By Andy May
The financial risk is too great.
Updated post (2/21/2017)
In any discussion of the future of energy, nuclear power generation is brought up. Once a nuclear power plant is built and operating, it can produce cheap electricity reliably for decades. Further, in terms of human health, some claim it is the safest source of energy in the U.S. Others, like Benjamin Sovacool, claim the worldwide economic cost (worldwide total: $177B) of nuclear accidents is higher than for any other energy source and nuclear power is less safe than all other sources of energy except for hydroelectric power. Some of the costs could be due to an over-reaction to nuclear accidents, especially Chernobyl and Fukushima. Others have much lower fatality estimates than Sovacool, it is unclear how many later cases of cancer are, or potentially will be, due to Chernobyl.
Permitting a new nuclear power plant and building it is a problem because there have been more than 105 significant nuclear accidents around the world since 1952, out of an IAEA total of 2,400 separate incidents. Thirty-three serious nuclear accidents compiled by The Guardian are listed and ranked here and mapped in figure 1. As figure 1 shows these incidents have occurred all over the world, some are design flaws, like the Fukashima-Diachi 2011 disaster and some are due to human error, like the loss of a Cobalt-60 source in Ikitelli, Turkey.
Figure 1: All nuclear power plant incidents, source The Guardian.
There is an ongoing debate about the safety of nuclear power. Roger Graves has written persuasively that:
“… there is no justification for singling out nuclear power as being especially dangerous. The fear of nuclear espoused by much of the media is vastly exaggerated.”
There have been either 4,231 fatalities due to nuclear accidents since 1952 or fewer than 100 depending upon who is estimating. The biggest difference is how many died due to the Chernobyl disaster. Was it the 31 who died right away or were there thousands that died later due to radiation induced cancer as Benjamin Sovacool argues? Either way, this is small compared to the number of fatalities due to hydroelectric dam failures, like the 171,000 people who died when the Shimantan Dam and 60 other dams, including Banqiao, broke in China in 1975 or the 4.3 million who die every year due to indoor air pollution from burning biomass or coal indoors. So, do we irrationally fear anything that glows in the dark? Or, are Benjamin Sovacool’s arguments more valid than Roger Graves? The differences are mostly due to what fatalities and costs are included in the calculation, both use reasonable methods and criteria. Either way nuclear is different from other sources and the risks are different. I’m not sure a valid safety comparison between nuclear and other sources of energy can be made.
If we include all air pollution from coal as a cost, coal becomes the most expensive and dangerous, except for hydroelectric. Yet, most of the problems are from personal, household use of coal or antiquated coal power plants with no pollution control equipment. Modern coal plants, used in western countries for decades, produce very little pollution and are safe. Households do not have nuclear power, nor do they have personal hydroelectric dams, so this seems like an invalid comparison.
It seems that nuclear power is here to stay, there are nuclear power plants all over the world after all. Why is it so hard to permit and build one? Why did Germany shut down so many nuclear plants? How serious are the dangers? We will not answer these questions here, but we can present what data we could find.
By nuclear we mean fission reactors. Fusion reactors always seem to be 20 years away and this seems unlikely to change. The most recently completed U.S. nuclear power plant, Watts Bar Unit 2 in Rhea County, Tennessee entered commercial service October 19, 2016.
Figure 2: Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear power plant, source TVA.
Unit 2 was 80% complete in 1980. Construction was stopped at that time due to a projected decline in demand. Construction resumed in 2007. The Fukushima-Daichi disaster in 2011 caused construction to be halted again and the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) ordered some design modifications. The delays and the late design modifications caused the initial estimate cost of $2.5B to almost double. The final cost, when it was completed in 2016, was $4.7B. So, this older generation “2” nuclear reactor, from beginning to end, took over 40 years to build. Over the 40 years the cost doubled.
TVA has also spent more than six billion dollars on two partially constructed nuclear plants at their Bellefonte site near Hollywood, Alabama. These were to be Units 1 and 2. They have also applied for permits for two more plants, units 3 and 4. Recently, they announced they have no plans to finish the first two plants and withdrew their permit requests for the second two. Obviously, nuclear power plant planning and construction has its problems. The problems seem to be the uncertain permitting process, high initial costs, and the very long construction period. The long permitting and construction times complicate financing and mean that revenue, profit and demand forecasts are obsolete long before the plants are completed. Thus, as the plants are being constructed, markets change, there are periods when the project appears uneconomic, and construction is shut down. Once shut down, any project is hard to restart.
There are two big problems here. The first is a perceived danger to the public, that may or may not really exist. The second, partially caused by the first, is the huge length of time from inception to completion and the very high and uncertain front end costs. I think anyone who has ever worked in a capital-intensive business will instantly see the problem. The problem is not safety per se, it is risk. This is not an industry that can survive in the marketplace without government guarantees, the risk to capital invested and the potential liability costs are so large no private company would ever touch it. Or stated another way, only a government would be foolish enough to put their money into building a nuclear power plant.
Without a viable business outlook, nuclear is probably doomed unless the design to completion timeline is shortened. The permitting time needs to be shortened and made more certain. This means the industry needs to mature and standardize the components of their commercial reactor designs, so approval of the standard components is guaranteed. Second, construction times need to be radically shorter. Standard components will help here as well. You must be able to propose, design, permit and build a plant before your economic forecasts become useless. There is no way around this, cash flow is king, design to startup times must be short and predictable. Time is often the most expensive component in long term projects, ask any construction company or oil and gas company.
Consider what Hollywood, Alabama Mayor Frank “Buster” Duke, who worked as a pipefitter helping build Bellefonte from 1974 to 1984, said about the TVA Bellefonte construction site:
“I think this was one of the best nuclear plants TVA ever built, but it’s not looking good for any nuclear use of Bellefonte. I’m afraid everything is outdated there now like an old computer. I just hope TVA can do something with all [these] assets.”
The radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is also a serious problem. Every year nuclear power plants, worldwide, produce 200,000 m3 of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste and about 11,000 m3 tonnes of high level waste. In the U.S. there is no infrastructure to permanently dispose of the waste, some of which is dangerous for many thousands of years or more. Some countries, including the UK, France, Germany and Japan, reprocess their high-level waste and recycle the remaining uranium and plutonium which decreases the volume of waste. For a list showing how various countries dispose of their waste see this report by the World Nuclear Association.
Waste products are also a problem for thorium molten salt reactors. Besides generating waste, thorium reactors are a nuclear proliferation threat, as discussed by Ashley, et al., 2012 in Nature. This is because one of the waste products is 233U and 8 kg of 233U is enough for a nuclear weapon.
Nuclear power plants have many attractive features, if they don’t leak any radioactivity to the environment and their waste is safely disposed of, they are pollution free. If you can get one permitted and built (no small feat) it produces cheap power and little waste. But, it seems unlikely to be a significant source of new electricity generation due to the public fear of accidents and the high financial risk. To be sure, the actual accidents to date have not caused a lot of injuries or deaths, relative to other energy sources, but the economic cost of the accidents, and the builder and operators liability, is extremely high.
Nuclear power generation has produced no deaths in the U.S. or in the UK. A Caithness Windfarm Information Forum (CWIF) compendium tabulated a yearly UK average of 164 windfarm accidents from 2012-2016 inclusive. Over the same period, 34 of the UK accidents were fatal. In total, in the UK, there have been at least 170 fatalities due to wind farms, so by this measure nuclear is safer than wind. While the safety record of nuclear in the U.S. and in the UK is quite good, the concern is the potential catastrophe. Certainly, the economic costs of nuclear accidents are much higher than for any other form of energy at least according to Benjamin Sovacool here. Sovacool has also shown that 94% of accidental electricity generation fatalities are due to hydroelectric dams, especially one large accident at Shimantan Dam in China. The nuclear catastrophe that can be imagined is horrific, particularly with regard to terrorism. Plus, we have all that nuclear waste being stored on the surface in temporary facilities. To quote Sovacool (source):
“… , nuclear power is less safe than alternatives. When overall fatalities from other energy sources are compared independent of the amount of energy they produce, nuclear power ranks as the second most fatal source of energy supply – after hydroelectric dams – and is responsible for more onsite deaths than oil, coal, and natural gas systems (Sovacool 2008).”
Coal mining is very hazardous, especially in China. But, elsewhere it has become much safer, especially in the U.S., in recent years. Urban indoor pollution, from burning biomass (wood, dung and charcoal) and coal indoors, kills 4.3 million people each year per the World Health Organization. This is the largest killer of all energy sources.
So, although we have estimates of how many have been injured or killed by nuclear accidents that range from less than 100 to over 4,000, both numbers pale in comparison to the deaths caused by other power sources, especially biofuels, coal and hydroelectric. By this measure, nuclear is safer. The problem is the perceived danger from a possible nuclear accident or terrorist attack, not the actual safety record. This fear causes expensive actions (over-reactions?) to be taken when an accident occurs, raising the accidents cost and the potential liability of the operator and builder of the reactor.
It is unlikely, after 60 years of building nuclear power stations, that the cost and time to build them has to be what we see today. After this much time, there is no need for every reactor to be a one-off and approved piecemeal one at a time. But, this is where we are. It is a capital intensive business with high front-end costs and the regulations and lack of standardized pre-approved components drag out the construction (no-revenue) period and private companies cannot get into the business.
I suspect that if a standardized power plant design can be agreed upon by the government and industry, a permanent storage facility built for the waste and permitting and construction streamlined; nuclear would be a success. But, until that happens, I doubt it will ever succeed. No one, outside of government, is foolish enough to invest in the industry the way it is now.
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Andy: what’s your source for this figure? This is an order of magnitude higher than I have found from other sources. The total actual deaths from radiation or other nuclear reactor accidents since 1947 is less than 200 (not including China and N. Korea, for which there are no published figures). Nearly half of those were from radiography accidents.
There are wildly varying estimates of excess cancer deaths attributed to reactor accidents, for example Chernobyl:
I question the methodologies used when the estimates range from 4,000 to 200,000 or even more.
I answer that here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/20/risk-and-nuclear-power-plants/comment-page-1/#comment-2432519
Over 4,000 are Chernobyl.
All but IIRC 23 deaths t Chernobyl are later excess mortality attributed to the incident. Very sketchy.
Might as well take Larry Butler’s millions to billions of deaths.
Andy
I think your source is wrong. The UN (UNSCEAR) did a close tracking on health effects of all major nuclear accidents.
Chernobyl caused 63 fatalities in total according to UNSCEAR. Your source is mentioning 4,056 without detailing it.
I also doubt the other fatality numbers from Sovacool. In total it’s hard to find more than 100.
Source: http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html
Update:
Unscear says 28 of the people which were exposed to severe radiation died within 4 months, further 19 died up to 2004 whereas not all of those cases can be attributed to radiation. Of the 6,848 people with thyroid cancer 25 died until 2005. Also there the attribution to the accident is not 100%.
In total 62.
Sorry: 15 instead of 25
Probably my fault for not being clear in the post, but I do think the safety thing is overblown and the estimates of fatalities due to nuclear power plants are all over the place. I simply chose some extremes to include. People have chosen a metric to get the number they want.
The issue here, is nuclear power is very capital intensive and the time from design to first revenue is very long and unpredictable. No private company can take that much risk. That means nuclear power is dead until the permitting and construction costs and time are slashed. It’s in the post, but a lot of readers obviously missed it. From a technical perspective nuclear power is a good option, we all seem to agree on that. From a business perspective it is a disaster – due primarily to excessive and poorly thought out regulations. Plus, the industry seems to always build everything from scratch – they need to standardize and get pre-approvals on their components. Short circuit the approvals.
The length and unpredictability are due entirely to enemies of nuclear power.
We have two choices, fight or surrender.
You seem to be advocating surrender.
The problem with that is those who oppose nuclear power won’t go away. These same people oppose anything with a perceivable risk, they will just move on the the next target, all the more emboldened.
Yaaawwwwwn, wrong…
Why is Fukushima considered a nuclear accident at all? It was caused by an earthquake a full order of magnitude greater than it was built to withstand. Wouldn’t it more fairly be considered a natural disaster? Even worse the unstable dual purpose reactor at Chernobyl was not something that could happen in most places simply because no one would build one like that for power generation alone..
Comparing the costs of nuclear to other sources of power will show nuclear cheapest in terms of clean up and ongoing costs as well if we use anything approaching a fair measuring stick.
Depends on whether your goal is an honest accounting of the facts, or an attempt to scare people.
Coupla points
Safest place away from radiation is dived in a nuclear submarine.
Fukushima deaths by radiation – none.
Andy: the Sovacool report which you reference claims 4,056 deaths from Chernobyl, but does not give a reference. If you look at the UNSCEAR assessment, they list 28 deaths within three months among the group of 134 highly exposed workers, and another 28 deaths in the years 1987-2004 “of various causes not necessarily associated with radiation exposure.” The report also says:
This is from an exposed population numbering about 340,000, going by the number evacuated in the years following the accident.
I think the Sovacool report includes all the cases of thyroid cancers among as fatalities. Depending on type and stage, thyroid cancer survival rates are mostly above 50% and in early stages close to 100%. So while many of the child thyroid cancer cases are likely due to radiation exposure, not all of them are and not all them resulted in deaths. I have not seen a more detailed assessment of post-Chernobyl thyroid cancer deaths.
I would like to know how many thyroid cancers would normally occur in such a population.
If it’s the same report I’m familiar with, it also attributes most of the 4,000+ cancer cases to a much higher rate of screening, which has led to a higher rate of diagnosis and a much earlier diagnosis than would normally be found. So for the ones that would have got thyroid cancer regardless, the accident ironically helped save or prolong their life.
They do not have good numbers for the background rate of thyroid cancer in children for that population (i.e., no reliable cancer registry). Although they eventually began a large screening program, when you screen symptom-less children you will find many more pre-cancerous and cancerous conditions than if that population were left to simply head to the doctor when symptoms occur – thus, screening leads to the identification of a large number of cancers above what would have previously been seen in the population even if there were a registry.
The figure 28 was mis-typed by me; the correct figure is 19.
The sovacol is the usual LNT model output result. Based on the principle that if 5 Sieverts kills half the people exposed to it, a lifetime dose of 5 Sieverts spread out over 50 years (100mSv/yr) will also kill half the people exposed to it.
In fact no single does below around 100mSV shows any cancer probability increase at all. Response to low level chronic radiation is non linear.
That is misleading. The LNT only applies to the rates of cancer and leukemia induced by varying but low dosages of radiation; it does not encompass the high dosages that will cause acute radiation syndrome.
I can assure you that LNT applies to ALL levels of radiation, or purports to.
In other words a straight line is drawn between Total dose4 sieverts 50% chance of death and total dose 0, zero chance of death and the regulations are framed around that.
And yet cancer patients receive massive total amounts of radiation, in smaller doses and survive. And peole live in places where whole life doses are massive, and show no signs of cancer.
30 years at 130mSv/a is just under 4 sieverts total dose. Which is about a 50% mortality rate if taken in a single dose. If radiation at that level had been that dangerous people in ramsar would be dying of radiation induce illnesses like flies.
Average background is 3mSv/a.
That’s what set Wade Allison on track.
The data shows that peak single doses are far far more damaging than chronic low level exposure.
Just as one day of bad sunburn is way more dangerous than living in a sunny place with a good tan all year round
LNT is a busted flush, but its what current regulations are built upon, and it allows people with axes to grind to say:
“There is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation”
“Its over government limits so its must be dangerous”
and so on ad nauseam.
And that’s the reaosn for the HUGE discrepancies in death tolls.
There are deaths that are unequivocally due to radiation – acute radiation sickness that got around 50 workers at chernobyl. Plus data that is statistically significant. 3000 excess thyroid cancers in Pripyat post Chernobyl, though few were fatal.
Those are the facts.
THEN there are ‘projections ‘ or ‘model outputs’ Do I hear WUWT readers laughing…of course, LNT is a ‘model’ and like all ‘models’ its only as good as its ability to predict, and its frankly useless.
LNT predicted upwards of quarter of a million excess deaths from cancer long term in the whole of NE Europe.
You cant hide quarter of a million blip in cancer statistics. Well my ‘green’ sister claims that governments can do that, but then believes that the givernment , that supports LNT, is terribly right about the dangers of nuclear energy.
She has a degree, but sometimes she’s not very bright…or she has learnt to double think. I am never sure whether the government which regulates nuclear power out of existence in Germany, is the good guy, or whether its responsible for ‘suppressing the true facts about nuclear energy’. Sigh.
Anyway, Sovakool and et Guardian (US readers think NYT) reading LeftyBrains like the sound of models that make it all scary, because it supports their emotional narrative. And they never let facts get in the way of a good anti-nuclear scare story. And it works:
A CND friend assured me that a professors had proved that there were some excess leukaemias due to the accident at Windscale UK, and that back in the day he had ‘read it in the New Scientist’.
I searched online, and all I came up with was that a professor had predicted that there would be excess deaths due to something or other.
NO story about there having BEEN any REAL deaths was to be found.
And that is how propaganda and myths are spun for very unpleasant reasons of commercial profit and fighting of cold wars.
The thyroid cancer aspect of it would have been highly preventable simply by giving iodine supplements to reduce I131 uptake.
With respect to the experience at Chernobyl, there were a number of contributing factors resulting in the excess childhood thyroid cancers, including the lack of KI distribution, delayed interdiction of milk, failure to effectively communicate milk interdiction orders to rural populations dependent on locally-produced milk, and low iodine in the local diet (resulting in higher uptakes of the radioactive iodine in the milk and leafy vegetables). That is not to say the releases from Chernobyl are not to blame, they are; but, the entire response was mishandled, and made the situation much worse than necessary.
This extensive detailed assessment shows nuclear power to be safest. Safer even than rooftop solar.
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
The perception that nuclear plants can not be designed to load follow is nonsense. Think submarines.
Thorium/molten-salt reactors should be cheaper and eliminate many concerns.
Radioactive waste disposal is a red herring.
Reactors can be designed to load follow reasonably well and a large number of French reactors do, although the process is not without issues.
http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/0203_Pouret_Nuttall.pdf
Yes, almost all accidents were from gen II reactors. Gen IV reactors will be very safe and produce little waste.
A 2008 update on the UNSCEAR report states:
So I make that 28 immediate deaths, plus 19 among the heavily exposed over the following 15 years, and 15 thyroid cancer deaths likely due to I-131 exposure. Total comes to 62.
Unless thyroid cancers were unknown in this population prior to the accident, at least some of those cases would have occurred anyway.
Oh this hurts so much: When I was young, my family was involved in the entire nuclear bomb thing in the Mohave Desert and the ranchers living downwind from the nuke bomb tests of the 1950s were told, radiation was no problem.
But it was a ‘problem’. One of my dear friends died as a child due to nuclear radiation exposure from living downwind. I freaked out after her funeral and had a fight with my father about this.
These deaths never made the news back then! But inside the ‘machine’ there were raging arguments about nuclear bomb side effects with downwind radiation being a major issue. Thus, the push for underground tests.
It was signed and the above ground tests stopped but not after doing grave damage.
It takes an enormous amount of radiation to kill someone. How did friend get so much and no one else did?
It is human nature to want to find blame.
Alan, I recall it was Strontium-90 in milk. I’ve made it to within a year of 80 so far and I’m feeling pretty good – still working, too.
The total number of recorded deaths from all nuclear POWER – as opposed to other radiological accidents – is less than 300.
Any figure higher than that is an estimate based on a model – the LNT model – that is even more discredited than the Climate Change model
See Wade Allison http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Public_Trust_in_Nuclear_Energy.pdf and the late Professor Cohen http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/ for a far more balanced view of radiation and financial risk
Stopped reading at that point.
“Stopped reading at that point.”
Pity, you may have learned something not seen on Fox news or Alec Jones.
He might have learned something true.
Learning something true on the other hand is contraindicated.
MarkW.
He might have learned something true.
Learning something true on the other hand is contraindicated.
Yes, he may well have learned something true, however,
Do you think Fox news, Alec Jones and Breitbart are paragons of truth? Really?
Yes, they are. Especially compared to the Guardian.
I realize that as a socialist you are required to believe that only things that fit the left wing narrative are true.
However the rest of us do not suffer from such delusions.
Really Mark, you believe what Alec Jones tells you about pedophile rings run by politicians from Pizza houses? And many other outrageous allegations. That’s a sad reflection on your belief in climate scepticism. I mean , can anyone who believes Alec Jones and Breibart are unbiased and truthful news sources be relied on to be objective in climate science?
The Guardian is biased and tends to support LibDems ( though not , as you believe, the hard left like Corbyn) but it rarely lies or makes up outrageous deceits in the manner of Alec Jones.
It really takes a total moron, but then again, you have fallen for the socialist chimera, to lump Fox and those others together.
But then again, you have been trained to believe that anything you don’t agree with is a lie.
BTW, Breitbart has been proven to be accurate.
Of the three Jones has the distinction of being slightly more accurate than the Guardian. The others are virtues of honesty compared to the Guardian.
Cold war Plutonium factories called pressurized, boiling and supercritical water reactors are dangerous indeed. Whenever you put hot water under high pressure into a reactor core composed of solid metal components, it is a disaster waiting to happen. Also, as you only use up half a percent or so of fuel, you end up with a tremendous amount of waste, containing lots of long half life Plutonium. That is, waste can be mined for bomb material for tens of thousands of years. I do not know of any object that was guarded continuously since the dawn of civilization.
On the other hand fuel dissolved in molten salt can’t be damaged structurally by neutrons, the molten salt itself does not have to be pressurized, since its boiling point is extremely high, the system has a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity, and almost all fuel can be burnt, meaning a hundred times less waste for the same energy output, containing no long half life radioisotopes.
There is a huge difference between different basic nuclear reactor designs. Some are inherently safe with barely any control, others are like balancing a pencil on its tip.
It’s worth remembering that more US citizens have been killed by firearms in the last 25 years than have died in every war she has fought. I think this puts the dangers of nuclear power in perspective.
Better supply some reliably sourced numbers on that. Cause probably isn’t true and smacks of anti second amendment nonsense. Civil war Union deaths 359,000. Confederate deaths 258,000. WW1 116,000. WW2 405, 000. This ignores Revolution, 1812, Spanish American, Vietnam…
In 2013 (last years stats available) there were ~11000 homicides, ~500 axcidental gun deaths, and ~21000 gun suicides. The suicides don’t count for your purposes..
When you are going to make up facts, you might as well go for the gold and make up BIG numbers.
Many of the homicides don’t count either. When a person is determined to kill another, they will find a way.
MarkW
If your comments were aimed at ristvan’s numbers, then this is he QED he left for you (otherwise, I apologize for incorrect target assumption)
ristvans numbers for just the Civil, WW1 & WW2 wars add up to about 1.1M (historians will argue about numbers forever, but those are reasonably consensus, which counts in history…). I think most would agree suicides don’t count (if no gun, than something else).
So you’re left with 25 yeas of 12,000/year = 300,000. Maybe YOU should have gone for the big number an claimed the last 100 years.
I thought that it was pretty obvious that I was concurring with ristvan not contradicting him.
This is one of my sources below, there are many others. Even if you don’t believe it, the number killed by guns is stunningly high in the US. The post was meant to make a point on how we assess risk. In nuclear power any fatality results in substantial efforts to improve safety. In gun control the result of the wholesale slaughter is for a President to reduce the restriction on people who are deemed to be a risk obtaining firearms. It is a great example of national cognitive dissonance. The actual figures are included if anyone is interested.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jan/18/mark-shields/pbs-commentator-mark-shields-says-more-killed-guns/
I love the way leftists use political commentators as their source of ultimate truth.
Unless you are a gang banger or suicidal, your risk of being killed by a gun is very, very low.
Mark W whines:
“I love the way leftists use political commentators as their source of ultimate truth.
Unless you are a gang banger or suicidal, your risk of being killed by a gun is very, very low.”
But substantially higher than being a victim of Islamic terrorism or as a result of a nuclear accident.
Interesting that being hurt by Islamic terrorism is an infinitely small chance, as is harm from nuclear power. But Trump bans Muslims, revokes gun controls and people here worry about nuclear safety ? Weird or what?
By the way, the source material is not a left wing site, but even low IQ right wingers should be able to understand its unbiased and straightforward information. You may eventually realise it is a check on whether certain facts are correct or not, it is not political commentary as in Fox news and Breibart.
Apologies, that should be MarkW “opines” ! Cursed predictive text .
They weeny Gareth complains about Fox news, then he repeats many times refuted lies from his favorite propaganda site, the Guardian.
Trump never banned muslims. He temporarily halted immigration from seven countries known to harbor terrorists.
Trump hasn’t revoked any gun controls. Not a single one.
Regardless, none of the gun control actually controls violence, they just make it harder for the victims to fight back. Which is how socialists like the world to be.
I could repeat my refutations from earlier, but Gareth, like most socialists is impervious to any fact that hasn’t been filtered through the proper authorities and declared fit for human consumption.
It beats actually having to think for yourself.
Visited construction site at Moscow, Ohio, with reporters and local Chamber of Commerce. A relative was a grunt at a coal-, oil- & gas-fired plant some 40-50 miles away of the same firm. Months later, there was much fuss. The construction firm had not been doing any of the weld tests and were caught faking some by copying materials from more recent tests, so the nuclear plan was ditched.
There was also fuss because some of the crew pranked the inspectors, dumping water and fire extinguisher down on them. This was a typical prank — along with shmearing limburger cheese on hot valve wheels — from the older plants, that the workers played amongst themselves, but this time the media and government went hysterical.
In the end, it became a conventional fuel fired plant…the company just could not afford the furor and panic, and then they became Cinergy, then consolidated into Duke.
Andy:
My own research, drawn from here, plus some additional digging, yields a total of 184 direct deaths from radiation exposure or other accidents at nuclear plants, plus another 103 attributed excess cancer deaths since 1947. The breakdown is as follows:
military research, tests and reactors (excluding weapons use): 34 actual / 33 attributed.
civilian reactors: 61 actual / 70 attributed.
radiography and radiotherapy accidents: 89 actual (there should be some attributable excess deaths, but I could not find any).
Civilian reactor death figures include non-radiation causes, as these are fairly accounted as part of the risks of nuclear power.
Most of the deaths from both civilian and military accidents were in the USSR. If we had figures for China and N. Korea, I expect these numbers would be higher.
Alan Watt: You could very well be correct. Even in peer reviewed literature I found numbers all over the place. Certainly the direct deaths due to the Chernobyl disaster were very low, no where near 4000. Sovacool documented what he did and provided a complete list and it was peer reviewed. Either way (4000 fatalities or 89), safety and fatalities are not the reasons why nuclear has not taken off. Let’s not get sidetracked on non-issues. The reasons are risk, liability, regulations and construction times. That was the point I was trying to make. To fix a problem, first identify what the problem really is.
“To fix a problem, first identify what the problem really is.”
Spot on. And I thought the problem was that we are going to boil from raging heat and drown from rising sea levels. If anyone was serious about the death and devastation that will be caused by the direct and indirect cost of CAGW, nuclear is the only contender. To argue for renewables as a solution is to argue for technology just as unproven as Gen 4 nukes. But it’s more hypocritical because it ignores the appalling conditions that many of the required raw materials are going to be sourced from (and the supply/reserve limitations – they are called ‘rare earths’ for a reason). And whacking huge batteries on the side of every domestic house isn’t going to hurt anyone is it? Just check the stats on household deaths and injuries from electrocution and electrically caused fires …
I doubt the claim of 4231 victims of nuclear power.
Your doubts are well founded. See above.
Genetic injuries are obviously not important to some people but I would very much beg to differ. The ongoing horrors of Fukushima and Chernobyl are not minor incidents. They are ongoing messes. And then there is all the natural life forms forever damaged by nuke accidents…plants, animals, even humans…
As always, emsnews just makes it up has he/she/it goes.
This nutcase is still trying to claim that last year, half the Humback whales in the Pacific suddenly died from radiation poisoning.
Emsnews-there is no credible evidence for genetic effects in humans, based on the studies of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors.
The fact that you call me names is telling…pretending nuclear disasters are nothing won’t travel far where people have some sense of reality. I beg you all: prove me wrong.
Move to Fukushima and get pregnant if you are a woman, if a man, volunteer to clean it up. The robots failed so maybe you can do the job there.
emsnews
You made the claim, you ned to provide the evidence.
You have (tried to) put Barbara in the position of proving a negative.
If you have evidence of genetic effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, cite it (I mean assuming it’s not the Daily Mail).
Emsnews – I did not call you any names. You may read about the lack of evidence of genetic effects here: http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/genetics_e/geneefx.html
You have no evidence for your clsim about genetic problems.
emsnewws, the Fukushima did not fail they were build at great expense for very specific areas of the plant to locate burned and spent fuel ( like through small openings like pipes etc. and under water) and operated on battery power when the battery power ran out they,…….
you know stopped moving. and were left in place as it would have cost a fortune to design a new robot to retrieve them. Most of the reports on the robots are simply not true, yes they have had problems operating them because of the fact that they are remote controlled, operate under water in confined spaces and radiation interfered with video and with wiring, the controllers lost contact. Each one though has led to improvements but at a great cost. Not monetary but time wise, it can take 2 to 3 years to develope a new one.
But hey, I hope your basement is warm.
AAARRGH emsnews I was talking about the ROBOTS. at Fukushima
emsnews: I drive by one of those yellow radiation signs on my way to my cabin. It’s a former uranium mine where my husband worked.
I would love to visit and study Chernobyl, though the access is very limited by Russia. (Your “help clean-up” in nonsense. Neither country will allow such a thing and you most certainly know that.) It is a fascinating area, and many areas of study are being suppressed to maintain the fear level. The women who still live in the area are a golden opportunity to study why some people are not affected by radiation as much as others, but politics says that’s impossible, so no one is studying this and science is completely shut out. It’s criminal. To simply refuse to look at reality in the name of continuing to terrify people.
Steam boiler explosions in the 19th century killed a lot more people than nuclear power has. In one incident alone, the Sultana in 1865, an estimated 1,700 people died from the explosion, steam burns, or drowning when the ship sank. Granted, the Sultana was criminally overloaded, but the same explosion if loaded to legal capacity would still have killed more than all the reactor deaths to date.
How many generations of survivors of that ship disaster had to deal with birth mutations, early deaths, etc? These two types of events cannot be compared. Fukushima is still polluting Japan and causing genetic problems. Not to mention, where the Sultana sank isn’t a disaster zone to this day, too dangerous to stay for long unlike Fukushima where even robots die from radiation effects trying to just ‘see’ what is going on there.
Carol died of thyroid cancer. I had to be operated on that same year because my own thyroid had problems, too. I can’t tell you all how frightening this is. It is no joke, not a thing to swipe aside with ‘few died’ when it hits home.
You receive more radiation from your granite counter top than most people who lived near Fukushima received.
emsnews, what you are engaging in is what I will call the “Silent Spring” fallacy, that artificial risks are much worse than natural risks. If the level of radioactivity does not go up appreciably, it does not matter that part of that level is produced by evil man. Try doing research on the failure of the so-called “Linear-no threshold ” model of radiation effects.
emsnews: I was reacting to Andy May’s claim of “4,231 fatalities due to nuclear accidents since 1952.” This number was an order of magnitude higher than I had gleaned from previous research, so I challenged it.
You can discuss non-fatal injuries resulting from nuclear power, but that’s a separate issue from getting the fatality numbers correct and in perspective.
I didn’t know there is an army of people desiring to move to places where nuclear disasters are happening. Seriously, they are in desperate need for volunteers. Sitting safe at home while this goes on is wrong. Contact the Japanese and Ukrainians and tell them you are ready and willing.
I doubt if you or anyone you has had cancer probably linked to cancer. I think you are just another troll pushing lies.
Are you aware, emsnews, that over 4000 potassium atoms emit radiation every second within your body? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium#Isotopes
emsnews: I got tongue cancer with ZERO risk factors. NONE. NADA. ZIP. Very depressing—nothing to blame, nothing to sit around in terror of…..oh, wait, maybe it’s better that way. I just dealt with it and went on, not looking under rocks with a geiger counter or eating only organic and wearing a charcoal filter mask everywhere (though acquaintances of mine do that due to fear of “chemicals”). Having things to blame is not always a good thing.
There are a lot of people in the third world who would jump at the chance to live in a modern country like Japan. And the fact that the would be exposed to tiny amounts of additional radiation would not be any kind of deterrent.
Not that there’s any need for volunteers now. But in the unlikely event that something like that would happen again in a modern country, working there would be a lot safer than trying to get into Europe in a leaky boat, like many refugees have been trying to do recently.
BTW I’m sorry that your Carol died of thyroid cancer, and that you’ve had thyroid problems too. I’ve had cancer three times and two were quite threatening.
In emsnews’ world. Cancer did not exist until nuclear power was invented.
In another forum I once debated a young man who was 100% opposed to automobiles. He wanted the government to ban them and he would not accept any compromise.
When pressed we finally found out that his mother was killed in an auto accident when he was young.
From this he had concluded that cars were unacceptably dangerous and there was absolutely nothing that would ever change his mind. The more people ignored him and kept using their cars, the angrier he got.
emsnews reminds me of that young man.
Add 19th century railroad accident deaths, too. No source.’ Just recall seeing article or TV show that pointed out traveling by rail in the 1800s was much more dangerous than I thought.
According to Erik Larson (don’t have the book so don’t know his reference), around 1900, two pedestrians a day were killed by trains in Chicago alone, a larger number maimed, and a dozen daily in fires. That’s not even counting things like diphtheria, typhus, cholera, influenza, etc. (they’d reversed the Chicago River by then but enough rain could still push sewage out into Lake Michigan and into the city’s water system).
Don’t recall the numbers, but I’ve seen stats on farmers (and, in particular, on farm kids) from that era that were pretty ugly. Life in general in the 1800s was much more dangerous than most people think. Most Americans take for granted a level of safety that earlier generations would consider paradisaical.
That should be “a dozen killed daily in fires.”
Here in the US, it is not just nuclear, it is everything. The regulatory agencies seem to have an agenda to kill any proposal with a hugely complex and expensive permitting process. Then you have the third party actors. In Massachusetts, there is the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), ostensibly dedicated to protecting the environment. A spox for CLF stated once “We have shut down bigger projects than this. We just tie them up in court and force them to burn through all their cash.”
A case for a Gas Fired plant:
After a few years of wrangling, a power company built a plant in Bellingham, MA. It was successful, and the company wanted to build a second plant in Franklin, MA, which is right beside Bellingham. So the local populace was familiar with the plant, and knew it to be a good neighbor. Nonetheless, the Greenies went wild. Pollution, toxic waste, poisoning the children, explosion hazard, the works. All for a gas fired plant. Then the Franklin Town Council got involved. They negotiated point after point, getting concession after concession. Then they would negotiate something else, and reopen settled issues, Then they wanted to restart the negotiations from the beginning. All the while playing politics with their local base.
The company gave up and offered the second plant to Bellingham, which eagerly accepted.
The town of Franklin then filed a lawsuit to “recover” taxes they would have gotten if they would have approved to plant.
Now try this with a nuclear plant. Imagine all these regulatory and permitting games being played at the local and the state and the federal levels. Add in third parties pinning you down in court, just to make you burn through cash.
And then people will turn around and say “It costs too much, and takes too long, it just is not viable.” Why do you suppose that is?
No regulator ever got fired for turning down a project.
On the other hand agencies have gotten into a lot of trouble when something went wrong at a project they had approved.
Institutionally, there is a huge bias towards rejecting everything.
Mankind has only one limiting resource, cheap energy. With cheap energy we can make all the fresh water we need to bloom all the deserts we want. We can suck gold out of seawater and melt tunnels through mountains. All we need is cheap energy. Eventually we will need to go nuclear. We can do this people.
Chauncey Starr 1969 http://w2agz.com/Library/Chauncey%20Starr/UCLA%20&%20Risk%20Analysis%20(1966%20-%201971)/(1969)%20C%20Starr,%20Social%20Benefit%20versus%20Technological%20Risk,%20Science%20165,%201232%20(1969).pdf
The CDC says bicycles are dangerous …
Deaths and Injuries
In 2013 in the U.S., over 900 bicyclists were killed and there were an estimated 494,000 emergency department visits due to bicycle-related injuries.
Cost
Data from 2010 show fatal and non-fatal crash-related injuries to bicyclists resulted in lifetime medical costs and productivity losses of $10 billion.
Numbers are for US.
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/bicycle/index.html
I finally gave away my mountain bike for heath reasons. Falling off is not good.
Why mention loss of Cobalt-60 source in conjunction with discussion of the risk of nuclear power? We would be making and using cobalt-60 sources whether or not we build and operate nuclear power plants.
It is not at all safe in geologically active regions with violent earthquakes, tsunamis and active volcanoes. Japan and Indonesia being two prime examples of this. Nor should nuclear power be used by dictators running crazy governments like we saw in Ukraine.
P@ranoia, it’s what’s for breakfast.
emsnews – you are partially correct. Geologically active regions are very, very dangerous. Approximately 20,000 people died in the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Zero of them died from radiation. If you really care about saving lives, I suggest you campaign to evacuate Japan.
How clever. Ahem: Fukushima is still polluting the ocean and Japan. It is not over. It is certainly not ‘fixed’ or even ‘cleaned up.’ The side effects are serious. Humans cannot get anywhere near where the radiation is happening, the recent robot that was supposed to be able to enter and see what is going on, fell apart quickly due to the violence of the radiation. This is no joking matter.
…or repurpose CAGW money to malaria cure (saving millions of lives)
Emnews – the robots that have recently entered to obtain additional information on the fuel melt penetrated farther than they’d gone in before. Closer to the core, the higher the radiation – not unexpected, nor was the eventual failure of the robots. It was expected due to the known very, very high radiations levels near the fuel. In part the problems with the clean-up have been driven by the very fear you express. I believe it is real fear, but not rational based on actual residual levels of contamination in the vast majority of cases.
emsnews is just trolling with reactionary fibbing. He hasn’t posted an honest point yet.
I am not a ‘he’ I am a female who knows how to hold up my end in an argument and I can speed type, too.
The solidarity front on this topic is interesting to me. It shows how people can fool themselves when they choose ideology over reality. The reality here is, Fukushima didn’t just ‘blow up’…it was flooded with mere water and then blew up!
Now…think carefully…if mere water can cause a massive catastrophe that continues for years…who could resist doing something nasty in the future to another nuclear power plant to make life very hard or impossible for someone else?
Remember: simple water did this! And a number of nations have plenty of bombs that can do worse.
emsnews, these side effects exist only in your fevered imagination.
This is the way a p@r@noid mind works.
The fact that everyone disagrees with it, is just proof of how big the conspiracy is.
It’s a lot like the people who are convinced that the moon landings were fake.
To them it’s so obvious that they are totally dumb founded that there is anyone who disagrees with them.
When you try to explain the science to them, they refuse to listen.
“It is not at all safe in geologically active regions with violent earthquakes, tsunamis …” I assume you mean nuclear power generation, but you could insert anything there and be correct.
Lots and lots of things aren’t safe in geologically active regions with violent earthquakes, tsunamis … lots and lots of things aren’t safe..
Bathtubs, without the little rubber adhesive ducks in the bottom, aren’t safe in geologically active regions with violent earthquakes, tsunamis, or volcanoes. Bathtubs, WITH rubber ducks, in areas of violent earthquakes and volcanoes, are safer (but still not completely safe).
Bathtubs, with adhesive ducks, in Akron Ohio (no earthquakes or volcanoes there), with grab bars and walk in doors, might be the safest place on earth to bathe. Notwithstanding, I’ll take the risk and bathe at home instead of going to Akron, but I draw the line at a potentially slippery bathtub.
You draw the line at nuclear power generation and I’ll draw the line at bathtubs without adhesive rubber ducks. Let us both keep up the good fight.
A bathtub isn’t Fukushima. And as I pointed out earlier, the disaster wasn’t caused by the earthquake there, it was caused by a sudden flood. WATER caused the disaster which is still very much a disaster. I call that ‘very fragile systems’ not ‘robust and safe systems’.
A massive tsunami is different from a normal flood. (Said wave was also caused by the earthquake, by the way) Comparing the two shows that you are fundamentally unserious. And now US plants are designed with even more redundancy, with outside power facilities in water-tight buildings.
Even in Fukushima, the earthquake alone would have been easily handled.
in 2014, Japan, 4,800 people drowned in bathtubs (there were no statistics available that were related to presence, or lack of, adhesive ducks). Bathtubs aren’t Fukushima … but they are pretty scary.
There is an obvious nexus between cheap (nuclear) energy and bathtub accidents; If the cost to warm the water was significantly higher, there would obviously less bathing time for the people in the tubs, and therefore less drownings. With cheap electricity (from Fukushima nuclear or any other source), there would be more people-hours bathing and more drownings.
Expensive energy (and adhesive ducks) saves lives.
The above may seem silly, but it is based on solid fact. Starting with emotional based concerns and fears, then intermingling fact based arguments to make a point is silly.
emsnews – The nuclear core did not “blow up.” When the earthquake occurred, it took down all the off-site sources of power. The diesel generators kicked in as planned. When the tsunami arrived it impacted the diesel generators powering reactors 1 through 4, because those had been sited below-grade (due to concerns about earthquakes). The diesel generators powering units 5 and 6 had at least two that were elevated and continued to function. These could have been used to power units 1 through 3 (unit 4 actually had been completely de-fueled prior to the accident for maintenance), but for the fact that the power distribution center was also located below grade and flooded by the tsunami. The explosions were hydrogen explosions (which I can explain if necessary, but suffice it to say they were) not “nuclear” explosions. A full description of the accident can be found here: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18294/lessons-learned-from-the-fukushima-nuclear-accident-for-improving-safety-of-us-nuclear-plants.
Disclaimer: I served on the committee that wrote the report. All comments here are my personal opinion and do not represent the opinions of the NAS, but you can read it for yourself and see if I’m misrepresenting it. I don’t think I am. There is also discussion of the potential health effects in the context of the emergency response in Chapter 6. It’s a free download.
Nuclear fission low pressure Molten Salt Reactors appear to solve these challenges. Reference Terrestrial Energy, Inc. website for details – terrestrialenergy dot com.
http://terrestrialenergy.com/imsr-technology/
Joel is right that the aim should be cheap energy and irrational nuclear fears stand in the way. Another way to think about this is that lack of energy resource is a bigger killer than anyway so far devised of producing it: poverty kills and the surest way to improve lifespan and human health is to provide energy to people without access to it. All the rest follows on.
These fears are not ‘irrational’. If power plants are not carefully run, supervised or built on insane places like all of Japan or Indonesia or other volcano/earthquake/tsunami places, then all is well but then, they always end up putting these in stupid, dangerous places or political things deteriorate and things fall apart and voila: these entities are then incredibly dangerous.
Emsnews, empathtic to yourmpersonal plight. But, past need not be future,prologue because things change. My books show rather conclusively,thatnnuclear will eventually be needed. Now, I qdvocate we tale the time and care to domit right next time.
Then there is terror attacks and wars: remember, in all wars, nuke plants will be a #1 target. If hit, it ‘gives trouble’ for a long, long, long time. We cannot assume there will never be wars for history shows very clearly, there is. Ditto in spades with terror attacks.
emsnews
O God; o god. We all need college safe zones to curl up in…
Frankly, you demonstrate a juvenile understanding & ability to function in the real world. Yea, things are not black & white, but most mature humans have a brain that can identify & prioritize threats. Granted, nuclear threats are a little more complicated because of black swans (and goof-balls like you), public ignorance and radiation damage takes place almost invisibly (unlike a gun wound).
It is quite possible (but not probable) that I will get hit by a meteorite tomorrow, but I’m not looking to buy a steel umbrella.
emsnews: Do you have a source for the statement “nuke plants will be a #1 target” or is that just your opinion? To be honest, there are a lot better things to start with than nuclear plants. Dirty bombs are just as effective in spreading fear and much easier to create. Knocking out communications could be a first priority—terror reigns when Twitter and Facebook go dead. Damaging water supplies. There are so many things people never think about but the terrorists and enemies in wars are sitting around coming up with these ideas. That’s how we got the biggest terrorist attack in America—doing the unexpected.
The ‘proof’ is obvious! Even ordinary power plants are a huge target in wars! A nuke plant would be double trouble for the victims and thus, a very enticing target. Doubt this, ask the Pentagon about these matters.
I cannot imagine a military group being so arrogant to imagine an enemy seeking to destroy us, would overlook this sort of troublesome target. I give other humans credit for being able to figure out the obvious.
Wishful thinking that nuke plants would be ignored by enemies is…well, hide under your umbrella, its going to rain cats and dogs.
Do you realize how hard it is to destroy a nuclear power plant as compared to a chemical plant? The containment building is inside a *reinforced concrete bunker* These are designed to take a 9-11 style attack. They also have the best security guards in the private sector – ex-military people with assault rifles and sniper rifles, using security system that can pinpoint intruders rapidly. Nuclear plants are only on the target list if you are facing a top-notch military, and if Russia is invading nuclear power plants are the least of our problems. Most chemical plants just have a gate guard, and some terminals or substations only have a fence.
In short, I want terrorist to attack nuclear plants, because then they will die, and not attack chemical plants or other soft targets.
A simple big wave starts the biggest nuclear meltdown/explosion in history and you all think that these places are totally protected from war missiles? All they have to do is disrupt how the place is run (like mess with all the support systems) to cause a disaster. I can think of many things that could be set off. It isn’t all that difficult. I hope our ‘leaders’ do studies about this while they push for war with Russia and China.
emsnews: I want you on the opposing side in a war. Your strategy and understanding of what can and should be wiped out to win is definitely going to keep our side the winner. Unless, of course, you have something to generate a “simple big wave” (definite indication of NO understanding of reality there) and take out a nuclear plant. If you could that, you wouldn’t need the nuclear plant, you could just hit New York, DC and California. Happily, you’d be looking for a nuclear plant and not doing anything so effective as taking out coastal cities.
They crashed a jet into a wall built to the same standards as the walls for containment vessels.
The jet was going over 400mph. The hole it made in a 12 foot thick wall was about 2 inches deep.
Your fear of terrorists destroying a nuclear plant is as irrational as the rest of your fears.
Terrorists would kill thousands times more people by putting that bomb into any number of chemical plants, causing the release of a toxic cloud.
Sherri, emsnews is a lot like a lot of the CO2 alarmists. They are on a mission from god to save the world.
Facts are not important. The mission and the feeling of importance that it gives to their otherwise meaningless lives is all that matters.
If emsnews were to admit that her fears were unfounded, it would destroy the only thing that gives her life meaning. So naturally she rejects any information that doesn’t agree with what she already believes.
Back in the 80’s, I worked on an upgrade for the Vogle nuclear power plant in Georgia.
It was an information management system based on requirements that were generated after TMI.
The system took in information from the plant and presented it on graphic displays. Original system had each signal as it’s own analog display. (The operator had to scan dozens of dials and determine what was going on in the plant based on what each was displaying.)
We also designed and built the case for the displays and computers.
The cabinets were built out of 1/4 inch steel, and the monitors were covered with bullet proof glass. We had to use the over head crane in order to assemble the thing for our tests.
These things were built with terrorists in mind.
The article claiming nuke power is too dangerous is based on lies. Isn’t the current term for articles like this “fake news”?
Read closer. I don’t think that is what this guest post says at all.
I am referring to the anti-nuke part. Not our author’s part.