121–130 of 169 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Things degrade wood too, doesn't make it useless.
Wood in today's society needs chemical treatment or physical isolation before we use it a construction material.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your claim is that bioaccumulation is not a problem because a.) It has not reached a level dangerous to humans (through direct consumption) and b.) Life is thriving in Pripyat. a.) is orthogonal, and b.) is encouraging but doesn't establish that there _isn't_ a problem here. Mostly what I take issue to is that you're saying people need to stop being concerned about something, but the reasons you gave didn't really su…
> Your claim is that bioaccumulation is not a problem because We have decades of living with the results (event was 1986), decades of scientific research (not just reactors, but medicine and space), and high political motivation to demonstrate harm (as it shows the failure of the USSR and communism). That in all this time and with all this money and motivation, we have not gathered data that conclusively says that th…
The only party that did push against Nuclear were the Greens. And it took them over 20 years to finally get a nuclear exit through in Germany.
And as far as thresholds are concerned: we have those for everything, from lead to small dust. Being above it doesn't outright kill people, but it defenitely doesn't improve longterm health. And yes, Bavarian boar has a tendency, in some regions, to be above radiation thresholds. That can be dorectly traced back to Chernobyl. You are trying to deny that by attacking the validity of those thresholds, thresholds that are coming from a ruling party in Bavaria that is in power sonce the 50s, is as pro-nuclear power as they come. I call that a straw man argument if there ever was one.
What that means for the safety of the exclusive zone is a different stroy, isn't it?
And no, as pointed out above, the health impact of Chernobyl, on everyone from Minsk and Pripyat to the liquidators and half of Western Europe was never really studied.
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Because it is a non-argument. The implication is that engineers are incompetent and will never gain competence. There's much more detailed arguments to be made, but I'll give you two things to consider that will give you context and help you track down those arguments if you are interested 1) RBMK reactors (like Chernobyl) have a positive void coefficient, which leads to an increase in radiation as steam pressure inc…
> Concerning Fukushima Concerning Fukushima the problem would have been averted, if managers actually did what they were told by engineers: >> All three of the generators added in the late 1990s were fully operational after the tsunami. If the switching stations had been moved to the interior of the reactor buildings or to other flood-proof locations, power would have been provided by these generators to the reactors…
At Fukushima, the flood barrier was too low. Saying it was the highest tsunami in recoded history would be an argument, if that was something nobody considered (that would indicate defficiencies in the regulatory aspects), but regulations actually had provisions for such Tsunami. Meaning, the managerial system of nuclear power screwed up.
And finally, there is the risk assessment aspect. People usually get that wrong. Risk is calculated by evaluating the detectability of an issue, the propability of an issue, the effectiveness of counter-measures and the impact of an issue. And as history has shown twice, the likelyhood of a nuclear disaster is rather low, the one for smaller accidents is significantly higher so. We also had to learn the hard way, that there is only so much we can do to mitigate those risks on the technical side (physical and cost limits, managerial and regulatory defficiencies and so on). And we also saw that the impact of a nuclear disaster can, and has been, huge. Not doing a proper risk analysis allows you to pretend everything is fine, an attitude explicitly called out by the Soviet investigation, the second report is much better than first one and both are available im English online, into the Chernobyl disaster. No idea why people interested in nuclear energy don't read those, or the IAEA report. Those reports, and Chernobyl itself, should be mandatory reading, and teaching, for every engineering program, there is so much to learn here!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it is a non-argument. The implication is that engineers are incompetent and will never gain competence. There's much more detailed arguments to be made, but I'll give you two things to consider that will give you context and help you track down those arguments if you are interested 1) RBMK reactors (like Chernobyl) have a positive void coefficient, which leads to an increase in radiation as steam pressure inc…
> Concerning Fukushima Concerning Fukushima the problem would have been averted, if managers actually did what they were told by engineers: >> All three of the generators added in the late 1990s were fully operational after the tsunami. If the switching stations had been moved to the interior of the reactor buildings or to other flood-proof locations, power would have been provided by these generators to the reactors…
This is an often cited claim with no realistic value. TEPCO did run simulations in 2008 that showed that the current safety measures were not sufficient were an 8.4 magnitude earthquake to happen that management ignored. But we have to be careful here and ask the appropriate followup question. Why did they ignore it? Easy to say money, and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of it. After all, we can always build bigger and better, there's no end to this. The reason management felt comfortable ignoring this simulation is because there was no evidence that such an earthquake could actually happen. I can simulate a magnitude 15 earthquakes all day, but that doesn't mean you should prepare for them, since there's no mechanism to explain how this could happen and no historical data to suggest it. This was the situation. You have to remember that the Tohoku earthquake was the 4th largest ever recorded. EVER. The simulation was based on an 8.4M 1933 earthquake (the 20th largest ever recorded) and in a different region of Japan. There was good reason to not act quickly on this simulation. Now, there were scientific advancements during that time and it was learned that the potential for such an earthquake that large could happen, before it did, but I'm also not sure how quick you expect people to react. Even when it was learned it was clearly known to be an unlikely event.
For your fun, here's the list of the strongest earthquakes since 1500s[0], which still puts Fukushima as #6. There's 9M and you'll notice that Japan only shows up on that list twice.
There's a danger to this kind of thinking that is concerning to me and appears like it should be concerning to you as your concerns are safety. This narrative encourages companies to not run such hypothetical scenarios because if they do and the situation turns from imagination to reality blame arises and we create a narrative of how we should have acted. But this isn't a Shell/Exon situation where they were measuring and modeling realistic data. Do not conflate the two. I understand the frustration, we want to know things could have been different. But this is also why we want entities to run hypothetical scenarios, because if knowledge updates then some of the work to improve systems already exist. It is a hedge. But we need to be careful to not put unrealistic expectations on others or to move the bar based on post hoc understanding. Don't be captain hindsight. It'll just discourage performing such hypothetical scenarios in the future. Post hoc blaming is counter to your actual goals.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes#Largest_e...
> including some [wild boar] bagged as far away as Germany—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation. This really needs to stop. I remember doing the calculation a few years back due to another HN post (and the German obsession around boar) and you'd need to eat roughly 0.55lbs (0.25kg) of the most radioactive boar you could find every day or 3lbs (1.4kg) of the median. That is to just hit EU radiat…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your claim is that bioaccumulation is not a problem because We have decades of living with the results (event was 1986), decades of scientific research (not just reactors, but medicine and space), and high political motivation to demonstrate harm (as it shows the failure of the USSR and communism). That in all this time and with all this money and motivation, we have not gathered data that conclusively says that th…
You have the political thing backwards. In fact, everybody, from the Soviets over IAEA to European governments did everything they could to down play the impact. Measures covered things like not following up the health of liquidators, nor asking for it. Excluding radiation related health issues from work sicknisses and injuries. Publicly drinking potentially contaminated water on live TV to shownit is save after the…
We can dig up hundreds of articles from the late 80's and early 90's of Germany being concerned with the radiation of Chernobyl. The articles are still being written to this day.
> And yes, Bavarian boar has a tendency, in some regions, to be above radiation thresholds
And you'll find that my calculation is based on the most radioactive boar found, which was about 4x higher than the median. Don't change my argument. We were dealing with the worst case scenario, not the average, not the best, but the worst. Nor am I denying that boar surpass thresholds. Who made such a claim? I sure didn't. I only wrote about the dosage you'd get and how much you'd have to eat to achieve the EU public dosage limit (20mSv/yr), which itself is well below the measurable threshold for developing cancer within your lifetime. That is purposefully set with margins of safety. Just like my argument is that no reasonable person is going to consume that much radioactive boar meat and if somehow they did, radiation is far from their biggest concern.
Your heart will explode before you can eat the most radioactive bavarian boar money can buy. That's all I said, don't put words in my mouth. I find it incredibly offensive that you so blatantly misconstrue my argument and with absolutely no shame.
[0] https://www.dw.com/en/east-west-germany-dealt-differently-wi...
> including some [wild boar] bagged as far away as Germany—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation. This really needs to stop. I remember doing the calculation a few years back due to another HN post (and the German obsession around boar) and you'd need to eat roughly 0.55lbs (0.25kg) of the most radioactive boar you could find every day or 3lbs (1.4kg) of the median. That is to just hit EU radiat…
I just had an exchange with a local hunter who claims that 60% of the shot boars are discarded and deposited for being over the radiation limits for food. If you feel happy eating them, please contact some Bavarian hunters to get some cheap meat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have the political thing backwards. In fact, everybody, from the Soviets over IAEA to European governments did everything they could to down play the impact. Measures covered things like not following up the health of liquidators, nor asking for it. Excluding radiation related health issues from work sicknisses and injuries. Publicly drinking potentially contaminated water on live TV to shownit is save after the…
This doesn't appear to be accurate unless you're talking about East Germany[0]. In west Germany citizens were told to stay inside, not drink milk, and not eat mushrooms. Many articles are written each year on the "dangers" of eating mushrooms in Germany, due to radiation, such that just googling "German mushrooms" will turn up results about radiation. This is strong evidence counter to downplaying the event. Such obs…
Long term, everybody silently agreed to just not look too closely anymore. And blame it all on bad Soviet tech. Until Fukushima happened, that was when things really changed across the political spectrum in Germany, other countries either stucknwith nuclear anyway (France), never got into it (Austria) or had a far easier time getting out of it.