Report Condemns Japan's Response To Nuclear Accident 267
mdsolar sends this quote from an article at the NY Times:
"From inspectors who abandoned the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan's response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday. ... In particular, an erroneous assumption that an emergency cooling system was working led to an hours-long delay in finding alternative ways to draw cooling water to the plant, the report said. All the while, the system was not working, and the uranium fuel rods at the cores were starting to melt."
In another era ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Comparisons with Chernobyl are varying. Prof. Kodoma [youtube.com] estimated 10-40 times Chernobyl (video has transcript and CC).
Dunno (Score:2)
Once that plant started to melt down any work on site was going to be long and dangerous. The only way to protect the local people was to move them away. So its pretty clear that the local area was not evacuated fast enough, but I don't see that using a different approach in the first few hours would have helped. That plant was gone and about to melt down. It was destroyed by a big earthquake and at least two big waves.
Alternate cooling (Score:2)
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Yeah a thermosyphon, like the solar hot water system I used to own. IIRC one of the units in Japan could be cooled that way but they didn't use it for some reason.
Re:Dunno (Score:4, Interesting)
Proper cooling (which would have meant functioning ICs OR venting+water injection)
But how could authorities have done that, given that most of the gear at the reactor site was trashed?
Re:Dunno (Score:5, Interesting)
Unit 1 IC train A was shut down by operators to avoid excessive cooling which would have thermally stressed the metal of the RPV and shortened the life of an already old plant. Later, power to operate the valves that would have made it active again became unavailable.
At that point, the RPV should have been vented and water should have been added using fire engines. This was not done for a variety of reasons, such as that the evacuation was not over yet. When at last venting was attempted, it was found that a valve needed for venting ad failed closed, possibly because of excessive pressure. Attempts to open it manually met with failure.
So, eventually the reactor vented itself. Explosively.
The severe accident management guidelines did NOT, in fact, state that venting should only be performed post-evac. They were ignored in the event.
Even later in the accident sequence sufficient fresh water became unavailable for a while (the first reactor explosion damaged fire trucks, severed water lines and prompted a TOTAL evacuation of the site). A decision was made to delay salt-water cooling. This probably contributed to the melt-through in reactor 3.
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The severe accident management guidelines did NOT, in fact, state that venting should only be performed post-evac. They were ignored in the event.
Judging by the news reports at the time, the Japanese government was intent on denying that this even was a "severe accident." I wonder if that was just media spin, or whether there was something about the Japanese cultural mindset that they just refused to believe things were getting out of control as fast as they did? And that's why the appropriate protocols weren't followed -- because they didn't believe this was a case that merited "severe accident management"?
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I hadn't heard that before.
Why do you think it's unusual for a plant to pass a safety inspection shortly before undergoing catastrophic failure(s)? It's got to happen some times. The earthquake hadn't been predicted (with any credibility) before the event (there are no credible techniques for earthquake pr
Re:Dunno (Score:5, Interesting)
The primary reason for the bad handling within the company (according to what I hear from an acquaintance of mine who works for TEPCO at Fukushima I) was plain panic and desire to cut as much cost as possible. The first reaction of TEPCO was to move out of the Fukushima plant. They apparently had evacuated all staff and families on Sunday already. Then they left subcontractors to deal with the disaster, while TEPCO staff was monitoring the shit happening from Tokyo via videoconferencing. They even had a glitch that caused delay in power re-supply sometime in mid-April, when a construction machine cut the optical cable that connected TEPCO staff with their human robots at the plant.
The real question is, why was all this allowed. Many reasons.
First, TEPCO is a very well connected and influential corporation. The nuclear power management body in Japan - JAEA - is staffed exclusively with people from the nuclear power industry, i.e. about half of their staff is from TEPCO itself. Those people advise the government on what to do. They also own stock or options of, receive pensions from and hold sinecure positions with their former corporate employer. No wonder they would be among the last to criticize it. Naturally, they influence what gets in the government media (NHK, mostly) about the accident. TEPCO is a large contributor to national politicians, and the local governments where TEPCO operates (including the affected areas) are also mostly in the pockets of the company. That is why both national and local politicians have worked with TEPCO to calm protesters from day one.
Despite that, there have been a few large demonstrations, but don't forget that the people in the affected areas are also victims of the earthquake - their houses, business and in many cases, family members are gone. They simply don't have the means to stage significant protests.
Second, TEPCO is a large advertiser. They wield a very large influence with a lot of private media. That is why you never see anything really bad about them in the newspapers or in the popular private TV channels. The culture preference against rocking the boat plays very nicely with the financial motivation of not angering TEPCO, so coverage is avoiding classifications as "disaster", "severe", etc. There was a lot of shock when the accident was classified at Chernobyl level, but overall the media has managed to project the message that this was an accident that is due to factors beyond human control, which has until recently, limited the interest in it on national level. We'll see if the report changes this.
Third, TEPCO is a company that also manages distribution of power. That is why if you are a large consumer in times of shortages, you keep your trap shut if you're smart. Just in case.
There is also the complex political situation in Japan. The LDP, the party that is directly responsible for giving the nuclear lobby a free ride, is the major opposition. They have not uttered a peep about the disaster yet, because they don't want their role advertised. Half the politicians in the party in power (DPJ) were members of the LDP at the time decisions about nuclear power in Japan were made. They also don't want to put forward the political responsibility issue. Third, the DPJ is in deep trouble anyways, and because of the way the political apparatus of Japan works, they handle the bureaucracy with a lot of difficulty. Maybe that is partly why they made the ultimately disastrous decision to let TEPCO handle the accident.
In short, it is a very complex and very unfortunate story.
Re:Dunno (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of clarifications:
The reason for the poor handling of the situation is as you mention, an over-reliance on contract workers, but also because of a complete lack of preparation and training by those involved. The officials at TEPCO never prepared for a worst-case scenario, because they wanted to cut costs, and they stupidly believed that the worst-case scenario was impossible. Two points make this painfully obvious: 1) they didn't think a complete loss of power was even in the realm of possibility (despite only having two backup generators, both located below ground), and 2) they didn't even have instructions in their manuals for manually venting the RPV. NISA, despite being in charge of nuclear safety and TEPCO, were watching network TV to find out the details of the problem -- i.e. a huge transparency problem.
Also, the TEPCO as we knew it, and as you mentioned it, is finished. Most likely the company will be nationalized sometime next year, and although the same pieces of shit that got us in this situation will most likely keep their jobs, their influence over Japanese people is pretty much at an end. The media has regularly covered their incompetence and negligence since the March explosions, and even NHK has pretty solidly shown how criminal their actions were. Will anyone get put in jail? Probably not. But the TEPCO CEO has already been forced to quit, and TEPCO stocks will be in shambles for decades. In this sense, you could probably draw parallels to the clusterfuck that was BP and the Gulf oil spill. But again, it must be emphasized that no one seems concerned about TEPCO's influence on network TV at all anymore because there is a massive amount of anger directed at the company.
In terms of power consumption, there is already talk of allowing non-centralized power companies to start operating, and hopefully this is something we'll see in the next 10 years or so. I have a feeling that the government will want to keep people tied to TEPCO mostly because there will be billions paid out in compensation to victims of the disaster, and they can't afford to pay for everything. There will be a shift away from nuclear power, though. The general consensus is that most people don't have the stomach for it anymore, and based on many reports on TV, it's clear that Japan was essentially forced into using nuclear power in the first place. We will probably see more power sourced from LNG in the near future, and there are plans to build a plant of this type in Tokyo soon.
I'm not disagreeing with you at all, I just think that some of your information is a bit out of date. TEPCO is in ruins right now, and since we'll be dealing with radiation cleanup for decades, its negligence won't be so easily forgotten.
I know you mentioned that NHK is in the pocket of the government, and they are, but NHK has produced some of the best documentaries on the disaster, so I highly recommend checking them out if you haven't done so (sadly, I can only find links to English dubbed versions):
NHK Japan's Nuclear Crisis [nippon-sekai.com] More video links [nippon-sekai.com]
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Everything in the generator hall was fine AFAIK except outside power was down and backup generators were trashed by the tsunami. And that was is, there were no better protected generators, no generators that could run from the heat of the reactor, and no plan to fly in working generators. Derp.
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I don't care for your style, but mostly because it is ineffective. The "stupid fuck" will just go into defensive mode, so you haven't changed his mind. Meanwhile, those of us in the people in the peanut gallery don't usually equate knowledgeable professionals with needless public profanity - so you aren't even convincing the peanut gallery like you would have otherwise.
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Yes, you are correct, of course. I am just very, very angry. I think I am conveying that pretty effectively.
Any thoughts on what I have posted, just to keep this semi-on-topic?
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I'm abusive on this site from time to time. It rarely gets a positive response, usually eliciting abuse, silence or hurt feelings comments. However I usually feel better about it, although my housemate saw me mid-abuse once and told me that I looked like a psycho, which has cut down on my bad behaviour somewhat.
Back on topic: yeah those Japanese really fucked up huh.
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Let's not be racist about it. The plant was designed by General Electric (GE nowadays). Immelt, slimy toad that he is, jumped in the media fray VERY early on, to do damage control:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/56fb5f92-4e0e-11e0-a9fa-00144feab49a.html#axzz1hguiUtBH [ft.com]
He offered help! He should have started by offering excuses! A group of GE whistleblowers were pointing out design flaws in that exact type of plant in the 970s! Design flaws which played a role in the accident, moreover:
http://www.iwatchnews.org/201 [iwatchnews.org]
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I am just very, very angry. I think I am conveying that pretty effectively.
Yes, but none of us care how angry you are - we are mostly just trying to make sense of what really happened at Fukushima.
Any thoughts on what I have posted, just to keep this semi-on-topic?
The report does seem to agree with you, though you say:
Proper cooling (which would have meant functioning ICs OR venting+water injection) could have saved the day.
While the report allows that the valve malfunctions may or may not have been caused by a lack of cooling/venting prior. In any case, it is pretty clear that they were initially trying to save the plant and avoid radioactive steam release when they should have been trying to prevent a disaster, plant and steam be damned.
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I am not the AC above. I have to say that your choice to throw in the completely extraneous ", you stupid fuck" is poor form. It is perhaps a testament to the maturity of others here that you could be modded up in spite of that.
There's a time and a place for everything. While debate is in theory all about facts and reason, such inflammatory language nmakes people WANT you to be wrong and find excuses to draw that conclusion. It does you no favors.
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Thanks. It's just that I am tired of all the mealy-mouthed "oh but nuclear is SCIENCE and SCIENCE is doubleplusgood" harping.
Keep that beer in mind, I plan to come on over when your gov't starts showing signs of sanity.
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I wasn't raised in a barn; were you raised in a reality where social cohesion trumped facts?
1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:2, Interesting)
Can you imagine if 1% of cars would randomly blow up? How about 1% of airplanes have their engines fall off in flight? There wouldn't be cars or airplanes.
But, 1% of all nuclear power plants in the world have now experienced melt downs. Per wikipedia, 441 operating plants in the world.
echo 5/441 | bc -l .01133786848072562358
So, OVER 1% catastrophic failure. .I'm sure all the pro pro pro nuke industry apologists on /. will mod this to oblivion. Facts can be inconvenient.
Re:1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:5, Informative)
How many cars have you driven 24/6 for 60 years? Hell, few airplanes are in the air after 30 years.
On top of that, 0.4% of all cars get in accidents every year. Every year more people die in the US from traffic accidents then in every nuclear power incident ever.
Sources:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.pdf [census.gov]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Total_number_of_vehicles [wikipedia.org]
Re:1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:5, Funny)
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I apologize if my analogies and comparisons are a bit rough, but it st
Re:1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many 60 year old light aircraft still being flown on a daily basis.
Those flying 60 year old planes are a lot like my old granddads axe though. On their 5th engine, 6th prop, 2nd windscreen, 3rd instrument cluster etc.
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I count 10 reactors that have melted down:
BORAX-i
EBR-i
The sodium reactor expiremnt
Stationary Low Power reactor No 1
SNAP8ER
Fermi 1
SNAP8DR
3 mile island
chernobyl
fukushima
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Windscale was not civilian. It was designed to breed plutonium for Britain's nuclear weapons program. It didn't even have power generating facilities.
Re:1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even with pessistimistic estimates for Chernobyl and Fukushima death rates nuclear power still kills less people per unit of energy than any other form of electrical generation.
If you want to complain about the safety of nuclear power tell us what you want to replace it with. Be honest and include the expected change in fatalities resulting from switching over to your alternative.
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So, do you think this report is some kind of conspiracy or something? Why don't you just come out and say it instead of beating around the bush? You really think Green Peace paid off the government-appointed investigative panel with their cocaine money, or something, right?
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He's a nuke shill, no mistake about that. I doubt he's including the land permanently contaminated by Mayak, Fukushima and Chernobyl in his "land use" statistics.
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If I recall correctly, he was saying solar power was far worse than nuclear contamination and fallout because it "takes up more land."
Maybe I did say that. But googling around, here's [slashdot.org] where I talk about land use by nuclear in response to a common by you, Idou (which I quote below):
However, what I find hard to understand is why you then feel like you know what the best energy policy is for Japan and what the true impact of the Fukushima accident to Japan will be.
It's not magical. Japan uses electricity infrastructure and obeys the laws of physics. They have to have base load power, whether provided by nuclear, coal, even geothermal, or some other source that can be smoothed out enough (such as sporadic power sources such as solar or wind combined with batteries or a complementary peaking source such as natural gas).
If they decided to discontinue nuclear power, then they need to replace it with something. Nuclear has several advantages that make it a very powerful alternative. Even with the occasional meltdown creating unusable blocks of land for a period of time, it still uses less land area than solar or wind per unit of power generated. That is, it has a very small footprint. Nor does it create dependence on foreign imports and generate air pollution comparable to fossil fuel plants. Finally, Japan could import it's power. Maybe string some lines over from Kamchatka or the Koreas? I don't think Japan wants to be so dependent on a foreign supplier.
In the long run, there could be all sorts of better technologies. Maybe fusion will work eventually and be competitive? Maybe offshore solar/wind and some sort of battery storage system? Orbital space-based solar power? Things like that. The thing is that there currently isn't a credible replacement for nuclear power aside from other technologies with their own serious drawbacks.
Japan needs something. Despite all the drawbacks, nuclear does work.
I didn't notice your reply to that particular message. I already mentioned that I was and still am invested in Duke Energy. I am not employed to shill by anyone and have no interest in nuclear power outside of my investment and my concern about the future of my society.
It's also worth noting that while Japan does import its nuclear fuel, it doesn't have to im
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still am invested in Duke Energy
Shilling for your minute equity investment, are you? How noble . . .
I am not employed to shill by anyone
Of course, because you would be fired for the quality of arguments you have been making.
My concern about the future of my society
Right, and Japan is not your society. Your biased spin is pissing off those of us who actually do have a vested interest in Japan and making the pro-nukes seem like a bunch of control freaks.
it doesn't have to import it all the time . . . less vulnerable to trade disruptions
Um, trade disruption due to all the pirates around Japan? Oh, and the nuclear waste you can just leave forever at the site, as we all saw during the Fukushima crisis
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I doubt he's including the land permanently contaminated by Mayak, Fukushima and Chernobyl in his "land use" statistics.
You'd be mistaken. The land use thing has been discussed before.
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Where?
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He's a nuke shill, no mistake about that.
Why would I be? A real, paid-for shill would pick their battles better and SEO any comments that have weak rebuttals. Khallow might sound unique but there's a lot of extraneous hits (apparently it's an uncommon, but common enough Asian surname). Slashdot is also crap for SEO due to the funky pages that Google actually finds. I've used Google before to attempt to find my older posts, but it's hard work.
When I just search "khallow" and "slashdot" I get more prominent hits from my posts on Kuro5hin.org (whi
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He's a nuke shill, no mistake about that.
Why would I be?
Because you have some piss-ant little investment in Duke Energy, which apparently is more important than the safety and livelihood of entire nations. Nations of which you are completely ignorant of in regards to their language, culture, and energy profile, yet you think you know what is best in regards to their energy policies. You have a significant personal bias that is not aligned with those most at risk from this specific incident, and yet you argue as if you have altruistic motives. Seems pretty shill-
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Are you counting deaths from cancer? How?
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Before expecting an answer why not go to Google and type "how to estimate cancer deaths from radiation exposure", read the top entry and then see if you still have a question.
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You do know, Google senpai, that there are several methods, none of which have been validated in proper epidemiological studies?
The Techa river cohort is just about all we had, pre-Fukushima.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16238437 [nih.gov]
Now, there will be the Fukushima schoolchildren to study. Their deaths from cancer and leukemia will further enlighten us, 50 years from now....
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/life_and_death/AJ2011110916955 [asahi.com]
Re:1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and air has always been the safest way to travel, but yet the FAA is one of the strictest safety organisations in history. Meanwhile, cars kill hundreds of thousands every year, and manufacturers still fight over having to implement safety features.
We hold different technologies to different standards, for different reasons. For nuclear power, this reason involves the ability of nuclear accidents to render cities, towns and surrounding regions effectively uninhabitable for up to and over 50 years. A 1% failure rate under these circumstances is not very comforting, particularly in such a space poor country as Japan.
Would you build a nuclear plant in the suburbs or port regions of New York or Tokyo? If not, why not, and where else are you going to build them? In which regions of your country are you willing to risk that 1% failure rate over 100 years, that could render the areas within 30km of the plant uninhabitable for 50 years?
You find me the small town willing to take the risks I've mentioned above first. I'm willing to bet you;ll have more difficulty with that than I will finding alternative energy sources.
We could of course, build nuclear plants in the middle of nowhere, but apparently that's unacceptable for some reason.
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What a short-sighted view !
How can you get modded insightful ?
Frankly, the problem is not the number of immediate deaths, it's the fact that the land is poisoned for a few millenia, and a lot of people will die in 100 years from this massive fuck-up (from eating contaminated food, and living in the neighbourhood).
It's easy to defend a rational point of view, when you are very FAR from the accident.
Let's suppose that a nuclear plant melts near your home.
Will you react as: no problem, I'm confident towards ou
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I spent eight years operating and maintaining the reactor that I slept less than 100 feet away from.
If you want to make things personal what's your experience in this area?
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I spent eight years operating and maintaining the reactor that I slept less than 100 feet away from.
Say hi to Marge, Bart and Lisa for me.
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Funny, I haven't heard of that many deaths from solar power .........
I know as an advocate for nuclear power you will immediately come up with the "baseline power" argument. I am always amused by this argument.
"Solar cannot supply enough power for the baseline power demand so we must build more nuclear power plants to give us the reserve power for when demand spikes." is the argument.
And yes, it is perfectly True
But, when does demand spike ?
When do demand induced brown outs and blackouts occur ?
Hot, sunny
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Then you haven't been listening.
There's no such thing as a riskless human activity. Every single possible thing a person can do has a death rate associated with it.
Most solar deaths occur during the construction and installation phase of the life cycle.
The number of deaths is low in absolute terms but since the amount of energy produced over the lifetype of a solar installation is so small compared to denser sources of power it makes each
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Funny, I haven't heard of that many deaths from solar power .........
That is because the deaths solar power causes are pretty mundane. Stuff like falling off roofs and similar.
It's like car crashes vs train and plane crashes. Car crashes happen all the time but they are too mundane to be interesting so they aren't usualy mentioned beyond the local news and sometimes not even there. Train and plane crashes kill far fewer people but when one does happen it's big news.
But, when does demand spike ?
When the temperature outside gets furthest from the temperature people want inside. In some places that is hot
1% of all governments have melted down now. (Score:2)
If you want to complain about the safety of nuclear power tell us what you want to replace it with. Be honest and include the expected change in fatalities resulting from switching over to your alternative.
Replace it with the hot air from congress. Safest source known to man.
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You could actually read his report, note the sources he cites and verify for yourself whether or not he accurately quoted them.
You did not do any of those things, however, so after initially assuming that you were asking for a citation in good faith I recognized the fact that you were slinging mud from the beginning rather than offering honest debate
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The trouble is, some of the commonly-used sources are... misleading. They do things like report radioactive emissions from coal plants and pollution-related deaths based on unfiltered stacks that are illegal now.
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He did do a followup article showing how those numbers have gone down over time as technology improves.
Of course to be fair if you're going to base safety comparisons on what is technologically possible now as opposed to the past you should be comparing "clean coal" and other new technologies to molten-salt reactors and other 4th generation technologies.
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As it stands right now the Fukishima death toll is currently 0 due to the reactor incident. The only remaining question how many future cancer deaths will be caused by the incident an as it stands currently the most pessimistic credible estimate is on the order of 1000. That's not enough to the ranking.
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most pessimistic credible estimate is on the order of 1000.
Citation needed.
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Sure: Deaths per TWh [nextbigfuture.com]
0.04 deaths per TWh for nuclear. Hydro is a bit more than twice that, wind is at 4 times as much, and Coal is at 42 times that again.
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Hydro is a bit more than twice that
Does this include deaths related from dam failures of hydroelectric dams that were designed largely for flood control as a result of a combination of shoddy construction and once-in-2000-years flooding? Including deaths that would have resulted anyway from the once-in-2000-years flood itself even without a dam? I have a feeling they do based on past experience...
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So what you're saying is that you don't like the results but can't point to any specific flaw in the methodology so you're just going to post angry anonymous tirades instead.
Got it.
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I would imagine it's because some people feel that they shouldn't have to look up everything that someone else says. If someone states something as a fact, then perhaps these people feel that they should be the ones to back it up.
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A nuclear meltdown isn't necessarily explosive. To be honest it would surprise me if most cars had a lower than 1% failure rate especially among cars still running designed and manufactured before 1980 as most nuclear plants are. What I find most inconvenient about facts is how the media distorts them.
Re:1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:4, Insightful)
And every coal mine has had tragic cave ins and deaths. Fossil fuel is causing potential global melt down.
Question is, how many of those melt downs resulted in deaths? How many compared to coal, oil and gas exploration and mining?
And we're not talking about a random blow up here. We're talking a >9 richter scale earth quake and biggest in memory tsunami, which killed infinitely more people than the melt down, and orders of magnitude more people than even Chernobyl.
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Now put something like that on a coastline prone to quakes and tsunamis. It's a bad risk to take yet was labeled 'safe' quite recently.
If humans were involved in the design, construction or operation, there will be things that fail.
Even if they built a sea wall h
Re:1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:4, Insightful)
IF any of the accidents and incidents with nuclear powerplants (and nuclear weapons) have caused as many deaths and injuries as CARS have (or alcohol or tobacco or other types of powerplants, like coal or hydro), then you'd have half a point.
Come back when nuclear powerplants start killing as many people as anything I have mentioned here.
Re:1% of all nuke plants have melted down now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Random? What are you talking about? Are you using the word because a nuclear plant accident can seem random to people not paying attention?
A car that's improperly maintained can cause an accident that seems to happen "randomly." A driver that falls asleep behind the wheel can cause an accident that seems to happen "randomly". An unexpected weather event can cause an accident that seems to happen "randomly". Are you counting those as "cars randomly blowing up"? Because when they happen at a nuclear plant, you would use the same word.
Or are you talking about areas affected? Do you really want to try to compare how much (surface area * time) is wasted by car crashes, or how many people lose time or property because of them, compared to nuclear accidents? Or how much manpower is put into cleaning them up? How many fatalities?
To be perfectly honest, we put up with cars because cars are individually empowering. Nuclear power is not individually empowering, not when compared to other kinds of power generation, and it won't be until we have some sort of cold-fusion device that lets you live off the grid. Power generation is about trust. And nuclear power (right or wrong) is asking us to trust them to deal with scarily powerful forces.
You can mistrust them. That's fine. But, please don't scaremonger. Voice concerns, by all means, but don't scaremonger. Some of us do trust it, and in a vast majority of cases, that trust is not misplaced. Being a dick to people who are actually trustworthy and going out of their way to be of use to us is kind of a dick move.
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These data sets are not related. A better comparison might be how many nuclear power plants melted down vs., say, how many oil spills there were or how many coal mines caught fire.
I mean, that's like saying 10 out of 100,000 people are killed by guns and 20 out of 100,000 people are killed by raccoons, and therefore raccoons are more dangerous than guns.
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Can you imagine if 1% of cars would randomly blow up?
apparently you never lived through the 70's.
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Can you imagine if 1% of cars would randomly blow up?
It's like you aren't aware of the millions killed by automobiles, let alone maimed.
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Can you imagine if 1% of cars would randomly blow up? How about 1% of airplanes have their engines fall off in flight?
What an arsebackwards comparison. 1% of planes would fall out of the sky if they were 50 years old. What about cars with no seatbelts, traction control, or any other of those lovely advances in technology that have happened over the last 40 years to make us safer?
As usual people people pick the facts that are most convenient to their argument and then completely ignore all other external influences.
Here's another fact. While 1% of nuclear reactors may have experienced catastrophic failure, they have killed
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Not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone in Japan who has followed the developments would have told you so much. I was hopeful until the Sunday after the quake, when it became plainly obvious that the government and TEPCO are lying about the extent of the damage. It was obvious that a meltdown has occurred at the time of the first explosion, but nobody with even a textbook understanding of how a reactor works would have had any doubts after unit 3 sent large concrete blocks 150 meters up in the air.
Yet, the Japanese government and TEPCO "admitted the possibility" of meltdowns in the beginning of May, and admitted meltdowns have actually occurred in late July. All this was done while the nuclear industry was faking support for nuclear energy all over Japan, and officials in Japan alongside with power company officials were twisting arms, legs and other limbs to avoid responsibility.
I won't even discuss the irresponsible dispatch of highly radioactive water on barges and into the ocean and the venting of radioactive steam in the air, which continued for weeks, etc. Now, when the cooling of the reactors has allegedly finished, TEPCO has few hundred tons of highly radioactive sludge in containers on site, waiting for the next quake and tsunami to wash them over the landscape. These will, supposedly, be "dealt with" in the distant future.
What is really surprising is not only the abysmal response of TEPCO. Nuclear industry in Japan has forever been plagued by accidents. What is un-fucking-believable s the continuing complacency of the government about it. There have been no investigations, no arrests, nothing.
A government panel, composed mostly of "old boys" (former execs from the nuclear industry, who now serve as "regulators" on taxpayer dime and whose job is to excuse the fuckups of their former colleagues) estimated that Fukushima will increase cost of nuclear power by 20%. Independent experts estimated that actual increase will be more like 3-4 times the current cost. Guess what -- TEPCO already wants the price of electricity to rise by about 20% from next year -- that is just to cope with the immediate cost of the Fukushima cleanup and compensations. The independent experts may yet turn out to be right about a fourfold cost increase.
Considering the size of the accident and the level of criminal complacency and negligence that lead to it, the report doesn't even come to "damning". It is more like a strongly-worded letter. What is needed in this case is some good ole criminal prosecution, some long terms in the PMITA prison for the TEPCO board members and plant managers, and restructuring the company so that investors who cheered the bad safety practices are heavily punished. A cleanup of the regulatory bodies won't be a bad thing as well.
But it is Japan, so none of these are very likely to happen. Instead, we'll have another accident in a few years.
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But it is Japan, so none of these are very likely to happen. Instead, we'll have another accident in a few years.
And thus it is very much deserved, should the people of that country fail to exert more power than the minority politicians and interested industry shareholders.
cowards (Score:3)
Speaking as a TKECF shareholder, I wish ya'll... (Score:2)
...would just shuttup about it. Everything's fine now. Remember BP? They were worse. Please move along.
Re:Pro-mistakes advocates. (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely agree with this report. Incompetence and high risk activities do not belong together. That goes from building a dam to driving a car, all of which have had their share of preventable accidents.
As a nuclear advocate, I find the nytimes summary of the report indicates it is a little too weak and toothless, as they say, "the interim report seems to leave ultimate responsibility for the disaster ambiguous."
Not only that, but the report states that a "quicker response" would have helped, as opposed to the obvious "design flaws in the redundant cooling systems should have been fixed previously." Most everything that should have been done to prevent this should have been done decades before.
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Here is a little reminder of the different approaches the two countries have on things. [theatlantic.com]
Perhaps you might want to clarify just which countries you are pro-nuke for . . .
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I think, when things go wrong, people should be held accountable for their mistakes (see: wall street meltdown. Didn't happen there, either). Here I think the issue is with Tokyo Electric, and some people should be canned, some fined personally, and the company as a whole held
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I think, when things go wrong, people should be held accountable for their mistakes.
Right, so the U.S. taking 7 and half years to admit an actual meltdown at 3M proves they are worthy? Who got fired for that mistake?
Here I think the issue is with Tokyo Electric, and some people should be canned, some fined personally, and the company as a whole held responsible.
The problem is that even if that did happen, which it will not, it would come no where close to preventing future accidents. This is the banking bailout issue all over again but with global health implications.
Again, I think you are one of the more reasonable pro-nukes here, but I still feel like statements like "willing to be responsible and own up to the risks involved" ha
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Guess what, you can find idiots in Japan
On the streets, perhaps, but as aircraft personnel? Are you serious!? Not sure where you are writing from, but from where I come from, aviation is a highly regulated industry, and rightfully so. Those pictures represent more than a couple of idiots, but a failure of various systematic controls and lack of basic equipment.
Are you seriously implying fascist, communist China has better overall controls than free, democratic Japan? Right . . . now NOTHING on Slashdot could possibly surprise me . . . we might
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75 years of uranium (Score:2)
Re:Pro-mistakes advocates. (Score:4, Informative)
As for "was I there when the accident happened," I believe that amounts to an argument for believing the world didn't exist until I was born.
Re:Pro-mistakes advocates. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not as if this particular reactor was on anybody's list of "this is safe."
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Japan's deadly game of nuclear roulette
Japan sits on top of four tectonic plates, at the edge of the subduction zone, and is in one of the most tectonically active regions of the world.
The 52 reactors in Japan are located in an area the size of California, many within 150 km of each other and almost all built along the coast where seawater is available to cool them.
However, many of those reactors have been negligently sited on active faults, particularly in the subduction zone along the Pacific coast, where major earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 or more on the Richter scale occur frequently.
"I think the situation right now is very scary," says Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist and professor at Kobe University. "It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode."
Last summer, I visited Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture. Because Hamaoka sits directly over the subduction zone near the junction of two plates, and is overdue for a major earthquake, it is considered to be the most dangerous nuclear power plant in Japan.
When the geologic evidence was presented confirming the extreme danger at Hamaoka, the attending media were obviously shocked.
On July 7 last year, the same day of my visit to Hamaoka, Ishibashi warned of the danger of an earthquake-induced nuclear disaster (...). He said: "The seismic designs of nuclear facilities are based on standards that are too old from the viewpoint of modern seismology and are insufficient. The authorities must admit the possibility that an earthquake-nuclear disaster could happen and weigh the risks objectively."
After visiting the center a few kilometers from Hamaoka, I realized that Japan has no real nuclear-disaster plan in the event that an earthquake damaged a reactor's water-cooling system and triggered a reactor meltdown.
Additionally, there is an extreme danger of an earthquake causing a loss of water coolant in the pools where spent fuel rods are kept.
When I asked ERC officials how they planned to evacuate millions of people from Shizuoka Prefecture and beyond after a Kobe-magnitude earthquake (Kobe is on the same subduction zone as Hamaoka) destroyed communication lines, roads, railroads, drinking-water supplies and sewage lines, they had no answer.
Yoichi Kikuchi, a Japanese nuclear engineer who also became a whistle-blower, has told me personally of many safety problems at Japan's nuclear power plants, such as cracks in pipes in the cooling system from vibrations in the reactor. He said the electric companies are "gambling in a dangerous game to increase profits and decrease government oversight."
It is not a question of whether or not a nuclear disaster will occur in Japan; it is a question of when it will occur.
It is time to make the changeover from nuclear fuel to fossil fuels in order to save future generations and the economy of Japan.
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This is an argument against cars.
"People are fucking incompetent. And, yea, there will always be incompetent people. And, yea, they will screw things up. And, yea, that's why you shouldn't let them drive a 2 ton kinetic weapon that won't run into something without constant action/supervision by some incompetent people."
As an example of competence, I point you to the USA. Only three people have died from nuclear power in the US, back in 1961. For comparison, that many people die from car accidents in th
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Reality: If you can name an alternative way to produce as much electricity as is currently produced by nuclear power and will result in less people being killed in the process name it.
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