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So I have to spell it out for you? The typical pro-nuclear-power rant goes like this: everything else is more dangerous than radiation, therefore radiation is n

by Tichy 16y ago

So I have to spell it out for you? The typical pro-nuclear-power rant goes like this: everything else is more dangerous than radiation, therefore radiation is not dangerous. This is not valid logic, which I hoped to demonstrate by stating an absurd variant of that kind of logic.

chc 16y ago
Except that, in order to be meaningful, "dangerous" must indeed be relative. Anything that happens to anyone at any time in their life is strongly correlated with death within the next 120 years, so your "absurd variant of that kind of logic" is also an absurd variant of the statement "drinking water is not dangerous." At any rate. patio11 doesn't appear to be claiming that it would be safe if you went right up to the sun and sat there. The point he's making, AFAICT, is that the mere existence of a nuclear reaction or radiation somewhere is not cause for alarm, and can be quite beneficial. If you look at outer space and single out stellar radiation as the thing that will kill people, you must just be grinding an axe.
- Tichy 16y ago
  Somebody brought up the example of the sun to "prove" that radiation is not dangerous. I merely pointed out that we are protected by a magnetic field, so not all of the radiation reaches us. I don't see the relevance of pointing out that space kills you anyway, without radiation, hence my reaction. For what it is worth, the article explicitly mentioned that the current levels of radiation is not dangerous. Yet the pro-nuclear crowd has to fall over themselves making up stupid examples of daily safe exposure to radiation. For what it's worth, that kind of argumentation really is like saying "drinking water is safe, therefore we shouldn't worry about Tsunamis". I wanted to believe the pro-nuclear-crowd for a while, but as I said, their useless comparisons make me lose faith. For starters they don't even seem to understand the difference between radiation and radioactive isotopes. Edit: yes, isotopes, not particles, I was too lazy to look it up in the dictionary.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    > For starters they don't even seem to understand the difference between radiation and radioactive particles. Do you mean "radioactive isotopes" when you say "radioactive particles"? We usually refer to things like electrons and protons are particles (and beta particles, AKA electrons, are one type of radiation). Unless you were trying to draw some distinction between high energy photons (gamma rays) and alpha/beta particles? I'm guessing not, because that would hurt your argument. After all, the sun emits tons of electrons via solar wind, which get caught up in the Earth's magnetic field. Anyhow, I don't think you'll find many people here who don't know this stuff. If you're just trying to say that no analogy is perfect, well, I have to agree. I've never seen a perfect analogy either, though some are better than others.
    - Tichy 16y ago
      Thanks for the clarification, I meant isotopes. My point was not "no analogy is perfect", my point was most analogies I have seen from the pro-nuclear crowd were stupid and insulting. Sorry I can't find better words for it. What haven't we read - from eating bananas to the sun, you name it.
      - Natsu 16y ago
        Bananas and the sun are both radiation sources which pose little health risk to humans on Earth. Just like the radioactive isotopes detected in California. (As opposed to humans in space, who would be in more serious danger of solar radiation.) The reason people are trying to point that out is to help people become familiar with radiation. Familiar and intentional risks are less scary. If you want more info on that, I suggest reading Bruce Schneier's books. That said, there are some people who have good reason to worry. For example, I'm very concerned about how long that plant worker was near the 1 Sv/hr water. I'm glad they're getting robots over there. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be more widespread than that. They're aware of the risks of contaminated food and are on guard. We've learned quite a bit since Chernobyl. The engineers will learn a lot here, too. When you study engineering, the first thing they do is tell you horror stories about every major engineering disaster they can find. The Tacoma Narrows bridge video alone has probably been seen by almost every engineering student since 1941 or so. My point is that, even if they're fighting to keep adequate containment on this plant following a worst-case scenario, the engineers won't let the same things happen again, provided they're allowed to upgrade the existing plants. EDIT: Accidental italics.
Natsu 16y ago
> The typical pro-nuclear-power rant goes like this: everything else is more dangerous than radiation, therefore radiation is not dangerous. You're misrepresenting the argument. The argument is that radiation is less dangerous than the alternatives. We basically don't have a choice but to use some form of power generation. It even helps feed us by creating fertilizer. Citation: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Haber_process https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Haber_process So the logic is that, if we have little choice but to take some risk, we ought to take the smallest risk. Obviously, we should push forward to advance all types of power generation, including things like wind & solar. I don't seriously think those can provide base load, but I would be very happy if scientists were able to prove me wrong, especially if they could manage that without rare earths, which tend to pollute the environment with radioactive sludge during mining. Citation: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine#Environmental_impact https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mountain_Pass...
- Tichy 16y ago
  "We basically don't have a choice but to use some form of power generation" Humans seem to have done well for thousands of years without electricity. Just saying. Don't bother to reply with death rates and so on - it is a complex subject, but your generalization is definitely too simple. The fact is, there are lots of alternatives. Maybe we need nuclear power to sustain three TVs per household, though. Is it worth the price? As for fertilizer, I can produce you some fertilizer without any help of nuclear power, too. I do it every day.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    > Humans seem to have done well for thousands of years without electricity. The problem is one of scale. There's no way you can produce enough so that people won't starve without some form of power (coal, natural gas, etc. work too, nuclear isn't the only option, just one of the better ones, and costs fewer lives than the alternatives). For those thousands of years, we had a much, MUCH smaller population. Notice the spike in the world population graph: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_population https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_populat... Also look under the "Forecast" section, where it lists estimated world population back to 70k BC. Which people should we permit to starve in order to reduce world population to that which is more readily sustainable? I mean, that's basically our only other option. We wouldn't have gotten even this far without the Green revolution: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Green_revolution https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Green_revolut... If we suppose that the 1750s levels are considered sustainable, then they had 791 million people, while the 2008 estimate is 6,707 million. Thus, we have to get rid of just under 6 billion? That's, very roughly, 6 out of every 7 people. Ouch. Or we can choose which types of power generation to use as best we can based on the risk: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so... That said, I agree very much with the reply to this: http://www.quora.com/Does-who-dies-matter-morally-when-assessing-energy-options http://www.quora.com/Does-who-dies-matter-morally-when-asses... Our goal should always be zero deaths. It's an impossible standard, but we still have to try. But please give the engineers some credit for trying.

by Tichy 16y ago

chc 16y ago

Except that, in order to be meaningful, "dangerous" must indeed be relative. Anything that happens to anyone at any time in their life is strongly correlated with death within the next 120 years, so your "absurd variant of that kind of logic" is also an absurd variant of the statement "drinking water is not dangerous." At any rate. patio11 doesn't appear to be claiming that it would be safe if you went right up to the sun and sat there. The point he's making, AFAICT, is that the mere existence of a nuclear reaction or radiation somewhere is not cause for alarm, and can be quite beneficial. If you look at outer space and single out stellar radiation as the thing that will kill people, you must just be grinding an axe.

Tichy 16y ago
Somebody brought up the example of the sun to "prove" that radiation is not dangerous. I merely pointed out that we are protected by a magnetic field, so not all of the radiation reaches us. I don't see the relevance of pointing out that space kills you anyway, without radiation, hence my reaction. For what it is worth, the article explicitly mentioned that the current levels of radiation is not dangerous. Yet the pro-nuclear crowd has to fall over themselves making up stupid examples of daily safe exposure to radiation. For what it's worth, that kind of argumentation really is like saying "drinking water is safe, therefore we shouldn't worry about Tsunamis". I wanted to believe the pro-nuclear-crowd for a while, but as I said, their useless comparisons make me lose faith. For starters they don't even seem to understand the difference between radiation and radioactive isotopes. Edit: yes, isotopes, not particles, I was too lazy to look it up in the dictionary.
- Natsu 16y ago
  > For starters they don't even seem to understand the difference between radiation and radioactive particles. Do you mean "radioactive isotopes" when you say "radioactive particles"? We usually refer to things like electrons and protons are particles (and beta particles, AKA electrons, are one type of radiation). Unless you were trying to draw some distinction between high energy photons (gamma rays) and alpha/beta particles? I'm guessing not, because that would hurt your argument. After all, the sun emits tons of electrons via solar wind, which get caught up in the Earth's magnetic field. Anyhow, I don't think you'll find many people here who don't know this stuff. If you're just trying to say that no analogy is perfect, well, I have to agree. I've never seen a perfect analogy either, though some are better than others.
  - Tichy 16y ago
    Thanks for the clarification, I meant isotopes. My point was not "no analogy is perfect", my point was most analogies I have seen from the pro-nuclear crowd were stupid and insulting. Sorry I can't find better words for it. What haven't we read - from eating bananas to the sun, you name it.
    - Natsu 16y ago
      Bananas and the sun are both radiation sources which pose little health risk to humans on Earth. Just like the radioactive isotopes detected in California. (As opposed to humans in space, who would be in more serious danger of solar radiation.) The reason people are trying to point that out is to help people become familiar with radiation. Familiar and intentional risks are less scary. If you want more info on that, I suggest reading Bruce Schneier's books. That said, there are some people who have good reason to worry. For example, I'm very concerned about how long that plant worker was near the 1 Sv/hr water. I'm glad they're getting robots over there. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be more widespread than that. They're aware of the risks of contaminated food and are on guard. We've learned quite a bit since Chernobyl. The engineers will learn a lot here, too. When you study engineering, the first thing they do is tell you horror stories about every major engineering disaster they can find. The Tacoma Narrows bridge video alone has probably been seen by almost every engineering student since 1941 or so. My point is that, even if they're fighting to keep adequate containment on this plant following a worst-case scenario, the engineers won't let the same things happen again, provided they're allowed to upgrade the existing plants. EDIT: Accidental italics.

Natsu 16y ago

> The typical pro-nuclear-power rant goes like this: everything else is more dangerous than radiation, therefore radiation is not dangerous. You're misrepresenting the argument. The argument is that radiation is less dangerous than the alternatives. We basically don't have a choice but to use some form of power generation. It even helps feed us by creating fertilizer. Citation: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Haber_process https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Haber_process So the logic is that, if we have little choice but to take some risk, we ought to take the smallest risk. Obviously, we should push forward to advance all types of power generation, including things like wind & solar. I don't seriously think those can provide base load, but I would be very happy if scientists were able to prove me wrong, especially if they could manage that without rare earths, which tend to pollute the environment with radioactive sludge during mining. Citation: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine#Environmental_impact https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mountain_Pass...

Tichy 16y ago
"We basically don't have a choice but to use some form of power generation" Humans seem to have done well for thousands of years without electricity. Just saying. Don't bother to reply with death rates and so on - it is a complex subject, but your generalization is definitely too simple. The fact is, there are lots of alternatives. Maybe we need nuclear power to sustain three TVs per household, though. Is it worth the price? As for fertilizer, I can produce you some fertilizer without any help of nuclear power, too. I do it every day.
- Natsu 16y ago
  > Humans seem to have done well for thousands of years without electricity. The problem is one of scale. There's no way you can produce enough so that people won't starve without some form of power (coal, natural gas, etc. work too, nuclear isn't the only option, just one of the better ones, and costs fewer lives than the alternatives). For those thousands of years, we had a much, MUCH smaller population. Notice the spike in the world population graph: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_population https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/World_populat... Also look under the "Forecast" section, where it lists estimated world population back to 70k BC. Which people should we permit to starve in order to reduce world population to that which is more readily sustainable? I mean, that's basically our only other option. We wouldn't have gotten even this far without the Green revolution: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Green_revolution https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Green_revolut... If we suppose that the 1750s levels are considered sustainable, then they had 791 million people, while the 2008 estimate is 6,707 million. Thus, we have to get rid of just under 6 billion? That's, very roughly, 6 out of every 7 people. Ouch. Or we can choose which types of power generation to use as best we can based on the risk: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so... That said, I agree very much with the reply to this: http://www.quora.com/Does-who-dies-matter-morally-when-assessing-energy-options http://www.quora.com/Does-who-dies-matter-morally-when-asses... Our goal should always be zero deaths. It's an impossible standard, but we still have to try. But please give the engineers some credit for trying.