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Radiation is everywhere. We can detect radiation incredibly precisely, to the point that we can tell which person ate a banana for breakfast. I wrote that conta

Radiation is everywhere. We can detect radiation incredibly precisely, to the point that we can tell which person ate a banana for breakfast. I wrote that contamination was not detected, not that zero radiation whatsoever was detected. Again, we can detect radiation that's a trillionth of a deviation above average. But we don't care about the mere presence of radiation - it's all around us in low quantities - radioactive contamination happens when levels reach harmful concentration. None of your studies concluded that radiation would reach harmful levels even if it increased by a factor of 1,000. And remember, we already get 10% of our electricity from nuclear power so I'm not sure where this figure of 5,000 came from. We all know that the cooling systems of nuclear power plants leak tritium. But the levels are negligible and nowhere near the concentrations that would cause harm. But organizations like Greenpeace continue to try lie and insist that it's contamination when it's not. The same thing is happening with La Hague. There is absolutely nothing misleading about saying radiation isn't at harmful levels. On the contrary, insisting that the presence of any radioisotopes is evidence of harmful contamination is, itself a highly misleading kind of rhetoric. If you care about the levels of radiation released by La Hague you should be frantically trying to ban stone and brick housing. Hopefully this will better convey a sense of what radiation exposure really means: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Nuclear is 2% of world energy, and only an insignificant fraction is reprocessed right now. You're pushing it as a complete fossil fuel replacement, not electrical generation. Then there's the rest of the world that don't have access to enough energy yet. So you're saying releasing 10PBq of Cs137 per year which is the lower bound on what la hague did in the 90s for reprocessing 1000t of fuel is completely fine and can be scaled up to the level required to generate world primary energy?
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  No, it wont. The UK and USSR dumped nearly 100 PBq of radioactive waste into the ocean. Scientists have monitored its activity and found that it dilutes to background levels of radiation. Over 2 million PBq of radiation were released during the cold war as part of nuclear weapon tests. And you know what dwarfs all of these figures? The naturally occurring potassium 40 isotope in the ocean makes up 14,000,000 PBq [1]. Even if your figure of 10 PBq is correct (you don't give a source for it) it is a drop in the bucket compared to what's already been released. Even 50 La Hague operating for 100 years, producing radioactive waste at your figures would not reach 1% of naturally occurring radiation. It's painfully obvious that Greenpeace is exploiting fundamental misunderstandings of radioactive waste, and how small it is compared to our background radiation exposure. And I'm sorry to tell you, you've fallen for their misinformation. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste#1946%E2%80%931993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Way to conflate different isotopes that are short lived or don't bioaccumulate. The total Cs137 (which caused most of the damage) entering the biosphere from nuclear testing was officially reported as 545PBq. My figure from La Hague was accidentally the total including H3, not just Cs137, but seeing as that's completely fine, let's use Stellafield before big mean Greenpeace and the nuclear alarmists held them to account at the end of your supposed golden age. This was around 4PBq/yr for reprocessing around 1500t/yr of low burnup SNF which would produce around 200t/yr or of MOX or about 10GWe Producing 10TWe or enough energy to power the world in your fantasy breeder scenario would be 4000PBq per year of Cs137 or 8x the fallout of the entire testing program every year if even a small portion of reprocessing operated in this completely fine and normal way. Your comparison to K40 is facile because Cs137 bioaccumulates up to 100x in food and it doesn't blend into the ocean evenly. The fukushima plume was still concentrated over a relatively small area and a few hundred m deep when it hit the coast of california 5 years later. There are still hotspots in Japan Now prove it's safe.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      The cesium 137 that "hit" the west coast was less than a trillionth higher than the pre-release concentration. 100x of an incredibly small number is still an incredibly small number. We test waters and measure their level of radioactive material. We do the same with fish. They're not even remotely close to hazardous levels. In fact they're not even consistently above baseline: https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/radiation/fukushima-update/fish-and-shellfish-testing https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/radiation/fukus... You're assuming that every reprocessing plant will release the same amount of radiation as Sellafield, which was a particularly badly run plant that saw over a dozen contamination incidents. And even then, it was still less than half the figures you initially claimed La Hague was releasing. No such releases have been measured. Greenpeace's claims of widespread contamination we're not replicated. The tests around the oceans in la Hague all indicate levels of cesium isotopes orders of magnitudes lower than unsafe levels. Fish are not showing radiation contamination. Greenpeace makes fake radiation readings all the time. They tried to claim the Olympic torch path was contaminated, nobody else was able to replicate their findings: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/04/radiation-hotspots-found-near-fukushima-olympic-site-greenpeace https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/04/radiation-hots... If one activist group published tests supposedly disproving anthropic climate change, would you just ignore all scientific concensus and believe this one group? Why is that valid reasoning when it comes to believing a fringe group's claims about radiation exposure? It's just a coincidence that no healthcare authority, no food and drug agency, no oceanography department, no group besides activists seem to be able to detect this contamination? Again, just think about how absurd this idea is: France is poisoning the English channel and the UK, Belgium, and Netherlands are totally okay with it? Somehow they're able to keep radiation levels under wraps when anybody can walk out to shore and collect a sample? Fish are being contaminated but nobody seems to be able to find radioactive

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Nuclear is 2% of world energy, and only an insignificant fraction is reprocessed right now. You're pushing it as a complete fossil fuel replacement, not electrical generation. Then there's the rest of the world that don't have access to enough energy yet. So you're saying releasing 10PBq of Cs137 per year which is the lower bound on what la hague did in the 90s for reprocessing 1000t of fuel is completely fine and can be scaled up to the level required to generate world primary energy?

Manuel_D 4y ago
No, it wont. The UK and USSR dumped nearly 100 PBq of radioactive waste into the ocean. Scientists have monitored its activity and found that it dilutes to background levels of radiation. Over 2 million PBq of radiation were released during the cold war as part of nuclear weapon tests. And you know what dwarfs all of these figures? The naturally occurring potassium 40 isotope in the ocean makes up 14,000,000 PBq [1]. Even if your figure of 10 PBq is correct (you don't give a source for it) it is a drop in the bucket compared to what's already been released. Even 50 La Hague operating for 100 years, producing radioactive waste at your figures would not reach 1% of naturally occurring radiation. It's painfully obvious that Greenpeace is exploiting fundamental misunderstandings of radioactive waste, and how small it is compared to our background radiation exposure. And I'm sorry to tell you, you've fallen for their misinformation. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste#1946%E2%80%931993 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Way to conflate different isotopes that are short lived or don't bioaccumulate. The total Cs137 (which caused most of the damage) entering the biosphere from nuclear testing was officially reported as 545PBq. My figure from La Hague was accidentally the total including H3, not just Cs137, but seeing as that's completely fine, let's use Stellafield before big mean Greenpeace and the nuclear alarmists held them to account at the end of your supposed golden age. This was around 4PBq/yr for reprocessing around 1500t/yr of low burnup SNF which would produce around 200t/yr or of MOX or about 10GWe Producing 10TWe or enough energy to power the world in your fantasy breeder scenario would be 4000PBq per year of Cs137 or 8x the fallout of the entire testing program every year if even a small portion of reprocessing operated in this completely fine and normal way. Your comparison to K40 is facile because Cs137 bioaccumulates up to 100x in food and it doesn't blend into the ocean evenly. The fukushima plume was still concentrated over a relatively small area and a few hundred m deep when it hit the coast of california 5 years later. There are still hotspots in Japan Now prove it's safe.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    The cesium 137 that "hit" the west coast was less than a trillionth higher than the pre-release concentration. 100x of an incredibly small number is still an incredibly small number. We test waters and measure their level of radioactive material. We do the same with fish. They're not even remotely close to hazardous levels. In fact they're not even consistently above baseline: https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/radiation/fukushima-update/fish-and-shellfish-testing https://doh.wa.gov/community-and-environment/radiation/fukus... You're assuming that every reprocessing plant will release the same amount of radiation as Sellafield, which was a particularly badly run plant that saw over a dozen contamination incidents. And even then, it was still less than half the figures you initially claimed La Hague was releasing. No such releases have been measured. Greenpeace's claims of widespread contamination we're not replicated. The tests around the oceans in la Hague all indicate levels of cesium isotopes orders of magnitudes lower than unsafe levels. Fish are not showing radiation contamination. Greenpeace makes fake radiation readings all the time. They tried to claim the Olympic torch path was contaminated, nobody else was able to replicate their findings: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/04/radiation-hotspots-found-near-fukushima-olympic-site-greenpeace https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/04/radiation-hots... If one activist group published tests supposedly disproving anthropic climate change, would you just ignore all scientific concensus and believe this one group? Why is that valid reasoning when it comes to believing a fringe group's claims about radiation exposure? It's just a coincidence that no healthcare authority, no food and drug agency, no oceanography department, no group besides activists seem to be able to detect this contamination? Again, just think about how absurd this idea is: France is poisoning the English channel and the UK, Belgium, and Netherlands are totally okay with it? Somehow they're able to keep radiation levels under wraps when anybody can walk out to shore and collect a sample? Fish are being contaminated but nobody seems to be able to find radioactive