<story><title>Public&apos;s Dread of Nuclear Power Limits Its Deployment</title><url>https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/may/nuclear-power-limits.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pdonis</author><text>We already know how to safely operate nuclear power plants: the US Navy has been doing so for decades with no incidents. We could have imposed a similar level of discipline on civilian nuclear power plant operators back in the 1970s, when commercial plants started being built in the US in quantity. Or we could have done it after Three Mile Island (which harmed no members of the general public but clearly showed inadequacies in the way civilian nuclear plants were operated). The fact that we didn&amp;#x27;t is a political problem, not a technical or operational problem.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, even the operational problem is now nonexistent with newer reactor designs. Older designs, like the reactors at Three Mile Island, required the operators to correctly execute a fairly complex procedure in the event of a problem to prevent the reactor from being severely damaged or destroyed; the TMI operators failed to do that. Also, as Fukushima showed, older reactor designs require reliable backup power for decay heat removal. Newer designs have neither of those requirements; you can literally pull the shutdown switch and walk away and there will be no problem.&lt;p&gt;So while I don&amp;#x27;t disagree with what you say about complex systems in general, I don&amp;#x27;t think nuclear reactors, with today&amp;#x27;s designs, are even that complex. We know how to design and build them so that it is impossible to operate them unsafely. We just don&amp;#x27;t have the political will to do it.</text></item><item><author>jwr</author><text>I have conflicted thoughts on this. On one hand, nuclear energy seems to be the only way we have right now to at least try to avoid the oncoming climate catastrophe. On the other hand, I&amp;#x27;m reading &amp;quot;Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies&amp;quot; by Charles Perrow and it&amp;#x27;s scary. Really scary. The combination of very complex systems with interactions that no one understands and greed, poor oversight, and other human behaviors results in something we should be afraid of. And yet, we might have no choice but to use nuclear power.&lt;p&gt;By the way, official statistics are one thing (I used to love quoting them as well), but if you look at the number of &amp;quot;close calls&amp;quot; that we had and if you look into the causes behind various incidents, a different picture emerges and you might lose some of the confidence.&lt;p&gt;I also now think that anyone taking part in the discussion should read Perrow&amp;#x27;s book.&lt;p&gt;One thought I had while reading the book is that these days it might make sense to try to model these complex systems and run simulations to at least try to discover the unexpected interactions and mitigate them. Similar to (for example) how FoundationDB was developed. Simulations on that scale were likely difficult or impossible at the time when most nuclear plants were designed, but with modern computing power we might have better ways of reducing the problem domain.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jwr</author><text>&amp;gt; no incidents&lt;p&gt;I would respectfully suggest that you read the book I quoted. I also thought there were &amp;quot;no incidents&amp;quot;. The book is from 1983, so it specifically describes the 70s and early 80s. There were plenty of incidents and accidents, it&amp;#x27;s just that few of them resulted in major releases of radioactive material. My take on this after reading about some details is that we were just lucky.&lt;p&gt;Some might say it is outdated — but I followed up on some of the stories described there and checked more recent developments. Specifically, the San Onofre plant which gets a mention in the book. You can read about it on Wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Shutdown,_2012_and_closure,_2013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_...&lt;/a&gt; — now tell me that we know what we&amp;#x27;re doing and that we &amp;quot;know how to safely operate nuclear power plants&amp;quot; after reading things like:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; On investigation, the replacement steam generators from 2011 in both units were found to show premature wear on over 3,000 tubes, in 15,000 places.[47] Plant officials pledged not to restart until the causes of the tube leak and tube degradation were understood.&lt;p&gt;Other honorable mentions:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;The firm Bechtel was ... embarrassed in 1977, when it installed a 420-ton nuclear-reactor vessel backwards&amp;quot; at San Onofre&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In 2008, the San Onofre plant received multiple citations over issues such as failed emergency generators, improperly wired batteries and falsified fire safety data.&lt;p&gt;Again, I am not against nuclear power. I&amp;#x27;m just pointing out that we have way too much hubris and the rosy picture of &amp;quot;no incidents&amp;quot; is not entirely true.&lt;p&gt;Also, which newer designs do you mean?</text></comment>
<story><title>Public&apos;s Dread of Nuclear Power Limits Its Deployment</title><url>https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/may/nuclear-power-limits.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pdonis</author><text>We already know how to safely operate nuclear power plants: the US Navy has been doing so for decades with no incidents. We could have imposed a similar level of discipline on civilian nuclear power plant operators back in the 1970s, when commercial plants started being built in the US in quantity. Or we could have done it after Three Mile Island (which harmed no members of the general public but clearly showed inadequacies in the way civilian nuclear plants were operated). The fact that we didn&amp;#x27;t is a political problem, not a technical or operational problem.&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, even the operational problem is now nonexistent with newer reactor designs. Older designs, like the reactors at Three Mile Island, required the operators to correctly execute a fairly complex procedure in the event of a problem to prevent the reactor from being severely damaged or destroyed; the TMI operators failed to do that. Also, as Fukushima showed, older reactor designs require reliable backup power for decay heat removal. Newer designs have neither of those requirements; you can literally pull the shutdown switch and walk away and there will be no problem.&lt;p&gt;So while I don&amp;#x27;t disagree with what you say about complex systems in general, I don&amp;#x27;t think nuclear reactors, with today&amp;#x27;s designs, are even that complex. We know how to design and build them so that it is impossible to operate them unsafely. We just don&amp;#x27;t have the political will to do it.</text></item><item><author>jwr</author><text>I have conflicted thoughts on this. On one hand, nuclear energy seems to be the only way we have right now to at least try to avoid the oncoming climate catastrophe. On the other hand, I&amp;#x27;m reading &amp;quot;Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies&amp;quot; by Charles Perrow and it&amp;#x27;s scary. Really scary. The combination of very complex systems with interactions that no one understands and greed, poor oversight, and other human behaviors results in something we should be afraid of. And yet, we might have no choice but to use nuclear power.&lt;p&gt;By the way, official statistics are one thing (I used to love quoting them as well), but if you look at the number of &amp;quot;close calls&amp;quot; that we had and if you look into the causes behind various incidents, a different picture emerges and you might lose some of the confidence.&lt;p&gt;I also now think that anyone taking part in the discussion should read Perrow&amp;#x27;s book.&lt;p&gt;One thought I had while reading the book is that these days it might make sense to try to model these complex systems and run simulations to at least try to discover the unexpected interactions and mitigate them. Similar to (for example) how FoundationDB was developed. Simulations on that scale were likely difficult or impossible at the time when most nuclear plants were designed, but with modern computing power we might have better ways of reducing the problem domain.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gpm</author><text>&amp;gt; the US Navy has been doing so for decades with no incidents.&lt;p&gt;The USS Seawolf, Theodore Roosevolt, Swordfish, Proteus, Puffer, and Long Beach all had publicly known incidents involving the release of radioactive material... and given the navy&amp;#x27;s (legitimate) tendency to classify stuff I see little reason to believe this is the extent of the issues.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lutins.org&amp;#x2F;nukes.html#subs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.lutins.org&amp;#x2F;nukes.html#subs&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>