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Cam P's avatar

Nuclear proponents, Including Dr Alan Finkle (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/22/heres-why-there-is-no-nuclear-option-for-australia-to-reach-net-zero) often state the safety record is comparable to that of wind and solar in terms of deaths per unit of energy produced. What they don’t mention is the cost of making nuclear safe. Arguments that fewer safety measures are needed founder on the fact you can't test to failure and therefore we can't know the precise level of safety margins needed. Add to this the high consequences of getting risk analysis wrong and no-one in the free world are prepared to fully accept those risks.

I also had a look at the ANSTO website recently and was disappointed to find cut-and-paste content in the nuclear power section which could have come from the industry lobby. There was no detailed description informing the public on the state of the art in Nuclear power technology, no detailed lists of various reactor technologies the number of producing reactors and prototypes etc.

The notion that we MUST be able to get usable energy out a substance tens of thousands times the energy density of coal is highly compelling, so it’s no wonder people keep trying. The problem is nearly all technological development depends on trial and error, but with reactor technology error can kill you. You can’t “fail upwards” Elon Musk style.

Before you even build a prototype, you have to have your have an orders of magnitude higher degree of certainty of the probability for failure than for any other technology, and for every aspect of the system because you can’t know how a design will function until it’s functioning. New, previously unknown potential points of failure can then crop up when you are building the prototype, running the prototype, building the working reactor and running the working reactor.

Faults or malfunctions in an active reactor core can’t be directly repaired so you have to make sure nothing goes wrong before you load up the fuel, and if something does go wrong, hope that it is the kind of problem remote repair systems are designed to cope with, that it will resolve itself, that, if all else fails, it won’t result in a leak or explosion and the reactor can be shutdown and decommissioned safely. All of this means a precautionary principle must be applied to design and construction simply due to the fact you can’t test a reactor to failure, at least, not on purpose.

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Andriy's avatar

Wow. You did a great job tracking the Coalition's claim back to its underwhelming source. I'll climb on board the nuclear bandwagon if the numbers stack up but for now they very clearly don't.

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