5 ms·

Pretty simple, we were in the middle of a nuclear renaissance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/w

Pretty simple, we were in the middle of a nuclear renaissance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_renaissance_in_the_Uni...) in the US prior to Fukushima. Instead of informing the public of the facts (The plant was an antique, didn't meet safety standards, was built on a fault line), the media in the US used it as an opportunity for scare-mongering and politicized it.

Schlaefer 5y ago
> Instead of informing the public of the facts (The plant was an antique, didn't meet safety standards, was built on a fault line) Knowing these facts makes it even more scary. We can't move countries away from fault lines, so plants are going to be build in these places again. Everything new is going to be old eventually. There's no reason to expect meeting safety standards in the future if we can't do it right now.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  I think I understand your point here, but it also seems to me this line of thinking also denies the laws of evolution...
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Everyone seems to forget that it took a freaking tsunami that displaced hundreds of thousands of people to take out a 60 year old reactor design. While coal is killing people every day.
  - Schlaefer 5y ago
    Of course it should take a freak event to take out a nuclear power plant, it shouldn't happen every second Sunday. But I would also expect it to be an event that doesn't happen regularly every few hundred years [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html
    - korantu 5y ago
      If anything this can be ascribed to resilience of nuclear generation. The tsunami in question killed (in a first world country, no less) many thousands of people. The outdated nuclear plant located in the midst of the disaster killed none.
    - belorn 5y ago
      We should hold nuclear to the standard of hydroelectric power. The potential energy of elevated water behind a dam is on par or greater than nuclear accidents, and past dam failures has costed way more lives than nuclear has. In 2017, California had a major accidents with their Oroville Dam and evacuated of 188,000 people living downstream. This can be compared to the 154,000 evacuated from Fukushima. The United state and the state of California can be compared to Japan and the Fukushima Prefecture. Why did both countries, wealthy as they are, fail to meet the safety standards that a required of them? Both occurred during unexpected natural events. One occurred during the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began 100 years ago. The other occurred during Northern California's wettest winter in over 100 years. I suspect the first one to be more rare, through both include "hundred years" as a key factor. I suspect however that the wrong conclusion to make is to define both dams and nuclear to be inherently unsafe technologies that we can't use because people might die. They are dangerous, and historically a lot of people has died, but they are also significant safer than burning fossil fuels. More people has and will die because of fossil fuel, and until we stop burning fossil fuels we should deploy any and all alternatives.
      - sfifs 5y ago
        > a major accidents with their Oroville Dam and evacuated of 188,000 people living downstream. This can be compared to the 154,000 evacuated from Fukushima You're being disingenuous here. The waters would have flowed to the sea and most people would have been back inweeks if not days. No one's going back to Fukushima's neighborhood in decades.
        belorn 5y ago
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    More than displaced, the tsunami killed 20,000 people. It was also the biggest Earthquake in 1000+ years of recorded Japanese history, and hit a small area where it could produce a tsunami overflowing the tsunami walls. In the 99.99% likely world where this didn't happen, we'd have a much healthier nuclear power situation. But now we're in this world...
olau 5y ago
From your Wikipedia link: "A 2017 assessment put rising nuclear construction costs, low gas prices and improving renewable generation economics as the three main causes of the failure of the nuclear renaissance in the United States." While Fukushima may have made the public image worse, I believe, although I'm certainly not an expert, that its primary problem for the nuclear industry is that it demonstrated that a certain failure mode having to do with backup generators for the cooling circuit needs to be taken seriously in the design. I think this is one of the major sources of cost in nuclear plants. They need meticulous planning and execution to ensure safety.
Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
I believe it is way before Fukushima, don't forget Chernobyl and Three Mile Islands. Chernobyl is fresh on a lot of people minds back then because of how disastrously it is. It took years to get people to start to be comfortable with nuclear plants after series of regulations and safeguards to ensure maximum safety to avoid another Chernobyl. Until Fukushima fked it up for everyone else. It is not because people don't want another Fukushima, it is because people don't want another Chernobyl and its severe fallout spread to Europe and Asia. Also it didn't help when the government, USSR, tried to keep it a secret from the rest of the world and refused to take responsibilities. I don't blame the citizen for not trusting the governments when it come to nuclear power plants due to those disaster events.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Schlaefer 5y ago

> Instead of informing the public of the facts (The plant was an antique, didn't meet safety standards, was built on a fault line) Knowing these facts makes it even more scary. We can't move countries away from fault lines, so plants are going to be build in these places again. Everything new is going to be old eventually. There's no reason to expect meeting safety standards in the future if we can't do it right now.

rmbyrro 5y ago
I think I understand your point here, but it also seems to me this line of thinking also denies the laws of evolution...
nitrogen 5y ago
Everyone seems to forget that it took a freaking tsunami that displaced hundreds of thousands of people to take out a 60 year old reactor design. While coal is killing people every day.
- Schlaefer 5y ago
  Of course it should take a freak event to take out a nuclear power plant, it shouldn't happen every second Sunday. But I would also expect it to be an event that doesn't happen regularly every few hundred years [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html
  - korantu 5y ago
    If anything this can be ascribed to resilience of nuclear generation. The tsunami in question killed (in a first world country, no less) many thousands of people. The outdated nuclear plant located in the midst of the disaster killed none.
  - belorn 5y ago
    We should hold nuclear to the standard of hydroelectric power. The potential energy of elevated water behind a dam is on par or greater than nuclear accidents, and past dam failures has costed way more lives than nuclear has. In 2017, California had a major accidents with their Oroville Dam and evacuated of 188,000 people living downstream. This can be compared to the 154,000 evacuated from Fukushima. The United state and the state of California can be compared to Japan and the Fukushima Prefecture. Why did both countries, wealthy as they are, fail to meet the safety standards that a required of them? Both occurred during unexpected natural events. One occurred during the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began 100 years ago. The other occurred during Northern California's wettest winter in over 100 years. I suspect the first one to be more rare, through both include "hundred years" as a key factor. I suspect however that the wrong conclusion to make is to define both dams and nuclear to be inherently unsafe technologies that we can't use because people might die. They are dangerous, and historically a lot of people has died, but they are also significant safer than burning fossil fuels. More people has and will die because of fossil fuel, and until we stop burning fossil fuels we should deploy any and all alternatives.
    - sfifs 5y ago
      > a major accidents with their Oroville Dam and evacuated of 188,000 people living downstream. This can be compared to the 154,000 evacuated from Fukushima You're being disingenuous here. The waters would have flowed to the sea and most people would have been back inweeks if not days. No one's going back to Fukushima's neighborhood in decades.
      - belorn 5y ago
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  More than displaced, the tsunami killed 20,000 people. It was also the biggest Earthquake in 1000+ years of recorded Japanese history, and hit a small area where it could produce a tsunami overflowing the tsunami walls. In the 99.99% likely world where this didn't happen, we'd have a much healthier nuclear power situation. But now we're in this world...

olau 5y ago

From your Wikipedia link: "A 2017 assessment put rising nuclear construction costs, low gas prices and improving renewable generation economics as the three main causes of the failure of the nuclear renaissance in the United States." While Fukushima may have made the public image worse, I believe, although I'm certainly not an expert, that its primary problem for the nuclear industry is that it demonstrated that a certain failure mode having to do with backup generators for the cooling circuit needs to be taken seriously in the design. I think this is one of the major sources of cost in nuclear plants. They need meticulous planning and execution to ensure safety.

Isthatablackgsd 5y ago

I believe it is way before Fukushima, don't forget Chernobyl and Three Mile Islands. Chernobyl is fresh on a lot of people minds back then because of how disastrously it is. It took years to get people to start to be comfortable with nuclear plants after series of regulations and safeguards to ensure maximum safety to avoid another Chernobyl. Until Fukushima fked it up for everyone else. It is not because people don't want another Fukushima, it is because people don't want another Chernobyl and its severe fallout spread to Europe and Asia. Also it didn't help when the government, USSR, tried to keep it a secret from the rest of the world and refused to take responsibilities. I don't blame the citizen for not trusting the governments when it come to nuclear power plants due to those disaster events.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]