Safety of Nuclear Power Plants

[synaesthetic]

My brain hurts after reading the above article.

[Ithekro]

"Well let us take a look at it, Mr. Gumby."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIlKiRPSNGA

Sorry, that's the first thing I think about when I hear or see the line "My brain hurts".

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

"Well let us take a look at it, Mr. Gumby."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIlKiRPSNGA

Sorry, that's the first thing I think about when I hear the line "My brain hurts".

Probably one of my favorites of the series (and my dad's favorite - he also had to work with the public and idiot bureaucrats).

[Kuroi Hadou]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

My brain hurts after reading the above article.

I assume you mean "My brain hurts after reading how stupid the politicians mentioned in the above article are."? I mean seriously: A new study three years later isn't going to reveal anything substantially different than the previous one.

[Zetsubo]

I am tired of people bring up Chernobyl now.

The accident was a totally different cause and a totally different design.

I remember from my schoolboy days the report after the accident found that an experiment was being done at the plant at the time of the accident.

Im amazed reporters today didn't rehash this important bit of information.

That an experiemnt was being done at the plant why it exploded.

From my engineering lessons, I have learned that accidents in complex systems don't happen suddenly without warning and they are always caused by a series of tiny events all laid up like dominoes in line.

But if you can remove the dominoes one by one you break the line of the accident waiting to happen.

Fukushima has been hit by an 8.9 Earth Quake why don't people realize HOW SERIOUS that is ? How many have 8.9's occurred on this planet in modern times ?


Then a Tsunami came and took out the backup systems.

After all that crap... Fukushima is still standing ok enough for work to be done to help bring the problem reactor back under control.

I just don't get how people can't praise the design of the plant and the effort of the team.

They were given a a curve ball by nature 8.9's happen maybe once every 100 years... and the buildings were still standing !

I don't want to downplay the danger, but I would like people to put it into perspective... and most importantly... the fact that Chernobyl was not like Fukushima and... Chernobyl was being experimented with.

[Athena]

But it can't be denied the fact that some people will die due to the radioactivity.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by kira0802

But it can't be denied the fact that some people will die due to the radioactivity.

Some people will always die. For whatever reason. Like when a dam in Japan was destroyed by the earthquake and the resulting flooding killed many people. So are you going to suggest Hydroelectricity is too dangerous to use too?

There is nothing SAFE about any powerplant. They are big buildings that generate blobs of lighting. There is a reason we have highly trained professionals operating these things.

No matter what, when accidents and disasters happen, people die. That's how disasters work.

Do you know what is the single most lethal human invention on the planet in history? Not nukes, not even bullets. It is the humble auto-mobile. More people get killed by cars than anything else man-made on this earth. So why not ban cars when they are never 100% safe?

[Zetsubo]

Originally Posted by kira0802

But it can't be denied the fact that some people will die due to the radioactivity.

Will you stop ?

This is an accident of unprecedented proportion.

1. An 8.9 Earth quake
2. A Tsunami
3. Winter conditions
4. Total Loss of electrical power

More people died and will die from those situations listed above than any radioactivity.

Focus on those who are without food and warmth tonight, while you are comfortable in your home fussing over a BWR system and a heroic set of people risking themselves to save their nation form worse problem.

[Random32]

Originally Posted by kira0802

But it can't be denied the fact that some people will die due to the radioactivity.

Maybe a few will die. Compared to the death toll of the tsunami, or even the quake itself, it is a minuscule amount. The only people that are at any risk are probably the "Fukushima 50," and not only did they agree to risking themselves to the sake of others, the vast majority of them will die of causes other than the radiation.

[Athena]

...can people stop saying that it's "a little bit of human beings dead" compared to the tsunami? A HUMAN LIFE IS A LIFE. What could have been prevented should have been.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...bles-show.html

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Zetsubo

Will you stop ?

This is an accident of unprecedented proportion.

1. An 8.9 Earth quake
2. A Tsunami
3. Winter conditions
4. Total Loss of electrical power

More people died and will die from those situations listed above than any radioactivity.

Focus on those who are without food and warmth tonight, while you are comfortable in your home fussing over a BWR system and a heroic set of people risking themselves to save their nation form worse problem.

Actually I donated money to the red cross. What have you done to help the people there?

[Zetsubo]

Originally Posted by Jinto

Actually I donated money to the red cross. What have you done to help the people there?

poor taste

[Athena]

@Zetsubo I have participated in some street sweeping for money to Haiti and am probably going to do this for Japan, happy?

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Zetsubo

poor taste

You know usually I differntiate between big words and action. I am not the type of person who gives the best condolences and is always politically correct. But I help when I can. And I cannot do more than donating to an NGO. But I don't like it, if somebody plays the moralizer and its basically just emtpy words. Because those words do not prevent that people will die.

[Magin]

I'm not sure whether this belongs here or in the Japan earthquake, but I'm playing it safe and putting it here

Basically, it's my two cents on the nuclear power plants and why they're getting all this attention. And the reason is very simple, if you ask me: it's a double-edged sword. Though they provide great power, they can also cause great destruction. And naturally, people are always going to question the part about great destruction.

Of course, that also brings up "but cars and other man-made products are also the same way, so why aren't they getting all this kind of attention?" First off, it's because these objects are commonplace, something that in order to have be made such, I have no doubt that they were originally placed through hundreds of thousands of tests to be made readily available to the populace. Even still, we all know the dangers of things like these and that they can kill; we also have gone far and wide to discover any and all preventive measures within human capability. And for many people, they're a part of everyday life and are therefore very comfortable with them

Nuclear power plants, on the other hand, are far from commonplace/ available to the general populace. As I've seen demonstrated multiple times, the general populace knows very little about power plants beyond that they provide great power, but can also be one of the deadliest creations of mankind, along with the various bombs we've made for wars (and Chernobyl didn't help the case for nuclear power plants, despite it have been pretty much a disaster waiting to happen). So naturally, when we have a situation like this, the media's going to focus on something that because most people know very little about, and feed the fear of stuff going horribly wrong to the masses, despite those who actually know what the hell they're talking about going and giving the actual straight facts. Not to mention, when it comes to safety... well, I'm sure that more can be done, but more hasn't been done because of the fact that it's not something people deal with on an everyday basis (beyond the power plant workers themselves)

just wanted to get this little rant out...

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Look at it this way; I can get into my car right now, and kill someone with it. And nothing in the car would be able to stop me.

Compare that to a nuclear powerplant, where I would need to disengage or outright rip out entire pieces of hardware in order to cause it to be damaged, let alone melt down.

There is nothing logical about treating cars as safe and nuclear powerplants as unsafe. People just aren't willing to give up cars because they can't live without them.

On the other hand, electricity it taken for granted. You are suppose to get your mains power from a magical fairyland. Nuclear powerplants are suppose to be dangerous monsters, born into the world by mad scientists who want nothing more than destroy the world. I mean, we don't need nuclear powerplants for electricity, right? Because it's not like we actually need to turn it on in our backyard. We plug our appliances into the wall socket, and we pay our power bills every month. That's all. The money gets magically turned into power. Powerplants are evil monstrosities that offer nothing... Right?

[DDshoeshowz]

Originally Posted by kira0802

...can people stop saying that it's "a little bit of human beings dead" compared to the tsunami? A HUMAN LIFE IS A LIFE. What could have been prevented should have been.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...bles-show.html

THANK YOU! The only reason that some of the posters in this thread can even talk about people that way is because they come from a privileged situation. I'm sure they wouldn't be saying the same thing if the natural disasters had taken place outside of their own home!

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

...
On the other hand, electricity it taken for granted. You are suppose to get your mains power from a magical fairyland. Nuclear powerplants are suppose to be dangerous monsters, born into the world by mad scientists who want nothing more than destroy the world. I mean, we don't need nuclear powerplants for electricity, right? Because it's not like we actually need to turn it on in our backyard. We plug our appliances into the wall socket, and we pay our power bills every month. That's all. The money gets magically turned into power. Powerplants are evil monstrosities that offer nothing... Right?

Ah good, that you made that statement. I was basically waiting for it, because I wanted to tell a little tale from Germany.

Once upon a time in Germany there was greedy gang of power utilities, who ripped of Germany's population selling them expensive electricity. They promised, if they could use nuclear power plants they could generate electricity for a lower price. They also promised the nuclear power plants will be completely secure.

So they built nuclear power plants (sometimes against the will of local communities). And they kept their promise, they produced electricty for a lower price. However, the costs for electricity never really declined. So the EU spoke that the german power utilities have to sell their electricity on the electricity stock exchange. And if they are also distributors (all of the are) they have to buy the elctricity there. The power utilities didn't like the idea in the beginning. But soon they figured out how to manipulate the stock exchange to their advantage.
For some reason electricity was always scarce and therefore expensive when local community power units bought electricity from the electricity stock exchange. And for some odd reason electricity was overbundend and hence very cheap when the big power utilities where buying their own electricity.

In the meantime green Germans were causing havoc in the politics. And introduced things like feed in tarifs for renewables or setting up plan to phase out nuclear powerplants.
The big power utilities were not amused. Now they had to buy electricity at feed in tarif from producers of renewable energies. And on top of that they had to phase out their cash cows. Those convenient nuclear power plants, where electricity generation costs are very low and the otherwise expensive storing of the nuclear waste was basically for free, since all Germans had to pay for it with their taxes. A very hard time was coming for them, and before they even could feel the hardness they delegated it to the end consumer German.
Electricity prices were rising in a pace where the costs for the feed in tarifs simply were not able to follow.

But there was still the phase out of their nuclear power plants. Some time later political constellations were better, and is was time to make a deal. The government was promised a small tax for electricity produced in their nuclear power plants, and that they will help reduce CO2 emissions, which in their oppinion renewables alone could never achieve. They simply demand, that they are allowed to run their nuclear power plants longer in return.

The deal was made, and the big power utilities were happy. And rightly so, they had saved enough power generation capacity to save their electricity exchange scam tactics for the next decade.

But then in a country called Japan, an incident happened. This incident happened in the time of the german state election cycle. And boy were the big power utlities unlucky, because the german government ordered to put the majoity of german nuclear plants off from the grid. Now they had no choice and had to take them at least temporarily down.

The german populace was wondering, why this is even possible when that electricity is almost always scarce and expensive. They were expecting blackouts but there were none. For the big power utilities it was a black day however, since not only their melking cow was stopped, but they were not able to scam as much at the electrisity stock.

[Xacual]

Originally Posted by DDshoeshowz

THANK YOU! The only reason that some of the posters in this thread can even talk about people that way is because they come from a privileged situation. I'm sure they wouldn't be saying the same thing if the natural disasters had taken place outside of their own home!

You know some of the posters here are from Japan right?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Xacual

You know some of the posters here are from Japan right?

No, some of the posters seem unaware that we have members in Japan, Europe, South America... and many live close to nuclear power plants as well as study their technology, policy, and (as Jinto notes) the tendency of individual power brokers to be greedy or cheat. Some of us have actually been through disasters or personally know people who have.

I find that people who have been wrapped in too much bubblewrap tend to estimate or analyze risk poorly if they haven't had risk analysis training.