[quote=“tommy525”]US media is saying that the nuclear plume heading for the West Coast is like everybody getting a dental xray ! [/quote]Well, that’s really great, if it’s true. Is it really? I wonder if a bee can withstand the radiation emitted by a dental x-ray. We’re all up Shit Creek without a paddle without bees. In simple words, I wonder how much radiation is too much radiation for our ecosystem to handle before things go horribly wrong.
Cells are cells, whatever animal they make up. However, as far as I know, insects are more resilient than humans to radiation exposure. Radiation is most dangerous during cell division, and insects have more time than humans between each cell division (I’m talking about cell division for replacement or repair of dead cells). A quick burst from an x-ray won’t harm a bee, but long term exposure to radiation will - but humans would cop it first.
In another post i’ve said that i think we will have to live with less energy in the future and learn how to use the available energy more efficiently.
As far as i can see wars happen with or without nuclear power. What is the causal connection here in your view?
I certainly am not arguing anything like that. 
Well, we humans will have to think very carefully where and how and what for we want to live. The religion of money (an essential tenet of which is that it is important to HAVE lots of THINGS) has already proven to offer no more a path to salvation than most other religions. We of/ in the “first world” may have to forego some of our recently acquired habits, such as everybody having a private house, a private car, a new TV or computer every one or two years, etc., etc. This is not just about nuclear power or not nuclear power - the way most humans live is unsustainable in so many more ways than this one, and we of the “first world countries” are farthest out on the limb that is being sawed at vigourously.
I don’t give half a cent of credibility to any position that that starts with the premise that humans can’t or won’t adjust their way of life to make it sustainable - such views are nothing more than evidence of a serious lack of imagination and survival skill. Humans WILL adjust - or die. Non-sustainability is not an option - that is physics 101. It would seem to me much less stressful to start with the adjusting before we sit in the dark and freeze, but… you know the rest of my argument (holding one’s breath in view of highly unlikely conditions tends to have fatal consequences).
I criticize those scientists who are of the kind described below.
Well, that was exactly my point: people who purport to calculate the benefits vs. costs of nuclear power only from the point of view of science while ignoring how the world really works are ignorant enough to be dangerous.
This forum here does not seem the right place to expand on this topic much further, and, anyway, i don’t claim to have the answers that we need to arrive at the “how” of a sustainable future, but i am confident that i understand and acknowledge the problem at hand - and i am confident that if a sufficiently large number of people do the same, answers will start to emerge.
PS: i’m not really disagreeing or arguing with you about anything in particular, i’ve just taken your questions as a jump-off point to go a little bit more into where i think we need to look for what is really the problem (which is necessary before we can hope to get answers)…
I don’t think it is. Radiation from an x-ray is applied once, then the radiation source is removed. Radioactive particles can be breathed in, absorbed via food etc. That doesn’t mean that ingesting a small amount is particularly dangerous, but the danger it poses and what you can do to reduce that mitigate the risk is vastly different then if you are directly exposed to radiation.
For example after Chernobyl crops were destroyed rather than used for human consumption, people stopped picking wild mushrooms (which tend to accumulate heavy metals which are radioactive), staying out of the rain etc. Depending on the amount of radioactive material which arrives at the US West Coast that may be necessary or it may be excessive, I haven’t heard anything concrete yet.
Conflating these completely different scenarios is intended to calm people, but of course many people see through that and react with mistrust, which might well lead to overestimating the danger. People tend to assume the worst when they realize that they are constantly placated with lies. A perfectly natural reaction.
[quote]
It would seem to me much less stressful to start with the adjusting before we sit in the dark and freeze, but…[/quote]But what? Millions of people ARE in the dark, world wide, on an ongoing basis. Some are freezing, some are starving and others are dying of countless easily curable diseases.
Found this in an aviation forum. Do not know if theres any truth but it sure sounds good.
quote:
Another view…
A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION
March 16, 2011
With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.
This only seems counterintuitive because of media hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.
As The New York Times science section reported in 2001, an increasing number of scientists believe that at some level – much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government – radiation is good for you. “They theorize,” the Times said, that “these doses protect against cancer by activating cells’ natural defense mechanisms.”
Among the studies mentioned by the Times was one in Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast cancer than the general population.
And there are lots more!
A $10 million Department of Energy study from 1991 examined 10 years of epidemiological research by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health on 700,000 shipyard workers, some of whom had been exposed to 10 times more radiation than the others from their work on the ships’ nuclear reactors. The workers exposed to excess radiation had a 24 percent lower death rate and a 25 percent lower cancer mortality than the non-irradiated workers.
Isn’t that just incredible? I mean, that the Department of Energy spent $10 million doing something useful? Amazing, right?
In 1983, a series of apartment buildings in Taiwan were accidentally constructed with massive amounts of cobalt 60, a radioactive substance. After 16 years, the buildings’ 10,000 occupants developed only five cases of cancer. The cancer rate for the same age group in the general Taiwanese population over that time period predicted 170 cancers.
The people in those buildings had been exposed to radiation nearly five times the maximum “safe” level according to the U.S. government. But they ended up with a cancer rate 96 percent lower than the general population.
Bernard L. Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, compared radon exposure and lung cancer rates in 1,729 counties covering 90 percent of the U.S. population. His study in the 1990s found far fewer cases of lung cancer in those counties with the highest amounts of radon – a correlation that could not be explained by smoking rates.
Tom Bethell, author of the The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science has been writing for years about the beneficial effects of some radiation, or “hormesis.” A few years ago, he reported on a group of scientists who concluded their conference on hormesis at the University of Massachusetts by repairing to a spa in Boulder, Mont., specifically in order to expose themselves to excess radiation.
At the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine in Boulder, people pay $5 to descend 85 feet into an old mining pit to be irradiated with more than 400 times the EPA-recommended level of radon. In the summer, 50 people a day visit the mine hoping for relief from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders.
Amazingly, even the Soviet-engineered disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 can be directly blamed for the deaths of no more than the 31 people inside the plant who died in the explosion. Although news reports generally claimed a few thousand people died as a result of Chernobyl – far fewer than the tens of thousands initially predicted – that hasn’t been confirmed by studies.
Indeed, after endless investigations, including by the United Nations, Manhattan Project veteran Theodore Rockwell summarized the reports to Bethell in 2002, saying, “They have not yet reported any deaths outside of the 30 who died in the plant.”
Even the thyroid cancers in people who lived near the reactor were attributed to low iodine in the Russian diet – and consequently had no effect on the cancer rate.
Meanwhile, the animals around the Chernobyl reactor, who were not evacuated, are “thriving,” according to scientists quoted in the April 28, 2002 Sunday Times (UK).
Dr. Dade W. Moeller, a radiation expert and professor emeritus at Harvard, told The New York Times that it’s been hard to find excess cancers even from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, particularly because one-third of the population will get cancer anyway. There were about 90,000 survivors of the atomic bombs in 1945 and, more than 50 years later, half of them were still alive. (Other scientists say there were 700 excess cancer deaths among the 90,000.)
Although it is hardly a settled scientific fact that excess radiation is a health benefit, there’s certainly evidence that it decreases the risk of some cancers – and there are plenty of scientists willing to say so. But Jenny McCarthy’s vaccine theories get more press than Harvard physics professors’ studies on the potential benefits of radiation. (And they say conservatives are anti-science!)
I guess good radiation stories are not as exciting as news anchors warning of mutant humans and scary nuclear power plants – news anchors who, by the way, have injected small amounts of poison into their foreheads to stave off wrinkles. Which is to say: The general theory that small amounts of toxins can be healthy is widely accepted --except in the case of radiation.
Every day Americans pop multivitamins containing trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron – all poisons.
They get flu shots. They’ll drink copious amounts of coffee to ingest a poison: caffeine. (Back in the '70s, Professor Cohen offered to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would eat caffeine – an offer Nader never accepted.)
But in the case of radiation, the media have Americans convinced that the minutest amount is always deadly.
Although reporters love to issue sensationalized reports about the danger from Japan’s nuclear reactors, remember that, so far, thousands have died only because of Mother Nature. And the survivors may outlive all of us over here in hermetically sealed, radiation-free America.
[quote=“tommy525”]Found this in an aviation forum. Do not know if theres any truth but it sure sounds good.
quote:
Another view…
A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION
March 16, 2011
[/quote]
Several sites indicate that this comes from Ann Coulter (a leading nuclear specialist - or something else perhaps? - in the US). 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Coulter
[quote=“tommy525”]Found this in an aviation forum. Do not know if theres any truth but it sure sounds good.
quote:
Another view…
A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION
March 16, 2011
With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.
[/quote]
The theory is called radiation hormesis: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
From the article: “Consensus reports by the United States National Research Council and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) have upheld that insufficient human data on radiation hormesis exists to supplant the Linear no-threshold model (LNT)”.
To talk in this context of “probably much less likely to get cancer” can only be described as a bald-faced lie. We don’t know for sure if this effect exists at all, we don’t know the radiation level which would have positive effects, the people affected wouldn’t have been exposed to a chronic dose anyway - so the conditions for radiation hormesis don’t apply … It’s a completely dishonest article. The studies it quotes are cherry-picked to solely show the minority view.
Based on current scientific knowledge you could at best make a statement like “might potentially cause lower cancer risks in some people while being harmful to others, depending on the dose”.
Stuff like this really angers me - you can have different views about many things, but nobody could have possibly written that article and believed what he wrote. I don’t know how these assholes live with themselves.
I did a web search: turns out the article was written by Ann Coulter, wonder why it was reposted without that attribution?
[quote=“StefanMuc”][quote=“tommy525”]Found this in an aviation forum. Do not know if theres any truth but it sure sounds good.
quote:With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.
[/quote]
The theory is called radiation hormesis: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
…
To talk in this context of “probably much less likely to get cancer” can only be described as a bald-faced lie. We don’t know for sure if this effect exists at all, we don’t know the radiation level which would have positive effects, the people affected wouldn’t have been exposed to a chronic dose anyway - so the conditions for radiation hormesis don’t apply … It’s a completely dishonest article. The studies it quotes are cherry-picked to solely show the minority view.
Stuff like this really angers me - you can have different views about many things, but nobody could have possibly written that article and believed what he wrote. I don’t know how these assholes live with themselves.
I did a web search: turns out the article was written by Ann Coulter, wonder why it was reposted without that attribution?[/quote]
If Ann Coulter has the opportunity to cause mischief, she’ll take it.
Pharyngula, mischief maker on the side of the angels, talks about radiation hormesis here:
scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011 … protec.php
Basically, as I understand it: the body reacts against damage and starts repairing. If the damage is calibrated just right (and, obviously, minor), then the actual repairs may result in strengthening the body or tissue or whatever: the damage takes you down to 95%, the repairs take you up to 105%. (I suppose weight-lifting operates on a similar principle.) However, calibrating that radiation to a just right level is, um, impossible.
[quote=“tommy525”]Found this in an aviation forum. Do not know if theres any truth but it sure sounds good.
quote:
Another view…
A GLOWING REPORT ON RADIATION
March 16, 2011
With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.
This only seems counterintuitive because of media hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.
As The New York Times science section reported in 2001, an increasing number of scientists believe that at some level – much higher than the minimums set by the U.S. government – radiation is good for you. “They theorize,” the Times said, that “these doses protect against cancer by activating cells’ natural defense mechanisms.”
Among the studies mentioned by the Times was one in Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast cancer than the general population.
And there are lots more!
A $10 million Department of Energy study from 1991 examined 10 years of epidemiological research by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health on 700,000 shipyard workers, some of whom had been exposed to 10 times more radiation than the others from their work on the ships’ nuclear reactors. The workers exposed to excess radiation had a 24 percent lower death rate and a 25 percent lower cancer mortality than the non-irradiated workers.
Isn’t that just incredible? I mean, that the Department of Energy spent $10 million doing something useful? Amazing, right?
In 1983, a series of apartment buildings in Taiwan were accidentally constructed with massive amounts of cobalt 60, a radioactive substance. After 16 years, the buildings’ 10,000 occupants developed only five cases of cancer. The cancer rate for the same age group in the general Taiwanese population over that time period predicted 170 cancers.
The people in those buildings had been exposed to radiation nearly five times the maximum “safe” level according to the U.S. government. But they ended up with a cancer rate 96 percent lower than the general population.
Bernard L. Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, compared radon exposure and lung cancer rates in 1,729 counties covering 90 percent of the U.S. population. His study in the 1990s found far fewer cases of lung cancer in those counties with the highest amounts of radon – a correlation that could not be explained by smoking rates.
Tom Bethell, author of the The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science has been writing for years about the beneficial effects of some radiation, or “hormesis.” A few years ago, he reported on a group of scientists who concluded their conference on hormesis at the University of Massachusetts by repairing to a spa in Boulder, Mont., specifically in order to expose themselves to excess radiation.
At the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine in Boulder, people pay $5 to descend 85 feet into an old mining pit to be irradiated with more than 400 times the EPA-recommended level of radon. In the summer, 50 people a day visit the mine hoping for relief from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders.
Amazingly, even the Soviet-engineered disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 can be directly blamed for the deaths of no more than the 31 people inside the plant who died in the explosion. Although news reports generally claimed a few thousand people died as a result of Chernobyl – far fewer than the tens of thousands initially predicted – that hasn’t been confirmed by studies.
Indeed, after endless investigations, including by the United Nations, Manhattan Project veteran Theodore Rockwell summarized the reports to Bethell in 2002, saying, “They have not yet reported any deaths outside of the 30 who died in the plant.”
Even the thyroid cancers in people who lived near the reactor were attributed to low iodine in the Russian diet – and consequently had no effect on the cancer rate.
Meanwhile, the animals around the Chernobyl reactor, who were not evacuated, are “thriving,” according to scientists quoted in the April 28, 2002 Sunday Times (UK).
Dr. Dade W. Moeller, a radiation expert and professor emeritus at Harvard, told The New York Times that it’s been hard to find excess cancers even from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, particularly because one-third of the population will get cancer anyway. There were about 90,000 survivors of the atomic bombs in 1945 and, more than 50 years later, half of them were still alive. (Other scientists say there were 700 excess cancer deaths among the 90,000.)
Although it is hardly a settled scientific fact that excess radiation is a health benefit, there’s certainly evidence that it decreases the risk of some cancers – and there are plenty of scientists willing to say so. But Jenny McCarthy’s vaccine theories get more press than Harvard physics professors’ studies on the potential benefits of radiation. (And they say conservatives are anti-science!)
I guess good radiation stories are not as exciting as news anchors warning of mutant humans and scary nuclear power plants – news anchors who, by the way, have injected small amounts of poison into their foreheads to stave off wrinkles. Which is to say: The general theory that small amounts of toxins can be healthy is widely accepted --except in the case of radiation.
Every day Americans pop multivitamins containing trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron – all poisons.
They get flu shots. They’ll drink copious amounts of coffee to ingest a poison: caffeine. (Back in the '70s, Professor Cohen offered to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would eat caffeine – an offer Nader never accepted.)
But in the case of radiation, the media have Americans convinced that the minutest amount is always deadly.
Although reporters love to issue sensationalized reports about the danger from Japan’s nuclear reactors, remember that, so far, thousands have died only because of Mother Nature. And the survivors may outlive all of us over here in hermetically sealed, radiation-free America.[/quote]
In summary, eat your strontium-90, it’s good for you! 
I dunno, man. . . .
You are much more likely to die (or kill someone else) in that death trap of a car you insist on driving than anything to do with power generation.[/quote]
I worked in explosive ordnance disposal for a while, clearing the site of London’s prospective 3rd airport. I remember being in a meeting between the Army and civilian workers, in which the latter were threatening industrial action in support of a claim for hazardous duty allowance.
Army Spokesman: “This work is safer than than crossing the road” (Such an apparently absurd claim would be a lot more plausible in Taiwan).
Bolshie Civvie: “I don’t believe you, but even if it is, we have to cross the road as well”
All these comparative statements designed to talk down risk, even when they are not utter bullshit, ignore this basic fact. Risk is usually additive, radiation exposure especially so.
IIRC a few pages ago you posted that this incident was a triumphant vindication of the nuclear industry, citing some utter bullshit blogged by some complete dickhead in support.
Your/his position was that the plant had “kept an incredibly powerful energy source under control despite a natural disaster far beyond design limits.”
IF that had been true, it would not have been a triumph of engineering design, it would, by definition, have been an engineering design fuckup in which we got lucky.
By extension, you were (are?) commending the nuclear industry to us on the basis that “They’ve been lucky so far”.
That is a scooter-punk safety policy.
Perhaps you’ve been here too long, and perhaps its just as well you’re selling your motorcycle.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]
@Ducked
I see your point with war, but we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. [/quote]
OK, assuming that’s true, lets “don’t” then.
[quote=“llary”]
Not a fair comparison, Windscale was a military reactor that was hastily rejigged into an even more dangerous type of military reactor.[/quote]
Precisely. I acknowledged that when I mentioned Britain’s A-bomb programme. It doesn’t in any way invalidate my point, in fact it enhances it.
Part of my point (since I apparently need to spell it out ) was that it was unjustified to single out the Japanese for special criticism. There are reasons, including the lack of military involvement, which I specifically referred to, to expect them to be better at this than most people, so if they fuck up, anyone is likely to fuck up, and others demonstrably have.
Nuclear stupidity, like plutonium, is an internationally distributed renewable resource, and there’s a historically high concentration of both in the UK.
My wider point was the absurdity of trying to separate nuclear safety in the abstract from concrete human fallibility. Do I need to spell that out too?
Nuclear power does not exist in the abstract, so its inherently and logically inseparable from human fallibility.
(I got the date wrong. The reactor fire was in 1957)
Well, the scientific community isn’t the main problem here. The nuclear power industry/military-industrial-governmental complex is.
On nuclear power in general, there is a diversity of opinion in the scientific community, depending, among other things, on whether they (still) work in the industry. Someone once said it was hard to get a man to see something obvious if his salary depended on him not seeing it.
On your narrow and specific point, some of the scientific community presumably work in weapons production so will support whatever lets them do their thing.
Anyway, given your citation of (a) “scientifically minded” (?) writer[strike]s[/strike] a while back, I’m afraid I wouldn’t trust you to recognise a “scientific community” if it invited you to tea in the Princeton Common Room and then stood around cheering while Albert Einstein recited his Nobel Prize acceptance speech and beat you about the head and shoulders with a rolled copy of Nature.
The reason I brought up your car (which is obviously what got you so pissy) is that not so long ago you wrote that the back end lost traction and swung out into the oncoming lane.
It’s great that you can preach about ‘risk’ and ‘getting lucky’ when you talk on this same forum about driving a car without a valid license that is unsafe because it happens to be cheaper and/or more convenient.
I honestly can’t figure out why it doesn’t bother you that there is even a small risk that your car could lose control one day and cause a serious or fatal accident (that the victims would not be compensated for since you don’t have a license and therefore no valid insurance), but it does bother you that industrial power generation is dangerous.
But hey, you’ve been lucky so far. Maybe you’ve been here too long?
People complain about nuclear power because they don’t have to take responsibility for it and they barely understand how it works. They can bitch and moan about big business and corrupt government while still reaping the benefits of cheap, clean, stable electricity. Then if an accident does happen they can say ‘I told you so!’ and was their hands of all responsibility.
I applaud anyone who takes their belief that nuclear power is dangerous and acts on it directly by installing solar panels or wind generators to remove themselves from the national grid. I’m pretty sure that none of the nuclear skeptics here have done so, they just want someone else to do it for them and preferably at no personal cost to themselves.
Well over a million people die in traffic accidents every year. The sad thing is that if we could only keep personal vehicle ownership or nuclear power generation most of us would choose to keep the cars.
That’s not the only reason why people complain. Some of us are, uh, reasonably well educated about science, economics, and politics - and we make connections between the things we see, hear, and read…
Some of are willing to pay quite a bit more for energy because we know that the current price does not reflect the real cost. And if electricity were to cost three times what it costs now, many people would be more careful not to waste it - that is the way Japan, at least, will have to go anyway from now on… fortunately, i will say, inspite of the tragic reasons behind it…
No applause necessary, but for the last two years we have been in communication with our electricity company (Okinawa Denryoku) and companies that build small-scale solar systems, since we have been planning to get a solar system onto the house we bought (not disconnected from the grid but meant to feed surplus energy into the grid during the day). The matter is unfortunately not as easy as it sounds - we are facing a few technical and cash flow obstacles that are not yet resolved, but we are making progress in other ways, for example, we have made arrangements for a new, more efficient hot water system that is to be installed in April. One step at a time…
There are also political obstacles: requirements for electricity in Okinawa could be noticeably reduced if we were allowed to adopt a life style that fits our hotter climate better (starting with having long afternoon breaks, like they have in Arabia, Italy, etc.,), but our daily business and school schedules are determined and controlled by the central government in Tokyo that does not (yet) allow for such diversity within the country, and although i have been talking about this issue for years, i am no more than the proverbial crier in the desert under the current circumstances.
FWIW…
The reason I brought up your car (which is obviously what got you so pissy) is that not so long ago you wrote that the back end lost traction and swung out into the oncoming lane.
It’s great that you can preach about ‘risk’ and ‘getting lucky’ when you talk on this same forum about driving a car without a valid license that is unsafe because it happens to be cheaper and/or more convenient.
I honestly can’t figure out why it doesn’t bother you that there is even a small risk that your car could lose control one day and cause a serious or fatal accident (that the victims would not be compensated for since you don’t have a license and therefore no valid insurance), but it does bother you that industrial power generation is dangerous.
But hey, you’ve been lucky so far. Maybe you’ve been here too long?
People complain about nuclear power because they don’t have to take responsibility for it and they barely understand how it works. They can bitch and moan about big business and corrupt government while still reaping the benefits of cheap, clean, stable electricity. Then if an accident does happen they can say ‘I told you so!’ and was their hands of all responsibility.
I applaud anyone who takes their belief that nuclear power is dangerous and acts on it directly by installing solar panels or wind generators to remove themselves from the national grid. I’m pretty sure that none of the nuclear skeptics here have done so, they just want someone else to do it for them and preferably at no personal cost to themselves.
Well over a million people die in traffic accidents every year. The sad thing is that if we could only keep personal vehicle ownership or nuclear power generation most of us would choose to keep the cars.[/quote]
I think, if we absolutely have to discuss my car, we should take it over to the cars and motorcycles forum, which has been pretty boring of late.
I responded to it as I would the introduction of any other largely irrelevant risk comparison, rather than as a personal attack on me. I note that you failed to address the logical argument in my response.
This topic has wider impact, and considerably more actual and potential tragedy.
Denial of that, does, I admit, get me pissy.
The cheap electricity is a subsidy for the industry and a side-effect for us consumers. It’s the industry that wants the cheap electricity and lobbies so they can keep these old power plants running for ever.
If the Japanese industry runs for decades in direct competition with huge parts of the German industry and it goes, who can cheaper more and better than it’s no wonder they are taking risks.
The WTO does not allow subsidies and should figure how to address this issue. Maybe they should set a minimum price for the industry to pay for each KW/h.
By the way, the German government who decided just a month or so ago, to let the old power plants run another decade and more, turned them off over night saying things have changed since Japan.
Don’t we have to do this crazy thing anymore because Japan is game over?
And now that we can start looking arund a bit more carefully and breathe deeply, take into account that some serious sould-searching has to come out from this bad scare. Someone is already on it:
online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 … TopStories
[quote]Most of those plants are in just two places: Japan and Taiwan, both islands with limited natural resources that have chosen the risks of nuclear calamity over complete dependence on foreign sources of energy.
Both are now being forced to re-evaluate that calculation amid Japan’s unfolding nuclear crisis. A poll in Taiwan taken Monday—four days after a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered massive devastation and deadly tsunamis—showed that 55% of respondents lacked confidence in the island’s nuclear facilities.
…
Japan and Taiwan together account for 10 of the 14 high-activity reactors. But the U.S. has two reactors in such areas and Slovenia and Armenia has one each. Armenia has another planned.
The nuclear industry says reactors world-wide are built to withstand the most powerful quakes thought possible at each location, plus usually an added safety factor in case those projections are wrong. The Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan apparently survived last week’s powerful earthquake intact, only to fall victim to the aftermath.
…
Nuclear power has also been controversial in Taiwan, where all four of the island’s existing reactors are built near major fault lines. Two more reactors are under construction near the densely populated cities of Taipei and New Taipei.
The Atomic Energy Council, Taiwan’s nuclear regulator, said all its plants are built to withstand earthquakes of magnitude 7 or above and tsunamis of 12 to 15 meters. Both the regulator and government-owned nuclear operator Taiwan Power Company have pledged to take quick steps to increase safety margins if necessary.
Energy experts say it may be hard for Japan and Taiwan to move away from nuclear power. “Developing nuclear is a way to both diversify and reduce dependence on imported oil gas and coal,” said Jone-Lin Wang, managing director of global power for the energy consulting firm IHS CERA and a native of Taiwan.
[/quote]
I would not expect energy experts to understand much of anything outside their speciality, meaning, i don’t expect them to think outside their box (for example, to consider that we may have to get used to living in a way where we use much less energy). But as long as most people are content listening to experts the cycle of preventable disasters will continue…
So… what percentage of electricity consumed in Taiwan is produced by nuclear reactors? Wikipedia suggests 20%.
And what is that percentage in Japan? According to the same source, 34.5%.
Living without nuclear reactors is unthinkable?
Why is it irrelevant? We all do things every day that carry risk and there is nothing disingenous about comparing risks vs benefits.
It seems like you think I am coming from the angle that since other things are statistically riskier we don’t have to be concerned about nuclear safety. However that’s not my opinion at all and I don’t see why we need such polar attitudes to nuclear power. I don’t trust the commercial and political aspects of the industry but if that was grounds for barring a technology we would all be left with sticks and stones. We should be suspicious and demand clarity of any large scale industrial operation, but without descending into hysteria.
Calculating and comparing risk is important to put things into perspective and make logical decisions. If we are talking seriously about withdrawing from nuclear power on safety grounds, then it’s absolutely valid and essential to compare the proven and potential risks with other industries and activities that do not give us so much benefit.
Despite government bungling, corporate profiteering and all that other jazz, what has actually happened as a result of this incredibly rare and powerful natural disaster blasting into a 40 year old power plant?
And I’m not being facetious, but I didn’t see any logical argument that I was supposed to address.