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Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

bbc.com

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Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#31

Post by dv_dt »

coredog64 wrote: post #13
dv_dt wrote: post #5

The attitude on risks of radiation have little to do with the economic and technological failures of nuclear power. With multiple schedule and cost failures it seems like fission nuclear is an exercise in what is possible, but not really practical compared to what is accessible via renewables + storage and it's far less constrained financial and technological foundations.

Nuclear opponents: File lawsuits and generally propose BANANA policy Also nuclear opponents: Gee, look how long it takes to build a nuclear plant.

There were also cost and schedule overruns in other nations like China and France, besides the ones in the US and UK.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#32

Post by pilsetnieks »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #24
sto_hristo wrote: post #22

Everything around the nuclear disasters has been a human bullshit of a problem, not a technological one. Probably with the exception of Fukushima, where all the conditions were put into the extreme - killer earthquake and monster tsunami. Being anxious about it is more than justified, especially with idiotic countries in mind. But that doesn't mean we need to abandon it. Nuclear is the future and there is no debate a…

Problem is that you don’t get to opt out of the “human bullshit”. Nuclear power comes with a massive and unavoidable cost from these matters.

Does it, though? A large portion can definitely be avoided with design and technology. Chernobyl happened because it was a positive feedback loop, in the West it was an obsolete design even before it was built. And Fukushima was quite literally acts of god (in the actuarial sense.)

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#33

Post by matthewmacleod »

08-15 wrote: post #20

Good article, until they ask the usual suspects and get this answer: no2nuclearpower says, "there is no such thing as an absolutely safe level of radiation: all exposures no matter how small entail some risk - even background radiation." This is absolute nonsense. If an increase in exposure at these low doses mattered, we'd see a correlation between background exposure and cancer rates, but we don't. More importantly…

This is absolute nonsense

No, it’s not. It might not be accurate, but to my knowledge the linear-no-threshold model is still subject to support and opposition from various bodies.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#35

Post by jwilliams »

This article implies radiation is the only objection to nuclear power, which isn’t true. It also fails to mention any alternatives (renewables) at all. Both seem major omissions.. especially from the BBC, which I always found was a bit more balanced on these topics.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#36

Post by raffraffraff »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #24
sto_hristo wrote: post #22

Everything around the nuclear disasters has been a human bullshit of a problem, not a technological one. Probably with the exception of Fukushima, where all the conditions were put into the extreme - killer earthquake and monster tsunami. Being anxious about it is more than justified, especially with idiotic countries in mind. But that doesn't mean we need to abandon it. Nuclear is the future and there is no debate a…

Problem is that you don’t get to opt out of the “human bullshit”. Nuclear power comes with a massive and unavoidable cost from these matters.

Whereas with lovely coal and oil we get to ignore the problem. It's just smoke until... Catastrophic climate feedback loops, mass extinction, hundreds of millions of climate migrants escaping uninhabitable parts of earth, coral and shellfish disappear in acidic oceans, entire ecosystems collapse and etc etc. But nuclear had costs. Sure. But we could at least begin to calculate those costs.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#37

Post by pmiller2 »

08-15 wrote: post #20

Good article, until they ask the usual suspects and get this answer: no2nuclearpower says, "there is no such thing as an absolutely safe level of radiation: all exposures no matter how small entail some risk - even background radiation." This is absolute nonsense. If an increase in exposure at these low doses mattered, we'd see a correlation between background exposure and cancer rates, but we don't. More importantly…

If you want to get right down to it, there might even be a benefit to being exposed to certain levels of ionizing radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#38

Post by pfdietz »

08-15 wrote: post #20

Good article, until they ask the usual suspects and get this answer: no2nuclearpower says, "there is no such thing as an absolutely safe level of radiation: all exposures no matter how small entail some risk - even background radiation." This is absolute nonsense. If an increase in exposure at these low doses mattered, we'd see a correlation between background exposure and cancer rates, but we don't. More importantly…

> If an increase in exposure at these low doses mattered, we'd see a correlation between background exposure and cancer rates, but we don't.

No, because the marginal increase at low doses, as seen in the natural background, under LNT is so low that it's not statistically visible.

The evidence we have is even consistent with models in which the effect/dose at low exposures is HIGHER than in LNT (for example, if there are repair mechanisms that are induced at sufficiently high doses.) Advocates of hormesis don't point out that a concave downward curve at low doses that this sort of effect might produce would increase the number of cancers from a nuclear accident, vs. what the LNT would predict.

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#39

Post by dv_dt »

raffraffraff wrote: post #36
matthewmacleod wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that you don’t get to opt out of the “human bullshit”. Nuclear power comes with a massive and unavoidable cost from these matters.

Whereas with lovely coal and oil we get to ignore the problem. It's just smoke until... Catastrophic climate feedback loops, mass extinction, hundreds of millions of climate migrants escaping uninhabitable parts of earth, coral and shellfish disappear in acidic oceans, entire ecosystems collapse and etc etc. But nuclear had costs. Sure. But we could at least begin to calculate those costs.

Why does the answer always reply with coal and oil instead of Renewables and storage?

Re: Nuclear power: Are we too anxious about the risks of radiation?

#40

Post by rjkennedy98 »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #32
matthewmacleod wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that you don’t get to opt out of the “human bullshit”. Nuclear power comes with a massive and unavoidable cost from these matters.

Does it, though? A large portion can definitely be avoided with design and technology. Chernobyl happened because it was a positive feedback loop, in the West it was an obsolete design even before it was built. And Fukushima was quite literally acts of god (in the actuarial sense.)

As an equal analogy - why can't we design our way out of governments having lots of "human bullshit" problems? If you can answer that question, you solve a much bigger problem than energy.
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