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Merged nuclear power safe?

I would not mind playing tourist in japan in a few month, once the calm has come back and the extent of the damage is known. I betcha touristic place will break price and it will be particularly a good time as a tourist.

The only difficulty is that I have flying phobia...
 
Aepervius said:
You should really be careful of what you say, because of misunderstanding the petkau effect, or even exagerating the effect of low radiation as being overly dangerous, is what you seem to pretend, and is not supported by science.
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Two wrongs don't make a right and I do not claim any expertise on the subject.

Perhaps you can provided some specific information (rather than links to entire papers/books) to support Hindmost's assertion that
Hindmost said:
working in a nuclear plant tends to increase one's lifespan
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and that this is due the beneficial effects of radiation.



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Aepervius said:
I would not mind playing tourist in japan in a few month, once the calm has come back and the extent of the damage is known. I betcha touristic place will break price and it will be particularly a good time as a tourist.

The only difficulty is that I have flying phobia...
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Instead of Japan, perhaps you should holiday in the still highly contaminated areas of the Ukraine and the Belarus border to reinforce your faith in the safety and life-enhancing properties of radiation.


'Nuclear's green cheerleaders forget Chernobyl at our peril
Pundits who downplay the risks of radiation are ignoring the casualities of the past. Fukushima's meltdown may be worse'

EXTRACT:

I prefer the words of Alexey Yablokov, member of the Russian academy of sciences, and adviser to President Gorbachev at the time of Chernobyl: "When you hear 'no immediate danger' [from nuclear radiation] then you should run away as far and as fast as you can."

Five years ago I visited the still highly contaminated areas of Ukraine and the Belarus border where much of the radioactive plume from Chernobyl descended on 26 April 1986. I challenge chief scientist John Beddington and environmentalists like George Monbiot or any of the pundits now downplaying the risks of radiation to talk to the doctors, the scientists, the mothers, children and villagers who have been left with the consequences of a major nuclear accident.

It was grim. We went from hospital to hospital and from one contaminated village to another. We found deformed and genetically mutated babies in the wards; pitifully sick children in the homes; adolescents with stunted growth and dwarf torsos; foetuses without thighs or fingers and villagers who told us every member of their family was sick.

This was 20 years after the accident but we heard of many unusual clusters of people with rare bone cancers. One doctor, in tears, told us that one in three pregnancies in some places was malformed and that she was overwhelmed by people with immune and endocrine system disorders. Others said they still saw caesium and strontium in the breast milk of mothers living far from the areas thought to be most affected, and significant radiation still in the food chain. Villages testified that "the Chernobyl necklace" – thyroid cancer – was so common as to be unremarkable; many showed signs of accelerated ageing.

The doctors and scientists who have dealt directly with the catastrophe said that the UN International Atomic Energy Agency's "official" toll, through its Chernobyl Forum, of 50 dead and perhaps 4,000 eventual fatalities was insulting and grossly simplistic. The Ukrainian Scientific Centre for Radiation, which estimated that infant mortality increased 20 to 30% after the accident, said their data had not been accepted by the UN because it had not been published in a major scientific journal.

Konstantin Tatuyan, one of the "liquidators" who had helped clean up the plant, told us that nearly all his colleagues had died or had cancers of one sort or another, but that no one had ever asked him for evidence. There was burning resentment at the way the UN, the industry and ill-informed pundits had played down the catastrophe.
 
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Aepervius said:
I don't think the impact on Japan will be the same, for one I think the opportunity cost will be greater, because as far as i know Japan tourisn is greater than biolorussia's tourism, but difficult to say which impact it will have.
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I still plan on going to Japan in a few years. But then, I don't have knee-jerk reactions to things nuclear.
 
JihadJane said:
Perhaps you can provided some specific information (rather than links to entire papers/books) to support Hindmost's assertion that and that this is due the beneficial effects of radiation.
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No I can't, I did read such paper about positive effect of radiation some time ago, but to the effect that in total it was inconclusive and required more research. ETA and in case you can't be bothered to read back : my standpoint was that there is not much info on low irradiation, except that it does not seem to follow a linear biological model, but rather a sub linear one.

Instead of Japan, perhaps you should holiday in the still highly contaminated areas of the Ukraine and the Belarus border to reinforce your faith in the safety and life-enhancing properties of radiation.
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Firstly it is all a question of dosis, and hindmost did not say *ALL* radiation are life enhancing or whatever strawman you are making it of.

Secondly I like how you know whether or not I was in Chernobyl already, or if I would return in the future a second time. Hint for you : even independentely of me , people are living there.

Thirdly here you are again comparing Fukushima and Chernobyl. Hint for you : compare the amount of radioactive material released in the environment , including their half life and daughter isotope, THEN come back to us.

OH and PS Tear jerking rethoric is worth *NIL*. Come back when you have REAL STATISTIC on increase of cancer. Like the estimate on which the WHO absed their estimate of life loss over 70 years.
 
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Puppycow said:
GE vows $10 million aid, long-term help on Fukushima: report

I suppose that GE isn't necessarily legally obligated to pay for any of this, even though they designed and build these reactors, but $10 million is a pittance for GE even though it sounds like a lot. The cost of this disaster to TEPCO might be tens of billions of dollars. (I found estimates of $50 billion and $90 billion on the internet, but I don't know how reliable those are).
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Presented with such humongous cleanup costs (50 to 90 billion) and having geological evidence of prior huge tsunamis over the past 1000 years doesn't it make sense to spend more on security?

Sure 1000 years might seem like small odds of happening again, but consider the per year cost. A $50 billion cleanup averaged out over 1000 years comes to $50 million a year. I'm sure $50 million buys a lot of added security even in nuclear power industry costs. Think of it as paying for insurance rather than putting it in a savings account for a rainy day.

Now we can't say this is in hindsight because the geological evidence was there many years ago. And the estimated costs of a cleanup can be estimated without having the actual incident. Actually without knowing the cause of the incident.
 
JihadJane said:
Two wrongs don't make a right and I do not claim any expertise on the subject.

Perhaps you can provided some specific information (rather than links to entire papers/books) to support Hindmost's assertion that and that this is due the beneficial effects of radiation.


....snip....
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Strawman....I NEVER said that nuclear workers live longer due to the "beneficial effects of radiation." This clearly indicates that you do not comprehend what I have posted or the results of the studies in various links. What I have indicated and is verifed by the 30 plus years of studies outlined in this link is that nuclear workers live longer on average.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=030909156X
 
I will certify to you that nuclear workers live longer than coal miners...

And when we talk about relative dangers we have to consider that we can for now make enough energy to keep civilization running by one of two ways; Coal or Nuclear.

Nuclear is much safer and less polluting even when you consider Chernobyl and the Japan incident now unfolding. Not even close.

As I previously posted (I think in this thread) coal has as a waste product thousands and thousands of TONS of radioactive material. Some goes up the stack, some becomes flyash and cinders that have one of two fates;

1. Landfill
2. Building materials

Also up the stack goes toxic mercury and lead. These pollutants are only partially addressed by scrubbers, and in fact the scrubbers take so much energy that you burn more coal to keep the same output, and so emissions are higher than you would think looking at the raw efficiency of the scrubber.

And coal devastates landscapes and makes huge areas unfit for farming or human habitation.
 
I may sound a bit slow here.
I take that the control rods dropped at the first shake and stopped the fission process, and that the heat now comes from the radioactive fission products radiating.

What is the risk of melting fuel-rods separating* from control rods and restarting the fission process?

*Density difference or such.
 
Toke said:
I may sound a bit slow here.
I take that the control rods dropped at the first shake and stopped the fission process, and that the heat now comes from the radioactive fission products radiating.

What is the risk of melting fuel-rods separating* from control rods and restarting the fission process?

*Density difference or such.
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I read something on this long ago. As I recall; You can have that happen, but it tends to be a self-limiting thing as the material is poisoned (term for elements that will retard fusion) with all sorts of junk and once a reaction starts the fuel heats up and this lowers its cross-section and the reaction stops. Once the fuel reaches boiling point, there is mechanical disruption of the layer that was forming the critical mass.
 
I see, so a meltdown will "just" leave a radioactive mess under the plant, with particles carried off by boiling off groundwater. (At least until drained)
From what I read in the paper worst case would be several % increase in cancer deaths in Tokyo.
That sounds pretty minuscule compared to the international reaction?
 
BenBurch said:
I will certify to you that nuclear workers live longer than coal miners...

And when we talk about relative dangers we have to consider that we can for now make enough energy to keep civilization running by one of two ways; Coal or Nuclear.

Nuclear is much safer and less polluting even when you consider Chernobyl and the Japan incident now unfolding. Not even close.

As I previously posted (I think in this thread) coal has as a waste product thousands and thousands of TONS of radioactive material. Some goes up the stack, some becomes flyash and cinders that have one of two fates;

1. Landfill
2. Building materials

Also up the stack goes toxic mercury and lead. These pollutants are only partially addressed by scrubbers, and in fact the scrubbers take so much energy that you burn more coal to keep the same output, and so emissions are higher than you would think looking at the raw efficiency of the scrubber.

And coal devastates landscapes and makes huge areas unfit for farming or human habitation.
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There is another danger for coal. There is something we call the "coron" which are hills build from the result opf the mining, the "rejects". Such artificial hill are attempted to be stabilized with trees, but sometimes with water they simply slip, and kill everything which is on their path. Think of a giant mudslide.

And then there are gas/coal mine which explode and burn and burn and burn (hell mouth for example, another one is centralia)....
 
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Aepervius said:
My "nose" estimate is , matching the number we know for Chernobyl, that the local cost of clean up will be about 5 to 15 billion dollar over 10 years, but that the loss of opportunity , economical and touristic impact will be easily in the hundred of billion over a few decades.
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Here's another way to estimate it: TEPCO's stock price

14:30 Mar. 11: 2133 per share (3427.75B market cap)
12:30 Apr. 5: 391 per share (628.34B market cap)

loss of market cap: 2799.4 billion yen
yen-dollar conversion: 84.25
loss of market cap in dollars: 33.22 billion
 
Toke said:
I see, so a meltdown will "just" leave a radioactive mess under the plant
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Not necessarily. A meltdown just means that the fuel elements melt. That doesn't mean that they melt through the reactor vessel. That could happen in extreme cases, or the material could escape by other means (like if the vessel has other cracks or leaks, or if vented steam carries lighter radioactive elements), but a melt down itself doesn't require that anything radioactive leave the reactor vessel.
 
Puppycow said:
Here's another way to estimate it: TEPCO's stock price

14:30 Mar. 11: 2133 per share (3427.75B market cap)
12:30 Apr. 5: 391 per share (628.34B market cap)

loss of market cap: 2799.4 billion yen
yen-dollar conversion: 84.25
loss of market cap in dollars: 33.22 billion
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Does not reflect much without giving the P/E. Plus I tend to view loss of stock as unimportant compared to the loss of opportunity around the economic of the area. After all that money was not "lost" but reflect the current value of Tepco.
 
Aepervius said:
There is another danger for coal. There is something we call the "coron" which are hills build from the result opf the mining, the "rejects". Such artificial hill are attempted to be stabilized with trees, but sometimes with water they simply slip, and kill everything which is on their path. Think of a giant mudslide.
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The man has a point.

Aberfan disaster.

The Aberfan disaster was a catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil-tip that occurred in the Welsh village of Aberfan on Friday 21 October 1966, killing 116 children and 28 adults.
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Rolfe.
 
There is another danger for coal. There is something we call the "coron" which are hills build from the result opf the mining, the "rejects". Such artificial hill are attempted to be stabilized with trees, but sometimes with water they simply slip, and kill everything which is on their path. Think of a giant mudslide.
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Hm. Didn't someone on the nuclear opposition side say something about how we should not consider energy sources that produce waste that cannot be safely stored?
 
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