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Merged nuclear power safe?

Hmm, who to believe. The know-it-alls at JREF that say everything is safe, and the worst that could happen is peoples lives may be reduced to a level as if they had been smoking

---or---

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_bi_ge/as_japan_earthquake_nuclear_crisis

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said a fourth reactor at the complex was on fire and more radiation had been released.

"Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health. These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening. Far away, the levels should be lower," he said.

"Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight. Don't turn on ventilators. Please hang on your laundry indoors," he said.

"These are figures that potentially affect health, there is no mistake about that," he said.
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You know what is funnier, how are people going to breathe in airtight houses?

I say, the Japanese ignore their Cabinet Secretary, and go run marathons around the plant. After all, the cores are housed in containment domes. Perfectly safe. :rolleyes:

I think nuclear power is worth the risks as much as the average joe, but FFS, some of the cheeky dismissiveness of the gravity of the situation and lashing out at the media for causing hysteria is just ridiculous. This has serious potential for catastrophe.
 
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so does this mean we in hawaii have to start worrying? I see "game over man, game over" all over the forums (except the jref of course)
 
Puppycow said:
:covereyes
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The spent fuel pool going dry would explain the spike in radiation levels seen at that plant. It also indicates a management problem. Without electrical power to run the normal monitoring equipment, someone should have been assigned to check the water level in the pool.
 
pipelineaudio said:
http://www.truth-out.org/tokyo-elec...info-japans-disastrous-nuclear-operators68457

Note: its greg palast, but people are freaking over this
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I read that...and seriously, I felt it could have easily belonged in the CT section of the fora here. He's basing his entire argument on a single incident from his own experience with zero evidence to support his accusations against the Japanese.

Although, he may have a valid argument. Everyone knows diesel generators can run under water... :rolleyes:
 
UWdude said:
Hmm, who to believe. The know-it-alls at JREF that say everything is safe, and the worst that could happen is peoples lives may be reduced to a level as if they had been smoking

---or---
[...] This has serious potential for catastrophe.
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I skimmed the first few posts here and in similar threads before going to work for a 12hr night shift, then just got home and listened to BBC radio news. It's all very well being a staunch supporter of technological advances and 'progress' and 'cheap energy for all!', but the repeated insistence that it's all perfectly safe is beginning to look like hasty coats of whitewash over a stain that keeps showing through.

And no, for the record, I don't wholly approve of coal pollution either - the frequent deployment of the fallacious argument that 'everyone' who suggests nuclear power isn't as safe as its ardent supporters would prefer us to believe somehow approves of, condones, conveniently ignores or remains silent about coal or oil pollution sits tidily with the whitewashing to suggest that there is more wishful thinking than rational thinking at work amongst the pro-nuclear.
 
The political fallout has begun, Senator Joe Liberman has gone weak in the knees:

“I’ve been a big supporter of nuclear power because it’s domestic, it’s ours and it’s clean,” Lieberman said in an interview with “Face the Nation.”

“We’ve had a good safety record with nuclear power plants here in the United States ... I don’t want to stop the building of nuclear power plants, but I think we’ve got to kind of quietly, quickly put the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened in Japan.”
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"Big supporter" = "first to fold" in Lieberworld?

The White House on the other hand is standing firm:

The Obama administration said Monday that it remains committed to nuclear power as part of a "clean energy" agenda, but officials brushed back questions about whether the Japanese disaster should raise concerns about the industry’s safety in the U.S.

Nuclear “remains a part of the president’s overall energy plan,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said at a briefing also attended by Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko and Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman.

Carney deflected questions on whether President Barack Obama would support Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman’s call for a freeze on permitting of new U.S. nuclear power plants until more was known about the causes of the Japanese problems.
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There are now multiple threads on this issue and I haven't read all posts in them, but I don't think anybody ever said it was 100% safe. The point is that other forms of energy are also unsafe in other ways, much more unsafe for coal in particular.

We are seeing a particularly bad scenario unfolding and obviously it has caused some deaths already, but these events are rare. Lots of people are killed by coal every year.
 
Thunder said:
its just a lot to take in, seeing two nuclear plant cooling towers blow up like in a Hollywood action flick.

:(
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That would be four explosions in total now, with possibly more on the way, apparently. Plus a fire in the fourth plant which wasn't even being used to generate power, but was being refurbished. The water level was allowed to drain on those cores as well, which caught fire. What a mess.
 
Puppycow said:
There are now multiple threads on this issue and I haven't read all posts in them, but I don't think anybody ever said it was 100% safe. The point is that other forms of energy are also unsafe in other ways, much more unsafe for coal in particular.

We are seeing a particularly bad scenario unfolding and obviously it has caused some deaths already, but these events are rare. Lots of people are killed by coal every year.
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I don't think anyone said anyone said it was 100% safe. I certainly didn't. You're naturally less certain that nobody did, given that you haven't read all the posts, but that's neither here nor there - you 'think' it all the same.

I'm not sure you read all my post, let alone all the posts, since you repeat the tu qoque that coal is also dangerous. How many people are 'killed by coal' every year? Did the Aberfan disaster up the average in 1966? Are you including deaths from mining coal? Are you also including in your comparison deaths from mining uranium? Are those not actually death by mining? You're certainly not including sources, figures, facts...just a bald assertion of where your support lies.

Yes, 'these events' are rare. The practise of risk assessment factors in both the likelihood of the risk and its severity. Can we agree that a nuclear disaster, while rare, is a considerably more severe risk than any presented by the use of, for example, coal? Or, for a better example (for rational thinkers at least, perhaps a worse example for supporters of nuclear power) a whole range of other sources of energy - all those options that aren't cutting edge, technological advances. You know, the old-fashioned boring stuff that doesn't require specialist knowledge...or present a severe risk. People used to get killed by windmills, I'm sure - but probably only one at a time, and I'll confidently claim that nobody was ever evacuated from a 20km radius around a windmill.

To present the false dichotomy of coal as the only possible alternative to nuclear power presents a neat triptych with the whitewashing and the tu qoque. Do you have any pro-nuclear arguments that aren't wholly fallacious? You know, by the way, that your forefathers and mothers managed to build the society you inherited largely without electricity, let alone electricity generated by a method you can only argue may be 'slightly less dangerous' than another chosen specifically because you can hope to confidently claim it is 'slightly more dangerous'.
 
HARMFUL radiation was spewing from damaged reactors at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant today in a dramatic escalation of the four-day-old catastrophe. Prime Minister Naoto Kan warned up to 140,000 people nearby to stay inside or risk getting radiation sickness after a fourth reactor at the quake-damaged complex exploded and caught fire and more radiation was released.
The fire, which was later extinguished, was caused by a hydrogen explosion and followed another blast at a separate reactor this morning, as authorities struggled to prevent a catastrophic release of radiation.
There have now been four explosions at Fukushima in four days since the power plant was damaged by last Friday's massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake, which triggered a devastating tsunami. The plant has six reactors.
Japan's nuclear safety agency said the first explosion this morning was in Fukushima's No 2 reactor, where it was revealed last night that fuel rods had become fully exposed, sparking fears of a new blast.
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/ten...lear-catastrophe/story-fn84naht-1226021799761
 
jiggeryqua said:
Yes, 'these events' are rare. The practise of risk assessment factors in both the likelihood of the risk and its severity. Can we agree that a nuclear disaster, while rare, is a considerably more severe risk than any presented by the use of, for example, coal?
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Yes, if by 'disaster' you mean something more severe than e.g. the Three Mile Island accident (which was a 5 on the 7-point INES scale -- recorded history so far knows two incidents rated above 5, both of which happened in the USSR; the Fukushima situation was rated 4 yesterday, and will in all likelihood be upped). Can we also agree that the likelihood of risk presented by burning coal is about 100%?
 
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Andrew Wiggin said:
Assuming voltage, phase, and frequency match. I suspect it's more a matter of the plugs being designed (like the difference between a 220 and 120 volt plug) so that you can't plug the wrong appliance in; the plug is a warning that there's some sort of mismatch and you shouldn't be connecting. I can see them bringing in generators, and then realizing that the generators were useless because the plant needed 440 volt three phase, and the generators were 220 volt single phase. Yeah you could cross connect, but there are really good reasons not to.
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If i remember rightly the US and Japan work on different frequencies which means different gens. If they were US generators then that might explain why they weren't right. Although if they were portable gensets onboard an aircraft carrier I would have assumed they would have planned for such eventualities.
 
pipelineaudio said:
so does this mean we in hawaii have to start worrying? I see "game over man, game over" all over the forums (except the jref of course)
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Any specific ones? I could do with a laugh.

ETA: Never mind. Had a quick search and I suppose this comment will be typical

"Well, time to start looking for another Island and name it Japan 2.0..."
 
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slingblade said:
That they are flooding with seawater means they'll never use the plants again, due to the corrosive nature of seawater.
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It was about to be decommissioned anyway, so I suspect at this point they really don't care about preserving the powerstation.
 
sigh...

26434d7f323e74c44.png


I am willing to give that second guy very favourable odds on an 8.9 earthquake and tsunami occurring in mainland Australia.

EDIT: Also, as someone else pointed out, it seems nuclear is actually much safer than houses.
 
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