6 ms·

MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

64 points by maw 16y ago

dhimes 16y ago
Does anybody know what time this was posted? I don't think it was 4:51 PM (if so, what time zone would that be? It's now 2:42pm US EDT).
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- lutorm 16y ago
  system_clock_uses_UTC ? ;-)
  - dhimes 16y ago
    Ah, with the "PM" I didn't think UTC-- I always use 24 hr. Thanks.
iwwr 16y ago
So far, the best layman source on these events.
hop 16y ago
The wikipedia "Timeline of the Fukushima Nuclear accidents" is the most up to date source I have been following - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_nuclear_accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_nucle...
- jedbrown 16y ago
  Another frequently updated source: http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
  - lutorm 16y ago
    Thanks for that link, that is the best source of facts without unnecessary blabber that I've seen so far. The IAEA site also confirms the radiation level that I heard in various places: As reported earlier, a 400 millisieverts (mSv) per hour radiation dose observed at Fukushima Daiichi occurred between Units 3 and 4. Just so that we're clear: 400mSv/h is a serious amount of radiation. A short-term exposure of 1Sv is a ballpark value for acute radiation sickness, and you'd get that in 2.5h. Like the IAEA says, that's a point value right in the plant, but if the workers were exposed to that sort of radiation level, saying that "no one will die from radiation here" is not justifiable.
hermanthegerman 16y ago
Siemens astroturfing http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-strange-case-of-josef-oehmen/ http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-strange-case-of-josef-oe...
- angusgr 16y ago
  FWIW, Josef Oehman has posted some explanation on the original blog post: http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/ http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-wo... I think the primary problems here are insufficient concrete information, and also masses of confirmation bias in both directions (leading people to essentially find whatever they want to find in a mass of conflicting information.) At least the information should become increasingly clear over the next month or two, which should cut down somewhat on the second problem.
- LunaCity 16y ago
  Bullshit. The MIT NSE department has a link to mitnse.com on their main webpage. http://web.mit.edu/nse/ http://web.mit.edu/nse/
svedlin 16y ago
This is a good site. And our prayers are with the quake survivors in Japan and the responders who are working to contain the problem during this horrible disaster. Any model of nuclear power reliability would have a high degree of uncertainty (due to intractability) and would need to account for arbitrary faults in design, siting, construction, operation, and monitoring. In CS there's a concept of "byzantine fault tolerance" where every processor in a network can fail in arbitrary ways. The minimum reliability rate predicted by the safety model would need to be on the order of 1-10^-8 to have assurance that major catastrophic events would not be likely to occur within some reasonable time span. How much confidence can you have that a model is consistent with reality to within 8 or 9 decimal places in order to overcome the minimum acceptable reliability level? We cannot come close to this in a complex, realistic system analysis. This is not like other problems we normally encounter, where the minimum acceptable reliability to prevent an immediate global catastrophe is orders of magnitude lower. Due to high model uncertainty and low acceptable failure rate, it is difficult in principle to come up with a convincing pro-nuclear argument whose lower interval didn't have a high expected death rate. In this case, the heroism of the emergency responders was the difference between an immediate catastrophe and the current situation. Logistical problems and equipment failures impeded the response. Had the delays been exacerbated or had there been other complications (such as aftershocks that weakened the system), it's easy to see the delays could've been extended to the point where intervention wouldn't have been as effective. Solar thermal power generation and wind are safe alternatives that can provide all 474 exajoules of earth's global energy demand. It's cheaper than the alternatives when externalities are properly accounted for and the initial investment would be a reasonable fraction of global GDP (certainly much less than the global financial crisis cost and it would actually stimulate the economy). Technology is ready. However, there are primarily sociological hurdles now (how do we get powerful polluters to change course?) Why should anyone have to die for electricity? Renewable energy is safe. Emergency responders and residents are all at serious risk. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-en...
- uikjhgyujmn 16y ago
  >Why should anyone have to die for electricity Depends - if it's our citizens following an accident obviously never. If it's some civilians in the middle east that happen to be living on top of our oil, or some poor people in the 3rd world that are being poisoned by air pollution - well tough, can't make an omelet without breaking eggs etc.
illumin8 16y ago
I find it extremely interesting (and by that I mean suspicious) that the Siemens astroturf post "Why I am not worried about Japan's Nuclear Reactors" has been migrated from a quote-unquote "personal" WordPress blog onto a quasi-official MIT website that was suspiciously purchased Sunday evening. Not only that, the text of the post has been so dramatically altered that it no longer says anything about not being worried, or how the concrete containment will prevent anything from possibly going wrong. This entire thing smells like a huge PR stunt from a company (Siemens) that recently donated money to MIT and has a huge economic interest in preventing any bad publicity about nuclear power from appearing in the media. I actually find it shameful that HN can be so easily duped by this obviously doctored information. See my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319278 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319278 when this "news" was posted Sunday.
- guscost 16y ago
  If you have reason to believe that the information is doctored, it would be a better idea to explain why. Attacking the messenger is fine for scoring points in a debate, but it isn't going to bring anything valuable to the discussion. We should be thinking about the people who are confused and scared right now, not Siemens and their bottom line.
  - bhousel 16y ago
    He did explain why.
    - LunaCity 16y ago
      There is a direct link to mitnse.com from the MIT NSE main web page here: http://web.mit.edu/nse/ http://web.mit.edu/nse/
    - guscost 16y ago
      Because the guy made an incorrect assumption before he had the proper data, or something else? Most people did that, it's obviously not an unfixable problem. Also, can't we just ask some guy who was working at the plant if there is a third stage? How does this guy know that it hasn't been upgraded?

64 points by maw 16y ago

Does anybody know what time this was posted? I don't think it was 4:51 PM (if so, what time zone would that be? It's now 2:42pm US EDT).

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
lutorm 16y ago
system_clock_uses_UTC ? ;-)
- dhimes 16y ago
  Ah, with the "PM" I didn't think UTC-- I always use 24 hr. Thanks.

iwwr 16y ago

So far, the best layman source on these events.

hop 16y ago

The wikipedia "Timeline of the Fukushima Nuclear accidents" is the most up to date source I have been following - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_nuclear_accidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_nucle...

jedbrown 16y ago
Another frequently updated source: http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
- lutorm 16y ago
  Thanks for that link, that is the best source of facts without unnecessary blabber that I've seen so far. The IAEA site also confirms the radiation level that I heard in various places: As reported earlier, a 400 millisieverts (mSv) per hour radiation dose observed at Fukushima Daiichi occurred between Units 3 and 4. Just so that we're clear: 400mSv/h is a serious amount of radiation. A short-term exposure of 1Sv is a ballpark value for acute radiation sickness, and you'd get that in 2.5h. Like the IAEA says, that's a point value right in the plant, but if the workers were exposed to that sort of radiation level, saying that "no one will die from radiation here" is not justifiable.

hermanthegerman 16y ago

Siemens astroturfing http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-strange-case-of-josef-oehmen/ http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-strange-case-of-josef-oe...

angusgr 16y ago
FWIW, Josef Oehman has posted some explanation on the original blog post: http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/ http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-wo... I think the primary problems here are insufficient concrete information, and also masses of confirmation bias in both directions (leading people to essentially find whatever they want to find in a mass of conflicting information.) At least the information should become increasingly clear over the next month or two, which should cut down somewhat on the second problem.
LunaCity 16y ago
Bullshit. The MIT NSE department has a link to mitnse.com on their main webpage. http://web.mit.edu/nse/ http://web.mit.edu/nse/

svedlin 16y ago

This is a good site. And our prayers are with the quake survivors in Japan and the responders who are working to contain the problem during this horrible disaster. Any model of nuclear power reliability would have a high degree of uncertainty (due to intractability) and would need to account for arbitrary faults in design, siting, construction, operation, and monitoring. In CS there's a concept of "byzantine fault tolerance" where every processor in a network can fail in arbitrary ways. The minimum reliability rate predicted by the safety model would need to be on the order of 1-10^-8 to have assurance that major catastrophic events would not be likely to occur within some reasonable time span. How much confidence can you have that a model is consistent with reality to within 8 or 9 decimal places in order to overcome the minimum acceptable reliability level? We cannot come close to this in a complex, realistic system analysis. This is not like other problems we normally encounter, where the minimum acceptable reliability to prevent an immediate global catastrophe is orders of magnitude lower. Due to high model uncertainty and low acceptable failure rate, it is difficult in principle to come up with a convincing pro-nuclear argument whose lower interval didn't have a high expected death rate. In this case, the heroism of the emergency responders was the difference between an immediate catastrophe and the current situation. Logistical problems and equipment failures impeded the response. Had the delays been exacerbated or had there been other complications (such as aftershocks that weakened the system), it's easy to see the delays could've been extended to the point where intervention wouldn't have been as effective. Solar thermal power generation and wind are safe alternatives that can provide all 474 exajoules of earth's global energy demand. It's cheaper than the alternatives when externalities are properly accounted for and the initial investment would be a reasonable fraction of global GDP (certainly much less than the global financial crisis cost and it would actually stimulate the economy). Technology is ready. However, there are primarily sociological hurdles now (how do we get powerful polluters to change course?) Why should anyone have to die for electricity? Renewable energy is safe. Emergency responders and residents are all at serious risk. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-en...

uikjhgyujmn 16y ago
>Why should anyone have to die for electricity Depends - if it's our citizens following an accident obviously never. If it's some civilians in the middle east that happen to be living on top of our oil, or some poor people in the 3rd world that are being poisoned by air pollution - well tough, can't make an omelet without breaking eggs etc.

illumin8 16y ago

I find it extremely interesting (and by that I mean suspicious) that the Siemens astroturf post "Why I am not worried about Japan's Nuclear Reactors" has been migrated from a quote-unquote "personal" WordPress blog onto a quasi-official MIT website that was suspiciously purchased Sunday evening. Not only that, the text of the post has been so dramatically altered that it no longer says anything about not being worried, or how the concrete containment will prevent anything from possibly going wrong. This entire thing smells like a huge PR stunt from a company (Siemens) that recently donated money to MIT and has a huge economic interest in preventing any bad publicity about nuclear power from appearing in the media. I actually find it shameful that HN can be so easily duped by this obviously doctored information. See my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319278 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319278 when this "news" was posted Sunday.

guscost 16y ago
If you have reason to believe that the information is doctored, it would be a better idea to explain why. Attacking the messenger is fine for scoring points in a debate, but it isn't going to bring anything valuable to the discussion. We should be thinking about the people who are confused and scared right now, not Siemens and their bottom line.
- bhousel 16y ago
  He did explain why.
  - LunaCity 16y ago
    There is a direct link to mitnse.com from the MIT NSE main web page here: http://web.mit.edu/nse/ http://web.mit.edu/nse/
  - guscost 16y ago
    Because the guy made an incorrect assumption before he had the proper data, or something else? Most people did that, it's obviously not an unfixable problem. Also, can't we just ask some guy who was working at the plant if there is a third stage? How does this guy know that it hasn't been upgraded?