Merged nuclear power safe?

[Christian Klippel]

I feel for you, Chris. It must be crazy in Germany.

The media is just dying to hype the hell out of this thing, just like they have from the beginning. After the Fukushima plant situation seemed like it wasn't going to be the end-of-the-world, then our (US) media started to scream about "Government Shutdown!!11! " for a couple of weeks.

When that didn't lead to the end-of-the-world, it's back to "Fukushima is now an INES rating of 7!!! Just like Chernobyl!!11!!1 "

Crazy? It was crazy 4 weeks ago. Now it is far beyond insane. If it were for the media, the reactor cores at Fukushima would have melted down several times by now, probably being stuck in the middle of the earth. Japan would probably glow by night, and half the worlds population would be deformed zombies.

From day one there was nearly constant mentioning of Chernobyl. Whenever there was a reportage, they almost invariably showed pictures of sick and dying children from Chernobyl. They had "experts" around that not only were no experts in that field at all, but 99% of them were actually involved in some green/environment activist group or the green party. Some of those people, when Googled for, turned out to be experts in basically everything. During the BP spill they were experts for oil drilling, they were experts for environmental impacts of whatever industrial plant, experts for energy generation and distribution, experts for traffic, and of course experts for all things nuclear. It simply depended on what was actual news, and presto, they suddenly are experts for that.

Not only was it one-sided reporting, it was pretty much as if there were no other side to talk about at all. And always the same mantra. We can go 100% renewable soon. 50% by 2030, 100% by 2050. Just put up some more windmills and solar panels. What? Storage? No problem! And anyways, we are exporting sooooo much electricity, we don't need the nukes at all. Nothing would ever change if we turn them off. Now!

And they did. They got the government to really temporarily shut down half of the nukes immediately. And the remaining ones are to follow soon, if they keep that course. Of course it did _not_ have no impact. Now we are importing more electricity then ever. We increased import from France, and massively increased import from Czechoslovakia. Everyone can see that by visiting and registering at entsoe.net. Compare the numbers from before Fukushima with the ones from after Fukushima. Someone even did a graph about that a while back here.

Groups, who are either pretty much clueless or are just lobbying organizations, are coming up with all sorts of nice looking plans, telling us how easy it is to go 100% renewable by 2050. Reading them makes me want to puke. They come up with really silly ideas. Like, hey, lets build a _massive_ amount of new windmills. Only 2% of all our land needs to be plastered with windmills to satisfy our demands! Nowhere do they think about were all these windmills should come from, how they should be errected, connected to the grid, maintained, etc. Others say, hey, we don't need new places for windmills. It's enough to replace all the old ones with new ones! Yeah, sure....

Store the energy by producing hydrogen and methane gas with electricity. Wonderful! Unless, of course, you look at the efficiencies of these processes. Which in the end means way more windmills that have to be build and installed.

All that 100% renewable talk is simply nonsense. The efficiency of these systems is just crap, compared to the amount of materials and space needed. Plus the storages. Plus the maintenance.

Oh, and don't even think for a minute that building more windmills and storages is easy anyways. We already have people protesting against these thing. Funnily, it's mostly the same people who are also telling us that nukes are so bad (and coal and gas as well, of course)! They don't want new windmills because of the environmental impact, the looks of it, the shadows they produce, etc. They don't want new high voltage lines, because they are ugly and produce baaaaaad magnetic fields, you see. They don't want storage plants either, because they need so much space etc.

I tell you, "insane" doesn't even start to describe what is actually going on here in Germany.

Sorry for the long rant...

Greetings,

Chris

 

[Belz...]

Nuclear power will not be safe if we don't use it. It will be inexistent.

I was under the impression that non-existent things are safe.

Nuclear power will be safe if we use it and we address the risks and don't cut corners and don't underestimate the gravity of the issue.

We don't. That's why the plant held as well as it did.

Go back and read this thread from the start.

**** that. I'm not reading 56 pages a second time.

It is typical Greek tragedy at its best. The audience knows exactly what's going to happen, but yet the characters seem bound to play their role and face their inevitable outcome.

Then why are you still here ?

 

[Belz...]

ETA: In an example of just how far some of the anti-nuclear freaks have reached in their twisted ideology, I had some clown come onto my blog and seriously comment - no kidding - that the 27,000+ people killed by the earthquake & tsunami were "better off" than those left behind in Japan who are exposed to the radiation (who are supposedly going to "experience the horrors later in life"). That's just plain sick; some of these folks are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

That's just sick. Assuming you get radiation damage and die of cancer in 20 years, have time to have kids, etc. Are you really worse off than the poor sod who died drowning ? Some people, eh ?

 

[Christian Klippel]

BTW, it is interesting to see that the anti-nuke people here have as main reasons, beyond a few others, that nukes are so expensive to build and operate, that waste storage is a huge problem and very expensive, and that decomissioning is very expensive as well. And that the people have to pay for all that either by taxes, subsidies, etc.

Now, it's funny because in France they produce 80% of their needs from nukes, and on top of that, they have plenty enough to export a lot of nuke power as well. It gets even more funny if you consider that one kWh in France is about 12.25 Euro-Cent, including 24.7% taxes total, while in Germany one kWh is about 22.94 Euro-Cents including 40.8% taxes in total.

Makes you wonder how they do it then, doesn't it? And don't even get me started on that silly subsidies argument. Because the renewables are _heavily_ subsidized here in many ways, one of them is that we currently directly pay 3.5 Euro-Cent per kWh especially for that. Everyone. Plus a whole host of other stuff where they get monies from for their 100% renewables pipe dream.

Greetings,

Chris

Edit: The prices are from 2009, and have risen a lot since here in Germany. The list can be found here.

 

[DC]

BTW, it is interesting to see that the anti-nuke people here have as main reasons, beyond a few others, that nukes are so expensive to build and operate, that waste storage is a huge problem and very expensive, and that decomissioning is very expensive as well. And that the people have to pay for all that either by taxes, subsidies, etc.

Now, it's funny because in France they produce 80% of their needs from nukes, and on top of that, they have plenty enough to export a lot of nuke power as well. It gets even more funny if you consider that one kWh in France is about 12.25 Euro-Cent, including 24.7% taxes total, while in Germany one kWh is about 22.94 Euro-Cents including 40.8% taxes in total.

Makes you wonder how they do it then, doesn't it? And don't even get me started on that silly subsidies argument. Because the renewables are _heavily_ subsidized here in many ways, one of them is that we currently directly pay 3.5 Euro-Cent per kWh especially for that. Everyone. Plus a whole host of other stuff where they get monies from for their 100% renewables pipe dream.

Greetings,

Chris

Edit: The prices are from 2009, and have risen a lot since here in Germany. The list can be found here.

Do you have data how the frensh finance their nuclear industry?

 

[Dr.Sid]

Like you mean nuclear energy is financed from taxes ? Well in Soviet Russia sure .. but anywhere else ?

 

[DC]

Like you mean nuclear energy is financed from taxes ? Well in Soviet Russia sure .. but anywhere else ?

I merely wanted to look up how they finance it. We for example have no subsidies on nuclear and make them everything pay themself. but it partly belongs to us anyway, its not 100% in private hands.
But other countries do that much differently, alot is payd by the taxpayers and not by those running the plant.
I wondered how France does it in detail.

and btw, france nuclear industry belongs to a big part is in public hands.

http://www.areva.com/EN/finance-402...industry-and-major-player-in-bioenergies.html
http://shareholders-and-investors.edf.com/edf-share/shareholding-structure-42691.html

 

[Travis]

It should be rated as 7 because that's how the ratings are defined. The problem is that this sort of continuous slow release isn't really what was expected when the definitions were thought up. In theory you could release a tiny amount every day and still eventually be classed at level 7 even though there's no possibility of ever harming anything. Obviously this accident is a little more severe than that, but it does highlight the deficiencies in using a scale based on raw radioactivity released without taking into account things like the length of release, distribution or isotopes involved.

I absolutely agree. The ratings should be about what the actual impact of the radiation is and not just a cumulative amount released. Strangely several level five and six incidents have killed lots of people by radiation compared to the zero harmed by radiation let alone killed in this event.

Also, thanks to the Goiania incident, we know that humans can actually take quite high doses of radiation so long as it is spread out over time.

 

[Toke]

I have noticed that geigercounters are pretty much sold out around the world, does anyone know if they have practical application outside parts of Japan?

 

[DC]

I have noticed that geigercounters are pretty much sold out around the world, does anyone know if they have practical application outside parts of Japan?

i have heard rumors they also work outside Japan.

 

[Toke]

i have heard rumors they also work outside Japan.

I guess I could elaborate on the "practical application" bit.
Have the radiative stuff spread in amounts worth worrying about/measurable?

 

[DC]

I guess I could elaborate on the "practical application" bit.
Have the radiative stuff spread in amounts worth worrying about/measurable?

no/yes

 

[shadron]

I guess I could elaborate on the "practical application" bit.
Have the radiative stuff spread in amounts worth worrying about/measurable?

Not with the ones you or I could afford.

 

[shadron]

You should see what's happening in Germany. While i'm not familiar with the situation in the US, i'm pretty sure that we easily beat you with respect to fearmongering and one-sided crap journalism about this incident.

Greetings,

Chris

I don't think you can put a patch on what New Zealand does.

 

[r-j]

I saw a Chef using a Geiger counter on fish on the TV. He would serve no radioactive seafood!

 

[BobTheDonkey]

I saw a Chef using a Geiger counter on fish on the TV. He would serve no radioactive seafood!

Did he also test for heavy metals like mercury?

 

[theprestige]

I saw a Chef using a Geiger counter on fish on the TV. He would serve no radioactive seafood!

I imagine he must have served a lot of radioactive beef, pork, and chicken, then. What with everything being at least a little bit radioactive.

But yes, whenever I'm worried about the effects of radiation, I turn to television chefs for advice.

Remember that time Iron Chef Kiloton made a creme brulee so delicious it even blocked out background radiation for several hours after the meal?

 

[r-j]

I thought the Chef was using brilliant marketing actually. Since fear of radioactivity is probably still worse than the slight bit falling from the skies.

 

[332nd]

I imagine he must have served a lot of radioactive beef, pork, and chicken, then. What with everything being at least a little bit radioactive.

But yes, whenever I'm worried about the effects of radiation, I turn to television chefs for advice.

Remember that time Iron Chef Kiloton made a creme brulee so delicious it even blocked out background radiation for several hours after the meal?

That was Bender & his title was "Zinc Saucier".

 

[r-j]

I gave up eating fish after I learned the terrible carnage the fishing industry is inflicting upon the oceans. And all the garbage that ends up high on the food chain.