A plea for a return to science on the nuclear power issue

Well said.

Sadly I think the good Dr is going to be disappointed.
I grew up in the sputnik / NASA time. Since that time we’ve really gone backwards. It’s largely generational. The people that gave us sputnik and NASA were the warriors of WWII. They understood sacrifice and discipline. They looked forward to challenges. We’ve become too soft too risk averse. Our education system is in shambles and has become too political.
We need some major calamity to take place to wake us up.

Three quick observations: he asserts that nuclear power is “affordable, clean, and plentiful energy on a large scale as never seen by man.”
First, nuclear power is not affordable – it is mostly where heavily subsidized by governments that the reactors are built. There is a good reason Warren Buffett has not built a nuclear power plant — it won’t make money. A stand-alone nuclear power plant built today in the USA must charge 25 to 35 cents per kWh for its power produced.
Second, it is only “clean” if you think the highly toxic spent fuel is clean. I don’t.
Third, it is plentiful on a large scale as never seen by man only if one ignores fossil fuels – oil, coal, natural gas.
He makes an argument for using atomic power for the good of mankind, as if that is its only use. Yet those same physicists that he so admires stated that atomic power should never, ever be used because of the immense harm it will do. And has done.

It is one thing to be fearless of radioactivity. The same fearlessness can be had for gunpowder. But to be fearless of badly configured reactors is as foolish as to be fearless of badly made pipe bombs.
The devil is in the details.

“So it fills me with sadness and anger on how the work of the above mentioned giants of physics is now being dragged through the mud, how the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century are being redefined and criminalized.”
Germany, like many European countries, appears to have contracted a bad case of “Green” mania. The mania stems from poorly educated youth, zealots, and an inadequate news media. Yet, “Greenies” aren’t nor are they ever likely to have a meaningful impact on Science and Physics.
No one is criminalizing Physics or atomic energy. Yet, its clearly obvious that physicists were not in charge of the Fukushima response. We all wish physicists had been in charge — the response would have been immediate, insightful, and would have avoided hydrogen explosions, contamination, and the destruction of 6 plants.
Taking the plants off-line at this time of year in Germany for assessment isn’t a bad idea. Its probably unnecessary but presents little risk in the grand scheme of things.
If you could replace politicians with physicists (assuming the physicists could actually agree about anything and the governments didn’t pay them all off) we might have a shot at intelligent change.

I wish people would quit living off the name Einstein.

The main factor that went into the disaster at Fukushima will always go into planning any nuclear reactor: the human inability to account for all future scenarios that could cause a disaster.

Obie – posts sit for a short time awaiting moderation.
Ok – so this has to be said if only because perspective is the first victim of disaster.
Japan’s Toyota factory products have killed more people around the globe than all the reactors in Japan (and the world) have. Nobody is calling for a shutdown of Toyota.
Spot poll (using the Bill Murray of SNL model)
Que es más mortal?
1) Uranio
2) Toyota

Will there be any posts from scientists making a plea to end nuclear power plants?

Roger says “Yet those same physicists that he so admires stated that atomic power should never, ever be used because of the immense harm it will do”
Ah, Roger. By all means make sure the facts do not get in the way of your argument!
You will find that those physicists of whom you speak were not talking of ‘nuclear power’ but of the ‘power of nuclear’ weapons. Many were unwilling to work on them at all. All were very unhappy about doing so. But that is not the same thing at all as the use of nuclear power for production of energy.

Leif Svalgaard says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:12 am
One might also question the rationale behind storing spent fuel rods in pools wordwide.
Politically, you cannot get rid of this stuff and neither can it be recycled (again due to political quagmire).
So, 95%(if I am informed correctly) of the UO2 in spent fuel rods sits in pools of water being kept cool.

The principal point seems to me to be that the number killed or injured by the nuclear plant has been … zero? And that should be put against the number killed by the earthquake and tsunami ….. 7000 so far?
Clearly, the logic of the alarmist argument should be applied to both. No one should ever be allowed to live in an earthquake/tsunami zone again. Look at the immense harm it might do. (‘might’ is a little misplaced here – ‘will’ is more exact).
In the end, I too am confounded by the irrational fear surrounding anything to do with ‘nuclear’.

Thank you very much for posting my essay here. Pierre and Bernd helped (many thanks to them) with the translation, because I am not very experienced in English.
But: The picture does not show me nor am I a “Professor of Physics” from Harvard. As mentioned in my text I do not work as a professional researcher, I left university soon after receiving my Ph. D. (I am not a professor). I am a little bit younger than the professor and I live in Germany and never lived anywhere else on this planet. The essay is an answer to many comparable essays of individual viewpoints of the opponents of nuclear power in the current debate in Germany. Many people at the moment are talking about their fears (“German Angst”), I wanted to say something about hopes.
REPLY: Apologies, identical names. Do you have a CV/bio page that I can properly reference? – Anthony

One might wonder about the rationale in a tsunami-prone country to build power plants on the coast…
Or locating backup generators in the basement while placing spent (dry?) fuel rods on the roof.

German is depressive. Just a week ago in a TV debate one person said that Germany must abandon this nuclear “technology of yesterday” and that there’s another good reason for it – young people don’t want to study something so ugly, most of the engineers is between 50-60 years of age and there will be soon a shortage of specialists fro running the plants safely.
Incredible.

“kim says:
March 20, 2011 at 10:21 am
The Endarkenment Beckons.”
This is the most telling comment and it is not just about nuclear. The issue is will we be allowed to honestly answer the questions that are asked or will political correctness creep farther into science than it already has? Will we be allowed to do the work necessary to add to our understanding or will more and more areas be off limits to discussion, experiment, and advancement?

@ Kohl — I gently suggest you study the history of nuclear non-proliferation. Those stellar physicists – some of whom I much admire – knew quite well that even atomic power plants (the term they used back then) could and would be used to create weapons. They knew quite well how the plutonium with which they were working was created. They wanted the entire thing to be stopped. Weapons, electricity, all of it. They knew what they were doing. And nobody in positions of power listened.
So here we are 65 years later, as a civilization, 6 or 7 billion people held hostage to the next great earthquake, beyond what a nuclear power plant was designed to withstand, or the next great tsunami – surprise!!! Who knew they could reach 100 feet!!!! Or the next clever sabotage effort that succeeds, or any of dozens of other ways for the genie to escape the bottle.
If all this atomic power is such a grand idea, why then is there so much angst world-wide over Iran building a nuclear power plant – and North Korea doing the same? Weapons-grade plutonium is not the only way these things can sow death and destruction and agonizing illness that lingers for years. Or worse, babies born with birth defects from radiation to their parents. Dirty bombs with spent nuclear fuel wrapped around a conventional explosive will ruin your day. Any physicist should know this, and every physicist should acknowledge this.

Roger Sowell
Nuclear power would be very cheap if not for the cost associated with endless lawsuits and extra environmental studies that must be factored in whenever a nuclear plant is proposed to be constructed. Also, the subsidies are mostly in the form of federal loan and insurance guarantees not actual money spent by the government. Gwyneth Cravens in her book ,Power To Save The World, sites estimates that nuclear power could cost as little as two cents per kwh based on actual construction and operating costs.
Waste storage too would be a non problem if we recycled the fuel rods, reusing the non fissioned material in them . Doing this would reduce the amount of wast to a very small amount .

bubbagyro says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:39 am
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:12 am
[It withstood the earthquake fine—————as an aside, there is no waste problem except for the wastes known as Democrats and ecotards on the ultra-left wing.—- The ecotards made this problem, where rods have to now be stored on site]
——————————————————————–
Bubbagyro. I couldn’t agree more – and it’s the same ecotards who have infiltrated our education system that are destroying the children’s minds – and the future.
Douglas

Floor Anthoni says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:51 am
Tsunami-sensitive areas in the world.
Had the engineers known a little about storms and tides, they would indeed have built the reactors more out of harm’s way – a bit higher up
REPLY: They didn’t know about earthquakes and tsunamis?

Thanks for the translation. I agree fully with Dr Peter Heller. He is the exception!
Germany’s media and so called experts have shown a lot of misinformation at the time of Chernobyl and it’s the same this time.
Japan shows that they are doing everything possible and impossible to keep it under control. Great job.
People that jump on a plane, into a car, burn coal, oil or gas, or do anything else that could cause death fear radiation as it is invisible. The media and the politics is doing the rest.

Kohl says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:50 am
In the end, I too am confounded by the irrational fear surrounding anything to do with ‘nuclear’.
I am confounded by the confidence.

PaulH says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:10 am
I fear it will take a long time to dig out of this hole.
No matter the length of time it will not be long enough.

Obie says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:03 am
So why no comments from the usual readers of WUWT.
I’m one that’s been here posting, oh, just a couple comments in these nuclear power related threads threads.

Einstein believed God created. Opps!

.
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I too am a physicist (retired) of the astro- kind. My opinion, in the past, was that nuclear energy was too risky to use on a wide scale. The events in Japan have demonstrated that such apprehension was, for the most part, unfounded; I became converted almost overnight.
But. Fear, in the population masses, is, and has been, a primary driving force. It has been a useful, if not fundamental, tool to instigate and maintain control, doctrines, dogma, and ideology.
From the original Judeo-Christian POV, the One God was here/there to provide solace or comfort or deliverance from the consequences of physical (natural) and/or moral evil. It didn’t take long for that specific offering (or sacrifice) to transmogrify into — “do it my way, or else I’ll clobber you”: the bad-news of tyrants, rather than the “come, let us reason together”: the good-news of the One God.
And so pandemic fear has permitted educated, degreed, popular, successful politicians and scientists and clerics and journalists and everyday pedestrians to believe that CO2 is poison. Almost the same crowd will readily accept that multiculturalism (in the sense that all cultures and religions and ideologies are of equal value) is a value beyond which there is nothing conceivable more valuable. The idea is to be revered or venerated or worshipped; opposition to the value is to be extinguished in any way.
All physicists are not immune to rampant, mimetic contagions. Neither are all clerics, or politicians, or anybody else. And even in “free-science” there remains the risk that the discoveries can lead to a triumphalism as potent as any religious brew has concocted.
“Come let us reason together” is a notion of workable religion as much as it could be a workable notion of the scientific method or a cultural mandate. But, like peace, reason does not always defend itself.
And if you’ll believe that CO2 is poison, then it’s not much of a stretch to criminalize the radioactivity of a banana.
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Perhaps I’m easily impressed but I thought the translation from German was amazing.
Excellent comments by James Sexton and Theo Goodwin. I am not a “Creationist”. I was taught evolution from grade school on. Only recently have I realized that the theory of evolution has a lot of holes in it. It does not fully answer some very fundamental questions like “how does an organism add genes to evolve into another organism?” And no…an adaptive response like Staph aureus developing resistance to an antimicrobial is not “evolution”. The adapted bacterium is still a Staph aureus.
Theo Goodwin makes a good point about PC. Rather than trashing Creationism it may have been more appropriate to use the example of AGW. But in Germany to doubt AGW is nearly a crime. Dr. Heller would have lost his audience. To be fair, there’s much better empirical evidence to support evolution than there is Creationism. At the same time there’s better empiric evidence to support UFOs and extraterrestrials than there is to support AGW.

@Jerry Gustafson on March 20, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Re nuclear power would be very cheap if…
My comments on that topic are on record on WUWT’s earlier thread
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/18/good-news-from-japan-situation-fairly-stable-says-iaea/
The lawsuits are generally brought to force the plant into compliance with the governing regulations. The additional costs are built into the nuclear plant design – the triple-shielding is required due to the ultra-hazardous nature of atomic fission. The multiple redundancies for various systems are also required under the law, again because of the catastrophic harm that occurs when these things melt down, shake apart, blow up or otherwise go badly wrong.
The plant’s equipment is much bigger, for one thing, and therefore more expensive, simply because nuclear power plants produce low-pressure steam, and THAT requires much more steam to circulate for the same amount of power produced. More steam flow requires larger turbines, larger condensers, larger pumps, larger pipes and valves, larger cooling water systems, and so on. This is especially true for the BWR designs (boiling water reactor). The construction codes for nuclear plants require much more extensive, and expensive, testing and inspection including x-ray of most of the welds in the plant.
All these things add to the cost of the plant – but are required simply because nuclear power is very, very dangerous without elaborate and multiple safeguards. The original atomic physicists were absolutely correct when they said this should never be used. When the green genie escapes, there are multiple types of hell to pay.

When you take into account the number of accidents and environmental damage done annually by the conventional power industry, nuclear is much cleaner and much safer. Why is nobody complaining about the mercury “fallout” from China’s coal power? That is more dangerous than anything we are going to see from Fukushima and it occurs every day, day in, day out, and does cumulative damage to the food chain.
We recently had a natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed people and damaged homes. We have such explosions practically monthly in the US. Globally, probably nearly every day someplace. We have all sorts of industrial accidents that kill dozens, yet no hue and cry as we have over this incident that has killed nobody or even injured anyone due to any radiation leakage.
If I were “big oil” or “big coal” I would be giving big money to the anti-nuclear wackos.

Unless we have the political will to grow nuclear it won’t happen. There is too much negative information out there most of it wrong. People still believe that many people died at TMI and hundreds of thousands have cancer due to Chernobyl.
Someone will need to take the bully pulpit of office, like Senator James Inhofe has fought against AGW. And let’s not think the our current president ‘H’ is pro-nuclear. He is just mouthing the words. He appointed Gregory B. Jaczko whose record would be better described as anti-nuke. And at DOE Dr Chu is focusing on alternative green energy.
Boy, are we screwed!

Onion says:
March 20, 2011 at 12:36 pm
. Frankly, it feels like you’ve created a really good straw man to beat up to cheers from an echo chamber.
——————————————————————–
Onion. It is you that maketh the strawmen. It’s all you ever do here. Go, take your onions with you and weep elsewhere.
Douglas

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
March 20, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Douglas says:
March 20, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Leif Svalgaard says: March 20, 2011 at 11:12 am
Max Hugoson says:March 20, 2011 at 10:44 am
the “sea wall” is going to have to be: 14 meters high.
One might wonder about the rationale in a tsunami-prone country to build power plants on the coast…
—————————————————————–
We’ve all got 20/20 hindsight.
Douglas
=======================================================
They didn’t know about earthquakes and tsunamis ahead of time?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Amino – Of course you HAVE got 20/20 hindsight vision – A 9.0 one plus a 10 metre one plus the stored rods – all together. Great stuff. You guys p*** me off – Give these people a break. The damage at the plant is bad enough on top of the REAL disasters there– they will learn from it – believe me – but they don’t need s*** from EXPERTS like you to pontificate about it.
Douglas

‎”Fukushima illustrates that we are indeed able to control atomic energy.” – Dr Peter Heller, Physicist, Germany
Fantastic article Dr. Heller. Outstanding.
Current doses from the emissions, virtually unmeasurable.
Fukashima has managed to “contain” most of the “hard stuff”, other than Cesium, Iodine and Xenon. 99% of all the Cesium and Iodine has “gone out to sea”, where it’s totality will be indistinquisable from background.
The BIG problem here is the loss of almost 3 Gigawatt of capacity. And let’s get down to the heart, if the other 3 units at Fukashima are going to go back on line, the “sea wall” is going to have to be:
14 meters high.
The emergency D.G.s are going to be in a tsunami/explosion proof building (earthquake too). Emergency plans will include 3 week offsite power loss.
All in all, this should NOT happen again.
Too NOT “fix” these things, would be a TREMENDOUS LOSS OF FACE for Japan, and I can assure you they WILL fix them!
– “Max Hugoson at March 20, 2011 at 10:44 am”
Excellent comment Max, I fully concur with the fixes.
BOB (Big Ole Battery), which also happens to be made by TESCO, could easily provide the multiple week or longer dedicated energy source for a nuclear plant. Every nuclear plant on the planet needs a Bunkered BOB within a few kilometers for backup.
I’ve written about it and a few other suggestions in this article:
http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/safer-nuclear-reactor-designs-are-a-must/

Okay, I’ve heard enough. Picture this; the 9/11 planes didn’t fly into the WTC, instead they were flown directly into nuclear power plants. Would you all be so sure about their continued programme then? I’m an atheist – because I see rationale and logic. I love science, because it trumps everything else. But if you fly a plane into a hydro-electric plant, or a geothermal-electric plant, or a coal-electric plant, or a gas-electric plant, you know what? It’s going to cause annoyance and economic problems…but everyone’s going to be fine. You fly passenger jet aircraft filled with fuel into one nuclear power plant – then tell me all is gong to be absolutely fine. And yes, there will be people reading this that will say that a nuclear plant could withstand it. Well do you want to know something else…I don’t believe it.
I don’t want to go back to the Dark Ages, and I want science to trump religion and belief in nonsense. But I don’t want to go to an age where hundreds of square miles are a no-go area for thousands of years, where cancer becomes a major killer, where birth defects affect millions.
Fusion? Great. But don’t tell me that we’re perfectly safe with nuclear power, because we ain’t. We could invest all those billions in hot-rock geothermal, or hydro, or tidal. We could. Instead people want to continue on a path thats always walked a fine line.

The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:59 pm
“Okay, I’ve heard enough. Picture this; the 9/11 planes didn’t fly into the WTC, instead they were flown directly into nuclear power plants. ”
It would have been very hard for them to hit the rather small reactor core – even the Pentagon did not take a direct hit. The reactor core is hidden in a rather stable containment, made to withstand enormous pressure. Try to hit a small ground target with a commercial airliner going at 800 km/h…
They could have taken out a turbine house, i grant you that.

I notice that the failure modes with the pumps is similar to New Orleans where the pumps were below sea level to begin with. Once flooded they were of no use.
Any system that depends on an active shutdown is going to have a failure mode. Even storing cooling water uphill can fail if the ground shifts enough to damage to piping. As I understand it, the reactors SCRAMMED correctly but still required cooling till the fuel cooled down. Seems to be a stupid design to require a system in a failure mode to continue operating for a safe shutdown.

Some one has created a web site for all those journalists you mention.
http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/Journalist+Wall+of+Shame
Here’s an excellent article in this morning’s Age Newspaper comparing nuclear to hydro power on safety.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/dont-fall-victim-to-nuclear-phobia-20110320-1c24t.html

So it turns out that nuclear fission reactors are dangerous when hit by huge tsunamis, Wind & solar power has been proven effectively useless, too expensive and impractical, Hydro-power & thermal power are too geographically Dependant, fossil fuels are cheap, efficient and a proven source of power generation but have become the focus of anthropogenic political wrangling to monitor & tax every last soul on this planet.
Ask the question if we should fire up a few nuclear fusion reactors to generate electrical power? In fact ask Joe public, “Mr green” or your politicians if we should start building them immediately?
It has the demonized word “Nuclear” in the question so Joe public will immediately wet him self and become frightened, “Mr Green” will campaign, lobby & protest against the idea of cheap and abundant energy as this suggests more people living longer and over populating the planet, destroying the environment through Co2 pollution and what ever anthropogenic disaster spin-off is popular.
And what about the politicians, wealthy elites & corporations? Well… the realities of creating heavy duty power generation will always be dangerous so long as there is greed in the expensive bureaucracies through which the funding of major engineering projects have to filter down through to begin with, especially if they are publicly funded by the tax payer then privatized by politicians, effectively handing a public utility over to corporations owned by wealthy elites who then drive up prices for their stock investors who make a killing of the consumer.
I’m just an engineer/technician “type” so my opinion is worthless too apparently!

Onion says:
March 20, 2011 at 12:36 pm
“I’ve observed a lot of good as well as very poor MSM journalism over this story. Frankly, it feels like you’ve created a really good straw man to beat up to cheers from an echo chamber.”
Which broadcast company did not scream nuclear disaster? Even Fox News could not resist. It was a bonfire of hysteria from the first report. There is no justification whatsoever for a news reporter or broadcast company to engage in hysteria.

Dr. Dave says:
March 20, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“To be fair, there’s much better empirical evidence to support evolution than there is Creationism. At the same time there’s better empiric evidence to support UFOs and extraterrestrials than there is to support AGW.”
Just because you mentioned me in this context, I will say that I have found nothing interesting in Creationist writings. However, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is as close to real science as a Model T Ford is to a BMW. But we are forbidden to discuss anything that might be taken as critical of Darwin. That Political Correctness is immoral, unscientific, and un-American.

The sad truth is that nuclear power is dead. The politics alone have killed it. Safety and efficiency have nothing to do with it.
A review of construction costs some years ago discovered that most utilities had not fully factored decommissioning costs into their rate structures. These amounted to $2B (1970s dollars) per reactor. The cleanup costs of an accident are so huge, so much greater than mere decommissioning, that no public utility will risk it. That’s it. Politics plus economic risk means no nuclear power.
And don’t talk to me about fusion. Fusion is outright criminal fraud. Physicists have been playing with their tokamak machines for 40 years and have made literally no progress to self-sustaining fusion. None. Absolutely none. No other fusion technology (other than bombs) works either. The fusion researchers have lied repeatedy about the prospects, and they have wasted no only billions of dollars but the entire professional careers of two whole generations of young physicists.
Back in the 1970s, engineers pointed out that the capital costs of fusion were at least a full order of magnitude greater than fission reactors. So even if we drink the KoolAid and believe in fairies, fusion reactors would be so large and their costs so high that even the military wouldn’t build them.
So, we are stuck with natural gas (huge deposits, especially clathrates), coal (very large deposits), petroleum, natural gas and small amounts of hydro.

What a brilliant synopsis Dr. Heller. Written to the point, simply and easily understandable.
I put up a comment on a previous post on WUWT, which I think may be relevant…
“I apologise if I am stepping on anyone’s toes, as I admit to not reading all the comments above.
The major factor that the MSM have omitted in their ignorance and doom-mongering, is that spent fuel rods were the cause of all the local radiation, simply because the Japanese back-up cooling water pump supplies failed – no electricity – even though they are doing a sterling job of containment.
urtailment. Without constant water cooling, any spent fuel rods in storage continue to rise in temperature as low level nuclear reaction continues.
I have often wondered why the design engineers involved have never bothered to utilise this heat energy, e.g. as in second or third stage compound steam engines, or latterly in second stage turbo-charging on large 2-stroke engines…”
One of the major problems that I have, personally, is trying to make my friends and family aware of what is really happening in the world of weather, climate and energy; all related, but with a woeful ignorance of the facts.
And there we have the dilemma, or a better word may be ‘bugbear’, because the more difficult the subject matter, then the harder it is to understand. So it is with climate and energy, more especially with the former.
There are not many ‘climate’ scientists that I (personally) would trust, but one that I would, on every turn, is Bob Carter. He is one of those lucky few who can explain something that is obviously complex, in a logical and reasoned manner, leaving one with the impression that the subject was not so difficult after all.
Then you have the sincere and rather avid folk on the ‘other side’, who still insist that any more man-made CO2 increase will be the end of the world.
It is about time these mostly ill-informed remarks were put to rest. If only it were that simple! However, there are good people in this world, who do not necessarily believe in hobgoblins, spirits (apart from vodka), or, indeed, propaganda; people like Willis, Judith, Christopher… I was going to carry on with many names, but I find, much to my delight, that they are too numerous to name.
Having said that, I must not omit your name, Anthony, for without your website I would have been unable to post this.

Tom in Texas says:
March 20, 2011 at 11:56 am
…placing spent (dry?) fuel rods on the roof.
I’m not an expert but as I understand it…
If you look at page 19 of the link below you will see that in order to refuel the BWR reactor it is necessary to flood the top of the reactor in order to keep the spent fuel shielded (by the water) while it is removed from the core. The spent fuel pool holds the removed fuel in a shielded environment (under water) until it is decayed enough to be transferred to dry storage.
http://www.ati.ac.at/fileadmin/files/research_areas/ssnm/nmkt/06_BWR.pdf

The fear associated with all things nuclear (CO2, etc) is not evidence of knowledge.
Fear is used as a tool by media and interest groups and others.
I lay the blame for such fear in the lack of spirit of discovery and pioneering within a paternalistic/maternalistic society.
John

“how does an organism add genes to evolve into another organism?”

Begin here: Transposons and genome evolution in plants

And no…an adaptive response like Staph aureus developing resistance to an antimicrobial is not “evolution”. The adapted bacterium is still a Staph aureus.

This kind of argumentation falls in what is called the Sorites paradox: a grain of wheat is not a pile. Nor 2. Nor 3, nor 4. But there exists piles of wheat. Where do you place the limit? This is the same reasoning with “adaptive response” and “evolution”.

I know a person, he was born in 1920 and is still around kicking, and as it happens he usually spend his days surfing the net.
When I was eight I built my first model airplane, a spitfire, when he was eight he didn’t even know there was such a thing as airplanes. He didn’t have running water or a house connected to the sewer, since there wasn’t any sewer lines. The telephone didn’t exist in his mind yet neither.
But consider the flying apparatus. A machine that could take people up into the blue, to fly, and back safely again.
1928, your eight, and your world doesn’t include the flying machine, it doesn’t exist, but in 17 years there was jets, and in 41 years a man on the moon.
Imagine if they’d said back then, when the eugenics were all the rage, that, hey them flying apparatus’s are true and real dangerous, people go missing or, worse, die every year from accidents so how are those supposed to be good for us in the future?
What happened after 9/11 when planes couldn’t leave the ground?
What happens when planes can’t leave the ground due to volcanic outgassing problems?
And even what happens when really squeezing diamond uptight bureaucratic national security personal gets scared out of their pants from all the maybes and if’s and ban flight due to baby muffler capped milk cans?
Do we dismantle the aircraft industry or do we just make changes, up the security, and adapt and refine the technology one more time?
We would probably not have come as far had that world not let the aircraft industry been allowed to go through all the refinements through the years. An aircraft is just the same now as it was, almost a 110 years ago, way before they even existed in an eight year old old farts reality. The only thing that has changed, really, is that the design has been refined numerous generations, yet, still, accidents happens, terrorists happens, and they’r still used to slaughter thousands of people each year.
Although the main point is that in one persons mind it only took 41 years from the advent of flying machines to moon rockets landing on the moon. And I wonder how far along would we have come in the last 25 to 30 years had the green loonies not imposed a de facto ban on nuclear R&D, such bans were imposed in countries in Europe even before Chernobyl happened. The loss of knowledge, and larger nuclear waste heaps, are evident compared to France (that produce 80% of electricity from nuclear power), who, today even, manage to recycle about 10% of their nuclear waste.

Jeremy Poynton says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Well, Japan has just had one. And no man is an island…
Yes, but no the kind of calamity I had in mind.
The only way to kick start nukes is to demonstrate that it helps us be energy independent. So a major flair up in the middle east that cuts off US supplies of oil for an extended period of time. Just to get peoples attention. Say no gas available at gasoline stations in the US for 3 or 4 weeks. We need people to get angry.

Oh dear. The use of 9/11 comparisons is usually frowned upon. Especially when the comparison is not even valid.
“But if you fly a plane into a hydro-electric plant”
Oh, you mean like a giant dam with millions of tons of water piled up behind it, at the head of an inhabited valley? An earthquake there (no need for planes) would result in something rather like a tsunami, yes?
“I’m an atheist – because I see rationale and logic.”
What does that have to do with anything?
“You fly passenger jet aircraft filled with fuel into one nuclear power plant – then tell me all is gong to be absolutely fine.”
Sure. “Everything is going to be absolutely fine.” This is in fact one of the tests they do on nuclear power stations, I’ve seen the video. Compared to a magnitude 9 tsunami, a jet plane is insignificant. Compared to a 30 ft high wall of water moving at up to 200 km/hr, a single jet plane is insignificant.
Here’s the video.

People seem to have no comprehension of the scale of what this power station has withstood. I have the same feeling of bemusement that I would if I said my wristwatch was ‘tough’, my mate said ‘oh, yeah?’ and proceeded to take it slam it repeatedly with a heavy sledge hammer, and then said ‘There, see? The glass on the front is slightly scratched!’
“But I don’t want to go to an age where hundreds of square miles are a no-go area for thousands of years, where cancer becomes a major killer, where birth defects affect millions.”
None of that could possibly happen. The most radio-active isotopes are the shortest-lived. With warning to evacuate, there is little likelihood of more than momentary increases in either cancer deaths or birth defects. A hundred square miles is a square 10 miles on a side, or an area extending 5 miles out from the reactor in the centre – which is not a big deal compared to the size of the planet. And there are uninhabitable places on Earth far more deadly over far longer time scales due to chemical or climatic conditions, that nobody is bothered about because it happens to be natural. Go live in Antarctica for a bit – an entire continent rendered uninhabitable, with death from hypothermia or starvation inevitable to anyone there without massive technological support – and tell me how unendurable it is that such a place could exist.
Go visit the city of Hiroshima, and you will find it thriving. Such events are never a good thing, but we can recover.
Nuclear power is dangerous, but not significantly more dangerous than many other chemical and industrial processes. The potential for harm is minor compared to many other events. And the safety measures are simply out of this world. Even the current event is not a threat to anybody not working at the site, and is unlikely to harm even those who are. It’s simply been blown up out of all proportion by the media and the campaigners.
Given the real disaster due to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the urgent need to deal with that, it seems ridiculous to be spending our time fretting irrationally about this entirely imaginary fear. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth about nuclear doom is just annoying, and it will have bad consequences for technological progress for the future.

Umm,
The sun just crossed the equator, it is spring in the NH!!!

Herr Heller says: (in his pleading for a return science)
>>
Here again one has to remind us that Fukushima was first hit by an unimaginable 9.0 earthquake and then by a massive 10-meter wave of water just an hour later. As a result, the facility no longer found itself in a highly technological area, but surrounded by a desert of rubble.
>>
I don’t intend to knit-pick this huge out-pouring but let’s just look at this paragraph.
1/ As the 6th largest since quantitive recordings began, mag 9 is unusual but not “unimaginable”. Not a very scientific statement.
2/ Initial speculation of a wave of “up to 10m” was not a reality on the coast. This is about as scientific as IPCC’s may be as high as 6C warmer. Not very scientific.
3/ No “desert of rubble”. The nuclear plant is on the coast not in the city. It was flooded but not smashed up. No “rubble”. Untrue , over dramatisation. Not scientific.
So all dramatic over-statements , not unimpassioned science.
“and there would be no other place I would rather be than on site at Fukushima. ”
Really? So why aren’t you there. They could use someone with no fear of radiation to fix up things up. They have to keep pulling their guys out.
Strange that such a rigorous , hardline scientist can’t stick to the facts whilst appealing for a return to science.
Maybe it is not just the IPCC and “the team” , maybe science has always been a lie, it’s that we only just noticed.

The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:59 pm
“Okay, I’ve heard enough. Picture this; the 9/11 planes didn’t fly into the WTC, instead they were flown directly into nuclear power plants. ”
Since 9/11, the NRC has required the nuclear power plants develop and implement strategies to intercept and stop land or water based terrorist attacks and to mitigate the consequences of an airborne terrorist attack that successfully makes it to a plant without being shot down. While the details of these strategies are not publicly available (to keep the details from the terrorists), from what I’ve seen, they’re a lot more robust than most folks would expect, including periodic drills where guys that look like they’ve got special forces backgrounds try to make it into the plant and access vital plant equipment.

I don’t understand your response to my earlier post. I come down squarely on the side of we NEED nuclear power. TMI was Nothing, but the media keeps bringing it up to keep the scare on.
Take you Meds or something 🙁

TheJollyGreenMan said:

The emergency water should be part of a passive system, no pumps etc. required to operate the system. The solution is simple. Store the emergency water upstream, on a hill, the natural head of the water will ensure a supply of water even in the event of a power failure.

I’ve got to believe reactor cooling engineering is not a full time job for you. Here’s a page that can help put things in the proper scale for you:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/04.pdf

The purpose of the reactor coolant pump is to provide forced primary coolant flow to remove the amount of heat being generated by the fission process. Even without a pump, there would be natural circulation flow through the reactor. However, this flow is not sufficient to remove the heat being generated when the reactor is at power. Natural circulation flow is sufficient for heat removal when the plant is shutdown (not critical).
The reactor coolant enters the suction side of the pump from the outlet of the steam generator. The water is increased in velocity by the pump impeller. This increase in velocity is converted to pressure in the discharge volute. At the discharge of the reactor coolant pump, the reactor coolant pressure will be approximately 90 psi higher than the inlet pressure.
After the coolant leaves the discharge side of the pump, it will enter the inlet or cold leg side of the reactor vessel. The coolant will then pass through the fuel to collect more heat and is sent back to the steam generators.
The major components of a reactor coolant pump (page 4-16) are the motor, the hydraulic section, and the seal package.
The motor is a large, air cooled, electric motor. The horsepower rating of the motor will be from 6,000 to 10,000 horsepower. This large amount of power is needed in order to provide the necessary flow of coolant for heat removal (approximately 100,000 gallons per minute per pump).

If I’ve done my math right that comes to about 500 cubic yards of water per minute. There are 1440 minutes in a day, 10,000 in a week. That’s turning out to be quite a bit of water to put on a hill top. But let us assume there is a hilltop to put it on. Oh – wait. No hill top. But then calculate the size of the pipe needed to gravity feed that much water per minute and then describe how you turn that pipe on and off when there’s no electricity. You have to be careful the inertia in the pipe doesn’t pull the pipe off the hill. Air has to be let into the pipe at the top so it doesn’t get sucked flat like a cheap drinking straw. Haven’t mentioned yet the preferred condition of that cooling water be clean and free of plants and drowned animals. And wouldn’t it be a shame if it became contaminated on the way through the reactor, because all that water has to finally go into the sea (insert cheap joke about the rebirth of Godzilla).
Clearly a recirculating cooling system that can use preprocessed sea water is desirable and feasible. The problem is the site is susceptible to tsunami waves and the facility was not engineered to withstand a large tsunami. We don’t know if it was built to withstand a tsunami of any serious size, but even a small tsunami is capable of going over the barriers that were put in place. Tsunamis will rise to the occasion. See more at http://geology.com/records/biggest-tsunami.shtml.

Dr. Dave says:
March 20, 2011 at 12:56 pm
“To be fair, there’s much better empirical evidence to support evolution than there is Creationism. ”
In the beginning there was God …. God created the world and all of creation in 6 days.
In the beginning there was a Big Bang…. in a few trillionths of a second the whole universe appeared from nowhere.
Science has explained nothing , it’s just changed the language.

Douglas says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:40 pm
You guys p*** me off – Give these people a break. The damage at the plant is bad enough on top of the REAL disasters there– they will learn from it – believe me – but they don’t need s*** from EXPERTS like you to pontificate about it.
Douglas
=======================================================
Are you intentionally changing the subject?
Kinda strange that you think I don’t care about the people caught in the tsunami.

Holbrook says:
March 20, 2011 at 4:50 pm
>>
I therefore totally agree with the professor and was pleased to hear the head of EDF confirm that they are still planning to go ahead with the three new nuclear sites they intend to build in the UK.
>>
Well they would say that. Since the UK govt. has promised the tax-payer will cover the cost of any accident , it’s a win-win deal for the EDF. No risk , no need for insurance. In any other industry that would be an illegal govt subsidy.
Any why did Brown’s govt agree to that ? Because no financial institutions would even consider insuring them.
Worth noting that they got the tax-payers’ money from a bailed out bank to buy existing nuclear sites that belonged to the state, ie we the people.
They buy our land, using our money and if it fucupshimas … well, we pay for that too. Of course if nothing goes wrong they get to keep everything and flees us all with energy bills for the next 50 years or so before we come back and pay for decommissioning and eternal storage of all the shit they leave behind.
Yep , their position makes perfect sense to me. Whatever happens in Japan is irrelevant to their position.

P. Solar says:
March 20, 2011 at 5:02 pm
=============
Ah, now we’re having fun, syntax as an argument.
It’s all about perspective.

E Smith says:
March 20, 2011 at 4:19 pm
“However one area to the south is showing a recent dramatic rise.
ibaraki
2040 (0:5:50) 1635 (0:4:20) 639 (17:40 yesterday)
http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870
”
So that’s a map in nGray/h; wikipedia says
1 Sv = 1 Gy · W (where Sv=sievert, Gy=gray, W=weighting factor specific to each type of radiation and tissue).
where W ranges from 1 to 20 depending on the radiation. Your highest reading is 2040 nGy/h. That would translate to 17mSv/year to 357 mSv/year, depending on the unknown W, if it persisted which it won’t. What have we learned? 100mSv is the lowest one year dose clearly linked to an increase in cancer.
I wouldn’t panic yet, even if your link is real.

P. Solar says:
March 20, 2011 at 4:30 pm
“I don’t intend to knit-pick this huge out-pouring but let’s just look at this paragraph. ”
Huge out-pouring, is that the beginning of self-awareness? 😉

janama says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:39 pm
The land area around Chernobyl has been locked up as you say – a biologist was given permission to enter and check it out. She found thriving animal life more diverse and greater numbers than before Chernobyl.
I’m really going to need a link for that. I hope it’s not the Ann Coulter column.

I am constantly amazed, that people without the sense to pull over to talk on their cell phones, can be completely freaked out with technology. Materials and technology have advanced considerably since the 1960’s. As others have stated, we can almost have neighborhood nuclear installed now. The only issue is how to pay the bill. Safety is not a big concern. Living here in NW Indiana, going back to cave habitation with our families, would be a larger issue.

Dr. Dave says:
Perhaps I’m easily impressed but I thought the translation from German was amazing.
Excellent comments by James Sexton and Theo Goodwin.
======================================================
I’d like to thank you and Theo for the kind comments even though it is apparent that you both view things a bit differently than I do. This is the only basis upon which understanding can be attained. I expected a different reaction in general. My faith in humanity is restored!
I feel it necessary to point out, I haven’t read much on either “intelligent design”, nor any novel “creationist” theory. I came to the conclusion that I am a product of a creation by my own thoughts and perspective. I would also point out that the “chaos theory” and “evolution theory” don’t fit well together.
Lastly, in my perspective, the difference between the thoughts of creationism and evolution is this, one believes our being came from one thought. The other believes we came from one micro-organism. My view of Nature doesn’t distinguish the difference. Nor, do either posits answer the original question. But, one, it seems, leads us closer than the other.
Towards the irrational fear of nuclear melt down, I would remind people that we were reduced to cooling the damned things down with firetrucks. (I don’t believe this is optimal.) We didn’t get to an awwww damn, but we got pretty close. We live, we learn and we adapt. Hopefully, our hindsight will provide better than the foresight used to put the reactor and backups in a place given towards tsunamis and earthquakes. Anyone believing we won’t see a catastrophic occurrence with nuclear reactors are deluding themselves. It isn’t a matter of “if”, it is a matter of “when”, especially given the proliferation of the technology. That said, we can’t base that as a reason not to pursue it and use it. If we were, as has been pointed out, we should ban wind, coal, gas, oil, cars, jets, planes, or any other thing that advances the general welfare of mankind.
As to electricity use, it’s an easy mix formula. Coal, where available for base. Hydro, where base demand is feasible. Nuclear where it isn’t. Nat gas to provide peak demand. Wind and solar to provide when it can and where it is economical. I don’t understand why this is so hard?

Theo Goodwin says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Which broadcast company did not scream nuclear disaster? Even Fox News could not resist. It was a bonfire of hysteria from the first report. There is no justification whatsoever for a news reporter or broadcast company to engage in hysteria.

Agreed. Shephard Smith on Fox News’s 7 PM (Eastern) report was foaming-at-the-mouth hysterical over the ongoing or impending “nuclear disaster.” It was embarrassing. On the other hand, Bret Baer on the always excellent Fox Report (6 PM Eastern) was much better at maintaining a judicious sense of proportion. I don’t generally watch the opinion shows on Fox, so can’t speak to those, but Shep is ostensibly doing ‘news’. Unfortunately, his often ill-informed opinion is too often on histrionic display.
/Mr Lynn

Sorry to go somewhat off topic, but creationism was mentioned in this article. Here is a very impt Nature article regarding chromosome mapping of a chimpanzee with comparisons to humans.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/abs/nature04072.html
The abstract should have one “pause” for deeper consideration.
“we have generated a largely complete catalogue of the genetic differences that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor, constituting approximately thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events, and various chromosomal rearrangements.”
35 millions + 5 million = 40 million random mutations, all in the “right” direction, all in 6 million years. There had to be literally billions of wrong mutations and somehow the fittest 40 million survived and reproduced. Somehow this had to occur, yet know one has the slightest idea how. But it’s a FACT they say.
We don’t see this species evolution going on right now in the millions of species on planet earth right now. We should be seeing evolution in motion everywhere, beneficial and harmful, we don’t. This is not about Creationism, which is only a theory not whatsoever based on science, and a more wacked-out theory than evolution. But the facts are there is much we don’t know. Why is it so important to think you are sure?

Those picking nits in the translation of Peter Heller’s original article should address those comments initially to the translators.
Every language has idioms and nuances which do not have a 1:1 correspondence in other languages. Perfect translation (in a readable form) is not possible. However, if one asks the translators (or other able, third parties) nicely, then a re-examination and comparison of original source and translation may show that the nit is insubstantial; a figment of personal nuances imposed on language.
Remember: The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten.

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
March 20, 2011 at 5:33 pm
“Flying a plane into a nuclear plant would be hard. But what if they had a missile? Aiming that is frighteningly easier than a plane.”
What kind of missile are you thinking of? An anti tank missile won’t do it, same for anti airplane, they’re designed to pierce armour and blast copper plasma or something similar into the machine, so they’ll pierce the building and spew the plasma into the space between containment and outer wall and not even pierce the containment.
So we need something bigger. Now there was a nice invention by the Brits to crack German bunkers. The tallboy, so yeah, you’re right, what if our terrorists had a tallboy bomb and a Lancaster bomber and enough experience to climb 10,000 meters high and drop it from there… Modern guided bombs make the job somewhat easier…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunker_buster
But i think you would have to attack at least twice to make sure you crack the reactor after you have cracked the containment. An easier way would be to attack with a nuclear warhead, but that kinda defeats the purpose.

Dr Heller,
Thank you for your fine essay – an inspiration.
I have been waging my own personal war on disinformation on the nuclear situation in Japan by emailing everyone on my email list with alternative sources of information including posting on this blog as well as other objective scientifically grounded sources (MIT; etc). The responses have been quite interesting – one friend called me and had read a link I gave her on how nuclear reactors operate and had read up in detail. She is not technically trained (but very sharp nonetheless) and was absolutely fascinated by how nuclear reactors work. After gaining a better understanding, she was able to see through the panic and alarmism MSM is selling.
Other friends and colleagues were less than positive and seemed to be feeding on the fear – it will most likely turn out their fears will thankfully be groundless.
Has anyone seen anything on MSM that names and celebrates the heroic people in Japan that have worked so hard to control this horrible crisis? I do not have a TV, don’t listen to the radio, and don’t read the poodle publications like Newsweek anymore (got rid of all that stuff after Climategate) so I really do not know.

We need to de-centralize our power and eliminate the “grid” altogether. The grid itself is a tremendous liability. The planned “Smart Grid” is really a total control grid with “snitch appliances” and the ability to shut your power down whenever the Big Nanny government bureaucrats see fit. Any centralized power system is also a system of control over the people. Nuclear power has not been proven safe or affordable so far in my opinion. There were 4,277 tons of nuclear fuel at Fukushima at the time of the disaster. The Mark 1 reactor design was so deeply flawed that top scientists resigned in protest yet many of these poorly designed reactors are in use today. Which lunatic thought it would be a good idea to store thousands of “spent” fuel rods above the reactor? This complex was a dirty bomb waiting to happen. I demand a full investigation of this preventable disaster. Despite all the pronouncements of the nuclear fanboys, all it takes is one tiny particle inhaled into your lungs and you are doomed to eventually die from cancer. Why are so many reactors located on fault zones? Where did the idea to store spent fuel above the reactor originate? I’m sorry but these facts do nothing to instill confidence in nuclear power.
I agree that mercury-laced coal pollution is another huge problem which must be dealt with and considered in any comparison. Mercury from coal burning plants circles the entire planet before gradually raining slow-death on all the little creatures below. Coal pollution from China is one cause of northern ice cap melting due to the albedo effect. Natural gas extraction is wrecking aquifers across the West. Wind turbines are sprouting up all over the place and new solar panels are everywhere. The arguments against the economic viability of wind and solar fail to account for the true longer-term costs of nuclear / oil / gas / coal such as thousands made sick over the course of their lives from pollution, damage throughout the food chain, billions in cleanup costs, and other “externalities”.
Someone mentioned eugenics as if it was a thing of the past. Sorry to break the news, but eugenics is all the rage right now among folks like John P Holdren, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Al Gore, and many other “hope and change” charlatans.
They have initiated their “final solution” for their imaginary “overpopulation crisis”. The Gulf oil spill wrecked the Gulf and the Grand Banks in the Atlantic, the Fukushima dirty bomb will wreck Pacific seafood production, and chemtrail spraying of aluminum barium and strontium will soon destroy the farm belt. Oil prices will top $7.00 per gallon in America and no one will be able to afford food. What food we can afford will be heavily laced with toxins. More and more slow-kill vaccines will be forced on an unhealthy immune-compromised people. Together with fluoride these toxins will attack our bodies and slowly more and more people will die. Our only hope is to face facts and fight back with truth and justice. We are all being deliberately exterminated.
Q. “What do you expect me to do?”
A. “I expect you to die, Mr. Bond”

janama says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:39 pm
“Fly a plane into a hydro/electric and you break a dam and cause thousands of deaths. In Fukushima Prefecture that’s exactly what happened – A dam in NE fukushima burst and 1500 houses destroyed including most of the occupants. ”
Damn good thing that a nuclear power plant wasn’t built on the dam, eh?

Noelene: “When you think about it,building the reactor near the ocean is probably what saved it.How do you build a nuclear plant on land with access to water if an earthquake is going to bust pipes and bring down water reservoirs?”
No, by all apparent accounts the reactors survived the earthquake OK and shut down as they were supposed to do. It was the backup generators, located at ground level, that failed when they were flooded by the tsunami. So, yes, they are using seawater to help cool now, but it was the seawater what don’ it in the first place.

DirkH says:
March 20, 2011 at 6:56 pm
“Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
March 20, 2011 at 5:35 pm
janama says:
March 20, 2011 at 2:39 pm
The land area around Chernobyl has been locked up as you say – a biologist was given permission to enter and check it out. She found thriving animal life more diverse and greater numbers than before Chernobyl.
I’m really going to need a link for that. I hope it’s not the Ann Coulter column.”
“Do you trust NatGeo?”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0426_060426_chernobyl.html
Do you? Did you read the article? There is a second page.

What how dare you publish good sense from Peter Heller? The proper response is panic, run arround in circles and scream we are all going to dy. Thats true its only a question of when. Nuclear waste is a raining down, worlds end , think of the children, blah blah. Notice the MSM attention has moved on already, no meltdown no explosive spread of radioactive material, nevermind. There will be no return to science until scarcity bites the soft delusional masses we have created amongst us. Poverty and having to do without our marvelous technology tends to cure magical thinking real quick. Maybe its time for involuntary deprivement of technology for the anti science anti technology crew, social justice give them what they say they want.

I still havn’t heard an apology from the luddites who wanted to shutdown the LHC because of their irrational fear that it would produce a runaway blackhole that would engulf the Earth.
REF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
March 20, 2011 at 5:16 pm
Douglas says:
March 20, 2011 at 1:40 pm
Are you intentionally changing the subject? Kinda strange that you think I don’t care about the people caught in the tsunami.
———————————————————————————
???? Are you unable to read or understand my comment?
—————————————————————————-
What if next time it’s a 9.6 with an 80 foot tsunami? Is that planned for in any nuclear plant located on an ocean? That can’t happen?
—————————————————————————-
You expecting the sky to fall in or something – How high can you go? 10.8 and 100metres?
—————————————————————————————You shouldn’t expect all people to agree with you. You shouldn’t get bent out of shape so easily. You also shouldn’t assume that just because someone doesn’t agree with you about nuclear power that it also means they don’t care about people. That’s quite a leap to make. It could be that people have serious objection to nuclear power because they do care about people.
So please no more accusations that I or anyone else that doesn’t like nuclear power doesn’t care about the people caught in the tsunami.
Also, shouldn’t your conversation be only about the people caught in the tsunami since you think I should be doing that? Does it really make sense that you say just because I’m not rah-rah about nuclear power that I am insensitive about what really happened over there?
Please clean your own house before you think you see dirt on the floor of someone elses.
————————————————————————-
What’s this diatribe all about? You missed your medication or something?
The context of my comment was in respect to your rather smug question @ March 20, 2011 at 12:24 pm ‘They didn’t know about earthquakes and tsunamis ahead of time?’
Nothing more that this. It seemed to me that you were rather callous and smug. I was simply saying of course they knew about earthquakes and tsunamis but for all that were still overtaken by those events AND I have no doubt that they will sort things out soon enough as well as learn from the experience.
Calm down
Douglas

I think you all would be interested in comparing the US NRC’s guidelines and regulations for US nuclear facilities and power plants to Japan’s government nuclear regulation body METI. Google for their websites.
METI has adopted very broadly the NRC guidelines & regulations. You might find METI is more restrictive in general.
METI’s enforcement methodology appears to be more direct than the NRC’s.
John

DTaylor
Are their studies used in the book?

Dr. Dave says:
March 20, 2011 at 4:41 pm
. . . Evolution, like AGW is no longer taught as a “theory” but as a “fact”. In may, indeed, actually be a “fact”…but to date it remains an unproven theory. . .

Not to belabor the point, but the evolution of life forms on Earth is as much a fact as the existence of gravity. The evidence is the fossil record, and it cannot be gainsaid. What remains theoretical is the mechanism, namely natural selection by adaptation. We know a lot more about that than Darwin did, since the discovery of molecular genetics, which continues to introduce wrinkles and complications into a neat but clearly oversimplified 19th-century construct. But the concept of adaptation still has enormous explanatory power, and that is what science looks for, not some deus ex machina that ‘explains’ everything, and therefore nothing.
And that is but one example of the know-nothingism that Peter Heller decries, as the source of unwarranted and uninformed alarmism.
/Mr Lynn

“I am a physicist.”
Talk to an economist sometime, nuclear energy is a boondoggle. No private company will touch it without massive government aid/guarantees.

Glenn
They don’t need pipes when they have an ocean next door.If I am not mistaken,I believe they were forced to use sea water,I don’t know if they still are.

Lady Life Grows says:
March 20, 2011 at 8:55 pm
“As an adult male, you have much less risk, Dr. Heller, than the general public. By far the worst risks are to developing embryos.”
I’d never considered that before but you are of course correct. Ionizing radiation causes DNA damage. In cells that are differentiating (stem cells) into many different and diverse tissue types all the downline cells will replicate the damage. So damage that might not matter to a pancreatic cell might be quite critical to a brain cell and it won’t be just one brain cell but all of them if it’s early enough in development. That’s why all sorts of drugs deemed safe for adults carry warnings for pregnant women and young children.

I won’t aim this at specific posters here, because to do so would make for a very long postin.
For all of you who are so apprehensive about the dangers of nuclear power, here is a good solution. I will say up front that I hold down my use of energy and of other resources. That is because I’m not a big fan of waste. I’ve been told that is because my parents grew up during the depression. (Both of them were born in the 1920s.)
Anyway, here’s your solution. Go find the composition of the power generation for your utility. Such things are readily available online. No, I’m not going to tell you how to do it. I found it, so you should be able to, also. Once you have the percentage of power from nuclear plants, all you need to do is to cut your usage by that percentage permanently. Then you can have the delirious thrill of not supporting those nukes.
My personal choice is to accept that danger, as I am quite aware of what the risks are and aren’t.

The problem with nuclear power isn’t the highly publicised accidents that can’t be covered up, it’s the hundreds of small incidents that we are lied to about and the political corruption.
Labour and the nuclear lobby
Anti-nuclear campaigners like to portray the government as being in the pocket of the nuclear industry. How else, they argue, do you explain the return to favour of an industry once written-off as dirty, dangerous and prohibitively expensive.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5149676.stm
German abandonment of nuclear power
In 2000, the German government, consisting of the SPD and Alliance ’90/The Greens officially announced its intention to phase out the use of nuclear power. Jürgen Trittin (from the German Greens) as the Minister of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, reached an agreement with energy companies on the gradual shut down of the country’s nineteen nuclear power plants and a cessation of civil usage of nuclear power by 2020.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Germany
Higher cancer risk for children near nuclear power plants found in Germany
A new study on behalf of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection is the first study to show reliable results: the risk of children under 5 years of age to contract leukaemia increases the closer they live to a nuclear power plant. This is the result of an investigation of the German Childhood Cancer Registry (GCCR) in Mainz carried out on behalf of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection. The investigation concludes that in the study period from 1980 to 2003, within a radius of 5 km around the reactors, 37 children contracted leukaemia. On the statistical average, 17 cases would have to be expected. About 20 cases can thus be attributed to the fact that they live within this radius.
http://www.insnet.org/ins_headlines.rxml?id=5571&photo=
Sellafield (previously known as Windscale)
Some claim that the Irish Sea remains one of the most heavily contaminated seas in the world because of these discharges.[41]
The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR Convention) reports an estimated 200 kilograms (441 lbs) of plutonium has been deposited in the marine sediments of the Irish Sea.[42] Cattle and fish in the area are contaminated with plutonium-239 and caesium-137 from these sediments and from other sources such as the radioactive rain that fell on the area after the Chernobyl disaster. Most of the area’s long-lived radioactive technetium comes from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel at the Sellafield facility.[43]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield
In 1989 Sugaoka received an order that horrified him: edit out footage showing cracks in plant steam pipes in video being submitted to regulators. Sugaoka alerted his superiors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co., but nothing happened. He decided to go public in 2000. Three Tepco executives lost their jobs.
The legacy of scandals and cover-ups over Japan’s half-century reliance on nuclear power has strained its credibility with the public. That mistrust has been renewed this past week with the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. No evidence has emerged of officials hiding information in this catastrophe. But the vagueness and scarcity of details offered by the government and Tepco — and news that seems to grow worse each day — are fueling public anger and frustration.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iU29-CtBza8xA01r9IzPwksyP1WQ?docId=9e518d4998224fd8b705cc3fe9903eb6

I would like to translate to swedish for possible publication in swedish newspapers, but I am unable to find a link to Mr Heller. Can anybody assist?

E Smith says:
March 20, 2011 at 4:19 pm

What are the radiation readings for Fukushima ? – They are censored.
However one area to the south is showing a recent dramatic rise.
ibaraki
2040 (0:5:50) 1635 (0:4:20) 639 (17:40 yesterday)
http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870

I did a bit of converting and normalizing.
1 milliGray = 0.001 sievert
1 microGray = 0.000001 sievert
1 nanoGray = 0.000000001 sievert
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert#SI_multiples_and_conversions
Hourly dose examples
* Approximate radiation levels near Chernobyl reactor 4 and its fragments, shortly[clarification needed] after explosion are reported to be 10,000–300,000 mSv/hr
* Average individual background radiation dose: 0.23μSv/hr (0.00023mSv/hr); 0.17μSv/hr for Australians, 0.34μSv/hr for Americans[9][5][10]
From http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870
Ibaraki radiation levels: 63 – 86 nanoGray per hour (or 0.063μSv/hr to 0.086μSv/hr)
Keep in mind that Ibaraki the counters in Ibaraki are quite likely close to sea level, where natural background radiation would be much lower than in Colorado.
From http://www.radiationnetwork.com/
Radiation levels in Colorado (near Denver): ~24 – ~67 CPM (scintillation counts per minute, depending on location and elevation).
By my calculations:
1 CPM = 0.00926μSv/hr
24 CPM = 0.222μSv/hr (in Colorado)
63 CPM = 0.58338μSv/hr (in Colorado)
9.3 CPM = 0.086μSv/hr (in Ibaraki according to the map, at 2011 02 21 05:50 (JST))
12 CPM = 0.111μSv/hr (Vancouver)
10 CPM = 0,093μSv/hr (Texas)
The background radiation level at Ibaraki shown by the Japanase radiation map at http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870 is nothing out of the ordinary. It is slightly less than those for Vancouver or Texas.
However, the values shown in the table at the bottom of the map at http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4870 for Ibaraki, Horiguchi Hitachinaka City are as follows:
Date and Time (JST) nGray/hr
2011 03 15 19:40 —1114
2011 03 15 23:00 —1065
2011 03 16 00:30 —1046
2011 03 16 03:10 —1030
2011 03 16 06:00 —2114
2011 03 16 17:40 —1044
2011 03 16 19:50 —1029
2011 03 16 23:50 —1011
2011 03 17 03:00 — 993
2011 03 17 16:40 — 881
2011 03 17 19:20 — 876
2011 03 17 21:40 — 872
2011 03 18 01:00 — 856
2011 03 18 03:00 — 847
2011 03 18 20:50 — 760
2011 03 19 01:00 — 749
2011 03 20 06:50 — 637
2011 03 20 08:40 — 631
2011 03 20 17:40 — 639
2011 03 21 04:20 —1635
2011 03 21 05:50 —2040
Those values are the equivalent of the range from 631μSv/hr to 2,040μSv/hr, considerably higher than what would be normal levels of background radiation. Still, as of now no one knows for how long those levels will persist and whether at any point in time they will become dangerous.
It intrigues me that there is so much fear about possibly dangerous levels of radiation, but so little effort is being made to measure radiation on a regular basis and globally in many different places. Mind you, before we get to doing that, we should probably try to finish the other job, to try and come to grips with how to accurately measure temperatures. I doubt it that we can do that any time soon and that we will be able to do the much more difficult thing, measure radiation correctly in many different places without someone fudging the facts on that, too.
It is obvious from looking at the radiation map of Japan that the fudging and obfuscating is already in progress.

A question for any physicists out there. What effect would a water pressure of 12919 psi have on an arbitrary group of ten spent fuel rods? In a containment cylinder?

To be blunt and use old fashioned units.
A major core failure in a small reactor such as used in submarines might release some 10 to the twelve curies, Chernobyl probably released a thousand times this. This incident, as best can be estimated at the moment, does not seem to have to released more than than a hundred thousand curies: and more likely a tenth of that.
It was suggested that TMI released a million curies mostly in the form of noble gasses, but the estimate has never been justified and is probably overstated by a factor of a hundred times or so.
The immediate danger from such a release is radioactive iodine which although it has a short half life enters the food chain chiefly through milk. This can be dealt with by controlling the milk supply and if necessary iodine tablets. After Chernobyl the USSR did neither so perhaps a few thousand people suffered who should not have done.
Except very close to the incident there are no serious hazards.
The Japanese are very well organised to deal with disasters including nuclear ones such as this one. You should not imagine that their timely precautions are any reason for panic or that anything is much amiss.
It is all under control: it is the massive disaster and loss of life from the natural catastrophe that is of concern.
Unless of course you believe in hobgoblins and the like as credulous people do and as politicians and their ilk invent in order to enrich themselves. But there is no doing much about that I am afraid: although I have hopes the blogosphere might change things for the better.
Kindest Regards

“The media suggests a nuclear catastrophe, a mega-meltdown, and that the apocalypse has already begun. It is almost as if the 10,000 deaths in Japan were actually victims of nuclear energy, and not the earthquake or the tsunami.”
On Sunday afternoon the news ticker on BBC America stated:
“Japanese police say 15,000 people may have died in one perfecture alone, as efforts to tackle Fukushima crisis go on”
It was such a classic in misleading hype that I wrote it down. About all I can say is:
Holy Fukushima, whatever happened to reliable mass media.? Long gone.

@ Mike Nystrom. I am also from Sweden but live abroad. I have followed the hysteria in Sweden about this whole thing. I wish you luck, truly, to publish anything sensible in Sweden. I wonder where you think they would interested in anything that is more scientific than a horoscope?

P.Laini says: Let’s return to science. Indeed? This so commonplace and yet boring distorted vision of the medieval times and religion not helps. For example, how many times more will be necessary to say that earth as a center of universe was not a religious dogma and, by the way, that the dispute between Galileo and the Church was essentially other thing than science versus religion? And could continue…
If you a have a sincere desire to learn about these topics, I sugest …
I agree with you that geocentrism was not a Catholic dogma, but none of the websites you’ve linked say anything about it, if Google can be relied on. TomWoods.com says nothing about Galileo. FinancialSense.com mentions him in one article, but only in a quote at the beginning of the article, which is used in a stupid way and has nothing to do with whether geocentrism was a Catholic dogma. TheInterAmerican.org, in one part of one article talks about him, but says nothing about whether geocentrism was a Catholic dogma.

I was in Germany last week and the way this disaster was reported in the media was jaw-dropping. Even intelligent Germany citizens now believe that these 6 reactors are all going to explode like an H-Bomb wiping Tokyo off the map, poisoning the whole of Japan and sending up a toxic cloud that will blow across to China and bring manufacturing industry there to a complete halt with devastating impacts on the global economy.
I came back to the UK to hear that the absolute worst case scenario was a release of a small amount of radiactive material into the atmosphere which might cause the people of Tokyo to remain indoors for a few days, with a death toll from cancer over the following years ranging between 0 and 200 but largely indistinguishable from the normal death-rate from cancer.
They cannot both be right.

bob says:
March 20, 2011 at 8:21 pm
The anti-nuclear view has now been comprehensively proven to be wrong. No honest well-informed scientific-minded person can now henceforth credibly be ‘anti-nucler’.
This is a particularly stupid statement, like there is one “anti-nuclear view ” that summises the whole discussion. Something has just “proved” this view to be wrong. Nice reduction to a black and white issue , like climate!
So according to you , anyone who disagrees with your “proven” position is either uninformed, or dishonest (or both) and not credible.
In short you are saying ” the science is settle”. I would suggest that position is position is either uninformed, or dishonest (or both) and not credible.

Thanks, Dr Heller, for a wonderful piece of common sense and perspective. Unlike you, I have never thrilled to the stories told by the great scientists, or been entranced by the objects in our galaxy, but perhaps that may or may not show a flaw in my character. I continue to be thrilled, however, by the stories of the great inventors, the innovators, the explorers and the mapmakers from various cultures. I have always been intrigued by the thinkers and the builders, the scientists, engineers, draughtsmen, cartographers and artists, who lightened the burdens of heavy labour, disease, hunger and ignorance that Man has struggled with over the millennia. To me, the stories of the discoveries by Marie Curie, Louis Pasteur, Newcomen, Harrison, Watt, Diesel, Benz, Bell, Mendel, Crick and Watson are as thrilling as any adventure novel.
As a regular and enthusiastic reador of WUWT, I have been shocked by some of the extreme positions taken by some of the regular posters here, who over time have acquired the persona of old friends for me; some of those attitudes provide gloomy evidence that we haven’t advanced that much in our heads from the primitive struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and untruth, faith and the absence of faith.
At the moment, the disaster-obsessed voices of the MSM seem like a Greek chorus of evil; the maxim that ‘ truth sets us free’ seems a good one to follow right now, but the doom-mongers make it difficult to find the truth.
Posts such as Dr Hellers and the calm, matter-of-fact post from Anthony outlining the facts about radioactivity and its measurement point the way forward.
Lengthy reconstructions of the failures in Japanese engineering design are not incredibly helpful right now, particularly to the unfortunate Japanese who have suffered a double disaster of unimaginable proportions. As a Kiwi, I thought the Christchrch earthquake was bad, but I struggle to understand the magnitude of the events in Japan and the resultant level of devastation.

James Sexton says:
March 20, 2011 at 6:04 pm
“Towards the irrational fear of nuclear melt down, I would remind people that we were reduced to cooling the damned things down with firetrucks. (I don’t believe this is optimal.) We didn’t get to an awwww damn, but we got pretty close. We live, we learn and we adapt.”
I want to emphasize that the hysteria in the MSM that was manifested in reporting on nuclear reactors in Japan is a real threat to our well being as citizens and to our nation’s interests. Surely, there is no genuine scientist who would argue that the reporting was not hysterical. Now, let us apply this lesson to the history of AGW. I believe that MSM reporting on AGW has been no less hysterical than its reporting on the tragedy in Japan. We all know that Al Gore and his movie are truly hysterical in their claims about AGW. So does Dr. Muller whose remarks about Gore are “satirical” at best. The scientific community really must pull back from the hysteria of the MSM and the Al Gores. Not pulling back is a serious moral error. Scientists may believe that global warming is happening and that billions must be spent on it right away, but no scientist can believe the hysterical claims put out by the MSM and Al Gore.

Star Trek 2, Wrath of Khan.
For Godsake Bones, why didn’t you tell Spock to take the Iodine tablets!?!