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Japan's Last Nuclear Reactor Shuts Down
AmiMoJo writes "Japan's last active reactor is shutting down today, leaving the country without nuclear energy for the first time since 1970. All 50 commercial reactors in the country are now offline. 19 have completed stress tests but there is little prospect of them being restarted due to heavy opposition from local governments. Meanwhile activists in Tokyo celebrated the shutdown and asked the government to admit that nuclear power was no longer needed in Japan and to concentrate on safety. If this summer turns out to be as hot as 2010 some areas could be asked to make 15% power savings to avoid shortages, while other areas will be unaffected due to savings already made."
That's securing your nation's future in the post-oil world! /s
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Energy has to come from somewhere -- lets burn more fossil fuels! huge victory for the environment! yay!
we are japanese if you please, we are japanese if you dont please
This is a great step. Now, if only they'd do something about all the spent fuel rods in Fukushima, stored in a building that has a seismic structural rating of 0 (I.e. very fragile).
That alone is probably the greatest threat to the existence of humanity today. God help us all if there's another earthquake.
While nuclear can be done safely, there seems to be no effort to do so - as it would deny environmentalists a chance to remake the power grid in their own way.
Environmentalism - as practiced today - has been about control versus the original intent of cleanliness and efficiency.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
We need to start making some of these Thorium reactors.
Before the accident 27% of Japan's energy came from nuclear power. Even if everyone could 15% (which is impossible because many big users are already conserving due to costs) that still leaved 12% unaccounted for. Sure green power can make up for some of that in the long term but in the short term it means increased import and burning of fossil fuels. A 54% increase in fossil fuel base electricity production in one year is significant.
You have it wrong --- this is "we can save face if we blame the problems we had with our nuclear reactor on nuclear energy being inherently unsafe, not the fact that we totally f**ked up the safety management and planning in multiple ways".
BTW, at least one of these errors is being made practically everywhere in the world: stopping research into new, possibly safer reactor designs because of the public's knee-jerk fear of technology. (Maybe not so much in China, though.)
Do you have a shred of evidence suggesting environmentalists want control over power vs clean energy? It almost sounds like an oil executive projecting his own motivations onto green activists: "Harumph, CLEARLY they are just after more control and power, and don't actually give a rat's behind about the well being of the planet or the implications for human health! ... (cough) ... Stevens, fetch me a glass of brandy, I'm done giving press conferences for the day."
How about the simple fact that "environmentalists" are celebrating the shut down of nuclear reactors while ignoring the coal and oil based power plants?
When solar and wind power becomes widespread then we can celebrating shutting down nuclear power plants. Until then, all you're doing is trading one evil for an even greater evil.
Inaccurate story.
Fukushima 4 may be "offline" but can't be "shutdown"...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Meanwhile activists in Tokyo celebrated the shutdown and asked the government to admit that nuclear power was no longer needed in Japan
If this summer turns out to be as hot as 2010 some areas could be asked to make 15% power savings to avoid shortages
Would seem to me that it is very clear that nuclear power is still needed in Japan if areas have to make cuts in power draw to avoid shortages.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's not environmentalists behind this push. And they aren't making bank on it.
Others are, because they exploit the nobler intentions with profit on their mind.
Ah that's alright, considering Japan seems to be going full bore towards coal power plants. They're buying up every coal mine in western Canada that they can get their hands on so they can export it. I'm sure this is a much better option.
Om, nomnomnom...
Someone at a hospital in 2006 told me about this and it actually happened.........
well no more calling japan saying heroiusma for me.
And despite what the greenies say, wind and solar aren't always reliable, especially near the ocean -- clouds come and go, as do storms, and wind fluxuates, whereas power demand is constant. Not only that, but the efficiency of solar panels isn't high enough yet to be a replacement in an urban area -- panels have to be installed outside the city and cover large tracts of land. That may work in America, but it will not work for an island city-state.
Japan is taking a step backwards here because of political pressure and disinformation about the safety of nuclear power: Fukishima wasn't a failure of engineering, it was a failure of management, and it's something every government has to contend with when they hand over to capitalists and industrialists anything that can go boom; They are asked to balance profit with safety, but invariably when the two conflict, profit wins.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Until it is. Desperately. Hydrocarbons aren't long for this world from an "energy return/aggregate price" point of view. Do they expect to pull power from the behinds of pink unicorns and baby godzillas?
Which would, admittedly, be pretty cool.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
According to this Fukushima 4's fuel was removed soon after the disaster and therefore has been shut down for some time.
Of course he doesn't have any evidence. The pro-nuclear crowd wants to pick and chose the best parts about nuclear... they want to pretend that each plant lasts for 40-60 years--so that the cost of nuclear is competitive with coal,etc.. and then when those 50 year old reactors are found to be unsafe, they say it's because they are out of date.
Well... if they were rebuilt every decade with the latest safety improvements, they would not be cost competitive. So chose: unsafe reactors... or uncompetitive energy prices.
..... when the air-conditioners wont work in the middle of summer due to power cuts?
I know we are all supposed to point out how foolish they are being but they do have reasons for such a strong reaction. Up until Chernobyl they were the only country to deal with major contamination in heavily populated areas. Even Chernobyl was in a rural area not two major cities. It badly scarred them not only physically but mentally. The recent disaster effectively killed a chunk of the country and Japan already has a shortage of land especially farmland. It may have been smarter to phase it out but the fear of a second such disaster was too great. Japan is fairly new to nuclear power and they are in a unique situation. The country is very active geologically and earthquakes are commonplace and it has a lot of potential for similar disasters. None of us can know the real position they were in. The accident happened because they got sloppy and after reviewing other plants they may have seen shortcomings in the other plants that could have lead to disasters and the upgrades would take too long. I'm just saying there may be more to it than we know and Japan has a lot of pride and it's hard for them to admit they got sloppy. It's easy to say all the disasters are human error but it's impossible to take human error out of the equation. Growing up I heard there would statistically be one disaster every thousand years. If statistics were accurate we would be safe for the next three thousand years. Human error will always be a factor. As costs rise also there's a tendency to cut corners increasing risk. That's what caused the gulf oil spill. All the reactors in this country are rapidly approaching the end of their projected lives and many have already passed it. The nuclear materials have a corrosive affect on the pipes so the risk keeps going up on existing plants. The point I'm trying to make is it isn't as cut and dry as most think. There are a lot of pros and cons. Fusion makes a lot more sense but in truth I've never heard anything to convince me it'll ever be practical. For all it's potential every test so far takes nearly as much energy as it produces. We need safe, stable, long term solutions and there is no magic bullet one size fits all solution. In the near term we need all of the sources including coal and oil but a critical part of the puzzle will be that ugly word, conservation. Trust me, the Japanese will be hearing that word a lot over the next few years. Used wisely conservation is a powerful part of the puzzle. Obama got laughed at for suggesting properly inflated tires would save as much oil as the arctic reserve would contribute. As funny as some found it the fact is he was right. If everyone embraced conservation they wouldn't have to change their lifestyles significantly and we could put off new power plants for a decade or more. That would buy us time to make the needed changes including building more nuclear plants if that's the solution. I'll predict this, Japan will become the world leader in conservation. It's the only way they'll survive.
Japan has essentially no internal oil or natural gas resources. Everything has to be imported. As a result of the nuclear shutdown, imports are up. Way up. So are prices.
From the Financial Times:
As utilities last year met the shortfall of nuclear power, Japanese consumption of LNG rose by 56 per cent, crude oil for direct burning by 27 per cent and fuel oil usage by 20 per cent. The trend, which is helping to keep spot LNG prices in Asia and global oil prices higher, is set to accelerate in the next few months as utilities burn more hydrocarbons to compensate for the lack of nuclear power.
Energy analysts say utilities have maximised LNG-fired electricity output, leaving crude oil and fuel oil to meet additional needs. Oil traders believe that Japan's nuclear cutback could add between 450,000 and 800,000 barrels a day to world demand for crude and fuel oil. The figures are significant. The bottom end of the range equals the production of Ecuador and the upper end matches the output of Qatar.
You can't convince the anti-np crowd or conspiracy theorists with facts. They just keep on repeating the same misinformation hoping it will eventually override all the evidence.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Environmentalists seem to be more concerned with gross pollution, as opposed to pollution per capita or per kwh, and seem to neglect the fact that you need more of something that produces less power to get the same output.
I don't see environmentalists ignoring anything at all. In fact efforts to fight Oil have been really stepped up, especially in light of what happened in the Gulf with BP. Plus, more and more environmentalists are arguing for modern, safe nuclear power, not against ALL nuclear power. Just the sort of plants that put profits before safety.
You can't convince the anti-np crowd or conspiracy theorists with facts. They just keep on repeating the same misinformation hoping it will eventually override all the evidence.
don't worry, the day you prove p=np they will all bow before you. /mutates & /ducks
The Unit 4 reactor had already had it's fuel removed *before* the earthquake, not after. The problem is that all that spent fuel is now in the Unit 4 fuel pool.
So in reference to this statement:
So now Godzilla can just wade around in Tokyo Bay
You said: "Inaccurate story."
Gee, ya think?
Whoever rated this up +3 needs to seriously lay off the LSD.
Environmentalism - as practiced today - has been about control versus the original intent of cleanliness and efficiency.
Oh. My. God.
I think this has finally done it for me.
First I stopped logging into my account and only posted occasionally as an AC.
Then I stopped reading so much of Slashdot posts.
Then the "articles" turned more and more into adverisements and PR statements and garbage.
Now, I think I'm gonna stop reading Slashdot altogether.
Thank you. I waste too much fucking time here anyway and you've just proven to me, once again, that sites like this (Fark, Digg, Reddit, etc ...) are just complete garbage now. People very rarely post anything insightful - it's mostly "derp" as the Farkers say - parrotted shit that's broadcast on other electronic media. No real honest unique opinions. Just rehashes of the same old shit that's been said time and time and time and time again.
There's evidence of this in the US by the government propping up companies like Solyndra - while blocking oil, coal, and nuclear from having any chance to be usable.
If you want green energy, fine. Just be prepared for when it fails to deliver as promised.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
2002-2008 the United States handed out subsidies to fossil fuel industries to a tune of 72 billion dollars. I sure wish the government would block me like that...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I like how you accuse him of not having evidence... and then throw out a bunch of generalizations and theories.
Do you have a shred of evidence suggesting environmentalists want control over power vs clean energy?
Well you can start with the story you're commenting on.
. The pro-nuclear crowd wants to pick and chose the best parts about nuclear... they want to pretend that each plant lasts for 40-60 years--so that the cost of nuclear is competitive with coal,
So are you trying to reduce the impact on the environment, or on your wallet?
My bad; I was at least closer to the truth.
Thank you for being backwards and making the entire world suffer because of increased use of fossil fuels.
No, it won't be recovered by green any time soon, nor will it pay off for many more years even if you do get it all built up.
You'd think these fruitloops who want to save the environment would THINK things through.
But then I realize that most of them are as crazy as religious zealots.
FOSSIL FUELS ARE MORE DANGEROUS TO THE ENVIRONMENT IN EVERY SINGLE WAY POSSIBLE.
NUCLEAR IS SAFE IF YOU DON'T BUILD THE DAMN THINGS WHILE CUTTING CORNERS.
So 12 billion a year across a wide industry, of which how many companies went bankrupt? Didn't Solyndra get 2 billion? Wasn't there a few other billion-dollar handouts to solar firms that have gone belly-up?
Government money should not be involved in the creation or propping up of business and industry. Research, yes, and if such research leads to advancements that are economically feasible and viable.. money will find and support those advancements.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
It sort of looks like these environmentalists are celebrating the fact that ALL nuclear power plants have been shut down in Japan. While I will admit there might be some bad plants that needed to be shut down and that some changes needed to happen, was it necessary to shut all of them down at the same time?
Keep in mind that the celebration is over the last of the nuclear power plants being shut down. They are celebrating the death of even the concept of nuclear energy.
If there was a real concern about the environment, they would be far more worried about increasing dependence on coal and oil for electrical power. Heck, just by restarting some of these older coal power plants they are going to be introducing more radioactive debris into the environment than had they simply left the nuclear power plants running. These environmentalists are in that way celebrating a nuclear future AND the destruction of the environment on a massive scale, where many more people will die because these plants are being shut down.
If you were genuinely concerned about safety, you would be insisting that these nuclear power plants be restarted ASAP. If you look strictly at deaths directly caused from mining coal to replace these nuclear power plants, I think that would more than offset any potential deaths caused from even casual handling of spent nuclear rods, much less the risk of having another Fukushima-type disaster happening in the next few years.
You Can't Repeal Murphy's Law
Fukashima
BP oil spill\
Costa Concordia Cruise Ship
Exxon Valdeze
Titanic
We were all allsured that they were foolproof. Wrong -- we found the fools.
I hear Fukishima is wonderful this time of the year
The failure to build more nuclear reactors is the biggest social disaster since the sacking of the library of Alexandria. Just as that act set world civilization back by 1000 years, the failure of humankind to use carbon-neutral and safe modern designs of fission reactors will be seen by centuries of people in the future as a major failing. It disgusts me that people who don't understand reality and science pretend that a 40 year old reactor design in Fukishima, or a completely unsafe design as in Chernobyl, have ANYTHING to do with modern nuclear energy generation technology. The ironic thing is that so often it's the people who pretend to care about the environment who are ignorantly opposing modern nuclear energy plants.
I look at it another way. We can get rid of a whole inefficient industry at the loss of 15% of peak capacity. Sure the wasteful liberals just want everything to be given to them, but sometimes we must live within our means. This is what we should be doing everywhere. Figuring out how to be efficient.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Do you see coal plants or even solar power farms being rebuilt every ten years?
It takes time to phase in changes in engineering and design, where certainly nuclear energy plants built in the early 1960's perhaps ought to be phased out and shut down. Then again that was over 50 years ago. I would agree that 50 year old nuclear power plants should be decommissioned and perhaps even rebuilt. Sadly too many of plants that age are still being used because the new plants aren't being built to replace them.
There are also a number of factors that drive up costs for nuclear power plants. I think they can be made cost effective, and even safe enough that you don't ever need to worry about a disaster like Fukushima happening in the future. The largest driver of nuclear power plant cost in America has been largely due to the one-off nature of the plants. Most of them were experiments in engineering design where each plant was essentially a prototype incorporating the newest technology known at the time. Other countries (notably France) have gone beyond that and standardized designs which made it much cheaper to build those facilities... and because France built their reactors more recently they have higher standards as well.
Nuclear power isn't perfect, but it can certainly be something that should be in the mix and not ruled out.
Do you see coal plants or even solar power farms being rebuilt every ten years?
Solar power farms don't have the same problems when they fail, and the panels we had in the 1970s could repay the energy cost of their production in seven years. Why in hell have you brought them into this conversation? To make Nuclear look shitty?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The safety improvements in modern designs are enough that they don't need to be rebuilt every decade. This isn't like computers where you need the latest and greatest all the time. There is no Moore's Law of Reactor safety. This is an issue of the technology having matured since the reactors in question were built.
Or, you could just build inherently safer designs in the first place.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
That people are celebrating is not evidence that they want control. What is evidence of is that a large number of environmentalists are deeply ignorant about the pros and cons of different types of power and that they have absorbed a large number of anti-technology memes. That's not an indication of a desire for "control". Hanlon's razor seems a bit relevant here.
Are you saying that the reactors we have now were designed with KNOWN safety issues?
Of course that's ridiculous... everyone THOUGHT they were safe when they were designed and built. It's not until decades later we find out if they were wrong.
Every time this topic comes up, there is the same string of irrelevant nonsense. Wake up.
There are only two long-term, large, successful, safe nuclear power projects on Earth - the U.S. Navy's and France's. Last year, the Navy logged its 6,500th reactor-year of experience w/out a single serious accident - nuc subs Thresher and Scorpian went down for reasons unrelated to their power plants. Both the Navy and France use a high degree of standardization between plants, rigorous operator selection and training, and procedures enforced by iron-fisted independent regulators - anathema to the unregulated free-market mavens designing and selling reactors and the natural-monopoly privatized power companies either trying to maximize profit or with guaranteed profit margins regardless of efficiency. The U.S. nuc power system failed as much because of the heterogeneous designs afoot - and resultant inability to insure standardized reliable performance and procedures, as because of the political resistance. But, the two are highly related - that is, there was good reason to be skeptical of promises of safe, long-term operation. A small, compact variation of the Navy's system is being marketed to U.S. communities for local power production at this time, but its adoption is meeting strong resistance in the regulatory agencies and congress due to big power and big energy special-interest influence - i .e. corruption.
So yes, there is a way to have safe, long-term nuclear power right under our feet and it is only our inept corrupted political system that keeps us from realizing it.
I'll play along... quick question: how much time is there between safety issues being discovered? Since that's how much time the reactors will be safe and usable before they should be fixed.
So you say they are safe now? The Westinghouse AP1000 was approved by the NRC in 2005. The NRC approved two plants in 2011 (in GA). and it's being built at the Sanmen Nuclear Power Plant in China. "Unequaled safety".. a Gen III+ reactor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP1000
They break ground in Georgia and China... and then they find it has a safety flaw:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/business/energy-environment/21nuke.html?pagewanted=all
This is it.. the latest, greatest nuclear tech we have.. and we're still making mistakes with it.
the trouble with Nuclear is the disasters are so bad, and sooner or later the reactors get privatized and some wealthy jackass cuts funding to safety. Since he doesn't live anywhere near the disaster (or could just move if he did) he's fine. Running a nuclear reactor is very, very expensive. So there's a LOT of money to be made by cutting corners and skipping maintenance. The kind of people who run our world (thanks to the way inheritance works) are not very bright either. Unless safety can be made so cheap that the margins aren't good enough to attract your average capitalist you'll never have 100% safe nuclear power.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Keyword here: theory. And I mean that in the colloquial sense.
As soon as real-world issues crop up (like "Okay, technically we should shut everything down for a month while we check that it's all safe. But that costs an enormous amount of money; it's far cheaper to falsify records and pretend we've done that, if anything happens we'll all be dead anyway so who cares?" or "Yes, this reactor is totally foolproof and shutting everything down for a month is unnecessary with this design. But it's totally untested in the real world, which means it's such a political hot potato that no politician in their right mind will let it happen"), you've got problems.
So, who's got suggestions that don't fall down in the real world?
I guess it doesn't pay to be a nuclear scientist in Japan anymore...
Of course he doesn't have any evidence. The pro-nuclear crowd wants to pick and chose the best parts about nuclear... they want to pretend that
You just fell into the same trap as the GP you are bitching about -presuming that you know what someone elses intentions are.
each plant lasts for 40-60 years
They do.
--so that the cost of nuclear is competitive with coal,etc..
If a 40-60 year lifespan would make the costs competitive, then yes -they are.
and then when those 50 year old reactors are found to be unsafe, they say it's because they are out of date.
They are. 50 years is in the 40-60 year lifespan you just proposed -and as it is end-of-life, it is out-of-date as well.
Well... if they were rebuilt every decade with the latest safety improvements, they would not be cost competitive.
Obviously rebuilding something every 10 years that has a proposed lifespan of 40-60 years is not cost-effective.
So chose: unsafe reactors... or uncompetitive energy prices.
False Dilemma.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Some of the Fukushima reactors were only 25 years old. Since it was obviously an unsafe design, at what point should it have been shut down? At 15 years? At 20 years?
The AP1000 design lasted 5 years before a safety flaw was found.
If the lifetime for a reactor is supposed to be 60 years, it should be safe the ENTIRE 60 years. Not, 40 years safe.. 20 years "hopefully nothing will happen"
Stop pretending these things are safe. They are complicated, with far too many parts to get right. Safety flaws have been found even in our very newest reactors.
There's more than one environmentalist out there, and they can and do have different motives.
One touchstone is how they react when clean power becomes realistic. Those who are motivated by concern for the environment (and the people who live in it) welcome clean power. The others sue to stop it.
Solar power is also ridiculously expensive compared with anything else, and not really viable for a long term solution on its own.
I can think TWO better options. We can reduce the global dependency on uranium by switching to nature's organic power.
1. fuels created from organically-fed, free-ranging dinosaurs.
2. 100% Certified Organic Coal (also reduces dependency on hydro from dams)
Of course, reducing power consumption is part of the equation.
1. Stop reading slashdot using manufactured, powered devices and switch to better alternatives.
2. Stop distributing slashdot using manufactured, powered devices and switch to better alternatives.
Toss your power-hungry, multi-core laptops in the landfill and invest in clay. "Tablets" are power-efficient and will be next big thing in global communications.
I like nuclear technology a lot. A lot. But I don't think we should be using it for electricity generation, Why? Because when we leave this little ball to explore the universe, we are going to be travelling far away from our star. Batteries aren't going to be enough. Solar won't cut it. We'll need a stable energy source that can last millenia to power our ships through the galaxy and only nuclear is capable of it. Should we really be rushing to burn all of that non-renewable fuel for tasks which frankly prudent use of solar salt thermal generators can accomplish the same ends? Not to mention that digging nuclear materials out of the ground still involves mining/consuming a raw material for energy and at some point that energy source will run out. Nuclear is no cure for our long term energy needs, it'll just result in a new energy crisis when all the easily available uranium/thorium is expended. It's time some truly long term planning was actually used by governments.
Solar power is also ridiculously expensive compared with anything else
Only if you fail to account for the cost of cleaning up the mess of using other kinds of power.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some of the Fukushima reactors were only 25 years old. Since it was obviously an unsafe design, at what point should it have been shut down? At 15 years? At 20 years?
In my opinion? As soon as it was determined to be unsafe. The real questions should be: Determined by whom? and what is the definition of unsafe? I am not a nuclear engineer, I would want the definition to come from scientists, not politicians, or us plebeians.
The AP1000 design lasted 5 years before a safety flaw was found. If the lifetime for a reactor is supposed to be 60 years, it should be safe the ENTIRE 60 years. Not, 40 years safe.. 20 years "hopefully nothing will happen"
Is the lifespan designed as 60 years? or is it designed to be (as the previous poster said) 40-60 years?
Stop pretending these things are safe.
Statistically, they are. Again, I ask: How do you define safe vs unsafe?
They are complicated, with far too many parts to get right. Safety flaws have been found even in our very newest reactors.
That is a very Luddite statement. Do you feel the same about cars? about computers? about shoes?
"Complicated, with far too many parts to get right." ...umm...OK. If that is your feeling, go with it. But it is not a logical position, and cannot be debated.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Didn't Solyndra get 2 billion?
Well, not as far as I can tell, no.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Hot topic - but where do you store the nuclear waste reliable and safe? Thats a problem no matter how safe your reactor is, and it keeps on growing.
Last I checked, ramming airplanes into things is a great way to troll a country into spending $1M for every $1 you spent.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
It sort of looks like these environmentalists are celebrating the fact that ALL nuclear power plants have been shut down in Japan. While I will admit there might be some bad plants that needed to be shut down and that some changes needed to happen, was it necessary to shut all of them down at the same time?
Yes, it was necessary because they were hit with a very large earthquake and had to be checked. That is standard procedure in the event of a large quake. Plumbing breaks, concrete cracks, stuff falls over. They also had to be stress tested to make sure that if a magnitude 9 quake hit them directly they would survive, since they were only designed to withstand a magnitude 7.5. In light of what happened at Fukushima the tsunami defences needed to be looked at too.
The environmentalists are happy because the threat of another meltdown has now passed. You can argue over how big that threat was, but don't misunderstand their position. It is about safety, not the relative merits of nuclear vs. coal or whatever other straw man people you want to set up. I'm sure they are aware that coal plants release radiation because it has been on the TV endlessly since last year, but they are worried about another Fukushima type accident.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I suggest Japan switches to powering itself with Activists.
An average size activist has a mass of approximately 70Kg (counting the younger people and women into the average).
70Kg of a raw unadulterated activist contains about 6.3 Ã-- 1018 J, which translates to 6Ã--1015 BTU, or 1.7Ã--1012 KW/hr.
Thus only one activist fully converted into energy should in principle be sufficient to power Japan for about 25 years.
Of-course this is assuming that an activist can be fully converted into energy, but since an average activist is against all forms of energy that people actually need to live, we can also conclude that activists are generally against human survival, and thus they are self-defeating. If the activists get their way, there will be no humans, but there also will be no activists, so by converting activists into energy even in less efficient ways (an open fire stove), would still provide us with some energy and bring the Earth closer to the blissful moment, when the people are removed from it, starting with the activists.
You can't handle the truth.
they have absorbed a large number of anti-technology memes
In Japan? Are you kidding? They are all for new technology, and that is the point. Nuclear is old, dating back to the 50s and 60s. They want modern clean technology like wind and geothermal.
Instead of just guessing what they want why not try simply listening to them. All this has been stated quite clearly.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Ok What replaced the nuclear reactors ? I'm guessing burning fossil fuels I'm guessing. Global warming anybody ?
Do you see coal plants or even solar power farms being rebuilt every ten years?
*FACEPALM*
An accident at a coal or solar plant just can't be as bad as Fukushima. It couldn't spread radioactive material over a wide area, making that area uninhabitable. There is no comparison.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Given that the Japanese gov't is doing everything it can to make importing raw materials more expensive by devaluing the currency and given this latest development of the Japanese nuclear reactors being shut down, one can conclude that the demand for oil, coal, gas, and other minerals will have to keep climbing.
There are 2 factors for this: first is the inflation (money printing by gov't) and second is actual growing demand with the nuclear reactors being shut down.
I actually found out that many of the Japanese exporters are also part of the gov't itself, this goes way back in Japan, that the top manufacturers and businessmen are also in government, so now I can completely see why the gov't is destroying the purchasing power of the people, lowering the prices of Japanese goods via destroying the Yen rather than having the purchasing power of the Japanese currency holders maintain value and grow it actually (given the productivity of the Japanese manufacturers) and having the exporters face the reality that the only reason they export by devaluing currency is that it lowers the actual prices for the Japanese goods to the foreign customers.
The Japanese people, just like all other people in the world, are being systematically hurt by their government, this will have to end eventually, it's now leading to a serious global economic disaster.
You can't handle the truth.
Finally they are safe from earthquakes and tsunamis! Oh wait...
Can you cite a source for this? Typically the 'subsidies' I see reported for the fossil fuel industry are tax breaks on capital investment and heavy machinery that are available to all businesses. Not saying there aren't outright subsidies, but I am curious what exactly you are talking about and where the 72 billion number comes from.
In about 100 years or so I would expect space launches will be reliable enough to shoot the small amount that can't be recycled into the Sun.
*FACEPALM*
An accident at a coal or solar plant just can't be as bad as Fukushima.
*FACEPALM*
The accidents occuring at solar plants ar far more common and outnumbers the deaths of all nuclear accidents combined.
What the accidents lack in size they make up for in quantity.
They want modern clean technology like wind and geothermal.
Instead of just guessing what they want why not try simply listening to them.
Though, I'm not originally from here, I live in Japan. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
I talk to Japanese people every day. They are against nuclear power. At best, people don't mind wind power. At least most people don't actively complain about the new windmills being put up (and there are a lot going up). But nobody is calling for them as far as I can tell. But people here do NOT want geothermal. There is a fear that it will somehow destroy the onsens (hot springs). This is a major problem, because we have *no* domestic base load generation capacity except geothermal. Even now, as far as I can tell, there is *no* move to find new geothermal wells.
There is, unfortunately, a media fuelled misconception that solar power will solve all the problems. Granted, where I live, it is quite feasible to run most of your house on solar power. But we still need base load generation and we don't have it.
Don't get me wrong. As far as I'm concerned, nuclear was only a stop gap for Japan. It gave us some time to sort out new technologies. It's not like Japan has a domestic supply of nuclear fuel. But by shutting down all the reactors, it really puts the pinch on. I just hope we end up going the right direction in the end...
You can't convince the anti-np crowd or conspiracy theorists with facts.
What mis-information, what conspiracy theory? That if you mis-manage a nuclear power plant it fails like Fukushima or Chernobyl.
They just keep on repeating the same misinformation hoping it will eventually override all the evidence.
Well the nuclear crowd is presented with overwhelming evidence that the Nuclear Industry has problems and they still can't accept it. They can't even accept that there is room for improvement. Instead all the comments from the nuclear crowd is that Fukushima is an example of why nuclear power is safe.
For the record I am neither pro or anti nuclear, just that it is an unfortunate necessity and that the industry requires fundamental structural reforms.
My observations of the pro-nuke crowd is they behave the same way a religious cult does when confronted with the facts about it's belief system. The phenomenon is called social proof and when that is combined with dogmatic skepticism it appears scientific. What it does though is promote the Industrial failures that occur in the nuclear industry.
If anyone is to blame for the demise of Nuclear Power it is the pro-nuke crowd. If the same attitude had been taken in the aviation industry then we would all be getting around the world in ships. Your statements are a prime example of how Nuclear fanbois cannot accept the facts about the Nuclear Industry even when confronted with the smouldering toxic remains of 3 commercial power reactors. The anti-nuke crowd simply don't want the nuke industry any more, the por-nuke crowd seems to think it's perfect as it is, meanwhile no-one is lobbying for any improvement. It's because of people like you that no political pressure is put on the industry to improve and that is why Japan is shutting down Nuclear Power.
You, of course, have no idea what I am talking about.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
What mis-information, what conspiracy theory?
From the GP of my original post: "Fukushima 4 may be "offline" but can't be "shutdown"..."
Your statements are a prime example of how Nuclear fanbois cannot accept the facts about the Nuclear Industry even when confronted with the smouldering toxic remains of 3 commercial power reactors.
No, my statements were a direct response to demonstrably false info.
As to the rest of your diatribe, you've assumed many facts about me and my intent, none of which are in evidence. Nor do you have any idea where I stand on NP. So, I won't bother to respond to it. But before you attack me again, you might want to find out some info about who you're dealing with and where I stand on NP.
You can start from my blog. From there, I suggest a google search for my name and "nuclear".
Then, we might have something to discuss.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Maybe now the Japanese will realize how silly it is to have electrically heated toilets running all the time in hotels, office buildings, etc. along with electric faucets, paper towel dispensers, etc. Hell, if they unplugged their bathrooms, I bet they could cut 50% of their electrical demands.
They found the testing parameters weren't right. That doesn't mean it has a safety flaw. It doesn't even mean it wouldn't pass the testing with the right parameters.
Given how overbuilt and designed these things are it's unlikely this would result in a safety issue.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EBTn_3DBYo
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Nuclear isn't done so much in the US because of litigation. The instant somebody announces they're going to be looking at building a nuke plant anywhere, the lawyers come out from the rocks and start burying the courts in paperwork, trying for injunctions to stop any and all nuclear construction.
Nuclear plants are expensive. They wouldn't be nearly as expensive if it weren't for the legal fees associated with the word 'nuclear'. When you have an activist-lawyer go in front of a camera and say "The only phisics I know is Ex-Lax', you know you're dealing with idiots.
Just read the history of the Perry Nuclear Plant. Most of the 'construction time', the plant was idle, nothing was moving due to the injunctions. They weren't even allowed to do maintanance on what they already had up, so when the injunctions lifted, they got the construction crews in there to inspect 100% and replace anything that even LOOKED like it had a rust spot, or they wouldn'tve received their operating license. And they had to keep full construction crews on the payroll even while they were waiting for the injunctions to crawl through the courts because if they didn't, the crews would vaporise off to other jobs with no guarantee of getting them back. Half the time they just barely got through with the inspection and maint before they got hit with yet another injunction. The lawyers made tons of money on that project.
All told, Perry cost $6 billion and took 9 years to build, mostly due to the injunctions. They never did finish the #2 Unit because of cash flow problems from all the litigation. Even though all but the containment vessel is done for #2, they stopped construction on it in '85 & 'abandoned' it in '94. They still have to do maintanance on the empty building in order to keep their license to operate since it's considerted legally to be 'one complex'. It could have gone online with both reactors at half the cost and within 3 years of groundbreaking if it wasn't for all the injunctions.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Jesus Christ, it worked perfectly for 25 years before it got hit by a fucking tidal wave and a major earthquake in a 1-2 combo punch. When they came up with the plant design, they asked themselves, "what's the absolute worst thing we can think of?" and designed against that with a good safety margin. Just like the Twin Towers were designed to be rammed by a 707 and still stand, then got hit by something even bigger (and the conspiracy theorists still think it was an inside job because of the construction materials & methods. Me, I'm thinkin somebody might've cheated on the materials after the first inspections).
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
That's only if you assign a ridiculous cost to cleaning up the mess of any kind of power, nuclear included, by making a bunch of assumptions of what "cleaned up" means.
Personally I think I agree with you, but would like to refine and discuss a counter point. I believe that federal government money should not be involved in the creation or propping up of business and industry. I think the point is that it creates a climate where the government takes action on behalf of the people in the attempt to gain power (votes) at the expense of the freedom of the voters. (i.e. Our government supports green energy sounds better than our government lets oil companies profit. Votes are garnered because people don't realize it means the same thing as we take your money and spend it our way because we are smarter than you.)
Federal government is different from state government though in that state government more closely reflects the will of the governed and promotes the competition of ideas. This is where there is a reasonable counter argument that should be considered.
If a state such as California believes that government control of power is a benefit to the citizens, they can establish a monopoly and price controls. They might believe that it is in the best interest of the citizens of CA to have a move to centralized electrical generation because centralized production of electricity can achieve efficiencies and enforceable environmental standards that couldn't be achieved in the free market. They can subsidize and promote such a move by taxing gasoline and diesel purchases and using some of the additional revenue to give tax incentives or even partial funding to the electric monopoly. By making these choices, they are controlling the decisions available to their citizens for a goal of benefiting the citizens.
Oregon may feel that a less controlled electric market has a greater potential to provide service reliably and that their citizens benefit more from having lower fuel prices than from the potential of a controlled energy market. Oregon then may decide to offer no additional tax breaks to either potential industry in the hope that what the consumer chooses will be the most cost effective and generally beneficial option.
This is where it gets interesting. If CA has high gasoline and deisel prices, but lower cost electricity, then they may benefit from increased demand for electric cars and find citizens are benefiting from a cleaner environment and cheaper electricity. OR may find that their environment is more polluted and their electricity costs more to the consumer. Alternatively however, CA may find that the structure and prices for electricity are insufficient to match demand and there is insufficient revenue to prevent brown and blackouts state wide. OR may find that their consumers have more income available due to the lower costs of energy and have a more vibrant economy as the money that isn't spent on energy is applied to other products.
By having two states with differing policy and application, the rest of the nation benefits in making their own policy decisions. What works or fails for CA and OR can be reapplied in all the states that have the same goals resulting in a majority benefit. It isn't as great as a government that always makes the best decisions, but few people would suggest that our federal governmetn always makes the best decisions.
I didn't examine the examples I gave, they're hypothetical only. Please don't worry about the state particulars, I'm happy to admit that CA and OR energy policy is likely not exactly, possibly not even close, to what I described. I'm focusing on the concepts, not real world examples. Feel free to offer real world examples however, if they address the concepts.
The accidents occuring at solar plants ar far more common and outnumbers the deaths of all nuclear accidents combined.
What the accidents lack in size they make up for in quantity.
[citation needed]
Seriously, I would like to see the person that died from a solar panel accident. He probably qualifies for a Darwin Award.
Yet we had a nuclear reactor that had almost none of the problems of light water (like shutting down, melting down, proliferation, burns a tiny amount of fuel and leaves the rest as waste...) reactors in the 1960s. Too bad Nixon was a greedy little bastard and only cared about getting light water reactors built in his home state of California. In fact, he so much wanted knowledge of this project buried that he fired Alvin Weinberg, the guy that had invented it and the light water reactor who was head of Oak Ridge National Laboratory at the time.
Incidentally and ironically, Japan is planning to build one if they can get some more funding - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji_Molten_Salt_Reactor
One of the organizers, journalist Satoshi Kamata, called it a historic day. But he said pressure must be kept up so that power companies do not restart the nuclear power plants.
In other words, they passed the tests, but the activists don't care. They want the plants to STAY OFF even though they're safe to operate.
TEPCO is building new gas power plants INSIDE Tokyo Metropolitan area to make up for the lost capacity of the nuclear plants and canceled plans to decommission older plants that are not enough efficient, or that are in other populated areas. Even Roppongi Hills have their power plants running full time. Gas burns way cleaner than coal but still you have combustion gases going out. Maybe those "environmentalists" learnt how to make photosynthesis because for the rest of the population of Tokyo this means lower air quality everyday, all the time.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
I will assume that Japan signed the Kyoto treaty. I suppose this means they are throwing it away at this point.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Yes, and nuclear energy will do so well without government support! Oh wait, it won't, nuclear is heavily subsidized. And when things go wrong it's insanely expensive to cleanup, all of which is payed by the tax payers.
Maybe free market energy production is a pipe dream?
Are you saying that the reactors we have now were designed with KNOWN safety issues?
So you are saying that GE designers didn't know what would happen when the Fukushima reactors and their active cooling systems were both shut down? Yes, reactors were designed with KNOWN and obvious safety issues, but the thinking of the time was that such failure modes were both infrequent and addressable. Perhaps both assumptions were correct, but that didn't keep the accident from happening.
Maybe free market energy production is a pipe dream?
It works when it is used.
right on - but why are you sitting on the fence.
human beings have demonstrated that they are incapable of managing nuclear without major radioactive accidents.
I'm anti nuclear because people are incompetent bozos and it's just a matter of time before another disaster.
of course after the NEXT disaster we'll have to listen to the wailing and lamenting about how it couldn't possibly happen again, it only happened because of blah, blah, blad.
and the next time too, until we're all drowning in radioactive Cs, which of course, is easy to treat for, doncha know ?
Absolute statements are never true
So.. nuclear is ok, as long as nothing unexpected happens. If it does, then massive swaths of the earth will be rendered unusable.
Sounds awesome.
We should get started on more nuclear reactors once human beings are able to forecast all future events.
And btw, they knew about the earthquake risk.. japan gets earthquakes regularly. And they also knew about the tsunami risk.. they just didn't build the wall high enough, despite being warned about it nearly a year before.
The power company should just disconnect the anti-nuclear activists from the grid, to help reduce the load on the grid and increase justice.
As in remove the meter and wires, so once power is again available, they'll have to pay a full reconnection fee. Really expensive!
Nuclear can be dangerous, and perhaps it should be replaced, but shutting down supply before summer is STUPID!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
If there was a real concern about the environment, they would be far more worried about increasing dependence on coal and oil for electrical power.
Well, of course. It's long been known that the Greens are only interested in forcing people to take specific actions (shut down all nuclear plants) but not interested in producing specific results (lowering the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere). The fact that what they're demanding will have exactly the opposite effect from what they claim to be fighting for is completely irrelevant to them.
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what a bunch of horsshit. the greenies by no means ignore coal power. and by the way, great ignorant AC VERY LITTLE electricity is generated from oil, so that's not part of the discussion.
only right wing morons with an axe to grind things environmentalists ignore the problems associated with electricity generation via coal.
Absolute statements are never true
A lot of the is policy and radiation fears.
They are people (quasi-illegally) living in the exclusion zone.
And they aren't all dropping dead of cancer. Imagine that.
If the US became as radioactive as the exclusion zone, and smoking decreased by 5% and people exercised 5% more, and 5% more people would get colonoscopies the overll cancer rate would PLUNGE.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Nuclear power really could be done safely but as the history provides proof, it has never be done, because of the cost.
And since when is 20% the majority and 80% the minority. Since a representive inquiry in Japan found that 80% off the people want to phase out nuclear power.
"While nuclear can be done safely, .." is a term for "nulcear can be done as safely as a possibility, but with an event of very low probability that can lead to the highest possible damage".
Solyndra was given a $527 million loan, which is neither $2 billion nor a subsidy.
If you look at the original report, you'll find that renewable energy subsidies over the same period totaled $29 billion, of which about half went toward corn-based ethanol.
Note, also, that the report considers tax credits to be subsidies, which may or may not fit your own personal definition.
Solar is expensive to clean up, too. Either we need to find a way of processing and recycling old solar cells, or they need to be stored in a dry place indefinitely. The arsenic (from doping or from GaAs substrate panels) can contaminate groundwater.
Sorry, it was Solar Trust that got the 2.1 billion loan and the closed their doors. Wrong solar company.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
man.. all these people... "oh LOL nuclear won't explode unless u lite it on fire" *earthquake* >.>
Yeah, so coal kills or whatever. There are so many more options... Sheesh... There has to be a better solution for a tiny island like that. Solve it. Clearly the people want something better.
An accident at a coal or solar plant just can't be as bad as Fukushima. It couldn't spread radioactive material over a wide area
"Spreading of radioactive material over a wide area" is the normal operating mode of coal, no wonder an accident there helps to stop it.
Pro nuclear (as I am) simply point out that zthere is NO SAFE baseload energy generation, but nuclear is the not the most dangerous of the one we are using. Coal is much more dangerous for one. Even if we discount the death by mining, there is still a great number of death estimated due to the release of heavy metals and radioactive particle in the atmosphere, and I am not even touching the CO2 problem. Greenie like you keep misusing rethoric and politic and shifting goalpost and strawman to build a case against nuclear. But the fact is, despite all potential danger, nuclear killed less than coal by a factor hudnred, maybe a factor thousand (OECD estimate of coal death per year is 25000+, that include lung cancer and various other problem). THAT right there tells a lot of the safety of nuclear a much brighter picture than your "nuclear is not competitive" (untrue) or "nuclear is unsafe". You people disgust me.
2002-2008 the United States handed out subsidies to fossil fuel industries to a tune of 72 billion dollars.
So what? I have to echo what Aquitaine said. These subsidies aren't for the most part industry specific. If renewables were the big power industry instead of fossil fuels, they'd be getting most of those subsidies instead.
But yeah, it's SO MUCH cheaper than anything else that supposedly efficient markets won't touch it without heavy public investment and blank disclaimers. Nothing fishy here.
Though, I'm not originally from here, I live in Japan.
I talk to Japanese people every day.
Me too!
But nobody is calling for them as far as I can tell.
Except the people celebrating yesterday. You know, the ones mentioned in TFA.
But people here do NOT want geothermal. There is a fear that it will somehow destroy the onsens (hot springs).
I have never heard that. In fact people seem to think the opposite - we have this fantastic resource that has been used in Japan for centuries, and now we have the technology to make even better use of it.
But we still need base load generation and we don't have it.
Off-shore wind will help with that. More reliable that nuclear and coal, ideal for base-load. The wind never, ever stops blowing in the Pacific, as any sailor will attest.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The Fukushima nuclear reactor sites were constructed with obvious safety issues, including fratricidal crowding and a low seawall. The crowding was discussed in Nuclear Safety, an industry magazine, in the 1970s. The low seawall problem was obvious to any engineering student and reflects management problems. Japan might do well to get independent assessments from other regulatory bodies or consultants. And jail a few execs and failed regulators for unnecessary multiple losses of lives. Then reopen only +- 3/4 of the reactors and then restart the nuclear construction program, if any, after such warning actions.
That's only if you assign a ridiculous cost to cleaning up the mess of any kind of power, nuclear included, by making a bunch of assumptions of what "cleaned up" means.
That's only if you believe that zero emissions are ridiculous. I don't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's a point there, but not in the way you think. the whole idea of building large reactors to be used for 50 years is unsound. The way to get a safe design is to have a fast rotation of reactors.Cars can evolve quickly because they get replaced every 10-15 years or so. And because they're a mass product. Reactors aren't really a mass product but if the path of economies of scales had not been taken, they could have had been built for a short lifespan and modest yield, say 200MW max. This way the reactors would have been able to evolve quickly. The Fukushima reactors are old and were already considered unreliable when they were built.
Now a common theory is that with the economies of scale nuclear energy was already too expensive if you calculated in all the costs. That could be. My point here is that following the economies of scale approach was self defeating too.
More people have died from cancer that they got from the coal-industry... Death's per kWh for coal is very high... Even kWh for wind-power is quite high.
from http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Energy Source / Death Rate (deaths per TWh)
Coal – world average 161
Coal – China 278
Coal – USA 15
Oil 36
Natural Gas 4
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44
Wind 0.15
Hydro 0.10
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04
The REAL problem with nuclear power today is not that it's unsafe... It's the unrest from the population because they have not idea about risks.. This in turn results in no new, safer, reactors being built and the old ones kept since we still need them.
Building Thorium reactors would solve basically all safety issues we have with reactors today since they cannot go critical... The only problem related to this is to make the population understand that they are safe, but i don't think that will ever happen since the majority of the population are idiots and scared of anything 'atomic'... Just hope no one tells them they have about 7 billion billion billion atoms inside them... And a few are probably uranium.
The safety concerns are based on the downside risk, not on cumulative damage to date.
Furthermore the Japanese truky love their country, unlike Americans who seem to revel in the destruction of great American cities like Detroit and New Orleans.
Who would trust a government to build a nuke after it failed to react to Katrina? Look at the Republican attitude towards Chicago, San Francisco and Massachussetts. They wuld celebrate if there were a massive nuclear accident in these areas, just like they called for the bulldozing of New Orleans after Katrina.
Yeah, we no longer "need" nuclear power - in fact we never "needed" it, if we want to import and burn shitloads of natural gas like we are doing right now. That raises the price of natural gas for the whole region, pollutes our atmosphere, and causes more pollution related deaths than the nuclear reactor for sure - plus it's more expensive, and means that other, poorer, countries will be without energy.
Doctors cite lung cancer worries at Port Augusta
Posted May 03, 2012 11:48:28
A new analysis of pollution data for the Port Augusta region contradicts reassurances from the South Australian Government that smoking can be blamed for high lung cancer rates.Residents of the region have long complained about health problems they link with two power stations, Playford and Northern, which burn highly-polluting brown coal.The lung cancer rates around Port Augusta are said to be double the expected number.The independent analysis has been presented in Adelaide at a briefing for state parliamentarians organised by Doctors for the Environment Australia. Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-03/doctors-cite-lung-cancer-worries-at-port-augusta/3987432
Doctors for the Environment Australia website has a longer article titled Illness and Pollution at Port Augusta; Doctors Prescribe Solar Thermal Treatment. Now clearly this body has a green bias, but their position paper contains some useful links to check the facts http://dea.org.au/images/general/Briefing_paper_on_coal_2011.pdf
A nuclear power station, located only 250km South of the world's largest uranium mine (Olympic Dam) sounds like a much safer option to me.
Off-shore wind will help with that. More reliable that nuclear and coal, ideal for base-load. The wind never, ever stops blowing in the Pacific, as any sailor will attest.
Well, the wind might not stop blowing, but the towers might stop working since it's a quite rough environment... Hurricane winds is not too popular to have at a wind-farm....
Offshore wave generators might do the trick, and will probably be cheaper in the long run too.. Can be placed very close to the coast since they are quiet and it will also reduce the install-costs and reduce the transfer-loss since shorter power-lines will be used.. Also a benefit... If placed around a harbor it will reduce the waves while still providing power..
Last time i checked a ~25m floater was able to generate somewhere between 700kW to 1MW..
And to remember... the energy potential in a wave that's just a few centimeters high and a few hundred meters long is *huge*.. And most waves out at sea, or just maybe 500 meters out from the shore, are those types of waves, in any weather and regardless if it's windy..
But to get back to the point... Nuclear energy is safe and efficient.. What's not safe and efficient today is old nuclear plants that was mainly built between 1950-1980..
Building thorium reactors would make it safe, efficient and cheap.. They would be safe since they are unable to go critical.... They are also much simpler in design making them less prone to failures since there are fewer parts that can fail...
If you want to learn a bit more about this watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8
Saying that nuclear power is dangerous is like saying that atoms are dangerous.. There are many ways to extract energy from nuclear reactions... Like direct conversion from radiation to electricity from the already produced waste from the current breed of reactors.. http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/direct-conversion-of-radiation-into.html
No, I'm saying the earthquake/tsunami combo was a 1-2 combo punch. Keep in mind also that both the earthquake and the tsunami were pretty big events in their own rights, and more destructive than such events usually are. The plant would have survived either, which was reported at the time, just not the two together. Neither event is so common that you could expect them to happen on a regular basis, thus the combo was so outside the box, they considered the risk so microscopic, they didn't plan for the combo. It's like predicting you'll have a heart attack and a simultaneous stroke on a daily 15 minute commute on the freeway that causes you to ram a propane truck causing an explosion that rips a bigass hole in the bridge you just happen to be crossing and kills a bunch of people. What are the odds? Way slim, 1 in a million, maybe, or we'd be hearing about that exact thing all the time. Granted, the odds aren't zero. But they're not inevitable, either.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Do you see coal plants or even solar power farms being rebuilt every ten years?
*FACEPALM*
An accident at a coal or solar plant just can't be as bad as Fukushima. It couldn't spread radioactive material over a wide area, making that area uninhabitable. There is no comparison.
You are correct. There is no comparison to the widespread contamination of nuclear material that a coal powered electricity generation plant makes compared to nuclear power plants. It is far worse for coal plants. Not only that, but deaths directly attributable to coal being used as a power source are by far and away much, much higher for coal plants both in terms of the number of plants in operation and "industrial accidents" at those plants, the deaths from miners who are extracting that coal from the ground, and the deaths from ordinary people who die from the air pollution these plants produce. China is a very good case study on that point where hundreds of miners die each year (on average) from coal mines collapsing... much less coal mines elsewhere.
I can point to specific people who have died recently from the production of coal powered electricity. Can you do the same thing for nuclear power production?
unlike Americans who seem to revel in the destruction of great American cities like Detroit and New Orleans.
Those cities are no longer great and the "destruction" was self-inflicted.
Who would trust a government to build a nuke after it failed to react to Katrina?
So don't trust the city of New Orleans then. I don't. The other relevant governments didn't fail.
Look at the Republican attitude towards Chicago, San Francisco and Massachussetts.
Look at the context for the "attitude". "Reap what you sow" is the saying that should come to mind. It's not the job of the Republican party to support bad political models and failed societies. They aren't the "clean up on aisle four" party.
They wuld celebrate if there were a massive nuclear accident in these areas, just like they called for the bulldozing of New Orleans after Katrina.
Perhaps that is true, though you wouldn't be in a position to know one way or the other. New Orleans was a special case, a failed society in a bad location after a large, preventable disaster.
Bulldozing is a reasonable solution to that problem. Personally, I think a better solution would have been for New Orleans to fend for itself. Whether or not it remained a viable city, I would find the outcome satisfactory.
If a society chooses to be self-destructive, it should get to enjoy the consequences.
I won't bother, but at least try to look up the statistics with a search engine if you dare try. If anything, because of the locations where solar power devices are installed (typically roof tops), there are a number of deaths each year. In terms of deaths per kilowatt-hour produced, solar power farms are likely one of the most dangerous ways to generate electricity.
You may say they qualify for a Darwin Award, and that may be true. But you are asking for the same standards which apply to the nuclear power generation industry to be applied to solar production and there is hardly a comparison. Nuclear power is by far and away much safer and has much better trained technicians performing the installation and operation of these facilities than anything being done with solar power at the moment.
So if the risk isn't zero, don't do it ever? You can have a heart attack in bed, does this mean we should ban beds, too?
Yes, things will crop up all the time, and just not in nuclear powerplants. To use my favorite example, the Perry power plant had a small lubrication fire in a pump bearing, easily controlled, the fire was out and the pump replaced in a matter of hours, the lights didn't even dim in Cleveland. The 'no nuke' people wanted an immediate shutdown and dismantlement of the entire plant, even though there was no real danger, the place wasn't gonna explode, and the pump in question had nothing to do with cooling the reactor itself.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Even if very little electricity is produced directly from oil it does have a direct influence on the oil usage..
If electricity was cheap as hell more electric cars would be made thereby reducing oil-usage..It would become more const-beneficial to use electric trains instead of diesel engines and so on...
(Numbers are from 2008)
About 36% of the world energy comes from oil... fuel for vehicles, burning for electricity or to heat homes etc..
About 26% of the world energy comes from coal...
About 21% from natural gas..
Oil and coal are also have the highest death's per kWh..
reference http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Well, the coal-plants don't result in such an accident... They spew out radioactive material continuously... Also they produce quite allot of hazardous waste..
as a prevous commenter wrote..
Solar is expensive to clean up, too. Either we need to find a way of processing and recycling old solar cells, or they need to be stored in a dry place indefinitely. The arsenic (from doping or from GaAs substrate panels) can contaminate groundwater.
And if we get large amount of arsenic in our ground-water we are probably more screwed than the Fukushima incident..
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
nuclear tech... Just because we put the word nuclear does not mean it is unsafe... MRI machines where initially named NMRI but because of the responses it would have gotten they just removed the N (as in nuclear)...
There are many types of reactors... The types that are operated today can result in incidents like the ones in Chernobyl or Fukushima...
When we developed those reactors they also had a goal of producing plutonium for weapons... If we rethink the strategy now and use thorium reactors they are much cleaner and safer than today's reactors, and with the added bonus that it cannot go critical... it's physically impossible..
Bottom of the reactor they have a hole that they chill so they get a salt-plug.. If power goes out or the temperature goes up then the plug melts and the molten thorium drains out into cooling-chambers (all passively cooled) and the reaction stops... If someone notices that something has gone wrong they can stop the plant very fast check the problem and if they found it was an incorrect stop they can start it up again in a very short timespan... Ie, using the safety features will be more common since they would not require the plant to be shut down for a few months before they can start it again etc..
Fukushima happened because of dual disasters (the earthquake plus the tsusami) and then some simply inept planning that put the back-up generators that could have prevented the plant from dying in perhaps the worst possible location. It was almost like installing a screen door on a submarine.
I would expect that a proper engineering review board would be convened over the incident at Fukushima, and it would likely include the top nuclear engineers from around the world with several academic conferences going over the safety issues and how to prevent similar accidents like that in the future. That still doesn't justify why you need to have a knee jerk reaction like is happening here.
There may be some similar kind of ineptitude at the other nuclear power plants, and if a rational review shows a systemic safety issue that compares those other plants to Fukushima, the concerns for another meltdown might be legitimate. I don't know enough about the specifics of the Japanese nuclear power industry to make an objective decision here, but these "activists" I'm sure are just as ignorant as I am over those issue, and perhaps more so because they also have an irrational fear of nuclear power.
Comparing coal to nuclear power is legitimate and not a straw man because it will be (and is) coal-powered plants that are taking up the slack. It is a perfectly valid approach to suggest that you need to look at how many people you kill when you flip on a light switch in your house, and to suggest real safety concerns ought to be addressed at reducing that number to as low as reasonably possible. People die in the quest for producing energy, a sad fact of life that should be addressed when you are talking about safety issue.
Clearly the thought of why they are in pools has never crossed your mind. When the pool is empty, the rods heat up and burst, scattering plutonium across the land, the sea and in the air.
One speck of plutonium is enough to kill you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Original poster here --- The point I made was "a high degree of standardization between plants, rigorous operator selection and training, and procedures enforced by iron-fisted independent regulators". That implies good "safety management and planning" by the Navy and France.
I did not in any way imply "nuclear energy being inherently unsafe". Quite the opposite. Read what I said..."So yes, there is a way to have safe, long-term nuclear power... "
You seem to want to use other people's posts without reading them to spout your own philosophy and it's you, not me, that is trying to save face for the "free market mavens" who have so screwed up nuc power in the U.S..
activists [...] asked the government to admit that nuclear power was no longer needed in Japan
Of course it's not needed as long as they don't mind making up the shortfall with conservation (good) and motherfracking natural gas (not good).
"Celebrating" the nuclear shutdown is asinine, since it's just trading the carbon-free generation for more coal and gas, which are orders of magnitude worse.
When "renewables" are deployed massively and the last fossil generation shuts down--that's when it makes sense to re-think nuclear.
I see a good post but no proposal on what you would recommend. It looks like you are slanted towards Geothermal but unless you live in a small-population country with a LOT of geothermal potential (Iceland being the only real example), it can't supply a significant portion of the power. Geothermal isn't as green as many people think it is, either. There are some nasty chemicals involved (including arsenic and other bad things), and you can't just drill a well and forget about it. The steam pressure and temperature degrades fairly quickly so you always need to be drilling more wells, chasing the steam. It's similar to drilling for oil in that regard. The concern for cooling down the onsens is not unfounded, since you are removing the geothermal heat from localized areas.
I may not be unbiased (working for a japanese company that has invested billions into Nuclear in the last few years) but nuclear needs to be part of Japan's energy mix. Importing millions of tons of coal a year from Australia and millions of cubic feet of natural gas a year from south Asia is not a long-term solution. After the earthquake, Japan restarted a bunch of hydro turbines which had been shut down because they were notorious for blendering fish. They also restarted some oil plants which had been shut down for being dirty and uneconomical. These are short-term bandaids. Renewable electricity can be part of the energy mix, but you need a base to stand on. If Nuclear was a "stop gap" as you say, it was a pretty good one. The current policy is much worse.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I live in Japan and can tell you that the nuclear industry is just a giant accident waiting to happen. For years they have been covering up accidents and cutting corners on design, general safety and maintenance.
Here is my comment from Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/t6q9g/japans_last_reactor_to_shut_down_leaving_country/c4k4g2x
Its 1AM so I won't write much, but the way the foreign press is spinning this whole thing is disgusting.
I do like the idea of a "laboratory of states", where governmental policies applied in one state can be tried for awhile to see if a particular political concept works or not, and to allow those ideas to "spread" to other states if they seem successful. The idea of imposing policies on the federal level is the notion that if the idea is flawed, that you have no way to compare the flawed idea to other ideas to see if there might have been something better.
I don't mind the "California Air Quality Board" setting policy for California where Nevada, Idaho, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina would have a similar kind of authority for their own respective citizens. Perhaps other "solutions" or priorities might work better in other states, where some states might encourage "green energy", others to do fossil fuel production, some might go to biofuels, and others might even decide to invest into nuclear fusion or some other technology that hasn't even been invented yet.
There is no "silver bullet" in terms of what kind of energy we should or for that matter other kinds of political ideas as well (choose your favorite topic, but since this is a thread about energy production, energy policy certainly seems to be good to mention here).
It was a loan they didn't repay though, so it became a subsidy as the loan was guaranteed by the U.S. federal government.
and here India is running helter skelter to sign Atomic deals with US of Ass
Yeah, that's the thing that pro-nuke Slashdotters don't get: If the once-in-a-century event happens to a solar plant, or a coal plant, the plant breaks. OK, life goes on.
Even with the Chinese dam break, people died at a point in time, but only at that time, not forwards tens or 100s of thousands of years.
By contrast, nuclear catastrophes are wider in area and in time.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Well, we do have quite a lot of earth we could theoretically irradiate before we'd really be in trouble.
But since we can't forecast everything like you are hoping for, did you want us to go live in caves again? And even then, a cave could collapse.
~S
And don't forget to remind people that a percentage of all potassium is radioactive. It's the single largest source of radiation in the environment, and it's absolutely necessary for life. That banana, avocado, salt substitute, steak, potato, etc., all radioactive. Your smoke detector is radioactive.
Radiation isn't a problem. Too much radiation CAN be a problem. Each and every person, animal, most plants, and most rocks are radioactive. You're constantly surrounded by radiation every second of every day. Walk outside on a clear sunny day, more radiation. Live in a cave, probably less radiation, but it depends upon what kind of rock.
Fear and misinformation will not solve the energy crisis. Facts and reason can. Nuclear power can be a safer part of a sensible, sustainable energy policy.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Those cities are no longer great and the "destruction" was self-inflicted.
Pretty sure that was his point. We're all part of the same society, you know. If New Orleans was bulldozed or left to fend for itself, do you think all the citizens of New Orleans would just stay there in the rubble? No, much of them would move to other areas, taking their attitudes with them.
I'm not sure you understand how R&D works... sometimes all you get out is 5 paths you know won't work and 10 more to look at. It would be pretty easy to go through quite a bit of money developing power generation equipment just to find out something doesn't scale up like you though for your first full scale test.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
flip the switch, walk out the door. .. errr ... "shut-down" one?
it's not that easy with nuclear power plants. still needs a lot of baby-sitting
even AFTER it's "shut-down".
the timing is prolly not bad though, considering what would happen if
a "shut-down" nuke would fall off the grid due to a black-out : )
my guess, there are going to be people that argue to "safely"
"shut-down" a nuke, well, uhm, we have to restart another one so it can
provide all the power needed for a safe cooling of the
Look again, I replied to http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2831449&cid=39903031 whose content has nothing whatsoever to do with your post.
That post (on Reddit) is one of the most insightful posts I have read in a long, long time.
If that is the current state of the nuclear power industry for Japan, that would certainly make sense why they are shutting down all of their nuclear plants pending a full safety review. It sure as hell makes much more sense than most of the tripe that I see from the anti-nuclear activists that have been posting here on Slashdot.
My only concern is that such a massive full smash of all plants would also warrant a Manhattan Project style engineering effort to get as many of those reactors back on line ASAP... something that doesn't seem to be indicated in the article. I have to presume that Japan and its government has at least a tiny portion of intelligence in terms of putting something like that together if necessary. The disaster that they are facing right now to deal with the shortfall of energy production from this shut down is more than I can possibly understand other than I see it even here in America as a political disaster waiting to happen. This is the kind of crap that usually gets a major party shift to happen in most countries.
My concern is mainly with the anti-nuclear nuts using this for their own political advantage and using it to shut down what new nuclear power plants are currently being built in America (there are currently a few of them) where the largest issues involved are legal costs and not engineering costs. When you need a dozen lawyers to protect each engineer, you know your project is screwed from the beginning.
We're all part of the same society, you know.
Not so. Shared destiny, the idea that we're in it together, is true for some things, but not this.
If New Orleans was bulldozed or left to fend for itself, do you think all the citizens of New Orleans would just stay there in the rubble?
I imagine they might leave. I have no trouble with that. As to their attitudes, they have to overcome the fact that they came from a failed city.
My only concern is that such a massive full smash of all plants would also warrant a Manhattan Project style engineering effort to get as many of those reactors back on line ASAP... something that doesn't seem to be indicated in the article. I have to presume that Japan and its government has at least a tiny portion of intelligence in terms of putting something like that together if necessary. The disaster that they are facing right now to deal with the shortfall of energy production from this shut down is more than I can possibly understand other than I see it even here in America as a political disaster waiting to happen. This is the kind of crap that usually gets a major party shift to happen in most countries.
Right now I have no problem at all with the shutdown. An independant third-party investigation in Japan into Fukushima found that it was not the natural disaster that was to blame, but TEPCO who had repeatedly ignored research into earthquake and especially tsunami risks and failed to act on new data showing their seawall was insufficient (and their plant would be inundated), and that they completely lacked any comprehensive emergency planning or preparation, meaning their reaction to the disaster was slow, unorganised, completely adhoc and in many cases the wrong decisions were made at the wrong time. If you check my other comments in that Reddit post I talk about how they did not even have a backup power supply (eg. UPS) for their main control room, nor did they have emergency lighting (they had to use torches for everything, everywhere), they did not even have instructions on how to do an emergency manual pressure release - they had to read the original design documents and work out how to do it, a process which took almost half a day as they had to first find the documents (not even kept at the plant), then scope out the valve, then find equipment to operate it.
The official TEPCO report into their actions immediately after the earthquake and tsunami reads like a bad sci-fi novel.
My concern is mainly with the anti-nuclear nuts using this for their own political advantage and using it to shut down what new nuclear power plants are currently being built in America (there are currently a few of them) where the largest issues involved are legal costs and not engineering costs. When you need a dozen lawyers to protect each engineer, you know your project is screwed from the beginning.
This is exactly what is happening, and it pisses me off. The plants aren't being shutdown because they are inherently unsafe, or because the public fears nuclear power - its a matter of trust. We don't trust the power companies - they, along with government regulators, have been covering up accidents and skipping on maintenance for years. Repeatedly it has come to light that the power companies, contractors and the government have covered up damaged equipment or ignored warnings from experts, and eventually they'll make some sort of token effort before getting back to business as usual.
In this case the people are not stupid - these "stress tests" are nothing more than computer simulations. I'd want WANO, IAEA and everyone else and their dog to actually physically inspect every single inch of each plant, and have the government write up some decent regulations for the power companies to enforce. Up until now the government has said "the power companies know best, we don't want to impede", THIS IS RIDICULOUS, and we all know it.
You can bet these plants will stay shutdown until changes are made, and all hell will be raised if the federal government allows them to light the reactors without local community support.
I for one am looking forward to a second summer of rolling blackouts! (Granted last year wasn't that bad)
Though I am also not looking forward to my power bill.
Nah, they will just prefer to see old people and children dying with cold in the winter, or from heat strokes in the summer from lack of air conditioning and heating. Not to mention the proven fact that carbon monoxide emissions cause increased risk for cardiovascular problems (the main cause of death in modern society - even manages to beat cancer).
I think some of this gets into the category of "too big to fail". There are far too many institutions that are getting so huge that they simply can't fail... at least until reality hits them hard in the face like what happened in Fukushima. There is no reason to think this is isolated to just Japan, so similar kinds of engineering management screw ups are likely to happen.
I used to live downstream from a large dam that was built right on a major earthquake fault line. What is worse, if that dam goes it will create a cascading failure of another dam further downstream... where the other dam is smaller (hence the reservoir simply couldn't contain the incoming water even if it was empty) and all of that water is going to be channeled into a narrow canyon that will act as an amplifier of the energy from those failures. Well, I guess a hundred thousand registered voters really doesn't matter to the politicians who planned the whole thing and ignored contrary engineering investigations that showed the dam should never have been built in the first place. You'll find out about the dam when the "big one" hits. I'm just glad that I moved.
I still live downstream from a couple of dams, but they are tiny ones (about 10 meters tall and about 60 meters across), and I think those dams get more review inspection than the big ones get. If they fail, they will take out a few homes and death tolls will likely be in the dozens, but life in the city will continue on in spite of that failure if it ever happens. They also survived a magnitude 6 earthquake about 50 years ago, so in a sense they've already been "proofed".
This isn't just isolated to nuclear engineering, but I agree these mega projects do tend to get out of hand and become a monster unto themselves. Projects and plants that are so big that shutting them down even for a "routine inspection" becomes a political issue rather than something related to actual engineering or safety.
We're all part of the same society, you know.
I just wanted to emphasize this statement a little. Too often we foolishly think that everyone shares in the pain of a failure of a significant part of society. That's rarely the case even with the worst of disasters or wars. For virtually every such thing, there are winners as well as losers. Even a full blown nuclear war would have organized groups of survivalists coming out ahead of almost any other survivors.
When it comes to small scale failures driven mostly by bad choices, such as New Orleans or Detroit, then failure is easily contained. And ideologies that emphasize responsibility, personal and societal, gain from each such failure that occurs. So sure, we're in a sense part of the same society, but it doesn't mean that I or the societies of which I am part, for example, gain from bailing out failed societies even in the US.
Yes, without question.
Those in charge of managing the safety of those plants have been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt, completely incompetent, willfully negligent, and incredibly deceitful.
There is simply no legitimate reason to trust anything anyone claims in the affirmative about the fitness and safety of any plant in Japan (or much of the world, honestly). So yes, the only prudent...no, the only sane decision is to shut them all down until such time that a trustworthy source can testify to their safety and fitness. Of course when we're talking about so much money and power corrupting everyone anywhere near nuclear energy, such a time will probably never exist.
The same is just as true for new thorium reactors. Sure, the spin is that they are 100% filled with rainbows and fairies and strawberry shortcake, but what possible reason would any sane person have to believe a word of it, coming as it does from the same mouths that brought us the current world wide nuclear mess...promised with the same exact nonsense? It really doesn't matter if the actual reality of thorium lives up to the hype. The industry has burned the people of the world far too much with a century of complete bullshit. Standing on top of that mound of fertilizer and shouting, "But this time we're actually telling the truth, trust us!", just isn't going to cut it.
My
I think some of this gets into the category of "too big to fail".
This is pretty much what the problem is. Simply building and fuelling a nuclear power station isn't overwhelmingly expensive, but the ongoing cost of maintenance and dealing with the waste is very expensive, and retiring a reactor even more so - its not like a conventional thermal power plant where you build it, fuel it, and when you are done just leave it.
There are far too many institutions that are getting so huge that they simply can't fail... at least until reality hits them hard in the face like what happened in Fukushima.
At which point the only answer is to nationalise - which, IMO, is how all large utilities should be run. For example telecommunications in many countries is an absolute mess because you have several very, very big companies, all competing and building infrastructure against each other, in many cases with incredibly wasteful overlap. But what if the infrastructure was all nationalised, and these companies only have to "buy-in" to get access? You would have a single set of infrastructure which is still paid for by the big companies, but lacking over-lap and being standardised means that people are not locked in to certain vendors, and by having control be done by a government entity that only provides wholesale access means you don't have unfair advantages.
There is no reason to think this is isolated to just Japan, so similar kinds of engineering management screw ups are likely to happen.
The only way to prevent this is to make sure these companies are prepared - they should be carrying out safety drills and exercises on a regular basis, and facilities should be inspected by independent third parties - none of this has happened in Japan.
Wikipedia is shit. The fuel in Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor 4 had been removed and placed in its spent fuel pool WAY before the earthquake, in view of ongoing work to replace the reactor core shroud (you can see the old one sitting in the cask pit if you look at TEPCO's videos of said SFP).
http://www.jimstonefreelance.com/fukushima1.html paints a different picture. Japan 0: Terrorists 1 The author seems to be no fool. http://www.henrymakow.com/jim_stone_is_the_real_thing.html The "last reactor shuts down" looks different from this perspective then.
No, my statements were a direct response to demonstrably false info.
Well then, I pose the questions to you.
Do you accept there is overwhelming evidence that the Nuclear Industry has problems and that the industry requires fundamental structural reforms?
As to the rest of your diatribe, you've assumed many facts about me and my intent, none of which are in evidence.
Yes I have. As to the evidence I haven't completed reviewing it. I am pleased that you offer far more reasoned discussion than a many of fanbois here, for that I complement you.
Nor do you have any idea where I stand on NP.
Then share it, what do you have to hide? I have made my position quite clear. If you have anything to evolve my reasoning than I will accept it, most of the time /. is full of fanbois full of hyperbole and ad hominem attacks. You had the opportunity to confront the NP with facts and evidence but you launched into such an attack. Under the circumstances it's quite a reasoned response to such an attack. I don't care about the NP, the same assessments of the nuclear lobby can be made as you make of the anti-nuclear lobby.
If you want to set an example of why you are different, then challenge the NP statements with facts so i can judge your post on that basis.
So, I won't bother to respond to it.
Why? Too hard, too close to the truth. Well I'll respond for you;
If the Nuclear Industry had adopted the same standards as the Aviation Industry then we would have a reactor design *radically* different from the AP-1000 that is a re-hash of SNUPPS and would include all of the NRC panel recommendations the industry made for itself.
If the Nuclear Industry was economically viable and could be operated safely without subsidies or the continued existence of the Price-Anderson act.
That if commercial Nuclear Industry operators could be trusted to run reactors at lower profit margins then events like TEPCO operating Fukushima outside the Basis Design for GEN 1 S class facilities then, maybe, we would see an example of a 'Safe' Nuclear industry.
But the fact is, we don't.
You can start from my blog. From there, I suggest a google search for my name and "nuclear".
Then, we might have something to discuss.
Well I did that. I searched on "geoff strickler nuclear" and I found your discussion of trying to assess the boil off rate of the SFP at Fukushima. I actually had that data then and I can tell you that your calculations did not take into account the *second* Basis Design issue of a GEN 1 GE reactor, that the refuelling gate pairs have to be powered, constantly. I posted that data to /. some 10 days after your discussion.
I also searched on "geoff strickler radionuclides", "geoff strickler radioisotope analogues", " geoff strickler radioisotope bio-accumulation" to gauge your understanding of the mutagenic properties of radioisotopes but found little results. I also checked out you discussion on Radiation Treatment interesting but largely useless unless you knew how or if you had ingested a radioisotope like pu-239, especially when a microgram is a fatal dose. I look forward to your follow-up article.
Additionally my analysis of you article found flaws in your reasoning surrounding plutonium ingestion. if you start with one of my posts it may give you a good start and how facts are largely ignored by /.
But before you attack me again, you might want to find out some info about who you're dealing with and where I stand on NP.
Gary, this is incredibly arrogant and does nothing to support your position. If you could you would respond with evi
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And don't forget to remind people that ....
it's radionuclides that are the *real* issue, not radiation.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
What do you mean by overcome the fact that they came from a failed city? I grew up in a failed city. The majority of people that left just go on to destroy different cities.
I'm not saying we should bail out failed societies. Part of the problem is that we desperately try to bail out failing societies! Instead of just letting the rats drown with the sinking ship, we keep the ship afloat just long enough for the rats to scurry to other boats, never pausing to think that just maybe it's the rats' fault the boat sank, and maybe we'd be better off if the rats drowned. The rats go to the other ships and breed and sink other ships.
If a part of the country is destroyed, we all lose that part of the country. Are we better off without the people that were in that part of the country? Probably. But odds are those people are just going to go destroy more of our country, so we've all lost something and haven't won anything. People don't look at the failure of a city and think "well here's where they made their mistake, we should be more responsible in the future." Instead the people from the city go breed somewhere else and pass their attitude of irresponsibility into other parts of the country, where before it was contained within that failing city. Really the solution, imo, is to stop allowing irresponsible people to breed at the responsible' expense.
I just don't get this attitude. The Japanese economy is far too dependent upon the energy being produced in this fashion, and conservation just isn't enough when you need to find ways to do things like run factories, trains, and communications systems.
More to the point, I am questioning the attitude.
I admit that there were some serious problems with the management of nuclear reactors in Japan (see the exchange I had with ewok85 above... somebody who definitely has a clue about what is going on in Japan), but I really don't see why such an austerity measure needed to happen. Certainly all of the reactors at Fukushima needed to be shut down (I really get that one!) and I can see shutting down all of the plants operated by TEPCO, as their repuation as an operator certainly can be called into question. But shutting down every last nuclear reactor? No, that doesn't make sense.
Reviewing safety protocols or trying to make some massive reforms in terms of how the government performs oversight on these reactors makes sense too, but it doesn't require a full lockdown of every nuclear power plant. I don't see these plants being decommissioned either, so all that really is happening is that they aren't currently contributing energy to the power grid. They are still a "danger" simply because they are still in tact and that the nuclear fuel is still sitting in the reactor cores.
I just see the full smash as an idiotic move. Furthermore, suggesting that this needs to be applied to nuclear power plants in other countries just goes beyond the pall. At least gain a little bit of understanding for how energy production happens and the issues involved if you are going to suggest such a drastic step.
The majority of people that left just go on to destroy different cities.
How? They aren't that numerous. And you have the existence of the lesson of the first failed city to prevent a recurrence.
People don't look at the failure of a city and think "well here's where they made their mistake, we should be more responsible in the future."
In my experience, yes, they do this sort of thing frequently.
Instead the people from the city go breed somewhere else and pass their attitude of irresponsibility into other parts of the country, where before it was contained within that failing city. Really the solution, imo, is to stop allowing irresponsible people to breed at the responsible' expense.
I don't see evidence that irresponsibility is genetic. Instead, I see evidence that irresponsibility is a function of inexperience and structural absence of consequences for behavior that harms others.
Japan is one of 3 countries in the world with enough geothermal potential to deal with base load generation. The other two are Iceland and the Philipines. Geothermal is a good idea for base load generation here. But I'm with you in that I wouldn't take nuclear out of the mix until there was a reasonable alternative. It will take 20 years to disocover enough geothermal wells to deal with base load generation. And that's if we actually start looking for them (which we don't appear to be doing). Coal, gas and oil are not reasonable alternatives in my mind.
I would absolutely love to be proven wrong. As it stands, I am not aware of *any* initiatives to increase the search for geothermal wells. My environmentalist friends (who protested against the Hamaoka nuclear power plant) are all vehemently opposed to geothermal and believe fervently that solar energy will save the day. I have tried to educate them, but it's a bit like talking to a brick. They only seem to believe what they want to believe. I accept that it might be different in other parts of the country. In fact, I would celebrate that!
I live in Shizuoka (actually, right next to the Hamaoka power plant). I am well aware of the wind in the Pacific ;-) If we can build off-shore wind farms big enough to deal with base generation, that would be fantastic. However, the problem for both wind farms and geothermal is time. I might be wrong, but I don't think we have the technology to build off-shore wind farms of the scale you are proposing (especially ones that can withstand regular typhoons). It will happen eventually, but it will take a very long time. Similarly, geothermal wells take time to find and develop. We need to start 20 years ago.
In the meantime we are stuck with oil, gas and coal and I don't see any way around it... :-( On the plus side, just from an economic point of view, shutting down the nuclear power plants will spur development of other technologies. Oil and gas are not going to get cheaper and they are already pretty damn expensive here.
Sorry, it was Solar Trust that got the 2.1 billion loan and the closed their doors. Wrong solar company.
RU Sure?
http://solartrustofamerica.com/
Contrary to inaccurate media reports, no taxpayer funds were loaned to Solar Trust of America. The company withdrew from the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program in August 2011 foregoing any government funding for the Blythe Solar Power Project.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I like nuclear power, I just don't trust capitalists.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
right on - but why are you sitting on the fence.
Because I just happen to see the Nuclear Industry a third way that is not framed as what is commonly termed 'anti' or 'pro' Nuclear. Though I've seen the term "anti-nuclear" used as another PR mechanism to cast people with a "Nuclear Free" preference as being "anti" something. None of these approaches are suitable for my position on the Nuclear Industry.
A realistic approach to examining the Nuclear Industry is that it could be safe, but it would be considerably expensive and more than likely only run by government by management processes legislated into law.
Consider this. If the Nuclear-Free lobby got their way and all nuclear reactors are shut down then we still have the problem of dealing with and enormous amount of radioactive material. Furthermore, because of the dispersed nature of the Nuclear Industry we would be looking at an infrastructure plan measured in decades to clean it up.
If we examine the position of Nuclear Advocates, few believe there are any problems with the infrastructure of the Nuclear Industry, mining, enrichment, reactors or spent fuel containment. They marginalise the mutagenic effects of radionuclides and few make the effort to understand how they analogue micro-nutrients which is evident in the arguments about the harm of radio active effluents.
Because of this polarisation there is no discussion of infrastructure plans to address the issues. These are serious costs, that escalates each day, imposed on future generations and ultimately, not solved.
The irony in this is that pro and anti Nuclear proponents want the same thing for different reasons. That thing is long term geological storage of spent fuel and other radionuclide products in granite of the country that owns the reactors. The Nuclear Free people want that because it starts to address the real issue of spent fuel and Nuclear Waste in a controlled manner. The pro-Nuclear people want it because, whether they realise it or not, Fukushima demonstrates it's not practical to build Nuclear reactors without spent fuel containment.
human beings have demonstrated that they are incapable of managing nuclear without major radioactive accidents.
I'm anti nuclear because people are incompetent bozos and it's just a matter of time before another disaster.
You won't find any disagreement from me there except in the way the argument is framed. The Nuclear Industry has had a long history of failure supported by evidence. What is worse there has been a long history of attempting to cover up those failures until the Reactor installations can no longer tolerate the sum total of failures. So something like a Tsunami happens that exposes compound failure in the form of a serious accident like Fukushima, or operators trying to conform with crazy management demands like those that brought about Chernobyl or the fortunate accidents and confusion with what cutting edge technology was trying to tell the operators of Three Mile Island.
Ultimately though, despite the sheer wonder of Nuclear Technology is there is any point to it? Sure it's advanced but without being able to address the lack of any substantial net energy return from the Industry (which is demonstrated in peer reviewed science) without significant advances in material sciences, Nuclear power, in it's current form, is more a liability than an asset to the progression of the Human race.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
How = because they don't give a shit. It doesn't take many people to destroy a city, and this type of people tend to breed often and early. So for example you have 10 single-income families that want to keep the city going. 1 no-income family moves in, let's say they have 5 kids, and let's say it takes the taxes of 2 people to pay for that 1 family. If each of those 5 kids has a kid before at least 1 kid from each of the families with incomes gets a job (because for example they all go to college while the no-income family becomes teen parents) the city is already going to start to go under. Now you've not only got a city that can't support itself, you've got 6 different households that don't give a shit about the city. and most of the kids from those 10 single-income families are going to want to move away because they see that the city is turning to shit.