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Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was b

Can we just get something straight about the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant? Although it was a 1960's design, the reason it failed the way it did was because of one design flaw... Its backup generators were not placed up on the hills above it. Rather, the backup generators were situated below sea level underneath the reactor buildings. DERP. Fukushima Dai-ichi survived the Magnitude 9 earthquake. It did not survive the tsunami because said tsunami overcame the tidal wall in front of it, and then the backup generators got flooded. But for that one event, if the generators were placed up on higher ground, the outcome would have been so much different. I have first-hand knowledge, due to.. 1) Knowing the area. I lived in my Japanese father-in-law's mountain house, situated 1.5km out of Miyakoji-machi, Tamura-shi. That town was just inside the 20km evacuation zone from the power plant, the mountain house was just outside at 21km - myself and my family lived in our own house in the outskirts of Koriyama city. 2) My (now deceased) Japanese father-in-law was president of the Hitachi subsiduary company which built Fukushima Dai-ich No.4 reactor, which wasn't operating at the time of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami but did suffer an explosion thought due to hydrogen gas from the spent fuel situated in the Spent Fuel Pool in its upper level. 3) Mentioned in point (1) above, I owned a house in Tobu New Town on the Eastern outskirts of Koriyama city, and I was working at Flextronics in Koriyama at the time the M9 quake occurred - things got a tad 'exciting' at the time. I should write a book. My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account - in Fukushima Dai-ichi's case, for some reason (possibly financial?), it was decided that the tsunami barrier was sufficient (it wasn't) for the job, and at some point in time it was decided that placing backup generators underneath the buildings was sufficient - that unfortunately did not turn out to be the case :/ And lastly, I still fully support the idea of nuclear power.

skookumchuck 8y ago
Or just put the generators on stilts, in a bunker, or simply hardened them against flooding. There were other design flaws, too, like venting hydrogen inside the building rather than outside.
- scarygliders 8y ago
  Indeed. I'll point out, however, that the Error Cascade began with the loss of the underground backup generators - hydrogen would not have been a problem if the backup generators were operative.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Yes. The way to a robust system is to stop every link in the zipper effect, not just the initiating event.
option 8y ago
I grew up near Chernobyl. My parents still work on CNPP (which was closed in 2000 but still needs personnel). In my opinion nuclear is the only reallistic solution to solve global warming. Per kw produced it is safer than even solar or wind and modern reactors are even safer. I now live in bay area and have high end solar panels. While this is a nice thing, looking at their output - it is just not enough (covers our family consumption at about 70%, this is house plus electric cars, but, obviously, not including products consumed and long distance travel. And this is California)
- capsulecorp 8y ago
  Not to be rude but that seems like a silly qualification to be speaking on a matter. I grew up next to a Lockheed factory and my father worked for NASA, but I fail to see how that qualifies me to comment on what a "realistic" solution for interstellar travel would be.
  - option 8y ago
    Yes, this is anecdotal evidence. But having grew up there I obviously read up about it a lot and this is why I am speaking my opinion on this matter. Also, in my opinion, what I saw written about it in the US media is fear mongering or outright lies about death tolls, radiation levels in nearby areas, cancer rates, etc. To give you an example. Did you know that CNPP was profitably working until 2000 while the disaster was in 1986? Or another, fact - CNPP is an almost exact copy of an older nuclear plant which still profitably produces clean energy near St. Petersburg in Russia
    - petre 8y ago
      Yes but the RBMK is still an irresponsible design: highly positive void coeficient, no containment, then the control rod misdesign which was fixed. VVER reactors (Russian PWRs) are much more safer by contrast. Of course it was profitable, it ran on natural Uranium and it was cheaper to build (no containnent). You should watch the "A is for Atom" episode from Adam Curtis "Pandora's Box" series. It also talks about US designs and how they upscaled the naval PWRs to utility level which was not deemed safe by nuclear scientists of the time.
davrosthedalek 8y ago
The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard opposition of the locals, which leads, at least in a democracy, to a political compromise for the location (to see this in action, look at the story for long term storage in Germany). If I have to chose between nuclear power and democracy, my vote is on the latter.
- option 8y ago
  nuclear waste is not as big of a problem as most people think.
  - davrosthedalek 8y ago
    Not technically, but politically. Look at the demonstrations against castor transports in Germany.
  - ansmithz42 8y ago
    I will support nuclear if you have a solid solution that will work for the waste for the island living populations of the world. Hawaii for example. If a good solution for the waste can be presented there, we can more effectively move forward. Looking just at large continental areas when solving the problem leaves some holes to fill. Not saying nuclear is bad, it does have a solid cost presentation and a low pollution foot print.
    - baddox 8y ago
      I mean, if the world switches largely to nuclear power, it’s probably fine if small populated islands that don’t have anywhere to store nuclear waste keep using whatever power source they’re using now (or switch to other clean energy sources if possible). There’s no reason to let the perfect get in the way of the better.
systemBuilder 8y ago
How many times do we have to hear this "1 in 10,000 year accident!" Argument (3? This guy wants 4!) Before we realize that the idiots designing nuclear power plants don't understand probability?
- Jaepa 8y ago
  Woah. Take it easy mate. To be clear there is no "safe" option. But this 60+ year old nuclear facility survived the 4th largest earthquake in record history, a tsunami, and only failed because the placements of the back, back up generators. Other plants (e.g. the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plan) that were closer to the epicenter survived just fine. Old outdate plants aren't perfect, but even still its better than the guaranteed best case scenario for fossil fuels.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    > survived the 4th largest earthquake in record history, a tsunami, You make it sound like this is unbelievably improbable. Like "multiply the probabilities of an earthquake and a tsunami". In fact, this is a prime example for a common cause failure.
    - Jaepa 8y ago
      I was referring to the amount of abuse it took, not the likely hood of the events.
abtinf 8y ago
Your post makes it sound like Fukushima failed in a catastrophically unsafe manner. I think it’s important to be explicit about the casualties that resulted from the disaster. The death toll currently stands at... maybe 1. A plant worker died of lung cancer in September 2018–over 7 years after the incident—and the government thinks it might have been caused by the plant.
- rorykoehler 8y ago
  200k people were displaced
  - abtinf 8y ago
    And over a thousand people died due to the evacuation. Every one of those deaths is the moral fault of generations of anti-nuclear fear mongers who created the atmosphere of paranoia.
- i_am_proteus 8y ago
  At the time, the media was conflating deaths from the earthquake (there were around 15,000) and "deaths from the reactor accident."
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
    That's the most distasteful thing of all for me. 15,896 people died that day, and no one (outside Japan) gives a shit because there was some radiation leakage and property damage.
ilitirit 8y ago
> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account To be honest, you could probably make that argument for anything under question in any scenario. But even if we were to skip the logical loopholes ("We took it into account, but we decided the benefits outweighed the costs because of <fill in any reason>"), let's just look at the raw numbers or simply just historical facts. Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries? OK, take one step back. Would those disasters have occurred if "all disaster scenarios [were] taken into account"? The reality is that we have no one good and practical energy solution for the world. And even though I believe that there's no practical solution that can beat a tried and tested solution like nuclear in terms of efficiency, I also believe that there's been no tried and tested solution that's been worse in terms of failure.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  coal is arguably worse even when it's working as designed. it's just amortized over a much larger area.
  - ilitirit 8y ago
    Anything is "arguably" worse or better. But honestly, I would challenge that point any day. As much as I'm against fossil fuels, coal powered plants only contribute a very minor part to global warming compared to lets say... ships, planes and cars. And my point is not about coal specifically - it was just mentioned because that's what the main opposition is to nuclear. Not solar/wind/water. My point is that failure of nuclear energy provision is demonstrably worse than the failure of any other options we've tried. Does this mean it's better/worse? Who knows. But you simply cannot say that something is safe if <xyz>, especially when history says otherwise. I'm flabbergasted at the number of people talking unironically about "human error" as if it's historically insignificant...
    - roenxi 8y ago
      > My point is that failure of nuclear energy provision is demonstrably worse than the failure of any other options we've tried. No it isn't; when dams fail villages get swept away and everyone dies. Bad mining disasters can wipe out ~50 people too. When Fukushima failed, basically nobody got hurt, and there is a lot of inconvenience and resources have to go to cleaning the thing up. Obviously it is still awful for the people involved, but I'd personally rather go through a nuclear accident than a dam failure or have a mine fall on me, because I'd still be basically ok after a nuclear accident. The argument might be that it is uneconomic after accounting for the costs, but it is demonstrably safe and so a far better failure mode than anything else we've tried. I mean, Fukushima has basically proven that the only question is economic cost/benefit.
samstave 8y ago
So what is your take on what seems to be the complete and utter failure for the cleanup and dealing with the aftermath?
- scarygliders 8y ago
  It is extremely difficult to clean up thousands of kilometers of contaminated land - esecially if said land is comprised of mountainous area... Miyakoji-machi itself is situated in a valley surrounded by hundreds of square kilometers of mountainous terrain. To blithley claim it would somehow be easy to decontaminate thousansd of square kilometers of mountainous area is naive folly. It is an extremely diffcult problem to solve.
  - samstave 8y ago
    But blithley saying it is difficult is different than explaining why it /appears/ that very little effort, relative to the scope of the problem, has been applied. Especially goven that tepco didnt even ADMIT to the other reactir failure, nor the acale of the catastrophy for a really really long time. They down played the whole thing feom day one and failed to even seek out external help immediately. Thats why thousands of kilometers and trillions of galllons of sea wer contaiminted
nwallin 8y ago
> in Fukushima Dai-ichi's case, for some reason (possibly financial?), it was decided that the tsunami barrier was sufficient (it wasn't) for the job, Plate tectonics was not understood or scientifically described until 65-67. It was not a widely accepted theory until later, at least the 70s. By that point, Fukushima had already been permitted and built. Without plate tectonics to create the plate shift earthquake which resulted in the tsunami which caused the disaster, the only mechanism to create tsunamis known was underground rockfalls from steep slopes. Afaik the builders of the plant studied the bathymetry around the area, and saw limited risk of tsunamis. The primitive science of the time ruled out the possibility of a tsunami overcoming a tsunami wall that was X feet tall. So they built a tsunami wall that was X+k feet tall, and called it a day. When later scientific theory showed that larger tsunamis were not just possible, but inevitable, the plant was not retrofitted to deal with the new reality. Oops.
- scarygliders 8y ago
  Indeed! And so goes hindsight. And we (the human race) have learned.
  - chii 8y ago
    > And we (the human race) have learned. yet, this is specific to this one incident, one specific threat. The issue is more likely to be systemic. Once a production system is up and running, it is not consistantly being improved and iterated upon, but instead left to stagnate technologically (and in this case, in safety in light of new research etc). But the argument is that such level of continuous improvement/iteration is costly, and the owners would not recouperate the costs! And so hence the economics goes, and so does the human condition continues to revolve around profit and loss.
    - mjevans 8y ago
      Thus regulate mandatory re-certified every 10 years. Also that such process must involve meeting or exceeding //current// engineering standards and safety, with the potential for limited exceptions if approved by need and actively in progress plans for achieving the specifications.
holri 8y ago
> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account It is impossible for us to take all disaster scenarios into account. Our knowledge is very limited.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  It's not even about knowledge. When you include active human attackers that have nothing to loose or state actors in times of war in the equation it's simply impossible to secure.
dirkt 8y ago
> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And the latter is something that might be tolerable in less densely populated countries or locations (Chernobyl), but in very densely populated ones it would be a major catastrophe. And so far we've only seen disaster scenarios caused by human error and force of nature, and there's a third one (human malice), which thankfully hasn't happened yet, but which is impossible to guard against. So my conclusion from reality is that no, we can't make nuclear power completely safe: The consequences of a disaster are too great, the monetary incentives are all wrong (it's not the nuclear companies which pay in case of the disaster, the state takes over; and the costs of the risk are not factored in into the actual running costs; and safety measures are expensive, so economics will always lead to, say, putting the backup generators NOT on the hill, because that would have cost more). And then there's the problem that in some countries using nuclear energy and producing nuclear waste, the problem of actually storing that waste safely for the next few centuries is still not solved. Even after 50 years of producing it. And that is just insane. I wish we could make nuclear safe. It would be a great way to reduce carbon emissions. Looking at reality, I can only conclude that we can't, and it's wishful thinking. (Yes, I know, that opinion is not popular, and the nuclear fanboys will be all over me, but so be it).
- kortilla 8y ago
  >but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. And how many plants failed that were built after the 70s? >The consequences of a disaster are too great Even with the disasters, it kills fewer people than coal even without taking into account the damage from global warming. It’s like refusing to fly because plane crashes stick out in memory and then choosing to drive instead, despite how much more unsafe it is.
  - asaddhamani 8y ago
    Yes, but what about having to evacuate the area for decades / more to come? And the radioactive waste problem?
cameldrv 8y ago
I'm pretty pro-nuclear. Nuclear power has proven to be extremely safe relative to the alternatives. In this specific case though, to say that there was one design flaw is failing to go beyond the first why. The second why is "why does the reactor require an uninterrupted supply of electrical power in order to not melt down? Gen 2 nuclear power is inherently dangerous, and is only made safe through active safety systems. If the reactor trips, the cooling pumps must run or decay heat will cause a meltdown. Gen 3 reactors tend to incorporate a lot more passive safety systems or at least ones that don't require electricity.
- doomjunky 8y ago
  It's just a trade-off of mathematical probabilities. The alleged extreme safety comes with an extreme destructive disasters. When it comes to risk management, the human brain that is bound by evolution to dangers close in time and location, is not capable of assessing the consequences of losing a piece of the planet earth's habitat for millions of years.
  - roenxi 8y ago
    The arctic and antarctic regions are literal ninth-circle hellscapes (the ninth circle of hell is the one that is frozen over). Significantly worse than the areas around Chernobyl which is apparently well on the way to becoming a national park. I'm not sure that there is a 'risk' that the human brain can't process. Risk of what, exactly? Huge cost to the generation that has to move, massive risk if it hits farmland, sure. But even assuming that the 'millions of years' figure is factual - which I doubt - we are certainly going to run out of human race before we run out of land. The risks are all fairly short-term things.
    - doomjunky 8y ago
      The term national park is a euphemism, considering that all life forms in this exclusion zone suffer from genetic diseases.
      - 8y ago
smueller1234 8y ago
Let me argue that there's at least one more design flaw: backup generators are generally not very reliable. So for any given plant, there's a comparatively high risk that they don't work when you need them. This risk is non trivial even when the generators are well taken care of (both maintenance and regular test runs) but it's very easy to skimp on the tests. My knowledge is from another industry that relies heavily on backup generators.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Friend of mine has a high school friend that a maintenance engineer. He has contracts to maintain diesel back up generators for hospitals. And sometimes they don't start. It's very disconcerting when that happens. The other design flaw is diesel or no they require cooling water during shutdown. What bothers me for instance is during the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes the Mississippi ran backwards for a while. During other earthquakes you see significant uplift. If the intakes run dry because the local hydrology suddenly changes you're just fucked.
  - smueller1234 8y ago
    To add to that: backup generators are also a logistical mess. Diesel doesn't last infinitely. Do in particular if you expect to run large generators to sustain significant load (like in big data centers, I don't know how significant the load is for the backup gens of a nuclear plant), the amount of diesel you get to store is impressive. Which in turn means that the logistics/tank life issues of the fuel get worse. The physical&power infrastructure side of big data centers is really quite interesting, by the way. Not something we all get exposed to regularly but I can only encourage anyone who has a chance to learn about it to take that opportunity.
a2tech 8y ago
Also the generators were originally situated in a raised location but had been moved to the ground level after their installation. If the generators had not been moved they would have functioned through the tsunami.
_ink_ 8y ago
Can we just get something straight about the waste situation? It's still not solved. As long as that is the case, I think nuclear energy is not an option.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- DennisP 8y ago
  Well then maybe we should develop reactors that solve the problem. Any fast reactor or molten salt breeder will do it. Russia has two fast reactors in commercial operation right now, and a bunch of startups are working on various designs.
radu_crisan 8y ago
My opinion is that you might underestimate the magnitude of potential nuclear accidents. I think that Germany's decision to decommission over time their nuclear power plants was pretty well studied. Please see: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/09/chernobyl-history-tragedy-serhii-plokhy-review-disaster-europe-soviet-system https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/...
- jfnixon 8y ago
  And now Germany is not meeting its decarbonization goals. How is that a win for the environment?
  - turbinerneiter 8y ago
    That has little to do with the decommissioning itself, and more with the Governments stupidity and ignorance. The decommissioning is only one part of that screw-up. Germany wants (and the whole world should): * enough energy * carbon-free * nuclear-waste-free On order to do that, you need massive investments in renewable energy and storage. Instead, they found a way to have: * large investment in solar energy, without protectionist measures, leading to the German solar industry dying an creating demand that lead to cheap China solar (overly simplified - feel free to elaborate in your answers) * laws that limit the building of wind power significantly * failure to build a power line from the north (offshore windparks) to the south (high power demands, less power resources) which currently leads to insane situations with the neighbors * first extending the nuclear power plants permits, shortly afterwards deciding to shut down, which lead to Germany having to pay compensations to the companies (in addition to a completely botched nuclear fuel tax, that they had to pay back after it was found invalid in court) * subsidies for dirty coal plants over decades (300 billion was a number floating around) and another I think 50 billions to help the regions which rely on the coal business after the coal shutdown Politicians deal in compromise. They see different interests and they try to find a middle ground between those two. They do that with a pretty heavy disregard of science. Scientist are just another interest group. Scientists: If we don't cut CO2 but this much until this date, the effects of climate change will become this nasty. Industry: If we do that, that will cost us X moneys and endanger Y jobs and we will make Z less profit. Government: OK. let's meet halfway. Earth: LOL
lispm 8y ago
There were multitudes of design flaws. * building reactors in areas with severe earthquakes and tsunamis was the main design flaw * flood protection too low, even though this was known * backup-generators not safe against flooding * loss of outside electricity over a long period of time -> powerlines were not working, other sources of electricity on the grid were offline due to earthquake * too long time to restore electricity, we are talking about many MWs for cooling and other purposes -> generators were difficult to bring in with further problems making them work * various damage due to earthquake on reactors, buildings and infrastructure around the plant * too much spent fuel in pools, required large amount of electricity for cooling * spent fuel pools high in the buildings, hard to reach * no cooling capability in case of days-long loss of electricity -> then needs to be cooled with seawater pumped with vehicles with concrete pumps (which were flown in from remote places, even from the US) -> caused structural damages to buildings and spread radiation * no idea what to do with the contaminated cooling water * no protection in main buildings against the explosions that happened * no technology existed for a decade or more to deal with molten cores * ineffective security/safety process -> the plant had checks a few months before the accident with no consequences * unwillingness to invest major amounts of money into upgrades * life extension for outdated reactors, due to economical pressure * no independent controlling instances for the nuclear industry
Tomte 8y ago
That may all very well be true, but it still means that the power plant was unsafe. All the time nuclear power fans tell us that "this time we've learned and current design are safe". And all the time bad things happen and they have to admit "well, not when X happens". Or "not when A and then B happens". Just as you did here. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived an earthquake, but the tsunami isn't a freak accident, it's actually a common cause thing. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived both the earthquake and the tsunami, had it been built differently. But it hadn't. And that's why all this "This time everything is safe" is just as unbelievable as over the last decades. Now, you can certainly say that decarbonization is worth the risk, and I might even be on the fence about it. But please don't insult the general public's intelligence by ever telling us again that nuclear power is safe and it was only those stupid Russians who totally mismanaged their power plant.
- ace_of_spades 8y ago
  Disclaimer: I am not really pro- or con- nuclear energy but try to keep an open mind. How does what you are saying not apply to any other technology? Cars are “save” but kill more people than all nuclear power plants and accidents combined. Still we say to ourselves we can deal with the risk, which is obviously the case for lot’s of cases but might not be in some exceptions. I think your reaction seems a little bit too emotional to an interesting and seemingly informative (haven’t fact checked his claims) personal perspective. The problem with discussions about nuclear energy is that there is a strong dogma towards openly thinking about the costs/risk/benefits in the political sphere. In Germany postponing our nuclear exit could buy us some time to get coal offline earlier and provide some stability to the grid. Ironically, the green party would never consider such a move due to ideological (and historical) reasons.
  - Tomte 8y ago
    You're right. It fully applies to cars, as well. That's why we have those "more bikes" discussions here every now and then. But that's no reason not to point out the obvious flaws in the comment I replied to. And re: emotionality: you can wish it away, but it is real. Nuclear fans always act as if they only had to show this one scientific study to citizens, and everyone would immediately fall in line. That's hilarious. Nuclear is done. It may be irrational, but the nuclear community has richly earned that. A little bit of humility and risk-weighing instead of grandiose claims of "perfect safety" would have helped. But these lies of "perfect safety" were useful back then. They were a shortcut. A cheat. They could get their reactors much quicker if they made false claims. Now they get the long-term results to their short-term thinking.
differentView 8y ago
There will always be unknown unknowns. It's 2019, we can't even not fuck up with a commercial aircraft.
heisenbit 8y ago
Even if you were right the spent fuel ponds were not safe. Just let an airplane crash there - the reactor may survive it the ponds will not and they may very well be the bigger problem. The amount of radioactivity stored in these ad-hoc structures globally is staggering. Increasing the problem by further investing in nuclear is not a good idea.
imtringued 8y ago
Of course it's possible to make nuclear safer. But how do you make the dumb humans that design them safer?
nikdaheratik 8y ago
And yet, very few companies (in the U.S. at least) want to build them. It's because the worst case scenario they're planning for is very bad indeed, so they have to spend all this expense to keep it from happening. Compared to every other renewable energy technology, it is more risky and has a much higher cost to get up and running. And that's setting aside the other problem which is that many of the countries that are still growing, and will need new, clean sources of power are countries that don't have as much nuclear expertise to begin with. And some of them are countries that the West has tried to actively keep from having nuclear capability. Better solar, wind, etc., has fewer risks than better nuclear tech in the long run.
- ftr45 8y ago
  >Better solar, wind, etc., has fewer risks than better nuclear tech in the long run. no https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#658c4855709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

skookumchuck 8y ago

Or just put the generators on stilts, in a bunker, or simply hardened them against flooding. There were other design flaws, too, like venting hydrogen inside the building rather than outside.

scarygliders 8y ago
Indeed. I'll point out, however, that the Error Cascade began with the loss of the underground backup generators - hydrogen would not have been a problem if the backup generators were operative.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Yes. The way to a robust system is to stop every link in the zipper effect, not just the initiating event.

option 8y ago

I grew up near Chernobyl. My parents still work on CNPP (which was closed in 2000 but still needs personnel). In my opinion nuclear is the only reallistic solution to solve global warming. Per kw produced it is safer than even solar or wind and modern reactors are even safer. I now live in bay area and have high end solar panels. While this is a nice thing, looking at their output - it is just not enough (covers our family consumption at about 70%, this is house plus electric cars, but, obviously, not including products consumed and long distance travel. And this is California)

capsulecorp 8y ago
Not to be rude but that seems like a silly qualification to be speaking on a matter. I grew up next to a Lockheed factory and my father worked for NASA, but I fail to see how that qualifies me to comment on what a "realistic" solution for interstellar travel would be.
- option 8y ago
  Yes, this is anecdotal evidence. But having grew up there I obviously read up about it a lot and this is why I am speaking my opinion on this matter. Also, in my opinion, what I saw written about it in the US media is fear mongering or outright lies about death tolls, radiation levels in nearby areas, cancer rates, etc. To give you an example. Did you know that CNPP was profitably working until 2000 while the disaster was in 1986? Or another, fact - CNPP is an almost exact copy of an older nuclear plant which still profitably produces clean energy near St. Petersburg in Russia
  - petre 8y ago
    Yes but the RBMK is still an irresponsible design: highly positive void coeficient, no containment, then the control rod misdesign which was fixed. VVER reactors (Russian PWRs) are much more safer by contrast. Of course it was profitable, it ran on natural Uranium and it was cheaper to build (no containnent). You should watch the "A is for Atom" episode from Adam Curtis "Pandora's Box" series. It also talks about US designs and how they upscaled the naval PWRs to utility level which was not deemed safe by nuclear scientists of the time.

davrosthedalek 8y ago

The problem is that "taking all disaster scenarios into account" is easy in hindsight, but maybe not in planning. But I believe that modern nuclear power reactors can be build intrinsically safe. For me, the real problem begins with the treatment of the waste: It's hard to find a good place to store it or reprocess it. Not so much because finding the actual place is hard, but because using that place will face hard opposition of the locals, which leads, at least in a democracy, to a political compromise for the location (to see this in action, look at the story for long term storage in Germany). If I have to chose between nuclear power and democracy, my vote is on the latter.

option 8y ago
nuclear waste is not as big of a problem as most people think.
- davrosthedalek 8y ago
  Not technically, but politically. Look at the demonstrations against castor transports in Germany.
- ansmithz42 8y ago
  I will support nuclear if you have a solid solution that will work for the waste for the island living populations of the world. Hawaii for example. If a good solution for the waste can be presented there, we can more effectively move forward. Looking just at large continental areas when solving the problem leaves some holes to fill. Not saying nuclear is bad, it does have a solid cost presentation and a low pollution foot print.
  - baddox 8y ago
    I mean, if the world switches largely to nuclear power, it’s probably fine if small populated islands that don’t have anywhere to store nuclear waste keep using whatever power source they’re using now (or switch to other clean energy sources if possible). There’s no reason to let the perfect get in the way of the better.

systemBuilder 8y ago

How many times do we have to hear this "1 in 10,000 year accident!" Argument (3? This guy wants 4!) Before we realize that the idiots designing nuclear power plants don't understand probability?

Jaepa 8y ago
Woah. Take it easy mate. To be clear there is no "safe" option. But this 60+ year old nuclear facility survived the 4th largest earthquake in record history, a tsunami, and only failed because the placements of the back, back up generators. Other plants (e.g. the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plan) that were closer to the epicenter survived just fine. Old outdate plants aren't perfect, but even still its better than the guaranteed best case scenario for fossil fuels.
- Tomte 8y ago
  > survived the 4th largest earthquake in record history, a tsunami, You make it sound like this is unbelievably improbable. Like "multiply the probabilities of an earthquake and a tsunami". In fact, this is a prime example for a common cause failure.
  - Jaepa 8y ago
    I was referring to the amount of abuse it took, not the likely hood of the events.

abtinf 8y ago

Your post makes it sound like Fukushima failed in a catastrophically unsafe manner. I think it’s important to be explicit about the casualties that resulted from the disaster. The death toll currently stands at... maybe 1. A plant worker died of lung cancer in September 2018–over 7 years after the incident—and the government thinks it might have been caused by the plant.

rorykoehler 8y ago
200k people were displaced
- abtinf 8y ago
  And over a thousand people died due to the evacuation. Every one of those deaths is the moral fault of generations of anti-nuclear fear mongers who created the atmosphere of paranoia.
i_am_proteus 8y ago
At the time, the media was conflating deaths from the earthquake (there were around 15,000) and "deaths from the reactor accident."
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  That's the most distasteful thing of all for me. 15,896 people died that day, and no one (outside Japan) gives a shit because there was some radiation leakage and property damage.

ilitirit 8y ago

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account To be honest, you could probably make that argument for anything under question in any scenario. But even if we were to skip the logical loopholes ("We took it into account, but we decided the benefits outweighed the costs because of <fill in any reason>"), let's just look at the raw numbers or simply just historical facts. Have any disasters at coal plants rendered areas uninhabitable for centuries? OK, take one step back. Would those disasters have occurred if "all disaster scenarios [were] taken into account"? The reality is that we have no one good and practical energy solution for the world. And even though I believe that there's no practical solution that can beat a tried and tested solution like nuclear in terms of efficiency, I also believe that there's been no tried and tested solution that's been worse in terms of failure.

leetcrew 8y ago
coal is arguably worse even when it's working as designed. it's just amortized over a much larger area.
- ilitirit 8y ago
  Anything is "arguably" worse or better. But honestly, I would challenge that point any day. As much as I'm against fossil fuels, coal powered plants only contribute a very minor part to global warming compared to lets say... ships, planes and cars. And my point is not about coal specifically - it was just mentioned because that's what the main opposition is to nuclear. Not solar/wind/water. My point is that failure of nuclear energy provision is demonstrably worse than the failure of any other options we've tried. Does this mean it's better/worse? Who knows. But you simply cannot say that something is safe if <xyz>, especially when history says otherwise. I'm flabbergasted at the number of people talking unironically about "human error" as if it's historically insignificant...
  - roenxi 8y ago
    > My point is that failure of nuclear energy provision is demonstrably worse than the failure of any other options we've tried. No it isn't; when dams fail villages get swept away and everyone dies. Bad mining disasters can wipe out ~50 people too. When Fukushima failed, basically nobody got hurt, and there is a lot of inconvenience and resources have to go to cleaning the thing up. Obviously it is still awful for the people involved, but I'd personally rather go through a nuclear accident than a dam failure or have a mine fall on me, because I'd still be basically ok after a nuclear accident. The argument might be that it is uneconomic after accounting for the costs, but it is demonstrably safe and so a far better failure mode than anything else we've tried. I mean, Fukushima has basically proven that the only question is economic cost/benefit.

samstave 8y ago

So what is your take on what seems to be the complete and utter failure for the cleanup and dealing with the aftermath?

scarygliders 8y ago
It is extremely difficult to clean up thousands of kilometers of contaminated land - esecially if said land is comprised of mountainous area... Miyakoji-machi itself is situated in a valley surrounded by hundreds of square kilometers of mountainous terrain. To blithley claim it would somehow be easy to decontaminate thousansd of square kilometers of mountainous area is naive folly. It is an extremely diffcult problem to solve.
- samstave 8y ago
  But blithley saying it is difficult is different than explaining why it /appears/ that very little effort, relative to the scope of the problem, has been applied. Especially goven that tepco didnt even ADMIT to the other reactir failure, nor the acale of the catastrophy for a really really long time. They down played the whole thing feom day one and failed to even seek out external help immediately. Thats why thousands of kilometers and trillions of galllons of sea wer contaiminted

nwallin 8y ago

> in Fukushima Dai-ichi's case, for some reason (possibly financial?), it was decided that the tsunami barrier was sufficient (it wasn't) for the job, Plate tectonics was not understood or scientifically described until 65-67. It was not a widely accepted theory until later, at least the 70s. By that point, Fukushima had already been permitted and built. Without plate tectonics to create the plate shift earthquake which resulted in the tsunami which caused the disaster, the only mechanism to create tsunamis known was underground rockfalls from steep slopes. Afaik the builders of the plant studied the bathymetry around the area, and saw limited risk of tsunamis. The primitive science of the time ruled out the possibility of a tsunami overcoming a tsunami wall that was X feet tall. So they built a tsunami wall that was X+k feet tall, and called it a day. When later scientific theory showed that larger tsunamis were not just possible, but inevitable, the plant was not retrofitted to deal with the new reality. Oops.

scarygliders 8y ago
Indeed! And so goes hindsight. And we (the human race) have learned.
- chii 8y ago
  > And we (the human race) have learned. yet, this is specific to this one incident, one specific threat. The issue is more likely to be systemic. Once a production system is up and running, it is not consistantly being improved and iterated upon, but instead left to stagnate technologically (and in this case, in safety in light of new research etc). But the argument is that such level of continuous improvement/iteration is costly, and the owners would not recouperate the costs! And so hence the economics goes, and so does the human condition continues to revolve around profit and loss.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    Thus regulate mandatory re-certified every 10 years. Also that such process must involve meeting or exceeding //current// engineering standards and safety, with the potential for limited exceptions if approved by need and actively in progress plans for achieving the specifications.

holri 8y ago

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account It is impossible for us to take all disaster scenarios into account. Our knowledge is very limited.

jobigoud 8y ago
It's not even about knowledge. When you include active human attackers that have nothing to loose or state actors in times of war in the equation it's simply impossible to secure.

dirkt 8y ago

> My point is that nuclear power is safe, as long as all disaster scenarios are taken into account I don't know if you are old enough to remember it, but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. Since then, actual experience showed that about every 20 years, there has been a big incident with global impact, and it will take decades if not centuries until the affected area is usable again. And the latter is something that might be tolerable in less densely populated countries or locations (Chernobyl), but in very densely populated ones it would be a major catastrophe. And so far we've only seen disaster scenarios caused by human error and force of nature, and there's a third one (human malice), which thankfully hasn't happened yet, but which is impossible to guard against. So my conclusion from reality is that no, we can't make nuclear power completely safe: The consequences of a disaster are too great, the monetary incentives are all wrong (it's not the nuclear companies which pay in case of the disaster, the state takes over; and the costs of the risk are not factored in into the actual running costs; and safety measures are expensive, so economics will always lead to, say, putting the backup generators NOT on the hill, because that would have cost more). And then there's the problem that in some countries using nuclear energy and producing nuclear waste, the problem of actually storing that waste safely for the next few centuries is still not solved. Even after 50 years of producing it. And that is just insane. I wish we could make nuclear safe. It would be a great way to reduce carbon emissions. Looking at reality, I can only conclude that we can't, and it's wishful thinking. (Yes, I know, that opinion is not popular, and the nuclear fanboys will be all over me, but so be it).

kortilla 8y ago
>but that's exactly what nuclear energy proponents said in the 70s. And how many plants failed that were built after the 70s? >The consequences of a disaster are too great Even with the disasters, it kills fewer people than coal even without taking into account the damage from global warming. It’s like refusing to fly because plane crashes stick out in memory and then choosing to drive instead, despite how much more unsafe it is.
- asaddhamani 8y ago
  Yes, but what about having to evacuate the area for decades / more to come? And the radioactive waste problem?

cameldrv 8y ago

I'm pretty pro-nuclear. Nuclear power has proven to be extremely safe relative to the alternatives. In this specific case though, to say that there was one design flaw is failing to go beyond the first why. The second why is "why does the reactor require an uninterrupted supply of electrical power in order to not melt down? Gen 2 nuclear power is inherently dangerous, and is only made safe through active safety systems. If the reactor trips, the cooling pumps must run or decay heat will cause a meltdown. Gen 3 reactors tend to incorporate a lot more passive safety systems or at least ones that don't require electricity.

doomjunky 8y ago
It's just a trade-off of mathematical probabilities. The alleged extreme safety comes with an extreme destructive disasters. When it comes to risk management, the human brain that is bound by evolution to dangers close in time and location, is not capable of assessing the consequences of losing a piece of the planet earth's habitat for millions of years.
- roenxi 8y ago
  The arctic and antarctic regions are literal ninth-circle hellscapes (the ninth circle of hell is the one that is frozen over). Significantly worse than the areas around Chernobyl which is apparently well on the way to becoming a national park. I'm not sure that there is a 'risk' that the human brain can't process. Risk of what, exactly? Huge cost to the generation that has to move, massive risk if it hits farmland, sure. But even assuming that the 'millions of years' figure is factual - which I doubt - we are certainly going to run out of human race before we run out of land. The risks are all fairly short-term things.
  - doomjunky 8y ago
    The term national park is a euphemism, considering that all life forms in this exclusion zone suffer from genetic diseases.
    - 8y ago

smueller1234 8y ago

Let me argue that there's at least one more design flaw: backup generators are generally not very reliable. So for any given plant, there's a comparatively high risk that they don't work when you need them. This risk is non trivial even when the generators are well taken care of (both maintenance and regular test runs) but it's very easy to skimp on the tests. My knowledge is from another industry that relies heavily on backup generators.

Gibbon1 8y ago
Friend of mine has a high school friend that a maintenance engineer. He has contracts to maintain diesel back up generators for hospitals. And sometimes they don't start. It's very disconcerting when that happens. The other design flaw is diesel or no they require cooling water during shutdown. What bothers me for instance is during the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes the Mississippi ran backwards for a while. During other earthquakes you see significant uplift. If the intakes run dry because the local hydrology suddenly changes you're just fucked.
- smueller1234 8y ago
  To add to that: backup generators are also a logistical mess. Diesel doesn't last infinitely. Do in particular if you expect to run large generators to sustain significant load (like in big data centers, I don't know how significant the load is for the backup gens of a nuclear plant), the amount of diesel you get to store is impressive. Which in turn means that the logistics/tank life issues of the fuel get worse. The physical&power infrastructure side of big data centers is really quite interesting, by the way. Not something we all get exposed to regularly but I can only encourage anyone who has a chance to learn about it to take that opportunity.

a2tech 8y ago

Also the generators were originally situated in a raised location but had been moved to the ground level after their installation. If the generators had not been moved they would have functioned through the tsunami.

_ink_ 8y ago

Can we just get something straight about the waste situation? It's still not solved. As long as that is the case, I think nuclear energy is not an option.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DennisP 8y ago
Well then maybe we should develop reactors that solve the problem. Any fast reactor or molten salt breeder will do it. Russia has two fast reactors in commercial operation right now, and a bunch of startups are working on various designs.

radu_crisan 8y ago

My opinion is that you might underestimate the magnitude of potential nuclear accidents. I think that Germany's decision to decommission over time their nuclear power plants was pretty well studied. Please see: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/09/chernobyl-history-tragedy-serhii-plokhy-review-disaster-europe-soviet-system https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/...

jfnixon 8y ago
And now Germany is not meeting its decarbonization goals. How is that a win for the environment?
- turbinerneiter 8y ago
  That has little to do with the decommissioning itself, and more with the Governments stupidity and ignorance. The decommissioning is only one part of that screw-up. Germany wants (and the whole world should): * enough energy * carbon-free * nuclear-waste-free On order to do that, you need massive investments in renewable energy and storage. Instead, they found a way to have: * large investment in solar energy, without protectionist measures, leading to the German solar industry dying an creating demand that lead to cheap China solar (overly simplified - feel free to elaborate in your answers) * laws that limit the building of wind power significantly * failure to build a power line from the north (offshore windparks) to the south (high power demands, less power resources) which currently leads to insane situations with the neighbors * first extending the nuclear power plants permits, shortly afterwards deciding to shut down, which lead to Germany having to pay compensations to the companies (in addition to a completely botched nuclear fuel tax, that they had to pay back after it was found invalid in court) * subsidies for dirty coal plants over decades (300 billion was a number floating around) and another I think 50 billions to help the regions which rely on the coal business after the coal shutdown Politicians deal in compromise. They see different interests and they try to find a middle ground between those two. They do that with a pretty heavy disregard of science. Scientist are just another interest group. Scientists: If we don't cut CO2 but this much until this date, the effects of climate change will become this nasty. Industry: If we do that, that will cost us X moneys and endanger Y jobs and we will make Z less profit. Government: OK. let's meet halfway. Earth: LOL

lispm 8y ago

There were multitudes of design flaws. * building reactors in areas with severe earthquakes and tsunamis was the main design flaw * flood protection too low, even though this was known * backup-generators not safe against flooding * loss of outside electricity over a long period of time -> powerlines were not working, other sources of electricity on the grid were offline due to earthquake * too long time to restore electricity, we are talking about many MWs for cooling and other purposes -> generators were difficult to bring in with further problems making them work * various damage due to earthquake on reactors, buildings and infrastructure around the plant * too much spent fuel in pools, required large amount of electricity for cooling * spent fuel pools high in the buildings, hard to reach * no cooling capability in case of days-long loss of electricity -> then needs to be cooled with seawater pumped with vehicles with concrete pumps (which were flown in from remote places, even from the US) -> caused structural damages to buildings and spread radiation * no idea what to do with the contaminated cooling water * no protection in main buildings against the explosions that happened * no technology existed for a decade or more to deal with molten cores * ineffective security/safety process -> the plant had checks a few months before the accident with no consequences * unwillingness to invest major amounts of money into upgrades * life extension for outdated reactors, due to economical pressure * no independent controlling instances for the nuclear industry

Tomte 8y ago

That may all very well be true, but it still means that the power plant was unsafe. All the time nuclear power fans tell us that "this time we've learned and current design are safe". And all the time bad things happen and they have to admit "well, not when X happens". Or "not when A and then B happens". Just as you did here. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived an earthquake, but the tsunami isn't a freak accident, it's actually a common cause thing. It's nice that Fukushima could have survived both the earthquake and the tsunami, had it been built differently. But it hadn't. And that's why all this "This time everything is safe" is just as unbelievable as over the last decades. Now, you can certainly say that decarbonization is worth the risk, and I might even be on the fence about it. But please don't insult the general public's intelligence by ever telling us again that nuclear power is safe and it was only those stupid Russians who totally mismanaged their power plant.

ace_of_spades 8y ago
Disclaimer: I am not really pro- or con- nuclear energy but try to keep an open mind. How does what you are saying not apply to any other technology? Cars are “save” but kill more people than all nuclear power plants and accidents combined. Still we say to ourselves we can deal with the risk, which is obviously the case for lot’s of cases but might not be in some exceptions. I think your reaction seems a little bit too emotional to an interesting and seemingly informative (haven’t fact checked his claims) personal perspective. The problem with discussions about nuclear energy is that there is a strong dogma towards openly thinking about the costs/risk/benefits in the political sphere. In Germany postponing our nuclear exit could buy us some time to get coal offline earlier and provide some stability to the grid. Ironically, the green party would never consider such a move due to ideological (and historical) reasons.
- Tomte 8y ago
  You're right. It fully applies to cars, as well. That's why we have those "more bikes" discussions here every now and then. But that's no reason not to point out the obvious flaws in the comment I replied to. And re: emotionality: you can wish it away, but it is real. Nuclear fans always act as if they only had to show this one scientific study to citizens, and everyone would immediately fall in line. That's hilarious. Nuclear is done. It may be irrational, but the nuclear community has richly earned that. A little bit of humility and risk-weighing instead of grandiose claims of "perfect safety" would have helped. But these lies of "perfect safety" were useful back then. They were a shortcut. A cheat. They could get their reactors much quicker if they made false claims. Now they get the long-term results to their short-term thinking.

differentView 8y ago

There will always be unknown unknowns. It's 2019, we can't even not fuck up with a commercial aircraft.

heisenbit 8y ago

Even if you were right the spent fuel ponds were not safe. Just let an airplane crash there - the reactor may survive it the ponds will not and they may very well be the bigger problem. The amount of radioactivity stored in these ad-hoc structures globally is staggering. Increasing the problem by further investing in nuclear is not a good idea.

imtringued 8y ago

Of course it's possible to make nuclear safer. But how do you make the dumb humans that design them safer?

nikdaheratik 8y ago

And yet, very few companies (in the U.S. at least) want to build them. It's because the worst case scenario they're planning for is very bad indeed, so they have to spend all this expense to keep it from happening. Compared to every other renewable energy technology, it is more risky and has a much higher cost to get up and running. And that's setting aside the other problem which is that many of the countries that are still growing, and will need new, clean sources of power are countries that don't have as much nuclear expertise to begin with. And some of them are countries that the West has tried to actively keep from having nuclear capability. Better solar, wind, etc., has fewer risks than better nuclear tech in the long run.

ftr45 8y ago
>Better solar, wind, etc., has fewer risks than better nuclear tech in the long run. no https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#658c4855709b https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...