I get mail:
German physicist Peter Heller wrote a passionate plea for a return to science on the nuclear power issue, published in German here: http://www.science-skeptical.de/blog/fukushima/004149/
With Dr. Heller’s permission, I’ve translated it in English. But having gone over the content, I think his plea is worthy of a much wider audience – more than what NTZ can offer. So I send this to you with the kind request that you consider publishing it at WUWT.
Best regards,
P Gosselin
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German physicist Peter Heller makes a passionate plea for a return to science on the nuclear energy issue. He wonders if ignorance and fear will cause us to abandon the legacies of Einstein, Heisenberg and others.
Fukushima
By Dr Peter Heller, http://www.science-skeptical.de
Astronomer, Physicist
There’s no place on earth I would rather be right now than at Fukushima – right in the atomic power plant, at the centre of the event. I say this because I am a physicist and there is no other place that could be more exciting and interesting for a physicist. The same goes for many, if not most physicists and engineers, on the planet.
Already at a young age I knew one day I would study physics. As a boy, I received a telescope for Christmas, and from that point on my view was fixed on the night sky; gazing at star clusters, nebula and galaxies was my favourite preoccupation. It was only later that I learned that these lights and the twinkling in eyepiece were actually the expressions of a chaotic and violent force of nature – the direct conversion of matter into energy during the fusion of an atomic nucleus.
My curiosity carried me, as if on a high, through 10 semesters of study and subsequent graduation. It was a time of discovery that involved the tedious task of understanding. At times I felt exasperation and self doubt with respect to the sheer complexity and breadth of what there was to learn. Yet, there were times of joy whenever the fog lifted and the clarity and beauty of physical descriptions of natural phenomena moved in its place. It was a time that, unfortunately, passed all too quickly and is now some years in the past.
The great minds that accompanied me through my studies were Planck, Sommerfeld, Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, and a host of others who, for us physicists, are still very much alive today. They are great thinkers who contributed to unravelling the puzzles of nature and the forces which keep the world together through the most minute structures. I devoured the stories of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, of Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller – to name a few – and on how they created completely new technologies from theoretical concepts, how the energy stored in the nucleus of an atom could be used for the good of man and how it became possible in a single process to tap into this source of affordable, clean and plentiful energy on a large scale as never seen by man. Electricity illuminates our world, drives our machines, allow us to communicate over great distances, thus making our lives easier and more comfortable. It is a source of energy that staves off poverty and enables prosperity.
Electricity: manufactured by splitting atomic nuclei with neutrons, gained through the direct conversion of mass into energy. It is the principle by which (via the reverse process of fusion) the stars twinkle in the night sky, a principle by which our sun enables life on our planet.
As a physicist it fills me with great joy and pride to see how man is able to rouse this force of nature at the most minute structural level, then amplify, control, and use it for our benefit. As a physicist I have the fundamental understanding of the processes – I can imagine them and describe them. As a physicist I have neither fear of an atomic power plant nor of radioactivity. Ultimately I know that it is a natural phenomenon that is always around us, one we can never escape – and one that we never need to escape. And I know the first as a symbol of man’s capability to steer the forces of nature. As a physicist I have no fear of what nature has to offer. Rather I have respect. And this respect beckons us to seize the chances like those offered by neutrons, which can split nuclei and thus convert matter into energy. Anything else would be ignorance and cowardice.
Dark times in history
There were times in history when ignorance and cowardice overshadowed human life. It was a time when our ancestors were forced to lead a life filled with superstition and fear because it was forbidden to use creativity and fantasy. Religious dogma, like the earth being the centre of the universe, or creationism, forbade people to question. The forbiddance of opening a human body and examining it prevented questions from being answered. Today these medieval rules appear backwards and close-minded. We simply cannot imagine this way of thinking could have any acceptance.
But over the recent days I have grown concerned that we are headed again for such dark times. Hysterical and sensationalist media reporting, paired with a remarkably stark display of ignorance of technical and scientific interrelations, and the attempt by a vast majority of journalists to fan the public’s angst and opposition to nuclear energy – pure witch-burning disguised as modernity.
Freedom of research
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. The current debate in Germany is also a debate on freedom of research. The stigmatization and ostracism of nuclear energy, the demand for an immediate stop of its use, is also the demand for the end of its research and development. No job possibilities also means no students, which means no faculty, which then means the end of the growth of our knowledge. Stopping nuclear energy is nothing less than rejecting the legacy of Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and all others. It is tantamount to scrapping it, labelling it as dangerous – all in a fit of ignorance. And just as creationists attempt to ban the theory of evolution from the school books, it almost seems as if every factual and neutral explanation in Germany is now in the process of being deleted.
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. 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. All around the power plant the infrastructure, residential areas, traffic routes, energy and communication networks are simply no longer there. They were wiped out. Yet, after an entire week, the apocalypse still has not come to pass. Only relatively small amounts of radioactive materials have leaked out and have had only a local impact. If one considers the pure facts exclusively, i.e. only the things we really know, then it exposes the unfounded interpretations of scientific illiterates in the media. One can only arrive to one conclusion: This sorrowful state will remain so.
In truth, this does not show that the ideologically motivated, fear-laden admonitions and warnings were correct. Fukushima illustrates that we are indeed able to control atomic energy. Fukushima shows that we can master it even when natural disasters beyond planning befall us. Still, at Fukushima the conflict between human creativity/competence continues to clamour against the bond energy in atomic nuclei. It’s a struggle that that shows what human intelligence, knowledge gained, passion, boldness, respect, and capability to learn allow us to do. Personally this does not fill me with apprehension, but with hope. Man can meet this challenge not only because he has to, but most of all because he wants to.
Even though I have not practiced physics for some time now, I will never be anything other than a scientist and researcher, and there would be no other place I would rather be than on site at Fukushima. There is no other place at the moment where so much can be learned about atomic energy, which keeps our world together deep inside, and the technical possibilities to benefit from it. Do we have the courage to learn? Do we accept – with respect and confidence – the opportunities we are confronted with? Fukushima will show us possibilities on how to use the direct conversion of matter into energy in a better and safer way, something that Einstein and others could have only dreamed of.
I am a physicist. My wish is to live in a world that is willing to learn and to improve whatever is good. I would only like to live in a world where great strides in physics are viewed with fascination, pride, and hope because they show us the way to a better future. I would only like to live in a world that has the courage for a better world. Any other world for me is unacceptable. Never. That’s why I am going to fight for this world, without ever relenting.
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Translated from the German, with the permission of Peter Heller, by Bernd Felsche and Pierre Gosselin. Original text appeared here: http://www.science-skeptical.de/blog/fukushima/004149/
Leif Svalgaard says:
March 21, 2011 at 2:19 pm
“There is really no such thing today. Darwin himself only used the word ‘evolve’ once [it was the last word of his great opus]. More correct one should say that Darwin introduced the concept of ‘natural selection’. He did not know about DNA, the genetic code, genes, and all those things which we have discovered are necessary for the mechanism of natural selection to work. We are now working on the details of this very complex problem and people can have differences about those details, but the foundation is ‘natural selection’, governed by natural forces. No ‘guiding hand’ is needed, just the pressures of changing environment and competition for resources. There is no ‘great chain of being’ striving after ever greater perfection. Just adjustments to a hostile environment. Almost every species eventually go extinct, probably humans too at some time in the future. A dark horse in this is our growing knowledge that we can transmit across generations and [if we want to – and some people may abhor playing God like that] can be used to direct the future evolution in ways we today cannot foresee. So, in the end, we may end up with ‘intelligent design’ [of our own making].”
I am with you totally. I will introduce one distinction that I find important. What you describe above is Darwin’s vision of scientific method. He deserves great credit for this vision. Natural Selection is the clearest statement of that vision. The science is another matter. There is not a thriving science of Natural Selection. If there were, the times at the Kentucky Derby would have been cut in half, if the new species were permitted to compete. No discredit to Darwin in that.
Darwin’s fundamental postulate is a bit strange. It states “All species evolved from some other species, except the first one.” In all of hard(ish) science, there is not another high-level postulate with an exception clause. Some researchers struggle to recreate the primal soup in which the first living thing came into existence. Their success would mean very little. What we know today, as you suggest, is that there will be an evolutionary science of the Double Helix and that science will develop independently of what we understand as biology today. Of course, new and complete gene sets will be inserted into biological entities to create what can only be called monsters but will be sold as the best things since sliced bread. Someday you might own a beautiful fish tank that is also a super computer.
Zeke the Sneak says:
March 21, 2011 at 2:39 pm
And what are the other explanations for an advance flash, which was so brilliant that it saturated the camera’s detector? That was an electric arc discharge as predicted. There were two bright flashes and the jets moved and relocated on the comet nucleus. No explanation has been given for this.
Any time two bodies collide at hypervelocity a large amount of kinetic energy is released as a flash which certainly can saturate a detector. The first flash was weak and did not saturate anything and is explained simply by the surface being layered with a looser outer layer [dust] over the stronger inner layer. What are the observations that show it to be ‘an electric arc’? If the comet is a rubble pile, the jets would certainly shift and relocate.
But you are avoiding the elephant in the room: the most characteristic of the EU assertions is the source of the Sun’s power. Here the EU is a dismal failure. To wit: your reluctance to take it on.
[[[P. Solar says:
March 21, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Jon says:
March 21, 2011 at 10:16 am
REPLY: yeah, sure, whatever. TMI was a failure of humans and technology, Fukishima was a result of an act of nature, big diff. – Anthony
…The fact that fission reactors are inherently unstable , are operated on the knife edge of criticality and need an active, working control system to shut down and maintain them in a safe state in an emergency, will always be a big risk… ]]]
To P. Solar: “reactors are inherently unstable, are operated on the knife edge…”
I have issue with your spin. Reactors only need to be kept cool, just like most cars on the road today. Overheating doesn’t make them unstable, they meltdown into a blob and become harder to cool. Using your term “knife edge”, cars with water cooling also operate on “the knife edge”… try driving with the radiator empty. The engine will overheat and quickly destroy itself. Most things have operating limits between design extremes. Reactors are no different, no worse, normal physics. Overheating has destroyed there reactors just like a car engine without water, or anything else overheating or overcooling or over stressing.
The hydrogen explosions could have been avoided by a better design in venting the gas through particle capture filters. The torus fissure was also from poor pressure management, another design flaw. Yes the gas explosions put some radioactivity into the air, but that did not have to happen and can be avoided in the future, in my estimate. It’s all in the design. There is ongoing radiation but it will be contained in some fashion. The wings fell off this “nuclear airplane”, but we need nuclear energy. We can fix the problems and reduce the risk closer to that elusive and impossible “zero risk”. Considering the “million to one”(or whatever number) circumstances, Japan is managing reasonably OK. They and we will make it through this. There is always a solution to a problem. If you run out of solutions, you haven’t asked enough questions. Just need to chill here, especially the nuke material. kbray.
P. Solar says:
March 21, 2011 at 2:01 pm
‘are you suggesting the only places known to man that are not seismically active are on the moon? ‘
You would be quite surprised at the number of places that anti-nuclear advocates consider seismically active. A magnitude 2.6 just occurred in Arkansas today.
My feeling is that nuclear reactors can be built in complete safety, but not by humans. Not at this point anyway. The Charles Darwin award this year goes to the guy who put the spent fuel rods in a pool above the reactor, not understanding that a build-up of Hydrogen in the facility could blow the roof off and the pool and spent fuel along with it. He’s closely followed by the guy who didn’t know a tsunami could hit the coast and knock out the power. He’s closely followed by the guy who only had one backup plan for emergency power generation. etc…etc…
Great article in the Chicago Tribune about why the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository should be revived:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-yucca-20110319,0,4049532.story
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
March 21, 2011 at 6:51 am
“…So you think a 9.5 earthquake couldn’t happen with a 80 foot tsunami? Has an 80+ foot tsunami ever happened before? Cause I’m just wondering….” The Richter scale really doesn’t have a top end, so anything is (theoretically) possible. It just comes down to how much mass is bound up and unable to move down the subduction plate (or along the transform fault), until some catastrophic (in the sense of instantaneous) brittle failure takes place. So far, our limited history of measurements indicates that a practical limit is in the range of 9.0 – 9.5. But again, Earth continues to surprise us. As a result, anything we build can come crashing down on top of us.
According to Wikipedia, one tsunami in Alaska measured “…over 1700 feet….”!!! This one was not the direct result of an earthquake, but rather an underwater landslide (probably a secondary effect of a quake). Still, nothing we can do will protect us from havoc when something like that takes place.
My position is that we need to do what we can to make life easier and better tomorrow than it is today. Energy is one of the keys to that concept. We have all sorts of energy sources, each having its own set of good and bad aspects (I have no issue – as an economic geologist – with a giant strip-mining coal operation, for example. Just do it with adequate reclamation so that the site will support plants and animals when the mine is exhausted). God or Nature created these things; we have the capability to find 🙂 and use them.
What we saw in Japan is that old nuclear technology was up to the task of safely shutting itself down in the aftermath of an extraordinary seismic event. We also saw that old understanding of the risks nature imposes were not up to the task.
Today I would not support another Fukushima or Morro Bay (in the past decade we have learned more about tsunamis than we have in the time since an ancient Greek described one and pinned its genesis on an earthquake). But I would emphatically support a modern reactor complex in Sioux City or Enid or Fargo or somewhere-in-South Carolina; i.e. places that have no seismic activity, and no exposure to tsunamis.
One development that holds promise in my view, is small, factory-built reactors that generate something like 150 MW – 400MW (a typical old nuke plant is around 1000MW). These plants are extensions of naval power plants, with the idea that superior quality control is added by building these in a dedicated factory, and the installations can better match the actual need of the consumer.
In conclusion I think a lot can be done to make a safe (the number of deaths attributable to nuclear energy – in mining, metallurgy, or operations – is minuscule compared to those attributable to coal or oil and gas energy) and relatively clean power generation technology work for us in the future. We just need to use our knowledge to put it in places where it makes sense.
Theo Goodwin says:
March 21, 2011 at 3:24 pm
There is not a thriving science of Natural Selection. If there were, the times at the Kentucky Derby would have been cut in half, if the new species were permitted to compete. No discredit to Darwin in that.
Well, Natural Selection is ‘natural’ so nothing to do about that. But mankind has also been practicing Artificial Selection for thousands of years with great success. I’m sure we could produce a horse that was faster, but I’m also sure it would be banned from the Derby, just like loaded baseball bats and the like are banned from the game. The newest in Artificial Selection with a boost is direct genetic modification [which I think is a good thing], that is so vilified by the ignorant populace, more or less along the same lines as the nuclear scare.
Dr S, the video for the Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1 provided for you here:
Australian physicist Wal Thornhill:
“This website carried the only prediction of the unexpected initial flash before impact: “before physical impact occurs, we may expect a sudden discharge between the comet nucleus and the copper projectile. It will have the characteristic light-curve of lightning, with rapid onset and exponential decay. The question is, will it be a mere spark or a powerful arc?” Also, I predicted that instead of seeing very little impact effect: “the energetic effects of the encounter should exceed that of a simple physical impact, in the same way that was seen with comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 at Jupiter.”
Your personal interpretation and hindcasting of that event is just that. NASA did not expect that discharge, and the finely divided massive dust cloud does not fit the icy comet theory. The only reason I said anything is because you made your unfounded, misleading statement about the lack of successful predictions in Electric Universe theory. No one predicted the energetic events of Tempel 1 impact but Thornhill. So now I will take your attempts to discuss the predictions as a retraction of your earlier statements about a lack of predictions.
It good to see a few other folks advocating newer designs of safe reactors. It is just silly to still be using reactors designed mainly to produce plutonium for weapons and power for submarines and other warships. High pressure ,high temperature water is one of the most corrosive, hard to handle materials known. The design is inherently unsafe because of all the high pressure piping, pumps, and power required to control the thing.
There are at least two reactor designs available, the thorium fueled reactor that has been tested for years at Oak Ridge, and the pellet bed type reactor. Both are nearly inherently safe. The thorium cycle is especially interesting because the fuel cycle is almost impossible to weaponize. And it burns thorium, which is one of the most common radioactive elements and the US has large supplies if needed. A third type, the sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor is also relatively safe. The drawback is that it produces a lot of plutonium which would make it very attractive as a terrorist target.
Hi,
As a physicist and a scientist, perhaps you can help calculate the levels of radiation we can expect in Tokyo in three months. Five days ago levels within 20 kilometers of Fukushima were in the 4 microsievert range. Today, the IAEA reports that levels of 161 microsievert range are being detected.
Be clear. I live in Tokyo with my family and am extremely pro-nuclear. I’m also pro-car. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to put my family in a vehicle that is clearly unsafe.
Your general remarks about the safety of nuclear energy have little or no bearing on the specific situation in Fukushima. You may lack data or you may have a political agenda of your own. In either case, your rosy assessment could do with some sprucing up.
Why don’t you and your smart scientist buddies take a little time off from feeling smug and superior and help calculate what kind of radiation levels we can expect in Kanto given the IAEA figures. Assuming their correct, inconvenient as these numbers may be.
I’m generally a fan. This pro-nuclear puff piece and preening isn’t your best work. And given the gravity of the questions suggests a stunning level of insensitivity. Those of us who live in Japan or Germany do not need a lecture on the merits of nuclear energy compared to other sources, as much as you may wish to climb on your soap-box and show off.
Please update your essay and provide some usable information.
Cheers!
Leif and James,
German physicist Peter Heller opened the topic of science versus non-science (creationism, earth centrism, etc ) in his post. It seems fair game. So I continue the Leif and James dialog on science versus creationism.
NOTE: for a contextual reference, here is my position in regards to those claiming knowledge of and existence of supernaturalism (aka religion) through a process of faith (believing). Since supernaturalism basically maintains a position to be beyond reality (nature) it isn’t reality. My position is (with me not being a Platonist or Kantian) that supernaturalism is not even qualified to be intellectually irrelevant. Therefore, metaphysically and epistemologically it has no existence. In my view, on a scientific basis then supernaturalism is not even nothing.
For me, Peter Heller highlights a view were there are two concurrent struggles to achieve knowledge of nature from nature by our natural existing knowing capacity. One struggle is to wrest the knowledge from the subtleties of nature, it is mostly not an easy process. The other struggle is to achieve the freedom of thought and action from those closed societies and authoritarian structures based on supernaturalism; this is the independent man’s struggle to openly challenge them and ignore them. The latter struggle is the primary achievement and allows the former. However, the two struggles have been historically interwoven in complex ways.
It is a constant and ongoing glorious struggle for science. Viva!
Finally, creationism contains a fatal false premise that simply makes it self-refuting.
John
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
March 21, 2011 at 2:17 pm
phlogiston says:
March 21, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Roger, a few years ago 160,000 people died in China after the failure of a hydroelectric dam.
“It doesn’t seem fair to point out a disaster from Chinese workmanship.”
It isn’t fair to refer to a dam as a hydroelectric dam just to critic hydroelectric. The dam is what failed, not the plant.
The iceman cometh says:
March 21, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Thanks for an excellent summary of events.
phlogiston says:
March 21, 2011 at 1:34
re Roger Sowel says: “Nuclear power is…very, very dangerous”
Roger, a few years ago 160,000 people died in China after the failure of a hydroelectric dam.
This is orders of magnitude more than the total number who have died from all nuclear power plant accidents in history. Before you reach for your Chernobyl tract, less than 200 people verifiably died from Chernobyl. (I did my PhD on radiation biokinetics and dosimetry, visited Chernobyl, advised and collaborated with Ukraine’s radiation measurement laboratories, so if you dont agree, go ahead punk, make my day.) The rest of the claimed thousands of deaths are mathematical artefacts of assuming, falsely, ….is abundantly falsified by the existence of no relationship or even a negative relationship between background radiation exposure (bananas etc.) and cancer incidence.
See my two links on http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/20/someone-is-in-the-msm-about-radiation/#comment-625485
To help you understand where your ‘mathematical artefacts’ was created, and why.
What’s bananas is that the effects of radiation are actually extremely well-known, how anyone knowing this can imagine that the huge doses from Chernobyl had no effect in all the areas it spread, is absurd.
http://www.ippnw-students.org/chernobyl/research.html for a glimpse of what you missed from your great educational height.
From which: “In a paper published by the Chernobyl Ministry in the Ukraine, a multiplication of the cases of disease was registered – of the endocrine system (25 times higher from 1987 to 1992), the nervous system (6 times higher), the circulation system (44 times higher), the digestive organs (60 times higher), the cutaineous and subcutaneous tissue (50 times higher), the muscolo-skeletal system and psychological dysfunctions (53 times higher). Among those evaluated, the number of healthy people sank from 1987 to 1996 from 59% to 18%. Among inhabitants of the contaminated areas from 52% to 21% and among children of affected parent from 81% to 30%. It has been reported for several years that type 1 diabetes (insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus) has risen sharply amongst children and youth.”
For a look at the diabetes connection: http://nourishedmagazine.com/au/blog/articles/uranium-mercury-and-diabetes
Besides which, your “mathematical artefact”, “falsified” is ridiculous. Even things that are benign for us if taken in large enough doses will kill us, oxygen and carbon dioxide for example, while many of those things we know are toxic, carbon monoxide for example, will have a minor effect on us even in small doses. If something is toxic it is toxic. In small doses the body might well be capable of shrugging off the effects and/or repairing any damage.
Long term cancers taking years to manifest and such from higher but not immediate higher levels may not be so dramatic as the effects of immediate higher, such as the babies born grotesquely deformed by the depleted uranium bombs, but nevertheless there is an effect.
Not falsified. Have you proof that bananas are not detrimental to, say, the ability of the genes to maintain good dna copies over time? (Genetic damage is known effect).
If not, then why exactly are you using this as an example..?
And, do you really think “background” means benign??
Zeke the Sneak says:
March 21, 2011 at 6:32 pm
finely divided massive dust cloud does not fit the icy comet theory.
Tempel 1 is an old comet with a lot of rocks and dust. And with lots of water [250,000 tons released] http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=17210 contrary to EU predictions. Only one crater was produced http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/517291main_Schultz_1_11103_still6-43_800-600-580×435.jpg contrary to EU predictions. And so on. But all of these things could have any number of reasonable explanations.
retraction of your earlier statements about a lack of predictions.
As I said, the ‘predictions’ are not unique to EU but can have many other explanations. The one central prediction of EU, that solar energy is not caused by fusion but by electric current heating the Sun from the outside is the one unique ‘prediction’ that need be explained. Ad here the EU fails. To wit: your avoidance of this issue.
He is right on the money, why do you think Popeye was so strong, radiactive spinach of course and Spiderman would not be the man he is today without a radiactive spider. I am so impressed I would like to invite him for a special milkshake, certainly puts hairs on your chest. All this talk about harmfull radiation still in the food chain nearly 30 years after Chernobyl is ridiculous. I mean it is blantantly obvious that the reason for the massive increase in the rates of cancer over the last 30 years is because of the fad for ‘organic’ food propogated by those ‘Greenpeace’ types.
Re Fermi – Fermi’s folly, Wignor’s wisdom
nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2008/10/both-eugene-wigner-and-enrico-fermi.html
For a look at the history of the nuclear options.
Fermi died of stomach cancer age 53, from exposure to radiation. Two of his graduate students also died of cancer.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor skated on the thin ice of disaster several times before the earthquake. This is but one of the reasons I hold my viewpoint that nuclear power is anything but safe.
See “Japan Plant Had Troubled History” at the link below.
Excerpts:
“A [Wall Street] Journal analysis of Japanese regulatory documents shows that the Daiichi plant was already one of Japan’s most troubled nuclear facilities, even before it was severely damaged by this month’s quake and tsunami. In the five-year period from 2005 to 2009, the latest data available, Daiichi had the highest accident rate of any big Japanese nuclear plant, according to data collected by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, a mostly government-funded group that monitors safety and conducts inspections. Daiichi’s workers were exposed to more radiation than their peers at most other plants, the data show.
Tepco says that overall it operated the Daiichi plants safely. It says the plant’s age accounted for the higher rate of accidents, all of which were relatively minor until March 11.”
and
“The Daiichi plant has had 15 accidents since 2005, the most of any Japanese plant with more than three reactors, according to an analysis of the data by the Journal. Maintenance problems have been a leading cause of accidents at the plants, but it isn’t clear whether age has been a major factor.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704433904576212980463881792.html
If you and your family contemplate going to within 20 kilometers of Fukushima, you may want to skip one or two meals to compensate for your increased exposure to the radiation. In particular, you may want to avoid bananas, broccoli, potatoes, peanut butter, and brazil nuts. It appears the increased exposure has gone up markedly from one twenty-fifth of a banana equivalent dose to a whole 1.6 bananas in your numbers for Fukushima. If you elect to stay in the Tokyo area, feel free to eat all of the bananas and broccoli you desire.
@ur momisugly Jerry Gustafson
“Gwyneth Cravens in her book ,Power To Save The World, sites [sic] estimates that nuclear power could cost as little as two cents per kwh based on actual construction and operating costs.”
Ms. Cravens then has little credibility in the modern world if she writes such things. Ms. Cravens should seek the advice of qualified financial professionals. The detailed work published by Craig A. Severance, CPA, would provide some guidance.
Regarding published costs for new nuclear power plants in the USA, using the South Texas Nuclear Project Expansion as the example (2200 MW in twin reactors):
“The price for the South Texas Nuclear Project expansion just went up by $4 billion, now at $17 billion. Toshiba (the designer) apparently cannot agree on the price – thus the City of San Antonio is re-thinking this – and postponing their decision on whether to invest in 20 to 40 percent of the expansion. This is absolutely amazing, since nuclear proponents insist (indeed, shout it from the rooftops!) that Toshiba’s Japanese nuclear plants are old technology by now – with modular construction and known costs. Apparently not! Stay tuned in Texas!
see this http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/environment/article/Nuclear-cost-estimate-rises-by-as-much-as-4-844529.php
This is an amazing jump in the price, roughly 33 percent, and construction has not yet started! When one adds in the inevitable delays, unforeseen conditions, change orders, escalations for materials, services, and labor, then interest on the construction loans, plus legal costs, this plant (if it ever gets built) will easily cost $25 to $30 billion.
And that is why nuclear power plants make zero sense in the USA.”
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/up-up-and-away-stnp-costs-already.html
kidneystones,
Thanks for your viewpoint. It brings a view some commenters are trying to say isn’t really happening.
Myrrh says:
March 21, 2011 at 7:42 pm
how anyone knowing this can imagine that the huge doses from Chernobyl had no effect in all the areas it spread, is absurd…….. the Chernobyl Ministry in the Ukraine…..
Thanks Myrrh. This is what I thought was really happening. I didn’t believe Ann Coulter, or anyone else that was downplaying the effect of radiation.
Myrrh
Do you have a link to the the Chernobyl Ministry in the Ukraine study that isn’t linked through a Greenpeace website? I’m looking now. Haven’t found one yet.