There's A 50% Chance of Another Chernobyl Before 2050, Say Safety Specialists (technologyreview.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via MIT Technology Review: Spencer Wheatley and Didier Sornette at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Benjamin Sovacool at Aarhus University in Denmark have compiled the most comprehensive list of nuclear accidents ever created and used it to calculate the chances of future accidents. They say there is a 50:50 chance that a major nuclear disaster will occur somewhere in the world before 2050. "There is a 50 percent chance that a Chernobyl event (or larger) occurs in the next 27 years," they conclude. Since the International Atomic Energy Agency doesn't publish a historical database of the nuclear accidents it rates using the International Nuclear Event Scale, others, like Wheatley and co, have to compile their own list of accidents. They define an accident as "an unintentional incident or event at a nuclear energy facility that led to either one death (or more) or at least $50,000 in property damage." Each accident must have occurred during the generation, transmission, or distribution of nuclear energy, which includes accidents at mines, during transportation, or at enrichment facility, and so on. Fukushima was by far the most expensive accident in history at a cost of $166 billion, which is 60 percent of the total cost of all other nuclear accidents added together. Wheatley and co say their data suggests that the nuclear industry remains vulnerable to dragon king events, which are large unexpected events that are difficult to analyze because they follow a different statistical distribution, have unforeseen causes, and are few in number. "There is a 50% chance that a Fukushima event (or larger) occurs in the next 50 years," they say.

Comments

There's also a 50% chance

[Anonymous Coward]

That Algore will finally capture ManBearPig.

Re:There's also a 50% chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Have some faith, he'll get manbearpig in 2017 for sure!

Re: There's also a 50% chance

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually he is looking wrongly. There are more unman'd bearpigs than manbearpigs.

And?

[fsckinhippies]

There is a 50% chance of a world war in that period as well. Which one will kill more?

Re: And?

[johnsmithperson123]

Isn't it obvious that the world war caused the nuclear accident?

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, there's a 50% chance that their estimate is 100% incorrect.

question

[Anonymous Coward]

does that mean there's a 50% chance it won't happen?

Re:question

[Anonymous Coward]

You're pretty good at math

Already had one

[Anonymous Coward]

Fukushima WAS the "another Chernobyl".

Denial is not a river in Egypt folks...

How to derive the probability

[Anonymous Coward]

Either it happens, or it doesn't. Mathematics tells us that makes the odds 50/50.

50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[Anonymous Coward]

Without a reliable data source, the confidence in that number is highly suspect.

As someone who deals with environmental loads and return periods for building safety, I can say pretty confidently that they're pretty much WAGing that number if you really got down to how the data was evaluated. I would like to know what their predictions are, using the same type of methodology, for the stock market or, maybe more accurately, one segment of he stock market for the next 100-200 years, and let me know each point at which the value will double. Bonus points for doing it without any official industry data like the did with the incident data.

Re: 50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[Anonymous Coward]

On other news "there's a 50% chance (probably higher) the article is full bollocks.

Re: 50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[Anonymous Coward]

That reminds me of a study done that say 50% of all published studies are a bunch of crap

Re: 50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[bobbied]

Figures never lie, but liars figure..

Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics...

Re: 50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[rubycodez]

50 percent of experts agreed with that. The other 50 percent were too busy publishing studies to answer the survey.

Re:50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[Mr D from 63]

Without a reliable data source, the confidence in that number is highly suspect.

That is an understatement. They intentionally decided to ignore all the officially recorded data and come up with their own list of what they think was an accident, and they used things like newspaper articles and anti-nuke sites to create their base list of data. These so called 'experts' don't actually appear to have any background in nuclear power generation or knowledge of nuclear plant safety analysis. I guess anyone can be an expert these days.

Re:50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[Mr D from 63]

on top of that, it appears they included incidents from sites that weren't even nuclear power plants, like cold war waste sites. But, alas, the anti-nukes care little about facts and credibility. Here once again is proof that they can't carry on a good argument without twisting the truth till it is unrecognizable.

Re: 50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that is just about as accurate as studies on global climate change. I heard they just did a peer reviewed 150 million dollar 10 year scientific study to determine that 9.8 / 10 global climate change scientist know for a fact that global climate change is in fact a fact. With scientific evidence like that there can be no doubt. Global climate change is real, and it is caused by nuclear reactors that will all blow up by the year 2050.

You can't argue with science. Numbers are science, and science never lies.

Re:50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[jimbolauski]

There are about 500 nuclear power plants worldwide and 24 years for this prediction to come true. There is a 1 in 24,000 chance that a given plant will have a Chernobyl event this year or a 1 in 48 that any plant will have a Chernobyl disaster this year. Both those numbers seem remarkably high and I agree that they are getting pretty liberal with their numbers to get to a 50% chance.

Re:50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[serviscope_minor]

There is a 1 in 24,000 chance that a given plant will have a Chernobyl event this year or a 1 in 48 that any plant will have a Chernobyl disaster this year. Both those numbers seem remarkably high and I agree that they are getting pretty liberal with their numbers to get to a 50% chance.

Indeed! Especially as no reactor like Chernobyl is in operation any more. All of the remaining RBMKs in service have been modified so that the void coefficient is never positive which means that an overheating reactor loses power, rather than gaining it as in the original design. The changes also make it impossible to operate the reactor in the very unstable region that Chernobyl was operated in since with the modifications the reactor is not critical in that region.

So the chance of a repeat of Chernobyl itself is 0.

Re:50% is nothing without a confidence interval

[Rakarra]

Well, the bar here for "a Chernobyl" is amazingly low. An accident is "an unintentional incident or event at a nuclear energy facility that led to either one death (or more) or at least $50,000 in property damage." That can be... that can be almost anything. A death OR property damage.

So any unintentional incident that does more than $50,000 in property damage? Do you know how easy it is to do $50k in property damage especially in a facility like that?

Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Cherno

[eepok]

First off, the article is dated as "April 17, 2015". So, "Not News".

The headline says "Chernobyl" (a stupid set of human errors leading to meltdown). The summary says "Fukushima" (the results of old tech meeting an extreme natural disaster". The article's own summary says it's a 50:50 chance of a "Three-Mile Island" (where no one was harmed). Or are we just talking an expensive incident? Or an actual meltdown?

I'm an abject Slashdot apologist and I'll confidently say that this submission is crap.

A good reason to replace old reactors

[Vihai]

To me it does mean that we should invest more to replace old reactors and replace them with newer models which are not subject to the same kind of failure with those consequences. Better yet we have to invest on LFTRs.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[AmiMoJo]

We should replace old reactors, but not with new ones. The costs are too high, and it takes many decades to return the land to a usable state anyway.

As an aside, they are looking at building a sarcophagus for Fukushima. The damage from multiple meltdowns and the difficulty of cleaning it up means that just leaving it for future generations might be the only option.

The whole area is starting to look like a complete write-off.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Vihai]

The high cost is a myth. A nuclear reactor produces so much energy in its life that the decommissioning costs are only a small fraction of the kWh sold on the market. Do you want to double the reserve? Fine, it would still be economically valid.

That said, the "usability" of the land is a moot point. How "usable" is the land of a hydroelectric basin that is permanently made unusable *by design* ?

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[swb]

The land question is an interesting point, but the water basins can be used for storing fresh water, water surface can be used recreationally, and in places like the Tennessee Valley and other places, more land is usable downstream because flooding has been controlled.

I think the nuke plant land argument is mostly bogus because unless you have a Chernobyl event, the lost land to a decommissioned reactor is relatively small in the scheme of things.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[khallow]

The costs are too high, and it takes many decades to return the land to a usable state anyway.

Why would you want to do that when you can put a new nuclear reactor on that land instead?

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Captain Splendid]

Fine, it would still be economically valid.

Yeah, but keeping the required multi-billion dollar investment group together over several decades is like herding cats. Capitalists like fast returns, especially when the sums are this high.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[bobbied]

I dare say, a coal fired power plant is going to be a much bigger land foot print.... Land that you won't ever put back to it's original use... So why not just build a new plant there?

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

Decommissioning costs are enormous and they are always pushed on to the tax payer. But that's not even the problem.

The spent fuel is impossible, politically, to store safely. We've proven without a doubt that we cannot construct a safe storage facility. Not even in the most remote, burned out, shithole-middle-of-nowhere-useless-fucking-desert patch of Nevada. Fuel stays on site with no plan, effectively forever to the future.

Lawsuits, voter fear, NIMBYisim - All of these have real dollar costs.

You see, I trust nuclear power. Run properly it's perfectly safe. What I don't trust are people. If anything my short 35 years on this earth have taught me is the ONE thing you can count on is human greed and laziness. Fukashima was caused by regulatory capture, complacency, cost cutting, and plain old greed.

Renewables fail safely. Dead solar panels just sit there. At worst a wind tower falls over and smashes a barn or some trees.

Nuclear failure modes cost the public hundreds of billions.

Failure happens. Always.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Rockoon]

Capitalists like fast returns

Capitalists like the largest returns available at the time of deciding what to invest in.

The "speed" of the return is only of valid importance under the artificial restriction of not selling the appreciating asset before its fully matured.

For instance it takes over 10 years before the planting of pecan trees to the harvesting those pecans trees. It still makes financial sense to start pecan farms. The cost of starting such a farm is near the cost of the land, the value of a producing farm is much greater. The value of the developing but not producing yet farm goes up fairly linearly beyond a year or two in.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

"You see, I trust nuclear power. Run properly it's perfectly safe. What I don't trust are people...."

I trust Nuclear Power as well; I spent three decades on the Research side. (BTW, the DOE reportable damage estimate was $10K, not $50K, and the only time we went above that was a total failure in a Radiation Safety Chain.)
I even trust people. Well, most people. What I don't trust is when People give up any sense of personal responsibility, usually to a Corporation. (Yep, I'm looking at you Bechtel.) In those three decades in Research, I know of one person who was fired for gross Radiation Safety negligence, (Putting it mildly, he deliberately performed an unsafe experiment after he was explicitly told not to, and contaminated a Cold Room.), and even then, he got a job back shuffling papers. (Daddy was a Lawyer...)
Yet, in the "Accident Report", he wasn't named. In fact, to be named in such a Report, it's usually for going beyond the Call Of Duty, say for pulling somebody _Safely_ off a HV Power Supply, and even then, this is very rare.

It's a Herd Immunity. This is especially true in the US Corporate world, but it even exists in Academia and Research. Don't name names. For instance, we were bound by a written agreement of employment that we would never discuss our work, and any work accidents, with the real world- this was to be handled by the staff Lawyers and Public Relations.
This leads to a sense of sloppiness. With no personal responsibility, people get sloppy, and accidents happen.

As far as Commercial Nukes go, I could spend a few paragraphs on Price-Anderson, but you get the gist: Price Anderson indemnifies Commercial Nukes against really big boo-boos; the Government assumes the risk. Thus less personal responsibility.

One solution to this issue is to eliminate the main cause of personal irresponsibility- get rid of the Operators, Technicians, Program Managers... get rid of the whole lot, completely automate the Plants, and use Robots, who never fall asleep at a console at 3AM, for all hands-on tasks. The only humans man the Security Perimeter, which should be set a good distance from the Plant. Yet even then, PLCs can be hacked, and airplanes can be hijacked.
And this doesn't address the Design issues: Managers who authorize Short Cuts, and Engineers who design them. As long as profit is involved, cost/benefit analysis dictates Short Cuts. But even with Research Facilities, where there should be no profit, there are still annual budgets. (Putting such a Facility on a Ten-Year Budget would help tremendously, so that long-term solutions can be given their proper concern.)
And lastly, the Waste Issue. People still are needed to mine and refine the Uranium, (And Thorium won't be any better.), and People are needed again to do something about the Waste afterwards. (Uranium tends to be mined from very seismically stable areas, yet putting the crud back there is rarely considered.)
So, I too am Pro-Nuke; it can be a lot of fun. But Man just isn't ready for it, although we are a lot more ready for it than Fermi was.

Re: A good reason to replace old reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

The high cost is not a myth as they are large engineering projects. Hinckley point in the UK needed the government to offer double the going rate of wholesale electricity (now triple) and even then the CFO of EDF resigned over it, due to the implied threat to EDFs future. Large engineering projects are expensive and project management of them not generally sufficient to stop cost overruns.

This is not to say nuclear power is a bad thing but that is has financial challenges, namely high upfront cost, high cost of insurance absent government subsidy, decommissioning costs and uncertain value of energy produced which means it is proving hard to attract capital, which is a significant factor in low build rates. Perhaps an alternative approach is required.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[AmiMoJo]

Myth? The new Hinkley Point reactors in the UK are going to be insanely expensive, far exceeding the value of energy they generate. In fact, the government had to guarantee an extremely wholesale high price for the electricity just to convince the operator to actually build it, and they are still considering cancelling. Identical reactors in other European countries are already behind schedule and way over budget.

To give you an idea, the average strike price for electricity in the UK is about £50/MWh. This plant is guaranteed at least £92.50/MWh, rising with inflation. The plant itself is projected to cost around £25bn. It will be by far the most expensive electricity in the UK, and the deal has been described by financial think-tanks as "insane".

The usability of the land is hardly moot. With hydro you change the landscape but can at least do it in a way that creates an environment which can be used for other things or become a natural habitat. With nuclear sites... Well, current UK ones which started decommissioning in the late 80s/early 90s are looking at a 90 year timeframe before they are put back to a state where new stuff can be built on them. Part of it is the difficulty of removing the waste, part of it is just wanting to wait for half-lives etc. to make it safe enough to work on.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[AmiMoJo]

You can't just build a new reactor on the site. Removing the old one takes many decades at least, because it is high level waste. You can't just lift the old one out and drop a new one in, you have to replace all the plumbing (which is now contaminated) and buildings etc.

Do some research into how long it takes to decommission a nuclear plant. I mean really decommission, not just entomb it and leave it for decades to cool off, I mean to clear the land and put it back to a usable state where you could build a new reactor on it. Current projects for UK plants that shut down in the late 80s/early 90s are 90 years. I and almost everyone alive when they started will be dead before they can re-use that land.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[thegarbz]

The costs are too high

No they aren't. The costs associated with nuclear are purely imaginary costs caused by regulatory, legal and insurance overheads. This is why eastern countries are happy to continue investing in the technology. Many of these costs are already taken care of when upgrading an existing facility vs building a new one.

and it takes many decades to return the land to a usable state anyway.

Sunk costs. The best places for new reactors are on site with old ones.

The whole area is starting to look like a complete write-off.

All the more reason to upgrade the old crap.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[AmiMoJo]

The costs associated with nuclear are purely imaginary costs caused by regulatory, legal and insurance overheads.

Recent history suggests that forgoing regulation and comprehensive insurance is a bad idea.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Plumpaquatsch]

The high cost is a myth. A nuclear reactor produces so much energy in its life that the decommissioning costs are only a small fraction of the kWh sold on the market.

If the high decommissioning cost is a myth, why do the German NPP operators ask for billions of Euros for the decommissioning of their plants that ran far longer than originally planned?

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone please tell me why this is Offtopic? If you disagree with Vihai's statements, fine... but it is very much on topic.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

Decommissioning costs are enormous and they are always pushed on to the tax payer. But that's not even the problem.

Have a look at the extra taxes nuclear-plants have to pay because of the way they generate power... So yes, it's the tax-payers that pay for the decommissioning cost..

The spent fuel is impossible, politically, to store safely. We've proven without a doubt that we cannot construct a safe storage facility. Not even in the most remote, burned out, shithole-middle-of-nowhere-useless-fucking-desert patch of Nevada. Fuel stays on site with no plan, effectively forever to the future.

Well.. that's the thing... we have ways today where we could either refine the spent fuel and reuse it, but that's not permitted.. At least on any large scale.
We have other ways where we could reuse the spend fuel in other types of reactors that would require us to store it for 300 years instead of a few hundred thousands.. But the fear of nuclear has been pushed down peoples throats for so long that it makes it almost impossible to have a sane and fact-based discussion today.

There are completely failsafe reactors we can use today that could basically be dug into the ground with only two wires coming out of it.. They cannot fail in the sense of a melt-down...
Imagine if we would have tiny small reactors dug down beneath each switching-station in a country.. you would have it guarded.. If anyone would try to attack it they would have to push down thru 10-20 meters of dirt (yea, that's quite hard) and if one fails the fallout would be minimal compared to any big station..
One of those could put out a few megawatts at least.. You would have to dig down every 10-15 years or so to fill it up with a bit more fuel but that's about all the maintenance that would be required.. Or just make it capable of surviving for 300 years and just leave it there and dig down a new when the old one runs out..

Until we have solar/wind/hydro that can provide the world with enough power, at a cost where the worlds population can afford it, we are in the shithouse if we close down all the nuclear reactors we have. Imagine the amount of people that will die because of not being able to refridiage food/medicine or not be able to get access to clean drinking water etc.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[khallow]

You can't just build a new reactor on the site. Removing the old one takes many decades at least, because it is high level waste. You can't just lift the old one out and drop a new one in, you have to replace all the plumbing (which is now contaminated) and buildings etc.

And the obvious rebuttal is that you don't have to do anything of those things in order to build another reactor on the site. You can always move the reactor off to one side. Most plants have some clearance around them.

Or sure, you could just move the plumbing and other radioactive stuff off to the side and build the reactor where the old one was. We have millennia of experience with putting new buildings on the foundations of a previous building.

Do some research into how long it takes to decommission a nuclear plant. I mean really decommission, not just entomb it and leave it for decades to cool off, I mean to clear the land and put it back to a usable state where you could build a new reactor on it. Current projects for UK plants that shut down in the late 80s/early 90s are 90 years. I and almost everyone alive when they started will be dead before they can re-use that land.

We don't need to decommission a reactor, if we build another one on the site.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[AmiMoJo]

So why does this never, ever happen? Could it be that building a nuclear power plant and then decommissioning it is somewhat more complex than you assume? I mean, if it was that easy they would do it just to take advantage of the existing grid ties and land use permits etc, right?

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Eunuchswear]

The new Hinkley Point reactors in the UK are going to be insanely expensive, far exceeding the value of energy they generate.

Nope.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Eunuchswear]

So why does this never, ever happen?

It doesn't?

The last PWR built in the UK was Sizewell B. What do you think Sizewell A was?

The two EPRs planned are Hinkley point C. What do you think Hinkley point A and B were?

The EPR being build in France is Flamanvile 3. What do you think Flamanville 1 and 2 are?

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[khallow]

Could it be that building a nuclear power plant and then decommissioning it is somewhat more complex than you assume?

Then why am I advocating skipping the decommissioning step? I think unfortunately, that your comment about decommissioning nuclear reactors, "takes many decades at least" is on the mark. Thus, the obvious solution is to don't do that. It also means a lot of very costly hurdles are already overcome (as your mentioned examples of grid ties and land use permits).

Also, I see that Eunuchswear mentioned counterexamples to your assertion.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[AmiMoJo]

They are all near by, not on the same site. The old sites are either still running or being decommissioned for another 70+ years. You can't just lift the old reactor out and dump an new one on the same site.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[AmiMoJo]

If you don't decommission, what are you planning to do to make the reactor safe? Bury it under concrete or something like Chernobyl or possibly Fukushima if they decide they can't do any better?

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[Anonymous Coward]

It can take a while to make the land usable, sure - but most countries have extra land they aren't really using anyway. Not having *that particular piece* of land isn't necessarily a real problem. This is less true in the UK, but no power generation solution will be one-size-fits-all.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[khallow]

If you don't decommission, what are you planning to do to make the reactor safe?

What does safe mean here? It sounds to me like there is a ridiculous standard of safety being advocated here that can be best met by ignoring it, especially given that advocates like you are very careful not to give the nuclear industry a reasonable and cost-effective way to comply with those standards. I don't believe the safety issue is introduced in good faith and as a result, I don't believe one should comply with it.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[AmiMoJo]

Safe means that the land can be returned to general use with no special measures needed. So entombing is not acceptable, because the tomb needs to be monitored and damage avoided, and obviously can't be built on.

Re:A good reason to replace old reactors

[khallow]

Safe means that the land can be returned to general use with no special measures needed.

Exactly. And my point all along is that you don't need to even think about that standard of safety, if you continue to use the land for nuclear power. Then it is not going to be used for "general use" and we can use a variety of "special measures" indefinitely.

Re:Well....

[angel'o'sphere]

Healthy for animals that live 3 - 6 years, perhaps.
Healthy for life that lives longer: no.
Not even after 40 years.

Either it happens

[El_Muerte_TDS]

... or it doesn't.

So yeah, that's a 50% chance.

So

[Anonymous Coward]

Not like The Ukraine is going to notice another one. Matter of fact, let's do one on purpose so to remove all chance of one by 2050.

Logic! Heard of it? Now you have!

Nuclear under the Microscope

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the chances of an accident at a conventional plant. I bet they are higher than this. Typical liberal fear mongering. Nuclear power is the safest most environmentally friendly means of energy production currently available. Yet the liberals are afraid of it because they watched a movie in the 1970 by Jodie Foster.

Re:Nuclear under the Microscope

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet the liberals are afraid of it because they watched a movie in the 1970 by Jodie Foster.

I think you meant 1979, and Jane Fonda. But you were close, right?

Are you stupid because you're conservative? I think so.

Re: Nuclear under the Microscope

[Anonymous Coward]

First Jane Fonda started the Vietnam war, and now this? Thanks Obama!

But, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, why would anybody name another nuclear power plant Chernobyl? Isn't that just asking for trouble? /me did not RTFA!

how was that number derived?

[Lead Butthead]

did it involve a coin toss? throwing out a 50/50 is about as useful as a coin toss.

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[khallow]

I also like how the headline says by 2050 and they quote in the body of the summary one of researchers saying in the next 50 years which would make it by 2065.

I like those odds

[mattyj]

So, 50:50. Either it'll happen or it won't. That's some grand statisticizing right there.

there is a 95% chance...

[ooloorie]

There is a 95% chance that safety specialists just made up those numbers out of thin air.

"We're all going to die!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Morons From Outer Space Theatrical Trailer

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[bidule]

Maybe mdsolar became an anonymous coward?

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Experts" predict that there is a 50% chance that the year 2050 is 27 years away from the year 2016. Also, the world is ending in three minutes.

Re:Well....

[bobbied]

There are residents in the Chernobyl exclusion zone who have lived there largely undisturbed and unhurt since right after the accident.

But the problem with the zone is that nobody has fully mapped the hot spots, so walking around can be somewhat dangerous to one's long term health should you happen to step in the wrong place and these hot spots move around due to the wildlife, wind and such.

Fukashema (sp) has a similar situation, where the radioactive materials have been randomly scattered about and although they present on immediate danger in most places, long term exposure could be a problem. But again, the wildlife refuge idea is viable there too. There really isn't that much radiation out there, apart from a few hot spots that you need to stay away from.

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[c]

The article's own summary says it's a 50:50 chance of a "Three-Mile Island" (where no one was harmed). Or are we just talking an expensive incident? Or an actual meltdown?

I'm curious as to how this 50% compares against the odds of a major (possibly global-scale) conflict over energy resources. I'd certainly take a Chernobyl or Fukushima over nuclear war...

So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiation

[KonoWatakushi]

Radiation killed about 50 at Chernobyl, and none at Fukushima and Three Mile Island. Meanwhile, pollution from burning fossil fuels causes millions of premature deaths every year. Even with a meltdown every year, nuclear would be a vast improvement if it replaced burning of fossil fuels, and incidents are increasingly unlikely with modern reactors, should people let us build them. (If one is objective, nuclear would even reduce loss of life over installation and maintenance of wind and solar generators, and at far less cost.)

The truth is, radiation is typically harmless, and can even be used to improve health. The body has repair mechanisms which routinely deal with an enormously greater amount of chemical damage from oxygen and such. It takes a whole lot of radiation to have any negative health effects, and current regulatory limits are based on bad science funded by fossil fuel interests.

People have been deceived for more than half a century, and mainstream “environmental” organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of Earth, Sierra Club, NRDC, etc. continue the effort, often funded by those same interests. If you are genuinely concerned about the environment and climate change, look to ecological conservation groups and leading climate scientists, which uniformly support nuclear. It is the only option which is scalable to global needs and also has the smallest environmental footprint.

Learn more about radiation from Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information, or see the articles tagged LNT and Health Effects.

If you really want to see how bad it was...

[Grog6]

Read the IAEA report on the Chernobyl disaster.

It reads like bad comedy; operators trying to follow a test program while the reactor was in a completely unstable state.

The REAL kicker: The SCRAM command to shut down the reactor made it go "Prompt Critical" and explode.

No shit.

"As can be seen from the foregoing, the event which initiated the accident was the pressing of the EPS-5 button (SCRAM Button) when the RBMK-1000 reactor was operating at low power with a greater than permissible number of manual control rods withdrawn from the reactor. " pp67

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/p...

Scariest thing I've read this decade. :)

Re:If you really want to see how bad it was...

[Anonymous Coward]

The scariest thing about Chernobyl -- and this is coming from someone who studied nuclear engineering at the graduate level -- is that it was a RMBK reactor, which allows for a positive feedback loop. On a largeish scale, that's just an insane design as it means that the reactor has the potential to go critical unless there is active human intervention.

In contrast, just about every other reactor design has a built-in negative feedback mechanism of some kind. That is, while you can actively screw up the reactor -- slam the control rods full open and override the automatic emergency shutdown system for example -- and cause a problem, you can also more or less just walk away from the controls and the reactor will slowly shut down by itself after some hours or days with zero chance of a meltdown.

Re: If you really want to see how bad it was...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it had to fulfil both power generation and weapons manufacture purposes. The design allowed them to switch between them when they wanted. Most other power generation reactors are pretty terrible at weapons manufacturing

Re:If you really want to see how bad it was...

[Eunuchswear]

In contrast, just about every other reactor design has a built-in negative feedback mechanism of some kind. That is, while you can actively screw up the reactor -- slam the control rods full open and override the automatic emergency shutdown system for example -- and cause a problem, you can also more or less just walk away from the controls and the reactor will slowly shut down by itself after some hours or days with zero chance of a meltdown.

As Fukushima shows that happens not to be true.

Most currently running designs will shut down, but if the cooling is turned off most of them will still melt down due to decay heat.

Now, without massive destruction of surrounding infrastructure (like an enormous earthquake and tsunami) and near-total incompetence by the operator that is not likely to happen. But, as Fukishima shows, it can happen.

Re:Well....

[angel'o'sphere]

There are residents in the Chernobyl exclusion zone who have lived there largely undisturbed and unhurt since right after the accident.
In the 'exclusion zone': yes. Close to the original site: no.
And the farmers who live there breed exiting looking cattle, well, 15 - 35 years ago. I guess now it is better.

Known bias

[Badlight]

Benjamin Sovacool has a known anti-nuclear bias, and his topics range from economics to engineering and now to safety, none of which are areas in which he has any education or expertise.

There is a 75% chance runaway global warming will

[Anonymous Coward]

Before 2050 Because we did not build enough green energy capacity .... Like nuclear.

Including an "incident" causing $50,000 in damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Including events with such a low dollar cost is just silly. One transformer fire at a substation, a bucket truck being misused and flipping over, any number of run of the mill "incidents" have a cost of over $50,000 in damage. Heck, lose a small load on a crane during routine maintenance and you're out $50K. You can figure any long term power outage due to a good storm involves losses of over $50K.

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say there's a better than 50% chance of that.

Re: So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radia

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said

potassium iodide foods.

[Anonymous Coward]

People can live through it. The towns within .t miles of Fukishima have no casualties while towns far away like 10miles have thuyroid damages and birth defects. Sea vegetables once a week will work better than iodine pills from Alex Jones 1 week before disaster(ahhem! How do u know?)

Chernobyll already happened twice in America.

[Anonymous Coward]

World Trade center towers had tridiated water underneath them, 1400 automobiles around would start (fried efi) and cancer blamed on asbestos to over 75k people. Rewatch skilled techs after those demolitions dump resin on the rubbel sites!

Re:Chernobyll already happened twice in America.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you simple-minded or just not a native English speaker? Besides all the spelling errors, or the nonsense itself, you have some incomprehensible ideas there.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[drinkypoo]

psst uranium mining, I note you didn't mention that.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[by (1706743)]

To paraphrase the quote oft attributed to Churchill, "Nuclear energy is the most dangerous form of energy, except for all the others."

50% == I don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

50% chance of another Chernobyl
50% chance of not another Chernobyl

Read the comments attached to the article

[Applehu Akbar]

The commentary, by actual MIT people, thoroughly melt down this fake analysis.

100% chance of bullshit

[blindseer]

This "study" doesn't even appear to make any comparison to the loss of life and property from reduced electrical power output from taking these nuclear power plants off line or any comparison to the loss of life and property from producing the electricity from sources other than nuclear power. The reason they do not do this is obvious to anyone that has seen the death rates to energy produced for the energy sources in common use.

Nuclear power is the safest energy source we have available to us.

This is a bunch of fear mongering which serves only to make future deployment of nuclear power more expensive and therefore cause more deaths. Again, nuclear power is the safest form of energy we have and therefore anyone that opposes nuclear power is lobbying for more people to die.

Here's another thing, when it comes to our "carbon footprint" there is nothing that produces more energy with less carbon in the air than nuclear power except hydro. We've run out of rivers to dam up so if we want to even maintain the energy output we have now and not increase our carbon footprint then we need to build more nuclear power plants. If global warming is going to kill us all, and even assuming this "study" has even a grain of truth to it, then the answer is more nuclear power.

Anyone that claims man made global warming is a problem and opposes nuclear power is either completely ignorant or completely stupid.

Re:Well....

[fnj]

There are residents in the Chernobyl exclusion zone who have lived there largely undisturbed and unhurt since right after the accident.

In the 'exclusion zone': yes. Close to the original site: no.

Reactor #2 at the Chernobyl power plant continued operations from the day of the accident with reactor #4 until 1991. Reactor #1 operated until 1996. Reactor #3 operated until 2000. The people operating those reactors weren't just working in the "exclusion zone", nor even NEAR the site. They were ON the site. And no harm came to them.

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is also a 50% chance you will get hit by a car tomorrow.

1 in 100,000

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA management put the odds of loss of shuttle at 1 in 100,000.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[KonoWatakushi]

Uranium mining is in the noise of todays mining activities, and would remain so even if we stopped mining coal. It can also be extracted directly from seawater, and from rare earth mine tailings which also contain thorium. Nuclear fuel is so energy dense that you barely need any at all; the worlds entire yearly energy demand could be met with byproducts from a single small rare earth mine. The tremendous energy density also puts the cost of the fuel in the noise, and even seawater extraction wouldn't impact energy costs more than a fraction of a cent per kWh.

To mention something so insignificant, you are either ignorant or drinking the green kool-aid. A hell of a lot more mining is needed for wind turbines and solar panels, and neither are remotely environmentally friendly to produce in the quantities needed. Nor do renewables replace fossil fuels, because they are not reliable.

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, especially at the $50k level. A bad weld can cause $50k easily, like David Bussy reactor (SP?). That was much more expensive then just 50k. How about this, someone slips and gets a 50k workers comp settlement? Does that count? Morons.

No Thank You

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a nice game of chess?

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[AchilleTalon]

This article is total BS. For another Chernobyl to happen, we need nuclear reactors without any containement vessel and confinement for the reactor. How many of these still exist today and are operating?

Fucking optimist & fucking idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

It would surprise me if there wasn't another Chernobyl level accident in 50 years. There was hell of a shorter time between Fukoshima and Chernobyl. Assholes are going to fuck you in the name of money every time they get the chance; and even if they aren't given the chance they're creative enough to create one. I'm just going to consider myself lucky if I'm not in the area of the fallout.

Everything is 50-50 0/1 yes/no slashcunts

[Anonymous Coward]

How stupid of a story is this?

Re:Everything is 50-50 0/1 yes/no slashcunts

[Anonymous Coward]

moe or less stupid as you, cunt

Re:Well....

[Maxo-Texas]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

It is now well-documented that children and adolescents exposed to radioiodines from Chernobyl fallout have a sizeable dose-related increase in thyroid cancer, with risk greatest in those youngest at exposure and with a suggestion that deficiency in stable iodine may increase the risk. Data on thyroid cancer risks to other age groups are somewhat less definitive. In addition, there have been reported increases in incidence and mortality from non-thyroid cancers and non-cancer endpoints. Although some studies are difficult to interpret because of methodological limitations, recent investigations of Chernobyl clean-up workers (âoeliquidatorsâ) have provided evidence of increased risks of leukaemia and other hematological malignancies and of cataracts, and suggestions of an increase in risk of cardiovascular diseases, following low doses and low dose rates of radiation. ...
---
conclusion
Twenty-five years have passed since the Chernobyl accident led to exposure of millions of people in Europe. Studies of populations exposed have provided significant new information on radiation risks, particularly in relation to thyroid tumours following exposure to iodine isotopes. Recent studies among Chernobyl liquidators have also provided evidence of increases in the risk of leukaemia and other haematological malignancies and of cataracts, and suggestions of increases in the risk of cardiovascular diseases, following low doses and low dose rates of radiation.

Further careful follow-up of these populations, and the establishment and long-term support of life- span study cohorts, may continue to provide important information for the quantification of radiation risks and the protection of persons exposed to low doses of radiation.

The life of a nuclear reactor

[MrKaos]

Embrittlement of the reactor and key metal components from Neutron bombardment exposed to radiactive isotopes is the key factor that limits the lifespan of nuclear reactors. These are called "S" class facilities.

In the early phases of the facilities service life (roughly 10 years) is when basis design issues are mostly exposed and shaken out and stabilize for the bulk of the service life of a nuclear reactor facility. In the "old age" (40+ years) of the facility is when the embrittlement of the functional parts of the "S" class facilities makes them more prone to failure. I wonder if this study factors 'for-profit' institutions operating these older facilities by pushing them to their limits and ignoring or actively lobbying against safety improvements, as we saw from TEPCO. Looking at it for that perspective I think the likelyhood of a INES 7 type accident at somewhere like Indian Point or Palo Verde is higher than other plants who operate their processes with more discipline.

Of course the question is whether these utility companies operate these plants if the Price Anderson act wasn't there to take the brunt of the liability of an accident from them. Franly, I'd prefer legislation in place to position the board members of these companies and their families close to the, often very beautiful, places these plants are built. It might be an interesting way to ensure they feel the consequences of any safety related decisions they make and tip the odds in favour of preventing an accident from happening.

Re:The life of a nuclear reactor

[MrKaos]

It would seem it is not possible to have a reasoned conversation about the issues with nuclear power without being down modded. If we can even talk about the issues the the likely hood of an accident is closer to %100.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, smoking can actually be good for you. If only we could force you shills to eat your own dog food, but apparently that is illegal.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[Anonymous Coward]

I though you were about to write about the fear of the WI-FIs and the terror of the telecom services..

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm fairly pro-nuclear, I'm going to have to question your statement that Chernobyl only killed 50 by radiation and radioactive materials released, you'd have to count only deaths caused by acute radiation poisoning and very short-term fatal thyroid cancer. You're ignoring those who weren't outright killed but still suffered a significant loss of lifespan and those who suffered light-to-moderate loss of lifespan. Sure, it's hard to outright call that "killed" but it certainly counts as "premature deaths", which is what you accuse fossil fuels of (correctly).

Everything is 50:50 chance

[skaag]

Something either happens, or not. There's a 50:50 chance we will be discovered by aliens in the next 2 years (either it will happen, or it won't... it's a 50/50 chance).

Re:Everything is 50:50 chance

[Anonymous Coward]

way to completely and utterly fail at statistics.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[Anonymous Coward]

Using the flawed LNT hypothesis, the projected number can be inflated to about 4000 or so. While invalid, that should serve as a more than generous upper bound on the long-term effects of the incident, and changes none of the conclusions. The point is that radiation exposure is not nearly as bad as the fear-mongers would have us believe. Beyond those who died of acute radiation poisoning, perhaps some did see a small decrease in lifespan. Nothing is without cost.

Re:Well....

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, because they are indoors.

Cant be so hard to grasp.

And to shuttle from work to "home" they use special vehicles and cleaning locks.

Facepalm, how stupid people are is unbelievable.

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[Anonymous Coward]

I came to read this comment. Mdsolar lies about anything power related.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[Anonymous Coward]

The saving grace, so far, has been the relative remoteness of the disaster areas and favorable weather conditions. There are many more nuclear reactors in densely populated areas now, and the wind need not always blow out to sea, away from population centers. A disaster on the scale of Fukushima or Chernobyl can easily have millions of casualties, medium-term, and make the homes of many millions more uninhabitable. The economic cost of Fukushima is orders of magnitude below the worst case scenario.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[thegarbz]

Because it's not worth mentioning. We could shut down 4 major coal mines for every small uranium mine we open. Net win.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[drinkypoo]

To mention something so insignificant, you are either ignorant or drinking the green kool-aid.

Well, that's what nuclear playboys always say. They want to ignore groundwater contamination, just like frackers. The Navajo nation is still drinking groundwater contaminated by uranium mining. Rock waste from uranium mining is substantially more hazardous (and poorly managed) than the industry likes to claim, and runoff from that is hazardous as well.

See, every time humans get involved in something, they start trying to cut corners to maximize personal profit. And in practice, activities which could be relatively safe and clean become hazardous and toxic. That's why even geothermal has a poor record. Radioactives which come out of thermal vents collect on turbine blades and have to be washed away and disposed of. In the early days of Calpine geothermal, for example, they collected the slurry in drums and buried the drums in a field off Butts Canyon Road out of Middletown, CA. Then the drums leaked and a superfund site ensued. The only sign that anything went wrong there is a whole lot of cyclone fence and signs saying you can't come in because the government said so.

A hell of a lot more mining is needed for wind turbines

You can make wind turbines with no rare earth elements outside of what's used for alloying its metals.

and solar panels,

We have organics coming up now, which don't require rare earths at all. Solar panels don't require expensive decommissioning because they're not radioactive. Solar panels could repay their energy debt handily in the 1970s, and if we had started building them en masse then, we'd not need to have done as much mining subsequently because of the power we'd have saved... thus not needing high-toxicity activities like uranium mining.

Enjoy your glowing green kool-aid.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[MrKaos]

Uranium mining is in the noise of todays mining activities, and would remain so even if we stopped mining coal.

You have to crush 500tons of rock to extract 1kg of uranium. Acid leech mining dissolves rock and it is pumped to the surface. You choose between a highly energy intensive mining process that creates copious amount of water soluble radium that pollutes water tables or megalitres of radioactive sulfuric acid, which also pollutes water tables. Specifically what do you propose been done with these mine tailings?

It can also be extracted directly from seawater,

Which takes so much energy that it is pointless extracting it in the first place. Specifically which technology does this without using a lot of energy?

and from rare earth mine tailings which also contain thorium.

to power reactors make make a completely new waste stream based on thallium 233

Nuclear fuel is so energy dense that you barely need any at all;

nuclear plants only reach an efficiency of 0.3% so can never extract all of the energy from the uranium

the worlds entire yearly energy demand could be met with byproducts from a single small rare earth mine.

Re:Well....

[Drethon]

Yeah, it sucks that radiation leads to increased cancer rates. My biggest problem is I can never find numbers in these studies of how many more people are getting cancer, and if a "significant" increase is hundreds, thousands or doubling a 0.1% chance to 0.2%.

Alternatively, coal and oil power is believed to have contributed to the death of hundreds of thousands. Even renewables such as wind and solar are believed to have killed more than nuclear power: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

Re:Radionuclides are the problem, not radiation

[MrKaos]

You post casually bypasses the main issue of *radionuclides* being released into the environment from these accidents. pu-239 is fatal at doses of 1 microgram, an iron analogue when presented to a metabolism, is an inhalant in the form of plutonium oxide causing lung cancer and highly water soluble in the form of plutonium chloride and when absorbed in the body causes leukemia. There a plethora of other radionuclides released in these accidents.

You speak of radiation exposure as if it is the main issue. It is not. You speak of *external* radiation exposure as if it is the only thing possible. It is not. Internal radiation exposure from the radionuclides released from these plants occurs from bioconcentration of these radionuclides in the food chain. This progressively increase the likely hood of gestating cancer, passing on transgenic disease from genetic mutation that don't kill the person but damage their reproductive germ and statistical reductions in the birthrate of human beings from failed pregnancies as a long term and permanent consequence of these accidents.

and can even be used to improve health.

From the first paragraph of the article:might provide a useful treatment modality for certain neurodegenerative diseases. Not *can*, *might*. It's not a radiashun health spa where you get a triated water enema and come out feeling superb, it's a medical treatment that may work or it may not work.

If you are genuinely concerned about the environment and climate change, look to ecological conservation groups and leading climate scientists, which uniformly support nuclear.

Based on flawed information supplied to the IPCC by Vatenfal on the energetic returns of nuclear power whilst ignoring the peer reviewed study with contributions from major universities around the world, including CERN.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[Anonymous Coward]

Go for a swim in lake Karachy you fucking idiot. LNT is the model not a hypothesis you moron.

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to remind everyone that Three Mile Island released radiation into the atmosphere. the amount was equivalent to a single chest x-ray. Go home NIMBY, and get a job.

Price-Anderson

[mdsolar]

The US stands in line for the next catastrophe. Owing to the government's liability for loss of property and life through the Price-Anderson Act, during times of recession, the government could become insolvent should the accident occur in high property value areas. The very badly run Indian Point plant is an example.

California nuclear free

[mdsolar]

California will soon become nuclear free and all the power will be covered by renewables and efficency. You seem very misinformed.

Re:California nuclear free

[blindseer]

You have said nothing that contradicts what I have said. I did not say that nuclear cannot be replaced by unreliable energy sources, I said that doing so would be at a greater cost of life and property.

Too expensive

[mdsolar]

Even existing reactors can't compete with wind and solar without vast state subsidies. No point in raising electricity costs just to prop up a dying industry.

Re:So what? Radiophobia is the problem, not radiat

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Chernobyl was an experiment, not an accident.

What green company funded this?

[RogueWarrior65]

Makes you wonder what solar company funded this "research." Oh, wait, you're saying that only oil companies fund bogus research? Riiiiight.

Re:Well....

[Maxo-Texas]

Coal is actually pretty comparable to nuclear in terms of land permanently lost and has a higher number of deaths. Hundreds of square kilometers have been lost to coal seam fires, and 99% of coals put out a ton of mercury. There are laws which say coal should be as clean but they didn't go into affect until last year and compliance has a big grandfather time window (which may be further expanded under lobbying pressure).

But the half life of coal negative effects is much lower. Oil is too expensive to use to generate power and would be much more expensive if humans seriously tried to use it to generate power instead of coal or alternative energies.

Personally, I don't think humans and city scale nuclear reactors pair well. The humans always fuck it up. Fukishima was really due to cost cutting, not due to the tsunami. Humans always fuck it up because over time they either get cheap, or they get careless, or they do something actively stupid.

I do support smaller scale (5,000 houses) automatic nuclear power generators which are literally fool proof and do not rely on humans to operate as much.

Forbes is adwalled, but when I've read similar articles from other sites, they always did funny stuff to reach their conclusions.

I'm concerned about nano solar technology because its a new and not well understood form of pollution. We are putting a lot of nano-particles into our environment. It's new. It may be harmless, or it could be a serious problem

---

On topic with the article, we have a higher chance that aging (and already older tech) plants will have an issue. On the flip side, we have a lower chance with newer tech and fewer nuke plants in general.

Since the cold war waste was from nuclear plants

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the claim it's a bad argument including them in the statistic? Or was that proof you can't carry on a good argument without twisting the truth till it is unrecognizable?

Re:Well....

[AmiMoJo]

This. Idiots walk down the street in the exclusion zone around Fukushima with a dosimeter and proclaim it to be perfectly safe. Well, it's not too bad if you just go there now and then and walk around a bit. That's quite different to living there, repairing buildings there, having pets and children who play in the dirt there, trying to grow things in your garden there, being exposed when the wind gets up or rain dislodges soil there etc.

That's even assuming you could get enough people to go live there to form a viable community. A lot of the former residents have moved on with their lives, or died, or just don't want to go back because they are still suing TEPCO to get proper compensation for their losses.

Re:Well....

[Maxo-Texas]

Reading the study (which is pretty dense), it appears the extra thyroid cancers are in hundreds (but less than a thousand), extra cases of leukemia are maybe 30ish?, and general mortality is an average of 5 years lower.

I couldn't tease out the number of extra heart attacks or cataracts tho they were increased.

Given enough general health problems to lower average lifespan by 5 years for the affected populations (residents and cleanup workers), that's pretty significant.

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[hey!]

One of the features of "black swan" events is that after the fact they're rationalized to appear more predictable than they actually were. So attributing Chernobyl to "human stupidity" is an explanation that only seems to explain. The problem is it gives you exactly zero insight; bad decisions are a factor in every disaster that's ever occurred, and was present but for some reason inoperative in every situation where a disaster was averted. Saying a catastrophe was "caused by stupid human error" is like saying "inertia caused the car accident." That's trivially true, but not very useful. You have to study the specifics of how inertia operated in a particular accident if you want to understand it. Same goes for stupidity in tech disasters.

In both Fukushima and Chernobyl bureaucratic decision-making played a key role in the disaster. TEPCO was warned some years earlier that their planning figures for tsunamis were inaccurate. They initiated a response which generated a few (obviously) ineffectual changes. In other words they fulfilled the imperative of being seen to respond to the information, without taking the threat implied by the information seriously.

One of the remarkable features of the Fukushima accident was how little the engineers understood about the state of the reactor as the event was unfolding. This raises a fundamental epistemological limitation: experience only prepares you for things you have experienced. In situations where you're thrust into the unknown, practical knowledge is of limited value. They may even be a hindrance. In TEPCO's experience monster tsuamis, while a theoretical possibility, didn't actually happen. They trusted their personal experience more than they trusted science.

The Chernnobyl operators found themselves in that same situation, operating a poisoned reactor with nearly all of its control rods removed. Stupid, yes, but the real story is how they got to the point. One key element is a piece of information unknown to operators: a design flaw in the reactor's SCRAM system which could cause a transient spike during an emergency shutdown. The disaster occurred during a safety test; night operator Alexander Akimov objected to running the tests on the poisoned reactor but was threatened with firing if the test did not proceed. He proceeded, ready to SCRAM the unstable reactor the instant it showed signs of exiting its poisoned state. He was unaware that when that happened it would already be too late to SCRAM the reactor.

So the particular forms of human stupidity involved in these events were: (1) not wanting to look bad (Dyaltov), (2) being satisfied with not looking bad (TEPCO), (3) being willing to take chances in order not to lose your job (Akimov), (4) trusting your experience to see you through the unexpected (everyone). If you could eliminate these behaviors the world would become a much better place, but you can't.

Why not use thorium?

[walterbyrd]

My understanding is: thorium is much safer.

Re:Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

And even if you take Chernobyl and Fukushima together they still have lower amount of death's or shortened lifespans than coal does per year.

The anti-nuclear movement is about fear, not facts.

Start with the worst things.. I would love if we could use solar/hydro-electric/fusion/wind for everything... but until we are there, with a sane amount of cost, it's just bad the way the power-industry is forced away from nuclear...

Cheap power saves tons of life too, probably more lives than the amount that would be killed if every single nuclear power-plant would have a chernobyl-similar meltdown.. (excluding the amount of people dying due to loss of power)..

Cheap power allows gives us:
- Cheap access to clean water.
- Refrigeration of food and medicine.
- Production of lots of material.
- Cheap transportation with severely reduced pollution via electric vehicles. (cars, buses, trams, subway and so on)
- Heating or cooling of homes with severely reduced pollution.
and more...

If you want to slam down on nuclear don't just ban it... put more strict regulations about it in terms of allowed amounts of waste products, lifespan of waste-products, safety regulations and so on... Today they just tax it to death.

Dragon king events

[Anonymous Coward]

How do Dragon Kings mate with Black Swans? Is this just a new naming convention or are they intrinsically different phenomena?

Re:Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

Please show me ONE death that is directly linked to the radiation in Fukushima from people living in the area.

The alternative they have is coal-plants for the foreseeable future... (10+ years at least)
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

Re:Well....

[Rakarra]

And even if you take Chernobyl and Fukushima together they still have lower amount of death's or shortened lifespans than coal does per year. The anti-nuclear movement is about fear, not facts.

I believe in nuclear energy generation and wish we had more of it. That said, most people who are "anti-nuclear-power" are not pro-coal and do not recommend replacing nuclear power with coal plants. They're usually the "solar/wind/tidal" groups.

The Odds

[dcw3]

They didn't post the math or reasoning behind their estimate, so there's no way to critique it. Click-bait. Nothing to see here...move along.

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[Anonymous Coward]

The article's own summary says it's a 50:50 chance of a "Three-Mile Island" (where no one was harmed). Or are we just talking an expensive incident? Or an actual meltdown?

I'm curious as to how this 50% compares against the odds of a major (possibly global-scale) conflict over energy resources. I'd certainly take a Chernobyl or Fukushima over nuclear war...

it's simple. there are two options. either Something Bad Happens or it does not. I think that's where they got their 50% LOL

Re:Old Article & Three-Mile, Fukushima, or Che

[Rakarra]

It sounds like they're saying "another Chernobyl" like some people say we'll have "another 9/11." They mean, general nuclear accident. And then set the bar for "accident" so low that couldn't possibly be wrong. 50% is pessimistic, by their standards I'd say 90%+

Oh yeah, because everyone knows mine accidents

[PJ6]

and anything else "nuclear-related" that isn't at a power plant should be included in any statistical analysis to predict the probability of the next Chernobyl.

Each accident must have occurred during the generation, transmission, or distribution of nuclear energy. That includes accidents at mines, during transportation by truck or pipeline, or at an enrichment facility, a manufacturing plant, and so on.

Sub-critical reactors is what is needed.

[quax]

Why do we keep trying to tame a potential run-away chain reaction if there are perfectly good alternatives?

Re:Well....

[Maxo-Texas]

Just say alternative energy plus battery plus conservation and efficiency.

I'm skeptical of nuclear generation run by a corporation and maintained by human operators.

Even governments cut corners and rationalize like hell eventually tho.

Humans rationalize until things fail.

I would like to see one thorium reactor actually reducing the volume of waste. But where?

Re:Well....

[Eunuchswear]

conclusion -- they should have received iodine tablets quickly, rather than too late.