I’ve heard a theory that tsunamis are bad too. Anyone got an opinion on that? FX?
We shouldn’t build any more tsunamis. In fact we should pass legislation preventing tsunamis. And global warming. And the idea that a 1 GW nuclear reactor with a 20 year load of fuel rods having enormous energy that might be released in an unforeseen way far more quickly and controlled than planned can be changed by our Republican House amending the second law of thermodynamics.
Oh, Come On! Like *those *ever happen!
That isn’t the same thing I was talking about. I’m talking about 35% of the world’s power generation by 2030, from here:
That doesn’t include oil, which is included in the analysis of your link. And your link is from 2006, a long time ago in the renewable energy business.
Evasion noted. I asked about lives.
I’ll honestly answer your question and tell you that it is going to cost a shitload of money to clean up, tens of billions certainly , the effects on peoples homes, the economy and environment are wide and long-lasting. You’ll have a hard time finding anyone that disagrees with that.
So, Japan drops nuclear and relies on fossil fuels because there is now an energy gap to be filled. How do the effects of that fossil fuel usage compare to the Fukushima incident in terms of death and environmental damage?
The incident at Fukushima means that nuclear power from here on will be even safer, and it already is the safest form of power generation.
I’d be more concerned about people than plants but the important thing is to take a wide view.
If nuclear can be replaced by equally clean and safe renewables then we are all laughing. If not (and it can’t at the moment) then an energy gap needs to be filled with fossil fuels.
If that happens then the excess deaths from such a switch may dwarf any estimates from TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima combined. link
So we don’t know. Nuclear accidents are spectacular and scary but ultimately nowhere near as deadly as the more mundane (but equally final) deaths from fossil fuel power generation. And bear in mind that technology and safeguards are improving all the time and fukushima so very nearly survived a cataclysmic scenario. It (and plants like it) will fare much better next time.
I’m all for renewables and if the Fukushima incident pushes us to greater research on that then what’s not to like? But if it also creates a knee-jerk leap back to fossil fuels and into the clutches of certain energy-rich countries of dubious character, then we are royally screwed.
I say develop safe nuclear alongside other renewables.
And for those periods when the sun does not shine? and the wind does not blow? (and it’s too wet to play :)) What is the best option to plug the gap?
Meh, even though it’s the Pit, I might as well capitalize on/productively hijack this thread to ask a question that came to mind from watching a Frontline rerun about Fukashima the other day…
After the earthquake and the shutdown of the reactors, then the tsunami and the underground (:smack:!) generators being rendered useless, was there anything they could have done differently at that point to *completely *avert the catastrophe that followed?
I’m aware that there were lots of things they could have done better/faster with their response that would have minimized the fallout, but what I’m really wondering is if some sort of nuclear engineering “MacGyver” type would have been able to completely save the day with the resources that were available at the time.
For example, they discussed how they scavenged the batteries from all of the available cars so they could at least power the control room to monitor the reactors. Instead of that (which seems a bit like rearranging deck chairs), could they have rigged up the cars’ engines to act as generators to power the cooling systems? Or, couldn’t they have dug/pumped out, or otherwise repaired the flooded generators? Shit, even with the chaos of the quake and tsunami aftermath, ISTM that as soon as they knew the generators were kaput, they could/should have immediately moved heaven and earth to get some new generators airlifted in, come hell or high water! :o
It just seems that with the reactors shut down and no power to their cooling systems, the results were entirely predictable, and their immediate response should have been a no-brainer. At that point, you don’t even need the benefit of the hindsight we have now. I’m no MacGyver, or expert on crisis management, but I still can’t help but feel that even I could have found a way to get 'er done if I was there calling the shots (assuming I could have resisted the urge to just run away). I would have put one team on (A) trying to rehab the existing generators, and one team on (B) trying to rig up some cars and/or scavenge any nearby local generators, and the rest of the management-types to © contact everybody and anybody to get some generators airlifted in. With all the military bases in Japan, would it really have been *that *difficult to get some helos to deliver some generators? I mean, given the history, it seems the US military might have been uniquely motivated to use their vast resources to help Japan avoid nuclear fallout by dropping off some generators. Man, what a win/win that would’ve been!
So, how realistic is my assessment? Was their crisis response really just *that *bad, or was the situation at that point just that hopeless? Completely aside from the extremely poor prior planning, is this really a story about the inherent dangers of operating nuclear power plants amidst unpredictable natural disasters, or more just an example of terrible crisis management?
(I’d usually apologize for the hijack but, in the case of this thread, I consider it a bit of a public service! :D)
While I think nuclear power most definitely should be on the table, one possible avenue to explore could be carbon trading. The sunnier, and coincidentally(?) less developed parts of the world switch completely to solar to sell carbon credits and allow polluting fossil fuel plants a longer, less damaging run in places that aren’t as well endowed.
I don’t see how asking intelligent questions about the worst nuclear disaster in history could be considered a thread hijack. So I consider your comments irony, or even better, subtle sarcasm. In either case, heads above the never ending debate over nuclear vs every other source of electricity, and how nuclear is the safest thing ever invented.
It’s impossible to say, as we still don’t have a realistic idea of what actually happened. The Frontline special tries to tell the story, but leaves out several critical facts, and tells us how secretive and careless both industry and government actually is, especially when faced with a real ongoing danger from nuclear issues.
I suspect the people in charge were as deluded and brain washed as the engineering types posting online, still, about how it just isn’t really a danger. There is a certain type that simply can’t admit being wrong, they have a religious like denial about things. Until Reactor Building Three just simply blew the fuck up, followed by Building four, and radiation levels became so high everybody had to withdraw, they actually believed their own bullshit. Much more on this later.
Yes, but it is so much more. If you realize that we are talking about a dozen reactors at three separate locations, all at the same time, having emergency problems, at the same time there is chaos and massive deaths and destruction, extreme infrastructure damage, the real problem with nuclear becomes clear. You have to have a functioning advanced civilization, with resources, always. You can’t stop caring for a nuclear plant. Even if the reactors are shut down, no fuel even in the reactor, you can’t stop being there for it. You especially have to have electricity, and fossil fuel.
It’s much more. The almost complete lack of equipment, resources, tools, batteries, and planning for a disaster, it isn’t just Fukushima of course. None of the nuclear reactors running (or shut down) are ready for a disaster. The equipment isn’t nearby, the resources are not on standby, and the drills have never been done.
If you watch the Frontline film, you will notice this, when the workers who were actually there, describe what it was like, right after the Tsunami finished off the plant. (the earthquake certainly started the first meltdown)
If you are discussing the disaster and you haven’t watched the Frontline special
you probably should shut the fuck up.
Of course the received generators, and fuel, and they found, much to their abject horror, the rooms they needed to connect to were flooded with salt water, due to the tsunami. Useless. Ruined. They were hooking up water and power directly to reactor one (the most damaged from the quake, and giving the highest radiation readings) when the first explosion fucked that operation up.
We know now of course it had already melted down, and the plant was doomed before the first explosion. It was the earthquake that started the disaster, not the tsunami. It certainly finished things off. the claim they had a tsunami wall protecting the plant is complete bullshit. Neither Fukushima plant had one.
They didn’t even plan for a tsunami, much less build protection for the event.
The real clown car events followed, but it was the earthquake damage that led to Japan shutting down it’s reactors. Not the Fukushima meltdowns.
No you’re not. If you were actually concerned you would be discussing it in a topic about it. brainstorming, maybe actually doing shit about it.
Everyone trying to sidetrack a thread about an ongoing nuclear disaster into your discussion about how “nuclear is better, safer, we need it”, while using fossil fuels to do so, you are hypocrites. You think a discussion about an actual real disaster is a threat somehow, and you don’t like it.
Get a fucking life. If you want to pimp nuclear energy go start a thread about it. Let the grown ups discuss the real issues while you sermonize elsewhere.
Hahahaha. Like that would ever happen on the SDMB
Well, yeah. 'Cause we got enough of them suckers to tidy us over for the foreseeable future. We can afford to muck up with renewable experiments, seeing as our base is covered with plentiful, safe, clean and only-opposed-by-scientifically-illiterate-bozos nuclear energy.
No, seriously, we love that shit. OTOH, there’s plenty of opposition to wind energy from French farmers. Might be renewable, clean and good kharma galore ; but it’s woefully surface-intensive and that land could have been used for cash crops instead; you see ?
Ironically, based on the various erroneous bullshit you have spewed in this and the previous threads, you should have watched it yourself. 
Well, watched it with an eye towards comprehension.
But the thing is that all of those can be improved. Merely a question of improved procedures. No new tech to invent. Chernobyl and TMI both moved the industry on and Fukushima will do the same. Nuclear is safer now than it was 3 years ago and it was already the safest means of generating power.
What can’t be controlled for is a 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami. When those happen the result is never going to be pretty and, to be honest, a nuclear meltdown has been the least of their worries.
There will be a rethink of where these reactors are to be sited, a re-vamp of disaster planning and recovery procedures and then life will carry on as normal.
Nuclear will continue to be viable however much you kick and scream because at the moment there just isn’t a viable alternative other than fossil fuels (and we know they kill way more people than nuclear, even though those people don’t seem to count for you).
Those countries putting their nuclear plans on hold, or scaling them back, will likely think again.
Batteries.
Oh, the ignorance in these threads. An earthquake and tsunami didn’t cause the Fukushima nuclear disaster. It’s been over two years guys. Investigations have been performed and the conclusion is good ol’ fashioned red-blooded business greed, lies and incompetence. The nuclear disaster was man-made.
Keep up will you? I created a news alert when it first happened and I’ve been following the news there the whole time.
Quit the ignorance.
Nuke is dead in the US. You might as well give up on nuke, solar and wind and go with fusion, for all the good it’s going to do anyone here. The free market has spoken, and no one is going to build a new nuke plant with out truly staggering levels of corporate welfare, subsidies and rate payer gouging starting years before ground even breaks. Not gonna happen.
Meanwhile alternatives pile on megawatts all the time, and in the time it would theoretically take to build a single nuke plant, nukes will be even more irrelevant. Iran will have nuclear power before the US builds another plant.
In other threads the troll even has resorted to self feeding, and FX talking about “grownup talk” is like Attila the Hun talking about world peace. Just recently to reply to Wendell Wagner in GD FX just posted “Yeah, right”.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of batteries? They’re these neat things that you can use to store electrical energy.
ETA: Ninja’d by Try2B Comprehensive; good show, mate!