I still believe nuclear power is a good alternative to fossil fuels from an environmental perspective. But Steve M. is damned right that this cannot and should not turn into yet another example of “no one could have predicted”. Here’s the NYT newsroom:
… Over the years, Japanese plant operators, along with friendly government officials, have sometimes hidden episodes at plants from a public increasingly uneasy with nuclear power….
Last year, [a] reactor with a troubled history was allowed to reopen, 14 years after a fire shut it down. The operator of that plant, the Monju Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, located along the coast about 220 miles west of Tokyo, tried to cover up the extent of the fire by releasing altered video after the accident in 1995….
And yet here’s the Times Week in Review:
…The sobering fact is that megadisasters like the Japanese earthquake can overcome the best efforts of our species to protect against them. No matter how high the levee or how flexible the foundation, disaster experts say, nature bats last. Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, warned that an earthquake in the United States along the New Madrid fault, which caused strong earthquakes early in the 19th century, could kill tens, or even hundreds of thousands of people in the more densely populated cities surrounding the Mississippi River.
All technology can do in the face of such force is to minimize damage to communities and infrastructure, he said, and “on both of those fronts, we’re never going to be perfect.” …
Let’s be clear, all of our hearts go out to our Japanese brothers and sisters. That’s all the more reason that a shrugging “shit happens” can’t be the right response here.
cathyx
Even if that reactor had no history of trouble, it would have had this happen after this earthquake.
MikeJ
As I said in an earlier thread, until Ben & Jerry start running nukes, profit will always be more important than safety.
Polish the Guillotines
History shows, again and again, how nature points out the folly of man.
Tom Levenson
There are no natural disasters. There are natural events and human disasters. Videotape at 11.
Litlebritdifrnt
And the nuclear power stations in the UK have been providing clean, cheap, power to the citizens of the UK for 30 years. My sister’s power bill is forty pounds per month at the same time that mine was $300.00. At what point are you people going to realize that you are being screwed, royally.
Wile E. Quixote
Have you ever noticed that “If you have nothing to hide. You have nothing to fear” only applies when government or corporate officials are talking about average citizens and never the other way around?
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
Those two quoted sections are not at odds with one another, and the second one is not “No one could have predicted” — it’s “No matter how good we are, we’re always at risk.” The first quote should lead to prison, if not the guillotine.
Lesley
Meanwhile…
Larry Kudlow says: “The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that.”
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Tom Levenson: I would say that there are natural events and [species of your choice] disasters. I don’t think the dinosaurs were prepared for that meteorite.
Comrade Mary
@Lesley: Hey, weren’t we just talking about guillotines?
Balconesfault
The history of the last century – especially the last 60 years – has been greater and greater efficiency in being able to pack more and more people into populated areas, and in supplying them water and food and power.
Unfortunately, the more you push a system towards maximal efficiency – the greater damages result from disasters. And it’s not linear, because response systems get overstripped … so 2x the number of people often won’t mean 2x the number of casualties – often it will mean 10x or so.
We have to keep getting better and better at infrastructure, and at planning, and at monitoring, and all forms of preparedness … but at some point it’s a sad relationship. More people – more deaths from disasters.
MikeJ
@Litlebritdifrnt: They work great until they don’t, and then you’re telling people in Norway it’s unsafe to drink milk.
Which insurance company underwrites those plants? If a worst case scenario happened, could they afford to make all those affected by it whole?
The market says nuclear power is a loser unless you attach a money funnel to the taxpayers.
scav
OT but a nicely simple view of before and after the tsunami imagery. One narrative, composed of two views.
Throwin Stones
Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
It’s dizzying, the possibilities.
hilts
“Low-Level” Radioactive Waste Is Not Low Risk
h/t http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/llwnolowrisk.pdf
Implications (And Actions) For U.S. Nuclear Power
h/t http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5502/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1156657
Polish the Guillotines
@Comrade Mary:
You rang?
Elia
“How high the levee”
is this specifically in regards to Japan; or is it just a turn of phrase I’m unfamiliar with; or are we supposed to accept now that Katrina was a hoocoodanode situation?
Because it really fucking wasn’t.
jeff
I am inclined toward including nuclear in out future energy portfolio; however, we have to think about reactor safety like this:
Not: what is likely to happen given the last 1000 years of geological history; but
Can we deal with whatever energy can be released assuming everything goes wrong?
I think that the sort of systems that can contain even unthinkable scenarios are impossible (almost by definition).
But, I do think that new reactors can be safely built.
OTOH, I certainly understand it if nobody wants a part of it.
Thousands of people die annually from oil extraction and refinery (direct deaths only; it’s millions if one includes politics, secondary health effects, war, etc.)
Martin
@Elia: Turn of phrase.
Basically, any serious endeavor cannot be made without risk. You can diminish the risk at a financial cost, but there’s a diminishing return on those investments. At some point, you buy so little it’s not worth spending the money.
The entire history of the nuclear power industry has taken fewer lives than one bad year of coal mining. We’ll never have risk-free infrastructure and while the Japan situation hasn’t played out fully yet, it doesn’t look like that equation is about to change due to it. Expensive, sure. Scary as fuck. Yep. But even in this scenario, the loss of life and human suffering due to the dam that broken in Japan looks vastly worse than what’s likely to happen in the end due to the nuke plants.
hilts
Amory Lovins co-founder and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute makes the case againts nuclear power
h/t http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/16/amory_lovins_expanding_nuclear_power_makes
Sly
@Lesley:
Larry Kudlow repeatedly commits the unforgivable sin of making me miss the Commies.
Roger Moore
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
The problem with the second quote is that people can interpret it whichever way they prefer. If they want to read it as “shit happens” they can, or if they want to read it as “no matter how good we think we are, we are still at risk” they can read it that way instead.
The bigger point is that you can’t engineer the danger out of a system that has a catastrophic failure mode just by increasing your safety margins. The potential for catastrophic failure will still be there, and human greed and stupidity will expose it. The only way to make a technology inherently safe is to pick one that degrades gracefully and simply doesn’t have a catastrophic failure available as a possibility.
slag
TED offered up a pretty compelling nuclear power debate (from an environmental perspective): http://www.ted.com/talks/debate_does_the_world_need_nuclear_energy.html.
Personally, I found the con side of the discussion much more persuasive. We need to just get our shit together and go all in for non-nuclear renewables.
NineJean
So, I work in the electric industry, with a lot of power-oriented engineers. They’ve persuaded me, over the years, that nuclear power, done right, is indeed safer, cleaner, less polluting than most any other source… depending, of course where you put it.
Living in the Northwest, there isn’t even one of these engineers who think that it’s appropriate to site a nuclear plant here — the whole seismic issue is indeed a big deal.
Elia
@Martin: Great point about the dangers of coal mining.
I’m inclined to agree with the President that using nuclear power–on the condition that it’s part of a broader movement that includes investing in green energies–is worth doing if it brings more people to the table.
But–and I’m not refuting you here, you said the same–no one should underestimate or minimize how dangerous this shit is and how seriously we need to take regulation of it.
And I’m worried about our capacity to actually have oversight over nuclear power considering how woeful we are at regulating fossil fuels…
Nerull
How people can watch the carnage caused by fossil fuels, over and over again, and then claim nuclear is more dangerous is beyond me.
Martin
Crap, another tsunami is likely to hit – 3-5 meters.
rapier
The flaw of nuclear power lies in the topography of giant plants serving large areas. A more distributed system is superior but to take root such will take new and better technology.
It is entirely possible that economic trends will force a more distributed system. For now the system enforces the centralized system so as like in all things economic power and wealth continues to concentrate.
Nukes will go forward only with massive subsidy and risk unloading to the public. That is the definition of free enterprise now as the partnership of corporations and government struggles on.
AhabTRuler
An explosion reported at Fukushima Daichi Reactor 3.
Martin
@Martin: Or not. Can’t blame them for barely knowing what’s going on – I’d be punch drunk if I was stuck in the middle of that mess.
hilts
@slag:
Great Link.
TED is an incredibly valuable kick-ass resource.
Emerald
Everybody needs to read this:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
which was linked in an earlier Ballon Juice post. It’s the science, well explained, of what’s really happening in the Japanese nuclear plant, minus the fearmongering media spin.
Short answer: the “radioactivity” that was “vented” decayed and stopped being radioactive in a few seconds.
There was never any possibility of a Chernoble event. The explosion that caused Chernoble did happen, but because the explodable area was built outside of the danger zone, instead of inside as with the Soviet model, everybody was safe.
Even if a complete core meltdown were to happen, it’s all contained.
The “China Syndrome” is essentially Hollywood hype.
From elsewhere: the nine people “exposed” to radiation got about two x-rays worth. That’s also the equivalent of a couple of plane trips across the country, or living on the Earth for about a year.
Also, they are currently developing “Fourth-Generation” nuclear plants, which will be ready to build in about 20 years. These plants will be the safest yet and will produce very little waste. What waste they do produce, they can recycle. They can also recycle the existing nuclear waste we already have.
This was indeed a very serious accident. Notice: as with Three-Mile Island, nobody got hurt and nobody was in danger.
If you care about the climate, you really do need to learn something about the actual science, not the fearmongering, of nuclear power. It is safe, and we need it.
patrick II
In 1960, as a result of a 9.5 earthquake in Chile, a significant tsunami hit Japan killing 138 people. In about 1970 a nuclear reactor was built on the ocean front in a very earthquake prone country with the electrical circuitry that controlled the backup generators in the basement. In 2011 a tsunami flooded the reactor and its basement. The basement is still flooded, and the generators cannot be turned back on even if there was electricity to do so. Incredibly tsunamis and flooding seems not to have been something taken into account during the design process.
I am genuinely confused.
Comrade Mary
@Polish the Guillotines: Yeeeeaaaahh, I’m gonna need you to come in on Saturday…
PeakVT
I still believe nuclear power is a good alternative to fossil fuels from an environmental perspective.
That’s a false choice, because until conservation costs more than generation with externalities fully priced in, we don’t need to build either new fossil fuel or nuclear power plants.
The entire history of the nuclear power industry has taken fewer lives than one bad year of coal mining.
The problem with nuclear power is the tail risk. I don’t trust private companies in the US to handle their plants properly, because the risk isn’t priced in fully and there are always quarterly numbers to meet. And I don’t trust our government as long as Republicans have a chance of getting elected. If I was convinced the tail risk was being taken seriously, I’d be glad to change my attitude towards nuclear power.
Southern Beale
I’m sorry Doug. You lost me at
For God’s sake at least tell me why. I see absolutely no environmental reasons why nuclear power is a good alternative. For one thing, mining uranium and building the plants themselves is not carbon neutral. For another thing, they still haven’t figured out what to do with the radioactive waste! That’s especailly shameful since greenhouse gases and climate change are essentially a waste problem. Let’s at least learn from our mistakes and not trade one energy waste issue for another.
Decommissioning nuclear plants is an issue, and then there’s peak uranium. And then we have the safety issues and the reality that with everything else, in the case of a catastrophic nuclear plant accident, it’s the American taxpayers who pay the cost of cleanup, not the plant owners.
If people are going to remain gung-ho about nuclear power then I say we should first repeal the Price-Anderson Act and make power producers pay to clean up their messes, or find an insurance company that will. Can’t do it? Hmm … maybe it’s not so affordable after all, then.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
This is true as an abstraction, but I don’t think it’s achievable in the physical world. I doubt that any high-risk technology can degrade gracefully to the point where the risk of catastrophic failure goes to zero. You can anticipate worst cases and plan for them, but you can’t anticipate all possible scenarios. All you can do is build on the subjective evaluation of the probability of an imagined event, but not all events are imagined in the planning, and the probability may be small, but it never goes to zero.
MTiffany
Just in case no one has yet mentioned it… on a per megawatt generated basis, nuclear power is: the safest, cleanest, most environmentally friendly way to generate electrical power. Doug is absolutely correct: coal kills more people in a year than nuclear power ever has. Carbon neutral? What the fuck do you people think coal fucking is? Long lived radioactive waste? Reprocess it and use it as fuel.
different church-lady
Our society does incredibly dangerous things all the time, and yet most of the time we pay it no mind until it goes terribly wrong.
We strap ourselves into objects that travel at lethal speeds. We work in offices that might be as much as a thousand feet above the earth’s surface. I’ve got this pipe coming into my house that contains a gas that will blow me sky high if the system malfunctions. Yet we accept these risks with hardly a thought.
Granted the stakes are much higher when it comes to nuclear power plants. Maybe that’s the only reason we debate that and accept the other things.
Martin
@PeakVT:
Don’t need to tell me that. That’s what’s gotten Cali this far. What the fuck is wrong with the rest of you?
Neither do I, but I do trust the government to run them.
Southern Beale
That’s actually not true, we just have socialized the costs. There are tremendous health risks associated with mining uranium — Let’s ask the Navajo how about the issue, why don’t we? Of course they’re just Native Americans, should be used to getting screwed by America by now.
And all it takes is one accident to obliterate that bumper sticker slogan.
slag
@hilts: Agreed.
That anti-nuclear guy was an exceptional debater. When he juxtaposed the physical footprint of a nuclear plant against that of a windfarm, it was an “Ohhhh…snap!” moment.
soonergrunt
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude: That’s only because their government failed to prepare for the meteorite and then kept lying to them about the level of dinosaurian preparedness.
The fact that the Sauropda didn’t trust the Civil Defense shelters run by the Therapoda (and looking suspiciously like herding pens) probably didn’t help matters.
sherifffruitfly
Hundreds of thousands die yearly due to gasoline power. Clearly we should ban gasoline.
It is the very nature of a high-yield energy source to be dangerous, and the only way to ensure perfect safety from such is to not use it at all.
So that’s the first choice to be made.
The second choice to be made (assuming a “go” choice prior) is the balancing of cost versus safety. Here diminishing returns plays a role (marginal increase of safety = large cost increase eventually), as does cost effectiveness compared to making another choice in the first place.
As we have done (and we want to do better) with cars, I believe these choices can be well-made with nuclear power.
Probably not by Americans, thought.
PeakVT
@Martin: What the fuck is wrong with the rest of you?
What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
MTiffany
@Southern Beale:
Thank goodness coal mining is so healthy or else us pro-nuclear types would have to invent some bullshit scare propaganda about the health risks of coal mining. Hmmm… how about… black lung? Does that sound sufficiently scary? Yes? Good thing I only made it up or coal mining would be dangerous too.
hoyt
Mankind’s energy use rate is 16 terawatts a day. Currently, an estimated 2 of those terawatts are derived from “green” sources. That means that the remaining 14 terawatts rely on traditional fossil fuels. Now, if the Sun alone (to name but one available form of “free” alternative energy) is bombarding the Earth with a potential tap of 86,000 terawatts a day, WTF IS WRONG WITH MANKIND?—Dennis Hartley, Hullabaloo
People that want to ‘include’ nuclear power are dreaming. Not every technology invented needs to be used, just because it exists.
soonergrunt
@Emerald:
See, now you’re just spitting into the wind.
Shithead #3 - formerly Gen Stuck
Horse and Buggy, how do they work?
different church-lady
(If this is a duplicate post, I blame society and WordPress for eating my first dingo.)
The question here is: how many non-coal miners die in mining accidents?
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Martin:
The government will not assume long-term risk for short-term profit, but NASA, for example, has a history of assuming small risks for the short-term reputation/ego/status profit of meeting schedules and budgets, which has led to discounting small things that resulted in major failures that killed or needlessly put lives at serious risk.
kdaug
Retread: why not site this shit a mile under, away from aquifers and faults?
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@different church-lady: Perception of risk doesn’t have a whole lot to do with reality. If there had been no Three Mile Island and no Chernobyl, I think the American landscape would be cheerily dotted with nuclear power plants.
Shithead #3 - formerly Gen Stuck
If I had to pick a poison at this point, it would be go nuke. There is substantial risk for sure, but fossil fuels are killing us and the planet and that is a certainty. Make them as safe as possible, and it might be a good idea to not build them on real estate that is the most earthquake prone in the world.
I don’t see alternative fuels making a big enough difference in time to roasting the planet in a man made green house, and all the other nasty shit put into the air.
It is nukular that not only is a better risk in my opinion, amongst current poor choices, it will possibly direct more energies into solving the fusion riddle, if it can be solved. Learn to stop worrying, and love your split atom for peaceful purpose/
Omnes Omnibus
@kdaug:That worked real well in Raccoon City.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@kdaug: For pretty much the same reason we don’t mine Unobtainium on Pandora.
Villago Delenda Est
@MikeJ:
Exactly.
In this country, corporations cannot be trusted, ever, to put safety before profit.
Furthermore, until their influence over government is significantly reduced, government can’t be trusted.
The wikileaks situation shows how much both the government and the corporations do not want to be held accountable for their actions.
Triassic Sands
I read that the Japanese reactors were built to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 8.0. In 1964 Alaska was hit by a magnitude 9.2 earthquake. I’ve read that the first reactor to experience trouble was built 40 years ago, which means it was built to withstand an earthquake many times less powerful than one that could reasonably be expected at some point.
Admittedly, an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 or above is quite rare, but it seems to me that if you’re dealing with nuclear reactors, you have to build for the worst possible case, with that case being determined liberally. If it isn’t possible to build for a worst case earthquake, either for financial or physical construction reasons, they gambling seems reckless. However, we’ve put ourselves in a position where being reckless, while pretending we aren’t, seems to me the most likely outcome.
I watched the TED debate and wasn’t persuaded by either side, since I think both were employing a significant level of wishful thinking. I don’t think renewables are as reliable as argued and I think the way the “footprint” is calculated is somewhat disingenuous, since spacing matters a lot in terms of environmental impact. I don’t think nuclear is as safe as argued, and I think there is definitely wishful thinking involved regarding accidents, terrorism, and “events.”
Finally, I think someone will continue to burn coal until it’s gone or it’s more expensive than the alternatives. And, no, I don’t think we’ll suddenly begin to calculate coal’s externalities honestly. I just don’t have any confidence in the willingness of people to make the kinds of adjustments that are needed in the face of climate change.
The kind of thinking embodied in “you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers” is not limited to firearms.
soonergrunt
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck: Who are numbers 1 and 2?
Arclite
AND THERE IT GOES
My wife is telling me that the Number 3 reactor at the Fukushima plant just exploded. She said this reactor contains plutonium. Whether the containment vessel has been breached is unknown at this time, but this can’t be good.
Martin
@PeakVT: I mean, we’ve been doing that seriously here in Cali for 3 decades and no other state has joined the effort. To say that conservation is more cost effective is great – but until the other 49 states actually DO something, standing in front of nuclear power is pointless.
Villago Delenda Est
@Wile E. Quixote:
Yeah, I’ve noticed that.
Again, I point to wikileaks and the reaction of those who apparently DO have a great deal to hide.
Shithead #3 - formerly Gen Stuck
@soonergrunt:
I could tell you, but then I’d have to snark you.
I think danimal was number one, joe from lowell number 2
srv
Fukushima #3 going up video, looks much more dynamic (high plume, shit falling back) than #1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIZKlaEZMLY&feature=player_embedded
Yeah, it looks like more than exterior structure going up…
Martin
@Arclite: It’s not breached. It’s a hydrogen explosion like what happened at reactor 1. Hydrogen, part of the steam that was vented exploded. Not great, but doesn’t look like it has any real impact.
lostinube
They are saying that the containment vessel hasn’t been damaged right now. Unit 3 is now missing it’s outer wall and looks like Unit 1.
And all that was going on while there was a false tsunami warning that was freaking everyone out.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
Dark Lord Cheney insists that energy conservation is for Muggles, Blood Traitors, and your odd Squib.
Bill Murray
@Southern Beale: there are other nuclear fuels than Uranium. Thorium has some very good points — Thorium can, deliver abundant, safe and clean energy – and a way to burn up old radioactive waste. With a thorium nuclear reactor, meltdowns are more or less impossible, power is relatively inexpensive, weapons-grade by-products are not produced (which is why the US decided against Thorium power back in the day, and existing high-level waste can be used up in the fuel cycle.
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/print/348/new-age-nuclear?page=0%2C0
http://news.change.org/stories/thorium-nuclear-energys-clean-little-secret
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Polish the Guillotines: I can’t believe no one has given you an “I saw what you did there” on that comment, but I did. I’ve been ashamed of myself for laughing at Godzilla riffs through this horrible situation, but I’ll be damned if I could help it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Arclite: This report says no containment breach. Whether it is correct or not is another matter.
soonergrunt
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck: And who declared these designations?
fasteddie9318
@Triassic Sands:
Me, I think even if the day comes when we’ve littered the landscape with nuclear plants and coal is 10X more expensive than the alternatives, Republican politicians will join up with the Kochsucker brothers to buy truckloads of coal and just burn the fucking shit, not to generate electricity but because fuck you, you hippie enviro-fucks. Our country is run by a frothy mix of those who want to blow the planet up because they want some dude to come down from the sky and whisk them off to a better place, and those who want to blow it up because they’re sociopaths who have enough money to rocket themselves off of the planet and then roast marshmallows on the burning remains of the pond scum with which they once had to deign to co-exist. We’re fucked no matter what we do.
Shithead #3 - formerly Gen Stuck
@soonergrunt:
Well, in a Manning post, Cole pre adorned any dissenters to his post as the usual shitheads, and Nobel candidate cathyx did the numbering in order of dissent. I don’t like being number 3, but it’s better than #4, i suppose. I was slow on the draw and payed the price
catpal
I live in an area where my energy company says that we get about 25% “cheaper” electricity from the local nuclear generating station. Do they pass that savings on to me the consumer? No, not really.
I temped at an energy company and Yes they do put profits before scheduled maintenance that does Not always happen timely. THAT knowledge is scary.
When there are mechanical problems reported – those years reported significant increases in rates for Leukemia and Cancer in children in that area.
So the benefits are …?
kdaug
@Omnes Omnibus: @Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
If we’re gonna do it, do it proper.
Comrade Mary
There are unconfirmed reports that several workers may have been injured or died at No. 3. I’m looking for links now, but even if this was a controlled release, something may have gone terribly wrong.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Mary: I am waiting for confirmed reports of anything.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Villago Delenda Est: Give it a rest. The government is not a unified monolithic organization of evil intent. Some of the things that the government conceals really do need to be concealed — troop movements in a war, for example, or access parameters that could allow hostile actors to penetrate the US infrastructure (think stuxnet). There’s a mix of legitimate secrecy and illegitimate misdeed cover-up. Put another way, some of those who DO have something to hide have legitimate reasons for hiding it.
I haven’t heard of Wikileaks exposing anything shocking, and it may have gotten a few intelligence sources eliminated. Beyond the rather entertaining embarrassment of unfiltered diplomatic cables, what government malfeasance have they exposed? (The cables don’t represent malfeasance, but I needed a good closing sentence.)
kdaug
@fasteddie9318:
Socia1ist, or sociopath? Pick a side.
Ellen
I don’t agree that nuclear power is a good alternative for reasons I explained
here: http://ellenofthetenth.blogspot.com/2008/07/mark-kirks-nuclear-powered-world-is.html?spref=fb
and
here: http://ellenofthetenth.blogspot.com/2010/08/mark-kirk-and-bob-dold-seek-to-waste-us.html
Comrade Mary
Latest No. 3 report (still no one providing links to web sources): 6 injured, no one missing, no one dead.
I made a mistake in my original post: no one was describing deaths, just x people missing or injured.
Villago Delenda Est
First reports can usually not be trusted to be close to accurate.
But they are reports, which means the airheads of the “news” networks put them up immediately.
nancydarling
Worth a read if you missed it 6 years ago, and worth re-reading also. It’s James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” from Rolling Stone. There have been a lot of Cassandras out there in the last 30 or 40 years. Maybe we should start listening.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4856
srv
Saudi’s have gotten tired of the unhappiness in Bahrain and are sending their troops in to make things better.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@kdaug: I comment here because it’s the only place I’m taken seriously.
BR
@nancydarling:
Yup. And these two books are must-reads on the same topic:
Eaarth by Bill McKibben
The Party’s Over by Richard Heinberg.
I’ve spent the last few years reading a ton of books by the various “Cassandras”, and these two are probably the best all around.
lostinube
Someone already put it up but yes, 6 injured, none dead at the plant. Previously it was 3 injured and 7 missing but all have been accounted for now. This is via the NNN (Nihon TV News Network).
All the major stations in Japan have a news service they share with all their affiliates:
NNN = Nihon TV
FNN = Fuji TV
JNN = TBS
ANN = TV Asahi
TXN = TV Tokyo
nar
I miss Godzilla!
trollhattan
@Comrade Mary:
Cripes. This is indeed the one reputed to have plutonium in the fuel mix.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2014482409_apasjapanearthquakenuclearcrisis.html
Omnes Omnibus
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude: Seriously?
jl
If I understand DougJ’s point right, my question is, in terms of US energy policy, so what (at least for near future)?
While we see which of the two narratives prevail, and work to make sure any new nuclear plants are safe and follow good regs, why not insert a third narrative of energy conservation?
My own perspective, is that I do not particularly like nuclear power, and mistrust some of the promises about pebble beds, liquid salt reactors, thorium cycles, etc (Mainly because the technology always looks better and safer before it is scaled up to nationwide industrial size).
But if even there is a moderate chance anthropomorphic global warming will cause serious climate change, then it is silly to oppose R and D on new nuclear plant designs.
BTW, I read the plants in trouble are old boiling water plants that were going to be closed and decommissioned in a few months. So, not sure what their problems say about, for example, pressurized water reactors, which I think are by far the most common in the Western US.
Edit: if anyone knows different, please let me know.
srv
@jl:
In the near future (next 30 years), buy coal. Best week for that industry since TMI.
RareSanity
Throughout all of the news coverage on the US networks, I have become increasingly uncomfortable, and almost sickened, by the “scoreboard” type reporting of the estimated death toll.
A lot of people have perished, been injured, lost loved ones or, been otherwise affected by this tragedy. Please stop ringing the bell on your “death toll” board, like this is a freaking telethon…k thx!
MikeJ
@Triassic Sands:
Building for a stronger earthquake isn’t the answer. No matter how well you design it, mother nature can always one up you. The real question is, what will happen when there is a catastrophic failure? If something bad enough to destroy a nuke plant happens, will your emergency response be helped or hurt by the presence of radioactivity? What do you do if a meteor hits? Yes, it’s not likely. How many unlikely things have happened in your lifetime? How long will the site of the reactor and the spent fuel storage be around waiting for a 100 year storm?
BR
@jl:
I’ve done a lot (maybe too much) studying on the subjects of alternative energy, climate change, oil depletion, nuclear energy, etc.
We’re at a point where we have no options. The newest studies say that we’ll have hit peak oil in 3 years or less (German military says last year was the peak, UK industry taskforce says 2013-14, Kuwait University says 2014, a DoD study says 2012, etc.). Once we’re at peak oil production, we enter an era of permanent recession, with only halfway recoveries possible before the next recession.
The options for replacing that oil are to use coal-to-liquids, tar sands, etc. That is, really dirty options that will worsen the climate problems we have already.
The alternatives will work, but the scale at which we need them is daunting – for some alternatives we’re talking about tens or hundreds of times our current industrial capacity. And they’d only mitigate the problem if we had started building twenty years ago.
The only viable solution is a drastic campaign of energy use reduction (not efficiency – because that implies doing what we’re doing with less energy rather than just downscaling society on the whole).
Anyway, McKibben and Heinberg are the two I’d read on this, and if anyone is interested I can post other links.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Omnes Omnibus: No.
Polish the Guillotines
@Evolved Deep Southerner: Sometimes, only a dose of
guillotinegallows humor can preserve my tenuous grip on sanity.In reality, my company has field offices in Tokyo, and thankfully, those folks are all accounted for and okay. Biggest quake I’ve ever experienced was the ’89 Loma Prieta. To think they’re having aftershocks comparable to Loma Prieta makes me reach for the black humor. With both fists.
soonergrunt
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck: When was this? I just waded into the Brian Manning thread by ABL (haven’t seen the interview) and while I’m surprised that the bodies aren’t waist deep, I didn’t see Cole in there at all, or did I miss something?
Also noted there are a LOT of misunderstandings about what’s happened/happening with respect to the pending Court Martial. I’ll try to fix that when I can, for example noting that A)we don’t know who exactly requested the RCM 706 board. We only know that the Government denies requesting it and that to my knowledge Manning’s lawyer has never answered the question even though he’s been directly asked, and B)most of the pre-trial delay is non-avoidable delay by the government, and not Manning’s lawyer, although the 706 is taking some time on its own.
The non-avoidable delay has to do with several things, mainly having to do with classification issues relating to evidence to be used in the case, and clearance issues relating to the court personnel, and pulling together a list of cleared personnel to potentially serve on a Members Panel in case PFC Manning elects such. The military lawyers I know (I do some IT work on the side of my current job for a couple of small law firms in OKC and Altus, OK and Lawton, OK) are all pretty much in agreement that it hasn’t taken longer than it should to date, given the nature of the case. They are split about the conditions of Manning’s confinement. about 50% think there’s no real issue here, about 50% think there is. They all think that Manning’s lawyer (who has a good reputation among those who’ve heard of him) think he’s doing the right thing.
Having read Manning’s rebuttal Article 138 complaint to the denial of his original Article 138 complaint, I can say that there are a couple of incidents that Manning alleges in that document that strike me as abusive. The thing with the multiple guards yelling at him, especially the “we say ‘Aye’ in the Marines” crap.
As an aside, the last high-profile client that Mr. Coombs had was SGT Hassan Ackbar, who murdered two officers with a hand grenade and then wounded several other personnel with his M-16 rifle in Kuwait a couple of days before the invasion of Iraq. Ackbar is now in the post-conviction appeals process regarding his conviction and death sentence.
Villago Delenda Est
Shit happens.
The thing is, have realistic contingency plans in place before it does, and execute those plans subject to the rule that no plan survives contact with the enemy.
The problem we have is the short term mentality of our political and economic overlords, which assume they’ll be able to skate to the Caymans and get away from the mess they created.
trollhattan
Narrowing the discussion to the U.S., no commercial outfit will build a new fission powerplant without massive subsidies so at least one key question is whether the money can’t be better spent? Everything I’ve seen the past four days tells me the answer is yes. I can’t begin to count the experts who’ve assured me/us over the years what’s happening in Japan can’t happen.
Also, too, I presume a new reactor would have to be made A380-proof.
soonergrunt
@Polish the Guillotines:
I was stationed at Fort Ord, California just down the road near Monterrey at the time. Richter Scale 7.4 was scary as hell. I can’t imagine 8.9.
trollhattan
Ooh-kay:
Roger Moore
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
But that’s an argument in favor of avoiding high risk technologies, not accepting lower safety standards. If you can’t make a technology inherently safe from catastrophe, you must prepare for catastrophe. That’s the essence of Murphy’s Law. If there’s a way your system can fail, it will eventually fail that way.
The other important point to remember is that safety estimates based on engineering figures, rather than solid actuarial data, are bullshit. Systems that are designed to be redundant will turn out to be redundant only to random equipment failure, not larger scale disaster. Estimates of material strength assume that builders never skimp on materials or use shoddy construction techniques. Failure rates assume that maintenance is competently performed on schedule, not allowed to slide to save money. If anything ever does exceed its engineering safety estimate, that will be used as justification to keep using it after its designed safe life and to strip safety features out of the next generation design.
Arclite
Reactor 3 went up two hours ago at this point. Supposedly there wasn’t a containment breach. However, nuclear workers aren’t returning to continue cooling reactor 3 due to “safety concerns”. What might those be?
Polish the Guillotines
@soonergrunt:
I was in my car on the upper level of a parking garage in SF. It was like bouncing on a concrete trampoline. I had some friends who were loafing around Santa Cruz that day and they said you could actually see the ground undulate. That’s a mere 7.1 for ya.
Like you said: 8.9 is hard to imagine. Loma was what, around 15 seconds? They’re saying this one shook for somewhere between two to three minutes. Man.
Yutsano
@trollhattan: They could have just saved a bunch of words and admitted they don’t know what the fuck is going on. But that probably comes with a loss of face card too.
Jay C
@Arclite:
What’s the Japanese phrase for “building collapsing on head“?
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I don’t. That government might one day be run by Republicans, who treat competence as the eight deadly sin. Besides, how long will it be until the plants are sold for $1 each to Koch Energy?
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
Obfuscation roll with special prevarication sauce (and tobiko!) now on the specials board.
nancydarling
@BR: BR, Thomas Homer-Dixon who is a professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at a university in Toronto wrote “The Upside of Down:Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization”. I recommend it if you have not read it. He is supposed to have another book on the same sorts of issues coming out soon. He is somewhat up beat considering his subject matter.
trollhattan
Okay, this rates a “getthefuckouttaheah!!”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14plume.html?_r=1&ref=asia
What’s really going on?
Shithead #3 - formerly Gen Stuck
@soonergrunt:
It was at least a couple of weeks ago, or maybe longer. You must have missed that thread. Ask Joe from Lowell about it when he shows up again.
I wouldn’t bother if I was you. The die is cast and the narrative set. Obama is torturing Bradley Manning, and that is all there is to it. And even his father is not immune from getting smeared for breaking that narrative. It’s not about Manning, but Obama.
And your question about Cole trolling his own blog. He is not, and is fully serious on what he writes on this topic. IMO, at least.
Mark S.
@soonergrunt:
It was hard to find, but here it is. I couldn’t remember anything about the post besides shitheads, and that’s a very common word here at balloon juice.
@BR:
I didn’t realize so many people were saying now or in a year or two. Fortunately, we don’t have a majority of shitheads in Congress whose solution will be drill, baby, drill.
Yutsano
@trollhattan: Totally fergot what tobiko is, so did some Google-fu (cwap that shit’s expensive!) and came across this website, too cool not to share.
soonergrunt
@Polish the Guillotines: I remember watching waves go through the floor of my building. Prestressed, steel-reinforced concrete floor, and waves going through it like somebody had thrown a large rock into a pond. I remember looking at it and thinking “what the fuck?”
hilts
@nancydarling:
Speaking of James Howard Kunstler, check out this interview
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-09-james-howard-kunstler-we-need-a-new-american-dream
Michio Kaku discussed the current crisis on Good Morning America
h/t http://bigthink.com/ideas/31595
joel hanes
I’ve spent the day reading about the Japanese reactors and the actions of the operators.
I think that all the explosions so far are hydrogen explosions, a side-effect of cooling the over-hot core with water at temperatures that dissociates hydrogen from oxygen.
They don’t necessarily indicate that such cooling is failing.
But it’s clear that raw seawater cooling wasn’t enough in at least one, and now I think two of the reactors; the operators have mixed boric acid into the water. Boron “poisons” fission reactions: it readily absorbs neutrons, and in sufficient concentrations it completely halts the uranium chain reaction. After a reactor has been heavily poisoned with boron, only the the secondary breakdown of reaction products continues to produce heat, and that should subside after a couple days.
If I’m reading this right, the operators reached a decision point when raw seawater cooling failed to bring the reactor temperature down, and chose to destroy the future operability of the reactor with boron rather than risk further overheating.
jl
I don’t think an 8.9 Richer scale earthquake can happen in California (ha! famous last words, maybe I should not type this, since the San Andreas fault is a few miles away from me). The type of fault and the strengths of the rock in the plates prevents anything much stronger than about 8, which was approached in 1906 SF quake, and 1857 Fort Tejon quake, or some nameless great quake that happened around LA in the 1600s.
A geophysicist told me that the maximum credible earthquake in the world is something less than 10 on the Richter scale. No known formations and friction between plate boundaries and subduction zones can hold that much energy, and would fail before enough energy was stored to produce a 10. An asteroid would have to hit the earth for something like that to happen.
So, I hope people use some judgment about how the experience in Japan would translate to the US.
hilts
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck:
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
Your old screen names were much better than your new ones. You guys should switch back to them.
trollhattan
@jl:
Supposedly southern and central California are not the right kind of faults to propagate quakes that large, while the north coast to B.C. can and have had quakes that large. It’s like a visit to Cold Comfort Farm, but we’ll take what we can get.
I love that the Hayward Fault travels under UCB’s stadium. Go Be ars!
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Roger Moore:
Nononono. It’s an argument in favor of doing a really serious risk assessment that includes a cost-benefit analysis (yes, sadly, human lives are valorized) to arrive at a consensus that the risk is acceptable. That includes determining the workability of safety standards that minimize the risk of human injury and death; minimize, not eliminate. I read your original assertion as advocating abandonment of any technology where the risk of catastrophic loss cannot be reduced to zero. If I read you wrong, I apologize.
Martin
@jl: The faults in CA are quite different from those in Japan. An 8.9 is really at the upper limit of what they think is possible. But the big difference between here and Japan is that the fault lines generally run under land, under populated places – not out under the ocean. That means that our tsunami risk is quite a bit less, but the direct damage risk quite a bit more.
As you can guess, the lower tsunami risk is totally worth it.
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
Very cool somebody’s thinking about this. Have to admit, if it comes down to mackerel sushi or no sushi I’ll order the chicken.
different church-lady
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck: Dude, bronze is nothing to be ashamed of.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@hilts: I use my original ID when the subject matter doesn’t make me need antidepressants. The long one is a statement of fact: I read this blog, and it’s all too often very depressing. However, for a modest weekly stipend, I can be persuaded to stop using the screen name to which you object. Make me an offer.
trollhattan
According to TEPCO we have a pope.
joel hanes
If I’m remembering correctly, the New Madrid fault is considered capable of producing a 9 scale quake, and there’s evidence for geologically-recent quakes of this scale on the Washington/Oregon coastal subduction zone.
Underwater landslides can also produce enormous tsunami, sometimes even without a triggering earthquake; California may be vulnerable
Roger Moore
@joel hanes:
As I understand it, the boron is a standard part of the emergency cooling procedure. They abandoned hope for the reactor the moment they started cooling it with anything but high purity water. Hot water is highly corrosive, and anything in it only increases the corrosive power. Cooling with sea water is going to corrode the works to the point they can’t be safely brought back into service. Adding boron is just icing on the cake.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Martin: Maybe not so much if you live in my neighborhood. The insurance companies have stopped writing quake insurance on condo buildings.
Shithead #3 - formerly Gen Stuck
@different church-lady:
Yes, I know. But I could been number 1, I coulda been a contender.
soonergrunt
@different church-lady:
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck:
That’s a good point. You are number 3 IN THE WORLD. I mean, think of number of people who comment here, and the number of people who read here. You are the third biggest Shithead of all of us, AND everybody else. Can I shake your hand and get your autograph?
BTW–I just omitted a joke that I thought was funny as hell, but it occurred to me that the humor challenged would not.
BR
@nancydarling:
Been meaning to read it – just heard an interview with him on Radio Ecoshock. I’ll check it out.
soonergrunt
@joel hanes: Well, the super volcano under Yellowstone National Park will probably wipe out all life in north America whenever it goes off.
Life is a crapshoot no matter where you hang your hat.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: Go ahead and share it anyway. Nobody here is ever fails to see humor.
BR
@Mark S.:
The weirdest thing I’ve realized / understood about peak oil is that the primary effect will be economic. It’s unlikely for some time after peak oil that we’ll see gas lines return, etc. More likely we’ll just get hit by severe recessions every 3-5 years with halfway recoveries.
I’ve heard that the UK government is making plans for gasoline rationing. Yet it’s not even on the radar here.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@BR:
Real Americans won’t stand for gas rationing unless we refight World War II, and maybe not even then.
nancydarling
@BR: BR, here is a link to a discussion Homer-Dixon had with John Horgan on Bloggingheads-Science Saturday Edition. This was my introduction to him.
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/11143
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@hilts: I hope you won’t mind if I keep mine for now.
hilts
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
My financial situation is pretty bad right now, so a stipend isn’t a viable option for me. I can all too easily relate to depression. On the plus side, your new screen name is head and shoulders above General Stuck’s new screen name.
Polish the Guillotines
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
No self-respecting Teabagger would ever vote for a politician who’s in favor of “death pumps.”
hilts
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
No problem, you’re good.
BR
@nancydarling:
I’ll check it out, thanks.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Polish the Guillotines:
Is that a reference to the current fashion in stiletto heels?
hilts
For nuclear power advocates, this is worth reading
Nuclear Power: A Resurgence We Can’t Afford
h/t http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-resurgence.html
different church-lady
@trollhattan:
You win the black humor-nets. Maybe for all time…
hilts
@slag:
Another good post on the nuclear power issue
The Push To Revive Nuclear Power
h/t http://karlgrossman.blogspot.com/2010/11/push-to-revive-nuclear-power.html
Yutsano
@different church-lady: I admit it. I LOLed at that.
Polish the Guillotines
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
Now that you mention it, isn’t that what Caribou Barbie wears in her crush videos?
Martin
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude: Well, if you look at Japan right now, insurance is pretty much the least of anyone’s concerns. I’d rather be alive than insured, personally.
Roger Moore
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
That’s probably a fair reading of what I wrote, so I have nobody to blame but myself if that doesn’t accurately reflect what I think. My own thinking on this is a bit muddled. I know that it’s foolish to think that we can eliminate all risk, and I can imagine cases where it’s possible that a small risk of catastrophe is more acceptable than the alternative. But I think that we inherently do a very bad job of estimating the true risk of rare but catastrophic risks.
Yes, I know that there’s an innate tendency to overrate the importance of rare, newsworthy catastrophes like nuclear reactor accidents compared to boring ongoing events, like the bad effects of air pollution and greenhouse gasses. My counter point is that there’s a tendency to underestimate the likelihood of events that are rare enough that we depend on engineering estimates rather than actuarial data. Estimating tail risk is tricky because you’re either extrapolating from inadequate data or flat guessing, so it’s easy to be laughably far off. It’s even worse because the people doing the estimates are often the same ones who designed the system in the first place, so they’re inherently biased. Even when they aren’t they’re often being leaned on by people who want the project to go through. If we can’t accurately estimate the likelihood of a catastrophe, we can’t make an informed judgment about the acceptability of the risk.
nancydarling
@BR: Just started listening to the Radio Ecoshock you referenced. TH-D is definitely more pessimistic than when I first heard him two years ago.
MattR
@hilts: There is really no point even considering nuclear power while there is such a strong contingent of anti-government, anti-regulation, “business can do no wrong” zealots in this country. Even if we could identify a set of conditions which would make nuclear power 100% safe (which is an impossibility to begin with), those Tea Party bastards would undermine the system and corners would be cut in the name of saving money with the end result being that perfectly safe system would suffer a falure with disastrous consequences.
Polish the Guillotines
@MattR: This. Light a candle for Enron while you take your iodine pills.
hilts
@MattR:
You make a great point. Those Tea Party bastards are a major obstacle to progress on many fronts. I’m incredibly disappointed to see so many Balloon Juice readers expressing support for nuclear power.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Roger Moore: I’d like to continue this, but it’s late (for me) and I have to go to work tomorrow.
Good night to everybody!
nancydarling
@MattR: My understanding is that the Federal government has all liability for nuclear accidents since the reactors are uninsurable through traditional insurance companies. This is the antithesis of the free market capitalism the R’s love so much. It is amazing that conservatives love nuclear so much, unless they are just doing it to piss off the DFH’s.
BR
@nancydarling:
I think it may not just be him – the scientific community (broadly speaking) is much more pessimistic than just a few years ago.
(Radio ecoshock in general is great.)
MattR
@nancydarling:
Never, ever discount this possibility. (EDIT: I do wonder if their love of nuclear power is because they tie it in their mind with nuclear weapons and our victory in the cold war)
@hilts: I am not completely anti-nuclear. I just don’t trust things in the current environment. (EDIT: The funny thing is that I would probably trust a company like Google if they wanted to build a nuclear power plant next to their main corporate campus.)
And now I am kinda wondering if growing up within the 10 mile evacuation zone for Indian Point has colored my view of nuclear power one way or the other.
Mark S.
It seems like if goopers are gung ho about nuclear energy, they should support a carbon tax:
We really don’t think very long term in this country.
hilts
@MattR:
I think the political environment is going to get a hell of a lot worse in the coming years regardless of the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.
I’m hoping to see more anti-nuclear posts in a future thread.
BR
This is an unbelievable amount of power to have offline:
That’s 1 TeraWatt, which is a large fraction of the world’s electric generation capacity.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Lesley:
C’mon, think of all of that money that could have been lost! Lives are cheap, they can quickly be replaced at a minimum of cost. In the meantime, there are lots of people out there who will be more than happy to have a chance to step up and earn their dollar now that a position has opened. A large loss of life is preferred over a large loss of business infrastructure. It reduces the population, opens up potential for employment, thus easing the strain of high unemployment, and increases economic activity, further enriching the rich.
/CNBC suckup Kudchewinglow
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Lo. You still up? Here is my platform, part one.
BR
@BR:
I should go to sleep. I can’t multiply right – it’s 1 GigaWatt, not 1 TeraWatt.
nancydarling
No one has ever made an accurate assessment of the energy return on investment of nuclear power. The assessments that have been put forth do not take into account the incredible costs of decommissioning reactors. The oil fields in the early part of the 20th century had an EROI of 100-1. For every barrel of oil spent, they got back 100. By contrast, the tar sands of Canada have an EROI of 4-1. Corn ethanol has an EROI of 1-1, which begs the question of why we do it—the agricultural lobby is incredibly powerful. My quarrel with these calculations is they do not take into account the environmental costs. Corn as it is grown today is very chemical dependent. The effect of this on the Mississippi watershed is evident in the dead zone in the Gulf at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The dead zone varies from 6 to 9 thousand square MILES. Corn is not the only culprit, but it is the major one. How do we break the strangle hold that these powerful lobbies have on the political system? Maybe Wisconsin is the start.
MattR
@asiangrrlMN: Even though I know you’ve seen it, I didn’t feel right posting this here until I knew you were around :)
Calouste
@nancydarling:
Not having the first presidential caucus in Corn Central, aka Iowa, would be a start.
BR
@nancydarling:
Maybe you’ve already seen this, but one of Richard Heinberg’s recent studies (which concludes that overall there are no viable alternatives for humanity’s energy needs – that reduction is the only option) has a bit on net energy, including nuclear. I’m not sure it includes the decommissioning cost you mention, but it seems he has it in the 5:1 to 8:1 range:
http://www.postcarbon.org/report/44377-searching-for-a-miracle
asiangrrlMN
@MattR: You’re gumdrop right that he has the right to be packing a pitchfork! What is this country coming to when a man can’t bring his pitchfork into a dingdang meeting with him?
Heh. Thanks. That made me smile again.
hilts
@Calouste:
Holding the first presidential caucus in Iowa is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Holding caucuses in any state is a bullshit proposition. The current insanity of Iowa voting 1st and NH voting 2nd should be replaced by a series of rotating regional primaries.
Mary G
I live almost right next to the San Onofre plant, which was put up in the 1970s. We protested it mightily, especially when the power company put up a TV commercial showing a diver coming out of the water with a bright red lobster waving two claws and said, “Look, everything is fine!” Of course lobsters are only red if they have been cooked, and Pacific Coast lobsters only have one claw, so we were unconvinced. They must have gotten Jim Henson to rig the claws to wave.
But over the years, I have wondered. We have never had any trouble, no one has noticed a jump in cancer rates, etc. I’m so blase about it at this point I don’t even remember where I put the iodine pills they gave out. The first unit ran its allotted 25 years and was safely decommissioned. Is this really worse than coal mining? The downsides are so much bigger, it’s hard to decide.
trollhattan
Wha?
BBC
Further shyte:
Wile E. Quixote
Give me 6,000 square kilometers of California desert and I’ll give you enough power for the entire state. Well that is “give me 6,000 square kilometers of California desert and a bunch of money to build solar power towers like the ones at Solar One and Solar Two. Hell, call it 6,400 square kilometers of California desert, which is a piece of land 80 kilometers on a side. Oh, and this is making a lot of conservative assumptions about efficiency and basing the generating capacity needed upon peak demand figures.
nancydarling
Let’s all cultivate our gardens. I planted potatoes today and my daffodils up by the pond have finally sent up green shoots—Every on else has had blooms for a couple of weeks, but I did get mine in late. Loved that pitchfork story MattR. BR, I don’t think Heinberg’s calcs include decommissioning costs. ‘night all.
PanAmerican
It’s great for Radiotrophic Fungus. Every other life form? Not so much.
All the bullshit over the last few days about how these reactors are different from Chernobyl? They reached the same end state. A smoking hot, uncontrolled lump of radioactive death.
Everyone working that site is going to fucking die from radiation poisoning. Who knows how many indirect deaths will accrue in the coming years.
PanAmerican
@trollhattan:
They’ve been lying from go. Check out the before and after pics of the Fukushima site. Between the quake and tsunami the place was wiped clean – the piping, tanks, out structures and all the shit that allows control of the pile was gone.
MattR
@asiangrrlMN: Is two your limit on pseudo-curses or do you have any other gems stored away?
@nancydarling: I will make you a deal. If you can find someone to buy my condo, I promise to make room for a garden in the yard of the house that I purchase.
trollhattan
@PanAmerican:
Not even the Germans trust them any longer.
BBC
nancydarling
@MattR: Can’t find you a buyer Matt, but if you lived nearby, I would share my vegetables with you. Now I’m really going to bed.
asiangrrlMN
@MattR: I have an unlimited store of them since I gave up cursing for Lent (as a precursor to my run to the Republican primaries). My favorite so far is Hades and Damascus figs.
Bill Murray
While I’m way down the shithead category, so am often ignored, the likely nuclear fuel of the future is Thorium not Uranium. Uranium was mainly chosen back in the 60s because it produces plutonium for bombs. Thorium plants can’t go critical, can use/destroy uranium and plutonium waste and there is enough to produce 10,000 years of energy at the current world production rates. Plus, the processing is much easier than Uranium. There are some issues as with any fuel source, but if nuclear is part of the answer, thorium is the way to go.
Wile E. Quixote
@MattR:
What about using teabaggers as an energy source? It would be carbon neutral and with their high lipid content, extremely efficient.
joel hanes
@PanAmerican:
All the bullshit over the last few days about how these reactors are different from Chernobyl? They reached the same end state. A smoking hot, uncontrolled lump of radioactive death. Everyone working that site is going to fucking die from radiation poisoning.
So far, nothing I’ve heard about the Japanese reactors is remotely comparable to Chernobyl, not by many orders of magnitude. If you have pointers to some hard data about emissions or measurments outside the site, I’d very much like to read it.
Arclite
So far as we have been told, there has been a primary containment breach (the fuel rod covers) but no secondary containment breach (the main core containment vessel). And only a little radioactive cesium and iodine have been vented along with the steam.
How does that square with the fact that the USS Ronald Reagan and its helicopter crews were exposed to radiation:
1. Can the “small” amount of radiation released by the plant cause that much exposure? Is that expected, or evidence of a cover-up?
2. If the winds are easterly pushing the radiation out to sea, why did helicopters 60 miles north get contaminated?
TenguPhule
But wouldn’t a waste byproduct of the process be Weapons-Grade Insanity? We’d have a new world arms race of concentrated stupid.
Triassic Sands
@Bill Murray:
Maybe, but I distinctly remember a guy I worked with back in the late seventies telling me, guaranteeing me, that by 2000 there would be operational fusion plants. They were just working the bugs out he said. So, I’m assuming that they exist and work perfectly, but they are being kept secret by the oil companies, who bought up all the patents and are suppressing the technology because doing so is worth a good chuckle.
no. of commercial fusion power plants operating in 2000 = 0
Likelihood of a functioning commercial fusion power plant in the next 20 years?
TenguPhule
I’m sorry, I have to call Bullshit here.
The Thorium cycle produces a different isotope of uranium and requires uranium to work since Thorium by itself lacks the nuclear Boomb boom to make the heat exchange work.
Also, plutonium is greatly reduced but still produced.
Anne Laurie
@BR:
Larry Kudlow will weep fat, bitter tears, because the power shortages are going to damage Japan’s economic interests, big time.
joel hanes
The Nuclear Energy Institute said that the incident at Fukushima Daiichi had received a rating of 4 on its 7-point International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, lower than the 5 earned by the 1979 Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania and the 7 earned by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
joel hanes
@Arclite:
The U.S. national annual background dose for humans is approximately 360 mrem / year, or 30 mrem / month.
Chest x-ray (14 x 17 inch area) – 15 mrem
Dental x-ray (3 inch diameter area) – 300 mrem
So if the report is correct, the sailors got a dose equivalent to 2 chest X-rays, or one-tenth of one dental X-ray, presumably over their whole bodies.
* (source of data) Any arithmetic or units errors are undoubtedly mine. Void where prohibited. Offer not good after curfew in sectors R or N. Some settling of contents may have occurred during shipping and handling.
DBrown
Last I checked, no one could predict any accident, even if your brakes loose all fluid, and you know this and start driving down a mountain you still have the emmergency brake … what utter bullshit. The basic american reactor is a death trap waiting to happen and no engineering design or system can change that fact. An ultra-high energy density reactor designed for a sub can not be safely scaled up to power a city. Anyone who says otherwise is full of it. The Candu reactor, even with lost of coolent does not have the latent energy to melt down even partly but it costs more and gives less energy; of course, cost is a realative term, isn’t it? Look at all the accidents and near accidents and there is zero doubt – the people who say otherwise are liars – QED
alwhite
I’m late to the party I know but everyone here is aware that there is a nuclear power plant on the San Andreas Fault line in California, right?
Hoocoodnode indead.
Omnes Omnibus
@DBrown:
Liars, huh? No possibility that people came up with a different interpretation of the facts, were unaware of certain facts, made a mistake, or otherwise innocently said something that contradicted your point of view?
John D.
@TenguPhule: And yet, India has produced in almost 100 TW-h of power using ThO2 fuel. Oddly large for what you call “bullshit”.
Yes, you have to spike the fuel (or wait for neutron capture and decay to produce enough U233 for the chain to close) to achieve the initial criticality. The most common additive used? Spent fuel from *other* reactors. You know, the waste nobody seems to know what to do with, and are concerned about.
Thorium is not a magic bullet that solves all the problems with nuclear power, but it has some significant advantages – ones that Rickover listed as disadvantages when the US policy was settled on Uranium as a fuel, including no weapons-grade waste produced.
Svensker
@fasteddie9318:
Feeling a little bleak, are we?
Peter
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck: Look on the bright side: you are the third strongest master of this hole.
Svensker
@nancydarling:
Yes, but capitalism subsidized by the Feds is exactly the model the Rs love so much. Privatize profits, socialize risk. Easy peasy.
4tehlulz
Japan? Lie about environmental disasters? UNPRECIDENTED
brantl
I’m sick of this “Nuclear power is safe!” shit. When are you gong to ever find any place save to put the waste? THERE ISN’T ANYWHERE TO PUT IT. PERIOD.
John D.
@brantl: Yelling won’t change the fact that you are wrong.
You can transmute it in a breeder reactor. You can encapsulate it, attach a robot sub, and stick it in a subduction zone a few miles down in the ocean. You can launch it into space.
You do realize that the waste problem has been solved for decades by other countries, yes? Usually using the first option I listed above. The long-lived isotopes are created by nuclear transmutation, and can easily be destroyed the same way.
TenguPhule
This does not cover the REST of the radioactive nuclear waste produced. Just the core.
chopper
@BR:
at this point we’re at what POers call ‘the wobbly plateau’. we have some economic growth, then oil prices skyrocket, then recession, oil lowers, then some growth, later rinse etc.
this happens as long as throughput, in general, has plateaued. oil production has been pretty level for the past few years, but depletion in current fields is chugging along, and the inflexibility in crude supplies as well as the lack of meaningful production in unconventional sources (plus the lack of meaningful throughput even when those sources are brought on) means soon we’ll be off the plateau and into decline.
since our economic growth is tied to energy, we won’t be seeing an alternating growth/recession paradigm, like something liek a 50/50 duty cycle signal. it’ll be heavier on the recession and light on the occasional growth.
the thing that’s really scary is that our economy is based on growth. take away even the possibility of long-term growth and the sovereignty of US debt comes into question. there go bonds, social security, basically the whole neighborhood.
chopper
@TenguPhule:
the thorium cycle starts with a charge of fissile uranium, which breeds more uranium from a jacket of thorium. so outside of the original charge, all you put in is thorium and the plant keeps running. and thorium is far more abundant than natural uranium.
U233 has its own proliferation risks, but they are more minimal than the uranium or plutonium cycles. U233 is often contaminated with small amounts of U232 which is a really, really nasty gamma emitter. makes it hard to work with, and so not so good at all for bombs.
Tonal Crow
@John D.:
How useful is this technique? That is, what can be transmuted into what at what rate, and with what undesirable byproducts and risks?
And we know enough about where it will go to say that the risk is acceptable? Please cite your source.
And when we invade Iraq we’ll be greeted with flowers, and flying unicorns will pop out of our asses and grant each of us 10 no-backfire wishes.
Anyone even passingly familiar with launch tech knows that the catastrophic launch failure rate (~10%) is far (far!) too high to take the risk of scattering high-level waste over thousands of square miles. Read and learn. And just in case you think that failure rates have somehow vastly improved since that report, just 10 days ago the Glory climate satellite got Poseidoned in the South Pacific. This comes after the OCO climate satellite got the same treatment less than 2 years ago.
ETA: Moderation? Er what? Is “Poseidon” now on the banned list?
Wolfdaughter
Question for those of you advocating nuclear power as a stopgap: how long does it take to bring a plant online, and at what cost?
I’ve been reading threads here in BJ, as well as on Salon and HuffPo/AOL, and some of the nuclear advocates dismiss solar and wind as taking time and money to develop and bring online. But isn’t that also a problem with nuclear?
And yes, even solar and wind come with some risks, but the risks of nuclear failure are so much greater. One catastrophe could result in the deaths of 1000s of people, cancers down the road, and leaving swaths of lands uninhabitable for many years to come.
So I would rather see us go for a Manhattan Project on renewables, which would create jobs as well. I also second the concerns of those of you who don’t trust Corporate USA or even our government as it’s now constituted.
Comrade Mary
One source reporting that units 1-4 have now all achieved “cold shutdown”.
uptown
With the possibility of rolling blackouts in your major cities the pressure will always be to keep the old and unsafe nuclear power plants running beyond their planned lifespan.
John D.
@Tonal Crow: Ah. I take it you do not know what a subduction zone is. The entire POINT is that is does not “stay there”, but instead gets pulled into the mantle. Otherwise know as “the place that stays molten due to natural radioactivity”.
There is a lot of literature available on your first question. OSTI PDF is a good place to start. It is from 1993, and the tech has advanced greatly since then, but here is what it boils down to.
Transmutation of any nucleonics is achieved by neutron capture, so the important designation of any waste under consideration is “neutron cross section” (NCS). This is a measure of how easily it will capture a neutron. With me so far?
If you would direct your attention to the Fission Product Yield page on Wikipedia, look at the table that is ordered by half-life. Everything up through Krypton 85 is going to have pretty much decayed into a tiny fraction by the time we begin to reprocess. So, let us look at the remainder.
Cadmium 113. Large NCS. Large enough that almost none of this will AVOID capture and decay while the fuel is still in use as a fuel.
Strontium 90 and Cesium 137: Small NCS. Best separated out chemically and left to decay naturally. Both have half-lives ~30 years.
Samarium 151. See Cadmium 113.
Technetium 99. First of the long (200 Kyear)lived waste products. Medium NCS. Captures a neutron to form Tc 100, which beta decays to stable Ru 100 with a halflife of 16 seconds. Demonstrated at CERN as a viable candidate for transmutation.
Tin 126. Medium NCS, but the transmuted atom has a halflife of 100 Kyears. Produced in very small quantities, though. Long half-life, low environmental mobility, and poor biologic uptake make this particular isotope less of a threat than cosmic radiation.
Selenium 79. Small NCS. Absorbs a neutron to form stable Se 80. Low percentage of waste means it can just be left in the neutron stream – if it absorbs another neutron to form Se81, it decays to Bromine 81 with a halflife of 18.45 minutes.
Zirconium-93. Small to medium NCS. Halflife of 1.53 MYear. Will absorb a neutron to form Zr 94, which is stable.
Cesium 135. Medium NCS, but a poor transmutation candidate for two reasons — First, it is a beta decay isotope, which means that the energy released upon decay can’t even penetrate skin, and second, double neutron capture leads to Cs 137 which decays to Ba 137 (h/l ~30 years) which is a strong gamma emitter with a h/l of 12 minutes. Separate this out chemically (it is the only alkaline waste product) and sequester.
Palladium 107. Low percentage present in waste, 6.5 MYear h/l, pure beta decay, alternate isotope with far larger cross section. Not a transmutation candidate. Sequester.
Iodine 129. Moderate NCS. Almost no other isotopes present. Halflife of 15.7 MYears, decays via beta and low energy gamma to Xe 129. Mobile in the environment, so not a candidate for sequestration. Neutron capture leads to I 130, which decays to Xe 129 with a 12.4h h/l.
The waste uranium and plutonium isotopes are best used as fuel in breeder reactors, since there are no decay transmutations for the actinides that do not lead to other radioactive actinides. Instead, you force them to go through fissile transmutation, which is what nuclear power is all about. Which also brings us back to the Thorium reactor design talked about upthread, that need other fissiles to induce criticality, which, hey, we have here.
uptown
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Maybe she doesn’t live in a McMansion and has gas heat (like many in the UK because of the North Sea oil & gas fields)?
How about comparing the price per Kwh? Seems that UK prices are double those in the USA on average.
uptown
Here’s the link for international electricity prices.
Tonal Crow
@John D.:
I am familiar with subduction zones. And I did not say that the material would “stay there” — don’t make up stuff that you put within quotes.
That said, while we understand the some of the outlines of circulation within the earth’s mantle and core, we don’t know in exhaustive detail where an object placed into a particular subduction zone will go, or how soon it might re-emerge via volcanism. Maybe you’ve got cites to peer-reviewed papers that explore this issue?
There are huge uncertainties about what the various contributions to earth’s internal heat flux are. One current estimate is that only 30% of the heat is generated via radioactive decay. http://jupiter.ethz.ch/~kausb/Teaching/DynLithMantle/papers/lbclc07.pdf .
Tonal Crow
@John D.: Ack! I can’t edit my previous message. Anyway, thank you for the resources on transmutation. I’ll examine them. It would be nice if this were practical and safe enough to use.