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Thanks for digging up the story about Daini. Checking the Wikipedia page, this was a sister plant to the one with the meltdown, located very similarly and inun

Thanks for digging up the story about Daini. Checking the Wikipedia page, this was a sister plant to the one with the meltdown, located very similarly and inundated by the same 14m Tsunami that was twice the height both plants were designed for. It got a bit luckier and avoided the same fate. So same kind of plant, same Tsunami, better results. What exactly was your point here? Oh, and there was corruption in the Japanese nuclear industry. I also remember reading about those problems after Fukushima, and that actually informed my change in opinion about nuclear power: There was corruption, they were using an old design, they disregarded new directives, the Tsunami was unprecedented. Yet despite all that crap going on, very few people were harmed by the reactor accident, whereas a LOT were harmed by the Tsunami. Maybe this nuclear stuff isn't nearly as dangerous as I thought?

lispm 3y ago
> What exactly was your point here? I'm helping you with your own question: I gave you an example where a reactor was not shutdown for 'political reasons'. It was shutdown because it was a crap safety design, which almost caused additional meltdowns. > So same kind of plant, same Tsunami, better results. But not good results. The results were still shit: the reactors had be decommissioned. > the Tsunami was unprecedented Was it? Japan sits for several million years on the "ring of fire" with lots of volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis, ... Here is a list of stronger Earthquakes in the last years... https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/earthquakes.php https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/earthquakes.php The 2011 earthquake was only the strongest in the short recorded time. There are similar strong ones on the list. -> Earthquake under sea cause Tsunami. > Yet despite all that crap going on, very few people were harmed by the reactor accident, whereas a LOT were harmed by the Tsunami. A few 100k people lost their homes. 10k people will work in the reactors with high radiation over the next thirty years. Japan lost >> 100 billions USD worth of electricity production infrastructure. What's worse: they built the reactors knowing that there was a chance of a meltdown, the molten fuel went through the reactor containment and was going into a concrete bed underneath, where it also was melting into it. With the Earthquake creating cracks. But the kicker: they had no idea what to do then. No plans, no technology, no sensors, nothing. They had decades time to prepare. They did nothing. 6 years after the accident they were finally able to measure radiation inside a reactor: 530 Sievert per hour... They were completely clueless what actually happened, because all electronics (sensors, computers, cameras, robots, ...) were useless, because they all were dead because the high radiation. It will take decades to develop the technology to deal with the molten cores themselves. 880 tons of molten nuclear fuel. -> https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsfukushima-decommissioning-plans-revised-7581105 https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsfukushima-decommissioni... Looks pretty bad, when a single event can take out all their nuclear reactors for years (please don't mention your armchair expert bullshit that it was all politically overreacting on their side).
- mpweiher 3y ago
  Again, I quoted Wikipedia, just as you did. "Though all of Japan's nuclear reactors successfully withstood shaking from the Tohoku earthquake..." And yes, the shutdown of nuclear reactors was primarily political: Japan Backs Off Of Nuclear Power After Public Outcry https://www.npr.org/2011/05/11/136209502/japan-backs-off-of-nuclear-power-after-public-outcry https://www.npr.org/2011/05/11/136209502/japan-backs-off-of-... "Kan's decisions to back away from nuclear power came after an unusual number of public demonstrations. " And of course, all this is an irrelevant sideshow. The point is that you claimed nuclear power is on its way out. Except that turns out not to be the case, we have had 22 countries committing to tripling nuclear power. Tripling is not "on the way out". And it turns out that Japan is one of those countries. Something you first denied. Then you claimed they were only reactivating their old reactors. Even if that claim were correct: so what? It's an increase compared to now. But your claim is not correct: they are actually planning to build new plants. And of course Japan is just one country of the 22 (+China+India+...). So again, how is nuclear on the way out? You know what is on its way out? The German Energiewende. A lot of countries were going to follow this model, but most have now reconsidered, and the few that remain are hedging, for example Belgium just extended the life of their reactors. In Switzerland, recent initiatives to turn their reactors off earlier than currently planned were rejected by the electorate, and of course they have >50% reliably hydro power. In fact, the German public also rejects the Energiewende, around 60% say that getting out of nuclear was a mistake. I have a hard time thinking of anything in recent times that got that kind of a majority. Mehrheit ist gegen Atomausstieg https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlandtrend-3357.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan... And as to the sideshow: You found another plant that was affected by the Tsunami (not the earthquake directly), as it was a sister plant of the one that melted down and sited about the same, so inundated by the same unprecedented Tsunami. Now you claim the Tsunami wasn't unprecedented. The Japanese disagree with you, but what do they know? About anything really. You know better than them about their plans for nuclear power, you know better than them about their Tsunamis, you know better than them what the risk/reward of nuclear power is...despite them actually having had to deal with the 2nd worst nuclear accident in history. Coming back to the Tsunami: "It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan,..." "Most powerful ever recorded" sounds pretty unprecedented to me. "The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that may have reached heights of up to 40.5 meters (133 ft) " "Among the factors in the high death toll was the unexpectedly large water surge. The sea walls in several cities had been built to protect against tsunamis of much lower heights. Also, many people caught in the tsunami thought they were on high enough ground to be safe" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tōhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tōhoku_earthquake_and_tsu... So a lot of non-nuclear infrastructure in Japan built specifically to withstand or even protect from Tsunamis was...washed away by this Tsunami. To point a finger exclusively at the nuclear infrastructure that was also washed away is either ignorant or dishonest. 'nuff said.

lispm 3y ago

> What exactly was your point here? I'm helping you with your own question: I gave you an example where a reactor was not shutdown for 'political reasons'. It was shutdown because it was a crap safety design, which almost caused additional meltdowns. > So same kind of plant, same Tsunami, better results. But not good results. The results were still shit: the reactors had be decommissioned. > the Tsunami was unprecedented Was it? Japan sits for several million years on the "ring of fire" with lots of volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis, ... Here is a list of stronger Earthquakes in the last years... https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/earthquakes.php https://www.worlddata.info/asia/japan/earthquakes.php The 2011 earthquake was only the strongest in the short recorded time. There are similar strong ones on the list. -> Earthquake under sea cause Tsunami. > Yet despite all that crap going on, very few people were harmed by the reactor accident, whereas a LOT were harmed by the Tsunami. A few 100k people lost their homes. 10k people will work in the reactors with high radiation over the next thirty years. Japan lost >> 100 billions USD worth of electricity production infrastructure. What's worse: they built the reactors knowing that there was a chance of a meltdown, the molten fuel went through the reactor containment and was going into a concrete bed underneath, where it also was melting into it. With the Earthquake creating cracks. But the kicker: they had no idea what to do then. No plans, no technology, no sensors, nothing. They had decades time to prepare. They did nothing. 6 years after the accident they were finally able to measure radiation inside a reactor: 530 Sievert per hour... They were completely clueless what actually happened, because all electronics (sensors, computers, cameras, robots, ...) were useless, because they all were dead because the high radiation. It will take decades to develop the technology to deal with the molten cores themselves. 880 tons of molten nuclear fuel. -> https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsfukushima-decommissioning-plans-revised-7581105 https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsfukushima-decommissioni... Looks pretty bad, when a single event can take out all their nuclear reactors for years (please don't mention your armchair expert bullshit that it was all politically overreacting on their side).

mpweiher 3y ago
Again, I quoted Wikipedia, just as you did. "Though all of Japan's nuclear reactors successfully withstood shaking from the Tohoku earthquake..." And yes, the shutdown of nuclear reactors was primarily political: Japan Backs Off Of Nuclear Power After Public Outcry https://www.npr.org/2011/05/11/136209502/japan-backs-off-of-nuclear-power-after-public-outcry https://www.npr.org/2011/05/11/136209502/japan-backs-off-of-... "Kan's decisions to back away from nuclear power came after an unusual number of public demonstrations. " And of course, all this is an irrelevant sideshow. The point is that you claimed nuclear power is on its way out. Except that turns out not to be the case, we have had 22 countries committing to tripling nuclear power. Tripling is not "on the way out". And it turns out that Japan is one of those countries. Something you first denied. Then you claimed they were only reactivating their old reactors. Even if that claim were correct: so what? It's an increase compared to now. But your claim is not correct: they are actually planning to build new plants. And of course Japan is just one country of the 22 (+China+India+...). So again, how is nuclear on the way out? You know what is on its way out? The German Energiewende. A lot of countries were going to follow this model, but most have now reconsidered, and the few that remain are hedging, for example Belgium just extended the life of their reactors. In Switzerland, recent initiatives to turn their reactors off earlier than currently planned were rejected by the electorate, and of course they have >50% reliably hydro power. In fact, the German public also rejects the Energiewende, around 60% say that getting out of nuclear was a mistake. I have a hard time thinking of anything in recent times that got that kind of a majority. Mehrheit ist gegen Atomausstieg https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlandtrend-3357.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/deutschlandtrend/deutschlan... And as to the sideshow: You found another plant that was affected by the Tsunami (not the earthquake directly), as it was a sister plant of the one that melted down and sited about the same, so inundated by the same unprecedented Tsunami. Now you claim the Tsunami wasn't unprecedented. The Japanese disagree with you, but what do they know? About anything really. You know better than them about their plans for nuclear power, you know better than them about their Tsunamis, you know better than them what the risk/reward of nuclear power is...despite them actually having had to deal with the 2nd worst nuclear accident in history. Coming back to the Tsunami: "It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan,..." "Most powerful ever recorded" sounds pretty unprecedented to me. "The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that may have reached heights of up to 40.5 meters (133 ft) " "Among the factors in the high death toll was the unexpectedly large water surge. The sea walls in several cities had been built to protect against tsunamis of much lower heights. Also, many people caught in the tsunami thought they were on high enough ground to be safe" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tōhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tōhoku_earthquake_and_tsu... So a lot of non-nuclear infrastructure in Japan built specifically to withstand or even protect from Tsunamis was...washed away by this Tsunami. To point a finger exclusively at the nuclear infrastructure that was also washed away is either ignorant or dishonest. 'nuff said.