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Merged nuclear power safe?

Prometheus said:
Correlation does not equal causation. That "study" is reporting on total deaths (from all causes) in some U.S. cities during the 14 weeks after the Fukushima incident as compared to the same period of time a year previous, and extrapolating those cities' data to the whole U.S. population. In other words, it's bollocks. There's no reason to assume that any of those deaths are caused by radiation from Fukushima.
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I understand the correlation/causation fallacy. However, this study doesn't claim anything about causation, it only asks if there is a correlation.

One thing studies like this always seem to prove (if nothing else) is that there is a need for more studies. :)

"More importantly, the findings reported here, plus the disease patterns that
developed after Chernobyl, indicate that public health personnel can anticipate
and plan to put in place diagnostic and treatment procedures. Given the continued
high levels of radioactive iodine, it is predicted that the incidence of
thyroid disease, including thyroid insufficiency in newborns and thyroid cancer
in children and adults, will increase...
"The health effects of exposure to radioactivity from the Fukushima meltdowns,
both in Japan and around the world, will take a long time to fully assess. The
paucity of data from the U.S. EPA is unfortunate and will hamper future studies.
A quarter of a century after the Chernobyl disaster, and more than 60 years after
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, compilations of health casualties
are still being updated. It is critical that research should proceed with all due
haste, as answers are essential to early diagnosis and treatment for exposed
people, particularly children and the very young."

Kestrel said:
Thanks.

My impression after a quick read is that the claimed effect is within the noise level of the source data. A lot of things can cause the raw number of deaths in a city to go up or down. And the deaths didn't seem to be correlated to the radiation levels.

There could however be a Fukushima effect. The radiation levels were insignificant, but stress from worrying about radiation could have resulted in some excess deaths.
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That thought crossed my mind too, and it seems a reasonable theory.

Thank you both for your responses.
 
bikerdruid said:
Experts say that the total amount of radiation leaked will exceed amounts released from Chernobyl, making Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in history.
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I'd really like to see how that is supposed to work. One is a rather contained nuclear accident, the other is a disaster where the reactor was literally blowing big amounts of it's core into the environment. One has only a small evacuation zone which further only has a few spots with high radiation levels, while the other was so bad that even trees started glowing....

Unless someone drops some bombs onto the Fukushima plant to release a lot of the core's material into the environment, i simply can't see how it can even get into that ballpark.

But then, having those anti-nuke-bozos stick to reality would really be equal to a miracle.

Greetings,

Chris
 
bikerdruid said:
ah, you win some and lose some..
speaking of which, the anti-nuke lobby has won in alberta.:D
i guess you lost that one, eh?;)
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So you posted alarmist rhetoric, it was shown to be wrong, and your only response is "you win some and lose some"? Personally I'd dedicate myself to a better understanding of the issue when it becomes clear that I'm falling for ********. It seems that anyone who's interested in the truth would do the same.

Unless you didn't actually think what you posted was true, in which case I really can't understand why you posted it.
 
I do not think that consequences of Fukushima (in terms of radiation effects on humans) will be comparable to those from Chernobyl.

Ludwik Kowalski
.
 
So, a commission investigating the disaster response has recently released its interim report:

Fukushima Probe Focus on Regulator in Multiple Response Failure

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When engineering professor Yotaro Hatamura took the job of heading the independent investigation into the Fukushima disaster, he said he was looking for lessons rather than culprits. He may have changed his mind.

In a 507-page report published yesterday after a six-month investigation, Hatamura reserves some of his strongest criticism for Japan’s atomic power regulator, the Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency, known as NISA.

NISA officials left the Dai-Ichi nuclear plant after the March 11 earthquake and when ordered to return by the government provided little assistance to Tokyo Electric Power Co. staff struggling to gain control of three melting reactors, according to the report.

“Monitoring the plant’s status was the most important action at that time, so to evacuate was very questionable,” the report by Hatamura’s 10-member team concluded. The committee found “no evidence that the NISA officials provided necessary assistance or advice.” Even though NISA’s manual said to stay at the plant, their manager gave the officials permission to evacuate, according to the report, which doesn’t name the manager.
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Japan Panel Cites Failure in Tsunami

TOKYO — From inspectors’ abandoning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan’s response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday.

The failures, which the panel said worsened the extent of the disaster, were outlined in a 500-page interim report detailing Japan’s response to the calamitous events that unfolded at the Fukushima plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out all of the site’s power.

. . .

The panel attacked the use of the term “soteigai,” or “unforeseen,” that plant and government officials used both to describe the unprecedented scale of the disaster and to explain why they were unable to stop it. Running a nuclear power plant inherently required officials to foresee the unforeseen, said the panel’s chairman, Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus in engineering at the University of Tokyo.

“There was a lot of talk of soteigai, but that only bred perceptions among the public that officials were shirking their responsibilities,” Mr. Hatamura said.

According to the report, a final version of which is due by mid-2012, the authorities grossly underestimated the risks tsunamis posed to the plant. The charges echoed previous criticism made by nuclear critics and acknowledged by the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power.

. . .

Officials of Japan’s nuclear regulator present at the plant during the quake quickly left the site, and when ordered to return by the government, they proved of little help to workers racing to restore power and find water to cool temperatures at the plant, the report said.

Also, the workers left at Fukushima Daiichi had not been trained to handle multiple failures, and lacked a clear manual to follow, the report said. A communications breakdown meant that workers at the plant had no clear sense of what was happening.

In particular, an erroneous assumption that an emergency cooling system was working led to hours of delay in finding alternative ways to draw cooling water to the plant, the report said. All the while, the system was not working, and the uranium fuel rods at the cores were starting to melt.

And devastatingly, the government failed to make use of data on the radioactive plumes released from the plant to warn local towns and direct evacuations, the report said. The failure allowed entire communities to be exposed to harmful radiation, the report said.
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In other news, TEPCO is going to be unable to pay for the cleanup and compensation costs, and will likely have to be nationalized. Taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Japan trade min to call for Tepco nationalisation-Nikkei

Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:04am EST

* Trade minister to meet with Tepco president Tuesday evening

* Tepco asks for additional $9 bln for compensation

* Tepco saddled with huge compensation, cleanup costs

By Yoko Kubota

TOKYO, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Japanese trade minister Yukio Edano will urge Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, on Tuesday to accept a public fund injection and a de facto nationalisation, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Japan's biggest utility is saddled with huge compensation and cleanup costs after a massive earthquake and tsunami in March triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years at the Fukushima plant, putting the firm's independence in doubt.

. . .

Earlier on Tuesday, Tepco asked a government-backed bailout body for 690 billion yen ($8.8 billion) to help compensate victims of the crisis, in addition to the 890 billion yen that the government had agreed in November to provide.
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Putting the cost of this into perspective:

There seem to be a lot of different estimates out there but it seems the cost of the Fukushima disaster may be roughly double the cost of the BP oil spill.

Tepco is expected to have to pay 1.02 trillion yen in the year to March 31 in compensation to those affected by the disaster, according to an October report from a government investigation of the utility’s finances. Compensation may total 4.5 trillion yen in the first two years of the disaster, the government panel said.

Decommissioning the four damaged reactors at the plant, located about 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo, will cost at least 1.15 trillion yen, according to the government panel, which was headed by bankruptcy lawyer Kazuhiko Shimokobe, who attended today’s meeting with Edano.

Shimokobe is now head of the steering committee of the fund that’s also overseeing Tepco.
Contamination Cleanup

The bill to clean up the contamination is estimated to be $14 billion over 30 years, according to the environment ministry.
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So, 4.5 trillion yen plus 1.15 trillion yen plus $14 billion dollars is about $86 billion at current exchange rates.

BP oil spill costs to hit $40bn

BP said today it expects the cost of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to be $7.7bn (£4.8bn) bigger than previously thought, pushing the total bill to nearly $40bn.
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The BP estimate is from 2010. Probably both these estimates will be wrong, but it will take many years before a more accurate number can be put on each disaster.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
And compared to the total cost of the earthquake/tsunami across all Japan what would it be?
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That's a good point: this isn't a nuclear disaster, it's an earthquake and tsunami. All the other damage is blamed on the earthquake, but somehow the damage at Fukishima is to be laid at the feet of the nuclear industry.

I understand the sentiment in Puppycow's posts: there are valid questions about oversight, etc. And it's also meaningful to point out the costs (particularly if they are born by Japanese taxpayers), but let's not forget that this wasn't simply a matter of poor design: there's also the small matter of a massive natural disaster to take into account.
 
Roboramma said:
So you posted alarmist rhetoric, it was shown to be wrong, and your only response is "you win some and lose some"? Personally I'd dedicate myself to a better understanding of the issue when it becomes clear that I'm falling for ********. It seems that anyone who's interested in the truth would do the same.

Unless you didn't actually think what you posted was true, in which case I really can't understand why you posted it.
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BD does not wish to udnerstand : he only does propaganda. And like all propagandist he simply throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks to it. He does not care at the spaghetti which falls, he will simply throw more rancid spaghetti at the wall.
 
The report are pretty damning, and if they have done negligence they should be acted on.

But one part of it seems to me exaggerated "they should foresee the unforeseeable" is more demagogy than real analysis.
 
Roboramma said:
So you posted alarmist rhetoric, it was shown to be wrong, and your only response is "you win some and lose some"? Personally I'd dedicate myself to a better understanding of the issue when it becomes clear that I'm falling for ********. It seems that anyone who's interested in the truth would do the same.
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I just skimmed one of JudeBrando's threads. What Bikerdruid posts on Fukushima caused an odd case of deja vu. Debating tactics are exactly the same -- just different topics.
 
In review:

Nuclear Reactors + TEPCOs poor management + Japanese Govt's poor oversight = safe and efficient production of electricity

Nuclear Reactors + TEPCOs poor management + Japanese Govt's poor oversight + the entire Island of Japan leaping eight feet to the right = disaster

Nuclear energy is so safe, TEPCO and the Japanese government together couldn't screw it up without help in the form of a disaster that killed 20,000 people across the entire country.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
...
Nuclear energy is so safe, TEPCO and the Japanese government together couldn't screw it up without help in the form of a disaster that killed 20,000 people across the entire country.
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You do have kind of a point, my biggest worry is that the levels of incompetence, cost cutting and mismanagement attained by the Japanese could easily be surpassed elsewhere.
 
Germany unloads nukes, gets nuclear power anyway:

While Germany may soon be nuclear plant-free, reactors continue to exist within sight of its borders in France and the Czech Republic, and new ones are popping up in Poland and the Netherlands, Spiegel Online reports.

And while the Germans have complained, EU law states that the countries undertaking the construction don't need to listen.
​

I approve of the rest of Europe producing nuclear energy that ignorant superstitious Germans don't want, but are going to have to buy anyway. :D
 
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Sword_Of_Truth said:
Germany unloads nukes, gets nuclear power anyway:
While Germany may soon be nuclear plant-free, reactors continue to exist within sight of its borders in France and the Czech Republic, and new ones are popping up in Poland and the Netherlands, Spiegel Online reports.

And while the Germans have complained, EU law states that the countries undertaking the construction don't need to listen.
​
I approve of the rest of Europe producing nuclear energy that ignorant superstitious Germans don't want, but are going to have to buy anyway. :D
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Well, you, know, they don't have to buy it; they could just do without. That would show the French and the rest of them who's in charge. Giggle.
 
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JWideman said:
Just mining coal is an ecological disaster, and it's unavoidable. Using it for power is even worse. It may be "cleaner" now than before, but it still puts soot in the air and causes acid rain.
Oil spills are enormous ecological disasters. When there's a spill, it's never just a few thousand gallons - it's hundreds of thousands to BILLIONS of gallons!
Hydro requires having a nearby natural waterfall big enough and has a major environmental impact.
Other forms of generating power are good for individual use (if you can afford it), but totally impractical on a large scale.
Nuclear power, on the other hand, has a minimal impact and generates enormous amounts of electricity. It's only when something goes wrong that things get bad, and that's thankfully quite rare.
The problems Japan is facing are not due to the inherent risks of nuclear power, but the fact they just got by the biggest earthquake ever.
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Solar energy, as we know, is nuclear, in the final analysis. Building nuclear power plants on satellites (natural or man-made) and beaming energy to earth is science fiction, so far. But it can become reality.

Ludwik Kowalski
.
 
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