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NRC Study Lowers Hazard Estimate For Nuke Plants
JSBiff writes "With the incident at Fukushima causing much renewed concern about the risks of nuclear power this year, the NY Times brings news that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released the preliminary version of a safety report due out in April 2012, based upon new science about the behavior of Cesium-137. The report finds that the public health hazards of nuclear accidents at the types of reactor designs currently in common use are lower than previously thought, based upon a better understanding of the science behind earlier estimates."
...that John Q Public does not operate on the logical, scientific wavelength?
TFA says that 1-2% of cesium 137 is likely to escape the core in the event of a containment breach, unlike 60% in previous estimates (Most of it dissolves in stagnant water or is deposited on the containment vessel surface). People living in a 10-mile radius would have enough time to evacuate, and cancer estimates within 10 miles went from 1 in 167 previously to 1 in 4348. A rainstorm happening during the meltdown can cause a higher dose to accumulate in small areas.
Only half the people that know about it, read it.
Only half the people that read it understand it.
Only half the people that understand it believe it.
Only half the people that believe it will agree with it.
Of those six people, maybe one will actually try and persuade others.
The rest are as jaded as me, if not more so. I admire the sentiment behind it, but alas I don't think the general populace will be won over by anything larger than a few tens of words. *sigh* If only we could curtail fear-mongering in the media without impinging on journalistic freedom.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Fist Cesium 137 was very dangerous, but now "new" science dictates it's safe....
It's like going to the tire shop with a flat tire and having them say it's perfectly fine....
Previewing comments are for sissies!
It will not get in the tabloids because lack of fear does not sell newspapers.
It will not get in most of the adult newspapers because it win't fit the editorial stance that is either anti-technology because "green is good" or anti state control because they are so right wing they could only be seen as mainstream in the USA. Few people really want nuclear power run like Monty Burns one...
This does not leave many other sources of information that "normal" people (not like the /. crowd) will hear.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
we now know so much more about these 1 in 10,000 years types of meltdowns, because we've been so fortunate to get over 40,000 years worth in less than 50 years. Like winning the mega-millions lottery again and again and again.
After this :
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/06/20/1540233/AP-Investigation-Concludes-US-Nuke-Regulators-Weakening-Safety-Rules
and this :
http://www.myweathertech.com/2011/07/03/leaked-emails-reveal-government-conspiracy-to-downplay-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/
and this :
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/05/19/confirmed-epa-rigged-radnet-japan-nuclear-radiation-monitoring-equipment-report-levels-nuclear-fallout-22823/
is it ANY surprise that an official government committee said 'nuclear is less dangerous than you think' ?
despicable. the fact that they think they can still fool people, is appalling. the fact that there could be people who would believe them, is dumbfounding.
these people should be outcast from society. they are public enemies.
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This /. posting does indicate that what's linked is a NYT article, but it fails to remind that following the link costs you one of your 20 free NYT accesses/month. It would be helpful if the posting were updated with a [paywall] marking, or some such, after the link. Otherwise, thanks for the interesting post!
Like the astronomical cost required for a cleanup and that can for example negatively impact the economy with all the negative health effect that causes?
Events of this type and impact magnitude always need to have all their negative impact looked at in a holistic fashion. Everything else is just lying with statistics.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I am amazed that they were able to gather such specifics so quickly from the Fukushima accident when apparently even the Japanese government still seems to be clueless to the extent of cesium contamination (though, they continue to give out low-ball estimates that do not align with observations in the field . . .). Oh, or maybe this does NOT include lessons learned from Fukushima? Then why the peculiar timing? Perhaps this is just more industry damage control through PR efforts?
In that case, I am not too interested. I would much rather listen to professors with the balls to yell at the Diet of Japan than looking a the industry/regulators give each other reach arounds . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
This is about as bad of scenario as one could imagine, yet there were no public deaths. That sounds to me like nuclear power is in fact safe and robust, and the worst case scenario is bad but not catastrophic.
Show me the sums that truly show re-newables in a good light, I will listen. No-one can, other than 'ideology sums'. I'd love to think otherwise, but I still have faith in nuclear for now. Really the 'best' alternative we at this moment in time as we buy time is for truly greener solutions.
Safer and cheaper . . . the residents are so overjoyed by their new found wealth that they are literally killing themselves to rejoice.
If you want nuclear technology, first build a proper system to protect and compensate those negatively impacted by the limitations of institutional governance and oversight. You can start by compensating my family and myself. Otherwise, STFU.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
The Fukushima experiment is still ongoing and will take at least 20 years before the first set of results come in. I think the conclusions from the report are a bit premature and the timing is quite suspicious.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Before you call nuclear power cheap you have to come up with a plan and a cost for the whole lifecycle of a nuclear plant - including disposal of the spent fuel. Otherwise you don't know what you spent for the power you got. Since there is no plan to dispose if the spent fuel, there can be no costing associated with it. So we really have no idea how much this power actually costs yet. Cheap nuclear power is a myth.
Producing spent fuel with no plan to be permanently rid of it is simply irresponsible.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Well since you asked... http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html
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Yeh and those same apologists will quote this sort of rubbish to try and "prove" nuke is safe.
And those same folks will say that climate scientists are corrupt, and cant be trusted, whereas nuke scinetists who are directly employed by their indusrty are to be believed.
Funny about that eh? Nuke fans get the message, most people dont want nuclear plants near them and that is NOt going to
change. Lets get on with other forms of energy, not piss around with a thouroughly discredited nuke industry.
I think we're better off with geothermal. It's like nuclear in that it uses a heatsource to heat a medium that conducts heat, and flashes to drive a turbine. Unlike nuclear instead of highly toxic nuclear fuel that generates even more toxic waste we have no plan to be permanently rid of, it uses an even more scientific space-age technology to heat the water commonly referred to as "a deep hole in the ground". As an added benefit, it's hard to steal a hole in the ground when you're done with it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Isn't the problem with geothermal that there are very few spots where it is feasible to create said "hole in the ground"?
Not really, no. Some are just better than others.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
there wasnt any nuclear opponents until 1960s. and they were STILL holding back safety precautions by reducing safety standards even then.
moron. wake up to this fact - when there are profits involved, corporations do anything. it is cognitively stupid to expect a corporation to care about your life over their profits. time and time again, this was proven, yet you still talk like a fool.
Read radical news here
The more I read about geothermal, the less I like it. Economically optimal locations are few in number and tend to be located far from population centres. As I continued to read, thoughts of of how the process of drilling could contribute to earthquakes, landslides and other forms of natural "disasters" ran through my head. Lo and behold:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=geothermal-drilling-earthquakes
Now I Know the editors over at scientific american are a bunch of marxist hippies (most likely bearded), but still, it does make one pause for a minute.
I live near The Geysers, the world's largest geothermal field, which has a power plant on. Arsenic and other toxics come up from the earth. This happens at an increased rate because we have increased venting, and we inject water (actually, primary-treated sewage) into the ground to keep it going, potentially loosening deposits which would otherwise remain static.
Before they came up with a sequestration strategy for these deposits (which are pressure-washed off the turbine blades -- interestingly the turbines are made by Halliburton, I make sure to give the driver the finger whenever I see new ones coming in) they put them into drums and buried them in a field. Then we started having calves born with two heads and suchlike. The field was declared a superfund site. The fix was to dig up the drums and re-bury them on site with a rubber liner, so that's going to eventually fail and we will have another superfund site on the same site! Assuming they still exist by then.
You're going to like this even better: the current strategy for sequestering the toxics is to wash the turbines over the same concrete pit they've always used, and to let the water evaporate off, and then to simply cap the pit with concrete. This has been done repeatedly to the point where the site now hosts a layer cake of toxics and concrete. No less than five fault lines come together here and the entire county is a volcano field. Nothing so seismically sensitive with such penalty for failure should ever be built here. When the pit fills up, they raise the walls and repeat the process.
Geothermal energy is another one of those ideas that sounds good until you actually get going and learn that there are serious problems to be accounted for. The powerplant at The Geysers has been over budget and under projected production for its entire life cycle.
It may well be that geothermal power can be safe and clean, but we are apparently not capable of doing it that way in the USA.
I think we'd have been better off starting to put in solar in the 1960s. It would have paid off the energy cost of its production in less than a decade back then. Today it can do it in less than three years if you use thin film. It is staggeringly stupid that we do not have massive PV solar plants. They should be funded by the government and installed at cost for the benefit of the country, but that runs contrary to everything we truly believe in here in this country; primarily that some rich fucks should get richer every time we do anything.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Risk = Probability x expected loss
If expected loss is not (nearly) 0, you need to manage probability as well. So while the hazard (expected loss) may be less than estimated before, it says nothing about the probability. And in my opinion it is the probability in nuclear plants that is the issue.
This is of course besides the question what a "lower hazard estimate" means. A lower hazard estimate can still be pretty high.
Renewables are even older, so what's your point?
E.g. see the info at http://fairewinds.com/updates
The NRC is slow, weak and not well informed.
Of all the arguments I've ever seen against nuclear power, "Durr, it was invented 50 years ago" is quite possibly the stupidest. In most cases the claims involved at least make some connection to reality if you interpert generously. But there's just no way to read this retarded appeal to novelty, however favorably or disfavorably, that even makes sense.
Yes, nuclear power was commercialized in the 1960s... And? So were integrated circuits and color TV, dumbass.
You can buy real estate without living in it. And my EXACT POINT is that the populace is being blamed for overreacting, which means there is a mid to long term investment opportunity if you believe so (difference between market price and expected price). So, like so much of your ilk, your ideas are worth 10 minutes of your time, but not your money or economic actions. 10 miles from the plant? . . . you are so full of shit. Go peddle your BS somewhere else you clueless troll.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Current technology can only clean an area to a certain point (even that is too costly to properly do), but not to a level you would actually want children to be exposed to. "Nature" takes around 5 half-lives . . . But more importantly, how many assets around Fukushima do YOU currently own!? Nice to yell out "doomsayer" from the comfort of 1000s km? You like ridiculing the Japanese parents who are concerned that their kids are being exposed to nuclear worker level radiation? IMHO, people like you should be committing suicide, not the victims of your ignorant and dangerous views.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
How much land have you bought around Fukushima, you fucking troll!? You think it is so safe, where is your fucking proof that you actually believe your own fucking bullshit?! Your views amount to you BSing on the web occasionally and then abandoning Fukushima, just like Chernobyl was abandoned by the industry years ago. You want to debate with the experts on the fact that radioactive contamination from Fukushima will cause an increase rate of cancer, be my guest, but do it some fucking other place, you looney.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
We delayed doing anything about the terrorism risk for 6 years, since we were really stumped and way too busy trying to push the industry agenda. Then we were taking our sweet time and Fukushima happened, so we quickly put out some BS to offset the horrible truth being revealed everyday about the disaster.
Yes, I can admit that I work for the NRC, since all our astroturfing is outsourced to India. Yes, I think I believe our own bullshit, but I would NEVER do something substantial like purchasing land around Chernobyl or Fukushima. Those people are truly fucked.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
The Geysers is a relic. Geothermal heat has been commercially exploited there since 1852, and by natives for thousands of years before that as hot baths. It was first tapped for electricity 1960, the first commercial geothermal electricity plant in the US.
It's one of the cheapest powerplants in the world per KWh. (Well, whatever - many plants in a 30sq mi area). It's a dry steam plant. They do need to upgrade to modern binary cycle, where everything that comes up from the ground goes back into the ground - a closed cycle. They could get much more efficiency this way and eliminate the need for so much injection because binary cycle plants recover energy from a much lower temperature delta. They're probably not doing it yet because it's not yet the least expensive option at this site, but that's not the fault of modern geothermal power. I understand the upgrade is planned. The Geyser's site is almost unique, and I could not have been talking about this mode of geothermal energy for other people because other people don't have this rich resource.
WRT arsenic, arsenic is a valuable industrial chemical. No doubt someone will mine that arsenic and concrete sandwich one day. Per equivalent energy output coal produces far more arsenic in addition to more harmful things - and nuclear produces far more. I assure you that a few tons of arsenic are easier rendered inert and nontoxic than the mass of nuclear fuel that would be required to produce the same power. The Geysers powers 60% of the homes between Sacramento and the Oregon border - power for 1.1 million people.
The plants I was talking about don't use thermal resources located so close to the surface that increasing venting is an issue. That entire area has been venting toxic gases and fluids from beneath the ground for a hundred million years. That's what made it such a fertile field for early geothermal work. It was low-hanging fruit in a day when we lacked the tech to drill so deep and exploit the energy beneath our feet everywhere. There's a reason you don't drink the water in the hot spring.
As to anecdotal evidence of two-headed calves and such, against the region's natural output I'm doubtful that the powerplants made a significant environmental impact. Perhaps you have links to a study? For the general case it's neither here nor there because as I said, active geothermal regions aren't required for the modern Enhanced Geothermal Systems so those issues aren't present and if they were, the toxins would be put back where they came from.
PV is a grand idea. I support it wholeheartedly. I look forward to the day when a PV cell can generate more energy in its lifecycle than the energy required to produce it, install and maintain it, and recycle it. Hopefully by then they won't be made of the exact same chemicals you're complaining about. One day when PV achieves perhaps 30% efficiency and becomes as cheap as paint we'll all be able to unhook from the grid - or even power the grid with our excess.
Since this is going longish I may as well go the extra few feet and solve the whole problem. We wouldn't need so much power if we weren't wasting so much. Much power goes to heating and cooling homes - and much of that can be alleviated with insulation and roofs (and maybe walls) that are white where it's hot and black where it's cold. A roof that changes shade according to the desired temperature in the home would be a greater energy savings than PV cells. We have thermally color-changing paints, so this shouldn't be a big deal. Our electronics need to drop in power, and they are doing so now that we're moving to LCD TVs and ARM processors, lighting is moving to LED so that issue may go away without other action. Particularly with LED there is some good work to be done. The last big modern home energy sink is heating water. I do love my hot water. Hot water on tap is the hallmark of civilization. If you have some back issues of Mother Earth News from the 1980s they have many solutions to this problem, mos
Help stamp out iliturcy.
As to anecdotal evidence of two-headed calves and such, against the region's natural output I'm doubtful that the powerplants made a significant environmental impact.
It was a superfund site, I've given you all you need to know to find out more. We have had several here because we also have a cinnabar mine and a borax lake. But it will be clearly indicated.
PV is a grand idea. I support it wholeheartedly. I look forward to the day when a PV cell can generate more energy in its lifecycle than the energy required to produce it, install and maintain it, and recycle it.
So you're looking forward to the 1970s?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"