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Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

bloomberg.com

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Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#51

Post by notspanishflu »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

I've been pro-nuclear (fission) most of my life but I changed my opinion when I saw that Humanity can't manage when things go south.

Still waiting for nuclear fusion though.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#52

Post by netmare »

gotchange wrote: post #49
atomwaffel wrote: post #3

As I feel incompetent to comment on the article's content, I'll be glad to start a thread on the linguistics of that car crash of a headline. It took me three or four fresh starts to parse it correctly. The linguistic term for this is garden path sentence[1][2] and it's such a good one that it makes me wonder if it's deliberate. Even just some small adjustments would make it more readable: "Japanese pictures may show…

When you usually write headlines, you go for the most concise or compact version possible to conserve space. Even though I'm a non native speaker, I haven't experienced any difficulties parsing and processing this headline. I am not sure what part of it that got you off balance.

For me it was the fact that 'pictures', 'show' and 'fuel' can be either verbs or nouns. Since I first parsed 'pictures' as a verb, it went downhill pretty fast.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#53

Post by vtange »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

Probably far off in the future but assuming we perfect robotics and A.I. wouldn't it be possible to manage nuclear with no human-hands?

The thing then will be who takes responsibility for accidents caused by robots..

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#54

Post by kingkawn »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

I am not pro nuclear, but fossil fuels are presently responsible for the active die off of the earths oceans and melting of its ice caps, id say things are being managed catastrophically poorly for those fuels as much if not worse than nuclear. Fall out zones like Chernobyl seem to have vibrant resurgent nature once people are gone. I am making a twisted argument I suppose for meltdowns, but all I'm trying to say is that this argument against nuclear applies just as devastatingly to everything but renewables.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#55

Post by alex_young »

marze wrote: post #6

I still don't see why they are spending years trying to make rad hard robots. A long steel tube with fiber optics to pipe in light, mirrors and optics to transmit an image down the tube would be infinitely easier. They'd need to burn a few holes, but none of the reactor vessels are intact so that wouldn't allow additional radioactive material to escape. I'm surprised the Japanese decision to dump the all the tritium…

> I'm surprised the Japanese decision to dump the all the tritium contaminated water into the ocean hasn't made more news.

Why? It seems relatively safe, and there doesn't seem to be much else to do with it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment...

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#56

Post by sathackr »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

Just because there isn't a single event to point at and say 'that is the cause' doesn't mean that the damage wasn't done.

Auto accidents probably kill a few orders of magnitude more people than a nuclear accident, yet you don't see the evangelical preachings against cars like you do nuclear.

The other forms of power need to be well managed also, and they historically have not. I don't need to go into detail about the huge amounts of pollution the power industry has generated.

What is worse? A handful of accidents that kill a few hundred people? Or several thousand people dying from various cancers and respiratory illnesses cause by decades of pollution from coal plants? Not to mention the dangers of mining it.

Current where I live there is a huge push towards natural gas due to the increased supply/decreased costs thanks to fracking. I don't think we have even begun to understand the environmental impact of fracking, yet industry has unanimously declared it safe. Another huge mismanagement of our environment, in my opinion.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#57

Post by maxander »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

As you note, both nuclear and traditional energy can fail spectacularly (e.g., Brightwater Horizon,) but a good comparison of these events can be tricky. Particularly, for nuclear "harm," careful how much is real science vs how much is merely the scariness of radioactive materials; yes, scientists could detect radioactive caesium and iodine from Fukushima washing up on California, but there's orders of magnitude difference between what is "detectable" and has any real chance of effecting you.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#58

Post by intopieces »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

It's not just "well managed" nuclear that is better than fossil fuels. It's the use of nuclear entirely, including the horrible accidents, that is still better than burning fossil fuels.

We could have 100 more Fukushimas and not even touch the number of people who have died of respiratory conditions due to coal.

Please don't let the outsized, dramatic media stories about nuclear sway you. It's a viable, efficient, almost limitless power source that should be a major part of the world's energy mix.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#59

Post by ori_b »

Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

Keep in mind that the death toll from Fukushima was zero.

Re: Japan Pictures Likely Show Melted Fukushima Fuel for First Time

#60

Post by ChuckMcM »

maxander wrote: post #57
Boothroid wrote: post #43

A common response from defenders of nuclear when concerns are raised is to point to the impact of other energy sources, and say that nuclear is better in those terms. But I just cannot get away from the thought that whilst in aggregate those other forms of energy (fossil fuels, etc) might be provably worse than well managed nuclear within a particular analysis, humanity does not seem capable of this good management o…

As you note, both nuclear and traditional energy can fail spectacularly (e.g., Brightwater Horizon,) but a good comparison of these events can be tricky. Particularly, for nuclear "harm," careful how much is real science vs how much is merely the scariness of radioactive materials; yes, scientists could detect radioactive caesium and iodine from Fukushima washing up on California, but there's orders of magnitude diff…

I was going to point out something similar. Scientists can also detect the pollution from coal plants in China in California[1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/asia/china-also-exp...

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