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 May,
You remarked, “like the loss of a Cobalt-60 source in Ikitelli, Turkey.” That is really a non sequitur because the production of cobalt 60 is not an intrinsic part of producing power. There are small amounts produced by irradiation of the iron in the reactor, but I’m sure that the lost cobalt 60 was purposely created by irradiation of Cobalt 59. It was and is a decision to use reactors to produce something that has numerous uses in medicine and food sterilization. If society decides that the risk of Cobalt 60 outweighs the benefits, society can simply ban its production and we can look for other ways to treat cancer.
:You also stated, “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.” That is true, but it is probably more important that it significantly reduces the amount of time that the remaining waste products have to be isolated from the biosphere. Thanks to an executive decision made by Jimmy Carter, the US is not allowed to extract the remaining fissile material in the waste and this seriously exacerbates the problem of disposing of the material.
You are correct most nuclear incidents that involve mishandled radioactive materials are due to medical waste and not nuclear power fuel. But, the public and the governments don’t care – they fear anything with “nuclear” in the name. The lists they see rarely distinguish between the two. To address the public fear, overall nuclear safety needs to be improved worldwide. I don’t apologize for discussing both nuclear power accidents and medical accidents, I did clearly label which was which. The pubic conflates them, government statistics conflate them, so I did as well.
That the public doesn’t care is not an excuse to further scare the public with misinformation.
Radiation has probably saved many more lives by delivering a knock-out punch to cancer, than deaths ever due to radiation exposure. Like global warming, the benefits are often ignored. The benefits of the useful energy delivery outweigh any of the measured risk. GK
I’ve read several reports claiming that there is a homeopathic response to low levels of radiation.
Something to do with kick starting the cells DNA repair mechanisms.
The evidence to support such a belief is weak. At least it was the last time I looked, years ago.
2 years after ‘Fukushima’ an american expert on radiation induced cancer said
in 20 years maybe 2,000 to 20,000 more radiation induced cancer deaths in Japan;
statistical noise with 1,020,000 cancer induced deaths annually:
https://www.google.at/search?q=Japan+cancer+deaths&oq=Japan+cancer+deaths&aqs=chrome.
Small wonder with 127,3 mill. inhabitants:
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=Mr6rWKm1IuvWgAbAyJrgDQ&q=Japan+inhabitants+&oq=Japan+inhabitants+&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.
An excellent article. I comment here to pay tribute to the late great Petr Beckmann whose pink A4 newsletter Access to Energy fought against the misrepresentation of science in general and nuclear energy in particular. Beckmann, an ex Spitfire pilot, and PhD and MSc, saw the hand of totalitarian activism in the so called green anti-nuclear movement as far back as 1975.
I received his monthly newsletter for many years, asking for it to cease once when I couldn’t afford it. He responded simply to me – it’s your gratis – and airmailed it here to NZ from Boulder Colorado until my finances improved.
A very good man. RIP Sir.
This article was disgraceful. I understand being critical of nuclear power, but the amount of incredibly ignorant claims here is amazing. Take the discussion of nuclear incidents. The author mentions a cobalt-60 source, which is telling. These are *all* of the incidents world-wide which involve *radiation / radioactive materials* As far as major nuclear reactor accidents, you have SL-1, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daichi. Only SL-1 and Chernobyl had radiation casualties (Fukushima had some people killed by the initial earthquake on site IIRC) All of the rest are either nuclear fuel and weapons processing accidents, or commercial radioactive materials sources getting into the wrong hands. Cobalt-60 sources are used in medicine for treating cancer and industrial radiography, not nuclear power.
This is like counting coal mine disasters as a safety issue for coal power, residential gas explosions for gas turbine power, and all floods against hydropower.
As far as nuclear waste goes, every utility in the US has been contributing toward building a repository for spent fuel. However, Sen. Harry Reid blocked its construction. We could also start recycling nuclear fuel again, like France and Britain. Waste disposal is actually a fairly simple problem, which was solved in principle during the 60s. You can convert nuclear waste to a glassy material that is insoluble in water, and store it in a dry location. After that, it is no different from any other hazardous waste. (most of which never decays)
Also, your comment on the Thorium fuel cycle shows that you do not understand how it works. Thorium does indeed produce U-233 – that is much of what drives the nuclear reaction. However, the U-233 is contaminated with U-232, which is difficult to remove and produces large amounts of radiation. It is just as hard to hard to purify U-233 from U-232 as it is to extract U-235 from natural uranium.
Anthony should get someone with more knowledge of the issues to write about nuclear power. The public perception and long start up time are major issues for nuclear power, and criticism there is certainly possible once the person is able to talk about it reasonably.
UK fuel recycling has not been a success… not sure how French have done.
Note also there is concern about safety issues and flaws identified in reactors before they actually caused an accident. That contributed to the German distrust of nuclear.
The French have been highly successful for decades.
Let me explain: the reason why many people didn’t die due to the nuclear power plants blowing up is because they were immediately evacuated. So fast, they had virtually no time to pack any bags! The are all far, far away from their homes and these homes are still mostly empty.
This is what has to be focused on: no one can go back home. Does anyone here want to have that fate? This week, the Japanese government announced they are ceasing support for people who lost their homes due to this event! They are being cut off now. Talk to them. See how they feel about all this.
So we are reduced to “feelings” now. As important as feeling may be to you, they have very little to do with actual risk. A good dose of realism needs to be sprinkled over your fear sundae. GK
People are removed via eminent domain, tornado hits (towns aren’t rebuilt nearly as fast as they used to be—people seem to just move elsewhere), freeways being run through one’s front yard. My mother had to move as a child because the state decided to move a river channel. A sister-in-law had a freeway run near the first house she had. We moved in high school when a liquor store was built next to our house and my parents did not want to deal with the traffic. The store went in in spite of protests against it—forcing people to learn to love it or move. A lot of people “can never go back home”. That’s part of life. Most people used to realistically deal with it. Now there’s a lot of moaning and the irrational belief that nothing should ever, ever, ever change. The only cure is the re-introduction of reality to life.
The major question here is: How much of the evacuation was scientifically necessary and how much was political? Did science or politics cause the damage?
emsnews says, “the reason why many people didn’t die due to the nuclear power plants blowing up is because they were immediately evacuated.”
So, none of that is true. The explosions were hydrogen explosions in units 1, 3 and 4, which would not have impacted the local population at all. The population out to 2 kilometers was evacuated relatively quickly in anticipation of a potential meltdown. They were evacuated before they were ever in any danger from the nuclear units. Evacuations further out were ordered as the accident progressed, but no one was ever in any imminent danger of death (except those that died because they were evacuated to evade a small increased risk of future cancer). The inability to repopulate most of the evacuated areas are (in my personal and professional opinion) due to 1) unrealistic clean-up goals (i.e., existing contamination levels in many areas do not pose measurable risks), 2) people have established lives and livelihoods elsewhere, and 3) irrational fear.
The real complex question after Fukushima for Geomorphologists is:
what possible magnitude of earthquake and following tsunami shall I teach my students:
https://www.google.at/search?client=ms-android-samsung&ei=rcmrWN_JH4mnaI_UrYAL&q=earthquake+Fukushima+scale+&oq=earthquake+Fukushima+scale+&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.
Last post, need to go to bed. Failure to identify the all stupid here should not be an indication of anything except too much stupid.
Maybe someone should write an essay about car accidents before seat belt or polio deaths before a vaccine. [\sarc]
My point is that the current fleet of LWR built to US standards have a perfect safety record. They produce affordable power. If you claim to have cheap natural gas for 60 years, lock up that in a contract but do not expect delivery.
All power plants have to be safe and protect the environment.
Fusion is coming rapidly now. It may be 20-30 years before commercial Fusion plants are operating, but any other large scale Fission plant would take as long or longer to license and to construct like an MSR Thorium plant.
Fusion has been 20 to 30 years off for over 60 years.
The ITER fusion research reactor is now scheduled for first run (not break-even, just *run*) in 2035. Even if it works, it would most optimistically lead to a prototype reactor that would take another 10 years to build. Plus, hot fusion reactors generate a lot of high speed neutrons that would turn the reactor walls into high level waste.
Retired K., ‘last post’ –
https://youtu.be/wQSx02nvG6g
The windfarm accidents, if accurate, are in construction and maintenance. The nuclear deaths are from accidents/plant failure.
The two sets of figures are not related: it is an apples and pears comparison.
Griff: Do you understand what an apples and pears comparison really is? Or are you labelling fruit in a way designed to prove your point? I can never really tell with you.
So tell me young griff, what part of construction and maintenance was a german parachutist doing when she was killed by a wind turbine?
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960465/parachutist-death-wind-turbine
Can you name any other industry where seriously powerful rotating machinery is not covered by H & S legislation that insists on guards around all rotating blades, and absolutely limits public access to sites where such is?
Or any other industry where noisy dangerous industrial machinery is given planning permission in quiet rural areas?
There is nothing more sickening than a wind farm apologist is there? It’s almost as bad as a holocaust denier…
Can I ask a question about FLONUPS (I hate all these acronyms) – how do you get the power they. Produce to where you need it? undersea cables I presume, but that won’t be trouble free.
HVDC undersea cables can suffer from anchor damage – UK/France one damaged last year… but latest tech as being used on Norway/UK interconnector has a device follow cable track once laid and ‘blow’ a channel into the silt, then cable topples in and gets safely buried.
At least a 30 yr old technology. Nuttin new…
la la Land. Sleep away.
Anyway, Japan lived through – fanfare to the common Japanese men –
https://youtu.be/c2zurZig4L8
4.3 million who die every year due to indoor air pollution from burning biomass or coal indoors
Read that then stopped. These are all the magic numbers created by statistician from zero evidence..
The number is from the World Health Organization, check the link in the post or here http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/
I object to the categorisation of things like the loss of a Cobalt-60 source as a nuclear accident. It did not involve a nuclear power station. Yes, nuclear radiation sources (used in nuclear medicine and industrial applications) have been lost and caused many deaths. But they caused by nuclear POWER.
If you restrict the deaths claimed from nuclear sources to just those actually involving nuclear power, I think you will find that it is pretty much just Chernobyl. Nobody died at Three Mile Island and the deaths at Fukushima were from blunt force trauma and drowning, not radiation.
Oops…
But they were not caused by nuclear POWER.
I’ve updated the post to address some of the concerns in the comments. To me it says the same thing it did before, but I’ve tried to be more clear. To me, the problem with nuclear power is the time to permit and build a power station, that is why the private sector is not in the business. Whether 31 or 4200 people died due to Chernobyl is not really a factor. The public and governments are afraid of nuclear, causing huge delays and the delays are too expensive. Plus, obviously, the safety statistics are all over the map depending upon the person compiling them and what they want to “prove.” My point is that does not really matter, other sources are more dangerous regardless of which fatality number you use. Arguing whether 31 or 4200 is correct simply doesn’t matter. I’ve suggested some changes that might help based on my experience in oil and gas, which has had some of the same problems. Standard parts could help a lot. I hope this new version is better.
The UK illustrates your points about build and permitting:
The new EDF design at Hinkley Point will take at least 10 years to build…
The design intended for Wylfa in Wales could be constructed in 4 years and seemingly has had quicker approval for its UK ABWR design.
One design of a type proven elsewhere would certainly be better for the UK… seems unlikely to happen.
Does anyone remember the incredible death toll from the coal-fired global warming heat waves of 2010?
=================
The heat waves had caused around 17,905,000 deaths globally, with 3,000+ direct, 17,821,672+ indirect, and 21+ unconfirmed deaths, through factors including famines and heat strokes.
=================
Someone just deleted that quote from the wikipedia page, so I checked the revisions and found this…
“18M deaths and a precision of “21+” unconfirmed – dodgy” – William M Connolley. Feb 21, 2017
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2010_Northern_Hemisphere_summer_heat_waves&action=history
Deleted today. It only took William 7 years to act. 🙂
Perhaps small, modular, fail safe, factory manufactured nukes are the answer the world needs for a nearly boundless energy supply. Babcock & Wilcox, among others, has such a design which languishes in the present environment while we waste billions on greeniac fantasies such as the idiotic windmills. Since our political system has become distorted by too much government power, funds are misdirected ala Lysenkoism to inane uses. If industry was stronger the government would need to listen to industry voices but the government has two strangle holds on business;n taxation and regulation. So the CEOs cower and publish platitudes while the great ship of state sails into a sea of icebergs. The several hundred electric utilities in our country would be wise to organize behind a modular uclear generation program; but they will not. The USA acts only when crisis demands a reaction.
“small, modular, fail safe, factory manufactured nukes ”
Marketing BS. Small is the key word. If you want small put up some solar panels.
Nuclear has great economy of scale. Coal and gas require huge amounts of fuel daily. Unless the fossil fuel source is local, there us a huge drain of capital.
emsnews on February 21, 2017 at 5:28 am
The entire discussion here hinges on trying to prove points via ‘how many died’
____________________________________
emsnews move along till YOU dare answere.
The entire discussion here hinges on trying to prove points via ‘how many died’ rather than ‘how many years/centuries/eons must pass’ before one can go near a nuclear disaster like Fukushima. Right now, we have no idea. We do know that nuclear power plants can fail. We know these failures last a very long time. And we know that we have no idea of all the other possible ways this can happen again.
Ignoring the unknown is not wise. And it doesn’t persuade people to not worry about nuclear power plants because they feel the real fear after what happened in Japan. This cannot be ignored or taunted. It must be realistically faced.
I do not see that here.
see also Chernobyl, where a vast area remains abandoned and restrictions on eating livestock from affected areas in europe lasted decades…
The only restriction on eating game caught in the Chernobyl region are that they have to be checked by geiger counter before processing. There is no livestock in the area since nobody lives there at present.
Regardless, the only reason why the radiation is so widespread is because Chernobyl was built without a containment vessel. No western plant was ever built without such a vessel.
BTW, the other reactor at Chernobyl is still in operation.
Mark, you seem unaware that livestock (sheep) in upland areas of the UK were banned from the food chain for years after chernobyl, thanks to the fall out persisting in the vegetation
so also reindeer in parts of Scandinavia… and those weren’t the only bans.
As always, Griffie takes panic as proof that the panic was necessary.
Even if the event it claims to remember actually did happen, there was no reason for it beyond the irrational fear of people such as itself.
Fake news.
There was no nuclear disaster at Fukushima. People did not need to leave and they can go back anytime without being hurt.
Then I suggest you take advantage of the really cheap property there, then…
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/five-years-after-meltdown-it-safe-live-near-fukushima
Since you are so concerned about carbon dioxide emmissions, you should be living without the use of any energy whatsoever. No cars or public transportation for you. Only bicycles and walking for you.
No AC, and heat has to be from fully renewable sources.
You can’t buy anything that was transported or created using fossil fuels.
If you can’t see how silly you sound, then you are probably an AGW nutcase.
The area that has to be restricted for centuries can be measured in square meters.
The entire discussion hinges on what is reality and what is phobia. An entire continent was not made uninhabitable by Chernobyl. Only a TINY area of Russia. You are obssessing over a TINY area of the planet and making it a HUGE monster that we must cry and run from. It’s not realistic.
Griffie and the other greens have been proclaiming that feelings trump data for years.
Again. Not true. I’ve been to Fukushima Daiichi. Stood on the roof of Unit 4, over the loaded spent fuel pool in November 2012. Flora and fauna around Chernobyl are flourishing, and many don’t know this, but there are locals that refused to evacuate still living in the exclusion zone. Also, no one is “ignoring the unknown.” We can detect incredibly low levels of radioactive material and radiation. There is nothing “unknown” about the potential risks, except to the extent that calculate risks are quite likely much lower than those predicted by strict application of the linear no-threshold hypothesis.
“Retired Kit P — the six deaths are Fukushima are still attributed to the use of nuclear power. Not one died from radiation exposure. However, the point I was making is that 1600 people died due to the stress of the evacuation. That’s when you have to wonder about our priorities.”
It would appear the priority of most posters here is to make up stuff to support their agenda, pro and con.
If you are producing electricity your #1 priority is not exposing children to I-131. The evil empire, USSR, was a case of failure because they learned nothing from TMI.
In Japan, as measured, no children were exposed to I-131. Zero risk of thyroid cancer. In hindsight maybe evacuation was unnecessary but with three reactor cores heading to core damage and containment pressure increasing, I think evacuation was the correct call.
It was my job in the navy to recommend to the captain when to abandon the ship in case of a reactor accident. It was the captains responsibility to decide if the risk from radiation exposure was greater than the risk of drowning.
I have participated in emergency drills at US nuke plants. Exposure wise, there is a huge difference between a small ship and a 5 miles.
Just to clarify, some children in Japan were exposed to iodine 131, but to much less than those children affected by the Chernobyl accident. In part, this was because Japan ordered evacuations early; in prefectures close to the plant, potassium iodide (KI) was distributed (although rather erratically); Japan ordered interdiction of milk and limitations on water very early (compared to the interdictions following Chernobyl), and (though fortuitous) the Japanese diet is iodine rich (unlike the Ukainian diet), which dampens the uptake of radioactive iodine in the thyroid.
“I grew up in Arizona and lived next to the Papago reservation”
So ems was not a downwinder. During weapons testing, I was a downwinder when we lived in Ohio but not when lived in Seattle.
I have looked at the science of releases from US weapons programs. My conclusion is that we have to much exposure to lawyers and journalists who make up stuff for their own profit.
Agreed a 100 times over. Lawyers seem to be the greatest threat to persons in the USA. Personal injury lawyers.
“Yucca Mountain was stopped by Obama.”
The courts ordered Obama to continue. Also a OMB report trashed DOE’s economic analysis. Since Yucca Mountain is next to the Nevada test site for underground testing, it is nobodies back yard.
I have no reason to think ems or American tribes would fair any better under the Nazis, Japanese , or the USSR. Those folks exterminated people for fun.
“Coal plants generate more radiation than nuclear plants do.”
That is a stupid statement Leo. Coal plants do not generated any radiation. There is trace amounts of naturally occurring uranium which is not a radiological hazard. Furthermore no one is exposed to measurable levels of radiation. You can hold uranium in your hand. I have.
Nuke plant fission uranium generating huge amounts of radiation. If you are accidentally exposed to a criticality, you will die. When uranium fission, the fission product atoms generating huge amounts of radiation. If you are accidentally exposed to spent fuel, you will die.
If your body absorbs too much energy suddenly, you will die. You can also die by absorbing energy slowly or loosing energy slowly.
No one dies from my power plants, they get hit by cars , too much exposure to the sun, or freeze to death.
Leo’s statement is not stupid. Emissions from coal plants contain much more radioactive material than emissions from nuclear power plants. It is naturally occurring radioactive material, but the alpha, beta and gamma particles emitted are no different than those emitted from fission or activation products. It is not even sensible to bring in a discussion of exposure to spent fuel, since the public exposure is only to air and water effluents, and coal emissions trounce emissions from nuclear power plants in terms of radiation and radioactive material in that regard.
I have a lot of opinions on nuclear power, but I’ll spare you folks most of them. One thing though that I think could be both true and important. There are about 500 serious power reactors in the world (give or take a bit) and about 50 years of operating experience. That’s at most 25000 operating years. And we’ve had two significant failures — one due to blatantly irresponsible design and operation and one despite a reasonable attempt to do things right. We also had a near miss at TMI. That suggests that the catastrophic failure rate for nuclear power might be .5 per 10000 operating years or maybe even higher.
Problem is that were we to try to power to world with mostly nuclear power. And were we to try to provide every human being who wants a decent standard of living (almost all of them I should think) with enough energy to live comfortably, we’re probably looking at something like 10000-20000 nuclear power plants.
The question then is, are our political systems up to dealing with a bona fide nuclear power plant disaster every year or so? I’m inclined to think not.
From every incident, we learn and improve.
Modern designs are leaps and bounds better than what was being built in the 60’s.
Chernobyl was a design that was rejected completely in the west because it was inherently unsafe.
TMI was primarily caused by operator overload. They were presented with too much information and were unable to make the proper decision in time to save the reactor. As a result of that , information systems have been re-worked to better present the critical information to the operators in a more timely fashion.
Fukushima was not the result of a design flaw in the reactor, but rather a stupid decision about where to place the back up generator. One that the regulatory agency in charge had already told the operators to fix. Regardless, only plants in areas prone to tsunamis need to worry about that particular flaw.
@Don K
“The question then is, are our political systems up to dealing with a bona fide nuclear power plant disaster every year or so? I’m inclined to think not.”
The US fleet of LWRs power reactors for the navy and commercial power plants is the largest in the world with about 200 reactors operating at a time. TMI was an example of a severe accident or catastrophic failure.
Clearly the US has the political systems to handle it. Lesson learned from TMI were incorporated around the world. If you read reports about other industrial accidents they often cite how the navy and also the US nuclear industry prevented recurrence of such problems.
I am skeptical of a failure rate based on one event 30 years ago can be used to predict a trend.
If you look at the USSR, there political system failed on the issue of nuclear safety. Of course the evil empire failed in just about every aspect of safety.
Japan was a epic natural disaster. The world political system handled the disaster including catastrophic failure at three reactors at the same time just fine.
The only issue was the nut case Obama put in charge of the NRC. Local organization call for help when they did it. Idiots not trained in emergency response should bud out.
There have only been two serious accidents in the nuclear power industry. Windscale and Chernobyl.
3MI and Fukushima were, in terms or danger to the public, very minor.
20,279,640 GWh/y is what wiki says is the current electrical generation, of which 10% is currently nuclear
That’s around a total capacity of 2315 GW.
For redundancy, lets say 2500GW of capacity to replace every single fossil and renewable power station.
A typical nuclear power station is 3.2-5GW these days, so worst case 730 nuclear power plants will generate all the electricity mankind needs right now.
Or around 2000 to replace gas oil and coal in all energy applications including transport.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/nuclear-basics/global-number-of-nuclear-reactors.aspx
says there are 400 or so reactors currently operating, but many of these are much much smaller than genIII -IV types would be.
IN short its not a lot of reactors.
And they do get better.
And there has never been, nor in fact could there be, serious loss of life. Even chernobyl style radiation release is impossible with newer type reactors.
MarkW writes
“Kit P, make it a chemical processing plant, or any of the hundreds of types of commercial facilities that handle toxic materials.”
I have done about 3 years work applying nuclear safety system methodology to chemical processing plants. I was doing some background reading and did not understand when it said the probability of failure was one. I asked the manager and he explained the life of the plant was until it blew up. He then show me a video of an explosion in Henderson, Nevada (where I am currently visiting).
What was disturbing to me was that outside of the nuclear industry killing people used to be an acceptable risk of doing business. If you look at immediate deaths, nuclear would not make the top 100 list for industrial accidents. It took 50 years before industry was forced by OSHA regulations to adopt practices in the nuclear industry for not killing people.
It’s not that killing people was an acceptable risk, it’s more that the only option that would eliminate all chance of killing people was to shut the entire plant down and for the consumers to completely do without whatever you were creating.
You can be like emsnews and demand that only 100% safe is acceptable, or you can realize that in the real world, accidents happen. You do everything in your power to decrease the likelihood of an accident, but it is impossible to drive that risk all the way to zero.
To refine what I stated earlier.
Safety costs money. More safety costs more money.
At some point you have added so much safety that it is no longer possible to create a product that people can afford to buy.
So there always a trade off between safety and cost. In the real world working with real people and real problems, that will always be the case.
Nuclear, being in a highly regulated business, it’s easier to pass costs to the customers than it is in other industries.
21 February 2017
Small amounts of iodine-131, well below levels likely to have any effect on human health, were detected in outdoor air last month in a number of European countries. The source of the release has yet to be identified.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Detector-network-flags-traces-of-radioactive-iodine-in-Europe-2102175.html
British tabloid :”The high levels of Iodine-131 has led some to suggest Putin is testing nuclear weapons in Novaya Zemlya near the Arctic.
However, the CTBTO (Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation) ruled out a nuclear test had recently taken place.”
At one time there was a seismic network designed to detect nuclear blasts. Does it only work on below ground blasts, or has it been disbanded?
It now detects earthquakes AND nuclear blasts.