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Safe Enough?

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Re: Safe Enough?

#31

Post by exmadscientist »

jenadine wrote: post #27
exmadscientist wrote: post #23

The article is fine, but the link in its Footnote 3 is the really interesting part: https://www.ans.org/news/article-1556/tmi-operators-did-what... It's a story from the Davis Besse NPP operators, who happened to face the exact same fault as caused the accident at Three Mile Island... and made it through OK... except they experienced it first , 18 months earlier. So why, when this happened a second time, did no one l…

I agree with you, but you are overestimating the cost on live of an accident by many orders of magnitude. How do you get to the tens of millions of live ruinned?

My brain pulled that number from the article's discussion of Fukushima:

> In the worst case scenario, not made public until long after the disaster, the entire Tokyo Metropolitan Area - 35 million people - would have to be moved to temporary shelter. The very existence of the nation of Japan was at stake. And no one - not TEPCO, the utility that owned Fukushima, not the Prime Minister, not the Japanese military - could do anything but hope.

Feel free to call that unreasonably-worst-case or just hyperbole. (It kind of is.) But that's where I got it.

Re: Safe Enough?

#32

Post by teddyh »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #21
totetsu wrote: post #15

In the hypothetical situation where Tokyo needed to be evacuated, or a large enough portion of the population there feared for their health and wanted to leave, i wonder if in the long term, the redistribution of population back into regional Japan would not be a good thing over all.

In the long term, everything is a good thing over all because humans adapt to make it that way

Yes. Like when you’re driving using a GPS map. You can’t look at the map and see if you’ve made the wrong turn, because it always recalculates the route and determines the currently correct path to your destination, and shows you as being on that path. (The only exception is when it tells you to make a U-turn.)

Re: Safe Enough?

#33

Post by Gwypaas »

troupo wrote: post #8

> a slippage between tectonic plates so powerful that it moved Honshu, the main island of Japan, 2.4 meters to the east. The earthquake generated a tsunami 14 meters high The definition of a black swan event. And yet the conclusion is, unsurprisingly, indistinguishable from "nuclear is bad, be very very wary". Imagine if any other tech had the same fear-mongering. We'd never have a single hydroelectric plant after Ba…

> The definition of a black swan event.

An earthquake and tsunami in the country who coined the term is now a "Black Swan event" to make an attempt at painting the nuclear power plants failure in favorable light.

Even more entertaining is that Fukushima lead to widespread changes across the industry around independent core cooling and gas filtration.

The regulators found systemic deficiencies in the industry, but let's roll that back!

As an example: A nuclear reactor in Sweden had a severe incident in 2006 when many of the "defense in depth" layers had been accidentally removed through freak occurrences and upgrades. Thus independent core cooling was not a Black Swan event, it was systemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forsmark_Nuclear_Power_Plant#J...

Re: Safe Enough?

#34

Post by troupo »

Gwypaas wrote: post #33
troupo wrote: post #8

> a slippage between tectonic plates so powerful that it moved Honshu, the main island of Japan, 2.4 meters to the east. The earthquake generated a tsunami 14 meters high The definition of a black swan event. And yet the conclusion is, unsurprisingly, indistinguishable from "nuclear is bad, be very very wary". Imagine if any other tech had the same fear-mongering. We'd never have a single hydroelectric plant after Ba…

> The definition of a black swan event. An earthquake and tsunami in the country who coined the term is now a "Black Swan event" to make an attempt at painting the nuclear power plants failure in favorable light. Even more entertaining is that Fukushima lead to widespread changes across the industry around independent core cooling and gas filtration. The regulators found systemic deficiencies in the industry, but let…

> An earthquake and tsunami in the country who coined the term is now a "Black Swan event" to make an attempt at painting the nuclear power plants failure in favorable light.

How many earthquakes do you know that move an entire island by 2.4 meters?

How many 14-meter tsunamis have there been?

"A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences"

> The regulators found systemic deficiencies in the industry, but let's roll that back!

Of course that is not what I'm saying. But do let the FUD roll.

Re: Safe Enough?

#35

Post by verve_rat »

troupo wrote: post #8

> a slippage between tectonic plates so powerful that it moved Honshu, the main island of Japan, 2.4 meters to the east. The earthquake generated a tsunami 14 meters high The definition of a black swan event. And yet the conclusion is, unsurprisingly, indistinguishable from "nuclear is bad, be very very wary". Imagine if any other tech had the same fear-mongering. We'd never have a single hydroelectric plant after Ba…

An earthquake on the Pacific Rim is far, far from being a black Swan.

If you can't build a nuclear plant, or a dam, while accounting for expected events, then maybe don't.

Re: Safe Enough?

#36

Post by Gwypaas »

troupo wrote: post #34
Gwypaas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The definition of a black swan event. An earthquake and tsunami in the country who coined the term is now a "Black Swan event" to make an attempt at painting the nuclear power plants failure in favorable light. Even more entertaining is that Fukushima lead to widespread changes across the industry around independent core cooling and gas filtration. The regulators found systemic deficiencies in the industry, but let…

> An earthquake and tsunami in the country who coined the term is now a "Black Swan event" to make an attempt at painting the nuclear power plants failure in favorable light. How many earthquakes do you know that move an entire island by 2.4 meters? How many 14-meter tsunamis have there been? "A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe con…

The Indian Ocean one less than ten years prior?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake_a...

Following that multiple studies showed that Fukushima could get hit by +15m tsunamis and suggested heightening the sea wall.

Now you are trying to redefine Black Swan to fit your narrative.

Take what the author said about COVID-19.

> According to Taleb, as it was expected with great certainty that a global pandemic would eventually take place, the COVID-19 pandemic is not a black swan, but is considered to be a white swan; such an event has a major effect, but is compatible with statistical properties.

Similarly, there is a great certainty that a +15m tsunami will hit any of the existing nuclear power plants in Japan. Fukushima was not a Black Swan, simply human negligence.

Re: Safe Enough?

#37

Post by verve_rat »

troupo wrote: post #34
Gwypaas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The definition of a black swan event. An earthquake and tsunami in the country who coined the term is now a "Black Swan event" to make an attempt at painting the nuclear power plants failure in favorable light. Even more entertaining is that Fukushima lead to widespread changes across the industry around independent core cooling and gas filtration. The regulators found systemic deficiencies in the industry, but let…

> An earthquake and tsunami in the country who coined the term is now a "Black Swan event" to make an attempt at painting the nuclear power plants failure in favorable light. How many earthquakes do you know that move an entire island by 2.4 meters? How many 14-meter tsunamis have there been? "A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe con…

>How many 14-meter tsunamis have there been?

Since 1900 there have been at least 12 megatsunami with a height up to 1/2 a kilometre.

Re: Safe Enough?

#38

Post by defrost »

verve_rat wrote: post #35
troupo wrote: post #8

> a slippage between tectonic plates so powerful that it moved Honshu, the main island of Japan, 2.4 meters to the east. The earthquake generated a tsunami 14 meters high The definition of a black swan event. And yet the conclusion is, unsurprisingly, indistinguishable from "nuclear is bad, be very very wary". Imagine if any other tech had the same fear-mongering. We'd never have a single hydroelectric plant after Ba…

An earthquake on the Pacific Rim is far, far from being a black Swan. If you can't build a nuclear plant, or a dam, while accounting for expected events, then maybe don't.

An earthquake isn't a black swan event, correct.

An earthquake of that magnitude, creating a Tsunami of that strength, striking in just the wrong place .. is very much a black swan event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilFEKSZQv5o

By your 'logic' no dam can be built as they all stand a chance of a direct hit from a meteorite.

Risk-wise the Fukushima nuclear disaster cause less direct and indirect death than many accidents and natural disasers .. including deaths from, say, fertilizer depot explosions, oil rig accidents, etc.

Re: Safe Enough?

#39

Post by noduerme »

>> A nuclear power plant's approximately twenty thousand safety components have a Rube Goldberg quality. Like dominoes, numerous pumps, valves, and switches must operate in the required sequence to simply pump cooling water or shut down the plant. There were innumerable unlikely combinations of failures that could cause an accident

Query: Is anything this complex designed this way today, without actually running all its failure modes through risk analysis before actually building it?

Re: Safe Enough?

#40

Post by jenadine »

toyg wrote: post #28
jenadine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but you are overestimating the cost on live of an accident by many orders of magnitude. How do you get to the tens of millions of live ruinned?

Chernobyl and surrounding areas had to be fully evacuated, and it was a pretty remote site in a very sparsely populated country. That's not tens of millions but probably in the single millions. If it happened in a denser area, like France or the US East Coast, it would probably reach 10m relatively easily.

According to Wikipedia, there was less than 200k people evacuated for Chernobyl. Also, if you take a 30km radius, multiplied by the population density of California, you get only 274k people. (And I'm pretty sure that the powerplant are build in area which are less populated than the average).

As we leaned since, 30km radius is probably over-doing it.

That's considering the life of someone being evacuated to be "ruined"

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