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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'

#181

Post by leoc »

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 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's not just the industry or governments, it's also the shamelessly, breathlessly partisan pros and antis who seem to dominate the broader debate on nuclear.

> It seems to me this is partially a failure of our current economic system, where the incentives for the industry are towards minimizing costs / maximizing profits. This is fine for some other industries, but it seems to fail for areas where the impact of mismanagement is much more severe than a bankruptcy.

There are definitely serious incentive problems. However, making everyone a public employee and so notionally an agent of the public interest doesn't necessarily make such problems go away, viz. Chernobyl.

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

#182

Post by mpyne »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #125
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

This is a very key point.

One of the ways that the Navy's nuclear management agency (NR) has tried to avoid the problem of regulatory capture is that they train their own experts in addition to pulling experienced personnel from the nuclear-powered fleet.

Those who have never been underway but still understand nuclear power and administration are typically thought of as a bunch of pompous no-fun assholes... but that's their job and they do it well. They have little to no ability to be empathic with ship's crew as they've not been underway and dead tired and all that... and so it's that much easier to demand that the right thing is done instead of the easy thing.

It's not enough just to train your own experts though. NR pulls people back from the fleet, as those with operational experience are those who best understand the typical shortcuts that might be employed by the crew, and how to detect that those shortcuts are being practiced.

But you're exactly right, it's impossible to design a safe nuclear power industry without looking at how best to design the regulatory component.

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

#183

Post by DennisP »

kenster07 wrote: post #159
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…

Why is it fundamentally stupid to be opposed to it? Nuclear power in its current form presents tremendous, potentially country-altering downside when things (can and will) go wrong. Is this really the best humanity has got -- the side effect of a decades-old weapons program?

Because the worst nuclear accidents have done less damage than coal plants do every year as part of their normal expected operation. If we were rational we'd replace those coal plants as fast as we could, even if it took nuclear to do it.

Because the accidents have all been with very old designs. Even at Fukushima, in the face of a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, reactors built in the 80's instead of the 70's got through it all just fine.

Because climate change is turning into such a desperate problem that we can't afford to leave any solutions on the table. And nuclear works quite nicely with solar power...nuclear all the time, solar for extra peak load during the day.

Nuclear is not just the side effect of a weapons program. It's an amazing energy source. With the most advanced reactors, all the energy you need for your entire life can come from a lump of fuel smaller than a golfball.

It's very sad that our first use of this technology was to kill people. Perhaps if we hadn't figured it out in the middle of WWII, things would have been different, and climate change would be a hypothetical instead of an imminent nightmare.

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

#184

Post by mpyne »

orblivion wrote: post #160

"They are worried about the enormous quantities of water, used to cool the reactor cores, which are now being stored on site. Some 1,000 tanks have been built to hold the water. But these are believed to be at around 85% of their capacity and every day an extra 400 tonnes of water are being added." Are they still cooling down the reactors?

Probably they are still cooling down the reactors, as least somewhat. The effect is called "decay heat" and does take quite some time to completely dissipate for reactors of that scale.

However there is also a lot of groundwater leaking into the basement/reactor complex apparently, which then needs to be pumped back out.

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

#185

Post by lostlogin »

pdonis wrote: post #138
pessimizer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

risks imposed on people who don't have a choice and don't stand to benefit Huh? People do have a choice to move if they don't want to live near a power plant. And the plant is making the electricity they use, so they do benefit from it. (That said, plenty of nuclear plants have been killed because the people who would have lived near the plant protested.)

Probably the majority don't. The poorer you are the less choices you have. If they can move its probably to another undesirable location. I doubt that those who live by power plants are wealthy.

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

#186

Post by DennisP »

WalterBright wrote: post #166
pdonis wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess nobody thought it would be overrun. But why would you even take that risk? Not to mention that tsunamis can easily reach 100 feet in wave height; I'm not sure you could build a seawall that could keep one out.

It would be easier to put the generators in bunkers and harden them. Besides, it was pretty clear to me reading the sequence of events at Fukushima that there was entirely too little thought given to backup decoupling - there was too much of a zipper effect of one failure leading to another. I'm not a lay person on this - I worked for 3 years on airliner designs, and much of that is finding ways to deal with failure…

Bear in mind that these reactors were built in the 1970s. Modern designs are a lot better, and some shut down by themselves upon loss of power, with no need for active measures at all. Even some reactors built in the 1980s got through the events at Fukushima just fine.

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

#187

Post by mpyne »

bengrunfeld wrote: post #85
pdonis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, let's try to keep things in perspective, please. This is very bad for the people that are near the plant, no question. But in global terms, the total amount of contaminated water that could potentially leak is miniscule. The Pacific Ocean is really, really big. The article says that 400 metric tons of contaminated water are being added every day. Let's say that leakage rate goes on for 5 years. That's about a mil…

Right, but isn't radioactive water like cordial, you only need a small amount to change a much larger body of water? Ton for ton, I can see your point of how it's only a drop in the ocean, but if that drop is highly radioactive and spreads in the currents, wouldn't that be enough to cause serious damage?

If by "radioactive" you mean "ever emits radiation" then yes, a small amount of radioactive water can dilute into a large volume of still-radioactive water.

By if you use that definition you yourself would be considered "radioactive" as you are always walking around carrying quite a few radioactive isotopes, including Carbon-14 (as made famous by "carbon dating" from geology) and Potassium-40.

As pdonis notes, radioactive contaminants dilute just as well as any other contaminant in water. Assuming it more-or-less evenly mixes within the Pacific Ocean, you could essentially dump all of Fukushima into that ocean and not see large changes in overall ocean radioactivity.

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

#188

Post by kenster07 »

baddox wrote: post #179
kenster07 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it fundamentally stupid to be opposed to it? Nuclear power in its current form presents tremendous, potentially country-altering downside when things (can and will) go wrong. Is this really the best humanity has got -- the side effect of a decades-old weapons program?

Why is it appropriate to compare the worst case for various methods of power generation? I think it's more appropriate to weigh the potential failure cases of each by the probability of them occurring, and I suspect if we did that, nuclear wouldn't be the most harmful method of power generation.

It certainly is not the best. The worst case scenario for nuclear isn't even remotely acceptable.

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

#189

Post by KVFinn »

beefman wrote: post #167

It's really sad and frightening for me to see such hysteria in the media and even in the comments here. I want to address all of it, but it's not possible even to make a dent. But I can offer the following numbers: Fukushima release to groundwater TEPCO estimate, August 2013 0.024 PBq ( And here's a picture of the leak http://stat.ameba.jp/user_images/20130820/14/noraneko-okayam... The highest seawater activity level…

You're quoting a bunch of year or more old stats... there's been a flurry of recent news coverage because recent measurements have either exceeded past limits, or past measurements are now considered to have been underestimates, with respect to ocean release.

Example:

http://japandailypress.com/fukushima-bay-radiation-levels-hi...

>Reports from Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), operator of the disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, say that measurements of radioactive tritium in seawater – seeping out of the nuclear complex via groundwater into the sea – show levels at 4700 becquerels per liter, the highest tritium level in the measurement history. The highest tritium levels have come in the past 15 days, the same reports show.

It is very very strange to be seeing such Tritium levels this late, it dilutes so quickly. It's so strange it's to even figure out probably causes.

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

#190

Post by WalterBright »

DennisP wrote: post #186
WalterBright wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be easier to put the generators in bunkers and harden them. Besides, it was pretty clear to me reading the sequence of events at Fukushima that there was entirely too little thought given to backup decoupling - there was too much of a zipper effect of one failure leading to another. I'm not a lay person on this - I worked for 3 years on airliner designs, and much of that is finding ways to deal with failure…

Bear in mind that these reactors were built in the 1970s. Modern designs are a lot better, and some shut down by themselves upon loss of power, with no need for active measures at all. Even some reactors built in the 1980s got through the events at Fukushima just fine.

I worked on airframe design in the 1970s. The ethos of design to withstand failure was well-entrenched then, and goes back a long way in the airframe industry.

The key idea is nobody has managed to design parts that won't fail. But they have figured out how to design highly reliable systems out of parts that fail.

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