<story><title>Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest</title><url>https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Recurecur</author><text>New reactor designs completely eliminate the possibility of meltdown. LFRs include an electrically cooled salt plug that seals a holding tank. If power fails, the molten salt melts the plug, and the fuel safely drains into the tank. I particularly like ThorCon&amp;#x27;s concept, where the reactor is underground. Another plus of this reactor type is that water cooling isn&amp;#x27;t needed, so siting is much more flexible.&lt;p&gt;Note that the ThorCon design can use uranium or thorium as fuel. ThorCon estimates it could be shipping reactors in ten years, and could produce 100 GW worth of reactors per year, at around three cents per KWH.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thorconpower.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thorconpower.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suggest watching the video on this page, it gives a good perspective:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thorconpower.com&amp;#x2F;news&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thorconpower.com&amp;#x2F;news&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>simias</author><text>People are scared of nuclear energy for the same reason that they&amp;#x27;re scared of taking an airplane. Even though it&amp;#x27;s technically and statistically very safe, the &lt;i&gt;perceived&lt;/i&gt; risk appears much greater.&lt;p&gt;In particular in both cases when something goes wrong it tends to go &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; wrong and you&amp;#x27;re completely helpless to stop it. In contrast getting in a car accident or slowly suffocating in coal power plant emissions seem manageable.&lt;p&gt;Personally I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that going all nuclear would be a mistake but on the other hand it&amp;#x27;s a great way to move away from coal and petrol while we&amp;#x27;re still figuring out how to scale renewable energies (and maybe fusion, but that&amp;#x27;s still a moonshot). It provides cheap, reliable and reasonably safe energy with very little CO2 emissions.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m more worried about global warming than Fukushima and I&amp;#x27;d gladly trade even a dozen of Fukushima-type incidents in the next decades (highly unlikely) if it could stop global warming and its dire, hard-to-revert consequences.&lt;p&gt;In particular I genuinely do not understand why most ecologists seem to be staunchly anti-nuclear. I can understand asking for better funding in renewable R&amp;amp;D and planning for a transition but, at least in Europe, ecologists seem to favor dropping nuclear immediately, no matter the cost. For instance they applauded when Germany decided to completely stop producing nuclear energy, even if it meant more pollution in the short term. I find that hard to justify.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>beat</author><text>&amp;quot;Completely eliminates the possibility&amp;quot; sounds like something a supervillain would say.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not saying that this passive safety system won&amp;#x27;t work, or is a bad idea. It sounds great from the brief description. BUT. There&amp;#x27;s a terrible, terrible tendency of the pro-nuclear side to use bombastic language, and then sneer at those with doubts as ignorant and emotional rather than logical.&lt;p&gt;Pricing promises are another problem. &amp;quot;Power too cheap to meter&amp;quot; has been promised since the 1950s. It hasn&amp;#x27;t happened yet.&lt;p&gt;Be careful with your language.</text></comment>
<story><title>Out of all major energy sources, nuclear is the safest</title><url>https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Recurecur</author><text>New reactor designs completely eliminate the possibility of meltdown. LFRs include an electrically cooled salt plug that seals a holding tank. If power fails, the molten salt melts the plug, and the fuel safely drains into the tank. I particularly like ThorCon&amp;#x27;s concept, where the reactor is underground. Another plus of this reactor type is that water cooling isn&amp;#x27;t needed, so siting is much more flexible.&lt;p&gt;Note that the ThorCon design can use uranium or thorium as fuel. ThorCon estimates it could be shipping reactors in ten years, and could produce 100 GW worth of reactors per year, at around three cents per KWH.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thorconpower.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thorconpower.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suggest watching the video on this page, it gives a good perspective:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thorconpower.com&amp;#x2F;news&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thorconpower.com&amp;#x2F;news&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>simias</author><text>People are scared of nuclear energy for the same reason that they&amp;#x27;re scared of taking an airplane. Even though it&amp;#x27;s technically and statistically very safe, the &lt;i&gt;perceived&lt;/i&gt; risk appears much greater.&lt;p&gt;In particular in both cases when something goes wrong it tends to go &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; wrong and you&amp;#x27;re completely helpless to stop it. In contrast getting in a car accident or slowly suffocating in coal power plant emissions seem manageable.&lt;p&gt;Personally I&amp;#x27;m of the opinion that going all nuclear would be a mistake but on the other hand it&amp;#x27;s a great way to move away from coal and petrol while we&amp;#x27;re still figuring out how to scale renewable energies (and maybe fusion, but that&amp;#x27;s still a moonshot). It provides cheap, reliable and reasonably safe energy with very little CO2 emissions.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m more worried about global warming than Fukushima and I&amp;#x27;d gladly trade even a dozen of Fukushima-type incidents in the next decades (highly unlikely) if it could stop global warming and its dire, hard-to-revert consequences.&lt;p&gt;In particular I genuinely do not understand why most ecologists seem to be staunchly anti-nuclear. I can understand asking for better funding in renewable R&amp;amp;D and planning for a transition but, at least in Europe, ecologists seem to favor dropping nuclear immediately, no matter the cost. For instance they applauded when Germany decided to completely stop producing nuclear energy, even if it meant more pollution in the short term. I find that hard to justify.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ZeroGravitas</author><text>Solar prices in the sunniest regions have already dipped below 3c unsubsidized, and are projected to keep falling for decades to come, even without any major technological breakthroughs. So aiming for that price 10 years out, with a new design isn&amp;#x27;t a very good sign</text></comment>