Calling it a disaster is non-productive, since it discourages use of nuclear power. Without more nuclear power, we’re toast.
This is a good point and goes to the psychological fear of nuclear power that has been instilled in the public by decades of disinformation and propaganda by the anti-nuclear movement.
But solar power will kill people in the public. My city currently has 1900 homes with solar panels on the roof. Solar panels that do not generate any power when covered with snow. Solar panels that need maintenance, up on slippery roofs in winter.
Falls from a height are the #1 form of accidental death. Just wait until thousands of people try to clean the snow off their solar panels in winter.
Roughly 50 roofers die from falls in the US every year. Solar installations will increase this number, and these are pros who use safety gear. Wait till homeowners start clamboring up there.
Another cleaner dies:
Wind is not safer either:
This is not an argument against wind or solar power, which are useful sources of energy. Rather, it’s to illustrate that there is no such thing as a perfectly safe energy source.
It IS an argument against coal, which is orders of magnitude worse than the others. Germany is now burning more coal.
The facts are that Fukushima was not a disaster. It resulted in no deaths, few injuries, and little lasting harm. The fact that people call it a disaster is probably more damaging than Fukushima itself since it resulted in serious, irreparable damage to the nuclear industry and further reliance on fossil fuels.
When you say nuclear disaster, here’s what the public sees.
I didn’t say it wasn’t nuclear - obviously, it was. And I didn’t say there wasn’t a disaster! There were, in fact, two - an earthquake, followed by a tsunami. Two devestating disasters.
What there simply was not, was a nuclear disaster - a catastrophic loss of life or property caused by nuclear damage.
Exactly. You want to change society so that the phrase “nuclear disaster” doesn’t carry the implications it does in our society (or to an even greater extent, Japanese society)? Great, that’s a wotthy goal. But don’t pretend we have already accomplished it.
This is an excellent, concise post that addresses all the main concerns. Quoting it in full because it deserves to be repeated.
This seems to me to be the key. Chernobyl was caused by a failure of the nuclear reactor. Three Mile Island was caused by a cascading set of events within the power plant.
Fukishima was caused by an earthquake and tsunami. It had consequences due to the nature of nuclear plants using nuclear fuel, but was not caused by the nuclear nature of the plant.
I agree that language has consequences. That to me means that we need precision in describing the event to make that causal distinction clear.
Yeah. I Mean I guess you can call it a nuclear disaster, but not a NUCLEAR DISASTER!!!
Maybe someone somewhere died of cancer due to it, but 15000 died from the earthquake and wave. So far, no deaths have been attributed to the nuclear portion.
Japan has spent rougly $88 billion, possibly rising to $200 billion to mitigate the harms of the Fukushima disaster. We can’t know how many people would have been killed or sickened if the area was not evacuated and decontaminated. But we know about 150,000 were displaced, and about 30,000 people remain displaced. There are still no-go zones to the tune of billions of dollars.
There are extremely valid points in this thread around the urgent need for nuclear power, and the relative risk compared to other green sources of energy. But “Fukushima was not a nuclear disaster” is not an objective statement of fact, it is an obtuse word game that irresponsibly undermines the other very strong points made in this thread.
Why does only nuclear deserve special treatment? When the tsunami damaged Sendai Airport, was that an aeronautical disaster? Or when several ports were destroyed, and ships crashed into buildings when being pulled in by the tsunami, was that a maritime disaster? The Cosmo Oil Company refinery that caught on fire–was that a petrochemical disaster? Or how about the irrigation dams that failed–was that an agricultural disaster?
I think the difference is the airport and shipping ports and surrounding areas re-opened and people could move back and re-build. That is still not possible near Fukushima because of the nuclear meltdown.
That’s not possible due to massive overreaction to the nuclear meltdown.
The authorities have undoubtedly caused more deaths from their evacuation orders than they saved from radiation, given that the levels were always very low. Mass evacuations kill people simply by being highly disruptive to people’s lives.
Weren’t most of the people near Fukushima evacuated because of the tsunami? And if they didn’t evacuate the tsunami got them? I thought the government just wasn’t letting people go back.
I mean, yes? Whataboutism aside, are you suggesting these events weren’t disasters?
It’s one thing to argue that maybe nuclear is unfairly singled out for use of the word disaster. But the contrarian statement made in this thread title is plainly an unserious and incorrect word game.
The immediate evacuation? Sure. And those deaths are ascribable to the tsunami, not to the radiation. But later orders were due to radiation fears.
You moved the goalposts. No one has said there wasn’t a disaster. The question is if it was a nuclear disaster.
That there was a disaster, and it involved a nuclear plant, does not make it a nuclear disaster, any more than a breached irrigation dam is an agricultural disaster.
If a bunch of people died due to the release of radiation, or if there was a significant long-term effect on the environment, then we might legitimately call it a nuclear disaster. But that wasn’t the case. The people that died died for the same reasons as anyone else caught in the tsunami–they drowned, or were crushed by debris, or whatever. That a nuclear plant was involved is not an important detail.
The title of this thread is: “There was no nuclear disaster at Fukushima.” The post I responded to states “The facts are that Fukushima was not a disaster.” If goalposts are being moved, it’s not me doing it.
I’ll refer you to my previous post where I mentioned a few of the not-small impacts that were specific to the 3 meltdowns and not the other issues you mentioned.
I’d agree that keeganst94’s post was not specific enough, but you yourself said this:
But “Fukushima was not a nuclear disaster” is not an objective statement of fact
And the OP said this:
There was no nuclear disaster at Fukushima. The disaster there was a tsunami caused by an earthquake in the ocean. That danger is the same for any facility, of any sort, on a seacoast.
That Japan massively overreacted to the events at Fukushima does not make it a nuclear disaster.
At least one. I get one is not many in the scheme of things but still not zero:
Wow, this thread has really blown up since yesterday (in a purely metaphorical, non-explosive sense).
I was wondering how long it’d take for someone to mention that scale. 7 is defined as “Major Accident”. OK, so how do you define whether an accident is “Major”? How do you even define whether something is an “Accident”? Is it based on amount of radioactive material released? Number of injuries, or deaths? Monetary cost? What are the thresholds, and why those thresholds? They don’t say, which makes it completely worthless.
OK, so take the Kingston fly ash spill, then… That was a specific event at a specific place and time. What’s its rating on the INES?
OK, then what about an incident that released only a small amount of radioactive material?
Irrelevant. How much did Japan actually need to spend?
For context, the impetus for my post was someone asking whether a hypothetical fusion power plant would face the same issues as the Fukushima plant did. And the answer is yes: Everything built on a seacoast faces the same issues that the Fukushima plant did. If you replaced the power plant with absolutely anything at all, the net effect would have been much the same. If it was a puppy shelter there instead of a nuclear power plant, would we say that it was a puppy disaster?
I suppose that the fact that a nuclear power plant failed to withstand a record-breaking tsunami means that nuclear power isn’t 100.0000% safe. But then, nothing is 100.0000% safe. Perfect safety isn’t possible, for anything. But even if nuclear power isn’t perfect, it’s still awfully darned safe.
That’s just it though. The puppy shelter is not an ongoing disaster. It is sad but once the damage was done that is the end of it.
Fukushima was not over once the tsunami was done and receded. Fukushima remained a serious threat for a long time and loads of effort was expended for many days (weeks?) trying to stop it from becoming worse. And this when the country’s resources were stretched very thin by a large natural disaster.
That would not be true for the puppy shelter.