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Hey, while we've caught you here as someone knowledgeable, I've always worried about one thing re: nuclear power: What do you think the risks are in terms of nu

Hey, while we've caught you here as someone knowledgeable, I've always worried about one thing re: nuclear power: What do you think the risks are in terms of nuclear facilities being easy targets for malicious people? Both in terms of the power network being less distributed because of the much higher energy production per plant, but also much more about the potential consequences of leaks and meltdowns. The Fukushima incident gave me serious doubts about whether containment buildings were truly sufficient to withstand a targeted attack in a war scenario. Sabotage is even more scary, but I'm guessing there are safeguards against that too. Sounds a bit paranoid, but seems worth thinking about before putting more and more civilians near these things :)

sambe 10y ago
Last time I checked (maybe a year ago) there was not a single person who had died from Fukushima (the reactor problems - obviously the quake/tsunami had many fatalities). There was one worker who died but the last official stance was that it was from exposure. I think also some elderly or frail people died as part of the evacuation. Estimates in the abstracts of papers I skimmed were low hundreds of potential future deaths, but quite some uncertainty there obviously. I think the models nearly always estimate on the high side due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model being used but I'm not an expert. Obviously you can continue to argue about environmental damage and cost of the land being unusable for many years as well. I actually felt a bit better about nuclear safety though - if old reactor designs that are poorly managed can be hit by tsunamis, melt down and still not result in many deaths, the safety looks better than expected. Possibly the risk model changes for a determined attacker? EDIT: current state of Wikipedia is pretty much in agreement with the above, but it's an article with a lot of edits and some points have no references. The number of deaths "due to evacuation conditions" is much higher than I remembered (~1500).
- snuxoll 10y ago
  Low hundreds of future deaths for a nuclear plant that was standing for over 40 years is a hell of a lot lower than a single coal plant, as well. Fukushima sucked, but the potential loss of life is MUCH lower than fossil fuels.
  - sambe 10y ago
    Yes, I would imagine people don't generally account for the deaths due to a coal plant when they think about it casually. The grandparent already made some claims around that, but no references.
acidburnNSA 10y ago
Good question. For sabotage, right now they are not easy targets because most plants are behind one of the strongest structures known to man (reinforced concrete containment domes) and employ ~130 paramilitary guards. For wars it's another story, most militaries could bomb the hell out of a nuke and cause some grief. One rather crazy idea to deal with this is to build nukes on large ships, 10 miles offshore. Worst case, they retreat as designed into one of the most unaccessible places on the planet (the bottom of the ocean), where they stay cooled and avoid releasing radiation until things calm down and the planned recovery operation begins. Other pluses in this scenario include possible shipyard construction (could be cheap), ability to use power purchasing agreements to get nuclear power to countries that don't have nuclear regulatory infrastructure (the NRC could regulate plants worldwide), and enhanced safety since you're always coupled to a great heat sink and there are 0 people living within your evacuation zone. Anyway that's a bit far-fetched but I love the idea.
- JamesBarney 10y ago
  Wars don't seem like a big risk for nuclear plants. If war has escalated to the point nuclear plants are being bombed, it has escalated to the point that we're nuking each other.
  - makmanalp 10y ago
    Isn't it a common thing to do in a war scenario to cut out the enemy's supplies? IIRC the brits did this a lot to the germans in WW2 with air bombing runs. If most power in the world switches to being nuclear eventually, doesn't that seem like a likely target? If you mean that people wouldn't escalate that far, that's a fickle thing to depend on! Saddam used nerve gas, even though there's treaties against that stuff. I guess it's a good thing that a lot of us live in a part of the world where the thought of war on the homeland is inconceivable, but I don't think it's that remote an idea. I'm from Turkey, which is a semi-developed country where conflict and bombings happen with some regularity, and nuclear power plants are being seriously discussed. So I hope that gives a bit more context to my concerns.
    - 10y ago

sambe 10y ago

Last time I checked (maybe a year ago) there was not a single person who had died from Fukushima (the reactor problems - obviously the quake/tsunami had many fatalities). There was one worker who died but the last official stance was that it was from exposure. I think also some elderly or frail people died as part of the evacuation. Estimates in the abstracts of papers I skimmed were low hundreds of potential future deaths, but quite some uncertainty there obviously. I think the models nearly always estimate on the high side due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model being used but I'm not an expert. Obviously you can continue to argue about environmental damage and cost of the land being unusable for many years as well. I actually felt a bit better about nuclear safety though - if old reactor designs that are poorly managed can be hit by tsunamis, melt down and still not result in many deaths, the safety looks better than expected. Possibly the risk model changes for a determined attacker? EDIT: current state of Wikipedia is pretty much in agreement with the above, but it's an article with a lot of edits and some points have no references. The number of deaths "due to evacuation conditions" is much higher than I remembered (~1500).

snuxoll 10y ago
Low hundreds of future deaths for a nuclear plant that was standing for over 40 years is a hell of a lot lower than a single coal plant, as well. Fukushima sucked, but the potential loss of life is MUCH lower than fossil fuels.
- sambe 10y ago
  Yes, I would imagine people don't generally account for the deaths due to a coal plant when they think about it casually. The grandparent already made some claims around that, but no references.

acidburnNSA 10y ago

Good question. For sabotage, right now they are not easy targets because most plants are behind one of the strongest structures known to man (reinforced concrete containment domes) and employ ~130 paramilitary guards. For wars it's another story, most militaries could bomb the hell out of a nuke and cause some grief. One rather crazy idea to deal with this is to build nukes on large ships, 10 miles offshore. Worst case, they retreat as designed into one of the most unaccessible places on the planet (the bottom of the ocean), where they stay cooled and avoid releasing radiation until things calm down and the planned recovery operation begins. Other pluses in this scenario include possible shipyard construction (could be cheap), ability to use power purchasing agreements to get nuclear power to countries that don't have nuclear regulatory infrastructure (the NRC could regulate plants worldwide), and enhanced safety since you're always coupled to a great heat sink and there are 0 people living within your evacuation zone. Anyway that's a bit far-fetched but I love the idea.

JamesBarney 10y ago
Wars don't seem like a big risk for nuclear plants. If war has escalated to the point nuclear plants are being bombed, it has escalated to the point that we're nuking each other.
- makmanalp 10y ago
  Isn't it a common thing to do in a war scenario to cut out the enemy's supplies? IIRC the brits did this a lot to the germans in WW2 with air bombing runs. If most power in the world switches to being nuclear eventually, doesn't that seem like a likely target? If you mean that people wouldn't escalate that far, that's a fickle thing to depend on! Saddam used nerve gas, even though there's treaties against that stuff. I guess it's a good thing that a lot of us live in a part of the world where the thought of war on the homeland is inconceivable, but I don't think it's that remote an idea. I'm from Turkey, which is a semi-developed country where conflict and bombings happen with some regularity, and nuclear power plants are being seriously discussed. So I hope that gives a bit more context to my concerns.
  - 10y ago