9 ms·

I'm curious as to why they banned the use of asbestos by the chlor-alkali industry. It seems that the asbestos is relatively inert (i.e. it's not going anywhere

I'm curious as to why they banned the use of asbestos by the chlor-alkali industry. It seems that the asbestos is relatively inert (i.e. it's not going anywhere), perhaps they had some evidence that there were asbestos fibers getting into the final products?

whatshisface 3y ago
That stuff almost always gets into the lungs of the workers making it. Oftentimes stuff gets banned because nobody can handle it properly. Its actually kind of like nuclear power. The electricity isn't more dangerous to consumers, but observation of the mortal nature of man lead to the conclusion that it'd be better to keep corporations away from it.
- smallmancontrov 3y ago
  If we had kept up the pace of nuclear construction, we would have finished decarbonizing our electric grid by now. Instead, we've barely started. Was it worth the extra 100Gt of CO2 in the atmosphere?
  - Filligree 3y ago
    Yes. Extra CO2 and global warming is far less likely to scuttle your reelection attempts, and voter deaths don't matter if they're diffuse enough no-one will point their finger at you.
    - contravariant 3y ago
      Diffuse isn't the most important bit, the main point is that they happen during the next election cycle.
  - jajko 3y ago
    People clearly prefer slow silent mass death (and messing up world for good for grandchildren) over few-per-century bigger accidents (when literally everybody in the world takes notes and massively improves). Similar to car massive amount of death (not even going into secondary and tertiary effects) and nobody bats an eye, even if they know personally somebody who died like that. Yet every single plane crash and tons of folks are getting panic attacks. Human psychology fascinates me, but at the same time makes me outright sad. So much potential often wasted on utter stupidities, and even worse - its trivial for skilled people to manipulate masses into literally shooting off their own feet with 12 gauge shotgun buckshot, just play the fear tune well enough for long enough.
    - tacocataco 3y ago
      I think you might be interested in Adam Curtis' "century of the self" if long documentaries are your thing.
    - HPsquared 3y ago
      See also, economic policy of the last 100 years or so.
    - rurp 3y ago
      I think you're right to be sad about it, and I would add "deeply concerned" as well. Our society is at a point where the most dangerous risks are ones that the human mind is pretty bad at reasoning about. That's a big problem, to put it mildly. Climate change, nuclear weapons, bio threats, and runaway AI all pose immense risks, at scales that are hard to reason about intuitively. Hopefully we develop ways to better manage current and future risks before a big one blows up.
  - legulere 3y ago
    Yearly added renewable generation (not capacity, but actual generation) is already much larger than added nuclear power ever was.
- unglaublich 3y ago
  Strange, that same observation and the corresponding 3 million worldwide deaths yearly didn’t change our attitude towards fossil fuel combustion and its air pollution. Even more remarkable, the fact that nuclear is kept out of the hands of corporations, but the oil industry is not might have been the cause that the latter put so much money and effort into the nuclear fear campaign. More people die of fossil fuel air pollution per year than have died of COVID. We might have saved more lives during the lock down by the reduction in pollution than the actual virus containment.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    > Strange, that same observation and the corresponding 3 million worldwide deaths yearly didn’t change our attitude towards fossil fuel combustion and its air pollution. Stranger still, alcohol is still legal even though there's "no safe level of consumption"[1]. [1] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
    - HPsquared 3y ago
      Every activity carries risk of one form or another.
      - oblio 3y ago
        True, but as we remove various forms of risks and prolong life, for sure there will be a point in the future where our 200-year-living descendants will say: why were those idiots actively, massively and collectively poisoning themselves?
        stevejb 3y ago
        Probably not. They’ll understand it was the best we could do at the time, just like we understand that about our ancestors.
- Reason077 3y ago
  Vastly more people have died from hydro accidents, let alone coal pollution, than have ever died from all the world’s nuclear accidents combined.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    The very same meticulous regulatory oversight that make plants safe makes them impossible to get through permitting cost-effectively. The result of the "soft ban" are a number of extremely safe plants that it's not economical to make more of. You could hypothetically enforce a similar "soft ban" for leaded gasoline or asbestos - by requiring elaborate filtration, containment and disposal procedures, plus monitoring and redundant process oversight. They'd never show up on consumer vehicles or in homes, but they may show up in a handful of specialty applications, complete with extraordinary amounts of paperwork and large government departments. Some people might start talking about "clean fiber," or "safe leaded." P.S. if you are wondering what's wrong with allowing corporations to take on endeavors with a risk of causing large amounts of damage, it's because the value of a company isn't allowed to go negative due to bankruptcy and the corporate veil. If you're able to incorporate, you can profit from a series of "-$1,000 if I lose, +$1 if I win," bets, because creating $1000 liabilities on an entity with no money in the bank costs little more than the equipment you'd be forced to liquidate.
    - Georgelemental 3y ago
      China and Korea manage to build nuclear plants under budget with no significant accidets to date. So it's empirically possible
    - SnorkelTan 3y ago
      China seems to be building next gen reactors in reasonable amounts of time.
      - whatshisface 3y ago
        Let's check again in 50 years, after the safety systems have had time to deteriorate, and we've had Chinese Glasnost for a look into the archives from 2056. (The Soviet Union would have kept Chernobyl a secret if Sweden hadn't detected the radiation. If the accident had been limited to the boundaries of Ukraine, it might never have been revealed as long as the regime lasted.)
- briandear 3y ago
  More people have died from wind turbines than in all the nuclear accidents combined. Here’s some data from just Scotland: https://scotlandagainstspin.org/turbine-accident-statistics/ https://scotlandagainstspin.org/turbine-accident-statistics/
  - pfisch 3y ago
    It is hard to say how many people died from chernobyl. Some accounts say more than 30k(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...) Your link shows ~200 from wind turbines.
    - arcticbull 3y ago
      Absolutely not, the USCEAR report is pretty much the gold standard, and the number is no more than 4,000. I've read the report and I'd suggest if you're curious that you do the same. The 4,000 number includes fully realized expected number of people who would contract cancer in their lifetimes, etc. And it uses the contested and very pessimistic linear no-threshold dose response model for very low doses. It also includes increase in suicide risk due to people believing they're 'contaminated.' As your link shows the direct deaths were around 78. Everything else beyond that is a statistical estimate, and the more anti-nuclear the group running the numbers is, the exponentially larger the "death toll." The largest estimate came in at a staggering 985,000 -- despite there only being 350,000 people in what is now the CEZ.
  - patall 3y ago
    The wind number seems to include everything, i.e transport etc. To have a fair comparison, one would need the number of premature deaths in uranium ore mining etc. Without that, it is kind of apples to oranges. (And I don't want downplay wind turbines, I fully aware that maintanance on a 200m high pole is dangerous)
  - tolien 3y ago
    > Here’s some data from just Scotland: No it's not (putting aside that they seem to be a bunch of anti-wind cranks). > Total number of accidents: 3493 If you drill into the PDF they link to: > 3493 Miscellaneous 31/12/2023 Whispering Willow North windpower facility, Franklin County, Iowa USA Last I looked, the USA hasn't been part of the UK in almost 250 years. But also their data is nonsense - they've counted one turbine catching fire as two separate incidents, and conveniently ignore that it was during a named storm when the turbine was exposed to winds gusting >70 knots and thousands of people lost power due to downed power lines [0]. Even if you take their number as gospel, which seems unwise given they're counting this as an accident: > "World's biggest wind farm makes bid to force land sales". Report that SSE Renewables, owners of the Berwick Bank wind farm project off the cost of East Lothian, Scotland, are seeking to force landowners to sell land to operators of the Berwick Bank project. > Their application to Scottish Ministers to use a Compulsory Purchase Order for lands has brought a stream of objections from private land owners, Network Rail, and EDF who operate Torness nuclear plant. The application will now go to public enquiry. The FT [1] claims 2202 deaths due to Fukushima: > There were 2,202 disaster-related deaths in Fukushima, according to the government’s Reconstruction Agency, from evacuation stress, interruption to medical care and suicide 0: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/learn-about/uk-past-events/interesting/2023/2023_12_storm_gerrit.pdf https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metoffi... 1: https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b189ea https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b18...
- asdff 3y ago
  American nuclear plants are ran by corporations though
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  Nuclear power is safely handled by humans, even accounting for every accident. Humans just have a lot easier time dealing with deaths that happen gradually for no definitive cause, like that caused by say burning coal, than sudden dramatic events which leave no doubt as to what killed people. If a nuclear accident killed 10k people tomorrow that still wouldn’t really change my mind.
ars 3y ago
This has an overview: https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/ez_import/Asbestos_derogation_chrysotile_diaphragms.pdf https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/ez_import/Asbestos_... Nothing is in the final product, and there is no worker contact except around every 10 years as the cell is replaced.
- GenerWork 3y ago
  Thanks for the link. Seems strange that this industry would be singled out considering that asbestos exposure seems really limited.
Gibbon1 3y ago
I think they now use a polymer membrane that works better at keeping the two products separate.
adrr 3y ago
Someone still has to mine it.
amluto 3y ago
I recall reading some rather concerning accounts from plant maintenance workers in chlor-alkali plants. It wasn’t some nicely contained chunk of asbestos — it sounded like fluffy asbestos got everywhere.

whatshisface 3y ago

That stuff almost always gets into the lungs of the workers making it. Oftentimes stuff gets banned because nobody can handle it properly. Its actually kind of like nuclear power. The electricity isn't more dangerous to consumers, but observation of the mortal nature of man lead to the conclusion that it'd be better to keep corporations away from it.

smallmancontrov 3y ago
If we had kept up the pace of nuclear construction, we would have finished decarbonizing our electric grid by now. Instead, we've barely started. Was it worth the extra 100Gt of CO2 in the atmosphere?
- Filligree 3y ago
  Yes. Extra CO2 and global warming is far less likely to scuttle your reelection attempts, and voter deaths don't matter if they're diffuse enough no-one will point their finger at you.
  - contravariant 3y ago
    Diffuse isn't the most important bit, the main point is that they happen during the next election cycle.
- jajko 3y ago
  People clearly prefer slow silent mass death (and messing up world for good for grandchildren) over few-per-century bigger accidents (when literally everybody in the world takes notes and massively improves). Similar to car massive amount of death (not even going into secondary and tertiary effects) and nobody bats an eye, even if they know personally somebody who died like that. Yet every single plane crash and tons of folks are getting panic attacks. Human psychology fascinates me, but at the same time makes me outright sad. So much potential often wasted on utter stupidities, and even worse - its trivial for skilled people to manipulate masses into literally shooting off their own feet with 12 gauge shotgun buckshot, just play the fear tune well enough for long enough.
  - tacocataco 3y ago
    I think you might be interested in Adam Curtis' "century of the self" if long documentaries are your thing.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    See also, economic policy of the last 100 years or so.
  - rurp 3y ago
    I think you're right to be sad about it, and I would add "deeply concerned" as well. Our society is at a point where the most dangerous risks are ones that the human mind is pretty bad at reasoning about. That's a big problem, to put it mildly. Climate change, nuclear weapons, bio threats, and runaway AI all pose immense risks, at scales that are hard to reason about intuitively. Hopefully we develop ways to better manage current and future risks before a big one blows up.
- legulere 3y ago
  Yearly added renewable generation (not capacity, but actual generation) is already much larger than added nuclear power ever was.
unglaublich 3y ago
Strange, that same observation and the corresponding 3 million worldwide deaths yearly didn’t change our attitude towards fossil fuel combustion and its air pollution. Even more remarkable, the fact that nuclear is kept out of the hands of corporations, but the oil industry is not might have been the cause that the latter put so much money and effort into the nuclear fear campaign. More people die of fossil fuel air pollution per year than have died of COVID. We might have saved more lives during the lock down by the reduction in pollution than the actual virus containment.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > Strange, that same observation and the corresponding 3 million worldwide deaths yearly didn’t change our attitude towards fossil fuel combustion and its air pollution. Stranger still, alcohol is still legal even though there's "no safe level of consumption"[1]. [1] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Every activity carries risk of one form or another.
    - oblio 3y ago
      True, but as we remove various forms of risks and prolong life, for sure there will be a point in the future where our 200-year-living descendants will say: why were those idiots actively, massively and collectively poisoning themselves?
      - stevejb 3y ago
        Probably not. They’ll understand it was the best we could do at the time, just like we understand that about our ancestors.
Reason077 3y ago
Vastly more people have died from hydro accidents, let alone coal pollution, than have ever died from all the world’s nuclear accidents combined.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  The very same meticulous regulatory oversight that make plants safe makes them impossible to get through permitting cost-effectively. The result of the "soft ban" are a number of extremely safe plants that it's not economical to make more of. You could hypothetically enforce a similar "soft ban" for leaded gasoline or asbestos - by requiring elaborate filtration, containment and disposal procedures, plus monitoring and redundant process oversight. They'd never show up on consumer vehicles or in homes, but they may show up in a handful of specialty applications, complete with extraordinary amounts of paperwork and large government departments. Some people might start talking about "clean fiber," or "safe leaded." P.S. if you are wondering what's wrong with allowing corporations to take on endeavors with a risk of causing large amounts of damage, it's because the value of a company isn't allowed to go negative due to bankruptcy and the corporate veil. If you're able to incorporate, you can profit from a series of "-$1,000 if I lose, +$1 if I win," bets, because creating $1000 liabilities on an entity with no money in the bank costs little more than the equipment you'd be forced to liquidate.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    China and Korea manage to build nuclear plants under budget with no significant accidets to date. So it's empirically possible
  - SnorkelTan 3y ago
    China seems to be building next gen reactors in reasonable amounts of time.
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      Let's check again in 50 years, after the safety systems have had time to deteriorate, and we've had Chinese Glasnost for a look into the archives from 2056. (The Soviet Union would have kept Chernobyl a secret if Sweden hadn't detected the radiation. If the accident had been limited to the boundaries of Ukraine, it might never have been revealed as long as the regime lasted.)
briandear 3y ago
More people have died from wind turbines than in all the nuclear accidents combined. Here’s some data from just Scotland: https://scotlandagainstspin.org/turbine-accident-statistics/ https://scotlandagainstspin.org/turbine-accident-statistics/
- pfisch 3y ago
  It is hard to say how many people died from chernobyl. Some accounts say more than 30k(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...) Your link shows ~200 from wind turbines.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    Absolutely not, the USCEAR report is pretty much the gold standard, and the number is no more than 4,000. I've read the report and I'd suggest if you're curious that you do the same. The 4,000 number includes fully realized expected number of people who would contract cancer in their lifetimes, etc. And it uses the contested and very pessimistic linear no-threshold dose response model for very low doses. It also includes increase in suicide risk due to people believing they're 'contaminated.' As your link shows the direct deaths were around 78. Everything else beyond that is a statistical estimate, and the more anti-nuclear the group running the numbers is, the exponentially larger the "death toll." The largest estimate came in at a staggering 985,000 -- despite there only being 350,000 people in what is now the CEZ.
- patall 3y ago
  The wind number seems to include everything, i.e transport etc. To have a fair comparison, one would need the number of premature deaths in uranium ore mining etc. Without that, it is kind of apples to oranges. (And I don't want downplay wind turbines, I fully aware that maintanance on a 200m high pole is dangerous)
- tolien 3y ago
  > Here’s some data from just Scotland: No it's not (putting aside that they seem to be a bunch of anti-wind cranks). > Total number of accidents: 3493 If you drill into the PDF they link to: > 3493 Miscellaneous 31/12/2023 Whispering Willow North windpower facility, Franklin County, Iowa USA Last I looked, the USA hasn't been part of the UK in almost 250 years. But also their data is nonsense - they've counted one turbine catching fire as two separate incidents, and conveniently ignore that it was during a named storm when the turbine was exposed to winds gusting >70 knots and thousands of people lost power due to downed power lines [0]. Even if you take their number as gospel, which seems unwise given they're counting this as an accident: > "World's biggest wind farm makes bid to force land sales". Report that SSE Renewables, owners of the Berwick Bank wind farm project off the cost of East Lothian, Scotland, are seeking to force landowners to sell land to operators of the Berwick Bank project. > Their application to Scottish Ministers to use a Compulsory Purchase Order for lands has brought a stream of objections from private land owners, Network Rail, and EDF who operate Torness nuclear plant. The application will now go to public enquiry. The FT [1] claims 2202 deaths due to Fukushima: > There were 2,202 disaster-related deaths in Fukushima, according to the government’s Reconstruction Agency, from evacuation stress, interruption to medical care and suicide 0: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/learn-about/uk-past-events/interesting/2023/2023_12_storm_gerrit.pdf https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metoffi... 1: https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b189ea https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e8958b18...
asdff 3y ago
American nuclear plants are ran by corporations though
faeriechangling 3y ago
Nuclear power is safely handled by humans, even accounting for every accident. Humans just have a lot easier time dealing with deaths that happen gradually for no definitive cause, like that caused by say burning coal, than sudden dramatic events which leave no doubt as to what killed people. If a nuclear accident killed 10k people tomorrow that still wouldn’t really change my mind.

ars 3y ago

This has an overview: https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/ez_import/Asbestos_derogation_chrysotile_diaphragms.pdf https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/ez_import/Asbestos_... Nothing is in the final product, and there is no worker contact except around every 10 years as the cell is replaced.

GenerWork 3y ago
Thanks for the link. Seems strange that this industry would be singled out considering that asbestos exposure seems really limited.

Gibbon1 3y ago

I think they now use a polymer membrane that works better at keeping the two products separate.

adrr 3y ago

Someone still has to mine it.

amluto 3y ago

I recall reading some rather concerning accounts from plant maintenance workers in chlor-alkali plants. It wasn’t some nicely contained chunk of asbestos — it sounded like fluffy asbestos got everywhere.