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Fukushima

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Re: Fukushima

#21

Post by fridek »

treenyc wrote: post #6

"Have we learnt anything since then?" I'm very curious to hear from those who are knowledge in the area.

I'm not an expert, but the Fukushima's core problem was an older design based on active cooling, that requires continuous water input and thus electricity to run the water pumps. Current work is concentrated mostly on making nuclear plant as passive as possible, resulting in graceful shutdown in the event of supporting equipment failure. This involves finding a coolant that behaves predictably and nicely when various subsystems go down (water does not).

Additional reading: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/423307/newer-nuclear-re... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety

Re: Fukushima

#22

Post by fridek »

chinathrow wrote: post #16

"Seven years ago I ended my first documentary on Chernobyl with these words: „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.

We have learnt to not put reactors on top of the water tanks, and to not shutdown all safety systems to see if the plant explodes.

Re: Fukushima

#23

Post by pdkl95 »

ekianjo wrote: post #5

> The disaster could have been forseen and prevented. As in the Chernobyl case, it was a human, not technology, that was mainly responsible for the disaster. 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…

> 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].

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.

[1] http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/chernobyl.html

[2] http://thoriumremix.com/th/

Re: Fukushima

#24

Post by simoncion »

facepalm wrote: post #19
ggreer wrote: post #17

I found the pictures fascinating, but the accompanying text marred my enjoyment. Considering the circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, the anti-nuclear sentiment really irked me. The Tōhoku earthquake & tsunami killed close to 20,000 people. The author completely ignored those victims. Instead, he focused on Fukushima, which will cause around 150 deaths from cancers. For every tragedy created by Fukushima, there a…

You are just creating straw mean to support your own belief. Comparing to other causes of death is hardly relevant. 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 go…

While it is true that coal is not the only non-nuclear power generation mechanism, it is -by far- the most common in the US.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#25

Post by simonh »

facepalm wrote: post #20
gambiting wrote: post #13

As much of a tragedy this was, this is still nothing compared to the damage coal is doing to our society. I live in a coal mining town that also has a coal-fueled power and heating plant - the number of people who suffer in some way due to this is also huge. People get lung disease due to coal dust. In winter, everything is literally covered in soot - snow is blackish, with dark dots on everything. Pretty much every…

You assume that coal is the only alternative to nuclear power (there are not only other energy sources, but also the option to use less energy), and that there is no way to use coal in a cleaner way. I leave the judgement up to you, just wanted to point out some confirmation bias in your convictions.

> ...You assume that coal is the only alternative to nuclear power...

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.

Re: Fukushima

#26

Post by ptaipale »

struct wrote: post #14

One thing that grabs my attention is that the radiation levels in the contaminated zones are much lower than I thought they'd be. For context, the limit for a radiation worker in the US is 50 mSv. Obviously, I guess it depends on the radioactive isotopes released and what kind of radiation they release, but I'm still impressed.

Another funny anecdote about Fukushima was that people evacuated the area of elevated radiation and left Japan to what was "home", for instance in the case of my countrymen, Finland.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#27

Post by richmarr »

mixedbit wrote: post #10
ekianjo wrote: post #5

> The disaster could have been forseen and prevented. As in the Chernobyl case, it was a human, not technology, that was mainly responsible for the disaster. 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…

Don Norman, the author of "The Design of Everyday Things", writes that in most cases when the fault is attributed to human operator, it is actually a design error.

In the case of Chernobyl the accident wasn't attributed to a human operator. The safeguards built into the reactor had been disabled to perform an experiment to test a potential new safety feature.

Re: Fukushima

#28

Post by TeMPOraL »

facepalm wrote: post #20
gambiting wrote: post #13

As much of a tragedy this was, this is still nothing compared to the damage coal is doing to our society. I live in a coal mining town that also has a coal-fueled power and heating plant - the number of people who suffer in some way due to this is also huge. People get lung disease due to coal dust. In winter, everything is literally covered in soot - snow is blackish, with dark dots on everything. Pretty much every…

You assume that coal is the only alternative to nuclear power (there are not only other energy sources, but also the option to use less energy), and that there is no way to use coal in a cleaner way. I leave the judgement up to you, just wanted to point out some confirmation bias in your convictions.

> You assume that coal is the only alternative to nuclear power (there are not only other energy sources, but also the option to use less energy), and that there is no way to use coal in a cleaner way.

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).

Re: Fukushima

#29

Post by orik »

ggreer wrote: post #17

I found the pictures fascinating, but the accompanying text marred my enjoyment. Considering the circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, the anti-nuclear sentiment really irked me. The Tōhoku earthquake & tsunami killed close to 20,000 people. The author completely ignored those victims. Instead, he focused on Fukushima, which will cause around 150 deaths from cancers. For every tragedy created by Fukushima, there a…

You are seeing a sentiment that isn't there.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#30

Post by fridek »

ggreer wrote: post #17

I found the pictures fascinating, but the accompanying text marred my enjoyment. Considering the circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, the anti-nuclear sentiment really irked me. The Tōhoku earthquake & tsunami killed close to 20,000 people. The author completely ignored those victims. Instead, he focused on Fukushima, which will cause around 150 deaths from cancers. For every tragedy created by Fukushima, there a…

It is interesting to read that burning coal actually produces more radioactive waste than a nuclear plant [1], only because there are loads and loads of it, and there are usually very few regulations involved.

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...

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