The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists • Hacker News Board

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#91

Post by hackerblues » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 1:35 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #85

icarus_drowning wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets see: genetic fallacy[1], circumstantial ad hominem[2], appeal to spite[3], and well-poisoning[4]. All in all, a very good compendium of logical fallacies, but as such, not a terribly good argument against the assertions made. 1: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/genetic-fallacy.htm... 2: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-h... 3: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-s…

To be fair, the unworried proponents of this piece used equally fallacious rhetorical tricks, and did so with the intent to deceive.

What is your point?

Presumably the correct response to bullshit is to call it out as such rather than producing your own.

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#92

Post by Estragon » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:16 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #16

gojomo wrote: post #12

This was quite a 'walk-back' of the original headline. It started as "Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors" on one site. The title is now "Modified version of original post written by Josef Oehmen", with the content modified and moved to another site. It also now includes a disclaimer "Note that the title of the original blog does not reflect the views of the authors of the site." Perhaps they should j…

Unfortunately, this version is not as entertaining to read. It does seem much more accurate, though.

Yes, I'm really grateful to them for cutting through the crap. It's nice to have a relatively confident sense of what's going on.

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#93

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:24 PM UTC

hackerblues wrote: post #91

anigbrowl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the unworried proponents of this piece used equally fallacious rhetorical tricks, and did so with the intent to deceive.

What is your point? Presumably the correct response to bullshit is to call it out as such rather than producing your own.

I don't think the grandparent poster was aware of the fallacies in his argument; more importantly, it throws the reliability of the original information supplied into question.

For example, the 'not worried' writer explains that 'the nuclear fuel is uranium oxide.' But that is not true of the whole plant: http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/challenge/csr/nuclear/cycle-e.html

Plutonium complicates things rather significantly. Accuracy should not be sacrificed to fearmongering, but nor should it be sacrificed for mere reassurance.

Edit: downvoted for supplying more accurate information with a citation? Classy.

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#94

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:27 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #25

colinprince wrote: post #19

mitnse.com was registered just two days ago? With no track record what is the credibility of this site? From whois: Registered through: Automattic Domain Name: MITNSE.COM Created on: 13-Mar-11 Expires on: 13-Mar-12 Last Updated on: 13-Mar-11

mitnse.com is linked to from http://web.mit.edu/nse/ . I imagine it would be either hard to fake that or it'd be noticed quickly if a MIT department's website was hacked.

[deleted]

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#95

Post by moe » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:33 PM UTC

NickPollard wrote: post #86

moe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see many people crying out for abolishment of planes, though. I think there's a tiny difference between a plane falling out of the sky and a nuclear reactor melting down. I'm sure you can spot it, too, if you think long and hard.

The plane falling happens a lot more often?

Are you serious?

According to [1] roughly 15k people died in plane accidents over the past decade. It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that Chernobyl killed many more than that.

Furthermore a nuke meltdown renders a large area uninhabitable and leaves an economic footprint "slightly" bigger than a few planes coming down every year.

Quote from [2] (page 33):

  Coping with the impact of the disaster has placed a huge burden on national   
  budgets. In Ukraine, 5–7 percent of government spending each year is still 
  devoted to Chernobyl-related benefits and programmes. In Belarus,
  government spending on Chernobyl amounted to 22.3 percent of the
  national budget in 1991, declining gradually to 6.1 percent in 2002.
  Total spending by Belarus on Chernobyl between 1991 and 2003 is estimated 
  at more than US $13 billion.

Other Quote (same page):

  Belarus, for instance, has estimated the losses over 30 years at US $235 
  billion.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incident...

[2] http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernoby...

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#96

Post by dkersten » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:36 PM UTC

brown9-2 wrote: post #25

colinprince wrote: post #19

mitnse.com was registered just two days ago? With no track record what is the credibility of this site? From whois: Registered through: Automattic Domain Name: MITNSE.COM Created on: 13-Mar-11 Expires on: 13-Mar-12 Last Updated on: 13-Mar-11

mitnse.com is linked to from http://web.mit.edu/nse/ . I imagine it would be either hard to fake that or it'd be noticed quickly if a MIT department's website was hacked.

On the about page, they also state that its linked and that they registered a new domain because they wanted to host on wordpress.com instead of dealing with large traffic themselves and apparently wordpress.com won't work on a sub-domain (or something along those lines).

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#97

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:37 PM UTC

icarus_drowning wrote: post #7

RandyHelzerman wrote: post #4

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love category 6 nuclear disasters. This is typical MIT hubris. Nobody knew om march 12 what was happening, even the operators, and even now nobody knows how bad thing are or how bad things will get.

>This is typical MIT hubris. I am getting tired of asking this, but which facts are wrong in the revised article?

Well, Fukushima daiichi unit 3 uses MOX fuel, a mix of uranium and plutonium, which TEPCO has been experimenting with for a few months now. But neither MOX nor plutonium get any mention in this article. This is not a trivial oversight.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/challenge/csr/nuclear/cycle-e.html

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#98

Post by JonoW » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:39 PM UTC

To any nuclear experts, question I've got: The Fukushima plant is a 1970's design I believe, what would the situation be if the plant was as modern a design as possible, would the situation there be different?

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#99

Post by gjm11 » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:50 PM UTC

wladimir wrote: post #54

kitsune_ wrote: post #50

This is BULLSHIT, the guy (Oehmen) is a mechanical engineer with a management focus. He worked at my alma mater (ETHZ). His field of experties is supply chain risk management. Look up his papers, he isn't a nuclear physicist. I'd say he's about as qualified to make a comment on the situation as I am. The "essay" by Oehmen was first published by a notorious nuclear lobbyist, Jason Morgan. Look at this: http://nuclearf…

It reads very much like a last-ditch effort by nuclear energy lobbyists to convince us that nuclear energy is really safe. This brings back memories of the Iraqi information minister. In 15 years, if there are no further disasters, they might crawl out of their holes and start preaching about the wonders of nuclear energy again. Until then, just give up.

> a last-ditch effort by nuclear energy lobbyists to convince us that nuclear energy is really safe.

Well, let's see. In this case we've had a bunch of nuclear power stations very close to the site of a historically-large earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, large enough that even with Japan's outstanding disaster-preparedness thousands or tens of thousands of people have died. That would seem to be pretty much a worst-case scenario.

And, so far, all the troubles at the nuclear reactors have produced a grand total of zero deaths. Now, for sure, it's too early to know what the final outcome will be. Maybe there will be a Vast Nuclear Holocaust that obliterates Japan. (No, the laws of physics do not in fact permit this, but that objection applies equally to a number of other nightmare scenarios people have been proposing.) But so far as anyone can tell, the worst outcome that's at all likely is: a few people die, a few square km of land become unusable for a while, and they need to rebuild from scratch somewhere else. Well, that's pretty bad, for sure. But if that's the worst-case outcome from such a major natural disaster, it seems to me that -- so far as what we know right now goes -- nuclear energy is still looking pretty safe overall.

(Note: I am not a nuclear energy lobbyist.)

Re: The 'why I am not worried' article, edited by MIT nuclear scientists

#100

Post by _delirium » Wed, Mar 16, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

icarus_drowning wrote: post #66

kitsune_ wrote: post #50

This is BULLSHIT, the guy (Oehmen) is a mechanical engineer with a management focus. He worked at my alma mater (ETHZ). His field of experties is supply chain risk management. Look up his papers, he isn't a nuclear physicist. I'd say he's about as qualified to make a comment on the situation as I am. The "essay" by Oehmen was first published by a notorious nuclear lobbyist, Jason Morgan. Look at this: http://nuclearf…

Lets see: genetic fallacy[1], circumstantial ad hominem[2], appeal to spite[3], and well-poisoning[4]. All in all, a very good compendium of logical fallacies, but as such, not a terribly good argument against the assertions made. 1: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/genetic-fallacy.htm... 2: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-h... 3: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-s…

I don't think all examination of qualifications constitutes a genetic fallacy. If anything it's closer to an argument from authority plus a closed-world assumption (i.e. I only accept arguments from authorities). But expertise and authority has a significant role in science, and not entirely an improper one imo. If I say that I prefer to hear expert analysis of nuclear reactors from someone with a PhD in nuclear physics, rather than from someone with a PhD in another field, that seems like a decent epistemological heuristic. The qualifications don't prove anything about the argument, but in general I expect people with relevant qualifications to know more of the relevant facts, so am more willing to defer to their judgment.

It's doubly the case when the original article author promoted the article as being by an "MIT PhD". If someone is explicitly invoking their credentials to add weight to an argument, investigating whether the credentials are relevant seems reasonable.