5 ms·

> Funny you mention Fukushima, where zero people have died or gotten sick due to radiation, and experts say that the toll will probably stay at zero. This is t

by makomk 10y ago

> Funny you mention Fukushima, where zero people have died or gotten sick due to radiation, and experts say that the toll will probably stay at zero. This is the problem with the pro-nuclear approach to nuclear safety. Fukoshima was a massive safety failure. Something that was supposed to never happen did, the cooling failed, the reactors melted down, the containment breached and radioactive isotopes leaked and kept on leaking. At that point, it's not engineering that's protecting people, it's sheer luck and we don't even know the odds of the bet or the stake. We don't know how likely it was for an even bigger containment breach to occur, for things to have gone far worse, because the whole event was outside of the plan. Not only that, it was due to an issue that had already been pointed out by TEPCO's internal planning documents and ignored. (Then there's the huge economic costs of the radiation leaks.) Just ignoring this as a minor incident is inviting further failures which may not be so kind.

antris 10y ago
I agree that it's a major failure, but doesn't that just mean that nuclear is even safer than people expect? Safety systems, backup safety systems, backup-backup safety systems can go down, and yet, the plant kills nobody. Even though the radiator had a meltdown, it was passively contained and the radiation didn't leak out in dangerous quantities. You mention that we don't know how likely a bigger containment was to occur, but I think there's barely a nugget of truth in that. The way the radioactive material was contained is very well understood. The safety systems worked, despite anything TEPCO did.
ageofwant 10y ago
And yet not a single person died or are likely to die due to radiation poisoning. This begs the question, if all those fail-safes failed, do we really need them ?
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  Well, it was certainly still a pain in the butt to clean up.
- neaden 10y ago
  Radiation poisoning isn't the only way to get sick or die from radiation.
saulrh 10y ago
Fukushima was fifty years old. Compared to modern reactors, it's approximately as unsafe as a car from 1971 is compared to a modern car [1]. Which is to say, it's pants-shittingly unsafe and we should've replaced it 20 years ago but idiots say we're not allowed to "because it's dangerous oooh noooo". If you want to badmouth nuclear by spouting off its worst-case scenarios rather than its average or expected scenarios, I invite you to do the same for the alternatives. Coal's worst case causes the Great Smog and Beijing and New Delhi. Oil's worst case causes the Exxon Valdez and Piper Alpha and the Texas City Refinery explosion and oh yeah global climate change. Hydro's worst case is the Banqiao Dam burst, which directly killed 200,000 people and forced 11 million out of their homes. Badmouthing nuclear over fukushima and chernobyl is like badmouthing cars because a Fluorine tanker crashed in downtown Seattle around 1935. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g
- ethbro 10y ago
  To synthesize what both of you are saying, I think the biggest problem nuclear has is that (a) current regulations make new reactor construction prohibitively expensive & (b) current regulations are designed around preventing problems that occurred in reactors 50 years ago. We're essentially strangling the innovation that would fix the things we're terrified of, which are why the regulations exist in the first place! As a result, we still have Gen II reactors (Watts Bar) coming online. In 2016.
  - saulrh 10y ago
    Bureaucracy: "We can't let you build this. It doesn't satisfy requirement IXX.53-A." Engineer: "The one about the primary turboencabulator?" Bureaucracy: "Yes. Your reactor needs it to be certified to the standards laid out in Index 437." Engineer: "There aren't any turboencabulators in the design. Our design uses retroencabulators. That's how it's so safe; the primary turboencabulator was the primary failure point. There is no primary turboencabulator to certify." Bureaucracy: "I'm sorry, but we can't accept this design without a certification for a primary turboencabulator. It can't be safe without one. Maybe you should start over?"

by makomk 10y ago

antris 10y ago

I agree that it's a major failure, but doesn't that just mean that nuclear is even safer than people expect? Safety systems, backup safety systems, backup-backup safety systems can go down, and yet, the plant kills nobody. Even though the radiator had a meltdown, it was passively contained and the radiation didn't leak out in dangerous quantities. You mention that we don't know how likely a bigger containment was to occur, but I think there's barely a nugget of truth in that. The way the radioactive material was contained is very well understood. The safety systems worked, despite anything TEPCO did.

ageofwant 10y ago

And yet not a single person died or are likely to die due to radiation poisoning. This begs the question, if all those fail-safes failed, do we really need them ?

sliverstorm 10y ago
Well, it was certainly still a pain in the butt to clean up.
neaden 10y ago
Radiation poisoning isn't the only way to get sick or die from radiation.

saulrh 10y ago

Fukushima was fifty years old. Compared to modern reactors, it's approximately as unsafe as a car from 1971 is compared to a modern car [1]. Which is to say, it's pants-shittingly unsafe and we should've replaced it 20 years ago but idiots say we're not allowed to "because it's dangerous oooh noooo". If you want to badmouth nuclear by spouting off its worst-case scenarios rather than its average or expected scenarios, I invite you to do the same for the alternatives. Coal's worst case causes the Great Smog and Beijing and New Delhi. Oil's worst case causes the Exxon Valdez and Piper Alpha and the Texas City Refinery explosion and oh yeah global climate change. Hydro's worst case is the Banqiao Dam burst, which directly killed 200,000 people and forced 11 million out of their homes. Badmouthing nuclear over fukushima and chernobyl is like badmouthing cars because a Fluorine tanker crashed in downtown Seattle around 1935. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g

ethbro 10y ago
To synthesize what both of you are saying, I think the biggest problem nuclear has is that (a) current regulations make new reactor construction prohibitively expensive & (b) current regulations are designed around preventing problems that occurred in reactors 50 years ago. We're essentially strangling the innovation that would fix the things we're terrified of, which are why the regulations exist in the first place! As a result, we still have Gen II reactors (Watts Bar) coming online. In 2016.
- saulrh 10y ago
  Bureaucracy: "We can't let you build this. It doesn't satisfy requirement IXX.53-A." Engineer: "The one about the primary turboencabulator?" Bureaucracy: "Yes. Your reactor needs it to be certified to the standards laid out in Index 437." Engineer: "There aren't any turboencabulators in the design. Our design uses retroencabulators. That's how it's so safe; the primary turboencabulator was the primary failure point. There is no primary turboencabulator to certify." Bureaucracy: "I'm sorry, but we can't accept this design without a certification for a primary turboencabulator. It can't be safe without one. Maybe you should start over?"