deaths per kWh (or even various adjusted life year metrics) aren’t all that matters. Cost of cleaning up and other economic losses due to accidents also matter.
The Fukushima accident may not have caused much in the way of injury, but the cleanup is projected to cost over $100bn. It’s not so easy for nuclear power to compete when those costs are factored in.
So yes, passively safe reactors are a big deal in my book.
The only thing that matters in reality is the investors making a profit. If nuclear out competed other generation on that basis it would be everywhere now, regardless of whether it was safe or not. cf Hydroelectric. A dam destroys more land for a far longer time than Fukushima has left contaminated today. And as for deaths, dam failures have a truly horrifying track record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure 100 people died just building the Hover dam. Yet we are likely to see more Hydro, not less.
You don't see nuclear for one reason: it's high risk with low returns. It isn't high risk because nuclear reactors regularly go bang. It's high risk because a plant has to operate profitability for 40 years in order to make a return, and 40 years is too far out so safely predict anything. 40 years ago there was no internet and global warming wasn't something we knew about. The plant going bang is just one of many things that could render it unprofitable. There could be fuel supply problems (cf Iran), or the demand could move away (eg, a aluminium smelter could close down), or a cheaper technology could come along, or an earth quake, or a tsunami.
The new designs in the article seem to solve some problems. Being tow-able means if the current market folds you can move it somewhere else for example, and being small means there is less money at risk. But geezzz - 4 years to build. In 4 years it is possible the price of solar or wild could drop by 40%.
What is more important than deaths/twh? Costs? I would disagree. Perhaps, area lost to contamination (e. g. Chernobyl exclusion zone, Fukushima area). But then, how much is lost/flooded due to coal excavation, hydro dam flooding, etc.
I don't think amluto said the clean-up costs were more important than deaths/kwh. The point is that these improvements are necessary and welcome even though nuclear is already safer than the options, for reasons other than safety.
If I were a nuclear regulator, I would not permit construction of a plant that could, by design, be a danger to anything other than itself if it lost power. I would also consider requiring existing plants to retrofit themselves to have the same property if the technology became available.
> "I would not permit construction of a plant that could, by design, be a danger to anything other than itself if it lost power."
What about a plant that's a danger to others when it's running optimally within design spec, as every single coal fired plant on this planet is? Do you apply this standard to all power plants, or only nuclear?
I think that, even in an appropriately regulated and taxed environment, coal has a place. In particular, fly ash can replace a respectable fraction of the cement used in concrete. If a coal-fired power plant can scrub its emissions to remove particulates and CO2, it may be cost effective as a source of fly ash compared to the (taxed) cost of cement production.
I'm skeptical that "clean coal" will ever be cost-effective when considered purely as a source of power in most locations.
As far as I'm aware coal (particularly coke) plays a vital role in the production of steel, so I don't expect we'll do away with it anytime soon. But it's very frustrating to see coal being given a free pass by critics of nuclear, particularly when those critics call themselves environmentalists.
One can make steel without using coal or coke. Some steel is made this way even today ("Direct Reduced Iron", particularly the mode where iron ore is reduced with syngas made with natural gas). Hydrogen could be used instead of syngas to do this reduction, and the amount of carbon that would be needed to make the final alloy would be small, and could be sourced from non-fossil sources.
> coal has a place [snip] in particular, fly ash can replace a respectable fraction of the cement used in concrete.
AFAIK fly ash is mostly used as a replacement for other filler (sand etc)... Using fly ash doesn't change the amount of CO2 produced per m3 of concrete.
I am struggling to understand what your point is here.
Also fly ash is generally a single digit percentage by coal weight burnt. So say 90% of coal burns with oxygen, most of which ends up as CO2 (by weight). Using the fly ash waste (from electricity generation) in concrete makes sense. Burning coal to indirectly justify making cement does not.
Your understanding is correct, fly ash can be used as a substitute for portland cement. It's apparently chemically similar to how the Romans used to use volcanic ash in their concrete mixes. A lot of cement sold these days is a mixture of fly ash and portland cement.
My impression is that fly ash involves the production of more CO2 than burning coal to produce an equivalent amount of portland cement, but it's worth it when you're burning coal anyway and fly ash is basically free as a byproduct. So in practice it essentially offsets CO2 emissions from burning coal, but only partially.
That's just the impression I've gotten though, I don't have any numbers for any of it.
I would say any plant that was built before maybe the 2000s, which is admittedly a lot, should just be decommissioned, with more modern plants replacing them. Our main risks with nuclear plants is that most of the plants are at or around the 50 year point, which not only is about their original planned lifespan, but also absolutely ancient in terms of design and technology. Yeah they have been improved, but only so much as an already built plant can be modified for cheap. When people talk about nuclear safety, they are thinking about plants designed only 15 years after we invented nuclear technology. Talking about the safety of Fukushima, or Chernobyl, or many other plants is the equivalent of discussing the crash safety of a Model-T instead of a 2010+ model car, and has people wondering if cars should even be allowed based on the Model-T's design.
It's important in terms of adoption. Fukushima destroyed the economics of Japanese nuclear power. One accident like that per 100 years and nuclear suddenly becomes very expensive.
global warming has sever long term consequences for economies as well.
People need energy, problem is that the costs of dirty energy are spread out and “average Joe” doesn’t think of them as energy costs (pollution, worse health, wars for oil, etc.)
The Fukushima accident may not have caused much in the way of injury, but the cleanup is projected to cost over $100bn. It’s not so easy for nuclear power to compete when those costs are factored in.
So yes, passively safe reactors are a big deal in my book.