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The earthquake was the most powerful to ever hit Japan and the fourth most powerful in the world since modern record keeping began, and the investigation into t

The earthquake was the most powerful to ever hit Japan and the fourth most powerful in the world since modern record keeping began, and the investigation into the disaster showed that the safety precautions weren't adequate in the first place. You can't dismiss the technology based on that incident. Just like we don't ban cars because a lot of people don't operate them properly.

oldgradstudent 8y ago
When I was in high school we visited a small 5MW nuclear reactor. It was a few years after Chernobyl and we got a very long lecture about how this was all the fault of the terrible Soviet design and that it could never happen in a western-designed nuclear reactor. As far as I remember from the news at the time, the tsunami was terrible, but not unprecedented. If this obvious risk was ignored, what other risks are being ignored elsewhere?
- kungtotte 8y ago
  A Chernobyl accident can't happen in a western reactor, and it wasn't what happened in Fukushima either, so the lecturers weren't wrong. I don't know the facts of the tsunami whether it was unprecedented or not, but considering the magnitude of the quake I'm guessing it was one of the largest tsunamis to ever hit Japan. This is speculation on my part. They didn't ignore the risk of tsunamis, they had precautions against them but they weren't up to par. It was a series of malfunctioning safeties that caused the accident. The backup power generators conked out, and the backup to the backup was washed away by the floods. And the floods only managed to get that far because the protective walls weren't enough. "Build better walls" seems like a trivial problem to solve, don't you think? International regulatory bodies could also be more proactive in finding these flaws prior to accidents. It's not a hard problem to solve in the long run. It'll be easier and quicker than finding a viable non-nuclear energy option anyway.
  - oldgradstudent 8y ago
    > A Chernobyl accident can't happen in a western reactor, and it wasn't what happened in Fukushima either, so the lecturers weren't wrong. He was referring to the core meltdown, not the very specific fault mechanism. I should have made it clear. Otherwise, it would be an uninteresting technicality. The entire Fukushima incident makes me suspect it's a result of defining an exact fault model and then optimizing to the model. This way, if the fault slightly exceeds the model, the result is not graceful degradation, but catastrophic failure. Can we put the generators below sea level? sure, the sea wall is high enough, no need to worry about that at all. > "Build better walls" seems like a trivial problem to solve, don't you think? Yes, but is it a robust solution?
- shawabawa3 8y ago
  It's also important to note that literally one person has died as a direct result of the reactor failing in Fukoshima. Around 1600 died in the evacuation process, mainly elderly people. The earthquake itself killed over 15000 people. Imo it's a massively overblown disaster. Yes, it's bad, especially the environmental effects, but it's absolutely nothing compared to the earthquake and tsunami itself.
  - oldgradstudent 8y ago
    The distinction between direct and indirect deaths is completely irrelevant. The decision to evacuate will always be taken under conditions of uncertainty, when it is impossible to know the eventual scale of the disaster. It is also irrelevant to compare the earthquake and tsunami to the nuclear disaster. Earthquake and tsunamis are unavoidable natural disasters, but the Fukushima Daichi disaster could have been easily avoided. You're also ignoring the massive costs of the disaster and the monumental scale of the cleanup. The official costs put it at $188B and counting.
docker_up 8y ago
No one is dismissing technology. My point is that humans are terrible at assessing risk. The Japanese built Fukushima to standards that they felt were acceptable, and they were wrong and now the ocean is being polluted for the next thousands of years with the continuous risk of things getting worse at Fukushima. In the same manner, they may be building this fusion reactor or LHC with what they feel is acceptable risk, but could they be wrong, with extremely catastrophic results? This is something I don't know but would love to know the answer to.

oldgradstudent 8y ago

When I was in high school we visited a small 5MW nuclear reactor. It was a few years after Chernobyl and we got a very long lecture about how this was all the fault of the terrible Soviet design and that it could never happen in a western-designed nuclear reactor. As far as I remember from the news at the time, the tsunami was terrible, but not unprecedented. If this obvious risk was ignored, what other risks are being ignored elsewhere?

kungtotte 8y ago
A Chernobyl accident can't happen in a western reactor, and it wasn't what happened in Fukushima either, so the lecturers weren't wrong. I don't know the facts of the tsunami whether it was unprecedented or not, but considering the magnitude of the quake I'm guessing it was one of the largest tsunamis to ever hit Japan. This is speculation on my part. They didn't ignore the risk of tsunamis, they had precautions against them but they weren't up to par. It was a series of malfunctioning safeties that caused the accident. The backup power generators conked out, and the backup to the backup was washed away by the floods. And the floods only managed to get that far because the protective walls weren't enough. "Build better walls" seems like a trivial problem to solve, don't you think? International regulatory bodies could also be more proactive in finding these flaws prior to accidents. It's not a hard problem to solve in the long run. It'll be easier and quicker than finding a viable non-nuclear energy option anyway.
- oldgradstudent 8y ago
  > A Chernobyl accident can't happen in a western reactor, and it wasn't what happened in Fukushima either, so the lecturers weren't wrong. He was referring to the core meltdown, not the very specific fault mechanism. I should have made it clear. Otherwise, it would be an uninteresting technicality. The entire Fukushima incident makes me suspect it's a result of defining an exact fault model and then optimizing to the model. This way, if the fault slightly exceeds the model, the result is not graceful degradation, but catastrophic failure. Can we put the generators below sea level? sure, the sea wall is high enough, no need to worry about that at all. > "Build better walls" seems like a trivial problem to solve, don't you think? Yes, but is it a robust solution?
shawabawa3 8y ago
It's also important to note that literally one person has died as a direct result of the reactor failing in Fukoshima. Around 1600 died in the evacuation process, mainly elderly people. The earthquake itself killed over 15000 people. Imo it's a massively overblown disaster. Yes, it's bad, especially the environmental effects, but it's absolutely nothing compared to the earthquake and tsunami itself.
- oldgradstudent 8y ago
  The distinction between direct and indirect deaths is completely irrelevant. The decision to evacuate will always be taken under conditions of uncertainty, when it is impossible to know the eventual scale of the disaster. It is also irrelevant to compare the earthquake and tsunami to the nuclear disaster. Earthquake and tsunamis are unavoidable natural disasters, but the Fukushima Daichi disaster could have been easily avoided. You're also ignoring the massive costs of the disaster and the monumental scale of the cleanup. The official costs put it at $188B and counting.

docker_up 8y ago

No one is dismissing technology. My point is that humans are terrible at assessing risk. The Japanese built Fukushima to standards that they felt were acceptable, and they were wrong and now the ocean is being polluted for the next thousands of years with the continuous risk of things getting worse at Fukushima. In the same manner, they may be building this fusion reactor or LHC with what they feel is acceptable risk, but could they be wrong, with extremely catastrophic results? This is something I don't know but would love to know the answer to.