I’ll take your offer and improve it. I’ll take both the domes and the pools if you accept to put an E.R. OR a daycare center for 100 special needs kids in your house .
Sorry, I haven´t read the backlog, (this is my first post here, excuse any inconvenience)
I´d like that those who feel happy with the argument that says that “there haven´t been so many deaths” , consider this:
http://www.chernobyl-international.com/index.aspx
There is a lot of (denied) suffering about Chernobyl and a future of death and diseasse that is what a nuclear disaster leaves. Nuclear power has unpredictible
consequences. It depends of humans, that´s the main weak point.
Everyone agrees that Chernobyl was terrible. But that’s not because Chernobyl was a nuclear power plant; it’s because it was both a design so insanely terrible that trained nuclear engineers couldn’t do worse if they tried, and because the folks running it made decisions that your typical five-year-old could have told them were incredibly stupid.
Nuclear engineers conducted their risk assessments the same way all nuclear engineers do, and Chernobyl was judged 100% safe. If Chernobyl hadn’t blown up every single pro-nuke member here would be holding up Chernobyl as a shining example of the inherent safety and reliability of nuclear power. The other Chernobyl reactor continued to produce safe, clean nuclear power for years after the “event.”
It’s our risk-assessment that is flawed. Nuke plants are too complex to anticipate everything that can happen, and as we’ve seen at Fukushima, multiple unforeseen failures combine in a way where disaster happens, and I guarantee you the next Fukushima won’t be caused by an earthquake-tsunami double punch. It’ll be caused by a series of mistakes and unforeseen failures that will leave nuclear engineers and society at large scratching their heads and saying “who could ever have seen that happening?”
The accident at Chernobyl was directly causes by an experiment they were conducting to see if they could use latent heat to keep power generation going until the back up generators reached full strength.
Because they figured out there was a serious danger in the event of loss of external power, due to the loss of cooling while the big diesels got up to power.
In a case of absolute irony, the thing they were concerned about happening happened, while they were doing an experiment to see if they could prevent it from happening.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
Nuclear engineers conducted their risk assessments the same way all nuclear engineers do, and Chernobyl was judged 100% safe. If Chernobyl hadn’t blown up every single pro-nuke member here would be holding up Chernobyl as a shining example of the inherent safety and reliability of nuclear power. The other Chernobyl reactor continued to produce safe, clean nuclear power for years after the “event.”
[/QUOTE]
Ridiculous. No one would be holding up Chernobyl as a model of nuclear power safety if it hadn’t had a problem because no one would have ever heard of it. Regardless, even before Chernobyl, the design wouldn’t have been acceptable or considered ‘100% safe’ in the west because the thing didn’t have many of the basic safety features required in western nuclear plants. It was considered ‘safe’ only by Soviet standards.
Well, the ability to judge risk is certainly one of the major issues…of course, it’s the inability of folks such as yourself to judge risk that’s really evident here.
-XT
Cecil’s article compares nuclear body counts with coal production in foreign country’s.
When people try talking about safety and nuclear power they commonly refer to stats where governments care very little about worker safety of the public for that matter. Yes its true that coal miners die by the bus load in China and Russia but thats not really comparing apples to apples, is it. We insist on better working conditions for our domestic power production in the US. If the argument is how safe is it to have cooling towers a city or a state up wind of your children’s school, we need to compare the danger that plant presents to deaths from other forms of domestic power production. If you need more data then look to other country’s that are responsible about worker safety. But I support the idea of moving past the knee jerk reaction many have about nuke power and like the idea of making these sorts of comparisons. This just sounds like something put together by the nuke industry. If coal production really is more dangerous, that is something to consider. But we need good data. And I know that Cecil doesn’t have time to create his own data. He has to go and find it someplace, just like the rest of us would. But Ive been hearing that comparison being made a lot lately and it sounds a lot like industry buzz.
Helen Caldicott, a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, writes an Op-ed piece in today’s New York Times (20 max per month, after that SubReq). She states:
I wasn’t too impressed by Dr. Caldicott’s piece: it seemed to devote a hefty portion to ad hominem. Other times, the author seemed to make blanket statements about what this admittedly lay-reader believed to be controversial. But her core argument appears to be that it takes more than 15 years to show the long term affects of radiation – while Leukemia can form in that span of time, lots of cancers take 60 years. And some mutations take multiple generations to emerge. So we can’t yet say for sure what the consequences of Chernobyl are.
The good doctor left out comparisons to other energy sources. She noted that nuclear defenders tend to de-emphasize sources of radiation that are ingested or breathed in: these internal emitters can be more harmful than the external ones. I’ve noticed that as well. Caldicott observes that, “…doctors know that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation…” My perception is that toxicologists know that, “The dose makes the poison.”. For example, radioactive potassium has a half life of over a billion years. It’s natural: organisms dealt with it in the pre-Cambrian era and “In a human body of 70 kg mass, about 4,400 nuclei of 40K decay per second.” So while I guess it’s sort of true that no level of radiation is completely safe, this risk is hardly a new one. Comparing the effects of any radiological release to familiar baselines seems like a more appropriate framework.
My problem with nuclear power is that it appears to be a high cost energy source both before governmental subsidies are taken into account and after. Plants are expensive to build and have a tendency towards cost overrun. And whatever the final death toll from Chernobyl, it certainly has created an expensive and undesirable kill-zone in the lands around the plant. I shudder at the costs and consequences of ordering a permanent evacuation around any nuclear plant in a non-rural location.
[QUOTE=Measure for Measure]
She noted that nuclear defenders tend to de-emphasize sources of radiation that are ingested or breathed in: these internal emitters can be more harmful than the external ones.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve noticed that nuclear detractors tend to de-emphasize the costs in human lives of other comparable sources of energy. I didn’t read through your cite, but at a guess she didn’t go into the annual deaths due to coal fired power plants, did she? Even wind and solar have real costs in terms of human lives lost…and they don’t scale anywhere near to what coal or nuclear can do. In another thread there was a cite showing the relative human costs of the various power systems…and nuclear was at or near the bottom of the list.
My problem with this argument is that A) wind and solar are equally costly, when you actually try and scale them up to the levels that nuclear currently provides, and B) part of those increased costs and overruns and lengthy time lines to build come directly from anti-nuclear agitation and deliberate attempts to sabotage the construction of any nuclear power plant.
Nuclear is definitely costly…it’s highly front end loaded, since much of the capital cost is in the initial construction and in setting up funding for the eventual decommissioning. Maintenance and fuel are fairly minimal, however, so once you have the thing built and running it’s going to generate a return for the lifetime of it’s operation (several decades at least), less the eventual decommissioning costs and storage of it’s waste. Wind and solar also have a rather large up front capital cost, and the maintenance costs are fairly substantial as well (obviously fuel costs are pretty much zero ;)), and they are also going to have decommissioning costs…and, afaik, a shorter lifetime to recoup capital costs. To build out wind or solar you are also going to need substantial subsidies, just like nuclear (or anything else that has a huge capital cost).
-XT
No she does not talk about deaths from other fossil fuel consequences. However she is also limited in column space (just like Cecil). I do take issue with her statement:
So…essentially, what she’s saying is “it’s impossible to prove something won’t cause cancer in you 60 years from now or in your great-grandchildren, therefore we should assume the worst.” Hey, I can make predictions like that all day long. “xtisme, your overdose of deep-fried peanut butter and banana pancakes every weekend is going to lead to heart disease in you 60 years from now. Prove me wrong.”
Thanks to the internet I now don’t worry about nuclear pollution. Even Chernobyl wasn’t that bad. If four exploded reactors/fuel pools is no big deal, then there really isn’t any reason to worry.
Chernobyl only had one reactor explode. Oh…you were speaking in hyperbolic terms and exaggerations about Fukushima, perhaps? Well, happily none of the reactors exploded (the explosions, of course, were in the secondary containment buildings due to a build up of hydrogen gas) and none of the spent fuel pools exploded either.
Good thing you had the internet to get this breaking news that the rest of us got, oh, a month or so ago, ehe? 
-XT
That’s the wonderful thing about the internet. While TEPCO doesn’t know the state of the reactors, and some of the fuel ponds, the internet already knows the answer. And it’s all good.
TEPCO should just get their info from internet forums, save a lot of time.
They know that neither of them exploded, however. As did the rest of us. Sadly, you seem to be unaware of this, despite having participated (so to speak) in numerous threads on this topic. It’s almost like you, I don’t know, refuse to listen to what anyone is trying to tell you…or something.
-XT
Ah, I think I see the confusion.
Thanks to the internet I now don’t worry about nuclear pollution = according to the vast majority of opinions, no matter what happens there is no reason to worry about radioactivity.
Even Chernobyl wasn’t that bad.= the worst nuclear disaster didn’t kill that many people, or cause that much cancer. So even when a reactor just blows the hell up, burns and spreads core material all over, it isn’t that bad.
**
If four exploded reactors/fuel pools is no big deal, then there really isn’t any reason to worry**. = If four REACTOR BUILDINGS have huge explosions, fires and leak radioactive water, steam, smoke and parts of the buildings all over, it’s no big deal.
I just assume anyone following the story knows that it wasn’t the reactors that blew up, it was the containment buildings. Or something. They still don’t know the state of the reactor containment structures (which were inside the containment buildings)
We do know 100% sure that the spent fuel ponds (SFPs) are no longer in any kind of containment structure.
But even so, thanks to the internet, even that isn’t a problem.
[QUOTE=FXMastermind]
Ah, I think I see the confusion.
[/QUOTE]
Giving you the benefit of the doubt…no…no, I don’t think you do.
What 4 reactors exploded? What fuel pools exploded? See? You were just making all that up, or using hyperbolic language to exaggerate your statement and give it some zing. I’m not seeing why you had any confusion about this, but heck…always here to service.
Let’s look at the spin parts though, just for fun:
Um, no. The ‘vast majority of opinions’ is to use some freaking common sense and attempt to judge relative risks and to assess the ACTUAL risks, instead of going off in a fear crazed and pretty much fact free rant. Have you ever, just once, tried to actually READ what folks other than the fear crazed crowd have actually tried to write in ANY of those threads you participated in? Because, based on the posting evidence, it doesn’t seem so.
Again, relative risk. No one said that there was no cause for concern, or that this was anything other than a major disaster. It cost hundreds of people their lives, and will potentially effect many thousands, or even hundreds of thousands. It cost billions to fix. A little perspective would be nice, however…and a bit of rationality.
But, you know, ‘four exploded reactors/fuel pools’ DIDN’T HAPPEN. NONE of the reactors blew up. Zero. Nada. Nuffin. None of the fuel pools blew up either…none, zero, nada, nuffin. The secondary containment BUILDINGS blew their roofs off. One or two of the reactors seem to have leaks of some kind or another. There has been radiation that has leaked or been deliberately dumped into the environment outside of the plant. NO ONE IS DENYING ANY OF THIS IF YOU JUST PAID ATTENTION.
Um, yes…very convincing. You just assumed that you could toss in some hyperbole and bullshit because, well, everyone is following the story and knows better. Gotcha.
We know with 100% certainty that the fuel pools didn’t blow up.
You can lead a horse to water, but it’s not wise to try and look at his teeth half way across the stream while trying to change mounts. Or make him think.
-XT
Calm down.
Watch out he is going to blowup like a nuke plant.
Nah, after the containment structure goes, you just keep pouring cold water on for the next couple of years. No problem.
In case it wasn’t clear, I thought Caldicott’s effort paled next to Cecil’s. Generally speaking, her POV was a lot more common in the 1970s, but I see it hasn’t disappeared yet. I thought it worthy of note as it addressed Cecil’s Chernobyl comparison, albeit lamely IMO.
xtisme: Yeah, you want to compare different sorts of energy sources - including conservation which is sometimes ignored in these discussions. Nukes are expensive in the US – but also in other countries where anti-nuke sentiment is less intense. And it’s heavily subsidized by governments around the world.
My rough answer is to end nuke subsidies, place a tax on greenhouse gas and let the market decide what the best mix is. I doubt whether nuclear power ends on top -but hey, if it does more power to them. My guess is that natural gas (regulated, so that methane leakage is taken into account) and energy efficient technologies would be the winners. As for whether solar or wind dominate nukes in 60 years, who knows?
The more precise answer is that we are purchasing a portfolio of energy sources. I would advocate building 1-3 new nukes over the next 20-30 years just so we keep that sort of industrial capacity, while funding an R&D effort in case a breakthrough occurs. Oddly enough, that’s probably what the US will end up doing, though this may imply a slow phase-out of nuclear power. Nukes are a lousy bargain now, but they might be relatively cheap later - again who knows?
Will message board posting lead to cancer in 60 years?
I understand that the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have actually been tracked for a while. So, um, don’t we know a thing or two about the long term effects of radiation? It’s been over 65 years after all.