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Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#121

Post by at-fates-hands »

samatman wrote: post #82
veidr wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there was a culture that had a centuries-old tradition of committing painful ritual suicide to atone for failures... I would totally trust those guys to safely run a nuclear plant...

The idea is really old . In the Code of Hammurabi, a builder whose building collapses and kills someone is killed. If the building kills a son, the son of the builder is killed. Simply having it around as a cultural trope ain't gonna do it. I'm talking about a voluntary pledge that assumes the force of law. Turn it around: if an engineer thinks he can build a perfectly safe nuclear plant, why shouldn't he pledge his…

When I was in school to be an Architect, I was told that if I designed something, and I put my signature on blueprints and the structure I designed was built and failed in any sense, it is me, and me alone who is responsible.

So in a sense, this idea (while not nearly as extreme as yours) actually exists today. Architects and Engineers regularly take risks when they attempt to create something new. When it doesn't work, they are usually held accountable:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/06/mit_sue...

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#122

Post by pessimizer »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #93
samatman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is really old . In the Code of Hammurabi, a builder whose building collapses and kills someone is killed. If the building kills a son, the son of the builder is killed. Simply having it around as a cultural trope ain't gonna do it. I'm talking about a voluntary pledge that assumes the force of law. Turn it around: if an engineer thinks he can build a perfectly safe nuclear plant, why shouldn't he pledge his…

it's a ridiculous suggestion because 1) the workers at nuclear plants already risk their lives to help out when it's out of control 2) nuclear is so expensive to clean up that they run for decades after the initial design, presumably many of the initial designers are dead, and every incremental change should involve a suicide pact? Remuneration for such an undertaking would have to go up by a large multiple to make s…

>Remuneration for such an undertaking would have to go up by a large multiple to make such work attractive.

This is the point. The cost of operating the plant would have to take into account what are currently deemed externalities. If that turned out to make the plant too expensive to run, that's the market.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#123

Post by pdonis »

redblacktree wrote: post #113
pdonis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

running the risk of turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous mutation. But here's the thing: we have already had two "nuclear accidents of any significance": Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Neither of those came even remotely close to "turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous mutation". Nor will Fukushima. Yes, it's very bad for people near the plant, and for fishermen in…

Yes, but I'm not a miner. Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near the power plant.

Does that mean you're not concerned about the deaths from coal mining? You're only concerned about the risks that impact you personally? That doesn't seem to be a common attitude: if it were, nobody would have complained about the Deepwater Horizon spill except people who lived on the Gulf coast. (And nobody would complain about nuclear power except those who had to live near a plant.)

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#124

Post by ant512 »

samatman wrote: post #50
jre wrote: post #16

I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all. It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the indus…

I can think of one thing, and no one will swallow it in our society: The engineers who work on nuclear plants must pledge their lives for its safety, and ritually kill themselves in the event of an incident. I'm perfectly serious, in that it's within the human experience and it would work. I also suspect our world society can't wrap its head around that kind of medieval pact, and I'm not even sure I want to live in t…

Just the engineers?

Did you ever work on a project where you said to your boss, "We need to do X or this won't work," and your boss said, "X is too [expensive | time consuming | difficult], we won't do that."

Or a project where your boss hired a bunch of incompetents at the last minute because the project was running late, and the new hires made endless mistakes that you then had to fix?

Do you want to seppuku because your nuclear plant blew up because your boss was an idiot and wouldn't listen to the engineers?

And don't suggest that the engineers become whistleblowers. We all know how that turns out.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#125

Post by CWuestefeld »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #76
jre wrote: post #16

I think there are similarities between the nuclear power debate and the GMO debate. In both case, I think it's stupid to be fundamentally opposed to the technology/research itself. But in both case, the industry is so fucked up (lies, too close ties with control authority, ...) that I don't trust them at all. It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the indus…

Regulatory capture is a big problem. One of the more bizarre twists in the Japanese nuclear story is that a program to develop robots that could remotely work inside damaged nuclear generating stations was canceled out of fear that it would send a message that nuclear power isn't safe.

Regulatory capture is a big problem.

Regulatory capture is THE problem. Contrary to the parent post's claim, the problem is not with our "economic system". It's that, if you're going to regulate something (particularly something as complex as nuclear energy), then you need experts. And the only place to get those experts is from the industry. Generally, those people are naturally going to look at the industry from a certain perspective, one that views the activity of the industry as important, and its status quo as something other than an historical accident.

Until you can find a way to extract human nature from the regulatory process -- and that's even before we start talking about corruption -- you're not going to get anything better.

So sure, the industry tries to push the boundaries, and we should call them out for that. But while doing so, we must also consider how the regulators -- themselves humans -- might do even worse. That side of the equation is too often overlooked.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#126

Post by pessimizer »

Symmetry wrote: post #60
Symmetry wrote: post #37

Have we gotten to the point where the Fukushima disaster has caused as many deaths as an equivalent megawattage of coal powerplants operating over Fukushima's lifetime would have?

Ok, so the lifetime output of the plant is 188 GW-years. Most estimates for the expected cancer deaths due to radiation are around 120. The evacuation itself caused 46 deaths due to disruption in medical care and suicide. That means that Fukushima had .88 deaths per GWyr. That's 1/3 the death rate of coal according to an EU study, but twice the death rate of coal according to another study that looked at a different…

What a great answer to your own great question.

So depending on the accuracy of the estimates - which may be drastically low, but also should be spread amongst the plants currently running without incident and their likelihood to continue that way - nuclear could end up being far more damaging to human health than coal for an equivalent amount of energy.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#127

Post by pessimizer »

pdonis wrote: post #123
redblacktree wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I'm not a miner. Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near the power plant.

Does that mean you're not concerned about the deaths from coal mining? You're only concerned about the risks that impact you personally? That doesn't seem to be a common attitude: if it were, nobody would have complained about the Deepwater Horizon spill except people who lived on the Gulf coast. (And nobody would complain about nuclear power except those who had to live near a plant.)

>Does that mean you're not concerned about the deaths from coal mining?

No, it doesn't. It's a difference between risks taken willingly by the people who benefit from the outcome, and risks imposed on people who don't have a choice and don't stand to benefit. And it's obvious that it was meant that way. Don't be deliberately obtuse.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#128

Post by lukeschlather »

redblacktree wrote: post #113
pdonis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

running the risk of turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous mutation. But here's the thing: we have already had two "nuclear accidents of any significance": Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Neither of those came even remotely close to "turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous mutation". Nor will Fukushima. Yes, it's very bad for people near the plant, and for fishermen in…

Yes, but I'm not a miner. Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near the power plant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania is a good example how coal mines are equally dangerous to people who live nearby as a nuclear plant.

Furthermore, the risks of emphysema and cancer due to coal pollution are underrated. Coal causes much more deaths among people who don't live in coal plants than we like to pretend. (Conversely, nuclear is safer on the balance.)

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#129

Post by pdonis »

redblacktree wrote: post #113
pdonis wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

running the risk of turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous mutation. But here's the thing: we have already had two "nuclear accidents of any significance": Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Neither of those came even remotely close to "turning our children's children into walking bags of cancerous mutation". Nor will Fukushima. Yes, it's very bad for people near the plant, and for fishermen in…

Yes, but I'm not a miner. Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near the power plant.

Coal is much less dangerous for those who live near the power plant.

Oh, I should have added: this claim isn't really true either. The WHO estimates that a million people die each year due to air pollution from coal plants. This is many orders of magnitude higher than the annual average deaths related to nuclear energy.

The difference is, there isn't a worldwide push to ban coal because of this; instead, there's a push to scrub the plant emissions to remove the pollution. So again, nuclear is treated much more strictly than other power sources, relative to its actual risk.

Re: Fukushima leak is 'much worse than we were led to believe'

#130

Post by MichaelGG »

rangibaby wrote: post #99
api wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly every Fukushima mega-scare story I've encountered seems to go back to Arnie Gunderson, who is a professional anti-nuclear consultant. At the same time, I see a near information blackout from other authorities. There just doesn't seem to be much good information on this one way or the other. Radiation is very easy to detect. If there's a serious leak, people outside Japan could see it. Where is this data?

I take some reassurance that the anti-nuclear guys say we're fucked and pro-nuclear guys say nuclear is still the safest. That means the truth is probably somewhere in the middle ;-)

Sorry if I downvoted sarcasm. Unless you meant "middle" literally as in anything exactly as written by the most extreme of either side, this is a bad way to reason about things.

It's the kind of thinking that lets people say "well the anti-vaccine people are pretty strong about their views, but doctors disagree; it's probably somewhere in the middle" and slide about while being incorrect.

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