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Whether you like it or not, the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved. It's inconceivable (cue s

Whether you like it or not, the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved. It's inconceivable (cue sound clip from Princess Bride) to most of us that extremely extensive and effective contingency plans are not in place. The nuclear risk is obvious, and so any nuclear construction's main emphasis must be on handling all possible contingencies... right? If Fukushima does end up being a "Big Deal" that is going to forcibly shift the world view of many many engineers and hackers. It will represent a piece of data that is fundamentally at odds with our view of the world. The facts will eventually win out, but for the short term, it is necessary that we go through these cycles of disbelief and then shock. Because that's just reality. I will be shocked if Fukushima causes serious harm to humans because until now it has been inconceivable to me that people making nuke plants could possibly underestimate the risks. If my inaccurate beliefs are shattered by the harsh reality of nuclear related deaths then... that's just how it will have to be. I'll have to eat my hat. I'm not looking forward to it. In the meantime I have to go with what I know. Which is that this should not be an issue that threatens human life.

jshen 16y ago
" It will represent a piece of data is fundamentally at odds with our view of the world." Sadly that rarely changes anyones mind.
- mistermann 16y ago
  Indeed, and that goes both ways......just as several decades of extensive use of nuc lear power generation with practically no deaths in multiple countries has done absolutely nothing to quell some people's fears. Any guess as to who understands the science better? But then, its not about science is it? And its certainly not about facts.
  - mturmon 16y ago
    Not offering an opinion one way or the other, but just noting that there really are some facts here that are motivating people. The piece that rationalist engineers (I am one of them) tend to gloss over is that the public has historically been lied to, by experts about the dangers and difficulties of nuclear power -- all nuclear technology, really. X rays for shoe sizing. Atmospheric weapons tests. Ed Teller. The downside to accidents is large, and there's not much trust anymore. Some, but not much. These are the facts that are perhaps engaging people's fears. Given this history, for some people, the bank of "expert credibility" is overdrawn already. The classic nerd technique of argument from expertise is ineffective.
    - icarus_drowning 16y ago
      ...and none of this says anything about the facts that have been reported (most of which, you'll note, have not been pretty for pro-nuke advocates). Are the facts that have been reported wrong? If you don't have evidence that they aren't, this is just a "hunch", and not really worth serious consideration.
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      If we shouldn't argue from expertise, what should we argue from? Cast members of Jersey Shore? Berry diet fad producers? PR persons? Our personal feelings? A magic 8 ball? Seriously if they won't listen to experts (assuming that we can agree on whom the experts are), that is perhaps the best argument against democracy that I have ever heard.
      - mturmon 16y ago
        In my opinion, it's not an argument against democracy. It's an argument against lying in the first place.
  - jshen 16y ago
    "Any guess as to who understands the science better?" Ah, the glorious ad hominem. Here's one of your recent comments. "In terms of real disasters, when measured in human deaths, [chernobyl] are tiny footnotes in history, statistically irrelevant." Ironic isn't it, given my previous comment? Or this, "just as several decades of extensive use of nuclear power generation with practically no deaths" What is the scientific definition of "several", or better yet, "practically no deaths"?
  - Qz 16y ago
    I would bet that coal mining has resulted in far more deaths than nuclear power plants, and yet we love to burn that stuff.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - varjag 16y ago
      There are also gas power stations, which are much much cleaner than coal. Just saying.
  - jedsmith 16y ago
    > several decades of extensive use of nuc lear power generation with practically no deaths in multiple countries That actually hurt me physically to read. Take Chernobyl. All of those kids that have developed and will develop thyroid cancer, the firefighters that knowingly sacrificed themselves to get the fire out (thereby directly saving more lives), the plant workers who killed themselves in order to minimize the effects, the liquidation workers who contracted cancer in the process of building the sarcophagus, and the babies being born -- even today! -- in the surrounding area prematurely and dying before even being able to comprehend where they are (which some doctors from that region blame on Chernobyl). Yeah, those deaths aren't practical at all. How can you be so obtuse? Nothing wrenches my gut more than a child dying before being able to speak a single word. I'm actually tearing up that you dismiss such things as impractical statistically, in order to further your argument that us laymen have no idea what we're talking about when it comes to nuclear episodes. You take relative figures and turn them into an absolute. In multiple comments, you have denied that nuclear power has ever had a disaster, and that "practically" anybody has died (whatever the hell that means). You might believe strongly in nuclear power, but you cannot erase or modify history. Nuclear power is safe. It can also go horribly wrong, and we learned a lot from Chernobyl. Why does it have to be polar with you? It can be both. > And its certainly not about facts. Such cruel irony.
    - paganel 16y ago
      > How can you be so obtuse? Yeah, that always gets to me, too. And it is also funny how lots of these people try to downplay the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, if that's even possible. When it comes to the number of casualties they hurry up in bringing up the 4,000 mentioned in the IAEA report, which is like asking Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld of writing up about the effects of the Iraq mess. Just today I was reading about how in one of counties of Romania (of which I am a citizen) the number of deaths caused by cancer is double the number of deaths caused by TBC (which used to be the number one killer before 1986) or diabetes. One might argue that this may be caused by a sudden change in the the conditions of living or anything related, but I can assure you that's not the case (if anything, heart-related deaths should have been on the number one spot). Of course, you won't see these cancer-related deaths taken into account in any of IAEA's reports. I also have some sort of personal emotional involvement in all this, as one of my childhood playmates and best-friends died of leukemia in 1990. He was 5 when Chernobyl happened, but of course no-one can link his death to that disaster, can it? It doesn't matter that I can't even remember one case of my parents telling me about kids dying of cancer in the '50s or the '60s, because that just didn't happen (although child mortality was way higher back then). It all miraculously started to happen after Chernobyl.
gnosis 16y ago
"Whether you like it or not, the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved." That reminds me of all the bragging about how the Titanic was "virtually unsinkable".
- forensic 16y ago
  I thought we had learned better. Apparently not.
  - sp332 16y ago
    Hm, what are we supposed to learn? That everything might go badly? How can we apply that lesson to nuke reactors? By my count, 8 levels of failsafes have failed. How many more do you want? Reminds me of a Futurama episode where an oil tanker with 1,000 hulls crashes and spills. Fry exclaims, "Oh, if only we'd had the foresight to use 1,001 hulls, this would never have happened!"
    - nl 16y ago
      I think the lesson the poster was implying is that nuclear power is not safe, and cannot be made safe. Also, I'm not sure what you define as "failsafes", but the conventional measurement is number of containment levels. This reactor had 3, while I believe more modern reactors have 4.
      - sp332 16y ago
        I was including the power generators. After the reactor went into automatic cooling (which actually worked), the backup diesel generators were destroyed in the tsunami, and although the battery backup-backup power worked, it ran out before power could be restored. Also, venting the coolant helped a bit but not enough, and flooding the reactor with seawater helped a lot, I think that's the point when everyone got optimistic.
    - forensic 16y ago
      Does nature just keep jacking up the pressure to beat every security measure? Of course not. Nature doesn't do arms races. Nature's effect is finite and measurable... earthquakes are easily predictable in the long term... the terrible cost of radiation leak is easily predictable. Like most other human efforts, the goal posts are pretty clear. Make nuke plants stronger than the strongest that nature is capable of producing. A tsunami + earthquake in japan is not a surprise to anyone. What is a surprise is that the people running the reactor consider it a surprise.
Alex3917 16y ago
"Whether you like it or not, the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved." This belief is basically it's own logical fallacy; the idea that because someone has figured out a theoretical solution to a problem, the issue is moot. I feel like I've posted this previously, but I can't find now so maybe not.
- forensic 16y ago
  In the post-mortem this will probably be the lesson. How many times are you going to hear: "The issues were easily avoidable with proper upgrades, but it was decided that the cost of upgrading the plant was not justified given the low probability of an 8.9 earthquake" :\
  - juiceandjuice 16y ago
    A solution to the energy crisis is to unplug, but your anticipated response proves that's as viable as a solution as eliminating nuclear energy.
  - orangecat 16y ago
    "The issues were easily avoidable with proper upgrades, but it was decided that the cost of upgrading the plant was not justified given the low probability of an 8.9 earthquake" And that decision may very well have been correct. If I don't buy a lottery ticket but the numbers I would have picked come up, that doesn't mean I made a mistake.
    - forensic 16y ago
      Considering that this is going to set back nuclear energy for decades.... not a good decision
    - varjag 16y ago
      I fail to see in which way your analogy is relevant. If anything, you are buying lottery tickets with other people's money and are not winning.
Tycho 16y ago
Is it even possible to handle all contingencies though? I don't know enough to do the maths, but when you've got four different reactors an earthquake followed by a tsunami followed by loss of electricity for the emergency pumps followed by parts of the plant blowing up followed by tons of dust getting in the way followed by possibly more aftershocks followed by possibly more tsunamis followed by possible injuries to the personnel needed to run these operations considering other equipment can break down considering political pressures to make certain decisions considering some of the physics/chemistry here may be entirely novel ... Think of all the different permutations in those variables, just how many scenarios have been prepared for? It has to be more complicated than just 'if casing 1 fails, casing 2 will stop it, and if casing 2 fails, casing 3 is there'
- sandee 16y ago
  It will not be possible ever, to keep handling cases of escalating complexity one of top of other. When things get complex beyond certain level, a kill switch should be triggered. The Kill switch should not depend on If-else cases ...
  - drivebyacct2 16y ago
    And your response indicates compelete ignorance of both the situation and nuclear reactions. There is no kill switch, if they had a "kill switch" and executed it right now, you'd be condemning all the reactors to meltdowns, and you'd be condemning the US Western Coast to dangerous levels of radiation. The content of the fuel rods take DAYS to become non-radioactive enough for them to not need to be cooled constantly. The very problem that's occuring now is occuring because either the radioactive cesium and iodine is either at risk of not being cooled which will lead to a meltdown and release of them into the atmosphere, or a containment breach with largely the same impacts.
    - waterlesscloud 16y ago
      That's the basic problem with nuclear power, isn't it? There's no kill switch. It stops when it's ready to stop, not when you need it to stop.
harisenbon 16y ago
Not trying to be contrary, just sharing what I have heard. I don't know what you consider 'Serious Harm to Humans', but as of Sunday, there were an assumed 160 people with radiation exposure (9 confirmed).[0] From what I remember on the news the other day, the reason for the failures of the plants was the fact that they had not conceived of an earthquake and tsunami of this magnitude. PM Kan said that there were adequate protections in place for the facilities, but the earthquake was beyond the conceived scope of the protection. Also, while 20km from site 1 have been evacuated, they've needed to extend the radiation-affected area to 30km. Unfortunately, it's too wide of an area to evacuate, so they have told people to stay in their homes. [0]http://jp.reuters.com/article/mostViewedNews/idJPJAPAN-19971220110313 http://jp.reuters.com/article/mostViewedNews/idJPJAPAN-19971... edited: edited "poisoning" into "exposure" edited: Added evacuation distances
- patio11 16y ago
  This is a very consequential difference: 被ばく does not mean radiation poisoning, it means radiation exposure. You can have sub-clinical (i.e. no impact to health) exposure. For example, if you've ever had a dental X-ray, you've been hibaku'ed. So far, the only report of radiation poisoning which I've heard is a SDF member who was on-site when one of the steam explosions happened.
  - harisenbon 16y ago
    Sorry, you are right. I actually don't know at what point exposure becomes poisoning. I believe there were 3 SDF members who were hospitalized for radiation, but I could be wrong (also, I read it on the 共産党 site, so who knows)
    - alextgordon 16y ago
      Wikipedia has a table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#Exposure_levels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#Exposure_le... According to that, fatal poisoning starts at around 2 Sv. According to the BBC, levels in the surrounding area are 8 mSv per hour, so not enough for acute poisoning given the timings, though not at all good for you. For comparison, a chest x-ray is 60 µSv.
juiceandjuice 16y ago
It's never been 'inconceivable' that nuclear plants would fail. Nuclear energy was a risk nations were willing to take to keep you plugged in, making this post right now. You're faulting engineering that predates the microprocessor, at a power plant scheduled to be decommissioned soon, for failing in the two worst natural disasters (earthquake + tsunami) in Japan's modern history. I just wanted to make that clear.
- forensic 16y ago
  If society considers the loss of life acceptable given the benefits, fine. But I don't think it does. It's not just engineers who are responsible, in any event.
  - wiredfool 16y ago
    Something like 40k deaths per year are from auto accidents. Is that worth it? 158k due to lung cancer, 86%of that smoking related. Worth it?
  - kelnos 16y ago
    If society doesn't consider this comparatively small loss of life acceptable given the benefits, then society is stupid. But we already knew society is stupid, and terrible at risk analysis. If that weren't the case, we'd have many many more nuclear reactors, and no one would want to get in their cars, ever.
    - brazzy 16y ago
      If anyone is stupid and terrible at risk analysis it's the people who still spew that party line. It was already stupid when there had been only one complete failure of nuclear plant safety, and it happened to the "bad guys" whom everyone could just assume must have been more stupid and careless than we "good guys" could ever possibly be. But fact is, people have acted stupid and careless handling nuclear plants everywhere, and a risk analysis that assumes all risks are foreseeable and perfect execution of safety measures is just incredibly idiotic.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
richcollins 16y ago
The occurrence of radiation related deaths in this one instance isn't strong evidence that it is more dangerous than alternatives: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is...
- forensic 16y ago
  While I believe your implication is correct, the public is not going to believe it. When it comes to nuclear energy, perception is more important than reality.
cdavid 16y ago
Who are most intellectual engineers ? I agree that most news seem to be conflicting, and very hard to understand for the layman, but I cannot possibly see how anyone can claim the issue has been solved when even the people with incentive to downplay the reality (Japanese gvt, TEPCO) say that the situation is increasingly worrying. When you read nuclear news website (http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/), it seems the issue is potentially very serious, where the potentially become less and less uncertain rapidly. Given that this news website has the support of the world nuclear association, I would be inclined to trust them most than any general news channel out there (being tv/journals or of course Japanese gvt).
Gupie 16y ago
"until now it has been inconceivable to me that people making nuke plants could possibly underestimate the risks" What I don't understand is why the walls meant to protect the plant from a Tsunami were too low.
brazzy 16y ago
the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved. Not at all true for the intellectual engineer types I know. You may want to reassess how much of your certainties are cultural. it has been inconceivable to me that people making nuke plants could possibly underestimate the risks. That sounds so inconceivably naive to me that, out of the context of the rest of your post, I'd be sure it was meant sarcastically.

jshen 16y ago

" It will represent a piece of data is fundamentally at odds with our view of the world." Sadly that rarely changes anyones mind.

mistermann 16y ago
Indeed, and that goes both ways......just as several decades of extensive use of nuc lear power generation with practically no deaths in multiple countries has done absolutely nothing to quell some people's fears. Any guess as to who understands the science better? But then, its not about science is it? And its certainly not about facts.
- mturmon 16y ago
  Not offering an opinion one way or the other, but just noting that there really are some facts here that are motivating people. The piece that rationalist engineers (I am one of them) tend to gloss over is that the public has historically been lied to, by experts about the dangers and difficulties of nuclear power -- all nuclear technology, really. X rays for shoe sizing. Atmospheric weapons tests. Ed Teller. The downside to accidents is large, and there's not much trust anymore. Some, but not much. These are the facts that are perhaps engaging people's fears. Given this history, for some people, the bank of "expert credibility" is overdrawn already. The classic nerd technique of argument from expertise is ineffective.
  - icarus_drowning 16y ago
    ...and none of this says anything about the facts that have been reported (most of which, you'll note, have not been pretty for pro-nuke advocates). Are the facts that have been reported wrong? If you don't have evidence that they aren't, this is just a "hunch", and not really worth serious consideration.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    If we shouldn't argue from expertise, what should we argue from? Cast members of Jersey Shore? Berry diet fad producers? PR persons? Our personal feelings? A magic 8 ball? Seriously if they won't listen to experts (assuming that we can agree on whom the experts are), that is perhaps the best argument against democracy that I have ever heard.
    - mturmon 16y ago
      In my opinion, it's not an argument against democracy. It's an argument against lying in the first place.
- jshen 16y ago
  "Any guess as to who understands the science better?" Ah, the glorious ad hominem. Here's one of your recent comments. "In terms of real disasters, when measured in human deaths, [chernobyl] are tiny footnotes in history, statistically irrelevant." Ironic isn't it, given my previous comment? Or this, "just as several decades of extensive use of nuclear power generation with practically no deaths" What is the scientific definition of "several", or better yet, "practically no deaths"?
- Qz 16y ago
  I would bet that coal mining has resulted in far more deaths than nuclear power plants, and yet we love to burn that stuff.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - varjag 16y ago
    There are also gas power stations, which are much much cleaner than coal. Just saying.
- jedsmith 16y ago
  > several decades of extensive use of nuc lear power generation with practically no deaths in multiple countries That actually hurt me physically to read. Take Chernobyl. All of those kids that have developed and will develop thyroid cancer, the firefighters that knowingly sacrificed themselves to get the fire out (thereby directly saving more lives), the plant workers who killed themselves in order to minimize the effects, the liquidation workers who contracted cancer in the process of building the sarcophagus, and the babies being born -- even today! -- in the surrounding area prematurely and dying before even being able to comprehend where they are (which some doctors from that region blame on Chernobyl). Yeah, those deaths aren't practical at all. How can you be so obtuse? Nothing wrenches my gut more than a child dying before being able to speak a single word. I'm actually tearing up that you dismiss such things as impractical statistically, in order to further your argument that us laymen have no idea what we're talking about when it comes to nuclear episodes. You take relative figures and turn them into an absolute. In multiple comments, you have denied that nuclear power has ever had a disaster, and that "practically" anybody has died (whatever the hell that means). You might believe strongly in nuclear power, but you cannot erase or modify history. Nuclear power is safe. It can also go horribly wrong, and we learned a lot from Chernobyl. Why does it have to be polar with you? It can be both. > And its certainly not about facts. Such cruel irony.
  - paganel 16y ago
    > How can you be so obtuse? Yeah, that always gets to me, too. And it is also funny how lots of these people try to downplay the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, if that's even possible. When it comes to the number of casualties they hurry up in bringing up the 4,000 mentioned in the IAEA report, which is like asking Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld of writing up about the effects of the Iraq mess. Just today I was reading about how in one of counties of Romania (of which I am a citizen) the number of deaths caused by cancer is double the number of deaths caused by TBC (which used to be the number one killer before 1986) or diabetes. One might argue that this may be caused by a sudden change in the the conditions of living or anything related, but I can assure you that's not the case (if anything, heart-related deaths should have been on the number one spot). Of course, you won't see these cancer-related deaths taken into account in any of IAEA's reports. I also have some sort of personal emotional involvement in all this, as one of my childhood playmates and best-friends died of leukemia in 1990. He was 5 when Chernobyl happened, but of course no-one can link his death to that disaster, can it? It doesn't matter that I can't even remember one case of my parents telling me about kids dying of cancer in the '50s or the '60s, because that just didn't happen (although child mortality was way higher back then). It all miraculously started to happen after Chernobyl.

gnosis 16y ago

"Whether you like it or not, the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved." That reminds me of all the bragging about how the Titanic was "virtually unsinkable".

forensic 16y ago
I thought we had learned better. Apparently not.
- sp332 16y ago
  Hm, what are we supposed to learn? That everything might go badly? How can we apply that lesson to nuke reactors? By my count, 8 levels of failsafes have failed. How many more do you want? Reminds me of a Futurama episode where an oil tanker with 1,000 hulls crashes and spills. Fry exclaims, "Oh, if only we'd had the foresight to use 1,001 hulls, this would never have happened!"
  - nl 16y ago
    I think the lesson the poster was implying is that nuclear power is not safe, and cannot be made safe. Also, I'm not sure what you define as "failsafes", but the conventional measurement is number of containment levels. This reactor had 3, while I believe more modern reactors have 4.
    - sp332 16y ago
      I was including the power generators. After the reactor went into automatic cooling (which actually worked), the backup diesel generators were destroyed in the tsunami, and although the battery backup-backup power worked, it ran out before power could be restored. Also, venting the coolant helped a bit but not enough, and flooding the reactor with seawater helped a lot, I think that's the point when everyone got optimistic.
  - forensic 16y ago
    Does nature just keep jacking up the pressure to beat every security measure? Of course not. Nature doesn't do arms races. Nature's effect is finite and measurable... earthquakes are easily predictable in the long term... the terrible cost of radiation leak is easily predictable. Like most other human efforts, the goal posts are pretty clear. Make nuke plants stronger than the strongest that nature is capable of producing. A tsunami + earthquake in japan is not a surprise to anyone. What is a surprise is that the people running the reactor consider it a surprise.

Alex3917 16y ago

"Whether you like it or not, the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved." This belief is basically it's own logical fallacy; the idea that because someone has figured out a theoretical solution to a problem, the issue is moot. I feel like I've posted this previously, but I can't find now so maybe not.

forensic 16y ago
In the post-mortem this will probably be the lesson. How many times are you going to hear: "The issues were easily avoidable with proper upgrades, but it was decided that the cost of upgrading the plant was not justified given the low probability of an 8.9 earthquake" :\
- juiceandjuice 16y ago
  A solution to the energy crisis is to unplug, but your anticipated response proves that's as viable as a solution as eliminating nuclear energy.
- orangecat 16y ago
  "The issues were easily avoidable with proper upgrades, but it was decided that the cost of upgrading the plant was not justified given the low probability of an 8.9 earthquake" And that decision may very well have been correct. If I don't buy a lottery ticket but the numbers I would have picked come up, that doesn't mean I made a mistake.
  - forensic 16y ago
    Considering that this is going to set back nuclear energy for decades.... not a good decision
  - varjag 16y ago
    I fail to see in which way your analogy is relevant. If anything, you are buying lottery tickets with other people's money and are not winning.

Tycho 16y ago

Is it even possible to handle all contingencies though? I don't know enough to do the maths, but when you've got four different reactors an earthquake followed by a tsunami followed by loss of electricity for the emergency pumps followed by parts of the plant blowing up followed by tons of dust getting in the way followed by possibly more aftershocks followed by possibly more tsunamis followed by possible injuries to the personnel needed to run these operations considering other equipment can break down considering political pressures to make certain decisions considering some of the physics/chemistry here may be entirely novel ... Think of all the different permutations in those variables, just how many scenarios have been prepared for? It has to be more complicated than just 'if casing 1 fails, casing 2 will stop it, and if casing 2 fails, casing 3 is there'

sandee 16y ago
It will not be possible ever, to keep handling cases of escalating complexity one of top of other. When things get complex beyond certain level, a kill switch should be triggered. The Kill switch should not depend on If-else cases ...
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  And your response indicates compelete ignorance of both the situation and nuclear reactions. There is no kill switch, if they had a "kill switch" and executed it right now, you'd be condemning all the reactors to meltdowns, and you'd be condemning the US Western Coast to dangerous levels of radiation. The content of the fuel rods take DAYS to become non-radioactive enough for them to not need to be cooled constantly. The very problem that's occuring now is occuring because either the radioactive cesium and iodine is either at risk of not being cooled which will lead to a meltdown and release of them into the atmosphere, or a containment breach with largely the same impacts.
  - waterlesscloud 16y ago
    That's the basic problem with nuclear power, isn't it? There's no kill switch. It stops when it's ready to stop, not when you need it to stop.

harisenbon 16y ago

Not trying to be contrary, just sharing what I have heard. I don't know what you consider 'Serious Harm to Humans', but as of Sunday, there were an assumed 160 people with radiation exposure (9 confirmed).[0] From what I remember on the news the other day, the reason for the failures of the plants was the fact that they had not conceived of an earthquake and tsunami of this magnitude. PM Kan said that there were adequate protections in place for the facilities, but the earthquake was beyond the conceived scope of the protection. Also, while 20km from site 1 have been evacuated, they've needed to extend the radiation-affected area to 30km. Unfortunately, it's too wide of an area to evacuate, so they have told people to stay in their homes. [0]http://jp.reuters.com/article/mostViewedNews/idJPJAPAN-19971220110313 http://jp.reuters.com/article/mostViewedNews/idJPJAPAN-19971... edited: edited "poisoning" into "exposure" edited: Added evacuation distances

patio11 16y ago
This is a very consequential difference: 被ばく does not mean radiation poisoning, it means radiation exposure. You can have sub-clinical (i.e. no impact to health) exposure. For example, if you've ever had a dental X-ray, you've been hibaku'ed. So far, the only report of radiation poisoning which I've heard is a SDF member who was on-site when one of the steam explosions happened.
- harisenbon 16y ago
  Sorry, you are right. I actually don't know at what point exposure becomes poisoning. I believe there were 3 SDF members who were hospitalized for radiation, but I could be wrong (also, I read it on the 共産党 site, so who knows)
  - alextgordon 16y ago
    Wikipedia has a table: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#Exposure_levels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning#Exposure_le... According to that, fatal poisoning starts at around 2 Sv. According to the BBC, levels in the surrounding area are 8 mSv per hour, so not enough for acute poisoning given the timings, though not at all good for you. For comparison, a chest x-ray is 60 µSv.

juiceandjuice 16y ago

It's never been 'inconceivable' that nuclear plants would fail. Nuclear energy was a risk nations were willing to take to keep you plugged in, making this post right now. You're faulting engineering that predates the microprocessor, at a power plant scheduled to be decommissioned soon, for failing in the two worst natural disasters (earthquake + tsunami) in Japan's modern history. I just wanted to make that clear.

forensic 16y ago
If society considers the loss of life acceptable given the benefits, fine. But I don't think it does. It's not just engineers who are responsible, in any event.
- wiredfool 16y ago
  Something like 40k deaths per year are from auto accidents. Is that worth it? 158k due to lung cancer, 86%of that smoking related. Worth it?
- kelnos 16y ago
  If society doesn't consider this comparatively small loss of life acceptable given the benefits, then society is stupid. But we already knew society is stupid, and terrible at risk analysis. If that weren't the case, we'd have many many more nuclear reactors, and no one would want to get in their cars, ever.
  - brazzy 16y ago
    If anyone is stupid and terrible at risk analysis it's the people who still spew that party line. It was already stupid when there had been only one complete failure of nuclear plant safety, and it happened to the "bad guys" whom everyone could just assume must have been more stupid and careless than we "good guys" could ever possibly be. But fact is, people have acted stupid and careless handling nuclear plants everywhere, and a risk analysis that assumes all risks are foreseeable and perfect execution of safety measures is just incredibly idiotic.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

richcollins 16y ago

The occurrence of radiation related deaths in this one instance isn't strong evidence that it is more dangerous than alternatives: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is...

forensic 16y ago
While I believe your implication is correct, the public is not going to believe it. When it comes to nuclear energy, perception is more important than reality.

cdavid 16y ago

Who are most intellectual engineers ? I agree that most news seem to be conflicting, and very hard to understand for the layman, but I cannot possibly see how anyone can claim the issue has been solved when even the people with incentive to downplay the reality (Japanese gvt, TEPCO) say that the situation is increasingly worrying. When you read nuclear news website (http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/ http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/), it seems the issue is potentially very serious, where the potentially become less and less uncertain rapidly. Given that this news website has the support of the world nuclear association, I would be inclined to trust them most than any general news channel out there (being tv/journals or of course Japanese gvt).

Gupie 16y ago

"until now it has been inconceivable to me that people making nuke plants could possibly underestimate the risks" What I don't understand is why the walls meant to protect the plant from a Tsunami were too low.

brazzy 16y ago

the beliefs of most intellectual engineer types is that the nuclear power plant dangers have been solved. Not at all true for the intellectual engineer types I know. You may want to reassess how much of your certainties are cultural. it has been inconceivable to me that people making nuke plants could possibly underestimate the risks. That sounds so inconceivably naive to me that, out of the context of the rest of your post, I'd be sure it was meant sarcastically.