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Study Finds Humans Are Worse Than Radiation For Chernobyl Animals
derekmead writes: A study published today in Current Biology shows that wildlife in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is actually more abundant than it was before the disaster. According to the authors, led by Portsmouth University professor of environmental science Jim Smith, the recovery is due to the removal of the single biggest pressure on wildlife—humans. "The wildlife at Chernobyl is very likely better than it was before the accident, not because radiation is good for animals, but because human occupation is much worse,” Portsmouth University professor of environmental science Jim Smith says. “We were trying to emphasize that this study is a remarkable illustration of an obvious, but important message,” he said. “It is ordinary human habitation and use (farming, forestry, hunting) of land which does most ecological damage.”
With just a couple of nukes!
Study Finds samzenpus Are Worse Than Submissions For Slashdot Posts
The message is that the real risk of radioactive exposure has been greatly overblown. What is happening (or not happening ) in the Chernobly area is only a surprise to those who believe the anti nuke agenda driven FUD.
Three Mile Island was 1979 and Chernobyl was 1986. Don't you think technology has advances in 30 years. Even Fukushima is minor compared to the number of people killed by emissions from coal plants. The difference is when nuclear goes bad the damage can be very big. People get used to a few thousand extra people dying every month due to coal plant emissions.
If we'd just stop inhabiting the planet, hunting, and farming, then the other animals would be better off! Who'd have thought?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
those crazy Russians....
The Americans did it right - TMI released practically nothing into the atmosphere; you get more natural radiation from the natural stones by standing in the entry hall of the United Nations building than you'd have gotten standing next to TMI.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Could you please name a few victims of Fukushima and TMI? Not even with "skin melting off their bodies", just radiation sickness is ok.
While Fukushima was the latest accident, I always like to point out that the Fukushima plant is actually older than TMI, by at least by a few months, depending on how you measure it - do you start the time when construction started, or when criticality was first achieved?
Modern, actual modern nuclear plants would be far safer.
And yes, Coal power kills more people any given day than Nuclear does all decade.
I'd really like to see a high-efficiency high temperature molten salt thorium reactor deployed.
I don't read AC A human right
Couldn't we ban the trolls and their feeders first?
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
No, you have to learn to tune out.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Blowout soon stalkers.
Don't see many buffalo on them rolling plains in the US these days.
Or passenger pigeons ...
I'll gladly do that, provided you talk face-to-face to the families of all the people dying of coal-induced lung cancer, and explain why we did the right thing by burning more coal instead of going nuclear decades ago.
I'll be done long before you will.
You're dead cuz Boris the sk8tr dude was drunk on the job --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS3WvKKSpKI
Bikini atoll, devastated by a nuclear blast is in great shape, thanks mainly to the lack of people :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/3339485/Marine-life-flourishes-at-Bikini-Atoll-test-site.html
And certainly in much better conditions compared to Indonesia or the Philippines reefs with no radiation and huge populations.
Another example is the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, apparently with great wildlife. Again, because of the lack of
people.
In the rest of the world, while the human population has doubled from 3.5 B to 7B in only 40years, the wildlife (both marine and non) has halved :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26290-worlds-wildlife-population-halved-in-just-40-years.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-16/half-marine-life-lost-in-40-years/6779912
Even the relatively protected Great Barrier Reef has halved its cover in 27 years :
http://www.scienceinpublic.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Full-PNAS-paper-for-publication.pdf
Well, the way I see it, if the animals aren't delicious and/or can't pull a plow, what good are they? Who needs a bunch of plague carrying rats and squirrels?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Carolina Parakeets either
It's not farming, building and hunting that hurts the animal population. it's doing it in MASS QUANTITIES from overpopulation.
The american indians managed the land and it's resources just fine, It's the assholes from europe that wiped out most everything because of stupidity.
Just like how the Wolf population crashed horribly due to idiot farmers killing every wolf they see because they are too lazy to protect their livestock properly.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I thought that this has been well known for quite some time.
The push back against nuclear energy has always been the misinformed public on the dangers of anything nuclear related. And just like anything else today it only takes a very small minority to spread misinformation and negative propaganda to drown out the majority. We have the technology to create safe nuclear power plants with the only possible problem being the storage of spent nuclear waste. Burying it in salt mines in Nevada just hides the problem. And the Chernobel reactor was buried and entombed in concrete while the reactor core was still in an active state. They never were able to stop the reaction.
They weighed on average 900 kilograms - basically 2000 lbs. The largest of them were over 12 feet tall. - more than twice my height. They could reach up and grab things 14 ft above the ground. They could run over 40 mph. On all fours, were still taller than men.
They ate meat. Humans are made of meat.
Humans lived in the same place as the Short Nosed Bear. Humans that didn't have bows and arrows, let alone guns. Just spears. With rock points.
Humans probably didn't intentionally kill the S.N.B. - we just killed all it's food, and let them starve.
Humans: The most terrifying killing machine Earth has ever seen. Nothing is worse than a human.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
TMI suffered an endogenous problem, not an external insult. The two cases aren't comparable, but if I were comparing them I'd rate TMI as worse, because it caused problems with far less provocation. And I've no reason to believe that it would have caused less damage if inundated by an earthquake followed by a tsunami.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Finding Fukushima victims with radiation sickness is easy. Most of the workers after the incident suffered at least mild radiation sickness. They don't, however, match the rhetoric of the g.p. Most of them probably only have in increased probability of cancer.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Point taken, I should have mentioned victims have to die from said sickness.
Yep. TMI released more than 500 degrees magnitude more radiation than Chernobyl. The Soviet reactor system was basically fail-safe while the American design was rushed into production and is still leaving countless victims in its wake.
Finding Fukushima victims with radiation sickness is easy. Most of the workers after the incident suffered at least mild radiation sickness.
Absolutely false.
tmi didn't need to protect against either threat because it's not in an earthquake zone, and not near an ocean.
The most unexpected sight at my visit to KSC a few years ago was the ubiquitous, abundant wildlife -- far more than I've ever seen in any national park. Joined with the Merritt Island nature preserve, it's an area of coastal Florida that has dramatically fewer human activities (at least most of the time).
TMI was the worse radiological incident in history. TMI makes Chernobyl look like a walk in the park. How many Americans died compared to the Prolariat of the Soviet Union???
I'll trust the Russian body count any day before I trust anything from the US.
They are not estimating 1500 deaths because of Fukishima.
https://www.inverse.com/articl...
As noted in the title, the panic caused by the mass evacuations etc (e.g. moving people from hospitals) may have caused 1500 deaths.
Of course there are few (I think there may be a couple if I recall from workers in cleanup?) from radiation.
And of course 15,893 (wikipedia) deaths from the tsunami and earthquake.
Moral of the story is that even poorly designed and implemented power plants are less dangerous to your health than poorly sited and implemented housing. Spend the money on where and how people live to protect them from tsunamis and earthquakes. Then, maybe, spend money upgrading your nuclear facilities.
No. Getting acute radiation sickness is HARD. You have to really work to get it, even in cases of nuclear contamination. The first acute radiation sickness symptoms happen at around 1 Sievert. For comparison, the US lifetime irradiation limit for nuclear power plant workers is 0.2 Sv and two of the most irradiated worker in Fukushima received around that dose (though localized near their ankles) - and this is still 5 times less than the low threshold for acute effects.
A couple of books on the subject of humans and life on Earth. Ishmael, My Ishmael and The Story of B. by Daniel Quinn. I doubt humans will destroy life on Earth, but I am pretty sure we humans will destroy ourselves.
And animals don't have the mental capacity to understand how radionuclides will affect their offspring, that's still human created toxicity.
These animals are as likely to be exposed to radionuclide contamination by eating the local plant life as humans are. Since animals live vastly shorter lifespans than humans there is less time for cancers to manifest it's effects on the animals.
I doubt eating these animals would be a good idea however it would be very interesting to examine just how much radionuclide contamination is in the apex predators, like the wolves. The salient point about this article is that the microbes, insects and birds at the bottom of the food chain aren't there, as these are the fundamental building blocks of life.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Umn... You are aware that the Fukushima earthquake was well off shore aren't you? That was why it was followed by the large tsunami. And there isn't a place on earth that isn't subject to earthquakes. Some place are more likely to experience damage from them, but no place is safe. One of the largest quakes in US history happened in Missouri, but quakes can happen even in the middle of plates. And some of those are worse than most that happen along the edges.
As for not near an ocean:
https://www.google.com/search?...
it's further from the ocean than Fukushima was, but not far enough that tsunamis are irrelevant. It's right on a river. Most nuclear plants are, because they need the water for cooling. And tsunamis roll right up rivers.
All that said, I'll agree that TMI is less likely to experience that particular external insult. But the world is full of unlikely accidents. It's good to avoid the ones you recognize, but that doesn't make them the one you needed to have defended against. Where to TMI style plants store their spent fuel rods? What do they do if the power supplies are interrupted? (Be aware that Fukushima thought they had that covered before the accident happened.)
Many nuclear plants in the US are being run at longer than their rated lifetime and for more than their rated power output. Yes, the original ratings were conservative, but there are good reasons those ratings were conservative. And many of the plants have repeatedly failed safety inspections. That nothing bad has happened so far is as much due to luck as to proper care...because proper care has often be sacrificed to corporate agendas. (Much like Fukushima and other plants run by Tokyo Electric [TepCo] in that respect.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Words are just words. If you think humans are overcrowded and are killing off the wildlife, then set a good example and make that ultimate sacrifice for nature. Perhaps others will follow your example.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
We already knew that human habitation causes ecological dislocation. That's why we have nature preserves and nature preservers are not full of farms or factories.
There is, however, value in measuring the effect quantitatively.
Umn... You are aware that the Fukushima earthquake was well off shore aren't you?
It wasn't. Epicenter was only 70 km off-shore. As the other poster noted, there is no comparable fault with corresponding body of water within a few hundred km of Three Mile Island.
but are *you* willing to talk face-to-face to the families of the victims of these incidents when they occur and explain why Nuclear energy was the right choice while their relatives skin is melting off their bodies?
I'll just note here that no one has had to do that yet due to the (no doubt peculiar) lack of victims with melting skin, So I doubt I'd have to leave my fortress of solitude the next time a TMI or Fukushima happens due to the continued absence of skin melting.
Just for the shear hell of it, I'd like to see your impression of a gay cow.
Table-ized A.I.
"That's not an udder, but please milk it anyhow."
Could it also be that animals just have shorter generations and the first few generations did poorly ( I remember reading stories about badly mutated animals) but ultimately radiation is just a selective pressure so after 30 generations, those that do well in radiation have come to dominate the population. Because their generations are one year long, they don't die from the effects of radiation before the ones who are doing better can reproduce. It would be hard for humans to survive 18 years to reproduce (as well as other species that must mature for multiple years before reproducing).
just speculating...
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
FTFY.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
IIRC they were using some american/european test equipment when it happened
Cesium-137 has a 30 year half life. It takes a minimum of 10 half-life-periods or cycles to get close to inert (not reach to reach it, just to get close). Each cycle, every 30 years, the amount of radiation should drop by 1/2. No way around this, just the way it works. At least one radioactive has a half life of 240,000 years.... Some of that got released into the environment also. But lets keep it simple, we KNOW with 100% certainty that Cesium-137 was released by both Chernobyl and Fukushima.
30 half lifes X 10 cycles = 300 years.
While massive amounts of Cesium-137 was released at Chernobyl, more was released at Fukushima.
Ceisum-137 attacks heart muscle. It can NOT be detected with a normal radiation detector, you must have a 'Cesium detector'.
When scientists went back to Chernobyl 25 years later (almost one cycle or 1 half life) they expected to find a decrease in the amount of Cesium-137 released into the environment. They measured more Cesium-137. Yes, 25 years after the event there was more Cesium-137 in the environment then what was reported by the goverment and the Nuclear Industry.
The amount of Cesium-137 should have dropped by close to 1/2 of what was reported...now we must wait for 35 more years to see if this 'accurate' and scientific measurement actually drops by 1/2. What if it does not?
Regardless, the animals won't be able to survive the Cesium-137 any better than humans. So there are more of them in the short term. Long term results are the same. At least for the next 300+ years.
...worst of all, the Cesium-137 laden water gets pulled into the plants. Massive amounts of Cesium-137 has been measured in Pine cones at high elevation that will release their pollen into the air each spring for the next 300+ years....
Should it manage to reach the jet stream, it can be over North America in 24 - 48 hours. Of course its already in the food chain in the ocean as radioactive waste has reached the West Coast how many years ago? And will be in that food chain for 300+ years...Sushi anyone...
Does not matter, animals and humans can't live without their hearts, at least not yet.
wind and solar are still extremely diffuse, and the collection hardware has a large ecological footprint.
Bullshit. Wind has a minuscule ecological footprint; you put it on grazing land. Solar as well; you just put it on some crappy land that's not producing any benefit. And solar has the benefit that it reflects some of the light that would normally strike the ground, and it also absorbs and then reradiates as IR even more. More than half of that is reradiated upwards (because solar panels are white on their back sides) so solar panels reduce heating of the land and thus insolation-forced warming.
Not only the vast swaths of land permanently occupied, but the access roads and transmission lines.
The access roads already exist in the vast majority of cases, because as already stated, we put wind farms on grazing land. The energy cost of installation of the transmission lines is far dwarfed by the return, otherwise we wouldn't build them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I read practically the same headline five or so years ago. If they continue to publish it when I become senile it's start to become interesting again
From the earliest post-Chernobyl studies, things have been showing a healthier ecosystem in the area, with the primary change being fewer humans.
Alas for the anti-nuke hysterics, the main thing all that EVIL!!! radiation (properly radioactivity) has done has been...next to nothing. What really makes the place special is the laws forbidding humans from living in the area.
Note also that humans STILL live in the area illegally. And there's no real sign of meaningful biological effects among those humans either....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
[girly font]Mooooo[/girly font]
It's to be expected when some people think a nuclear meltdown looks like a nuclear bomb.
Well the AP1000 is the only approved design and my understanding of that design doesn't lead me to that conclusion. Safer reactor designs are already available, the features aren't implemented in AP-1000 because they are too expensive so the AP-1000's design still falls short. For accident mitigation the EPR design is better. Briefly the buildings that service the reactor are split into four (main) operational divisions (and the reactor containment). An accident, failure or maintenance in the other areas can be mitigated by the other divisions. It's planning, and being prepared for, problems.
None of the designs incorporate features to ease the teardown and eventual decommissioning of the facility. For example, Yankee Rowe, was a controlled shutdown of a functioning reactor. It cost half a billion dollars to clean-up and it was only 137 Megawatts, less than a quarter of the size of TMI-2. You have to wait decades to allow the *really* radioactive elements to decay. This is because new and highly radioactive elements are created in the reactor core. It's still not something that has been addressed in an industrially proficient way that makes the sites safe or 'greenfeild'. Considering the 104 reactor sites around America are multi-core the United States will be looking at a conservative estimate of a quarter of a *Trillion* dollars, at todays prices, on reactor decommissioning alone.
While the cost is a concern, decommissioning the reactor core has to be conducted so that it doesn't release any of the new radioactive elements free to bio-concentrate in the food chain.
Finally, The Nuclear industry panel (Westinghouse, General Electric, Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, Northern States Power and Commonwealth Edison) design recommendations are specifically targeted at reducing the opportunities to sabotage a nuclear reactor installation. The AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design. AP-1000 is a rehash of the Standard Westinghouse Nuclear Utility Power Plant (SNUPPs) examples of which are installed at Wolf Creek and Callaway, you will note in the picture the uncanny resemblence to the AP-1000 design (and similar capacity).
Is there anything specific you can point to that details why we can expect something different from this design by the order of magnitude your saying, I would be very interested in evaluating it. To the OP, I'd say, not much.
Actually it is specifically the Thermal Containment ratio, which refers to how much concrete is in the dome, is higher in TMI than other NPP concrete domes. My understanding of the rational is because it is in the flightpath of a major airport. So what I mean specifically is, there is more concrete in the TMI concrete dome than other reactor installations, and a lot more than the AP-1000 designs (even if you include AP-600).
NRC guidelines permit the venting of radioactive effluents into the environment every two weeks Firethorn. There is no evidence that the AP-1000 series improves on that.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Gladly:
References;
Obviously there are mutagenic properties of other materials however tritium is often labeled the most benign so the effects get worse depending on how energetic the radio-isotope is and if the body absorbs it.
A nuclear bomb produces a lot of radiation, but not a great deal of fallout compared to what a nuclear reactor can release and that is what we are talking about here. Radio-isotopes as opposed to the radioactivity they produce.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Yes I do, but like the issue of the thermal containment, that is not what I am refering to. Thallium has some unusual properties (oh, I checked and it's 208 Thallium not 233. It's a gamma emmitter, not a alpha emmiter like 239 pu - so it's pretty nasty stuff). I'm still trying to wrap my head around it so if you have any facts about it that help to understand better, I'd welcome them.
What I've learnt so far is that it has lots of halflives (more than the 20 or so) and many, many daughter products. Now I'm not sure if the mechanism is spontaneous fission (IIRC) that does this (like DU) but because it is a gamma emmitter it would be a heck of a lot harder to deal with than plutonium. I'm not sure but I think it has something to do with the properties of the metal being more like alluminium than like lead (i.e. the properties of the metal).
Don't take that as a criticism of Thorium reactor technology though, it's got good anti-proliferation characteristics however I think if you are going to advocate the technology you really have to have a salient and realistic look at the whole fuel cycle and how you manage it especially if you want to avoid the mistakes of the old technology.
I probably have a ways to go with Thorium salt technology however from my understanding so far, I'd go with IFR because you don't loose energy (i.e joules) mining and processing the fuel as with Thorium and, IFR deals with 238 pu by yielding the energetic investment.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The difference is when nuclear goes bad the damage can be very big.
No the difference is the damage from operating coal and hydrocarbon fuel plants is spread over a large geographic area (diffused in the atmosphere) and period of time. Individuals, societies, and ecosystems are generally able to cope with and absorb those impacts.
What is missed is the concentrated calamities that are oil spills, tail pound leaks, ash spills etc. Those are also consequences of traditional generation even if indirectly.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
If you remove cats from an area, rats are able to thrive in greater numbers! I also heard that researchers have discovered that it appears in the time of dinosaurs, areas that had fewer or no carnivores and abundant food, the herbivore populations did much, much better.
I mean ... duh. Take a species higher up the food chain and a greater user of resources out of the environment, and the other creatures are going to be able to thrive. Even if it's a difficult environment to live in. With less competition it is going to be easier to deal with other hardships. I seem to remember hearing that the species that made it through the asteroid and years of turmoil afterwards that killed off the dinosaurs were not the species thriving at the time, but the ones that (with a lack of competition from the big bad dinosaurs) could survive and eventually thrive in the harsh environment left over.
I get the whole environmentalism "haha" of it being better for animals to have radiation than humans in the area, but it doesn't strike me as shocking.
I think I see where you are going with this. If you are going to take a longer term veiw of the Nuclear Industry based on reprocessing and start implementing reactors that implement this technology then you have to accomodate reprocessing facilities, the reactor and the spent fuel products anyway. You have to move it from around the country from the reactor sites to reprocess it.
IFR did this in an integrated way and it is a proven and tested design so I think it realistic to implement provided you have contained adequate facilities. You yeild a significant energetic advantage (from my loose calculation 1.3Tw hours - don't hold me to that though - I haven't checked my math) over the initial 40 year lifespan of the reactor if you can dispose of the reactor core, in situ, i.e you build the reactor in a granite mountain and leave it in place when it is no longer viable. Then double that advantage again because you don't need to mine and enrich for fuel to operate it. Triple the energetic return, if you build it with material technology improvements that allows it to go beyond it's initial lifespan, every 40 years. So it's a real winner for that potential.
That's why I think it makes sense to look ahead and actually start by accommodating the spent fuel facilities, then you can site reprocessing facilities and reactors. The state that hosts it would get a bonanza of industry looking for cheap electricity, because it's easier to move electricity as opposed to moving highly radioactive fuel. So when evaluating the two if you are going to consider Thorium reactors over something like IFR you have to also factor the energetic inputs of processing the ore ready for the reactor.
So far IFR is the only threat to the coal and oil industry and it's not hard to see the hard lobbying they did of Clinton when he killed it and Bush when he funded it's demolition to well and truely bury it. The American people would never have been beholden to the oil industry for at least 5000 years - based on fuel availability.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Considering the proliferation of like in the Chernobyl area ecosystems can absorb radiation too.
It's mutation. You can't go a month without hearing a report about a horribly mutated animal in the exclusion zone who's life is basically nothing but torment. Of course a lack of humans will lead to abudance.
Every time you post news like this more of them will start wondering if they should just kill people to save the world!
Either that or kill themselves.
Reminds me of the old April 1 Slashdot prank.
Classic.
Table-ized A.I.
Well the AP1000 is the only approved design and my understanding of that design doesn't lead me to that conclusion. Safer reactor designs are already available, the features aren't implemented in AP-1000 because they are too expensive so the AP-1000's design still falls short. For accident mitigation the EPR design is better. Briefly the buildings that service the reactor are split into four (main) operational divisions (and the reactor containment). An accident, failure or maintenance in the other areas can be mitigated by the other divisions. It's planning, and being prepared for, problems.
You know, it's odd, I searched my posts multiple times and didn't find the AP1000 listed? I didn't even mention GenIII.
First: I was pretty much talking globally in my posts, thus the NRC could be considered a 'local' issue.
Second: More designs can gain approval.
AP1000 vs EPR: Per wiki the AP1000 has a core damage frequency of 5.09e-7 per plant years, EPR is rated at 6.1e-7 per plant year. So by that metric they're both neck and neck (e-7), with the AP1000 having a slight lead over the EPR. The EPR is about 50% more powerful though, so on a per kWh basis it's a touch safer, as you'd need 3 APs to replace 2 EPR. You're still very close though.
For example, Yankee Rowe, was a controlled shutdown of a functioning reactor. It cost half a billion dollars to clean-up and it was only 137 Megawatts, less than a quarter of the size of TMI-2.
The problem here is that you're assuming a linear relationship between clean-up costs and reactor power size. Personally, I figure that the cost has an extremely large static component - IE the relationship is not linear, and should be cheaper per MW the larger the reactor.
Basically, just getting set up to handle the cleanup is more expensive than actually doing it, especially for a smaller plant.
NRC guidelines permit the venting of radioactive effluents into the environment every two weeks Firethorn. There is no evidence that the AP-1000 series improves on that.
Citation? Hell, citation that plants routinely vent radioactive materials into the environment outside of emergency circumstances!
Actually it is specifically the Thermal Containment ratio, which refers to how much concrete is in the dome, is higher in TMI than other NPP concrete domes.
My point was that even a normal dome will still tank an aircraft.
AP-1000 is a rehash of the Standard Westinghouse Nuclear Utility Power Plant (SNUPPs) examples of which are installed at Wolf Creek [wikipedia.org] and Callaway,
This is a bit like comparing a 4 stroke 4 cylinder from the '80s to a modern 4 stroke. Sure, there may be broad similarities, but there's also refinements in pretty much every aspect.
I'm afraid that I have to go - I've re-entered college to upgrade my degree and have to get to class. I need to get some other work done, so I'm afraid that I'm going to take a while to respond to your other posts, as well and being unable to go quite as deep into the research as I'd like.
Personally, rather than going 'greenfield', I'd prefer to do an immediate reconstruction in most areas - remove the old reactor, and put a new plant down in it's place, whether that be an AP1000, EPR*, or one of the other dozen approved GenIII designs out there. AP1k might be the only one in production, but it's not the only one approved.
*EPR might not be approved in the USA, but getting it so shouldn't be a huge regulatory hurdle, relatively speaking, especially if it's as safe as you say.
I don't read AC A human right
Slashdot seriously needs a "-1 Wrong" mod.
and if we cut the HFCS out of corn we could save approximately 27 million acres there alone.
Sorry, that was the ethanol, not the HFCS.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The funny thing about Chernobyl is that future generations of hippies will probably be grateful that it happened. By removing humans from the area, it has guaranteed a sanctuary for nature for at least 10000 years. There aren't many places like that left anywhere on our planet.
As noted in the title, the panic caused by the mass evacuations etc (e.g. moving people from hospitals) may have caused 1500 deaths.
I remember reading something a few years ago, can't remember the author, maybe it was Michael Crichton. He said he was researching a book about the most massive terrorist-type events in history, and when he looked closer, found there actually were none. People are afraid of such things even though they don't ever really happen. Even the worst events only killed a few hundred people which wasn't enough to base a story around.
Take 9/11, the original event only killed about 500 people. the rest died from poorly managed damage control from the victim's own government. Chernobyl was the same, only a few dozen deaths from the accident, the rest from the authorities not evacuating residents nearby. Fukushima the same story.
When you put it into perspective that 30000 people die in cars each year, even a Chernobyl style accident is nothing to really be concerned about, as long as you have a reasonable emergency response plan. As TFA says, if an accident creates a mandatory nature reserve then it may actually be a net gain for the planet.
It's the gamma radiation that makes it less of a proliferation risk. Can't have detonators around that.
As for the radioactivity, yes, it's highly radioactive, but properly processed the waste is in said highly radioactive state for a substantially shorter period of time. Basically, it'll reach background levels in a period shorter than human civilization, not longer.
I'm fine with going with IFR, but I'm not sure what you mean by 'loose energy' (lose energy) for mining and processing Thorium - Thorium is currently a byproduct of rare earth mining and refining; currently they're avoiding some of the richest Thorium ore because there's no demand for thorium, thus it's expensive to handle the ore.
Start up a few thorium reactors such that there's a commercial demand for the metal, and it'll get mined along with the other stuff. One thing I've learned is that a 'pure' mine is actually pretty rare. Copper and gold mines also tend to produce silver. Rare earths are usually mixed. Etc...
I don't read AC A human right
You said:"radioactive effluents"? You do realize that nuclear reactors don't release any radioactivity under normal operating conditions? Major releases are on the order of once a decade or more, and that's with our aging GenII reactors, world wide. GenIII would be a lot safer.
The regulations were first set out in 1971 by the NRC’s predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, as part of the General Design Criteria (GDC) for Nuclear Reactors. The GDC are contained in Appendix A to 10 CFR Part 50 (AEC 1971b).
The limits are contained in Appendix I to 10 CFR Part 50, which the NRC adopted in May 1975, and in 10 CFR 20.1301, which it adopted in 1991.
That's where the 'authorized' ventings are defined. All NPPs vent radio-isotopes into the atmosphere every 2 weeks during normal operations, because they need to. That is a fact of operating the technology.
You're missing the point, it's about designing plant facilities to ensure they are available to mitigate accidents during an accident, so that installation only looses a reactor, instead of a reactor, a water pump house, a turbine and the control room. It's not about core damage frequency, it's about what you have when you are facing core damage and you are trying to save the installation.
That would have saved Fukushima.
Any citations that it isn't because the work I've read suggests it is.
No, they are not because you cannot retrofit improvements to a Nuclear reactor, the same way I can install a four valve head where there previously was a 2 valve head, or a turbo charger to improve the volumetric efficiency of an engine. The refinements in the design turn that thick concrete dome into an eggshell, sure it looks the same, but it isn't.
The "refinements' are made to reduce material input costs, specifically, concrete.
You keep asking me for citations, why? Do you think I am bullshitting you? What does it mean that I provide it? Will you correct your assumptions against this new knowledge or maintain your assuptions in face of the fact?
I've done the research before I post, that is why I know what I am saying. If you don't have a reference to base an opinion on you can be fairly certain that I've already researched the subject so that I can form an opinion. I think this stuff is important enough to get a good grounding in knowing it before talking about it, that's why I express an opinion. The social proof of NPPs that happens at /. is mostly false and not grounded in any fact, it would be advisable not to buy into it because it will make you dogmatically skeptical, which is worse than groupthink.
I'm not saying this in a jerk kind of way, but why don't you just check out some of the citations I've already sent you and see what it says, it's actually pretty interesting stuff.
Unless you can provide your own citations you will find that AP1000 is the only one that is approved by law (also very interesting).
Good luck with your studies
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
1. AP1000 = Gen3, Gen3 != AP1000, though good catch, I did say gen3. Though I'll note that was in a different reply chain.
That's where the 'authorized' ventings are defined. All NPPs vent radio-isotopes into the atmosphere every 2 weeks during normal operations, because they need to. That is a fact of operating the technology.
No, they don't. Venting steam(from the primary loop) is an Emergency event. Citation that they actually vent that often, not that they are merely 'allowed' to. I've searched, and it's not mentioned that I found.
You keep asking me for citations, why? Do you think I am bullshitting you? What does it mean that I provide it? Will you correct your assumptions against this new knowledge or maintain your assuptions in face of the fact?
What I do depends on the qualities of the citations. For example, you haven't provided a source that says NPPs actually vent radioisotopes every two weeks, merely that they *can*. When I ask for citations, it's because from my knowledge it's different. I'm not saying you're lying, but I want to know the source of your knowledge.
No, they are not because you cannot retrofit improvements to a Nuclear reactor, the same way I can install a four valve head where there previously was a 2 valve head,
The scale is different, but you can sure can retrofit improvements into a nuclear reactor. Let's see, safety improvement available, but not installed for Fukushima: Hydrogen recombiners, otherwise known as PARS. From what I remember reading, US reactors have them, having been retrofitted decades ago. Quite a few reactors have been 'up rated', to the point that for quite a while we were actually producing more electricity and increasing nuclear capacity despite not actually building any new reactors, even shutting down a few. Many reactors have been upgraded with more efficient turbines.
Besides all that, you're missing the point I think - I'm not talking about retrofitting improvements, I'm talking about incorporating improvements into the design of NEW plants.
The "refinements' are made to reduce material input costs, specifically, concrete.
That's certainly part of it. Doesn't mean that the containment dome isn't still strong as all heck. They've also reduced the amount of pipping and valves needed, and otherwise simplified and made the systems more robust.
Unless you can provide your own citations you will find that AP1000 is the only one that is approved by law (also very interesting).
Not according to the NRC. There's quite a few certified.
ABWR, System80+, AP600, AP1000, ESBWR. Under review: US EPR, US-APWR, APR1400
These are the 'major' reactors. There are smaller power units around.
I don't read AC A human right
You do realize that nuclear reactors don't release any radioactivity under normal operating conditions?
My original response was NRC guidelines permit the venting of radioactive effluents into the environment every two weeks Firethorn. Which I have supported with references to the GDC and CFR.
These points are slightly divergent however, I think you would agree that I have supported my point regarding the authorized frequency of ventings.
You expanded to Major releases are on the order of once a decade or more and citation that plants routinely vent radioactive materials into the environment outside of emergency circumstances
You have to read the GDC to understand why the regulations are in place. They exist for a reason and sometimes you have to go and research things yourself to gain the knowledge. For example, you might download EPA data and query it to find out something about the Nuclear Industries CFC emissions. The data is available, it just isn't packaged and you have to be prepared to do the work yourself.
When you look at how a Nuclear reactor works you discover that an operating reactor needs to do venting at that frequency because the reactor generates gasses and radio-isotopes that poison the reaction. They collect the gasses in tank, allow these gaseous radio-isotopes to stabilize and then release them because they only have a finite amount of storage space which is what determines the frequency of their releases.
I'm not talking about major or emergency ventings, I'm talking about standard operational ventings under normal operating conditions. The regulations exist to allow them to do these ventings because they *need* to do these ventings for the reactor to continue to function.
I have provided you with the highest quality citation, the actual design criteria for a Nuclear Reactor. Since this is not enough I suggest you read this patent Method for treating gaseous effluents emitted from a nuclear reactor so that you understand why nuclear reactors do release radioactivity under normal operating conditions.
You say your knowledge is different, so can you supply citations to support your claim as I have supported mine? Have you questioned your own reasoning to ask yourself 'What fact is this statement based on?' and challenged your assumptions? I'll evaluate what you have to say however, like yourself, what I do depends on the qualities of the citations and you are yet to provide any quality knowledge that supports your statement and is directly contrary to how I know a Nuclear Reactor works.
The next part is There is no evidence that the AP-1000 series improves on that. What evidence or citations can you provide that the venting volme and frequency of the AP1000 considering it is the same fundamental technology? I'm sure there is however what citations/evidence can you provide that an AP1000 does not release any radioactivity under normal operating conditions?
Which brings us back to the point I originally made that the AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design for NEW plants.
None of which were put in place for the reason you originally stated Modern, actual modern nuclear plants would be far safer. or change the fact that By some ironic quirk TMI *is* one of the safest designs because it was designed to be resistan
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Citations please, there are a whole lot of assumptions there that are already inconsistent with what I know so far. 208 Thallium has some very unusual properties in it's decay cycle that I am still learning about so if you have actual fact that goes beyond a wiki page (a peer reveiwed work would be great). 208 Th decays to its first daughter in about 5 minutes, so it's "hotter'n'hell" before it decays to a stable daughter.
The biggest issue here is it is an entirely new spent fuel product so it's a whole new process to handle it when we haven't dealt with 239 pu properly yet.
Apologies, tiredness. yes, lose energy. IFR is inherrently more efficient that Thorium because the energy expenditure to mine and process the fuel has been done. A loose ;) calculation is 1.3-2.6 Tw hour advantage over the Thorium fuel cycle per Gw reactor installed if the reactor is disposed of in-situ.
More so when it is radioactive. It is also energetically expensive.
Don't get me wrong here but neither technology has a chance. Right now the oil and coal companies own the game and it's apolitical. Clinton killed IFR, and Bush demolished it. Forget your Th reactor for a moment. IFR was a game changer and that is why it was not just killed but obliterated. Why? because it produced hydrogen and electricity, i.e it would have been able to replace oil and maintain existing vehicle fleet with a different fuel, and coal because well electricity.
Featuring a fully enclosed waste management and fuel cycle, built in facilities for producing medical isotopes.
Using DU and weapons grade Pu as fuel with a 20% burn-up rate also makes it an anti-proliferation device, winding back our M.A.D world. Acutally makes the plutonium economy make sense as it drives scarcity, as opposed to abundence with a breeder - which is only good for making weapons.
Most nuclear supporters get fixated with the reactor technology, as opposed to the fuel or what the waste products are. Ask yourself if you know what the disposal stragegy is for the thorium fuel cycle's spent fuel? how does reprocessing work? can it burn pu and DU (possibly)? p> IFR's is built in, especially if you site it within the waste facilities - because then you also dispose of the reactor without additional energetic inputs. Prototyped, tested, operation and retired without an accident. A rarity for the nuclear industry.
America already has designed the replacement energetic technology for the prototype A/BWR reactors, coal and, oil, whilst designing a technology to export peace around the world by dis-arming it from nuclear weapons. But big oil and coal killed that idea because they really need all that money to keep flowing.
My study on American law to try to understand the funding model for Nuclear led me to conclude that oil companies are using the subsidy model for Nuclear to plunder billions of dollars from the taxpayer in a repeat of the scenario that led to the great depression. Now you might say to me 'well Mr Kaos yada yada new deal blah Roosevelt etc' to which I would encourage you to check out what PUCHA is and
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You have to read the GDC to understand why the regulations are in place. They exist for a reason and sometimes you have to go and research things yourself to gain the knowledge. For example, you might download EPA data and query it to find out something about the Nuclear Industries CFC emissions. The data is available, it just isn't packaged and you have to be prepared to do the work yourself.
You do realize that this is basically what asking for a citation means, right? You can't just say 'go find it yourself'. If you write a scientific paper, you'd cite the paper and page you got the information from. You make an assertions, you might be asked to back it up. I'm actually fine with backing my assertions up, at least when I have time.
Still, on emissions - there's a difference between what you wrote, along the lines of 'allowed to release radioactive gasses every two weeks', which implies that they were just opening reactor vents every two weeks, allowing the gasses to go directly to the atmosphere, and what the patent you linked to(thank you, very enlightening), which reveals that while systems vary, they're actually trapping said gasses in non-emergency situations for at least 30 days. Which is very much NOT just releasing to the atmosphere in normal operations, which is what you implied, and why I was getting antsy about sources.
As for providing links better than yahoo news, I do that when I can. Proving a negative is hard.
As for AP-1000 vs EPR, I already did the calculations, which I posted. Basically, the EPR is rated at more accidents per plant year, but only slightly. Because the EPR is a more powerful reactor though, by anticipated energy production it'd actually have slightly fewer accidents. Note the use of 'slight'. The EPR is not significantly safer than the AP1000, and vice versa.
Both are at around 1% as likely to have an accident involving radiation release as the current legacy reactors, which are generally e-5 on accidents, rather than e-7.
Man, too a bit to find
AP1000 vs EPR: Per wiki the AP1000 has a core damage frequency of 5.09e-7 per plant years, EPR is rated at 6.1e-7 per plant year. So by that metric they're both neck and neck (e-7), with the AP1000 having a slight lead over the EPR. The EPR is about 50% more powerful though, so on a per kWh basis it's a touch safer, as you'd need 3 APs to replace 2 EPR. You're still very close though.
As far as asking me to provide citations, let's see:
Reactors not venting: Conceded. However, I'll maintain that under normal operation, said venting doesn't appear to be on a '2 week schedule', and is very much a processed release, where the gasses are contained and absorbed until the radioactivity has time to die down. If you had expressed it in this fashion, I wouldn't have been so confrontational about it. Also, you were the one saying they vent, which is why I placed the onus on you. Proving a positive is also easier than proving a negative.
Planes not being a threat to even AP1000 domes - Analysis of Nuclear Power Plants Shows Aircraft Crash Would Not Breach Structures Housing Reactor Fuel.
Which brings us back to the point I originally made that the AP-1000 incorporates none of the design changes the industry *itself* recommends be applied to reactor facility design for NEW plants.
Dude, the wiki, westinghouse's site, etc... All mention extensive safety systems, including how they've changed some things up to improve safety - things like relying on gravity rather than pumps, because gravit
I don't read AC A human right
Aside for having provided citations and evidence to support my claims, that is not what I am talking about. Specifically, what I mean is, sometimes you have to do your own research and capture the supporting evidence, for example uncovering what the semantics of reactor operations are, not just how it works, but what it needs to do to work. I have done my own research and what you said was not congruent with what I already knew about reactor operations and why they *have* to perform venting.
I think I have backed up my assertions with quality evidence from authoratative sources. As I said, you should only make an assertion if you can back them up and /. is repleat with social proof when it comes to nuclear power. I don't buy into all that groupthink because I think it hides facts about nuclear power and I'm looking for fact from quality sources. I think you would agree that it is complicated enough without all of the politics and emotion that just confuses the issue.
My statement was a simple statement of fact, I can't really control the assumptions that you make about them.
Yes, that is also my understanding and there are likely variations depending on the reactor in question. What we have to keep in mind is that with over 400 reactors around the world, this happens roughly everyday.
Industry wide, Nuclear power is really sloppy about its effluents and deserves all it gets, and more, for not handling these materials with the respect they deserve. Having a discussion about *what* is being released and the scale of unauthorized releases is for another conversation.
Providing the GDC should have been enough because when you read it you discover it is the applicant (the manufacturer of the reactor) requesting the rules from the NRC in response to a design criteria of the reactor be made so that they can operate legally. I've found the Nuclear Industry is very complex and you really need to amass a lot of background information to discuss it in a way that makes sense. /. seems to view nuclear power with rose colored glasses and all to often people make statements based on either how they believe it works or their 'idealized' notions of how it should work. Neither are connected to fact. I tend to stick with talking about what I know and validating *before* I post. Besides I find it fascinating, it's been 15+ years so my library on this subject is pretty big now.
Consider also that it is difficult to point to information (outside of the GDC) that tells you that it is standard operation to release nuclear effluents, you don't expect a news report everytime they do something they are authorized to do because it would be a bit redundant. Maybe we should have it on the news, like a weather report.
You got this far, which is more than most, which indicates you have enough critical thinking skills to challenge your own assumptions and change your mind. I think we have reached parity in this part of the discussion and I commend you for being open minded enough to evaluate the facts for what they are.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.