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Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

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Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#131

Post by mixmax »

blablabla123 wrote: post #122
mixmax wrote: post #45

I have a personal theory, that I haven't really been able to confirm or deny. Here it is. After Hiroshima and during the cold war nuclear energy was associated with death and destruction. Hiroshima for obvious reasons, and the cold war because the population of the western world was constantly reminded how The Soviet Union had thousands of missiles with nuclear bombs pointing at us, ready to go. Western governments u…

>It's the energy source that has the fewest deaths per MWH produced Source? I want to remind that the nuclear material needs to be mined somewhere. I never worked in a Uranium mine but it's probably not the healthiest job in the world. Then the material needs to be transported, transported a long way. During this way it gets enriched, used, cooled down. Maybe even re-enriched, used, some part get stuck in walls, pipe…

Here is a source - http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...

Note that nuclear is significantly safer than even hydro and solar.

I think your fear of uranium mines is overblown, as these numbers are included in the calculations. Many more people die in coalmines.

Did you know that a coal plant emits significantly more radiation than a nuclear plant because coal is radioactive and isn't shielded like nuclear power plants?

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#132

Post by ori_b »

peterpathname wrote: post #108
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fear prevents development of safe nuclear reactors. Irrational, yes?

safe reactors certainly do exist : on paper. I'm old enough to remember chernobyl. at the time, we were assured it was a dodgy old design, and that they future models would be foolproof. Then fukushima, and we started hearing the same soothing stories of fantasy designs that could never cause such havoc. Ever since day one, this industry has over-promised and under-delivered. Remember "power too cheap to meter"? It's…

Fukushima (1971) predated Chernobyl (1977).

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#133

Post by patrickg_zill »

I wonder exactly how much access the scientists had to the raw data - TEPCO has lied before.

I would offer the journalist, all-expenses paid including food (and fed by fish caught in the general area), internet, housing, to live within 10km of the plant, for 1 year with his wife and children.

Would he take me up on the offer?

BTW, articles like this seem to show that long-term effects can be expected: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130429/srep01742/full/srep01...

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#134

Post by ori_b »

peterpathname wrote: post #105
sampo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nuclear plant's worst-case scenario is clearly substantially worse If 14-meter tsunami hitting a 70's build nuclear power plant isn't a worst case scenario, what is? Also coal's worst case scenario is global climate change.

to me, a worst case scenario is that one or more of the nutcases who leapfrog a weapons program off the back of the materials, technologies, facilities and expertise developed thru their power program, decides to test a bomb. or shake it angrily. or drop it. Can anyone here remember going to war because we though the other crazy guy -might- have a coal bomb? there's more nuclear actors than ever before, and it only t…

Thankfully, the designs that can be used to produce weapons grade material are also the ones that are the least safe. If people opt for the old designs, it will be obvious what their intentions are.

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#135

Post by antr »

lkozma wrote: post #84
jasonkester wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing about this place is that you don't have to be arguing to reply to a post. We sometimes have discussions where participants agree with one another, or even change their minds about things. It's a unique feature, so don't feel bad if it takes a while to get used to.

I'm not feeling bad, in fact, it seems that I had two more weeks of getting used to than you, looking at when our accounts were created, :) The post to which I replied has been edited. Where it now says "I do agree" it used to say "However, I disagree with you on..." or something similar, and also in other places.

I haven't edited the post, I'd appreciate that you don't make false statements.

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#136

Post by dpark »

gmac wrote: post #72
mixmax wrote: post #45

I have a personal theory, that I haven't really been able to confirm or deny. Here it is. After Hiroshima and during the cold war nuclear energy was associated with death and destruction. Hiroshima for obvious reasons, and the cold war because the population of the western world was constantly reminded how The Soviet Union had thousands of missiles with nuclear bombs pointing at us, ready to go. Western governments u…

> Through decades the population was told by the government that nuclear radiation was the evil silent killer. Well, two out of three's not bad: it is silent, and it can kill. > people are now irrationally scared of nuclear radiation from power plants You may not fear nuclear energy, but it's not irrational to do so. Even the current generation of reactors rely on active safety systems, and can't just be shut down. E…

> Sure, it's a low probability event for each of us, but in my opinion those consequences are unacceptable for essentially any probability of occurrence.

This is not rational fear. The non-nuclear energy industry is not perfectly safe. Coal mining results in many deaths both from the dangers of mining and the pollution caused. Oil mining results in some deaths and a fair few major ecological disasters. Solar power and wind power kill people as well (falling from a roof or having a turbine fall on you are both potentially life-ending).

According to this site (http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-ener...), Nuclear is the safest in terms of human death by far. This is just a blog post, so grain of salt, but it illustrates that your "unacceptable for essentially any probability" claim is not rational.

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#137

Post by wnight »

petercooper wrote: post #106
rolleiflex wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it similar to the risk of an airplane death. Both of those are deemed by 'rationalists' as irrational fears, as airplanes are by and large, safer than driving cars. However, considering the outcomes the fear is not as irrational; there are a significant chance of surviving a car accident, but almost none at all of a plane one. It also comes with a bonus of a few minutes of horrifying fall into your inevitable…

there are a significant chance of surviving a car accident, but almost none at all of a plane one. I think this demonstrates the overarching point well because the chances of surviving an air related accident are surprisingly high. The NTSB figures for people involved in commercial airline accidents between 1983-2000 show that 95.7% of people survived: http://boingboing.net/2012/11/05/surviving-a-plane-crash-is-... .…

> there are a significant chance of surviving a car accident, but almost none at all of a plane one.

Also, the charts of fatalities by travel mode that I've seen have already screened out the non-fatalities. If you died in a car accident, no matter how un/likely it was, you're 100% dead.

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#138

Post by snowwrestler »

onli wrote: post #19
ghshephard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single statement you made, with the exception of handling radioactive waste, applies more to coal than it does to nuclear power. Coal pollution doesn't "kill outright" - but does so slowly, over many years, and many, many more people than nuclear power. Coal waste continues to leak into the air, and into water systems. I'm not arguing that Nuclear power is "safe" (nothing, is - even solar power kills many peopl…

I always love it when coal is used as a comparision. Because: Coal isn't the alternative, solar and wind are Furthermore: Nuclear energy has a fairly high CO2 output, if you count it all together. So this argument against coal is itself an argument against nuclear energy. Most importantly: We can't manage nuclear waste. There is just no feasible scenario which makes sure for future generations that the nuclear waste…

Solar and wind might be the alternative for powering your TV and AC. They will not power the advanced scientific and engineering projects of the future. For instance the Large Hadron Collider uses twice as much electricity in a year as the entire city of Geneva. It's possible to conceive of a physics experiment that uses orders of magnitude more. What if we discover that "warp drive" is possible, but takes enormous amounts of energy? Wouldn't you want to try to do it?

If we want a Star Trek future--spaceships, advanced materials, anti-gravity, incredible new technologies, etc.--we are going to need to iteratively develop denser and more powerful energy sources. These will also have denser and more powerful failure modes. So our engineering also needs to get iteratively better.

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#139

Post by Pxtl »

rolleiflex wrote: post #95
gmac wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Through decades the population was told by the government that nuclear radiation was the evil silent killer. Well, two out of three's not bad: it is silent, and it can kill. > people are now irrationally scared of nuclear radiation from power plants You may not fear nuclear energy, but it's not irrational to do so. Even the current generation of reactors rely on active safety systems, and can't just be shut down. E…

I find it similar to the risk of an airplane death. Both of those are deemed by 'rationalists' as irrational fears, as airplanes are by and large, safer than driving cars. However, considering the outcomes the fear is not as irrational; there are a significant chance of surviving a car accident, but almost none at all of a plane one. It also comes with a bonus of a few minutes of horrifying fall into your inevitable…

Which highlights the problem with fear - when you look down the list of leading causes of death, you basically have a million terrible diseases (cancer, heart disease, alzheimer's etc.)... but once you get out of the "disease" territory, the big killer? Cars.

Probably the most avoidable, most pointless way to die... but we think nothing of driving everywhere, of putting our kids in cars (children don't get much in the way of heart disease or alzheimers, so automotive accidents are pretty close to the top for them).

So yeah, I have trouble respecting the public's perception of danger.

Re: Japan's radiation disaster toll: none dead, none sick

#140

Post by fhd2 »

qwertyboy wrote: post #82
fhd2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you look at the numbers you'll see that nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest scalable energy source we've got. It's the energy source that has the fewest deaths per MWH produced, it doesn't produce CO2, etc. etc. How about nuclear waste though? Where do we put that? I'm with you, it seems like humanity at large is hysterical beyond reasonable levels about radiation. However, it's not like it's completely ha…

Actually, fossil fuel power plants release more radioactive waste than nuclear ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Comparing_radioac... Nuclear power really is a darn good solution to our energy problems, and is more feasible and entirely more humane than using less energy. Our growing energy demands are not just a result of us being spoiled, they are a direct result of our need to sustain more and more…

> Actually, fossil fuel power plants release more radioactive waste than nuclear ones.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Comparing_radioac....

That surprised me, but I didn't mean to say that fossil fuel power plants are a great alternative.

> Progress has created a lot of problems, but we can't really slow down in any significant way. Our only hope is to use our momentum to find solutions.

I'm not saying we should go back to not having energy at all. But it seems like there's quite a bit of potential for saving energy without seriously lowering anyone's quality of life.

For instance, does 50% of the population have to commute in a big car every day? That doesn't sound like progress to me.

The US's per capita energy consumption is more than twice that of the UK [1], is there really no way to save some of that?

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

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