Safety of Nuclear Power Plants

[Zetsubo]

Originally Posted by Kuroi Hadou

Did you know that the longer the half-life, the less radioactive the material is? And that you're actually more likely to die in one of the eight most populous cities of today due to pollution than if you actually lived at the hypocenter of Chernobyl now?

I can't use that logic with regular people.

It has too many variables.

The ordinary man will say that smoke or smog inhalation is NOT guaranteed to kill you if you lived in the middle of shanghai.

He will say he has a higher survival chance.

But if you lived in near radioactive material, your chance is diminished faster than if you lived directly under high tension transmission lines and beside a metropolitan sewage treatment plant.

You see, humanity has gotten use to pollution since the industrial revolution.

They feel their body can deal with it... since they can SEE IT or take steps to cleans their body if its effects.

Radioactive dosing however, to the layman, is death incarnate.

Here is the kicker... the magic word RADIO... that word alone gives people the willies... since radio means "omniscient presence" to most people.

I am trying to develop arguments for pro-atomic power... so help me out here... because the layman arguments are using ocams razor... and It is getting harder.

[Samari]

I haven't read all the news regarding the plants in Japan...nor have I read all of the information in this thread. But I want to know one thing: Does Japan's nuclear plants pose any danger to the west coast of the United States? Specifically up here in the bay area?

[Zetsubo]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Ask people what they feel about electricity rationing.
Ask them what they will feel if they could only have mains power for 6 hours a day, and if you go over the daily quota you get shut down. All the while paying MORE for the power than they currently do.

Powerplants are not for decoration. Tell the complainers to live without power for a month, and see how they fare.

The analogy is that you can't die from a car accident if you never leave your house. But is that a real option?

Those arguments only work with technical people like us.

For example.... My girlfriend will ask me...

"WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN THE REACTOR GOES HISSSSSS ?"

And she will demand that I answer that question before I go any further.

I cant side step that point... no matter how I tried.

I have to answer it... or loose the debate.

When We lost our number 3 turbine and boilers... we cleaned up the place and carted the scrap to the local dump. We then cleared the soil of oil treated it relaid foundations and started a new installation on the same piece of land.

We cut up the old damaged scrap and sold it to china. That money was given to the technicians that got hurt in the accident and most are still alive and working at the plant.

18 months later new steam turbine and boilers (gas fired)

So....

how do I explain it.

What do I do as the lead engineer when my reactor goes critical ?

These are the fears most of my country men have... and if we had ONE nuclear plant we most likely would never have energy problems for 40years (we are a small country)

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Zetsubo

I am trying to develop arguments for pro-atomic power... so help me out here... because the layman arguments are using ocams razor... and It is getting harder.

Look, the layman doesn't care about burning fossil fuels for electricity because they live with them every day. You are never going to convince them that something they don't live with is less dangerous than something they do live with. Truth doesn't matter here, not for the ill-informed.

The only way you are going to convince anyone is to just cause an electricity supply shortage. i.e. when it is too late to start building new Plants, and you would take two years to get the power supply back up. The layman assumes the electricity from their power socket came magically from the ether, so you have to convince them otherwise.

Fact: Until we find a renewable source of power that is actually able to be used for everyone everywhere, the medium term electricity future is nuclear fission. Coal and gas power supply will never actually run out, but the price will go up so high over time that it would no longer be economical unless the electricity becomes a luxury good.

I am talking about what will happen in our lifetime; fusion or space elevator solar collectors are beyond us right now.

"WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN THE REACTOR GOES HISSSSSS ?"

And she will demand that I answer that question before I go any further

Ask her what will she do when she lose the use of electricity for the rest of her life.

Because if she can't survive without electricity, she loses the argument.

As an analogy, I eat a lot of meat. But it would be insane if I eat meat while at the same time, demanding that animals not be slaughtered for food. To get scared of nuclear powerplants is like being scared of planes; if you are so scared, stop using it. And if you don't want to stop using it, suck it up and take the consequences.

EDIT: And seriously, does your girlfriend think nuclear plants are built as decoration? Does she understand that every time someone bought a new fridge, the power supply has to go up? Why do you think your girlfriend isn't "technical" enough to understand this?

[Zetsubo]

Originally Posted by Solace

We've been using nuclear power for decades now. The two biggest "meltdowns" were due to engineering issues and human error. Both are now very old news and technology and understanding of nuclear power have both come a long way. That doesn't mean that it is "safe", but nothing is. All you can do is minimize any potential, foreseeable problems, and if something does go wrong, fix it the best you can and re-engineer future iterations with what you've learned.

What's irritating about the criticism of Japans nuclear plants is that it took an absolutely massive earthquake and huge tsunami to cause the damage. That's not human error, these plants were built with such things in mind. However, I don't care how amazing you engineer something the force of nature is nothing to scoff at. That the plants affected even have the chance of being prevented from becoming worse is a testament to how well built they were considering what they were hit with.

Well my neighbour states clearly...

"An earthquake and tsunami can mess up a conventional power station. Do you know what happens ? They don't have to worry spilled BunkerC oil giving radiation leaks felt 10 miles away. No one can detect bunker C leaks on a bloody aircraft carrier in the ocean ! No has to evacuate a whole city because of a blown turby. If the turby is blown, people can power up their portables and the grid will re route and rotate for as long as it takes... but we still live in the city and my dog wont have 6 legged puppies"

So i am beginng to loose faith in my ability to explain that Atomic energy is really as safe as can be... it was hard before when our minstry of energy was thinking about it... but the plan was shut down.

The plan was shut down (long before the Japan tragedy) because of many of the questions i am asking including what someone said in a public forum....

"We have previously lost boilers and turbines because of poor maintenance and sleepy technicians. Humans are humans and high tech systems that exist in a nuclear powered systems will work as built perfectly until some lazy technician falls asleep and hits the wrong button, or worse some lazy accountant and corporate bunglers cut back on maintaining sleeping safety systems and bureaucracy gets in the mix"

In otherwords... to the folks back home... loosing a conventional power plant is no where as catastrophic as loosing a Nuclear power plant.

They want to know that when a human fucks up that the pain wont be as much.

Can I honestly tell a person at these public meetings that a human error is not possible ?

Can I tell them that if it happens that the system is deffinetly will fail safely ?

Can I tell them that if we get a tri-fecta of shit from Mother nature all saftey systems will work ?

Can I tell them that accountants wont force us engineers to cut corners ?

Can I tell them to TRUST US !

The already don't trust us with conventional power... expecting to see another power plant fail because some manager didn't want to have the boiler tubes inspected regulaly... but if the boiler blows... only 5 miles of crap will occur and after a clean up... its as good as new.

[solomon]

Originally Posted by Samari

I haven't read all the news regarding the plants in Japan...nor have I read all of the information in this thread. But I want to know one thing: Does Japan's nuclear plants pose any danger to the west coast of the United States? Specifically up here in the bay area?

Danger? In a short word, no. Radiation could reach west coast but with little if any dicernable health effects.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/03/16...ars/index.html

Be VERY CAREFUL what you read in the papers and watch on tv, lotta hype going around.

[Zetsubo]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Fact: Until we find a renewable source of power that is actually able to be used for everyone everywhere, the medium term electricity future is nuclear fission. Coal and gas power supply will never actually run out, but the price will go up so high over time that it would no longer be economical unless the electricity becomes a luxury good.

Ohh I like this... yes... that I never thought of.

Ask her what will she do when she lose the use of electricity for the rest of her life.

She says" "That is not possible as long as man can cut magnetic fields with a moving conductor... and as long as there is the sun their will be wind, water and waves."

Because if she can't survive without electricity, she loses the argument.

Growing up in the mountains of a small tropical island... she can

Her home town got electricity just before she left her home island at 17 to come here for university.

EDIT: And seriously, does your girlfriend think nuclear plants are built as decoration? Does she understand that every time someone bought a new fridge, the power supply has to go up? Why do you think your girlfriend isn't "technical" enough to understand this?

To be honest, I find that my inability to simplify the technical in truthful ways is causing me communication problems.

Simply put... I can't answer the question of what to do with the hisss...

she sent me this text... from wikipedia

Cleanup started in August 1979 and officially ended in December 1993, having cost around US$975 million. Initially, efforts focused on the cleanup and decontamination of the site, especially the defueling of the damaged reactor. Starting in 1985, almost 100 short tons (91 t) of radioactive fuel were removed from the site. The defueling process was completed in 1990, and the damaged fuel was removed and disposed of in 1993.[citation needed] However, the contaminated cooling water that leaked into the containment building had seeped into the building's concrete, leaving the radioactive residue impractical to remove.[citation needed] In 1988, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that, although it was possible to further decontaminate the Unit 2 site, the remaining radioactivity had been sufficiently contained as to pose no threat to public health and safety. Accordingly, further cleanup efforts were deferred to allow for decay of the radiation levels and to take advantage of the potential economic benefits of retiring both Unit 1 and Unit 2 together.

If the reactor core melts (that is what is meant by hissss) and drops into the catchment area... that plant reactor is done. No one is going to take it out and re-use the place for a long time and if it is a catastrophic failure we have to seal it off for "10,000 years" all the doing special things to keep the area safe (chernobyll)

My Neighbour again reminds me: we rebuilt our blown turbines and fossil boilers 18 months after they failed catastrophically in the same "bloody spot"

I'm loosing the debate here.

[Ithekro]

Ask them what happens if Hoover Dam breaks? A source of power that is "clean" that can break and flood out everyone down the way.


As for everything else, the risk factor is what keeps the humans from making the mistakes. When you know that if you screw up, not only are you dead, but your family and everyone within ten miles is also dead, you tend to stay awake.

It isn't to say that something can't go wrong. Something will always go wrong, but the numbers of things that go wrong that kill people tend to happen more often in conventional plants verse nuclear ones. Also there is the infrustructure that supports the conventional plants that need considering. Oil refineries for example. When things go wrong there, things also go really wrong. Massive fires that can easily go out of control and the polution from said things can kill just as well as radiation. Sure you can clean it up in a shorter period of time, but the number of accidents will also be higher. You can also clean up nuclear accidents. Three Mile Island is proof of that. Sure the number two reactor was never used their again, but the rest of its systems I image were used as backups for the number one reactor that is still in use. The area is secure and people live as they lived before anything happened there. Only Chernobyl is a mess, and the American designed reactors cannot explode and burn like that, there is just no way for that to happen.

Add to this the new generation of reactors are suppose to be even safer that the ones currently in service in the United States (since the United States hasn't build more than a handful of new civilian reactors since Three Mile Island due to public and political worries) so even problems like Three Mile Island and what is going in in Japan shouldn't happen. Look at all the other reactors in Japan that were in the danger area. Only these old reactors are having real problems and they, as far as I can tell, are not going to be massive long term problems for the region. The three will never work again, but they were going to be decommissioned within five years anyway. There replacements are already under construction and will be much safer since they use newer technology and engineers learn from their mistakes and experiances.

Aside from human error, one imagines that only a weapon or meteor could cause a meltdown in a newer plant that even the earthquakes and tsumani didn't destroy.

[GundamFan0083]

I wonder if after this nuclear incident is over, whether or not Japan will join Italy in pushing the development of Hydrogen (H2) power plants.

The Italian Hydrogen Park project looks like it may have considerable promise.

I realize a hydrogen power plant is no where near as powerful as nuclear plants are, which will certainly be needed for the foreseeable future, but perhaps nuclear can be supplemented by Hydrogen plants?

That might lessen the waste by-product of nuclear power, and provide a less expensive, vastly more abundant, source of fuel.

[Zetsubo]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Add to this the new generation of reactors are suppose to be even safer that the ones currently in service in the United States (since the United States hasn't build more than a handful of new civilian reactors since Three Mile Island due to public and political worries) so even problems like Three Mile Island and what is going in in Japan shouldn't happen. Look at all the other reactors in Japan that were in the danger area. Only these old reactors are having real problems and they, as far as I can tell, are not going to be massive long term problems for the region. The three will never work again, but they were going to be decommissioned within five years anyway. There replacements are already under construction and will be much safer since they use newer technology and engineers learn from their mistakes and experiances.

thats the only argument they will take...

Aside from human error, one imagines that only a weapon or meteor could cause a meltdown in a newer plant that even the earthquakes and tsumani didn't destroy.

I can imagine the response I would get if I said that:

"I find your faith in technology to be cocky... the same way the engineers at our old power plant were cocky. "

Hhuman beings are experience based life forms and we can only build things based on PAST experience and then add to it with FUTURE expectations based on our PREVIOUS experience and IMAGINATION.

However our minds are limited in how we can IMAGINE... because our imagination is STILL limited by our past experience. We need past stimulus to drive our imagination. So we can't imagine the cluster-fuck that will come.

I dont think that example you give wil win me votes.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Zetsubo

Growing up in the mountains of a small tropical island... she can

Her home town got electricity just before she left her home island at 17 to come here for university.

In that case, why are you even interested in convincing her that nuclear power is needed? If she doesn't feel she need electricity at all, of course you wouldn't be able to convince her she needs something she doesn't actually need. You might as well try to convince a vegetarian that beef is a good source of iron.

Nuclear power is not for everyone. And especially not for those who can live off the grid. You are wasting your time with her, you can only sell what someone actually wants.

[valet]

Originally Posted by Zetsubo

My Neighbour again reminds me: we rebuilt our blown turbines and fossil boilers 18 months after they failed catastrophically in the same "bloody spot"

I'm loosing the debate here.

Frankly, your girlfriend might be right. If you can tear down a plant and put up a brand new one in 18 months, maybe you're not in bad shape to begin with, and there's nothing wrong with burning gas for electricity. The argument for nuclear is purely economic, and it'll sell itself once coal, oil and gas become too scarce or volatile to be viable. When that day comes, you won't have to convince anybody of anything, because they'll already be beating down your door for nuclear power.

The point you're making about a nuclear reactor failure isn't a bad one at all, though. You also have to manage the fuel and the waste, and there are certainly geopolitical ramifications to becoming a nuclear state if you aren't one already. All things considered, it isn't an obviously superior alternative to fossil fuels in all cases. Maybe a gas-fired plant is the best solution for the moment, and that's a completely reasonable design call to make if that's just how the trade-offs shake out. Being able to go from rubble to online and producing power in 18 months is a pretty compelling feature, after all.

[Ithekro]

Solar power requires are very large amount of area to effectively generate the electrical needs of a city and the battery technology to story it over the roughly 12 hours a day they will not be generating electricity.

Wind requires a large amount of territory that has constant mild to high winds to generate electricity needs of a city.

Water requires a river to be dammed which can cause ecological problems with local wildlife and humans if they are dependant on some of that wildlife for food. Also flooding is a danger there.

Waves require you having an ocean or sea to use. Salt water is extremely bad for most techological devices and mechinary, making this rather maintenance intensive. Also this can be destroyed by tsunami quite easily.

Nothing is fool proof. Man can (and usually does) manage to screw up anything at least once.

However lets look at something. California's energy generation from say 2002. Most of California's energy output is from Natural Gas, but the second largest output is Nuclear.
Source Megawatts % of Total
----------------------------------------------------

Coal .............. 2,327,809 1.3
Petroleum ......... 1,961,066 1.1
Natural Gas ....... 89,624,044 48.7
Other Gasses ...... 1,240,053 0.7
Nuclear ........... 34,352,340 18.6
Hydroelectric ..... 30,899,631 16.8
Other Renewables .. 23,680,568 12.9
Other.............. 124,520 0.1

In this the renewables includes, wind, solar, small hydroelectric, biomass, and geothermal. Of these, the largest is geothermal. The smallest is solar and wind. I've seen the windmill farms in California. They take up a lot of space and don't provide much energy in return. All of them combined at the time were able to power the city of San Francisco. But San Francisco is a small part in a state the size of California. They are working at is since they want to reduce emissions by 2020. TO do that they need wind power to be 20% of California's energy output, however that would require an increase of over 700% over what is in place now.

Thing is, California is a big place with a lot of people and a large economy on the world scale. It has the rivers to make hydroelectric work for only about 17% of the
electricity the state needs. (I don't think the report takes into account energy provided from outside the state). It produces more than that with nuclear power using only four active reactors in the entire state.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by valet

Frankly, your girlfriend might be right. If you can tear down a plant and put up a brand new one in 18 months, maybe you're not in bad shape to begin with, and there's nothing wrong with burning gas for electricity. The argument for nuclear is purely economic, and it'll sell itself once coal, oil and gas become too scarce or volatile to be viable. When that day comes, you won't have to convince anybody of anything, because they'll already be beating down your door for nuclear power.

The point you're making about a nuclear reactor failure isn't a bad one at all, though. You also have to manage the fuel and the waste, and there are certainly geopolitical ramifications to becoming a nuclear state if you aren't one already. All things considered, it isn't an obviously superior alternative to fossil fuels in all cases. Maybe a gas-fired plant is the best solution for the moment, and that's a completely reasonable design call to make if that's just how the trade-offs shake out. Being able to go from rubble to online and producing power in 18 months is a pretty compelling feature, after all.

Indeed.

One should not build nuclear powerplants unless one needs them. If you can get affordable gas for power generation, then gas is the way to go in the short term. Powerplant construction is situational; no one method is superior to another.

In short, Zetsubo , you might have gone about this the wrong way. Nuclear power is not inherently better, it is just more high tech. In some countries, like Japan, they went fission because that was the only option left. While in other places, if they can afford the fossil fuel and don't mind the CO2 pollution, they would use coal or gas for power.

There is nothing "wrong" with not having a fission plant.

[Hiroi Sekai]

*Enjoys a hearty laugh after reading the responses*

You didn't think I was the one freaking out, do you? Funny story actually, my mother actually did call me down again today; supplied me with KI pills, filter masks, lead tape, and dried sea kelp (for additional iodine) before I managed to escape. I'M NOT KIDDING.

Went home, saw a clip from her beloved CNN that said Americans were already overreacting when flocking to the pharmacies to find KI supplements. Thanks for wasting my day, mom?>.>

[mecharobot]

Originally Posted by Zetsubo

When a atomic plant goes hiisssss..... what do we do then ?

What are we supposed to do when any other sort of power plant goes hiisss? You shouldn't take that sort of argument seriously. Ask what the person means without the use of lame buzzwords.

[Kuroi Hadou]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Sigh....it is highly, repeat, highly unlikely that this could in any way get even close to anything like Chernobyl. It just isn't that type of reactor.

I'm well aware, which is why I pointed out there would be differences in the highly unlikely event that there's a meltdown. I just used Chernobyl because it really is the "worst case scenario".

[Zetsubo]

Originally Posted by mecharobot

What are we supposed to do when any other sort of power plant goes hiisss? You shouldn't take that sort of argument seriously. Ask what the person means without the use of lame buzzwords.

We did have one power plant "go hisssss" and then bang.

After cleanup It was rebuilt in the same spot 18 months later.

All burnt fuel and fuel/lubricant/treatment chemical residues in the immediate area were cleaned from the soil and that soil was reused where the foundation was relaid

My neighbor has a solid argument. I was a student at the time this happened.

The scrap metal was stored cheaply in an open air lot of land and then eventually sold to China.

There was talk of getting a nuclear plant to provide use with power since we must import oil and our exchange rate and economy is struggling.

But people are simply not convinced that we can recover from an atomic plant failure as quickly as a conventional power plant failure... and since we are a small island we need that recovery.

The very idea that an accident can make the land for several Kilometers un usable for hundreds of years instead of say 2 or 3 years... makes the citizens rigid.

The local University was proposing the use of (we do have a small academic reactor at the university) the most advanced Canadian CANDU type reactor like they have in S.Korea and Argentina... with Japanese assistance... Our local power company is Japanese owned.

However the motion was thrown out eventually and I was hoping that it would come up again. But My country and Japan are very close, and there are a lot of Japanese citizens here... so the Govt and the Powers that be are watching this event unfold intensely... it doesn't help that our power company is Japanese owned, so ... people are going to have lots to say.

[Random32]

Originally Posted by Kuroi Hadou

I'm well aware, which is why I pointed out there would be differences in the highly unlikely event that there's a meltdown. I just used Chernobyl because it really is the "worst case scenario".

Its an impossible scenario for Fukushima.

[Kuroi Hadou]

Originally Posted by Random32

Its an impossible scenario for Fukushima.

I know that, you know that, and a few others here know that. But as this thread has shown: People really believe Fukushima will be as bad as Chernobyl.