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Comment by pieter | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps someone can tell about about the perception of nuclear reactors in Japan after the earthquake. Is there any knee-jerk reaction calling for the demolition of all existing reactors and stopping of all plans, or do most people have the same reaction Patrick has, seeing this as somewhat of a success? Is there any hysteria about the current problems with some of the reactors?

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Interest in the nuclear question is running very high. Japan historically has a complicated relationship with nuclear power, for all the obvious reasons. (Heck, I got freaked out when I saw the word "hibakusha" used in print today in a context not related to WWII.)

I would characterize the tenor of reports I saw on NHK earlier as "visible concern" on the part of the anchor and "restrained professionalism" on the part of their expert guests

I've said this before, though: Japan is a big country and it's diversity is often underappreciated. There is largely not a monolithic Japanese viewpoint on this. The same goes for just about everything. (See also: the United States.)

I read what you wrote in the linked post, and your view of the situation appears to be... erm... too bright if you will.

Were there not repeated cooling system failure resulting cooling pumps running on batteries (that needed to be swapped every few hours)? This sounds to me less like "something working as designed" and more like scraping last fallback options. Releasing (lightly radioactive) steam to ease the pressure in a chamber they have no view or control over doesn't sound that much better either. Nor does the evacuation of 140,000 people "from the area around Fukushima".

All in all, based on the quotes of Japanese authorities that sip into the Reuters' feed - they did not have a situation under full control at several points. They handled it as professional as it's possible, no doubts about it, but it could've unfolded differently.

https://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-w...

Worst possible case right now is a meltdown in the core (which is not explosive, just hot thermally and radioactively). A meltdown is not a problem because containment vessel is still intact and it's designed to handle a meltdown. It's just expensive and a bit dangerous to clean up radioactive sludge off the bottom of the containment vessel. (The building that blew off just protected the containment vessel from weather.) The article linked by anonymous246 explains in detail.

I guess the Japanese don't generate 30% of their electricity from nuclear power for fun or because it's a popular choice. It's by necessity -- Japan imports 99% of its oil and has only tiny coal reserves.

Wondering roughly what kind of cents per kilowatt hour they pay for electricity over there, I know nuclear is a lot more efficient energy generation but have no idea how this translates for the end consumer.

I'm a Tepco (Tokyo) customer. Looking at my most recent electric bill we're paying about 22 yen a kWh, or around 27 cents.

That'll probably go up with Fukushima out of commission.

Ah okay so it's not exactly the silver bullet for electricity costs, I saw that the uranium price had doubled in the past year or 2, might have something to do with it. For comparison here in Melbourne Australia we are at about 20cents per kwh, with a grid based mostly on coal fired power plants. That has jumped a great deal in recent years though, I was paying 17 a couple of years ago and just before that when I was living at home I think it was under 15.

Not really. Uranium price has very little, if any, effect on operational costs at a power plant.

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