The Long Shadow of Chernobyl

Given that the vast majority of links posted to demonstrate the dangers of nuclear power come from anti-nuclear websites, I think it’s fair game that statistics on the dangers of other forms of generation come from “anti” propaganda websites too.

Put your hand in water at -30°C or even cold then Rainmaker. Still harmless?

How about we compare the effects of ionising radiation with soemthing really comparable, such as ioninsing radiation. Hot or cold water don’t shoot bits off the DNA in your cells.

Put your hand in water at -30°C or even cold then Rainmaker

You could try, bit it may be a little difficult 🙄

Smuggest. Jpeg. Ever.

Argh!

Edukator – It was an analogy to describe LNT, not a real life experiment.

If you look at the links there are examples of comparing ionizing radiation with ionizing radiation from published peer reviewed studies by scientists. I think the Reference page on the first website has a list a few more.

I have always found it strange that people don’t want to look at the possibility people are actually going to be alright at Fukushima and instead want to continually perpetuate the story of an imminent blood bath as if rubbing their hands together waiting for people to start dropping dead. Not saying this is you Edukator (I don’t know you) but I do know a couple of people who try to seek links they can connect to Fukushima. Basically their logic is if anyone sneezes or gets a nose bleed 400km from Fukushima… its radiation!!

So Fukushima didn’t happen? the contents of four reactors can be vented into the environment and verything will be hunky-dory?

So Fukushima didn’t happen? the contents of four reactors can be vented into the environment and verything will be hunky-dory?

Compared to the damage several millions of tons of seawater at about 10 C did to the surrounding area, I’d suggest that the nuclear aspect itself (as of yet, no one has been killed by radiation from it I think) was indeed a fairly minor event, yes.

No one has been killed by radiation YET…

“A fairly minor event, yes”. Nuclear denial taken to a whole new level…

Nuclear denial taken to a whole new level…

No, I think you’ll find it’s called a sense of proportion.

Number of people killed by a bit of water moving: 14,308 drowned
Number of people killed by devastating multiple nuclear meltdowns: 0

So Fukushima didn’t happen? the contents of four reactors can be vented into the environment and verything will be hunky-dory?

no one will say this was a good thing however it did change my view

there are two views
!. It leaked nukes are bad get rid of them all it as a disaster.
2. It was not designed to cope with this sort of event /natural disater and yet it was till controlled [ in the way say a fire would be] did not get out of hand and no one died and it dod not melt down. See how safe they really are that even this unpanned natural disaster did not lead to serious nuclear event

Take your pick as the facts support either view

and in the year since the earthquake/tsunami/meltdown-or-not, 30,000 europeans have been killed in car crashes.

nuclear power isn’t completely safe, it’s just much less dangerous than lots of other things we don’t seem to worry about.

…like air pollution from unclean energy sources.

Holy isotopes Batman!

Can’t believe this is still going, I only posted a link to some nice photos!

Anyway, to summarise, Nuclear is a clean dirty (non) polluting method of power generation that kills millions of people, but is nicely balanced out with murderous fluffy green wind turbines that kill more people and other stuff!

Yes that probably does just about sum all the important to know stuff.

Nuclear power stations were an amusing but pointless experiment, and the world has moved on.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article33807.html

Renewables also recieve massive subsidies from the government.

Germany was abandoning nuclear power before Fukushima, they just brought it forward (and have been importing nuclear power from France and Czech Republic) so it is no big drawback or surprise to the nuclear industry. Nice to see Germany building 12 new coal plants to replace them which produce 100 times more radiation and pollutants than nuclear. The other countries such as Switzerland and Italy were small players who were looking to exit nuclear anyway (even though they are Hydro and the Banqiao Hydro dam disaster in 1975 killed over 100,000 people). China and India seem to have big plans for nuclear power.

Germany is the leader in renewables technology but are now cutting support and subsidies for solar power for the next 5 years because it is too expensive. The customer will see this as a increase in their electricity bill. Wind Turbines in Germany used to have an average load factor of 30%-40% but it is now only 18% simply because they locate the turbines in the prime windy areas first and then are forced to install them in less desirable places. I am not an anti-renewables person, just don’t think they are the answer without nuclear power.

The problem with posting links is there’s always another one out there that contradicts the other 🙂

http://www.atasteofred.com/index/2012/03/asia%E2%80%99s-thirst-for-power-makes-nuclear-future-bright/
http://etfdailynews.com/2012/03/22/why-uranium-stocks-are-poised-to-profit-from-a-nuclear-renaissance-ura-ccj-uec-dnn-uuu-urz-urre/
lungusa.org/assets/documents/healthy-air/coal-fired-plant-hazards.pdf

Nuclear power stations were an amusing but pointless experiment, and the world has moved on.

Really????

Would you explain why, despite the best efforts of renewables, the majority of the UK’s (and even the world’s) electricity is still fossil-based? I think you’ll find that’s somewhat older tech than splitting (or hopefully in some distant future) fusing atoms.

But, I suppose unlike TJ, you don’t waste pages demonstrating how blinkered you are when a few lines will do it…

France is also 75%-80% nuclear powered and has the cheapest electricity in Europe and Germany is the leader in renewables and has the second most expensive.

There is also thorium reactors which can’t melt down and are safe from earthquake, tsunami and human error and will cost something like 80% less than uranium fuel based reactors. India is building a thorium reactor that should be running by the end of the decade.

Then you have Small Module Reactors (SMR’s) which are compact stand-alone units, and can be built when the need arise. If you have a small town with a population of 100,000 people, then when it rises to 150,000 you simply add another SMR to meet rising demand. A 25-megawatt SMR could supply electricity for 20,000 homes. SMR’s can be located underground for security and they would produce significantly less waste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rIajql5LNI&feature=player_embedded
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/01/india-thorium-nuclear-plant
http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_costs/thorium_costs.php

But the unanswered question is, what do you do with the inevitable waste?

can we not just pump it into the atmosphere like we do with fossil fuels? I mean what harm has CO2 done to us eh?

I think everyone agrees that storage is a headache/problem/not perfectly answered and that storage methods are not as brilliant as they could be.

Storage of fossil fules emissions is a far mor epressing problem right now and for the future

raising the planets temperature will do more harm

RWE and E.On halt plans to develop UK nuclear plants

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17546420

Veeery interesting.

Or more good…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greening_Earth_Society

Thorium produces less waste and also is pretty much impossible to make nuclear weapons from which also takes away the proliferation issue.

Annual waste from one reactor will fit into a pickup truck and the fuel from 50 years of reactor operation could fit in a single football field, amounting to 77,000 tons (1,540 tons per year). We discard 179,000 tons of batteries per year in the United States and they contain toxic heavy metals. To improve the efficiency of renewable energies it is proposed that huge batteries be used to store the energy, just how much waste is this going to produce compared to nuclear power? As I said before I’m not anti-renewables but don’t believe anything wears halos.

Another perspective is that the amount of waste produced by nuclear power is 2 pounds for each persons lifetime electricity needs (fits into a coke can) compared to 68 tonnes of coal put into the atmosphere per person. If all electricity was generated by nuclear power, every American would generate a weight equivalent to 7 quarters of waste per year. Coal fired plants also expose the population to around 100 times more radioactive by-products than nuclear power plants do in their entire lifecycle.

People say future generations will be furious with us if we leave nuclear waste for them to clean up. I think future generations will be more furious with us if we continue using fossil fuels that produce waste that can’t be contained adequately and potentially end life on earth as we know it. Fossil fuels will be a far bigger problem for future generations than nuclear power ever will be.

But the unanswered question is, what do you do with the inevitable waste?

This thread’s about 13 pages long now. I suggest you read some of it instead of attempting a poor impersonation of TJ in his absence.

If we never compare technologies to what existed in the pre-industrial revolution world, we will always play the game of which is ‘least bad’.

Remember we have lived for millenia on just current solar income. Coal, gas, fission…they are all powerful, exciting methods that give the illusion of abundance, but they are all finite. Fun while they last.

Germany was abandoning nuclear power before Fukushima, they just brought it forward (and have been importing nuclear power from France and Czech Republic) so it is no big drawback or surprise to the nuclear industry. Nice to see Germany building 12 new coal plants to replace them which produce 100 times more radiation and pollutants than nuclear.

Great solution – rely on neighbors to kop the political flak for nuke power that you use, then burn more fossil fuels because it’s Russians that will put up with air pollution and Bangladeshis + I-Kiribati that’ll put up with rising sea levels…

http://mrws.decc.gov.uk/en/mrws/cms/Waste/UK_radioactive/UK_radioactive.aspx
http://www.nda.gov.uk/ukinventory/documents/Reports/upload/2010-UK-Radioactive-Waste-Inventory-Summary-of-the-2010-Inventory.pdf

http://www.british-energy.com/documents/Radioactive_Waste.pdf

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-Bon_voyage_to_Berkeley_boilers-2003127.html

But without trawling through all the links Macavity has posted, how many people die from nuclear power generation per GWatt, compated with gas powered stations, coal powered stations, wind etc?

From what I can see it’s zero for nukes vs some for all the others.

So why are you arguing that nukes are dangerous?

without trawling through all the links Macavity has posted

has anyone ever evn read one of their links
I just ignore everything they sayhyperlink

Are you shy?

boriselbrus – There were approximately 56 deaths from Chernobyl and uranium mining has caused a few deaths back in the 1950/60’s. Nuclear still has the lowest death rates compared to other kinds of energy generation including wind which I didn’t believe until you read some of the articles out there regarding the turbines.

I honestly don’t know why people here and elsewhere are fixated on nuclear and seem too scared to protest coal which kills hundreds of thousands of people a year. I am guessing no one can stand up and defend coal so they have no one to argue with? Or maybe since coal power generates over 70% of the world energy it is too late to do anything about it and they should have been focused on that decades ago instead of nuclear, “you snooze you lose” as they say.

Regarding waste:
“About 2 billion years ago, at Oklo in south-eastern Gabon nuclear chain reactions just like those which we produce in reactors occurred spontaneously in several deposits of natural uranium mineral.

For over a million years, about fifteen natural nuclear reactors operated with power levels of up to 100 kiloWatts. None of the fission products remain radioactive today – they have completely decayed. However, one finds their stable (non-radioactive) descendents in their place. The nuclear waste which we produce now is carefully confined, which was certainly not the case at Oklo.

Yet after two billion years we find that the plutonium and the fission products, left to their own, have not migrated more than a few meters, perhaps three meters at most. That “waste” remains in the sedimentary rocks, in or near each natural reactor, without even being dispersed or carried away by the ground water which was necessarily present as the moderator to produce the chain reaction. Most of the fission products form solid compounds and they are not at all mobile.”

http://www.efn.org.au/NucWaste-Comby.pdf

I honestly don’t know why people here and elsewhere are fixated on nuclear

really you dont know

The risk of a nuclear disaster may be small however the consequences are rather large- it is why they are genrally place din remote places and not in the middle of towns
We could debate the relevant risks but i imagine everyone can see it.

Junkyard – I envy your clear head and understanding of the populace 🙂

Maybe your right but there is a second part to the sentance which relates to the first which was my main point “…and seem too scared to protest coal which kills hundreds of thousands of people a year.”

You say “…the consequences are rather large”. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima (so called near “nuclear appocolypses”) are your consequences? Only 56 died in these disasters which is probably the daily death total of coal, but I suppose the deaths caused by coal aren’t considered “accidents”, just routine.

I envy your clear head and understanding of the populace

😆

its like flying, many fear this, though you are more likely to die in the car on the way there.
However you are much more likely to survie a car crash than a plane crash.
It is about risk you cannot see or assess easily hence the diveregnce on risk views.its not like you are asked to choose to fight the squirrel or the tiger now is it 😉

So, who saw the debate on Nuclear / Gas / Renewables on Newsnight last night? It was almost like the debate on here!

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima (so called near “nuclear appocolypses”) are your consequences

Although tbf if they had been actual, as opposed to near, apocalypses, tHe death toll would have been higher. The fuss about those incidents is not particularly about how many DID die but how man COULD have died.

Rainmaker – far more than that died from these accidents – tens of thousands is a a more reasonable figure. some claim millions. Sources quoted earlier

Zokes – when are you going to make meaningful answer to ” what are you going to do with the waste?” you did come close to admitting there is no answer at one point. Don’t say yo have answered unless you actiaulay copy and paste your meaningful answer

One issue about the risk is the longevity of the risks here tens of thousands of years this stuff remains toxic for

I shall leave you pro nuclear evangelists to your ridiculous. unscientific, illogical position. Some of the pro nuclear nonsense espoused on here by folk who really should know better is astounding

“radiation is safe, I know this because my bosses gave me a safe limit”

“Radiation risk is the same as hot water”

Rainmaker – far more than that died from these accidents – tens of thousands is a a more reasonable figure. some claim millions. Sources quoted earlier

“Genetically, paedophiles have more genes in common with crabs than they do with you and me. Now that is scientific fact. There’s no real evidence for it, but it is scientific fact.”

Zokes – when are you going to make meaningful answer to ” what are you going to do with the waste?” you did come close to admitting there is no answer at one point. Don’t say yo have answered unless you actiaulay copy and paste your meaningful answer

When are you going to give us a viable alternative that isn’t subsidised against the environment i.e. fossil-based?

And if you’re so hell bent on the fact that no amount of radiation is safe, I would strongly suggest that coal-based generation should be higher up your hit-list than nuclear. But again, you’ve been told this, you choose to ignore it. For an apparently intelligent man, you do seem to exhibit an astounding level of wilful ignorance on this topic 🙄

Rainmaker – far more than that died from these accidents – tens of thousands is a a more reasonable figure. some claim millions. Sources quoted earlier

Yeah, right 🙄