As for Chernobyl, if you read about it, one of the things that strikes an observer is the multiple, deliberate steps that were taken to bypass the safety procedures, and the stunning incompetence of the Soviets.
IOW, if we really put our minds to it, we can create a disaster with a nuclear power plant. That, of course, can be said to be true of practically any human endeavor.
Of course, we could also expect the horrors of something like Three Mile Island, in which no one was killed, no one was injured, and no radioactive material escaped into the environment.
Contrast that to the tens of thousands who die every year from other energy sources, and it appears we are running up against the unaccountable human preference for things that kill a lot of people over a long period over things that kill relatively fewer people once in a great while.
No one has denied they both use the processes of nuclear fission. But this is just a pointless digression. The risks can be quantified, and the risks of nuclear power are significantly better than alternatives like coal plants.
The “Soviet” nuclear engineers who were running the plant and testing it for safety. They were certain, like all engineers, that they were the only ones who had any knowledge or expertise and arrogantly went along. All engineers are capable of such stunning stupidity, being human and or the especially arrogant kind called engineers that they don’t have to explain themselves.
For engineers in Japan in the 1970s to build a power plant and not assume a 9.5 earthquake (as occurred in Chile) and 125 foot tsunamis (as had occurred in Japan) was stupid. They should have exceeded those assumptions like reasonable engineers.
Engineers make assumptions all the time. And there are engineering failures frequently because of those assumptions or deviation by the actual construction people.
Nuclear power, even when done poorly, is far less dangerous than coal power, even when done well. The only difference is that when something goes wrong with a nuclear power plant, everyone freaks out and we create an exclusion zone, but when coal plants create just as much hazard by operating correctly, we just let poor people live near them.
And with engineering practices conducted by human beings who happen to be engineers, how many? I calculate about one every 25 years based on actual experience. About once every 25 years past and present decision making in a chain will result in a meltdown at the number of power plants the world has one or more reactors at. That is based on the numbers.
One of the last things Richard Feynman did was do a post mortem on the Challenger disaster. One assumption by one group leads to more by others and in a complex chain, it just rolls out of control.
Bridges collapse, dams bust, reactors melt down. The second law of thermodynamics is utterly fuckin inexorable. Your supposedly closed system is still run by human beings in a universe in a state of entropy. Human vigilance may be able to reduce such chaos, but there isn’t really any reliable science that heightened vigilance won’t increase the chaos.
Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. A major nuclear exchange was averted because the decision maker did not rely on the experts who assured him that there were no missiles already in place. Years later, we find out those experts were wrong. They were vigilant experts, they were confident and using all the care and skill of their reconnaissance. But they were wrong. Their recommendation for an air strike “now before the sites are ready” was rejected by Kennedy, not because he was certain that they were wrong, or even strongly suspected it, but because they might be wrong and it might be a really bad idea. The risks that he was wrong were supposedly low, but the price of being wrong was unacceptably high.
That’s the point - they didn’t, and as a result maybe one person died or will die, eventually, as a result of radiation exposure, and others might die, eventually, of thyroid cancer.
Contrast that to every other power source which is not similarly over-engineered. Statistically lots more people die as a result - many more than would with nuclear.
It’s not going to be a perfect world any time soon. Thus, which is better, X, which kills a thousand people a year for twenty years, or Y, which kills five thousand people once every twenty years?
Statistically it is much more dangerous to install a solar panel on your roofthan to live next to a nuclear power plant. Chinese people are dying because their government is almost as irresponsible as the worst Soviet nuclear engineer in captivity. What makes you think we can’t prevent another Chernobyl as readily as we could (or the Chinese could) stop the poisoning of the environment in China?
If so, this is great news too – a far, far lower risk to human life and the environment. One Fukushima/Chernobyl every 25 years is way, way better both for human life and for the environment than the record of the other major energy sources. Way to go nuclear power!
The fact that engineers think that Fukushima was over-engineered is one of the problems. The fact that only deaths are considered damage is another. The fact that cancer deaths from Fukushima are called speculative while speculating on solar panel installation deaths (that people directly choose to participate in) is not measuring with the same yard stick.
I can remember the construction of Diablo Canyon. The propaganda for it called it a nuclear fortress. And then they found earthquake faults right on the site. And they said it will withstand any earthquake that might hit, all the way up to 7.0. And then they installed the piping backwards. And on and on and on.
In the real world, the alternative to nuclear power is fossil fuels. Solar and wind can’t power any more than a tiny percentage of the needs of the world right now. Hopefully they will be able to at some point, and hopefully we’ll develop fusion power as well. Until then, nuclear power is far, far safer and less risky than the alternative.
Nuclear energy is like flying in a modern airliner. Many people are more afraid of flying than of riding in a car, despite the fact that flying is safer.
You are still missing the point. Fukushima was not engineered to withstand earth quakes or tidal waves. As a result, many, many fewer people died than would have if the same amount of energy were generated from any other practicable source. The worst case scenario worked out better than SOP from any of the alternatives.
Commercial airliners don’t have parachutes for every passenger. But air travel is a lot safer and faster than automobiles.
No matter what choice we make, people are going to die as a result. That cannot be avoided. What we should do is pick the alternative in which the smallest number of people die. Statistically, that’s nuclear.
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I can remember the construction of Diablo Canyon. The propaganda for it called it a nuclear fortress. And then they found earthquake faults right on the site. And they said it will withstand any earthquake that might hit, all the way up to 7.0. And then they installed the piping backwards. And on and on and on.
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How many people has Diablo Canyon killed?
Got a cite for 125 foot tsunamis ever having occurred before? The fact is, the engineers did design for tsunamis, very large ones in fact, and their preparations were almost good enough to withstand the largest tsunami on record.
Compare their track record with that of the engineers who built coal plants.
Some of the people in this thread say that earthquakes and tsunamis were prepared for with Fukushima, and some say they were not.
But instead of 125 foot waves and 9.5 quakes, the engineers designed for much more manageable disasters. Like the people in the towns with the 30 foot tsunami walls. After all, you don’t want to over-engineer a project so that it might, you know, work to prevent a worse disaster than the one you budgeted for. But in all fairness to the budgeters and engineers all over Japan, they all got paid and got all their profits decades ago and are now long gone and the public is left holding the bag.
It’s like insurance- nobody in their right mind carries liability coverage that would cover ANY possible injury and rehabilitation that a person in an accident with you could possibly have.
More often than not, you’ll be fine- the person will have a broken leg or something, and your $100,000 of liability coverage will be just fine.
But it’s possible that one of the other passengers could be seriously jacked up necessitating lifetime care; your $100k policy won’t cover that, and you’ll be on the hook.
But it’s not likely. Neither are 2011 Tokohu earthquake and tsunami type events .
Such events are certain. I cannot imagine why you say they are not likely. They are as certain as the movement of geological plates. Who faces the consequences is also certain: it will be local people whose homes are utterly destroyed and lives are ruined without compensation.