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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?'"
This confirms it.
No nuclear power plants can handle a tsunami.
All of them must be shut down.
Experts? They don't know anything. Everyone knows the definitive word is with the armchair commentators here on Slashdot!
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.
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.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
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.
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.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
for years.
Use modern reactors, and the government should build and operate them. remove profit gained from skimping on safety and EOL procedures.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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