I keep seeing comments on nuclear safety. My knowledge is incomplete but I do know that, at least in the U.S. anyways, when building a nuclear plant, it has to be up to date on the safety codes. The issue is that the codes get updated every so many years and all plants being built during code updates have to be built to the new code. This makes building them very time consuming and expensive, hence the government grants. I also know that safety is the first objective of the nuclear industry taught by the lessons learned from Chernobyl and 3-mile Island. People are railing against nuclear but nuclear is the best alternative to oil in terms of energy production. The reason have been sated in this thread already. With the new reactors being built in Europe, China, and the U.S. over the next several decades, radioactive waste will not be an issue as the new reactors should be able to use the spent fuel from older reactors and in effect recycle formerly non-recyclable material. If by some miracle we get fusion, hell, I'd hate to see one of those plants go critical. I honestly don't see solar, wind, tidal, or biofuel technologies having any sort of major energy impact, minor ecological impact status in the near (several decade span) future. I'd rather live closer to a nuclear power plant than a coal power plant. I think people are over reacting.

Matt_B wrote:

It's not quite as simple as that, as the water needs to be at very high pressure to avoid boiling off and that's not easily going to be achieved without pumping, although convective cooling systems have been proposed.

i find that a poor excuse, passive cooling should be mandatory, anyone willing pay for the huge infrastructure cost of nuclear plants should have to pay extra for fail safe cooling systems, at plants were it cant be done they should be decommissioned

Now that would be utterly tragic, if true.

I've read elsewhere that the original set of backup generators were flooded out by the tsunami.

im sure we will find out everything when Tokyo electric company is put on trial

The Japanese situation may or may not be an argument against nuclear power in general but it does provide evidence for the following:

1) Businesses running the power plants can and do skimp on safety and training.
2) Businesses building power plants can and do skimp on construction quality.
3) Nuclear power industry pushes a large PR spin and governments can be uncritical.
4) Nuclear accidents are orders of magnitude worse than wind turbines blowing apart in a strong wind.

I suppose you propose driving around around in an accident proof car as well

ALL technology carries risk.
Nuclear reactors have a superb safety record.
While this event has unfolding coal has killed several thousand people......why aren't you venting your ill informed rage on a real risk to you and the planet.

The planet gets 15% of it's power from nuclear and will get more....
get over it.

Gone to a hospital lately - very high risk of death.

Got on an aircraft lately? Very low risk of death......some people are still scared tho

care to compare risk of death from the nuclear industry to almost ANYTHING say death by donkey

Given that was one of the strongest quakes on record, making the reactors just a little bit more resistant and there probably would have been no problems.

DanDare wrote:The Japanese situation may or may not be an argument against nuclear power in general but it does provide evidence for the following:

1) Businesses running the power plants can and do skimp on safety and training.
2) Businesses building power plants can and do skimp on construction quality.
3) Nuclear power industry pushes a large PR spin and governments can be uncritical.
4) Nuclear accidents are orders of magnitude worse than wind turbines blowing apart in a strong wind.

The first two points are equally true for any business doing anything. The building of nuclear power plants has more regulation than any other industry that I am aware of. The operation and maintenance of nuclear power plants has more regulation than any other industry that I am aware of.

Your point three is a given for any industry, so...? Perhaps we need more regulation and oversight on lots of industries...

Your point four is attempting to compare a wind turbine losing a blade to what, exactly? What nuclear accident are you referring to in the real world?
You are aware that a nuclear power plant produces many orders of magnitude more power than a wind turbine?

Are you aware that you are not comparing apples with apples?

Festeringbob wrote:i find that a poor excuse, passive cooling should be mandatory, anyone willing pay for the huge infrastructure cost of nuclear plants should have to pay extra for fail safe cooling systems, at plants were it cant be done they should be decommissioned

Sure, but what's fail safe? Fukushima already had a triply redundant emergency power supply with batteries and two sets of generators; it's just that the tsunami appears to have taken out the lot at once which isn't something you could anticipate happening too often. That's probably not something that'll be applicable to too many other plants although perhaps some others, such as the aforementioned Diablo Canyon, might have to implement procedures to deal with such a possibility.

Although it'll be a feature of many new designs, passive cooling isn't something that can be retrofitted to existing reactors, and it's not a panacea for all ills. It'd probably have helped in this instance, but there are plenty more things that could possibly go wrong where it wouldn't.

In terms of what you said before, gravity fed emergency flooding systems do exist, but it's a rather belt and braces approach. They're pretty much equivalent to pumping borated water in, as is happening at Fukushima now; it'll ruin the reactors and release a large amount of radioactive steam. The decision to do this isn't one to be taken lightly and it's certainly not something that you'd want to kick in automatically at the first sign of trouble.

im sure we will find out everything when Tokyo electric company is put on trial

I'm sure they will be, and going by their track record I wouldn't be surprised if there's been some negligence.

However, it has to be said that they probably can't be held culpable for the unanticipated consequences of the earthquake or decisions that had to be made whilst operating outside the book. The only thing I'm sure of is that much current speculation will turn out to be wrong.

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/17/f ... h-summary/

Tyrannical wrote:Given that was one of the strongest quakes on record, making the reactors just a little bit more resistant and there probably would have been no problems.

The porblem was not the earth quake damaging buildings. It was a power blackout combined with a failure of the emergency generators.

Meanwhile...

Thousands of liters of radioactive water have been released into Lake Ontario as a result of an accident at a Canadian nuclear power plant, according to authorities.

"The event was a low level regulatory event with only negligible effect to the environment and no public health implications," Ontario Power said in a statement on Wednesday.

The power company, which is owned by the Ontario provincial government, said 73,000 liters (19,280 gallons) of radioactive water was released into Lake Ontario from the Pickering Nuclear Station.

The Pickering nuclear power station, one of five in Canada, is located 35 kilometers (22 miles) east of Toronto, the country's largest city with 2.6 million inhabitants.

The company blamed the leak on a faulty pump seal and said it was stopped as soon as it was discovered.

"From a regulatory perspective, this is a very low-level event. There is no impact to quality of drinking water," the power company said.

The Canadian commission on nuclear safety also said the risk to the environment and human health was "negligible."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... 5caa07.291

Negligible environmental effects and no impact on drinking water quality.

Also no units are presented so we do not know just how low low level is.

It is good that such things are detected rather than occurring unknown. How many other industries get away with significant contamination because they are under less scrutiny. How many industries have campaigns to shut them down totally after such incidents. Take the alumina plant in Hungary. That spilled vast quantities of material last year. Have Greenpeace et al called for a closing worldwide of all alumina plants?

A little research shows the 73,000 litres is a conservative estimated calculation for the maximum possible release. The actual amount may be lower.

Lake Ontario has a natural radiation level of 6-10 becquerels per litre. This leak involved trace amounts of tritrium and will raise the levels in Lake Ontario by no more than .56 bq per liter. (Again this is a worst case scenario). This is well below the normal fluctuations in the lake.

Onyx8 wrote:

DanDare wrote:The Japanese situation may or may not be an argument against nuclear power in general but it does provide evidence for the following:

1) Businesses running the power plants can and do skimp on safety and training.
2) Businesses building power plants can and do skimp on construction quality.
3) Nuclear power industry pushes a large PR spin and governments can be uncritical.
4) Nuclear accidents are orders of magnitude worse than wind turbines blowing apart in a strong wind.

The first two points are equally true for any business doing anything. The building of nuclear power plants has more regulation than any other industry that I am aware of. The operation and maintenance of nuclear power plants has more regulation than any other industry that I am aware of.

Your point three is a given for any industry, so...? Perhaps we need more regulation and oversight on lots of industries...

Your point four is attempting to compare a wind turbine losing a blade to what, exactly? What nuclear accident are you referring to in the real world?
You are aware that a nuclear power plant produces many orders of magnitude more power than a wind turbine?

Are you aware that you are not comparing apples with apples?

Yes Onyx8, they are the same for other businesses. When doing risk assessment you need to know the likely hood of danger and the scale of danger. I am saying that engineering excellence is not the only factor at play.

The wind turbine remark was simply a reference to an earlier remark that there is a video of a wind turbine catastrophically failing, as if that was comparable to the kind of harm produced by catastrophic failure of a nuclear rector.

NineBerry wrote:Meanwhile...

Thousands of liters of radioactive water have been released into Lake Ontario as a result of an accident at a Canadian nuclear power plant, according to authorities.

"The event was a low level regulatory event with only negligible effect to the environment and no public health implications," Ontario Power said in a statement on Wednesday.

The power company, which is owned by the Ontario provincial government, said 73,000 liters (19,280 gallons) of radioactive water was released into Lake Ontario from the Pickering Nuclear Station.

The Pickering nuclear power station, one of five in Canada, is located 35 kilometers (22 miles) east of Toronto, the country's largest city with 2.6 million inhabitants.

The company blamed the leak on a faulty pump seal and said it was stopped as soon as it was discovered.

"From a regulatory perspective, this is a very low-level event. There is no impact to quality of drinking water," the power company said.

The Canadian commission on nuclear safety also said the risk to the environment and human health was "negligible."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... 5caa07.291

Radioactive trace elements
As most ores in the Earth's crust, coal also contains low levels of uranium, thorium, and other naturally occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into the environment leads to radioactive contamination. While these substances are present as very small trace impurities, enough coal is burned that significant amounts of these substances are released. A 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant could have an uncontrolled release of as much as 5.2 metric tons per year of uranium (containing 74 pounds (34 kg) of uranium-235) and 12.8 metric tons per year of thorium.[17] In comparison, a 1,000 MW nuclear plant will generate about 500 pounds of plutonium and 30 short tons of high-level radioactive controlled waste.[18] It is estimated that during 1982, US coal burning released 155 times as much uncontrolled radioactivity into the atmosphere as the Three Mile Island incident.[19] The collective radioactivity resulting from all coal burning worldwide between 1937 and 2040 is estimated to be 2,700,000 curies or 0.101 EBq).[17] It should also be noted that during normal operation, the effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants.[17]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fue ... e_elements

a counter position for perspective

Macdoc wrote:I suppose you propose driving around around in an accident proof car as well

ALL technology carries risk.
Nuclear reactors have a superb safety record.
While this event has unfolding coal has killed several thousand people......why aren't you venting your ill informed rage on a real risk to you and the planet.

The planet gets 15% of it's power from nuclear and will get more....
get over it.

Gone to a hospital lately - very high risk of death.

Got on an aircraft lately? Very low risk of death......some people are still scared tho

care to compare risk of death from the nuclear industry to almost ANYTHING say death by donkey

I assume your talking to me. There is no "ill informed rage" in my comment that I can see.
We don't have to get our power from nuclear energy just because you say so. get over it.
Everything carries risk. Correct. Those with wisdom will attempt to determine the mix of likely hood of danger AND the consequences when dangerous events occur. Additionally people become more concerned when they don't have personal control, so although a nuclear meltdown is less likely than a car crash, people feel less at risk driving a car than being near a nuclear plant.
I can be against more than one thing, and for more than one thing. I am firmly against coal burning energy production, but it can't just be shut down, it has to be phased out. I am also somewhat against nuclear, especially these older technologies, because of the risk/result ratio, but also because of the growing waste storage problem. I am for a mixture of wind, tide, geothermal and solar but all these technologies need improvement, long term deployment problems to be solved and better systems for storing and transmitting energy. I am very much in favour of energy use efficiencies and waste reduction.

Havent read through the whole thread, so apologies if someone has already said this. The predominant design for nuclear reactors, i.e. uranium fuel rods, is actually a very poor form of reactor for generating power. When nuclear reactors were first being developed, the funding came from the military, and the military wanted something that could produce plutonium for bombs. Thus, most research went into breeder type reactors. When the civilian sector took over, they picked up where the military left off, because creating an entirely new type of reactor would have been more expensive. Other types of reactors, such as thorium reactors, are physically incapable of melting down, and also produce much less harmful waste.

With that said, I'm amazed at what a shitstorm this situation turned into. I honestly thought reactors were safer than this, especially after Chernobyl. Before this, I would have supported even uranium based reactors over non-nuclear generators. Now, I'd say that we need to start taking uranium reactors offline as soon as we reasonably can. Also, it's more important than ever to research safer, more efficient types of nuclear power.

Oh come on - don't be ridiculous -

a) its not the reactors that are the problem but the interim storage pond inside the building which holds a partial reactor load before moving to the long term ponds.

b) a vanishingly small percentage of reactors would be subject to a combination of earthquake and tsunami and the tsunami was the issue in mucking up the cooling - the reactors scrammed properly and are intact and it's only residual heat.

The issue is the interim cooling pond and the rods there.

The world will continue to use nuclear reactors and the experience of this will lead to improvements just as airliner crashes do.

Nuclear energy is safe and effective just as airlines are safe and effective and both have decent governing bodies.....unlike coal and oil cowboys.

There is far more short and long term harm done to humans and the environment from the other long term toxins released by the combo of earthquake and tsunami but that's not sound bite fodder the news idjits.

Do you not get it - Chernobyl had nothing to do with reactor safety ....IT HAD NO CONTAINMENT DOME. No one in their right mind designs without a containment structure - multiples in this case with the Japanese and others.

Read some of the science instead of promulgating more fear mongering.

http://bravenewclimate.com/

http://www.newscientist.com/special/japanquake

All technology has risk.
Do you drive a car?
Got to hospitals?
Heat your house?
Breathe the air anywhere in a big city or within an hundred miles of a coal plant?
Fly in an aircraft
Walk across the street.....?

AL have far far higher risks than nuclear power to do harm.
Your position is ridiculous.

You want to take nuclear reactors offline and replace them with what?? 15% of the planets electricity with a sterling safety record.
:dl:

Macdoc wrote:a) its not the reactors that are the problem but the interim storage pond inside the building which holds a partial reactor load before moving to the long term ponds.

Actually, it's both. Currently, the storage is the most problematic. But the reactors are not off the hook yet.

Macdoc wrote:b) a vanishingly small percentage of reactors would be subject to a combination of earthquake and tsunami and the tsunami was the issue in mucking up the cooling - the reactors scrammed properly and are intact and it's only residual heat.

The same can happen to any reactor. In 2006, the reactor Forsmark in Sweden was close to a core melt because during a planned shutdown, suddenly all generators failed to power up. It was only shear luck that after some time, after temperature had already risen, two of the four decided to begin producing energy. You don't need an earth quake or a tsunami for anything to go wrong.

Macdoc wrote:http://bravenewclimate.com/

I wonder what relation he has to the industry

I wonder what relation he has to the industry

His comments should stand and fall on what he says not who he is.

That said he is not in the industry but is an academic and is Director of Climate Science at The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide.

In 2006, the reactor Forsmark in Sweden was close to a core melt because during a planned shutdown, suddenly all generators failed to power up. It was only shear luck that after some time, after temperature had already risen, two of the four decided to begin producing energy

Was there ever any suggestion of lack of containment though? Anything in a nuclear plant is only a technical/financial headache for the plant owners if containment is maintained.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBXqiw6EJUk[/youtube]