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Canadian Nuclear Accident Study Puts Risks Into Perspective
An anonymous reader writes: A Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) study has concluded that there would be no detectable increase in cancer risk for most of the population from radiation released in a hypothetical severe nuclear accident. The CNSC's study is the result of a collaborative effort of research and analysis undertaken to address concerns raised during public hearings on the environmental assessment for the refurbishment of Ontario Power Generation's (OPG's) Darlington nuclear power plant in 2012. The draft study was released for public consultation in June 2014. Feedback from the Commission itself and comments from over 500 submissions from the public, government and other organizations have been incorporated in the final version. The study involved identifying and modelling a large atmospheric release of radionuclides from a hypothetical severe nuclear accident at the four-unit Darlington plant
is grab the car key
Nuclear energy is the past, and is a ticking time bomb waiting to detonate. Solar and wind is the obvious way forward.
Did they 'study' any people that were actually exposed to a nuclear accident? Including Jimmy Carter?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
From the study: "The radiological exposure to people (beyond the first seven days) and its resulting short and long-term health impacts are not assessed in this study."
In other words, the flow of radionuclides through the environment, and expected specific dispersal and concentration pathways resulting in human exposure and the resulting cancers risks were not studied.
So a dirty bomb situation. Now compare that with the deaths that will supposedly occur from a dirty bomb. In the terrorism scenario, they assume no-one will be evacuated; weird. Or maybe, hypothetical deaths are convenient for the government.
how they could come to such a conclusion defies logic. As accidents, by their very nature are unpredictable. Have they factored in the lid of the containment vessel blowing off.
There are four the types of arguments, of increasing power:-
1. Detailed technical arguments.
2. Simplistic factual arguments.
3. Emotional arguments.
4. Authoratative arguments.
Mugs like me tend to rely on detailed technical arguments. Simplistic factual arguments are much more powerful, but will always be trumped by an argument that appeals to people emotionally. And arguments from respected people in authority (like film stars) trump everything else.
So Nuclear = Nuclear Bombs = Satan. No amount of geeky statistical analysis can change that.
Reactors make poor bombs, because these devices require radically different designs, in the same way that your toaster does a lousy job drying your hair.
In Chernobyl, a large nuclear disaster, not only did people die from acute exposure, but hundreds if not thousands of children had thyroid surgery (the "Chernobyl necklace"), and many downwind developed cancer as a result. Remembering that this paper states exposure beyond SEVEN DAYS is not considered, we already know that large nuclear disasters have both acute and long-term health effects. Claiming that they don't flies in the face of history.
If you get lucky, you'll not die in a accident and get cancer instead. Yay!
Yes, I did try turning my computer on and off.
Basically, it should have compared it to coal, as coal releases more radioactivity than nuclear. Small bits of radioactive thorium are found in coal mines, and when you mine the coal, you release it from the entombed safety. Then when you burn the coal, you release even more into the atmosphere. The radioactivity risk in the immediate vicinity of a coal burning plant is significantly greater than that of all nuclear power plants. Coal miners and plant workers are more likely to die of cancer than uranium miners and nuclear power plant workers (note, this only applies to the US industry, other countries may have different rates due to different regulatory strengths.).
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
how they could come to such a conclusion defies logic. As accidents, by their very nature are unpredictable.
Actually they aren't as unpredictable as you think. Predicting accidents and fallout scenarios underpins the entire process safety movement of modern process plants. The nuclear industry has some 50 years of experience and data on exactly how often every abnormal operating condition happens. They simple extrapolate as to what would happen if the abnormal operating condition is unable to be corrected (the hazard).
Have they factored in the lid of the containment vessel blowing off
Why would they? Primary containment explosion is an incredibly rare event. The only time an event has ever escalated to that level was with a 50 year old reactor design which had it's safety features disabled on purpose and was then run at an operating point that was known to be unstable on purpose. It was also done on a graphite moderated reactor with a huge positive power co-efficient which caused a runaway reaction. By comparison the reactor being talked about is a CANDU reactor which has a really low and only slightly positive power co-efficient making an explosion from within the containment vessel very unlikely. And that's before taking into account that the reactor commissioned in the 90s has very different and way better safety systems than one in the 70s.
No. Chernobyl did not even have a containment vessel.
Canadian nuclear accidents are polite and civilized. There is no way one would be so obnoxious as to actually cause anyone cancer.
Wow. I'll guarantee you there was a lot of politcking that went on behind this *COUGH* *COUGH* study. No way it was going to warn people of a potential for disaster. That would have been nipped at the bud from the outset.
PRO-TIP: The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission wants people to use nuclear power. Just "safely."
mdsolar, tell me why this study is bunk! You know you are the authority on everything electrical! After all, you can't stop telling me how I destroy the environment!
What about all the 'cancer clusters' that have arrived after every nuclear accident in history? And that's just for starters.
This 'study' is pure Grade-A astroturf aimed at the fox-watching masses who lack critical thinking skills. The mouth-breathers who are eating this propaganda up like candy are on the same level as climate-change deniers. How it got onto /. is anyone's guess...
You know, like spending 100 years to clean up the mess, large areas that become inhabitable, and people that have to relocate under emergency conditions? Cancer is just one thing here, there is a ton of other problems.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You know the building and the containment vessels are different things right?
One must realise that the reactors utilised for power generation in Canada do operate on a paradigm largely differing from that of other countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
its, please its! It's = it is!!!
99% of the population of Canada lives within 3 km of the US-Canada boarder.
Darlington is on the shore of lake Ontario about 70 km northeast of Toronto.
Prevailing wind direction is to the southeast (US).
Eureka!
Ontario can blow-up Darlington to create a dirty nuclear bomb cloud to drift across Lake Ontario to kill the fucker Yanks who in 1812 tried to annex Canada into their slave Nation.
Kill Fucker Yanks NOW!
Ha ha.
Nuclear energy is the last thing the public needs to worry about. The world pretty much has been poisoned over the last 100 years with toxic chemicals made by DuPont and 3M. Cancer, high cholesterol, endocrine disruption, diabetes, mental health....death. Poorly regulated chemicals are orders of magnitude more dangerous than the highly regulated nuclear industry.
Having fired former Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission head Linda Keen for refusing to compromise on safety, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper replaced her with one of his seemingly-inexhaustible supply of conscienceless, obedient drones.
I'd be entirely unsurprised if the commission concluded the most important consequence of brushing one's teeth with plutonium dust would be a whiter smile.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Yeah, I know it's not really a problem with science, but one thing that has bothered me in recent years is the sheer amount of stuff that is scientifically "undetectable" or negligible, and thus dismissed.
Say a nuclear accident increases cancer risk by 0.01%. No study is going to find that, no matter how thorough. Ok, then we add this man-made chemical to our diet. Another undectable 0.01% increase. Do that a few dozen more times. Hell, maybe one or two of them actually reduce cancer rate by an undetectable amount. Add in the infinitesimal risk from plastics touching our food, plus the slightly detectable risk of being heated with our food, or drinking liquids from plastic bottles (which you started in your infancy). Add in the chemicals we rub on our bodies to stay fresh and clean. Then the residues left in our clothing after production and washing. And so on, and so on, with a thousand things every day.
I do think it's paranoid to worry too much about any particular risk. And many of the risks are outweighed by the good they do. But I'm just sick of people using "science" as an excuse to mock others and prevent further study. The whole "I fucking love science" crowd is as unscientific a group of people as religious fanatics. Even if there haven't been any studies on a particular topic, they'll actually hold that up as proof of safety and then probably go on to argue that no studies are necessary because no studies have ever shown it to be harmful (despite only having one or fewer studies even done in the first place).
It is too short period of time for any kind of epidemic study of the impact of an agent into a population.
Come back in 48 years more.
Right next to the high wealth district. This ensures that there is as little energy loss as possible in moving the electricity to those who use it most.
And even if there WERE an accident, this study proves that there is no discernible increased risk.
You DON'T reach for your car keys, you don't get to work you get fired you lose your house and you die on the street starving. Or you walk hours to work and walking is very dangerous with all those maniac drivers, so you don't walk either. So you MUST take those risks. You have no other option.
That nuclear power plant produces electricity. But you don't have to have nuclear powered electrical generators to generate electricity. Therefore this is a risk you DO NOT have to take. You have other options.
PS have you thought about NOT letting drivers in cars, since they kill thousands a year in accidents and therefore the risk is entirely due to the crap drivers such as yourself. Or at least regular testing, a harder test and a zero tolerance policy for dangerous driving to ensure that unlike you wot is a good driver, there is no place for a bad driver to get past the testing for more than a short time? Drivers cause most of the hazzard (by a three-to-one margin) and most of the deaths (by a thousand-to-one margin), so your risk could be abated by severe restrictions or removal of private transport. But, despite your acknowledgement of the high risks, you refuse this. Why?
Perhaps you might want to read _Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster_ and find out just how well their accident modelling works.
Many "can't happen" failures happened one after another. Entire failure modes totally ignored for not being "realistic" but that actually happened.
Failure analysis needs to be done by pessimists. The nuclear industry apparently doesn't like pessimists.
Yeah well that's a bit like saying we should stop worrying about robberies while people are still being raped.
No, actually if you postulate the plant is put underwater, which it was not designed for, the outcome is quite easy to accurately predict. The problem was they placed the plant where it would wind up underwater.
It amazes me how many people have never heard of Bhopal, yet consider Fukushima a great environmental disaster.
>9 magnitude earthquakes followed by once-in-1000 year giant tsunamis are incredibly rare events. That's why settlements that had been there for hundreds of years were wiped out too.
Sorry, but however unlikely you think it you have to consider the worst case scenario. We do in other industries, nuclear doesn't get an exception from the rule.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There's no such thing as a can't happen failure. There's only decreasingly likelihoods of occurrences. If a failure can happen by any way even if it something like terrorism or mass murder suicide then is not in the realm of can't happen. But you are right you need the correct people to come up with the correct answers when doing risk analysis which is why in many cases in the process industry they outsource it. In any case my answer to the original question stands. Fukushima did not have an explosion of the primary containment vessel for similar reasons why a CANDU reactor won't.
One interesting observation as a bit of an aside is that the Nuclear industry actually suffers from over regulation when it comes to safety analysis. Prescribed safety solutions are common in the industry with centralised bodies determining how safety systems are implemented. The end result of prescribed safety systems is nearly universally expensive over-design for simple low-risk scenarios, and dangerous under-design in high-risk scenarios. You can see the former scenario in medical research reactors which end up having the same safety systems as large power plants despite having a few kg of fuel and only a few 10s of kw of heat output.
And what has that got to do with primary containment failure?
The problems at Fukushima weren't that they didn't consider the risks, it's that they under-engineered the solutions. There was a tsunami wall, and the building was designed to withstand an earthquake. The up front risk assessment was not the problem.
for starters. Then a nice chunk of land near the reactor would lose their value. And then you have to pay to clean up the mess. And all of this for electricity that is more expensive than any other form of power. You can use the ones that are already built but no more. No more until they are walk away safe. And cheap.
I think most of the fear associated with nuclear has to do with the nature of radiation in that you can't really sense it killing you without some sort of detector. It is like magic to most people, so they fear something they can't see, hear, smell, or understand really. A good analogy might be natural gas. Also used for power, and it just happens in its natural form, invisible and odorless. However in that case, we're able to artificially add a smell to it, so as to make it safer to work with. Not really possible with radiation...
Also Hollywood hasn't helped with the imagery of massive fireballs incinerating everyone in a titanic explosion. When the reality is the most impressive and dangerous part would be a big rising cloud of steam from vaporized water table during a full unconstrained meltdown, then nothing really (unless you're more less standing right next to it) except the possibility of cancer in 20 years, maybe. That would make for some pretty boring and depressing movies however...
So I see this as another study whose conclusions will be misunderstood and misused outside the scientific community (whatever that means). It's not the single incident so much as it's the cumulative effect. We've already had several nasty incidents, so a responsible conclusion would be "what if this occurs once every 3 years" or something like that. Because in the past man's effect on the planet has been generally small, people still think "things will go back when we stop messing them up". This is just not true anymore. There is no going back, at least not in any timeframe any of us humans want to wait for.
No, actually if you postulate the plant is put underwater, which it was not designed for, the outcome is quite easy to accurately predict. The problem was they placed the plant where it would wind up underwater.
You mean under the water required to cool the plant because they didn't improve the seawall.
It amazes me how many people have never heard of Bhopal, yet consider Fukushima a great environmental disaster.
I'm surprised how many people who have heard of Bhopal think that the assholes that ran Fukushima are any different.
Sorry, but however unlikely you think it you have to consider the worst case scenario
No, that's silly. Do you consider a thousand-year tsunami? A ten-thousand-year tsunami? Asteroid impacts? Alien attacks?
You balance the risks based on likelihood.
"Hypothetical", y'know, because as anybody who's managed to live through the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's or the first decade of the new millennium can attest, a severe nuclear accident has never happened. Just hypothetical...
If there is no detectable increase in cancer risk, then how exactly is this a "severe" accident?
This study was done by scientists who aren't allowed to say anything bad about the Canadian government, especially during an election. And it was done for an agency (Ontario Power Generation) that the government of Ontario wants to sell to private investors. Highly suspect.
You said they didn't consider the case of the lid blowing off. You said the chance of it happening was remote.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is a wonderful example of misdirection. As someone that lives within the exclusion zone of Pickering, it's not the radiation that worries me, it's the fact that I will be forced from my home never to return, rendering the largest investment I have worthless. Losing most of my life's capitalization, yeah, that worries me. And it worries me more that the other end of that exclusion zone is well within Toronto, which means that the collective savings of about a million other people will be similarly effected.
And back to my point there has been a single case of such a failure. Fukushima was not one of them, and in a CANDU reactor it's borderline impossible to occur with even the great brains behind the Chernobyl disaster running a reactor out of spec while disabling safety systems at the same time wouldn't be able to achieve it.
But I agree my response was tongue in cheek. The correct answer is to consider it and then at the end of the hazard study write "Not a credible scenario".
Chernobyl was estimated to cause millions of deaths.
So far including all past and future expected deaths its down to 10 thousand.
Fukushima killed 10 people (2 drowned, 8 industrial accidents in the cleanup), while the Tsunami killed 20 thousand. And most anti nuclear lunatics were sure Tokyo would be contaminated.
My conclusion is even disregarding the utter lunatics, all radiation models lead to at least an order of magnitude in people affected, in the case of Chernobyl two orders of magnitude.
People insist on thinking nuclear reactors are inherently dangerous, without studying one little bit about how they actually work.
Its time we stopped once and for all using future probabilities but rather use past statistics to analyze nuclear safety.
We've been using nuclear heavily in the world since the 80s. We know for a FACT nuclear is safe. Nuclear isn't causing cancers.
Studies that try to impinge cancers on nuclear reactors are done on reactors built in chemically contaminated areas, the cancers are due to past non nuclear industrial activity rather than radiation.
Coal is deadly.
First get rid of COAL worldwide.
Then we can talk about nuclear being safe or not.
Coal is paying most professional anti nuclear interests. Most of them have ZERO interest in attacking coal. Follow the money.