8 ms·

> Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster

> Look at Fukushima for example. It seems hard to imagine a nuclear power plant design, even Gen III or IV that would be immune to any possible natural disaster. For Fukushima, it seems that the panicked response of the local authorities (evacuating the whole area ...) was what caused the most problems.

wazoox 6y ago
Exactly zero people died because of radiation at Fukushima. And keep in mind that if the entire exclusion zone was covered with solar panels, it wouldn't produce nearly as much power annually as the nuclear plant did.
bluquark 6y ago
The magnitude and extent of the radioactive release was largely unknowable in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The local authorities were put in an impossible position, either gamble with everyone's health or evacuate at great cost. The root cause of the dilemma is that the worst case scenario for traditional nuclear is so severe and nobody can tell decision-makers with high confidence whether or not you've just hit it.
- infogulch 6y ago
  The fundamental, unsolvable difficulty of making decisions with imperfect information seems to be often under analyzed. Are there any related fields that study this decision making difficulty?
  - patrickfreed 6y ago
    professional poker
  - john-shaffer 6y ago
    I highly recommend "Probability Theory" by E.T. Jaynes. Don't be fooled by the generic title - the book is my Bible for reasoning with uncertainty. > In my opinion, this book is a required read for anyone who wishes to understand precisely how the scientific worldview is, in a mathematically defensible sense, the best possible worldview, the one that lets us optimally use evidence to develop an interlocked Bayesian network of evidence supported beliefs that can change and evolve as the evidence is accumulated. It also shows the critical connections between physics and statistical mechanics and Shannon's theorem in computational information theory, laying the foundation for a fair bit of modern physics as it demonstrates that physical entropy and information entropy are very much one and the same thing, from a certain point of view.
burfog 6y ago
The automatic shutdown contributed. Fukushima needed cooling pumps to operate. There were 3 ways to power the pumps: 1. the reactor itself, automatically shut down when the earthquake was detected 2. diesel generators, shut down by flooding 3. power lines from elsewhere, shut down by the tsunami knocking them down Clearly, shutting down the reactor is a self-inflicted problem. Had they left it running, the pumps would have had power, and the whole disaster wouldn't have happened. It's a stupid panic-driven regulation that a nuclear power plant must shut down for an earthquake. Once the earthquake hits, it is too late to reach a cool shut-down state. That would take weeks. There is no justification for doing the shutdown. It just caused problems, leading to disaster.
- cesarb 6y ago
  > It's a stupid panic-driven regulation that a nuclear power plant must shut down for an earthquake. Once the earthquake hits, it is too late to reach a cool shut-down state. It might be too late to reach a cold shut-down state, but it should be enough to reduce a lot of the pressure within the pressure vessel and the piping. If the earthquake causes a crack in the pressure vessel or the piping, this could be the difference between it bursting open and a small leak (or even nothing, if the crack is small enough to not penetrate all the way).
- fomine3 6y ago
  IIRC the reactor itself produces very high voltage power so it can't be used without a transformer that's not on power plant. Diesel generators should be proper solution but it's sunk on tsunami due to its location.
runeks 6y ago
> For Fukushima, it seems that the panicked response of the local authorities (evacuating the whole area ...) was what caused the most problems. Great. In the future let’s just avoid making wrong decisions then. Problem solved. /s

wazoox 6y ago

Exactly zero people died because of radiation at Fukushima. And keep in mind that if the entire exclusion zone was covered with solar panels, it wouldn't produce nearly as much power annually as the nuclear plant did.

bluquark 6y ago

The magnitude and extent of the radioactive release was largely unknowable in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The local authorities were put in an impossible position, either gamble with everyone's health or evacuate at great cost. The root cause of the dilemma is that the worst case scenario for traditional nuclear is so severe and nobody can tell decision-makers with high confidence whether or not you've just hit it.

infogulch 6y ago
The fundamental, unsolvable difficulty of making decisions with imperfect information seems to be often under analyzed. Are there any related fields that study this decision making difficulty?
- patrickfreed 6y ago
  professional poker
- john-shaffer 6y ago
  I highly recommend "Probability Theory" by E.T. Jaynes. Don't be fooled by the generic title - the book is my Bible for reasoning with uncertainty. > In my opinion, this book is a required read for anyone who wishes to understand precisely how the scientific worldview is, in a mathematically defensible sense, the best possible worldview, the one that lets us optimally use evidence to develop an interlocked Bayesian network of evidence supported beliefs that can change and evolve as the evidence is accumulated. It also shows the critical connections between physics and statistical mechanics and Shannon's theorem in computational information theory, laying the foundation for a fair bit of modern physics as it demonstrates that physical entropy and information entropy are very much one and the same thing, from a certain point of view.

burfog 6y ago

The automatic shutdown contributed. Fukushima needed cooling pumps to operate. There were 3 ways to power the pumps: 1. the reactor itself, automatically shut down when the earthquake was detected 2. diesel generators, shut down by flooding 3. power lines from elsewhere, shut down by the tsunami knocking them down Clearly, shutting down the reactor is a self-inflicted problem. Had they left it running, the pumps would have had power, and the whole disaster wouldn't have happened. It's a stupid panic-driven regulation that a nuclear power plant must shut down for an earthquake. Once the earthquake hits, it is too late to reach a cool shut-down state. That would take weeks. There is no justification for doing the shutdown. It just caused problems, leading to disaster.

cesarb 6y ago
> It's a stupid panic-driven regulation that a nuclear power plant must shut down for an earthquake. Once the earthquake hits, it is too late to reach a cool shut-down state. It might be too late to reach a cold shut-down state, but it should be enough to reduce a lot of the pressure within the pressure vessel and the piping. If the earthquake causes a crack in the pressure vessel or the piping, this could be the difference between it bursting open and a small leak (or even nothing, if the crack is small enough to not penetrate all the way).
fomine3 6y ago
IIRC the reactor itself produces very high voltage power so it can't be used without a transformer that's not on power plant. Diesel generators should be proper solution but it's sunk on tsunami due to its location.

runeks 6y ago

> For Fukushima, it seems that the panicked response of the local authorities (evacuating the whole area ...) was what caused the most problems. Great. In the future let’s just avoid making wrong decisions then. Problem solved. /s