Fukushima • Hacker News Board

Re: Fukushima

#101

Post by dfox » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:19 PM UTC

DangerousPie wrote: post #38

inatreecrown wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get the facts straight: Fukushima is human failure. In the accident the neccecary cooling could not be supplied. As a result, people will die of cancer from the radiation. The tsunami is not human failure, and to say that living by the sea is human failure is another discussion completely.

I disagree. 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 bu…

The extent of damage and contamination certainly is human failure, mainly in accident response. My understanding is that the correct response to such a major loss of cooling on BWR is just to evacuate premises and do nothing (with the idea that the resulting excursion will obliterate the reactor but the dangerous fallout will remain inside the containment), the Fukushima operators tried to save the situation and thus made the impact worse.

Re: Fukushima

#102

Post by rmatz » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:27 PM UTC

Being Japanese, that picture of blackboard in abandoned school 1/3 of the way through the post alone almost made me cry.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#103

Post by afterburner » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:28 PM UTC

7952 wrote: post #67

DangerousPie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. 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 bu…

It doesn't actually make much difference if you consider it to be human or not. All future nuclear stations will add it to their massively long list of safety considerations. I think that is something that people miss in an argument like this. Due to the complexity of the operations it is very expensive and difficult to guarantee safety. Moreover, it is very hard for anyone outisde the industry to reason effectively…

> All future nuclear stations will add it to their massively long list of safety considerations

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.

Re: Fukushima

#104

Post by afterburner » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:31 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #59

ju-st wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This diagramm shows that renewables are replacing nuclear power in Germany, not coal. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromerzeugung#/media/File:Ene...

The Germany situation is mentioned in Scott Alexander's Livejournal post, linked above. Keep in mind that that post was written a little while after the tsunami came in and wrecked stuff, so it's pretty old. 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.

> it's very hard and not cheap

That also describes nuclear power.

Re: Fukushima

#105

Post by jscheel » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

speleding wrote: post #92

orik wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fukushi…

Are you really not sensing an anti-nuclear sentiment? For example, take this paragraph where he talks about Chernobyl? "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.

I felt a bit of that sentiment, but it didn't seem ham-handed. If you are interested in reading about nuclear accidents and the things we can learn from them, I highly suggest Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20820098-atomic-accident...). He's pro-nuclear, but acknowledges that there are still things to learn about safe containment. His focus is mainly, and rightly, on the unrelenting power of steam, and how a reactor going prompt critical can tear down even the strongest safety mechanisms when it causes a huge spike in pressure.

Re: Fukushima

#106

Post by Turing_Machine » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

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…

"So comparing coal to nuclear is kind of valid, except that coal is not the only alternative to nuclear power."

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.

Re: Fukushima

#107

Post by vonmoltke » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #95

InclinedPlane wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point you are missing is that these articles create a bias against nuclear power, but by rights there should be a deluge of articles documenting the ongoing tragedy of using coal. 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 nuclea…

In fairness there's no shortage of articles on climate change calling out fossil fuel burning, and literally nobody advocating coal as the miracle energy source of the future (notwithstanding the fact that plenty of coal plants are being built in rapidly-industrialising countries with scant regard for the environment) I'll grant that perhaps too much of the criticism of coal power links it vaguely to global climate c…

IMO, that has always been the problem with environmental issues. For the past thirty years or so everything has been focused on this massive yet fuzzy future catastrophe rather than the real, specific, less "critical" damage being done now. Thing is, addressing the latter will pretty much address the former as well.

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".

Re: Fukushima

#108

Post by Turing_Machine » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:36 PM UTC

mariusz79 wrote: post #93

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…

yeah, it's very safe.. you have areas of land where people won't be able to live for thousands of years.. and you have hundreds of these "safe" power plants all over the world.. in addition to that we have to store the waste from these "safe" plants for few millennia, and hope that after our civilization is gone, it won't destroy the life on this planet.

"you have areas of land where people won't be able to live for thousands of years.."

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.

Re: Fukushima

#109

Post by coldtea » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:37 PM UTC

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…

>Instead, he focused on Fukushima, which will cause around 150 deaths from cancers.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#110

Post by dfox » Tue, Sep 22, 2015, 2:39 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #18

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…

> Of course we have learnt a lot since Chernobyl, and designed subsequent plants to be much more safe based on what happened there. 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 extensio…

From purely technical standpoint, there is essentially nothing that you can learn from Chernobyl that wasn't known in 1986, and all that essentially boils down to "don't do that".