Fukushima: Myth of Safety, Reality of Geoscience

An anonymous reader writes "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' has published a special Fukushima issue with interesting/deep/new pieces written by leading experts on the nuclear disaster in Japan. Fukushima: The myth of safety, the reality of geoscience, which shows that in the decades after the nuclear plant was built, the authorities discovered historical records that showed Fukushima was vulnerable to a giant tsunami, but they did nothing to protect the plant. But there's a globalized twist to the issue: The Bulletin has also translated these lengthy expert analyses of the disaster into Japanese. As Bulletin editor Mindy Kay Bricker explains: 'Those in genuine need of erudite analysis are, of course, those directly affected by the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese population. Stellar coverage by Western news outlets might win awards, but what is the point if those who most deserve the information never benefit from reading it?'"

Comments

Close them all

[Anonymous Coward]

This confirms it.
No nuclear power plants can handle a tsunami.
All of them must be shut down.

Re:Close them all

[siddesu]

The problems in Fukushima had jackshit to do with tsunamis, and a lot to do with incompetence, greed and political pressure, during plan construction, during operation and, finally, during the disastrous handling of the incident after the earthquake. Those problems are universal problems that tend to plague the nuclear sector everywhere, because many view it as prestigious, there are "national security" concerns, the orders are large and a lot of money is swapped under the table in deals that cut various corners, etc.

Since fission nuclear power, if done for safely and accounted for properly, is insanely expensive to begin with, and the costs multiply many times over in the case of a nuclear fuckup, coming up with better alternatives is not a bad idea.

Re:Close them all

[swanzilla]

Well this confirms it.

Big waves are bad for nuke plants;

All must be shut down.

FT(haiku)FY

Re:Close them all

[siddesu]

Yeah, sure. And I am the elf-lord Feanor.

Re:Close them all

[Target Drone]

Since fission nuclear power, if done for safely and accounted for properly, is insanely expensive to begin with

The funny thing is that when nuclear power was first being developed in the 1950s there was talk of unmetered billing. The electricity from nuclear would be so cheap that you would just be charged a flat rate each month.

Slightly off topic. We've all heard how as soon as fusion is developed it will solve all our energy problems but is it going to be any better? I've heard the design of a fusion reactor will be very similar to a fission reactor. There will be a nuclear core that generates heat and drives steam turbines. A cement containment building to contain any leaks or explosions. The core will be radioactive so you need specially trained workers and procedures. From a cost/operating standpoint it sounds a lot like a fission plant.

I should mention there are a few big pluses to fusion though.

• The containment vessel becomes much more radioactive then fission waste. However it will only take about 200 years to decay to safe levels making finding a safe disposal site easier
• An radiation that escapes from the plant should decay to background levels by the time it reaches the fence around the perimeter of the plant
• Uranium fuel currently accounts for about 30% of the cost of running a fission plant. So there is that savings. Although until a fusion plant is actually built we won't know if there are any additional costs that fission didn't have

Re:Close them all

[Will.Woodhull]

In short, there is nothing wrong with nuclear technology. It, of itself, is safe.

All the problems arise from the use of human beings in the design, implementation, and maintenance processes. We know that human beings are flawed in half a hundred different ways and to such an extent that there is no possibility of applying any kind of credible quality assurance to these modules. We can extrapolate from history and recognize that so long as human modules are involved in the nuclear power industry, there will be catastrophic failures.

What we need is a nuclear power industry that uses no human modules. Anything short of that is clearly defective by design.

Agree with parent post: it is long past time to recognize that in real world terms the human caused risks in the nuclear power industry are just too damn expensive to handle. Anyone who disagrees with that summation should be closely examined to see if they are human. If they do seem to be human, then for safety's sake they need to be recognized as flawed and their assertions dismissed as not credible.

Re:Close them all

[hedwards]

There hasn't been a major accident in the US in decades. And worldwide the two major incidents in my lifetime were the result of negligence and incompetence. The risks are known and the US Navy has had nuclear reactors in much of its fleet for decades without problems.

The problem is one that can be solved, throwing out the industry and eliminating humans isn't going to solve the problem, and it just means that we'll have to go back to coal and oil power until we do find another replacement. Chernobyl wouldn't have happened at all if the people running it had stuck to established protocols rather than experimenting with removing control rods.

Fukushima shouldn't have happened. In fact, had they kept and maintained a secondary back up generator this largely would have been avoided. Considering that the plant was hit by a significant earth quake and tsunami and was ultimately undone by the lack of a spare back up generator, I'd say that this is a good sign over all. It just means that plant operators need to be more closely regulated for things like that. And most plants are not in a position to be exposed to those sorts of conditions.

Re:Close them all

[leucadiadude]

Nope, your just another opinionated person that spews shit about stuff they have never studied in depth. Like most, you are not dumb, quite the contrary. But because you are presumably smart in your area of expertise, you think you are an expert in another highly technical field.

Re:Close them all

[siddesu]

there is nothing wrong with nuclear technology. It, of itself, is safe.

In short, this is a very simplistic way to put it. All I am saying is that even before the issues of technology come into play, there is the issue of having a good enough social framework to ensure nuclear safety. This is the necessary condition to get right before it even makes sense to consider the technological issues of nuclear safety, and this condition is rarely satisfied even in developed countries, as the Fukushima debacle has shown beyond doubt.

The technological issues at hand aren't trivial either -- there is no such thing as "nuclear technology" per se, there are all kinds of reactors, built by all kinds of groups, connected to all kinds of control equipment and operated by various organizations with complex vendor relations, etc. Saying "it is safe" without context is rather meaningless.

Re:Close them all

[leucadiadude]

Now this post I can agree with. Well put.

And yes I am in the commercial nuclear industry. Have a strong culture of nuclear safety is of paramount importance. Everything follows from it.

Re:Close them all

[siddesu]

I don't know what your purported expertise is, and you will excuse me if I take it as I take any anonymous claim to expertise on Internet boards, that is, very lightly.

What I am talking about is not the technology of nuclear power, but rather the management of the said technology. Do you have anything from my original comment that you disagree with, or are you going to keep asking us to believe you because you claim expertise and throw "FUD" around? I can back my claims of incompetence, greed and political motivation in the nuclear sector winning over safety and for that I don't need to know every detail of the plant construction.

Re:Close them all

[leucadiadude]

"The problems in Fukushima had jackshit to do with tsunamis, and a lot to do with incompetence, greed and political pressure, during plan construction, during operation and, finally, during the disastrous handling of the incident after the earthquake. Those problems are universal problems that tend to plague the nuclear sector everywhere, because many view it as prestigious, there are "national security" concerns, the orders are large and a lot of money is swapped under the table in deals that cut various corners, etc.

Since fission nuclear power, if done for safely and accounted for properly, is insanely expensive to begin with, and the costs multiply many times over in the case of a nuclear fuckup, coming up with better alternatives is not a bad idea."

You throw out many accusations for which you WOULD need detailed knowledge of the industry. On the face of it your post is FUD because there is no way "under the table deals" would not have been leaked, you have provided no data that indicates in any way you have the knowledge or skills to objectively judge competence or incompetence of operations, construction, or handling of the post event emergency response. You could not possibly know about fictitious "deals to cut corners", if you did you would have notified authorities.

In short, you are offering up your personal opinions as facts without any basis, and worse, not stating plainly up front that this is your opinion.

Thats why I said FUD.

Re:Close them all

[Gizzmonic]

In short, there is nothing wrong with aviation technology. It, of itself, is safe.

All the problems arise from the use of human beings in the design, implementation, and maintenance processes. We know that human beings are flawed in half a hundred different ways and to such an extent that there is no possibility of applying any kind of credible quality assurance to these modules. We can extrapolate from history and recognize that so long as human modules are involved in the aviation industry, there will be catastrophic failures.

Re:Close them all

[siddesu]

Well, my experience is probably influenced by me being too close to the two worst disasters - I happened to be within few hundred km of both Chernobyl and Fukushima when they happened, and have to bear the cost of the consequences of two nuclear disasters myself - but my observations of the way nuclear industry and regulators operates worldwide don't exactly inspire my confidence in the safe handling of technology.

Japan has always had a bad culture when it comes to nuclear safety, but the depth of Fukushima fuckup really surprised me. Russia isn't far behind from what I know and see. The many old nuclear plants in Eastern Europe engage in a lot of worrying practices (substandard fuel, hushing up of minor accidents, etc.) and are nearing their end of life, so more construction probably with Russian tech will ensue, with all associated risks. China with its "stellar" industrial safety record isn't exactly inspiring confidence, and neither is India, and both have plans to build a lot of reactors. Even Germany admitted their reactors aren't up to their own regulations after the post-Fukushima inspections.

So, the "safety culture" of the nuclear industry is, IMHO, severely overhyped worldwide. If nuclear accident outcomes could easily be contained, I could have cared less, but alas it doesn't seem to be the case.

Re:Close them all

[Ol Olsoc]

Well then - I appoint thee High Lord leucadiadude - the final authority on all things nuclear on slashdot!

Forgive the snark - but this isn't a courtroom, so his opinion isn't worth as mush as your's might be, but how about telling us why we are perfectly safe, rather than cute comments about other people who "spew shit".

So tell us, What exactly is the FUD?

Before you declare me one of the great unwashed, allw me to say the we are on the cusp of a choice. Greatly expand the use of nuclear power, or return to the middle ages, and live in a world that will not support anywhere near the number of people it does now.

That's correct, I'm saying civilization is going to collapse if we don't go Nuc.

But make no mistake - I want it done safely. The heads of engineering building these plants need veto power over CEO's and "The Stockholders", we have to overbuild the plants by a huge amount, we have to have a design lifetime at least triple what we do now.

And the reason is that bad decisions will be made on the basis of profit, Plant safety will be compromised for the same reason, and the plants will almost certainly be operated well past their planned lifetimes. Happens with bridges, buildings, and other structures. It will happen with nuc plants.

We hear so much from nuc supporters on how "Chernobyl was an unsafe design" Fukushima really wasn't much of a disaster. TMI was probably the best example of how to handle a disaster (technically).

But here is what you are working against. There are plenty other old reactors out there, and when the next disaster happens, we'll hear all over again how the press is trumping things up, how everyone is so stupid, how there has never been a nuclear (fill in your favorite stat).

But we've seen Chernobyl, we've seen Fukushima. This is the future you have planned for us. It's going to be a hard sell.

Re:Close them all

[siddesu]

Well, if I have time later I'll dump on you all the corner-cutting deals and operator mishaps at Fukushima to ponder at. I wonder how can you claim expertise and be so oblivious to the details of the disaster there. If I were working in the "nuclear industry", I would have familiarized myself with the accident simply on the grounds of professional interest. Cheers, fellow elf-lord.

Re:Close them all

[mug funky]

do you regularly get screened for cancer? not to worry you, but in the worst case scenario you could be a valuable data point, and in the best case scenario, we're all gonna be fine.

Re:Close them all

[Opyros]

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant

Re:Close them all

[siddesu]

Why yes, I do, thank you for your snark.

Re:Close them all

[Alex Belits]

I happened to be within few hundred km of both Chernobyl and Fukushima when they happened, and have to bear the cost of the consequences of two nuclear disasters myself.

If you were "few hundred km" from there, then you definitely don't.

Re:Close them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, backup generator. Located where the FUCKING TSUNAMI WOULD NOT HAVE KNOCKED IT OUT. You hindsight moron.
 
What you fuctards keep discounting is "oh, gee, it was human greed and incompetence that actually caused the problem." Greed and incompetence are ALWAYS a factor in business. Apply them to industries where major events cause incredible devastation, and you get closer to the true costs of those industries.
 
You twats who say nuclear is safe, "if only human factors are removed" are incredibly naive, and should be removed forcibly from the conversation.

Re:Close them all

[Alex Belits]

Because I lived less than 100km from Chernobyl power plant, built a simple radiation meter a week after the disaster, used it to evaluate level of radiation, and years later worked in an organization that did health safety/contamination monitoring in that area.

Unless someone is actually at the disaster site, the only way to be affected is to eat or drink something that grew in a heavily contaminated area, over extended period of time. Food safety inspections prevented that from happening (among many other, usually unnecessary things that politicians insisted on).

Re:Close them all

[siddesu]

Well, not all problems and costs are caused by radiation, but both my cousins, who remained in the area, developed thyroid problems that were officially attributed to the contamination. One of them has two chidren with birth defects, born a year and a half after the disaster. I'll spare you my story, but to deny the serious medical trouble in the area is rather cynical.

Re:Close them all

[Will.Woodhull]

there is nothing wrong with nuclear technology. It, of itself, is safe.

In short, this is a very simplistic way to put it.

Yes, this is a very simplistic assertion. But it is also very useful to posit this to get it out of the way. Because until the fatal problems with human failings are solved, there is no need to discuss the much simpler problems of the science, engineering, and technology.

As so many who seem to object to GP post keep pointing out, Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the Fermi fast breeder reactor failure, the incident at Hanford where control rods were blown out of the core with such force that they were embedded in the ceiling of the containment vessel, and so on were all due to human mistakes. When the persons you are arguing with are making your points for you while sincerely believing that they are arguing against you, then logic alone is not going to get them to start using their minds and thinking the issues through. Sometimes presenting things in a very simplistic manner will shake some people's minds out of the muddy rut they have dug for themselves.

Re:Close them all

[Alex Belits]

I have recorded my measurements in relative units, and calibrated the meter later after I got access to a suitable reference meter. I used my shoes as a test sample to be measured simultaneously by both meters in the same conditions, so the types and spectrum of radiation remained approximately the same as one involved in measurements (except some distortion caused by higher percentage of radiation being produced by I-131 initially and less few weeks later when I have performed the calibration). Then I have translated initial measurements into absolute units. While imprecise, it was perfectly suitable for the purpose of safety assessment and finding the relative distribution of contamination.

Re:Close them all

[Alex Belits]

If they were hundreds of kilometers from the power plant, they could not get any thyroids problem from it. Birth defects can be caused by plenty of things, but effects of radiation from Chernobyl disaster would amount to less than being exposed to the sun or eating bananas at such distance.

There are plenty of people who attributed medical problems to disaster though. Right after it happened, many complained about getting headaches "from radiation". If they were able to get enough radiation to produce a headache, the city would be littered with corpses in a few weeks.

Re:Close them all

[bursch-X]

Yes sure and let's just forget about the fact that we have no idea what really to do with all the nuclear waste. We'll just tuck it away underground for 10.000 years? Well how well have we been doing conserving any critical information for just a tenth of that time, say, 1000 years? How much of the buildings and information from 1011 is still in a good shape? Nuclear fission has no future.

Re:Close them all

[oh_my_080980980]

There have been nuclear accidents within the United States, RECENTLY. You might want to do some actual research before shooting off your mouth.

Re:Close them all

[grumbel]

All the problems arise from the use of human beings in the design, implementation, and maintenance processes.

The problems aren't humans, but the systems in which they have to work. Just like any mechanical or computer competent, humans tend to fail from time to time and just like with any other failure you can prevent that from causing catastrophic failure by building redundancy and checks into the system. Those redundancies and checks of cause have to be forced by regulation, as nobody is building them in when they can save a bit of money leaving them out.

Re:Close them all

[BJ_Covert_Action]

And yet, somehow, despite the bold claim that human society is not yet capable of handling nuclear power in an appropriately safe manner, France has managed to do pretty well running a whole slew of nuclear plants. Hell, even the U.S. has managed to keep a number of different reactors running safely for quite awhile now. These designs range from 40 year old technology to some relatively new designs closer to the East Coast.

I keep seeing folks claim that human society isn't capable of responsibly handling nuclear power, and yet, if you look at the whole industry on a percentile basis, only very, very few nuclear power plants have severe problems. And even fewer still ever go critical in an uncontrolled manner. For every Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, and Fukushima, how many nuclear power plants are operating perfectly safely today?

Re:Close them all

[mug funky]

actually, i really was curious. but okay. i'll give you some free snark just cause you asked.

Re:Close them all

[Will.Woodhull]

All the problems arise from the use of human beings in the design, implementation, and maintenance processes.

.... Just like any mechanical or computer competent, humans tend to fail from time to time and just like with any other failure you can prevent that from causing catastrophic failure by building redundancy and checks into the system.

Ah! This is the first response that shows some potential for coming up with a solution to the problem.

What would an institution that provided the necessary redundancies and checks look like? Some kind of paramilitary structure? Or maybe a bit like a religious order? How could it be funded so that it would be immune from subversion or corruption? What would its service life need to be (a few decades, a couple of thousand years)?

How does one go about coming up with answers to these kinds of questions? Nuclear power may be the first industry that is forcing us to deliberately design human systems in this way, but one could argue the current world wide economic mess and the things that caused it are only going to be fixed if those human systems are deliberately redesigned with the same kind of fail-safe approach.

Re:Close them all

[Alex Belits]

Yes, and some people died to prevent it from spreading further. Sometimes heroic efforts actually save huge numbers of people.

Re:Close them all

[noodler]

"What we need is a nuclear power industry that uses no human modules. Anything short of that is clearly defective by design. "

You propose to move the problem (humans) to a different part of the design.
Anything not made by humans is made by something that was made by humans.
If that thing was not made by humans then the thing that made it was, etc, etc, etc.,
In the end, all technology starts with humans and so must be flawed at some point.

Since nature doesn't make ready-to-use nuclear fission reactors it seems we will never get them without human intervention.

Experts?

[Oh Gawwd Peak Oil]

leading experts on the nuclear disaster in Japan

Experts? They don't know anything. Everyone knows the definitive word is with the armchair commentators here on Slashdot!

Re:Experts?

[AmiMoJo]

TFS isn't much better:

leading experts

According to whom? In my cat's opinion I am a leading expert.

This is what peer reviewed journals are for, and even then you have to wait years while others do their own studies and check each assertion carefully. People don't want to wait for that though.

Responsible nuclear power is fine.

[Beelzebud]

If you're going to run a nuclear reactor, you are definitely going to make all of the money back from building it, and a mountain of profits over the lifetime of the plant. Ignoring things like historical Tsunamis, and not making the plants prepared to deal with that situation is gross negligence, and the company should be punished. Making their plants resistant to the effects of a Tsunami would have been bad for the bottom line for a year or two, but I'm sure now the investment seems trivial.

I'm not against nuclear power. I'm just against weakly regulated nuclear power. Private companies have proven over and over again, that they do not take public safety as a serious issue, until it's too late. Nuclear power is one industry that should have regulators breathing down their necks at every step of the way.

Re:Responsible nuclear power is fine.

[foobsr]

the company should be punished

FTFY: The individuals who profited, aka shareholders.

However, this will not happen in these days of public risk and private profit.

CC.

Re:Responsible nuclear power is fine.

[mug funky]

Private companies have proven over and over again, that they do not take public safety as a serious issue, until it's too late.

at the risk of sounding like a neo-con libertarian tea partier, governments haven't exactly been too good at this. as i recall, the Pripyat facility was run by the government.

Re:Responsible nuclear power is fine.

[catmistake]

If you're going to run a nuclear reactor, you are definitely going to make all of the money back from building it, and a mountain of profits over the lifetime of the plant.

Hmm... then what's the reason for the massive goverment subsidies poured into every single commercial nuclear plant ever built? How come these large injections of capital are never returned? You'd think plant builders would be grateful for all the billions government already poured into hammering out all the R&D... but they also always seem to take the subsidies anyway. Just seems... odd... Most businessess that make mountains of profits give some kind of return on investment other than astronomical cleanup costs when something goes very wrong.

Re:Responsible nuclear power is fine.

[Beelzebud]

Do you think oil companies don't make a profit? Because they get more subsidies than the nuclear industry. Subsidies have little to do with profit...

The major lessons

[JoshuaZ]

This isn't a reason to be worried about nuclear power. This shows that bad things can happen when political decisions override science engineering or when bad engineers don't do a good job.. At the end of the day, what you want can't override nature. Nature doesn't care about politics. This is true with many different technologies

At this point, more people die from coal related problems every year than nuclear power. One interesting metric to compare power types is to look at deaths per a terawatt hour. http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html. By this metric, nuclear power is one of the safest forms of power out there. The primary reasons that nuclear power stands out to people is because a) it associated with nuclear weapons which makes it scary b) it is a more advanced technology which makes it seem more risky and unnatural c) when something does go wrong is goes wrong in a spectacular fashion. This last is probably the most important- humans react to how much they hear about disasters not how likely they are to impact them. This is why people are afraid of airplane crashes and shark attacks more than car crashes and heart attacks.

Unfortunately, few people are likely to pay attention to this. We are already seeing the fallout as Germany and other European countries turn away from nuclear power. France right now is being surprisingly calm in continuing to use it. Unfortunately, there's some indications that this issue is also making people more worried about fusion power. There's been a long-running problem with scientifically ignorant environmentalists who don't understand the difference between fission and fusion. A lot of them have tried to protest fusion research in the past and Greenpeace has an anti-fusion stance. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/22/fusion_greenpeace_no/. The whole situation sucks.

Re:The major lessons

[metageek]

This story that coal kills more people than nuclear is rather misleading. The issue is much more complicated than simply counting deaths --- though, of course, coal is no nice energy source at all.

The problem with nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they leave large portions of land unusable for millenia. (besides having the risk of killing lots of people too.) The effects are not just to the poor people who work on those plants (just as the poor miners) but that they leave a severe risk of exposure for many generations to come. The cost of maintaining those patches of land unusable are very large. Much larger costs than even those needed to keep an undamaged power plant secure beyond its productive life; this is already so high that no private company wants to do it without support from large government subsidies (besides they are all helped by not being help legally liable for any accident).

So, even though coal has indeed killed many people, that is not to say that nuclear is not a very large problem to society. In my opinion larger than coal. To support this, find out how much it costs to insure a nuclear power plant, versus how much it costs to insure a coal mine.

Before anyone says that we need some form of energy so we must to take up these risks, let me say:
  * direct solar source
  * increase in efficiency of use
  * and please keep the population down.

Re:The major lessons

[should_be_linear]

This shows that bad things can happen when political decisions override science engineering
Thats one way to look at it. Other way is "This shows that bad things can happen _because_ political decisions override science engineering".

Re:The major lessons

[leucadiadude]

"but that they leave a severe risk of exposure for many generations to come."

You didn't study logarithimic mathmatics in school did you?

Re:The major lessons

[couchslug]

Coal-related death is not socially disruptive.

Humans have all sorts of accepted casualties, usually those which the system is evolved to process. I

Death is not a problem. We ALL die. DISRUPTIVE death is a problem.

Re:The major lessons

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember my professor for modern physics (nuclear, quantum...) saying fusion wouldn't be practical. He basically said all of the easy fusion reactions produced so many fast neutrons that the containment vessel would quickly fail as the neutrons transmuted the materials used to construct it. The only safe fusion pile would be one that produces electrons which can be captured. It has been a couple of decades, but I seem to remember Lithium being one of the fusion components.

Re:The major lessons

[ozborn]

This isn't a reason to be worried about nuclear power. This shows that bad things can happen when political decisions override science engineering or when bad engineers don't do a good job.
How well an energy source performs in a variety of political environments from well funded enlightened governance up to civil war and social breakdown needs to be considered when evaluating an energy source. Blaming politics doesn't cut it, some energy sources are much more sensitive to bad political environments - nuclear power is one of them.

By this metric, nuclear power is one of the safest forms of power out there.
I saw a more recent study (I think it was in Scientific American, maybe somebody else can find the link?) which also considered all the inputs including mining and transportation when calculating the numbers. By this metric nuclear performed considerably worse than wind and solar per energy generated. It was however better than all types of fossil fuel (oil, natural gas and coal). I'm guessing the numbers went down for nuclear relative to wind and solar because of the hazards of uranium mining and transportation problems (accidents happen).

There's been a long-running problem with scientifically ignorant environmentalists who don't understand the difference between fission and fusion
I support research into fusion and I think it will likely prove much better than fission. However I still place its importance between wind, solar and efficiency improvements.

Re:The major lessons

[blair1q]

>This story that coal kills more people than nuclear is rather misleading.

If you mean that coal doesn't kill more people then nuclear, then it's not misleading, you're just wrong.

If you mean that the story overestimates the extent by which it does, then it may be misleading.

if you mean that the story underestimates the extent by which it does, then it may also be misleading.

Nuclear is unsafe only if you don't make it safe. The means to make it safe are simple acts of design and maintenance. Coal is not safe. It is not possible to make it safe and still have it be a major portion of the energy supply. Simply using it is unsafe for everyone in the world who chooses to breathe air.

Re:The major lessons

[ultranova]

The problem with nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they leave large portions of land unusable for millenia.

Chernobyl is already usable right now (and in fact people live there and it's heavily forested), it's simply pointless to take the risk in a country that does not lack space.

Also, a radioactive material that's still present a thousand years after in significant quantities would need to have a half-life of at least a century, which in turn means it produces so little radiation per second as to be pretty much harmless. Do you people think radioactivity is some kind of death magic from Negative Energy Plane or something?

* direct solar source

Meaning what, exactly speaking?

* increase in efficiency of use

That only works so far before the laws of physics come calling.

* and please keep the population down.

It is declining in all Western countries, but energy usage isn't. And why should it, when we can tap into near-limitless energy source anytime we want to? It's only the "nuclear is scary" lobby that's keeping us from doing so.

Re:The major lessons

[metageek]

Plutonium spent fuel has a huge half-life, apply your logarithms to it and check for how long it has to be kept. Strontium, which is extremely toxic as it is absorbed into bones (same chemistry as calcium) has a very long half life too. Even Cesium is 30 years, so it will be around for much longer than that.

Re:The major lessons

[metageek]

I did clearly say that coal is dreadful, and that I do not support the deaths that it causes. It is terrible. However nuclear fission is much worse on a global view, from a risk perspective.

Ask any insurance company if they would even consider insuring a nuclear power plant... that is a huge statement made by market forces. (and they insure some pretty insane stuff, for huge premiums, of course -- but not nuclear)

Re:The major lessons

[JoshuaZ]

Strontium-90, the primary dangerous isotope of strontium has a half-life of 29 years. That means that in 200 years you have about one 70th as much left. Moreover, these isotopes spread around over time. So in practice most areas with these isotopes become less dangerous faster than their half-lives suggest. This is less true for plutonium because it isn't that easily metabolically active, but lots of living things will pick strontium and use it where they would use calcium. So it might suck to be them but it will make the area a lot safer in the long-run.

Re:The major lessons

[Solandri]

The problem with nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they leave large portions of land unusable for millenia. (besides having the risk of killing lots of people too.) The effects are not just to the poor people who work on those plants (just as the poor miners) but that they leave a severe risk of exposure for many generations to come. The cost of maintaining those patches of land unusable are very large. Much larger costs than even those needed to keep an undamaged power plant secure beyond its productive life;

Wind turbines suffering blade failures and ice throws have killed many people, more per MWh generated than nuclear has. Consequently, France has established 500 m exclusion zones around wind turbines, where people are prohibited from entering. Germany has a 600 m exclusion zone. For a given amount of average MW generated, the area of this mandated exclusion zone for wind farms far exceeds the evacuation zone caused by the Fukushima accident. You can reduce the size of the exclusion zone by putting turbines closer together, but it's still far worse than nuclear.

The Fukushima plant had a nominal production capacity of 4696 MW. Multiplied by nuclear's average 90% capacity factor and that's 4226 MW average for the year. It currently has a 20 km evacuation zone, and let's ignore that roughly half of that zone extends over the sea. A 20 km radius encompasses an area of 1257 km^2. So the evacuation zone (which is by no means permanent, nor likely to be permanent) works out to 0.297 km^2 per MW average.

The largest wind farm in Europe is Whitelee Wind farm in Scotland. It has a nominal generating capacity of 322 MW. Onshore wind typically has a 20%-25% capacity factor, but Scotland's winds are strong and consistent, yielding an average capacity factor around 40%. So that's 128.8 MW average for the year. The farm covers 55 km^2 in a 13x8 km rectangle. Add a half km exclusion zone around the periphery and you get a total area of 76 km^2. So its exclusion zone works out to 0.590 km^2 per MW on average.

So just the regular operation of the largest wind farm in Europe renders about twice as much land uninhabitable as the second-worst nuclear accident in history, MW for MW. Hydroelectric dams create a lake behind them, rendering that land uninhabitable. Itaipu dam has a 1350 km^2 reservoir. It generates 91.6 TWh annually, which works out to 10449 MW on average, for an uninhabitable area of 0.129 km^2 per MW average. Solar (pretty much the most expensive power source) actually fares well by this metric. At 125 W/m^2 and a 15% capacity factor, it weighs in at a featherweight 0.053 km^2 per MW on average.

But wait, we looked at pretty much the worst case for nuclear, while looking at average or better-than-average cases for other technologies. What happens if you look at nuclear on average? After all, the vast majority of nuclear plants have operated safely for decades. The world's nuclear capaicty is 351 GW. The evacuation zones around Fukushima (20 km) and Chernobyl (30 km) work out to 4084 km^2. The average land area rendered uninhabitable by nuclear works out to 0.012 km^2 per MW on average. In other words, nuclear is the technology which renders the least amount of land uninhabitable per MW generated. If you replaced all nuclear power with solar, you'd render 4.6x as much land area as Fukushima + Chernobyl uninhabitable. Hydro would be 11x as much. And wind about 51x as much land area uninhabitable (about 100x for a more typical wind far than Whitelee).

Re:The major lessons

[Ol Olsoc]

Nuclear is unsafe only if you don't make it safe

Bingo! We don't make it safe. And when we have problems, we either blame it on the press, or tell people that they are stupid, and make up excuses fro the accident.

A big hint to the pro-nuc's (which I am one) is that the accident at Fukishima is not a nuclear fault. This isn't an excuse - it's a fact. It is the fault of a stupid decision about tsunami heights - there have been several tsunami that would easily top their walls. Then their emergency generator plan was criminally inadequate. Locating the plant along a river above historical wave ingress and height, plus a 100 percent safety margin, and this disaster would never have happened. But it did happen.

The problem, safety wise, is that nuc energy is has a very high energy density. As energy density goes up, the consequences of release problems goes up. So even without radiation issues, a breach with that much energy involved is going to be very messy.

But the consequences end up being the same, whether it's "unsafe nuc", or stupid designs. We can design to contain that energy density. Will we?

Re:The major lessons

[mug funky]

3. yeah, population control measures will fly... seriously... what are you thinking??

they did say "please"...

Re:The major lessons

[BitZtream]

The problem with nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they leave large portions of land unusable for millenia. (besides having the risk of killing lots of people too.)

Wow, you have absolutely no idea whats going on in the area around Chernobyl do you?

You need to learn the difference between FUD and reality, and add to that the time thats lapsed since Chernobyl and the fact that it was until recently (last year?) an active power plant. Or the fact that while the area was evacuated, all indications and tests of the area now show it to be normal and you'd be unlikely to know anything happened if you weren't told. See just because you're afraid of something doesn't mean its actually unsafe.

Re:The major lessons

[Anonymous Coward]

So just the regular operation of the largest wind farm in Europe renders about twice as much land uninhabitable as the second-worst nuclear accident in history, MW for MW.

You appear to have forgotten how much land is rendered uninhabitable because of uranium mining. In Australia vast areas are now off limits because of the mines, the Ranger mine in particular has real problems with leakage from tailing dams and contamination of the surrounding country side.
It is all well and good for you Europeans to spout on about the safety of nuclear plants and how clean they are but YOU never consider the damage done by the uranium mining. Tailings from a coal mine (unless they slip into a school) are considerably safer than anything from a uranium mine. If they had mined uranium in Wales like they did coal then the whole of Wales would be uninhabitable!

Re:The major lessons

[ShakaUVM]

>>Tailings from a coal mine (unless they slip into a school) are considerably safer than anything from a uranium mine. /snort

"On Feb. 26, 1972, a slurry dam gave way at the Buffalo Mining Company in Logan County, W.V., releasing a giant wave of thick, murky water, choked with chemicals, coal refuse, rocks and dirt. According to the official accident report, 132 million gallons of slurry suddenly flooded the Buffalo Creek Valley floor, destroying or partially destroying 17 communities. 125 people were killed. 4,000 people were left homeless."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_Flood

"The nation's largest coal slurry spill at the Martin County Coal Company in Inez, Kt., on Oct. 11, 2000. The EPA called the Inez spill the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States . Far more extensive in damage than the widely known 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, the Martin County Coal slurry spill dumped an estimated 306 million gallons of toxic sludge down 100 miles of waterways."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_sludge_spill

And then with coal fly ash:
"The TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill occurred just before 1 a.m. on Monday December 22, 2008, when an ash dike ruptured at an 84-acre (0.34 km2) solid waste containment area at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, USA. 1.1 billion US gallons (4,200,000 m3) of coal fly ash slurry was released."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill

Not to mention the thousands upon thousands that die mining coal.

Re:The major lessons

[Hellsbells]

This isn't a reason to be worried about nuclear power. This shows that bad things can happen when political decisions override science engineering or when bad engineers don't do a good job.

This is the exact reason that we should worry about nuclear power. As an engineer, I know that politics and price are generally involved in making engineering decisions.

- All engineers make mistakes. I'm sure that there were many good engineers involved with Fukushima.
- Software programmers make mistakes.
- Natural disasters happen.
- Corruption happens.
- Builders make mistakes and swap parts for cheaper parts to save money.
- Lack of oversight happens.
- Maintenance gets cut to save money.
- Safety measures get reduced to save money.
- Security gets reduced to save money.

It would be nice to have an energy producing technology that doesn't fail so catastrophically, doesn't require such high levels of safety and security, and doesn't have all the issues around waste disposal.

Re:The major lessons

[techno-vampire]

Plutonium spent fuel has a huge half-life, apply your logarithms to it and check for how long it has to be kept.
Yes, and that huge half-life implies that it breaks down very, very slowly. You do understand, don't you, that with the exception of Uranium, long half-lives mean a low level of radiation and those isotopes that are highly radioactive have very short half-lives? (Why Uranium is a special case will be left as an exercise for the reader.)

Re:The major lessons

[Zoxed]

> Germany has a 600 m exclusion zone.

As I live in Germany I would be especially interested in a reference for this. Please.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2421220&cid=37362382

> I quick read of your linked article suggests that only France has the 500m exclusion zone, and it seems unclear to me whether this refers only to buildings. Certainly where I live in central Germany I have not seen 500m exclusion zones: even many roads are that close !!

Re:The major lessons

[Tomato42]

There's no such thing as "china syndrome" as far as nuclear power plants are concerned. Stop reading and watching sensationalist fiction. No core has enough energy to melt through concrete base. This has not happened in Chernobyl and the Russians skimped on security as much as they could there.

Re:The major lessons

[AmiMoJo]

There's been a long-running problem with scientifically ignorant environmentalists who don't understand the difference between fission and fusion. A lot of them have tried to protest fusion research in the past and Greenpeace has an anti-fusion stance

Yes, and there has been a long running problem with people who think renewables won't work, or only work when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. That is despite the fact that there are already large scale projects demonstrating that they do work. Basically both sides are as bad as either other for rubbishing the competition.

Overall nuclear is pretty safe, but frankly I don't trust the people running it not to cut corners or put profit before safety. There is a long history of people doing that, despite attempts to regulate the industry. Sure, we could spend money coming up with new safety systems, increasing inspections and oversight, developing thorium reactors that are fail-safe, but investing in renewables makes more sense. There is demand for them, we have a chance to get into the market ahead of other countries, and they can be easily exported. There is no fuel, no waste and minimal clean up, plus (rightly or wrongly) people don't mind living near them and they are already extremely safe.

Nuclear was a good option, but we have better ones now.

Re:The major lessons

[AmiMoJo]

That only works so far before the laws of physics come calling.

0.3% of the energy that falls in the Sahara in a day could power all of western Europe for a year. With solar thermal that is very doable. If it helps you can think of the sun as a nuclear reactor.

On the other hand nuclear waste needs to be refined, transported and stored safely for a long time. Sorry, but those are the laws of physics.

Re:The major lessons

[AmiMoJo]

We can design to contain that energy density. Will we?

How much are you willing to pay for your energy?

The economics of energy are all messed up. Coal kills a lot of people, but the price is largely unaffected because it happens in poor countries or to a few people down a mine, not to random voters. Nuclear is heavily subsidised, not least because until recently there was no alternative to meet our energy needs. Plus the consequences of an accident can be very expensive, so only a government can effective insure the operators against them. Wind and solar are cheap but for some reason people don't want to live near them or won't believe they work.

Add to that masses of lobbying and the whole thing is distorted beyond recognition.

Re:The major lessons

[drinkypoo]

This isn't a reason to be worried about nuclear power. This shows that bad things can happen when political decisions override science engineering or when bad engineers don't do a good job.

Yes, those are things that happen in the real world, things that therefore make nuclear power undesirable. If it weren't for bad politics, or bad engineering, then I would be 100% behind nuclear power. Unfortunately, both abound. Further, the geniuses of today will be dead tomorrow and there is no guarantee that the people who slide into their chairs will not be idiots, assholes, or idiot assholes.

Re:The major lessons

[Ol Olsoc]

How much are you willing to pay for your energy?

We pay one way or the other. What was the cost of Chernobyl? What will be the cost of Fukushima? Because when one of these plants goes south, there are monetary issues, and there are political ones.

You just can't mess with that energy density. If it's too expensive to pay to keep it safe, you're just deferring the costs until after the thing falls apart.

note: of course it will be difficult to figure the cost of Fukushima, given the concurrent destruction by the Tsunami.

And that is the real danger of the frothing at the mouth, blame the press, blame panicky people, blame the people who are too stupid to understand crowd. I don't care what caused the disaster, all I know is another "perfectly safe" plant went under. It has to be done right.

Re:The major lessons

[Auntiegrav]

Your depiction of "uninhabitable" is ridiculous. You do know that, don't you? Cattle can be grazed there (what's a dead cow but some more hamburgers?), People can use the space with appropriate warnings about ice conditions, and the windmills can be shut down while the land is harvested or during other events. Sure, some things can go wrong with wind power, but they go VERY wrong with nuclear power.

Re:The major lessons

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Good luck maintaining a solar farm so large that it covers 0.3% of the Sahara. Or did you think that producing, transporting, maintaining, and supplying infrastructure for acres of solar panels in a relatively unsettled, remote location would be as simple as waving a magic wand?

Re:The major lessons

[Scottingham]

On the other hand nuclear waste needs to be refined, transported and stored safely for a long time. Sorry, but those are the laws of physics.

Inferring that nuclear waste has to be refined, transported, and stored safely are all unchangeable facts due to the laws of physics is garbage. Traveling wave reactors refine as they go, eliminating the need for transportation and refinement, and when the reaction is done the reactor vessel becomes the storage vessel.

Re:The major lessons

[HornWumpus]

Gravity fed backup cooling systems.

Standard equipment on newer versions of GE reactors. Retrofit rejected by the Japanese as unnecessary.

Re:The major lessons

[AmiMoJo]

You don't need 0.3% coverage because that is for an entire year. The infrastructure issues are resolvable, and are seen as a good way to invest in Africa. I don't know where you got solar panels from, I specifically said solar thermal. Mirrors are very cheap to produce and require very little maintenance.

Re:The major lessons

[AmiMoJo]

We pay one way or the other. What was the cost of Chernobyl? What will be the cost of Fukushima? Because when one of these plants goes south, there are monetary issues, and there are political ones.

That was my point. The true cost of nuclear is pretty high, especially if there is an accident. You are agreeing with me, but somehow you got the wrong end of the stick.

Re:The major lessons

[cartman]

The problem with nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they leave large portions of land unusable for millenia.

If you believe the AGW crowd, then coal will cause a significant fraction of the Earth's terrestrial surface to fall below sea level. Like much of the deep south, and south asia, and northern china.

You should compare the surface area lost to Fukushima against the surface area underwater from even the most conservative global warming projections.

In addition, coal has spread mercury everywhere so children and pregnant women aren't supposed to eat fish anymore. So we can also compare the respective areas of contamination.

The problem with nuclear disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima is that they leave large portions of land unusable for millenia.

Nuclear contamination loses more than 99% of its radioactivity within 300 years.

In my opinion [nuclear's dangers are] larger than coal.

Then you are severely misinformed about the relative dangers of each. A coal plant poses more than 100x as much risk to health and the environment than a nuclear plant with similar capacity.

Re:The major lessons

[couchslug]

The processes dealing with standard deaths are integrated into the economy.

You are referring to emotional disruption. I'm referring to social and economic disruption.

Dispersed death isn't a threat to national economies. In fact, industries exist to cater to every stage of dying.

Re:The major lessons

[HornWumpus]

You are right, they are not passively safe for 'any extended period of time'.

Only for long enough for a reactor to cool down, with progressively slower coolant flow as decay heat decays.

It's almost like it was designed by someone who passed physics. I don't know why I even post an answer to an AC who already thinks he has the answers when he clearly doesn't.

Re:The major lessons

[petermgreen]

The largest wind farm in Europe is Whitelee Wind farm [wikipedia.org] in Scotland.

Afaict scotland doesn't have any exclusion zones arround wind turbines. Heck people seem to be encouraged to use the windfarm as a recreational area.

Even in countries that are paranoid enough to exclude the general public from windfarms it should still be possible to use the land under them for farming and similar activities with reasonable precautions.

But really this all ignores the key difference. Afaict building a windfarm is something a landowner chooses to do with their land voluntarily. Presumablly they would only do so if the value of the land to them as a windfarm is greater than the costs of making it one (in terms of other activities prevented/reduced/made less efficiant). A nuclear accident or a coal mine fire, or a chemical spill is an accident that renders an area of land uninhabitable and quite possiblly a larger area unsuitable for agriculture regardless of the landowners wishes and in the case of a nuclear accident the area rendered unusable can be a long way from the plant, it doesn't form nice circles you can plan for.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Chernobyl_radiation_map_1996.svg

Re:The major lessons

[Coren22]

I would even point out the town in PA that is completely uninhabitable due to an ongoing coal fire (for the last 50 years!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

Re:The major lessons

[Coren22]

You are so ignorant, that it is actually funny to read...

Name one country that has been "one little hiccup is all it takes to render countries uninhabitable." Hell, the worst nuclear disaster in history, which was pretty much a worst case, didn't do this.

"you're a short-sighted, callous monster. the design of all current nuclear plants on earth require constant off-site power to prevent catastrophic meltdown and the spent-fuel pools catching on fire,"

Bull shit. This is only the case for this 43 year old design. The other reactor installations in the same area shutdown just fine. The issue with this one was that the design required power to prevent the production of H2 gas from the core overheating. Other plants use a passive system to burn off the H2 gas in a safe manner. Without the H2 explosion, Fukushima was absolutely nothing, and even with the tops blowing off two of the reactors, there was very little radiation released.

Re:The major lessons

[ShakaUVM]

>>I would even point out the town in PA that is completely uninhabitable due to an ongoing coal fire (for the last 50 years!)

Heh, that's right.

By contrast, Fukushima has already been put out.

Poor Japanese...

[slimjim8094]

... too stupid to read English journals, or analyze their own disasters rigorously and tell their population.

Seriously, is this "Mindy Kay Bricker" person coming off like a racist to anybody else?

Re:Poor Japanese...

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Only on the internet could a company making an honest effort to make their content open and accessible to other nations be labeled as racist.

Can much of the Japanese population read English?
Probably.

Do people often prefer to digest information in their native language?
Yes.

Can Japanese scientists rigorously analyze their own disasters?
Probably.

Does it often help to have independent sets of eyeballs analyzing a problem in a scientific field when those eyeballs belong to people who are experts in that field?
Yes.

Should we berate "Mindy Kay Bricker," for speaking on behalf of her journal's honest attempt to open the science and informed opinions of experts in this industry to other experts in this industry?
No.

Are you really making a stretch of cynicism to turn this into something negative?
Most definitely.

Calm down. The world doesn't always have to suck.

Re:Poor Japanese...

[geekoid]

No. Only to you because you are a bitter ass.

Re:Tokyo is being evacuated also

[leucadiadude]

"Internet morons"

Irony.

Re:Tokyo is being evacuated also

[pixelpusher220]

Sources beyond the fringes?

According to Huffington Post & Bob Cavnar it isn't likely. Think about that. A very left leaning publication and the expert that most left leaning sources went to during the crisis are saying this isn't really a likely scenario. And he provides some plausible explanations for the oil.

And still criticizes BP for not providing video of the site to diffuse the internet rumors, so he's hardly in BP pocket on this.

Huh?

[publiclurker]

I take it you don't know what FUD means. There is no uncertainty or doubt in this case because it's already happened. All the claims of "we never though it would happen" mean is that some people have very limited imaginations, especially when their pockets can be lined with the results of willful ignorance.

Re:Huh?

[leucadiadude]

Nope...still FUD.

Re:Huh?

[Sir_Sri]

As though that makes them something we can't use? Everything comes with risk. Building cities on coasts where people live has risks. Having people live near a fault line than can have a magnitude 9 earthquake isn't a great plan either, shall we evacuate all of the Japanese islands? All electrical generation causes problems, hydroelectric completely changes ecosystems, Wind Turbines kill piles of birds and, if you have enough of them, shoddy construction will lead to breakage and other damage, coal spews all sorts of toxic crap in the air, which kills people, mining for coal kills people. Solar uses a wonderful soup of toxic chemicals which will have to be disposed of, and need to be extracted. Natural gas is again, less than pleasant from extraction.

So unless you want to go back to a per-electrical area with infant mortality measured in the range of 70 or 80 percent, and huge portions of planet being unsafe to inhabit without fire etc. you're going to have to take risks. Fukushima is, at best, a 30 year old reactor, based on a 40 year old design. If people refuse to have new reactors built you're going to be stuck with old, more dangerous technology.

The earthquake and tsunami killed 16 000 people (with 4000 still missing). To put that in american terms thats more than 5x a sept 11th, and on a per capita basis more than 10x. Thus far the reactor has seriously burned 2, and the explosions etc have wounded 37.

Yes, there's a big area that is an exclusion zone, but there's a big area that's uninhabitable due to flooding too. On the scale of things that go wrong in the world Fukushima Daiichi is relatively boring, it's a useful learning experience for experts, and nuclear policy makers so they can, you know... do better. But that's about it.

Re:Huh?

[macpacheco]

You have a lot of correct points, I would just like to add...
  There are organic solar panels that avoid those toxic chemicals. They're still evolving in cost and performance, but in this decade solar panels made of organic materials should become the majority of PV panels built. Also PV panels are supposed to produce 50+% of their production capacity 20+ years into usage, and by then we should have a recycling program in place. Except for warranty, PV panels could be used for 30+ years, as long as there's rooftop space left, leave them working, even at a reduced capacity.
  Wind energy kills birds... It's doesn't kill that many birds. And it kills birds, not people. Wind turbines with 10MW power ratings are coming in the next year or two, in comparison, the Hoover Dam has 2080MW capacity and Itaipu (in Brazil) has 14000MW. So a mere 208 10MW turbines would have power production rivaling the hoover dam. Of course wind isn't baseline production, while hydro is, but you get the idea.
  I agree that no nuclear power plants should be built in areas prone to serious earthquakes/tsunamis. So Japan should have been far more careful in choosing construction sites for their nuclear power plants. Hurricanes aren't that serious a threat since they come with days fore warning.
  In reality, the major issue today is why US and some other countries don't reprocess their nuclear waste. Nuclear reprocessing reduces nuclear waste to less than 10% of the original volume/weight. Also, there are reactors that can burn the waste from regular reactors, why not build a few of those and run it with all nuclear waste from the world ? In the end there will still be some nuclear waste, but perhaps just a few percent of the original waste.
  But for areas with plenty of sun and/or wind, nuclear can be avoided, using large CSP power plants, large wind farms. In Spain there are already a few CSP plants that produce power 24x7, using molten salt as an energy buffer in the night.

Re:Huh?

[AmiMoJo]

Everything comes with risk.

Yes, but the consequences of a major nuclear accident are far more serious, wide ranging and long lasting than other forms of energy. That has to be considered when evaluating risk.

Building cities on coasts where people live has risks. Having people live near a fault line than can have a magnitude 9 earthquake isn't a great plan either, shall we evacuate all of the Japanese islands?

Actually Japan did pretty well when you consider that one of the biggest ever earthquakes did very little damage. The resulting tsunami was something unexpected, and that is where the real danger is: the unknown.

hydroelectric completely changes ecosystems

Only if you do it wrong.

Wind Turbines kill piles of birds

Myth.

Solar uses a wonderful soup of toxic chemicals

Not any more, and fully organic solar cells are on the way. Plus photovoltaic isn't the best option for large scale generation, solar thermal is. Works 24/7 in any weather and requires only water and salt.

So unless you want to go back to a per-electrical area with infant mortality measured in the range of 70 or 80 percent, and huge portions of planet being unsafe to inhabit without fire etc. you're going to have to take risks

How much do you want to bet that Germany and Japan are not like that in 10 or 20 years time?

Thus far the reactor has seriously burned 2, and the explosions etc have wounded 37.

Take a look at the cost of dealing with it, or the fact that large amounts of crops are now contaminated and unsaleable, or that vast amounts of top-soil will need to be decontaminated or replaced. Tourism is suffering badly on the whole country too. No one is arguing that the direct health effects from the disaster do not appear to be too serious, but the economic and social costs are.

Had Fukushima been any other type of power station the consequences would not be so severe. You could argue that people are being over cautious, but when it comes to their health and the health of their families people are always going to be very conservative., especially when there are viable alternatives.

Yes, there's a big area that is an exclusion zone, but there's a big area that's uninhabitable due to flooding too.

Only the areas right on the coast had some flooding, most of the exclusion zone is otherwise perfectly safe and habitable.

Re:Huh?

[cartman]

Yes, but the consequences of a major nuclear accident are far more serious, wide ranging and long lasting than other forms of energy. That has to be considered when evaluating risk.

No. We kill about 50,000 people per year in the USA alone from coal emissions, which is about 6 Chernobyls every year. Also, there have been dams bursting which killed tens of thousands of people all at once--far more than Fukushima or Chernobyl.

[hydroelectric completely changes ecosystems] Only if you do it wrong.

No. All hydroelectric power requires completely altering the course of large water flows and this severely changes the ecosystem.

How much do you want to bet that Germany and Japan are not like that in 10 or 20 years time?

My bet is that Germany still gets most of its electricity from coal burning and Japan from nuclear.

Had Fukushima been any other type of power station the consequences would not be so severe.

A coal plant poses more than 100x the risk to health and the environment as a nuclear plant with similar output.

You could argue that people are being over cautious, but when it comes to their health and the health of their families people are always going to be very conservative

People are not being over-cautious. We kill 50,000 people per year right now in the USA from coal burning, which is 6 Chernobyls every single year. In addition we risk raising the sea level, inundating large fractions of the terrestrial surface of the earth, badly damaging the entire ecosystem, and negatively affecting billions of people. The response of almost everyone has been "Eh, so what." The problem obviously ISN'T over-cautiousness. The problem is that we respond with irrational panic to scary images on television, while ignoring the real dangers, and while failing to do any rational comparison of the risks. As a result we panic over things like nuclear reactors, mad cow disease, vaccines, nuclear waste in Nevada, SARS, etc, which are all very small risks, while at the same time totally ignoring massively destructive things which are happening all the time.

In the U.S. we decided to abandon our nuclear plans during the 1970s, and we discarded more than 100 reactors which had already been started or were on order. Instead we replaced them all with coal plants, thereby predictably increasing the death rate and killing several million excess people, from emphysema and lung disease, over 4 decades. We did this for safety.

Re:Huh?

[AmiMoJo]

We kill about 50,000 people per year in the USA alone from coal emissions

I wasn't arguing that coal isn't worse, merely that in the event of an accident a coal plant will burn but a nuclear plant can spread radioactive material over a large area. I hate pollution as much as anyone, although I can't find any reliable evidence for you 50k deaths a year from coal burning alone.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting coal as an alternative.

All hydroelectric power requires completely altering the course of large water flows and this severely changes the ecosystem.

No. Tidal power does not alter the course of water flow, it merely uses the natural tides. There is also underground hydro, or in a few places it is possible to use the natural flow of a river (Wales has a couple like that).

If you are going to rubbish hydroelectric power at least bother to learn about it first. Even Wikipedia could tell you that much.

My bet is that Germany still gets most of its electricity from coal burning and Japan from nuclear.

Well, I'll still be here if you fancy commenting on the story about the last nuclear plant being turned off in Germany.

Anyway, you seem to be obsessed with coal for some reason, but I was never advocating it. I was actually in Japan at the time the earthquake hit and so I am well aware of how much bullshit was said about Fukushima in the western press. My friends and family were very worried for me, but there really was no reason to be. I am more concerned with the economic and social impact it is having, and will be heading out there again in December.

Germany is doing it for economic reasons - the world has gone off nuclear so there is little point spending money developing it, but there is huge and growing demand for clean energy. Japan sees it more as a question of safety, in that they can be certain of having large earthquakes in the future and despite all the protections in place can never really be sure that all their reactors will be okay. People don't entirely trust the plant operators either, and that experience has been born out in the UK as well. Our nuclear waste storage consists of some big pools of water open the elements and wildlife (google "dirty thirty") so you can understand why people are concerned. On top of that Japan has always been a big exporter of technology so wants to be on this (green) bandwagon.

I suppose what it boils down to is that when you have better and cheaper alternatives with less chance of human error or negligence anything else is a very hard sell.

Re:Huh?

[cartman]

hate pollution as much as anyone, although I can't find any reliable evidence for you 50k deaths a year from coal burning alone.

Then you're not looking very hard. Unfortunately it's not covered extensively in the press but the EPA routinely estimates the number of people killed by lung disease as a result of coal emissions.

No. Tidal power does not alter the course of water flow, it merely uses the natural tides.

Almost nobody is using tidal power at present. That is less than 0.1% of all hydro power generated. I thought you were referring to the hydro which actually existed, or which anyone seriously plans to build in the forseeable future.

If you are going to rubbish hydroelectric power at least bother to learn about it first. Even Wikipedia could tell you that much.

I actually have some idea what I'm talking about.

Germany is doing it for economic reasons - the world has gone off nuclear so there is little point spending money developing it, but there is huge and growing demand for clean energy.

Germany is not doing it for economic reasons. Germany is doing it because of public outcry, because of misguided concerns of safety. For Germany, nuclear power is by far the cheapest option since they've already constructed the plants. By shutting down those nuke plants prematurely, they will spend billions compared to just leaving the nuke plants running.

Germany decided to shut down all nuke plants as a result of popular panic, in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima. It was an irrational and stupid decision, and they will pay dearly for it (and so will others). They just spent a lot of money to kill many people and badly damage the environment.

Anyway, you seem to be obsessed with coal for some reason, but I was never advocating it.

I am "obsessed" with coal because I live in the actual world where that's how we generate electricity (not tidal power). In case you didn't notice, the world generates more than 60% of its electricity from coal.

Almost all countries generate the vast majority of their electricity from two sources: coal and nuclear. Those two sources, are the actual alternatives at present. By shutting down its nuclear plants, Germany has chosen to increase its coal consumption. In fact, Germany has already ordered 4GW more in coal capacity in the last few months.

Nuclear and coal are alternatives which we face at present so one is relevant to the other.

You claimed repeatedly that nuclear had risks which far surpassed anything else. This is totally wrong. What we are doing right now has risks which far surpass anything else, and which far surpass the risks of nuclear.

Re:Huh?

[Sir_Sri]

I have nothing against all of the plans for future solar technology. But I was looking today, the place where I work figured they could generate solar power on all of the building roofs for an average of 71 cents /kWh. Right now we pay 7 + about 3 for distribution.

new technology is new. It's hopefully more efficient, safer, cleaner blah blah blah. The same would be said of nuclear (imagine trying to compare 40 year old solare technology to fukushima). There's lots of solutions but no political will to solve the problems associated with.

Re:Huh?

[macpacheco]

Your employer buy electricity for 10 cents/kWh ? Is that a large consumer paying wholesale rates ? That's about 1/3 of what I pay retail here in Brazil.

Re:Huh?

[AmiMoJo]

Then you're not looking very hard. Unfortunately it's not covered extensively in the press but the EPA routinely estimates the number of people killed by lung disease as a result of coal emissions.

Link?

Almost nobody is using tidal power at present. That is less than 0.1% of all hydro power generated. I thought you were referring to the hydro which actually existed, or which anyone seriously plans to build in the forseeable future.

I'm not sure what your point is... There is at least 2TW of wave power available on the earth, which is twice the current level the entire world consumes. Similarly there is more than enough solar power available, we just don't use it. I take your point though, wave power is still relatively new and underdeveloped, but that is due to a severe lack of investment. As I said rather than pump billions into nuclear (which is what it needs to be safer and deal with the waste) we should spend it on this.

If you prefer traditional hydro then small scale generation is already producing over 2GW and does not affect the environment significantly. Generally speaking we need to move towards more micro generation as it becomes affordable. Solar PV already more than pays for itself over its lifetime, the main barrier is the up-front cost.

Germany is not doing it for economic reasons. Germany is doing it because of public outcry, because of misguided concerns of safety. For Germany, nuclear power is by far the cheapest option since they've already constructed the plants. By shutting down those nuke plants prematurely, they will spend billions compared to just leaving the nuke plants running.

Actually most of their plants are reaching the end of their lives. They have already been extended, the same way that plants in Japan, the US, the UK and France have, and Germany's decision is to not do that any more. Fukushima was a bit of a wake-up call for nuclear safety, in that plants which were previously considered okay are now looking at beefing up protection from earthquakes and flooding.

That is costly and you can never account for every eventuality (e.g. terrorism). An interesting example is the 2005 leak at the THORP plant in the UK, where attempts to protect it from seismic activity resulted in design faults that allowed a large amount of radioactive material to leak out. So the choice is between spending that money on nuclear and doing the best you can or spending it on an inherently safer and cleaner replacement.

coal and nuclear. Those two sources, are the actual alternatives at present.

That simply isn't true. Plus Germany is not turning them off tomorrow, they have a decade to get replacements in place. In a decade the US managed to go from not even having put a man in orbit to landing on the moon, so developing existing technologies that we know for certain work and are viable for large scale production doesn't seem unreasonable.

SNPP needs to be shut down or at least sector 7g

[Joe_Dragon]

SNPP needs to be shut down or at least sector 7g.

Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Relic of the Future]

And still zero deaths attributable from the disaster due to radiation.

Did you know that in March--the same month as Fukishima--that a worker at an aging US power plant, scheduled to be closed and currently down for maintenance, was killed in an explosion? But it wasn't a nuclear plant (it was coal) so no one cared. The company's been fined, but no government is committing to shutting down 100% of its coal plants.

And yeah, it's still too early to detect any increase in cancer rates, but by the six-month mark, Chernobyl had killed about 300 people via acute radiation sickness, so I don't see how anyone can claim this either IS worse than Chernobyl or WILL BE worse. 300 versus zero.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Uberbah]

I suppose you would think that's a great point, if you also think that nothing's wrong with smoking 4 packs of cigarettes a day while eating a diet entirely composed of Big Macs is perfectly healthy because it wouldn't kill anyone within six months....

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that remains to be seen. The Japanese population is currently eating last year's rice crop. The current year's harvest post Fukishima will not be on the market till next year. For what it is worth, the food regulation process in Japan mandates that any food that contains radioactive traces must be labeled as such. If the radioactivity has migrated via the underground water tables it may have contaminated many of this year's crops. IF Japan loses a significant portion of this year's rice crop which they will depend on next year to feed their population it could be really great for rice commodity speculators and very ugly for the indigenous population trying to responsibly feed their families in Japan.

I have a close friend who has lived there for several years. He is currently only a few hundred kilometers south of Fukishima. He states that the local prefectures are now hiring their own experts to evaluate the radiation levels in the air, water and soil because no one trusts the national government to be open and honest about what they know concerning radioactive exposure(s).

A little off your topic, but the cascading effects of this disaster remain to be seen.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[SoftwareArtist]

Of course, a >1000 square km area in Fukushima has been officially declared uninhabitable, and is expected to remain so for a couple of decades. How large an area was made uninhabitable by that coal plant explosion? It seems to me the two are just a little bit different in their impact...

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[geekoid]

1000 sq, Km?

Citation needed.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well coal plants do contaminate large areas: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2002/2002-04-19-06.asp - Utility Buys Out Contaminated Ohio Town. This has happened in multiple locations as well.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[SoftwareArtist]

Here you go. More precisely, they've banned anyone from going within 20 km of the plant. Using area=pi*r*r gives an area of 1256 square km.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Anonymous Coward]

Half of that area is in the ocean, which is pretty uninhabitable for humans anyway ;-)

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[debrain]

Sir – Here's a comparison Is Japan's nuclear disaster âoeon parâ with Chernobyl? that you (and others) may find interestig.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[mug funky]

read it again and you'll find this:

"And yeah, it's still too early to detect any increase in cancer rates" ...maybe read it again AFTER wiping the special sauce off your glasses (man, how does it even get there?).

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[mug funky]

cool. i'll trust you then. you asked, after all.

i trust everyone who asked me, ever since watching Terminator 2. it was sad he had to be lowered into molten steel in the end.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[darthdavid]

That's a strawman. Did he say it was 'perfectly healthy'? Or that there was nothing wrong with it? No. He said that it wasn't on the same scale as Chernobyl because by all measurable data it isn't worse than Chernobyl.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[MemoryDragon]

Those 300 people were basically exposed to high radiation while the disaster happened. You dont know what will happen over time since radiation unless it is a really high dosage can take up to 10-20 years to develop serious diseases. (Unless you are a child then things might just take a handful of years)
The cancer/death rate among children will be the first we will see increase in the upcoming years.
Believe me I live in an area which was exposed 2000 kilometers away from Tchernobyl with radioactive rain, and our thyroid problem rate went up in the years after the disaster so did the cancer rate.
I was in the rain and so far "knock on wood" have not developed any disease, but my mother had a thyroid operation about 10 years after and so did many people.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[MemoryDragon]

Btw. speaking of long term consequences, there recently was a testing of wild boar in southern germany. And the meat tested still was way over the radiation limits. The reason for that simply was that the area of southern germany was washed heavily with radioactive rain, and the soil which hosts the radioactivity simply is in layers where truffels grow. So go figure what the wild pork eat and how they got contaminated.
Although the dosage if radioactive content you will get by eating such a pork wont kill you it is definitely a good years dose of what you should have gotten under normal circumstances. Tchernobyl btw. is 25 years past now.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Tomato42]

One also has to remember that everybody has a chance of developing cancer of about 30%. Being introduced to high levels of radiation over a long period will increase it by 1-2%. There are places with natural background radiation higher than detected at any time in Fukushima!

Sorry, I'm more worried about RSI, car accidents and heart attacks.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[quenda]

OMG you just cited the Daily Mail. How desperate can you be?
Anyway, they have banned people from living in that zone, which is bad, but a long way from banning anyone from entering.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Tomato42]

There was also a wide population testing of humans in affected areas. There was no statistically significant increase in leukemia or birth defects in affected areas. Only the thyroid cancer was higher, which is operable and non lethal even in later stages. And by higher I mean less than two fold increase.

Yes, high levels of radioactivity are harmful. We still don't know what levels of radioactivity are not harmful. There have even been suggestions that increased background radiation reduced chances of cancer.

I'll gladly put a nuclear reactor in my backyard, give me a thorium fuelled one and I'll sleep on the bloody thing.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Anonymous Coward]

You just quoted the Daily Mail as a reference source? That's like saying I heard it in the playground so it MUST be true. You have also just identified yourself as a Daily Mail reader... oh the shame!

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[MemoryDragon]

No need to get a reactor in your backyard, just move to japan near Fukushima.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[SoftwareArtist]

OMG you just cited the Daily Mail. How desperate can you be?

Ummm... what is that supposed to mean? You're clearly trying to imply something, but I honestly don't know what. Anyway, it was just the first hit that came up in a Google search for "fukushima uninhabitable area". If you prefer a different news source, I'm sure you can find lots of them with very little difficulty. This story was reported by almost every major news agency in the world.

Anyway, they have banned people from living in that zone, which is bad, but a long way from banning anyone from entering.

Absolutely false. From the article: "Japan has banned people from entering within 20 km (12 miles) of the Fukushima plant, located 240 km northeast of Tokyo." Please check your facts before making assertions like this. Don't just make things up and spread misinformation around the internet.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[egarland]

Exactly! No deaths! Nuclear Power is dangerous and can kill you which puts it in the same category as breathing and eating. The question isn't is it dangerous: the question is, how dangerous is it.

Air travel is dangerous. Plane crashes kill people spectacularly and when something goes wrong it's a media field day, but thanks to tireless championing by the industry with definitive statistics backing them up, most people know air travel is extremely safe.

Nuclear power is in a similar predicament. When something goes wrong, it's global news. People are irrationally terrified by something that's extremely safe. Look at the statistics for deaths involved in power generation and you find coal is extremely unsafe by comparison, even if we discard it's emissions, which we shouldn't. Oil is also quite deadly. Look at the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the 11 dead, plus the health impact on everyone exposed to the oil dispersants, which may lead to hundreds more premature deaths. Still, you don't hear people calling for us to shut down all oil production, do you?

Lets stop being irrational and look at actual numbers:

Here's a list of Death Rate (in deaths per TWh) by Energy Source:
161 Coal (world average)
36 Oil
15 Coal (USA only)
12 Biofuel/Biomass
12 Peat
4 Natural Gas
0.44 Solar (rooftop)
0.15 Wind
0.10 Hydro
0.04 Nuclear

Think about the monumental difference this represents. Oil has 900 times as many people die per TWh generated. Even Hydro and Wind kill people at a higher rate than Nuclear, and this is while all of the issues outlined in this book are going on. It's also too late to claim that nuclear is actually unsafe, we just haven't had anything bad happen. This place got hit by an earthquake, a tsunami, faulty equipment, incompetence, greed, three meltdowns, and *still* nobody died. Chernobyl blew it's roof off leaving the naked fission reaction exposed to the sky, and only 67 people died. It's not great, but that many people die in an average week mining coal in China. We've been through enough Nuclear disasters to know what they're like, and they aren't all that bad. The great thing about this technology is it's extremely vocal about it's danger. You can wear little devices, and carry little meters that beep at you to tell you how much radiation you are being exposed to. You can detect radiation instantly from miles away, and you can detect even the most minute quantities from thousands of miles away. We know exactly when and where the danger is. and we know how to deal with it when it does.

Nuclear isn't perfect, but it's big problem is it's cost, not it's danger. It's super safe, we;re essentially burning rocks, but that safety is expensive.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[cartman]

How large an area was made uninhabitable by that coal plant explosion?

How large an area will be made uninhabitable by coal emissions raising the sea level 5m? I bet it's more than 20 km across. Last time I checked the "exclusion zone" will include Florida, and the deep south, and northern china, and Manhattan, and south asia (including almost all of Bangladesh). In fact much of the population of the world lives within 5m of sea level.

Let's compare the exclusion zones from all western nuclear plants (nobody is seriously considering building soviet RBMK reactors) against the area underwater from a sea level increase. Then adjust for the amount of electricity generated from each source, and the time period the area will remain uninhabitable (300 years for nuclear, 5000 for sea level to return to normal).

My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the average coal plant causes more than 100,000x more uninhabitable area than a nuclear plant with similar output.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[SoftwareArtist]

Yes, that is a completely valid criticism of coal burning power plants. It's also completely unrelated to the point I was responding to. The poster mentioned an explosion that killed someone, "[b]ut it wasn't a nuclear plant (it was coal) so no one cared." He wasn't criticizing coal power. He was criticizing the media for (he seemed to believe) using different standards for nuclear accidents than for accidents at other types of power plants. I pointed out that the media had very good reasons for treating these two accidents differently.

I completely agree with you: fossil fuels are causing major problems throughout the world. Rising sea levels are just one of those problems. We need to do something about them. But that's a different subject.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[jafac]

Why don't you have a nice fresh plate of sushi then?

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[cartman]

The point you were responding to was that the media overemphasizes nuclear problems while downplaying or ignoring coal ones. What I said was completely relevant to that and to your post. The coal explosion was just an example for a broader point about risk comparison.

I completely agree with you: fossil fuels are causing major problems throughout the world. Rising sea levels are just one of those problems. We need to do something about them. But that's a different subject.

It is not a different subject insofar as nuclear and coal are alternatives to each other, and we'll use one or the other.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[SoftwareArtist]

The point you were responding to was that the media overemphasizes nuclear problems while downplaying or ignoring coal ones.

If you're including global warming among the problems caused by coal, then I don't think that's true. Far more stories get published about global warming than about nuclear disasters. I would say that some media sources (especially those with a strong political slant) do a bad job of reporting on global warming, lending far too much credibility to fringe views that aren't justified by the evidence. But that's another matter. If you're claiming the media doesn't report about global warming, or that it ignores the connection to burning coal, that simply isn't true.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[quenda]

You're clearly trying to imply something, but I honestly don't know what.

Really?? The Daily Mail is a trashy UK tabloid, in the mould of The Sun, and News of The World. They do not fact-check, and barely proof-read. Not a reliable source for anything more than your horoscope.
I was just saying that people can be allowed to visit, for various reasons. Like working at the power station. Its not some instant death zone.

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Uberbah]

You mean an offhand sentence in his last paragraph means that even he knows the thrust of his post was red herring misdirection?

Huh, interesting. You think anyone else noticed?

Re:Still No Deaths From Radiation

[Uberbah]

You're using that word, straw man....

He said that it wasn't on the same scale as Chernobyl because by all measurable data it isn't worse than Chernobyl.

Other than the measurable data that says that the Japanese reactor will leak more radioactive material than Chernobyl, of course. Which means it will be measurably worse, of course. Which means Fukushima will be worse than Chernobyl, of course.

Re:Tokyo is being evacuated also

[PPH]

Now, now. Be kind. AC probably just fell asleep watching Godzilla.

Who is Shima?

[A Commentor]

And why are people really mad at him/her.... ;-)

Nuclear power apologists keep missing the point...

[SwedishChef]

It isn't so much whether the plants themselves can be designed to be safe, sited in safe areas, built safely or operated safely; it's whether we can trust the people who are involved not to take kickbacks or falsify records because they're too lazy to x-ray all the pipe welds or be bullied by politicians or miss what turn out to be obvious problems. And the it's not so much the body count after an accident as the resultant loss in credibility of the systems themselves. Not many of us want to live next to a nuclar plant for very good reasons: the consequences of a problem are devastating and the people running them keep lying to us.

Other power generation facilities lie about things too but they don't require that everyone living within 40 miles of them abandon everything and run... and not come back for a century or two.

Re:Tokyo is being evacuated also

[CrimsonAvenger]

As always, both Tepco and the Japanese government have massively downplayed the actual severity of this thing. It's worse than Chernobyl. Much, much worse.

Following your link, I find that the danger is being "ingored".

Personally, I tend to discount "alternative media" that can't spell. Makes me wonder what else they can't do correctly.

This just underscores what I have been saying

[geekoid]

for years.

Use modern reactors, and the government should build and operate them. remove profit gained from skimping on safety and EOL procedures.

Re:This just underscores what I have been saying

[Anonymous Coward]

Um.... At least in the USA, the government doesn't build or run anything. It's all contracted out to the lowest bidder. So, no, that won't help.

Re:This just underscores what I have been saying

[Hentes]

Indeed, I am a supporter of nuclear power but i do think that boiling water reactors should be closed and replaced with safer modern ones.

Re:This just underscores what I have been saying

[Anonymous Coward]

> the government should build and operate them
Oh god, no. Private companies may be ruthless, but they don't inherently have the power to re-write the legal framework to suit themselves (even if it sometimes looks this way, at least in the US).

Re:This just underscores what I have been saying

[guruevi]

Who does the government hire to build them then? Government contractors and employees are more likely to skip safety procedures (see the BP oil rig disaster and just about any other environmental disaster out there) for profit or out of laziness. They also know they can't get fired or reap any consequences so why would they care?

What we need is companies that want to be liable when stuff goes wrong. Companies need to be liable for their coal plants and liable for their nuclear plants. Right now our taxes through health care are soaking up those costs. For every death or illness caused by the byproducts of the energy production (whether that be smoke, fuel leaks or nuclear radiation), an energy plant needs to pay into the health care system. Also, the cost of energy should be regulated so they can't just raise their prices to offset the cost of their dirtier plants, there needs to be incentive to go to a cheaper (and thus more environmental friendly) solution. You may say you can't just replace a coal plant but you could replace the individual engines one by one with self-contained (container size) reactors - they're not that expensive, some data centers have them as main power and use the grid for backup.

A PhD Told Me

[Anonymous Coward]

..that nuclear reactors are complex systems, and therefore subject to chaotic behavior.. further, the culture of security does not breed increased response to threats, quite the opposite. Long periods of stable energy and profits lead predictably to cozy relationships with regulators and "asleep at the wheel" operators.. industry-wide! This was someone with no political axe in hand, simply advanced training in physics..

Re:A PhD Told Me

[catmistake]

..that nuclear reactors are complex systems, and therefore subject to chaotic behavior.. further, the culture of security does not breed increased response to threats, quite the opposite. Long periods of stable energy and profits lead predictably to cozy relationships with regulators and "asleep at the wheel" operators.. industry-wide! This was someone with no political axe in hand, simply advanced training in physics..

Well said.

Re:Nuclear power apologists keep missing the point

[metageek]

very well argued, much better than I did.

Re:Nuclear power apologists keep missing the point

[Solandri]

It isn't so much whether the plants themselves can be designed to be safe, sited in safe areas, built safely or operated safely; it's whether we can trust the people who are involved not to take kickbacks or falsify records because they're too lazy to x-ray all the pipe welds or be bullied by politicians or miss what turn out to be obvious problems.

That's an advantage for nuclear, not a disadvantage. What you say about safety is true for all power plants. Coal plants, wind turbines, and hydroelectric dams can be built and operated dangerously. They're distributed so the number of people killed/injured from a single incident is smaller. But if you assume the same level of corruption in all industries, the number of people killed by those technologies will be about the same or higher per unit of energy generated.

So how is this an advantage for nuclear? Because nuclear's power generation is so concentrated, it's much easier to enforce stricter building codes, maintenance schedules, and inspections for the same amount of energy generated. Instead of amassing a small army to monitor 10,000 wind turbines being built, inspected, and maintained over 1000 km^2 of land, you can have a dozen inspectors do the same at a single nuclear plant. The statistics bear this out. Historically, nuclear is the safest power generation technology we've invented. Safer than coal, safer than solar, safer than hydro, safer than wind.

Re:Nuclear power apologists keep missing the point

[catmistake]

it's whether we can trust the people

You had me at "whether we can trust ... people"

I wish everyone was of the quality of the gung ho bravery of the stereotypical NASA astronaut, with the intellect of the Rhode scholar... and raised in the mid-west and having a sort of a innocent bafflement of evil or corruption or falsehood. And from what anyone can tell, the Japanese have a far superior sense of morality than any other modern people (low crime rates, no looting... all the cash and valuables found that has been turned in), but even within their population we obviously have corruption (as we have seen its unfortunate effects).

So the issue is that anything that involves enough capital and/or is sufficiently complex that involves lots of people (such as nuclear power) will be subject to the effects of corruption, period. Nuclear power may be safe... but because (corruptable, imperfect) people are involved... whatever safety gains there are become nullified, even reversed.

It's a dead issue in the USA anyway

[dbIII]

This shows that bad things can happen when political decisions override science

Sadly that's the entire history of the civilian nuclear industry.
Almost every time something has been put forward which will improve safety (eg. thorium reactor project) or deal with nuclear waste (eg. synrock) it has been vehemently opposed for political reasons. Saying that safety can be improved is seen as a criticism that the status quo is not good enough, and there is a lot of money riding on maintaining the existing gravy train. Due to this and the massive capital costs involved with doing anything new with nuclear at all the civilian nuclear industry in the USA is effectively dead but on expensive life support. Even the AP1000 came in via Toshiba and the Japanese taxpayer - all signs of local innovation are just a blood transfusion from a now dead donor. To see any advances in civilian nuclear power you are going to have to look overseas or hope for some military inspired developments (eg. modified submarine reactors).

Re:Nuclear power apologists keep missing the point

[Target Drone]

Nuclear is scarier in the same way that people are more afraid of airplane crashes then car crashes. It's the big spectacular events that scare us the most, even if they are extremely rare. Nuclear also has a real public relations problem. You can't tour a plant. You might even get detained by police for taking a picture of one. The whole issue of what to do with the waste hasn't been worked out (sure it's mostly politics but the fact is it hasn't been taken care of). The average person doesn't have a Geiger counter so it's impossible to know if they are leaking radiation or not. It also doesn't help that in most countries environmental regulation is handled by one department and nuclear power is handled by a separate often very secretive branch. If nuke plants held once a month community tours with free BBQ hamburgers and let people buy a subsidized Geiger counter on their way out through the gift shop things might be different.

Re:Nuclear power apologists keep missing the point

[felipekk]

A small army to monitor vs a dozen inspectors?

I'll take wind all day. We need the jobs! =P

Re:Tokyo is being evacuated also

[Tomato42]

the radiation levels considered "safe" are set using the "lowest level reasonably achievable" not using the "highest known safe levels". The difference between them over 4 orders of magnitude between them.

If all industries used the same limits as nuclear energy you couldn't get your chest X-ray, let alone MRI scan made.

Re:Nuclear power apologists keep missing the point

[Tomato42]

You can buy Geiger counters (you should be looking for dosimeters though) on eBay. They're not exactly cheap (around $500) but they're not unattainable.

Political aspects of Nuclear power

[fritsd]

So how is this an advantage for nuclear? Because nuclear's power generation is so concentrated, it's much easier to enforce stricter building codes, maintenance schedules, and inspections for the same amount of energy generated. Instead of amassing a small army to monitor 10,000 wind turbines being built, inspected, and maintained over 1000 km^2 of land, you can have a dozen inspectors do the same at a single nuclear plant. The statistics bear this out [nextbigfuture.com]. Historically, nuclear is the safest power generation technology we've invented. Safer than coal, safer than solar, safer than hydro, safer than wind.

Interesting..

<cynicism>
So you're saying:

• nuclear power is concentrated which makes it an excellent target for foreign military strike (read about Osirak) and for terrorists (read about the liquid Sodium in the Superphénix fast breeder in the Seventies; this current discussion about breeder reactors is not new)
• wind power provides a small army of regional jobs
• wind power is distributed so provides regional independence from the central government (think: if Libya depended on 1 nuclear plant for all electricity and Gadaffi had that one heavily guarded)

</cynicism>
I think you're on to some interesting political points there!

Re:Political aspects of Nuclear power

[jafac]

The other interesting political points; are about how dickheads like Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein, and Ahmadinijad, use the development of nuclear power - (oh, and I'm sure that the US did this back in the day) as some kind of technical PISSING CONTEST, to bully other regional (or global powers) . . . oh, look at our marvelous industrial power and technology. Suck our industrial, nuclear cocks, bitches! Don't fuck with us, we can make BOMBS now!

And it's nothing but self-serving arrogant posturing of politicians, so they can feel secure about their diminutive stature when they're at the negotiating table with their enemies. . . (etc).

. . . and the result, is putting their own people at dire risk. Because they never gave a flying fuck about clean, cheap, safe power. They wanted the big phallic symbol to wave around the conference table.

Re:Political aspects of Nuclear power

[fritsd]

Well Bushehr sounds more manly and dangerous than "don't mess with us or we'll make our phallic Vestas V90-3MW fall 100 m across the border onto your head".

Re:Tokyo is being evacuated also

[psnyder]

Tokyo is being evacuated also.

I live in Tokyo. No one is being evacuated. No one has ever been evacuated from here as far as I know, even during the crisis. The blog post you linked, as well as the Al Jazeera broadcast within it, talks about a citizens' group who is trying to tell the government that we need to evacuate.

During the crisis, many other countries "suggested" that their nationals fly back. And some countries had their embassies fly their people out, free of charge. If that's the "evacuation of Tokyo" you're talking about, it's a bit disingenuous.

Anyone could tell that the official reports were downplaying the severity because all of the real hard numbers we got went against what they were saying.

Actually, anyone can measure the background radiation in their area with fairly cheap devices. And many independent people post their findings on aggregated maps. I watched a number of these fairly carefully for a while after the crisis. To put it into perspective, Rome has much higher background radiation than Tokyo, because the granite buildings give off a slight amount.

The news broadcast talked about average people testing the dirt. It's fairly easy. I'd imagine the actual results are similar to the background radiation, but there are no specifics in your linked article about where and how they got their numbers. The soil near the plant is bad, no doubt. But I'd like you to cite a more reliable source for the Tokyo numbers.

There's radiation everywhere in the world. It's the amount and type you have to look at. The "small amount" that can cause illness or cancer that they mention on the Al Jazeera piece is actually one particle. You are being bombarded with multiple particles of radiation every second that you're out on a sunny day or flying in an airplane. Yet one particle, at any time, may hit a part of DNA and screw up the cell's ability to inhibit cancer.

The Al Jazeera segment also shows a borderline abusive mother who won't allow her child to go outside because of her fear. Yet she claims she can't move away from Tokyo (the most expensive place to live in Japan) for financial reasons. And the size of the rooms shown in the news segment suggest a fairly expensive house/apartment in Tokyo. She's probably using the idea of losing her or her husbands job as the excuse. It's cognitive dissonance. If she wanted to, she could easily find a low paying job anywhere outside of Tokyo, live in a slightly smaller place, and live fairly well (because the cost of living would be so much less).

The mother looks like a borderline case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Children like her child are the true casualties, but not in the way your blog posting suggests.

Tsunami: not sure anything could have helped

[CodeShark]

For every thousand people wringing their hands about all of the "coulda shoulda woulda(s)", there seems to be only a voice or two that really comprehends the size of either the quake or the Tsunami. Yes, TEPCO and the government regulators should have paid attention to what other researchers were saying about the likelihood of a big tsunami hitting the Tokai plain, including the area where Fukushima Daiichi, etc. were located.

I lived in three of the areas hardest hit: Ishinomaki, Northeast Sendai, and Fukushima. Damages further north and south on the coast are equally indescribable. To put it in perspective though..... Let's say California got pitched the same distance to the west that Japan did in the mega quake. There would now be an eight foot moat around anything west of the fault line. Any building lower than about 30 feet (the highest tsunami readings were nearly double that) not made of pretty much stone, brick, or cement would be gone. Assume you'd built a ten meter sea wall -- and then not only does the seawall get smacked by the quake, but the quake takes out all the backup systems designed to shut your big old project down safely -- and the roads required to get new backup equipment in place. In fact, pretty much all you can do is spray water on a hot spot.

You'd have as much luck avoiding a disastrous ending as you would n putting out a forest fire with the results of that 32 oz big gulp soda you drank an hour before the fire broke loose.

Any questions?

Nuclear bias isn't so much evident

[Auntiegrav]

..as the pro-technology biases of people using the internet. Evil: Any action taken based on unquestioned belief. Beliefs don't matter: actions do. So, everyone got together and decided to believe that a typical tsunami wouldn't occur anymore because they had already built a nuclear plant there, and the alternative would mean not using it. Now that we have no viable alternative to cheap petroleum for running our technology, everyone has chosen to believe that we will somehow change the human species into something that gives a shit about safety over profits. lol

Re:Nuclear power apologists keep missing the point

[T Murphy]

I don't care to live next to a large industrial facility, but if I had to I would readily pick a nuclear plant over almost any other industrial operation. Coal plants would be at or near the bottom of my list. With a nuclear plant there is a (almost, but not quite) negligible chance that I would have to evacuate and never go back home, while with a coal plant I would dread every day that I lived there.

You can only use "I don't want to live next to a nuclear plant" as an argument against nuclear if you would be happy living next to a coal plant, given that's the alternative right now. I'm sure some people would still claim they would rather live next to a coal plant, but give coal the same media exposure as nuclear and I bet most people wouldn't be so sure.