly comprehensive.
Nuclear technology is fine for non-terrestrial purposes, like Mars colonization, we have so many better options on this planet that it baffles me why such short shortsightedness prevails, other than abject greed.
Hell, Elon refuses to use it on Mars, and would rather have a football fields worth of solar farms, which may be a mistake due to weather based outages that are likely to occur, but is also a keener insight as to how myopic this technology is in the Hands of Humans from one of the most cunning people on this Planet.
> Have you ever lived near a Ppwer Plant?
Yes.
> In the case of a melt down, as San Onofre is both on the Pacific coast line as well as along the San Andreas fault line so it was just a matter of time, we would all die. Some slower than others, but death was the most likely outcome due to radiation exposure as an evacuation plan would fail.
This is disinformation and has absolutely no basis in fact or reality.
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) shut down in 2012 and was replaced (partially) by a natural gas power plant in Carlsbad. There is no possibility of meltdown. Even if there were, the impact would not even approach what you are describing.
> football fields worth of solar farms
Football fields would be tiny in comparison to the immense amount of land that would be required to replace Diablo Canyon with solar panels. Solar Star generates one eleventh the power of Diablo Canyon over the course of a year and occupies almost four times the space. Solar Star produces only about 42% as much energy in December as it does in June, while Diablo Canyon operates consistently pretty much year-round.
A single plant powers 9% of California with near-zero carbon emissions.
Yes.
> In the case of a melt down, as San Onofre is both on the Pacific coast line as well as along the San Andreas fault line so it was just a matter of time, we would all die. Some slower than others, but death was the most likely outcome due to radiation exposure as an evacuation plan would fail.
This is disinformation and has absolutely no basis in fact or reality.
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) shut down in 2012 and was replaced (partially) by a natural gas power plant in Carlsbad. There is no possibility of meltdown. Even if there were, the impact would not even approach what you are describing.
> football fields worth of solar farms
Football fields would be tiny in comparison to the immense amount of land that would be required to replace Diablo Canyon with solar panels. Solar Star generates one eleventh the power of Diablo Canyon over the course of a year and occupies almost four times the space. Solar Star produces only about 42% as much energy in December as it does in June, while Diablo Canyon operates consistently pretty much year-round.
A single plant powers 9% of California with near-zero carbon emissions.
I'm not even going to validate your post with a response, you clearly didn't grasp what I was saying and instead to a reactionary stance nor do you have actual factual information; SONGS was only on standby in 2012 after the leak was made public (it continued to be operational for a few days later while they tried to resolve the leak) while they dealt with the legal proceedings in court about how a decommsion would take place and who would be liable for it, and was only shutdown in 2013.
I uprooted my entire Life because of this situation and how badly it was handled by the local Government, Edison, Mitsubishi, NRC etc... I lived in a neighborhood with mainly workers from SONGS! I had conversations with one of the lead engineers (one my neighbors) from Mitsubishi where I tried to get as much information as I could to make my eventual decision to leave.
I was an activist on the front line, I was there and I lived in San Clemente: How are you going to tell me what happened? Because you read something you think you have greater insight on the situation than someone who lived it on a daily basis?
> Football fields would be tiny in comparison to the immense amount of land...
You took what I said out of context, that was in reference to Mars colonization.
Again... this is horrible post and you should be downvoted and be ignored entirely on the matter and perhaps on any other subject if this your approach to argument/reasoning.
I uprooted my entire Life because of this situation and how badly it was handled by the local Government, Edison, Mitsubishi, NRC etc... I lived in a neighborhood with mainly workers from SONGS! I had conversations with one of the lead engineers (one my neighbors) from Mitsubishi where I tried to get as much information as I could to make my eventual decision to leave.
I was an activist on the front line, I was there and I lived in San Clemente: How are you going to tell me what happened? Because you read something you think you have greater insight on the situation than someone who lived it on a daily basis?
> Football fields would be tiny in comparison to the immense amount of land...
You took what I said out of context, that was in reference to Mars colonization.
Again... this is horrible post and you should be downvoted and be ignored entirely on the matter and perhaps on any other subject if this your approach to argument/reasoning.
> Statistics are only a cursory form of understanding a subject and hardly comprehensive.
And yet your anecdotal evidence is much better at estimating risk than it?
And yet your anecdotal evidence is much better at estimating risk than it?
> And yet your anecdotal evidence is much better at estimating risk than it?
Seeing as how my anecdotal situation was a first hand account of the many perils it entails, briefly outling why some of us still have bad PTSD about it, and how that situation ultimately led to the closure of the plant, I'd say: absolutely.
You have a very glib understanding of this situation, and it shows if you still ask such a vapid question.
You have no idea of the amount of corruption that goes on with the NRA at all. Just look how they're handling the wasted material, they're literately burying in casks on site it leaving it in pools and saying 'well, that's good enough' along one of the most active fault lines in N. America right net to the Pacific Ocean!
Edison try to wash its hands of the situation entirely by blaming Mitsubishi who also tried to remove itself from any culpability... and this has gone until recently, like last month. All while nothing got done for nearly 7 years.
And in Japan its worse with the Nuclear village and TEPCO's influence on the Abe cabinet.
You may not know this, but back in 2011 many Japanese women refused to have children after Fukushima, and not just those from Fukushima prefecture (a country with already horrible fertility rates) because of the fallout they saw first hand with the birth defects of the Hibakusha. The amount of deformed babies from WWII is staggering, the amount of displaced people is terrifying, but the fact that they allowed for this technology to be used for commercial applications in a country where Nuclear bombs were used against them in Warfare all while geo-thermal literately covers the entire country is just fucking CRIMINAL.
I still remember 3/11 vividly, as the leak at San Onofre happened not long after and we had to take to protesting against SONGS at personal danger to ourselves--they started to monitor and follow anti-nuclear protestors that later led to mass detainment and interrogation.
I'm sure you can grasp all of that by looking at a spreadsheet on excel.
Seeing as how my anecdotal situation was a first hand account of the many perils it entails, briefly outling why some of us still have bad PTSD about it, and how that situation ultimately led to the closure of the plant, I'd say: absolutely.
You have a very glib understanding of this situation, and it shows if you still ask such a vapid question.
You have no idea of the amount of corruption that goes on with the NRA at all. Just look how they're handling the wasted material, they're literately burying in casks on site it leaving it in pools and saying 'well, that's good enough' along one of the most active fault lines in N. America right net to the Pacific Ocean!
Edison try to wash its hands of the situation entirely by blaming Mitsubishi who also tried to remove itself from any culpability... and this has gone until recently, like last month. All while nothing got done for nearly 7 years.
And in Japan its worse with the Nuclear village and TEPCO's influence on the Abe cabinet.
You may not know this, but back in 2011 many Japanese women refused to have children after Fukushima, and not just those from Fukushima prefecture (a country with already horrible fertility rates) because of the fallout they saw first hand with the birth defects of the Hibakusha. The amount of deformed babies from WWII is staggering, the amount of displaced people is terrifying, but the fact that they allowed for this technology to be used for commercial applications in a country where Nuclear bombs were used against them in Warfare all while geo-thermal literately covers the entire country is just fucking CRIMINAL.
I still remember 3/11 vividly, as the leak at San Onofre happened not long after and we had to take to protesting against SONGS at personal danger to ourselves--they started to monitor and follow anti-nuclear protestors that later led to mass detainment and interrogation.
I'm sure you can grasp all of that by looking at a spreadsheet on excel.
Oh, I'm aware of the corruption that follows nuclear programs–every effort of that size and expense has it; it's all but inevitable. But I still maintain that "a spreadsheet on excel" is a much more accurate way of ascertaining risk than your personal experience. Mostly because your personal experience doesn't include the people who in coal-related deaths every year.
[deleted]
There's another plant in NY state with no evacuation path. Even the govt. is concerned about that one.
It's a hard comparison to make. Nuclear weapons have caused, and care capable of causing, more damage. But they also have a better safety record, insofar as accidents at nuclear power plants have done more damage to surrounding communities than accidents at places where nuclear weapons are stored.
IOW, one could argue that the metaphor is making nuclear power plants out to be safer than they are.
It's true that coal is awful, too. But I think that it would be callous to simply dismiss the rather arresting psychological impact of entire communities being rendered uninhabitable at a single stroke. Why what happened to Pripyat or Fukushima is known to basically everyone, while what happened at places like Aberfan and Centralia seem to have become subject matter for Atlas Obscura, I couldn't quite say. Perhaps it's the greater scale of the individual events.
IOW, one could argue that the metaphor is making nuclear power plants out to be safer than they are.
It's true that coal is awful, too. But I think that it would be callous to simply dismiss the rather arresting psychological impact of entire communities being rendered uninhabitable at a single stroke. Why what happened to Pripyat or Fukushima is known to basically everyone, while what happened at places like Aberfan and Centralia seem to have become subject matter for Atlas Obscura, I couldn't quite say. Perhaps it's the greater scale of the individual events.
> But they also have a better safety record, insofar as accidents at nuclear power plants have done more damage to surrounding communities than accidents at places where nuclear weapons are stored.
Compared to the sites in the US related to nuclear weapons, like Hanford, and the (literal) fallout from above-ground nuclear weapons testing?
It's also quite likely that accidents related to nuclear weapons are under-reported, especially outside of the US, for all the obvious reasons.
Compared to the sites in the US related to nuclear weapons, like Hanford, and the (literal) fallout from above-ground nuclear weapons testing?
It's also quite likely that accidents related to nuclear weapons are under-reported, especially outside of the US, for all the obvious reasons.
I think it's probably safe to say that more Americans have been killed by nuclear bomb tests than by nuclear powerplant accidents. It's hard to say for sure, but John Wayne may have been one of those killed by it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders
I recomend looking up "Broken arrow" - many nuclear weapons have been destroyed or lost, often with signifficant local loss of life (generally the bomber crew & often crew of the aicraft the bombrr colided with) as well as local contamination.
Also some of the soviet bomb development efforts caused wide scale contamination, sometime even in inhabitted areas.
Also some of the soviet bomb development efforts caused wide scale contamination, sometime even in inhabitted areas.
If the statistics were so great, insurance for the plant would be cheap. Yet no one will insure a nuclear plant. Why is that? No one wants to take free money?
> If the statistics were so great, insurance for the plant would be cheap. Yet no one will insure a nuclear plant. Why is that? No one wants to take free money?
This is a common trope, but that answer is that insurance companies are required to hold enough capital to pay a claim regardless of what the probability is. So if you want someone to carry a hundred billion dollars worth of insurance, even if the probability of the event was one in a trillion, the insurance would still be prohibitively expensive because you'd have to pay the time value of money on the hundred billion dollars the insurance company has to hold in order to cover a potential claim regardless of whether one ever comes.
This is why the government insurance thing. The federal government is large enough that it isn't necessary to make them hold that much capital in reserve ahead of time in order to trust their ability to pay a claim, which solves the problem.
This is a common trope, but that answer is that insurance companies are required to hold enough capital to pay a claim regardless of what the probability is. So if you want someone to carry a hundred billion dollars worth of insurance, even if the probability of the event was one in a trillion, the insurance would still be prohibitively expensive because you'd have to pay the time value of money on the hundred billion dollars the insurance company has to hold in order to cover a potential claim regardless of whether one ever comes.
This is why the government insurance thing. The federal government is large enough that it isn't necessary to make them hold that much capital in reserve ahead of time in order to trust their ability to pay a claim, which solves the problem.
There is $450m nuclear insurance available on the market. Perhaps you could work out proportional reinsurance using that plus the reactor maker insurance guarantee. Price-Anderson already incentivizes nuclear quite a bit by the US Gov acting as a backer. It doesn't help because nuclear is too risky for the benefit. Same as hydro-electric. Too dangerous for the money.
Reinsurance is a method to pool insurance resources so that a smaller insurance company can assert the ability to cover a hundred billion dollar claim to begin with. It doesn't solve the time value of money issue, it only moves it around.
Carrying that amount of insurance is prohibitively expensive independent of the risk. Require the oil companies to carry enough insurance on every well to cover a claim the size of Deepwater Horizon and see how fast it destroys them.
Carrying that amount of insurance is prohibitively expensive independent of the risk. Require the oil companies to carry enough insurance on every well to cover a claim the size of Deepwater Horizon and see how fast it destroys them.
Which statistics? Rate of unintended explosions?
I believe the "steel man" argument is that living next to a nuclear power plant exposes you to unknown tail risks.
I believe the "steel man" argument is that living next to a nuclear power plant exposes you to unknown tail risks.
Living near a coal power plant exposes you to significantly more radiation than a nuclear power plant, let alone other health risks due to non-radioactive pollution.
> Living near a coal power plant exposes you to significantly more radiation than a nuclear power plant, let alone other health risks due to non-radioactive pollution.
But who is advocating for coal in lieu of Nuclear, other than say China?
This is such a red herring, that no one in their right mind is trying to use coal as alternative, I mean even Texas with a dreadful position on environmental damage (see examples like COVID) and is swimming in oil--they had 99 cent gasoline before the pandemic--is moving towards wind farms.
Even the Gulf States see the writing on the wall and are moving on to other investments in Aerospace and mining asteroids in space.
But who is advocating for coal in lieu of Nuclear, other than say China?
This is such a red herring, that no one in their right mind is trying to use coal as alternative, I mean even Texas with a dreadful position on environmental damage (see examples like COVID) and is swimming in oil--they had 99 cent gasoline before the pandemic--is moving towards wind farms.
Even the Gulf States see the writing on the wall and are moving on to other investments in Aerospace and mining asteroids in space.
> But who is advocating for coal in lieu of Nuclear, other than say China?
As of 2016, Germany generated ~40% of its electricity from coal [1]. At the same time, France generated 72.3% of its electricity from nuclear (2016) [2], and 1.18% from coal [3].
Yet you will see people straight-up praising Germany for its anti-nuclear stance.
People who advocate against nuclear, yet stay silent on coal, are contributing to our coal-burning world, whether they realize it or not. Actions speak louder than words.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Electricity_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France
[3] https://www.climatescorecard.org/2020/04/france-aims-at-clea...
As of 2016, Germany generated ~40% of its electricity from coal [1]. At the same time, France generated 72.3% of its electricity from nuclear (2016) [2], and 1.18% from coal [3].
Yet you will see people straight-up praising Germany for its anti-nuclear stance.
People who advocate against nuclear, yet stay silent on coal, are contributing to our coal-burning world, whether they realize it or not. Actions speak louder than words.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Electricity_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France
[3] https://www.climatescorecard.org/2020/04/france-aims-at-clea...
Japan is also building a lot of coal plans to cover all the nuclear reactors that are either still sitting idle or have been decomissioned early. We even saw one of the coal plans under construction right from the beach of the Rabbit Island last year.
> Japan is also building a lot of coal plans to cover all the nuclear reactors that are either still sitting idle or have been decommissioned early. We even saw one of the coal plans under construction right from the beach of the Rabbit Island last year.
As a resident, have they made appeals to explore geothermal? During the 'Genpatsu Hantai' protests after Fukushima in 2011 so many people were committed to making that happen, the Abe Government was stalling things for TEPCO but I thought by now their would be at least some exploration, my cousin did his Civil Engineering degree under a professor who was part of a team doing those studies in Japan before Fukushima. Things were promising.
What happened?
Japan is tricky, it has very few if any natural resources, but Nuclear only ever made up 30% of its energy needs in its peak. In the time from 2011 to now you'd think more viable projects for geothermal would have been made, rather than relying on coal being brought in from Sea freight for their energy. Japan has always been in a precarious situation when it came to Energy creation, its the commonly told reason (US oil embargo) why it attacked Pearl Harbor; although this entirely negates that the supposed 'neutral' US was already involved in fighting the Japanese Imperial Forces in China under the AVG. Then again Fukushima residents still reside in a version of their own FEMA camp after all these years.
As a resident, have they made appeals to explore geothermal? During the 'Genpatsu Hantai' protests after Fukushima in 2011 so many people were committed to making that happen, the Abe Government was stalling things for TEPCO but I thought by now their would be at least some exploration, my cousin did his Civil Engineering degree under a professor who was part of a team doing those studies in Japan before Fukushima. Things were promising.
What happened?
Japan is tricky, it has very few if any natural resources, but Nuclear only ever made up 30% of its energy needs in its peak. In the time from 2011 to now you'd think more viable projects for geothermal would have been made, rather than relying on coal being brought in from Sea freight for their energy. Japan has always been in a precarious situation when it came to Energy creation, its the commonly told reason (US oil embargo) why it attacked Pearl Harbor; although this entirely negates that the supposed 'neutral' US was already involved in fighting the Japanese Imperial Forces in China under the AVG. Then again Fukushima residents still reside in a version of their own FEMA camp after all these years.
Indeed, there should be significant resources - and if you go to the Kanawa district of Beppu you can practically see them with your own eyes. :)
Found this on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Japan
Apparently there is opposition from local people that large scale geothermal energy development could disrupt natural hot springs that they often depend on with their livelihood.
BTW, you can kinda feel the energy crisis while in Japan - you will quickly notice how solar panels are places on any unused flat land that is available & there are many solar water heaters (that could save quite a bit of electricity and gas for water heating).
Found this on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Japan
Apparently there is opposition from local people that large scale geothermal energy development could disrupt natural hot springs that they often depend on with their livelihood.
BTW, you can kinda feel the energy crisis while in Japan - you will quickly notice how solar panels are places on any unused flat land that is available & there are many solar water heaters (that could save quite a bit of electricity and gas for water heating).
And in 2019, three years later, it was down to 29.3%. What happened was tweaking of the European carbon credit market to increase the cost of CO2 credits.
https://strom-report.de/germany-power-generation-mix/
https://strom-report.de/germany-power-generation-mix/
> Yet you will see people straight-up praising Germany for its anti-nuclear stance.
I don't, and I wore the 'Atomkraft, nein danke' patch too while I lived there and installed solar on several sites for the Farm owners I worked for; the State may have subsidized solar a lot, but as you said they have gaps and they just import the energy from France's Nuclear behemoth despite this policy. I lived and worked in Southern Germany 30 Km away from the border of France near Alsace and this was common knowledge when I lived there. The mother of my friend who I worked for was a politician of the Green Party, and this was one of the point of contentions she and I would argue over; the facade of doing something while only externalizing the issue.
This was the same in my hometown with the nuclear plant in Orange County, we ended up paying Mitusbishi Heavy Industries for a f'd re-design, paid Edison more for electricity, and had our lives impacted with the radiation leak and our surf spots closed off so that we could subsidize and help offset the energy needs of the greater San Diego region; specifically Camp Pendelton Military base, which was/is the biggest domestic concentration of Marines on US soil for a mobilization point into the Pacific region where Obama had placed his military focus on early into this administration.
Turns out the grid could handle it without the need of SONGS as its been shutdown, and they restarted natural gas plants in OC as result.
> People who advocate against nuclear, yet stay silent on coal, are contributing to our coal-burning world, whether they realize it or not. Actions speak louder than words.
Agreed but this is portraying things in a false dichotomy, I'm for advocating the use of all renewable in conjunction of having fossil fuels be the (limited) back up for when its needed to fill the gaps. I really do not think we will 100% remove ourselves on fossil fuel, airplanes will likely never be EV, nor cargo crafts for Sea Freight, neither will propellants for rockets go away either. In fact I see it going up in fact as SpaceX makes progress with Starship and increases its manifest, and at the tail end of the consumer market motorsports people like myself will always have a need for it.
There are far too many variables to realistically think Fossil fuel will go away 100% in any of our Lifetimes, my friend is finishing his BSc in renewable energy/EE and just got accepted to a Masters program in Iceland focused on geothermal and even he says the same thing. Albeit incredibly reluctantly.
I don't, and I wore the 'Atomkraft, nein danke' patch too while I lived there and installed solar on several sites for the Farm owners I worked for; the State may have subsidized solar a lot, but as you said they have gaps and they just import the energy from France's Nuclear behemoth despite this policy. I lived and worked in Southern Germany 30 Km away from the border of France near Alsace and this was common knowledge when I lived there. The mother of my friend who I worked for was a politician of the Green Party, and this was one of the point of contentions she and I would argue over; the facade of doing something while only externalizing the issue.
This was the same in my hometown with the nuclear plant in Orange County, we ended up paying Mitusbishi Heavy Industries for a f'd re-design, paid Edison more for electricity, and had our lives impacted with the radiation leak and our surf spots closed off so that we could subsidize and help offset the energy needs of the greater San Diego region; specifically Camp Pendelton Military base, which was/is the biggest domestic concentration of Marines on US soil for a mobilization point into the Pacific region where Obama had placed his military focus on early into this administration.
Turns out the grid could handle it without the need of SONGS as its been shutdown, and they restarted natural gas plants in OC as result.
> People who advocate against nuclear, yet stay silent on coal, are contributing to our coal-burning world, whether they realize it or not. Actions speak louder than words.
Agreed but this is portraying things in a false dichotomy, I'm for advocating the use of all renewable in conjunction of having fossil fuels be the (limited) back up for when its needed to fill the gaps. I really do not think we will 100% remove ourselves on fossil fuel, airplanes will likely never be EV, nor cargo crafts for Sea Freight, neither will propellants for rockets go away either. In fact I see it going up in fact as SpaceX makes progress with Starship and increases its manifest, and at the tail end of the consumer market motorsports people like myself will always have a need for it.
There are far too many variables to realistically think Fossil fuel will go away 100% in any of our Lifetimes, my friend is finishing his BSc in renewable energy/EE and just got accepted to a Masters program in Iceland focused on geothermal and even he says the same thing. Albeit incredibly reluctantly.
> But who is advocating for coal in lieu of Nuclear, other than say China?
Germany, for example, is literally dismantling their nuclear energy program and the slack is taken up with coal. Due to self-named "green" advocacy.
Or anyone arguing against nuclear in the developing world, for example. The status quo is coal.
Germany, for example, is literally dismantling their nuclear energy program and the slack is taken up with coal. Due to self-named "green" advocacy.
Or anyone arguing against nuclear in the developing world, for example. The status quo is coal.
It gets a lot crazier than that. Germany is also closing coal plants. If not enough power is available we are importing from France(nuclear) or Poland(coal) for a premium of course. Germany's energy policy is a complete fail and should never be praised.
The US has built just one new coal power plant in the last five years (a tiny one in Alaska). Coal is not the status quo; coal is collapsing here. Neither nuclear nor coal is the way forward.
I'm very much in favor of nuclear, but if you want to advocate for it, you should know what the strongest arguments against it are.
It's very easy to beat down the strawman of pollution.
The risks of living next to a coal plant are rather well understood.
The worst case scenario of living next to a coal plant is very different from the worst case scenario of living next to a nuke.
It's very easy to beat down the strawman of pollution.
The risks of living next to a coal plant are rather well understood.
The worst case scenario of living next to a coal plant is very different from the worst case scenario of living next to a nuke.
These statistics: http://origin.who.int/airpollution/en/
Like statistics on something like 70 years of industrial experience with nuclear plants? How many centuries are required to make a point?
Its as useful a metaphor as saying living next to a pond is as dangerous as living next to an ocean.
Bad analogies are bad.
Bad analogies are bad.
"Causing damage to surroundings" is to "exploding nuclear bomb" as a broken tail light is to 9/11.
Yep. Roughly same source, but a very different "pathway" of energy. Nuclear bombs depend on prompt neutrons, whereas nuclear power depends on delayed neutrons. Hence why the enrichment of the Uranium is important.
And those who bring up the Chernobyl explosion, those were due to Hydrogen gas build up. Which is an interesting case study of Murphy's law.
And those who bring up the Chernobyl explosion, those were due to Hydrogen gas build up. Which is an interesting case study of Murphy's law.
The Chernobyl explosion was a steam explosion caused by superheated cooling water.
You may be thinking of Fukushima which was mainly due to the build up of hydrogen gas.
You may be thinking of Fukushima which was mainly due to the build up of hydrogen gas.
"This is typical of people who aren’t educated about nuclear power."
This is typical of people who are aware of Chernobyl and Fukushima. There have not been utility-scale many nuclear power plants in the history of the world. The fact that two out of ~600 failed catastrophically makes natural gas, wind and solar look really safe by comparison (especially since they are all cheaper and do not produce radioactive waste that lasts forever). How many catastrophic energy plant failures can you name that were not nuclear?
This is typical of people who are aware of Chernobyl and Fukushima. There have not been utility-scale many nuclear power plants in the history of the world. The fact that two out of ~600 failed catastrophically makes natural gas, wind and solar look really safe by comparison (especially since they are all cheaper and do not produce radioactive waste that lasts forever). How many catastrophic energy plant failures can you name that were not nuclear?
The Banqiao and Shimantan dam failures in China killed ~170K people.
The Machchu-2 dam failure killed 5K people in India.
The South Fork dam failure killed 2K people in the US.
Coal mining directly killed over 100 people annually up until the mid 1980s, and continues to kill 10-30 people annually.
Oil drilling in general kills about 100-110 people annually.
There's not much good data for wind turbines, but generally wind power kills 10+ people annually, either due to fires in the turbine housing or falls.
There have been a number of deaths at various power plants, often due to electrocution or steam boiler explosions.
The only truly safe power utility-scale power source in widespread use is solar.
BTW: Fukushima killed 1 person directly due to the nuclear material. Even Chernobyl only killed between 30 to 80 people directly, depending on how you count it.
If you want to count indirect deaths due to Chernobyl and Fukushima, then you also have to compare that to indirect deaths due to traditional power. You don't want to know how many people diesel, oil, and coal kill annually!
The Machchu-2 dam failure killed 5K people in India.
The South Fork dam failure killed 2K people in the US.
Coal mining directly killed over 100 people annually up until the mid 1980s, and continues to kill 10-30 people annually.
Oil drilling in general kills about 100-110 people annually.
There's not much good data for wind turbines, but generally wind power kills 10+ people annually, either due to fires in the turbine housing or falls.
There have been a number of deaths at various power plants, often due to electrocution or steam boiler explosions.
The only truly safe power utility-scale power source in widespread use is solar.
BTW: Fukushima killed 1 person directly due to the nuclear material. Even Chernobyl only killed between 30 to 80 people directly, depending on how you count it.
If you want to count indirect deaths due to Chernobyl and Fukushima, then you also have to compare that to indirect deaths due to traditional power. You don't want to know how many people diesel, oil, and coal kill annually!
Dam failures can be truly horrific. When the South Fork Dam failed and flooded Johnstown, the floodwaters smashed a bunch of people, a barbed wire factory and various other debris into a stone bridge (which still stands today.) The debris, a tangle of wood, people (many still alive), and twisted metal, then caught fire and burned for days, killing dozens. They had to use dynamite to clear the wreckage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Bridge_(Johnstown,_Penns...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Bridge_(Johnstown,_Penns...
> The only truly safe power utility-scale power source in widespread use is solar.
Apparently a fair number of people die from solar as a result of falling off of roofs.
Apparently a fair number of people die from solar as a result of falling off of roofs.
I'm only considering utility-scale power. Those are ground-level, not rooftop installations.
If you want to include all forms of "home" power generation, including heating and cooking, then wood fireplaces are mass-murderers, killing tens of thousands due to particulate pollution and carbon monoxide poisoning. Not to mention homes burning down and killing the occupants.
If you want to include all forms of "home" power generation, including heating and cooking, then wood fireplaces are mass-murderers, killing tens of thousands due to particulate pollution and carbon monoxide poisoning. Not to mention homes burning down and killing the occupants.
> BTW: Fukushima killed 1 person directly due to the nuclear material. Even Chernobyl only killed between 30 to 80 people directly, depending on how you count it.
Only a pedant would write that.
A quarter million Fukushima residents have lived in school gyms for years. How many lived in jail-like conditions until death?
Only a pedant would write that.
A quarter million Fukushima residents have lived in school gyms for years. How many lived in jail-like conditions until death?
Definitely not for years. Temporary housing had widely prepared at least in few month.
Non-renewable plants are still responsible for far more deaths than nuclear plants. The choice is: do we want a safer plant that fails in a sensational manner every few decades or do we want a more dangerous plant that steadily emits lethal pollution?
There have been plenty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_...
Worst being Banqiao and Shimantan Dams failure that killed nearly 200 thousand people.
Worst being Banqiao and Shimantan Dams failure that killed nearly 200 thousand people.
Does it have to energy plants, or does general infrastructure qualify? Because,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents
Nuclear energy is far safer than gas, and about the same as wind/solar:
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#modern-r...
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#modern-r...
I spent a month in Rwanda in late 2018, and it's an extremely impressive little country.
It fascinates me that we hear so little of them, our media only wanting to bring us the gripping headlines (which are of course all bad)
- By far and away the cleanest country I've ever been to on the planet (WAY better than Canada/USA/Australia)
- They have a thriving tech sector, developing phone apps, hardware and other software that is in use all over East Africa
- Extremely well educated, kind and considerate population. The young people especially were very eager to speak English and discuss the outside world. They knew more about a ton of stuff than I do (just a simple Software Engineer / traveller)
- Their economy is booming.
I wish them all the best!
It fascinates me that we hear so little of them, our media only wanting to bring us the gripping headlines (which are of course all bad)
- By far and away the cleanest country I've ever been to on the planet (WAY better than Canada/USA/Australia)
- They have a thriving tech sector, developing phone apps, hardware and other software that is in use all over East Africa
- Extremely well educated, kind and considerate population. The young people especially were very eager to speak English and discuss the outside world. They knew more about a ton of stuff than I do (just a simple Software Engineer / traveller)
- Their economy is booming.
I wish them all the best!
My trip was in 2014 and I concur with how clean and beautiful it is. In addition to the capital being an impressive city, another amazing opportunity awaiting you there is visiting mountain gorillas. I just uploaded a video of my experience a few days ago:
https://vimeo.com/stephenhuey/gorillas
https://vimeo.com/stephenhuey/gorillas
It's half the price in Uganda!
Here's me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1vhZ03OKKE
Here's me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1vhZ03OKKE
What is Russia's geopolitical angle here?
The gulf between peaceful nuclear program and weapons-grade nuclear program is vast and easily detectable.
>A Plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies on Monday, June 15, 2020, voted the law approving the ratification of the agreement between Rwanda and Russia, on cooperation in the construction of the Centre of Nuclear Science and Technology on the territory of Rwanda.
>The agreement was signed in the Russian city Sochi, on October 24, 2019.
>The Centre will develop integrated nuclear energy solutions which the Ministry of Infrastructure expects to be beneficial to the advancement of several sectors of the economy especially agriculture, healthy, education, sciences and industry.
The gulf between peaceful nuclear program and weapons-grade nuclear program is vast and easily detectable.
>A Plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies on Monday, June 15, 2020, voted the law approving the ratification of the agreement between Rwanda and Russia, on cooperation in the construction of the Centre of Nuclear Science and Technology on the territory of Rwanda.
>The agreement was signed in the Russian city Sochi, on October 24, 2019.
>The Centre will develop integrated nuclear energy solutions which the Ministry of Infrastructure expects to be beneficial to the advancement of several sectors of the economy especially agriculture, healthy, education, sciences and industry.
Russian companies build reactors and other similar tech. Like any other country, Russia is helping domestic industry grow. Same thing done by most big European countries, the US, China, etc.
On top of that, Russia probably is concerned that they have few global strategic partners and is on the hunt for allies wherever they can find them. Although Rwanda probably can't help out in too many places (eg. additional ports in Africa like the Chinese and other are trying to secure in places like Djibouti) it is still part of the UN and could help project power in the region & serve as an example of the kind of support Russia can give to Africa. I think in S. Africa they're trying to engage in military partnerships and recently sent a few bombers down.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/10/21/russian-bombe...
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/10/21/russian-bombe...
Do you mean they're helping their domestic peaceful nuclear energy industry grow?
They probably are, it still helps them project geopolitical power, maybe earns them some money (although who knows, it may be mostly free and they get something else in return). Plus, a somewhat educated guess tells me that even their domestic peaceful nuclear industry is closely related to the highest levels of government and follows their strategic goals just as the military would.
It is a mutually beneficial deal. Nobody's "helping" anyone here.
The "help" is the government supporting a private enterprise. Cronyism that "helps" the political class and the company, but possibly not Russian citizens. Or maybe it does. Maintaining a domestic nuclear industry is certainly strategic.
All big strategic companies are supported by their respective governments one or the other way. Nothing is wrong about it. And the Government will have their cut in return eventually. I think it helps Joe Schmoe in the end as well.
>What is Russia's geopolitical angle here?
Nuclear reactors are big and expensive. And Africa will need lots of them for baseload if they are to catch up with the rest of the world economically.
Because unfortunately EU and USA nuclear industry is politically blocked - the competition in Africa will be between Russia and China
Nuclear reactors are big and expensive. And Africa will need lots of them for baseload if they are to catch up with the rest of the world economically.
Because unfortunately EU and USA nuclear industry is politically blocked - the competition in Africa will be between Russia and China
Here is the symbol used in the US for food that has been irradiated the process called radurization. I'm not sure how common it is and I've never looked for the symbol. I do recall years ago how people were upset about "radioactive food" due to irradiation. It's done using gamma rays or x-rays not particles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radura
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radura
Many if not most modern plant cultivars had at some point irradiation used on them to increase mutation rates to find interesting mutations with higher yield, higher resistance etc.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
This has worked especially well in rice, chances are between 5% and 25% depending on country you're eating rice from a cultivar that has been bred using radiation.
That's done in these cool-looking atomic gardens where you have a radiation source in the middle and then plants are seeded in circles around it. The inner-most circle dies, the outer-most circle stays the same, the middle is interesting to breeders, you can see those on google earth, there's a picture here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/atom-garden-eden/
It's one of the things the consumer would be very upset about if told, but has been living fine with for decades, like the fact that your insulin, your washing powder, and your contact sense solution is made by genetically modified bacteria.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding
This has worked especially well in rice, chances are between 5% and 25% depending on country you're eating rice from a cultivar that has been bred using radiation.
That's done in these cool-looking atomic gardens where you have a radiation source in the middle and then plants are seeded in circles around it. The inner-most circle dies, the outer-most circle stays the same, the middle is interesting to breeders, you can see those on google earth, there's a picture here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/atom-garden-eden/
It's one of the things the consumer would be very upset about if told, but has been living fine with for decades, like the fact that your insulin, your washing powder, and your contact sense solution is made by genetically modified bacteria.
Yep, this is funny - people have problem with GMO where we have atleasts some idea what the modification did but at the same time most of what people eat was created by radiation induced random mutation.
The color green, the imagery of leaves. This symbol clearly invokes the natural and warm feelings commonly associated with blasting things with nuclear radiation.
> natural and warm feelings commonly associated with blasting things with nuclear radiation
Try going outside sometime ;)
Try going outside sometime ;)
While i'm not fundamentally anti nuclear the long lead time and high cost of installation surely makes renewable and battery storage a serious contender against nuclear at this stage, right?
Rwanda is a small country, about the size of the Massachusetts state in the US, but with double the population. It's in the mountains, lots of forests and lakes. No deserts. Not a lot of unused land where you can mount solar panels. Nuclear makes sense for them.
Rwanda is roughly 6.5 million acres in size. Half of its roughly 200MW of total generating capacity comes from hydro and solar, the other half coming from natural gas and biomass thermal generation. To replace existing thermal generation would be ~12k acres of solar, and another ~12k acres for every additional 100MW in solar generating capacity desired (or inter connectors to other grids in the region). I also assume that rooftops are available for solar.
Their current generating capacity is not coming close to meeting their needs, with around 85% of it's energy use coming from firewood.
Your point is taken. I think it's incredibly valuable the fuelwood used for cooking and lighting is deprecated for off grid solar solutions, not only for health reasons but to stem the deforestation Rwanda faces from it's reliance on fuelwood for its energy needs.
> ~12k acres for every additional 100MW in solar
On paper lots of things look easy. Rwanda has 12MW of solar as of now [1] and doing feasibility studies for 30MW more. Feasibility studies, not ongoing construction. For one reason or another, they don't find it that easy to install hundreds of MW of solar.
On the other hand, it doesn't look like this green light for nuclear technology is directed towards power generation. Russia will provide a 10MW reactor, but it appears Rwanda is more interested in non-energy applications, like medicine, or food sterilization.
[1] https://www.mininfra.gov.rw/index.php?id=85
On paper lots of things look easy. Rwanda has 12MW of solar as of now [1] and doing feasibility studies for 30MW more. Feasibility studies, not ongoing construction. For one reason or another, they don't find it that easy to install hundreds of MW of solar.
On the other hand, it doesn't look like this green light for nuclear technology is directed towards power generation. Russia will provide a 10MW reactor, but it appears Rwanda is more interested in non-energy applications, like medicine, or food sterilization.
[1] https://www.mininfra.gov.rw/index.php?id=85
[deleted]
Nuclear is not cost competitive against renewables and storage, correct. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a role in the generation mix as a small baseload component, but that role will require subsidies based on nuclear’s low carbon footprint.
https://www.lazard.com/media/451086/lazards-levelized-cost-o...
https://www.lazard.com/media/451086/lazards-levelized-cost-o...
Nuclear actually doesn't have a role as baseload in a cost optimized grid, especially in a country at low latitude.
[deleted]
I'm a big fan of Russia's floating nuclear plants [1]. Wouldn't they be able to just... mass produce this exact same design like the Model T and tow them to customers?
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49446235
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49446235
Renewables are simply cheaper than nuclear at this point.
(Downvoted by someone who doesn't know the data.)
(Downvoted by someone who doesn't know the data.)
Even if this is true (which we cannot know since there is no pipeline of projects - so no economies of scale for nuclear) you deeply discount the price of reliability.
We need batteries that are order of magnitude better to have something that could produce 5GW of energy for weeks on end.
We need batteries that are order of magnitude better to have something that could produce 5GW of energy for weeks on end.
You grossly overstate the cost of storage needed to back up renewables. And you ignore that batteries are not the storage of choice for weeks of backup -- hydrogen (burned in CC or OC turbines) would make much more sense for that. The efficiency is lower, but for weeks of storage capital cost is much more important than efficiency.
BTW, we very much can know that nuclear is more expensive than renewables. The attempts to build reactors in the west have been disastrously more expensive. It's not even close. It's because of this failure to compete that the pipeline is bare. And nuclear has historically shown lousy experience effects, so what economies of scale?
If you want to talk about woulda-coulda-shoulda cost numbers for nuclear, instead of the actual demonstrated numbers, then you must do the same for renewables, especially renewables that could be built in a year or two a decade from now when any reactor started today could come online. Unlike nuclear, renewables have shown Silicon Valley-style relentless cost decline.
BTW, we very much can know that nuclear is more expensive than renewables. The attempts to build reactors in the west have been disastrously more expensive. It's not even close. It's because of this failure to compete that the pipeline is bare. And nuclear has historically shown lousy experience effects, so what economies of scale?
If you want to talk about woulda-coulda-shoulda cost numbers for nuclear, instead of the actual demonstrated numbers, then you must do the same for renewables, especially renewables that could be built in a year or two a decade from now when any reactor started today could come online. Unlike nuclear, renewables have shown Silicon Valley-style relentless cost decline.
Hope that plant gets built, but I mean just look at Bulgaria, where corruption is rampant. We haven't been able to complete the Belene Nuclear Power Plant for 30 years now.
Doubt the Rwandan plant will get built any time soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belene_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Doubt the Rwandan plant will get built any time soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belene_Nuclear_Power_Plant
Rwanda is a very interesting player in Africa. They are experimenting with many technologies that the West can only dream of. They use drone deliveries for emergency medicines as well with good success, between plants that manufacture them and hospitals dozens of kilometers away.
I highly doubt your second sentence is true
They do have a very proactive government that deploys experimental technology in highly public pilots. That you doubt it’s not true is purely because it’s an African country.
Maybe what he's getting at is that the technologies the west "can't dream of" were invented in the west. Drones, for example. The west doesn't use drones to deliver medicine because it has very well developed infrastructure to deliver medicine.
It is cool Rwanda is doing this but I would guess the west has dreamed of drone deliveries of things and decided that its current system is ok.
It is cool Rwanda is doing this but I would guess the west has dreamed of drone deliveries of things and decided that its current system is ok.
Some of techs I dream about are cheap personalized immunotherapies, batteries made out of simple materials with high densities, fusion, artificial general intelligences that are smarter than us...
Sounds more like Wakanda!
> the Minister said that [some of] the imported foods into Rwanda are preserved using nuclear technology
Huh, anyone knows what this is referring to?
Huh, anyone knows what this is referring to?
You can blast foods with gamma radiation and then can it or otherwise put it in an airtight seal. The gamma radiation kills all foods and microbes that would cause it to decay. Gamma radiation is just photons (unlike alpha and beta radiation) so it doesn't case the food to become radioactive.
It would enable canning food without preservatives.
It would enable canning food without preservatives.
Typically you put the food in the can and the cans the box and then blast the whole box in one go.
Very useful for countries with limited access to refrigeration.
This is also a common method for sterilizing single use medical stuff, band-aids, sutures, iv tubes etc.
Very useful for countries with limited access to refrigeration.
This is also a common method for sterilizing single use medical stuff, band-aids, sutures, iv tubes etc.
That's not that strange or extra-ordinary. Sometimes radiation is used to sterilize food to increase shelf life. It doesn't make the food radioactive though. The sources of such radiation are similar to those used for medical purposes.
If I remember correctly, this is especially useful for spices. But probably other stuff, also.
If I remember correctly, this is especially useful for spices. But probably other stuff, also.
That or they're just running fridges with nuclear power ;)
bluntfang(2)
This is typical of people who aren’t educated about nuclear power. To have a minimally functioning fission bomb you need enrichment north of 98% whereas nuclear power plants use fuel that is only enriched to 2%. It’s like comparing the hydrogen peroxide you but at the grocery store to the purified stuff that’s used in liquid rocket experiments. Yes, there is uranium in a nuclear power plant just as there is in a nuclear bomb but the type and enrichment is so different as to make them practically not the same thing.