I wan't. But coolant line leaks don't bring a plant down, the main primary system piping stayed intact. They are designed to handle coolant leaks, which some might describe as a 'rupture' but coolant leaks, from valves and fittings and a few other places, happen occasionally during normal operation . An article that completely ignores the size of the leak, and fails to mention the ability for injection and cooling systems that were operational after the quake, is not one you should put any faith into. But you will simply because you want to.
None of that explains why the article author fails to understand basic fundamental nuclear safety features... but whatever you want to believe I suppose you will.
I provided a scientific source which is well documented. You can deny it if you like,or provide a credible rebuttal to that analysis. But you'd have to do a lot of work to disprove many years of scientific study which provide the basis. A lot more than pointing to an article full of hyperbole.
A flash flood or other water event, not just a tsunami was a 100% guarantee of meltdown..
No. Plants are designed to withstand normal flooding events, which are very different than a tsunami. They have a design flood level, and they should sited where that flood level cannot be exceeded. But floods do not suddenly deluge a plant and rip apart it's external auxiliaries. A nuclear plant,. when hit by a design basis flooding event, is expected to operate with zero safety problems. That means every safety system operates, and single failure functionality as well as redundancy and separation are maintained.
Every plant has a list of design basis events it can handle. That includes floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and more. These plants DO NOT have a tsunami event as a design basis event.
So, siting a plant that is not designed to be hit by a tsunami in a place where it can be hit by one is not acceptable to me, with or without an elevated backup power source.
So, you'd rather have a meltdown because the cost of a "real fix" is too high for approval, but the "patch" that works shouldn't be done. I live in reality. If $5000 would save $5T, I wouldn't choose a $5T loss.
Having elevated tanks would NOT have guaranteed safety.
There is no "guarantee of safety", only "more" and "less" safe, and a cost to each.
Not placing it in that location would have guaranteed safety.
That's BANANAs. The only "guarantee" of safety is to Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. You are an anti-nuclear Luddite, not a proponent of safety.
No, you completely misunderstand. I would rather not have plant located where it can be hit by a tsunami to begin with. I certainly would NOT be ok with locating a plant that is not designed to be hit by one in a place where it can be, even if it had an elevated tank and generator. Now, make it tsunami proof, where ALL safety systems are designed to withstand that event, and I might reconsider, but this plant was not designed that way.
As the voltages and currents get higher, the cost of safety increases significantly. Not only initial manufacturing cost, but also inspection and maintenance requirement increases.
It will be interesting to see what they design. I suspect they haven't fully done that yet, and could run in to challenges.
But is easy to just check CO2 output and see that France is much lower.
Not difficult with 25% less population:D
My god you are ignorant. That chart just shows total German imports and exports, it doesn't even have the total power used in France at all, that is a German export chart.
As for CO2 output, there is the thing called 'per capita'. Have you ever heard of it? Germany is almost twice as high as France in per capita CO2 emissions.
https://www.google.com/search?...
And if you want to just look at electrical generation, you can do it 'per TWH';
"In 2016, Germany generated 545 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity at an average rate of approximately 560 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh. By contrast, France generated 530 TWh of electricity at an average rate of approximately 58 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh. In terms of carbon emissions from electricity, this means that Germany emitted almost exactly ten times as much as France -- over 300 million metric tonnes."
Your problem is you just say stuff you want to be true without even checking to see if it is true. Why did you know now this about Germany and France?. It is common knowledge. Are you still going to ignore this well established fact and make your false claims?
Angel upthread had a link to an Independent piece that argues the plant was doomed, with or without the tsunami. TEPCO was so half-assed with their maintenance that the earthquake took out the cooling pipes, making meltdown inevitable.
Well, that is an obvious hit piece, you can tell by the over-use of adjectives placed to make everything sound like 'doom'. You just found an article that takes anecdotal statements and couples with ignorance. But even that article does not contend the melt down would have occured without the tsunami. There are many nuclear plants in Japan and they all did fine through the earthquake. There are 8 units at Fukushima, all the same basic design. 4 that got hit by tsunami had problems, the 4 right next to them that had the same earthquake but did not get hit by tsunami all safely shut down with no significant problems.
Nuclear plants have redundant safety features, even if one is out of service or alignment, there are others to accomplish the job. This article acts like one system not working would itself be a big problem, very wrong.
There are a million articles out there that claim to 'expose the truth'. But they make claims without providing the basis. Find any nuclear safety expert and you'll get a different, but accurate story. But I suppose you want to believe this one is true and therefore, despite no corroborating stories independently put forth by people with actual knowledge of reactor safety, you apparently have already decided to believe it.
All those nice diseases that make your life hell but do not kill you, that long-term exposure to radiation causes, are conveniently swept under the carpet.
No, they are not swept under the rug. Please show us exactly which ones you are talking about. The 2013 UNSCEAR report specifically addresses risk of radiation associated illnesses of all know kinds. Science shows these estimates are valid and conservative. You can deny the science, just like a climate change denier, or you can simply throw out statements that are not supported by science if you like, but that is just a contribution to ignorance.
Capacity factors are very important, that is why the industry uses them and will continue to use them. I know you want to wish them away because of the lower numbers associated with wind and solar. But you can't just decide on your own and dictate they are not important.
There is no rule a plant must be run at its full CF, I agree, and many are not. But CF signifies not only full capability, but also the availability of that resource, and availability is of utmost importance to grid reliability and management.
Its nice you brought up France, who has essentially proven that nuclear is a central element to low CO2 emissions. They kick Germany's ass every day, and have been doing so for quite some time. France is the leader in large industrialized countries when it comes to clean air electrical production. They also displace claims that nuclear cannot vary output.
$5000 could have saved billions in Japan.
The fuel tank and generator were on the ground level. If they had put them on the roof, there wouldn't have been a meltdown.
seawall, millions. Designing a safer reactor billions. Putting the generator on the roof of an earthquake hardened building? Cheap.
It was a full on case of stupid, it wasn't an issue of money, it was a case of hubris. The design has a 100% chance of meltdown in a flood. That wasn't cost. That was pure stupid.
You completely misunderstand the fundamentals of nuclear safety. Having elevated tanks would NOT have guaranteed safety. Patches are not acceptable in nuclear.
The plant should never have been located where it could be hit by a tsunami as it was never designed to withstand a tsunami. Not placing it in that location would have guaranteed safety.
Many of the people who want to go back are elderly and in poor health anyway. Some have young children. Those groups will be worse affected, so you are not going to convince them to return just by looking at averages. They want to know the effect on themselves and their children.
In any case, so many people have moved on now that the communities they go back to won't be viable. They need to rebuild the population by attracting younger people who will want to start families, in an area that is still contaminated.
Before someone says it, the initial evacuation could not have been avoided. There was no way to know how bad the situation was going to get.
Its also important to note that there are still many people displaced from their homes due to the earthquake and tsunami alone;
It could be argued that people in the Fukushima zone are at reduced risk of dying or suffering from cancer. Why? Because they are all screened much more carefully and often than the general population. Finding cancer early is the greatest single factor in successful treatment. It increases cure and survival odds tremendously, whereas the increased risk of actually getting cancer from living in these areas is extremely low.
The strongest radioactive material released had a half-life of only eight days, so while a two-week temporary evacuation probably made sense, permanently uprooting the people in the outer perimeter was bad for them, overall.
The half life is irrelevant.
The most dangerous material around Chernobyl is Plutonium.
If it gets into your organism, you most certainly die due to it.
Benzene will certainly kill you as well, Why are you OK with walking through benzene clouds? Or did you not even know you do?
Bright red FUD flags fly when people ignore actual exposure levels and risk. Will the actual levels present pose a significant risk? The answer is no, just like benzene.
This part is the really, really important thing. One of the things that's been found out is that a lot of people will take a shorter but distinctly nicer life--and things like 'being a refugee' or 'stress & strain of being evacuated' have their own costs in life expectancy, too. Having a rough idea what your actual benefits and costs are help you make a good decision...and at the very least, it might be a Good Idea to not evacuate when the cost in life expectancy is more than that of staying put.
The good news is you don't have to reduce life expectancy if you choose to live in the Fukushima zone. You might live longer where you want to be, as long as you are not stressed due to unnecessary fear of very low dose exposure.
J-value method supported relocation when nine months' or more life expectancy would be lost due to radiation exposure by remaining
The Life Expectancy is a statistical quantity. Reducing the average life expectancy by 8 months doesn't mean there won't be data outliers, or individuals affected with undue severity, E.G. Individuals whom will die much earlier because of the incident.
This is the problem with using life expectancy or other statistical summary averages ---- SOME people still die, and nobody wants that person to be themselves or one of their friends or loved ones; that might be 1 death out of 1000, but it STILL MATTERS to that person and to their community.
Statistics is the only way the evaluations can be performed. For Fukushima, the UNSCEAR 2013 concluded essentially no statistical loss in life expectancy and no deaths. Since then, studies have shown that actual exposures were lower than used int he report. The methodology in that report is the same as used to estimate Chernobyl health impacts, and studies have shown a much smaller health impact than estimated. So the science is clearly good and conservative.
Every life matters, but that is not how we evaluate overall safety. We evaluated it in terms of risk. We have statistics on car deaths, and use that to evaluate the risks and also improve safety. Every one of those deaths still matters, of course.
As for radiation zones, the very low risk should not surprise anybody who has attempted to objectively asses the information available. Of course, if one reads headlines, then they might not get it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wan't. But coolant line leaks don't bring a plant down, the main primary system piping stayed intact. They are designed to handle coolant leaks, which some might describe as a 'rupture' but coolant leaks, from valves and fittings and a few other places, happen occasionally during normal operation . An article that completely ignores the size of the leak, and fails to mention the ability for injection and cooling systems that were operational after the quake, is not one you should put any faith into. But you will simply because you want to.
None of that explains why the article author fails to understand basic fundamental nuclear safety features... but whatever you want to believe I suppose you will.
I provided a scientific source which is well documented. You can deny it if you like ,or provide a credible rebuttal to that analysis. But you'd have to do a lot of work to disprove many years of scientific study which provide the basis. A lot more than pointing to an article full of hyperbole.
A flash flood or other water event, not just a tsunami was a 100% guarantee of meltdown. .
No. Plants are designed to withstand normal flooding events, which are very different than a tsunami. They have a design flood level, and they should sited where that flood level cannot be exceeded. But floods do not suddenly deluge a plant and rip apart it's external auxiliaries. A nuclear plant,. when hit by a design basis flooding event, is expected to operate with zero safety problems. That means every safety system operates, and single failure functionality as well as redundancy and separation are maintained.
Every plant has a list of design basis events it can handle. That includes floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and more. These plants DO NOT have a tsunami event as a design basis event.
So, siting a plant that is not designed to be hit by a tsunami in a place where it can be hit by one is not acceptable to me, with or without an elevated backup power source.
So, you'd rather have a meltdown because the cost of a "real fix" is too high for approval, but the "patch" that works shouldn't be done. I live in reality. If $5000 would save $5T, I wouldn't choose a $5T loss.
Having elevated tanks would NOT have guaranteed safety.
There is no "guarantee of safety", only "more" and "less" safe, and a cost to each.
Not placing it in that location would have guaranteed safety.
That's BANANAs. The only "guarantee" of safety is to Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. You are an anti-nuclear Luddite, not a proponent of safety.
No, you completely misunderstand. I would rather not have plant located where it can be hit by a tsunami to begin with. I certainly would NOT be ok with locating a plant that is not designed to be hit by one in a place where it can be, even if it had an elevated tank and generator. Now, make it tsunami proof, where ALL safety systems are designed to withstand that event, and I might reconsider, but this plant was not designed that way.
Vin numbers are no indication of actual production.
Its an indication of the productivity of the guy who registers VIN numbers. That guy is killing it!
As the voltages and currents get higher, the cost of safety increases significantly. Not only initial manufacturing cost, but also inspection and maintenance requirement increases.
It will be interesting to see what they design. I suspect they haven't fully done that yet, and could run in to challenges.
France is a leading EXPORTER of electricity in Europe;
https://www.statista.com/stati...
https://www.google.com/url?sa=...
You can google the deadly dose of anything easily.
But you avoid the thing that matters, which is the amount you would actually be exposed to.
France does not import 10% of its power from Germany. Yes it does: https://www.energy-charts.de/e...
But is easy to just check CO2 output and see that France is much lower. Not difficult with 25% less population :D
My god you are ignorant. That chart just shows total German imports and exports, it doesn't even have the total power used in France at all, that is a German export chart.
As for CO2 output, there is the thing called 'per capita'. Have you ever heard of it? Germany is almost twice as high as France in per capita CO2 emissions. https://www.google.com/search?...
And if you want to just look at electrical generation, you can do it 'per TWH';
"In 2016, Germany generated 545 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity at an average rate of approximately 560 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh. By contrast, France generated 530 TWh of electricity at an average rate of approximately 58 grams of carbon dioxide emitted per kWh. In terms of carbon emissions from electricity, this means that Germany emitted almost exactly ten times as much as France -- over 300 million metric tonnes."
http://environmentalprogress.o...
Your problem is you just say stuff you want to be true without even checking to see if it is true. Why did you know now this about Germany and France?. It is common knowledge. Are you still going to ignore this well established fact and make your false claims?
Angel upthread had a link to an Independent piece that argues the plant was doomed, with or without the tsunami. TEPCO was so half-assed with their maintenance that the earthquake took out the cooling pipes, making meltdown inevitable.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
Well, that is an obvious hit piece, you can tell by the over-use of adjectives placed to make everything sound like 'doom'. You just found an article that takes anecdotal statements and couples with ignorance. But even that article does not contend the melt down would have occured without the tsunami. There are many nuclear plants in Japan and they all did fine through the earthquake. There are 8 units at Fukushima, all the same basic design. 4 that got hit by tsunami had problems, the 4 right next to them that had the same earthquake but did not get hit by tsunami all safely shut down with no significant problems.
Nuclear plants have redundant safety features, even if one is out of service or alignment, there are others to accomplish the job. This article acts like one system not working would itself be a big problem, very wrong.
There are a million articles out there that claim to 'expose the truth'. But they make claims without providing the basis. Find any nuclear safety expert and you'll get a different, but accurate story. But I suppose you want to believe this one is true and therefore, despite no corroborating stories independently put forth by people with actual knowledge of reactor safety, you apparently have already decided to believe it.
So, you cannot even provide one example. When backed into a corner, insult... right?
I'm supposed to look up a list and guess which ones you are talking about? No, you made the assertion, please back it up with even one example.
So, now you are concerned about dose and levels? Why not in your previous post?
France does not import 10% of its power from Germany. But is easy to just check CO2 output and see that France is much lower.
File this one under the 'get a life' category.
All those nice diseases that make your life hell but do not kill you, that long-term exposure to radiation causes, are conveniently swept under the carpet.
No, they are not swept under the rug. Please show us exactly which ones you are talking about. The 2013 UNSCEAR report specifically addresses risk of radiation associated illnesses of all know kinds. Science shows these estimates are valid and conservative. You can deny the science, just like a climate change denier, or you can simply throw out statements that are not supported by science if you like, but that is just a contribution to ignorance.
Capacity factors are very important, that is why the industry uses them and will continue to use them. I know you want to wish them away because of the lower numbers associated with wind and solar. But you can't just decide on your own and dictate they are not important.
There is no rule a plant must be run at its full CF, I agree, and many are not. But CF signifies not only full capability, but also the availability of that resource, and availability is of utmost importance to grid reliability and management.
Its nice you brought up France, who has essentially proven that nuclear is a central element to low CO2 emissions. They kick Germany's ass every day, and have been doing so for quite some time. France is the leader in large industrialized countries when it comes to clean air electrical production. They also displace claims that nuclear cannot vary output.
$5000 could have saved billions in Japan. The fuel tank and generator were on the ground level. If they had put them on the roof, there wouldn't have been a meltdown. seawall, millions. Designing a safer reactor billions. Putting the generator on the roof of an earthquake hardened building? Cheap. It was a full on case of stupid, it wasn't an issue of money, it was a case of hubris. The design has a 100% chance of meltdown in a flood. That wasn't cost. That was pure stupid.
You completely misunderstand the fundamentals of nuclear safety. Having elevated tanks would NOT have guaranteed safety. Patches are not acceptable in nuclear.
The plant should never have been located where it could be hit by a tsunami as it was never designed to withstand a tsunami. Not placing it in that location would have guaranteed safety.
Many of the people who want to go back are elderly and in poor health anyway. Some have young children. Those groups will be worse affected, so you are not going to convince them to return just by looking at averages. They want to know the effect on themselves and their children.
In any case, so many people have moved on now that the communities they go back to won't be viable. They need to rebuild the population by attracting younger people who will want to start families, in an area that is still contaminated.
Before someone says it, the initial evacuation could not have been avoided. There was no way to know how bad the situation was going to get.
Its also important to note that there are still many people displaced from their homes due to the earthquake and tsunami alone;
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
and many people died in those evacuations as well;
https://reliefweb.int/report/j...
Ten years after Katrina, there were still thousands who did not have permanent homes, and many homes that will never be re-built.
It could be argued that people in the Fukushima zone are at reduced risk of dying or suffering from cancer. Why? Because they are all screened much more carefully and often than the general population. Finding cancer early is the greatest single factor in successful treatment. It increases cure and survival odds tremendously, whereas the increased risk of actually getting cancer from living in these areas is extremely low.
The strongest radioactive material released had a half-life of only eight days, so while a two-week temporary evacuation probably made sense, permanently uprooting the people in the outer perimeter was bad for them, overall. The half life is irrelevant. The most dangerous material around Chernobyl is Plutonium. If it gets into your organism, you most certainly die due to it.
Benzene will certainly kill you as well, Why are you OK with walking through benzene clouds? Or did you not even know you do?
Bright red FUD flags fly when people ignore actual exposure levels and risk. Will the actual levels present pose a significant risk? The answer is no, just like benzene.
This part is the really, really important thing. One of the things that's been found out is that a lot of people will take a shorter but distinctly nicer life--and things like 'being a refugee' or 'stress & strain of being evacuated' have their own costs in life expectancy, too. Having a rough idea what your actual benefits and costs are help you make a good decision...and at the very least, it might be a Good Idea to not evacuate when the cost in life expectancy is more than that of staying put.
The good news is you don't have to reduce life expectancy if you choose to live in the Fukushima zone. You might live longer where you want to be, as long as you are not stressed due to unnecessary fear of very low dose exposure.
^"Statistics is"... uhgggg. embarrassed.
J-value method supported relocation when nine months' or more life expectancy would be lost due to radiation exposure by remaining
The Life Expectancy is a statistical quantity. Reducing the average life expectancy by 8 months doesn't mean there won't be data outliers, or individuals affected with undue severity, E.G. Individuals whom will die much earlier because of the incident.
This is the problem with using life expectancy or other statistical summary averages ---- SOME people still die, and nobody wants that person to be themselves or one of their friends or loved ones; that might be 1 death out of 1000, but it STILL MATTERS to that person and to their community.
Statistics is the only way the evaluations can be performed. For Fukushima, the UNSCEAR 2013 concluded essentially no statistical loss in life expectancy and no deaths. Since then, studies have shown that actual exposures were lower than used int he report. The methodology in that report is the same as used to estimate Chernobyl health impacts, and studies have shown a much smaller health impact than estimated. So the science is clearly good and conservative.
Every life matters, but that is not how we evaluate overall safety. We evaluated it in terms of risk. We have statistics on car deaths, and use that to evaluate the risks and also improve safety. Every one of those deaths still matters, of course.
As for radiation zones, the very low risk should not surprise anybody who has attempted to objectively asses the information available. Of course, if one reads headlines, then they might not get it.