Talk:Nuclear power reconsidered

Nuclear power is a controversial topic, and some of the controversies remain unsettled, even after the facts in the article are agreed on. This Discussion page will provide a concise summary from each side of these unsettled issues. Much of this discussion is collected from Internet forums, and we welcome updates to improve these summaries. See the ../editorial page for more discussion on editorial issues.

Sabotage scenarios are disaster porn

These sabotage scenarios are just disaster porn and should be deleted with prejudice. The arguments about terrorism are equally valid to municipal water treatment plants and hydro dams, but these are not challenged. How about a balanced discussion of the dangers of terrorism on public infrastructure? Maybe use Zaporizhzhia as an example:

There has been much hand wringing about the dangers of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant being subject to bombing, but these worries are far out of proportion to the potential risks. Certainly the bombing of expensive public infrastructure on which lives depend can be a catastrophe, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that we shouldn’t build towers just because a maniacal cult might fly airplanes into them.

We have evidence it is easy to kill tens of thousands of people by sabotaging a hydro dam in Zaporizhzhia. But what would be the damage of a nuclear facility being bombed?

Chernobyl is the best example—a reactor with no containment building exploded and burned for over a week. The result? 29 immediate deaths, and the loss of 1 GW of clean high capacity factor electricity. Decades later the UNSCEAR has reviewed the available health data, and determined that there have been roughly 6,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer and 15 deaths a couple decades later, all of which could have been avoided had the Soviet government admitted the accident immediately and taken a few simple safety measures.

We now know from various studies that evacuations following nuclear accidents have been significantly overzealous to the detriment of the life expectancy of the evacuees, due in large part to fear and ignorance. Almost all of the evacuees from the Fukushima region would’ve been better off sheltering in place. We now know that the impact of moving from Fukushima to Tokyo and experiencing what we consider as acceptable levels of fossil fuel air pollution, for example, would have resulted in a greater loss of life expectancy than staying put following the meltdowns.

It becomes apparent that when it comes to nuclear reactors, the only thing to fear is fear itself. --- Dr. Al Scott - The Rational View

Editorial Note: Most questions on reactor safety are best discussed in the context of a specific design. For a response to these sabotage scenarios, see the Safety section of the ThorCon article. David MacQuigg (talk) 11:50, 13 September 2022 (CDT)

Purpose of this article

The purpose of this article is to summarize the questions that have been raised and the criteria that have been established for evaluating the many nuclear reactor designs that are now being proposed as solutions to the global warming problem. Answers to these questions should be provided in the subpages linked in the Related Articles subpage. We want to keep this top article short and non-controversial. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions and comments from skeptics on the Discussion pages. David MacQuigg (talk) 10:53, 26 December 2022 (CST)

Ordering of proposed reactor designs?

Is there a reason (such as priority of interest) in the ordering of the proposed reactor designs? If no particular reason for the current order, might we please alphabetize them? That is what I did over on the Related Articles tab, for now. Pat Palmer (talk) 14:12, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it was just the order that I encountered them, and spent more time developing the articles. There are dozens of these new designs, so perhaps to put them on an even footing, we should move them all to the Related Articles tab. That would also be the place to list dozens of subtopics, which we don't consider worthy of mention in the main article, topics like the world supply of nuclear fuel (unlimited on any timescale we need to worry about). But back to the question of what to highlight in the main article, I would say let's pick the ones our editorial council finds most interesting. That could be 1) Furthest along in providing a near-term climate solution (ThorCon) or 2) Some unique and worthy feature, like ability to burn old bomb cores (MSCFR, Natrium) promise of generating zero-carbon hydrogen fuel (VHTR) or closest to existing reactor technology and thereby maybe more acceptable to regulators with thousands of pages of existing standards (NuScale). Perhaps we should make this ordering a reward to authors who will do a really good job in developing a citable version of an article on their favorite design. For now, we could move the undeveloped articles off the main page. David MacQuigg (talk) 21:16, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Which new designs are intended to be highlighted?

The main article has 4 "new designs" in section Nuclear_power_reconsidered#Proposed_Designs, and the Related Articles tab lists 7 new designs. I wish, perhaps futilely, for consistency. Should the main article perhaps just point over to this section on the Related Articles tab? Pat Palmer (talk) 11:20, 11 December 2022 (CST)

Sorry for the late response. Email notifications for watched pages were being sent to an old email address. I think that is now fixed.

My plan was to make the Related Articles tab include any new designs that anyone cares to write about. This will be too much for the main article, but a single link with no comment on specific designs will be too little. We can still change the list of highlighted designs, but what I have now is a representative design from each of four important categories. Perhaps I should clarify what is important about each category. I would very much like to get more detail on an FNR and an HTGR, but the companies pursuing these designs are keeping them proprietary. ThorCon has been a shining example of transparency in detailing their design, and in answering followup questions. David MacQuigg (talk) 10:28, 24 December 2022 (CST)

Use of "we" in writing the article

I haven't groused about this yet because it's only a stylistic technicality, but I think it's probably a good idea to avoid using "we" in these articles, lest it be mistaken for advocacy. So in the Safety section, the sentence "In that case, we must consider possible scenarios and what the operator response would need to be" should be revised, in my opinion. I'll leave it up to you.Pat Palmer (talk) 11:20, 11 December 2022 (CST)

Agreed. WE want to avoid even the appearance of advocacy. My intent was that WE refer to the public in general. I can change it to:

"In that case, regulators must consider possible scenarios ..."

There are four other instances of 'we' in the article:

2) Even if we look only at radioactivity released to the environment,[15] watt-for-watt nuclear power is 100 times less than coal.[16]

3) Again, we should evaluate specific plans by considering likely scenarios.

4) In evaluating a new reactor design, we must look at the complete fuel cycle,

5) It is important that we make a distinction between spent fuel from nuclear power, and the waste from bomb production,

I can change 'we' to 'regulators' in (3) and (4) for the same reason. (2) and (5) seem harmless, and 'we' provides a better flow. David MacQuigg (talk) 10:58, 24 December 2022 (CST)

Linking from the 2nd paragraph to other articles in this group

I have made another stab at organizing the opening statement, and I think now that we need to find a way, in the second paragraph, to link directly to the other articles such as Fear of radiation and Nuclear waste management, right there in the second paragraph. But that paragraph would need some reworking to make that possible.Pat Palmer (talk) 09:41, 3 January 2023 (CST)

uneasy with current end of 2nd paragraph

" It is important that all arguments for and against these new reactor designs be published for public comment. Scrutiny from people who have engineering experience, but are not connected to the nuclear industry or any political advocacy group, would be particularly useful." (2nd paragraph). Sounds too much like advocacy. I understand the sentiment, but a reword is needed. I can't think how to do it right now. Pat Palmer (talk) 09:41, 3 January 2023 (CST)

Maybe this statement could just be removed.Pat Palmer (talk) 09:46, 3 January 2023 (CST)