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Fukushima: Massive contamination?
Well, we are going to have to agree to disagree. I feel that science at least, is on my side, not yours. The state of California evidently sees it my way, they put a moratorium on ALL new nuclear reactors in 1976, until technology was developed to handle high level waste safely. Thirty six years ago----and the technology still does not exist. The US Court of Appeals in DC evidently agrees with me, in an August 2012 decision, they have frozen all new permits, and all renewals until the NRC can satisfy the requirements for safe waste handling. They recognize the absolute folly of the "dig a hole and bury it plan". Tell us---since nuclear waste stays lethal for hundreds of thousands of years, some of it MILLIONS of years---tell us about the stable government that will be here to safely monitor that waste....What? You say no government, no social structure in human history is anywhere NEAR that old or stable? And has never existed? Then who is going to be in charge of the 70,000 TONS of high level waste the US CURRENTLY has on hand? Who will be responsible for that waste in ten thousand years? It will still be wildly toxic, it will still be totally lethal for the environment. Tell us why it is that with all the resources in the world geologists STILL have not found geologic structures that are stable that long. Point to ANYTHING that humans have built that can be shown to last that long. No building, no "storage cask" no vault, nothing ever built by man can survive for MILLIONS of years. The US govt has been looking for a place to store the waste, they have 24 BILLION tax payer dollars invested in finding and building a place, but they have failed, even though they have been intensely searching since the 1990's. Absolutely no way to prevent that highly toxic, totally lethal radiation from getting into the biosphere, eventually. You want to pit the future of the planet against your HOPE that technology will be discovered that will make the waste safe. That is a HUGE gamble, and one that should NEVER be taken. Meanwhile, alternative energy sources are being developed. I couldnt help but notice you had no comment on the fact that fossil fuel combustion gets cleaner every year. Measurable improvement using currently available, proven technology. Real technology, not pipe dreams. Not "I hope they figure something out." Anyone advocating for nuclear power is simply giving away the future health of the planet for their own short term comfort. I refuse to think that is a good idea. Dec 05 12 12:31 pm Link An actual study -- dam collapses and nuclear look bad - coal - not so much. The costs of failure: A preliminary assessment of major energy accidents, 1907–2007 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar … 1508000529 This study offers a preliminary assessment of the social and economic costs of major energy accidents from 1907 to 2007. It documents 279 incidents that have been responsible for $41 billion in property damage and 182,156 deaths.  Fig. 1. Energy accident fatalities by source, 1907–2007. Dec 05 12 12:42 pm Link rfordphotos wrote: Would have, could have, should have. I don't deal in what might be, but what is. And what it is is that nuclear is far safer than burning coal. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Those are the cold, hard facts. Meanwhile, alternative energy sources are being developed. I couldnt help but notice you had no comment on the fact that fossil fuel combustion gets cleaner every year. Measurable improvement using currently available, proven technology. Real technology, not pipe dreams. Not "I hope they figure something out." I did address it. I said it's still more dangerous than using nuclear. Can you sum for us the total number of people who have died because of nuclear energy and the total number of people who have died from burning coal? It's hundreds for nuclear (globally, in the USA it is ZERO) vs. hundreds of thousands if not millions from burning coal. And with current anthropogenic climate change you're talking about millions of people dying by the end of this century. Anyone advocating for nuclear power is simply giving away the future health of the planet for their own short term comfort. I refuse to think that is a good idea. Pure hysterics. Until an alternative to burning coal or nuclear is developed (such as thermonuclear), nuclear is clearly the only choice. Dec 05 12 01:44 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: Do you see the fatal flaw of your post? Dec 05 12 01:46 pm Link Tony-S wrote: The period covered does not include the $110Billion bailout Tepco needed to cover the ongoing damage from Fukushima. Dec 05 12 02:00 pm Link Mikhail Gorbachev: Chernobyl, not Peristroika, Caused Soviet Union Collapse http://economistsview.typepad.com/econo … chern.html "The price of the Chernobyl catastrophe was overwhelming, not only in human terms, but also economically. Even today, the legacy of Chernobyl affects the economies of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Some even suggest that the economic price for the USSR was so high that it stopped the arms race, as I could not keep building arms while paying to clean up Chernobyl." That is why Germany is totally abandoning nuclear power. A single accident can destroy the entire country. --------------------------------------------------------------- Japan earthquake: Footage of blast at nuclear plant http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12721498 -- cooling pumps shut down - that's all that mattered Dec 05 12 02:03 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: Did you read the article? I did. Do you know were those 4000 deaths occurred? Dec 05 12 02:04 pm Link Tony-S wrote: rfordphotos wrote: Would have, could have, should have. I don't deal in what might be, but what is. And what it is is that nuclear is far safer than burning coal. No ifs, ands or buts about it. Those are the cold, hard facts. Meanwhile, alternative energy sources are being developed. I couldnt help but notice you had no comment on the fact that fossil fuel combustion gets cleaner every year. Measurable improvement using currently available, proven technology. Real technology, not pipe dreams. Not "I hope they figure something out." I did address it. I said it's still more dangerous than using nuclear. Can you sum for us the total number of people who have died because of nuclear energy and the total number of people who have died from burning coal? It's hundreds for nuclear (globally, in the USA it is ZERO) vs. hundreds of thousands if not millions from burning coal. And with current anthropogenic climate change you're talking about millions of people dying by the end of this century. Well, Tony, thankfully, the folks that actually have the science, actually have the facts find your arguments to be devoid of weight. They fall on the side of fact, not your fiction. Dec 05 12 02:19 pm Link Tony-S wrote: The bulk of those in the Ukraine. Dec 05 12 02:25 pm Link rfordphotos wrote: Nope, the science is on the side of nuclear: Dec 05 12 02:29 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: Virtually all of them were from Chernobyl. Chernobyl used RBMK reactors which were inherently flawed and built by the Soviets because they were cheap. After Chernobyl, the Soviets retrofitted the remaining RBMK reactors with additional safety features. None of the reactors in the West or Asia use this technology and are much safer. Certainly safer than burning coal. Dec 05 12 02:32 pm Link Explains Germany building new coal plants alright. A New Role for Coal in German Energy Revolution http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger … 54335.html "a new generation of power plants may herald a glowing future for the fossil fuel." Dec 05 12 02:35 pm Link Dam Failures and Flooding at U.S. Nuclear Plants http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/ … -19-12.pdf Nuclear Regulatory Commission Engineers Charge Government Coverup: Reactor Meltdown “Absolute Certainty” If Dam Fails … 100s of Times More Likely than Tsunami that Hit Fukushima http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/09/ … shima.html [1 in 4 odds in next 40 years using NRC figures] Dec 05 12 02:42 pm Link Tony-S wrote: Well Tony, only in your mind. The US govt has decided you are wrong, and stopped licensing reactors because the technology is unsafe. The State of California knew you were wrong 36 years ago when it stopped licensing reactors because the waste was impossible to deal with using any known technology. Dec 05 12 02:50 pm Link rfordphotos wrote: Because the public views it as unsafe* (as this thread has demonstrated) Dec 05 12 03:21 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: Did you also see this sentence: "Paradoxically, Germany would likely then end up emitting more CO2 overall." Dec 05 12 03:42 pm Link rfordphotos wrote: So, you don't believe the US National Academy of Science, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the World Health Organization? The numbers are perfectly clear - nuclear energy is far safer than burning coal. The US govt has decided you are wrong, and stopped licensing reactors because the technology is unsafe. The State of California knew you were wrong 36 years ago when it stopped licensing reactors because the waste was impossible to deal with using any known technology. So, you believe that coal burning can improve with time, but nuclear can't? Once again, the data are clear - coal kills far more people each year than nuclear energy has in its entire history. Germany knows you are wrong, that is why they are going thru the expensive, painful process of shutting down ALL their reactors. For political reasons, not scientific reasons. I'm still not convinced they'll shut them all down when they realize the cost in human lives and climate change it will cause. You can cling to your illusions if it pleases you. Thankfully those in power have more sense. Sorry, but the data are what the data are. Your personal incredulity will not change that. Dec 05 12 03:46 pm Link Tony-S wrote: Tony, you insist on taking a short term view. You are obviously not in the slightest bit concerned with the future. As long as your power doesnt dim, the hell with the future generations. Dec 05 12 03:59 pm Link dp Dec 05 12 07:51 pm Link rfordphotos wrote: I'm very concerned about the future. The problems with nuclear are manageable; however, by the end of this century, millions of people will be dying every year because of burning coal. You continue to deny the rapidly improving technology concerning the clean combustion of fossil fuels, technology that is currently real, measurable, viable. I don't deny it's getting better. What I don't believe is that it will get better soon enough considering the change in climate that it's causing, the number of respiratory diseases, and the number of neurological diseases from burning coal. You also continue to deny the simple fact that since the very first high level waste was created, NO NEW or EXISTING technology has been shown to be able to safely deal with that waste. Nothing new. The problem that existed in 1945 is precisely the same problem faced today. The amount of waste produced by modern nuclear reactors is substantially less than by those manufactured in the 1980s. You are willing to gamble the entire future of the environment on technology that doesnt exist. It is a calculated risk. There may or may not be substantial problems with nuclear energy in the near or distant future, but it is an absolute certainty that burning coal will continue to kill hundreds of thousands of people next year and by the end of the century millions per year. I am saying that the improvements in combustion technology exist now, that the improvements in alternative energy make nuclear an even WORSE gamble. If clean coal can be done I'd be all for it. But it's not there yet and there is nothing on the horizon that would make it less dangerous than nuclear energy. And for industrial electricity, only coal and nuclear are viable options. Wind nor solar can generate sustained energy output and battery technology isn't ready for such heavy burdens. But, I am wasting both of our time. You see it your way, I see it mine. The difference is I see it my way because of the facts. You see it your way in spite of the facts. Dec 05 12 08:02 pm Link from the intelligence wires --- about those new designs Alarm in Tehran and Moscow over Bushehr nuclear reactor’s near-explosion in mid-October http://www.debka.com/article/22577/Alar … id-October "Russian experts estimated that an explosion at the Bushehr reactor had the potential for causing a million Iranian deaths and hundreds of thousands of radiation victims in the Persian Gulf emirates, which supply the world with one-fifth of its fuel. The hazard was so great in October that Putin ordered command teams of the Russian emergency ministry trained to deal with nuclear disasters to set out for Bushehr in southern Iran and prepare the infrastructure for larger teams. The engineers immediately shut down the reactor and removed its 163 fuel rods" more at link Dec 05 12 08:39 pm Link For deaths due to severe accidents we have (data from Paul Scherrer Institute): Coal: 75 accidents, 2,259 fatalities in OECD countries and 1,044 accidents and 18,017 fatalities in non-OECD countries. For oil the numbers are 165, 3,713, 232 and 16,505 respectively. natural gas is 90, 1,043, 45 and 1,000 respectively. Hydro is 1, 14, 10 and 29,924. For nuclear we have 0, 0, 1 and 31 (immediate fatalities). I got the following data from a risk assessment site so they are evaluating risk versus benefits and measure deaths in öre/kWh. The effects of decaying isotopes have been taken into account. They calculated the effects at their maximum value and consider them to be negligible. If the waste is well covered with gravel (which it is, plus special casing) it decays before it reaches the surface. For coal it goes up to 90 öre/kWh, natural gas goes up to about 10 öre/kWh, bioenergy goes up to 20 öre/kWh while goes up to maybe 1 öre/kWh. The above doesn't even include greenhouse gases which makes nuclear look even better by comparison. Coal, lignite and oil are at the top for risk and cost and nuclear energy is at the bottom. We are looking into disposing of nuclear waste as glass and disposing of it in various places in the ocean. This wouldn't harm the ocean ecology and if we produced *all* of our electricity using nuclear plants and disposed of it in this way for the next hundred years, the radiation level would not even go up 1%. The largest component of the coal-burning waste is carbon dioxide gas, produced at a rate of 500 pounds every second, 15 tons every minute. It is the principal contributor to the "greenhouse effect". There is also sulfur dioxide, the principal cause of acid rain and perhaps the main source of air pollution's health effects, released at a rate of a ton every 5 minutes. Then there are nitrogen oxides, the second leading cause of acid rain and perhaps also of air pollution. A single large coal-burning plant emits as much nitrogen oxide as 200,000 automobiles. The third major coal burning waste is particulates including smoke, another important culprit in the negative health effects of air pollution. Particulates are released at a rate of several pounds per second. And next comes the ash, the solid material produced at a rate of 1,000 pounds per minute, which is left behind to cause serious environmental problems and long-term damage to our health. Coal-burning plants also emit thousands of different organic compounds, many of which are known carcinogens. Each plant releases enough of these compounds to cause two or three cancer deaths per year. And then there are heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and many others that are known or suspected of causing cancer, plus a myriad of other health impacts. Finally there is uranium, thorium, and radium, radioactive wastes released from coal burning that serve as a source of radon gas. The impact of this radioactive radon gas from coal burning on the public's health far exceeds the effects of all the radioactive waste released from nuclear plants. If nuclear power was used to the fullest practical extent in the United States, we would need about 300 power plants of the type now in use. The waste produced each year would then be enough to kill (300 x 50 million  over 10 billion people. It sounds like a lot but we produce enough chlorine gas each year to kill 400 trillion people, enough phosgene to kill 20 trillion, enough ammonia and hydrogen cyanide to kill 6 trillion with each, enough barium to kill 100 billion, and enough arsenic trioxide to kill 10 billion. This is all assuming that every bit used gets into people. Nuclear waste is 5 million times smaller by weight and billions of times smaller by volume. The nuclear waste from 1 year would occupy a volume of half a cubic yard. This is much easier and less dangerous to handle than the waste from coal. Note also, that the ground already has radioactive materials naturally. The nuclear waste buried would only raise the radiation level in the top soil by 1 part in 1 million. Dec 05 12 08:55 pm Link Sha-Lynne wrote: That would make this one pile about a centuries worth. Dec 05 12 09:07 pm Link A typical coal-burning powerplant generator consumes 40 truckloads of coal in an hour, while in 24 hours, a nuclear reactor uses an amount of fuel that would fit in a golf bag. The coal is turned into heat and smoke, with arsenic-laden ash left over. I'm not sure about the quantities or type of nuclear waste produced. Dec 05 12 09:08 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: And what's inside those? Has it been reprocessed, etc. Dec 05 12 09:22 pm Link All toxic wastes need to be dealt with safely, not just radioactive wastes. In countries with nuclear power, radioactive wastes comprise less than 1% of total industrial toxic wastes (the balance of which remains hazardous indefinitely). Due to the storage containers in your image, I am assuming that it is low level. This mainly comes from hospitals and industry. Many parts of the Earth's crust is more radioactive than this naturally. Dec 05 12 09:40 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: Missed this before: of course the evacuation zone will remain uninhabited. There was a huge-ass accident. My data above were with the reworked numbers after they realized that they had been underestimating. Dec 05 12 09:46 pm Link Here is the Ontario (local to me) and Canada nuclear waste inventory report http://www.llrwmo.org/en/programs/ongoing/inventory.pdf including [about] 10,000 cu yards high level fuel waste 2,000,000 cu yards low level waste 200,000,000 tons uranium mine tailings - in an area glaciated as recently as 15,000 years ago and iced over twice in 100,000 years -What kind of storage do you suggest is guaranteed safe with historic 2 mile thick Antarctic levels of ice plowing over it probably unattended? Dec 05 12 09:49 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: How many reactors does that include and for how long has it accumulated? Even with that, still better than the alternatives. You are still ignoring *all* of the other data about risk and health effects, etc. Dec 05 12 09:56 pm Link 3 dozen reactors on 17 sites - 50 years or less Time. Glass is soluble and flows on a long time frame. Those spikes on thistles are silica (glass) from solution. 100,000 years is what Yucca mtn. was aiming for. There is no evidence humans even used high level language more than 30,000 years ago. Who is going to look after this stuff? The U.S. has only been significant for 2 centuries. 1/500th of that time. The Roman empire barely lasted 10 centuries - this waste is dangerous for 100 times that long. Dec 05 12 10:25 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: Keep burning coal and there probably won't be too many humans alive in two centuries. That anthropogenic climate change is a real bitch. Dec 05 12 10:28 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: Okay that makes sense then. Michael Bots wrote: I don't know enough about glass to say anything about this but I'm assuming that they took this into account and that is why it is shielded and buried/surrounded by water or boric acid. I think that the main reason for converting it into glass is that it is easier to handle...once it's handled it probably doesn't matter as much. The radiation has been put in a place where it is contained whether it's glass or not. Michael Bots wrote: I wasn't advocating for Yucca Mountain. If the information about putting it in the ocean is currect, then I think that's the best bet. Michael Bots wrote: Once it's taken care of I don't think it really needs taking care of. People will be monitoring the environment for many different reasons if something goes wrong, we'll know. Though there isn't really much, if anything, that can go wrong. Dec 05 12 10:40 pm Link Tony-S wrote: From NOAA -- ice core data -- 9000 of the last 10000 years were warmer than present. Dec 05 12 11:14 pm Link Michael Bots wrote: Dec 05 12 11:28 pm Link  Dec 06 12 12:18 am Link -- 4 degree drop temp coming -- 1700's replayed Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ap … view/14754 "The onset of the deep bicentennial minimum of TSI is expected in 2042±11, that of the 19th Little Ice Age in the past 7500 years – in 2055±11." Dec 06 12 12:23 am Link Michael Bots wrote: So you're saying there's a lot of water in the air? No effing way! Dec 06 12 12:29 am Link     Even during a period of long term warming, there are short periods of cooling due to climate variability. It's not a steady climb.     Dec 06 12 12:36 am Link Director Pete Garcia II Intro -The Boy Who Cried Warming http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ICRsEWutDk The Boy Who Cried Warming (bonus footage) http://www.youtube.com/embed/nyEm57NqERA The Boy Who Cried Warming - Teaser Trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryidjdzfH2I Full film http://www.theboywhocriedwarming.com/ http://vimeo.com/47182591 http://watchdocumentary.org/watch/the-b … 55ddb.html Dec 06 12 07:30 am Link Michael Bots wrote: You really don't expect us to take this guy seriously, do you? Dec 06 12 07:58 am Link |
