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Not to downplay the significance of this disaster, but this is one of the worst nuclear accidents we know - yet "It is estimated that the radiation leak may hav

Not to downplay the significance of this disaster, but this is one of the worst nuclear accidents we know - yet "It is estimated that the radiation leak may have caused 240 additional cancer cases, with 100 to 240 of these being fatal". Not all dams are used for power, of course, but the failure of the Banqiao Reservoir Dam[0] is estimated to have killed 171 000 I guess all infrastructure implies some degree of risk to life and health [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

arethuza 4y ago
Yes - I've got the book "Atomic Accidents" and it starts with a description of a disaster at a Russian hydro plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayano-Shushenskaya_power_station_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayano-Shushenskaya_power_stat...
yabones 4y ago
I think a big part of what makes people so afraid of radiation is how easy it is to detect. Imagine if you had a geiger counter that detected Dioxin, Benzine, or PFAS contamination? It would be going off pretty much constantly. You can detect radioactive materials with a cheap detector, where you need an entire lab to find regular poisons, which doesn't help with our lack of ability to assess risk. For example, people side-eye me when I tell them that I have a collection of Uranium glass sitting on a shelf in my house. They assess that risk to be much worse than say, owning Teflon cookware. It's not hyperbole to say that that other forms of pollution kill more people every day than nuclear radiation has in the entire history of atomic power production. But most people don't have the same resistance to an oil refinery or steel factory that they do to a nuclear power station.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  It is not easy to detect UNLESS you have a geiger counter. Those Russian soldiers dug trenches around Tchernobyl blissfully unawhere of any problems. They carried the dirt into the dwellings and labs where people still have to work, causing ongoing problems. If you don't decontaminate and check everything, then any radioactive dirt that gets stuck on you or your equipment can do its damage for a long time. Worse is when you somehow ingest it and it stays inside. Does happen.
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    Except, of course, that the story about the Russian soldiers in Chornobyl was completely made up. > any radioactive dirt that gets stuck on you or your equipment can do its damage for a long time If it's outside of your body ,at the level that remains after 3 decades in Chornobyl, it's completely harmless. It starts causing problem if you ingest it, *and your body metabolizes it* (which is the big problem with iodine, but radioactive iodine has a very short half life and is completely gone now). And even in that scenario, you'll suffer from a cancer many years after, that's bad but that's also very far from the made up stories about soldiers' acute irradiation).
    - amiga-workbench 4y ago
      > Except, of course, that the story about the Russian soldiers in Chornobyl was completely made up. There are satellite photos of trenches dug around the red forest where Russian soldiers had deployed?
      - littlestymaar 4y ago
        The made up story was talking about those soldiers getting radiation sickness (which requires radiation levels millions time higher than the one you'd find there). If the Russian soldiers get problems from their trench digging endeavor, it won't be seen before many years, when a small percentage of them starts getting cancer. (needless to say, the increases mortality from the said cancers will be negligible compared to the mortality induced by being invading soldiers in Ukraine).
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Your blazée atittude on radiation safety reminds me of Homer Simpson. There is no way to know what radiation dose they got. Their activities increased the ambient radiation levels, but not extremely. But the soldiers themselves probably got quite a bit more since they came into direct contact with contaminated material. A few of them almost certainly got non-trivial doses on parts of their bodies. We don't know if any got radiation sickness, and I don't know of any source that said so. If they did, Russia would keep it quiet. The point of the story is that such a site remains a problem for millenia and people have to pay attention. If you don't want the dirt to travel further, you have to somehow remove it and store it more safely to keep it from circulating. That's what they are doing in Fukushima because they can't afford the same size of permanent exclusion zone. Another point is that the Russians put their artillery pieces near nuclear power plants. They discovered that the Ukrainians wouldn't shoot back when they fire from there. Funny that.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Most people are not aware that carbon, potassium and calcium are radioactive elements. Despite that, our body contains large quantities of them. Like also for the chemical toxins, the dangers of radiation depend on the dose, and we should not worry when it is low enough. Also platinum is a radioactive element, but those who wear platinum jewelry are seldom aware of this. All computer displays are slightly radioactive, because the ITO transparent electrodes contain indium, which is a radioactive element too. The ceramic kitchen knives are slightly radioactive, because their blades are made of zirconia, and both zirconium and hafnium are radioactive elements (all Zr, unless specially purified for nuclear reactors, contains Hf).
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    Someone has downvoted this, but I cannot understand the reason, unless it was due to ignorance. Everything written above are facts, not opinions. They are little known facts, which is why I have mentioned them. Uranium and thorium are the most radioactive among the elements that have survived since the creation of the Solar System, but they are not the only radioactive primordial elements, there are many others. Most people who are afraid of radiation do not realize how many of the surrounding objects are radioactive, without being dangerous because of that.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      You were downvoted because, whether or not they understand the numbers or know the names, most people understand that long lived bioaccumulative high activity alpha emitters like Tc99, Cs137 or Pu240 are really, really bad. Obvious half truths and misdirections told in a really arrogant way then re-enforce the idea that anyone telling them any amount of radiation is safe is deliberately trying to mislead them, and so they wind up trusting nobody. They then correctly infer that the liar is malicious and trying to scam them. So all in all they get to the right place even if it is for the wrong reasons.
    - hcknwscommenter 4y ago
      Typically, when one refers to an element as "radioactive" one is either referring to a particular isotope that is radioactive (e.g., C14) or an element in which the most abundant naturally occurring isotope(s) are radioactive (e.g., U). To call "carbon" radioactive, is technically true I suppose depending on your view but the level of radioactivity in natural carbon is so low that it is an almost meaningless truth. Potassium and calcium have a bit more natural radioactivity, but still it poses no health issues. The other elements you list are essentially the same, except perhaps Halfnium (have not checked). Heck by the definition you seem to be using of the term "radioactive element", I do not think there exists a non-radioactive element. Of course, you are correct that the dangers of radioactivity depend on the dose. But your message is diminished by overly emphasizing the radioactivity in carbon and other naturally occurring elements that pose zero health risk and frankly are so very non-radioactive in a relative sense.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  The eye opener for me was, when i read that one overheated teflon cookware kills all birds in a whole area. https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluoroethylene-poisoning-in-birds https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluor... Its like a trenchwarfare coated nightmare.
- reason-mr 4y ago
  The current proposed sample size is small in comparison to the required waste storage lifetime ….
Retric 4y ago
In general people build dams to #1 store water, #2 save lives, and only a distant 3rd generate power. Most of the 62 dams that collapsed in that hurricane where not hydroelectric dams. And it’s not clear the existence of these dams played that significant role in the death total considering China’s history with even more devastating floods.
maria2 4y ago
But the nuclear power plant has the potential to make large swaths of land uninhabitable for thousands of years. There’s clearly a difference.
- nebopolis 4y ago
  Dams have the side effect of making huge swaths of land uninhabitable automatically as soon as they start filling. From the Three Gorges Dam > China relocated 1.24 million residents (ending with Gaoyang in Hubei Province) as 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages either flooded or were partially flooded by the reservoir
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Planned and managed operational characteristics are not sudden-onset, unanticipated, and highly-disruptive catastrophes. They're fully-anticipated side-effects. Your comment really doesn't speak to the nature of the phenomenon.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - maria2 4y ago
    Dams do not make land uninhabitable. Dams use land for a productive purpose. Do railroads make land uninhabitable? I would say that land with railroad tracks should still be considered habitable, even though you'd die should you choose to live on the railroad tracks. The land itself is still habitable, you'd just need to remove the dam to live there. Just as you might need to remove the railroad tracks.
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  The «inhabitable for thousands of years» is a myth. Do you know how many people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today? Poeple vastly overestimate the dangerous of this stuff after a few years. Fukushima and Prypiat are probably safer to live than the average Asian city center due to air pollution, or even the Midwest due to pesticide exposure…

arethuza 4y ago

Yes - I've got the book "Atomic Accidents" and it starts with a description of a disaster at a Russian hydro plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayano-Shushenskaya_power_station_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayano-Shushenskaya_power_stat...

yabones 4y ago

I think a big part of what makes people so afraid of radiation is how easy it is to detect. Imagine if you had a geiger counter that detected Dioxin, Benzine, or PFAS contamination? It would be going off pretty much constantly. You can detect radioactive materials with a cheap detector, where you need an entire lab to find regular poisons, which doesn't help with our lack of ability to assess risk. For example, people side-eye me when I tell them that I have a collection of Uranium glass sitting on a shelf in my house. They assess that risk to be much worse than say, owning Teflon cookware. It's not hyperbole to say that that other forms of pollution kill more people every day than nuclear radiation has in the entire history of atomic power production. But most people don't have the same resistance to an oil refinery or steel factory that they do to a nuclear power station.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
It is not easy to detect UNLESS you have a geiger counter. Those Russian soldiers dug trenches around Tchernobyl blissfully unawhere of any problems. They carried the dirt into the dwellings and labs where people still have to work, causing ongoing problems. If you don't decontaminate and check everything, then any radioactive dirt that gets stuck on you or your equipment can do its damage for a long time. Worse is when you somehow ingest it and it stays inside. Does happen.
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  Except, of course, that the story about the Russian soldiers in Chornobyl was completely made up. > any radioactive dirt that gets stuck on you or your equipment can do its damage for a long time If it's outside of your body ,at the level that remains after 3 decades in Chornobyl, it's completely harmless. It starts causing problem if you ingest it, *and your body metabolizes it* (which is the big problem with iodine, but radioactive iodine has a very short half life and is completely gone now). And even in that scenario, you'll suffer from a cancer many years after, that's bad but that's also very far from the made up stories about soldiers' acute irradiation).
  - amiga-workbench 4y ago
    > Except, of course, that the story about the Russian soldiers in Chornobyl was completely made up. There are satellite photos of trenches dug around the red forest where Russian soldiers had deployed?
    - littlestymaar 4y ago
      The made up story was talking about those soldiers getting radiation sickness (which requires radiation levels millions time higher than the one you'd find there). If the Russian soldiers get problems from their trench digging endeavor, it won't be seen before many years, when a small percentage of them starts getting cancer. (needless to say, the increases mortality from the said cancers will be negligible compared to the mortality induced by being invading soldiers in Ukraine).
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Your blazée atittude on radiation safety reminds me of Homer Simpson. There is no way to know what radiation dose they got. Their activities increased the ambient radiation levels, but not extremely. But the soldiers themselves probably got quite a bit more since they came into direct contact with contaminated material. A few of them almost certainly got non-trivial doses on parts of their bodies. We don't know if any got radiation sickness, and I don't know of any source that said so. If they did, Russia would keep it quiet. The point of the story is that such a site remains a problem for millenia and people have to pay attention. If you don't want the dirt to travel further, you have to somehow remove it and store it more safely to keep it from circulating. That's what they are doing in Fukushima because they can't afford the same size of permanent exclusion zone. Another point is that the Russians put their artillery pieces near nuclear power plants. They discovered that the Ukrainians wouldn't shoot back when they fire from there. Funny that.
adrian_b 4y ago
Most people are not aware that carbon, potassium and calcium are radioactive elements. Despite that, our body contains large quantities of them. Like also for the chemical toxins, the dangers of radiation depend on the dose, and we should not worry when it is low enough. Also platinum is a radioactive element, but those who wear platinum jewelry are seldom aware of this. All computer displays are slightly radioactive, because the ITO transparent electrodes contain indium, which is a radioactive element too. The ceramic kitchen knives are slightly radioactive, because their blades are made of zirconia, and both zirconium and hafnium are radioactive elements (all Zr, unless specially purified for nuclear reactors, contains Hf).
- adrian_b 4y ago
  Someone has downvoted this, but I cannot understand the reason, unless it was due to ignorance. Everything written above are facts, not opinions. They are little known facts, which is why I have mentioned them. Uranium and thorium are the most radioactive among the elements that have survived since the creation of the Solar System, but they are not the only radioactive primordial elements, there are many others. Most people who are afraid of radiation do not realize how many of the surrounding objects are radioactive, without being dangerous because of that.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    You were downvoted because, whether or not they understand the numbers or know the names, most people understand that long lived bioaccumulative high activity alpha emitters like Tc99, Cs137 or Pu240 are really, really bad. Obvious half truths and misdirections told in a really arrogant way then re-enforce the idea that anyone telling them any amount of radiation is safe is deliberately trying to mislead them, and so they wind up trusting nobody. They then correctly infer that the liar is malicious and trying to scam them. So all in all they get to the right place even if it is for the wrong reasons.
  - hcknwscommenter 4y ago
    Typically, when one refers to an element as "radioactive" one is either referring to a particular isotope that is radioactive (e.g., C14) or an element in which the most abundant naturally occurring isotope(s) are radioactive (e.g., U). To call "carbon" radioactive, is technically true I suppose depending on your view but the level of radioactivity in natural carbon is so low that it is an almost meaningless truth. Potassium and calcium have a bit more natural radioactivity, but still it poses no health issues. The other elements you list are essentially the same, except perhaps Halfnium (have not checked). Heck by the definition you seem to be using of the term "radioactive element", I do not think there exists a non-radioactive element. Of course, you are correct that the dangers of radioactivity depend on the dose. But your message is diminished by overly emphasizing the radioactivity in carbon and other naturally occurring elements that pose zero health risk and frankly are so very non-radioactive in a relative sense.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
The eye opener for me was, when i read that one overheated teflon cookware kills all birds in a whole area. https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluoroethylene-poisoning-in-birds https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/teflon-polytetrafluor... Its like a trenchwarfare coated nightmare.
reason-mr 4y ago
The current proposed sample size is small in comparison to the required waste storage lifetime ….

Retric 4y ago

In general people build dams to #1 store water, #2 save lives, and only a distant 3rd generate power. Most of the 62 dams that collapsed in that hurricane where not hydroelectric dams. And it’s not clear the existence of these dams played that significant role in the death total considering China’s history with even more devastating floods.

maria2 4y ago

But the nuclear power plant has the potential to make large swaths of land uninhabitable for thousands of years. There’s clearly a difference.

nebopolis 4y ago
Dams have the side effect of making huge swaths of land uninhabitable automatically as soon as they start filling. From the Three Gorges Dam > China relocated 1.24 million residents (ending with Gaoyang in Hubei Province) as 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages either flooded or were partially flooded by the reservoir
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Planned and managed operational characteristics are not sudden-onset, unanticipated, and highly-disruptive catastrophes. They're fully-anticipated side-effects. Your comment really doesn't speak to the nature of the phenomenon.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- maria2 4y ago
  Dams do not make land uninhabitable. Dams use land for a productive purpose. Do railroads make land uninhabitable? I would say that land with railroad tracks should still be considered habitable, even though you'd die should you choose to live on the railroad tracks. The land itself is still habitable, you'd just need to remove the dam to live there. Just as you might need to remove the railroad tracks.
littlestymaar 4y ago
The «inhabitable for thousands of years» is a myth. Do you know how many people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki today? Poeple vastly overestimate the dangerous of this stuff after a few years. Fukushima and Prypiat are probably safer to live than the average Asian city center due to air pollution, or even the Midwest due to pesticide exposure…