3 ms·
By studying past incidents which are similar and creating accurate models to predict what will happen based on the data you can rapidly access. If you have a w
by jjk166 6y ago
By studying past incidents which are similar and creating accurate models to predict what will happen based on the data you can rapidly access.
If you have a whole bunch of radiation sensors spread around your nuclear plant, you know the level of radiation that people are likely to be exposed to in the near future. If you know the effects of radiation on people, you can predict the health consequences of allowing them to be exposed. If you have records of increased death rates in various evacuations, you can predict the cost of evacuating in this instance. Compare the cost of the two options, go with the better one.
It would be one thing if it was the early days of nuclear power and no one knew what the effects of radiation were, and no one had ever considered the possibility of an accident, but this is a mature technology which people have spent decades studying in close detail. People knew at the time that the evacuation plan was a bad idea, and this current report comes as no surprise. By simply assuming that the better-safe-than-sorry approach was to evacuate rather than consulting models based on data, those in charge killed a lot of people.
- fomine3 6y agoIt's impossible to estimate future max radiation when the plant is not under control. Fukushima pref is 3rd largest prefecture in Japan and not so many people is escaped at the incident. I believe enough number of people had escaped as a result.
- jjk166 6y agoHogwash. This wasn't some rapid emergency where they lost control of the plant, the reactors shut down properly during the earth quake and most systems were fine. The problem was the tsunami took out several of the backup generators which needed to power the cooling pumps when the reactors weren't producing power and there was no connection to the grid (actually several generators had been moved in 1990 to higher ground and survived the tsunami, but their switching station was kept in the old, unprotected building so they still couldn't provide power). It took days for the reactors to overheat. Radiation levels were being monitored both on the ground and by aircraft, the problem was this data was ignored - in many cases people were evacuated into areas with more intense radiation. Of course when dealing with unknowns your predictions have error bars, but you can most certainly still make valid estimates, and there is no excuse for not doing so.