Japanese earthquake / tsunami discussion

Coles

Photographs from inside Fukushima, -The Guardian.

Run_to_da_hills

Coles wrote: »

Photographs from inside Fukushima, -The Guardian.

Chernobyl all over again. :mad:

Nuclear energy will NEVER be safe.

shadowninty

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Chernobyl all over again. :mad:

Nuclear energy will NEVER be safe.

What the you propose we power our energy intensive lives with? :pac:

Worztron

shadowninty wrote: »

What the you propose we power our energy intensive lives with? :pac:

• Geothermal
• Solar
• Tidal
• Wave
• Wind

Nuclear power seems to be wonderful until it goes horribly wrong. Fossil fuels are finite and are ruining the environment.

Worztron

Worztron wrote: »

• Geothermal
• Solar
• Tidal
• Wave
• Wind

Nuclear power seems to be wonderful until it goes horribly wrong. Fossil fuels are finite and are ruining the environment.

Until consumers are prepared to pay extra or use less, it ain't going to happen (replace nuclear that is).

shadowninty

Worztron wrote: »

• Geothermal
• Solar
• Tidal
• Wave
• Wind

Nuclear power seems to be wonderful until it goes horribly wrong. Fossil fuels are finite and are ruining the environment.

The issue with that is that there is no base power generation capability there (I guess Geothermal would be plausible for some countries, and wave powers relative predictability could be useful for smart tech (devices that charge when there is excess generation capacity, heavy machinery that operates when this power is available.)). Hydro is being largely used to its potential (I guess some non generative dams could be converted).
Solar and wind aren't really practical base power wise, although it makes sense to harness their power, I guess said smart tech could play a role here)
There is also the problem of places to put these things. In Ireland we have lots of windy coasts but what about China, Turkey? The worlds population is growing in population and in its desire for energy.
The great thing about renewables and nuclear is that they are great till it goes horribly wrong (unlike fossil fuels)

jsd1004

Worztron wrote: »

• Geothermal
• Solar
• Tidal
• Wave
• Wind

Nuclear power seems to be wonderful until it goes horribly wrong. Fossil fuels are finite and are ruining the environment.

“Fukushima showed that the risk of nuclear power is too high.”

In fact, Fukushima showed just the opposite. How’s that? Well for starters, ask yourself what the death toll was at Fukushima. 100? 200? 10? Not true. Try zero.

To think rationally about nuclear safety, you must identify the whole context. As the late, great energy thinker Petr Beckmann argued three decades ago in his contrarian classic "The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear," every means of generating power has dangers and risks, but nuclear power “is far safer than any other form of large-scale energy conversion yet invented.”

To date, there have been devised only five practical means of producing large-scale, affordable, reliable energy: coal, natural gas, oil, hydroelectric, and nuclear. (Although widely-hyped and frequently subsidized, solar and wind power -- which generate energy from highly diffuse and intermittent sources -- have failed for forty years to deliver.) Whether you’re concerned about a dangerous accident or harmful emissions, a nuclear power plant is the safest way to generate power.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/23/nuclear-power-is-extremely-safe-thats-truth-about-what-learned-from-japan/#ixzz1VfAR7pMR

Back to Chernobyl. There is general agreement that 30 to 60 people died in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Beyond that, epidemiological studies generally don’t indicate a statistically significant increase in cancer incidence in populations exposed to Chernobyl fallout.

http://newmatilda.com/2011/04/07/do-we-know-chernobyl-death-toll

ScumLord

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Chernobyl all over again. :mad:

Nuclear energy will NEVER be safe.

As we learn more and get more experience building nuclear reactors they are getting safer but it's always going to be a potential problem because of the level of energy these places produce.

But even this reactor stood up fairly well to what was a massive natural disaster. If a suitable natural disaster took place near a hydro electric dam it would have caused much more problems as we've seen with burst dams in the past. Everything carries a risk and it's likely the next generation of nuclear power stations will even be built to withstand tsunamis.

Worztron

shadowninty wrote: »

The great thing about renewables and nuclear is that they are great till it goes horribly wrong (unlike fossil fuels)

Please explain to me how renewable energy can go horribly wrong!

vibe666

jsd1004 wrote: »

“Fukushima showed that the risk of nuclear power is too high.”

In fact, Fukushima showed just the opposite. How’s that? Well for starters, ask yourself what the death toll was at Fukushima. 100? 200? 10? Not true. Try zero.

afaik, there was actually one death as a result of the nuclear accident.

Posting from my mobile at the minute tho, so not able to provide a link, but I mentioned it previously in the thread when it happened.

geetar

Worztron wrote: »

Please explain to me how renewable energy can go horribly wrong!

as ScumLord said, if that quake happened at a hydroelectric dam, the death toll would be many thousands.



no one seems to appreciate the rarity of this natural disaster. the biggest quake recorded in a long time is of course going to cause damage.


we have no fault lines, modern plants are extremely safe, there is no issue.



also, more people die in coal mines. 7 die every day in china, im pretty sure that leads to many many times more then any nuclear disaster ever.

ed2hands

jsd1004 wrote: »

Whether you’re concerned about a dangerous accident or harmful emissions, a nuclear power plant is the safest way to generate power.

jsd1004 wrote: »

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/07/23/nuclear-power-is-extremely-safe-thats-truth-about-what-learned-from-japan/#ixzz1VfAR7pMR

Quoting Fox News for a nuclear issue, who are in turn quoting Ayn Rand Institute?

For shame:pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXFUUGeV1DI

jsd1004 wrote: »

Back to Chernobyl. There is general agreement that 30 to 60 people died in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Beyond that, epidemiological studies generally don’t indicate a statistically significant increase in cancer incidence in populations exposed to Chernobyl fallout.

http://newmatilda.com/2011/04/07/do-we-know-chernobyl-death-toll

It's not a bad article actually, but the above quote from it is rubbish.

jsd1004

Worztron wrote: »

Please explain to me how renewable energy can go horribly wrong!

Its horrible when you have no electricity.

http://www.aweo.org/problemwithwind.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-experiment-with-hydro-power-has-been-a-disaster-2010-5

Renewables have a part but are not the solution. There is a serious case for the sole use of nuclear as an energy source not so for renewables.

shadowninty

Worztron wrote: »

Please explain to me how renewable energy can go horribly wrong!

Windmills can collapse but more importantly damage wildlife if they screw up, Dams can burst (killing hundreds), Geothermal (blowouts, gases, seismic events), Solar (roof related deaths)
Dont know about wave.
All of these pale in comparison to fossil fuel generated power, just like the risks of nuclear.
People forget about the scale of this disaster too. Third ever largest recorded earthquake. Coast sunk by one meter in many areas. Brutal.

Overheal

Worztron wrote: »

Please explain to me how renewable energy can go horribly wrong!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

The Waltzing Consumer

shadowninty wrote: »

Windmills can collapse but more importantly damage wildlife if they screw up, Dams can burst (killing hundreds), Geothermal (blowouts, gases, seismic events), Solar (roof related deaths)
Dont know about wave.
All of these pale in comparison to fossil fuel generated power, just like the risks of nuclear..

Those Damn windmills! They may look pretty in Holland, but they are sinister and for some reason, damage wildlife? How? By blowing them?

I also thought your roof related deaths sounds hilarious for solar.

Number one reason not to get solar energy: Well ya know, the guy putting up the stuff on the roof, he could die, yep, fall to his death.

Can't get a satellite dish now, I will be too scared it will cause many deaths.

How about for waves, em, a big wave that could topple and drown midgets.

geetar

Worztron wrote: »

Please explain to me how renewable energy can go horribly wrong!

on a disaster free side of things, if its calm cloudy day, thats two sources of energy right there that arent working.

shadowninty

The Waltzing Consumer wrote: »

Those Damn windmills! They may look pretty in Holland, but they are sinister and for some reason, damage wildlife? How? By blowing them?

I also thought your roof related deaths sounds hilarious for solar.

Number one reason not to get solar energy: Well ya know, the guy putting up the stuff on the roof, he could die, yep, fall to his death.

Can't get a satellite dish now, I will be too scared it will cause many deaths.

How about for waves, em, a big wave that could topple and drown midgets.

I already said that ¨all these pale in comparison¨, i.e. mean f all

The Waltzing Consumer

shadowninty wrote: »

I already said that ¨all these pale in comparison¨, i.e. mean f all

Still funny to read though, roof related deaths, classic

Overheal

The Waltzing Consumer wrote: »

Those Damn windmills! They may look pretty in Holland, but they are sinister and for some reason, damage wildlife? How? By blowing them?

actually, noise pollution. and windmills dont just generate noise in the range of audible hearing either. People that live around windmills report regularly feeling ill. Similarly many animals have much different ranges of hearing. Then you have the problem of migratory and sometimes endangered-migratory birds that do happen to quite frequently get snuffed out by getting too close to windmills. Why I don't know why. You'd have to ask a goose or a duck why they fly close to windmills but all the same they do and they get smacked. You also have to ask birds why the divebomb straight into glass windows.

geetar

The Waltzing Consumer wrote: »

Those Damn windmills! They may look pretty in Holland, but they are sinister and for some reason, damage wildlife? How? By blowing them?

I also thought your roof related deaths sounds hilarious for solar.

Number one reason not to get solar energy: Well ya know, the guy putting up the stuff on the roof, he could die, yep, fall to his death.

Can't get a satellite dish now, I will be too scared it will cause many deaths.

might sound hilarious, but its far from it.


Comparing deaths/TWh for all energy sources



Energy Source Death Rate (deaths per TWh)

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)

nuclear provides 14 times the amount of energy to the world as solar, yet it has ten times less deaths per Twh.



source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html

My name is URL

jsd1004 wrote: »

“Fukushima showed that the risk of nuclear power is too high.”

In fact, Fukushima showed just the opposite. How’s that? Well for starters, ask yourself what the death toll was at Fukushima. 100? 200? 10? Not true. Try zero.

It's not really just about death-tolls though, is it? What about the tens of billions worth of damage a catastrophe like this does to the national economy?

Just because few or no lives are lost does not mean that the risk is worth taking.

geetar

My name is URL wrote: »

It's not really just about death-tolls though, is it? What about the tens of billions worth of damage a catastrophe like this does to the national economy?

Just because few or no lives are lost does not mean that the risk is worth taking.

thats true to an extent.

but... what caused the accident, was it nuclear energy, or was it a natural disaster?

dont forget that, A) ireland has no fault lines, and the plant in fukishima was built in the 70's. there are great advancements since then to make them even safer.

Overheal

My name is URL wrote: »

It's not really just about death-tolls though, is it? What about the tens of billions worth of damage a catastrophe like this does to the national economy?

Just because few or no lives are lost does not mean that the risk is worth taking.

that I can nod to.

Solair

The issue is not that it will cause instantaneous deaths, it's just poisoned a large area of Japan's landmass, agricultural production land and fisheries.

The deaths won't be rapid, they'll be slow and nasty due to cancers and kids being born with severe deformities.

The impact will be seen over the coming years, not in the immediate aftermath. E.g. you can expect to see cases of things like childhood leukaemia, thyroid cancers, various bone cancers, foetal deformities etc etc.

Nuclear power's risk is not one of instantaneous death, you'd have to have part of a plant land on top of you or be standing in the reactor for that kind of impact.

The economic cost of Fukushima Dia-ichi is absolutely enormous due to the area that has to be evacuated, damage to the food chain, contamination, clean up costs, law suits, and massive damage to fisheries and coastal tourism.

Also, unlike a chemical accident for example, radiological contaminants are very difficult to clean up and tend to last in the environment for extremely long times due to the fact that they're often incorporated into living organisms e.g. caesium mimicking calcium, radioactive iodine, etc etc etc.

If the problem was simply the instantaneous disaster i.e. a few hydrogen explosions / steam explosions it wouldn't really be a big deal. There have been far worse incidents at petrochemical and gas storage facilities, but they don't spew out long-acting, long-lasting radioactive toxins that do severe damage to living organisms.

The cost:benefit analysis make no sense and in general nuclear power seems to operate a bit like banks. It's unlikely that the industry or power users will bear the cost of this. Rather, the Japanese taxpayer will end up having to deal with it. It had 225.7% Debt:GDP ratio before the disasters, all this stuff will quite likely cause another debt/default issue over the next year or two.

jsd1004

My name is URL wrote: »

It's not really just about death-tolls though, is it? What about the tens of billions worth of damage a catastrophe like this does to the national economy?

Just because few or no lives are lost does not mean that the risk is worth taking.

Just to clarify I am not pro nuclear but believe it should be actively debated.

What about the tens of billions of damage and many more deaths that were caused by deepwater horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. Does that mean drilling for oil should be abandoned. The japanese disaster was caused by a once in a life time disaster. The Gulf of Mexico incident was a man made disaster.

jsd1004

Solair wrote: »

The issue is not that it will cause instantaneous deaths, it's just poisoned a large area of Japan's landmass, agricultural production land and fisheries.

The deaths won't be rapid, they'll be slow and nasty due to cancers and kids being born with severe deformities.

The impact will be seen over the coming years, not in the immediate aftermath. E.g. you can expect to see cases of things like childhood leukaemia, thyroid cancers, various bone cancers, foetal deformities etc etc.

Nuclear power's risk is not one of instantaneous death, you'd have to have part of a plant land on top of you or be standing in the reactor for that kind of impact.

The economic cost of Fukushima Dia-ichi is absolutely enormous due to the area that has to be evacuated, damage to the food chain, contamination, clean up costs, law suits, and massive damage to fisheries and coastal tourism.

Also, unlike a chemical accident for example, radiological contaminants are very difficult to clean up and tend to last in the environment for extremely long times due to the fact that they're often incorporated into living organisms e.g. caesium mimicking calcium, radioactive iodine, etc etc etc.

If the problem was simply the instantaneous disaster i.e. a few hydrogen explosions / steam explosions it wouldn't really be a big deal. There have been far worse incidents at petrochemical and gas storage facilities, but they don't spew out long-acting, long-lasting radioactive toxins that do severe damage to living organisms.

The cost:benefit analysis make no sense and in general nuclear power seems to operate a bit like banks. It's unlikely that the industry or power users will bear the cost of this. Rather, the Japanese taxpayer will end up having to deal with it. It had 225.7% Debt:GDP ratio before the disasters, all this stuff will quite likely cause another debt/default issue over the next year or two.

There is very little evidence of a substantial increase in cancer rates as a result of Chernobyl. Thyroid possibly but that can be attributed to increased screening and children fed with contaiminated milk as outlined in the articles below

Regarding the medical data, would you care to comment.

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/chernobyl.html
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs303/en/index.html

Regarding cost benefit I think that is incidental. If we do not use nuclear what option do we have? We are quickly killing the planet with Co2 emissions from fossil fuel. It is a tough choice but one that will have to be made.

Coles

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment

This is a collection of papers translated from the Russian with some revised and updated contributions. Written by leading authorities from Eastern Europe, the volume outlines the history of the health and environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. According to the authors, official discussions from the International Atomic Energy Agency and associated United Nations' agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl Forum reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findings reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and consequently have erred by not including these assessments.

This was all discussed in detail months ago.

Meanwhile the disaster continues. Does any one think that the situation is under control?

Solair

From what I've been reading online and seeing on NHK, the situation at Fukushima Dia-ichi doesn't appear to have moved on much at all. It's still just a big struggle.

They're about to put some kind of plastic tents over the reactors to reduce further air contamination, but the whole situation still seems to be a mess.

The latest development were to install Japanese built zeolite filters to clean the cooling water so they can recirculate it in a loop, thus avoiding run-off to sea. NHK seemed very critical of the French-US built systems that had been delivered and seemed to think that this Japanese system would do the job. However, I think it's just a lot of nationalistic arrogance. The two systems will be working side by side to clean as much water as possible.

Zeolite is just the same stuff that you'd find in your dishwasher's water softener or in a Brita filter. It will pick up a lot of the dissolved caesium, which is rather like calcium and other nasties. However, it's not really particularly high-tech nor is it 100% effective.

The other development has been reports of serious cracks in the ground with steam coming out of them. These are coming via unofficial sources i.e. workers speaking the media.

It's hard to know if these cracks are ruptured steam vessels under the ground, or if there's hot coolant leaking into the ground water. The worst case scenario would be if the core has melted through the bottom of the plant and is entering ground water as the result would be kind of unpredictable to put it mildly.

Overall, from what I've read / watched online, the situation doesn't seem to be good at all.

The media, outside Japan, seems to have just given up on it. The disaster is probably much worse than Chernobyl in terms of environmental impact and impact on high-density populations. However, I suppose it's a case of Chernobyl was "those scary soviets" during the Cold War where as Fukushima is those "Lovely High Tech Japanese" during peace-time. Also, it's a US-designed reactor, so we can't be pointing out any flaws with it. Good old GE!

Worztron

geetar wrote: »

on a disaster free side of things, if its calm cloudy day, thats two sources of energy right there that arent working.

But you still have: Geothermal, tidal & wave.
There would be a backup store of energy to prevent power cuts. Also countries should be inter connected so that one country with a lot of energy being created could help out another country which is not generating as much energy.