Enviromentalists and Anti-Nuclearism

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by plindboe:
People who can't grasp why there is a fear should take a trip to Chernobyl.

Chernobyl is indicative of the failure of communism, not nuclear power. This was the same political system that engineered mass famine in one of Europe's most fertile agricultural regions, after all.

 

[a_unique_person]

People also worry about a power company that might be going down the tubes cutting back on maintenance. An Australian airline, Ansett, is a case in point. It was owned by two companies, one of which was Murdochs Newscorp. Both has lost interest in it, and just wanted to flog it off for the best price for the least cost. That it, they let it run down, to the point that planes were not getting their required maintenance. A note from Boeing about a maintenance issue was 'lost on a desk under a pile of paper'. If it was true, or a lie to cover up deliberate cost cutting, the company was dammed in people's eyes after that, and very quickly went broke.

This is what people worry about, that the day to day humdrum stupidity, that we all experience, happening in a nuclear plant.

Just look at the recent accident in the Japanese plant where the two workers fried themselves. How could something like that ever happen?

 

[originalgagster]

Chernobyl is indicative of the failure of communism, not nuclear power. This was the same political system that engineered mass famine in one of Europe's most fertile agricultural regions, after all.

This is only partly true. The staff at Chernobyl were poorly trained, and the reactor design was flawed. How much of this was due to the Soviet political system is unknown, but it was certainly a factor.

A factor which was equally, if not more important however, was the behaviour of the scientists running reactor four. The scientists, as part of an unauthorised experiment let the temparatures in the reactor drop to extrememly low levels. This, as well as wilful disregard for basic safety procedures was the main cause of the disaster. See for example here

Now you can argue that superior design and better training would not have allowed the Chernobyl disaster to occur in a Western nation, and you may be right, but it can be justifiably pointed out that Western scientists are not immune to the same mistakes and stupidity as their ex-Soviet counterparts.

No matter how carefully you build a reactor, and no matter how soundly you design a set of guidelines for operating a reactor you just cant legislate for basic human error and misconduct.

In my opinion, the costs of human error in the operation of nuclear power plants are extremely high, and make me very sceptical as to the wisdom of nuclear power projects.

 

[originalgagster]

Some near misses, human error was a major factor.

Windscale, UK 1957

"On October 8, 1957 a technician was heating up the reactor...... Because of the inadequacy of the temperature measuring instrumentation the control room staff mistakenly thought the reactor was cooling down too much and needed an extra boost of heating. Thus temperatures were actually abnormally high when at 11.05am the control rods were withdrawn for a routine start to the reactor's chain reaction. A canister of lithium and magnesium, also in the reactor to create tritium for a British H bomb, was probably the first can to burst and ignite in the soaring temperatures. This coupled with igniting uranium and graphite sent temperatures soaring to 1,300 degrees centigrade."

Brown's Ferry, Alabama 1975

"Two electricians were trying to seal air leaks in the cable spreading room, where the electrical cables that control the two reactors are separated and routed through different tunnels to the reactor buildings. They were using strips of spongy foam rubber to seal the leaks. They were also using candles to determine whether or not the leaks had been successfully plugged -- by observing how the flame was affected by escaping air.

The electrical engineer put the candle too close to the foam rubber, and it burst into flame.

The resulting fire, which disabled a large number of engineered safety systems at the plant, including the entire emergency core cooling system (ECCS) on Unit 1, and almost resulted in a boiloff/meltdown accident, demonstrates the vulnerability of nuclear plants to "single failure" events and human fallibility."

Three Mile Island 1979

"A minor malfunction, or transient, in the nonnuclear part of the system would evolve a series of automated responses in the reactor's coolant system, and during all of this, the relief valve on top of a piece of equipment called "the pressurizer" would become stuck open. Owing to continued misreading of the symptoms by the operators over a 2 1/4-hour period before the relief valve was closed and the turning off of an automatic emergency cooling system, the reactor core would become partially uncovered and severely damaged. It would be another 12 hours before the plant crew and the engineers from GPU Service Company would concur in effective corrective action. "

Tokaimura, Japan 1999

"The accident occurred when employees of JCO Co, the company which operates the plant, poured 35 pounds of uranium into a purification tank containing nitric acid, instead of the 5.2 pounds normally used. What followed was a flash of blue light inside the plant as the result of what has been called a nuclear fission chain reaction. The Tokyo Electric Power Company rushed 880 pounds of sodium borate to the plant to absorb the radiation emitted, but the workers had difficulty getting close to the processing tank"

The above four examples are just a selection, the list could easily have been several times as large.

When supporters of nuclear power can prove that power plants are immune to human error, then we can accept nuclear power as a viable energy resource. Of course they cann't, so we need to search for safer methods of energy production.

edit: typos

 

[aerocontrols]

The above four examples are just a selection, the list could easily have been several times as large.

How easily?

How many times as large?

 

[originalgagster]

How easily?

How many times as large?

You can find an extensive list here

I'm not going to count them all, but the list is clearly substantial.

 

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by originalgagster:
You can find an extensive list here

I'm not going to count them all, but the list is clearly substantial.

In comparison to what? Is nuclear power anymore dangerous or prone to human error than other energy sources and usages? Less so? I mean in fifty years it would appear to me that nuclear power has had a fairly good track record.

 

[Richard G]

I had the pleasure of hammering a boat full of Greenepeace wackos with 150psi firehose when we (Navy) were pulling into Vancouver. They were doing their best to get run over and killed in their little rubber dingy by our 550 ft long guided missle cruiser. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

 

[LucyR]

I had the pleasure of hammering a boat full of Greenepeace wackos with 150psi firehose when we (Navy) were pulling into Vancouver. They were doing their best to get run over and killed in their little rubber dingy by our 550 ft long guided missle cruiser. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

When you think of what Richard stands for, this remark comes across as both ironic and profound.

 

[Solitaire]

No matter how carefully you build a reactor, and no matter how soundly
you design a set of guidelines for operating a reactor you just cant legislate
for basic human error and misconduct.

In my opinion, the costs of human error in the operation of nuclear power
plants are extremely high, and make me very sceptical as to the wisdom
of nuclear power projects.

One can design a nuclear reactor that will run itself.
For example the reactor heats up an starts expanding,
the gaps between elements expand a fewer nuclear
reactions occure, it cools down a bit - so you never
reach a meltdown. And there are other ways to make
them safe short of dropping a nuclear bomb on one.

 

[a_unique_person]

One can design a nuclear reactor that will run itself.
For example the reactor heats up an starts expanding,
the gaps between elements expand a fewer nuclear
reactions occure, it cools down a bit - so you never
reach a meltdown. And there are other ways to make
them safe short of dropping a nuclear bomb on one.

But what can you do about human stupidity?

Tokaimura, Japan 1999

"The accident occurred when employees of JCO Co, the company which operates the plant, poured 35 pounds of uranium into a purification tank containing nitric acid, instead of the 5.2 pounds normally used. What followed was a flash of blue light inside the plant as the result of what has been called a nuclear fission chain reaction. The Tokyo Electric Power Company rushed 880 pounds of sodium borate to the plant to absorb the radiation emitted, but the workers had difficulty getting close to the processing tank"

I wonder myself if nuclear power is the way to go, then I read about idiots doing things like this.

 

[Ziggurat]

I wonder myself if nuclear power is the way to go, then I read about idiots doing things like this.

Just to be clear, since it's not obvious from the quotes, the accident at Tokaimura was NOT at a nuclear reactor, but at a uranium processing facility (the only reactor in Tokaimura, which I visited once, is on the other side of town, and it's a research reactor, which operates at close to room temperature and not pressurized). That doesn't mean the accident wasn't serious or troubling, but just to make sure the facts are explicit.

 

[Scott]

Please don't cloud the issue with the facts.

 

[Kodiak]

Modern Environmentalism...

Truly the last bastion of socialism...

 

[originalgagster]

In comparison to what? Is nuclear power anymore dangerous or prone to human error than other energy sources and usages? Less so? I mean in fifty years it would appear to me that nuclear power has had a fairly good track record.

It is correct that in the last fifty or so years nuclear power has been responsible for many less direct deaths than have, for example coal mines and oil and gas exploration.

In truth however, this is not the primary issue. The real issue are the potential consequences of a major nuclear disaster. Everyone is broadly aware of what a large scale nuclear disaster may mean for the population in the surrounding area, and although precise figures are hard to come by, as there are so few examples of major nuclear contamination in the civilian population - and what figures there are remain hotly contested - it is generally agreed that the consequences of a large scale nuclear accident are potentially catastrophic.

Using the Chernobyl disaster as a model the number of early deaths due to the disaster has been estimated at anywhere between 40 000 and 500 000 (see the link below for sources). Even taking the lowest figure as the best approximation this is surely well beyond what could be expected from the biggest imaginable oil disaster. Having said this the Chernobyl disaster was potentially much worse; given the right winds, and a more severe explosion loss of life could have been far greater. A similar accident in a more densely populated area would likely cause much more death, disruption to the civilian population and be far more expensive to put right. In 1994 The Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs estimated that a worst case accident scenario in one of the reactors in Germany could cost up to US$ 6,800 billion to put right. Obviously this is before we even begin to deal with the cost in human suffering.

Nuclear related illness also has the horrible property of being genetically transmitted, so the repercussions of any large scale disaster are likely to be felt for generations. It is also this property which makes it difficult to accurately measure the true results of nuclear contamination.

Taking the position that superior Western training and technology rules out the possibility of a major Chernobyl-like disaster in the West is not a viable argument. As the many examples of nuclear accidents which were near disasters show, nuclear power is inherently unsafe at the level of human fallibility.

http://www.antenna.nl/wise/411/4067.html

 

[originalgagster]

One can design a nuclear reactor that will run itself.
For example the reactor heats up an starts expanding,
the gaps between elements expand a fewer nuclear

Yes reactor design has improved alot, but no matter how well designed a reactor is it can never be 100% immune from human fallibility, and unfortunately human fallibility is not the only factor which needs to be taken into consideration.

The possibility of a terrorist group slamming planes into a nuclear power plant is also a possibility that has to be seriously reckoned with, at least according to the NRC.

Nuclear power plants are also vulnerable to natural disasters. I doubt if any politician is in a position to guarantee that for the lifespan of any power plant, that it will be impervious to earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes and other natural disasters. Again this is a possibility that has to be reckoned with when considering an extension of nuclear energy programs.

 

[Hegel]

In the Three Mile Incident, NO ONE died. Although there was a great potential for accident, the government regulations on plant construction, and the inclusion of the containment building eliminated the problem. Yes, humans can make mistakes, and people die from them. However, this isn't only limited to nuclear power, and most of the problems occur due to simple mechanical failures, that occur throughout mechanical buildings nationwide. Due to the design of the power plants in America, and because of the government regulation thereof, these human accidents stay localized, and don't cause large harm to the ecology and nearby communities. On the other hand, with Chernobyl, simply by including a containment building, the accident would have most likely have had only a loss of life of the workers in the building. This can occur with any mechinized plant.

 

[Shane Costello]

Originally posted by originalgagster:
Everyone is broadly aware of what a large scale nuclear disaster may mean for the population in the surrounding area, and although precise figures are hard to come by, as there are so few examples of major nuclear contamination in the civilian population - and what figures there are remain hotly contested - it is generally agreed that the consequences of a large scale nuclear accident are potentially catastrophic.

Emphasis mine.

Half a century of nuclear power, and very few (and contestable) examples of nuclear contamination among the general populace.

 

[originalgagster]

Emphasis mine.

Half a century of nuclear power, and very few (and contestable) examples of nuclear contamination among the general populace.

I accept this, my argument is that the situation at time t says little about what the situation might be at time t+1. You can't prove the safety of nuclear power using this type of inductive argument.

As i have also pointed out the potential harm of any nuclear catastrophe is so huge, that it pays to be very sceptical about nuclear power, and it is probably very prudent to begin investing heavily in the search for viable alternatives.

 

[Tmy]

With all the advances in technology, are our coal fired plants really that bad? When you compare pollution vs power output.. Plants, like cars, have become much cleaner.