A 'spokesman' has just announced in the last few hours that there are high cesium levels in leaking water that is measuring 1Sv per hour. That going to be somewhere in the depths of the plant, but living about as far away from this ad is possible is a comfort to me.
We should stop running away from radiation
51–60 of 130 posts
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#52I am going to make a completely unscientific argument now that I know the HN readership will look down upon, but I think it captures why we can't build nuclear plants. First, nuclear power started out as a cold war thing; they built nuclear plants because of one very interesting side-product required to build nuclear bombs. These days in those countries that already have nuclear weapons, that's a secondary concern -…
I mostly agree with you here, but I do think the technology has advanced since the Fukishima (or certainly Chernobyl) were built. Those plants are fairly ancient. Newer facilities have much safer designs.
What we need to do with both nuclear and conventional power facilities is close everything from pre-1985 or so. The pollution coming from the dirty, grandfathered-in (to higher pollution) coal plants in the South, for example, are very likely to kill and sicken a lot more people than nuclear power.
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#53I am going to make a completely unscientific argument now that I know the HN readership will look down upon, but I think it captures why we can't build nuclear plants. First, nuclear power started out as a cold war thing; they built nuclear plants because of one very interesting side-product required to build nuclear bombs. These days in those countries that already have nuclear weapons, that's a secondary concern -…
What alternatives can you offer?
Solar and wind energy are not reliable enough to provide base-load coverage, hydro power is restricted to very specific terrain and has a devastating effect on local ecology, and really the only other option is fossil fuels.
At this point, the options literally are nuclear, or fossil fuels. And burning more and more coal for power (which puts out more radiation and kills more people than a nuclear plant, FYI) because anything less than perfection is not suitable just seems like a really, really shortsighted idea.
An alternative energy source does not need to be perfect to be worth switching to. It just needs to be better than the status quo. And nuclear power, currently, is very much better than coal.
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#54How about all those people dying from cancer years later all over Russia and Central Europe? Radiation does not kill instantly, it causes cancer, which kills years later. Stop spreading such nonsense articles, please! Just because the immediate impact is comparatively low, that doesn't mean it's harmless.
Radiation does not kill instantly, it causes cancer, which kills years later. Radiation is a carcinogen, yes. But it turns out that radiation is a really puny carcinogen. A radiation dosage which will probably kill you if delivered rapidly -- 4 Sieverts -- has only a small chance of causing cancer -- about 10% (and an even lower chance of causing lethal cancer).
A 10% chance of getting cancer is not small at all. It's pretty significant - thousands of products and substances have been banned for much less. The chance of getting cancer for current smokers, for instance, is said to be 10-15%. Do you think that tobacco smoke is a really puny carcinogen?
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Radiation does not kill instantly, it causes cancer, which kills years later. Radiation is a carcinogen, yes. But it turns out that radiation is a really puny carcinogen. A radiation dosage which will probably kill you if delivered rapidly -- 4 Sieverts -- has only a small chance of causing cancer -- about 10% (and an even lower chance of causing lethal cancer).
A 10% chance of getting cancer is not small at all. It's pretty significant - thousands of products and substances have been banned for much less. The chance of getting cancer for current smokers, for instance, is said to be 10-15%. Do you think that tobacco smoke is a really puny carcinogen?
No, I don't think tobacco smoke is a puny carcinogen. Dosage matters. To get that 10% chance of cancer, you need to have what would be an almost certainly lethal dose of acute radiation.
It's easy to get cancer by smoking. It's really really hard to get cancer from radiation without giving yourself a lethal acute dose of radiation in the process.
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#56I am going to make a completely unscientific argument now that I know the HN readership will look down upon, but I think it captures why we can't build nuclear plants. First, nuclear power started out as a cold war thing; they built nuclear plants because of one very interesting side-product required to build nuclear bombs. These days in those countries that already have nuclear weapons, that's a secondary concern -…
All children all over Europe were told to stay inside for a few days. And take Iodine.
[citation needed] I live in (western) Europe, and remember neither of these; neither does Wikipedia. Some milk and vegetables were destroyed as precautionary measures, but that is about it.
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#57I am going to make a completely unscientific argument now that I know the HN readership will look down upon, but I think it captures why we can't build nuclear plants. First, nuclear power started out as a cold war thing; they built nuclear plants because of one very interesting side-product required to build nuclear bombs. These days in those countries that already have nuclear weapons, that's a secondary concern -…
Fail safe plants unfortunately don't exist - they're not fail safe, as evident in Fukushima.
The Fukushima NPP is very old. Reactor 1 was already scheduled to be decommissioned at the end of March, in fact.
Does the chain reaction stop when everything fails? No? Then it's not fail-safe. Obviously.
At the Fukushima NPP, the chain reactions in reactors 1, 2, and 3 stopped about 5 seconds after the earthquake hit, due to the automatic SCRAM triggered by the detection of abnormal ground acceleration.
In the case the (very old) reactor design used at Fukushima, this was an active insertion; modern power plants use passive SCRAM (usually relying only on gravity) so that even if everything fails the chain reaction will still be shut down.
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#58I am going to make a completely unscientific argument now that I know the HN readership will look down upon, but I think it captures why we can't build nuclear plants. First, nuclear power started out as a cold war thing; they built nuclear plants because of one very interesting side-product required to build nuclear bombs. These days in those countries that already have nuclear weapons, that's a secondary concern -…
What alternatives can you offer? Solar and wind energy are not reliable enough to provide base-load coverage, hydro power is restricted to very specific terrain and has a devastating effect on local ecology, and really the only other option is fossil fuels. At this point, the options literally are nuclear, or fossil fuels. And burning more and more coal for power (which puts out more radiation and kills more people t…
hydro power is restricted to very specific terrain and has a devastating effect on local ecology...
... and isn't any safer than nuclear power. Four people died when the Japan earthquake caused a dam to fail -- that's more deaths than the Fukushima NPP has caused, but oddly enough nobody is calling for a worldwide halt to dam construction.
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#59I am going to make a completely unscientific argument now that I know the HN readership will look down upon, but I think it captures why we can't build nuclear plants. First, nuclear power started out as a cold war thing; they built nuclear plants because of one very interesting side-product required to build nuclear bombs. These days in those countries that already have nuclear weapons, that's a secondary concern -…
I lived in Germany when Chernobyl blew. I'm pretty aware of nuclear risks. But...should we get rid of hydroelectric as well? Banqiao Dam killed 26,000 people, immediately instead of years later, and there weren't any little pills they could take to prevent it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
There have been a lot of other dam failures that killed people, too.
And don't get me started on coal. I've seen estimates that pollution from coal kills 24,000 people every year in the U.S. alone. That's not even from accidents, it's just normal operation.
So I'm not too concerned about the relative risk of nuclear plants. All modern plants are far safer than Chernobyl.
But people are working on ideas that would meet your specs. The liquid thorium reactor, for example, produces orders of magnitude less waste, which is only dangerous for a few centuries. The fuel is liquid, and if it starts to overheat, a plug melts and drains it into a wide basin to cool off. The reactor can also dispose of our existing nuclear wsste.
Re: We should stop running away from radiation
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Radiation does not kill instantly, it causes cancer, which kills years later. Radiation is a carcinogen, yes. But it turns out that radiation is a really puny carcinogen. A radiation dosage which will probably kill you if delivered rapidly -- 4 Sieverts -- has only a small chance of causing cancer -- about 10% (and an even lower chance of causing lethal cancer).
Would you happen to have a source for this? I'm finding it hard to imagine how a study like this can even take place given that there have (probably) not been many survivors among those who have received a dose of 4 Sieverts.
There's a recent book called Physics for Future Presidents, written by a physics professor at Berkeley, which has a lot of material on radiation risks. He says you can calculate your risk of cancer from radiation by dividing your exposure by 2500 rem. The level that gives you acute radiation sickness is 200 rem.
This is called the "linear hypothesis" and is widely used. They use it in medicine to decide if diagnostic scans are worth the risk. The risk could actually be lower; some scientists think there's a threshold below which there's no risk. There's too much statistical uncertainty at low exposure levels to know for sure.