And in 2003 MIT came to a similar conclusion in it's report "The Future of Nuclear Power".

Ernest Moniz, the current DOE headnegotiating with Iran, co-chaired that report with John Deutch, another MIT professor who was CIA Director during Bill Clinton's presidency. Obama's Science Advisor John Holdren also participated in that report.

itself. When an accident takes 50,000 years to correct, it's not something that can be considered safe. And it only takes one accident.

The title merely says "may not be safer"... but that's not "safer than current reactors". It's "safer than the already much safer Gen III models"

Also - There are clearly safety enhancements (e.g., not using water means no threat of hydrogen explosions, and operating a low pressure means that loss-of-pressure wouldn't cause an accident). They just aren't in a position to estimate whether or not there are offsetting losses in safety due to the changes (e.g., higher temperatures and/or metal coolants that react with oxygen).

They won't be in a position to realistically evaluate safety improvements until design and development are much further down the road. They also aren't in a position to say that they won't be much safer.

...given that French nuclear reactors have a spectacular record of not killing anyone, how is that we should consider the question of making them "safer."

Safer than what?

Seven million people die each year from air pollution. The anti-nuke community couldn't care less about those deaths.

Have seven million people died from French reactors? Seven thousand? Seventy? Seven?

Nuclear energysaves lives.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197

It follows that people who oppose nuclear energy with constant assertions of fear and ignorance cost lives.

Last edited Fri Jul 31, 2015, 05:43 PM - Edit history (1)

Certainly... cost is a consideration. You wouldn't pay twice as much for a car that was 2% safer than the prior model of the same car, but the safety enhancements between GenII and GenIII reactors don't add much to the cost.

It's worth noting that while the Fukushima reactors would likely not have been so catastrophically destroyed had they been built/operated to U.S. standards for the same models... a GenIII reactor almost certainly would have survived with virtually no lasting impact. They would be back up and running some months later.

Suppose we spent one hundred billion dollars trying to make sure that no reactor experienced another Fukushima.

How many people died because of Fukushima?

Suppose we took the same one hundred billion dollars and installed septic systems for some of the 2 billion people on this planet who have no sanitary systems at all.

How many lives would be saved?

Which is the larger number?

Nuclear energy need not be perfect to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be superior to everything else, which it is.

There is no form of large scale primary energy, zero, that is safe as nuclear energy. Zip. Zilch.

The fact that there have been nuclear accidents has had nowhere near the effect in terms of destruction to health and the environment as the normal operations of dangerous fossil fuel facilities.

More people have died from the air pollution resulting from running computers to discuss Fukushima than have died from the radiation the reactors released.

are deaths due to improperly used or non existent cooking and heating apparatus's in third world countries. Where people heat with open fires and cook over open flames. Light their homes or huts, whichever you want to call them, with candles and oil burning lamps, all unvented. If you're concerned with those deaths then you need to get off your ass and help in providing them with the technology and stoves, lighting etc that won't kill them, not use it as an argument if nuclear is safe or not. Mr David Jones

If nuclear energy proponents would be honest in having a discussion on the deaths due to the mining, processing, accidents etc of nuclear energy then we could have an ear to listen, but until then all I hear is denial. Nuclear kills just as sure as a bullet, its just a slower more painful death, one that is easy to hide if one has a tendency or a want to do such a thing. I'm looking at you mr Jones and mr Baggins
Have a good day, I plan too

There is still no answer for the drawbacks of using sodium. Simply focusing on the advantages might be good salesmanship, but it is more piss-poor science from an industry that makes it's money distorting, misrepresenting and outright lying about the work of actual scientists.

Also note the timeframe for potential deployment of a PROTOTYPE of this most advanced of the GenIV reactors is sometime within the next 35 years. It's obvious to anyone outside the nuclear industry bubble that this line of research is a waste of resources if addressing climate is the goal you are pursuing.

"While it seems possible..."

All of the information items you are trying to make false assertions about are the statements and judgement of:

IRSN :Who are we
IRSN, a public authority with industrial and commercial activities, was set up under Article 5 of French Act No. 2001-398 of May 9, 2001, enacted through Order No. 2002-254 of February 22, 2002. This Order was amended on April 7, 2007.

The Institute is placed under the joint authority of the Ministries of Defense, the Environment, Industry, Research, and Health.

It is the nation’s public service expert in nuclear and radiation risks, and its activities cover all the related scientific and technical issues. Its areas of specialization include the environment and radiological emergency response, human radiation protection in both a medical and professional capacity, and in both normal and post-accident situations, the prevention of major accidents, nuclear reactor safety, as well as safety in plants and laboratories, transport and waste treatment, and nuclear defense expertise.

IRSN interacts with all parties concerned by these risks (public authorities, in particular nuclear safety and security authorities, local authorities, companies, research organizations, stakeholders’ associations, etc.) to contribute to public policy issues relating to nuclear safety, human and environmental protection against ionizing radiation, and the protection of nuclear materials, facilities, and transport against the risk of malicious acts.

Specializations
Monitoring environmental radiation and participating in radiological emergency response situations.
Human radiation protection.
Prevention of major accidents in nuclear facilities.
Reactor safety.
Safety in plants, laboratories, transport, and waste treatment.
Nuclear defense expertise.

Workforce (as of December 31, 2014)
IRSN employs around 1,748 people, including many specialists, engineers, researchers, physicians, agricultural engineers, veterinary surgeons and technicians, as well as experts in nuclear safety, radiation protection and control of sensitive nuclear materials.

Budget
291 € millions spent by IRSN in 2014 :
40.5% of budget devoted to research,
52.6% of budget allocated to technical support and public service missions.

I have no need to "smear" them because they don't say what you claim that they say.

All of the information items you are trying to make false assertions about are the statements and judgement of:

Let's see... I corrected three statements

1 - These reactors are so far off that just the prototype of the most advanced model is up to 35 years off
2 - Pursuing any of them is a waste of resources if your priority is to combat climate change
3 - There is no answer for the drawbacks of using sodium

2&3 are easy - since IRSN never said either one of them.

1 - is easy as well... but it assumes that you actually read the report - rather than intentionally misread once line of the summary. They do not say that only one reactor will even have a prototype in the next 35 years. They say exactly what I said... that they expect ASTRID to be completed in the next ten years. They also note that both India and Russia are (as of the time of writing) expected to reach criticality in 2014/2015.

They address China' HTR-PM prototype which should be completed in the next couple years. That's clearly a prototype of a second type of reactor. Their comment isn't that they'll barely be to the prototype phase 35 years from now... it's that the design doesn't fit France's priorities. They want a design that can replace current reactor designs with an improved fuel cycle that can burn their current waste. VHTRs currently show promise for the second part of that, but not the first because it isn't known that they can be large enough to replace GW+scale units.

IOW - They don't say that there won't be prototypes in the next 35 years (they mention nearer-term prototypes for other designs as well)... it's that there's no current plan for a prototype at a large-enough scale to evaluate as a fit for France's priorities. If, for instance, their only priority was to consume their waste plutonium... the HTR-PM in China would be a suitable prototype.

I find it entertaining that for some technologies (e.g., "rock batteries" and commercial wave generation) you take an unsupportedly optimistic reading of the available literature and claim that they're essentially "off-the-shelf" existing technologies and will be ready for commercial-scale applications any day now... and then misread opinions like this one to claim that they say that there's no point in wasting resources because even a pilot is decades away.

IRSN's presser:

It is one of the first tricks to look for when dealing with you Bags. They are talking about prototype for a commercially ready reactor, not a demonstration of concept prototype that is cobbled together to test a facet of the technology.

The quote is an accurate presentation of the body of the paper and their conclusion is in line with that of everyone else. There is no expectation of a commercial prototype before mid-century.

This BS play with the idea of what a "prototype" is and what it means about something being close to commercial development is the same game y'all nuclear acolytes play with the stories you tell about the Oak Ridge Molten Salt Reactor Experiment.

That thing was never even close to being a commercial prototype. And contrary to the legend et-you-al try to create, because it was only marginally better than light water reactors in a just couple of areas, it was discontinued because the technical obstacles weren't worth spending the money to overcome.

Last edited Tue Aug 11, 2015, 10:15 AM - Edit history (1)

I didn't expect it to take you a week... but whatever.

They are talking about prototype for a commercially ready reactor

They are... but You did not make such a distinction in your claim.

IOW, you're the one that's trying to "BS play with the idea of what a prototype is"

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112789018#post14

(Which includes almost none of your own words) - You can't offer their statement as proof that you were correct in your confusion of what they meant in their statement. That's circular.

You also can't spin near-GW reactors as mere "conceptual prototypes" that are just "cobbled together". Russia planned last month to have three BN-1200s (their commercial Gen IV unit) under construction by 2030. They're waffling on that now, but it still doesn't fit a "not even a 'real' prototype before 2050" claim.

The context of what I wrote was provided by extensive quotes from the press release and then the report itself. All consistent with each other.

To try and hide the truth of the conclusions drawn in the report You made an overtly false claim about the content.

You are shown to have attempted a deliberate misrepresentation of the content of the French nuclear safety agency's statements.

You.

Deliberate misrepresentation.

Deliberate.

Misrepresentation.

the rest not so much from building the machines that carve up the earth, the machines that haul the ore, the rubber tires that the machines use to travel over the earth carrying said ore to the processing plants, the building of those processing plants, the energy used to process that ore into fuel. The machines used in mining the raw ingredient to make the cement and iron used in building the nuke plants and on and on are all highly producing co2 endeavors. Claiming nuclear energy is clean is a lie, pretty much like all the other claims about nuclear energy are. Not to mention the years of construction workers doing all this work going to and from and all the equipment, vehicles and related items and the co2 produced there.
Nuclear energy is neither safe, sane nor cheap to produce and only a fool can see it as that it is

Wind and solar and hydro also involve "building the machines that carve up the earth, the machines that haul the ore, the rubber tires that the machines use to travel over the earth carrying said ore to the processing plants, the building of those processing plants, the energy used to process that ore into fuel. The machines used in mining the raw ingredient to make the cement and iron used in building the nuke plants and on and on are all highly producing co2 endeavors." (except that they aren't making "fuel&quot - and far more of it on a kwh basis.