Educating the general public about pro nuclear energy?

[Buzz Bloom]

Hi MattRob:

Thanks you much for the links.

But googling around a bit, I was able to find this,

The organization that produced this article, World Nuclear Association, is an industry association created to support nuclear energy. I have no expertise to judge the accuracy of what this organization publishes, but in general I find industrial organizations have a bias.

This makes a contrary claim

I understand that the source of this article, Union of Concerned Scientists, consists of well informed scientists who have no financial associations with any industries that might have financial interests in the subjects they publish about. I am inclined to accept what they publish as being reliable and true.

hard to find the original, but here's one article that uses it.

The source of this article, PBT Consulting, describes themselves as a

Strategic Marketing, Business Planning, Venture Capital and Value-Added Technology Blogger.​

I confess that I am inclined to consider them as a biased source.

it looks like it might originally be from here.

The source of this article, Galvin P Smith, describes in the article his business goals in terms which I also consider suggest possible bias.

I find it difficult to find sources supporting the safety and economic benefits of nuclear power in the United States which do not have a financial connection with the industry. I confess I have not looked for sources from other places, for example Europe.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[MattRob]

[snip]

3 sources that all support it are biased, some of which pull a tremendous amount of data and do some rigorous analysis, but the single source that opposes it with anecdote and virtually no data, is the one you consider true? Also the same one that is a strong proponent of newer "green" energy technologies like solar and wind?

The last two are capitalists, business oriented people not attached to the nuclear industry - capitalists and venture capitalists want to be right to have a good reputation and invest in things that will pay off, and there's no reason they should be biased for nuclear any more than to believe they should be biased for solar, gas, oil, or wind, since they are all, also, you guessed it - business-based.

So, just because they have some interest in investing and business, you automatically assume they have a pro-nuclear bias and are completely untrustable as sources? Yet a large organization that's a big advocate of "renewable" technologies and gets 83% of its funding from "membership and 'contributions'" is unbiased?

Every source there has possible biases. Everyone in the world has possible biases. What every source doesn't have is good data. The data is there, and it speaks volumes, and just because it's pro-nuclear doesn't mean it's biased and wrong.

I'm sorry, but rejecting 3/4 sources - 2 of which have at most as much or even less suspicion to be biased than the fourth - comes off as cherry picking. You can't call individuals work untrustable because they might be biased for the overwhelming number of sources that say one thing, then ignore the possible biases from the source that says another thing. That is inconsistent. If you're going to throw those two independent bloggers out for bias then at least consider the bias of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) when their website has a very strong, focused, pro-wind and "renewable" slant. The header for the site under "our work" immediately has "Renewables First" with a big, gleaming picture of a wind turbine.

I'll bet wind power companies (that more or less exist off of government subsidies) love groups like the UCS that convince the government to give them funding.

Some of the UCS articles are downright laughable. They talk about the "safety concerns" and "demand Congress enforce nuclear regulations" and such for a source of power that is proven to have less deaths/kWh than the wind they so flagrantly support, and say nothing of the concerns with wind.

To say nothing of how this is an annoying game of moving goalposts. Yesterday the topic was safety. Nobody asked about costs then, just safety. Once it was proven beyond question that nuclear is the safest, now we're looking elsewhere.

But if we were to be completely rational, then the same people who were arguing against nuclear over safety concerns, who were formerly uncaring about cost, should remain uncaring about cost and now argue for nuclear since it is the safest. At least you weren't one of them, though, so while the topic as a whole has shifted goalposts, at least you personally haven't.

But honestly, if you're going to claim every source that's pro-nuclear is biased and must be somehow financially tied to nuclear, then at least consider that the site that's focused around support for renewables might have its own biases, especially when the site consistently writes articles against nuclear, or at least for stronger nuclear regulations over safety, when they never say a thing about safety for the power sources they advocate, when those power sources are, undeniably, more dangerous, and especially when they draw on anecdote for their arguments instead of solid data.

Poor data handling lies, drawing causation where you've only shown correlation lies, drawing the wrong conclusions from data lies, data that is ill-defined, defined in misleading ways, or poorly determined, lies.

But good, solid data, by itself, does not lie. But anecdote and unsupported claims do.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

I'm sorry, but rejecting 3/4 sources - 2 of which have at most as much or even less suspicion to be biased than the fourth - comes off as cherry picking.

Hi Matt:

Well I confess that I have a bias about almost everything. The OP question, as I interpret it, is: "Why do people like me have the particular biases that we do, and in particular concerning nuclear energy?"

Now when I look at the charts that seem to me to have a bias, I notice certain elements that are consistent with my bias. For example, in the absence of content to counter my bias, it seems to me that the cost per KWH for nuclear might well be understated. For example, suppose the numbers in the chart only include production cost, and exclude the amortization of investment cost. Do you know what accounting assumptions are made in preparing the data?

Quite a long while ago my wife came up with an original aphorism.

The purpose of accounting is to make you happy.​

(Here "you" means "the accountant or the person hiring the accountant".)
She discovered this "truth" while doing household accounting and found she did not like some of the conclusions. So, she changed the assumptions about how certain household expenses should be accounted for, and that made her much happier.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[mheslep]

...put a serious effort in like France it would probably take 20-30 years

I hope the actual build out would not take that long, with a head start of 100 reactors already in the US and vigorous domestic fuel production. France built it's nuclear fleet in 12 years, sufficient to push fossil fuel power below 10%. Allowing for the existing combustion fleet to gracefully retire could take decades.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...ectricity_production_by_sources_in_France.png

 

[mheslep]

There is no debate. Not unless you're refusing to be reasonable, or are intentionally making stupid decisions that benefit yourself and hurt the rest of mankind. Nuclear is the best source of power, and it is wrong that anyone would think otherwise.

Something to keep in mind when buying concert tickets to see these safety experts perform:

...including rock musician David Crosby, who told the agency that the [Diablo Canyon nuclear] plant was unsafe and urged that it be shut down.

“The plant is dangerous,” he said. “When there are millions of people downwind of the plant it is an unacceptable risk.”

Letters from other musicians were also read into the record — all were opposed to the continued operation of the plant. They included Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt and Bonnie Raitt.

Mr Crosby has also protested nuclear power in an earlier era:

first of the decade’s many run-ins happened on March 28, 1982. It was a Sunday and Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash had planned to perform at an anti-nuclear demonstration near the San Onofre nuclear plant in San Diego County, Calif. Under the influence of cocaine, Crosby was driving himself to the rally when he crashed into a highway divider on a stretch of the San Diego Freeway in Costa Mesa.

According to reports, the 40-year-old Crosby had experienced a “cocaine seizure” before losing control of the vehicle. When emergency teams reported to the scene to extract the rock star from the wreck, police discovered Crosby was in possession of cocaine, as well as a loaded .45-caliber pistol. When authorities asked the singer why he felt the need to travel with a weapon, the former Byrds member allegedly answered, “John Lennon

 

[MattRob]

Something to keep in mind when buying concert tickets to see these safety experts perform:

Mr Crosby has also protested nuclear power in an earlier era:

I feel like this pretty well sums up the anti-nuclear movement. Talk about how unsafe the plant is then get in a car wreck by being stupid and unsafe.

Of course musicians are the real experts in the world. Who needs engineers and scientists?

 

[HAYAO]

HAYAO's comment (re-quoted below) I think is incorrect.
In the United States, I understand that a great deal of nuclear waste is awaiting disposal in containers stored on the surface near the nuclear plant facility. This is because there is no current national policy for it's permanent disposal. If I am mistaken about this I hope some one with well informed knowledge about this will post a reference. There is also the issue of getting the waste to an agreed upon disposal site. Will it be by trucks on highways or by trains traveling on not very well maintained tracks, and in either case, passing nearby highly populated areas. Perhaps a knowledgeable person can calculate and post the numerical risks.

Okay, I did not mention wastes yet to be disposed underground but that does not mean I am incorrect; it just means that I didn't mention it simply because it was not the topic I was getting into. Either way, they are stored in a way that it absolutely does not affect us. People and media talking about the dangers of how much waste is stored on surface awaiting disposal is a myth. It ain't going to do anything to us. In fact, the amount of people actually dying from normal operation is extremely low compared to most of the other power options, much less by radiation.

The important point I am making is that radioactive waste is a controlled waste while CO2 is not.

 

[russ_watters]

You are missing the point.
The diesel generators that contributed to the Fuku-up at Daichi were part of plant build by people who allegedely should have understood risk assessment. They clearly did not understand it too well, did they? I wonder if money played a part in that kind of overlooking.

Probably. But every accident makes the next one less likely. Like with planes. I can't even remember the last time an airliner crashed in the USA.

As for the wastes, that 3% that decays between 1000 and 10000 years, provided they will be stored in the safest place designated by scientists (and not a not so ideal choice resulting from politicians' compromise) can you be sure they will be taken care of after all that time? Will you write instruction in English, Latin, Sumerian, Hieroglyphs or Linear A? Ten thousand years is a long time. I bet they won't be using Unicode anymore.

So what/who cares? If civilization has fallen so far that whomever is left can't understand any current language or a giant sign with a skull and crossbones on it, they will certainly have bigger problems to be concerned about than what is in that barrel.

 

[russ_watters]

EDIT: And it doesn't have to be stored in the perfect place scientists say. It just has to be stored in drums that people check up on every once in a while. That's literally all it would take. Again, the lower cost of power production from nuclear would easily offset this cost.

But it doesn't even need that. Why not go ahead and store it at powerplants where you're already storing the active material and have all the security and monitoring in place, anyways? To say nothing of how bhobba pointed out that we can still use it (the waste) to produce power.

Which is what is being done now. It's fine -- the main problem is storage capacity, since the US government promised to take all of it and has reneged on that promise. But even where we have old reactors that eventually will need to be decommissioned, we might as well just build new ones and new storage facilities on the same sites. We'll generate power and store the waste a hundred years at a time.

 

[russ_watters]

True - fusion power is on the way
https://futurism.com/mini-reactors-could-make-affordable-fusion-power-a-reality-by-2030/

Fusion power has been "on the way", 30 years from commercialization, since 30 years ago when I was in elementary school. While we wait, we should build a thousand fission plants.

 

[russ_watters]

1978 tests of a spent fuel cask

If you're going to do a crash test, why not use rockets to accelerate the vehicles?!

 

[jim hardy]

If you're going to do a crash test, why not use rockets to accelerate the vehicles?!

 

[mfb]

Fusion power has been "on the way", 30 years from commercialization, since 30 years ago when I was in elementary school. While we wait, we should build a thousand fission plants.

Research is not magic, it needs money. You can't cut funding and still expect the same results.

"Fusion in 30 years" would have been the orange "moderate" plan:

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Either way, they are stored in a way that it absolutely does not affect us. People and media talking about the dangers of how much waste is stored on surface awaiting disposal is a myth. It ain't going to do anything to us.

I get it that you are confident that the presence of these above ground containers of nuclear waste in the US represent no danger to you. The OP question, as I interpret it, is why are people like me concerned about such things? One reason might be that your confidence is not particularly reassuring. I do not find calling the dangers "a myth" a convincing argument.

Do you believe these US surface containers are like the ones described for transport in posts #148 and #149? If you do, can you post a link to a reference that makes this clear? If that were the case, I would be somewhat reassured about their safety. Since I do not believe that is the case, I have, for example, some anxiety about a possible "terrorist" attack on that waste.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[Buzz Bloom]

US government promised to take all of it and has reneged on that promise.

Hi Russ:

An interesting point. It is a natural phenomenon that corporations will, if they can, get someone other than themselves to pay for some of their costs. It is natural because corporations are chartered to do their best to make the largest possible profits for the benefit of the share holders. The charts quoted in post# 151 show how cheaply nuclear plants produce electricity. Getting the US government to pay the expense of waste disposal (which I believe includes the liability costs for any bad things happening with the stuff) is still a cost even if the nuclear plant does not have to pay it.

It is also true that fossil fuel plants also do not pay the costs of waste CO2. It becomes a political issue who should pay for waste costs. A carbon tax is one possible answer. The currently most popular answer seems to be: NOT THE PRODUCERS.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[gmax137]

Getting the US government to pay the expense of waste disposal (which I believe includes the liability costs for any bad things happening with the stuff) is still a cost even if the nuclear plant does not have to pay it.

In the US, the licensees (ie, the power companies) have been paying 0.1 cents per kW-hr to the federal government to pay for the long term storage -- the storage that the government has not been providing. This has been going on for many years.

 

[russ_watters]

An interesting point. It is a natural phenomenon that corporations will, if they can, get someone other than themselves to pay for some of their costs. It is natural because corporations are chartered to do their best to make the largest possible profits for the benefit of the share holders. The charts quoted in post# 151 show how cheaply nuclear plants produce electricity. Getting the US government to pay the expense of waste disposal (which I believe includes the liability costs for any bad things happening with the stuff) is still a cost even if the nuclear plant does not have to pay it.

It is also true that fossil fuel plants also do not pay the costs of waste CO2. It becomes a political issue who should pay for waste costs. A carbon tax is one possible answer. The currently most popular answer seems to be: NOT THE PRODUCERS.

I do understand all of that and I guess I'm not sure what your point is, unless you weren't aware of the $30 billion drained from the nuclear power industry for something we/they have not received (per gmax's post).

In some ways it is the opposite of what has happened with coal; coal has recently seen regulations tighten in order to deal with the waste and perhaps even make it pay for the wast (carbon tax - not enacted yet). In nuclear power though, the cost of dealing with the waste was built-in to the cost of doing business up front and then the government failed to fulfill its promise to do something with it.

So on the one hand, not having to deal with its waste initially made coal cheaper whereas it made nuclear more expensive, with a back-end additional hit of not getting what was promised, causing nuclear plant owners to still have to figure out for themselves what to do with the waste! Essentially, they are paying for it twice!

 

[Buzz Bloom]

In the US, the licensees (ie, the power companies) have been paying 0.1 cents per kW-hr to the federal government to pay for the long term storage -- the storage that the government has not been providing.

In some ways it is the opposite of what has happened with coal; coal has recently seen regulations tighten in order to deal with the waste and perhaps even make it pay for the wast (carbon tax - not enacted yet). In nuclear power though, the cost of dealing with the waste was built-in to the cost of doing business up front and then the government failed to fulfill its promise to do something with it.

Hi gmax and russ:

I confess I have never seen before that information about the nuclear industry paying a tax to the US for each kWH produced, and I would very much like to become better informed about it. Can you post some links that might help me? Also, can you post any links to information about estimated costs for disposing of the waste?

Regards,
Buzz

 

[russ_watters]

Hi gmax and russ:

I confess I have never seen before that information about the nuclear industry paying a tax to the US for each kWH produced, and I would very much like to become better informed about it. Can you post some links that might help me? Also, can you post any links to information about estimated costs for disposing of the waste?

Regards,
Buzz

Sure, no prob:

The [Nuclear Waste Policy] Act [of 1983] established a Nuclear Waste Fund composed of fees levied against electric utilities to pay for the costs of constructing and operating a permanent repository, and set the fee at one mill per kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity generated. Utilities were charged a one-time fee for storage of spent fuel created before enactment of the law.
...
The Nuclear Waste Fund receives almost $750 million in fee revenues each year and has an unspent balance of $25 billion. However (according to the Draft Report by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future), actions by both Congress and the Executive Branch have made the money in the fund effectively inaccessible to serving its original purpose. The commission made several recommendations on how this situation may be corrected.[8]

In late 2013, a federal court ruled that the Department of Energy must stop collecting fees for nuclear waste disposal until provisions are made to collect nuclear waste.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act#Payment_of_costs

My understanding is that any money "in a fund" has been "borrowed" or rather just been spent by the US government for whatever it feels like. Either way, the lawsuit referenced above was the result of the Obama Administration's decision to stop development of the Yucca Mountain repository and attempt to permanently prevent its use. But with Obama and Senator Reid out of office it may yet be opened. But in the meantime, the nuclear plants were built assuming they wouldn't be permanently storing the waste and are now wondering if they will have to and how they will accomplish that.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

Sure, no prob:

Hi russ:

Thanks much for the post. I found it very informative and interesting.

Since the quote about the 1983 act and the Wikipedia article both failed to mention estimated costs for permanent nuclear waste disposal, I am still trying to find this information If you come across it anywhere, I hope you will post it in this thread.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[russ_watters]

Hi russ:

Thanks much for the post. I found it very informative and interesting.

Since the quote about the 1983 act and the Wikipedia article both failed to mention estimated costs for permanent nuclear waste disposal, I am still trying to find this information If you come across it anywhere, I hope you will post it in this thread.

Regards,
Buzz

What I found is $96 billion over the next 115 years:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/W...mate_rises_to_96_billion_dollars-0608085.html

However, please note that that assumes the project will be executed in the way the law demands, which is anything but a sure thing. At this point I believe it is more likely than not that the poject will be abandoned in favor of much cheaper mid-term storage. That could mean the storage fee is never reinstated at its previous level.

 

[Buzz Bloom]

What I found is $96 billion over the next 115 years:

Hi Russ:

Thanks much for the link. The $96 billion seems to be (1) the revised estimated cost for completing the Yucca Mountain project, plus (2) it's estimated operating cost for 150 years. A particularly interesting item was that the 1 mil per kWH was orginally in 1996, and still was when revised in 2008, to be expected to cover 80% of the total waste management costs (assuming the Yucca Mountain facility was going to be completed and used, which it isn't), with the taxpayer paying the other 20%. Do you know what the planned capacity of this Yucca Mountain facility is/was?

I would guess that the storage facility part of the waste management costs is the greatest, but I would also guess that the cost of the permanent storage tanks, and the very sturdy transportation storage tanks described in posts #148 and #149 would add a good bit, and there are also transportation costs.

Regards,
Buzz

 

[gmax137]

Hi Buzz Bloom, you seem like the perfect audience for the book I recommended back in post#3:

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

The author is a skeptical journalist. Well written and fun to read.

 

[mheslep]

If you're going to do a crash test, why not use rockets to accelerate the vehicles?!

Given the widespread yet unfounded concern about nuclear power accidents, perhaps some more catastrophic testing of reactor parts themselves would improve both safety and public opinion. Remote piloted jumbo aircraft are crashed intentionally; their wings are tested to failure in the shop. I suspect some underground nuclear test facility, even in excess of $1B, where reactors are tested to failure would be worthwhile. Such a test facility would have likely exposed the Chernobyl design before the fact.

 

[OCR]

...assuming the Yucca Mountain facility was going to be completed and used, which it isn't...

Unless I have it wrong, this might be an update concerning the article Russ posted... here ?

 

[mfb]

Such a test facility would have likely exposed the Chernobyl design before the fact.

It was known that the design is problematic. There were various safety rules in place to prevent an accident. These rules were violated deliberately. I'm not sure how a test facility would have helped. Do you run it with the idea "try to make an accident happen"? Because that is basically what they did in Chernobyl.

Don't bury nuclear waste. Use it. MYRRHA.

 

[jim hardy]

It was known that the design is problematic.

Moderator void worth $4 ... (4X enough to reach prompt critical) .
Such a machine was turned over to civilians?
As details of that accident unfolded , I wrote my congressman urging we give Castro an American PWR if he'd abandon that RMBK under construction on Cuba's South coast.

 

[girts]

I couldn't help but to stop by, the start was interesting and the end seems is getting there also,
as for the nuclear industry in general definitely the single biggest thing we should talk about is the average death toll per given energy source, because the count of human deaths is a very well established and easy to understand metric for anyone. And in this field oil, gas, coal and others have far surpassed nuclear by many orders of magnitude, so what more is there to say?
If people wouldn't die in car crashes we would never care to make cars safer or roads better simply because there is no need, we have had nuclear energy for about half the time we have had cars, almost anyone knows someone who has died in a car crash, but do you know someone who has died in a nuclear accident?
Sure we should put maximum effort and safety into every aspect of a nuclear reactor since of all the infrastructure objects a typical country has it is the most critical and dangerous one.
I agree that that Japan should have taken greater care of detail, after all the only reason the reactors failed (meltdown) was because the backup diesels were flooded, building a higher barrier would have cost probably pennies but taking care of 4 molten cores and an exclusion zone costs much more than just money.
The TV tower built in soviet times for example in my countries capital was designed to whitstand winds that are higher than the hurricane winds in worlds most affected places yet we have never even had one and by geography we technically even can't but this is the way to design important infrastructure objects not to just barely fit the specification.

So technically Fukushima and Chernobyl even though not comparable are both rather lazy mistakes, the Japanese should have know better that in a time of global natural events getting worse there is an ever higher chance of something like that happening given that their reactors are closer to the sea than I am to a store across street.

One of you called Chernobyl a stupid design here, can't remember who was it, well anyways I think our intellectual capability should extend beyond labeling designs or machines cute or stupid.
The soviet RBMK graphite light water reactor was no mistake it was built deliberately because the government wanted a bunch of very cheap and easy to build yet multipurpose reactors, and as such it is actually a great example because it offers high output power combined with online refueling combined with a simple design and low cost.
If you want plutonium for your bombs and a ton of electricity you can't use a PWR or a BWR because their refueling is harder and costlier.Their construction also and probably maintenance too.
And as some of you already know all to well, even a beast like the RBMK is a perfectly reliable machine if its given the adequate care and safety which in the case of Chernobyl was not the thing that was done.
The problem was actually political in nature, station operators were put at pressure from authorities to conduct the emergency backup power tests and they put themselves in a risky situation because as I have talked with persons that were involved indirectly they said to me that it was a nice and warm spring back in 1986 and the folks which were the shift supervisors like Anatoly Dyatlov
(who miraculously managed to survive 10 years after taking a lethal dose of radiation and not for the first time in his life by the way) were willing to make exceptional safety breaches in order to get the test done once and for all.
The part were the staff being trained in nuclear physics and the supervisors being former navy reactor engineers and designers didn't see the danger coming is beyond me, it's had to say why they were willing to go to such extremes like pulling out the minimum left control rods which was strictly forbidden by the manual and was done only after the security system that restricts that was disabled along with some others.
There was also this idea (again can;t remember who said it here on this thread) that why the fukushima reactor buildings were not better built to whitstand the hydrogen explosion, but that is a bad point, instead of building something to be able to take enormous explosions we should rather focus on how to make it safer in the first place so that it would never reach such a condition.
The negative feedback in PWR, BWR, VVER and some other reactors is just one example of that idea.
As for the RBMK like in Chernobyl , I can't say whether a typical PWR vessels would be enough to contain the explosive yield which sent the Chernobyl reactor building up in smoke.
I actually think that well looking from a modern perspective the RBMK was a design which should have never been used for civil purposes only maybe for strictly military supervised use with electrical grid output as a secondary thing instead of employing half informed former navy small reactor guys like Dyatlov as shift supervisors as he himself said in the memoirs after the accident that he wasn't fully aware of the specifics of the reactor performance at its or close to its safety margins, a story which later was twisted and probably would explain why he wanted to continue the test after the staff realized the xenon poisoning due to running the reactor at low power.So basically the nuclear industry comes down to what? It comes down to a few accidents right after WW2 and we can't even call them accidents because back then both regulation and military arms race was such that operating a small scale plutonium reactor with a single coolant loop which was extracting water from a lake and pumping it through the core and then letting it back into the lake was considered normal procedure.
Then we have Chernobyl which to be fair I would say is a political mistake not a technical one, simply because both the approval for such reactors and the way the test at 86 was carried out was completely and fully an operators error and on many levels starting from the local officials and their desire for good looking paperwork down to the shift supervisors disabling security systems and yelling at each other at the control room trying to decide whether to procede or not. Keep in mind the folks who designed the reactor and scientists from the Kurchatov institute and other places knew well the flaws of this reactor, yet politics did not allow them to explain these details to the staff.

And then we have Fukushima, basically a simple failure to assess the highest logically possible risk for that area, maybe it would have been enough to relocate the diesels further away from the shore and that's it , no need for higher wall.

Now as we keep in mind that these two biggest accidents were not actually technical in nature, only their outcome was a technical failure but started out as a human error. Keeping in mind this I would say I am both amazed and happy that nuclear has proven so safe, if we look at oil for example , many large accidents have been directly technical in nature even without human error. Accidents like the breaking of oil pipelines, gas pipelines, explosion of oil rigs and drilling stations, fires at chemical factories processing oil.
Just how many planes have fallen due to purely technical malfunction.
Taking all this into account I think we should only then evaluate the dangers of a given industry by comparing it. We need a point of reference much like in General relativity, otherwise its useless because as the last presidential election and political culture in general has shown, you can paint a turd red and claim its a sausage and people will believe that for whatever reasons know only to them and their lack of information and ignorance. If the general population can and is fooled by simple political facts then who are we to expect them to understand nuclear especially in the background of huge money lobbying and special interests working to shape the minds of society to whatever they find good.
Sorry for a lengthy post.

 

[mheslep]

It was known that the design is problematic

Yes by some, I know. Many problematic designs move forward in all kinds of technologies until failure in test makes the problem and consequences clear to all.

you run it with the idea "try to make an accident happen"?

Not sure what you mean here. All catastrophic tests, like those aircraft tests above, try to make an accident happen, but under controlled circumstances. It need not be done with a full sized reactor, nor any electricity conversion or other balance of plant equipment. Running a test version of that RBMK, in an appropriate test facility, at low power (and all other feasible profiles) and would dramatically destroy a test reactor as well.

 

[mheslep]

so what more is there to say

That unfortunately much of the public doesn't care about deaths per kWh, but harbors a fear of radiation released by a nuclear power plant run by Homer Simpson. That dozens of new coal plants underway in Japan, as people don't harbor a similar fear of fire. That many competing energy sources fight the advent of inexpensive nuclear power.

 

[SredniVashtar]

You are missing the point.
The diesel generators that contributed to the Fuku-up at Daichi were part of plant build by people who allegedely should have understood risk assessment. They clearly did not understand it too well, did they? I wonder if money played a part in that kind of overlooking.

Probably. But every accident makes the next one less likely.

Well, my whole point is that the safety of a nuclear plant is not merely a technical problem. And with Fukushima we have seen how - despite the technical solution was clearly at hand, poor judgement on the management part has led to the loss of multiple reactors.

But now we are much wiser.
Who knows what are we are going to learn with the next major nuclear accident.

Like with planes. I can't even remember the last time an airliner crashed in the USA.

It was on 9/11 2001.
Not a technical problem, but a political one.

As for the wastes, that 3% that decays between 1000 and 10000 years [...] can you be sure they will be taken care of after all that time? Will you write instruction in English, Latin, Sumerian, Hieroglyphs or Linear A? Ten thousand years is a long time.

So what/who cares? If civilization has fallen so far that whomever is left can't understand any current language or a giant sign with a skull and crossbones on it, they will certainly have bigger problems to be concerned about than what is in that barrel.

Of course. Before someone found the Rosetta stone, civilization was a shamble and had produced nothing valuable since Tutankamon. It would have been better if we all had been wiped away in 1899 because if we had lost the ability to understand the language of one of the most advanced civilizations of a few thousand years before...
As I said before, five-ten thousand years are a veeeeeery long time. Consider that with all our current wisdom we did not even bother to pay attention to the decipherable warnings saying "do not build under this line"...
I guess somebody else at Tepco uttered the famous "So what/who cares?"

_{Edited to fix some of my lousy grammar, but not all.}

 

[Astronuc]

It was on 9/11 2001.
Not a technical problem, but a political one.

Since September 11, 2001, there have been several crashes of commercial aircraft in the US.

A partial list - http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/major-u-s-plane-crashes-sept-11-article-1.1391967
The article was posted after Asiana Airlines flight crashed at San Francisco International Airport, killing two and injuring dozens in July 2013.

A well-known event - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 - and all survived.

There is a risk in flying, but most folks are willing to take that risk, but is a choice voluntarily made.

Airline safety in the US is in part due to the regulation by the FAA.

And with Fukushima we have seen how - despite the technical solution was clearly at hand, poor judgement on the management part has led to the loss of multiple reactors.

Just to clarify, following inundation of the plant by tsunami and the subsequent loss of emergency power, the technical solution was clearly not at hand. The state of the plant was outside of any guidance they had.

Prior to the Tohoku earthquake, the technical solution to protect the plant was certainly clear: Build a higher seawall, or at least ensure each unit had secure emergency diesel generators with secure fuel supply well away from the shoreline, and ensure the basement areas where electrical equipment were immune to flooding. There were critics who did point to the fact that the plant was not protected against expected tsunamis.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...s-311-tsunami-says-seismologist/#.WSUE3Xk2ypo

There was a failure by government as well as corporate management. It looks like a government official ignored knowledgeable scientists.

 

[HAYAO]

Just to clarify, following inundation of the plant by tsunami and the subsequent loss of emergency power, the technical solution was clearly not at hand. The state of the plant was outside of any guidance they had.

Prior to the Tohoku earthquake, the technical solution to protect the plant was certainly clear: Build a higher seawall, or at least ensure each unit had secure emergency diesel generators with secure fuel supply well away from the shoreline, and ensure the basement areas where electrical equipment were immune to flooding. There were critics who did point to the fact that the plant was not protected against expected tsunamis.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...s-311-tsunami-says-seismologist/#.WSUE3Xk2ypo

There was a failure by government as well as corporate management. It looks like a government official ignored knowledgeable scientists.

Just stopping by to say that I wholeheartedly agree to this, except just one thing that was left out.
There was a technical solution after loss of emergency power: just pour sea water.

Why didn't they do that? Well this is the political and corporate management issue like you mentioned. It's because pouring sea water permanently damages the reactor, which was something they didn't want because of financial issue and the government's political goal of relying more on nuclear power. The people there were ordered strictly not to pour sea water until they get access to clean water. The meltdown happened while they were waiting.

 

[jim hardy]

There was a technical solution after loss of emergency power: just pour sea water.

To a plant guy that is equivalent to killing your own child. You don't "Just Do It" with a light heart .

Hindsight is always 20/20. That was one of several things to try and among the least palatable.

Had they known the tidal wave would soon kill all power they could have violated their cooldown rate (at risk of ruining the vessel) and likely have saved the fuel.

 

[HAYAO]

To a plant guy that is equivalent to killing your own child. You don't "Just Do It" with a light heart .

Hindsight is always 20/20. That was one of several things to try and among the least palatable.

Had they known the tidal wave would soon kill all power they could have violated their cooldown rate (at risk of ruining the vessel) and likely have saved the fuel.

That was the only thing that they could have done. They had no access to clean water and they didn't even know when they would. This is not even a discussion about hindsight. They basically just had to do it. Prime minister at that time probably ignored that, though.

 

[jim hardy]

That was the only thing that they could have done.

Oh ?

 

[Astronuc]

There was a technical solution after loss of emergency power: just pour sea water.

Why didn't they do that?

They did do that. That's when it became obvious is was a severe (beyond design basis) accident.

The problem was they didn't have power once the emergency diesel generators and electrical buses got taken out by the tsunami and flooding. They had to use pump trucks, or fire trucks to draw seawater and get it up to the reactor. Then there was the complication of any leaks to the primary system. There is some speculation that there may be leaks in the piping or penetrations at the base of the pressure vessel. If that is so, no matter how much water was pumped in, it simply drained out the bottom and never got into the core, which is where it needed to be. Even so, hot seawater would severally corrode the stainless steel and may have chemically reacted with the Zircaloy, which could have produced hydrogen from the corrosion reaction. The structural materials inside a power reactor are designed to operate with nearly pure water, particularly in BWRs, whereas in PWRs, boric acid and LiOH (buffer) are added for reactivity and pH control, respectively.

 

[jim hardy]

Do any of you BWR guys know what is the inventory of a main condenser hotwell ?
Ours were bigger than a house. But i don't know a number. Been thirty years since i was in one. Could they have been 40 feet by 80 feet by 6 feet ? 143K gallons?

 

[anorlunda]

Do any of you BWR guys know what is the inventory of a main condenser hotwell ?
Ours were bigger than a house. But i don't know a number. Been thirty years since i was in one. Could they have been 40 feet by 80 feet by 6 feet ? 143K gallons?

Yeah, that's a decent guess.

 

[jim hardy]

That's a lot of condensate. I don't recall hearing whether they were able to get at it for core cooling.

I won't 'Monday Morning Quarterback' them.

 

[HAYAO]

They did do that. That's when it became obvious is was a severe (beyond design basis) accident.

Oh yes, of course I know that. Only except it was after the meltdown happened.

 

[SredniVashtar]

Just to clarify, following inundation of the plant by tsunami and the subsequent loss of emergency power, the technical solution was clearly not at hand.

Yep, I must apologize for my lousy English. With solution at hand I meant during design, or anyway after discovering that the risk of a damaging tsunami was not irrelevant but the tsunami was still only a future possibility. Putting the diesel generators in a safe zone back then would have prevented the loss of the reactors. The whole point of my argument is that the plant at Fukushima should have been safe from day 1 since all measures to make it safe were known and well within the capabilities at the time. The fact that management... managed to fuku it up nonetheless is what invalidates (in my eyes at least) all the beautiful science behind nuclear power generation.

So, in the end, it's not about the science but about your fellow man. Scientists are so focused on the science that they sometimes forget that the lack of trust is not in their achievements and capabilities, but in the greed of the people who manage the business.

P.S.
After the disaster happened, well it's easy now to say what could and should have been done. I can understand the resistance in flooding the reactors with salt water. I too would have waited for some fat cat big shot to make the call and take all the rap. That's why design should have prevented that in the first place.

 

[Astronuc]

Oh yes, of course I know that. Only except it was after the meltdown happened.

If one looks at this post in the thread on the accident, one can find a good reference about the accident.
https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...ear-plants-part-2.711577/page-61#post-5730486

In the IAEA report, Pub1710 (IAEA Report by the Director General) page 34 (47 of 222) in report:

"Status of core cooling in Units 1 and 2

Just before the tsunami struck, the Unit 1 isolation condenser was stopped by the operators in
accordance with established operating procedures to control the reactor cooling rate. This was
accomplished by closing the valves (located outside the primary containment vessel and DC operated,
as shown in Box 2.2, p. 26 (39 of 222 in pdf)). About 2.5 hours after the loss of indications, at 18:18 on 11 March, some of the
status lamps for those valves were found to be functioning, confirming that the control valves were
closed. The operators attempted to start the isolation condenser by opening those valves. However, the
isolation condenser did not function, indicating that the AC powered isolation valves inside the
primary containment vessel were closed. Thus, the fundamental safety function of core cooling at
Unit 1 was lost when the isolation condenser was stopped by the operators just before the tsunami,
and the Unit 1 core heated up from that time.

Additionally, local measurements (in the reactor building) at 20:07 indicated that the reactor was still
near the operating pressure of 70 bar (7 MPa), which prevented water injection by alternative methods
that would only be possible below 8 bar (0.8 MPa)."

The problem with Unit 1 was the loss of power. With various power-operated valves inoperable, the safety systems, including ECCS could not function properly. Once some valves were shut, with loss of power they could not be reopened. Attempting to pump seawater into Unit 1 would not be possible due to the high pressure within the primary system.

Footnotes on the page provide some additional insight.

The fire protection system was designed primarily for fire suppression and flooding of the containment vessel, not for injection of water into the reactor.

Cross-tie lines had been installed at the Fukushima Daiichi NPP nearly a decade earlier as a design enhancement for accident management. Sharing the functioning emergency power of Unit 6 was only possible for Unit 5, since these interconnections had been installed only between pairs of units, i.e. Units 1 and 2, Units 3 and 4, and Units 5 and 6.

The valve positions were not clear to the operators owing to the uncertain timing and sequence of each type of power loss that would determine the status of isolation valves. All the isolation condenser valves would keep their position when the AC.I don't know if the isolation valves were ever opened on Unit 1, which would have happened too late after the core was damaged anyway. Certainly, the company failed to adequately assure the design of the plant to prevent inundation by a tsunami of the magnitude that struck the plant. The auxiliary building and balance of plant were vulnerable. The designs of Units 5 and 6 were apparently adequate.

Figure 2.2 (page 29 (42 of 222 in pdf) shows the initial responses by the plant operators after the earthquake followed by the first tsunami.
Figure 2.5 (page 45 (58 of 222 in pdf) shows events after the 14.5 m tsunami arrives.

Clearly the utility failed with respect to the General Design Criteria. A 15 or even a 10 m tsunami should have been part of the design basis, since there were records of such tsunamis in the region in the past.

 

[jim hardy]

Clearly the utility failed with respect to the General Design Criteria.

If i could give your post ten "Likes" i would .

 

[HAYAO]

The long post

Okay, Astronuc, thank you for providing me those information. I admit I was misinformed of some of the events that have happened. I actually took a whole class in this, but either I forgot part of it or I was taught partially wrong information.Anyhow, I am relieved to know that we can agree on at least one same thing: there was a design flaw that should have been accounted for and fixed that - for whatever political reasons - was not done. Fukushima plant is a very old plant, one of the oldest at the time of the disaster. I can't necessarily blame the people who built it at the time of construction, for the necessary safety measures that was not taken that we would know now, most likely because information (such as potential large tsunami) was not as easily accessible at the time. However, now that information technology has developed, there is no excuse. Fukushima plant was running longer than the original expectancy. I think that is fine as long as they satisfy every single safety criteria required, but it was obvious that it was not. Considering how other plants are made to withstand such natural disasters, there is no excuse to why Fukushima was fine without it.

 

[girts]

well, first of all when Fukushima was built the designers knew of the past recorded tsunamis just as much as we know of them today via internet, its not like these weather records somehow only appeared in the last few decades, so that is no excuse. Secondly why do they have to build the reactors so close to the actual coastline, can't they put them like half a mile away from the coastline and simply use pipes to supply the sea cooling water for the cooling of he secondary loop??
And even if the reactors are so close at least put the damn diesels further away, a few more meters of 3 phase electrical cable isn't that expensive compared to a nuclear accident and a cleanup.

But I guess we could blame the folks at Chernobyl even more since they created their own disaster, like why would someone pull out the minimum required control rods from an unstable xenon saturated RBMK core?? Sure to burn away the xenon faster but well ehh prompt criticality doesn't knock on your door before its too late it comes right through in the matter of a split second so they should have known better.

All in all I think this whole deal is like marriage, people have been marrying for centuries and they have also cheated one another for centuries so technically if we were like the anti nuke proponents we should say let's stop marriage altogether, but we don;t do that don't we? We still marry despite all the drawbacks and many couples later say it has been the best time in their lives.
Sure nuclear energy is much more dangerous than a few marriages gone wrong but what did we expect that as humans we would somehow make this one example where we make no mistakes, instead we should learn and focus not to make any more of them in the future,
hopefully that will be the case because we have no alternatives to be honest so we better not screw this one up again.

 

[mfb]

Sure nuclear energy is much more dangerous than a few marriages gone wrong

Marriages gone wrong killed more people than nuclear power.
400/year in Germany alone (although that includes unmarried couples), which is certainly below the world average, so we are looking at tens of thousands of people killing their partners every year globally.

"Death due to nuclear power" is an extremely obscure way to die, even more obscure than death by misusing a lawnmower (~50/year in the US alone).

 

[HAYAO]

well, first of all when Fukushima was built the designers knew of the past recorded tsunamis just as much as we know of them today via internet, its not like these weather records somehow only appeared in the last few decades, so that is no excuse. Secondly why do they have to build the reactors so close to the actual coastline, can't they put them like half a mile away from the coastline and simply use pipes to supply the sea cooling water for the cooling of he secondary loop??
And even if the reactors are so close at least put the damn diesels further away, a few more meters of 3 phase electrical cable isn't that expensive compared to a nuclear accident and a cleanup.

But I guess we could blame the folks at Chernobyl even more since they created their own disaster, like why would someone pull out the minimum required control rods from an unstable xenon saturated RBMK core?? Sure to burn away the xenon faster but well ehh prompt criticality doesn't knock on your door before its too late it comes right through in the matter of a split second so they should have known better.

All in all I think this whole deal is like marriage, people have been marrying for centuries and they have also cheated one another for centuries so technically if we were like the anti nuke proponents we should say let's stop marriage altogether, but we don;t do that don't we? We still marry despite all the drawbacks and many couples later say it has been the best time in their lives.
Sure nuclear energy is much more dangerous than a few marriages gone wrong but what did we expect that as humans we would somehow make this one example where we make no mistakes, instead we should learn and focus not to make any more of them in the future,
hopefully that will be the case because we have no alternatives to be honest so we better not screw this one up again.

From this post, I understand that you are not well aware of the engineering aspect of nuclear power plants. So I'll get from the fundamentals.

First, construction of Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant began in mid 1967. So the planning of the plant must have been done even earlier than that. That is well before internet was of any practical use, except in military. Documents were not easily accessible at that time. You can easily see that with academic papers of that time, they have significantly less references than the papers today.

Second, practically speaking, reactors can ONLY be built around coastline because the core reactor is made somewhere else in a factory and carried by a cargo ship. Thus, the construction site needs to be reasonably close to where large ships can access.

Third, throughout this entire thread, people have been criticizing the design flaw of Fukushima Plant, and your point was part of it. We can only speculate about the reason why is was built so close to the coast. Were they not aware of the risks of such large Tsunami? Then the discussion comes back to the first point I made above that information was not easily accessible. Or were they simply lazy and didn't realize the flaw? The Nuclear Power Plants that came after Fukushima was improved in design and the point you mentioned have already been addressed.

Fourth, I have no idea what you are trying to say about Chernobyl. But the either way, everyone pretty much agreed that there was a flaw that could have been taken care prior to the disasters, and the fact that they didn't show that the problem is not in the concept of Nuclear power plant itself, but how we run it.

Fifth, marriage killed way more people than nuclear power plant. Also, you might want to keep in mind the difference between a hazard, and a risk. These two are quite different. In fact, nuclear power plant is actually low in both hazard and risk compared to any other power source. Data provided by MattRob shows that. It seems like you are also one of those people who have been mislead by the media or general public being extremely biased against nuclear power.A little piece of advice: you should improve the quality of your post. The content itself and the questions are fine, but the way you use your words are quite immature to be honest.

 

[girts]

I find your critique of my latest post unreasonable to be honest, HAYAO.
First of all , please don't tell me that in 1960's the industry built nuclear power plants and got their geology and weather data from sticks and stones, just because every high school senior did not have access to all the data doesn't mean people building important industrial facilities did not have the data that is false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_tsunamis

See this simple list, Japan has had quite a large recorded history of earthquakes and tsunamis.

Secondly seems like you have judged my understanding of nuclear power plants more harshly that it needed to be because even though it is preferable to transport by sea doesn't mean it's always done that way, and my argument wasn't against transporting by the sea my argument was that once the reactor vessels and its components like heat exchangers etc arrive at spot it doesn't complicate much to move them a little bit offshore , say 500 meters or such the only thing this complicates is probably expenses which is the main point of reference for business.
http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/29/009/29009815.pdf

you can read this IAEA documents about how BWR, PWR and VVER pressure vessels are transported, for example here in Europe we don't have as much good water access to each place so many vessels have been shipped by rail and trucks.
Also plants like the RBMK ones were built mostly at site because their design is such that they can be assembled mostly on site except a few larger parts like turbines and generator sets etc.I think the main reason why they are built either by large lakes and rivers like in the US or by the coastline like in Japan is simply because its easier but also because they need large cooling ponds and Japan doesn't have much of the inside the country unlike US, Russia and other places so they build them by the cost, which is surely more dangerous than building inland.Addressing your point about Chernobyl , the thing I wanted to say about Chernobyl which I think I made quite clear before is that it wasn't as much of a mistake or a flaw as it was a result of mismanagement and ill decisions, sure the reactor was much more dangerous than its western counterparts but much like an older car which is unsafer than a newer one it doesn't crash by itself but by a either deliberate or accidental mistake made by its operator, which was the case in Chernobyl, and to some extent Fukushima even though the mistake at Fukushima was a longer one and we could label it "failure to proper risk assessment"Lastly my point about marriage was not to compare deaths by divorce versus deaths by nuclear energy as that is what always comes up, it's a metaphor not a chart, all I was saying is that people make mistakes and it seems like nothing will change in the near future about that, so given the history nuclear has actually done remarkably fine and in no way I was against it , but we have ways to improve it still and we should simple because even though marriage kills more annually than nuclear power has ever but nuclear has the potential to kill more in a much shorter timeframe and leave much worse effects long term if done wrongly.

 

[mfb]

Lastly my point about marriage was not to compare deaths by divorce versus deaths by nuclear energy

But that is the point of the thread. Many fear nuclear power plants in a completely irrational way, because their fear is in no reasonable relation to the actual danger. More education could help to make the general public more aware of how small the actual risk is.