Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

morgsatlarge.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 190 posts

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#101

Post by [deleted] »

Wientje wrote: post #82
neutronicus wrote: post #57

The article is mostly correct, but a few corrections from a nuclear engineer: 1. What he refers to as "moderator rods" are actually control rods. The term "moderator" refers to a material that is unlikely to absorb neutrons, but likely to scatter them. This helps lower the average neutron speed inside the reactor, which actually increases the fission rate. Since water serves this purpose just fine, most reactors do n…

for 4. Tritium is a beta emitter. Wherever it ends up when it decays, the radiation won't get very far.

[deleted]

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#102

Post by mpyne »

ugh wrote: post #69
dfox wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is that you are comparing effects of relatively unlikely accident with effects of normal operation.

It looks to me as though one or two Chernobyl sized disasters per century can very much upset that balance. Deaths obviously still matter but I don't think looking only at radioactivity is good enough. I would very much like to know the deaths per kWh for energy produced from coal and nuclear energy. It is certainly possible that infrequent nuclear disasters are, well, worth it. (A single airplane crash kills many mo…

Nuclear energy is actually the safest form of energy generation we have (in terms of "deaths per gigawatt-hour"), although wind and hydro energy is approximately the same. This is as presented by the ExternE project financed by the "EU Commission". "http://manhaz.cyf.gov.pl/manhaz/strona_konferencja_EAE-2001/... - Polenp~1.pdf"

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#103

Post by juiceandjuice »

lispm wrote: post #96
ubernostrum wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're rattling around various fora, throwing out really bad red herrings (e.g., on reddit you tried to link Niger's average life expectancy to uranium mining when that likely isn't even a blip on the radar compared to poverty, malnutrition and lack of health infrastructure). So the onus is on you to provide strong citations for the claims you're making, rather than just tossing out BIG SCARY CAPS in a comment and th…

Yeah, it seems to be surprising to you that there are people who did not drink the nuclear Kool-Aid. Why is that? Has your 2-party system, the influence of corporations and your declining media made you unable of critical thinking?

I can't speak for the previous poster, but I started 'sipping the nuclear kool-aid' once I took a nuclear physics class.

Of course, the class was taught over cable TV by fox news anchors funded by both GE, the DNC and the RNC. That's pretty much how the US got to be a superpower and stuff.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#104

Post by DennisP »

ugh wrote: post #69
dfox wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is that you are comparing effects of relatively unlikely accident with effects of normal operation.

It looks to me as though one or two Chernobyl sized disasters per century can very much upset that balance. Deaths obviously still matter but I don't think looking only at radioactivity is good enough. I would very much like to know the deaths per kWh for energy produced from coal and nuclear energy. It is certainly possible that infrequent nuclear disasters are, well, worth it. (A single airplane crash kills many mo…

Chernobyl killed 50 people immediately, and is estimated to have killed 4000 people worldwide from excess cancers. That's worst case, assuming there's no minimum threshold for radiation causing cancer. Some scientists think there is a threshold, which would drop the number quite a bit. There's too much statistical uncertainty to know for sure either way.

TMI is estimated to have caused only one excess cancer. So we're looking at 4000 people killed over the lifetime of nuclear power world-wide, compared to 24,000 people per year killed by pollution from coal, in the U.S. alone.

Coal accounts for 50% of the U.S. energy supply, compared to 8% for nuclear.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#105

Post by wtn »

ck2 wrote: post #12

In theory we should be more worried about the ash radiation from our coal plants (which releases a lot more, in an unregulated manner, and makes me wonder sometimes if it's a trigger for the increase in cancer in industrialized nations). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station#Radio... it is estimated that during 1982, US coal burning released 155 times as much uncontrolled radioactivity into the atmos…

Nitrogen Dioxide is another harmful coal emission.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#106

Post by DennisP »

miles wrote: post #63

Grateful for the explanation, but the author's bias is questionable at best. He suggests, "If you want to stay informed, please forget the usual media outlets and consult the following websites" and goes on to list 3 nuclear lobbying websites. So, ignore the independent media and get all of your information from pro-nuclear lobbies? More: https://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-w...

BraveNewClimate is definitely an advocacy site, but I think it's unfair to call the guy a lobbyist. Your own link says he's a climate scientist, and doesn't make any claims that he has financial ties to the nuclear industry.

The more I read about climate change and nuclear energy, the more pro-nuke I am. If I start writing up what I've learned on my blog, would you call me a lobbyist too?

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#107

Post by NY_USA_Hacker »

neutronicus wrote: post #57

The article is mostly correct, but a few corrections from a nuclear engineer: 1. What he refers to as "moderator rods" are actually control rods. The term "moderator" refers to a material that is unlikely to absorb neutrons, but likely to scatter them. This helps lower the average neutron speed inside the reactor, which actually increases the fission rate. Since water serves this purpose just fine, most reactors do n…

Where does the tritium come from? As I recall tritium is one proton and two neutrons. So, you are saying that one hydrogen, that is, one proton, from the water captures a neutron and becomes deuturium and then later the deuturium captures another neutron and becomes tritium? Is that correct? Net, to those two reactions have a signficant reaction rate in the context?

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#108

Post by fxj »

25 years after chernobyl, we still find contaminated material in germany. e.g. mushrooms and wild boar. so i would be VERY carful with such a bold statement as in the linked article.

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/langfristige-folgen-von-ts...

"And the willingness to eat contaminated venison has dropped obviously, more and more hunters and forest owners can check the meat of wild boars - and compensation from the Federal Ministry of Environment, if they can not eat the contaminated venison because of the large cesium-137 content or sell.

€ 424 650 paid by the Federal Ministry of Environment last year for it. In the first half of 2010, the amount of compensation was 130,000 euros. 2008 there were 380,000 euros and 104,000 euros in 2007."

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#109

Post by SeoxyS »

illumen wrote: post #15

The writer is not an expert on earth quakes. Making such a bold claim that nothing can go wrong is plainly false. Just because they are an expert in one area, does not mean they are an expert in all areas. There are already a number of people being treated for radiation poisoning. They have already admitted that there have been radiation releases above safe levels. I feel sorry for the engineers working so hard to fi…

Let's use the smarter, more innovative, and safer energy solutions available today. Let's leave these 50's and 60's era shitty technology behind.

Oh, and what do you suggest? In the US, for example, we've just about dammed every river that can be dammed, and solar and wind are too expensive for wide scale deployments.

The only real alternative we have to the 20% of our energy which comes from nuclear would be to add to the 45% which comes from coal (or to the 23% from natural gas.) That would be a disaster, coal plants are far more damaging than nuclear plants are.

We should be doing the opposite. Replacing our alarmingly high coal energy usage with nuclear plants, instead. Too bad there's so much propaganda (and big-coal lobbying) against this. Nuclear is the only practical source of zero-emission energy for wide scale use.

Personally, I'd much rather live with a couple nuclear incidents than with the horrors of today's fossile fuel industries.

Re: Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors

#110

Post by VMG »

fxj wrote: post #108

25 years after chernobyl, we still find contaminated material in germany. e.g. mushrooms and wild boar. so i would be VERY carful with such a bold statement as in the linked article. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/langfristige-folgen-von-ts... "And the willingness to eat contaminated venison has dropped obviously, more and more hunters and forest owners can check the meat of wild boars - and compensation from the…

Thats when different radioactive material than in this case in much higher amounts was lifted to high altitudes, which also didn't happen here.

I'd be very careful to compare this incident with Chernobyl

Post reply on HN