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Fukushima

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Re: Fukushima

#131

Post by coldtea »

tptacek wrote: post #114
coldtea wrote: post #111

It's a classic spin -- trying to blind people concerned with nuclear plants in their area etc, by using science selectively.

It's impolite to accuse people on an HN thread of being deceptive. It also doesn't add anything to thread itself, so why bother?

>It's impolite to accuse people on an HN thread of being deceptive.

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).

Re: Fukushima

#132

Post by xigency »

Great article. I think this is an issue that always deserves more serious attention.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#133

Post by JibberMeTimbers »

kenesom1 wrote: post #54

The worst case scenario for a nuclear plant accident is millions of casualties and the long-term contamination of major population centers. 152 of the world's 211 nuclear power plants have more than 1 million people residing within 75 km. A plant in India has 16 million living within that radius. Fallout could be dispersed over an area thousands of miles wide. The worst case scenario for an accident at a solar power…

Alot of those plants are old. For instance, the average age of a plant in the U.S. is 34 years old[1]. Nuclear plants have gone through several redesigns to be safer and more efficient - tremendously more than these old reactors.

[1]http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=228&t=21

Re: Fukushima

#134

Post by zemotion »

rmatz wrote: post #102

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.

I visited Minamisoma last year, just viewing the damages from the outside was heartbreaking, seeing these images of interiors is so incredibly difficult, had me close to tears too.

Re: Fukushima

#135

Post by ArtDev »

Trombone12 wrote: post #45
simoncion wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Coal is the most common in the US and honestly you should have stopped relying on it several decades ago. But of course, you got the nukes so you needn't bother with paying for your share of the climate change damages.

In the Northwestern US we get most of our power from hydropower and wind.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#136

Post by dfox »

pdonis wrote: post #124
dfox wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the correct response to such a major loss of cooling on BWR is just to evacuate premises and do nothing 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 tha…

And that is exactly my point. In such situation just leaving the reactor be would cause destruction of the reactor and no major environmental impact, yet they misguidedly tried to save the situation and thus exacerbated the environmental impact.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#137

Post by elektromekatron »

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.

He also says - "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."

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.

Re: Fukushima

#138

Post by saalweachter »

pjc50 wrote: post #119
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…

The problem which nuclear disasters have that almost all other disasters don't is the permanence of danger over such a large area. There have been plenty of large-scale chemical or industrial disasters - everything from Bhopal to Tianjing to Agent Orange to Deepwater Horizon - but they have the common property that the smoke clears and it's possible to neutralise, disperse or otherwise clean up the mess. Whereas Cher…

Underground coal fires like the one under Centralia, PA -- which has forced a similar evacuation -- also last hundreds of years.

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.

Re: Fukushima

#139

Post by kazinator »

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…

> The author completely ignored those victims. Instead, he focused on Fukushima, which will cause around 150 deaths from cancers

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).

Re: Fukushima

#140

Post by e12e »

dfox wrote: post #117
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.

The limit is 50mSv per year, not per hour. Sievert is cumulative unit that has to be either qualified by time or measured over entire lifespan to be meaningfully comparable. 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 conversio…

Would appear that the limit is similar - the "red zone" is for "(> 50 mSv/y)" (note "more than") -- and the sign at the end "Leaving the zone" reads 4.9 mSV/h. That'd be about 42.000 mSV/year -- if we assume constant dose. Or put it another way -- stay an hour and you're at the (safe) limit of exposure for a year.

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...

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