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MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

mitnse.com

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Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#11

Post by uikjhgyujmn »

svedlin wrote: post #10

This is a good site. And our prayers are with the quake survivors in Japan and the responders who are working to contain the problem during this horrible disaster. Any model of nuclear power reliability would have a high degree of uncertainty (due to intractability) and would need to account for arbitrary faults in design, siting, construction, operation, and monitoring. In CS there's a concept of "byzantine fault to…

>Why should anyone have to die for electricity

Depends - if it's our citizens following an accident obviously never. If it's some civilians in the middle east that happen to be living on top of our oil, or some poor people in the 3rd world that are being poisoned by air pollution - well tough, can't make an omelet without breaking eggs etc.

Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#12

Post by angusgr »

hermanthegerman wrote: post #8

Siemens astroturfing http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-strange-case-of-josef-oe...

FWIW, Josef Oehman has posted some explanation on the original blog post: http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-wo...

I think the primary problems here are insufficient concrete information, and also masses of confirmation bias in both directions (leading people to essentially find whatever they want to find in a mass of conflicting information.) At least the information should become increasingly clear over the next month or two, which should cut down somewhat on the second problem.

Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#13

Post by ernestipark »

svedlin wrote: post #10

This is a good site. And our prayers are with the quake survivors in Japan and the responders who are working to contain the problem during this horrible disaster. Any model of nuclear power reliability would have a high degree of uncertainty (due to intractability) and would need to account for arbitrary faults in design, siting, construction, operation, and monitoring. In CS there's a concept of "byzantine fault to…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents

Look at how many accidents there have been since 1961. That's in the world, total. Only a few of those actually resulted in radiation being released to the environment. Nuclear power is unbelievably safe. Think about what it would take to replace the amount of nuclear energy being produced in the world now. Just a guess of course, but I think the butterfly effects of getting rid of nuclear power would be even worse than if there were some sort of catastrophic failure in Japan right now. It's not as simple as "nuclear energy in an accident would be catastrophic, let's replace it with clean alternatives". There are many many other factors at play.

Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#14

Post by illumin8 »

I find it extremely interesting (and by that I mean suspicious) that the Siemens astroturf post "Why I am not worried about Japan's Nuclear Reactors" has been migrated from a quote-unquote "personal" WordPress blog onto a quasi-official MIT website that was suspiciously purchased Sunday evening. Not only that, the text of the post has been so dramatically altered that it no longer says anything about not being worried, or how the concrete containment will prevent anything from possibly going wrong.

This entire thing smells like a huge PR stunt from a company (Siemens) that recently donated money to MIT and has a huge economic interest in preventing any bad publicity about nuclear power from appearing in the media.

I actually find it shameful that HN can be so easily duped by this obviously doctored information.

See my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319278 when this "news" was posted Sunday.

Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#15

Post by svedlin »

ernestipark wrote: post #13
svedlin wrote: post #10

This is a good site. And our prayers are with the quake survivors in Japan and the responders who are working to contain the problem during this horrible disaster. Any model of nuclear power reliability would have a high degree of uncertainty (due to intractability) and would need to account for arbitrary faults in design, siting, construction, operation, and monitoring. In CS there's a concept of "byzantine fault to…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents Look at how many accidents there have been since 1961. That's in the world, total. Only a few of those actually resulted in radiation being released to the environment. Nuclear power is unbelievably safe. Think about what it would take to replace the amount of nuclear energy being produced in the world now. Just a guess of course, but I think the butterfly…

Historical analysis doesn't have enough comparable data points and there are significant failures on record. How many times has a reactor been hit with an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami? There's only 1 data point.

Historical and simulation models both have large negative expected value (unless you can rule out a black swan event with a miniscule probability at around 10^-8 - unattainable certainty with current analysis).

Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#16

Post by guscost »

illumin8 wrote: post #14

I find it extremely interesting (and by that I mean suspicious) that the Siemens astroturf post "Why I am not worried about Japan's Nuclear Reactors" has been migrated from a quote-unquote "personal" WordPress blog onto a quasi-official MIT website that was suspiciously purchased Sunday evening. Not only that, the text of the post has been so dramatically altered that it no longer says anything about not being worrie…

If you have reason to believe that the information is doctored, it would be a better idea to explain why. Attacking the messenger is fine for scoring points in a debate, but it isn't going to bring anything valuable to the discussion. We should be thinking about the people who are confused and scared right now, not Siemens and their bottom line.

Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#17

Post by lutorm »

jedbrown wrote: post #9
hop wrote: post #4

The wikipedia "Timeline of the Fukushima Nuclear accidents" is the most up to date source I have been following - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_nucle...

Another frequently updated source: http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Thanks for that link, that is the best source of facts without unnecessary blabber that I've seen so far.

The IAEA site also confirms the radiation level that I heard in various places: As reported earlier, a 400 millisieverts (mSv) per hour radiation dose observed at Fukushima Daiichi occurred between Units 3 and 4.

Just so that we're clear: 400mSv/h is a serious amount of radiation. A short-term exposure of 1Sv is a ballpark value for acute radiation sickness, and you'd get that in 2.5h.

Like the IAEA says, that's a point value right in the plant, but if the workers were exposed to that sort of radiation level, saying that "no one will die from radiation here" is not justifiable.

Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#18

Post by bhousel »

guscost wrote: post #16
illumin8 wrote: post #14

I find it extremely interesting (and by that I mean suspicious) that the Siemens astroturf post "Why I am not worried about Japan's Nuclear Reactors" has been migrated from a quote-unquote "personal" WordPress blog onto a quasi-official MIT website that was suspiciously purchased Sunday evening. Not only that, the text of the post has been so dramatically altered that it no longer says anything about not being worrie…

If you have reason to believe that the information is doctored, it would be a better idea to explain why. Attacking the messenger is fine for scoring points in a debate, but it isn't going to bring anything valuable to the discussion. We should be thinking about the people who are confused and scared right now, not Siemens and their bottom line.

He did explain why.

Re: MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

#19

Post by LunaCity »

bhousel wrote: post #18
guscost wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have reason to believe that the information is doctored, it would be a better idea to explain why. Attacking the messenger is fine for scoring points in a debate, but it isn't going to bring anything valuable to the discussion. We should be thinking about the people who are confused and scared right now, not Siemens and their bottom line.

He did explain why.

There is a direct link to mitnse.com from the MIT NSE main web page here: http://web.mit.edu/nse/
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