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Merged nuclear power safe?

That seems to be based on the amount of radioactive material it leaked into the environment in the first week of the disaster. Not any new disastrous leakage.
 
r-j said:
That seems to be based on the amount of radioactive material it leaked into the environment in the first week of the disaster. Not any new disastrous leakage.
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As far as I understand it also involves the fact that it is an ongoing issue as of today and the end is nowhere near. Also consider there are more reactor cores involved in this incident than in Chernobyl.

And they said it was very improbable they'd get to this level. Yea sure.
 
Somehow the nuclear supporters still are saying there has been no loss of containment. lol!
 
By my understanding this shouldn't be rated a seven but humans do the ratings and humans are prone to do illogical things.
 
In my opinion, all nuclear accidents should be rated a 7 untill they have control over the situation, and have documented why it is less severe.

But they don't do it that way, and I am no longer in the industry.

They still don't know the extent of the core damage in this instance, and don't have control.
 
BenBurch said:
And cannot be.
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And that solely is the reason why it can be.

Cannot be overrun by a tsunami.

Cannot be left without power.

Cannot lose containment.

Cannot not reach level 7.

When will people realize "can" is cheaper than "cannot" even if it does carry a higher upfront cost.
 
It's important to argue over tiny little things, and ignore the larger picture.
 
bobdroege7 said:
In my opinion, all nuclear accidents should be rated a 7 untill they have control over the situation, and have documented why it is less severe.

But they don't do it that way, and I am no longer in the industry.

They still don't know the extent of the core damage in this instance, and don't have control.
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And this is why I am glad you don't work there anymore.
Incident should never have the maximum level "always" this is like having terror alert always on red , or having the siren of the ambulance even for a small wound. That make the REAL emergency on the same level as not-am-emergency. There are many reason why this is bad : chief among them because it make complacency (oh another level 7, probably only another small one) , it make resource monopolisation expansive and useless (oh another 7 , let us mobilize the whole sheband , even if it is a small leak), and that put the public in a constant panic (the end is nigh ! repent ! another 7 at the neighbour nuke plant !).

There is a good reason to have a grad. Your method would be similar to have NO GRADE at all, and jsut after the fact explain what went wrong. Contraproductive.
 
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Java Man said:
And that solely is the reason why it can be.

Cannot be overrun by a tsunami.

Cannot be left without power.

Cannot lose containment.

Cannot not reach level 7.

When will people realize "can" is cheaper than "cannot" even if it does carry a higher upfront cost.
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We will realize that once you understand how risk assesement work. But then by the time you do, you will be the same opinion as us , so....
 
Kestrel said:
theprestige said:
So when the article says "in the ocean", what do you think it means?
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A local sample taken near the plant.
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Good grief, I remember a homoeopath making exactly this argument. He accused sceptics of declaring that if he dumped a bag of sugar off a rock into shallow water, and then immediately scooped up some of the water, there would be no sugar in it.

I also remember that this led to a calculation that if you dumped a kilo of magic inert sugar that wouldn't be eaten by the fishes into the ocean, and it mixed absolutely evenly, you'd get something like one molecule in a litre sample. Which demonstrates just how much more astronomical than that the dilutions are that the homoeopaths use.

Rolfe.
 
Java Man said:
And that solely is the reason why it can be.

Cannot be overrun by a tsunami.

Cannot be left without power.

Cannot lose containment.

Cannot not reach level 7.

When will people realize "can" is cheaper than "cannot" even if it does carry a higher upfront cost.
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Here we're right back where we started: let's not do anything because there's always a possibility that our measures are insufficient.
 
Travis said:
By my understanding this shouldn't be rated a seven but humans do the ratings and humans are prone to do illogical things.
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It should be rated as 7 because that's how the ratings are defined. The problem is that this sort of continuous slow release isn't really what was expected when the definitions were thought up. In theory you could release a tiny amount every day and still eventually be classed at level 7 even though there's no possibility of ever harming anything. Obviously this accident is a little more severe than that, but it does highlight the deficiencies in using a scale based on raw radioactivity released without taking into account things like the length of release, distribution or isotopes involved.
 
Aepervius said:
We will realize that once you understand how risk assesement work. But then by the time you do, you will be the same opinion as us , so....
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Speaking of the devil. Wasn't it you who claimed:

"In the case of the 2 japanese plant we are not even going as far as catastrophic meltdown. To give you an idea, Chernobyl (which is by the way NOT even a likely scenario here, and was a recipe book for egregerious error)"

and

"Nothing is safe in life. Nothing. The question is what are the risk, and are they acceptable, and what are the consequence when the risk becomes reality. The problem is, people don't seem to be able to rationaly assess the nuclear risks, and the media is not helping. 10000 people die in the tsunami, and all most of coverage we get is of the nuclear reactors."

I guess you're the expert in risk assessment here, not. It turns out your assessment fell quite short of the seriousness of the crisis. You even criticized the media for exaggerating the issue. But they get paid to do that. Do you get paid to undervalue the risks?

I'll try to summarize my risk assessment in one paragraph. The death of so many people is a very sad thing, but we must also realize that no amount of money will bring them back to life and no amount of money will allow us to predict were everyone will be at all times and guarantee a safe spot in case of a tsunami. More so no amount of money will allow us to prevent an earthquake from happening. Predict yes, maybe. But bolt down the tectonic plates no. But we can take better precautions with the power plants. If there was prior knowledge of a large tsunami in the last 1000 years and it costs 100 billion to clean up this mess (conservative cleanup and rebuild costs). That's 100 million a year on average that the risk is worth. You can do a lot with 100 million a year in security infrastructure and best practices. For Japan's 54 nuclear plants that's a 2 million annual budget. That's my risk assessment, what's yours?


Power plant count source:
http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm
 
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