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You mean the alternate timeline where whole regions in the US become devastated by nuclear fallout? Look at this. Look at it as long as you like: https://www.g

by beders 5y ago

You mean the alternate timeline where whole regions in the US become devastated by nuclear fallout? Look at this. Look at it as long as you like: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3886475,30.0983731,1302m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3886475,30.0983731,1302m/dat... https://www.satimagingcorp.com/gallery/worldview-2/worldview-2-fukushima-daiichi/ https://www.satimagingcorp.com/gallery/worldview-2/worldview... Of course, noooo, can't happen to us. Our nuclear plants and waste disposal facilities are totally safe! Oops https://web.archive.org/web/20200118022609/https://www.abqjournal.com/364795/leak-never-supposed-to-happen.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200118022609/https://www.abqjo...

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
Chernobyl exclusion zone: 1,004 mi² Fukushima exclusion zone: 1,600 mi² I can't seem to find great numbers of how much land we expect to lose to climate change, I expect it will be quite large. I'm personally pro nuclear, but it's pretty clear we were building fairly dangerous plants back when Chernobyl & Fukushima were built. I still don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the world would be worse or better if we had built many of them in the US.
- godelski 5y ago
  The Fukushima incident shouldn't really be compared with the Chernobyl incident. Chernobyl was very preventable. As for Fukushima, the earthquake science didn't realize that such a quake was possible in the region until pretty close to the event happening, meaning little time to act in it. While people will point out early reports and hypothesis, that's not how science works. We need to peer review. The science has come a long way since then (specifically from computational modeling), but that's different from building reactors with the potential to explode (something the west didn't do) and pushing it's bounds (even if we didn't know about xenon spiking at the time).
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    Um, no. Tepco was told years before to relocate the vulnerable support equipment for safety reasons. They just didn't want to pay for it. And there's ancient monuments along the coast saying, "Don't build here." But it gets better. Tepco staff planned to completely abandon the plant in the middle of the meltdown, until the Japanese PM told them to remain and deal with the problem. Yes, their PM had to personally act as the crisis manager for much of the disaster. Also, the US military intervened with a drone survey, finding that the cooling ponds were about to explode, and insisting that they get re-covered in water beforehand. Even more than Californians, Japanese people are very aware they're in earthquake zone. Yet Fukushima.
- effie 5y ago
  Chernobyl NPP wasn't really dangerous design if run by competent people, many of those kind of NPP reactors are still working decades without a major incident. It was a mistake of the chief of the shift to proceed with unsafe test caused by the failure of the Soviet political system to maintain proper level of understanding and safety in the NPP. The personnel did not have the correct mental model of the device. Fukushima was a bad plant because they built it in a tsunami zone. Otherwise its design isn't dangerous either. But it got destroyed by unexpected tsunami. People should have expected the tsunami can happen and not build the plant there. People were stupid, NPP design would be fine if built far from tsunamis.

by beders 5y ago

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago

Chernobyl exclusion zone: 1,004 mi² Fukushima exclusion zone: 1,600 mi² I can't seem to find great numbers of how much land we expect to lose to climate change, I expect it will be quite large. I'm personally pro nuclear, but it's pretty clear we were building fairly dangerous plants back when Chernobyl & Fukushima were built. I still don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the world would be worse or better if we had built many of them in the US.

godelski 5y ago
The Fukushima incident shouldn't really be compared with the Chernobyl incident. Chernobyl was very preventable. As for Fukushima, the earthquake science didn't realize that such a quake was possible in the region until pretty close to the event happening, meaning little time to act in it. While people will point out early reports and hypothesis, that's not how science works. We need to peer review. The science has come a long way since then (specifically from computational modeling), but that's different from building reactors with the potential to explode (something the west didn't do) and pushing it's bounds (even if we didn't know about xenon spiking at the time).
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  Um, no. Tepco was told years before to relocate the vulnerable support equipment for safety reasons. They just didn't want to pay for it. And there's ancient monuments along the coast saying, "Don't build here." But it gets better. Tepco staff planned to completely abandon the plant in the middle of the meltdown, until the Japanese PM told them to remain and deal with the problem. Yes, their PM had to personally act as the crisis manager for much of the disaster. Also, the US military intervened with a drone survey, finding that the cooling ponds were about to explode, and insisting that they get re-covered in water beforehand. Even more than Californians, Japanese people are very aware they're in earthquake zone. Yet Fukushima.
effie 5y ago
Chernobyl NPP wasn't really dangerous design if run by competent people, many of those kind of NPP reactors are still working decades without a major incident. It was a mistake of the chief of the shift to proceed with unsafe test caused by the failure of the Soviet political system to maintain proper level of understanding and safety in the NPP. The personnel did not have the correct mental model of the device. Fukushima was a bad plant because they built it in a tsunami zone. Otherwise its design isn't dangerous either. But it got destroyed by unexpected tsunami. People should have expected the tsunami can happen and not build the plant there. People were stupid, NPP design would be fine if built far from tsunamis.