That’s a pretty big schnozzer you got there, Randvek.
This relates to the page entitled “Is Nuclear Power Safe?” at
The article accurately cites information from Professor Nocera’s lectures. Nocera is an entertaining speaker. You might want to view his lectures for many more details on the topic of the future world need for energy and how we might generate it. Three free streaming videos of Nocera are available on MIT World at:
http://mitworld.mit.edu/speaker/view/647
-paul
I believe you mean “mortified”. =)
Powers &8^]
Quoth FXMastermind:
In that situation, wouldn’t whatever it was that incapacitated the entire population to begin with be the greater threat?
No, because isolated groups would of course survive, and mankind would go on. But, with over 450 smoking ruins of former reactors and fuel ponds, as well as a global blanket of the absolute worst nuclear pollution, from the burned fuel rods, the explosions, the damage would last for over a 100,000 years easy, and the mutations and death would also effect all life forms on earth.
Entire countries, even continents would be uninhabitable, and rain would spread it to the oceans and lakes and rivers. There would be few places on earth free from the cancers and birth defects. It would be worse than anything. Except maybe a giant meteor impact.
Seriously…does that make sense even to you??
-XT
I think Japan has shown us it doesn’t take a global extinction event for a nuclear facility to fail. Japan is a free, modern technologically advanced nuclear power with the assistance and expertise of I imagine every other nuclear power on earth at its disposal and we’re still looking at a large evacuation area and out-of-control reactors and nuclear fuel pools that no one is running. Japan is still, after all this time, in emergency response mode. They’re trying to get the situation stabilized, which will take months and possibly years. No one is ever going to run that nuclear facility. They lost that ability within moments of the earthquake and it’s gone forever. Eventually they hope to get a semi-permanent cooling system operational and if they can do that, maybe they can start to think about actually dismantling the disaster area. It will be years though.
The very first thing that happened in Japan is an alarm went off, the facility was evacuated as per carefully thought-out and planned-for protocol, automatic systems promptly failed, and the disaster was in motion. The tsunami appears to have been icing on the cake.
Now imagine China and India, both with thousands of reactors, and it’s not hard to imagine them losing/evacuating a whole region with dozens or hundreds of nuclear reactors pretty much all at the same time. Then you have Fukushima times 100’s, in countries far less capable of responding to emergencies than Japan.
One of the problems at Chernobyl that made the whole situation even worse is that then Soviet leader Gorbachev couldn’t even get accurate information from his own experts on the scene. The whole communication system broke down as everyone up and down the chain started covering their own ass. He had to order all his KGB agents in the area to report to him directly, and even then he was hearing more accurate information from the international news than his own people.
Would the situation be better in China/India and the rest of the developing world, times 8000 reactors?
Seriously, it only takes minutes for a nuclear plant to be abandoned and automatic systems to start failing. Modern reactor designs moving forward in China and India and the US if the pro-nukes have their way, aren’t markedly different than the reactors at Fukushima. The AP1000, I believe it’s called.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
The very first thing that happened in Japan is an alarm went off, the facility was evacuated as per carefully thought-out and planned-for protocol, automatic systems promptly failed, and the disaster was in motion. The tsunami appears to have been icing on the cake.
[/QUOTE]
Absolutely untrue. The primary and secondary power backups both failed, but the tertiary battery backup worked fine until it ran out of juice. It was only after that happened that things started to go wrong. There is certainly a case that can be made that the secondary backups were poorly positioned and thought out, but to say that everything failed ‘promptly’ is absolutely untrue. And the tsunami was ‘icing on the cake’ on in so far as it so devastated the area and especially the power infrastructure and secondary power systems that there was nothing they could do in time to keep the pumps going and keep the reactors cool.
It took an even of this magnitude to do all this and wreak this level of harm. And ‘this level’ is not exactly the end of the world. Again, for about the 10,000th time…no deaths. Few injuries. Yeah, an evacuation zone, possibly one that extends for months or even years, but we are talking a few 10’s of kilometers here, not thousands of square miles that are uninhabitable forever, or some Mad Max wasteland. A purely LOCAL event.
Did you read the attached PDF, or just the Friends of the Earth analysis? 
-XT
Good thing I didn’t say that, then.
With nuclear power, you don’t need everything to fail; you just need the right unexpected thing to fail.
You are right…you said ‘automatic systems promptly failed’ which is wrong. The automatic system worked as they were supposed too. What failed was the power, and that took hours after the tsunami to happen.
[QUOTE=levdrakon]
With nuclear power, you don’t need everything to fail; you just need the right unexpected thing to fail.
[/QUOTE]
Seemingly, even with a 40 year old design what you need to have happen is a perfect storm of disasters in order to get it to fail. And even then, it wasn’t a catastrophic failure. Should I go through the litany of all the fretful things that didn’t happen, even in a disaster that killed 10’s of thousands and make 100’s of thousands homeless and did trillions of yen worth of damage?
-XT
Spewing misinformation about what we know happened only makes you look like a tool. Please stop.
[QUOTE=FXMastermind]
Spewing misinformation about what we know happened only makes you look like a tool. Please stop.
[/QUOTE]
Saying I’m ‘spewing misinformation’ without backing up your statement (or even bothering to quote what you think is ‘spew’ or ‘misinformation’ on my part) makes you seem like what you are. This not being the Pit I won’t go into that. I’ll stop when you provide citations showing that I’m ‘spewing misinformation’. If you can’t, then why don’t you take your own advice and ‘Please stop’. Deal?
-XT
Thus does the pot call the kettle black.
Damn it, I keep forgetting to check which sub forum each topic is in.
Of course I blame commentary like this for the confusion.
Such uninformed spench give a topic the appearance of an opinion piece, long on rhetoric, completely absent of fact.
I usually ignore such an internet driveler, preferring a fact based discussion, even when facts are scrace, we can at least compose ourselves to support our opinions based on reality, or at least our view of it.
ETA: Moved post to the Pit thread in case it was a bit over the top.
-XT
I recently learned that the US currently has a nuclear power plant under construction at Watts Bar, TN. This summer Westinghouse ships the fuel assemblies. It is scheduled to enter service in 2013.
Construction delays and cost overruns are routine in the nuclear power industry, but I expect Unit 2 to be operational this decade.
Nice location for a nuclear power plant. Right below a massive dam, and upstream from major cities. What could possibly go wrong?
The rapture could cause problems. That’s not location dependent, though. Would you describe some likely scenarios that concern you?
Shit don’t work, costs taxpayers billions anyway.