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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.
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.
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.
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.
Healthy for animals that live 3 - 6 years, perhaps.
Healthy for life that lives longer: no.
Not even after 40 years.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
Maybe mdsolar became an anonymous coward?
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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...
Log in or piss off.
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.
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. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
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.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I'd say there's a better than 50% chance of that.
The commentary, by actual MIT people, thoroughly melt down this fake analysis.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
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.
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. ...
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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.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.