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Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#141

Post by OpieCunningham »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #69
schintan wrote: post #61

The worst case scenario of a nuclear reactor going wrong is much worse than any other alternative, however slim the chances of that happening may be. This fact is enough to be concerned about the safety of nuclear reactors.

Cars are the probabilistically one of the most risky form of transport. I doubt that you are concerned about that fact when you get in to one.

Quantitatively, cars are extremely safe based on the number of drivers and the frequency with which they drive. If you put a billion people around Chernobyl during the accident the number of people dead would greatly outnumber the number dead from all car accidents throughout history.

Put another way, on average driving 100 million miles is safer than flying 100 million miles (contrary to popular belief that flying is safer than driving).

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/planecrash/risk-01.html

You can see the fallacy of "cars are dangerous" when you compare cars to motorcycles on that chart, because most people don't ride motorcycles so the probability of death for most people is lower than for a car.

Fukushima is extraordinarily safe for everyone living in Iceland. It is far less safe for everyone living in Japan.

Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#142

Post by OpieCunningham »

serichsen wrote: post #139
OpieCunningham wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you are right about Three-Mile Island. He's not right about TMI, either. The results of TMI are debated to this day with some studies claiming minimal or no adverse health affects and some studies claiming significant adverse health affects.

Just because someone disagrees, an issue is not necessarily controversial. You have to take the substantial merit of the arguments into account.

Of course you're right. But there is no indication in the OP that he has done that in any way. Nor amongst the literally dozens of identical claims regarding TMI I've seen on HN in the past few days.

Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#143

Post by serichsen »

Tichy wrote: post #125

If it is all designed for that, and they had to give up the reactors anyway, why don't they just wait and let the cores melt? Something doesn't add up in this optimistic scenario, it seems to me.

Cleaning up a molten core is quite a bit more complicated than dismantling a functional reactor.

Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#144

Post by serichsen »

schintan wrote: post #61

The worst case scenario of a nuclear reactor going wrong is much worse than any other alternative, however slim the chances of that happening may be. This fact is enough to be concerned about the safety of nuclear reactors.

The worst case in Japan would be a containment vessel blowing up from the pressure. That could kill the remaining workes on site and pose quite a messy cleanup problem, but already the 20 km evacuation zone could be seen as a bit of an overreaction.

However, that is not going to happen, because the containment is rather vented than letting it burst.

Anyway, the carnage and tragedy _actually having struck_ in form of the earthquake and tsunami _dwarf_ even the most horrible scenario at the nuclear plants.

Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#145

Post by mncolinlee »

First of all, recent studies show Chernobyl killed nearly one million people. Don't trivialize Chernobyl!

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html

Secondly, the real tragedies here are the high human health costs in cancer and birth defects, the economic cost of losing twenty percent of Japan's power indefinitely, and the outrageous modern day cost of building new reactors. Given those high costs and the ten year construction times, it is unlikely that these plants will be replaced by nuclear reactors even if we wiped Japan's collective memory.

Many geeks are easily swayed by scientific talk that ignores social variables and whole cost accounting. Remember Google's early motto, "Don't be evil!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_...

Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#146

Post by jerf »

potatolicious wrote: post #117
dublinclontarf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... I'm not one of the "OMFG LOOK AT THE NUCLEAR ANGEL OF DEATH" people, but can we wait for this crisis to reach some resolution before we make loud proclamations either way? Well you could see this as a calm article to balance those with cries of the nuclear angel because lets face it, they sure are making something of this.

It's not a calm article though - it's as bad as the ones proclaiming the death of nuclear and the upcoming atomic apocalypse... just in the complete opposite extreme. Where one side is "fire! brimstone! death!" this side is "lalalalala NO PROBLEMS KEEP CALM CARRY ON". Both are unnecessary, unproductive, and dogmatic.

But the question isn't who is being extreme in which direction. The question is, who's right? If the facts in this article are accurate, then they're not being extreme, they're just plain right. If the facts aren't accurate, then they are wrong.

This isn't a "(D) say -10, (R) says 10, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle" situation. This is engineering and reality. If the worst "nuclear" injury that has occurred is a dose equivalent to a year of background radiation and another of 1/10th of a year, the right answer is that nothing resembling disaster has happened, heck nothing you could even notice without sensitive instruments has happened, and it's not an "extreme" to say so if it's true.

Applying the political template to the story is immediately a fail, at least in terms of understanding the truth.

Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#147

Post by beefman »

beefman wrote: post #111
antirez wrote: post #5

Enough articles "everything is fine" for my tastes circulating onto Hacker News, while instead the facts created more and more concerns. I think it's better to just wait, and hope, instead of blabling about things that even the top experts of the world are having an hard time to figure. There will be a time, in a few weeks, and hopefully after a disaster was avoided, to speculate about the real security of nuke power…

People deserve to know if anything is currently wrong, throughout this event. If a public health problem does obtain, that doesn't make people who suggested it obtained before it did correct!

Downvoted, really? Please explain.

Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#148

Post by hartror »

sutro wrote: post #95
knieveltech wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, it doesn't take hordes of engineers nearly a decade to design your web server.

Good point. It took hordes of engineers almost two decades to design his web server. http://httpd.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html

Sure, but those hordes who designed it didn't spend time training him to set it up and run it correctly. Just face that it is a horrible analogy and move on.

Re: Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power: Build more reactors now

#149

Post by bluedanieru »

potatolicious wrote: post #114
bluedanieru wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 400 mSv figure was a spike measured at one of the reactors, not ambient radiation in populated areas. In Shinjuku in Tokyo for example they measured 0.809µSv (note the µ) between 10 and 11 this morning, although the average for that period was about half that. If there are no further blasts or fires I think things will be fine, but I don't know how much more damage the facility can take. Some of my friends and co…

Yes, the 400 mSv figure is at the plant - the front gates to be specific IIRC. If 400 mSv/h is measured in a populated area this would be a complete and absolute disaster - within a few hours people would be falling sick from radiation sickness, some will die in the short term from it, and you're now dealing with an incredibly large long tail of cancers in the future. Even just measuring that level at the plant is al…

It was 11 mSv/hr at the front gate. The 400 mSv/hr figure was from literally right next to or inside the reactor. And this was a spike, mind you, not sustained for even an hour (as with the 0.809µSv/hr figure).
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