Fukushima
podniesinski.pl
podniesinski.pl
I think Scott Alexander put it best. Before starting Slate Star Codex, he had this to say about Fukushima and nuclear power[1]:
> You know what kills more people per year than nuclear plants?
> Everything.
...
> When you hit a nuclear plant with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded, then immediately follow that with a twenty foot high tsunami, and then it explodes, it still kills fewer people than an average coal plant does every single year when everything goes perfectly.
Nuclear power is far from perfect, but it is the safest energy technology in existence. Curtailing it creates more suffering and death, but in a diffuse way that can't be photographed or humanized.
It's only relevant if you weigh two options against each other. So comparing coal to nuclear is kind of valid, except that coal is not the only alternative to nuclear power. Also, if you really want to nitpick, then you'd also have to count the lives that could have been saved with the money that now goes into cleaning up Fukushima, and so on and so on.
Tsunami deaths are not an alternative to radiation deaths, so the comparison is bullshit.
Edit: I would like to reply to your comments, but HN doesn't let me post more comments atm. Fwiw, I don't think you are correct in claiming nobody campaigns against coal power. For a recent example, look at Elon Musks presentation of their battery. Also, remember global warming? I seem to remember a lot of articles about that, which tend to mention fossil fuels as culprits.
It is also true that
> When you hit a nuclear plant with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded, then immediately follow that with a twenty foot high tsunami, and then it explodes, it still kills fewer people than an average coal plant does every single year when everything goes perfectly.
And yet, we don't hear people screaming to shut down coal power plants nationwide. We don't hear this, despite the fact that they are demonstrably more dangerous than nuclear power plants.
This is one of the reasons people are irked by folks who try to use Fukishima to claim that nuclear power generation is super-dangerous-mmkay.
I'm not going address your tsunami-deaths vs. radiation-deaths comment. A close and careful re-reading of ggreer's comment should help you to understand why.
But of course, you got the nukes so you needn't bother with paying for your share of the climate change damages.
Coal has a massive human cost in human health that makes it absurdly expensive overall.
Personally, I would like to see and end to coal and nuclear power.
But the nuclear power plant takes up to 2 days to startup. It's not sustainable for the daily life where consumption change every hour.
That's why there is the need for more agile power plant, where fuel, gas, and coal are suitable. Gas being the most agile but the less efficient, fuel and coal being used as the middle between gas and nuclear, depending of the price of each resource.
This is an engineering constraint before anything else.
Last I checked, the majority of the US's power comes from coal-fired power plants. If there was the political will and public understanding, we could likely replace pretty much all of that with nuclear plants, reserving coal-fired, or oil-fired (or pumped-storage hydro, or flywheel storage, or...) plants to meet peak power demands.
The European power grid is very tight and well-meshed, this is why we can let our nuclear power plant and sell electricity to Switzerland, Germany or Netherlands or buy it.
I guess it's not as well interconnected in the US, so that states can't easily lend power which disable the use of nuclear power plant for many states ?
I've -very recently- heard people making the claim that Texas has its own grid, but that's news to me. Maybe the situation in Texas is that they have all the power gen capacity that they need within the state, and are also hooked into the national grid. shrug
> I know heavy infrastructure like these often have a sound design respectively to their constraints (which can be absurd).
Anti-nuke hysteria is toxic to sound planning and design. :(
It would makes sense.
> Obviously, throwing power across the whole damn continent is far less efficient than just throwing it across a state.
For now. With the future high-temperature supra-conductive cabling we will be able to do wonders of efficiency on large distance.
East, West and Texas.
Sure, the whole process of storing electricity is lossy. Thermodynamics guarantees it. But the point isn't to try and store enough generation capacity to meet our demand. You just need enough storage capacity to deal with the peaks.
There is of course the argument of "pumped storage isn't practical for meeting all of our peaking demands". Of course it isn't. Neither is nuclear suitable for meeting all of our baseline demands. They are both just tools available.
/me puts on pedant hat and mad engineer jacket:
Are you sure about this? The US is huge and has an enormous amount of uninhabited space. If we covered -say- the north-western quarter of Nevada in the best batteries available today, would that cover base and peaking power during slack production time for -say- the surrounding states?
/me removes pedant hat
(Do bear in mind that I feel both that anti-nuke hysteria is hugely damaging to the planning and deployment of new nuclear power plants in the US, and that it's fairly clear that of the currently available non-hydroelectric base-load generation tech, nuclear power is the only good option. [Though, solar power beamed down from orbit is a really intriguing idea.])
But if you're really convinced this problem is unsolvable, lets just do this: we'll generate enough power (with fission, or whatever you want) to meet peak demand all the time. As long as we're near the coast there is a convenient way to get rid of all that surplus energy: desalination plants. I can think of a few areas that would jump at this idea, like California. Even if you wind up with too much freshwater, just start dumping it back into the ocean. The salt is generally worthless and is dumped back into the ocean. This will actually help offset the fact that the oceans are desalinating due to the ice caps melting.
Electricity prices will go up as a result of this, but you'll be subsidizing the fact that the grid is now greener as a result.
The surplus could be used to pump water up damns or charge batteries. Or even to just pull co2 out of the air to compensate for car emissions.
It could provide very cheap night power for electric car owners. Worst case we could just waste the energy.
Once you accept that co2 emissions are an existential threat to the world, small inefficiencies are a small cost.
Stopping to 0% is not needed in normal load variation, thanks to toaster usage patterns.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromerzeugung#/media/File:Ene...
Nuclear plants are really good base-load plants. I guess that you can design a national power grid that's supplied largely by renewables, but I suspect that it's very hard and not cheap.
That also describes nuclear power.
2) As I understand it, the hard part of nuclear power isn't the engineering and construction; that's a solved problem. The hard part is fighting pervasive, irrational anti-nuclear-power sentiment.
Of course, one could argue that overly strict regulations (which may only exist because of public concerns) are the reason for these problems. But the reason for the safety of the existing reactors are these strict regulations, so I think loosening these rules is not a good idea.
So, the engineering and construction of the power plant is a solved problem. The political problem of what to do with the fission products is -sadly- not a solved problem in the US.
> All new plants have construction delays and cost overruns.
Cost overruns are -sadly- a symptom of our not-infrequently-nuts-as-shit federal bidding process. Construction delays are a symptom of our failure to enact a system similar to some other countries where -after a lengthy plan-scrutinization and public comment period- approved public works projects become law and are immune to construction delays due to public outrage, outcry, legal challenge, or general meddling.
None of that is unique to fission power plan construction. :)
I think you're confused. He means delays due to engineering/construction issues, not political issues. If you are claiming these do not exist, then you are out to lunch and not talking seriously.
Furthermore, politics is a factor in nuclear safety. Consider that the Fukushima plant life was extended beyond its advisable lifespan. This was almost certainly because the idea looked like the cheaper one at the time, since shutting down a nuclear plant is a lengthy and expensive process. Keeping it running is politically a very tempting option, and such human factors will dominate safety considerations long after anything has been "solved".
I'm not. ju-st is implying either that we don't know how to build power plant sized fission reactors, that we've never built and operated one successfully and safely for decades, or both.
All projects in the US have delays and cost overruns. I addressed this in my reply to his comment. That doesn't mean that the design and construction of the thing being constructed isn't a solved problem.
> Consider that the Fukushima plant life was extended beyond its ["advisable"] lifespan.
And yet:
> When you hit a nuclear plant with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded, then immediately follow that with a twenty foot high tsunami, and then it explodes, it still kills fewer people than an average coal plant does every single year when everything goes perfectly. [0]
Nuclear power is less dangerous than even solar power, hydroelectric power, or wind power!
> Rooftop solar power has a per terawatt death rate ten times worse than nuclear power because of - I kid you not - people falling off roofs when installing the panel. Hydroelectric power has a worse fatality rate because of dams bursting and flooding people. Even wind power has a worse fatality per terawatt rate - seventy three people have died in windmill related accidents. [0]
Are you accounting for very-low-probability catastrophic scenarios? People are notoriously bad at that.
Is this the study that took all roof-related deaths as solar-panel-related?
Can you seriously not tell the difference between the danger of centuries-long contamination and waste that is dangerous for thousands of years, vs the very regular, understandable, and limited liability of everyday accidents?
Are you a part of the nuclear lobby?
Do you like to waste money?
Because ju-st stated "I think the engineering and construction [of fission reactors] is not a solved problem" [0]. This is untrue. We have well-tested fission reactor designs and know how to put them together. This is a solved problem.
> Is this the study that took all roof-related deaths as solar-panel-related?
I can't parse this. Would you be so kind as to restate the question? :)
I'm not sure why the fact that a nuclear plant (that's been -as you say- running past its optimal design life) that
* Got hit with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded
* Then got hit immediately after by a twenty foot high tsunami
* Then exploded
* Then melted down
kills fewer people than a single average coal-fired power plant [1] kills every year as a part of normal operation, fails to significantly increase the cancer risk of the majority of on-site containment workers, and fails to create centuries-long contamination [2] fails to make you question your assumptions about the failure modes of these power generation devices.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10259794
[1] According to http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_04_01.html , there were 300 such coal plants in the US in 2013. :)
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/04/fukushima-rice_n_64... Four-and-a-half years is far less than 100 or 200 or 500. :)
Is this the study that took all roof-related deaths as solar-panel-related = Is this the study that assumed that all roof falls were due to installation of solar panels
> Then exploded Then melted down
Um, am I supposed to exclude nuclear explosions from the list of risks of a nuclear reactor?
Not sure why you keep talking about coal. You think I want coal?
I don't know what study that is but it doesn't appear to be this one. Scott Alexander's blog post links to [0], which takes a completely reasonable approach to calculating the number of deaths due to solar panel installation. Search for "Falls are the leading cause of fatalities in the construction industry." and read on from there.
> Designing reactors is not the problem. Running them safely and building and decommissioning them efficiently is.
There have been two accidents that caused serious damage of any kind in nuclear power generation's 61 year history, [1] Fukushima and Chernobyl. As I mentioned before, Fukushima was hit by the fifth-largest earthquake ever recorded, and a twenty-foot tsunami, and has managed to only maybe kill two people (those guys died of blood loss, rather than radiation poisoning), and might contribute to ~150 cancer deaths as the years go by. This puts Fukushima's worst-case death rate at ~3.75 deaths per year.
What's more, -as I linked upthread- the area is now producing food that's 100% safe to eat. We're a substantial way down the road to recovering from the second largest disaster in nuclear power's history and it only took four years.
An absurdly pessimistic estimate of all deaths and potential deaths due to increased cancer risk related to fission power plant operation over the past 61 years puts the number at ~4,500. Even though this is a silly and inappropriate metric, that's ~73 deaths per year. If we look at deaths in just the US, choking on one's own food is an order of magnitude more hazardous than that.
> ...am I supposed to exclude nuclear explosions from the list of risks of a nuclear reactor?
Yes.
No power generation reactor has ever undergone a nuclear explosion. No currently operating power generation reactor, nor any such reactor that would be approved for construction can undergo a nuclear explosion. What's more, modern reactor designs (that is, reactor designs a fair bit newer than those at Fukushima) fail-safe in any conditions, short of deliberate sabotage by super-strong, radiation-proof superheroes that are able to enter the reactor vessel while it's in operation and intelligently tamper with the fuel rods contained within.
Not even Chernobyl underwent a nuclear explosion. [2] The explosion at Chernobyl was its steam piping exploding due to overpressure. The Chernobyl reactor was housed in an unhardened structure [4] that was more suited to storing goods and foodstuffs than containing fires and explosions. The steam explosion wrecked the containment structure, allowing the smoke from the flaming irradiated carbon control rods to escape into the surrounding countryside.
> You think I want coal?
I -charitably- think that you want safe power generation. I don't see why you're spending so much time and effort on combating something that has -worst case- over 61 years killed 15% of the the people power generation with coal-fired plants kills just in the US every single year.
Fight the big fights first: Decommission fossil-fuel-powered power plants. Dramatically increase the standards for hydroelectric dam design, construction, and maintenance. Institute programs that ensure that all workers who work at dangerously high elevations are properly secured against falls. Design and deploy helper bots to recognize and deliver aid to those who are choking on their own food.
Once all that's done, move on to shutting down something that's less hazardous than crossing the road or eating one's dinner.
[0] http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener...
[1] This is the first commercial power generation fission reactor. It ran from mid 1954 until mid 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obninsk_Nuclear_Power_Plant
[2] Even though a undergraduate-level physics student can design a bomb capable of undergoing a nuclear explosion, it requires deliberate effort to design and precise engineering to make such a thing. [3] You cannot turn a fission reactor into a nuclear bomb, unless you remove its fuel rods and use those to make a bomb. But then, we're talking about fission reactor safety, not the general safety of fissile materials.
[3] Note that a bomb that undergoes a nuclear explosion is very different from a "dirty bomb". A dirty bomb is made by wrapping conventional explosives with radioactive material. The explosives are used to spread the material around as far as is possible. No nuclear explosion takes place.
[4] This was widely regarded as a bad idea at the time. No power generation reactor in operation today is housed in an unhardened structure.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_168.shtml
And I should say that Sustainable Energy is the best book on this topic you can find and that it's free online.
All of the other alternatives cause more deaths. All of them. Dam disasters have been mentioned several times. Wind requires people working on high towers (and sometimes falling off). Solar electric uses extremely nasty semiconductor processes, and requires that people climb on roofs. Passive solar -- roofs again. Oil production and distribution is dangerous. Natural gas production and distribution is dangerous. Coal production and distribution is horrific (though not nearly as bad as it once was, it's still pretty bad).
Nuclear power has the lowest death rate per kWh generated of any energy production method known. By far.
The author doesn't take a political stance on Nuclear Power. He's just documenting the contamination zone. He talks briefly about how the disaster could have been avoided if the plant was designed better. He gives factual and statistical information about how the residents don't want to return there.
This is a primary source that offers an first-hand account of the Fukushima disaster and it's aftermath. The author is an authority on Fukushima contamination zone because he's been there and seen it with his own eyes, and has chosen to share that with us.
Just because Arkadiusz Podniesińki doesn't straight out say "I support continued investment in nuclear power" doesn't necessarily mean he's against investment in nuclear power.
I think it's counter-productive to lambast an article like this because it doesn't fit into how you perceive the world. I think it's important to have an open mind and to be able to listen to what other people have to say.
We should be encouraging people to make more pieces like this. I know I'm going to be sharing this article.
"Silence, lack of cries, laughter, tears and only the wind answers... Have we learnt anything since then?"
I would say the framing of that question makes his stance pretty clear.
For example, it's entirely possible he's talking about not building active reactors in lieu of passive ones...
it means the same thing as ham-fisted, more or less.
I'd say his stance is pretty nuanced and more to do with the care taken by people when designing and operating nuclear technology than being anti nuclear technology.
edit - also, if you design for tsunami, the two-punch scenario is your design brief.
Well, yes and no:
"TEPCO, that operated the station, had been warned their seawall was insufficient to withstand a powerful tsunami, but the seawall height was not raised in response." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...
I agree with your general sentiment, but I would say that humans are the biggest threat in nuclear power.
"...I could assess the effects of the power station failure and understand the scale of the tragedy, especially the tragedy of the evacuated residents, in a better way. This was a way of drawing my own conclusions without being influenced by any media sensation, government propaganda, or nuclear lobbyists who are trying to play down the effects of the disaster..."
Some say that coal is not the only alternative and it can be processed in a safer manner, but this is wishful thinking. Renewable sources involve a costly manufacturing process that is not necessarily green [2] and there is still no good, scalable solution for a cloudy, not-windy day. And don't get me started on hydro power and how we have at best no idea about the long-term environment impact of it. Then add to it the way politics works and that dirty coal works just fine for your common Joe, as long as it's burned elsewhere.
Nuclear power scale well, can be safe when done properly, and if nothing literally explodes is the cleanest option out there. Compare the victims of coal mining accidents alone with those of nuclear disasters [3] - and those do not include the air pollution victims.
[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-r...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emis...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disaster...
However, if there is an accident, then you are talking orders of magnitude more radiation in a nuclear accident. http://www.cejournal.net/?p=410
See the editor's note in the original Scientific American article. It simply confirms the statements made by CEJournal.
You seem to suggest that the fact that Fukushima was not adequately prepared for this tsunami was human failure, presumably because they should have expected such a tsunami to occur.
If this is the case, then you can just as well argue that it was human failure that the towns in the affected areas flooded because of the tsunami. After all, if they expected such a tsunami to occur they could/should have built higher levees.
The way I see it, the deaths resulting from the Fukushima accident were just as much (or as little) caused by human failure as most of the other deaths related to the tsunami.
For your information, in France where we use nuclear energy a lot, we look for the most catastrophic events of the last 100 years to see how we protect our infrastructure.
The Japanese looked for the last 50, but there were a tsunami of similar height 85 years ago.
Also the local authority of nuclear security has made a few reports were they recommended to increase the height of the seawalls. Several times. Never followed.
And last but not least, the accident could have been prevented, but has been badly handled. With Japanese hiding information, not cooperating with trained international nuclear-firefighters, and minimizing the scale of the incident until the last minute. This is the biggest mistake of all, compromising lives, resources, ocean and earth...
How is it not a human failure ?
What is interesting is that there was actually a city that raised the sea walls to 16 meters in the area. The mayor of that city was actually sent to jail because it was a scam to siphon money to his brother in law who was in construction. I don't remember the details because it was on a TV program that I watched about a year ago, but unfortunately the mayor in question died a couple of years before the tsunami and never lived to see that his actions actually saved the city.
Speaking of the seawall height, there were, indeed, studies done that showed that under certain circumstances 15-18 meter high tsunamis could be generated in that area. This was disregarded. "Why", you ask.
Let me explain. I live by the sea in Japan. I can go to the sea side and climb up on the sea wall. It is 5 meters above sea level. I can walk along it all practically all the way to Tokyo (200 km away). The only places where it doesn't exist is where there are natural cliffs (which are not as prevalent as you might imagine). Every little stream that empties into the ocean has a 5 meter high metal sea gate that can be closed in the event of a tsunami. Where I live there is one at least every km or so.
The sea walls in Japan are already a miracle of engineering. You want to make them 20m high? Around the entire country? This is an insane notion.
To be honest, I will take the risk. I don't want to live in a jail where the only place I can see the ocean is from on top of a mountain.
I live in Sagara, Shizuoka (now merged with Makinohara). It is the most dangerous place in Japan to live for earthquakes because of the imminent Tokai earthquake (50 years overdue, unless it actually happened in WWII when the place was already destroyed and nobody had the ability to measure the big earthquake that happened then). 5% of the population is likely to die by all predictions.
Which means 95% will live. Terrible tragedy, but not worse than surrounding yourself in a 20m high jail IMHO.
Now, there were many human failures regarding the Fukushima disaster (like not having the correct connectors to power the pumps externally). Sea walls is not one of them.
Do a google search for "tetrapod japan images" to see what the beaches around here already look like. The Japanese government is not trying to avoid money on reducing the damage of tsunami. It seems like there should be a simple solution, but there isn't.
I am not a nuclear engineer and I don't have enough background to really say what the answer is. My guess is that they are set up right next to the sea so that they can do exactly what they did in Fukushima -- pump sea water into the reactor.
Naturally higher ground is actually hard to find near the sea (because the mountains are usually set back by about a kilometre from the sea). Also, if you perch yourself on a cliff next to the sea, then you are at a more serious risk of landslides during the many 6-7 magnitude earthquakes we have in Japan each year. With artificially higher ground, I suspect you would be at even more risk.
The other main reason for not putting a nuclear reactor on high ground is that in the event of a containment breach, the contaminated water will run downhill (in indescriminate directions). The placement in low ground next to the ocean may be the best place, environmentally, in the case of a disaster.
Again, I'm only guessing, but I'm sure if you ask someone who is trained in the field they can give you better answers.
I'm hoping that Japan will transition away from nuclear reactors in the middle term. There is enough geothermal potential to provide base load (though protecting the environment with all the earthquakes we have here is not trivial in that case either). Since Fukushima, the amount of solar panels being installed in my area is insane, so I'm hopeful that things will improve over the next 50 years or so.
(Having said all that, Hamaoka power plant, which is just down the road from me, is perched up on top of a cliff overlooking the sea ;-) ).
To be honest, I have often wondered how the powerplant survived at all. I guess it was high enough up and that only the generators got clobbered, but I haven't looked into it in detail.
And then start ignoring them when it proves to expensive to consider them all. Or extend the lifetime of the plant beyond what is advisable, because shutting down a nuclear plant takes a long time and is as expensive as running one, but you don't get power out of it, so those in charge are very tempted to extend, extend, extend... like Fukushima.
The problem at Fukushima wasn't a short-term loss of coolant; it was the long-term lack of backup cooling after the tsunami hit (by which point the reactor had already been shut down for about 45 minutes), because of poor siting of the backup generators and switchgear. The operators couldn't do anything about that, no matter what they did.
Poor placement of backup systems is critical to process continuity, but in case of BWR mostly irrelevant to actual nuclear safety as long as you are willing to just write off the reactor (as you should) in case of major accident.
I'm not sure the last part is true; as I understand it, there was a significant risk of a containment breach if decay heat removal was insufficient--not from the reactor cores themselves, but from the spent fuel pools.
I agree with you, though, that any attempt to save the reactor itself was doomed to failure once the tsunami hit and the backup cooling was taken out, so any actions taken toward that end were misguided.
While I am not an expert,- this is evident from what I read about on the Fukushima topic in the past written by other investigators. From what I remember, the lost cooling capacity caused by overwhelmed backup system could have been prevented if the rushing water could not reach it. I think it was GE and whichever other participating bodies there at the time that made the engineering and budgeting decisions to design it that way. In an earthquake prone zone, with danger of tsunamis no less.
Thanks to Arkadiusz for posting what is an actual list of facts as they are today, not what is filtered by layers of communication and media relation.
1) They don't factor in the value of "background" material and over-emphasize the foreground.
2) They feel that in a "natural" state, they are in control of their fate (Azimov had much to say on this one, and the ending of "I, Robot" is quite illuminating).
Fukushima did not go as well as it hypothetically could. And yes, the nuclear contamination is a disaster.
But let's look at what happened because Fukushima was there:
- electricity was supplied to drive the devices that informed the public about the earthquake risk and how to escape it.
- electricity was generated (prior to the loss of the plant's capacity) that drove the infrastructure that people relied upon to escape the tsunami wave
I think that the question of how the Fukushima prefecture would have fared sans plant is a reasonable question. Because the absence of the dangerous technologies we rely upon is not a state of safety; it's a state of nature, and we build devices to escape the pure state of nature because we know by experience it's inherently somewhat hostile to human life.
Future plants on coastlines should be built with the lessons learned from Fukushima's failure-mode in mind. Saying Fukushima itself was a failure is actually a larger step than it appears. How many lives were saved prior to and leading up to the tsunami by the power the plant generated?
But fire and explosions we are much more familiar, even comfortable, with as causes of death and injury than creepy, invisible, insidious radiation.
Fukushima was a flea bite by comparison.
Fear of nuclear energy is irrational.
all of those are so silent, so invisible and kill or hurt so many more people.
The reason this will be discussed 10 years from now is because there will still be people actively affected 10 years from now. And probably just papers from Tohoku anyway.
And finally, the reason you don't hear issues from China being discussed all that often is because of their national policy and attitudes.
The game theory strategists realised that any use of nuclear weapons would either escalate, or end up in a massive defeat. You can start with a tactical nuke wiping out troops, it will escalate to larger nukes wiping out ships, and eventually you're dropping very large nukes on population centers.
Mutually Assured Destruction was the only solution. (Or peace, but let's be realistic).
The Russians may have gotten away with MAD, without any need for propaganda, but the US is a democracy. To convince the population that MAD was acceptable, they had to create a situation in which any use of nuclear weapons such a horrible crime that it warranted the complete obliteration of the country that dealt the first blow.
In order to make nuclear war (even limited, tactical use) a horrible crime, they made a very big deal out of the effects. (Yes, it's not nice to wipe out battleships and troop formations, but not unprecedented in a war). Which meant they emphasised how bad radiation and fallout can be.
Also, radiation is just naturally a bit spooky, as are many carcinogens (especially ones you don't choose to expose yourself to). The fact that they might kill you 30 years after the event doesn't sit well with a lot of people.
On that measure Solar power is more dangerous than nuclear given how many people die falling off roofs while installing or maintaining solar panels.
"The World Health Organization study in 2005 indicated that 50 people died to that point as a direct result of Chernobyl. 4000 people may eventually die earlier as a result of Chernobyl, but those deaths would be more than 20 years after the fact and the cause and effect becomes more tenuous."
So he uses 50 deaths for his calculations.
"1/6th of the 9 million roofing job accidents would be about 50 deaths from installing 1.5 million roofs if other countries had similar to US safety. The amount of roof installations is increasing as a percentage. 4 TWh from roofs PV. So 12.5 deaths per TWh from solar roof installations. Assuming 15 years as the average functional life or time until major maintenance or upgrade is required. The average yearly deaths from rooftop solar is 0.83/TWh."
How did I miss that! Incredible.
Where are these areas? Can you name a few of them?
" in addition to that we have to store the waste from these "safe" plants for few millennia"
Nope. After a couple of hundred years it's no more radioactive than the ore from which it came.
Long half-life = less radioactive. By definition.
"The time frame in question when dealing with radioactive waste ranges from 10,000 to 1,000,000 years" [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#The_Exclusi...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Long_term_ma...
"The time frame in question when dealing with radioactive waste ranges from 10,000 to 1,000,000 years"
As I noted below, a long half-life implies less radiation, by definition. "Infinite half-life" = "not radioactive at all".
Anyone who tries to use a long half-life as a scare tactic is either lacking in knowledge or selling something.
The source given in the Wiki article is Time: Disasters that Shook the World. Not exactly a scholarly work. It is also the apparent source of this falsehood in the Wiki article: "Even today, radiation levels are so high that the workers responsible for rebuilding the sarcophagus are only allowed to work five hours a day for one month before taking 15 days of rest." According to the article on the exclusion zone itself[1] and the source for said article[2], "More than 3,000 workers manage the Zone, living in Chernobyl town during 4-day and 15-day shifts." Furthermore, the article on the Reactor 4 sarcophagus contains a picture[3] of those same workers less than 200m from Reactor 4 with no protective gear. If radiation levels in the zone were that high they would be fully geared up.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone#Popul... [2] http://www.afterchernobyl.com/ [3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Chernoby...
That's if we believe the official accounts, who have been found lying on several occasions on this very matter.
>For every tragedy created by Fukushima, there are over a hundred created by the earthquake itself.
So? You can't prevent an earthquake (at best you can just build more resilient houses), but you can always not build nuclear reactors.
>You know what kills more people per year than nuclear plants? Everything.
Same goes for lots of things which we nethertheless don't tolerate. Like serial killers.
Sea level rise will last thousands.
The destruction of aquifers in central California -- when too much water is pumped out, the porous layers compress, and will no longer hold water in the future -- I don't even know if there's a process by which that will heal.
The loss of diversity of ocean and land life, you're probably looking at millions of years for new speciation to fill the emptied niches.
Ocean acidification, also another long wait.
Yes, freedom will do that to people: get them to go wherever they want, take pictures of whatever they want and focus on whatever topic they want in their own web page.
> Yet coverage is warped in the opposite direction.
Some guy's blog with travel pictures isn't "coverage". Journalistic standards do not apply.
He probably went elsewhere in Japan too and took other pictures. Those are off topic for the web page which is about the Fukushima site. Maybe he has other pages about other topics (in Japan or elsewhere).
The Fukushima disaster is not going away anytime soon. About 100,000 people lost everything, no rebuilding in sight. Former house owners are still living in containers.
Radioactive water is entering the environment since then. In 30 years, maybe someone will compare cancer statistics in that geographic area before and after the disaster. I doubt that figure of 150 deaths will hold then.
So it's perfectly normal to cover the Fukushima event as an ongoing disaster today. The earthquake and the tsunami are history. Nothing absurd about that.
Why?
The Tōhoku earthquake & tsunami killed close to 20,000 people. The author completely ignored those victims.
Saying it is the safest energy technology in existence is a dangerous lie. Solar is safer. Wind is safer. Even natural gas is safer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Diet_of_Japan_Fukushi...
Here's the main part: The nuclear incident "cannot be regarded as a natural disaster," the NAIIC panel's chairman, Tokyo University professor emeritus Kiyoshi Kurokawa, wrote in the inquiry report. "It was a profoundly man-made disaster -- that could and should have been foreseen and prevented. And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response."[3] "Governments, regulatory authorities and Tokyo Electric Power [TEPCO] lacked a sense of responsibility to protect people's lives and society," the Diet's Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission said. "They effectively betrayed the nation's right to be safe from nuclear accidents. Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly 'man-made'," it said.[4]
The nuclear incident was the result of poor earthquake-safety planning and faulty post-tsunami communication.[10] As a result of collusion between the facility's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), regulators and the Japanese government the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant unfolded as a "man-made disaster".[6] The report attributed the cause of the failings to Japan's culture of "reflexive obedience", noted that there was no separation between atomic regulation and promotion and described a Japan in which nuclear power became "an unstoppable force, immune to scrutiny by civil society."[6] TEPCO, regulators and the government "failed to correctly develop the most basic safety requirements -- such as assessing the probability of damage, preparing for containing collateral damage from such a disaster, and developing evacuation plans," the NAIIC said. According to the report the lack of training and knowledge of the TEPCO workers at the facility reduced the effectiveness of the response to the situation at a critical time following the quake and tsunami. As the crisis escalated, TEPCO, the regulators, government agencies and the prime minister's office were ineffective in "preventing or limiting the consequential damage" at Fukushima Daiichi.
It's always easy to say that with hindsight. Remind me, how frequent are Magnitude 9 earthquakes resulting in massive Tsunami?
Of course you can plan for everything, but there's always something that occurs you did not think of. The good thing is, we learn from previous mistakes and plan better accordingly next time.
> Have we learnt anything since then?
Nice punchline to finish your article, nihilist-like, but completely nonsensical. Of course we have learnt a lot since Chernobyl, and designed subsequent plants to be much more safe based on what happened there.
Everything about that situation was terrible: the badly design reactor, the laughably-bad "safety feature" try wanted to use as a workaround, the untrained operators that were ordered to run the test, and the Soviet politics that caused the foolish rush to complete the test. All of these factors "caused" the disaster. The combination of these failures created a situation that was far more dangerous than a single design problem or human error.
Unfortunately the anti-nuclear movement won and we are unable to build those safe subsequent plants because of political pressures.
Half of nuclear reactors in the US, and likely the world, are over 30 years old.[1] They are licensed for 40 years [2], but can apply for a 20 year extension [2]. The last new reactor came online in 1996, and the next one is likely to come online this year.
The Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986, 29 years ago. It will be at least another 10 years, 30 being likelier, before all those things we learned become entirely useful.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/15/news/economy/nuclear_plants_...
But I'm ignoring Hanlon's Razor, of course.
The RBMC design was always known to be an absolutely terrible idea because it's use of graphite as a moderator that required active cooling, creating an inherently unsafe positive void coefficient[1].
In fact, this was such a problem that there was concern before the disaster that the ~60 seconds the emergency diesel pumps would require before they could pump enough coolant would not be fast enough to protect the reactor if the main electric pumps failed. The "test" that was being conducted at the time of the disaster (and was the direct cause of the reactor going prompt-critical) was a shockingly foolish attempt to let the momentum of the electrical turbines (without any input steam) continue to power the pumps and keep the coolant flowing for a few seconds to fill that gap in time while the diesel pumps got up to speed[1].
Chernobyl was never a sane design, and no other power plant design - before or after - has such a blatant disregard for safety. Unfortunately, Soviet politics and the desire to keep their nuclear weapons program secret kept these problems from reaching the people with the power to do anything about it.
> designed subsequent plants to be much more safe
Absolutely. We had safer designs decades ago (and even better ideas[2] today), but upgrading to these safer designs has been hindered at every step by radiophobic activists and "not in my backyard" politics. So we're stuck with minor revisions (if any) to reactors designs from the 50s-70s.
If the general public viewed the computer industry like they perceive the nuclear industry, the average person would know vaguely that the discovery of the transistor was probably very useful, while being concerned that computers took up far too much space and burned out vacuum tubes far to often.
There are still countries investing in nuclear energy, like China, and I suppose these new reactors are made to the latest norms of safety.
They are, the Chinese are buying reactors like the AP1000 which is quite possibly the safest production-level certified reactor ever designed by humanity (and no I'm not a Westinghouse employee, I've just had a nuke "interest" for about thirty years).
Its almost comical in some sad ways... I've read reasonable predictions that in a decade the entire Chinese national "fleet" will have a total aggregate incident rate for an entire country below some individual antique American reactors. Absolutely tragic.
I'm surprised that the author still calls nuclear energy dangerous, especially since he comes from the same country I do. Coal did much more damage to us, and not having a single nuclear power plant in the whole country is really damaging to our environment.
I leave the judgement up to you, just wanted to point out some confirmation bias in your convictions.
There is no such assumption in that post. It's just a comparison of the the content of the article to a relevant example from personal experience.
I suppose the GP is implicitly taking into the account following facts:
- there are no other energy sources that are a) green, and b) can scale up fast enough to replace fossil fuels for base load;
- we're running out of fossil fuels;
- there is no "option to use less energy", not under capitalism and probably not even within human nauture - that is, unless you're suddenly capable of solving coordination problems on a global scale (i.e. you're a god).
It's really frustrating. We have a very good way to generate tons of energy, that's clean, safe and scalable, and we're not using it because people's perceptions of safety and danger are completely backwards (and politicians listen to that).
And that point itself is irrelevant anyway. I too recommend watching that TED video[0] 'pdkl95 linked. The first world can try and reduce their energy consumption all they want, while there's the remaining 2/3 of the population that is industrializing itself right now, who will need more energy for things like transportation and healthcare and washing machines and food production and entertainment, and that need will offset whatever we can save.
And while we the first worlders have privilege of worrying about climate change - after a hot meal and a hot shower, dressed up in clean clothes that were washed and dried by machines - most of the world won't care. They want their hot food and hot showers and washing machines now, to have time to go to school and to read books to their children. They will seek power sources they can get.
All this makes current anti-nuclear advocacy outright dangerous to survival of technological civilization[1]. We should be pushing nuclear for baseline and renewables on top for peak loads, and slowly phasing-out coal altogether (and maybe pouring some more money into fusion research as well). We should be doing it right now, gaining more experience with building and maintaining safe nuclear plants, so that maybe developing countries could even skip coal altogether and go straight for nuclear+solar. But instead, we got a lot of people irrationally afraid of nuclear power, thus endangering their own survival.
RE going to another country - I live in Poland, so I do have a perspective on how to live on less energy than an average American, though we still use a lot of power here.
[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...
[1] I initially wanted to write 'mankind', but humans are a resilient species and will no doubt survive even total civilizational collapse. Yes, there will be a world of humans. But it won't be a world any of us would like to live in. I like my pizza, showers, Emacs and an air-conditioned office, thank you very much.
Afaik China for example is trying to actively manage the population growth/consumption problem, and sometimes they managed to introduce some environment friendly things that took other countries decades (like making filters in car exhausts mandatory, making plastic bags illegal, and so on). Not that China is a model of environmentalism, just saying that it's not a given that third world countries have to take the same route to modern living as US+Europe.
As for why would anybody save energy: it doesn't always have to equate less convenience. For example, even if you gave me the biggest possible car, with some magic CO2-neutral power source and what not, I would still not like commuting. So a solution that involves less commuting could both save energy and be more convenient (for example cool new houses could be build that make it more attractive to live in the city - in fact less cars would make living in the city a lot more attractive).
In general it seems to me that if "convenience X" involves a lot of energy, it will also involve a lot of nuisance (machines that make noises or need a lot of attention - lots of energy passing through it means likely it will break down sooner).
Or better insulating your house could simply be cheaper than paying for the energy to heat it - why wouldn't you then choose to insulate the house?
And so on.
I take it you still haven't seen that TED talk. A key point Hans Rosling makes (which he expands upon in greater detail in several of his other talks). In this talk, he explains
... there are two things that can increase the energy use. First, population
growth. Second, economic growth. Population growth will mainly occur among the
poorest people here because they have high child mortality and they have many
children per woman. ...
The way you control population is \to bring people up to a standard of living that no longer requires having large families (i.e. for farm work, etc). China knows this. They aren't stupid - they certainly understand the costs of allowing terrible ("equivalent to a pack/day cigarette habit") smog. China also understands that if they can stabilize their population by raising their lifestyle. Hence they are using incredible amount of coal as a short-term workaround while they work on the largest public-works infrastructure projects in the world (e.g. Three Gorges, their current breeder reactor project).
> some magic CO2-neutral power source
A nuclear power generator is not magic.
> save energy
You say this as if engineers aren't constantly creating new ways to make energy usage more efficient. Of course they have - engineers hate energy waste. We have been slowly improving efficiency. Obviously we should continue this process, but it will never be enough to significantly impact the the total energy used in the world.
> it seems to me that if "convenience X" involves a lot of energy, it will also involve a lot of nuisance
This is absolutely not true in general. Many things oonly become possible when you reach a minimum of energy.
The one-child policy was a targeted a population of around 1.2 billion in 2000. Actually population in 2000 was about 1.262 billion. I may not like the methods used by China, but calling it not very successful seems somewhat questionable.
> Meanwhile, some areas have slowed their population growth.
Like, say, China, which had a natural growth rate around 25 per 1000 when the one-child policy was adopted, dropped down to 11 and back up to around 16 in the mid 80s, then pretty consistently down since, to 7.58 in 2000, and around 5 for about the last decade.
Without the ability to utilize energy, the China's population would be a lot further off from the 1.2B target. We still see this in some regions, as the one-child policy is harder to enforce the further you get from the metropolitan areas.
It's still a huge country with a lot of variation, of course, and I'm generalizing a lot.
That's of course not the solution I propose, it just abstractly proves the point that energy can be saved. In fact, as you mention with the washing machines example, the majority of people seem to get by on very little energy (even less than is required to power a washing machine).
All I said is that saving energy is another option, besides building more nuclear power plants or burning more coal.
And you seem to have missed that washing machines are not the major factor in power consumption that you make it out to be.
"it will never be enough to significantly impact the the total energy used in the world"
People will simply use all the energy they can get (even if you build lots and lots of nuclear power plants). That doesn't imply that they couldn't get by with less.
Some of us are trying to discuss solutions, not fantasies of genocide.
> All I said is that saving energy is another option
And I'm saying the only reason you say that is because you're living an incredibly privileged life. For most of the world, "less energy usage" means hard decisions like if they have enough food to eat. For someone who claims to think abstractly, you seem to have a serious problem thinking about energy from any other point of view than what is presumably your own ethnocentric perspective.
> And you seem to have missed that washing machines are not the major factor in power consumption that you make it out to be.
Do you know how I can tell you still haven't watched Hans Rosling's explanation of this problem?
Washing machines (and related basic-standard-of-living technology) is probably going to account for about 1/3 or 1/2 of the increase in energy usage of the world in the next several decades. Energy expensive technologies (e.g. airplanes) are not relevant, because only a small number of people will gain access to the necessary wealth in the same time period.
To be very explicit, the energy saving that are possible - which should still be done - form the tiny number of people with enough privilege to regularly pay to waste energy is tiny.
> they couldn't get by with less
Go watch that video. Look really hard at what it's like to waste your days washing your cloths instead of, say, getting an education.
What specific energy use is being wasted? What "optional" thing should they stop doing?
What, exactly, should most of the women in the world (who are currently in this situation) do to reduce their energy use?
Assuming you are not a terrible personj that says they should have to stay living in poverty or simply be bombed (your other "option"), where specifically should these people - that is, the 3-4 billion people currently living under these conditions get their energy? (there are only 3 options: nuclear, coal/gas, or "they don't get to enjoy an industrialized lifestyle")
Hopefully, answering these questions should reveal to you why "lower energy use" is not an alternative.
> People will simply use all the energy they can get
That may be true for you, but you shouldn't project your beliefs onto others.
Rosling seems to be angry at some economics students who he claims wanted to deny the world washing machines. You adopted his anger and now you think everybody who says "save energy" wants to deny people washing machines. There is simply no basis for that (and I wonder if those selfish economic students actually exist - Rosling is a cool guy, but also a show man, perhaps he invented them for a good story).
Washing machines are actually not that sophisticated, by the way. I think the first ones even operated without electricity. It's basically a drum spinning in a bowl of water, with some fancy chemicals added to the mix. Perhaps somebody should invent a "3rd world washing machine" to help all those women out.
Do you wash your clothes by hand, with water heated from solar? No? Then why are you suggesting that most of the women in the world should continue spending their lives doing such menial activity?
This idea that we need to use less energy is one of the most short-sighted examples of western cultural privilege that I've ever seen. The amount of energy the average person has available to utilize for day-to-day needs is one of the best correlations to social progress and freedom.
People that don't have to spend their days washing their cloths by hand have spare time to spend on things like getting an education or participating in a democracy. We should be using nuclear power to significantly increase the amount of power people use so the social benefits currently enjoyed by the "west" can reach more areas in the world.
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...
I not joking or exaggerating when I say that if we let the amount of available energy per-person reduce significantly, society will start to revert back to old institutions like feudalism and slavery. Without energy, you don't have the free time to become educated. Without education, we lose institutions that depend on an educated population like democracy.
edit: fixed missing word
And I did not suggest any of the things you say. It's all in your head, which went on a rampage triggered by the words "save energy".
All I said it is an option. I didn't say you have to take it.
Who are you to say that using less energy is an option, when you have the luxury of heating and energy-expensive transportation, and most of the world doesn't yet have the energy to wash their clothes?
The washing machine might eventually show up in the charts once we cut out enough of the big items from energy wasting cuplrits. Even then most of the electricity consumption goes to heating the water, but it doesn't even register enough to warrant hot water intakes in washing machines. Or heat exchangers in waste water systems for this and shower/dishwasher.
(You don't want to waste electricity on water heating when you could heat it with solar, CHP or waste water recovered heat)
But there are not.
And the result is that people have developed a fear of nuclear power while having an undeveloped fear of coal power. Coal is not the only alternative to nuclear, certainly, but coal has absolutely replaced some nuclear power around the world. And that's a tragedy because it represents people taking the wrong lessons to heart, being motivated by fear of the unknown, and making choices that lead to more tragedy and death, not less.
I'll grant that perhaps too much of the criticism of coal power links it vaguely to global climate change rather than specifically to the effect of exhaust gases and coal dust on people living downwind of the plant, but I think that obsession with massive future change rather than respiratory diseases and cancers of today is a more general problem in environmental reporting.
Activists insist on framing their message in terms of the former, though, even going so far as to claim focusing on immediate local effects is "missing the big picture".
Sometimes I wonder if we, as a nation, really deserves a better future if so many people are simply giving up struggling. Sorry for a negative comment.
For comparison, here's a trip report from hot spring resort a few hours of north of Tokyo that looks almost as apocalyptic, but has been ravaged by nothing other than economics.
The end result: they left an area of lesser radiation to an area where there is more radiation (the natural background radiation here is higher than the elevated levels were in Japan). And when doing so, they took an airplane where the in-flight radiation levels are even higher.
... I mean, yes, they probably aren't statistically very harmful! Nothing like the Chernobyl exclusion zone, at least in the areas this person visited, and considering only ambient exposure.
Still, over the limit, and, like I said, drastically elevated. Fukushima unquestionably harmed its surrounding area.
But on the other hand quantitatively measuring and comparing radiation effects is hard problem as there is essentially nothing that can be precisely measured and at the same time has any meaning as to biological effects, in practice the conversions between various units are just done using various experimentally determined constants that may or may not be relevant to given situation.
As for all the comments on how nuclear isn't all that dangerous -- how much do we really know about people leaving 4-5 generations in an area with elevated radiation, eating produce etc? I guess we have some data from the Bikin Islands[1] -- but those levels might very well be much higher -- at least it's not an example of how we can live safely in a radiation zone.
Speaking of [1]: "The special International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Bikini Advisory Group determined in 1997 that "It is safe to walk on all of the islands ... although the residual radioactivity on islands in Bikini Atoll is still higher than on other atolls in the Marshall Islands, it is not hazardous to health at the levels measured ... The main radiation risk would be from the food: eating locally grown produce, such as fruit, could add significant radioactivity to the body...Eating coconuts or breadfruit from Bikini Island occasionally would be no cause for concern. Eating many over a long period of time without having taken remedial measures, however, might result in radiation doses higher than internationally agreed safety levels." IAEA estimated that living in the atoll and consuming local food would result in an effective dose of about 15 mSv/year."
It will be interesting to see if removing topsoil in Fukushima will be enough for radiation to reach safe levels. Hopefully the water tables are safe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atol...
There are a few places on earth that have naturally high radiation levels (up to 250mSv/year), including many places with large granite deposits or hot springs. However, these places often do not show any higher cancer incidence (or other relevant health problems) than other areas, possibly suggesting some sort of limit before radiation becomes harmful (the Threshold model).
Some studies actually show significantly lower cancer incidence than other areas. This has prompted the idea of Radiation hormesis, that low doses above background have some benefit. We do know that low doses do stimulate cell repair mechanisms in different ways than large doses do, so it does seem possible (although real-world data is mixed). The effects are not well understood at present, and it's an area that is under ongoing study. Unfortunately, it's an absolute devil to research!
Still, ~43[1] mSv/year is pretty close to the "safe" limit (and it makes sense to set a safety limit well below what can be documented as being harmful) -- and that's just from irradiation. Who knows the effect of breathing in pollen, never mind eating local produce, over a period of ~50 years?
Are there different safety levels for children/infants? If the 50mSv/year is set for workers, I assume they're for adults?
[1] I accidentally dropped a significant digit when rounding off too. It comes to ~42924.0, not ~49...
Single picture tells more stories than thousand words.
4 years since it happened, almost no major Japanese media talks about Fukushima any more, so please share this to anywhere so it gets more attentions.
So many of the scenes reminded me of the recent Godzilla movie, amazing to see so much of a recent bustling environment abandoned, returning to nature. The number of spider webs in the supermarket is remarkable, I assume the rotting food stores brought insects which in turn made for a good feeding ground for spiders
„An immense experience, not comparable to anything else. Silence, lack of cries, laughter, tears and only the wind answers. Prypiat is a huge lesson for our generation.”
Have we learnt anything since then?"
That makes one think.
Chernobyl had many known design problems ever before it exploded. It's misleading to imply that it was consider a good design before.
There is a comment with more details from pdkl95
>> Chernobyl
> The RBMC design was always known to be an absolutely terrible idea because it's use of graphite as a moderator that required active cooling, creating an inherently unsafe positive void coefficient[1].
Read the complete comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10257459
Isn't there a difference between causing and preventing?
I'm very curious to hear from those who are knowledge in the area.
Additional reading: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/423307/newer-nuclear-re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety
I mean seriously, looking at the disasters we've had, pragmatically noting the engineers have not been given free reign to fix existing plants or build newer safer plants, at least in the west, there is no way anything short of space alien invasion could shake "us" into action.
For example, you build a plant designed for thirty years of operation, invent a safer way to do things twenty years after the old plant is built, then operate the old plant unchanged for fifty years for financial or environmental protest reasons. Then act all confused around year fifty when something blows up that was a known and fixed problem thirty years ago but can't ever be implemented.
There are numerous source code / programming analogies relating to sunk cost fallacies and political footballs and the like.
Its not just the engineering department. From a pragmatic crisis management standpoint some CYA civilian cultures should not be permitted to operate reactors. Military combat crews universally have more effective crisis management techniques than even the best civilians teams, even cross culturally. To say implementing this management shakeup would be tricky would be an understatement, however "we" do know that some cultures just can't operate a plant without civilian CYA-ing themselves and their neighbors quite literally to death. Civilians in high positions are trained by the system to prioritize protecting themselves personally from future court cases over accomplishing the overall mission of not melting down the plant ... the plant will take care of itself, at least it always has so far, and prioritizing themselves is how civilians rise to positions of power ... put them in charge of a crisis and it melts down and everyone dies ... somewhat more gung ho military personnel will do things like dump raw seawater into a sub reactor to prevent a meltdown, even if it results in a guaranteed economic kill of the reactor, even if they have to improvise. If you grab the tiger by the tail you will get eaten if you text message blamestorm over who's responsible and who wrote what proper procedure instead of holding on tight to the tail. You can't just engineer safety into something and call it done, anymore than you can checkbox security into a web application and call it done.
[1] http://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/fukushima/#attachment_9454
Of course commercial aviation has killed far more people than the nuclear power industry, anyway.
Addendum: I should say that I actually agree with you, I just wanted to point out that the dynamics of the two industries are quite different.
For example, the backup generators could have been protected from the seawater inundation rather easily.
I also think it's admirable for someone to do this kind of research, take pictures, and write about the experience for the purpose of educating others.
It's impolite to do it everywhere. However, just like people "being rude" happens, people being deceptive also happens in HN as well as in "real life" -- in which case it's not longer impolite to call them on it.
But that's just theoritical. In this case I never accused anybody in particular, heck, I didn't even mention anybody. I said it's a deceptive tactic.
I'm not sure what you mean "it also doesn't add anything to the thread itself".
Identifying a deceptive argument doesn't add to a thread?
You might argue that I'm wrong in my identification of it as deceptive, but I don't see how you can say it doesn't add anything (in case it's true).
Obviously again, Fridek, which I never mentioned at all, not even hinted at him, because I was answering my direct parent, can very much believe what he wrote.
>It's as if you read something you didn't like, and decided that the only way it could have appeared before you is dishonesty.
Actually it's like what I said is pretty clear, and you go out of your way to find some hidden attack beyond my words.
What I said of the thing said is that it's a classic spin.
Not that the one who said it on HN is a spinster or doesn't believe what he said, or is deceptive or anything.
If I'm right (and I think one can objectively say the argument is indeed misleading), then whether people who retell it believe it or not is orthogonal, as it doesn't make it any less spin.
EDIT: Admittedly, "trying to blind people" is not a charitable characterization.
I hesitate to add anything else, but the following proposition doesn't seem to generate much discussion so perhaps it's safe. Consider the fact that regular power plants are regularly built by mostly private investment, while nuclear power plants are only built by the state. This suggests that nuclear power is not profitable in a strictly economic sense.
That's quite possible, but if true, it just brings up the question of why it is not profitable. One might answer that it is not profitable because widespread public and media ignorance of the subject matter leads to NIMBY-ism that in turn makes construction too much of a hassle for private industry to bother with.
The worst case scenario for an accident at a solar power plant or a wind farm - nothing like that.
Today's nuclear power plants are inherently unsafe. Most that are in operation depend on active cooling systems to prevent a meltdown. If these cooling systems are interrupted for any reason (e.g.: power failure, loss of coolant, pump breakdown, loss of pressure control, control rod failure, backup power source failure, control systems failure, natural disaster, attack, etc.) - even for a short period of time - then the fissile material will likely overheat the reactor and result in a core meltdown.
Sheer luck prevented a catastrophe in the case of the 2006 electrical failure at the Forsmark plant in Sweden. Two of the four backup power systems failed to activate [1].
Switching the emtire world's energy consumption over to safe, renewable energy sources would only take 20 years and cost $100 trillion (money which would be spent anyway on non-renewable energy infrastructure) [2]. There is no need to continue building unsafe coal and nuclear plants.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#J...
[2] http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad11...
The money is not diverted from other needs - it's spent on renewable infrastructure instead of non-renewable infrastructure.
"Today's nuclear power plants are inherently unsafe. Most that are in operation depend on active cooling systems to prevent a meltdown."
Even the latest passive safety proposals like liquid fluoride thorium reactors don't conclusively solve the fundamental problem of overheating after a cooling system failure [1].
[1] http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2010/6/not-so-fa...
http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/docu...
The safety of nuclear power is based mainly on wishful thinking. It's the classic folly of chasing short-term cost savings and ignoring long-tail risks.
For every dollar diverted from non-renewable infrastructure spending, can you produce the same amount of energy? My guess is that it's not possible; certainly not without a lot of price disruptions and/or mass subsidies. But I do like the idea of savings that come from spending less on security.