Nuclear plants in war zones: A valid reason not to build more

As long as we replace nuclear with coal plants, which is what we are largely doing in Europe, I'm strongly pro-nuclear. Coal has an estimated death rate (only for power generation) of +100k people/year.

I am really positive/hopeful for battery tech and solar panels getting better AND deployed more within the decade, and if we were replacing nuclear for that (or wind, or hydro) I'd be happy, but right now we are not doing that and there's just no comparison of the dangers IMHO.

Nuclear is the "big and scary" airplane accident where lots of people die at once so it's in the news around the world, coal is the thousands of people quietly dying every year on car accidents.

Edit: it seems I was wrong and coal itself has not meaningfully increased in EU, it's other non-renewable (gas mainly) that are less dangerous. I believe my point stands though for 2 reasons: they are still a lot more dangerous than nuclear, AND closing/not building more nuclear probably has delayed the closure of many coal plants.

The danger of hitting a PWR core just right so it actually becomes a dirty bomb instead of having a meltdown seems kinda irrelevant next to the overall casualties of a war.

“Real” dirty bombs aren’t really any more deadly than a conventional bomb; they’re not WMDs. They just happen to make continued inhabitation of an area more risky or impossible for some time. Keep in mind that radiological dangers are very easy and cheap to measure, especially compared to chemical or biological contamination.

So what is the point? No potentially dangerous industrial plants because, in case of war, they can became a risk ? But they are a risk even without a war.

In other words:

- no hydroelectric power plants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure#List_of_major_dam_... );

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st... );

- no chemical plants ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Chemical_disasters );

- no refineries, petroleum processing ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills );

IMHO, nuclear plans are a good option to solve current energy needs and modern nuclear plans are safe even in worst case scenario in Ukraine I don't think a new Chernobyl disaster will be possible because that event was generated by events related to a chain of factors impossible to exist there.

I think the better way to avoid the risk of nuclear disaster in case of war is to renounce to atomic bombs and working to avoid proliferation of that kind of weapons.

Looks like similar risks are much greater with renewable power: Russia threatening to explode Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power plant could cause greater damage, than blowing up a nuclear power plant.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63341251

Also historically, the largest dam accident in history has an estimated 20 000 to 200 000 death toll. This one data point is (almost) never included in comparisons of safety and death tolls of different energy sources, as it would skew hydropower and renewables look much worse in statistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

Stop watching so much popular media, with their sensational catastrophe scenarios. Why spend any time floating ideas like this that have no chance of making any difference? How about we don't build cities in possible war zones, since lots of people get killed in cities during war.

Look up Chernobyl. Ukraine already had a meltdown disaster. Spoiler: Europe survived.

You should also think about chemical plants, then.

This argument is like - never do anything because we all die.

Maybe other counter argument would be thinking about meteor strikes - don't build nuclear reactors because meteor can hit it.

Looks at Europe, the country that doesn't have an enormous amount of hydro electricity and have the lowest carbon intensity for its electricity is France: https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

Renewable cannot provide a base load (except hydro which require specific geography not everyone has), thus cannot work in practice. Germany use coal and natural gas to provide their baseload, but in doing so, emit so much polution they indirectly kill thousands of peoples each year: https://env-health.org/IMG/pdf/dark_cloud-full_report_final....

No, you cannot store enormous quantity of energy a fully renewable grid would need, it has never been done, and we need a solution right now.

Since the 1980 France do low carbon electricity with it's nuclear, every days, whether there is sun or not, wether there is wind or not.

It's an existing tech, that is known to work, and work at scale.

Fog of War. Don’t get influenced by FUD generated by any side. You are hearing what one or the other side want you to hear.

You are feaongering without data, a classic. Even a bad nuclear accident dont come close in term of casualties to using any other energy source in peace time.

> The argument “There will never be a war here” seems foolish to me.

You know the same country that is invading Ukraine that may target a nuclear power plant could just as easily just drop its own nuclear weapons right?

There's a lot of reasons for optimism. Renewables plus storage are getting better than nuclear in so many ways. This alternative is faster to deploy, more resilient, (getting) less dependent on questionable imports, (getting) cheaper. The only structural disadvantage is space requirements, but even in that area, there is research on the benefits of symbiosis, like between agriculture and solar.

My experience tells me that no lobbyist will be able to fend off something intrinsically better in the long term.

No. There's right now a major dam that is feared Russia may blow up, just as it is feared that they might blow up the Nuclear power plant. If they did so, it would almost certainly cause more loss of life and damage than the NPP.

Why aren't you asking "Dams in war zones: A valid reason not to build more?". I'll tell you why: 1) because that would be stupid; 2) because dams don't invoke irrational fears like "Nuclear" does. Just stop it.

containment buildings are built to withstand missile strikes and airlines crashing into them. it would take a deliberate effort to breach one.

and since nuclear weapons exist, this is a ridiculous reason to not build nuclear power plants. if russia wanted to do area denial with a radiological weapon they would just set off a dirty bomb.

Another thing, just to show how far away we are from resilience in this sense: Having a surveillance state with perfect information about where everyone lives and maybe what their politics are.. that is not safe in case your country is occupied by a hostile force!

It's fearmongering.

I haven't seen a single expert be worried about ZPP.

Also, some gas plants were hit. Now those exploded in a scary way. That's what I'd be worried about.

For some designs of small nuclear reactors (SMR), the reactor is completely buried underground. That would probably eliminate most of this risk.

since chernobyl there have been a few very major civilian reactor meltdowns, and zero deaths caused by them

(Disclaimer: I'm just a random guy who doesn't know much about energy production. I'm just sharing my opinion.)

Unfortunately, we don't have other reliable clean alternatives. At the moment nuclear energy is the cleanest reliable energy we have. This is why China is building 150 reactors at the moment:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-cli...

Also it is not in anyone's interest to have a nuclear accident. What if there is a nuclear accident in Ukraine and the wind starts blowing east?

There are other more likely things that scare me more like chemical/biological warfare and military drones that can fit in a backpack.

War zones, potential war zones, or climate risk zones. See not only Ukraine this last year but the fact that France ran low on cool enough to be useful cooling water due to the summer heatwave. Unacceptable and unnecessary tactical risks. Don't risk rendering an city uninhabitable per generation at best for the sake of boiling water.