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."

Comments

Honestly, Japan's screwed no matter what.

[Chas]

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.

Fukushima was WORTH IT

[mrchaotica]

We only get worked up about nuclear disasters because they're so unusual. Coal is a disaster in its normal operation!

Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT

[bloodhawk]

every coal fire plant is a disaster that is occurring every single day and are continuing to affect the human race in ways we still don't fully comprehend long after everyone here is dead.

Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT

[mrchaotica]

First of all, I'll reiterate bloodhawk's point above, that coal has worse long-term impact than nuclear disasters too.

Second, the main long-term impact of Chernobyl and Fukushima (beyond the lifetimes of the humans involved) is that Russia and Japan have ended up with some accidental mandatory wilderness conservation! From the perspective of every species that isn't humanity, they were probably a net positive.

Look, Chernobyl and Fukushima sucked for their victims. I get that, and I'm not trying to minimize it. But abandoning nuclear because of things like that is like abandoning air travel ("the safest form of travel," they say) in favor of playing chicken on the highway because a plane crashes every once in a while. It's an emotional, irrational overreaction that just doesn't make any damn (statistical) sense.

Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT

[thesupraman]

I beg to differ, no it cannot.

It would, for example, be pretty damn hard to get a nuclear power incident more incompetently managed and 'dirty' as Chernobyl, and I am pretty sure that the human race has not yet been wiped out by it (although the local wildlife population is devastatingly healthy thanks to less people around).

Perhaps you would prefer a mountain of radioactive ash from coal plants?

Re:No.

[Luthair]

Point a geiger counter at your smoke detector sometime, and maybe watch Pandora's Promise to educate yourself on the reality of nuclear power.

Re:No.

[Solandri]

Samples collected from gutters around my office (Kanda, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) already light up the Geiger counter, and the soles of shoes right after make nice images when placed on photographic film.

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.)

Restart Isn't the Right Choice Either....

[Noble713]

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.

Restoring trust in the system.

[westlake]

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.

Re:What's with this headline?

[Coren22]

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.