Back in Tokyo after visiting disaster area

[Joe G.]

"So far the only people who have died from this spew of radioactivity are the elderly and infirm... "

What does "so far" have to do with anything, really? That's childish. We need to know the total effects of multiple reactor meltdowns, for the next -- what? Centuries?

Cesium-137 will take about 300 years to go away.

Plutonium ain't going away.

Cancer takes decades. Does that mean it is any less horrific?

Nuclear energy, based on its atrocious record, should be outlawed. Cozy relationships with so-called "regulators" let the plants operate recklessly (in the US as well as Japan, and elsewhere). The 14 "near misses" don't seem to bother the pro-industry bobbing heads, but they should. I mean, what does it actually take to get through that you are flat wrong?

 

[nigelsmith]

Anyone making glib comments about the limited consequences of this latest nuclear disaster is self-evidently a fool.
It will be AT LEAST 40 years from now before the true human cost, in terms of foetal abnormalities and leukemia to give just 2 examples, can be judged.
Arguing whether the unfolding nuclear disaster is more or less important than the more direct consequences of the earthquake is crass and offensive.
So please hold your tongue, have some dignity, and show compassion for the people of Japan.

 

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

Joe, those numbers are all over the place; that suggests to me there's bad science, bad data, or both. The very fact that scientists can disagree so wildly suggests the effect is very small and hard to measure; hard to filter out 'noise'.

Mike

 

[Vladimir Cassel]

Joe, you never answered this: "And no you didn't say coal but Japan needs electricity somehow. Unless you propose they stop using electricity in case someone gets cancer." In the meantime the power shortage resulting from the disaster is likely to last months and the Japanese economy is expected to go into recession as a result, all while you scream bloody murder to take their energy away.

When the authorities talk about the risk from ingesting, say, water from the Tokyo municipal supply, they are using the exact same units to measure THE TOTAL ADDITIONAL RADIATION DOSE OVER TIME RECEIVED FROM THE INGESTED MATERIAL. I guess we'll just have to wait for the entire population of Japan to not drop dead for you to maybe accept that you've been grossly overestimating the risks. Not to mention that it's not even within the levels of maginitude of Chernobyl except in your imagination--the reactor designs make the idea of a Chernobyl type disaster impossible since Graphite, the primary explosive/spreading agent, isn't present and the reactor's location also limits the spread of any release, making the total release much much MUCH closer to Three Mile Island than Chernobyl. But scare tactics and outright lies have been a mainstay of the anti-nuke movements since they started

 

[Vladimir Cassel]

Try reading up on the environmental impact of the silicon in solar panels some time and the groundwater pollution in Silicon Valley. Of course, solar panels don't need to be made out of silicon; you can use other stuff like Cadmium Telluride. But, hey, there's always wind. Ah, those wonderful modern wind turbines with their rare earth magnets.

The point, of course, being that there's no such thing as a free lunch in a world with an ever exploding population that relies on power.

 

[Randall Nott]

Maybe this will help put exposure in perspective:

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Randall Munroe is a cartoonist, not a radiation expert, read his disclaimer at the bootom. Still, he rationally puts this in a way we can grasp.

 

[Randall Nott]

Paul and Ian,

Before this thread gets off track again, I want to applaud your efforts. Shoot, document, gather and interpret stories, tell the truth in many small ways. But do stay safe.

Perhaps you could post some stills of the region from before the quake for us to appreciate what hopefully one day it will become again. Some things will never be recovered, but the Japanese spirit is much to be admired.

 

[Oliver Skibbe]

Try reading up on the environmental impact of the silicon in solar panels some time and the groundwater pollution in Silicon Valley. Of course, solar panels don't need to be made out of silicon; you can use other stuff like Cadmium Telluride. But, hey, there's always wind. Ah, those wonderful modern wind turbines with their rare earth magnets.

The point, of course, being that there's no such thing as a free lunch in a world with an ever exploding population that relies on power.

Human perception is a funny thing. Especially when people have to judge risks.
You are absolutely right about groundwater pollution in Silicon Valley. In other parts of the world there are legal constraints to prohibit industrial contaminations. It can be done.
BTW, would you be afraid of Plutonium polluted ground waters? A few million gallons of liquid radioactive waste leaking into the soil? This is not a science fiction story but a fact. I'm not talking about Japan. I'm looking at the USA. Here's the link.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I agree oliver. There are certainly problems. I grew up within long bike ride from the Hanford Nuclear reservation. I've gone wakeboarding and swimming many times in the snake river down stream. The handling at Hanford of low grade nuclear waste is still a contentious issue. And I think it should be treated seriously and carefully. But that's not to say that we can't manage the risk, I believe we can. And even though I also grew up within sight of one of the nation's largest wind farms (I could see them out my bedroom window at night blinking on hill a few miles away) I recognize that we can't build fast or effectively enough renewable sources without Nuclear. It's not ideal but it's better than coal. Thankfully I live in a state where more than 80% of our power is 0-emission electricity. But that's thanks in a large part to hydro-electric.

One of the largely unreported stories is that at least dozens of people were killed in Japan by a dam that burst. And I quite recently was in support of removing some of Washington State's dams, but now with climate change being a factor the ecological damage caused by dams seems lessened in comparison to the alternative which again unfortunately is coal. Wind and solar are good alternatives but are far more difficult to build in quantity in comparison to Nuclear. All of Germany's solar output for instance is less than the damaged reactors in Japan and Japan isn't exactly a nation with an abundance of available land as we have in the united states. Nor do they have an abundance of natural gas. And yes the Japanese reactor sites might be contaminated beyond use when all is said and done but probably not more than a couple kms.

There are better nuclear reactor designs now that weren't designed and constructed before I was born. Depleted Uranium, Thorium, Pebble Bed etc. I'm sure we'll develop efficient solar technology and we should be investing far more right now to invest in the future even if it's not economical.

But the question at hand about the Japanese Reactors should be viewed in light of comparative risk management. Evacuating Tokyo would kill more people than it will save. The author of the paper published in the NY journal is on Greenpeace's payroll, and while I like greenpeace and support many of their activities I disagree with their nuclear position. I think they're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The author of the NY Journal piece's claims are self admittedly unverifiable empirically. He also attributes every ill in the world to Chernobyl without any evidence which is neither scientific nor prudent. He even claims there was an increase in cancer in the united states linked to Chernobyl. That's a difficult claim to make. It's fine to be biased, everybody is but in this instance it's not science when you simply accumulate correlation and attribute causation without sufficient empirical evidence to prove the link.

If we reject empericism then every claim is of equal validity. "Cancer is caused by unicorns!" You can't have honest and thoughtful discussions when you have no means of determining truth. Every nation should carefully look at their nuclear infrastructure after Japan. Japan should have plans in place to evacuate citizens should the need arise and the risks or inaction outweigh the risks of action. We should always be careful and prudent but we also have to balance public safety on more than a single reactionary and unscientific perspective. Our inaction in converting from coal to nuclear after Three Mile Island results in 10s of thousands of deaths every year in the United States. That has actually been well vetted in scientific research. Sure I wish we had more solar and wind... but we don't. Pragmatically we know that letting nuclear energy die because of the Japanese Accident will result in far more deaths from additional coal emissions than from the nuclear power plants. They might not be "as good" as other alternatives but they are far more likely to supplant coal in the near term.

People are going to die either way. It's a question of minimizing the harm to the people of Japan and the World.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

By the way I'm also saying all this after having spent 6 months in high-school along with our environmental science class attempting to put together a business case to install a wind turbine. It's a challenging and long involved process. And even then we didn't spend nearly enough time to be able to give concrete answers on average KWh per year etc. Without that kind of information you're ultimately just guessing on rate of return etc. This isn't true of a nuclear reactor. If we could successfully develop a 'pocket reactor' as several companies are working on now you would know pretty precisely exactly what its output would be and its life span. It's a known quantity--which is appealing to those who need investors who want to know rate of return, profit etc...

 

[Oliver Skibbe]

Wind and solar are good alternatives but are far more difficult to build in quantity in comparison to Nuclear. All of Germany's solar output for instance is less than the damaged reactors in Japan and Japan isn't exactly a nation with an abundance of available land as we have in the united states.

Simply not true. The Fukushima plant produced 2 GW when shut down (source), all Japanese plants combined produced 31 GW. Germany is not a very sunny place, but up to now 17,3 GW of photovoltaic collectors have been installed (source). Sun, wind, biomass and water contribute to about 17% of Germany's energy. Nuclear power contributes another 23% (source).

There are better nuclear reactor designs now that weren't designed and constructed before I was born. Depleted Uranium, Thorium, Pebble Bed etc. I'm sure we'll develop efficient solar technology and we should be investing far more right now to invest in the future even if it's not economical.

I really like technological progress. But some ideas are just irresponsible. Every nuclear reactor, no matter how advanced, will acumulate dangerous fission products. We have no strategy how to deal with them. When I was young, we were told that it would take only a few decades until we will have found ways how to get rid of that stuff. Today we know for sure that there is no way. We have learned to live with all that waste and it is piling up fast. There are no reliable numbers for dangerous isotopes such as Cs-137 or Sr-90. But there are numbers for Plutonium. In 1999 a global amount of 250 t of weapon grade Plutonium and 800-1000 t of reactor grade plutonium have been estimated. A few mikrogrammes of that stuff will cause cancer if ingested (source, source). The US Department of Energy wants to dispose 34 tonnes of weapon grade plutonium in the United States before the end of 2019 by converting the plutonium to a MOX fuel to be used in commercial nuclear power reactors (source). Can you see a pattern here?

If we reject empericism then every claim is of equal validity. "Cancer is caused by unicorns!" You can't have honest and thoughtful discussions when you have no means of determining truth.

Nonsense. There a hundreds of scientific studies:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=chernobyl
http://www.dmoz.org/search?q=chernobyl+health&cat=all&all=no

 

[Oliver Skibbe]

An interesting video in this context: http://vimeo.com/21630171

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Simply not true. The Fukushima plant produced 2 GW when shut down, all Japanese plants combined produced 31 GW. Germany is not a very sunny place, but up to now 17,3 GW of photovoltaic collectors have been installed. Sun, wind, biomass and water contribute to about 17% of Germany's energy. Nuclear power contributes another 23%.

In 2010, Germany's cumulative installed solar PV stood at 17.3 GW. In 2009, Germany's PV solar capacity factor--the ratio of actual energy output over the year and the energy the plant would have produced at full capacity--was 9.5%. This is quite low for solar PV, which typically has capacity factors around 15%, and is likely due to the fact that Germany doesn't actually get that much sun. If we assume the same 9.5% capacity factor for 2010, then Germany's 17.3 GW translates into about 14,397 GWh of actual annual electricity generation from solar cells.

By comparison, in 2010, Fukushima's six Daiichi reactors--which have a nameplate capacity of 4.5 GW--produced 29,221 GWh of power generation.

That is, one nuclear power plant complex produces more than twice the power generation of Germany's entire installed solar industry.

http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011/03/doing_the_math_comparing_germa.shtml

I really like technological progress. But some ideas are just irresponsible. Every nuclear reactor, no matter how advanced, will acumulate dangerous fission products. We have no strategy how to deal with them. When I was young, we were told that it would take only a few decades until we will have found ways how to get rid of that stuff. Today we know for sure that there is no way.

Not necessarily so dire. We do have means of dealing with it. The french are successfully using Glassification. Here in Washington they are also evaluating Glassification. Combine that with Yucca and we would have a pretty good solution for the next few hundred years. I can't speak to the Japanese state of waste management but I imagine they are working down similar lines.

Nonsense. There a hundreds of scientific studies:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=chernobyl
http://www.dmoz.org/search?q=chernobyl+health&cat=all&all=no

Not saying there isn't research into Chernobyl. I'm saying we should be evaluating the best research there is on the subject. The earlier posted paper though was not a rigorous epidemiological study--it was an op-ed formatted as a research paper. Just publishing a paper isn't enough--it has to stand up to rigorous peer review. And the current state of peer reviewed studies on Chernobyl do not believe that 600k+ people were killed.

 

[Oliver Skibbe]

http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011/03/doing_the_math_comparing_germa.shtml

Gavin, this is getting complicated now. In post #69 you stated that "all of Germany's solar output for instance is less than the damaged reactors in Japan". I told you this is not true, since we are comparing 2 GW in Fukushima Daiishi to 17 GW installed photovoltaic capacity in Germany.

Now you refer to an article that says "First of all, the total installed capacity of Japan's Fukushima six-reactor Daiishi plant is actually 4.5 GW. The total power output of Japan's entire Fukushima complex, which consists of ten reactors--six at Daiichi and an additional four at Daini--is 8.8 GW." Even if Daiishi 1 has 4.5 GW (which it has not according to my cited sources, but they may be wrong) the fact remains that 17 GW is a higher number than 4.5 GW. Of course these numbers will not tell you how much energy is effectively produced during the runtime of these devices. Solar generation is depending on weather and daytime. Nuclear plants have to be cut off for maintenance. BTW, two of the Daiishi reactors were off the grid during the tsunami, and we should be glad they were…
There's a discussion of the numbers going on at the place you cited. I think we should not bring it to REDUSER.
It is a strange discussion anyway, since no reasonable person would expect that photovoltaics could be the main source of energy in a northern european country. Solar energy in Germany is meant to be a test bed as well as a complement to hydro power and wind energy. Solar energy and biogas are locally available even if the main power grid fails. Photovoltaics nevertheless is a very promising technology for sunny countries. Another aspect: German PV industry generates over 10,000 jobs in production, distribution and installation (source).

Not necessarily so dire. We do have means of dealing with it. The french are successfully using Glassification. Here in Washington they are also evaluating Glassification. Combine that with Yucca and we would have a pretty good solution for the next few hundred years. I can't speak to the Japanese state of waste management but I imagine they are working down similar lines.

Even the Swiss are trying glassification of radioactive waste using plasmaburners at temperatures above 1000 °C. They claim to be more than 95% effective. Only small amounts of C-14 and H-3 will escape into the environment. BTW, are all the money and energy needed to build and operate these facilities, to store and cool the highly concentrated, radioactive glass beads part of your calculation? This is not what I would call clean and affordable…

Not saying there isn't research into Chernobyl. I'm saying we should be evaluating the best research there is on the subject. The earlier posted paper though was not a rigorous epidemiological study--it was an op-ed formatted as a research paper. Just publishing a paper isn't enough--it has to stand up to rigorous peer review. And the current state of peer reviewed studies on Chernobyl do not believe that 600k+ people were killed.

I know it takes time to look at all the science papers in the links I posted. Im not going to argue with you about the numbers of deaths as aftermath of Chernobyl. But believe me (or better: see for yourself!): there are many peer reviewed papers that come to the conclusion that tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands people suffered for years and eventually died.

 

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

Every nuclear reactor, no matter how advanced, will acumulate dangerous fission products. We have no strategy how to deal with them. When I was young, we were told that it would take only a few decades until we will have found ways how to get rid of that stuff. Today we know for sure that there is no way.

There is, and it's to accelerate Gen IV reactor development. New reactor designs which will:

1. Use existing high-level waste as fuel, thus getting rid of it and
2. Produce waste that decays to safe levels much, much faster than existing reactors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor#Advantages_and_disadvantages

Mike

 

[Oliver Skibbe]

There's just a goal and a roadmap. The Generation IV International Forum was founded in 2001 and they hope to have a working reactor in 2030. They haven't even decided yet what design principle their reactor will follow. But they already promise

• Nuclear waste that lasts decades instead of millennia
• 100-300 times more energy yield from the same amount of nuclear fuel

Small print from the wikipedia article: One disadvantage of any new reactor technology is that safety risks may be greater initially as reactor operators have little experience with the new design. [...] As one director of a U.S. research laboratory put it, "fabrication, construction, operation, and maintenance of new reactors will face a steep learning curve: advanced technologies will have a heightened risk of accidents and mistakes. The technology may be proven, but people are not"

This is a bad joke.

 

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

There's just a goal and a roadmap. The Generation IV International Forum was founded in 2001 and they hope to have a working reactor in 2030. They haven't even decided yet what design principle their reactor will follow. But they already promise

• Nuclear waste that lasts decades instead of millennia
• 100-300 times more energy yield from the same amount of nuclear fuel

Small print from the wikipedia article: One disadvantage of any new reactor technology is that safety risks may be greater initially as reactor operators have little experience with the new design. [...] As one director of a U.S. research laboratory put it, "fabrication, construction, operation, and maintenance of new reactors will face a steep learning curve: advanced technologies will have a heightened risk of accidents and mistakes. The technology may be proven, but people are not"

This is a bad joke.

All very true, but no joke; the advantages, especially the ability to destroy existing waste, tip the balance for me. The timescale is a joke, that's why I suggest more serious funding and accelerated development. As it is, it make RED delivery schedules look brisk! :001_rolleyes: (that was a JOKE!)

(Aside: as a society we fart around too much when it comes to tech progress, risk-taking, and the 'vision thing'. We haven't equalled, let alone exceeded, the progress we made in the 1960s in many areas. Apollo worked and was done inside of ten years - then we lost it, we ended up with the compromised, bloated, political Shuttle, and we're about to lose even that. I hate having to explain to my son that yes, you used to be able to fly supersonic across the Atlantic, but we've gone backwards and lost that ability, we can't do that any more. RED are redressing that balance and pushing the envelope in one small area, which is one reason I like them so much.)

Mike

 

[Joe G.]

"And the current state of peer reviewed studies on Chernobyl do not believe that 600k+ people were killed. "​

Gavin continues to lie about the evidence in a misguided utterly ignorant defense of the indefensible. More of Japan becomes a radioactive wasteland by the hour.

I have the studies now, and I spent yesterday going through them. They are peer reviewed. They are not an "op ed" as you claim.

What you have are United Nations "studies" that drastically disagree with thousands upon thousands of other independent studies. Completely different situation than you repeatedly claim.

The UN is a highly politicized body. All the major nations there are pro-nuclear, obviously. They created their nations' industries and defend it with lax (criminally neglectful) oversight to this day. It isn't that difficult to send people there who are on board to do the work, and to create parameters that exclude whomever you want to exclude. Particularly, when everyone in charge is in agreement.

Gavin hasn't said anything truthful yet on the subject, and his repeated attempts to turn life and death issues into childish mockery ("unicorns") is revealing of a weak mind unprepared for serious discussion of anything.

From the NYAS paper:

"Additionally there were rising rates of childhood morbidity and Down´s syndrome. These findings indicate that the spectrum of developmental defects generated by incorporated radioactivity in humans may be much greater than derived by international radiation committees from the follow-up of Japanese A-bomb survivors. The findings are compatible with a particularly high radiosensitivity of the fetus assumed in the former times of radiation research. In contrast to this, the International Commission on Radiological Protection ICRP has postulated a threshold dose as high as 100 mSv in Publication 90 of 2003 for effects after prenatal exposure. They and other committees exclude radiation effects by Chernobyl fallout referring to the very low doses which were derived for the population. Even in highly contaminated regions their results of the average exposures do not exceed a few mSv. These estimates are, however, inconsistent with the results of a variety of cytogenetic studies in the affected populations."​

 

[Joe G.]

Arnold Gundersen
"Arnie is an energy advisor with 39-years of nuclear power engineering experience. A former nuclear industry senior vice president, he earned his Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in nuclear engineering, holds a nuclear safety patent, and was a licensed reactor operator. During his nuclear industry career,
Arnie managed and coordinated projects at 70-nuclear power plants around the country. He currently speaks on television, radio, and at public meetings on the need for a new paradigm in energy production. An independent nuclear engineering and safety expert, Arnie provides testimony on nuclear operations, reliability, safety, and radiation issues to the NRC, Congressional and State Legislatures, and Government Agencies and Officials throughout the US, Canada, and internationally..."

 

[Zakaree Sandberg]

March 31, 2011

"Japan finally conceded defeat in the battle to contain radiation at four of Fukushima's crippled reactors. They will now be shut down.
Details of how this will be done are yet to be revealed, but officials said it would mean switching off all power and abandoning attempts to keep the nuclear fuel rods cool.

The final move would involve pouring tonnes of concrete on the reactors to seal them in tombs and ensure radiation does not leak out.
The country's nuclear safety agency revealed levels of radiation in the ocean near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant had surged to 4,385 times the regulatory limit.

The dramatic announcement that the four reactors are out of control and will have to be decommissioned was made yesterday by the chairman of the electric company operating the Fukushima plant."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...a-plant-entombed-concrete-radiation-leak.html


Japanese government is telling people everything is ok..
we have radiation levels found in our dairy now, in the usa..

one thing history can teach you.. NEVER TRUST A GOVERNMENT..
shits real