That kind of stuff is why we need to get rid of nuclear power altogether. All that's holding us back is politicians and their bribes.. and of course, to a lesser extent, people who rationalize not moving away from nuclear power.
Fukushima was a standard design. Built by European and US companies in the same style as dozens of plants in Germany.
This is not "Fukushima was unsafe". If you say "Fukushima was unsafe", then half of Germany’s reactors are unsafe.
Shutting them down was the only option.
> making a few permanent wildlife reserves in the irradiated areas isn't a global catastrophe
You are talking about Japan. A country with one of the highest population densities worldwide. Declaring a whole province – and one with lots of history – off-limits is not going to happen. Currently they’ve been digging out the ground in half of the province.
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EDIT: Some more info:
Fukushima was a Boiling Water Generator built by General Electrics. Reactors of the exact same design are Krümmel (Germany), Brunsbüttel (Germany), Philippsburg (Germany), Isar (Germany). Krümmel and Brunsbüttel had constant issues, including the town next to it having the highest cancer rate on the planet.
The same design used by Fukushima is described in Wikipedia as "the second most common type of electricity-generating nuclear reactor".
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunsb%C3%BCttel_Nuclear_Power...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%BCmmel_Nuclear_Power_Pla...
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuk%C3%A4miecluster_Elbmarsch
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...
> Fukushima was a standard design.
The design was unsafe. The company knew this. In fact it had been known for 35 years. It was not unfixably unsafe, and in fact 5 of the 10 reactors had been upgraded. These 5 shut down properly during the Tsunami and survived without problems.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023048879045763955...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-general-electric-knew...
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/16/fukushima-reactor-flaws-...
The main design flaw was that the vital emergency cooling equipment was sited in an unprotected building outside the protected reactor. This is especially troubling if you site your reactor on a Tsunami-ridden coast. It's less of a problem in the middle of Germany, where there are no Tsunamis. Or to put it another way: if you have a Tsunami reaching the middle of Germany, a meltdown at these powerplants is going to be among the least of your problems.
Of course, it is hard to demonstrate improvements, especially when nuclear power is so demonized.
It doesn't make sense to say it's hard to demonstrate improvements when it's not even under our control.
But demonizing nuclear power has nothing to do with it.
Gee, what a great idea! In fact, a slightly improved reactor was operating in the other Fukushima plant, and all its reactors were shut down safely after being hit by the same Tsunami.
More modern designs are safer still. For example, there are designs that do not require external power for a shutdown at all.
No, unfortunately, that's not all that's holding us back. There are still some pretty substantial, e.g., storage and transmission problems with the renewables.
Unless you want us to keep burning coal or some other nonsense like that...
Build power lines from everywhere to everywhere, and refit transformer stations to be up to the load of users producing more than using, and you fix that, too. (Incidentally, in Germany we’re having a huge debate about a huge powerline currently, NIMBY is one of the worst things that happened)
You do realize that the largest ever energy-generation accident was a dam failure? 171000 people killed in 1975 when a dam in China failed. And overall, hydroelectric facilities claim 94% of the fatalities of energy-production accidents.
What I am talking about is hydro-pump-storage.
That type of storage has no dam that could fail – you take two lakes, one higher than the other, connect them with a tunnel, and place a turbine in the tunnel. Now you can push the water up (store energy) or let it flow down (produce energy).
However, it is simply not true that hydro-pump storage never has a dam.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffestiniog_Power_Station
In fact, when you look at the list of pumped storage stations, the vast majority of them have dams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...
When coal has a major incident, though, it still produces the same pollutants as if it's working correctly.
When nuclear has incidents, like the plants of Brunsbüttel and Krümmel that frequently had leaks, you end up with the highest leukemia quote worldwide [1].
Krümmel had major issues, with nuclear fuel being found in the area around the reactor, outside, on the ground, with the power plant leaking coolant frequently, and more incidents. [1]
Mismanagement with Nuclear can lead to far more problems than mismanagement with coal.
More Info and Links: [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukämiecluster_Elbmarsch (Sadly, only German article available).
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%BCmmel_Nuclear_Power_Pla...
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunsb%C3%BCttel_Nuclear_Power...
Yeah. No.
"Coal mining accidents resulted in 5,938 immediate deaths in 2005, and 4746 immediate deaths in 2006 in China alone according to the World Wildlife Fund"
So each year more deaths from coal accidents alone than the entire predicted, somewhat speculative and hard to ever prove death toll from Chernobyl over the next 20 or so years.