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Turns out the optimistic reports upvoted by hacker news were polyannish. There appear to be 2 borderline catastrophes right now - 1. In reactor 4 spent fuel ro

Turns out the optimistic reports upvoted by hacker news were polyannish. There appear to be 2 borderline catastrophes right now - 1. In reactor 4 spent fuel rods are burning and radioactivity is being freely vented in to the air. NONE of the optimistic reports suggested this possibility but I see a prophetic article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15fuel.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15fuel.html. 2. Reactor 2 has had an explosion that has damaged the core containment structure - something we were assured would not happen. Why were engineers so optimistic, while the ground reality is so much worse? Probably the complexity of the system escapes us and look at small parts of the issue and assume they are under control. In reality many things are interacting and the combination can overwhelm defences. For eg. as water is being routed to reactors 1, 2 and 3 to prevent meltdowns, the spent fuel rods are overheating. Hubris strikes again.

gnosis 16y ago
"Turns out the optimistic reports upvoted by hacker news were polyannish." There are way too many people on here who've been drinking too much of the radioactive koolaid doled out by the nuclear industry. The general consensus here tends to be that nuclear power is wonderful and amazingly safe. Well, we're seeing them being proven wrong yet again. How much more proof are they going to need? How many more nuclear disasters is it going to take?
- pyre 16y ago
  I generally see people talking about how safe the new reactor designs are, and how it's a tragedy that people are so afraid of nuclear that they won't let them be built. The reactors in Japan are 40-year-old designs. You can't compare them on the same level. It's like saying that people in favor of nuclear power claim that Chernobyl never happened because 'safe nuclear' == 'never was a reactor that was unsafe ever built.'
  - exch 16y ago
    Add to that the fact that the other reactors there have stood up to a 9.1 quake with about 600 aftershocks -- ranging from mild to "I'm a pretty decent disaster all by myself" -- A sizable tidal wave and numerous fires with hydrogen explosions. This could definitely have been far, far worse by now.
    - gnosis 16y ago
      "This could definitely have been far, far worse by now." It still can. The disaster may be far from over. And it may take quite a while to calculate the real cost of this disaster, both economically and in terms of human life.
  - dialtone 16y ago
    You might be surprised to discover that a 40 year old life is fairly standard in nuclear power plants[1], in fact some countries hope to keep their plants active for closer to 60 years. At close to $7B+ investment in just the building phase of a modern nuclear plant and close to 7-10 years construction time per plant[2], the limited lifetime of the plant does start to become a concern in the financial sense though. [1]: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2007/npp_extension.html http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2007/npp_extension.html [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor
    - pyre 16y ago
      I'm not balking at the age and saying that the place is 'falling apart.' I'm saying that they were designed 40 years ago, and that it's possible that we've learned things since then and can build better plants (starting at the design phase). I'm no expert though, so I'm making no claims.
      - borism 16y ago
        actually they were designed 60 years ago. they were built 50 years ago.
- sorbus 16y ago
  How many major nuclear disasters have there been in the last, say, 50 years? Three mile island and Chernobyl are the two big ones that everyone knows about, and considering that people are saying that this is the third largest [EDIT: actually the second largest, at this point], I take that as an endorsement of nuclear power. As compared with coal, oil, natural gas, and so forth, which function by spewing pollutants into the environment continuously, during normal operation. Yes, I would be thrilled if we switched entirely to solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power sources, but nuclear power isn't anywhere near as disastrous as the people strongly against it would like us to believe. It's also not as safe as a lot of people would like to think, but, by and large, it is fairly safe.
  - dchest 16y ago
    Hydroelectric? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Ecosystem_damage_and_loss_of_land http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Ecosystem_dama...
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      The problem with hydro is that you can't build it where you need the power (unless geography - or real estate - is uncannily nice to you) Most of Brazil depends on a single hydro facility with endless miles of aluminum wires crossing the southeast part of the country. If anything serious fails there, the country pretty much stops. Renewables like solar, hydro, biomass, and wind have their place, but you don't generate solar during night, you may want to spare your water during a drought, you may need to eat the biomass and you may have days without wind. Nuclear too has its place. Technology is a tool we should wield with reason, not passion.
    - whateverer 16y ago
      It should be noted, though, that solar thermal plants can indeed generate electricity during the night, by collecting heat in reservoirs to later produce steam, be them water or molten salt[1] heat reservoirs. [1] http://www.research-in-germany.de/61660/2011-03-08-molten-salts-for-efficient-solar-thermal-plants,sourcePageId=12358.html http://www.research-in-germany.de/61660/2011-03-08-molten-sa...
- mistermann 16y ago
  > how many more nuclear disasters is it going to take? Indeed....please provide us with the list of nuclear disasters, it should be an easy exercise judging by the tone of confidence in your post. Just for fun, throw in some stats on deaths per kwh of electrcity. PREDICTION: you will not respond to this, because there have been no nuclear disasters. And no one disputes that in practice, nuclear is the safest form of power statistically. If you want to assert that nuclear power is incredibly powerful and dangerous, that is one thing, but trying to pass off potential disaster as reality, is a but disingenuous.
  - angus77 16y ago
    Safer than solar or wind power?
    - Devilboy 16y ago
      Those are not comparable power sources. They cannot substitute for fossil or nuclear plants, because they are way too expensive and do not provide 24/7 power without even more expensive batteries.
      - whateverer 16y ago
        Actually, thermal solar plants can produce electricity 24/7 just fine. They can store heat in water or (more efficiently) molten salt up in a tower and use it to later generate power at a reliable rate. Spain is known to be investing heavily on concentrating solar power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Spain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Spain
        angus77 16y ago
        This one deserves an upvote for at least citing a source.
        Devilboy 16y ago
        Those are great they just don't generate a lot of power though. The biggest one so far peaks at 60MW while your standard nuclear or fossil power plant generates 1000MW consistently. You'd need at least 20 of these to replace just one coal plant. That makes it what, 5 times more expensive than nuclear / fossil? Not even the USA can afford to go 100% renewable with a price like that.
- ANH 16y ago
  Historically, coal-fired power plants have been much more dangerous for humans than nuclear power plants. I think the record shows that nuclear power is on the whole pretty safe. Regarding proof: I don't think anything has been proven, yet, except that there have been a lot of powerful forces at work with this disaster.
  - hop 16y ago
    Yes, in history. But that turns an eye to black swan events of mass proportion that only nuclear power is capable of.
    - ANH 16y ago
      Only nuclear power? What about the BP oil spill? Exxon Valdez? Coal slurry wiping out homes in West Virginia?
      - hop 16y ago
        Caesium-137 has a 30 year half life. If that blew into Tokyo, the city would be uninhabitable for 200 years - just like Chernobyl.
    - sho_hn 16y ago
      That said, there have been some pretty nasty events associated with coal as well, which are however surprisingly unknown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_sludge_spill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_sludge_spill Doesn't compare to the potential consequences of a nuclear incident, but it's quite possible to build and mishandle crappy coal infrastructure, too.
    - memetichazard 16y ago
      So, coal is the car, and nuclear power is the airplane.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  >Well, we're seeing them being proven wrong yet again. How much more proof are they going to need? How many more nuclear disasters is it going to take? You've had one and a half. TMI had no ill effects on health, Chernobyl was caused by Soviet incompetence, and Fukushima is the result of an earthquake 7 times more powerful than it was designed to survive. Compare that to the damage caused by oil spills alone. No power source that is economically viable on a large scale is 100% safe, including nuclear. They do their damndest, but sometimes it fails. There were some design flaws in Fukushima, namely the placement of the backup generators and the height of the tsunami barriers, but the precipitating earthquake was still the strongest in 1200 years. It looks like the containment vessel on the #4 reactor has been breached, and that's very, very bad. Still, the only people injured were those injured by the hydrogen explosions, not by radiation. There's been a few people (~12) who suffered radiation exposure, I believe all plant workers. Is this event bad? Yes. Could it be another Chernobyl? Probably not. Reactor 4 is on fire, and is releasing radiation into the atmosphere, but on nowhere near the scale that Chernobyl did. Most of the "optimism" yesterday was based on what had actually occurred: the coolant had failed, #1 was flooded, and #3 had encountered the same problems. Both reactors had hydrogen explosions outside of the containment vessel that didn't compromise them. No significant radiation had been released. Today is a different story. We'll keep an eye on things and see how they progress, but the optimism was based on the situation at #1 and #3, not the yet-to-happen situation at #2 and #4.
  - gnosis 16y ago
    "the precipitating earthquake was still the strongest in 1200 years" People keep mentioning this as if that matters. The fact is that it happened, and there's really no telling when future natural disasters will strike any given nuclear plant. All we know is that they can happen and that if disasters on this scale do happen, nuclear reactors are not up to surviving them. "Reactor 4 is on fire, and is releasing radiation into the atmosphere, but on nowhere near the scale that Chernobyl did." Yet. But this disaster may be far from over. "There's been a few people (~12) who suffered radiation exposure, I believe all plant workers." That's not what I'm hearing. From a former nuclear industry executive and whistleblower interviewed recently on Democracy Now: "they talk about 160 people that have been contaminated. That’s all they’ve tested. Basically, everything they’re testing is coming up contaminated in that inner couple of miles around the plant. You’ve got radiation being detected 60 miles to the north in a Navy helicopter, a hundred miles to the east on a Navy aircraft carrier. So, it’s not clear to me that that cloud is not looping around and affecting Japan." http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/14/japan_facing_biggest_catastrophe_since_dawn http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/14/japan_facing_biggest_c...
redwood 16y ago
Well put. This is a highly chaotic situation unfolding as we speak. If any of that fuel catches fire, those of us sitting on our couches in silicon valley may very get a nice early spring gift from jet stream. Even if AT THIS POINT the chances of such a fire are <1% (which quite frankly seems optimistic) we should be very very concerned... Software engineers especially, but engineers in general, have a tendency to love complex machines. But engineers of all kinds SHOULD know best: that there are ALWAYS bugs, and where you least expect them. We ought to put aside the politics here: whether you like nuclear power or you don't: we've all been very much dependent on it, and benefited from it greatly. It's impact on life is different, but not clearly better or worse than other sources. Let's hope the engineers on the ground in Japan are getting very very creative.
- timerickson 16y ago
  "those of us sitting on our couches in silicon valley may very get a nice early spring gift from jet stream." This brings up a question I've been wanting to ask since the ordeal started. How much do we know about the severity of radioactivity being spread to Hawaii, California or countries outside of Japan? Assuming worst case scenarios, are the citizens of Hawaii in real danger of poisoning? Should neighboring countries be stocking up on potassium iodine?
  - dublinclontarf 16y ago
    Well in a worse case scenario, which is not as bad as chernobyl then the answer is no, they dont really have anything to worry about. Chernobyl has actually killed very few people or cases of cancer. The death toll directly killed by the accident was around 50, with 4000 affected by radiation.
    - timerickson 16y ago
      According to the WHO, yes. Other reports have claimed up to 15,000 deaths, and 50,000 people handicapped after the disaster. McIntyre, P (May-June 2006). Chernobyl 20 years on. Cancer World, 40-44.
chc 16y ago
Alternative explanation: Being a pessimist is not productive. Woo-hoo, you were something in the ballpark of right. Is the world better because of it? If you look at every situation and assume the worst, you'll be right sometimes, but you'll never accomplish anything.
- Aetius 16y ago
  Only the paranoid survive.
  - snth 16y ago
    No, paranoid means unreasonably anxious. If people had an appropriate level of concern that kept them alive, they were by definition not paranoid.
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  The wise man knows when pessimism is warranted.
- gamble 16y ago
  I prefer my nuclear engineers to pay attention to the worst-case scenario, even if it does make them a wet blanket at parties.
  - chc 16y ago
    You're conflating the question of nuclear engineers preparing for the worst with question of whether, given two possible scenarios, we should just assume the worst (and, as implied by the GP, suggest that there is something defective with people who didn't make the negative assumption). The differences are incalculable.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- rbanffy 16y ago
  However, nuclear power generation is serious. Things happen very fast and can turn nasty in milliseconds if you don't pay attention, if you don't understand what is happening, if you don't know what you are doing and if you don't have the right tools at hand to deal with whatever is going on. One thing I learned in school is that you respect any machine bigger than you. I have no idea why things went so completely wrong there. I always assumed people who design and build nuclear reactors do so in ways they can't fail. Now I am more inclined to believe they are happy to have plans B through G instead of having a really bulletproof plan A. It's certainly more impressive to list a long series of failsafe devices than just having a very unimpressive core that can cool itself in the event of an emergency. It appears they were much less respectful than they should have been. Some people may end up paying with their lives.
btucker 16y ago
I think a big part of it is we've had it drilled into us that fears of nuclear meltdowns are irrational. That people are just misinformed & scared of something they can't see or possibly understand. And we like to think we're smarter than the general population. But clearly no one knows how bad this situation is going to get.
hartror 16y ago
1. The building on 4 is on fire, not the spent fuel rods. 2. The hydrogen explosion on 2 may have damaged containment.
- pessimist 16y ago
  Well, at least one of the 2 possibilities is closer to the worst case since radioactivity levels are 500x (400 mill-sievert, from 800 u-sievert) what they were a few hours ago.
  - mistermann 16y ago
    Well, just cross your fingers and pray, it may get worse, if you are lucky. I get the distinct feeling that you want there to be a nuclear catastrophe....most detractors are content with imagining (and genuinely believing) that there have been several catastrophes in our past. But you seem drawn to want an actual catastrophe. Am I wrong? If you could somehow magically snap your fingers and make nuclear power 100% safe, would you do it?
  - bbb 16y ago
    Where are you getting the milli from? Kyodo reports 8000 micro sievert. So it's an ~5.5x increase from the previous high-water-mark of 1,500 microsievert. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78063.html http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78063.html
    - pessimist 16y ago
      Japanese chief secretary's press conference which I was watching on NHK. NHK repeated the number several times. Found a press report here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/japan-appeals-for-international-aid-in-fight-to-prevent-a-nuclear-meltdown.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/japan-appeals-for-i...
      - bbb 16y ago
        Thanks! I am not sure what reports to believe anymore...
gamble 16y ago
Yes, the upbeat reaction to Fukushima outside Japan has been disturbing. The fact that it would be hard to equal Chernobyl doesn't diminish the reality that this is easily the second-worst disaster in the history of nuclear power. People have been killed, and the entire complex is effectively trashed. One reactor at TMI took 14 years and a billion dollars to clean up; Fukushima is going to be a nightmare to set right even if things don't get worse. Of course, this is assuming that things aren't worse than the official statements let on. The sordid history of the Japanese nuclear industry, including falsification of safety records at Fukushima, doesn't inspire confidence. Japanese nuclear officials are notoriously slippery in front of the press, and the lack of reliable information from Fukushima has been very frustrating. No one really knows what's going on there, and every time the officials claim to have it under control another building explodes.
- timerickson 16y ago
  Some context for the ongoing cost of Chernobyl: In Ukraine, Chernobyl related benefits and programs are still funded by 5-7 percentage of government spending each year. In Belarus, government spending on Chernobyl reached 22.3 percent of the national budget in 1991, declining gradually to 6.1 percent in 2002. Total spending by Belarus on Chernobyl from 1991 through 2003 was more than US $13 billion. (Chernobyl Forum, 2006)
  - gnosis 16y ago
    The area around Chernobyl was also very lightly populated compared to Japan. In Japan live over 100 million people, in an area the size of California. If the Fukushima disaster grows anywhere near the scale of Chernobyl, the damage (both economically and in terms of human life) will likely be much, much greater.
    - timerickson 16y ago
      According to the IAEA (2005), the radiation contamination from the radioactive fallout exposed up to 6 million people in the surrounding area (including Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia) with radiation.
sp332 16y ago
This is a longish, very specific (but apparently also overoptimistic) description of the mechanics of the reactor problems. http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/53461/fukushima-nuclear-accident-simple-and-accurate-explanation http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/53461/fukushima-nu...
pessimist 16y ago
To update, NHK is reporting the fire at reactor 4 is out.

gnosis 16y ago

"Turns out the optimistic reports upvoted by hacker news were polyannish." There are way too many people on here who've been drinking too much of the radioactive koolaid doled out by the nuclear industry. The general consensus here tends to be that nuclear power is wonderful and amazingly safe. Well, we're seeing them being proven wrong yet again. How much more proof are they going to need? How many more nuclear disasters is it going to take?

pyre 16y ago
I generally see people talking about how safe the new reactor designs are, and how it's a tragedy that people are so afraid of nuclear that they won't let them be built. The reactors in Japan are 40-year-old designs. You can't compare them on the same level. It's like saying that people in favor of nuclear power claim that Chernobyl never happened because 'safe nuclear' == 'never was a reactor that was unsafe ever built.'
- exch 16y ago
  Add to that the fact that the other reactors there have stood up to a 9.1 quake with about 600 aftershocks -- ranging from mild to "I'm a pretty decent disaster all by myself" -- A sizable tidal wave and numerous fires with hydrogen explosions. This could definitely have been far, far worse by now.
  - gnosis 16y ago
    "This could definitely have been far, far worse by now." It still can. The disaster may be far from over. And it may take quite a while to calculate the real cost of this disaster, both economically and in terms of human life.
- dialtone 16y ago
  You might be surprised to discover that a 40 year old life is fairly standard in nuclear power plants[1], in fact some countries hope to keep their plants active for closer to 60 years. At close to $7B+ investment in just the building phase of a modern nuclear plant and close to 7-10 years construction time per plant[2], the limited lifetime of the plant does start to become a concern in the financial sense though. [1]: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2007/npp_extension.html http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2007/npp_extension.html [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor
  - pyre 16y ago
    I'm not balking at the age and saying that the place is 'falling apart.' I'm saying that they were designed 40 years ago, and that it's possible that we've learned things since then and can build better plants (starting at the design phase). I'm no expert though, so I'm making no claims.
    - borism 16y ago
      actually they were designed 60 years ago. they were built 50 years ago.
sorbus 16y ago
How many major nuclear disasters have there been in the last, say, 50 years? Three mile island and Chernobyl are the two big ones that everyone knows about, and considering that people are saying that this is the third largest [EDIT: actually the second largest, at this point], I take that as an endorsement of nuclear power. As compared with coal, oil, natural gas, and so forth, which function by spewing pollutants into the environment continuously, during normal operation. Yes, I would be thrilled if we switched entirely to solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power sources, but nuclear power isn't anywhere near as disastrous as the people strongly against it would like us to believe. It's also not as safe as a lot of people would like to think, but, by and large, it is fairly safe.
- dchest 16y ago
  Hydroelectric? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Ecosystem_damage_and_loss_of_land http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Ecosystem_dama...
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    The problem with hydro is that you can't build it where you need the power (unless geography - or real estate - is uncannily nice to you) Most of Brazil depends on a single hydro facility with endless miles of aluminum wires crossing the southeast part of the country. If anything serious fails there, the country pretty much stops. Renewables like solar, hydro, biomass, and wind have their place, but you don't generate solar during night, you may want to spare your water during a drought, you may need to eat the biomass and you may have days without wind. Nuclear too has its place. Technology is a tool we should wield with reason, not passion.
  - whateverer 16y ago
    It should be noted, though, that solar thermal plants can indeed generate electricity during the night, by collecting heat in reservoirs to later produce steam, be them water or molten salt[1] heat reservoirs. [1] http://www.research-in-germany.de/61660/2011-03-08-molten-salts-for-efficient-solar-thermal-plants,sourcePageId=12358.html http://www.research-in-germany.de/61660/2011-03-08-molten-sa...
mistermann 16y ago
> how many more nuclear disasters is it going to take? Indeed....please provide us with the list of nuclear disasters, it should be an easy exercise judging by the tone of confidence in your post. Just for fun, throw in some stats on deaths per kwh of electrcity. PREDICTION: you will not respond to this, because there have been no nuclear disasters. And no one disputes that in practice, nuclear is the safest form of power statistically. If you want to assert that nuclear power is incredibly powerful and dangerous, that is one thing, but trying to pass off potential disaster as reality, is a but disingenuous.
- angus77 16y ago
  Safer than solar or wind power?
  - Devilboy 16y ago
    Those are not comparable power sources. They cannot substitute for fossil or nuclear plants, because they are way too expensive and do not provide 24/7 power without even more expensive batteries.
    - whateverer 16y ago
      Actually, thermal solar plants can produce electricity 24/7 just fine. They can store heat in water or (more efficiently) molten salt up in a tower and use it to later generate power at a reliable rate. Spain is known to be investing heavily on concentrating solar power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Spain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Spain
      - angus77 16y ago
        This one deserves an upvote for at least citing a source.
      - Devilboy 16y ago
        Those are great they just don't generate a lot of power though. The biggest one so far peaks at 60MW while your standard nuclear or fossil power plant generates 1000MW consistently. You'd need at least 20 of these to replace just one coal plant. That makes it what, 5 times more expensive than nuclear / fossil? Not even the USA can afford to go 100% renewable with a price like that.
ANH 16y ago
Historically, coal-fired power plants have been much more dangerous for humans than nuclear power plants. I think the record shows that nuclear power is on the whole pretty safe. Regarding proof: I don't think anything has been proven, yet, except that there have been a lot of powerful forces at work with this disaster.
- hop 16y ago
  Yes, in history. But that turns an eye to black swan events of mass proportion that only nuclear power is capable of.
  - ANH 16y ago
    Only nuclear power? What about the BP oil spill? Exxon Valdez? Coal slurry wiping out homes in West Virginia?
    - hop 16y ago
      Caesium-137 has a 30 year half life. If that blew into Tokyo, the city would be uninhabitable for 200 years - just like Chernobyl.
  - sho_hn 16y ago
    That said, there have been some pretty nasty events associated with coal as well, which are however surprisingly unknown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_sludge_spill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_sludge_spill Doesn't compare to the potential consequences of a nuclear incident, but it's quite possible to build and mishandle crappy coal infrastructure, too.
  - memetichazard 16y ago
    So, coal is the car, and nuclear power is the airplane.
redthrowaway 16y ago
>Well, we're seeing them being proven wrong yet again. How much more proof are they going to need? How many more nuclear disasters is it going to take? You've had one and a half. TMI had no ill effects on health, Chernobyl was caused by Soviet incompetence, and Fukushima is the result of an earthquake 7 times more powerful than it was designed to survive. Compare that to the damage caused by oil spills alone. No power source that is economically viable on a large scale is 100% safe, including nuclear. They do their damndest, but sometimes it fails. There were some design flaws in Fukushima, namely the placement of the backup generators and the height of the tsunami barriers, but the precipitating earthquake was still the strongest in 1200 years. It looks like the containment vessel on the #4 reactor has been breached, and that's very, very bad. Still, the only people injured were those injured by the hydrogen explosions, not by radiation. There's been a few people (~12) who suffered radiation exposure, I believe all plant workers. Is this event bad? Yes. Could it be another Chernobyl? Probably not. Reactor 4 is on fire, and is releasing radiation into the atmosphere, but on nowhere near the scale that Chernobyl did. Most of the "optimism" yesterday was based on what had actually occurred: the coolant had failed, #1 was flooded, and #3 had encountered the same problems. Both reactors had hydrogen explosions outside of the containment vessel that didn't compromise them. No significant radiation had been released. Today is a different story. We'll keep an eye on things and see how they progress, but the optimism was based on the situation at #1 and #3, not the yet-to-happen situation at #2 and #4.
- gnosis 16y ago
  "the precipitating earthquake was still the strongest in 1200 years" People keep mentioning this as if that matters. The fact is that it happened, and there's really no telling when future natural disasters will strike any given nuclear plant. All we know is that they can happen and that if disasters on this scale do happen, nuclear reactors are not up to surviving them. "Reactor 4 is on fire, and is releasing radiation into the atmosphere, but on nowhere near the scale that Chernobyl did." Yet. But this disaster may be far from over. "There's been a few people (~12) who suffered radiation exposure, I believe all plant workers." That's not what I'm hearing. From a former nuclear industry executive and whistleblower interviewed recently on Democracy Now: "they talk about 160 people that have been contaminated. That’s all they’ve tested. Basically, everything they’re testing is coming up contaminated in that inner couple of miles around the plant. You’ve got radiation being detected 60 miles to the north in a Navy helicopter, a hundred miles to the east on a Navy aircraft carrier. So, it’s not clear to me that that cloud is not looping around and affecting Japan." http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/14/japan_facing_biggest_catastrophe_since_dawn http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/14/japan_facing_biggest_c...

redwood 16y ago

Well put. This is a highly chaotic situation unfolding as we speak. If any of that fuel catches fire, those of us sitting on our couches in silicon valley may very get a nice early spring gift from jet stream. Even if AT THIS POINT the chances of such a fire are <1% (which quite frankly seems optimistic) we should be very very concerned... Software engineers especially, but engineers in general, have a tendency to love complex machines. But engineers of all kinds SHOULD know best: that there are ALWAYS bugs, and where you least expect them. We ought to put aside the politics here: whether you like nuclear power or you don't: we've all been very much dependent on it, and benefited from it greatly. It's impact on life is different, but not clearly better or worse than other sources. Let's hope the engineers on the ground in Japan are getting very very creative.

timerickson 16y ago
"those of us sitting on our couches in silicon valley may very get a nice early spring gift from jet stream." This brings up a question I've been wanting to ask since the ordeal started. How much do we know about the severity of radioactivity being spread to Hawaii, California or countries outside of Japan? Assuming worst case scenarios, are the citizens of Hawaii in real danger of poisoning? Should neighboring countries be stocking up on potassium iodine?
- dublinclontarf 16y ago
  Well in a worse case scenario, which is not as bad as chernobyl then the answer is no, they dont really have anything to worry about. Chernobyl has actually killed very few people or cases of cancer. The death toll directly killed by the accident was around 50, with 4000 affected by radiation.
  - timerickson 16y ago
    According to the WHO, yes. Other reports have claimed up to 15,000 deaths, and 50,000 people handicapped after the disaster. McIntyre, P (May-June 2006). Chernobyl 20 years on. Cancer World, 40-44.

chc 16y ago

Alternative explanation: Being a pessimist is not productive. Woo-hoo, you were something in the ballpark of right. Is the world better because of it? If you look at every situation and assume the worst, you'll be right sometimes, but you'll never accomplish anything.

Aetius 16y ago
Only the paranoid survive.
- snth 16y ago
  No, paranoid means unreasonably anxious. If people had an appropriate level of concern that kept them alive, they were by definition not paranoid.
waterlesscloud 16y ago
The wise man knows when pessimism is warranted.
gamble 16y ago
I prefer my nuclear engineers to pay attention to the worst-case scenario, even if it does make them a wet blanket at parties.
- chc 16y ago
  You're conflating the question of nuclear engineers preparing for the worst with question of whether, given two possible scenarios, we should just assume the worst (and, as implied by the GP, suggest that there is something defective with people who didn't make the negative assumption). The differences are incalculable.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
rbanffy 16y ago
However, nuclear power generation is serious. Things happen very fast and can turn nasty in milliseconds if you don't pay attention, if you don't understand what is happening, if you don't know what you are doing and if you don't have the right tools at hand to deal with whatever is going on. One thing I learned in school is that you respect any machine bigger than you. I have no idea why things went so completely wrong there. I always assumed people who design and build nuclear reactors do so in ways they can't fail. Now I am more inclined to believe they are happy to have plans B through G instead of having a really bulletproof plan A. It's certainly more impressive to list a long series of failsafe devices than just having a very unimpressive core that can cool itself in the event of an emergency. It appears they were much less respectful than they should have been. Some people may end up paying with their lives.

btucker 16y ago

I think a big part of it is we've had it drilled into us that fears of nuclear meltdowns are irrational. That people are just misinformed & scared of something they can't see or possibly understand. And we like to think we're smarter than the general population. But clearly no one knows how bad this situation is going to get.

hartror 16y ago

1. The building on 4 is on fire, not the spent fuel rods. 2. The hydrogen explosion on 2 may have damaged containment.

pessimist 16y ago
Well, at least one of the 2 possibilities is closer to the worst case since radioactivity levels are 500x (400 mill-sievert, from 800 u-sievert) what they were a few hours ago.
- mistermann 16y ago
  Well, just cross your fingers and pray, it may get worse, if you are lucky. I get the distinct feeling that you want there to be a nuclear catastrophe....most detractors are content with imagining (and genuinely believing) that there have been several catastrophes in our past. But you seem drawn to want an actual catastrophe. Am I wrong? If you could somehow magically snap your fingers and make nuclear power 100% safe, would you do it?
- bbb 16y ago
  Where are you getting the milli from? Kyodo reports 8000 micro sievert. So it's an ~5.5x increase from the previous high-water-mark of 1,500 microsievert. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78063.html http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78063.html
  - pessimist 16y ago
    Japanese chief secretary's press conference which I was watching on NHK. NHK repeated the number several times. Found a press report here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/japan-appeals-for-international-aid-in-fight-to-prevent-a-nuclear-meltdown.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/japan-appeals-for-i...
    - bbb 16y ago
      Thanks! I am not sure what reports to believe anymore...

gamble 16y ago

Yes, the upbeat reaction to Fukushima outside Japan has been disturbing. The fact that it would be hard to equal Chernobyl doesn't diminish the reality that this is easily the second-worst disaster in the history of nuclear power. People have been killed, and the entire complex is effectively trashed. One reactor at TMI took 14 years and a billion dollars to clean up; Fukushima is going to be a nightmare to set right even if things don't get worse. Of course, this is assuming that things aren't worse than the official statements let on. The sordid history of the Japanese nuclear industry, including falsification of safety records at Fukushima, doesn't inspire confidence. Japanese nuclear officials are notoriously slippery in front of the press, and the lack of reliable information from Fukushima has been very frustrating. No one really knows what's going on there, and every time the officials claim to have it under control another building explodes.

timerickson 16y ago
Some context for the ongoing cost of Chernobyl: In Ukraine, Chernobyl related benefits and programs are still funded by 5-7 percentage of government spending each year. In Belarus, government spending on Chernobyl reached 22.3 percent of the national budget in 1991, declining gradually to 6.1 percent in 2002. Total spending by Belarus on Chernobyl from 1991 through 2003 was more than US $13 billion. (Chernobyl Forum, 2006)
- gnosis 16y ago
  The area around Chernobyl was also very lightly populated compared to Japan. In Japan live over 100 million people, in an area the size of California. If the Fukushima disaster grows anywhere near the scale of Chernobyl, the damage (both economically and in terms of human life) will likely be much, much greater.
  - timerickson 16y ago
    According to the IAEA (2005), the radiation contamination from the radioactive fallout exposed up to 6 million people in the surrounding area (including Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia) with radiation.

sp332 16y ago

This is a longish, very specific (but apparently also overoptimistic) description of the mechanics of the reactor problems. http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/53461/fukushima-nuclear-accident-simple-and-accurate-explanation http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/53461/fukushima-nu...

pessimist 16y ago

To update, NHK is reporting the fire at reactor 4 is out.