7 ms·

Let's talk Fukushima ?

trinovantes 4y ago
Issues with Fukushima that could've prevented the disaster were raised by engineers/scientists but were ignored for years by the government/politicians
- 8note 4y ago
  That's always going to happen though. The government doesn't always have attention and money to shower on nuclear plants.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  ...and what lessons can we draw from this?
  - trinovantes 4y ago
    Trust your nuclear scientists/engineers because they know what they're doing and are, in fact, not playing god
- YetAnotherNick 4y ago
  So? Anything could have been prevented on hindsight.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    It's not hindsight when someone warns you beforehand.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      Given a large enough population, you can always in hindsight find someone who predicted the outcome.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Similar claims are often made after accidents, especially by people sympathetic to engineers an scientists (such as at HN). Given a large enough population, you can always find people who predict disaster. Every leader (of a large enough population) has to decide which predictions to trust and which not to; there isn't enough money and time in the world to listen to them all, and to perfect any machine - especially large, highly complex ones. The question is not 'was this one prediction accurate?', but 'how reliable is that population of predictions?'
throwaway5959 4y ago
Let’s build a nuclear plant in a country famous for tsunamis next on the coast. What could go wrong?
yongjik 4y ago
Fukushima also coincided with the largest earthquake Japan has ever seen (which caused Fukushima incident itself and complicated evacuation efforts). The expected death toll ranges between several hundred and several thousands. By comparison, vehicle emission is expected cause ~20,000 premature deaths in the US, every year [1]. (Sorry, I couldn't find a stat for Japan.) In other words, mankind's second worst nuclear disaster killed about as many people as vehicle emission kills in the US every month. That's not counting car accidents. In fact the wikipedia page about the disaster [2] contains this amusing bit of information, which might not be a fair way of looking at it, but I can't say it's factually wrong: > it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life. [1] https://apnews.com/article/science-health-business-environment-public-health-012330c14ee7deb83907bf1e42768560 https://apnews.com/article/science-health-business-environme... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  > mankind's second worst nuclear disaster killed about as many people as vehicle emission kills in the US every month. In fact the tsunami killed 20,000 people - and would have done so regardless of whether there was a power plant accident. The nuclear accident killed one person.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  The death toll for the Fukushima nuclear plant (as opposed to to deaths from the tsunami) is either zero or one. There was one 80 year-old who died of lung cancer, but it's unclear whether the cause was radiation from the incident or if he'd have died of lung cancer anyway as many 80 year-old smokers in Japan do. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofialottopersio/2021/11/04/no-one-died-from-radiation-at-fukushima-iaea-boss-statement-met-with-laughter-at-cop26/?sh=471151827a47 https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofialottopersio/2021/11/04/no-...
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    The population exposure from radiation from Fukushima will likely cause some hundreds of cancers. These will not be statistically detectable, but that doesn't mean they won't exist and that policy cannot take their plausible existence into account.
BenoitP 4y ago
Fukushima caused exactly one death from ionizing radiation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_di... Fossil fuel air pollution cause one fifth of premature death worldwide: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p... Do the sources I use suit you? Is it enough to convey sense about the orders of magnitude involved? And I didn't even talk about CO2 and the impending climate change catastrophe looming.
- xorcist 4y ago
  Exactly no one is advocating the use of fossil fuels to replace nuclear. In a debate, it is much better to counter the actual arguments instead of the more convenient ones.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
belorn 4y ago
Fukushima in 2011 is very similar to Oroville Dam in 2017. 154,000 evacuated vs 180,000, and both were caused by very rare natural disaster. Both involved failures in handling emergency scenarios like natural disaster, and failures in technology that was supposed to prevent catastrophic failures. Both also involved political failures in addressing risk to people who live near those power plants, and failures in addressing prior safety concerns. Hopefully those incident will have taught those countries to respect the enormous destructive forces involved, create a work culture where safety concerns do not get ignored, and to build power plants with consideration of very rare natural disaster.
Turing_Machine 4y ago
1) Outdated design 2) Magnitude 9 earthquake 3) Devastating tsunami 4) Catastrophic fire causing loss of power to all control systems One (1) person died from radiation. Just how safe do you expect something to be? How many fatalities would there be if there were a similar sequence of events affecting something like (e.g.) the Three Gorges Dam in China? A lot more than one, you can bet.

Issues with Fukushima that could've prevented the disaster were raised by engineers/scientists but were ignored for years by the government/politicians

8note 4y ago
That's always going to happen though. The government doesn't always have attention and money to shower on nuclear plants.
sangnoir 4y ago
...and what lessons can we draw from this?
- trinovantes 4y ago
  Trust your nuclear scientists/engineers because they know what they're doing and are, in fact, not playing god
YetAnotherNick 4y ago
So? Anything could have been prevented on hindsight.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  It's not hindsight when someone warns you beforehand.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Given a large enough population, you can always in hindsight find someone who predicted the outcome.
wolverine876 4y ago
Similar claims are often made after accidents, especially by people sympathetic to engineers an scientists (such as at HN). Given a large enough population, you can always find people who predict disaster. Every leader (of a large enough population) has to decide which predictions to trust and which not to; there isn't enough money and time in the world to listen to them all, and to perfect any machine - especially large, highly complex ones. The question is not 'was this one prediction accurate?', but 'how reliable is that population of predictions?'

throwaway5959 4y ago

Let’s build a nuclear plant in a country famous for tsunamis next on the coast. What could go wrong?

yongjik 4y ago

Fukushima also coincided with the largest earthquake Japan has ever seen (which caused Fukushima incident itself and complicated evacuation efforts). The expected death toll ranges between several hundred and several thousands. By comparison, vehicle emission is expected cause ~20,000 premature deaths in the US, every year [1]. (Sorry, I couldn't find a stat for Japan.) In other words, mankind's second worst nuclear disaster killed about as many people as vehicle emission kills in the US every month. That's not counting car accidents. In fact the wikipedia page about the disaster [2] contains this amusing bit of information, which might not be a fair way of looking at it, but I can't say it's factually wrong: > it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life. [1] https://apnews.com/article/science-health-business-environment-public-health-012330c14ee7deb83907bf1e42768560 https://apnews.com/article/science-health-business-environme... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

MagnumOpus 4y ago
> mankind's second worst nuclear disaster killed about as many people as vehicle emission kills in the US every month. In fact the tsunami killed 20,000 people - and would have done so regardless of whether there was a power plant accident. The nuclear accident killed one person.
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
The death toll for the Fukushima nuclear plant (as opposed to to deaths from the tsunami) is either zero or one. There was one 80 year-old who died of lung cancer, but it's unclear whether the cause was radiation from the incident or if he'd have died of lung cancer anyway as many 80 year-old smokers in Japan do. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofialottopersio/2021/11/04/no-one-died-from-radiation-at-fukushima-iaea-boss-statement-met-with-laughter-at-cop26/?sh=471151827a47 https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofialottopersio/2021/11/04/no-...
- pfdietz 4y ago
  The population exposure from radiation from Fukushima will likely cause some hundreds of cancers. These will not be statistically detectable, but that doesn't mean they won't exist and that policy cannot take their plausible existence into account.

BenoitP 4y ago

Fukushima caused exactly one death from ionizing radiation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_di... Fossil fuel air pollution cause one fifth of premature death worldwide: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-responsible-for-1-in-5-deaths-worldwide/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/fossil-fuel-air-p... Do the sources I use suit you? Is it enough to convey sense about the orders of magnitude involved? And I didn't even talk about CO2 and the impending climate change catastrophe looming.

xorcist 4y ago
Exactly no one is advocating the use of fossil fuels to replace nuclear. In a debate, it is much better to counter the actual arguments instead of the more convenient ones.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

belorn 4y ago

Fukushima in 2011 is very similar to Oroville Dam in 2017. 154,000 evacuated vs 180,000, and both were caused by very rare natural disaster. Both involved failures in handling emergency scenarios like natural disaster, and failures in technology that was supposed to prevent catastrophic failures. Both also involved political failures in addressing risk to people who live near those power plants, and failures in addressing prior safety concerns. Hopefully those incident will have taught those countries to respect the enormous destructive forces involved, create a work culture where safety concerns do not get ignored, and to build power plants with consideration of very rare natural disaster.

Turing_Machine 4y ago

1) Outdated design 2) Magnitude 9 earthquake 3) Devastating tsunami 4) Catastrophic fire causing loss of power to all control systems One (1) person died from radiation. Just how safe do you expect something to be? How many fatalities would there be if there were a similar sequence of events affecting something like (e.g.) the Three Gorges Dam in China? A lot more than one, you can bet.