5 ms·

I live less than 100 km away from Olkiluoto nuclear plant, and I have never been worried about its safety. I wonder why this incident ever got any publicity out

I live less than 100 km away from Olkiluoto nuclear plant, and I have never been worried about its safety. I wonder why this incident ever got any publicity outside Finland. Even here it faded away very quickly.

jsnell 6y ago
It's a postmortem of a failure in a complicated system, and those are almost always interesting to read.
- espadrine 6y ago
  They definitely make press, but my opinion is that it is detrimental to public perception of risk. Distributed systems are complicated beasts too, and have fascinating failure modes, but they get no press, because there are so many incidents and so many installations. Centralized systems make a better scapegoat regardless of probabilities. It reminds me of something Georges Charpak mentioned, paraphrasing: we can detect tiny particles, and now we are scared, but we cannot detect economic crashes, and we should be more scared of that.
  - paganel 6y ago
    > but my opinion is that it is detrimental to public perception of risk. The Finnish nuclear unit-nuclear watchdog had found that radiation levels had risen [1], the public does deserve to know and make up its own opinion about it. Also, centralized systems are a lot more vulnerable and high-risk compared to distributed systems. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/finland-nuclear-incident/radiation-levels-rose-inside-a-finnish-nuclear-unit-nuclear-watchdog-idUSKBN28K1WQ https://www.reuters.com/article/finland-nuclear-incident/rad...
    - vesinisa 6y ago
      The initial reporting was misleading in that it was not clearly communicated that where the radiation levels had risen. So yes, radiation levels rose inside the primary cooling system. This is what triggered the automatic emergency shutdown. But the primary cooling system is anyway 100% isolated from the environment. In particular, no change of radiation levels whatsoever outside the reactor building was ever detected. But initial reports did not make this quite clear.
  - _jal 6y ago
    Wait until it is common public knowledge that a distributed system failure can cause a loss of life. People like you and I may be interested in these postmortems strictly for the analysis, but the public at large is not. On the other hand, they're very interested in things that can kill them. I also wonder if there's more public attention paid to nuclear incidents in the region because of the proximity of a player who does not disclose or cooperate in nuclear incidents.
  - mr_overalls 6y ago
    > but my opinion is that it is detrimental to public perception of risk. This would positively affect my perception of the plant's operators. They handled the crisis, and now are laying out the post-mortem for the public in a transparent manner. A culture of secrecy conceals incompetence, and that can lead to disaster. See: Chernobyl
- kevas 6y ago
  You may enjoy the book called The Logic of Failure
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JorgeGT 6y ago
It's indeed weird, INES 0 events are rarely reported... even levels 1 and 2 rarely are. Just yesterday there was one INES 1 anomaly here in Spain and 2 in France... that said the reading was super interesting, I get why it is on HN.
kennu 6y ago
I think that at least within Finland, worries were mostly related to communication delays in informing relevant organizations about a potential nuclear incident. I.e. if this had turned out to be a more serious incident, the response would have been delayed. Glad to see it wasn't serious.
CptMauli 6y ago
It was reported about it in the German press. I'm an opponent of nuclear power, but in this case I can only shrug and conclude that everything worked as expected, the issue was identified and dealt with.
- tigerBL00D 6y ago
  > I'm an opponent of nuclear power Perhaps I am being pedantic, but this strikes me as a strange position to announce. Nuclear power is a broad category of things which includes fission, decay and fusion, all of the above can be used to generate heat.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Perhaps? If you look at a pie chart of how the electric power is generated in your country, and you see "nuclear power", which of "fission", "decay" and "fusion" are you going to think about?
    - tigerBL00D 6y ago
      Yes, that's why I qualified my comment. My point is that opposition is more effective when directed at specific design issues. It's about the quality of technical discourse. Just like you wouldn't say you oppose the internet if you have an issue with Facebook etc.
      - heavenlyblue 6y ago
        The specific design issue with fusion is that it doesn’t exist
        tigerBL00D 6y ago
        Fusion is a work in progress and it is likely what will power our civilization in the future. In the meantime there are new types of fission reactors being developed (small modular such as Nuscale, advanced fission deployed in China) and they aim the address shortcomings of older designs. The problem with current generation of fission plants is that they were primarily designed to be integrated into military-industrial complex that produces fuel for nuclear weapons. You can have safer fission plants by focusing on power generation only. P.S. Not sure what's up with downvotes, but whatever.
jagged-chisel 6y ago
> I wonder why this incident ever got any publicity outside Finland. I would argue that it is precisely this type of incident that should be well publicized to demonstrate how things work when they're working correctly.
nikanj 6y ago
Because nuclear bad. If it was a coal plant accident that killed 15 it would not make headlines outside of the country, but a 0-casualty nuclear accident makes it to the front page
- tuukkah 6y ago
  No, it's because a nuclear reactor has a small but real risk for a Chernobyl or Fukushima like event. We are not good at managing risks of this impact size: it's a slippery slope if small disturbances are not taken seriously. It's not unlike the reporting of near misses in aviation.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Both events killed like less than a hundred people directly in total, maybe a few thousand if all externalities are accounted for. Meanwhile dam failures have killed several hundred thousand people. I've always wondered why anti-nuke people weren't also adamant anti-hydro as well.
  - ryanlol 6y ago
    > Fukushima like event What was the impact of the nuclear reactor there?
    - tuukkah 6y ago
      "154,000 residents evacuated from the communities surrounding the plant due to the rising off-site levels of ambient ionizing radiation caused by airborne radioactive contamination from the damaged reactors." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_di...
      - ryanlol 6y ago
        Most studies seem to suggest that the evacuation ended up being much worse than doing nothing at all, no? For example: > “With hindsight, we can say the evacuation was a mistake,” says Philip Thomas, a professor of risk management at the University of Bristol and leader of a recent research project on nuclear accidents. “We would have recommended that nobody be evacuated.” https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b189ea https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b18...
cbozeman 6y ago
> I wonder why this incident ever got any publicity outside Finland. CAUSE NUKELEEAR IS BAAADD!! <- some uneducated reactionary, probably.

jsnell 6y ago

It's a postmortem of a failure in a complicated system, and those are almost always interesting to read.

espadrine 6y ago
They definitely make press, but my opinion is that it is detrimental to public perception of risk. Distributed systems are complicated beasts too, and have fascinating failure modes, but they get no press, because there are so many incidents and so many installations. Centralized systems make a better scapegoat regardless of probabilities. It reminds me of something Georges Charpak mentioned, paraphrasing: we can detect tiny particles, and now we are scared, but we cannot detect economic crashes, and we should be more scared of that.
- paganel 6y ago
  > but my opinion is that it is detrimental to public perception of risk. The Finnish nuclear unit-nuclear watchdog had found that radiation levels had risen [1], the public does deserve to know and make up its own opinion about it. Also, centralized systems are a lot more vulnerable and high-risk compared to distributed systems. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/finland-nuclear-incident/radiation-levels-rose-inside-a-finnish-nuclear-unit-nuclear-watchdog-idUSKBN28K1WQ https://www.reuters.com/article/finland-nuclear-incident/rad...
  - vesinisa 6y ago
    The initial reporting was misleading in that it was not clearly communicated that where the radiation levels had risen. So yes, radiation levels rose inside the primary cooling system. This is what triggered the automatic emergency shutdown. But the primary cooling system is anyway 100% isolated from the environment. In particular, no change of radiation levels whatsoever outside the reactor building was ever detected. But initial reports did not make this quite clear.
- _jal 6y ago
  Wait until it is common public knowledge that a distributed system failure can cause a loss of life. People like you and I may be interested in these postmortems strictly for the analysis, but the public at large is not. On the other hand, they're very interested in things that can kill them. I also wonder if there's more public attention paid to nuclear incidents in the region because of the proximity of a player who does not disclose or cooperate in nuclear incidents.
- mr_overalls 6y ago
  > but my opinion is that it is detrimental to public perception of risk. This would positively affect my perception of the plant's operators. They handled the crisis, and now are laying out the post-mortem for the public in a transparent manner. A culture of secrecy conceals incompetence, and that can lead to disaster. See: Chernobyl
kevas 6y ago
You may enjoy the book called The Logic of Failure

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

JorgeGT 6y ago

It's indeed weird, INES 0 events are rarely reported... even levels 1 and 2 rarely are. Just yesterday there was one INES 1 anomaly here in Spain and 2 in France... that said the reading was super interesting, I get why it is on HN.

kennu 6y ago

I think that at least within Finland, worries were mostly related to communication delays in informing relevant organizations about a potential nuclear incident. I.e. if this had turned out to be a more serious incident, the response would have been delayed. Glad to see it wasn't serious.

CptMauli 6y ago

It was reported about it in the German press. I'm an opponent of nuclear power, but in this case I can only shrug and conclude that everything worked as expected, the issue was identified and dealt with.

tigerBL00D 6y ago
> I'm an opponent of nuclear power Perhaps I am being pedantic, but this strikes me as a strange position to announce. Nuclear power is a broad category of things which includes fission, decay and fusion, all of the above can be used to generate heat.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Perhaps? If you look at a pie chart of how the electric power is generated in your country, and you see "nuclear power", which of "fission", "decay" and "fusion" are you going to think about?
  - tigerBL00D 6y ago
    Yes, that's why I qualified my comment. My point is that opposition is more effective when directed at specific design issues. It's about the quality of technical discourse. Just like you wouldn't say you oppose the internet if you have an issue with Facebook etc.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      The specific design issue with fusion is that it doesn’t exist
      - tigerBL00D 6y ago
        Fusion is a work in progress and it is likely what will power our civilization in the future. In the meantime there are new types of fission reactors being developed (small modular such as Nuscale, advanced fission deployed in China) and they aim the address shortcomings of older designs. The problem with current generation of fission plants is that they were primarily designed to be integrated into military-industrial complex that produces fuel for nuclear weapons. You can have safer fission plants by focusing on power generation only. P.S. Not sure what's up with downvotes, but whatever.

jagged-chisel 6y ago

> I wonder why this incident ever got any publicity outside Finland. I would argue that it is precisely this type of incident that should be well publicized to demonstrate how things work when they're working correctly.

nikanj 6y ago

Because nuclear bad. If it was a coal plant accident that killed 15 it would not make headlines outside of the country, but a 0-casualty nuclear accident makes it to the front page

tuukkah 6y ago
No, it's because a nuclear reactor has a small but real risk for a Chernobyl or Fukushima like event. We are not good at managing risks of this impact size: it's a slippery slope if small disturbances are not taken seriously. It's not unlike the reporting of near misses in aviation.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Both events killed like less than a hundred people directly in total, maybe a few thousand if all externalities are accounted for. Meanwhile dam failures have killed several hundred thousand people. I've always wondered why anti-nuke people weren't also adamant anti-hydro as well.
- ryanlol 6y ago
  > Fukushima like event What was the impact of the nuclear reactor there?
  - tuukkah 6y ago
    "154,000 residents evacuated from the communities surrounding the plant due to the rising off-site levels of ambient ionizing radiation caused by airborne radioactive contamination from the damaged reactors." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_di...
    - ryanlol 6y ago
      Most studies seem to suggest that the evacuation ended up being much worse than doing nothing at all, no? For example: > “With hindsight, we can say the evacuation was a mistake,” says Philip Thomas, a professor of risk management at the University of Bristol and leader of a recent research project on nuclear accidents. “We would have recommended that nobody be evacuated.” https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b189ea https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b18...

cbozeman 6y ago

> I wonder why this incident ever got any publicity outside Finland. CAUSE NUKELEEAR IS BAAADD!! <- some uneducated reactionary, probably.