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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
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.
Damn, I knew we forgot something!
Back to the drawing board guys, we completely forgot the part where the entire population of the country is required to march single-file through ground zero!
But seriously: there's absolutely no question that being at ground zero is going to ruin your day, month, and probably even your year. But if you aren't right there or immediately downwind where the worst of the toxic heavy metals settle out of the air, the radiation becomes just slightly-above-background-level pretty quick.
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.
Nope. We NEED nuclear power to tide us over while 'alternative' sources of energy ramp up, to get us off fossil fuels as soon as possible. Even 'alternative' sources are just another level of 'band-aid' until practical fusion power is developed. In the meantime everyone needs to haul their internal-combustion vehicles to the scrapyard and go out and get an electric vehicle and have a charging station installed at home. Severe sanctions against countries that don't follow suit. If we jump on it right away we might be able to save the planet from being turned into a clone of Venus.
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.
Funny, since the sun is actually nuclear energy.
Carter is 90 years old.
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.
Yes. He was also a nuclear engineer. Despite all of the above, because of the time lag, his cancer is almost certain to be from another cause. Like the fact he spent years working outside in the Sun. The man is also 90 years old...
..as the sun never stops shining..
Except at night. Or when it's cloudy.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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."
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.
And for perspective, up to 2011only about 15 people had actually died of their thyroid cancer, out of a possible 10,000 affected. In fact, more people died in the initial explosion.
For even more perspective, twice as many people killed by guns in the US every day than died to thyroid cancer caused by Chernobyl in the entire time since the disaster.
Truly, as the sun never stops shining and the wind never stops blowing.
It will eventually. I suspect there will still be fossil fuels available when that day comes, as we'll have moved fully to solar and fusion (but I repeat myself) before we run out.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We need to stop all forms of energy production until all the complaining idiots stfu and beg to turn it back on so the rest of civilization can advance unencumbered.
It would be totally worth the one or two day sacrifice. ZE day (zero energy day). Never forget.
You know the building and the containment vessels are different things right?
The sun is still shining in both those case -- gust on another part of the globe or some of the effects of it shining are blocked from reaching the ground directly by the lower atmosphere.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Oh, the difference between 'gust' and 'just'...
its, please its! It's = it is!!!
Then come back and talk about it once we have a world power grid in place.
Until then, the fact that central Wath Libya, Papunya Australia and Kayenta Arizona are perfect environments for generating massive solar power doesn't help people in Patlong Lesotho, Christchurch New Zealand or Bangor Maine.
It's what's known as "putting the cart before the horse".
Sure, small-scale stuff gets done. But not everyone can afford to drop the cash for a solar array or a wind turbine.
And not every place is suitable for doing so. Or should homeowners in Chicago be forced to climb out on their second and third story rooftops after a blizzard, risking life and limb, just to sweep off their panels? The main problem is that the current grid system(s) (PLURAL) simply aren't built for the sort of distributed input that renewables represents.
Fission nuclear power works NOW. And can tide us over on base load as we ramp up a modern power grid and increase renewables production to handle peak loads. Together, they can tide us over until we can perfect fusion or another form of clean power (vacuum energy extraction anyone?)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
1. This means we would have to build new power stations, which assumes centralised distribution, which means building those power stations somewhere near the existing coal fired stations - because that is the way the distribution network is designed. Coal fired stations are located near sources of coal - not on sites which might be good for nuclear reactors. E.g. near rivers.
2. This means continuing to maintain and upgrade the existing distribution network, which the public are unwilling to do, because they can generate their own power on their own roof, and don't see why they should subsidize industry by paying the bill for the centralised network.
3. Nuclear power is heavily IP bound, we would have to buy technology from, for example the US or other pre-existing user of nuclear power. Again, this looks to the public like money down the drain.
4. Depending on who you are, acquiring nuclear technology can make the legacy powers (e.g. the US, UK) nervous. Who needs those guys on your back?
5. Even if you have uranium (we have in my country) you still can't just feed it into your reactor. Many reactor designs require you to have the fuel rods made overseas. Again, this looks bad. Why are we adopting a source of power that makes us reliant on overseas companies?
If one of the newer designs was (a) ready to go and (b) commercially viable and (c) open source, so you could build it yourself (d) able to take locally sourced fuel so that you don't have to ship things high and low and (e) relatively foolproof, then in manys case nuclear might be viable.
But not everywhere. There is no way nuclear is suitable for Nigeria, for example. What happens when Boko Haram gets their hands on a nuclear power site? In many places, the key to energy generation is finding ways to distribute the generation so that it generated near the site of consumption. This way, you can have, for example, community owned generating facilities.
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.
That you know.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Then come back and talk about it once we have a world power grid in place.
Yeah no kidding! The day that we can get every nation on Earth to actually agree to something will be quite a day indeed. Not to mention that if you did manage such a thing as a 'world power grid' there'd still be terrorist organizations sabotaging it constantly, greedy corporations (and individuals) trying to leverage it for their own profit, and protestors protesting whatever it is they protest about concerning a 'world power grid'. Then there's the NIMBYs, and the people convinced that powerlines are causing their chronic illnesses.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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.
I think that dirty bomb scenarios assume it is being exploded in places like center of Manhattan (or in specially constructed dispersion device in the air). Nuclear power plants are NOT in the very center of densely populated cities, but at least few km away. There might be some light infrastructure around, but probably no huge condominiums 500-1000m from reactor core.
Irradiating few km^2 of manhattan or few km^2 near highway in middle of nowhere is bound to produce different death toll.
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.
My grandpa is almost 94 and doesn't have cancer, what's your point?
As you get older, the likelihood of you developing cancer, as well as a slew of other diseases, increases. To quote fight club "on a long enough time line, everyone's survival rate drops to 0".
It reminds me of the dust lady from the 9/11 photo being quoted as "I'm certain it had something to do with my cancer. I was healthy, never sick, how did I just develop cancer". That just made me want to scream. A co-worker of mine is finishing up chemo. He's always been healthy, and then one day, painful swelling in his thyroid, gets it checked out, cancer. It happens. Often at random. At any one time, most people have quite a few cancerous cells, just usually our immune systems detect them and kill them. But every so often, one isn't detected and becomes a tumor. And if that tumor is malignant, welcome to cancer town. Not a fun place to be. I hope to never get it, I feel for those who do, but at some point, you just have to accept, that's life.
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
Thyroid cancer in these individuals is caused by iodine-131 that was absorbed by the thyroid shortly after the Chernobyl incident. Anyone who is wearing a Chernobyl necklace was exposed to fallout within mostly the first eight days after the incident or to put it another way anyone who was in the area of fallout after May 5th, 1986 is unlikely to wear one.
Your statement is rather pointless as it does nothing to refute his point regarding long term habitation in the area post accident.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
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.
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...
We could just look up the home addresses of every person who sues to stop a power plant being built and just remove their power meters.
It would show how much they care about the environment to see how long they go without power.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
There was an interesting frontline about chernobyl I saw. There is work going on there to build a new containment structure for the reactor. The old concrete jacket is wearing. The area is so "hot" that the new vessel must be built away from the old area and later will be craned over the old reactor. The thing they are building is massive. The theory is the new structure should hold it for another 100 years. Then they will do it again I guess. The thing will be hot for as long as we have a sun, I think they quoted 4 billion years this thing will need to be covered. It makes me rethink if nuclear is a good idea, given the fukashima thing may turn into the same problem. How many of these reactors can we have around the world that will need to be shielded until the end of times?
http://atomicinsights.com/pick...
I'm not exactly sure what you refer to, but I found it interesting that Jimmy Carter never actually worked on a nuclear submarine.
I see below that you linked an article about a nuclear accident that he helped clean up, but I find it interesting that it indicates he was a nuclear engineer (which is untrue, he never even finished nuclear operator school when he had to drop out to take care of the family farm).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It doesn't say there either that he actually completed the nuclear program, which is interesting.
I would say that Jimmy Carter is a damn good example of the lack of effect of nuclear radiation, he has lived 63 years after helping in that cleanup, and he was one of the group apparently who was lowered into a melted down reactor to effect its shutdown, how much more exposure could you get?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
U-236 has a half life of 23 million years. To get down to a survival range, many half lives needed, at 10 half lives (230 million years, (1/1024 or about .1% of the current radiation levels) you'd still probably not be able to live in the area of the reactor. In the show, the reporter was very anxious to get out of the really hot spots like the old hospital. They were wearing protective clothing. Unprotected I think the kill time was about 5 minutes, so it was still very very hot. Keep in mind chernobyl was in the 80's so already 30 years later and still deadly areas exist outside of the reactor itself.
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
U-236 undergoes alpha decay. Alpha radiation has such a low penetration power that your bare dead surface skin is usually enough to block the radiation from causing you harm. You have to ingest the material for it to be a radiation risk.
The only thing I know of that has a kill time close to 5 minutes is the elephant's foot in the Chernobyl reactor building, certainly nothing close to a hospital. Shortly after the time of its formation the highest contributors to its radioactivity were a lot of isotopes with shorter half lifes, typically under 30 years. That lump has already lost over half it's radioactivity from it's formation.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Whatever you say nuclear is still vastly safer than coal which kills something like 1 to 1.5 million people every year.
Statistically since the invention of nuclear coal has killed something like 60 to 120 million people.
By the same statistics the Chernobyl disaster killed some 50,000 to 200,000 people.
Outside of Chernobyl nuclear in its whole history has killed less then 10,000 to 20,000 in its whole history - the rough number coal kills every week.
Statistically (by indirectly promoting coal) the nuclear protest movement itself has actually killed some 5 to 10 million people.
Today the pseudo-green groups constantly promote wind turbines - but the reality is that wind needs coal or oil stations for backup.
Wind is the oil industries answer to the threat of real green power and will keep them in business for the next 100 years..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
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".
Well, that depends on how you define "hot". The longer the half-life, the less radiation it puts out per unit time. So, while some uranium isotopes are radioactive for a long time, they aren't very radioactive. Fukushima will, as far as I know, not be that radioactive for that long because the type of meltdown was different and the reactor design was better.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
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.