5 ms·

> Radioactive waste generated from treating highly contaminated water used to cool crippled reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has thrown up ye

> Radioactive waste generated from treating highly contaminated water used to cool crippled reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has thrown up yet new nightmarish challenges in decommissioning the facility, a project that is supposed to be completed in 30 years but which looks increasingly doubtful. So not only did their nuclear engineers fail to foresee the effects of the tsunami, they are still being caught out by unexpected problems a decade later. It seems that nuclear energy is just beyond the ability of even well organised societies to safely manage.

umvi 5y ago
Nuclear pollution is scary but coal pollution isn't? I bet coal pollution has killed way more than nuclear pollution per plant.
- shepherdjerred 5y ago
  Worst case for nuclear is probably worse than the worst case for coal. The planet might be transformed in unwanted ways due to global warming, but that's better than it becoming irradiated and inhospitable to life. That being said I still think that nuclear is our best option.
  - kortex 5y ago
    Chernobyl was literally the worst case for nuclear power. The design flaws were myriad and the industry has learned a tremendous amount. It's not going to irradiate the whole planet, full stop. Coal is killing the planet now.
    - shepherdjerred 5y ago
      Chernobyl could have been much, much worse. It was successfully contained.
- forgotmyoldname 5y ago
  I think part of that is due to nuclear power primarily being in decently wealthy areas with very strict regulations and high amounts of security measures being taken. Coal plants are in even the poorest, most run down areas and run by just about everyone. They’re the baseline for energy. I support expanding nuclear energy in areas that are capable of doing so, but there are some places where nuclear would be an absolute disaster far beyond what coal could ever be.
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    You could imagine, if this were to be made a global priority, a UN organisation dedicated to running nuclear plants around the world, with protection by UN forces etc. I can’t see it happening in the current anti-nuclear climate but I think it’s fixable.
    - max002 5y ago
      Wont happen, there are much more nuclear plants set to be closed than created.
- merb 5y ago
  both are bad and scary? why even bring them up together? there is no need to bet because both are stupid so why should nuclear power be defended here? do you know why there is no article how bad coal is? because everybody knows but unfortunatly most people do not understand how fucking bad fukushima even is, people like you that try to make nuclear look cool just because there exists something worse does not make nuclear look cooler.
  - nindalf 5y ago
    > why even bring them up together Because reams of news articles are written about one but not the other, feeding the incorrect perception that one is vastly more dangerous than the other.
    - olliej 5y ago
      Here's the problem with coal power, the damage is not equatable to nuclear plants: There is no way to control the impact to the environment - areas immediately surrounding a coal plant have much higher cancer rates, the ground & streams becomes toxic, wider areas have heightened acid rain risks. Then you get to impact on the global climate. All this in a perfectly operated idealized plant. In a nuclear plant that is run properly, not even perfectly, produces radioactive waste. No atmospheric pollution, no water pollution. Major "normal" failures cause radiation leaks. These are so rare that the events are individually named. Accidents that result in atypical operation that don't even harm the plant, let alone cause external impact are all recorded, and systems are updated to prevent recurrence. Even major events like three mile island have not caused any excess deaths or cancers. Catastrophic failures have basically be down to understood design flaws: Chernobyl had an RBMK reactor with know flaws, Fukushima had emergency generators in the basement despite being advised to place them higher up. Precisely because of flooding concerns. As for waste: Nuclear waste is of course hard to manage, with most "solutions" being "bury it". Whatever the end solution is, we know it won't be as horrific as a coal plants solution: aerosolizing it and pumping it into the atmosphere. A lot of noise is made about decommissioning a nuclear plant. Decommission a nuclear plant means deconstruction of the reactor and removing the remaining waste. There is no need to remediate the land itself. No one talks about decommissioning coal plants as they simply don't: the land on and around the site is left permanently toxic.
- techsin101 5y ago
  yes, coal doesn't lead to a choice between obliterating northern hemisphere vs living with 30x radiation.
- phs318u 5y ago
  You're conflating pollution (which I take to mean typical by-products of both fuel generation i.e. during mining, and power generation i.e. at the plant) and catastrophic destruction of the plant. You may well be correct with respect to pollution - I don't know and certainly would find it tricky to determine (is there a consistent measure of "negative environmental impact" for comparing such things?). However, with respect to catastrophic destruction, this recent example at a coal plant [0], pales in comparison to something like a Chernobyl or Fukushima. [0] https://reneweconomy.com.au/worlds-newest-and-most-expensive-coal-plant-explodes-after-hydrogen-leak/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/worlds-newest-and-most-expensive...
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > However, with respect to catastrophic destruction, this recent example at a coal plant [0], pales in comparison to something like a Chernobyl or Fukushima. That's not a catastrophic destruction, merely a generator explosion. Wikipedia has articles on mining and energy accidents, and you can see there are far more catastrophic one with coal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
api 5y ago
A simple way to think of it: one incident like Fukushima destroys the economics of the entire nuclear industry over a very long time span. Nuclear can only be cost competitive if there are zero such incidents ever. It’s like if one plane crash cost more to clean up than the revenue of the entire airline industry for years.
- nexuist 5y ago
  Interestingly the same cost analysis is not used for nuclear weaponry because it is presumed that nuclear retaliation is more important than any economic cost...the important question is if we will view climate change as that same kind of enemy and authorize nuclear energy knowing that there will be future incidents, but the price of cleanup will be worth it to avert climate disaster.
JohnHaugeland 5y ago
Zero people died from the plant. Carbon is killing almost a million and a half people a year, plus screwing the atmosphere. We've put ten times the money it would take to solve this on nuclear into solar, and unless you incorrectly use nameplate capacity, it hasn't even broken the 2% mark yet, but it's already throwing the grid into chaos. Worldwide, in all of history, nuclear power has killed fewer than 200 people. Yes, I know HBO told you it was more. HBO is lying for profits. The UN says it's 156. There is no safer technology in history, of any kind, than nuclear power. Nuclear has already fixed 1/4 of the problem. It can fix the rest in time. Nothing else can. You have six years left to wake up before it's too late to vote for the fix we already have.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > We've put ten times the money it would take to solve this on nuclear into solar, Could you share the numbers for how much subsidy money was put into solar technology, and how much for nuclear energy (and fossil fuels, for that matter) over their history? > and unless you incorrectly use nameplate capacity, it hasn't even broken the 2% mark yet, The number I'm seeing[0] for solar, globally (based on 2019 data), is 2.7%, which, combined with wind, wave, and tidal etc. comes to 10.5%, compared to 10.4% for nuclear. Both are dwarfed by hydropower's 15.8%, of course, but it's hard to manufacture the right sort of rivers. > but it's already throwing the grid into chaos. That hasn't been the experience in Australia[1], so it sounds like you're referring to a politics problem, not a technology problem. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/08/Global-energy-vs.-electricity-breakdown-800x423.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/08/Global-energy-vs.... [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/08/31/renewables-improve-reliability-outlook-for-australias-main-grid/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/08/31/renewables-improve-re...
  - JohnHaugeland 5y ago
    > Could you share the numbers No thanks, you're doing a fine job finding wrong numbers by not knowing the difference between nameplate and delivered already.   > The number I'm seeing[0] is irrelevant, as it's about how much power the solar panels could produce, if the planet had noon 24 hours a day and the panels were forever perfectly aligned. Energiewende is unambiguous.   > which, combined with wind, wave, and tidal etc. comes to 10.5%, When you learn what to look for, it's under 1%. No, I don't have to teach you this in order to speak where you are also present. No, googling things without foundational knowledge isn't a valid push back. This is energy anti-vaxing.   > That hasn't been the experience in Australia Gee, who'd have thought that Australia, whose solar panel industry barely exists and which is entirely fuelled by coal and LNG, which can ramp up and down, would not yet be facing this? If only there was a valid piece of history to meausure, which left an entire country dumping power at negative prices for more than a month in the desperation to not blow their grid If only that country was radically more industrialized than Australia If only you knew enough about power history to not need to ask me who I mean If only you'd look at that eleven years and figure out what it meant
yongjik 5y ago
When the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake hit Japan, an oil tank ruptured and caught fire in the city of Kesennuma. The whole city burned down. As per Wikipedia: "As of 22 April 2011, the city had confirmed 837 deaths with 1,196 missing." Which is lower than most death estimates for Fukushima. In other words, the world's second worst nuclear disaster killed fewer people than another fossil fuel disaster that happened on the same day, due to the same external reason, which was so minor (for a fossil fuel disaster) that most people outside Japan haven't even heard about it.
- max002 5y ago
  So you say an oil tank burned hmmm... Yeat another argument to ditch fossil fuels completely.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > "As of 22 April 2011, the city had confirmed 837 deaths with 1,196 missing" Hell, that's less direct deaths than Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster ( only in direct immediate deaths, indirect long-term deaths are hard to calculate, and the WHO estimated them to be at around 9,000, which is still probably less than what that oil tank's oil killed indirectly via pollution).

umvi 5y ago

Nuclear pollution is scary but coal pollution isn't? I bet coal pollution has killed way more than nuclear pollution per plant.

shepherdjerred 5y ago
Worst case for nuclear is probably worse than the worst case for coal. The planet might be transformed in unwanted ways due to global warming, but that's better than it becoming irradiated and inhospitable to life. That being said I still think that nuclear is our best option.
- kortex 5y ago
  Chernobyl was literally the worst case for nuclear power. The design flaws were myriad and the industry has learned a tremendous amount. It's not going to irradiate the whole planet, full stop. Coal is killing the planet now.
  - shepherdjerred 5y ago
    Chernobyl could have been much, much worse. It was successfully contained.
forgotmyoldname 5y ago
I think part of that is due to nuclear power primarily being in decently wealthy areas with very strict regulations and high amounts of security measures being taken. Coal plants are in even the poorest, most run down areas and run by just about everyone. They’re the baseline for energy. I support expanding nuclear energy in areas that are capable of doing so, but there are some places where nuclear would be an absolute disaster far beyond what coal could ever be.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  You could imagine, if this were to be made a global priority, a UN organisation dedicated to running nuclear plants around the world, with protection by UN forces etc. I can’t see it happening in the current anti-nuclear climate but I think it’s fixable.
  - max002 5y ago
    Wont happen, there are much more nuclear plants set to be closed than created.
merb 5y ago
both are bad and scary? why even bring them up together? there is no need to bet because both are stupid so why should nuclear power be defended here? do you know why there is no article how bad coal is? because everybody knows but unfortunatly most people do not understand how fucking bad fukushima even is, people like you that try to make nuclear look cool just because there exists something worse does not make nuclear look cooler.
- nindalf 5y ago
  > why even bring them up together Because reams of news articles are written about one but not the other, feeding the incorrect perception that one is vastly more dangerous than the other.
  - olliej 5y ago
    Here's the problem with coal power, the damage is not equatable to nuclear plants: There is no way to control the impact to the environment - areas immediately surrounding a coal plant have much higher cancer rates, the ground & streams becomes toxic, wider areas have heightened acid rain risks. Then you get to impact on the global climate. All this in a perfectly operated idealized plant. In a nuclear plant that is run properly, not even perfectly, produces radioactive waste. No atmospheric pollution, no water pollution. Major "normal" failures cause radiation leaks. These are so rare that the events are individually named. Accidents that result in atypical operation that don't even harm the plant, let alone cause external impact are all recorded, and systems are updated to prevent recurrence. Even major events like three mile island have not caused any excess deaths or cancers. Catastrophic failures have basically be down to understood design flaws: Chernobyl had an RBMK reactor with know flaws, Fukushima had emergency generators in the basement despite being advised to place them higher up. Precisely because of flooding concerns. As for waste: Nuclear waste is of course hard to manage, with most "solutions" being "bury it". Whatever the end solution is, we know it won't be as horrific as a coal plants solution: aerosolizing it and pumping it into the atmosphere. A lot of noise is made about decommissioning a nuclear plant. Decommission a nuclear plant means deconstruction of the reactor and removing the remaining waste. There is no need to remediate the land itself. No one talks about decommissioning coal plants as they simply don't: the land on and around the site is left permanently toxic.
techsin101 5y ago
yes, coal doesn't lead to a choice between obliterating northern hemisphere vs living with 30x radiation.
phs318u 5y ago
You're conflating pollution (which I take to mean typical by-products of both fuel generation i.e. during mining, and power generation i.e. at the plant) and catastrophic destruction of the plant. You may well be correct with respect to pollution - I don't know and certainly would find it tricky to determine (is there a consistent measure of "negative environmental impact" for comparing such things?). However, with respect to catastrophic destruction, this recent example at a coal plant [0], pales in comparison to something like a Chernobyl or Fukushima. [0] https://reneweconomy.com.au/worlds-newest-and-most-expensive-coal-plant-explodes-after-hydrogen-leak/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/worlds-newest-and-most-expensive...
- sofixa 5y ago
  > However, with respect to catastrophic destruction, this recent example at a coal plant [0], pales in comparison to something like a Chernobyl or Fukushima. That's not a catastrophic destruction, merely a generator explosion. Wikipedia has articles on mining and energy accidents, and you can see there are far more catastrophic one with coal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

api 5y ago

A simple way to think of it: one incident like Fukushima destroys the economics of the entire nuclear industry over a very long time span. Nuclear can only be cost competitive if there are zero such incidents ever. It’s like if one plane crash cost more to clean up than the revenue of the entire airline industry for years.

nexuist 5y ago
Interestingly the same cost analysis is not used for nuclear weaponry because it is presumed that nuclear retaliation is more important than any economic cost...the important question is if we will view climate change as that same kind of enemy and authorize nuclear energy knowing that there will be future incidents, but the price of cleanup will be worth it to avert climate disaster.

JohnHaugeland 5y ago

Zero people died from the plant. Carbon is killing almost a million and a half people a year, plus screwing the atmosphere. We've put ten times the money it would take to solve this on nuclear into solar, and unless you incorrectly use nameplate capacity, it hasn't even broken the 2% mark yet, but it's already throwing the grid into chaos. Worldwide, in all of history, nuclear power has killed fewer than 200 people. Yes, I know HBO told you it was more. HBO is lying for profits. The UN says it's 156. There is no safer technology in history, of any kind, than nuclear power. Nuclear has already fixed 1/4 of the problem. It can fix the rest in time. Nothing else can. You have six years left to wake up before it's too late to vote for the fix we already have.

dane-pgp 5y ago
> We've put ten times the money it would take to solve this on nuclear into solar, Could you share the numbers for how much subsidy money was put into solar technology, and how much for nuclear energy (and fossil fuels, for that matter) over their history? > and unless you incorrectly use nameplate capacity, it hasn't even broken the 2% mark yet, The number I'm seeing[0] for solar, globally (based on 2019 data), is 2.7%, which, combined with wind, wave, and tidal etc. comes to 10.5%, compared to 10.4% for nuclear. Both are dwarfed by hydropower's 15.8%, of course, but it's hard to manufacture the right sort of rivers. > but it's already throwing the grid into chaos. That hasn't been the experience in Australia[1], so it sounds like you're referring to a politics problem, not a technology problem. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/08/Global-energy-vs.-electricity-breakdown-800x423.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/08/Global-energy-vs.... [1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/08/31/renewables-improve-reliability-outlook-for-australias-main-grid/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/08/31/renewables-improve-re...
- JohnHaugeland 5y ago
  > Could you share the numbers No thanks, you're doing a fine job finding wrong numbers by not knowing the difference between nameplate and delivered already.   > The number I'm seeing[0] is irrelevant, as it's about how much power the solar panels could produce, if the planet had noon 24 hours a day and the panels were forever perfectly aligned. Energiewende is unambiguous.   > which, combined with wind, wave, and tidal etc. comes to 10.5%, When you learn what to look for, it's under 1%. No, I don't have to teach you this in order to speak where you are also present. No, googling things without foundational knowledge isn't a valid push back. This is energy anti-vaxing.   > That hasn't been the experience in Australia Gee, who'd have thought that Australia, whose solar panel industry barely exists and which is entirely fuelled by coal and LNG, which can ramp up and down, would not yet be facing this? If only there was a valid piece of history to meausure, which left an entire country dumping power at negative prices for more than a month in the desperation to not blow their grid If only that country was radically more industrialized than Australia If only you knew enough about power history to not need to ask me who I mean If only you'd look at that eleven years and figure out what it meant

yongjik 5y ago

When the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake hit Japan, an oil tank ruptured and caught fire in the city of Kesennuma. The whole city burned down. As per Wikipedia: "As of 22 April 2011, the city had confirmed 837 deaths with 1,196 missing." Which is lower than most death estimates for Fukushima. In other words, the world's second worst nuclear disaster killed fewer people than another fossil fuel disaster that happened on the same day, due to the same external reason, which was so minor (for a fossil fuel disaster) that most people outside Japan haven't even heard about it.

max002 5y ago
So you say an oil tank burned hmmm... Yeat another argument to ditch fossil fuels completely.
sofixa 5y ago
> "As of 22 April 2011, the city had confirmed 837 deaths with 1,196 missing" Hell, that's less direct deaths than Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster ( only in direct immediate deaths, indirect long-term deaths are hard to calculate, and the WHO estimated them to be at around 9,000, which is still probably less than what that oil tank's oil killed indirectly via pollution).