Nuclear power is too safe • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#141

Post by illiarian » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:05 PM UTC

Gwypaas wrote: post #135

illiarian wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical nuclear fearmongers throwing nonsensical number about. "Japan has spent roughly 1 trillion yen ($7.3 billion) annually on the damage caused by the meltdowns at the Fukushima " That amounts to 84 billion dollars. That includes everything, including compensations and decomissioning. The cleanup itself is roughly 30 billion dollars. While the costs are still huge, note: this is for a plant that was both hit by a…

Lying with numbers? We should rely on the Japanese government instead of random HN:ers defending their pet technology. > The cost of dealing with the aftermath of the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant will reach 21.5 trillion yen , roughly double the government's initial prediction of 11 trillion yen, preliminary calculations released on Dec. 8 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry have sho…

> of random HN:ers defending their pet technology.

Ah yes. You are not a random HNer spreading FUD.

> Who said anything about radiation? We are talking about cost. The alternative is renewables, which are vastly safer

If you're talking about safer, then we need to talk about safety. And nuclear power is one of the safest we have.

> Again, typical blame shifting. You are not doing nuclear power any service with coal based whataboutism.

What?

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#142

Post by illiarian » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:07 PM UTC

Schroedingersat wrote: post #134

illiarian wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Implying that the evacuation was unnecessary. Implying that overall dangers spouted by fearmongers are overrated given the context of the discussion .

Again, the straw man you fell back to was not your initial statement.

Again, whatever you imagine I implied, said, or thought, has nothing to do with what I actually said or thought.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#143

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #140

mpweiher wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basis of the cleanup and evacuation requirements is the Linear No Threshold model, which assumes that even the tiniest amount of radiation has adverse health effects. There is no empirical basis for the LNT model at very low doses, so it's essentially made up. And in fact, the LNT model greatly overestimated the casualties from Chernobyl, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's tons of references for this on the web, see…

Wildlife has thrived due to a lack of humans, not because radiation isn't dangerous. There are mutations abound in animals from the CEZ. A question I'd have for you would be: are you willing to live with your family an extended period of your lives in a place with a radioactive event like the CEZ?

> Wildlife has thrived due to a lack of humans

...and due to it not being a poisonous wasteland where life cannot thrive. As evidenced by it thriving.

> not because radiation isn't dangerous.

Somehow you slipped in the assumption that the radiation is definitely dangerous. Why? What is the evidence? The fact that wildlife is thriving?

And of course I never claimed the wildlife thrived because of the radiation.

Though of course there is evidence for the therapeutic effects of low-level radiation, for example:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14673618/

> A question I'd have for you would be: are you willing to live with your family an extended period of your lives in a place with a radioactive event like the CEZ?

Straw-man.

"This is not my preferred place to live" ≠ "This is place is uninhabitable".

For example, there are tons of places in my city where I wouldn't want to live. And yet tons of people do live there.

And I am sure there are tons of people who wouldn't want to live where I live. Even though I think it's pretty nice.

If the place is cheap, green, slightly hilly but not too much, with water nearby and excellent transportation options but no noise: sign me up! Certainly if the radiation is at levels of some of the stuff they're removing from Fukushima Prefecture (less than the background radiation in Denver and many other places).

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#144

Post by illiarian » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:18 PM UTC

bjornsing wrote: post #98

This conclusion (i.e. that nuclear power is too safe) could very well be correct. But I’d like to see it underpinned with more solid economic reasoning. For example, while few people die from nuclear accidents they tend to be enormously costly. It may not be rational to spend billions of dollars to prevent one death, but it may well be worth billions of dollars to prevent the Fukushima disaster.

> but it may well be worth billions of dollars to prevent the Fukushima disaster.

Let's see about "Fukushima disaster".

Built in 1982. In 2012 was hit by a 9.0–9.1 undersea megathrust earthquake (preceded by a 7.2 foreshock two days before, three 6 earthquakes on the same day, and hundreds of aftershocks in the next days) and immediately after by a 14-meter-hight tsunami.

The earthquake exceeded plant tolerances (ground g-forces of 0.56, 0.52, 0.56 vs the seismic reactor design tolerances of 0.45, 0.45, and 0.46) and the tsunami (built to withstand 10-meter tsunamis, tsunami was 14 meters high).

So, the disaster is literally a black swan by definition. The aftermath is: 1 person dead due to actual incident, 2000 dead due to evacuation.

Now imagine if some other power sources were approached this way: Th Banqiao and Shimantan Dams disaster of 1975 killed at least 240 thousand people. We should never build another dam again, it's too dangerous.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#145

Post by mpweiher » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:18 PM UTC

bottlepalm wrote: post #139

mpweiher wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually you can, most of the evacuations were unnecessary and killed significantly more people than the radiation.

I guarantee you after 26 disasters the numbers will catch up.

And you'd of course be wrong.

Because these are ratios...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#146

Post by illiarian » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:20 PM UTC

Schroedingersat wrote: post #132

Ah the old "it'd be cheap if you'd just let us try and kill you". If your business model requires hundreds of emergency workers to heroically dive on the grenade once every couple of years to stop the disaster getting orders of magnitude worse than merely destroying a country's economy for decades, then it's going to start getting very hard to find people to keep diving on the grenade.

Here's your reasoning:

Every few years we throw people at the disaster that is dams. And still: Banqiao and Shimantan Dams failure with 240 000 dead, Machchu-2 Dam failure with 5000 dead etc. clearly show us how dangerous this technology is, and how we should never, ever use it again.

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#147

Post by illiarian » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #37

RC_ITR wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that can kill millions Did the inverse square law stop working recently or do they all take turns touching it?

Do you need to take turns touching it for it to be mishandled, stolen, have some accident during transport, leak in the biosphere, the soil, rivers, or underground waters, spread as air particles, be used in a dirt bomb, and several other ways besides?

> and several other ways besides?

As of March 2023, there are 422 operable power reactors in the world. Additionally, there are 58 reactors under construction and 104 reactors planned [1]

We've had nuclear plants for over 50-60 years now. We've also had nuclear reactors in ships, submarines etc.

How many of your amazing spy-novel-level scenarios have happened in reality?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#148

Post by bottlepalm » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #145

bottlepalm wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guarantee you after 26 disasters the numbers will catch up.

And you'd of course be wrong. Because these are ratios... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We know there’s potential for far worse accidents. Build more nuclear plants to find out what the ratio really is. From 2 to 26 disasters you’ll hit some big ones. The NRC itself has said the same - https://www.science.org/content/article/spent-fuel-fire-us-s...

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#149

Post by lispm » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

illiarian wrote: post #90

lispm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note how long reactors have been offline since the earthquake.

Note how it wasn't just an earthquake. But who am I to stop you from ignoring reality.

Most reactors and other facilities (like a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant) were not affected by the Tsunami, but by the earthquake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tōhoku_earthquake_and_tsu...

"In February 2019, there were 42 operable reactors in Japan. Of these, only nine reactors in five power plants were operating after having been restarted post-2011"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan

"All of Japan's nuclear plants were closed, or their operations were suspended for safety inspections. The last of Japan's fifty-four reactors (Tomari-3) went offline for maintenance on 5 May 2012,[8] leaving Japan completely without nuclear-produced electrical power for the first time since 1970."

"The total cost of implementing safety measures, maintaining facilities, and decommissioning of commercially operated nuclear power plants in Japan is estimated at ¥13.46 trillion ($123 billion)"

Re: Nuclear power is too safe

#150

Post by lispm » Fri, Mar 31, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

illiarian wrote: post #89

lispm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But still most of the reactors were taken offline and a lot are not coming back. I would invest into a technology which would not take out all similar systems for months and years on a strong earthquake - something which is to expect in Japan.

The reactor was built in 1982. 40 years ago Are you in all seriousness implying it wasn't built to withstand earthquakes?

> Are you in all seriousness implying it wasn't built to withstand earthquakes?

The question is to what kind of earthquake they were built to withstand and with what knowledge of earthquake risks? Also taking into account the level of corruption and the attempts to avoid extremely expensive building costs. It's a complex risk calculation - one won't build for arbitrary strong earthquakes, that would be very expensive.

The Fukushima site had inspections and was considered safe, only later being exposed to have multiple systemic risks: not enough protection from a tsunami, loss of power backup, loss of outside power, high-risk spent-fuel pools in need of extensive cooling, spent-fuel pools not being easily accessible, no cooling strategies for spent-fuel pools under loss of electrical power, building weakened due to cooling with seawater, no facility to clean cooling water, melted cores, no technology to investigate buildings with melted cores, hydrogen explosion in buildings, ... and much more.

Some of the reactors in Japan were built on fault lines with high risk of strong earthquakes. After a strong earthquake it could take many years to bring a nuclear power plant back online, if ever. This is what happened.