51–60 of 262 posts
What is difficult to reconcile is that we all know that nuclear meltdowns are catastrophic events, that the resultant fallout/radioactive contamination is utterly horrible. Yet it seems that we dont build reactors with the types of failsafe systems that truly are needed should meltdown occur. Obviously this reactor is old, and was not built during a time when we really knew what a meltdown looked like in real life. A…
When I see a story like this, it reminds me that the events in Japan represent the biggest PR challenge the nuclear industry has faced in many years. Fifty billion dollars of nuclear reactor US taxpayer-backed loan guarantees hang in the balance. The industry has been working for the past few decades to rehabilitate the image of nuclear power after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and now they have to contend with vi…
As an aside, if no one's seen the excellent Battle for Chernobyl, I highly recommend it. It details the insane clean-up operation that took place after the Chernobyl disaster. It's on Google Video.
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Buy Fukushiman land. Raise your kids there. Feed them local produce. To thy own self be true. I am not defending coal or solar or whatever. I am referring to the closed attitude of the nuclear industry. There is a huge problem with nuclear defenders in Japan who don't eat their own dogfood. You'd think they would be happy to do so since the reward is huge (improved confidence) and the risk is only 20 or more years do…
The problem with Fukushima was that it was an outdated design that should have been decommissioned. Nobody who points out the relative safety of nuclear power wants us to build more Mark I BWR's. My interest is in Travelling Wave Reactors and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors. But the problem is, when people freak out about Fukushima, they don't say "Hey! Mark I BWR's aren't safe! We should shut down those designs!" They…
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At scale, right now, those are the only two options.
Well, for that matter, we don't have enough nuclear power production capacity to meet our needs either, so I don't entirely see your point. Reducing the amount of power we're producing with fossil fuels will mean needing to increase our production from other sources, but it doesn't mandate that we have to increase it from a particular source.
It has nothing to do with current capacity. Nuclear has lost a lot to debates much like this one; however, if we wanted the capacity, nuclear would step up and fill it in at a reasonable price. The same amount of power generated by the alternatives would be astronomically expensive. That's one of the problems that plague the alternatives you've named: either they are far too expensive to use at any kind of large scale, or suitable locations are in thin supply, or power output fluctuates unsuitably with a change in weather, and so on. They just can't compete.
The current research into nuclear is making it even cheaper and safer (thorium, etc); the current research into the alternatives is making them cheap enough to be possible with significant demand.
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So now the point is that coal disasters aren't being talked about? I thought we were discussing whether nuclear power is safe. Are you actually going to stand up and on the record proclaim that in general, free of context, nuclear energy is safe. Just that one sentence: nuclear energy is safe. No it isn't. It's fucking dangerous. Air pollution killing lots of people doesn't change this. Radiation kills people too.
Bringing up coal when people start bitching about nuclear is no different from bringing up car accidents when people start bitching about flying. Danger is relative, and relative to the rest of the power industry, nuclear is absurdly safe .
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Nuclear power is cleaner than coal or oil. We just need to build stronger and safer reactors. Personally I'm glad OP posted this article. Fukushima was tragic, but it didn't give everyone the right to abandon rational thought. I used to work for a state pirg banging on doors to complain about nuclear power. Spreading fear by barking "3 mile island, chernobyl" etc. Then one day I knocked on the door of a nuclear physi…
Buy Fukushiman land. Raise your kids there. Feed them local produce. To thy own self be true. I am not defending coal or solar or whatever. I am referring to the closed attitude of the nuclear industry. There is a huge problem with nuclear defenders in Japan who don't eat their own dogfood. You'd think they would be happy to do so since the reward is huge (improved confidence) and the risk is only 20 or more years do…
I'm not saying it's something that should be dismissed, but I do think that we just have to take into account that anything that handles humongous amounts of energy in a concentrated space is dangerous, but nuclear energy is less so than most alternatives.
Great. I can't drink milk, had to avoid water for a day or two, having problem finding relatively uncontaminated meat, 20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable and so on. I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Mod me down all you want. I will be happy to pay attention when someone purchases land at a fair price near Fukushima…
"20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable" [citation requested] I haven't seen any hint of that. Is that from actual scientific reports based on sensible standards of "unlivable" (i.e., based in sensible risk analysis), or is it just based on unscientific worries? And did you have a hard time finding "uncontaminated" meat because there was actually a shortage of meat that was scientifically…
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/02/world/asia/ass...
Auditing nuclear power's extremely short history is not a valid method of assessing risk. In poker they call this 'results oriented thinking'. Especially when discussing black swan events, history is almost by definition not a very useful basis for predictions.
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Bringing up coal when people start bitching about nuclear is no different from bringing up car accidents when people start bitching about flying. Danger is relative, and relative to the rest of the power industry, nuclear is absurdly safe .
This just means that the bar is set very low. Any method of producing power that harms large numbers of people deserves serious scrutiny. We shouldn't be discouraging it, we should be calling for more!
The only thing people like you accomplish is preventing modern reactor designs from being implemented, therefore effectively discouraging improvement in the industry.