Nuclear Power: Viable energy or not after the Japanese disaster?

[yuli]

If you want to put this whole discussion about “safe” power into a larger perspective you could check out this article about earthquake risks in Japan:
“What chance of a ‘big one’ in Tokyo?”
bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12792943 (BBC)
(the headline on that page reads “Work resumes at stricken Japan nuclear plant”, but this looks like an editing artefact, a left-over from a previous article)

To suggest that the problems at the power plant or the impact of the events on the greater Tokyo area (rolling power outages, radioactive fallout, the ongoing out-migration of people) are just distraction from the “real problem” in northern Japan is silly: these issues cannot be separated, and nobody in Japan is interested in drawing attention away from the tenuous situation of the hundreds of thousands of people living in shelters in winter conditions right now. And the risk of another widely destructive earthquake in Japan is real and requires as much as attention as ever.

@llary

Nuclear fission should not be seen as a permanent solution, nor does it have to be something we’re unreasonably afraid of. It should be seen as a stepping stone to better technologies and a lesser of many evils.

We actually have reasons to be afraid of it, even if you perhaps don’t understand them…

[quote]What’s so bad about nukes is quite obvious at present.

This statement is infuriating. What is obviously bad about nuclear power when a plant that has supplied energy for 40 years without releasing noxious waste daily is ripped apart by one of the worst natural disasters of our time and subsequently results in nothing more than some elevated background radiation and a lot of media panic?
On the other hand it’s very obvious to me what’s so bad about coal fired plants.[/quote]
Interesting why this one thing is obvious to you but not the other… playing those technologies off against each other, as i said in response to that article in Scientific American, is no more than an argument on the level, “your stupid idea is more stupid than my idea”…

To suggest that just because “the worst” has not happened in Fukushima it could not have happened, or that we have no alternative but to live with either dangerous nuclear power plants or the dangers of coal fired plants (not to mention oil fired plants), betrays what at best could be called a Pollyanna attitude and at worst a severe lack of imagination: there are alternatives, but rather than involving more attempts at technological fixes they require structural changes, changes to the the way we live and work and consume energy.

On another topic, someone (in this or another thread) had wondered why western Japan did not supply more electric power to alleviate the shortages eastern Japan is facing. Not many people outside of Japan may know this, but our power system is divided into two separate and incompatible parts: the frequency of the alternating current supplied by the “western” system is 60Hz and that of the “eastern” system is 50Hz:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Power … _Japan.PNG

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[yuli]

@Franck de Taiwan

What we learnt 20 years since Tchernobyl is that a highly radio-contaminated ecosystem is far from being devoid of life, that’s quite the contrary wildlife actually does thrive there.

Not surprising, since there have been virtually no humans in that area for 20 years, so many other forms of impact were removed.

Even some locally extinct species did a come back. BUT plants and animals display much higher than average incidence of congenital disorders… Also we still don’t know is what are in the long run the consequences on an evolutionary scale.

Exactly… and the rest of the stuff you quote illustrates very well that even the short term consequences would not be pretty for humans: but perhaps all we need to do is forego the achievements of civilization and embrace a return to the level of fatalistic brutes, and we may perhaps survive as a species even in the face of a few ten % of genetic defects by simply discarding our defective offspring and those who fall ill…

Now, why do i think that particuarly women find this a rather unappealing alternative?

[Ducked]

[quote=“Eros”]The arrogance and bullying of yuli in this thread has gone on far too long. A lot of ‘debunking’ has gone on by this poster and yet no viable alternatives have been given to the nuclear problem except rather vague and disingenuous complaints of others not being creative enough to think of those same alternatives.

Time to put up or shut up.[/quote]

Blimey! You expect quite a bit from your unpaid online correspondents, eh?

One can only post concerns here (double-checks the thread title, Yup, I’m still covered) if one has a viable solution to the nuclear problem? Be a pretty short thread if everyone adhered to that.

[Charlie_Jack]

[quote=“Ducked”][quote=“Eros”]The arrogance and bullying of yuli in this thread has gone on far too long. A lot of ‘debunking’ has gone on by this poster and yet no viable alternatives have been given to the nuclear problem except rather vague and disingenuous complaints of others not being creative enough to think of those same alternatives.

Time to put up or shut up.[/quote]

Blimey! You expect quite a bit from your unpaid online correspondents, eh?

One can only post concerns here (double-checks the thread title, Yup, I’m still covered) if one has a viable solution to the nuclear problem? Be a pretty short thread if everyone adhered to that.[/quote]

One big problem is the difficulty people have in believing that the solution that seems most viable (be extremely safety conscious and circumspect in building, maintaining, and operating these things, and be honest and forthright in discussing the issues (I’m talking about industry people, not the posters here)) doesn’t seem likely to be put into full practice.

To me, the following is the behavioral benchmark (I’m being ironic) for the attitude the nuclear industry has displayed so far (but who knows, it may be topped one day), and it’s not limited to the old Soviet Union:

Publicly, however, Moscow describes its nuclear generators as thoroughly up < to date. In an article on Chernobyl in the February 1986 issue of Soviet Life, an English-language publication, Ukrainian Power Minister Vitali Sklyarov boasted that ‘‘the odds of a meltdown are one in 10,000 years.’’ In any case, he added, ‘‘the environment is also securely protected.’’

I don’t know U-235 from U-238, but I can tell s*** from wild honey. If they want this thing to work, they’re gonna have to change their game plan vis-a-vis ethics.

[headhonchoII]

As has been discussed in another thread and posters on here, we are living in one of the dodgier places on the planet for nuclear power right here. Look at the culture of not admitting things until they happen, the monopoly on power supply, the outdated reactors on an active fault zone which are designed to withstand scale 7 earthquakes at most and I doubt very much the Kending one would survive a tsunami. I have even read on here of how they handled the contract to clean out the outlet pools, dodgy stuff. So yes we have very legitimate worries with the existing nuclear plants in particular. Taiwan is tiny, if there was an event in either Kenting or Keelung the place would be screwed.
So yes to modern nuclear plants in appropriate areas, but the current plants are time bombs in Taiwan right now.

[llary]

@yuli

We actually have reasons to be afraid of it, even if you perhaps don’t understand them…

If you are trying to put forward an air of scientific diligence and respectability then I suggest leaving the backhanded comments to the rest of us.

To suggest that just because “the worst” has not happened in Fukushima it could not have happened, or that we have no alternative but to live with either dangerous nuclear power plants or the dangers of coal fired plants (not to mention oil fired plants), betrays what at best could be called a Pollyanna attitude and at worst a severe lack of imagination:

We both know that I never suggested that at all. I was debunking what I saw as an unhelpful and rather hysterical statement from another poster.

Let’s not beat about the nuclear bush, I’m very curious about your (and other posters’) opinion on what we should do about nuclear power in the short term rather than sit on our backsides and discuss it in an internet forum. I am not talking about longer terms goals such as reducing overall energy use or abandoning our modern lifestyle but some basic, realistic options we have right now.

1. abandon nuclear technology immediately - which would inevitably result in a short-mid term increase in use of coal and gas)
2. increase use of renewable technologies, then gradually reduce dependence on both carbon fuel and nuclear power
3. increase our dependence on nuclear power short term to immediately decrease use of carbon fuels while increasing use of renewable technologies - with a long term goal of reducing or abandoning both carbon fuel and nuclear power
4. maintain the status quo

(I am in the number 3 camp, and my reasoning is that sourcing and burning carbon fuels is a bigger danger than even an awful nuclear accident)

there are alternatives, but rather than involving more attempts at technological fixes they require structural changes, changes to the the way we live and work and consume energy.

Let me know when you get those technical and cash obstacles sorted on that solar system.

[Charlie_Jack]

@llary

Let’s not beat about the nuclear bush, I’m very curious about your (and other posters’) opinion on what we should do about nuclear power in the short term rather than sit on our backsides and discuss it in an internet forum.

I don’t consider myself to be under an obligation to come up with an alternative. I don’t trust the nuclear industry. It’s that simple.

They used to pull that number on us when I was a teenager. We looked around and saw the Vietnam War, nations with enough nukes to kill just about everybody, the minerals being sucked out of the earth and being replaced with poisons, everybody at each other’s throat, just the barest beginnings of a life without government-sanctioned racial discrimination, but with many of its de facto badges and incidents still in force, a work life that assumed one was eager to become a minor cog in a big machine, a large proportion of the world population not knowing where their next meal was coming from–so we complained about it. Some of the older ones (I was in my early-to-mid teens), some of the young adults, complained in the streets.

And the (often liberal) apologists for the system would ask in haughty tones, “Well, then, what do you recommend as an alternative?”

And that would stump me. Or sometimes I would actually try to describe an alternative (a highly-abridged, comically-adolescent version of Thomas More’s Utopia or Plato’s Republic), and of course my lone attempt to create an alternative model would fall on its face.

But several decades on, I’ve figured out how to answer that question: I ain’t gotta propose a damn thing in the way of an alternative. I didn’t concoct this mess. In fact, I wouldn’t know how to brew such a complicated, sophisticated concoction as the mess we currently face. So I figure I ain’t responsible for it.

[Icon]

Regarding nuclear energy per se:

You know what has always bothered me? That we usew thsi sophisticated form of energy, derived from the highest thoughts and collaboration of the greatest minds at that time, who rushed to invent this as a weapon to prevent what little freedom and humanity we had at that time left be extinguished, we use this power to what: boil water.

Yes, boil water. All that energy is employed to boil water and produce steam, and move pistons the way we did it in the 17th century, right? So basically waht we are doing is replacing coal, wood, oil with “cheaper” energy resource. But teh system itself remains the same. We have not come up with a better, more efficient way, to tap into teh energy directly.

We still waste most of our electricity through the transmission lines. We still pollute our air with fumes from our “cheap” fuels. If you take coal out of the equation, China and other developing countries development grinds to a halt. We are stuck, we are doing things the same as 300, 400, years ago. We claim to have advanced a lot to reach space, but the truth is we are still stuck, and haven’t figured out other ways of moving aside from an explosion…

Are we so constrained by costs? Or our scientific breaktrhughs come at too high a price? We still do not understand gravity, we still have too many mysteries in teh universe, yet we have given up on looking and claim that nothing can be done to stop mass extintion of animals/air pollution/social imbalance, because otherwise we would slip into chaos: the costs are too high.

When the world was stuck in two sides, comunism and capitalists, a third alternative was developed in Latin America: solidarism. value the worker, respect the capital owner. Negotiate, find a consensus. It did not gain much official recognition, but eventually, it is this course of action which has allowed better conditions. Cooperate, not clash.

hence, I cannot accept that we will reach the 25th century still burning a lamp to light our way. When people let go of the horse in favor of the car it was hard. It was even harder to introduce the train. But someone has to do it.

[llary]

@Charlie Jack

I don’t consider myself to be under an obligation to come up with an alternative. I don’t trust the nuclear industry. It’s that simple.

I wasn’t asking you to come up with an alternative for anything, I was asking a straight question out of curiosity about what posters here would do if the choice rested solely on their shoulders.

But several decades on, I’ve figured out how to answer that question: I ain’t gotta propose a damn thing in the way of an alternative. I didn’t concoct this mess. In fact, I wouldn’t know how to brew such a complicated, sophisticated concoction as the mess we currently face. So I figure I ain’t responsible for it.

So you enjoy the fruits of electricity generation (refrigerators, computers, washing machines, light) but you figure your responsibility for how it’s generated is zero, as long as it ain’t done in your back yard.

[archylgp]

Well said, Icon.

[llary]

@Icon

We still waste most of our electricity through the transmission lines. We still pollute our air with fumes from our “cheap” fuels. If you take coal out of the equation, China and other developing countries development grinds to a halt. We are stuck, we are doing things the same as 300, 400, years ago. We claim to have advanced a lot to reach space, but the truth is we are still stuck, and haven’t figured out other ways of moving aside from an explosion…

For deep space exploration there are already craft propelled by ion thrusters: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs21grc.html

One really cool project using ion thrusters is the current installation of a hydrogen-propelled system on the international space station. I thought it’s a particularly neat project because the ISS currently generates waste hydrogen that just gets dumped out into space, but if the project works they will be able to reuse that hydrogen for altitude corrections instead of burning fuel.

I can’t tell you how sad it makes me that so many other groundbreaking science projects have been scrapped because of ‘funding constraints’.

[Charlie_Jack]

@llary

[quote=“Charlie Jack”]I don’t consider myself to be under an obligation to come up with an alternative. I don’t trust the nuclear industry. It’s that simple.

I wasn’t asking you to come up with an alternative for anything, I was asking a straight question out of curiosity about what posters here would do if the choice rested solely on their shoulders.[/quote] Yeah, simple, straight question: How to cure the ills caused by human nature when it has been combined for at least the past two centuries, and in enormously complex patterns, with the forces of the Industrial Revolution. Just a straight, simple question. But like I said, I’m not under any obligation to answer it.

@I

But several decades on, I’ve figured out how to answer that question: I ain’t gotta propose a damn thing in the way of an alternative. I didn’t concoct this mess. In fact, I wouldn’t know how to brew such a complicated, sophisticated concoction as the mess we currently face. So I figure I ain’t responsible for it.

[quote=“In response, llary”]So you enjoy the fruits of electricity generation (refrigerators, computers, washing machines, light). . . .[/quote] Yes. I sure do.

@llary

. . . but you figure your responsibility for how it’s generated is zero, as long as it ain’t done in your back yard.

Yeah, that’s right, pretty much. But as for the second part, the part about my backyard, it’s all in my backyard and has been for as long as I can remember. But whether it’s in my backyard or not, as far as I’m concerned you all are free to generate all the nuclear power you want. Have at it. And while you’re all at it, why don’t you go ahead and inundate the world in iPods, iPads, iWhimwhams, iGimcracks, iGizmos, and iWhirligigs. And be sure and seek out the cheapest labor you all can find to make 'em (interesting, though, that we’re still often using virtual slave labor, just like back in 'way B.C., after introducing all this magical high-tech stuff to the world).

Now, you all are probably eventually going to have to enforce a lot of this state of affairs with the military. And I’m not responsible for that, either. Y’all can do whatever the hell you want to do.

But I’m not as bad as Shakespeare’s Timon:

[quote]Timon: I have a tree which grows here in my close,
That mine own use invites me to cut down,
And shortly must I fell it; tell my friends,
Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree,
From high to low throughout, that whoso please
To stop affliction, let him take his haste,
Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,
And hang himself. I pray you, do my greeting.[/quote]
bartleby.com/70/3951.html

Unlike Timon, I don’t want you all to go hang yourselves. However, as I said before, I ain’t responsible for this stuff. I’ll add to that, that because I’m trapped in this mess, I don’t feel any guilt about using a computer, refrigerating some apples in my small refrigerator, etc., because I figured out a long time ago (say, 1979) that with technology, you can’t usually go back to the previous state; you usually go back to Nowheresville.

[RobinTaiwan]

@Icon

hence, I cannot accept that we will reach the 25th century still burning a lamp to light our way. When people let go of the horse in favor of the car it was hard. It was even harder to introduce the train. But someone has to do it.

I don’t think that’s right. The train was the best thing that happened to every town that was lucky enough to be near the railway. The economy boomed. Small villages became cities in no time. Building railroads was also creating a lot of jobs. Being able to ship goods in large quantities saw small family-run businesses grow into small empires, etc.

The large-scale production of cars began around 1900. By then, oil had already secured itself a solid position as the number one source of energy in the world. For a long time, oil light the world at night. The invention of the light bulb was a hard hit for the oil industry, indeed, but cars saved the day.

It’s my understanding that the train facilitated the development and proliferation of the oil industry while the car procured long-term viability for the industry. So if we are talking about shifting from one energy source to another, the car and the train are not applicable examples.They are just numbers in a much larger equation.

Human kind is on an unchartered path… Looks promising to you?

[StefanMuc]

@llary

I wasn’t asking you to come up with an alternative for anything, I was asking a straight question out of curiosity about what posters here would do if the choice rested solely on their shoulders.

So I have free reign right?

Let’s assume this is correct http://www.moeaboe.gov.tw/Download/opengovinfo/Plan/all/energy_qreport/main_en/files/02/2-1.Energy%20Supply%20(by%20Energy%20Form)(201004).pdf (i.e. nuclear power in Taiwan supplies 8.3%) and this from the Royal Academy of Engineering http://www.countryguardian.net/generation_costs_report2.pdf, too.

Ok, I would pursue different strategies depending on the location. Basically I don’t think the pacific ring of fire is a great place for nuclear power stations. So for Taiwan I would turn them off pretty quickly. Maybe initially let the new one come online, but use it to replace one of the older ones (e.g. the one in Kending). Then build up capacity of mainly gas fired power stations and turn the rest of the NPPs off. Until sufficient capacity is available, make sure the lessons learned from the disaster in Japan are used to improve safety of the NPPs. This will increase carbon output from Taiwan, but that’s better than having a nuclear accident here.

At the same time invest heavily in off-shore wind power - that’s about twice as expensive as NPPs, but given that NPPs only produce 8.3% of the power for Taiwan, to replace that we are looking at a 4.5% increase in electricity costs here. That’s quite affordable. Currently there is no good way to store excess generated electricity from wind power, so there is a limit on the percentage of electricity we could medium-term generate with “alternative” power - maybe about 20-30%. (So 15% increase in electricity costs, still ok in my book.) The existing hydroelectric installations could be utilized to provide a battery function (i.e. pumping water up with excess electricity, then draining the water to generate as needed) - though they certainly serve that function in the current setup already - at least partially. Then make sure less energy is wasted: improve building codes so that better insulation is used, provide incentives to modernize existing buildings, impose higher efficiency ratings for electrical devices (fridges, AC units etc). Offer tax credits and/or subsidies for electrical scooters. These can be used to shape demand to adjust to variable electricity generation. So you could get cheaper power to charge your scooter - provided the utility company can shift charging times. (E.g. if you need to charge your scooter for 4 hours and you charge it overnight, then the utility company can charge it whenever convenient.) Geothermal ought to be able to make a bigger contribution in Taiwan, too.

That should keep us busy for a while - we won’t get carbon output to 0, but Taiwan could make a substantial contribution.

For geologically more stable countries I don’t see an urgent need to reduce nuclear power, but would focus investment on wind power, smarter grids and reducing waste. (Some of the older plants should be closed for safety reasons, though.) Smaller combined heat and power plants can be used to increase efficiency. There is already an EU project to generate solar power in Africa and transport electricity with high voltage DC. Given the political will (easy in this case, because the assumption of this thought experiment is that I rule the world ) - it should be possible to reduce carbon output in the mid-term. Again that should keep us busy for some decades - by then economies of scale and new technologies will have changed the picture and we need to look at the best way forward. Maybe we’ll have fusion ready, very likely battery technology will have improved considerably as well.

So those are my thoughts, feel free to thrust the reigns of world power into my hands. :roflmao:

[Mucha_Man]

Excellent post Stephan. I would add that Taiwan should also exploit ocean currents as we have the Kuroshio current flowing just offshore. I just don’t buy the argument that Taipower can be trusted to build a nuclear reactor but is stumped by the corroding effects of seawater.

I would also eliminate/relocate the most energy wasteful industries. Steel & petrochemical industries account for only a few percentages of GDP yet use far more energy. Taiwan can’t afford them any longer.

Hydropower is an interesting option to exploit. Interestingly the plants below Sun Moon Lake use surplus power from the 1st and 2nd nuclear power plants at night to pump water back up to the lake so that it can generate extra power during the day, when needed.

[yuli]

[quote=“llary”]Let’s not beat about the nuclear bush, I’m very curious about your (and other posters’) opinion on what we should do about nuclear power in the short term rather than sit on our backsides and discuss it in an internet forum. I am not talking about longer terms goals such as reducing overall energy use or abandoning our modern lifestyle but some basic, realistic options we have right now.

1. abandon nuclear technology immediately - which would inevitably result in a short-mid term increase in use of coal and gas)
2. increase use of renewable technologies, then gradually reduce dependence on both carbon fuel and nuclear power
3. increase our dependence on nuclear power short term to immediately decrease use of carbon fuels while increasing use of renewable technologies - with a long term goal of reducing or abandoning both carbon fuel and nuclear power
4. maintain the status quo
   (I am in the number 3 camp, and my reasoning is that sourcing and burning carbon fuels is a bigger danger than even an awful nuclear accident)[/quote]
   I appreciate your invitation to a discussion, which i think could be very useful, and i will join if you remove the condition that “reducing overall energy use” is mutually exclusive with “basic, realistic options we have right now” and if you also remove the notion of “abandoning our modern lifestyle”: predefining “to change” as “to abandon” turns the topic into a lead balloon for me.

[quote=“yuli”]We actually have reasons to be afraid of it, even if you perhaps don’t understand them…

If you are trying to put forward an air of scientific diligence and respectability then I suggest leaving the backhanded comments to the rest of us.[/quote]
Unfortunately your premiss is wrong, but as a lover of wordplay i appreciate the subtlety of your comeback…
So, if it’s OK with you, let us set up a common ground for a useful exchange of ideas!

[Icon]

@RobinTaiwan

[quote=“Icon”]hence, I cannot accept that we will reach the 25th century still burning a lamp to light our way. When people let go of the horse in favor of the car it was hard. It was even harder to introduce the train. But someone has to do it.

I don’t think that’s right. The train was the best thing that happened to every town that was lucky enough to be near the railway. The economy boomed. Small villages became cities in no time. Building railroads was also creating a lot of jobs. Being able to ship goods in large quantities saw small family-run businesses grow into small empires, etc.

The large-scale production of cars began around 1900. By then, oil had already secured itself a solid position as the number one source of energy in the world. For a long time, oil light the world at night. The invention of the light bulb was a hard hit for the oil industry, indeed, but cars saved the day.

It’s my understanding that the train facilitated the development and proliferation of the oil industry while the car procured long-term viability for the industry. So if we are talking about shifting from one energy source to another, the car and the train are not applicable examples.They are just numbers in a much larger equation.

Human kind is on an unchartered path… Looks promising to you?[/quote]

Not really. One of the major constraints against train development was this theory about a certain speed limit that could never be surpassed and the idea that at high speed, air would be sucked out and passengers would die. That could have stopped busines for a while.

So the problem was not teh energy source -to boil water they had wood, carbon, then oil, so to get steam- but rather beliefs that stood against scientific development. Now we have “it’s too costly, it will stop economic development, gotta see the patent, copyrights, etc…” whatever stops collaboration and advance.

[RobinTaiwan]

It is well known that the WHO and other environmental agencies have covered up the full extent of the disaster in Chernobyl.

[quote]
-50,000 to 100,000 liquidators (clean-up workers) died in the years up to 2006. Between 540,000 and 900,000 liquidators have become invalids;
-Congenital defects found in the children of liquidators and people from the contaminated areas could affect future generations to an extent that cannot yet be estimated;
Infant mortality has risen significantly in several European countries, including Germany, since Chernobyl. The studies at hand estimated the numberof fatalities amongst infants in Europe to be about 5000;
-In Bavaria alone, between 1000 and 3000 additional birth defects have been found since Chernobyl. It is feared that in Europe more than 10,000 severe abnormalities could have been radiation induced;
-By referring to UNSCEAR one arrives at between 12,000 and 83,000 children born with congenital deformations in the region of Chernobyl, and around 30,000 to 207,000 genetically damaged children worldwide. Only 10% of the overall expected damage can be seen in the first generation;
-In Belarus alone, over 10,000 people developed thyroid cancer since the catastrophe. According to a WHO prognosis, in the Belarussian region of Gomel alone, more than 50,000 children will develop thyroid cancer during their lives. If one adds together all age groups then about 100,000 cases of thyroid cancer have to be reckoned with, just in the Gomel region;
Altogether, the number of Chernobyl related cases of thyroid cancer to be expected in Europe (outside the borders of the former Soviet Union) is between 10,000 and 20,000;
-In more contaminated areas of Southern Germany a significant cluster of very rare tumours has been found amongst children, so-called neuroblastomies;
-In Germany, Greece, Scotland and Romania, there has been a significant increase in cases of leukaemia;
-In a paper published by the Chernobyl Ministry in the Ukraine, a multiplication of the cases of disease was registered - of the endocrine system ( 25 times higher from 1987 to 1992), the nervous system (6 times higher), the circulation system (44 times higher), the digestive organs (60 times higher), the cutaneous and subcutaneous tissue (50 times higher), the muscolo-skeletal system and psychological dysfunctions (53 times higher). Among those evaluated, the number of healthy people sank from 1987 to 1996 from 59 % to 18%. Among inhabitants of the contaminated areas from 52% to 21% and among the children of affected parent from 81% to 30%. It has been reported for several years that type I diabetes (insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus) has risen sharply amongst children and youth.[/quote]

I’d say that’s pretty bad… Of course, the stats published by mass medias will not account for any of this, and I can only presume that this is where your ignorance stems from.

[yuli]

@StefanMuc

I don’t think the pacific ring of fire is a great place for nuclear power stations.

Other good ideas:

hydroelectric installations could be utilized to provide a battery function (i.e. pumping water up with excess electricity, then draining the water to generate as needed)

That only works in areas with mountains - but as it happens, Japan and Taiwan have plenty of those…

make sure less energy is wasted: improve building codes so that better insulation is used, provide incentives to modernize existing buildings, impose higher efficiency ratings for electrical devices (fridges, AC units etc).

That is at least as important an idea, i think, as that of finding better ways to produce electricity. Although residential building design in Japan is substandard in my view (apartment buildings and houses with no or poor insulation are still the norm), you can see this kind of development with electric lights and household appliances that are becoming ever more efficient (competing household appliance manufacturers in Korea and China are also in that race). You’ll be amazed to see modern air conditioners, for example: they have an “eco mode”, meaning when you set them to 27 degrees or higher, they will not run in their usual mode (500W and up, depending on the size), but only use 100W when the compressor is on. It is enough to keep the air in the room maybe 10% drier and a few degrees cooler than the sticky hot air outside - and that is all you need to sleep or work in an office (since it stops the sweat from dripping from your arms and hands). Not only is it not necessary to cool bedrooms and offices down to 20 - 22 degrees, it also prevents your body from adjusting to the seasonal temperatures, which then requires that your car or the bus or train you use has to run the aircon as well. (I bet that as of this year’s summer we will see some major changes in the way people use aircons in the Tokyo area, etc.)

Offer tax credits and/or subsidies for electrical scooters.

… and since scooters are mostly not used during the late night/early morning hours, most of them could be re-charged during the night, when demand on the grid is lower.

There are other technological ways to reduce energy needs: natural lighting (leading outside light into buildings via glass fibers - if you ever get into that part of the world, check out the public library in Vancouver, BC, Canada where that has been implemented)

And then there are non-technological (structural, social) changes that we need to consider, such as adjusting our work hours to fit the climate, to live in smaller rooms that require less space to be heated or cooled, to wear more clothes when it is cold, to make “green roofs” (plants on top of houses) standard (this keeps houses cooler in summer and warmer in winter), to develop better public transport systems and reduce the number of cars, to plant lots of trees everywhere, including along the streets, so that we have enough shade when it is hot, etc., etc.

A related anecdote:
[color=#408040]When i worked in Arabia i had to do a lot of work outside (in the shade, mind you, but not in closed rooms), and there were two ways to cope with that situation. One was my “private” way: i did not use an aircon in my apartment (i had the windows open at all times), i made sure the aircon in my office was set to 27 degrees or higher (that was before “eco mode” existed, though), and i did not use the aircon in the car (again, windows open). As a result i was better adjusted to the heat outside than my office-bound colleagues from the Sudan and Egypt who had gotten accustomed to using the aircon whenever they were indoors or in a car. The second way to cope was to negotiate with management about a change in the work hours (used to be 4 hours before noon and 4 hours in the afternooon, after the lunch break). Although (or because?) the management was German, after hearing my rationale for the proposal to change the work hours, they agreed to let my team work on the schedule i had proposed, and from that time on we worked 5 hours before noon, broke for prayer, then went to have lunch (that was provided in the same building where the offices were located) and extended our lunch break until after supper (which would happen right after the early evening prayer). Then we went to our worksite and worked there until 10 or so, only interrupted once by the late evening prayer. We sweated less and everybody was much “lazy” than before (“lazy” is a misapplied expression that you can hear often when people from northern countries encounter people in the tropics - that “laziness” is just a natural way of coping with the afternoon heat).[/color]

I hope that we will be able to return to the traditional climate adjusted schedule in Okinawa, too - i imagine that in view of fuel import needs and electricity shortages in Japan our government might see the light (excuse the pun).

[RobinTaiwan]

Really? Here’s from the WHO:

[quote]
5 SEPTEMBER 2005 | GENEVA - A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.[/quote]

But then we also have this.

Nearly 3 million children in the Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian federation need medical treatment due to the disaster in Chernobyl. -Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations

And this.

According to Angelina Nyagu, president of Physicians of Chernobyl, “today more than 7 million people are suffering” due to the disaster. greenleft.org.au/node/34058

And this.

[quote]
The WNA claims that Chernobyl fallout killed only 56 people. But John Gofman, professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Chernobyl Accident: Radiation Consequences for This and Future Generations, has calculated that 950,000 people have, or will develop, cancer as a result of Chernobyl fallout; roughly half will die as a result.[/quote]

Many different authorities dispute the numbers related to Chernobyl. It is a well-known fact. But for some reason, your bullshit detector goes off on a tantrum because I say “it’s a well-known fact.” Downplaying the magnitude of what happened in the Ukraine in 1986 with a condescending sigh is not only insensitive but it’s also a fantastic depiction of ignorance and stupidity.

Say what you want, but it might not be long before the truth unfolds and I’ll make it my personal mission to rub it in your face. Your attitude is disgusting. We have over 35 million people in Japan and their water is now unfit for young children, indefinitely. You have family there? I don’t suppose you would recommend they hold off on having children just yet, would you?

The quake was disastrous and the tsunami was worse. But the leaking nukes is incomparably worse. It’s not going to kill more people over night but if you think about the social and economical implications, you can only begin to understand how devastating this is.