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Japan Nuclear Accident: Worse than Worst, Again

11 points by arman0 16y ago

borism 16y ago
wow, what a flamebait article...
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  Ditto. While I don't doubt this accident will be used by the anti-nuclear groups to further dig us into the pit of coal, oil and gas (seriously, I think the whole green movement might as well be funded by the oil industry for all they've made us rely further on it over the past several decades) while it takes another decade for renewable energy to even become viable for supporting a nation. I see this as a huge success. Every fail safe in good design has held up and kept a serious leak of radiation from happening. We're currently only seeing neutrons being leaked, which is essentially a 'big fucking deal' level of seriousness compared to a leak of radioactive iodine or something similarly absorbable and storable by the body. To say the plant suffered a hydrogen-oxygen explosion and didn't release fissile material, I would say is amazing. I'd just love it if people knew that more people die every year from the radioactivity released from the burning of coal than have ever died due to actual radioactivity from radioactive materials and power plant failures. Factor in the amount of people who die annually simply due to soot produced by coal plants and you can easily factor in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and still count it. Factor in the amount of third world miners who die annually and we might as well go nuclear and drop a nuclear bomb annually and it would still be safer for the global public. I'm serious, it's psycho-bizarre that the dropping of a WMD would actually cause less deaths in a year than the usage of coal.
  - borism 16y ago
    I don't think the time is right to start declaring safety or unsafety of nuclear energy as the meltdown is reportedly underway at two reactors. I'm all for nuclear energy, but we must not fool ourselves into thinking that we can prevent everything. There are natural and human forces that can compromise integrity of nuclear facilities which will result in major releases of radioactive material and contamination of large land and sea areas. This is simply inevitable.
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      Japan just got struck by an 8.9 (some saying 9.1 making it one of the worlds most powerful earthquakes ever recorded) and 1/25 reactors had a problem. They only had a problem because they lost backup power, which is quite simply the easiest fix that can be applied to all power stations essentially rendering this an impossibility for happening again. I think it is time to declare the safety of nuclear when 1/25 plants only become dangerous after an 8.9 earthquake. Virtually 90% of the planet will never be hit by a similar level earthquake making a similar situation impossible outside of an earthquake zone. FYI the Japanese government is worried of a partial meltdown in some rods in the reactor. This is in no way a meltdown. Also furthermore there's serious doubts in the nuclear community over whether a reactor can even achieve explosive criticality. Again, proper design inhibits the danger of these accidents. Three Mile Island for incidence had the same meltdown event as Chernobyl, but because of a better core design the corium never breached the core. Given the Japanese precautions around nuclear technology I'd expect their core to hold up at least the same as Three Mile Island if not a lot better. Given they're only claiming a partial meltdown in a few rods, the risk of corium breaching the core vessel is extremely remote.
  - kevin_morrill 16y ago
    What's galling is all the attention these stories are getting while hundreds of people are still trapped in ruble and have their lives on the line. The tragedy here is that probably several thousand people died from the earthquake. The issues at these nuclear plants are trivial in comparison.
ique 16y ago
This article seems thin on facts and big on sensations. Two things strike me as pretty weird sentences in the article. >Worst-case scenario builders consistently underestimate the statistical probability of separate bad things happening simultaneously There must have been more than three accidents at nuclear plants in the history of mankind. Yet three "misjudgments" make them consistently wrong? >Actually, ever major nuclear accident has been worse than worst case, and that's a fact How can something be worse than worst case? I don't understand what the article tries to claim that "experts" have deemed the worst case. Clearly Fukushima is not worse than worst case as there haven't even been a full meltdown or anything like that yet. Second, what is "Every major nuclear accident". Have there only been 3 major nuclear accidents? What constitutes major?
- pmorici 16y ago
  I took it to mean he was talking about worst case disaster scenarios in general not just nuclear reactor related. The breaking of the levees in hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the world trade center come to mind. For example in the towers collapse the fire weakened the structural supports even though they were designed to withstand the impact.
- dialtone 16y ago
  I interpret the "worse than worst case" as "What the designers thought was the worst case in reality was not" so we are now faced with a case that wasn't predicted and the outcome is unknown. I can see the sense, this reactor was designed 50 years ago even with upgrades it's old technology and there have been huge improvements in the past 50 years. So this shows that the designers 50 years ago didn't do a perfect job. This is what the author means I believe. And a "major nuclear accident" is defined as a level 7 accident in the International Nuclear Event Scale[1], I have no idea if the author refers to it when he talks about major nuclear events but probably not since there has been only one level 7 accident and that's Chernobyl. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Sca...
- michaelcampbell 16y ago
  > How can something be worse than worst case? Easy, when anyone involved starts "giving 110%".

11 points by arman0 16y ago

borism 16y ago

wow, what a flamebait article...

electromagnetic 16y ago
Ditto. While I don't doubt this accident will be used by the anti-nuclear groups to further dig us into the pit of coal, oil and gas (seriously, I think the whole green movement might as well be funded by the oil industry for all they've made us rely further on it over the past several decades) while it takes another decade for renewable energy to even become viable for supporting a nation. I see this as a huge success. Every fail safe in good design has held up and kept a serious leak of radiation from happening. We're currently only seeing neutrons being leaked, which is essentially a 'big fucking deal' level of seriousness compared to a leak of radioactive iodine or something similarly absorbable and storable by the body. To say the plant suffered a hydrogen-oxygen explosion and didn't release fissile material, I would say is amazing. I'd just love it if people knew that more people die every year from the radioactivity released from the burning of coal than have ever died due to actual radioactivity from radioactive materials and power plant failures. Factor in the amount of people who die annually simply due to soot produced by coal plants and you can easily factor in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and still count it. Factor in the amount of third world miners who die annually and we might as well go nuclear and drop a nuclear bomb annually and it would still be safer for the global public. I'm serious, it's psycho-bizarre that the dropping of a WMD would actually cause less deaths in a year than the usage of coal.
- borism 16y ago
  I don't think the time is right to start declaring safety or unsafety of nuclear energy as the meltdown is reportedly underway at two reactors. I'm all for nuclear energy, but we must not fool ourselves into thinking that we can prevent everything. There are natural and human forces that can compromise integrity of nuclear facilities which will result in major releases of radioactive material and contamination of large land and sea areas. This is simply inevitable.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    Japan just got struck by an 8.9 (some saying 9.1 making it one of the worlds most powerful earthquakes ever recorded) and 1/25 reactors had a problem. They only had a problem because they lost backup power, which is quite simply the easiest fix that can be applied to all power stations essentially rendering this an impossibility for happening again. I think it is time to declare the safety of nuclear when 1/25 plants only become dangerous after an 8.9 earthquake. Virtually 90% of the planet will never be hit by a similar level earthquake making a similar situation impossible outside of an earthquake zone. FYI the Japanese government is worried of a partial meltdown in some rods in the reactor. This is in no way a meltdown. Also furthermore there's serious doubts in the nuclear community over whether a reactor can even achieve explosive criticality. Again, proper design inhibits the danger of these accidents. Three Mile Island for incidence had the same meltdown event as Chernobyl, but because of a better core design the corium never breached the core. Given the Japanese precautions around nuclear technology I'd expect their core to hold up at least the same as Three Mile Island if not a lot better. Given they're only claiming a partial meltdown in a few rods, the risk of corium breaching the core vessel is extremely remote.
- kevin_morrill 16y ago
  What's galling is all the attention these stories are getting while hundreds of people are still trapped in ruble and have their lives on the line. The tragedy here is that probably several thousand people died from the earthquake. The issues at these nuclear plants are trivial in comparison.

ique 16y ago

This article seems thin on facts and big on sensations. Two things strike me as pretty weird sentences in the article. >Worst-case scenario builders consistently underestimate the statistical probability of separate bad things happening simultaneously There must have been more than three accidents at nuclear plants in the history of mankind. Yet three "misjudgments" make them consistently wrong? >Actually, ever major nuclear accident has been worse than worst case, and that's a fact How can something be worse than worst case? I don't understand what the article tries to claim that "experts" have deemed the worst case. Clearly Fukushima is not worse than worst case as there haven't even been a full meltdown or anything like that yet. Second, what is "Every major nuclear accident". Have there only been 3 major nuclear accidents? What constitutes major?

pmorici 16y ago
I took it to mean he was talking about worst case disaster scenarios in general not just nuclear reactor related. The breaking of the levees in hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the world trade center come to mind. For example in the towers collapse the fire weakened the structural supports even though they were designed to withstand the impact.
dialtone 16y ago
I interpret the "worse than worst case" as "What the designers thought was the worst case in reality was not" so we are now faced with a case that wasn't predicted and the outcome is unknown. I can see the sense, this reactor was designed 50 years ago even with upgrades it's old technology and there have been huge improvements in the past 50 years. So this shows that the designers 50 years ago didn't do a perfect job. This is what the author means I believe. And a "major nuclear accident" is defined as a level 7 accident in the International Nuclear Event Scale[1], I have no idea if the author refers to it when he talks about major nuclear events but probably not since there has been only one level 7 accident and that's Chernobyl. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Sca...
michaelcampbell 16y ago
> How can something be worse than worst case? Easy, when anyone involved starts "giving 110%".