Should Japan Restart More Nuclear Power Plants? (thebulletin.org) 313
Lasrick writes: Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Japan should restart more of its nuclear reactors (the Sendai nuclear plant was restarted in August). The reason is simple, writes Baum: "Japan is now building 45 new coal power plants, but if it turned its nuclear power plants back on... it could cut coal consumption in half. And coal poses more health and climate change dangers than nuclear power."
What's with this headline? (Score:2)
If you're going to ask us a question, make it a poll.
Re:What's with this headline? (Score:4, Insightful)
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from years of experience on Slashdot, I have gotten the strong impression that there is some kind of pro-nuclear lobbying going on on this site.
I'm anti-coal, which leaves nuclear as one of the best remaining choices for base load. Sure, like any power generation system it has problems but if you examine the actual data it's one of the safest, cleanest technologies we have. I'd prefer fusion, but for some reason the government won't fund it at an appropriate level to make actual progress.
Re:What's with this headline? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even including the two bombs used on Japan, nuclear has killed less people than any power generation technology around. Fear of nuclear is failure of math/science education, not something to proudly proclaim from the rooftops.
Re:What's with this headline? (Score:4, Informative)
This is pretty much it.
Coal? Greenhouse gases, soot, ash and lots of other fun things (Note: not fun at all. Very dangerous.). Also, said not-very-fun stuff is (in part) radioactive.
Natural gas? Greenhouse gases. It's better, I guess, but it still screws us over. Efficiency might be better, than coal, too.
Solar Thermal or PV? Sure, let's take advantage of it on structures and stuff. Using it on an industrial scale isn't quite practical, though, considering the massive areas required. Large scale thermal installations are also hazardous to birds. Doesn't work all the time, either.
Wind? Wind can be unpredictable, and it's supposedly a very big hazard for birds.
Nuclear? Complex, expensive designs that produce highly radioactive materials - however, they're confined and easily handled (compared to exhaust from a boiler or turbine) and just have to be stored away until they decay or new reactors can use them as fuel.
Hydro? Apparently, pretty bad for local ecosystems, otherwise a good solution. Probably going to be necessary for large-scale storage whatever happens.
Re:What's with this headline? (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite simply, nuclear power makes complete sense to technically-inclined people who do not go along with shortsighted ignorant paranoia, which I expect represent a significant part of people here.
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They're all solvable, unlike green fantasies of unicorn fart-powered cities.
Fuel storage is a simple problem, until breeder reactors are viable, considering the relatively low amount of material that needs to be stored.
Do not ignore storage requirements for coal ash, or the vast areas needed for solar and wind (though solar can be easily employed so that it can take advantage of structures to reduce land usage, it's probably never going to be enough).
Uranium reserves, seriously? 20 years is incredibly pessi
Honestly, Japan's screwed no matter what. (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically every option for them and their little fireball of an island chain are Bad Choices.
Still, engineered and maintained properly, with no corner cutting, they'd be better served by nuclear.
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I'm surprised given it's geography that Japan isn't a fantastic candidate for a combination of wind (onshore, and off), hydro, tidal, and geothermal.
Anyone know why they're more interested in building coal than harnessing more of their renewable resources? Does Japan have masses of cheap coal or something? I'd have assumed it has to import a lot of it?
I agree with you about nuclear over coal, but I'm struggling to see why Japan would need either. For such a high tech country it seems to be resorting to an i
Re:Honestly, Japan's screwed no matter what. (Score:4, Informative)
They are 100% importers of their coal. However they have very good coal supply contracts with Australia which provide them with a cheap and reliable supply.
The simple reason is that wind does not generate enough power. If they were to build out their entire wind potential they would have a max generating potential of 752gw. If we assumed favourable wind conditions you might get to 30% of that figure (that would make it one of the best performing in the world) so 225GW. Currently Japan has C250GW of installed generating capacity so there is basically no overhead if they went all wind and there would be a monumental capital cost to achieve it as 600GW is offshore.
As for tidal there isn't currently a working production level tech that I am aware of. Hydro sits at around 6.6% of their electricity generation but it has been expensive, hence they are not building any more. And they have 18 geothermal plants currently but their contribution to the power grid is almost noise level.
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If they were to build out their entire wind potential they would have a max generating potential of 752gw
How do you come to that number?
If we assumed favourable wind conditions you might get to 30% of that figure ... however tidal plants we have since 50 years or longer.
And how do you come to thatAs for tidal there isn't currently a working production level tech that I am aware of. Then I suggest to google. Perhaps Japan has no suitable places (which I doubt)
Bottom line the parents questions make sense.
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Source for the capacity numbers are here - http://jwpa.jp/page_132_englis... [jwpa.jp]
For the capacity figures there are heaps and heaps of examples. The highest ever capacity achieved by an installed turbine for a year is 59%, Ireland has the highest for a country at 21% and China's figures are just over 11%.
Tidal - http://www.tidalelectric.com/h... [tidalelectric.com] - from reading this there are very very few installed tidal systems and those that exist are low output. They also seem to have significant environmental impacts. So
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. Their CF is around 140%.
By definition [wikipedia.org], it will never be greater than 100%.
The net capacity factor of a power plant is the ratio of its actual output over a period of time, to its potential output if it were possible for it to operate at full nameplate capacity continuously over the same period of time.
And if we look at actual CF for wind power as mentioned in the Wikipedia article, it's firmly around 30% with some a little higher and some a little lower.
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I'm surprised given it's geography that Japan isn't a fantastic candidate for a combination of wind (onshore, and off), hydro, tidal, and geothermal.
Anyone know why they're more interested in building coal than harnessing more of their renewable resources? Does Japan have masses of cheap coal or something? I'd have assumed it has to import a lot of it?
I agree with you about nuclear over coal, but I'm struggling to see why Japan would need either. For such a high tech country it seems to be resorting to an insanely low tech sub-optimal and dirty solution.
You're assuming that these renewables are feasible options for a densely-packed high-power-usage country. Which they are not - the only places renewables are a significant proportion of power needed are the sparsely populated ones. Wind doesn't always blow. Solar doesn't shine when you need most power. Hydro-electric (the only one that is usable on-demand) requires lots of land in specific configurations.
Renewable power is not magic, you can't just throw money at it and get what you want.
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Actually, they can still use that land. It's unsuitable for living on, growing food, etc, but with proper protection and safeguards it can be used for storage and other things that wouldn't be a good mix in populated areas.
And they definitely should build more...using the knowledge they've gained as well as new technologies. Molten Salt comes to mind.
Nuclear Energy is really still in the nascent stages due to it being stalled for the last sixty years.
Re:Honestly, Japan's screwed no matter what. (Score:5, Interesting)
Over 90% of the affected area is suitable for those uses right now. The radiation in those parts is less than that of Colorado. I don't see people leaving Colorado because of the radiation.
Re:Honestly, Japan's screwed no matter what. (Score:4, Insightful)
While it may be technically suitable there are many problems, not least "hot spots" where contamination levels are higher. Most people don't want to carry a dosimeter around all the time, or outfit their kids with one. Kids love to play on the ground and get dirty - and since a lot of the "clean up" was just replacing or turning the top layer of soil it isn't safe for them.
There is also the problem of those communities having been broken up. A lot of people have left for good now, moving their lives elsewhere instead of waiting for the clean up to finish. Many of them died, either as a result of the evacuation or due to other causes. Infrastructure needs rebuilding and repairing after maintenance was abandoned for four years, and new facilities like healthcare centres, government services, schools etc. need to be established to replace the old ones that are now defunct.
The other big issue is compensation. If people move back into their homes they will get less compensation, because they have demonstrated that their property is not worthless and they have not lost their ancestral burial plots etc. Since most of them think that their homes have a value close to 0 yen now the compensation negotiations need to be completed first.
Climate change vs. Nuclear accident (Score:4, Interesting)
And Japan lost the use of a LOT of land with one nuclear incident.
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Apocalyptic? No.
Coal? Yeah. They sure as fuck DO have the outcome of an apocalyptic event. It's just a slower-building apocalypse where we continue spewing crap into the atmosphere and slowly poisoning the planet until we simply can't live here anymore.
Re:Climate change vs. Nuclear accident (Score:5, Interesting)
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Pebble-bed reactors can't recycle fuel, and get much lower output per volume. They're labor-intensive and require constant inspection of fuel spheres for cracks and other failures. Essentially, they're nuclear at 1000 times the cost.
Breeder reactors are a great way to manage waste, but they also have higher operating cost than regular reactors. Storing waste underground is cheap, and probably our best alternative: if we store it properly (e.g. in a neutron-dampening material like heavy water or graphit
Re: Climate change vs. Nuclear accident (Score:5, Informative)
What? A nuclear powerplant is not a potential teraton explosion waiting to happen...
Since there's nowhere near a teraton of water in the cooling system? No.
Nuclear plant explosions have more in common with a bursting water heater than they do with a nuclear bomb.
Now, don't get me wrong. A high pressure steam explosion is a nasty thing too. But it's NOT a nuclear explosion.
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Can you please clarify that? There exist real power plants today based on those technologies, albeit not much for tidal.
The main problem with those that I'm aware of is they are extremely local, even moreso than most other renewables -- that's why they are no general replacement for fossils or nuclear. You can't just pop up a geothermal plant wherever it's convenient to generate power. But Japan has a lock on a good chunk of both. I can try making wild guesses why you think it's bullshit but I'd rather
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After a flood of media coverage, the media backed off quickly when the news became depressing. I saw a few reports of tidal power plants shutting down, then nothing; nobody wants to talk about it. They're just expensive, complicated, and unreliable. It's like hydroelectric dams: all the rage for a decade or so, and then people just stopped building them because they're expensive as living fuck.
In essence, real tidal and geothermal plants are like real RTG nuclear plants: Russia has used them, the US h
Fukushima was WORTH IT (Score:5, Insightful)
We only get worked up about nuclear disasters because they're so unusual. Coal is a disaster in its normal operation [the9billion.com]!
The difference is (Score:2)
The trouble I have with nukes is that everyone in the world believes in the myth of gov't inefficiency. That means sooner or later a perfectly safe gov't run nuclear plant will either get turned over to a businessman who'll cut safety until there's an accident or we'll cut funding to the safety controls in the name of 'cutting waste and pork' until there's an accident. With co
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See point #2 (Score:2)
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" or we'll cut funding to the safety controls in the name of 'cutting waste and pork' until there's an accident"
Ok, which Russian bureaucrat said that?
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"Nuclear hits everybody, rich or poor."
That's right.
"If you're even upper middle class you can easily avoid coal death by living in the suburbs. "
That's very, very wrong because of the same reason the above is right.
A Chernobyl-level accident impacts both rich and poor because of the vast area potentially involved but just the same happens about coal: it is in the air you breath even thousands of kilometers away from the source so, no you are not safe just moving to a different neighborhood.
"The trouble I h
Chernobyl wasn't inefficiency (Score:2)
The exact same can be said about any large organization. The difference is that at least with gov't you take a good chunk of the profit motive out. Traditionally Gov't jobs don't pay well but are safe. You get good benefits and retirement. There are folks that want to change that so they can undermine the good gov't does. Google the phrase "Starve the Beast" an
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The difference is that at least with gov't you take a good chunk of the profit motive out.
And of course, you think that is a bad thing.
The way I see gov't, especially central gov't is this: It's a tool. A dangerous tool. But what other tool has the raw power to stand up to a mega corp?
You do. Megacorps aren't that powerful. Stop buying their stuff. If one really, truly went beyond the pale, its employees could quickly sabotage it into non existence. This fear of business is profoundly misguided. And frankly, I think it's encouraged to deflect attention from government power grabs.
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perfectly safe gov't run nuclear plant
The worst reactor disaster our species has yet caused was the explosion and melt down of Chernobyl; designed by government researchers, built by government owned industry, operated by government employed staff and named after every intellectuals favorite opium dealer; V.I. Lenin.
But don't let actual history impede your little world view. Go right on indulging the bullshit they trained you with.
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Actually, the Chernobyl power plant was built and operated by the closest match to regional private companies USSR had available at that time and not the usual Soviet nuclear industry supervisor (ministry of medium machine building).
In fact, Andropov (in the 1970ies the director of KGB, later the ruler of USSR for about two years) wrote a report to the Soviet government in 1979 describing safety deficiencies and cutting corners during the construction of the power plant and specifically warned about a possi
Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fukushima was NOT WORTH IT (Score:2, Interesting)
every coal fire plant is a disaster that is occurring every single day and are continuing to affect the human race in ways we still don't fully comprehend long after everyone here is dead.
You are arguing that having two problems is the solution, instead of getting rid of both problems. Nuclear and Coal are as bad as each other and Nuclear is worse in ways we still don't fully comprehend.
Re:Fukushima was NOT WORTH IT (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear and Coal are as bad as each other and Nuclear is worse in ways we still don't fully comprehend.
I'd argue that Coal is worse, and worse in ways that we still don't fully comprehend. We understand the problems with nuclear power pretty well, including that it kills fewer people per MWh than solar.
Remember, most of the dangerous byproducts from a coal plant don't break down, and aren't all that well contained. Nuclear power waste is at least contained.
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I'd argue that Coal is worse, and worse in ways that we still don't fully comprehend. Remember, most of the dangerous byproducts from a coal plant don't break down, and aren't all that well contained.
You're not going to get an argument from me that coal is bad. It is a shit industry, they don't want to change and you already know my opinions, based in knowledge of the appropriate bills, how and why the nuclear industry is still, like all of us, beholden to coal and oil.
You also know that I think Nuclear *could* be better if we could get past all of the people who think they are supporting it, but in reality are preventing it from evolving a safety cul
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You're not going to get an argument from me that coal is bad. It is a shit industry, they don't want to change and you already know my opinions, based in knowledge of the appropriate bills, how and why the nuclear industry is still, like all of us, beholden to coal and oil.
I think you need to lay off the oil-nuclear conspiracy theories. And yes, that's what I'd relate them as. Nuclear has historically been a baseload electrical power source, with Oil only being used for emergency power(including at nuclear plants) in most areas. In the previous thread where you posted more on this, I was seriously off-put by your allegations.
'Coal' opposing nuclear is more understandable, but it's important to remember that coal isn't a single entity - and they're actually more in bed with
Re:Fukushima was NOT WORTH IT (Score:5, Informative)
every coal fire plant is a disaster that is occurring every single day and are continuing to affect the human race in ways we still don't fully comprehend long after everyone here is dead.
You are arguing that having two problems is the solution, instead of getting rid of both problems. Nuclear and Coal are as bad as each other and Nuclear is worse in ways we still don't fully comprehend.
No, I am arguing coal is a KNOWN far worse problem right here and now, we don't have to wait for an accident, it doesn't have some "chance" of being an issue. It has far reaching known issues and probably just as many unknown.
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Okay, let's state clearly the argument being made by opponents of the coal plant re-starts too, just so we are all clear.
Firstly, the claim about building 45 new coal plants is nonsense. Most of that number appears to be replacements for existing plants. This is the same lie used to claim that Germany is building extra coal plants - it isn't, it's closing old ones faster than the new, more efficient ones open.
Japan sees coal as a temporary measure. It was 24% of capacity before 2011, and the plan is to have
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ok lets state this clearly for you. EVEN the cleanest most modern coal plant is thousands of times more polluting than a nuclear plant. This isn't questionable, or ifs or buts, the only scenario the two can be compared is in a nuclear disaster. 2% increase in coal will mean the deaths of 10's of thousands of people, it will be polluting millions and millions of tons of toxins into the environment and atmosphere. If instead of building those new cleaner coal plants they built modern nuclear with high levels
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What magic power box do you have in mind? Coal pollutes nastily, gas pollutes less but costs more, nuclear has PR issues and some scary worst-case scenarios, renewables are very expensive.
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I'm from Sweden, almost half of our electricity has come from hydro power and the other half from nuclear power.
Well, you guys and Finland and the world leaders in this technology. I commend your countries pragmatic approach to spent fuel containment, of which Japan has none.
Just to give other people here some context, one of the most major criticisms of Yucca Mountain was that the DOE's original policy using the 'Defense in Depth' approach to the specification for building a spent fuel containment facility could not be applied to Yucca's geology. The reason to choose a specific geology (in addition to being seisem
Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
Between direct deaths (ie people who die immediately in accidents) and indirect deaths (ie people who die of cancer or pollution) I think coal has more deaths than nuclear by quite a bit. Interestingly hydroelectric dominates for direct deaths as shown here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, I'll reiterate bloodhawk's point above, that coal has worse long-term impact than nuclear disasters too.
Second, the main long-term impact of Chernobyl and Fukushima (beyond the lifetimes of the humans involved) is that Russia and Japan have ended up with some accidental mandatory wilderness conservation! From the perspective of every species that isn't humanity, they were probably a net positive.
Look, Chernobyl and Fukushima sucked for their victims. I get that, and I'm not trying to minimize it. But abandoning nuclear because of things like that is like abandoning air travel ("the safest form of travel," they say) in favor of playing chicken on the highway because a plane crashes every once in a while. It's an emotional, irrational overreaction that just doesn't make any damn (statistical) sense.
Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT (Score:5, Insightful)
I beg to differ, no it cannot.
It would, for example, be pretty damn hard to get a nuclear power incident more incompetently managed and 'dirty' as Chernobyl, and I am pretty sure that the human race has not yet been wiped out by it (although the local wildlife population is devastatingly healthy thanks to less people around).
Perhaps you would prefer a mountain of radioactive ash from coal plants?
Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT (Score:4, Informative)
I beg to differ, too: although the local wildlife population is devastatingly healthy thanks to less people around . This is thirty years after the catastrophe, nearly 40 even!
The first ten years after the incident you only had misscariages there and deformed birthes.
The animals living there now are not decendents of the survivors of the catastrophe, but animals that migrated over the last 20 years into that area.
Depending where they set up their "base of living" they survived the immigration or died quite soon on problems with the radiation, e.g. mushrooms are contaminated enough that you get cancer for sure if you eat more than one or two dishes with them.
Even in south Germany you still can not eat wild boar or mushrooms.
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Units 1-4 used LEU fuel. Why are you concerned about plutonium?
Unit 4 used MOX.
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And MOX has a relatively low proportion of plutonium coupled with a very high ignition temperature. It probably wouldn't catch fire.
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And MOX has a relatively low proportion of plutonium coupled with a very high ignition temperature. It probably wouldn't catch fire.
Well it's probably not worth risking the extinction of humanity finding out then is it. Luckily, the people who make the decisions about such things agree with me and we won't have to find out.
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I think the OX part of MOX pretty much guarantees it doesn't have an ignition temperature at all unless you're a fan of fluorine atmospheres :)
At one point, people did try metallic actinide fuel. Even at the time it was considered to be a really dumbass idea and that was strongly confirmed by the subsequent events. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Indeed, thanks for reminding me.
I think the OX part of MOX pretty much guarantees it doesn't have an ignition temperature at all unless you're a fan of fluorine atmospheres :)
I'm curious about how you think this would behave. We already know that the fuel in that configuration was producing hydrogen as the water levels reduced in the reactor even with the control rods in place. With 30-40 years of spent fuel in the spent fuel pools, that's roughly 5-6 times as much fuel mass than the core. So in absence of anything to moderate such a fuel mass how are you suggesting it would behave?
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It's not the MOX that generates hydrogen: that's chemically stable. The metallic zirconium cladding of the fuel rods reacts with water (well steam) to make zirconium oxide and hudrogen gas.
The MOX itself is chemically very inert (uranium and plutonium are quite reactive) on the general scale of inertness and exceptionally unlikely to come into contact with anything which will cause it to burn.
Looking up some chemical data (unless I've misremembered how to use it), you might juuuust be able to get a weak the
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Why do you think that TEPCO worked so hard to remove the fuel rods from the structure that is failing. What do you think would happen to plutonium fuel rods in a spent fuel pool without water surrounding them to moderate neutron activity had the structure collapsed?
Nothing spectacular --- MOX or no MOX.
Circumstances of Unit #4 fuel pool was the biggest money-making lecture bonanza for Arnie Gundersen and Harvey Wasserman, two disingenuous prophets of nuclear doom whose popularity peaked in 2013. I am sorry to see that your scenario is directly taken from their playbook. Wasserman it was who doubled down on TEPCO's offloading of fuel for his bread and butter, saying âoeWe are now within two months of what may be humankindâ(TM)s most dangerous moment since the
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I beg to differ. Air travel can't wipe out the whole human race. An apocalyptic nuclear event can.
Funny about that. Air travel accidents have killed 53,000 people to date. Nuclear accidents have killed 283. And if you haven't had traveler's diarrhea, you don't know what apocalyptic means.
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An apocalyptic nuclear event can.
I'm sure it could. Now I'm awaiting your hypothesis on how one could occur.
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No, it can't. Stop being ridiculous. Chernobyl was about as bad as a nuclear accident could get, and it was bad, but it didn't come close to wiping out the human race. Hell, it didn't even wipe out the population of the city of Chernobyl, although it did make the city largely uninhabitable.
Re:Fukushima was WORTH IT (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to forget that the US dropped NUCLEAR FUCKING BOMBS on two Japanese cities only 70 odd years ago, and both are thriving cities these days.
What goes on for so long is the bs paranoia that is so deeply ingrained that people refuse to look at the scientific facts that low levels of radiation are not lethal, and in fact are quite common naturally.
Or perhaps you suggest we should require people to block up all basements in bedrock due to the natural radon levels?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon
Not to mention banning bananas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
People living in Ramsir, Iran of course must be dead by now, but somehow they have been surviving for centuries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Mazandaran
But dont let actual facts get in the way of your cold war radiation terror..
Re:Fukushima was NOT WORTH IT (Score:3)
You seem to forget that the US dropped NUCLEAR FUCKING BOMBS on two Japanese cities only 70 odd years ago, and both are thriving cities these days.
A nuclear bomb has a mass of plutonium in the kilogram range. A nuclear reactor's fuel mass is in the 100-150 ton range. You are missing the difference between radiation and radionuclides.
What goes on for so long is the bs paranoia that is so deeply ingrained that people refuse to look at the scientific facts that low levels of radiation are not lethal
Citation please. LNT has NOT been disproved - so where is your evidence that it is?
But dont let actual facts get in the way of your cold war radiation terror..
Well I'm sure you won't have any trouble producing the facts you claim to have.
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Nice to see you avoid the obvious proving point of populations LIVING in high radiation levels - just keep avoiding facts why dont you..
But since you asked.
A good starting point to learn about the assumption of linear ionising radiation damage:
http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/radiation-the-no-safe-level-myth.html
But you just keep believing your reds-under-the-bed propoganda view of radiation.. because science stopped in the 50s, really it did.
For bonus points I suggest you keep working hard to stop developm
Re:Fukushima is REALLY NOT WORTH IT (Score:3)
Thanks for the link, I didn't see anything there that disproves LNT, care to provide one that supports your statement?
But you just keep believing your reds-under-the-bed propoganda view of radiation.. because science stopped in the 50s, really it did.
There is no need to get emotional, I'd prefer to stick with the science myself. You are *still* missing the difference between radiation and radionuclides, the difference between internal and external exposure to radionuclides.
For bonus points I suggest you keep working hard to stop development/deployment of new generation nuclear power, to maximise the length of time we keep running old gen reactors, and block any attempts to minimise waste through reprocessing/breeding! yeah, thats the ticket!
breeding eh? I see you have a long way to go before you understand the issues. Right now you think I am anti nuclear, yet you don't even know what a burner reactor is
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A nuclear bomb has a mass of plutonium in the kilogram range. A nuclear reactor's fuel mass is in the 100-150 ton range. You are missing the difference between radiation and radionuclides.
Little Boy---the first bomb dropped---had 64 Kg of enriched uranium fuel. That's pretty comparable to the nuclear powerplant fuel charge you're thinking of.
Citation please. LNT has NOT been disproved - so where is your evidence that it is?
It's also not been proved they are lethal. You don't get to be a null hypothesis just
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You are missing the difference between nuclear bomb material and nuclear reactor fuel. Fuel in a nuclear reactor is of much lesser purity and cannot cause a nuclear explosion. The most that can happen is a chemical explosion and fire--in other words, what happened at Chernobyl. That that was a disaster that indeed cause
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Nope—There’s No Thyroid Cancer Epidemic in Fukushima
http://thebreakthrough.org/ind... [thebreakthrough.org]
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The article has a pretty good bibliography. Reading though the actual journal articles they all seem to agree, when you do mass screening you find lots of potentially cancerous lumps, more than you'd expect from national cancer stats, but you find the same even in uncontaminated areas.
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We only get worked up about nuclear disasters because they're so unusual.
No we don't. We get worked up about them because they go on for so long.
No we don't. We get worked up because of the collective U.S. guilt over the use of nuclear weapons to end WW II has resulted in an immediate knee-jerk response in the negative, particularly among the majority of the population, who can't even correctly pronounce the word "nuclear".
Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the disaster movie "The China Syndrome" have all added fuel to this fire of ignorance, but it was started by feeling guilty about taking action to end a war.
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Umm, no. We get worked up as a result of a propaganda campaign by the USSR that backfired, badly.
This occurred at the height of the Cold War, and was intended to push the USA in the direction of nuclear disarmament. Unfortunate
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No, we don't. We get worked up about nuclear power incidents because nuclear power became collateral damage in anti- nuclear weapons efforts. It's fallout from Hiroshima and the Cold War which was unfortunately internalized by the enviromental movement as an axiom of its value system.
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What a fucking little coward you are. Go crawl under your blanket and live in your world of soot and shit you cock sucking useless cum stain.
Says the Anonymous Coward illustrating the intellectual level at which you discuss things. Why don't you mod my copy of your insults up so people can see how useless and inane your ad hom attacks are.
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YES, *we* do (though, maybe you don't).
No you don't. You're still struggling to tell the difference between internal and external radiation exposure. You fail to understand bio-accumulation and bio-concentration, how it propagate through the environment and the food chain, what micro nutrients the radio nuclides you've mentioned below analogue, what cancers they cause, what level of transgenic disease and failed pregnancies and a host of other things are caused.
Most of fallout from these mishaps is in form of short lived isotopes, and the stuff that actually remains is Cesium (for Fukushima) and some Strontium (in case of Chernobyl, which is not the same as Fukushima). Both of these have half lives measured in about ONE human generation. This means that in a few generations (about 100 years),
Whose radioactive versions are neatly absorbed into the food chain and whose daughter
Rubbish.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Coal the only alternative?
What about Geothermal Power [wikipedia.org] ?
What about Wind Power [wikipedia.org]?
What about wave power?
Japan should take the lead from Germany who replaced all their nuclear power plants with renewables following the Fukushima disaster [theguardian.com]
Re:Rubbish.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Article fails to mention that Germany is also importing massive amounts of power from France, and that the price of electricity in germany is between 0.20 and 0.45c/kWh now from all those renewable sources.
Re:Rubbish.... (Score:4, Informative)
Germany [..] replaced all their nuclear power plants
Except they didn't [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
"Japan should take the lead from Germany"
No, because Japan is an igneous country with no lignite to burn. Furthermore, it doesn't have a land border with an all-nuclear nation that it can sip surplus power from on pollution-advisory days.
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Re:Rubbish.... (Score:5, Funny)
I think a cable reaching all the way to France would be very expensive, and I suspect the resistive losses would be prohibitive too.
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The simple reason is that wind does not generate enough power. If they were to build out their entire wind potential they would have a max generating potential of 752gw. If we assumed favourable wind conditions you might get to 30% of that figure (that would make it one of the best performing in the world) so 225GW. Currently Japan has c250GW of installed generating capacity so there is basically no overhead if they went all wind and there would be a monumental capital cost to achieve it as 600GW is offshor
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Nuclear power plants and skills (Score:2)
Whats the on site back up power like? Low level backup fuel tanks placed near the ocean or water? Poor placement of back up electrical systems to power the site when all normal connections fail. Can expected flooding get to all the vital sites?
The ability to cool, co
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Restart Isn't the Right Choice Either.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think turning on a bunch of outdated reactors that sit on one of the most earthquake and tsunami-prone areas of the world is a good idea.
How about replacing the existing reactors with a smaller number of very modern Westinghouse AP1000s? A far better way to spend billions of dollars than the stupid 2020 Tokyo Olympics. I think this is an acceptable medium-range solution until someone demonstrates a commercial 1GW thorium plant.
Restoring trust in the system. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2)
I live there
Unless, of course, you don't actually exist.
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Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
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Most smoke detectors now are optical, and even the ones that did use americium always had it screened - not difficult to do for an alpha source. No radiation gets out.
Re: (Score:2)
ACs posting personal anecdotes should always be taken at their word.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah yes, Nuclear myth #3: All radiation is caused by nuclear power and nuclear bombs.
Fact: Nearly everything in the world is naturally radioactive. You're horrified that that stuff around your office lights up Geiger counters, because you never pointed a Geiger counter at that stuff before the accident [youtube.com]. Thus you are incorrectly attributing natural radiation to the accident. Your largest annual radiation dose actually comes from your own body. Potassium has a relatively common naturally occurring isotope (K40) which is radioactive, and your body needs potassium to survive (it's essential to how your nerves function). Your second largest dose comes from cosmic rays. Most of these are filtered out by the atmosphere, so in a twist of irony many of those who fled Japan by plane after the accident unwittingly exposed themselves to more radiation during their flight (planes fly above most of the atmosphere) than if they'd just stayed put in Japan.
This myth is so prevalent and pernicious that we screen our nuclear plant workers with detectors which would be screaming if placed at the exit of a drugstore or supermarket. K40 is common enough that most of the false alarms from the "dirty bomb" detectors at our borders [seattlepi.com] are caused by shipments of food which are high in potassium - bananas, avocados, cocoa, etc.
Perhaps most damning with respect to TFA, burning coal releases radiation. Coal contains trace amounts of uranium. The uranium in coal actually contains more energy than the coal itself, but because people who believe this myth are staunchly opposed to nuclear power, they end up breathing in those minute traces of uranium released by burning coal instead. (Burning coal is also the current major contributor to mercury in our oceans which makes fish like tuna dangerous to consume. Historically the biggest contributor was mining, but that's been regulated enough that the primary mercury source is now coal pollution.)
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Try a banana on your Geiger counter..
And yes, I spend plenty of time in Tokyo myself, so I get to have an opinion...
Mind you, as you are posting anonymous, I suspect you are actually an american scaremonger posting BS, but thats pretty common.
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If gutters and footprints in Kanda (downtown Tokyo) were actually glowing, we would all know it by now.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
It CLICKS! And that's SCARY!
Re: (Score:2)
Then absolutely not. The reasons are many and are not new.
One more reason to build new ones.