Guest post by David Middleton
Radiation levels recorded inside Fukushima’s crippled nuclear power station are at the highest levels since its catastrophic meltdown in 2011.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc (Tepco) said the radiation level in the containment vessel of Reactor 2 in the Fukushima No 1 power plant had reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, Japan Times reports.
The “unimaginable” radiation levels were assessed by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences.
According to the institute, just 4 sieverts of radiation exposure would be enough kill a handful of people.
[…]
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/world/2017/02/08/10/24/fukushima-radiation-reaches-unimaginable-levels#6AfOp4jyo5k3elmi.99
Fake News Item #1: “Unimaginable radiation levels.”
“Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc (Tepco) said the radiation level in the containment vessel of Reactor 2 in the Fukushima No 1 power plant had reached a maximum of 530 sieverts per hour, Japan Times reports.
The ‘unimaginable’ radiation levels were assessed by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences.”
530 Sv/hr… “unimaginable”? I don’t think so…
High-level wastes are hazardous because they produce fatal radiation doses during short periods of direct exposure. For example, 10 years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose rate for a typical spent fuel assembly exceeds 10,000 rem/hour – far greater than the fatal whole-body dose for humans of about 500 rem received all at once.
530 Sv = 53,000 rem.
If “10 years after removal from a reactor, the surface dose rate for a typical spent fuel assembly exceeds 10,000 rem/hour,” 530 Sv/hr is not “unimaginable.” I would venture a guess that 530 Sv/hr would be well within the expected range inside a reactor core, loaded with hot fuel which had suffered at least a partial meltdown.
Fake News Item #2: “The radiation level in the containment vessel… had reached 530 sieverts per hour.”
The use of the phrase “had reached” clearly implies that radiation levels had risen. Other reports citing a previous high of 72 Sv/hr were also clearly intended to convey the impression that radiation levels had risen over the past 5-6 years. This is clearly fake news…
NO, RADIATION LEVELS AT FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI ARE NOT RISING
Saturday February 4th, 2017
— Yes, TEPCO has measured very high radiation inside Daichi Unit 2.
— No, it does’t mean radiation levels there are rising.
In response to visual investigation results and high radiation measurements recently taken by TEPCO inside Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2, many news outlets have published stories with headlines like “Fukushima nuclear reactor radiation at highest level since 2011 meltdown.” (The Guardian, Feb. 3, 2017).
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170202/p2g/00m/0dm/087000c
This has led to a number of alarming stories claiming that radiation at Daiichi has “spiked” to unprecedented levels. That’s not what the findings indicate, however. In addition, Safecast’s own measurements, including our Pointcast realtime detector system have shown radiation levels near Daiichi to be steadily declining. As described in the Safecast Report, Vol.2, Section 2.1.4, TEPCO and its research partners have been developing robots and remote visualization devices to search for melted fuel debris deep inside the Daiichi reactor units, and to help plan for its eventual removal. On January 30th, 2017, a long telescoping device with a camera and radiation measurement device attached was inserted through an existing opening in the reactor containment of Unit 2 for the first time, and successfully extended approximately 8 meters into in an area known as the “pedestal,” to measure and take images from immediately below the damaged reactor pressure vessel (RPV). In addition to finding the area covered with molten material likely to be fuel debris, radiation levels of 530 Sieverts per hour were detected, which would be fatal to a person exposed for only a few seconds.
It must be stressed that radiation in this area has not been measured before, and it was expected to be extremely high. While 530 Sv/hr is the highest measured so far at Fukushima Daiichi, it does not mean that levels there are rising, but that a previously unmeasurable high-radiation area has finally been measured. Similar remote investigations are being planned for Daiichi Units 1 and 3. We should not be surprised if even higher radiation levels are found there, but only actual measurements will tell. Unit 4 was defuelled at the time of the accident, and though the reactor building exploded and the spent fuel pool was dangerously exposed, it did not suffer a meltdown, so similar investigations are not being conducted.
[…]
Fake News Item #3: “Fukushima’s radiation is so bad it’s even killing robots.”
Five years after Fukushima, the exclusion zone is in better shape, but still a mess. The area around its once functional nuclear reactors are by far the most inhospitable. So much so that the radiation even managed to kill robots that had been sent in to help clean up.
Five robots that have gone into the reactor in order to help remove spent fuel rods have failed to return, reports Reuters. The issue? The radiation levels are so high that the robot’s internals just melt. We’ve seen this happen before.
Naohiro Masuda, Tepco’s head of decommissioning, explained the difficulties the company faces in an interview. Not only do the robots tend to fail due to the failure of their wiring, but it’s also not easy to get replacements. These aren’t just off-the-shelf bots; they have to be designed specifically for the challenges of the particular building they enter, and that takes about two years of design.
[…]
None of the robots have been “killed” by radiation…
Melted Nuclear Fuel Search Proceeds One Dead Robot at a Time
by Stephen Stapczynski and Emi Urabe
February 16, 2017
The latest robot seeking to find the 600 tons of nuclear fuel and debris that melted down six year ago in Japan’s wrecked Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant met its end in less than a day.
The scorpion-shaped machine, built by Toshiba Corp., entered the No. 2 reactor core Thursday and stopped 3 meters (9.8 feet) short of a grate that would have provided a view of where fuel residue is suspected to have gathered. Two previous robots aborted similar missions after one got stuck in a gap and another was abandoned after finding no fuel in six days.
After spending most of the time since the 2011 disaster containing radiation and limiting ground water contamination, scientists still don’t have all the information they need for a cleanup that the Japanese government estimates will take four decades and cost 8 trillion yen ($70.6 billion). It’s not yet known if the fuel melted into or through the containment vessel’s concrete floor, and determining the fuel’s radioactivity and location is crucial to inventing the technology needed to remove it.
“The roadmap for removing the fuel is going to be long, 2020 and beyond,” Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said in an e-mail. “The re-solidified fuel is likely stuck to the vessel wall and vessel internal structures. So the debris have to be cut, scooped, put into a sealed and shielded container and then extracted from the containment vessel. All done by robots.”
[…]
The machines are built with specially hardened parts and minimal electronic circuitry so that they can withstand radiation, if only for a few hours at a time. Thursday’s mission ended after the robot’s left roller-belt failed, according to Tokyo Electric, better known as Tepco. Even if it had returned, this robot, like all others so far designed to aid the search for the lost fuel, was expected to find its final resting place inside a reactor.
[…]
No. 2 Unit
On Thursday, Toshiba’s scorpion-like robot entered the reactor and stopped short of making it onto the containment vessel’s grate. While Tepco decided not to retrieve it, the company views the attempt as progress.
“We got a very good hint as to where the fuel could be from this entire expedition” Tepco official Yuichi Okamura said Thursday at a briefing in Tokyo. “I consider this a success, a big success.”
Tepco released images last month of a grate under the No. 2 reactor covered in black residue that may be the melted fuel — one of the strongest clues yet to its location. The company measured radiation levels of around 650 sieverts per hour through the sound-noise in the video, the highest so far recorded in the Fukushima complex.
[…]
The Hitachi and Toshiba robots are designed to handle 1,000 sieverts and no robot has yet been disabled due to radiation.
[…]
Because the No. 2 unit is the only one of the three reactors that didn’t experience a hydrogen explosion, there was no release into the atmosphere and radiation levels inside the core are higher compared to the other two units, according to the utility.
[…]
“The Hitachi and Toshiba robots are designed to handle 1,000 sieverts and no robot has yet been disabled due to radiation.”
Fake News Item #4 (or Urban Legend): TEPCO is dumping/pumping radioactive water into the ocean.
While I can’t locate an article from a reputable news outlet for this one, it has been a persistent urban legend. They are neither dumping nor pumping radioactive water into the Pacific. This image was circulated around the Internet with the claim that it depicted the flow of radioactive water across the Pacific Ocean…
The map was generated at the time of the earthquake and is of the projected height of the tsunami.
At no time has TEPCO intentionally pumped or dumped radioactive water into the ocean. Some contaminated water leaks into the ocean by infiltrating the local groundwater flow…
March 8, 2016, 9:24 AM
5 years on, Japan nuke plant still leaking radioactive water
TOKYO — After battling radioactive water leaks for five years at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, the utility that ran it says it will need another four to finish the job.
“We will bring an end to the problem by 2020,” says Yuichi Okamura, who led the Tokyo Electric Power Co. team dealing with water at Fukushima from the early days to last summer.
The contaminated water, now exceeding 760,000 tons and still growing, has been a major challenge that has distracted workers from decommissioning the plant. It is stored in more than 1,000 industrial tanks, covering much of the vast plant grounds.
Okamura says TEPCO expects that by 2020, it will have collected and treated all contaminated water pooled around the reactors, and will need to continue processing only the water necessary to cool the reactors.
TEPCO has managed to reduce the flow of contaminated water and hopes to get regulators’ approval within a month to activate an underground “ice wall” that would block out more water. The final step, though, remains contentious: Getting permission to release the water into the sea, after it has been treated to remove most radioactive elements.
[…]
The three damaged reactors still need to be cooled with water to keep their melted cores from overheating. The water picks up radiation and leaks out through cracks and other damage from the disaster. The water flows to the basements, where it mixes with groundwater, swelling the volume of contaminated water.
TEPCO has cut groundwater infiltration to 150 tons per day, nearly one-third of the amount two years ago, mainly by pumping out groundwater upstream and directing it to the ocean. The utility hopes the underground ice barrier will eliminate all groundwater inflow.
Radioactive water continues to leak into the ocean, but at a far lesser rate than it did early in the disaster. Ocean radiation levels are about a thousandth of what they were soon after the accident, according to Ken Buesseler, a radiochemist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) who has monitored the area. Because of concerns about the health of marine life, commercial fishing is still banned in waters just off the plant.
[…]
The only water they are directing into the ocean is uncontaminated groundwater and decontaminated waste water. By pumping out upstream groundwater, they have reduced the flow rate of contaminated water into the ocean.
From Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute…
What has been released from the Fukushima reactors and how dangerous is it?
Releases from the Fukushima reactors have included dozens of radioactive elements, but with regard to materials released into the ocean, most of the attention has been on three radioactive isotopes released in large amounts: iodine-131, cesium-137, and cesium-134. Iodine-131 decays quickly and any that was released from Fukushima is no longer detectable in the environment, but it was a significant health concern at the start of accident. Cesium-137 and -134 were released in the largest amounts. At the height of the accident, levels in the ocean near the docks at the reactors were 50 million times higher than before the accident and, at those levels, were a direct threat to marine life. Levels dropped quickly after the first month and today are many thousands of times lower, which is less of a direct health threat, but still an indication of ongoing leaks.
[…]
Are the continued sources of radiation from the nuclear power plants of concern?
The site of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is an ongoing source of radionuclides (pdf) in to the ocean—something I’ve seen evidence of in my data and published since 2011. However, the rate of release has fallen significantly since March 2011. At current rates of release, it would take 5,000 years to equal the amount of cesium that entered the ocean in the first month of the accident. For the workers at the site, direct exposure from leaking storage tanks is of greater health concern because exposure from these concentrated sources is much higher. For the general public, it is not direct exposure, but uptake by the food web and consumption of contaminated fish that is the main health concern from the oceans.
[…]
While Fukushima is still decades away from full decommissioning, the situation is currently far better than it was nearly six years ago.
Fake News Item #5: The Fukushima nuclear disaster was due to a failure of nuclear technology.
This is perhaps the most egregious fake news item of all. The Fukushima disaster was the result of the loss of external and backup power sources, rendering the cooling systems inoperable…
Events at Fukushima Daiichi 1-3 & 4
It appears that no serious damage was done to the reactors by the earthquake, and the operating units 1-3 were automatically shut down in response to it, as designed. At the same time all six external power supply sources were lost due to earthquake damage, so the emergency diesel generators located in the basements of the turbine buildings started up. Initially cooling would have been maintained through the main steam circuit bypassing the turbine and going through the condensers.
Then 41 minutes later, at 3:42 pm, the first tsunami wave hit, followed by a second 8 minutes later. These submerged and damaged the seawater pumps for both the main condenser circuits and the auxiliary cooling circuits, notably the Residual Heat Removal (RHR) cooling system. They also drowned the diesel generators and inundated the electrical switchgear and batteries, all located in the basements of the turbine buildings (the one surviving air-cooled generator was serving units 5 & 6). So there was a station blackout, and the reactors were isolated from their ultimate heat sink. The tsunamis also damaged and obstructed roads, making outside access difficult.
All this put those reactors 1-3 in a dire situation and led the authorities to order, and subsequently extend, an evacuation while engineers worked to restore power and cooling. The 125-volt DC back-up batteries for units 1 & 2 were flooded and failed, leaving them without instrumentation, control or lighting. Unit 3 had battery power for about 30 hours.
At 7.03 pm Friday 11 March a Nuclear Emergency was declared, and at 8.50pm the Fukushima Prefecture issued an evacuation order for people within 2 km of the plant. At 9.23 pm the Prime Minister extended this to 3 km, and at 5.44 am on 12th he extended it to 10 km. He visited the plant soon after. On Saturday 12th he extended the evacuation zone to 20 km.
Yes, the reactors were old (1960’s) technology… But it wasn’t the nuclear technology which triggered the disaster. It was a failure to anticipate anything more than a 3.1 meter tsunami.
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Just a simple note: Radiation levels can’t be higher now or physics isn’t working properly. The decay of radioactive isotopes is pretty simple and for levels to go up would mean that the half life of isotopes wasn’t working correctly.A Spent fuel rod can be 500k Rem on contact. Radiation is a 1/d^2 from a point source. So at 1000 meters, the rad level is 1 millionth of the source. As far as contamination of sea water goes, that is as simple as a molarity equation. Imagine 1 million rem source in one square foot of water. Now go 2000 miles by 200 miles wide and only 1 foot deep. That would be 1 million divided by 1.11 X 10^13 cuft. That gives you about 9 * 10^-8 Rem. Now imagine that the ocean is 1000 feet deep and you get 9*10^-11 rem per gallon. Not much to worry about. Not ideal, not a great way for the contamination to go but not extremely dangerous either. Anyway, my 2 cents and I operated reactors for 20 years.
Donald Hanson
February 17, 2017 at 4:32 pm wrote
“Just a simple note: Radiation levels can’t be higher now or physics isn’t working properly.”
Not so simple! “Radiation levels” are always just reports of readings from an instrument by one or more people. The instrument may malfunction, the user can misread it, and the source of radiation may have changed.
In August of 2013 there was a report of a deadly reading of an outdoor puddle at Fukushima, and the report went through several remarkable transformations, which I cannot find again. But, IIRC, the report was initially scary, then downplayed to trivial levels, then reasserted as significant danger. And the final, official, explanation from Tepco was that the meter of the worker who happened upon the leak was pinned and failed.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-leak-idUSBRE97J02920130820
I was reminded of this today by a “documentary” about saving the wood bison “La Semaine Verte”, which boldly stated that the wood bison population of Saskatchewan “at the end of the 18th century was 168,000. Wow! I thought.So accurate! I wonder what sort of instrumentation they had back then for counting wood buffalo?
A rather more egregious example of dubious, yet uncontested, data fabrication is reported in Dan Gardner’s book :
Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear (The Science of Fear in the United States)
in which Gardner, then an Ottawa journalist, recounts asking Dick Pound, world renowned anti-doping crusader, and supposed expert, how Pound arrived at the statistic he had successfully propagated worldwide that one in four professional athletes was using performance enhancing drugs, and was told:
“It seemed like a good number.”
I’m hoping you entertain my question – is the 350 tons of enriched uranium fuel still in a state of fission? A read a statement that indicated they are and the recent spike in silverts was due to the fuel having encountered resistance and the emitting blow back, through the hole the fuel made, described as the corrium. Seems like you’ve done your homework. What is your analysis of this assertion? Thank you.
There was no fracking recent spike in Sieverts. This was the primary thrust of the post.
@douglas m. fabish
I don’t believe there is something called a state of fission. Fission is process whereby an atom splits, not a state. I think you may be thinking of a sustained chain reaction, where there is a cascade of atoms undergoing fission. To start and sustain a chain reaction requires certain conditions including a certain architecture. When the core melts, the carefully designed shape of the fuel rods and the core is lost, thus making sustaining a chain reaction much more difficult, if not impossible. So, when the cores melted, the chain reactions could no longer be sustained and fission events almost certainly ended. Radioactive decay, however, continued to generate heat, which requires continued cooling, even after any fission events ended.
Your second sentence is difficult to parse, but I don’t think there is any “resistance” or “blow back.” There is only the remains of the melted core, which continues to decay and thus emit heat. The inside of a nuclear reactor is highly radioactive. After several years, the level of radioactivity of what remains of the melted core is almost certainly a lot lower than when the reactor was in operation, but still too high for humans to retrieve. Hence the robots.
It has lost critical geometry. Also, it is not a highly enriched core. Enriched yes but not highly. The fission rate will continue to diminish over time. After this long the rate would be extremely low. The rate of fission decays log rhythmically the decay heat at this point should be fairly insignificant.
“I’m hoping you entertain my question”
You’ve already been answered once – thhe answer was NO.
The rest of your post is utter nonsense.
Anthony Watts- You missed that it was a failure to have thorough comprehensive training of personnel at every level and local autonomy.. The disaster could have been averted by a manual release of hydrogen- the only operator who knew that wasn’t at site at the time. There was a lot of Tokyo based company and government BS that got it the way of controlling the situation. Politician had a nuclear pollution model trained in it but didn’t understand it.
cloa5132013
February 17, 2017 at 6:35 pm wrote:
“.. The disaster could have been averted by a manual release of hydrogen- the only operator who knew that wasn’t at site at the time.”
The online reports I read at the time stated that the automatic venting systems on all three containment structures failed, and that attempts to operate them manually failed on all three buildings also. And since they didn’t all blow up at the same time, the missing man explanation doesn’t wash either. More than a training issue, I’d say…
There is no ‘manual release of hydrogen’ or automatic for that matter on BWRs. So it is not a training issue.
I am an expert at both BWR and PWR hydrogen issues.
There should have been no hydrogen on the refueling floor where the explosion occurred since it is outside of the containment. The refueling floor is is protected from weather by an industrial grade metal building. It has no safety function. Blow out panels protect the building from low pressure events like tornadoes.
Retired Kit P
February 18, 2017 at 11:52 am wrote:
“There is no ‘manual release of hydrogen’ or automatic for that matter on BWRs. So it is not a training issue. ”
I stand corrected, I should have said “the electrically powered venting system” failed on all three reactor containment buildings when it was activated. Then repeated attempts to vent the structures failed on all three buildings also.
according the the NY Times article of May 17th. 2011:
“The results of the failed venting were disastrous.
Reactor No. 1 exploded first, on Saturday, the day after the earthquake. Reactor No. 3 came next, on Monday. And No. 2 exploded early Tuesday morning.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/world/asia/18japan.html
So the story of the one missing worker who knew how to do it would appear to be FAKE NEWS, as he would have had to be AWOL for the better part of a week during this crisis.
The NYTimes report ends in with a bizarre twist, suggesting the failure of the containment venting system was perhaps a covert design feature, as some NRC experts believe the containment structure should NEVER be vented. Presumably they just believed there could never be a hydrogen buildup great enough to blow a hole in it.
The venting system failed because it was designed to be useless if power was lost. That’s hardly a training issue at the reactor operations level.
I wonder if they could contain the radioactive material with a meltable powder with a carbon/ lead component. As it melted it could contain. Im not sure of the chemistry but it seems like they need something that wont flash to vapor.. Its sort of a BP situation tho, probably someone in a different industry entirely will come up with the easiest of solutions.
I am sure of the chemistry. Some fission products are gases to start with and there is always a small amount in reactor coolant even under normal conditions. Due to the small volume, those gases are allowed to decay before being released.
With core damage, more fission products are released to the reactor coolant. If the containment is vented to keep it from failing, some of the gaseous fission and some of the particulate carried with steam are released to the environment.
The amount of radioactive material released did not result in anyone being harmed.
I recently saw it claimed that it is now more radioactive living in Aberdeen, Scotland. And probably anywhere else on and built of granite. In other words, it is all rubbish in the news, again. By the way, it was a joy to see Trumpy rescind that coal-killing regulation on youtube.
Have you thought this through for an unsustainable resource reaching end of reserves, really this time? Scraped all the oil slicks off the Gulf of Mexico, etc. Licked the drill bits? etc. The world will not stay the same and the state will have to manage the transition in energy use over decades. Check out Chinas “nuclear and Hydro by the 22nd Century” strategy. Hopefuly Western Counries can do better that the straight enrgy science denying renewables fraud enacted in the name of climate change, that makes CO2 emissions worse versus unsubsidised gas and nuclear replacing coal, etc…, .
Yes. Supply and demand apply now at the macro level, short term to 2100, say, I do an occasional report on prices. Also a reason why the US is decarbonising fast, it swaps cheaper clean 40% the CO2 shale gas for dirty coal as prices fall with improved extraction rates, etc. Check out New York State energy use. But economics 101 explains how this only works normally when there are many willing sellers and many informed buyers (not even the case now with powerful cartels and oil companies rigging prices, with government officials bought off, etc.). You can’t make it up. It just happens anyway, why they want power. Government also keeps strategic reserves of primary fuels, its their job to protect the people from famine of all kinds.
To the point of overall supply and demand as the regulator- this will sort of work, oligopolistically, while there is enough fossil fuel to use as a commodity energy supply for energy generation and mass transport, as well as an important chemical feedstock (note we can also make chemical/plastic and oil from coal so that may be a substitute for oil government may support by a legal mechanism), petrol from coal kept Nazi Germany fuelled in WW2, but inefficiently/expensively). Note that oil is the most precious hydrocarbon ” far too valuable to burn”, as Mendeleev reportedly wrote to the Tzar from Pittsburgh.
So, as peak hydrocarbons dwindle overall, the most valuable uses will predominate and people will need to be coerced into change they never like. The job of government. If you think the massive reserves being fracked under the USA mean there is no problem, check out how many years consumtpion that is. BY 2100 a stabilised population of perhaps 11 Billion people will be developed – and using energy at closer to developed levels, etc.. Not just the few Billion already developed.
Alternative energy sources like stored and regenerated nuclear or hydro energy (expensive and inefficient way to use electricity versus as generated)) also become relatively affordable, as nuclear and hydro enrgy wil have stable prices in real terms, with effectively inexhaustible energy supplies. Then the real reserve use factor kicks in, national interest, economic and military security.
That will require strategic uses and reserves, and reserved uses, to be defined – and some transition.
nb: as they already do with electric car subsidies, on wholly bogus justifications, as the emissions are simply shifted to the power stations, at roughly the same thermal efficiency between direct combustion and combustion to deliver the same energy to the wheels electrically – 30%. Examples?
We can power transport with liquid gas, pressurised gas, hydrogen (very energy intensive to spearate from the O2 but OK if sustainably nuclear or nuclear electricity energised. Ships can be nuclear powered, large ones will be, etc.. Unlikely to return to steam cars, maybe steam ships? Trains and buses may need to be more mainstream again – happening now in cities..
RESERVE APPLICATIONS: However there are stategically important applications that demand compact and highly energetic liquid fues that can be put in fuel tanks, especially for flight, no alternative, but also for remote transport/agricultural/off-road, long haul freight – and defence/military. As Lamar Alexander pointed out, Going to War in saliboats is not an option.
What is certain is that, by then, synthetics will be appearing for similar uses, and you wil have the option to prefer those – at a considerable premium – to much cheaper electric power from a by then nuclear energised grid in most developed countries. I did the round numbers on this with David MacKay a year or two ago. Obviously renewables are a short term scam and quite inadequate, too weak/diffuse and intermittent eneregy sources to supply energy at the level required, when required, now or then. We have selfish people driving gas guzzling SUVs on regular roads one up now, giving 10mpg or whatever. They will have to pay a LOT more to be anti-social in future. Which is good for the majority of community spirited people.
So, in particular, there will come a time when nuclear generation must be pushed through aggressively to conserve hydrocarbons, and people “encouraged” to use electrical enrgy for transport and heating by taxation of some kind, as supplies tighten there will be bans on petrol and jet engine use w/o a reserved use licence? Obviously necessary for the good of all, only objected to by the selfish few, and abused by corrupt officialdom, the powerful and the rich, as always. Plus ca change.
You wil probably be dead by then, so don’t fret about it. The people won’t change. Trust me. Sadly.
The uses of coal, of which we have a lot and is way cheapest currently, will be interesting. Good for electricity if CCS is ever proven. Maybe OK for generation if AGW is shown to be far less than advertsised as appears likely. when the deep oceans and biological effects are included in the “models” (guesses). Possible cheaper way to synthetic fuels than elctricity and airborne CO2 recycling, etc. But relatively short term, and not in my lifetime. Has to happen.
High fraction liquid fuels are both expensive AND scarce, and we really are unsure where any more will come from that are not synthesised using nuclear enrgy (or coal). In colder Europe, I expect gas to be favoured for heating, as its as much as 90% thermally efficient in condensing boilers now , easy to distribute as we have the gas grid and a lot of gas underneath us, so using it for low carbon elelctricity generation is a bad idea, CCGT is still only 60% thermally efficient, versus 40% for open cycle coal and gas BTW, , so we should get nuclear on stream as fast as we can to conserve the gas – for what it does best in our national context. After gas it’s ground source heat pumps, but that only works if you have some ground to put them in. etc. Air source heat pumps are low efficiency and much more expensive (I assume gas as a primary heating fuel is 1/4 the price of refined pure energy electricity in the US as well?). Economics of generation at work ;-)?. And it’s unlikely that they will reach the performance co-efficients a claimed, so they will still be a more expensive grudge purchase, unless subsidised ………. as they already are in some countries. etc.
But, ultimately the enrgy we depend upon to support our economies will need to be controlled by the state at the end of fossil, yes. It’s why we g have governments. People are not rational, also selfish and short termist. Future generations will respect the necessary changes as inevitable, which they are, and normal, which of course they aren’t if you have to make them and suck it up. Historians may decry the frauds for a fast buck by cynical lobbyistts and politicains in the name of sustainability and climate change, which renewables are, in most cooler countries. But that’s ani other story..I have done this in haste, hope it is clear. Will re-write with added facts for more technical forums later. Eur Ing, CEng, CPhys, MBA etc.
Five robots that have gone into the reactor in order to help remove spent fuel rods have failed to return, reports Reuters. The issue? The radiation levels are so high that the robot’s internals just melt. We’ve seen this happen before.
Yep, fake news.
They make it up as they go along.
Nah!!! That must be 97 robots…..
The real problem was building such a plant so close to the ocean and not considering the possibility of such catastrophic events.
Nuclear power stations have to be built near sources of large volumes of water.
All of Japan’s nuclear power stations are located near the open ocean or bays…
http://www.nucleartourist.com/world/japan.jpg
In Japan, pretty well everything has to be built in fairly narrow coastal plains…
http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/prosp/196_prs/196f01.gif
They do not have to have been built that close to the ocean and at that low of an altitude.
If they had adopted my (admittedly ex post facto) idea of Floating Nuclear Power Plants (“FL0NUPS”), there wd have been NO DISASTER!
1. Massive, r.c., cellularized barge/caissons (a la Mulberry Harbours), one marine-style nuc.reactor per cell, say 6 total in one unit, towed to water deep enough to NOT be affected by under=passing tsunami pressure-poles, or by earthquake, and close enough to land for easy umbilical connection.
2. INSTANT, GRAVITY-FED FLOODING OF ‘ROGUE’ UNIT (all reactors below ext. water level).
3. Successive build-out of units form FLONUP FARMS, say a circular array of 6 with central “mother-station”.
4. Lends to steady-state, mass-production techniques for long-term development of electrical power needs.
4. Away from population concentrations.
Let’s presume robot killing radiationTM doesn’t decay, but can peak 6+ years later. Sounds like it has potential to be harnessed not only beyond renewable energy, but also beyond a perpetual motion machine.
Presuming I could drive my SUV 24/7/365 with quantity x of this energy. How many x re-fuellings would be needed in the next 12 years?
P.S. Let’s presume also my safety. I’ve already survived a couple of decades as the Soviet neighbour while additionally exposed to naturally occurring radon and beta-radiating protons otherwise. As it is currently, I’m likely to outlive Marie Curie’s respectable lifespan of 68 years.
Otropogo is the little boy who cried wolf except the boy in the fable did not image a rabbit was a wolf.
“In reverse order, disaster:
Dangers:”
In a post about fake news, Otropogo links more fake news.
I have seen the devastation caused by natural and manmade disasters. I do not need a headline to tell me that there was a disaster. The dead bodies in the wake of a flood or tornado is an indication of how dangerous it was.
No one was hurt by radiation. The environment was not hurt by radiation. This is by design. We design nuke plant so that almost all the radioactive material is contained in event of core damage.
There is no design criteria that requires us to address concerns and irrational fears. We just need to protect workers and the public. This also ensures the environment is protected.
So
You agree that we do not want and need nuclear energy
That is great@ur momisugly!
“You agree that we do not want and need nuclear energy”
He did nothing of the sort.
He said “There is no design criteria that requires us to address concerns and irrational fears”
“Irrational fears” means YOU.
weazle
please enlighten me as to why you still support nuclear energy when clearly it is not economical anymore to do so.
I think you attribute too much power to me…. I am not even a greeny beanie. No fear for me.
Please enlighten me why you still support building nuclear plants when clearly it has become too expensive compared to a gas power plant.
Nuclear plant costs might be greatly reduced by judicious changes to regulatory barriers. I’m sure that Mr. Pruitt has it on the list.
I believe the specs for plant are drawn up by the international atomic energy agency. Intl scientists. Nothing to do with politics.
Local agencies have specs, I’m sure in some regions the Iaea is involved. Designs are then made to meet those specs. But what has happened is legal proceedings make demands, most absurd, that delay construction and alter the designs, which have to be redone, over and over. These people have figured out by repeatedly bringing unfounded legal interventions, they can make a plant so expensive they won’t get built. The gov, should put an end to that.
Re: Mike McMillan February 17, 2017 at 10:13 pm
Could drop it into the Japan Trench. That should be good for a few lifetimes and it’s in the neighbourhood.”
Also, recent talk of water as a shielding medium …. a very effective one. Any nuc.waste cd. be lowered into water reservoir, formed by a 1 m. thick(?) reinf.conc. barge, and towed– when full — to the Mariannas Trench and sunk.
Were one — hypothetically — a diver visiting the sunk barge, I’d guess that radiation wd be immeasurable beyond 50 m. (Better Math please!)
In resp. to self:
As a Cold-War Certified Nuclear Fall-Out Analyst, we learnt that if you survived the blast, the next Killer was fall-out ….. that snowflake dusting on yr window-sill was lethal! How to shield from it?
Shielding 101 is simple: essentially, the denser the shielding agent, the less thickness you need for the same end-result. Best per-inch is Lead; worst is thin-air. A thick-enough wall of stacked newspapers wd have the same effect.
Water turns out to be a very good intermediary — as all in the Nuc. field know. I can’t remember the figures, but 1″ lead was the equal of 10-20′ of water
Having said, I think the cold war so terrified the laypeople that they have an irrational, now-inbred fear of all things nuclear. A fear based on the ‘Nuclear Winter” scenario of a fall-out smothered landscape.
The reality is that neither Chernobyl nor Fukushima (however deplorable was their planning) realized such a scenario.
In normal life, eating one more banana may push you beyond the irradiation you are receiving from yr local NPS!
The stats show NP to have a very low comparative mortality rate per kWh. (See these columns.) Melt-downs weren’t the life-killing events prophesied.
Public hysteria now extends to extremes of NIMBYism, such as: “NO TRANSPORTATION OF FUEL RODS THROUGH MY VILLAGE!!!”, despite the fact that they wd barely cause a flicker on a geiger-counter on the way thro’. “NO RADIOACTIVE WASTE STORED IN THE CANADIAN SHIELD!” (Perfect for the purpose, BTW, in deep underground caverns where solid granite wd shield the fiercest radioactive emissions within a few feet.)
According to the institute, just 4 sieverts of radiation exposure would be enough kill a handful of people.
A “handful of people”? They are advertising their ignorance of the basics of radiation dosimetry. Dose whether Gy or Sv is a concentration, not an amount. A given dose has the same lethality (or not) to either one person or a thousand people.
Another recent substantial study confirms in a well controlled cohort analysis that low level irradiation confers a maximum of zero added cancer risk:
http://www.auntminnie.com/index.aspx?sec=ser&sub=def&pag=dis&ItemID=114689
(Radiologists live longer.)
In a few seconds on google scholar you can find hundreds of published studies showing that low level low-LET radiation DECREASES cancer incidence and INCREASES longevity. The mechanism is well understood, immune stimulus form responses such as heat shock proteins, ion channels and many others. As scientific observations go it’s as solid as gravity.
And yet the false LNT hypothesis continues to be the basis of radiation protection and nuclear policy. The whole establishment reconciled itself to a lie.
Henryp, most rational energy experts and physicists expert in the area, agree that, after fossil, there is only the nuclear option for most developed countries who wish to stay that way. The only concern is from non nu those unfamiliar with nuclear enrgy who believe we cannot safely process and store spent fuel and waste. We can, and have a range of options. W Spent fuel from commercial reactors is not something you can make Uranium or Plutonium bombs from, there are much better ways.Hydro is useful for the variable bit, if you have non-porous mountains with deep valleys.. I am one of these people you infer are insane, and go to the Institutes oh phsyics and engineering meetings for the techncally insane. I don’t think we are insane, rather our most rational people, by training and experience of what works in practice, and what cannot. Because those are the engineering facts. No opinion required or appropriate. Unless you are a politician or official on the make at public expense.
FACT: Nuclear will be at todays prices in real terms “for ever” , because none of its component costs need to change much, ever, fuel cost in particular. Mostly CAPEX. Legal costs and pointless and expesnive planning challenge delays will reduce with deployment.
The IEA’s most recent publication below on actual LCOE costs brings nuclear out cheapest, at each discount rate. Renewables are actually described as “no longer outliers”, in fact. Not lowest cost, just not mentally over the top. But still more costly and subject to the absolute and fundamental handicaps of their weak, diffuse, intermittent energy source which means they must always use massively disproportionate land and physical resources to collect the same energy, and cannot generate according to demand. nb: Electrical energy cannot be stored, like all pure energy it must be used when generated in work, or converted into potential enrgy and regeneated later, very inefficiently and VERY expensively.
What changed in the physics or the energy sources since the industrial revolution?
So that’s a win/win for nuclear – wholly sustainble, safest of all, adequate, on demand, kinda, zero carbon and affordable. Of course, these are only the most authoritative facts you can get from the world’s experts on matters of energy fact, but they don’t align with the propaganda and beliefs, so must be dismissed by the true believers. Or maybe I’m missing some new world physics somewhere?
https://www.iea.org/media/presentations/150831_ProjectedCostsOfGeneratingElectricity_Presentation.pdf
So, Henryp, why would a “sane” man take such an irrational view that denies the science on energy?
Brian
they did a local study here and they concluded, I quote:
“The model shows that, in combining the 62c/kWh from wind and solar PV, with flexible solutions such as gas, which are “pessimistically” assumed to carry a cost of 200c/kWh, the outcome is a “blended cost” of just 90c/kWh. Such an outcome is cheaper than both baseload coal of 103c/kWh and the 117c/kWh to 130c/kWh currently assumed for nuclear.”
In this case the gas appears to be more expensive than nuclear but that is because of the distance of the gas. I am sure if they allowed for fracking here, it would become multiple times cheaper to go for gas. The increase in GDP of the US was shown to be largely caused by the increase in the availability of local gas and oil.
The advantage of gas is that produces more carbon dioxode which is good for the atmosphere. All components that you or drank today depend on there being carbon dioxide. It is the first building block for any nutrition. Another advantage of gas is that there are virtually no pollutants.
Another disadvantage is the large investment required for a nuclear plant compared to a gas powered plant.
The advantage of gas is that produces more carbon dioxode which is good for the atmosphere. All components that you or drank today depend on there being carbon dioxide. It is the first building block for any nutrition. Another advantage of gas is that there are virtually no pollutants
that should read
The advantage of gas is that it produces more carbon dioxide which is good for the atmosphere. All components that you ate or drank today depend on there being carbon dioxide. It is the first building block for any nutrition. Another advantage of gas is that there are virtually no pollutants.
“Reactor No. 1 exploded first…”
Otropogo does not get it and continues to link more fake news.
There are four barriers between fission products and nice people. The metal fuel rod, the metal reactor coolant pressure boundary, the metal and concrete primary containment, and the metal and concrete secondary containment, and the distance to where the people are.
The reactor did not explode, the primary and secondary did not fail.
There was a hydrogen at a not safety related part of the building. Hydrogen is bad stuff. There have been fatal hydrogen expositions at coal power plants and metal processing plants. Sugar and flour also explodes killing workers. NYT does not bother reporting real news and real loss of life.
“I should have said “the electrically powered venting system” failed on all three reactor containment buildings when it was activated. ”
The primary containment vent valves are air operated to open spring closed. These closed which is their safety position. There is no safety function to open. After the evacuation was complete, these valves were open using a portable compressed gas bottle to reduce pressure in the containment.
“covert design feature, as some NRC experts believe the containment structure should NEVER be vented. Presumably they just believed there could never be a hydrogen buildup great enough to blow a hole in it.”
Primary containments have hydrogen recombiners. Venting was to relieve pressure.
Even this old containment design protected the public. No one was hurt by radiation. One proposed post accident containment design that I have reviewed, would have a DF (decontamination factor) of 100.
This would reduce the exposure by 100. Zero hurt/100 = zero hurt.
Just for the record, the nuclear industry does provide information to media. The media chooses to print fake news.
jdseanjd
paul
it was from the 70’s that the specifications for nuclear plants became stricter as more safety back up system were required. These specs were drawn up by intl. scientists. You cannot blame me for that?
Anyway, that is the problem here: if one product becomes too expensive and another is available doing the same job at a much lower initial cost then why cling to the past?
Just move on.
Go with gas.
“Go with gas.”
How clueless is that? At $5/MMBTU natural gas can not compete with coal or nuclear. So what is the cost of natural gas going to be for the next 100 years?
Just for the record, engineers develop specifications. The have not changed much before and after the ’70s. I have worked on old plants (before they were old) and the newest designs being built now.
We still have to show regulators we do not hurt anyone with radiation. We engineers do need a little help from scientists developing the models.
The biggest difference is that new plants have much larger containment buildings surrounded shield building.
Not sure what this means, the correct approach is to pick what works best from current science and for the future – which is still nuclear. The inconvenient truth is that renewables simply can’t so nuclear is the only energy source that can deliver elelctrical energy at the levels we need now, a fortiore after gas and CCS coal is gone for transport and heating as well.. Happy tp provide the numbers on why this is, for most developed countries. Nuclear power is also consistently cheapest overall, so the best investment, and the least environmentally damaging per KWh. Those are the reasons. There are no reasons to do anything else in fact, because nothing else can powqer developed economies after fossil.
Also, the sooner we get nuclear up and running in quantity, the sooner we get CO2 down to zero, in case that matters, and we can start to conserve our finite fossil fuel and also oil feedstock for chemical processes, for future generations, once electric vehicles are charged from zero carbon electricity. The good new is, the people who make everything and are also messing the place up with unscrubbed coal fired power, are going to nuclear and hydro AFAP, at 6 new Nukes pa. Pver 80 are in build world wide. Because some countries understand what real science is. What is prove to deliver its claims. So one of the major problems is already delivering the best solution. Interestingly a similar strategy is being followed by New York State, which already has almost no coal, and over 50% nuclear and Hydro, the rest mostly clean low carbon gas. They aren’t building to fail.
But they want to shut the nuclear plant down.
Who are they? Which plant. Hardly a clear comment anyone can validate for themselves.
There is a large nuclear power station within 50 miles of NYC, I have gotten stuff about Indian Point https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/06/nyregion/indian-point-nuclear-power-plant-shutdown.html
Very well presented argument ….. see my posts re. comparative DCFs and externalities.
It never happened in the first place. This whole so called triple meltdown. It was fake news. Just like the tsunami.. It never happened.
Got this straight from the CIA.
So we build new and much better nuclear replacements every 60 years or so. It’s not climate science.
Its nuclear power station design and operation. It just works most of the time. About those cracks “Tiny cracks discovered in 2012 in the reactor pressure vessels of Doel 3 and Tihange 2 caused lengthy closures. They were both restarted at the end of last year, one having to close quickly again after a fire.” A conventiona fire, That’s what happens in power stations. Engineers manage the problems.There is no risk to the population from a well contained nuclear power plant, even if it melts down and is a 50 year on decommisining job – as all in the West and all under IAEA supervision are, maybe not (Iran, N.Korea).
Better go with gas.
HenryP:
Is NucPwr cheapest or not?
Only a comparative set of DCF (Discount Cash Flow) analyses between competing power-gen alternatives will help answer this question objectively.
Capital Cost Inputs are:
1. Initial CapEx
2. Decommissioning costs
3. Measurable Externalities, capitalized (e.g., population displacement & loss-of-ag-land costs for a dam-scheme)
Direct Op., Maint. & periodic overhaul/refurbishment costs
Indirect costs such as Licensing, Insurance
Sales Revenues projected from long-term, capacity-maximizing operations (as a start-point before prioritizing dispatch).
Nota bene that in the context of hydrocarbon-powered power-plant, arguments will rage over the valuation of externalities such as CO2 (however spurious the competing claims might be). In the context of dams, methane production & impacts on fish habitat.
Nota bene also that Nuclear Power suffers few externalities in comparison:
a. It is free of emissions of CO2, Sulphates, NOX, toxic particulates (e.g., Mercury, heavy metals)
b. No aerial acidification & down-wind agricultural/aquacultural impacts
c. Minimal, below ambient irradiation
Yes, my critics will crow, but what about Chernobyl & Fukushima? To which my answer is:
i. They were rogue incidents, and the World has survived them with nary a blink globally;
ii. Modern reactor designs will accommodate lessons learnt therefrom and mistakes will *NOT* be repeated. Existing reactors will be retro-fitted concomitantly.
iii. The radioactive releases from these disasters have largely dissipated below ambient levels of radioactivity world-wide.
Ross
Why not support your local fracking industry by building more gas power plants? Gas power plants produce more CO2 which is good for the environment. No changes in ecology because of release of warm water which btw also translate in more water vapour in the atm. Gas plant can easlily be shut down. Crack in vessels no major problem for safety. Etc.
Go with gas.
henryp.
You invite me (tongue-in-cheek?) to support my local fracking industry, which I would, were there one (in lower mainland B.C.!!!) and promote gas turbine (co?-gen plants.
My promotion of nuclear power is *precisely* because it is an essentially zero CO2 producing method, and — to the extent that a hysterical World repudiates anything CO2-producing, then nuc.power is the answer for base-load production.
Remove the bias against CO2, and I wd completely support nat.gas powered (co?)generation.
I have proven there is no man made warming. So we can remove it. More CO2 is better.
Ross King wroteFeb. 128 @ur momisugly 2.27, and in reply, I now provide some basic answers to the Q. of comparative thicknesses of shielding for the same effect. This is for gamma radiation of unspecified intensity, but you get the picture…..
“Radiation Shielding Materials:
To achieve a protection factor of 1,000 the following chart of materials and thicknesses must be used. We’ve saved you the trouble and have factored the proper ‘halving thickness’ values of each material in order to achieve a protection factor of 1,000.
Material Thickness (inches)
Lead 4
Steel 10
Concrete 24
Packed Dirt 36
Water 72
Wood 110
As a rule-of-thumb, for a protection factor of 1000, you want about 375 pounds of mass per square foot of area that you’re shielding (this is not a linear function, but this approximation is accurate for a protection factor of 1,000).”
So, if I swim away from a ‘hot-radioactive’ element suspended in water, my dosage is reduced to 1/000 th. by the time I’ve reached 72″ = 6′
In any of my FLONUP (Floating Nuclear Power Plant) designs, my reactors are each enclosed in a cell w/3′ thick r.c. walls, set in a floating caisson w/3′ thick r.c. hull. Nota bene that 20″ concrete also provides 1,000 attenuation, so a caisson full of radioactive waste sunk in the Mariannas Trench (30,000 ft. deep?) is about as effective as lobbing it into the Sun, but at 1/1×10^6 th. cost?
0.20 micro Sivert/hr? Watts the problem? Natural levels with no epidemiological effects around the world are up to 100microSieverts/h, 900mSv pa.
People still not dying at these levels, thriving in fact. . We all evolved on this radiocative rock, inhale Radon for half our background, especially in man caves, as we did in the real thing, and eat radioactive food every day. Of course there was always a threshold, as with solar radiation, little and often is fine, maybe hormetic, elevated low level radiation used in cancer treatment when Chemo and Radio thr erapy is to much to take.
We evacuate at 20mSv because of a 50 year old, now disproven radiobiological hypothesis, the Linear No THreshold hypothesis, abandoned by the UN UNSCEAR as invalid at low levels years ago. disproven by actual data and research into radiobiological mechanisms. LNT is dead, because all those people are still not dying. But a great way to create baseless fear in the ignorant.
Check out Natural level – in many cities 2mSv pa, BUT in SW France 80mSv pa, Ramsar Iran 300mSv pa. Beaches of Brazil up to 800mSv pa. No epidemiological cancer problem. Well documented. Google it.
“Also, the sooner we get nuclear up and running in quantity, …..”
“Better go with gas.”
“So we build new and much better nuclear replacements every 60 years or so.”
Okay then, let me clear; nuclear is economical for baseload requirements and most industrial countries have been doing it for 30 years. In the US, we stopped building nukes because we did not need more.
Now that communist China has stopped controlling its population with starvation and adopted a policy of controlling people with factory jobs, it is now needs nukes and is building them.
Going with ‘clean burning’ gas is a great PR gimmick if you do not count the dead bodies stacked like cordwood. The gas industry meets safety standards. Industrial fatalities and serious accidents are a daily occurrence. Accidents killing customers are also common events. If you are worried about old things, worry about old pipelines. Gas companies know they have them because the pump gas through them. Too bad they did not keep construction records. Out of site until a neighbor blows up. The fires are still burning and the bodies have not been recovered when the fake news industry loses interest.
Apparently dead bodies stacked like cordwood is okay with the fake news industry.
Finally, we do not need to replace nukes every 60 years. The best new design feature is huge containment buildings with large equipment hatches. Old plant installed reactor vessels and other large components and then built around them. New plants install the reactor vessel through the hatch.
The only part of yr submission worth replying to is yr last para. You touch on precisely a key criterion of my hereinbefore mooted FLONUP configuration, which utilizes pre-packaged, self-contained, marine-style nuc.units, one each per containment cell in a multi-cll r.c. caisson (floating in my case). Retired units are replaced thro’ the top (massive!) hatch and replaced by new ones.
New York State totally supports the use of natural gas – it’s 44% of generation, no coal. 31% nuclear 19% hydro. Gas is a great and clean fuel, but actually we should string out its best use for heating, as its 90% thermally efficient there, far more than the 60% efficient CCGT generation is. Works gret for the uK which is redominately gas heated since North SEa gas, and nowhere is very far away.
Manhattan has that steam powered heating system problem, I recall? What fuels that? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/10/nyregion/how-new-york-city-gets-its-electricity-power-grid.html?_r=1
I doubt replacing reactor cores/vessells only is a great idea, as designs need to move from Gen3 to Gen4 with Fast fission and interesting coolants in due course, and the metals in the heat transfer piping fatique as well as the boilers and turbines wearing out, when they are fully amortised/AKA paid for. The nuclear solution uses very little land, and the least steel and concrete per KW h of any generation, so resources are not a problem. If you can remove the fuel rods and reprocess them, whats the rsidual radiation problem anyway? Better to build an all new one for the next 60 years. Gas doesn’t kill people in pipeline or generation accidents. House explosions are the significant problem, usually poorly maintained equipment. If there is something I don’t know, where are these piles of bodies in the West where we have records…..references. I do know gas has a good safety record World wide. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#3e26d39d5176
Ja. Gas is good.
Only while it lasts. This whole discussion seems to be more concerned with the writers opinions or personal short term futures based on pathetially short time scales which are wholly irrelevant to humanity, rather than the future of humanity approaching the next ice age via the end of fossil fuels. People are so selfish, short sighted, many greedy or ignorantly fearful of what they don’t understand – a lot, as we see here. Politicians worse , and good at exploiting the delusional, selfish and ignorant by law. Why we have renewables.
There is enough gas for many lifetime. Just pipe it to where you need it. Go with the flow.
Aerial photos show devastation caused by massive ‘gas explosion’ that left five people injured and destroyed two houses in Manchester
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4124736/Two-houses-completely-destroyed-suspected-gas-explosion-Manchester.html#ixzz4ZGWNoDT1
TOWN CENTRE BLAST One person injured after Northampton high street gas explosion
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2863861/one-person-injured-after-northampton-high-street-gas-explosion/
In pictures: Rescue workers search for victims of the gas explosion in Oldham
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/9357211/In-pictures-Rescue-workers-search-for-victims-of-the-gas-explosion-in-Oldham.html
Paris rocked by TWO EXPLOSIONS leaving man with serious burns as blast destroys home
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/762498/paris-explosion-several-feared-dead-suspected-gas-leak
‘THERE’S KIDS IN THERE’ Several ‘unaccounted for’ after huge ‘gas blast’ reduces Oxford flats to rubble amid fears children were inside
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2865129/oxford-explosion-osney-gas-block-flats/
That is a small selection of gas explosions in domestic premises in the past month…
Weasle
You made some effort there but your comparison does not fit. This falls in the same category as motor car fatalities (many more).
Show me how many people died in incidents at gas powered plants?
I have not heard of any accidents there.
Best wishes.
H
Interesting, there are more than you believe. That will kill more people than have ever died from nulear accidents ever in a year or two, in the UK alone. Doesn’t matter where in the supply chain people die. That would be like not counting the effects of coal on people. And outside the plant is outside the control of well regulated generators. It’s hardly stacking bodies theough. The morgue is always rammed, we have to hire freezer lorries sometimes. Roughly 1 Millon people are going to die every day in the UK, 3,000 per day, from old age. No one says anything, except “Bye”.
Back to risk and perception of risk, and the type of risk. Gas is a more violently physically dangerous fuel than coal or electricity, which is already pure energy, not fuel. But coal kills far more and shortens lives, more insidiously. I use gas but have a detached house and maintain it myself, with some degree of ruthlessness and CO detectors, etc. Because the alternative of electric heating cost 4 times as much, unless I try a heat pump, and they aren’t working as advertised. Most gas installation are on the outside walls of buildings now, so are vented by design. etc. Low cost sustainable nuclear eletricity plus heat pumps is probaly the way to go long term. But not for all who can’t access a ground source – will need shared schemes for apartment v blocks and housing developments, like CHP in Sweden, which we seem so bad at in selfish versus communal UK. But the future is nuclear. No other choice of viable energy source long term, just a matter of timing. People not thinking very far ahead here, beyond our own short and unimportant lives, in contrast to real science, built on the shoulders of our best ovr generations, where would Einstein have been w/o Newton and Maxwell, and many others? Thinking unselfishly across centuriessomething that has been the bedrock of science, apart, it seems, from the apocalypse now climate “scientists” really should be classified as a religion. IMO.
Brian
the comparison of exact danger does not apply unless you work it out on equal industries, iow
show me how many died in incidents at nuclear and gas powered plants?