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Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

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Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#161

Post by zdragnar »

pfdietz wrote: post #6
baq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is numbers in computers, joules and watts are real things. Coal, gas and oil is full of externalities which are nowhere near being correctly included in the nominal prices of these commodities. Arguably neither are solar panels and wind turbines.

What are these putative externalities of wind and solar? These is a constant whataboutist argument from nuclear apologists, but it falls apart when examined closely, as all pro-nuclear power arguments do.

As of now, the thermoset epoxy in turbine blades can't be recycled. Turbines optimistically last 20-25 years, which means entire generations of them have either been buried or worse, incinerated.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/sweetwater-wind-t...

https://cen.acs.org/environment/recycling/companies-recycle-...

The same is true for solar panels. These are NOT unique problems to renewables, of course, except they tend to produce more waste compared to their energy output than other methods at the moment.

Recycling is a big area of research, but is not yet especially CO2 positive for solar versus just burying them, and non existent for wind.

The point isn't that the problem is impossible, but that these things are overlooked and green washed.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#162

Post by concordDance »

portaouflop wrote: post #110
foxyv wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your point. Disposal of nuclear waste at sea was common up until 1993. There is still a couple hundred thousand tons of such waste sitting in the ocean right now. In addition, about 214 times as much radioactive material was generated by nuclear testing than the Chernobyl breach. Fukushima wouldn't even come close to the waste that has already been released prior to the 1994 ban on Oceanic dumping.

What is the point ? That we dumped so much crap into the ocean a little more won’t hurt?

While intuitively dumping nuclear waste on the ocean seems like a terrible idea, if one actually does a cost benefit analysis of dumping glassed and cannistered nuclear waste on the abyssal plane it becomes tricky to find downsides.

The ocean already contains a billion tons of uranium and is mildly radioactive, the cannister and components are far too heavy to float or get carried much by currents, water is a fantastic radiation blocker (a few meters away and you're quite safe) and carries away exces heat and there's almost no life on the abyssal planes.

I really should get around to properly writing up all the details and background knowledge in a blog post at some point... (the above is missing a lot, including references, common objections and numbers)

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#163

Post by kvgr »

concordDance wrote: post #162
portaouflop wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point ? That we dumped so much crap into the ocean a little more won’t hurt?

While intuitively dumping nuclear waste on the ocean seems like a terrible idea, if one actually does a cost benefit analysis of dumping glassed and cannistered nuclear waste on the abyssal plane it becomes tricky to find downsides. The ocean already contains a billion tons of uranium and is mildly radioactive, the cannister and components are far too heavy to float or get carried much by currents, water is a fantast…

We could just trash it between two tectonic plates, so it gets eaten up by earth. It will take some time, but it would be perfectly safe. Somewhere very deep in the ocean.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#164

Post by natmaka »

bhawks wrote: post #122
natmaka wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it can be interpreted as "we didn't knew and made huge mistakes, therefore it seems OK to do so", which seems... let's say 'weird'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...

Spending nearly 1/6th of Japan's GDP to clean up 0.45% of the nuclear waste dumped into the ocean is worth consideration. If the earthquake had happened 20 years earlier (nothing on tectonic timescales) this wouldn't be up to much discussion. If you were to commit such a large amount of cash - a reparation for the disaster - would you spend it all on this?

> 0.45% of the nuclear waste

Do you mean that the Fukushima nuclear accident dumped locally in a few days 0.45% of all dumped nuclear waste during the last ~80 years?"? If so it seems non-negligible to me.

> 20 years earlier (nothing on tectonic timescales) this wouldn't be up to much discussion

Not sure about this. Maybe ~50 years ago, and even so the accident at Three Mile Island (1979) didn't pollute much but triggered quite a bunch of discussions.

> would you spend it all on this?

Yes, because there is no other realistic way: it is about losing citizens' trust and having to cope with other nations' claims, whatever the real risk. Associations of women were created to periodically measure radioactivity in various areas! In Japan! No government exposed to such distrust can decide to ignore it. A stain was made, it has to be cleaned.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#165

Post by Kon5ole »

credit_guy wrote: post #87
Kon5ole wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least in the US such costs are factored in According to [3] the industry is liable for 16b per reactor but the industry doesn’t have that much money to pay out. Entergy for example operates its nuclear plants in a subsidiary that generates about 100 million in revenue per year. They would have to raise the price of nuclear electricity by orders of magnitude to gave any chance of paying 16 bn, let alone the 10x mo…

> the operators will undoubtedly go bankrupt I think you are under the impression that if a company files for bankruptcy they can discharge debts they owe to the government. Good luck with that. They will get their power plants sold to the highest bidder, and the proceeds will be used to pay whatever cleanup cost they owe under the Price-Anderson act. Here's a link to a story that BP paid more than $60 BN for the cle…

>I think you are under the impression that if a company files for bankruptcy they can discharge debts they owe to the government.

No impressions here, surely you realize that if a company has no money, they won't get money just because the government demands it.

>Here's a link to a story that BP paid more than $60 BN for the cleanup related to the Deepwater Horizon spill [1].

But BP has lots of money. Nuclear operators don't.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#166

Post by Kon5ole »

pyrale wrote: post #138
Kon5ole wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any one power plant has no measurable effect on global climate. (All fossil power plants combined worldwide have about the same emissions as all cars; about 1/6). So, if your fathers started coal plants, you close them, stop paying for them and can forget about them. this is not at all the case if your fathers started nuclear plants, not only do you have to pay, your children have to pay, all their lives, and all you…

So basically you’re so caught up in this infighting between two carbon neutral energies that you’d rather spread disinformation about climate change and the negative effects of coal…

I have spread no disinformation. Seems to me you fail to come up with arguments against what I actually said so instead you create a strawman.

Nuclear costs are way higher than anyone has ever accounted for and they are kicked to future generations. This is a fact and we can do better.

The right thing to do is surely to spend now on tech that continues to pay dividends in the future. Maybe we ourselves won't see the benefits directly in our wallets but the future will.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#167

Post by natmaka »

defrost wrote: post #139
natmaka wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaths (nuclear accident): 1 confirmed from radiation (lung cancer, 4 years later), and 2,202 from evacuation. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... Long-term effects on health are disputed: http://csrp.jp/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2013-UNSCEAR-Repor... http://www.fukushima-disaster.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/e... https://apjjf.org/thierry-ribault/4761/article The nuclear accident…

> and 2,202 from evacuation. The primary source for that wikipedia quote argues that the act of evacuating "just in case" caused deaths and that had people remained in place no such deaths would have occurred. Over 65,000 people were evacuated from the vicinity. One such death, for example, was 102 year old Fumio Okubo who lived 30 km inland and hanged himself after being forced to move for no good reason. There were…

Obtaining the amount of victims of an evacuation is difficult, and official figures are conservative for many reasons, the main one being that each victim's family obtained financial reparation (see also the "Limitations" section of a pertinent study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266676572... ).

During the Fukushima nuclear accident information was scarce and volatile, specialists said that evacuating up to Tokyo may prove necessary (this was revealed by Kan Naoto, then Japan's Prime Minister: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-power-ody... ).

This is biz as usual: after a war many armchair experts, especially those acting upon one of the parties, are quite sure that "tackling this was easy". During the event, they are nowhere to be found.

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#168

Post by natmaka »

imtringued wrote: post #126
bamboozled wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were a Japanese tax payer, would it be a success ? The total cleanup costs were estimated to be between 50.5 and 71 trillion yen ($470 to $660 billion). For the cleanup, only 184.3 billion yen was reserved in the September supplementary budget of prefecture Fukushima, and some funds in the central government's third supplementary budget of 2011.

Nuclear power is one of the few industries where a single mistake can cost you as much as replacing the entire nuclear power plant fleet.

Indeed, and even more.

French experts stated it clearly:

1/ 'Cour des comptes' (France's supreme audit institution) established the cost of the nuclear fleet at approximately 228 billion € (2012 Report "Les coûts de la filière nucléaire"). It was contested and is probably under evaluated because some costs were paid for on various budgets (defense, scientific research...) but isn't too far fetched.

2/ IRSN (Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire: Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety Institute") stated that the cost of a single major accident may surpass 430 billions € ( https://www.irsn.fr/savoir-comprendre/crise/cout-economique-... ).

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#169

Post by natmaka »

Dalewyn wrote: post #74
teamonkey wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government was no more or less inept than any other organisation - government or private - anywhere in the world. When faced with pressure to save money but still deliver, weighed up against a very low risk of catastrophe in their time, they did the mental math and cut corners, found ways around the safeguarding policies previously put in place and kicked infrastructure spending down the line. The big problem wit…

You literally do not know what transpired. When the tsunami hit and Fukushima #1 lost power and was at risk of meltdown, TEPCO was ready to scuttle the reactors by dumping seawater in them. It would have rendered the reactors unusable, but meltdown would be prevented. The Japanese government at the time, coming from the Prime Minister (Naoto Kan) himself, denied TEPCO from scuttling them because the government wanted…

Naoto Kan was an advocate of nuclear energy, changed his mind after Fukushima, and the industry now tries hard to use him as a scapegoat.

Don't worry, experts are perfectly able to maintain a high level of safety (nope), then to assess correctly during an accident (nope: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nuclear-power-ody... ), and also to manage the aftermath (nope... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/special-report-he... ).

Re: Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel

#170

Post by defrost »

natmaka wrote: post #167
defrost wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and 2,202 from evacuation. The primary source for that wikipedia quote argues that the act of evacuating "just in case" caused deaths and that had people remained in place no such deaths would have occurred. Over 65,000 people were evacuated from the vicinity. One such death, for example, was 102 year old Fumio Okubo who lived 30 km inland and hanged himself after being forced to move for no good reason. There were…

Obtaining the amount of victims of an evacuation is difficult, and official figures are conservative for many reasons, the main one being that each victim's family obtained financial reparation (see also the "Limitations" section of a pertinent study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266676572... ). During the Fukushima nuclear accident information was scarce and volatile, specialists said that evac…

It's clear that a small number of mostly older people suffered unduly from the stress of an imposed evacuation.

It's not clear that this is a specifically nuclear issue.

Had an area been evacuated due to earthquakes making the ground unstable, due to extreme bushfires destroying every building, would the stress on the elderly be any less?

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