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Should Japan Restart More Nuclear Power Plants? (thebulletin.org)
Lasrick writes: Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Japan should restart more of its nuclear reactors (the Sendai nuclear plant was restarted in August). The reason is simple, writes Baum: "Japan is now building 45 new coal power plants, but if it turned its nuclear power plants back on... it could cut coal consumption in half. And coal poses more health and climate change dangers than nuclear power."
Basically every option for them and their little fireball of an island chain are Bad Choices.
Still, engineered and maintained properly, with no corner cutting, they'd be better served by nuclear.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We only get worked up about nuclear disasters because they're so unusual. Coal is a disaster in its normal operation!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Point a geiger counter at your smoke detector sometime, and maybe watch Pandora's Promise to educate yourself on the reality of nuclear power.
It CLICKS! And that's SCARY!
Speaking as someone who currently lives in Japan (for work, I'm not Japanese), I think they should. Japan has a ridiculous amount of people in a very small space - Tokyo has is only 75% as large as New York City, but has almost twice as many people. The amount of coal needed to provide enough electricity for them would absolutely pollute the area around them and render it inhabitable - and in a country where habitable land is so scarce, and with such a nice natural climate that attracts a huge amount of tourists, ruining it would not be a good idea. So long as they invest properly in their nuclear power plants and ensure they are well maintained and regulated, they have virtually no environmental impact, and they can provide absolutely insane amounts of power for a very low price. If they act cut the nuclear power like Germany did (which I think was an idiotic move, but I digress), they are going to have a very, very, very hard time supplying enough power for everyone, and if they do it in coal, that will be a disaster. I'll finish with a nice little graph: what do you think?
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Ah yes, Nuclear myth #3: All radiation is caused by nuclear power and nuclear bombs.
Fact: Nearly everything in the world is naturally radioactive. You're horrified that that stuff around your office lights up Geiger counters, because you never pointed a Geiger counter at that stuff before the accident. Thus you are incorrectly attributing natural radiation to the accident. Your largest annual radiation dose actually comes from your own body. Potassium has a relatively common naturally occurring isotope (K40) which is radioactive, and your body needs potassium to survive (it's essential to how your nerves function). Your second largest dose comes from cosmic rays. Most of these are filtered out by the atmosphere, so in a twist of irony many of those who fled Japan by plane after the accident unwittingly exposed themselves to more radiation during their flight (planes fly above most of the atmosphere) than if they'd just stayed put in Japan.
This myth is so prevalent and pernicious that we screen our nuclear plant workers with detectors which would be screaming if placed at the exit of a drugstore or supermarket. K40 is common enough that most of the false alarms from the "dirty bomb" detectors at our borders are caused by shipments of food which are high in potassium - bananas, avocados, cocoa, etc.
Perhaps most damning with respect to TFA, burning coal releases radiation. Coal contains trace amounts of uranium. The uranium in coal actually contains more energy than the coal itself, but because people who believe this myth are staunchly opposed to nuclear power, they end up breathing in those minute traces of uranium released by burning coal instead. (Burning coal is also the current major contributor to mercury in our oceans which makes fish like tuna dangerous to consume. Historically the biggest contributor was mining, but that's been regulated enough that the primary mercury source is now coal pollution.)
Try a banana on your Geiger counter..
And yes, I spend plenty of time in Tokyo myself, so I get to have an opinion...
Mind you, as you are posting anonymous, I suspect you are actually an american scaremonger posting BS, but thats pretty common.
I'm pro-nuclear (generally speaking). I live in Japan.
I don't think turning on a bunch of outdated reactors that sit on one of the most earthquake and tsunami-prone areas of the world is a good idea.
How about replacing the existing reactors with a smaller number of very modern Westinghouse AP1000s? A far better way to spend billions of dollars than the stupid 2020 Tokyo Olympics. I think this is an acceptable medium-range solution until someone demonstrates a commercial 1GW thorium plant.
perfectly safe gov't run nuclear plant
The worst reactor disaster our species has yet caused was the explosion and melt down of Chernobyl; designed by government researchers, built by government owned industry, operated by government employed staff and named after every intellectuals favorite opium dealer; V.I. Lenin.
But don't let actual history impede your little world view. Go right on indulging the bullshit they trained you with.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The geek's technical and ecological arguments count for nothing if you have lost faith in those who were responsible for the safety of nuclear power both in private industry and in government.
You don't have to cry conspiracy for everything, you know. Yeah maybe Fukushima is the cause and maybe it isn't. We'll see in time.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Why include nuclear anywhere? The problem with waste disposal is not going away any time soon. Solve this (and insure the plants) and this becomes a serious option again. Of course you would have to consider where you build those things i.e. plants and disposal sites as well. Do it right and I do not think many people will object. This is only one side of the story. I think there is a serious issue with overpopulation already and we do not really notice because the processes involved have time scales significantly larger even than anything else humans are used to (i.e. > 30 seconds of serious pumping for instance). I'd say relax and enjoy the ride as long as we can. The hordes of refugees from polluted, flooded, deserted or lands that become unpleasant in other unpleasant ways will make our lives much more interesting rather soon.
ok lets state this clearly for you. EVEN the cleanest most modern coal plant is thousands of times more polluting than a nuclear plant. This isn't questionable, or ifs or buts, the only scenario the two can be compared is in a nuclear disaster. 2% increase in coal will mean the deaths of 10's of thousands of people, it will be polluting millions and millions of tons of toxins into the environment and atmosphere. If instead of building those new cleaner coal plants they built modern nuclear with high levels of safety they would generate massive amounts of clean low risk power, they would save 10's if not 100's of thousands of lives over the lifetime of the plant and they would MASSIVELY cut emissions across the country.
Even including the two bombs used on Japan, nuclear has killed less people than any power generation technology around. Fear of nuclear is failure of math/science education, not something to proudly proclaim from the rooftops.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Quite simply, nuclear power makes complete sense to technically-inclined people who do not go along with shortsighted ignorant paranoia, which I expect represent a significant part of people here.