Educating the general public about pro nuclear energy?

[Gleaner]

Pardon my ignorance, but why would nuclear energy be better option, I hear a lot of fears from the general public of why it is not safe?
How would someone convince someones fear about the safety of nuclear power, considering what happened in Japan?

cheers,

 

[HAYAO]

Since you mentioned Japan, a Japanese will give you a reply.

There is no way of convincing anyone about the safety of nuclear power. Their fear is emotionally driven, and they cannot be reasoned with. Media overreacted to Fukushima incident causing unnecessary panic among people. In all honesty, I was one of them. It was until I decided to do some research on my own that I learned that I was panicking over something that I shouldn't have. Among all of the media coverage of the incident that I've seen, they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. I'm not sure if this because they do not have the time to understand the background necessary to at least qualitatively understand nuclear power and radiation hazards, or because they are extremely biased. I'm not a professional, but only an educated non-specialist. So I wouldn't really know all the mathematical theories behind everything, but I can at least qualitatively and broadly understand what they probably do mean.

I doubt that the general public would really understand the difference between Sv and Gy, much less what units like Sv/y and stuff means. I also do not believe they would understand all these standards that the government established regarding radiation and exposure. People would barely know the difference between external and internal exposure, neither. Unless they do some research on their own, they won't know about the fact that the effects of internal exposure to radiation on human body not only depends on the type of radiation, but the source of radiation (radioactive materials). If well educated people like us study these, we can at least get an idea of what they scientifically mean. But media coverage of the meaning in these words are ambiguous and abstract, and they sometimes make completely absurd assumption and speculation based on two different data that cannot be compared. I know they invite scientists to explain the incident, but they only choose the same person to explain again if they can say something against nuclear power. It almost made it look as if all scientists were against nuclear power and that they are unmistakably dangerous power source.

Japanese media has been extremely biased against nuclear power for quite some time, and they got the right timing to attack them. They say stuff like the number of people in Fukushima diagnosed with thyroid cancer increased since the incident, when in fact, a completely different medical procedure was done in the first and second test (second one was more specialized in detecting thyroid cancer, while first one was for general checkup). Of course they are going to find more people with thyroid cancer. However, the media haven't covered the fact that when same test as the first one was done no difference was observed.

To be fair, one or two people did die of acute radiation exposure, and several others were diagnosed with acute radiation syndrome. All of these people worked inside the reactor to resolve the issue after the incident.

What people need to understand in terms of "risks" and "hazards" of nuclear power, or in fact EVERYTHING, is that science is neutral. They don't determine what is safe or not. They only provide experimental or theoretical facts. We, or more precisely, the government decides what is safe or not. And the truth is that they misjudged Fukushima Plant. Fukushima Plant is one of the oldest nuclear power plant of obsolete design. They were supposed to be decommissioned before the incident, only except that the company (Tokyo Electricity) and the government decided to postpone the decommission for political reasons. That's when the tsunami happened. The newer design (all active plants other than Fukushima plant) was invulnerable to the same tsunami.

This is all about bad decisions by human. It's a human error. What is dangerous is us and how we run the plant, not the power plant itself.
As for why nuclear power is used? Well I don't quite know the details in terms of finance but I guess because it can make some money. Although the total cost of power plant and its running cost (including money given to local people as compensation) may be comparable or possibly more expensive than burning coals, but the fact that the stable fuel cost, electricity production, and the production per area of land is efficient, is a good reason. Also, it indirectly contributes to technological advancement as well as profits for some company in producing necessary parts and materials due to the nature of the plant (which in turn also advances their production techniques) compared to other sources of energies. Quick google or wikipedia provides many pros and cons so you might want to review them.

 

[gmax137]

Pardon my ignorance, but why would nuclear energy be better option, I hear a lot of fears from the general public of why it is not safe?
How would someone convince someones fear about the safety of nuclear power, considering what happened in Japan?

cheers,

Here's an easy to read, non-techno book. Amazon has it for $10. It was written in 2007 (before the tsunami) so it does not discuss Fukushima, but it covers a lot of the typical anti-nuclear concerns.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307385876/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[russ_watters]

Pardon my ignorance, but why would nuclear energy be better option, I hear a lot of fears from the general public of why it is not safe?

Could you please reword that; it looks like a combination of two incomplete thoughts. In particular; better option than what?

How would someone convince someones fear about the safety of nuclear power, considering what happened in Japan?

It depends on how deep you want to go, but I generally open such discussions by pointing out that nobody outside the power plant died (perhaps some will, but the number will be so small it will be difficult to measure)...and does anyone even remember what happened to precipitate the accident and how many people that killed?

 

[mfb]

Although the total cost of power plant and its running cost (including money given to local people as compensation) may be comparable or possibly more expensive than burning coals

Coal is cheap only because the power plant operators don't have to pay (notably) for the health issues their ash produces, or for the long-term effects of the CO2 they emit.

Chernobyl was by far the largest nuclear accident ever, and it would have been easily avoidable - by not using their stupid reactor design or by following the clear safety rules like "never remove these control rods this, no matter what happens". A few thousand deaths are probably linked to it. Coal ash kills 3000 people per day - coal power plants are equivalent to a Chernobyl accident about every two days. That is the design operation of them. Calculations and sources here.

 

[russ_watters]

We, or more precisely, the government decides what is safe or not. And the truth is that they misjudged Fukushima Plant. Fukushima Plant is one of the oldest nuclear power plant of obsolete design. They were supposed to be decommissioned before the incident, only except that the company (Tokyo Electricity) and the government decided to postpone the decommission for political reasons. That's when the tsunami happened. The newer design (all active plants other than Fukushima plant) was invulnerable to the same tsunami.

This is all about bad decisions by human. It's a human error. What is dangerous is us and how we run the plant, not the power plant itself.

How extreme is our intolerance for risk that even when the primary cause of the accident was one of the worst [two] natural disasters in human history we still feel the need to call-out human error as a substantial or even primary contributor? That's like if a meteor takes off the wing of a plane and we call it pilot error + design flaw!

 

[HAYAO]

How extreme is our intolerance for risk that even when the primary cause of the accident was one of the worst [two] natural disasters in human history and we still feel the need to call-out human error as a substantial or even primary contributor? That's like if a meteor takes off the wing of a plane and we call it pilot error + design flaw!

I wouldn't say that Fukushima plant was like the meteor and plane situation. Earthquakes happen every often in Japan, and obviously for that reason, tsunami is also likely to happen. Like I said in that post, Fukushima did have a design flaw that was already been accounted for and fixed in the later power plants in other parts of Japan before tsunami ever happened. People of Tokyo Electricity says they weren't expecting such large tsunami, but I speculate that they did know there was a design flaw due to the reason stated above. Politics prevented them from doing anything about it.

I agree that the scale of the tsunami was unpredictable. Nonetheless, since power plants are built near large water, and considering it's Japan, extra precautions are a necessity. All active plants other than Fukushima would have not had the same problem, which proves that they knew they needed such design even if it might have been an exaggerated precautions. Besides, Fukushima itself may have had other problems considering they were being used much longer than the expectancy of the plant. They should've decommissioned it anyway. So this is not a benefit of the hindsight or anything.

 

[jim hardy]

People of Tokyo Electricity says they weren't expecting such large tsunami, but I speculate that they did know there was a design flaw due to the reason stated above.

Humans (in fact all large brained mammals) learn from their mistakes.
Somebody uncovered evidence of huge tidal waves within recorded history that were larger than the fellows who designed the plant believed possible.
That SHOULD have triggered a corporate response to fix the plant so it could handle them.
I blame bureaucracy and fear to speak out.

Had a lowly electrician and a lowly geologist got together to write a letter to TEPCO executives explaining the electrical system's vulnerability to flooding with actual photographs and history of regional flooding sufficient to disable said electrical systems,
I have to believe TEPCO would have flood proofed the electrical systems.

Executives are people too, and still i believe you have to be a pretty good person to make it to executive ranks.

Ask anybody who works in a US nuke plant about their company's post Fukushima changes
.I lived through Brown's Ferry and Three Mile Island backfits. The improvements we made after those incidents exceeded the original cost of my plant.

old jim

 

[HAYAO]

Humans (in fact all large brained mammals) learn from their mistakes.
Somebody uncovered evidence of huge tidal waves within recorded history that were larger than the fellows who designed the plant believed possible.
That SHOULD have triggered a corporate response to fix the plant so it could handle them.
I blame bureaucracy and fear to speak out.

Had a lowly electrician and a lowly geologist got together to write a letter to TEPCO executives explaining the electrical system's vulnerability to flooding with actual photographs and history of regional flooding sufficient to disable said electrical systems,
I have to believe TEPCO would have flood proofed the electrical systems.

Executives are people too, and still i believe you have to be a pretty good person to make it to executive ranks.

Ask anybody who works in a US nuke plant about their company's post Fukushima changes
.I lived through Brown's Ferry and Three Mile Island backfits. The improvements we made after those incidents exceeded the original cost of my plant.

old jim

Or maybe it may have turned out like Challenger disaster. Just maybe.

 

[jim hardy]

Or maybe it may have turned out like Challenger disaster. Just maybe.

We got quite a lot of management training following the Challenger disaster too, with themes of "Eschew groupthink, Listen to your knowledge workers, don't yield to schedule pressure" ...

Industry learns from mistakes. That's how we got codes for buildings, boilers and pressure vessels, electrical systems; these machines we build. Management science is catching up with technology. (I hope)

 

[HAYAO]

We got quite a lot of management training following the Challenger disaster too, with themes of "Eschew groupthink, Listen to your knowledge workers, don't yield to schedule pressure" ...

Industry learns from mistakes. That's how we got codes for buildings, boilers and pressure vessels, electrical systems; these machines we build. Management science is catching up with technology. (I hope)

I'm no way denying that people learn from mistakes. We should and I know we always are. If we had no way of knowing the precaution necessary to prevent a disaster then it's going to be forgiven to some degree. I would justify them that nothing could've been done. All the blame people put on the responsible institute after such disaster is with a benefit of the hindsight.

However, the problem I am saying is that for the specific case like Fukushima Plant and Challenger disaster was something that could've been prevented without the benefit of hindsight. Once one is aware of a problem that could potentially lead to disasters, then they are obliged to do something about it, ideally. Now several things are of course less hazardous than the other. Those with minor hazard probably gets ignored and I can understand that to some degree. But I don't understand when critically crucial precautions that could prevent large scale disaster gets ignored.

Luckily, Fukushima incident isn't as bad as Chernobyl, despite the same level of hazard. But we were more or less lucky.

 

[russ_watters]

We got quite a lot of management training following the Challenger disaster too, with themes of "Eschew groupthink, Listen to your knowledge workers, don't yield to schedule pressure" ...

It was a case study in my Engineering Ethics courses in college. It was entirely preventable by people who knowingly violated safety protocols.

 

[Aufbauwerk 2045]

I think education is important, but so is trust. One does not necessarily lead to another. Sometimes the contrary is true. In some cases, the more we know about a system, the less we trust it.

As I mentioned in a previous post, from my point of view there are at least four levels of trust. I must trust the science, the engineering, the operations, and the oversight.

As pointed out by others, human error is at least part of the problem. But there are unintended safety violations, and there are intended safety violations.

For example, people can understand how a tired human at a nuclear power plant can make a mistake. The expectation of those who trust is that there are safety measures in place to deal with this. But what about trusting a system which performs intensional safety violations for financial or political reasons? I could mention military reasons, but that is more problematic. If we believe that what the military does is vital to the national defense then it is hard to argue against. But if people believe safety is violated for financial or political gain, then I think any sane person will be outraged.

Here in the USA, the level of trust in many institutions is very low indeed. We do not trust politicians, scientists, engineers, programmers, doctors, hospitals, lawyers, billionaires, the media, teachers, or in general our fellow citizens. Is this a result of inadequate education? On the contrary, sometimes it is the result of more education.

Is education the answer? People are wise to the fact that sometimes education is just another word for indoctrination.

I think the solution to the energy problem is to develop fusion power, unless someone comes up with something that is even better.

 

[jim hardy]

several things are of course less hazardous than the other. Those with minor hazard probably gets ignored and I can understand that to some degree. But I don't understand when critically crucial precautions that could prevent large scale disaster gets ignored.

in US there's a concept named "Probabilistic Risk Assessment"(PRA) , a mathematical process whereby 'things' are evaluated and prioritized according to their likelihood and severity of consequence.. The PRA experts can make it look pretty esoteric to one at my level.

When Japanese archeologists found those stones way up the hill that'd been engraved "do not build below here you'll get washed away"
and historians uncovered records of huge tidal waves within a thousand years
the PRA folks should've raised their 'likelihood' number for 'Loss of All AC' to 1/1000 per year or greater
which would make their ' likelihood X consequences ' product significant enough to warrant action .

I can understand how the 'Modest Proposal' that one's Sacred Diesels(that's how we plant guys feel about them) are at extreme risk would be met with initial disbelief and take some time to percolate up through a bureaucracy .
In that bureaucracy you have competing forces - a group whose job it is to think up "What If's" and another whose job it is to assess them and recommend action or dismissal. Most warrant dismissal or minimal action.
With a bureaucracy you get all the human complications of power, prestige and personalities. . So they're prone to herd behaviors like vacillation and immobility and stampede that promulgate the mistrust you mentioned.

Tepco's bureaucracy failed them on this one. That's why i maintain that they needed somebody near the bottom and close to the facts of the matter, to bypass the bureaucracy and apprise those near the top that their company's whole net worth hung on a decades old PRA equation with a badly underestimated Likelihood term in it .. .
And that's how i see it in my 'view from the bottom'.

We like to place blame on an individual.
I suppose someplace there's a bureaucrat mid level manager who agreed to send back for further study that challenge to their tsunami likelihood assumptions . He gets my vote. But he's surely a lot wiser now and has suffered plenty already in self recrimination so why flog him? Act on the lesson and go on.

My old mentor was expert at shredding red tape.
But if you're at the bottom and decide to bypass middle management you'd better be doggone sure you're right.

It could've been done for this one. Challenger too.
Oddly, Three Mile Island was caused by bureaucratic over-reaction to a hypothetical "What If" . Proximal blame for that one lies with whatever bureaucrat issued the edict to operators "Thou shalt not fill thy Pressurizer" , over some What-If called 'Pressurized Thermal Shock' . Not long afterward they changed their edict to "Thou shalt overfill thy Pressurizer and let the water run out onto thy floor". That left Crystal River operators with a wet containment to clean up but proved the point.
That's how large brained mammals and large organizations learn - through our mistakes.

Progress not perfection..Wow i really rambled on that one,, eh? Old guys just do that. Thanks for reading it.

old jim

 

[russ_watters]

I wouldn't say that Fukushima plant was like the meteor and plane situation. Earthquakes happen every often in Japan, and obviously for that reason, tsunami is also likely to happen. Like I said in that post, Fukushima did have a design flaw that was already been accounted for and fixed in the later power plants in other parts of Japan before tsunami ever happened. People of Tokyo Electricity says they weren't expecting such large tsunami, but I speculate that they did know there was a design flaw due to the reason stated above. Politics prevented them from doing anything about it.

I agree that the scale of the tsunami was unpredictable. Nonetheless, since power plants are built near large water, and considering it's Japan, extra precautions are a necessity.

Yes, I agree that such precautions are a necessity; I was simply pointing out just how wide the expectations gap is. Planes are probably a bad example because expectations are so high for planes as well. I probably should have picked an example where the expectations are low, like a car. How about: a head on collission at 100 kph due to falling asleep at the wheel killing the passengers and the deaths being blamed on a design flaw?

My point is that there is a near zero risk/ risk tolerance and near perfect safety record that nevertheless people incorrectly perceive as a high risk and poor safety record. As a result, they make every-day decisions regarding their own safety that are much, much worse even while opposing nuclear power -- and some even instead of nuclear power. When in the 1970s and 1980s Americans successfully got the nuclear program of the US halted, the result was replacing new nuclear capacity with new coal capacity. They - knowingly or not - replaced a technology that has never killed a civilian (anyone outside its production) in the US with a technology that kills several civilians every day. And if you ask the same people today, many will still argue they made the right choice!

 

[HAYAO]

Wow i really rambled on that one,, eh? Old guys just do that. Thanks for reading it.

old jim

I agree to most of it. Bureaucracy definitely is one of the problems when it comes to management. I'm not sure if there is any realistic option other than that, but bureaucracy in Japan quite often cause serious problems because Japanese corporation almost always take form of seniority. Although there are exceptions, many of the executives in Japanese companies are less likely to be familiar with science even if the company is based on scientific and technological products. For example in TEPCO, only one out of five CEO and presidents have scientific background. Scientific suggestion are less likely to be understood correctly for these people.

 

[HAYAO]

Yes, I agree that such precautions are a necessity; I was simply pointing out just how wide the expectations gap is. Planes are probably a bad example because expectations are so high for planes as well. I probably should have picked an example where the expectations are low, like a car. How about: a head on collission at 100 kph due to falling asleep at the wheel killing the passengers and the deaths being blamed on a design flaw?

My point is that there is a near zero risk/ risk tolerance and near perfect safety record that nevertheless people incorrectly perceive as a high risk and poor safety record. As a result, they make every-day decisions regarding their own safety that are much, much worse even while opposing nuclear power -- and some even instead of nuclear power. When in the 1970s and 1980s Americans successfully got the nuclear program of the US halted, the result was replacing new nuclear capacity with new coal capacity. They - knowingly or not - replaced a technology that has never killed a civilian (anyone outside its production) in the US with a technology that kills several civilians every day. And if you ask the same people today, many will still argue they made the right choice!

Okay, I was misunderstanding your point. Yes, I agree.

 

[mheslep]

wouldn't say that Fukushima plant was like the meteor and plane situation. Earthquakes happen every often in Japan, and obviously for that reason, tsunami is also likely to happen.

Yes quakes happen in Japan, are common, and the reactors survived this severe one intact. All of them shut down immediately, automatically. Tsunamis like this however are not at all common, once in perhaps 500 years. Indeed, the tsunami and quake killed some ten thousand people. The reactor accidents killed none.

Like I said in that post, Fukushima did have a design flaw that was already been accounted for and fixed in the later power plants in other parts of Japan before tsunami ever happened.

One could similarly label a plane wing hit by a meteor as a design flaw, by looking at safety measures not taken. It is possible, though wildly impractical, to accommodate the passengers on a plane with parachutes of some kind. Fuel tanks can be pressurized with inert gas (and are in in some miltary aircraft) to prevent explosion. None of this is done. Design flaw?

Edit: Russ's high speed head on collision example is better yet.

 

[HAYAO]

Yes quakes happen in Japan, are common, and the reactors survived this severe one intact. All of them shut down immediately, automatically. Tsunamis like this however are not at all common, once in perhaps 500 years. Indeed, the tsunami and quake killed some ten thousand people. The reactor accidents killed none.

One could similarly label a plane wing hit by a meteor as a design flaw, by looking at safety measures not taken. It is possible, though wildly impractical, to accommodate the passengers on a plane with parachutes of some kind. Fuel tanks can be pressurized with inert gas (and are in in some miltary aircraft) to prevent explosion. None of this is done. Design flaw?

Edit: Russ's high speed head on collision example is better yet.

This is not a valid argument.

Every other plant (which is the newer design) other than Fukushima in Japan are designed different and would have been invulnerable to the same disaster. Moreover, Fukushima was running longer than the life expectancy of the plant for political reasons. Other disaster may have happened one way or another. This means that something realistic could have been done, but just wasn't.

This is the huge difference from planes than can be struck by a meteor, which you pretty much can't do anything realistic about it. I mean, our houses can be struck by a meteor. Design flaw?

 

[RogueOne]

This is not a valid argument.

Every other plant (which is the newer design) other than Fukushima in Japan are designed different and would have been invulnerable to the same disaster. Moreover, Fukushima was running longer than the life expectancy of the plant for political reasons. Other disaster may have happened one way or another. This means that something realistic could have been done, but just wasn't.

This is the huge difference from planes than can be struck by a meteor, which you pretty much can't do anything realistic about it. I mean, our houses can be struck by a meteor. Design flaw?

People are not concerned with design flaws in nuclear reactors any more than they are concerned with design flaws in gasoline powered generators. Design flaws are not the center of their concerns.

Their concerns are with regard to the destructive potential of nuclear reactors as well as the mass centralization of our power grid to a smaller quantity of sources/locations.

You can decrease the likelihood of failure to nearly zero, but the destructive potential that a reactor has will always be greater than some people are comfortable living near. Also, decreasing the likelihood of each reactor failing is counter-acted by the increase in quantity of reactors. If you reduce the likelihood of a destructive failure by half, but you triple the amount of individual reactors, how has the risk changed? Which one do you want to build your house nearest to?

A core problem here is that you have people trusting their lives to a system with extraordinary destructive potential that they have no control over. So these people know that their lives are in somebody else's hands and that they can do virtually nothing about it. However, those hands which control the nuclear reactor can not be trusted to value the lives of those nearby as much as those nearby people value their own lives.

Are going to suggest to those people that nuclear reactors don't fail? Are you going to suggest that all safety procedures are always followed? Wouldn't you also have suggested that very same thing to those affected prior to nearly every single failure to date? If you are going to use either of those things as appeals to change people's outlook on the future of Nuclear Power, then be assured that your appeals will not work. Those appeals have been given since the dawn of nuclear power. Nobody will believe that Nuclear power will fuel civilization for thousands of years without a failure.

After a few thousand years of running on nuclear energy, how much waste will we have, and what will we do with it? Is that nuclear waste actually better for the Earth than CO₂, in the long term?

There. Now you can discuss ways to comfort people's actual concerns , rather than made up non-analogous straw man concerns as posted by HAYAO and mheslep.

Disclaimer: I am neutral on this topic. I am merely trying to encourage deeper thought into both sides of the topic. I don't think that the central topic of the OP was being sorted out effectiently.

 

[russ_watters]

People are not concerned with design flaws in nuclear reactors any more than they are concerned with design flaws in gasoline powered generators. Design flaws are not the center of their concerns.

Their concerns are with regard to the destructive potential of nuclear reactors as well as the mass centralization of our power grid to a smaller quantity of sources/locations.

You can decrease the likelihood of failure to nearly zero, but the destructive potential that a reactor has will always be greater than some people are comfortable living near.

Ok, sure: scientifically minded people may have a tendency to twist people's concerns into something at at least seems technically reasonable/relevant. So while I agree that you are correct that it is the sexiness of nuclear accidents (and plane crashes) that makes people fear them, I don't think it really changes the way you try to educate them. The bottom line is that while the "destructive potential" is large, an accident can only kill you once. So what really *should* matter is how likely "that" is to kill you.

I live in the shadow of a nuclear plant and I know that if it goes Chernobyl (because a meteor hit it?) it could kill me and a few thousand other Pennsylvanians. But I also know that the lifetime odds of that are so low it is difficult to put a reliable number on it. On the other hand, I also know that reliable data tells me my car has a lifetime odds of about 1% of killing me. So I choose to worry a lot more about my car than about that nuclear plant across town. And that is the type of logic we technical people need to sell to the non-technical people who irrationally fear the sexy accident.

Also, decreasing the likelihood of each reactor failing is counter-acted by the increase in quantity of reactors. If you reduce the likelihood of a destructive failure by half, but you triple the amount of individual reactors, how has the risk changed?

Well, let's see: what's half of zero? Right now the risk is so small that trying to calculate it generates a math fail, but suffice to say that whatever that risk is, increasing it by a factor of 3/2 leaves it about 1 percentage point lower than the risk of dying in a car accident.

A core problem here is that you have people trusting their lives to a system with extraordinary destructive potential that they have no control over.

Again, I agree that people have that fear and that may be the most difficult to counter because it is the most irrational. Every person has direct control over only one person's actions. So every other man-made thing that can kill you does so in part because of someone else controlling it. That's life. It's silly to fear flying because you aren't in control (do you really trust yourself to fly the plane more than you trust the pilot?!), but I do understand that it is real.

After a few thousand years of running on nuclear energy, how much waste will we have, and what will we do with it? Is that nuclear waste actually better for the Earth than CO₂, in the long term?

From a technical perspective, the nuclear waste issue isn't real. It's a complete political fiction. However, to directly answer your question: yes, it is much better to have a drum of nuclear waste that you can completely control than it is to have a million tons of CO2, free in the atmosphere, that you can't control.

[late edit: got car accident odds wrong...1%, not 10%. Doesn't change the point though]

 

[HAYAO]

People are not concerned with design flaws in nuclear reactors any more than they are concerned with design flaws in gasoline powered generators. Design flaws are not the center of their concerns.

Their concerns are with regard to the destructive potential of nuclear reactors as well as the mass centralization of our power grid to a smaller quantity of sources/locations.

Of course I know that, which is why I already said we can't do anything. So I have already answered the question in the first post.

No matter what we do or how they are explained, unless they are educated scientifically in an organized matter, nuclear reactors are potentially more deadly than car accidents and heart attack to them. That's like asking them to go on at least a full course of specified education. Most people won't go that far to get educated, and even less would want to challenge their own belief. Once they are emotionally driven to something, all they ever want to hear is news saying nuclear power plants have just killed someone, just so that they can start riot again to satisfy themselves into thinking that they are doing some justice or something.

I may have not been clear, but that's all there is to it.

You can decrease the likelihood of failure to nearly zero, but the destructive potential that a reactor has will always be greater than some people are comfortable living near. Also, decreasing the likelihood of each reactor failing is counter-acted by the increase in quantity of reactors. If you reduce the likelihood of a destructive failure by half, but you triple the amount of individual reactors, how has the risk changed? Which one do you want to build your house nearest to?

In all honesty, I wouldn't really care because they are never going to be built anywhere close to where I live. Nuclear power plant is built in places where such town needs financial support. This is so that the people of the town are more likely to accept the construction so that they can get compensation. Since I don't live there, why do I personally need to care? If I did live there, then I would have to say for personal reason, to let it build. Otherwise, I would move out of such financially fragile town.

A core problem here is that you have people trusting their lives to a system with extraordinary destructive potential that they have no control over. So these people know that their lives are in somebody else's hands and that they can do virtually nothing about it. However, those hands which control the nuclear reactor can not be trusted to value the lives of those nearby as much as those nearby people value their own lives.

Are going to suggest to those people that nuclear reactors don't fail? Are you going to suggest that all safety procedures are always followed? Wouldn't you also have suggested that very same thing to those affected prior to nearly every single failure to date? If you are going to use either of those things as appeals to change people's outlook on the future of Nuclear Power, then be assured that your appeals will not work. Those appeals have been given since the dawn of nuclear power. Nobody will believe that Nuclear power will fuel civilization for thousands of years without a failure.

This shows that you have not read my first post, but like I said, we can't do anything about irrational emotions.

After a few thousand years of running on nuclear energy, how much waste will we have, and what will we do with it? Is that nuclear waste actually better for the Earth than CO₂, in the long term?

The ONLY reason we ever need to worry about CO₂ and global warming is because it risks our lives in the long term. Nuclear waste is stored deep down Earth where it won't affect us. They are controlled unlike CO₂ that are emitted all over the atmosphere and are not controlled. We should rather worry about overpopulation and lack of food much more than nuclear waste. You or I should also care more about our daily life so that we won't have car accidents or heart attack. Why do we need to care about something that doesn't do anything to us? Unless you are some environmental activist that cares about what happens to the world after we cease to exist, why do we need to care? We are going to be extinct by the time the wastes are somehow released to the surface by some natural means, which is also quite unlikely.

There. Now you can discuss ways to comfort people's actual concerns , rather than made up non-analogous straw man concerns as posted by HAYAO and mheslep.

Disclaimer: I am neutral on this topic. I am merely trying to encourage deeper thought into both sides of the topic. I don't think that the central topic of the OP was being sorted out effectiently.

Well that's very nice of you. It would have been better if you read it more carefully, and that the question have been answered. I agree I rambled extra on something a little off-topic to add to that, though.

 

[russ_watters]

In all honesty, I wouldn't really care because they are never going to be built anywhere close to where I live. Nuclear power plant is built in places where such town needs financial support. This is so that the people of the town are more likely to accept the construction so that they can get compensation. Since I don't live there, why do I personally need to care? If I did live there, then I would have to say for personal reason, to let it build. Otherwise, I would move out of such financially fragile town.

I'm a bit disappointed by that attitude because otherwise I agree pretty well with your opinions/analysis. My opinion is a bit more pro-active than "why do I need to care?" and to put a finer point on it, I live 20 miles from Philadelphia, a city of a million people (and another million in the suburbs), and there is a nuclear plant in the next town over. Why? Because Philadelphia needs a couple thousand gigawatts of electricity.

Why do we need to care about something that doesn't do anything to us? Unless you are some environmental activist that cares about what happens to the world after we cease to exist, why do we need to care? We are going to be extinct by the time the wastes are somehow released to the surface by some natural means, which is also quite unlikely.

I was going to let this point go, but since you said it I'll just chime-in that I agree. "Environmentalists" tend to take it as an article of faith (religion?) that we should "save the world" regardless of what happens to us. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was conceptualized in part based on the idea that it should protect us for the absurd (arrogant?) period of a million years, including security and signage that would protect people and animals long after our civilization ended. As a legal matter, the US Constitution does not presume to protect people beyond the existence of the US and as a practical matter, if we're all dead we're not going to care if the waste is protected.

Ultimately, there are two ways the waste issue might go:
1. The Yucca facility might be opened despite illegal attempts to sabotage it.
2. We'll cede to the obvious (and expedient) reality that nuclear waste does not need any extra special handling and just store it in a secure warehousing facility.

 

[HAYAO]

I'm a bit disappointed by that attitude because otherwise I agree pretty well with your opinions/analysis. My opinion is a bit more pro-active than "why do I need to care?" and to put a finer point on it, I live 20 miles from Philadelphia, a city of a million people (and another million in the suburbs), and there is a nuclear plant in the next town over. Why? Because Philadelphia needs a couple thousand gigawatts of electricity.

Okay, I was little bit not myself when I wrote that. I got a little impatient when I felt that RogueOne skipped few of my points. My apologies for being a little bit arrogant about it. I care of course, but just not emotionally. There is a practical reasons to why they are built in a designated area, unlike general public who seems to not understand that. Since I do understand, I wouldn't care about it in an emotional way like they do.

EDIT: Also, I apologize for the post above since it was purely from the perspective of the situation in Japan. I'll be honest that I am not quite confident about my knowledge on how other countries deal with it.

 

[russ_watters]

Okay, I was little bit not myself when I wrote that. I got a little impatient when I felt that RogueOne skipped few of my points. My apologies for being a little bit arrogant about it. I care of course, but just not emotionally. There is a practical reasons to why they are built in a designated area, unlike general public who seems to not understand that. Since I do understand, I wouldn't care about it in an emotional way like they do.

EDIT: Also, I apologize for the post above since it was purely from the perspective of the situation in Japan. I'll be honest that I am not quite confident about my knowledge on how other countries deal with it.

I felt your frustration.

I didn't quite finish my thought in the previous post about how proactive my opinions are on the issue: my area is growing and if the power company wants to build another reactor on the site near me, I'll be there, waving a sign at the inevitable protests...but on the other side of the street. I'm unusually passionately pro-nuclear.

 

[RogueOne]

From a technical perspective, the nuclear waste issue isn't real. It's a complete political fiction. However, to directly answer your question: yes, it is much better to have a drum of nuclear waste that you can completely control than it is to have a million tons of CO2, free in the atmosphere, that you can't control.

Is 1 drum of nuclear waste an equal unit to 1 million tons of CO₂? If either byproduct caused catastrophe, which would be quicker to half-life? Which would make a geographical area uninhabitable for the longest period of time? Also, have you ever investigated what would happen in an atmosphere without CO₂? Is artificially adding water vapor to the atmosphere without any consequence, but CO₂ is?

Also, we should be thinking long term here. For nuclear waste, the half life is how long? How much of it will exist after 3,000 years of using nuclear reactors for energy?

How many more failures will take place between X-amount of reactors for 3,000 years? How much of the land on Earth will be rendered unhospitibal to life? How will these failures affect people on a global scale?

Just adding some more background info to help you gauge my own personal views: If an affordable passenger vehicle that uses nuclear propulsion were to come to the market, I would purchase and use that vehicle (Thought I'd combine the risks of automobiles with the risks of nuclear in order to demonstrate the extent to which I fear either). I am a fan of nuclear as an option. I appreciate every energy source for its own unique benefits. I am not an eco-fascist with a holier-than-though environment > actual human needs mentallity. However, I do try to actually understand the root cause for the apprehensions that exist in the most educated people who are anti-nuclear or at least not 'pro-nuclear'. What about nuclear has activated their amygdala? Do they even fully understand the root cause for their fear? Is there something rational that I have missed? Is my perspective omniscient?

 

[mfb]

Because Philadelphia needs a couple thousand gigawatts of electricity.

A couple of GW. The global electricity demand is 2000 GW.

Is 1 drum of nuclear waste an equal unit to 1 million tons of CO₂?

The CO2 is released as normal operation, the drum of nuclear waste is not. Coal ash kills as many people in two days as all radioactivity related to nuclear power in all of human history, and the CO2 emissions have the potential to kill even more (but that is very hard to quantify).

Nuclear waste initially has an effective half-life shorter than CO2 in the atmosphere.

Which would make a geographical area uninhabitable for the longest period of time?

Coal mining, probably, but it depends on the type of mining. I certainly prefer a small uninhabitable area over a high risk to die everywhere.

Also, have you ever investigated what would happen in an atmosphere without CO₂?

Without additional CO2 from humans? It would be better.

Is artificially adding water vapor to the atmosphere without any consequence, but CO₂ is?

Both coal and nuclear power emit water vapor, but this water vapor has a lifetime of just days - it is irrelevant.

Also, we should be thinking long term here. For nuclear waste, the half life is how long? How much of it will exist after 3,000 years of using nuclear reactors for energy?

Less than the CO2 emitted today.
The region around Chernobyl will be back to natural radioactivity levels in 100-200 years.

It is unrealistic to assume that we use either coal or nuclear power for 3000 more years. With coal this is completely impossible, with nuclear power it would be possible at least in theory. We can burn away the waste in subcritical reactors.

 

[jim hardy]

I repeat my tome

Mother Nature has been good to humankind on the energy front..
Our wood fires warmed our caves through the ice ages, fueled our Middle Ages metallurgy , and powered our early steam boilers.
Coal powered the industrial revolution of 1800's. Around the end of that century we stumbled across petroleum* and moved the flame from the boiler into the cylinders of our steam engines advancing the technology of heat engines to World War Two timeframe.
Then we figured out how to put "The "Friendly Atom" to work for us. Good thing too because there are enough of us on the planet to wreck it digging out its coal and oil to burn.

There's enough fissile raw material in the crust of the Earth to get us by for a few centuries and by then somebody should figure out Fusion.

*Incidentally, it was petroleum's displacing whale oil in late 1800's that saved the whales.

And that's how i think about the issue ..

old jim

 

[RogueOne]

A couple of GW. The global electricity demand is 2000 GW.

The CO2 is released as normal operation, the drum of nuclear waste is not. 1.) Coal ash kills as many people in two days as all radioactivity related to nuclear power in all of human history, and the CO2 emissions have the potential to kill even more (but that is very hard to quantify).

Nuclear waste initially has an effective half-life shorter than CO2 in the atmosphere.
Coal mining, probably, but it depends on the type of mining. I certainly prefer a small uninhabitable area over a high risk to die everywhere. 2.) Without additional CO2 from humans? It would be better. 3.)Both coal and nuclear power emit water vapor, but this water vapor has a lifetime of just days - it is irrelevant.
Less than the CO2 emitted today.
The region around Chernobyl will be back to natural radioactivity levels in 100-200 years.

It is unrealistic to assume that we use either coal or nuclear power for 3000 more years. With coal this is completely impossible, with nuclear power it would be possible at least in theory. We can burn away the waste in subcritical reactors.

1.) Yes that probably is very hard to quantify, considering the life expectancy increases that the human race has enjoyed due to the industrial revolution (made possible by coal)

2.) Thats a different question than what was asked. The correct answer is that if we halved the amount of atmospheric CO₂ that we have right now, all of the crops as we know them would stop growing.

3.) Given that the water vapor has a lifetime of several days, but is released every day, How do we know that the water vapor is irrelevant as a greenhouse gas? Are there any potential benefits of the water vapor release? What negative aspects is the increase in water vapor capable of on local/global levels?

I've also had the idea to strategically superposition the use of coal and nuclear with consideration to atmospheric content. Let's say temperature decreased in a few thousand years, as we leave this interglacial period, and slowed the carbonate silicate cycle to the point at which plant life was receiving insufficient CO₂.

 

[russ_watters]

A couple of GW. The global electricity demand is 2000 GW.

Yep, slipped a prefix; the plant near me (Limerick) has 2 reactors and a nominal capacity of 2400 MW.

 

[mfb]

1.) Yes that probably is very hard to quantify, considering the life expectancy increases that the human race has enjoyed due to the industrial revolution (made possible by coal)

Nuclear power was not available back then. We are discussing the situation today, not in 1800.

2.) Thats a different question than what was asked. The correct answer is that if we halved the amount of atmospheric CO2 that we have right now, all of the crops as we know them would stop growing.

How exactly is that relevant here? I answered a question that is relevant, because I though that is more interesting.

3.) Given that the water vapor has a lifetime of several days, but is released every day, How do we know that the water vapor is irrelevant as a greenhouse gas? Are there any potential benefits of the water vapor release? What negative aspects is the increase in water vapor capable of on local/global levels?

Water vapor is the largest contribution to the greenhouse effect, but the fraction of water vapor coming from humans is completely negligible. The fraction of atmospheric CO2 coming from humans is large - because CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time.

Lets say temperature decreased in a few thousand years, as we leave this interglacial period, and slowed the carbonate silicate cycle to the point at which plant life was receiving insufficient CO₂.

That won't happen for about a billion years. See all the history where plants survived many glacial cycles without problems.
And if you think this would be an issue and we should care about it, then we should stop burning fossil fuels immediately - to save them for later.

 

[Bandersnatch]

2.) Thats a different question than what was asked. The correct answer is that if we halved the amount of atmospheric CO2 that we have right now, all of the crops as we know them would stop growing.

We are not at risk of CO2 depletion, nor is human activity needed to maintain its natural levels, so what was this question even asked for? Was it an argument to the effect that CO2 is necessary for life, therefore we need more of it - in the same way as people affected by flooding need more life-giving water?

How do we know that the water vapor is irrelevant as a greenhouse gas?

Water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas, but it's irrelevant because, unlike CO2, it's also a condensing gas. If you put too much of it in the atmosphere, clouds form, followed by precipitation. Its concentration self-regulates.

 

[mheslep]

I agree that all the above is a valid objection to my point except for this:

running longer than the life expectancy of the plant for political reasons. Other disaster may have happened one way or another. Th

Which is baseless speculation, derivative of the fantasy that nuke plants are really just bombs trying to explode at the first blink. Unless the "other disaster" also happens at the same time as s 9.0 quake and 500 yr tsunami which prevents access to water and electrical utilities, and inhibits emergency crews for days, then there is no history of a disaster from these light water reactor designs, not that ever harmed anyone.

 

[russ_watters]

Is 1 drum of nuclear waste an equal unit to 1 million tons of CO₂?

I pulled those numbers out of the air, but google tells me the world emits about 5,000 million tons of CO2 per year from fossil fuel energy use (all uses) and generates 340 tons of high level waste per year. Not that we would store it in a bare 55 gallon drum, but if we did, each would weigh about 4 tons. So that's 1 barrel per 58 million tons of CO2. So I was conservative by an order of magnitude and a half. I consider that a pretty good swag.

If either byproduct caused catastrophe, which would be quicker to half-life? Which would make a geographical area uninhabitable for the longest period of time?

If global warming projections prove anywhere close to accurate, it would take [google] a thousand years for affected areas to becom inhabitable again. So about 10 times longer than from a really bad nuclear catastrophe.

Also, we should be thinking long term here. For nuclear waste, the half life is how long? How much of it will exist after 3,000 years of using nuclear reactors for energy?

Who cares? I'm not arrogant enough to believe that current civilization will still exist in 3,000 years and if whatever exists then doesn't have enough understanding of skull and crossbones sign to keep them out of a cave, they don't deserve any more assistance from us.

And that's even not really essential. All nuclear plants currently store their waste on site because the US government has violated its own law/promise to take it away. This has gone on for 50 years. So what? It wouldn't be a big deal to just build longer-term (larger capacity) storage on-site and leave it there for the forseeable future. That's what I expect will happen.

How many more failures will take place between X-amount of reactors for 3,000 years? How much of the land on Earth will be rendered unhospitibal to life? How will these failures affect people on a global scale?

That's too broad. Let's try this: if we increase the world's nuclear capacity by a factor of a thousand, how many (how frequent) Chernobyl failures should we expect? None. Fukushimas? None. Others we haven't anticipated? Tough to say because we haven't anticipated them yet, but past experience even with a modest assumption of improving safety would suggest to me perhaps one a decade. So that could potentially leave 10 areas uninhabitable at a time if they average 100 years to re-populate.

What about nuclear has activated their amygdala? Do they even fully understand the root cause for their fear? Is there something rational that I have missed? Is my perspective omniscient?

It is difficult to know what is really going on inside other peoples' heads, but it appears to me that the resistance to nuclear power in the USA has evolved out of political opposition to nuclear weapons. During the '60s and '70s the two issues were linked and after a while the myths became strong enough that they began to stand on their own.

 

[RogueOne]

I pulled those numbers out of the air, but google tells me the world emits about 5,000 million tons of CO2 per year from fossil fuel energy use (all uses) and generates 340 tons of high level waste per year. Not that we would store it in a bare 55 gallon drum, but if we did, each would weigh about 4 tons. So that's 1 barrel per 58 million tons of CO2. So I was conservative by an order of magnitude and a half. I consider that a pretty good swag.

1.) If global warming projections prove anywhere close to accurate, it would take [google] a thousand years for affected areas to becom inhabitable again. So about 10 times longer than from a really bad nuclear catastrophe.

2.) Who cares? I'm not arrogant enough to believe that current civilization will still exist in 3,000 years and if whatever exists then doesn't have enough understanding of skull and crossbones sign to keep them out of a cave, they don't deserve any more assistance from us.

And that's even not really essential. All nuclear plants currently store their waste on site because the US government has violated its own law/promise to take it away. This has gone on for 50 years. So what? It wouldn't be a big deal to just build longer-term (larger capacity) storage on-site and leave it there for the forseeable future. That's what I expect will happen.

That's too broad. Let's try this: if we increase the world's nuclear capacity by a factor of a thousand, how many (how frequent) Chernobyl failures should we expect? None. Fukushimas? None. Others we haven't anticipated? Tough to say because we haven't anticipated them yet, but past experience even with a modest assumption of improving safety would suggest to me perhaps one a decade. So that could potentially leave 10 areas uninhabitable at a time if they average 100 years to re-populate.
It is difficult to know what is really going on inside other peoples' heads, but it appears to me that the resistance to nuclear power in the USA has evolved out of political opposition to nuclear weapons. During the '60s and '70s the two issues were linked and after a while the myths became strong enough that they began to stand on their own.

1.) Thats a whole different topic, but how predictive have those models been historically?

2.) Its not arrogant to make decisions with regard to the possibility of human civilization existing 3,000 years from now. Assuming that human cilivization will not exist in 3,000 years is arrogant. Making decisions based on that assumption is absurd. We'll still technically be in this very same interglacial period at that time.