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Merged nuclear power safe?

r-j said:
Comparing how dangerous buses are when somebody points out how dangerous a metro train is, is just stupid.
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In a thread where we are discussing the safety of large scale baseload electricity generation, suddenly breaking into talk of buses and trains would be very stupid indeed.

Now you have claimed that a certain method of large scale baseload electricity generation is not safe. Yet the numbers show that this power source is safer by orders of magnitude than all other forms of large scale baseload electricity generation and at least two forms of small scale non-baseload generation.

Can you explain for us why the data shows the opposite of what you have claimed?
 
Now the nuclear apologist will want to compare nuclear power to something else, as if that somehow makes nuclear power safe. That is valid for risk assessment, in most cases. Comparing coal with gas with hydro with solar with wind.

But nuclear power isn't safe by an yardstick. It's incredibly dangerous. No rational person will deny that. It's why nuclear reactors are guarded, why spent fuel is guarded, why there are so many expensive and complicated things in place to try and prevent the many very dangerous things that can happen, from happening.

After a lot of very bad things happened, on 311, the nuclear apologist still wants to say it can't happen. Or try and say it really wasn't that bad. The problem nuclear power is facing, is you can't make Fukushima go away just by saying things.
 
Just like you can't make factual statements made go away by refusing to respond to them. All the coal talk is fine, there should be a topic about coal and danger and that sort of thing. Rather than constantly trying to sidetrack this one with off topic comments and insults.
 
r-j said:
Just like you can't make factual statements made go away by refusing to respond to them.
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Factual statements like this?

Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – China 278
Coal – USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)​

I posted this, and you refused to respond to it. You suddenly wanted to talk about buses and trains instead.
 
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To use a metaphor, it's like somebody trying to convince the world that gunpowder isn't dangerous because compared to TNT it is much safer.
 
Christian Klippel said:
Oh, and while we are at it, lets take a look at how green that wind energy is, shall we?

It's so green that in China a 100 feet high sea of highly toxic waste is rising by 3 feet each year.

But hey, who cares about the Chinese, as long as our own backyard is all nice and green, right?

This points to another problem as well. Currently, China is the main exporter of these materials, over 90% come from there. The current supply is barely enough to satisfy the demand. After all, these materials are used in a lot of things. But China plans to reduce its exports of these materials quite heavily.

So, how are we going to build all these windmills then, if we do not have enough resources available right now?

But i'm sure that in the green fantasy land, all these things grow on trees. Just hug them often enough!

Greetings,

Chris
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Well, to be fair the necesserary material can be mined somewhere else, like the US and other places, there would be a gap of years until production is ramped up , and it would be very costly due to pollution clean up requirement in the western world, but it could be done if it is required. It's not as if China had a monopole on the ore, they actually have only a monopole on producing it cheaply by ignoring all pollution and dumping it in the environment.
 
Belz... said:
So far, r-j has done nothing but call people who disagree with him liars, and plug his ears. Remember in this very thread how he reacted to people pointing out that there was radioactive stuff in milk ? Here's a sample:
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Maybe we can have another good laugh ?

Hey, did you know that bannane are radioactive ?
 
The "banana dose" thing was pretty funny. All those people who thought they were so smart didn't realize no matter how many bananas (or other foods with potassium) you eat, the radiation level from potassium is the same.

Thanks for the reminder.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
R-J, can I ask how you feel about Germany switching away from tightly controlled and regulated nuclear power and increasing their reliance on the lowest and dirtiest grade of coal and subsequently dumping tens of thousands of pounds of radioactive waste into Germany's soil and waterways every year?
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And let us not forget about the dozen of village and town moved away, the houses destroyed, to make place to the open mining pit.
 
r-j said:
The "banana dose" thing was pretty funny. All those people who thought they were so smart didn't realize no matter how many bananas (or other foods with potassium) you eat, the radiation level from potassium is the same.

Thanks for the reminder.
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I have no idea what you are speaking of. The radiation half life from any isotope is known, and their % from natural potassium is known, and unless you were eating an a source rich in potassium with skewed isotope quantity (which can happen in some rare circumstance I can't exclude but I am not aware of), that the K comes from a bannane or somewhere else don't matter.

Link to a post or this is another of your strawman.
 
r-j said:
Anything but a discussion of the topic. "Is nuclear power safe?"
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Safe relative to what? To answer your question without being relative to comparable energy production methods, which you apparently have decided you don't want to do, you're going to have to get busy and define what exactly you mean by safe. Of course, if you do that, then the thread would be considerably shorter than it is now.
 
shadron said:
Safe relative to what? To answer your question without being relative to comparable energy production methods, which you apparently have decided you don't want to do, you're going to have to get busy and define what exactly you mean by safe. Of course, if you do that, then the thread would be considerably shorter than it is now.
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He's like Homer Simpson (the source for a suprising amount of the anti-nuclear lobbys knowledge of nuclear engineering) in the episode where he was made the plant safety manager.

You! Stop being so unsafe!

You... safe enough.
 
r-j said:
The "banana dose" thing was pretty funny.
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People who don't understand deep technical or scientific concpets often used forced laughter to hide their lack of knowledge.

All those people who thought they were so smart didn't realize no matter how many bananas (or other foods with potassium) you eat, the radiation level from potassium is the same.
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That level being between five and eight times normal background radiation.

I have some potassium chloride samples and a geiger counter here and can post the readouts if you like?
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
People who don't understand deep technical or scientific concpets often used forced laughter to hide their lack of knowledge.



That level being between five and eight times normal background radiation.

I have some potassium chloride samples and a geiger counter here and can post the readouts if you like?
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I was actually reading his post as saying that some people pretended/claimed that "depending on the source of the potassium the radiation taken would be smaller or higher , for the same quantity of potassium", but maybe I read too much "cleverness" in his post.
 
I know what might have confused (easily r-j) when we discussed the bannane equivalent dose monthes ago, it was mentionned that bannana are rich in potassium isotope , but is because they are a foodstuff particularly rich in potassium, *NOT* because the isotope % are skewed in bannana. A handfull of KCl with the same quantity of K as in bannana would have the same effect.
I betcha r-j misinterpreted it and read it as "there is more radioactive potassium in bannana in proportion than other food".
 
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Aepervius said:
I know what might have confused (easily r-j) when we discussed the bannane equivalent dose monthes ago, it was mentionned that bannana are rich in potassium isotope , but is because they are a foodstuff particularly rich in potassium, *NOT* because the isotope % are skewed in bannana. A handfull of KCl with the same quantity of K as in bannana would have the same effect.
I betcha r-j misinterpreted it and read it as "there is more radioactive potassium in bannana in proportion than other food".
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The point is, that if you eat a banana, you've increased the potassium, and therefore the amount of radioactive potassium, in your body, until the body eliminates the extra potassium through homeostasis (presuming you have your surfeit beforehand).

It is worth noting that at the peak of the Japanese iodine scare in April, the peak amount found in California milk was clocked at 48 pCi/L, which is 1.7 Bq/L. A study of Finnish water a few years ago found that well water averaged about 300 Bq/L, mostly from Radon gas. Processed water had 20 Bq/L. A banana's dose is 31 Bq/gm, or about 5400 Bq/banana.
 
r-j said:
Comparing how dangerous buses are when somebody points out how dangerous a metro train is, is just stupid. If a metro system is having a lot of crashes and dead people, and rather than deal with that, you keep talking about bus crashes, that is ridiculous.
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r-j said:
To use a metaphor, it's like somebody trying to convince the world that gunpowder isn't dangerous because compared to TNT it is much safer.
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I understand what you think your are saying here and unfortunately, you are still wrong. You are claiming that we are presenting a false choice fallacy and that is not the case. If you are going to have a modern, developed city or country, you are going to have an electrical power grid. There is no way around this. There hasn't been since the 1800s. You are going to have electricity... period. By the very fact that you post here on JREF we know that you have made the choice to live in a city or country with mass electrical generation capacity. A false choice fallacy only exists if there are one or more choices that are not presented, but this is not the case here.

Nothing is ever 100% safe. Everything has the potential for accidents and loss of life. Every process has waste products of varying toxicity. Everything you do, will carry with it a cost in human lives.

These are the historical rates of loss of life for all the forms of electricity generation that have ever been used (with the small and negligible exception of geothermal power):

Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – China 278
Coal – USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)​

These are arranged from deadliest to safest. One of the above has caused less fatalities than any other power source... which is it?
 
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