My problem with nuclear disasters or really any kind of bigger scale environmental damage is, that you have no control over other people's actions and failures. You therefore can not argue, that the technology is fine as long as we all use it securely, because you simply can not ensure that for countries you have no control over.
And it is not only the small countries. We trust developed nations with nuclear technology, when we really should not [0]. Fukushima happened, many smaller scale incidents in the US happened [1] and in Germany the nuclear waste is a constant issue [2].
Unfortunately when using a shared resource like "world security", the free rider problem occurs, so everybody keeps using it. When you enlarge the time period in which we use nuclear power/weapons long enough the probability, that we mess things up on an even larger scale than Chernobyl or Fukushima ultimately approaches 1.
While I hate, that people forget that nuclear power does run on fuel and we have to handle the waste for generations to come, I am very thankful, that they also forget to think of peak uranium [3], which in my mind as a layman might solve the problem.
Administrative maturity does not reliably advance over time but technology does and technology can compensate for a lack of administrative maturity. The social challenges may be intractable but the compensating technological challenges are not and reactor technology has come a long way in this regard. If Fukushima had been built in 1971 instead of 1967, it would not have had the flaw that caused the 2011 meltdown. The industry has learned even more in the following 44 years.
Unfortunately, reactor designs are "frozen in" when built so we are in the awkward position of simultaneously knowing how to build safe, robust reactors and knowing that many of the reactors in service are not safe and not robust to administrative incompetence. A timeline:
date age
1956 00: Calder Hall, first commercial nuclear power
1967 11: Fukushima built
1971 15: Fukushima flaw discovered
1990 34: U.S. NRC ranks Fukushima flaw most likely risk
2004 48: Japanese NISA cites 1990 report
2011 55: Fukushima meltdown
2015 59: Today
Nuclear advocates propose closing down the old, dangerous reactors and building new, safe reactors. Nuclear opponents propose shutting down old reactors and not building new reactors -- but they haven't been able to find viable economic alternatives to the old reactors so effectively what happens is they lobby to keep the old, dangerous reactors running while stopping the construction of new, safe reactors that could otherwise have replaced them. This is the worst possible policy outcome and thanks to their efforts it is what has come to pass in the US. Ugh.
> Nuclear opponents propose shutting down old reactors and not building new reactors -- but they haven't been able to find viable economic alternatives to the old reactors
To the extent this is true, neither have nuclear proponents or the nuclear industry; the reason new nuclear reactors aren't built isn't because of nuclear opponents, its because the nuclear industry won't build them without special liability protections. So, clearly, even new reactors aren't economically viable alternatives, from the perspective of those who would pay for and profit from them, to old reactors without socializing the risk while privatizing the profits.
> so effectively what happens is they lobby to keep the old, dangerous reactors running while stopping the construction of new, safe reactors that could otherwise have replaced them.
Old reactors in the US continue to be decommissioned even though new ones aren't being built. Objectively, the market has found economically viable alternatives to nuclear power.
> its because the nuclear industry won't build them without special liability protections.
You say "liability protections" as if the dispute were over indemnification in case of a meltdown or accident. That's not what has made nuclear reactors too "risky" to be built in the US. The "risk" in question is that anti-nuclear factions will be able to indefinitely stall construction by repeatedly coming up with new "safety studies" to perform (e.g. environmental impact on squirrel population). This strategy worked for them in the past and the nuclear industry reckons it will work in the future unless they have legal protection against it.
> Old reactors in the US continue to be decommissioned even though new ones aren't being built.
A few old reactors, yes. But we've been holding steady at ~750GW of nuclear power for 15 years. "We have been keeping the old reactors running" is far, far closer to the truth than "we have been shutting them down."
Clean sources other than nuclear will eventually make this point moot but it'll take decades and in the meantime we have been / will be running on an unholy mix of unclean, nonrenewable power and power derived from old, dangerous nuclear reactors when we could have switched to clean, safe nuclear sources decades ago.
Not to mention that arguing about the degree of liability the owners face is effectively the same as arguing about the cost of their liability insurance. If the insurance is expensive enough to make it impossible to turn a profit, that is just as effective as a regulator causing endless delays by fiat.
Those cheaper power sources are coal and oil, right? Doesn't every discussion of nuclear being with the assumption that controlling carbon emissions are the real goal?
Germany relying on France is not a bad thing at all. It is called European integration. We do it in other areas, too, because the benefits way outweigh the costs. They could for example crash our currency or stop to sell us food. We could not feed us on our own. Remember, Germany is tiny by US standards.
Somebody has to be the first mover. Once France follows, we will provide them with renewable energy of the finest quality.
No one is complaining about one country cooperating with another, they're simply pointing out that Germany isn't as nuclear free as some claim as it uses nuclear energy from France on days when it's not "sunny".
I see the free rider argument for nuclear safety. But it also seems to apply to nuclear prohibition. Whether your approach is to make nuclear power safer or simply to eliminate it, you face the same problem when it comes to ensuring that everyone follows along. So while I see it as a problem, I don't see how it's an argument in favor of elimination over safety as you seem to be making.
The waste problem is greatly overstated. For one, newer technology allows reusing much of the waste. For another, the amounts involved are tiny. Finally, we put up with processes that produce far nastier stuff that lasts forever, not merely centuries or millennia. The "generations to come" bit is always brought up when it comes to nuclear waste, but that's still way faster than, say, environmental arsenic goes away.
My argument is not, that we should not enhance security. We definitely should, the fact, that even the most developed industrial powers can not handle it in a manner that satisfies me personally is my argument for eliminating it. I am personally just not comfortable with even a tiny chance of a massive and unfixable catastrophe. This is just my subjective feeling.
To your second point: I always forget how this rhetoric figure is called and I would be grateful for a link, but it is easily dismissed: Something even worse does not justify not acting on something bad. We have quite a few people on this earth and can tackle multiple issues at once.
Does that mean the free rider problem does not apply? If the argument is that it can't be handled with sufficient safety regardless, that's a reasonable one (albeit one I disagree with), but separate from the shared resource/free rider thing.
For the waste, I apologize, I didn't mean it as the usual "X is worse, so Y can be ignored." What I meant to say by that was that the dangers of waste are exaggerated, and it can be dealt with without a great deal of difficulty. The "generations to come" stuff is generally stated to make nuclear waste sound really bad, much worse than other things, but in fact that makes it a lot better than more mundane sorts of waste. The fact that we can deal with waste that is much more poisonous, generated in much greater quantity, and lasts much longer than nuclear waste tells me that nuclear waste isn't a difficult problem to solve (except for the political aspects). I don't mean to argue for not acting on it, merely that acting on it isn't a showstopper.
I thought of the free rider in this way: If we stop, everybody else is still doing it (free riding on our reduced risk) and we would be still affected by the risk they produce, but without the benefits of the energy, so lets just keep doing it.
Right. My point is just that it applies both to stopping (other people might just keep using it) and to improving safety (other people might not spend the money on safety like we do). So while it's a problem, it doesn't seem to be an argument for one choice over the other.
By this logic it doesn't matter which way you argue, or whether you argue at all, right? Those actors who you have no control over will do what they want. I don't see what I'm supposed to take away from it.
You have economical influence over prices and I would argue, that ensuring that something is not there is much easier than ensuring that something is built securely.
Yes it did, and it finally pushed me over the edge into full support for a nuclear renaissance (I was leaning before). Let's recap what happened:
1. A Tsunami of unexpected size hit Japan, overwhelming sea walls and other technical infrastructure, and as a result killing somewhere between 15000 and 19000 people. Most drowned, but 165 died of fire.
2. One of the many pieces of technical infrastructure that was hit and wasn't able to cope was an old nuclear power plant with severe safety deficits.
3. Yet there have been zero casualties of the resulting meltdown (and future predicted casualties are somewhere between low and non-existent). That's despite the fact that Tepco and the authorities appeared to be woefully unprepared.
165 people died of fires resulting from the Tsunami, a number much, much larger then the casualties from the meltdown. Banning fire and flammable substances would be a saner response to the Tsunami than banning nuclear power.
Your source [1], the Wikipedia article on nuclear accidents is the most ringing endorsement of nuclear power I can think of. Did you have a look at the "fatalities" column? It reads 0 or 1 for all of the accidents except the one in Idaho falls, where the number is 3. Do you know what the death toll of other energy sources is? Forbes put together the statistics[2], and the results are staggering: even in the relatively safe USA, the death-rate per Trillion kWh for Coal is 15000. Worldwide it is 150000 and in China 280000. Nuclear is 90.
Again, the gap is so staggeringly huge as to beggar belief, but it tallies with other sources. Now I'd obviously prefer that number to be zero, but that option is not available on the menu, so I'd like the least bad option, and nothing else comes close (even solar and wind are higher).
In terms of waste, I just want to reiterate what others have stated: technically, it is a solved problem, the problems are purely political, because of an unreasonably scared populace and spineless populist politicians. Heck, ash from coal plants is more radioactive than nuclear waste[3][4].
Now there are problems, for example being stuck with a military reactor design that whose express purpose was to make bombs, whereas other designs are much, much safer and would burn waste[5], but those can be overcome and even with those problems it is a damn good option, so good that many thinking environmentalists have come around[6][7]. Alas in Germany everybody "knows" that nuclear is bad, so our Dear Leader decided to cave in to popular demand, no matter how brain-dead.
If you haven't seen it "Pandora's Promise"[8] is also really worthwhile.
And it is not only the small countries. We trust developed nations with nuclear technology, when we really should not [0]. Fukushima happened, many smaller scale incidents in the US happened [1] and in Germany the nuclear waste is a constant issue [2].
Unfortunately when using a shared resource like "world security", the free rider problem occurs, so everybody keeps using it. When you enlarge the time period in which we use nuclear power/weapons long enough the probability, that we mess things up on an even larger scale than Chernobyl or Fukushima ultimately approaches 1.
While I hate, that people forget that nuclear power does run on fuel and we have to handle the waste for generations to come, I am very thankful, that they also forget to think of peak uranium [3], which in my mind as a layman might solve the problem.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_accidents_in_th...
[2]: http://www.dw.de/what-to-do-with-nuclear-waste/a-16755844
[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium#Peak_uranium_for_i...