7 ms·

There are two calls on hold for you, one from a place called Fukushima and the other Chernobyl. ;)

by mkramlich 15y ago

protomyth 15y ago
Statistic wise, natural gas has killed more people than nuclear.
- jerrya 15y ago
  It's not that statistically coal and natural gas are less dangerous, it's more how the disaster distribution works out. Coal and natural gas may have a constant payout that remains relatively low, rare, and random, perhaps a uniform distribution, and it's average value may be bigger than the distribution of nuclear. But the issue with nuclear is that its distribution might look like an enormous Dirac Delta function, and when it hits, it takes out many people even wiping out entire communities, if not regions, for hundreds of years. As a species we are probably used to hearing and feeling badly about the random ape being struck by lightning or forgetting to tend his fire and burning his tree down and being able to move on. But when we find an entire village is suddenly gone, their part of the forest gone, and strange unknown diseases attack us when we move through the now forbidden zones, we feel differently.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    When a Tsunami hits a 50 year old nuclear power plant bad things happen. Also, there was a Tsunami. I'm not sure how much it makes sense to lay all the damage caused by the Fukushima reactors at the foot of nuclear power rather than the Tsunami. If a CNG depot had been hit by a Tsunami and exploded, killing people with it how much would we blame natural gas and how much would we blame the Tsunami? Similarly, Fujinuma dam broke on March 11, 2011 due to the same disaster, resulting in several deaths and lots of additional destruction. Does that get tallied against the hazards of hydroelectric power or against the hazards of enormously powerful earthquakes?
  - quanticle 15y ago
    "[...] and when it hits, it takes out many people even wiping out entire communities, if not regions for hundreds of years." First of all, how many people has nuclear taken out, even including Chernobyl? According to the WHO and the IAEA, Chernobyl was (or rather, will be) responsible for about 9000 deaths. This includes the people killed by acute radiation exposure and the expected number of people killed by premature cancer from sub-acute radiation exposure over a period of 20 years. This comes out to 450 deaths per year. By comparison, the Bhopal disaster killed approximately 3000 people immediately, and 8000 people in total from gas-related injuries. It's not at all clear to me that nuclear is more dangerous than other "everyday" technologies like chemical plants and oil refineries. As for the effects of radioactive contamination, well, chemical contamination can be just as long-lived. Just look at your average Superfund site. There's nothing special about the risks of nuclear energy. We tolerate the exact same risks with many of our current technologies. It's just irrational fear tied to the anti-nuclear weapons movement that's driving the freeze on new nuclear construction.
Caerus 15y ago
Both of those events were predominantly due to 1960s technology, namely generation II nuclear power. Generations III and IV are significantly more robust with many more fail safe mechanisms.
- mkramlich 15y ago
  I was citing facts that clearly refuted your position: > We've had clean, green, safe, carbon-neutral energy for nearly 60 years. And whether the original design used for those failed facilities was created today or 60 years ago is irrelevant if today, right now, they can cause dirty hazardous life-threatening disasters. Which again, clearly and directly disproves your claim.
  - Caerus 15y ago
    The fact that old technology which should have decommissioned and replaced years ago is still in use is a public policy failure and in no way "refutes" nuclear as a safe technology.
  - Turing_Machine 15y ago
    They haven't produced any "life-threatening disasters", other than Chernobyl, of course. Soviet jets went down a lot, too, but we don't judge the safety of Wester airlines using the record of Aeroflot.
    - mkramlich 15y ago
      There have been no life-threatening disasters except all the ones that have occurred. Got it. I'm moving on from this thread. I'm seeing how the logic wind blows in it. :)
- Tichy 15y ago
  All systems fail. Sorry, but if you are remotely interested in engineering, you should have learned that already. After every accident, they will add one more safety net and then claim that "now the reactors really are safe". They assumed Fukushima was safe before the accident, too.
Turing_Machine 15y ago
Fukushima: despite a massive earthquake, tsunami, fire, and loss of power, no one died. Yes, the plant was trashed, but just how disaster-proof do you expect something to be? Chernobyl: Horrible Soviet-era reactor design that was never approved in the West. No member of the general public or plant worker has ever been killed by a Western-designed power reactor. That's a better safety record than any other source of power. We've got 60 years of experience. There have been three major accidents, two of which produced no loss of life whatsoever.
- poutine 15y ago
  Indeed it's worth pointing out that solar energy kills far more people than nuclear power does in the west. Installers fall from roofs quite often...
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  There have been three major accidents, two of which produced no loss of life whatsoever. This is an overstatement. A crane at Fukushima fell down killing a few people, and a couple of workers died of heatstroke (due in part to radiation suits). As for Chernobyl, you forgot to mention that in addition to design flaws, they were performing a scientific experiment well outside the safety parameters at the time of the disaster.
  - Turing_Machine 15y ago
    I would chalk those up as industrial accidents of the type that can occur anywhere, rather than nuclear accidents per se. Other energy technologies kill people directly. Natural gas explodes. Dams break. Coal mines cave in, catch on fire, and kill miners with toxic gases.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
The Chernobyl reactors were of a completely unsafe design. They had a positive void coefficient (which meant they got more reactive without coolant), and they had no reactor containment vessel. Then they were used in an incredibly risky experiment while overriding many safety measures. The Fukushima Daiichi power plants used a half-century old design which was already scheduled for decommissioning and that was subjected to one of the most powerful natural disasters in all of human history. Even so, nuclear power has yet to cause as many deaths as Hydro power or coal. We can build better, safer reactors. We already do. The surest way to make sure we continue operating the least safe reactors is to put unnecessary roadblocks in the way of building new ones.

There are two calls on hold for you, one from a place called Fukushima and the other Chernobyl. ;)

protomyth 15y ago

Statistic wise, natural gas has killed more people than nuclear.

jerrya 15y ago
It's not that statistically coal and natural gas are less dangerous, it's more how the disaster distribution works out. Coal and natural gas may have a constant payout that remains relatively low, rare, and random, perhaps a uniform distribution, and it's average value may be bigger than the distribution of nuclear. But the issue with nuclear is that its distribution might look like an enormous Dirac Delta function, and when it hits, it takes out many people even wiping out entire communities, if not regions, for hundreds of years. As a species we are probably used to hearing and feeling badly about the random ape being struck by lightning or forgetting to tend his fire and burning his tree down and being able to move on. But when we find an entire village is suddenly gone, their part of the forest gone, and strange unknown diseases attack us when we move through the now forbidden zones, we feel differently.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  When a Tsunami hits a 50 year old nuclear power plant bad things happen. Also, there was a Tsunami. I'm not sure how much it makes sense to lay all the damage caused by the Fukushima reactors at the foot of nuclear power rather than the Tsunami. If a CNG depot had been hit by a Tsunami and exploded, killing people with it how much would we blame natural gas and how much would we blame the Tsunami? Similarly, Fujinuma dam broke on March 11, 2011 due to the same disaster, resulting in several deaths and lots of additional destruction. Does that get tallied against the hazards of hydroelectric power or against the hazards of enormously powerful earthquakes?
- quanticle 15y ago
  "[...] and when it hits, it takes out many people even wiping out entire communities, if not regions for hundreds of years." First of all, how many people has nuclear taken out, even including Chernobyl? According to the WHO and the IAEA, Chernobyl was (or rather, will be) responsible for about 9000 deaths. This includes the people killed by acute radiation exposure and the expected number of people killed by premature cancer from sub-acute radiation exposure over a period of 20 years. This comes out to 450 deaths per year. By comparison, the Bhopal disaster killed approximately 3000 people immediately, and 8000 people in total from gas-related injuries. It's not at all clear to me that nuclear is more dangerous than other "everyday" technologies like chemical plants and oil refineries. As for the effects of radioactive contamination, well, chemical contamination can be just as long-lived. Just look at your average Superfund site. There's nothing special about the risks of nuclear energy. We tolerate the exact same risks with many of our current technologies. It's just irrational fear tied to the anti-nuclear weapons movement that's driving the freeze on new nuclear construction.

Caerus 15y ago

Both of those events were predominantly due to 1960s technology, namely generation II nuclear power. Generations III and IV are significantly more robust with many more fail safe mechanisms.

mkramlich 15y ago
I was citing facts that clearly refuted your position: > We've had clean, green, safe, carbon-neutral energy for nearly 60 years. And whether the original design used for those failed facilities was created today or 60 years ago is irrelevant if today, right now, they can cause dirty hazardous life-threatening disasters. Which again, clearly and directly disproves your claim.
- Caerus 15y ago
  The fact that old technology which should have decommissioned and replaced years ago is still in use is a public policy failure and in no way "refutes" nuclear as a safe technology.
- Turing_Machine 15y ago
  They haven't produced any "life-threatening disasters", other than Chernobyl, of course. Soviet jets went down a lot, too, but we don't judge the safety of Wester airlines using the record of Aeroflot.
  - mkramlich 15y ago
    There have been no life-threatening disasters except all the ones that have occurred. Got it. I'm moving on from this thread. I'm seeing how the logic wind blows in it. :)
Tichy 15y ago
All systems fail. Sorry, but if you are remotely interested in engineering, you should have learned that already. After every accident, they will add one more safety net and then claim that "now the reactors really are safe". They assumed Fukushima was safe before the accident, too.

Turing_Machine 15y ago

Fukushima: despite a massive earthquake, tsunami, fire, and loss of power, no one died. Yes, the plant was trashed, but just how disaster-proof do you expect something to be? Chernobyl: Horrible Soviet-era reactor design that was never approved in the West. No member of the general public or plant worker has ever been killed by a Western-designed power reactor. That's a better safety record than any other source of power. We've got 60 years of experience. There have been three major accidents, two of which produced no loss of life whatsoever.

poutine 15y ago
Indeed it's worth pointing out that solar energy kills far more people than nuclear power does in the west. Installers fall from roofs quite often...
yummyfajitas 15y ago
There have been three major accidents, two of which produced no loss of life whatsoever. This is an overstatement. A crane at Fukushima fell down killing a few people, and a couple of workers died of heatstroke (due in part to radiation suits). As for Chernobyl, you forgot to mention that in addition to design flaws, they were performing a scientific experiment well outside the safety parameters at the time of the disaster.
- Turing_Machine 15y ago
  I would chalk those up as industrial accidents of the type that can occur anywhere, rather than nuclear accidents per se. Other energy technologies kill people directly. Natural gas explodes. Dams break. Coal mines cave in, catch on fire, and kill miners with toxic gases.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

The Chernobyl reactors were of a completely unsafe design. They had a positive void coefficient (which meant they got more reactive without coolant), and they had no reactor containment vessel. Then they were used in an incredibly risky experiment while overriding many safety measures. The Fukushima Daiichi power plants used a half-century old design which was already scheduled for decommissioning and that was subjected to one of the most powerful natural disasters in all of human history. Even so, nuclear power has yet to cause as many deaths as Hydro power or coal. We can build better, safer reactors. We already do. The surest way to make sure we continue operating the least safe reactors is to put unnecessary roadblocks in the way of building new ones.