This sounds quite conspiratorial and it comes from someone (Bret Weinstein) who is known to be far down the conspiracy rabbit hole and misrepresenting science (e.g. on COVID). So I am surprised we are paying any attention to it.
More substantively:
If electrical grids fail for a year, will nuclear reactors really be the problem?
They all have diesel generators to supply power and could be shut down.
Also, Chernobyl-like events are not generally thought possible with reactors currently in operation.
Regarding 1., I would value someone who has researched this give more insight into:
A. How long diesel generators could be expected to be supplied with diesel when there is some continental electricity outage of a year (or longer). This is hard to judge. My intuition is that society would be in chaos and that maintaining diesel supplies would be extremely tough to manage.
B. What is minimally required in the long process of shutting down a nuclear power plant? Including but not limited to diesel or other backup generator supplies.
Regarding 2., I do not see how a meltdown as happened with Chernobyl is not thought to be possible with current reactor designs. Even if current reactor designs have more safeguards, the fundamental problem still seems the same. You have constantly heating fissile materials that require cooling water to not overheat. And there are some potentially flammable substances in the area of the (used up) fuel rods too. Could you clarify more specifically what you think are important differences here?
~
I felt a little confused about why the summary sounded conspiratorial to you. The way I meant to write it is “a chain of plausible-seeming but neglected events happen, and lead to catastrophe”. At most this seems a story of humans not being incentivised to act to prevent tail risks? Am I missing something?
Now, Bret Weinstein does seem to have a leaning toward potentially falsely identifying conspiracies. While I agree COVID vaccine negative side-effects seem underreported (I’ve seen it with family), I am also skeptical of Bret’s coverage. I also think there is another perspective on the Evergreen College situation, which is that the college had been slow to implement thoughtful reforms (whatever that means) to address structural discrimination and that tensions boiled over.
At the same time, I want to be careful about not dismissing explained reasoning outright because the person seems on the face of it unreasonable. There are people outside EA whom I talked with who initially seemed in some ways very unreasonable, until I probed their perspective enough, found a more comprehensive way of looking at the problem, and surprisingly changed my mind.
Would also want to encourage maintaining some openness around looking for conflicting perspectives. You have been advising a climate strategy of a developing a mix of energy solutions, including nuclear energy. You would adjust your recommendations if you ever found rigorous reasoning for there being an unacceptable risk of nuclear meltdown, right?
What I meant to say in my original comment is that when someone who has a bad reputation for being truth seeking / has a reputation for being a conspiracy theorist says something on an area outside their expertise we should not give a lot of credence to it.
The burden of this not being a credible scenario should—in my view—not lie with commenters and, at the time I was commenting, most comments seemed incremental instead of pointing to a strong skepticism on Weinstein’s take to start as if it were a plausible situation that a guy on a podcast without specific relevant expertise has uncovered a mechanism that 50 years of anti-nuclear activism have not produced (or, more nuanced, something that is so implausible that even typical anti-nuclear advocates wouldn’t lead with it because they know it won’t stand).
To the specific question—we do have a long section on nuclear in our 2018 report and I’ve obviously also spent a lot of time on it though I haven’t written it up, but it took me several years to turn from German anti-nuclear environmentalist to the positions I hold now.
Here is an article on why a Chernobyl-style event is not possible with modern reactors. And the diesel generators would not be refueled for a year, given in the scenario there would be a failure of the entire power grid you would just use them to have enough electricity to shut things down safely.
This sounds quite conspiratorial and it comes from someone (Bret Weinstein) who is known to be far down the conspiracy rabbit hole and misrepresenting science (e.g. on COVID). So I am surprised we are paying any attention to it.
More substantively:
If electrical grids fail for a year, will nuclear reactors really be the problem? They all have diesel generators to supply power and could be shut down.
Also, Chernobyl-like events are not generally thought possible with reactors currently in operation.
Regarding 1., I would value someone who has researched this give more insight into:
A. How long diesel generators could be expected to be supplied with diesel when there is some continental electricity outage of a year (or longer). This is hard to judge. My intuition is that society would be in chaos and that maintaining diesel supplies would be extremely tough to manage.
B. What is minimally required in the long process of shutting down a nuclear power plant? Including but not limited to diesel or other backup generator supplies.
Regarding 2., I do not see how a meltdown as happened with Chernobyl is not thought to be possible with current reactor designs. Even if current reactor designs have more safeguards, the fundamental problem still seems the same. You have constantly heating fissile materials that require cooling water to not overheat. And there are some potentially flammable substances in the area of the (used up) fuel rods too. Could you clarify more specifically what you think are important differences here?
~
I felt a little confused about why the summary sounded conspiratorial to you. The way I meant to write it is “a chain of plausible-seeming but neglected events happen, and lead to catastrophe”. At most this seems a story of humans not being incentivised to act to prevent tail risks? Am I missing something?
Now, Bret Weinstein does seem to have a leaning toward potentially falsely identifying conspiracies. While I agree COVID vaccine negative side-effects seem underreported (I’ve seen it with family), I am also skeptical of Bret’s coverage. I also think there is another perspective on the Evergreen College situation, which is that the college had been slow to implement thoughtful reforms (whatever that means) to address structural discrimination and that tensions boiled over.
At the same time, I want to be careful about not dismissing explained reasoning outright because the person seems on the face of it unreasonable. There are people outside EA whom I talked with who initially seemed in some ways very unreasonable, until I probed their perspective enough, found a more comprehensive way of looking at the problem, and surprisingly changed my mind.
Would also want to encourage maintaining some openness around looking for conflicting perspectives. You have been advising a climate strategy of a developing a mix of energy solutions, including nuclear energy. You would adjust your recommendations if you ever found rigorous reasoning for there being an unacceptable risk of nuclear meltdown, right?
I’ll address the rest later (hopefully this weekend), but just to clarify that I did not mean to call you or your summary conspiratorial, Remmelt!
I only meant the substantive claim and coming from Bret Weinstein, but I’ll address this with more time and the rest of your comment later.
Apologies for the delay, Remmelt.
What I meant to say in my original comment is that when someone who has a bad reputation for being truth seeking / has a reputation for being a conspiracy theorist says something on an area outside their expertise we should not give a lot of credence to it.
The burden of this not being a credible scenario should—in my view—not lie with commenters and, at the time I was commenting, most comments seemed incremental instead of pointing to a strong skepticism on Weinstein’s take to start as if it were a plausible situation that a guy on a podcast without specific relevant expertise has uncovered a mechanism that 50 years of anti-nuclear activism have not produced (or, more nuanced, something that is so implausible that even typical anti-nuclear advocates wouldn’t lead with it because they know it won’t stand).
To the specific question—we do have a long section on nuclear in our 2018 report and I’ve obviously also spent a lot of time on it though I haven’t written it up, but it took me several years to turn from German anti-nuclear environmentalist to the positions I hold now.
Here is an article on why a Chernobyl-style event is not possible with modern reactors. And the diesel generators would not be refueled for a year, given in the scenario there would be a failure of the entire power grid you would just use them to have enough electricity to shut things down safely.
Thanks, looking forward to reading your thoughts!