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Author Topic:   Japan
Rahvin
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Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 105 of 175 (609230)
03-17-2011 3:13 PM
Reply to: Message 104 by jar
03-17-2011 3:13 PM


Re: pretty
See the stack shadow of any coal power plant during normal operation, no crisis or disaster or earthquake or bizarre testing required...
Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

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 Message 104 by jar, posted 03-17-2011 3:13 PM jar has replied

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 110 of 175 (609237)
03-17-2011 3:38 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by 1.61803
03-17-2011 3:23 PM


Re: Wrong.
Rahvin writes:
"I'll take that as a concession on all points."
Sure, I would expect no less. And as I have stated before all of my opinions are just that. So what. Nothing you say changes the reality of what is happining right now. Multiple nuclear melt downs. None of your concise, well formulated, bulletproof, logical arguments mean squat. Coal seam fires or Mexican hit squads ...so what. Annnd?
7.8 to 10 on the Earth quake scale.. how do you think those people feel right about now, that they're whole world is in ruin?
The public always pays for the certainty of experts who convince us with graphs and clap trap how safe shit is, until it is deems unsafe. Then they shift the blame and begin damage control. Spare me. Wanna lick some radium paint off this perfectly safe product?
You're behaving like a child.
Look at what you post - you're specifically saying "no new information would ever change my mind, I will never concede anything on this subject despite my lack of personal knowledge or the fact that I've not done any research to counter your arguments. I'm emotionally charged and frightened, and so nuclear power is bad, end of story."
And for the record, while Fukushima is in the middle of a severe nuclear crisis with the potential to become much worse, we don;t really know that we're seeing a meltdown right now. The problem areas are not the reactor cores but rather the used fuel storage pools, which have lost enough water and pumping capacity to (from what we think is happening) expose the spent fuel to the air and steam from the evaporating water.
In a meltdown, the fuel rods reach criticality and begin a nuclear chain reaction, essentially an unchecked version of what happens in a regulated manner inside an operational reactor. That's basically what happened at Chernobyl, because the control rods jammed and the reaction went out of control.
Spent fuel, because of its very nature as spent, is too highly contaminated with the products of the fission reaction to actually begin that chain reaction, which is why it's not still in the reactor core in the first place.
What can happen at this point is a reaction between the now-exposed and really-hot cladding on the spent fuel and the air/steam, resulting in cracking Oxygen/Hydrogen from the water vapor and causing a buildup of Hydrogen. This as we all know is a highly flammable and explosive combination, so the concern is that a hydrogen bubble could form of sufficient size to break through more of the containment area and spread particulates into the general area. The results of that would not be good, as at least one of the reactors has recently been refuelled, meaning at least a portion of the spent fuel will still contain some of the short-lived but very highly-radioactive isotopes that can cause harm very, very quickly.
Basically all action being taken right now is to cool the spent fuel pool so that a hydrogen bubble does not form - but without a true active cooling system, this is extremely difficult.
Not that the distinction between this and a meltdown is particularly significant - it just shows that, once again, you don't know what you're talking about and should maybe let the grownups handle it instead of flapping your arms and throwing a temper tantrum.
Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(1)
Message 118 of 175 (609246)
03-17-2011 5:05 PM
Reply to: Message 113 by 1.61803
03-17-2011 4:11 PM


Re: Wrong.
and how even in the face of hundreds of thousands killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By willful use of nuclear power,
Hitler still managed to instutute geneocide. And Kill More people than was killed by H bombs.
Do you even have any idea how many things in this single secion are wrong?!
1) Nuclear weapons are not in any way applicable to a discussion on nuclear power, any more than fuel-air explosives like MOABs are relevant to a discussion on fossil fueled automobiles. Nuclear weapons produce completely different effects, beginning with the obvious fact that the reaction is faster and so produces a massive shockwave and radiation spike as opposed to the slow, drawn-out but non-explosive nature of a nuclear reactor incident. They also produce different radiation profiles, with nuclear weapons dispersing by far the majority of their radioactive particulates into the upper atmosphere, and containing far less material than a nuclear reactor in the first place, while a reactor isn't explosive enough to disperse material into the upper atmosphere and has a lot more material to disperse. They just are not in any way similar and bringing up one in a discussion of the other is just silly.
2) Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were H-bombs. An H-bomb uses a fusion reaction, typically started by a small scale fission reaction to get the necessary temperature and pressure to initiate Hydrogen fusion. Fusion does not produce anywhere near the same level of radioactive particulate matter that Uranium and Plutonium fission weapons, like those used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, do. They're also orders of magnitude more powerful, and so they are largely what comprises modern nuclear weapons. Of course, no H-bomb has ever, even once been used in time of war, so no H-bomb has ever killed anyone despite their destructive power.
3) If you wanted to make a casualty comparison that wasn't a total red herring when discussing nuclear weapons, you should have compared the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to various allied firebombing attacks that destroyed entire cities, and simply took more bombs and planes to get a similar result. Of course, nuclear weapons are still a complete non sequitur when talking about nuclear power. Hitler, of course, had nothing to do with anything at all in this conversation, even in a risk assessment.
For the love of rational thought, please actually read through my posts before you reply to them, and pretty pretty please go read a fucking book or at least a Wiki article.
Your current level of knowledge regarding nuclear power is roughly akin to someone who learned about evolution through the X-Men and the Teenage Mutant Ninja goddamned Turtles.

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 135 of 175 (609562)
03-21-2011 12:55 PM
Reply to: Message 134 by NoNukes
03-20-2011 10:45 AM


Re: Unexpected Tsunami??
This is a little bit naive. Earthquakes of the magnitude that occurred were not unexpected
Sorry, but that's just not true. Earthquakes in the range of 7-7.3 were expected, and the plant complex was designed with that in mind. Nobody expected a 9.0, the region has no history fof quakes of that magnitude. Even still, the plant managed to weather the quake without serious (with regard to reactor safety anyway) damage.
and given such an earthquake, wasn't the tsunami inevitable? Surely the wall of water was no huge surprise.
Tsunamis depend on the location, type, and severity of the earthquake (so no, not inevitable, but predictable), and barriers were in place to prevent tsunami damage.
The major problems were twofold: the barriers were insufficient for this particular tsunami (which may not necessarily have been a lack of foresight, but rather a limitation on the amount of protection that can be given by such barriers, I don't know a lot about them), and more importantly, the diesel generators that provide backup electricity to the active cooling system for the reactors and the spent fuel cooling pools were located in the basement, and flooded.
Diesel generators, I understand, don't work so well underwater.
Without generators, the cooling pumps had to rely on battery power, which is of course limited. The general power grid wasn't supplying backup power either - I presume damage to general infrastructure form the quake/tsunami took care of that. Without active cooling, heat began to build up unchecked in the cooling pools, and basically here we are.
So we have several lessons we can learn so far, even before a full investigation:
1) Passive failsafes, as you find in modern designs like pebble-bed reactors, are obviously superior in the face of a natural disaster than active cooling systems. The pebble-bed design uses a specific arrangement of fuel pellets such that, if a meltdown begins, the fuel will melt in a directed manner that maximizes the molten fluid's surface area exposure to passive coolant (I believe it also directs the fuel such that it separates widely to stop the fission chain reaction, and I wouldn't be surprised if the passive coolant pool contain neutron absorbers as well, but I'm not positive about those) - it's all just gravity based and the meltdown becomes self-limiting.
2) Don't stick your backup generators in the basement where a flood will take them out.
3) NIMBYs and anti-nuclear protesters like to decry future plant construction, but we need to be decommissioning 4+-decade-old designs and replacing them with newer ones so that we can actually put into practice the lessons we've learned since the dawn of the atomic age.
That said, I'd like to point out that the Japanese government has raised the maximum exposure level for workers in the Fukushima crisis to 250 millisieverts/year. Radiation sickness doesn't begin to set in until exposure reaches 250-1000 millisieverts, and even then it's basically just nausea - you need 1000-3000 millisieverts/year to reach the "recovery likely, not assured" level (which translates to about 5% of people with this level of exposure dying).
Estimates of the radiation levels at Chernobyl immediately after its explosion put radiation exposure levels around 10,000-30,000 mSv/hour, which would translate to a lethal dose within minutes (death would occur significantly later of course).
Those who are still expecting a Chernobyl or worse are being unreasonably pessimistic.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 138 of 175 (609575)
03-21-2011 2:01 PM
Reply to: Message 136 by dronestar
03-21-2011 1:16 PM


Re: Information
I've done a lot of reading about Fukushima, nuclear power, and other power sources lately. It seems one needs an advanced education about any/each/all of them to talk with a degree of accuracy so I hesitate to offer additional information:
As you have alluded in your post, according to the following article, the term "spent" fuel rods are not really spent:
Your article is rather dumbed-down, and it makes a very pointed implication that the nuclear industry is being dishonest to the public regarding spent fuel, when such dishonesty has never existed.
The "hot" nature of spent fuel is why there's such a large amount of effort put into things like long-term storage in the first place (if the stuff wasn't still radioactive, we wouldn't need cooling pools or projects like Yucca Mountain, now would we). "Spent" in the context of nuclear fuel simply means "no longer suitable for a controlled fission reaction."
Generally, that means that the fuel rods are too contaminated with the products of nuclear fission to maintain a stable level of output.
But the spent fuel still contains a very large amount of radioactive material - in fact, that's exactly why reprocessing is so valuable. 95% of the potential energy output of a given fuel rod is still there when it is "spent," and reprocessing allows us to recover that still very usable fuel.
But even in reprocessed fuel, the waste still contains radioactive isotopes - and radiological decay generates waste heat. Spent fuel is hot - literally. In the case of the freshly-used fuel in the cooling pools at Fukushima, it's very hot, generating an estimated several megawatts (1-5 are the estimates I've heard) of waste heat, which is why it needed to be cooled in the first place.
I am unsure if there are similarly designed and operated nuclear plants currently operating in the USA. I am simply raising the concern (though some may accuse me of fear-mongering. BTW, perhaps it is the constant fear-mongering and vigilance that causes the nuclear power to be AS safe as it is?).
Percy writes:
The difference in opinion on power options has a strong emotional core deriving from the fact that nuclear plants pollute through accident and catastrophe while other options pollute through normal operation.
Good words, but this may not be specifically true with all types of Hydro power.
Thanks for weighing in Percy, although maybe your post (and mine) would have been better in the other "is nuclear safe" thread.
I've done a lot of reading about Fukushima, nuclear power, and other power sources lately. It seems one needs an advanced education about any/each/all of them to talk with a degree of accuracy so I hesitate to offer additional information:
As you have alluded in your post, according to the following article, the term "spent" fuel rods are not really spent:
Spent is an industry-euphemism. It implies something harmless, wasted or used up. Quite the opposite.
Spent fuel is irradiated fuel: fuel that has been irradiated inside a nuclear reactor’s core. After removal from the reactor, this fuel is massively contaminated with radioactive elements and must be stored in giant pools.
On March 15 the New York Times said these fuel pools could pose an even greater danger than the reactors melting down.
An even greater danger? Isn’t a core meltdown as bad as it gets?
Alas, a fuel pool meltdown could be worse than a reactor core meltdown. Much worse. This is because fuel pools contain far more radioactivity than that which is inside a reactor core. Unfortunately, at Fukushima we may get both types of meltdowns.
Robert Alvarez, formerly of the US Department of Energy and now at the Institute of Policy Studies, provided insight into this potential nuclear Armageddon. In a recent blog Alvarez states the fuel in each of the pools at the Fukushima complex has 5 to 10 times the radioactivity of the fuel inside one reactor core. And much of this radioactive material is the highly toxic and long-lived radionuclide, cesium-137. See.)
Another problem: Unlike the reactor cores, which have a hefty, six-inch thick steel containment vessel, the fuel pools at Fukushima are in unhardened and therefore highly vulnerable concrete structures. The roof of one of these structures has been completely demolished in at least one of the stricken reactors, Unit 4.
Why is irradiated fuel sitting in pools? (They’re sort of like swimming pools, though considerably deeper. About 40 feet long, 40 feet wide and 45 feet deep.)
After removal from the reactor core, the irradiated fuel is fiendishly hot. The fuel is so hot it will cause the water it is immersed in to boil — if the water is not cooled. What if fuel pool’s cooling systems fail? Disaster. If the water is not cooled for a certain number of days or weeks, the water will boil off. Next, the fuel can catch fire, releasing its toxic load to the environment.
Japan’s Nuclear Armageddon and the Experts « Aletho News
I am unsure if there are similarly designed and operated nuclear plants currently operating in the USA. I am simply raising the concern (though some may accuse me of fear-mongering. BTW, perhaps it is the constant fear-mongering and vigilance that causes the nuclear power to be AS safe as it is?).
A certain amount of fear is appropriate - when dealing with commercial power generation, every method needs to be treated with a certain degree of fear and respect.
The only nuclear regulations in the US that I particularly have a problem with are the executive orders against using nucelar fuel reprocessing, because it needlessly causes us to put out more waste than we need to, go through fuel far faster than we need to by wasting 95% of it, and to generate a larger proportion of high-grade waste as opposed to less-dangerous low-grade waste.
The fearmongering takes over when we have NIMBYs who decry projects like Yucca Mountain or lobby against new plant construction entirely. Fearmongering takes over when people take a nuclear crisis drastically out of proportion and oppose nuclear power on general principle, despite direct and objective evidence showing that it is orders of magnitude safer than any other method of generation per unit of power generated. Fearmongering takes over when people forget that you get a higher dose of radiation exposure from eating a banana than living a few miles from a nuclear plant for a year. Fearmongering takes over when people look at the dangers of nuclear power without even considering the relative dangers of all the other methods of power generation.
You know what I hate? Assumptions. I hate it when people assume that "clean renewables" like solar and wind power are somehow "safe" just because they can't explode. I hate when people don;t even bother to look up the facts (the numbers I've been posting I found in less than ten minutes with Google, anyone with a brain can find the same information if they bother) and just claim that "x is safer" without actually knowing any such thing.
There are people who honestly believe that nuclear power is the most dangerous form of power generation there is. Jon, on this very forum, said that nuclear was "stupid" and that no civilized society should ever use it - which means he didn't know a goddamned thing about nuclear (or any other) power other than it scares him more than other forms.
That's fearmongering - when you don;t base your fear on the actual facts and real relative risks involved, but rather make assumptions based on ignorance and create a completely irrational risk assessment that's 100% divorced from reality.
Percy writes:
The difference in opinion on power options has a strong emotional core deriving from the fact that nuclear plants pollute through accident and catastrophe while other options pollute through normal operation.
Good words, but this may not be specifically true with all types of Hydro power.
Not just hydro. Solar and wind don't pollute so much per se, but their dangers come from accidents as well.
To paraphrase the Joker from the Dark Knight - if 50 people die in a hydroelectric plant, nobody gets scared, because it's all part of the plan. If a natural gas line explodes, people say "wow, that's awful," but don;t protest natural gas heating or electricity because it's all part of the plan. Acid rain from coal plants, global warming, radioactive fly ash released directly into the air, nobody panics - because it's all part of the plan. It's not surprising, it's not shocking, it's just not scaryyou.
But if just a little teency bit of harmless levels of radiation leaks from a nuclear plant, even if nobody dies, everybody just loses their minds! No more nuclear! RADIATION IS BAD! OMG, radiation was found on spinach a few kilometers from Fukushima! Even though you'd need to ingest that level of radiation for a decade to see any harm, PANIC! PROTEST! LOUD NOISES!

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 140 of 175 (609580)
03-21-2011 2:18 PM
Reply to: Message 133 by Percy
03-20-2011 9:50 AM


Re: Question about Nuclear Plant Design
Are nuclear power plant containment facilities designed to maintain integrity if something like this were to happen directly beneath them?
Nuclear power plants, like other structures, are designed to withstand earthquakes of a given severity. The Fukushima plant was designed with up to a 7.8 quake in mind, because up to 7.3 quakes had been recorded historically in the area. Remember, the Richter scale is exponential, not linear, so they were designing with an extremely large margin of safety beyond what they anticipated was likely to occur in the area.
What actually happened was a 9.0. And again, the reactors did hold up to the quake, well outside of their design specification, very well. If the quake alone had happened, the nuclear power plant would in all likelihood be a non-issue. The containment breaches that eventually happened were not caused during the quake, but rather by pressure buildups and hydrogen explosions after the tsunami took the active coolant systems offline.
So while I'm not a structural engineer and I don't fully understand all the measures taken for earthquake safety, I'd say with decent confidence that, if a plant can take a 9.0 earthquake, one of the strongest on record ever, and keep ticking, you probably don't need to worry so much about earthquake damage.
Tsunamis, on the other hand...

This message is a reply to:
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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(1)
Message 143 of 175 (609592)
03-21-2011 3:08 PM
Reply to: Message 142 by Taq
03-21-2011 2:47 PM


Re: Unexpected Tsunami??
That isn't true. Japan has experienced several earthquakes in the 8.0 range in the last century. At wiki they list an 8.5 in 1896 and an 8.3 in 1923, both on the Richter scale. There are others of the same or greater magnitude in other scales. If they designed for 7-7.3 then they set the bar much lower than very recent earthquakes.
Where in Japan did those other quakes strike? Was it the same fault? If so you have a point, if not then you don't.
There was also a magintude 8.2 quake in 1968 that was also accompanied by a large tsunami.
The placement of the diesel generators was stupid. Other than the flooding of the backup generators, the facility held up to the tsunami as well. Solution: maybe don't locate all of your backup diesel generators below sea level.

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 Message 142 by Taq, posted 03-21-2011 2:47 PM Taq has replied

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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 162 of 175 (611953)
04-12-2011 12:09 PM
Reply to: Message 161 by dronestar
04-12-2011 11:14 AM


Re: unreasonably pessimistic?
Yes, dronester, I saw that too.
And yet, despite the classification change, the nature of this disaster as opposed to Chernobyl means that we can expect a lower cost in lives at Fukushima.
The problem with the "top level classification" is that, once you've gotten that high, there's no further way to distinguish the severity of events. One Level 7 incident could literally be twice as bad as another Level 7.
Come back to me when we have a final death toll (or at least a preliminary one). That's the best, most meaningful metric to judge real severity. If Fukushima kills more people than Chernobyl, I'll concede. If not, well...
ABE -
Here's what Im talking about:
quote:
There have been no fatalities resulting from the leaks at Fukushima, and risks to human health are thought to be low.
...
The decision to raise the threat level was made after radiation of a total up to 630,000 terabequerels had been estimated at the stricken plant.
That would classify the crisis at level seven on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (Ines).
It was not clear when that level had been reached. The level has subsequently dropped to less than one terabequerel an hour, reports said.
In comparison the Japanese government said the release from Chernobyl was 5.2 million terabecquerels.
Still not nearly comparable to Chernobyl.
Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

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 Message 163 by dronestar, posted 04-12-2011 12:27 PM Rahvin has replied
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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 164 of 175 (611959)
04-12-2011 12:37 PM
Reply to: Message 163 by dronestar
04-12-2011 12:27 PM


Re: unreasonably pessimistic?
You used greenpeace for your numbers, dronester. I wouldn;t trust greenpeace to tell me what time it is. They're possibly worse than quoting Glenn Beck.
So instead I'll just repeat myself, or rather my previously quoted article:
quote:
There have been no fatalities resulting from the leaks at Fukushima, and risks to human health are thought to be low.
...
The decision to raise the threat level was made after radiation of a total up to 630,000 terabequerels had been estimated at the stricken plant.
That would classify the crisis at level seven on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (Ines).
It was not clear when that level had been reached. The level has subsequently dropped to less than one terabequerel an hour, reports said.
In comparison the Japanese government said the release from Chernobyl was 5.2 million terabecquerels.
I added bolding this time to help you absorb the relevant information, which you seemed to completely ignore.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 163 by dronestar, posted 04-12-2011 12:27 PM dronestar has replied

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 Message 165 by dronestar, posted 04-12-2011 12:44 PM Rahvin has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 166 of 175 (611964)
04-12-2011 12:53 PM
Reply to: Message 165 by dronestar
04-12-2011 12:44 PM


Re: unreasonably pessimistic?
I added bolding this time to help you absorb the relevant information, which you seemed to completely ignore.
Yet you still posted them as if they meant something. Curious.
Let me know when you come up with SOLID cancer numbers.
Since we both agree that "SOLID" cancer numbers are going to be impossible, perhaps we should focus on the numbers that are solid, like actual amounts of radiation released, and WHO-reported death tolls.
In addition to ignored information:
In addition, it seems the Japan site is increasing the contaminated zone (+12 miles) for evacuation. A similar 19 mi exclusion zone is around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster.
19 miles is more than 50% greater than 12. In what world is "more than half again as large" anything resembling similar?
Besides that, who cares? Evacuation areas and even exclusion zones are precautions. The only numbers that matter when discussing the severity of a nuclear disaster are the amount of radiation released and (more significantly) the death toll.
You seem to enjoy focusing on irrelevancies and data you know and acknowledge is suspect. Why is that, I wonder?

This message is a reply to:
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Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 171 of 175 (612000)
04-12-2011 4:51 PM
Reply to: Message 168 by Taq
04-12-2011 3:39 PM


Re: unreasonably pessimistic?
This is a good measure of the total activity released, but it can also be misleading with regards to risk. Specific isotopes (e.g. Iodine-131) can become part of the body and do more harm than the same amount of radioactivity from a different isotope that passes through our digestive system or is excluded from our bodies. Given the ample warning before major failures I would suspect that the risk is much lower in this case than the straight comparison of Bq's between Fukushima and Chernobyl might indicate.
More people lived closer to Chernobyl than to Fukushima as well.
The straight comparison of radiation emissions was given simply because that's the metric used for designating this a Level 7 incident. Once you pass a certain threshold of total radiation emission, you're at Level 7, that's that. Fukushima has passed that limit over time, while Chernobyl basically exploded and burned for a while in a very sudden emission of a lot more radiation all at once, blowing past that threshold like it was nothing.
But the point is that every statistic in which anyone actually has a real number indicates that the Fukushima disaster, while certainly a disaster, is not anywhere near the level of severity of Chernobyl.

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 Message 172 by jar, posted 04-12-2011 5:22 PM Rahvin has replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 173 of 175 (612014)
04-12-2011 5:47 PM
Reply to: Message 172 by jar
04-12-2011 5:22 PM


Re: unreasonably pessimistic?
Indeed true. If we were to remember the discussions back at the nucelar power thread...
quote:
Coal — world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal — China 278
Coal — USA 15
Oil 36 (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass 12
Peat 12
Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind 0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro 0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao) 1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear 0.04 (5.9% of world energy)
If Fukushima doubled the total of all deaths attributed to nuclear power, it would still be the safest form of power generation.
Hey, does anybody remember that earthquake and tsunami Japan had about a month ago? They killed around 10,000 people.
Fukushima hasn't killed anyone so far.

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