Fukushima has demonstrated that humans aren't great at controlling or predicting the real risk of nuclear. The fact is, even if no one dies from acute radiation poisoning, nuclear disasters are costly and devastating.
One of these many technical contraptions that was damaged/destroyed by the Tsunami was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Yet, so far not a single person has been killed as a result of that failure, and so far the predictions are that future deaths will be so low as to disappear into the statistical noise. (And these predictions tend to be on the high side: the WHO created reports every decade after Chernobyl, and each report massively revised those estimates downwards).
Yet, all we ever hear about is Fukushima.
Odd. That.
The waste of Fukushima is still an unsolved problem that will eat many billions more (see https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-...).
In fact, even when your reactor does NOT explode, you still have to manage the waste for 10,000 to 1,000,000 years (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#Long_term_manage...). The radioactive materials are not only deadly due to their radiation; most of them are also highly toxic.
So even without a meltdown, you risk many lives in the future. Just because not many people have died yet does not make it a safe energy choice. Who in their right mind can guarantee safe storage of the waste for 10,000+ years?
Are any projects doing that or planning to? As far as I have read, it's still only a plausible theory but has yet to be implemented.
Even if that's true, compared to the certain deaths per year caused by coal it still wins out.
(a) Citation needed.
(b) How many more deaths?
(c) Sure, it's good that we clean these things up. There would be more deaths from cars, airplanes, trains or just about anything if we didn't do something about it.
From the NYTimes article:
"400 tons of water a day"
Sounds bad, right? Except when you compare it to a coal plant, which produces about 350 tons of ash (which is more radioactive) and >500 tons of toxic sludge per day in normal operation.
Oh, and just how bad is that water?
"The authorities are debating whether it might be acceptable, given the relatively low radioactive levels in the water, to dilute the contaminated water and then dump it into the ocean."
And of course that is "low" under the current rules, which follow the linear extrapolation ("no safe dosage") assumption that is almost certainly wrong, and tend to be extremely conservative even within that framework.
"200,400 Cubic Meters of Radioactive Rubble"
Again, there is no context given. For water, 1 cubic meter is exactly 1 ton. Concrete is 2.4 tons per cubic meter, but it isn't clear how dense the rubble is. I am guessing significantly less dense than non-rubble concrete. But let's assume this is about 500 Kilotons of rubble, how does that compare?
"Reports indicate that some coastal areas generated as much as 4.35 million metric tons of waste each from the disaster,"[1] (that's the Tsunami, not the meltdown)
So that's about 10 times that amount, from each of several/many(?) sites. How radioactive is the Fukushima rubble? The New York Times article doesn't say, but the one I found (which also mentions 500 Kilotons) says that they measured "133 Bq/kg, well below the limit of 8000 Bq/kq". So 80 times below the limit, and the limits are conservative, so they are just processing it with the "normal" rubble from elsewhere.
How much is 133 Bq/kg? Well, the Potassium inside the human body means that humans produce around 40-60 Bq/kg[2], or a total 4000 Bq per person. Coffee is 1000 Bq/kg. Coal ash is 2000 Bq/kg. 1 household smoke detector with Americanium is 30000 Bq (not per kg, per unit).[2] Bananas are 31 Bq/g, so significantly more radioactive![2], with a single typical Banana of 175g being equivalent to 40 kilos of that rubble. So the rubble is not really all that radioactive and not all that scary.
And so on and so on...
Anyway, I fully understand where you are coming from. Nuclear is scary and the reporting is so incredibly one-sided and innumerate that it is hard to believe just how slanted it is. It certainly took me a while, because I wasn't suspicious, if anything I suspected the media were under-reporting. They aren't.
[1] http://www.naturalnews.com/033949_radioactivity_Fukushima.ht...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
[3] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-...
It's like if everyone got afraid of airplanes in the 1980's and kept flying the same ones from the 60s through today because people were afraid to build new ones. Would you say air travel was unsafe, or that we made poor technology investments?
Tepco from Fukushima claimed until the day their plants were hit, that everything was totally safe. Politics supported them. Nobody was questioning them.
But you missed the word "comparatively". We have lots of human-/technology-induced deaths and injuries. We allow car traffic in our cities at speeds that kills and maims thousands, often children. These are completely avoidable, just lower speed limits to 5mph or less. The US allows more than ten thousand gun deaths every year, because "reasons". etc. etc.
So yes, the effects were comparatively benign, compared to most of the technology we surround ourselves with, and certainly compared to all power-generating technologies we have (including solar). Not absolutely benign, though it would be interesting to compare the damage even of accidents like Fukushima to the benefits (in lives saved) of the electricity that was produced.
The country lost most of their nuclear power plants in a single day. It takes years, if not decades to bring them back online - partly. 50 plants. Each worth, say, ten billion dollar (current worth and future earnings - just an estimate). That loss alone goes into the hundreds of billions. Additionally fuel had to be imported, other plants had to be built.
'Currently 42 reactors are operable and potentially able to restart, and 24 of these are in the process of restart approvals. The first two restarted in August and October 2015.' Six years after the earthquake/tsunami.
Only a few ten thousand people, maybe a hundred thousand, will work in Fukushima under extreme circumstances to keep the site stable and clean it up the site for the next five decades. Robots die regularly after a short time inside the reactors. Humans get a year worth radioactive exposure in a few hours. Where to get all the people needed to work there?
We have experience to dismantle functioning reactors. Here we have damaged reactors with damaged fuel...
Very little effects... I don't think so. The effects were much more severe than the industry thought. They were thinking that most of the reactors would operate again, by now.
World-wide reactor projects were seeing delays. Companies have a hard time to survive. All these are effects of a single earthquake/tsunami on the nuclear reactor industry. It's a huge financial catastrophe for the nuclear industry and the countries financing it.
There was no actual need to shut down the other plants, etc.
That's your personal opinion. I think it's naive, because you had actually no idea in what state the other reactors were.
The OFFICIAL REGULATION AUTHORITIES for nuclear safety in Japan had a different opinion. Some plants had damages, were shutdown because of the earthquake, every plant needed inspections and every plant needed full safety reviews. That it takes so long to bring some of the reactors back shows that there are lots of doubts about their safety and the industry will need to do more than just say 'there was no need to shut them down' - nobody believes that.
Here you can find a good overview what the authorities are doing and when reactors might be restarted - if at all:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...
Japan sits on a seismic very active region and severe earthquakes and tsunamis happen. It's only logical after such damage to question the whole safety architecture. Are the spend fuel pools in similar unfortunate positions? Are they full, too? What happens at complete loss of outside electricity? Are the reactors able to safely shutdown then, unlike Fukushima? Can the spent fuel pools be cooled? Are there instruments in the reactor able to survive massive damage in an earth quake? There are many many questions which have not been asked for a decade, because the consequences would have been costly upgrades and even the shutdown of reactors - for example those sitting near fault lines.
Given that the nuclear industry in Japan is corrupt and runs very old reactors with severe design mistakes, I think it is only justified to shut down the industry for a full review. That would also include the whole network of politicians, research, industry, utilities, ...
Citation needed.
I could not find anything supporting that claim in the article you linked to. In fact, there is an article saying the regulator refused to shut down a plant [1]
"Despite attempts by politicians in Tokyo to persuade them to do so, provincial governors and local communities won’t allow them to restart."[2]
"Utilities were unable immediately to restart them due to public opposition."[3]
Also, the regulator that called for tougher standards was a new regulator, politicians having replaced the old one. So very clearly a political move.
So as I wrote, the shutdowns were largely political (or in some cases, routine shutdowns for maintenance happened and the reactors were then not allowed to restart for political reasons. Same difference).
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/18/japan-earthquakes...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/for-japan-...
[3] http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/japan-shuts-down-its...
The old regulator: 'The Nuclear & Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) granted a 10-year licence extension for Fukushima Daiichi 1 in February 2011, after technical review and some modifications in 2010.'
In March 2011, a month later, the reactor was destroyed incl. a fuel meltdown. It will take decades to clean up the mess. It wasn't even this reactor alone, units 2,3 and 4 were also damaged. Units 5 and 6 are given up in 2013.
Yeah, it was definitely a political move to replace the old regulator. The regulator was corrupt, incompetent, without power, ... The experts have failed. They had granted a ten year life extension to a reactor, which only days later was destroyed in a large scale accident.
It took a political move to replace them. Fully justified.
Don't read the torygraph or treehugger. Read the updates from the World Nuclear Association:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...
> The regulator was corrupt, incompetent, without power, .
And that was a legal decision? A technical decision? Oh wait, no! It was a political decision. Made by politicians.
> It took a political move to replace them.
Exactly. So why are you scoffing at me saying that it was a political move?
> Fully justified.
That's your (political) evaluation of that decision. Hmm...last I checked you scoffed at me for my evaluation.
You keep citing that article, but it proves my point.
"However, following the Fukushima accident, in October 2011 the government sought to greatly reduce the role of nuclear power."
Political decision.
Anyway, you still haven't provided any citations to prove your point, and haven't refuted my quotes that clearly show (a) that shutdowns were often routine maintenance (every 13 months) and (b) that blocking startup was frequently due to local political opposition.
So in essence, you have an opinion and not much else.
I'm not sure where you live, but in the country where I live energy policy is done by elected politicians, not by unelected technocrats.
It's their job. That's why we elect them.
The decision to replace the old regulatory body was made because the old regulatory body failed. Technically. Practically. In every single way. A nuclear reactor which they just granted a 10 year lifetime extension blew up days later and was a total wreck then. A multi-billion-dollar-wreck. Who would have left these people in office?
> Political decision.
You say that in a negative way. Every decision done is political. You live in a fairy tale world if you think unelected technocrats should make the decisions. The job of a politician is to make decisions based on all kinds of influences: technical, economical, social, ... That's exactly their job. If a technology (here nuclear) is not safe, costly, has no acceptance, etc, ... then this technology has to be reduced/removed and has to be replaced by safer technologies.
Politicians decided to invest into nuclear and set up the market, the regulatory bodies, the financing, etc. for it. They can also decide to reduce or completely abandon nuclear - if the voters demand that. That's why we have them.
Energy policy is political. Energy policy decisions are finally made by politicians we can elect. Not by TEPCO, Toshiba, ... There are huge amounts of money involved, paid by the tax payer (there is no other insurance of a nuclear power plant, the tax payer pays this show: the taxpayer finances the research, the infrastructure, the financing of the plants, and it keeps bankrupt companies like TEPCO from collapsing by pouring more money into them) and by electricity consumers. No nuclear power plant would exist without political decisions, public money, and a distorted market. It's no wonder nuclear especially grows in authoritarian states like Russia and China. There unelected technocrats make the decisions in combination with authoritarian politicians.
> quotes that clearly show (a) that shutdowns were often routine maintenance (every 13 months) and (b) that blocking startup was frequently due to local political opposition.
You still have not read the overview of the World Nuclear Association. Japan had literally to invest many billions to upgrade their reactor fleet. Old ones which weren't economic to upgrade were closed. Dangerous ones, for example sitting on top of fault lines, are not being opened again.
A few days later it was a multi-billion-dollar wreck.
Not at 'end of life' obviously does not mean 'safe to operate'. 'end of life' is also not a fixed date. Once the initial 'end of life' date comes, the owner will see how to get a life extension. Fukushima Daiichi 1 had an inspection, some upgrades, got the life extension. Following month this was one of most costly decisions ever made in industry.
Nobody says anything about the health and ecological disaster that is coal and oil. People do not attribute mining deaths to it and are bad at linking long term chronic health effects to them.
A red herring of solar and wind is proposed that people haven't rejected due to outages thanks to the other technologies covering its major drawbacks.
Likewise hydro disasters are not covered as much as they should.
"Yes dear Sklaar, it's even worse than we thought. Can you believe where they put the exhaust? Straight into the atmosphere!"
And so it happened that Earth was put into another 1000 years of no-contact-policy at the latest board of review, kids...
In fact, it was Fukushima that turned me around on nuclear. I always thought that the risks were just too great, that if you weren't perfect there would be disasters of unimaginable proportions. And humans just aren't perfect.
I was wrong. Well, not on the last bit :-)
2) Devastating tsunami
3) Crippling fire causing loss of power to all control circuitry.
Even with all that, the number of direct radiation casualties was zero. There are about six workers who got more than a lifetime allowed dose of radiation. They may have an increased cancer risk.
1) How many do you suppose would have died had it been a hydroelectric dam of similar capacity? (hint: a lot more than six)
2) Just how safe does something have to be?
How, you might say? Put the backup generators in waterproof bunkers, or simply on platforms high enough to keep them dry.
It's not expensive or tricky, it's just that the failure mode did not occur to anyone in charge.