7 ms·

I realize there are a lot of nuclear apologist around here, but this is getting ridiculous. That boars are living in the area means nothing. It doesn't mean in

by onli 10y ago

I realize there are a lot of nuclear apologist around here, but this is getting ridiculous. That boars are living in the area means nothing. It doesn't mean in the slightest that it is safe for humans. With Chernobyl and Fukushima we are talking about serious levels of radiation, high enough to kill people very fast. See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushima-daiichi-radiation-levels-highest-since-2011-meltdown https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/03/fukushim... of how high the radiation in Fukushima still is today. To act like "Ah, nothing really happened, see the wild pigs flocking around" is not even close to an appropriate judgment of the situation. We all would like to have safe and cheap energy. We won't reach that goal by trivializing the dangers of nuclear energy, which isn't even cheap to begin with.

Diederich 10y ago
> I realize there are a lot of nuclear apologist around here, but this is getting ridiculous. I'm pro nuclear power, but I agree with you. Boars running around doesn't mean jack squat. We need to look objectively about all of the many aspects of nuclear power production, including its dangers and financial costs. Honestly, the way solar generation and battery technology is taking off, even the most optimistic nuclear technology might become irrelevant.
jessaustin 10y ago
The nuclear apologists don't seem to realize they would have a more effective argument if they just admitted what is obvious to anyone: that occasionally nuclear power causes terrible catastrophes. Perhaps someday in the bright shiny future it won't, but it certainly has for the last 65 years we've been using it. Then they could stack those terrible catastrophes up against what they see as the wonderful benefits of nuclear power, and reasonable people would have some choices to make. Instead, they run around with fingers in ears chanting "nyah nyah nyah no problems here", and reasonable people can only conclude that the analysis is missing some important points.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mpweiher 10y ago
  > occasionally nuclear power causes terrible catastrophes Except that's not the case, other forms of power generation not only have far higher death tolls overall, but also more terrible catastrophes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    That energy accident table could really use a row for utility solar. edit: No, it's not out of wack, it's just that one uses trillion kilowatt hours and one uses terawatt hours. Oops. It's also hugely out of wack with this article: http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energ... Do we trust that article and it's many sources or the basically unsourced Forbes article Wikipedia relies on (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... ) It doesn't matter a great deal for the comparison, both articles point to many less deaths from nuclear.
  - onli 10y ago
    That's not even internally consistent. We have no terrible catastrophes because the others have terrible catastrophes?
    - vidarh 10y ago
      It's more that even Chernobyl is a tiny little blip compared to things like the Banqiao dam failure, even if you take some of the worst long term death toll estimates. And coal kills several times as many people every year in the US alone as what Chernobyl is projected to kill from the accident until the radioactivity released is all gone, even without any accidents.
jessriedel 10y ago
If you re-read mpweiher's comment, you'll see it doesn't use the presence of the boars to argue for the lack of danger to humans. You're responding to something he didn't say.
- onli 10y ago
  I don't manage to write a response to you without making it sound impolite, which is not my intention. I scrubbed it, please read the following short-form with the most positive interpretation you can muster: I don't think you understood his comment. If one links "There are boars" with "humans have higher fear of radiation than there is actual danger", there are only so many messages such a comment can transport. If one later goes on to talk about "we don't know how low levels of radiations interact with the human body', while in Fukushima there are high levels of radiation, then the intention of mpweiher's comments become pretty clear.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    (I do appreciate your restraint. I know these discussions can get heated.) > If one links "There are boars" with "humans have higher fear of radiation than there is actual danger", there are only so many messages such a comment can transport. The message I took was "boars are different from humans because they aren't susceptible to disproportionate fear". It's meant to highlight the fact that although the abstract reasoning of humans usually gives them great advantage over animals, it can backfire. Likewise, my dog successfully avoids homeopathic medicine, which is ironic given that people who are taken in by that stuff have more advanced brains than him. But, even though my dog also doesn't want to ever go to the vet, this is not an endorsement of never going to the doctor.
    - onli 10y ago
      It's meant to highlight the fact that although the abstract reasoning of humans usually gives them great advantage over animals, it can backfire. Exactly, that's how I understood it as well. And here the implications is that human reasoning backfired because we judged the impact of nuclear accident wrong. It is combined with a "the boar lives there well because it has no fear, we can live there as well". That comes from the first sentence, that health risks from fear of radiation exceed the actual health risks from the radiation. That's typical pro-nuclear propaganda.
new299 10y ago
The Guardian article you quote is I believe inaccurate. That was a new reading that was taken inside the reactor building. There was no increase in radiation. If you stand inside the containment vessel your probably going to have a bad time. That doesn't tell you much about how long you'd survive in a nearby town... and in fact there are individuals who have refused to leave, who are currently ok: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/11/caring-for-fukushimas-abandoned-animals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/11/c...
- onli 10y ago
  Well, yes and no. The article does cover an increase in radiation: > Even if a 30-percent margin of error is taken into account, the recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour detected by sensors in 2012. But it is talking about the reactor. That does not immediately translate into a high radiation level outside, but it shows the potential radiation level we are dealing with. At least in the beginning that radiation leaked, and that might happen again. Also in Chernobyl there are people living in the zone. If they are old enough that they will die before the radiation will cause cancer, and they are never unlucky enough to step into a pocket of escaping reactor radiation, that's probably not too bad.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    It is higher because the measurements were taken closer to the core. If anything, these measurements are good news, because they demonstrate a substantial fuel concentration right there, still inside the containment vessel, which puts limits on the amount that may have leaked. What would have been bad news would be not finding any significant radiation source.
    - new299 10y ago
      The reporting around this measurement was truly awful. I live in Japan, and it freaked out a bunch of my friends when really nothing had changed. It was also an estimate made based on the amount of noise seen on CCD camera images. That's a really awful way to measure radiation.
vidarh 10y ago
If you try to get your measuring equipment as close to the fuel as possible, then yes, you will unsurprisingly get high radiation readings. But they apply inside the reactor core, not outside the containment vessel.

by onli 10y ago

Diederich 10y ago

> I realize there are a lot of nuclear apologist around here, but this is getting ridiculous. I'm pro nuclear power, but I agree with you. Boars running around doesn't mean jack squat. We need to look objectively about all of the many aspects of nuclear power production, including its dangers and financial costs. Honestly, the way solar generation and battery technology is taking off, even the most optimistic nuclear technology might become irrelevant.

jessaustin 10y ago

The nuclear apologists don't seem to realize they would have a more effective argument if they just admitted what is obvious to anyone: that occasionally nuclear power causes terrible catastrophes. Perhaps someday in the bright shiny future it won't, but it certainly has for the last 65 years we've been using it. Then they could stack those terrible catastrophes up against what they see as the wonderful benefits of nuclear power, and reasonable people would have some choices to make. Instead, they run around with fingers in ears chanting "nyah nyah nyah no problems here", and reasonable people can only conclude that the analysis is missing some important points.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mpweiher 10y ago
> occasionally nuclear power causes terrible catastrophes Except that's not the case, other forms of power generation not only have far higher death tolls overall, but also more terrible catastrophes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
- maxerickson 10y ago
  That energy accident table could really use a row for utility solar. edit: No, it's not out of wack, it's just that one uses trillion kilowatt hours and one uses terawatt hours. Oops. It's also hugely out of wack with this article: http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energ... Do we trust that article and it's many sources or the basically unsourced Forbes article Wikipedia relies on (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d... ) It doesn't matter a great deal for the comparison, both articles point to many less deaths from nuclear.
- onli 10y ago
  That's not even internally consistent. We have no terrible catastrophes because the others have terrible catastrophes?
  - vidarh 10y ago
    It's more that even Chernobyl is a tiny little blip compared to things like the Banqiao dam failure, even if you take some of the worst long term death toll estimates. And coal kills several times as many people every year in the US alone as what Chernobyl is projected to kill from the accident until the radioactivity released is all gone, even without any accidents.

jessriedel 10y ago

If you re-read mpweiher's comment, you'll see it doesn't use the presence of the boars to argue for the lack of danger to humans. You're responding to something he didn't say.

onli 10y ago
I don't manage to write a response to you without making it sound impolite, which is not my intention. I scrubbed it, please read the following short-form with the most positive interpretation you can muster: I don't think you understood his comment. If one links "There are boars" with "humans have higher fear of radiation than there is actual danger", there are only so many messages such a comment can transport. If one later goes on to talk about "we don't know how low levels of radiations interact with the human body', while in Fukushima there are high levels of radiation, then the intention of mpweiher's comments become pretty clear.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  (I do appreciate your restraint. I know these discussions can get heated.) > If one links "There are boars" with "humans have higher fear of radiation than there is actual danger", there are only so many messages such a comment can transport. The message I took was "boars are different from humans because they aren't susceptible to disproportionate fear". It's meant to highlight the fact that although the abstract reasoning of humans usually gives them great advantage over animals, it can backfire. Likewise, my dog successfully avoids homeopathic medicine, which is ironic given that people who are taken in by that stuff have more advanced brains than him. But, even though my dog also doesn't want to ever go to the vet, this is not an endorsement of never going to the doctor.
  - onli 10y ago
    It's meant to highlight the fact that although the abstract reasoning of humans usually gives them great advantage over animals, it can backfire. Exactly, that's how I understood it as well. And here the implications is that human reasoning backfired because we judged the impact of nuclear accident wrong. It is combined with a "the boar lives there well because it has no fear, we can live there as well". That comes from the first sentence, that health risks from fear of radiation exceed the actual health risks from the radiation. That's typical pro-nuclear propaganda.

new299 10y ago

The Guardian article you quote is I believe inaccurate. That was a new reading that was taken inside the reactor building. There was no increase in radiation. If you stand inside the containment vessel your probably going to have a bad time. That doesn't tell you much about how long you'd survive in a nearby town... and in fact there are individuals who have refused to leave, who are currently ok: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/11/caring-for-fukushimas-abandoned-animals/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/11/c...

onli 10y ago
Well, yes and no. The article does cover an increase in radiation: > Even if a 30-percent margin of error is taken into account, the recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour detected by sensors in 2012. But it is talking about the reactor. That does not immediately translate into a high radiation level outside, but it shows the potential radiation level we are dealing with. At least in the beginning that radiation leaked, and that might happen again. Also in Chernobyl there are people living in the zone. If they are old enough that they will die before the radiation will cause cancer, and they are never unlucky enough to step into a pocket of escaping reactor radiation, that's probably not too bad.
- vidarh 10y ago
  It is higher because the measurements were taken closer to the core. If anything, these measurements are good news, because they demonstrate a substantial fuel concentration right there, still inside the containment vessel, which puts limits on the amount that may have leaked. What would have been bad news would be not finding any significant radiation source.
  - new299 10y ago
    The reporting around this measurement was truly awful. I live in Japan, and it freaked out a bunch of my friends when really nothing had changed. It was also an estimate made based on the amount of noise seen on CCD camera images. That's a really awful way to measure radiation.

vidarh 10y ago

If you try to get your measuring equipment as close to the fuel as possible, then yes, you will unsurprisingly get high radiation readings. But they apply inside the reactor core, not outside the containment vessel.