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Turns out the optimistic reports upvoted by hacker news were polyannish. There appear to be 2 borderline catastrophes right now -

1. In reactor 4 spent fuel rods are burning and radioactivity is being freely vented in to the air. NONE of the optimistic reports suggested this possibility but I see a prophetic article at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15fuel.html.

2. Reactor 2 has had an explosion that has damaged the core containment structure - something we were assured would not happen.

Why were engineers so optimistic, while the ground reality is so much worse? Probably the complexity of the system escapes us and look at small parts of the issue and assume they are under control. In reality many things are interacting and the combination can overwhelm defences. For eg. as water is being routed to reactors 1, 2 and 3 to prevent meltdowns, the spent fuel rods are overheating.

Hubris strikes again.

View on HN

Yes, the upbeat reaction to Fukushima outside Japan has been disturbing. The fact that it would be hard to equal Chernobyl doesn't diminish the reality that this is easily the second-worst disaster in the history of nuclear power. People have been killed, and the entire complex is effectively trashed. One reactor at TMI took 14 years and a billion dollars to clean up; Fukushima is going to be a nightmare to set right even if things don't get worse.

Of course, this is assuming that things aren't worse than the official statements let on. The sordid history of the Japanese nuclear industry, including falsification of safety records at Fukushima, doesn't inspire confidence. Japanese nuclear officials are notoriously slippery in front of the press, and the lack of reliable information from Fukushima has been very frustrating. No one really knows what's going on there, and every time the officials claim to have it under control another building explodes.

Some context for the ongoing cost of Chernobyl:

In Ukraine, Chernobyl related benefits and programs are still funded by 5-7 percentage of government spending each year. In Belarus, government spending on Chernobyl reached 22.3 percent of the national budget in 1991, declining gradually to 6.1 percent in 2002. Total spending by Belarus on Chernobyl from 1991 through 2003 was more than US $13 billion. (Chernobyl Forum, 2006)

The area around Chernobyl was also very lightly populated compared to Japan.

In Japan live over 100 million people, in an area the size of California.

If the Fukushima disaster grows anywhere near the scale of Chernobyl, the damage (both economically and in terms of human life) will likely be much, much greater.

Not the best comparison; California is fairly sparsely populated, with concentrations in the SF and LA/SD areas. Being an island nation (well, a several-island nation), you'd expect Japan to be a bit more dense.

Consider that the population density of Japan is less than a third that of a somewhat average-density city like Austin, TX, and is even less dense than that of the state of New Jersey.

There is no evidence to suggest that Dai-ichi is actually a "disaster," let alone one anywhere near the scale of Chernobyl. Do you even know anything about the design of the plant at Chernobyl? Orders of magnitude less safe than even these pretty-old Dai-ichi reactors.

"Not the best comparison; California is fairly sparsely populated, with concentrations in the SF and LA/SD areas. Being an island nation (well, a several-island nation), you'd expect Japan to be a bit more dense.

Consider that the population density of Japan is less than a third that of a somewhat average-density city like Austin, TX, and is even less dense than that of the state of New Jersey."

If Austin or New Jersey had either the area or population close to that of Japan, maybe these would be relevant comparisons.

If you want to compare cities, try comparing New York to Tokyo, which at least are somewhat comparable. Though even there, Tokyo is far more populous, while NYC is far more densely populated.

"There is no evidence to suggest that Dai-ichi is actually a "disaster""

I guess you've been reading different news than than I have. What I've been reading says three of the reactors have exploded and a fourth has caught fire. There have already been reports of radiation leaks and at least 160 people have been exposed to radiation (so far). Sounds like a "disaster" to me.

Now, whether it escalates to the scale of Chernobyl (or larger) remains to be seen.

If Austin or New Jersey had either the area or population close to that of Japan, maybe these would be relevant comparisons.

Ok, let's reframe: I shouldn't even have bothered. Comparing the population density of a country like Japan to a state like California (as you originally did) is meaningless.

I guess you've been reading different news than than I have. What I've been reading says three of the reactors have exploded and a fourth has caught fire.

Then you've read wrong, or at least drawn the wrong conclusions from it. I haven't read up on the 3rd explosion, but two of them were "cosmetic" in nature and only affected the building structure around the reactors (the purpose of the structure is to keep weather out and is not designed to keep nuclear material in). Neither of the reactors "exploded." Yes, there were explosions at the reactors, but those are two very different things.

I still don't agree that this is a disaster by many reckonings of the term, but I recognize that people are free to define the severity to invoke it as they wish. I just happen to disagree.

Now, whether it escalates to the scale of Chernobyl (or larger) remains to be seen.

Highly unlikely, but yep, remains to be seen.

According to the IAEA (2005), the radiation contamination from the radioactive fallout exposed up to 6 million people in the surrounding area (including Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia) with radiation.

Well put. This is a highly chaotic situation unfolding as we speak. If any of that fuel catches fire, those of us sitting on our couches in silicon valley may very get a nice early spring gift from jet stream.

Even if AT THIS POINT the chances of such a fire are <1% (which quite frankly seems optimistic) we should be very very concerned...

Software engineers especially, but engineers in general, have a tendency to love complex machines. But engineers of all kinds SHOULD know best: that there are ALWAYS bugs, and where you least expect them.

We ought to put aside the politics here: whether you like nuclear power or you don't: we've all been very much dependent on it, and benefited from it greatly. It's impact on life is different, but not clearly better or worse than other sources.

Let's hope the engineers on the ground in Japan are getting very very creative.

"those of us sitting on our couches in silicon valley may very get a nice early spring gift from jet stream."

This brings up a question I've been wanting to ask since the ordeal started. How much do we know about the severity of radioactivity being spread to Hawaii, California or countries outside of Japan?

Assuming worst case scenarios, are the citizens of Hawaii in real danger of poisoning? Should neighboring countries be stocking up on potassium iodine?

Well in a worse case scenario, which is not as bad as chernobyl then the answer is no, they dont really have anything to worry about. Chernobyl has actually killed very few people or cases of cancer. The death toll directly killed by the accident was around 50, with 4000 affected by radiation.

According to the WHO, yes. Other reports have claimed up to 15,000 deaths, and 50,000 people handicapped after the disaster.

McIntyre, P (May-June 2006). Chernobyl 20 years on. Cancer World, 40-44.

We have endless reports from international agencies not just WHO, in these reports they find NO evidence of any increase of congenital malformations, those reports claiming 50,000 people handicapped after the disaster are plain wrong. The reports also state that as a direct result of the accident 4000 children got thyroid cancer, of which the recovery rate was almost 99%.

Anti-nuclear groups have hyped up Chernobyl to such an extent that many people have an irrational fear of nuclear energy.

  http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/en/

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/IAEA_Pub1239...

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/chernobyl_di...

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594179_eng.pd...

http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/annexj.pdf

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1239_web.pd...

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2005/ebsp2005n008....

Those statistics are bullshit. I agree that people have irrational fears about nukes but quoting back bogus stats at them doesn't really help. We'll never have good data about Chernobyl because the autocratic Soviet government not only made it impossible to obtain at the time actively suppressed info to spin the global media and to keep the affected population calm and controllable. There is a large body of evidence that hundreds of thousands of people were 'affected' by the radiation. Given that tracking the effects of radiation exposure is challenging under the best of circumstances, will never know how many or to what extent. But we can definitely say that those WHO numbers are garbage, and it strains the imagination to think the real numbers aren't a lot worse.

Wow is that conspiracy theory talk, you have any facts to back that up?

We have endless reports from international agencies. Cover-up? I doubt it. Ukraine and Belarus want aid and help, have no interest in covering up, and it’s difficult to believe in an international nuclear industry driven cover-up taking in all those UN agencies.

What did these agencies say? Read for yourself,

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/en/

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/IAEA_Pub1239...

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/chernobyl_di...

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594179_eng.pd...

http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/annexj.pdf

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1239_web.pd...

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2005/ebsp2005n008....

and so on, the list really is endless, you can click through for hours.

What is this "large body of evidence" you speak of? It would be nice to have some reports by reputable scientists but all you've done is spew conspiracy hystaria.

Ugh, just for the historical record: no, it is not "conspiracy theory talk". It's the simple observation that without reasonably accurate data, valid analysis cannot be done. We don't have most of the data pertaining to Chernobyl, and we never will. That is mainly because the USSR was a totalitarian state with rigorous information control systems, and it didn't like to be embarrassed by its nuclear oopsie-daisy.

Good scientists--those of the WHO included--do their best with what data they have, and don't make claims that can't be backed up by data. Because there isn't enough data to support it, there will never be a comprehensive scientific analysis of the real impact of the Chernobyl event... at least until we get some kind of time machine tech.

Until then, you can't KNOW the impact of Chernobyl. Sorry, but you just have to GUESS. I realize that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but that's how life works a lot of the time.

So my point wasn't "I know the real Chernobyl outcome in its entirety! It was baaaaad, man!" It was, "nobody knows the real Chernobyl outcome; we only know some partial results that we've been able to piece together, mostly many years after the fact from inconsistent data." (And that my personal hunch is that there was probably a lot of negative impact to humans which could not be captured in reports such as the ones you cite.)

How are you going to have facts when they were destroyed?

Just found this article which claims "No radiation peril foreseen for California"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/14/...

1. The building on 4 is on fire, not the spent fuel rods.

2. The hydrogen explosion on 2 may have damaged containment.

Well, at least one of the 2 possibilities is closer to the worst case since radioactivity levels are 500x (400 mill-sievert, from 800 u-sievert) what they were a few hours ago.

Where are you getting the milli from? Kyodo reports 8000 micro sievert. So it's an ~5.5x increase from the previous high-water-mark of 1,500 microsievert.

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/78063.html

Japanese chief secretary's press conference which I was watching on NHK. NHK repeated the number several times. Found a press report here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-14/japan-appeals-for-i...

asahi.com also reported a similar number (400 mili sievert near reactor number 4, believed to follow fire at that location): http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0315/TKY201103150154.ht...

Thanks! I am not sure what reports to believe anymore...

Stop it! This is the proper time to panic and disregard any empirical evidence. The Sky-Is-Falling crowd has needed this release of pure panicgasm for a long time, don't ruin it for them.

Well, just cross your fingers and pray, it may get worse, if you are lucky. I get the distinct feeling that you want there to be a nuclear catastrophe....most detractors are content with imagining (and genuinely believing) that there have been several catastrophes in our past. But you seem drawn to want an actual catastrophe.

Am I wrong? If you could somehow magically snap your fingers and make nuclear power 100% safe, would you do it?

I have no way of knowing if their report is accurate, but this is what the NYT says on #1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16nuclear.html):

That fourth reactor had been turned off and was under refurbishment for months before the earthquake and tsunami hit the plant on Friday. But the plant contains spent fuel rods that were removed from the reactor, and experts guessed that the pool containing those rods had run dry, allowing the rods to overheat and catch fire.

I think a big part of it is we've had it drilled into us that fears of nuclear meltdowns are irrational. That people are just misinformed & scared of something they can't see or possibly understand. And we like to think we're smarter than the general population.

But clearly no one knows how bad this situation is going to get.

This is a longish, very specific (but apparently also overoptimistic) description of the mechanics of the reactor problems. http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/53461/fukushima-nu...

To update, NHK is reporting the fire at reactor 4 is out.

"Turns out the optimistic reports upvoted by hacker news were polyannish."

There are way too many people on here who've been drinking too much of the radioactive koolaid doled out by the nuclear industry.

The general consensus here tends to be that nuclear power is wonderful and amazingly safe.

Well, we're seeing them being proven wrong yet again. How much more proof are they going to need? How many more nuclear disasters is it going to take?

How many major nuclear disasters have there been in the last, say, 50 years? Three mile island and Chernobyl are the two big ones that everyone knows about, and considering that people are saying that this is the third largest [EDIT: actually the second largest, at this point], I take that as an endorsement of nuclear power. As compared with coal, oil, natural gas, and so forth, which function by spewing pollutants into the environment continuously, during normal operation.

Yes, I would be thrilled if we switched entirely to solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power sources, but nuclear power isn't anywhere near as disastrous as the people strongly against it would like us to believe. It's also not as safe as a lot of people would like to think, but, by and large, it is fairly safe.

Small correction - this current disaster is worse than 3-Mile-Island.

Hydroelectric? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Ecosystem_dama...

You've got a good link there, but the wrong anchor. The anchor you are looking for was #Failure_hazard, and possibly a better link would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#1975_Flood . 26,000 dead in the flooding and 145,000 dead due to subsequent epidemics.

If some of you anti-nuclear types get frustrated that I and others are not rushing out to forswear nuclear forever and ever amen, it's not because we don't understand the risks. It's because we don't ignore a death just because it happened in a non-radioactive flood or a non-radioactive coal mining accident and didn't involve any OMGRadiation!!1!. Nor are deaths caused by nuclear issues magically worse than being killed in a flood or a coal mining accident. Dead is dead. Someone who wants to be seen caring waves around their fashionable concerns and waits for congratulations from their peers; an engineer who wants to care considers the costs and benefits of the whole system, and doesn't simply assume either is zero without evidence. Regardless of how bad this particular crisis may become, it still nets out that people are dying every year because we're too cowardly to look at nuclear head on and use more of it and less of the even-more dangerous other technologies we are using, so that we can feel good about our irrational fear of OMGRadiation!!1!.

The problem with hydro is that you can't build it where you need the power (unless geography - or real estate - is uncannily nice to you)

Most of Brazil depends on a single hydro facility with endless miles of aluminum wires crossing the southeast part of the country. If anything serious fails there, the country pretty much stops.

Renewables like solar, hydro, biomass, and wind have their place, but you don't generate solar during night, you may want to spare your water during a drought, you may need to eat the biomass and you may have days without wind. Nuclear too has its place. Technology is a tool we should wield with reason, not passion.

It should be noted, though, that solar thermal plants can indeed generate electricity during the night, by collecting heat in reservoirs to later produce steam, be them water or molten salt[1] heat reservoirs.

[1] http://www.research-in-germany.de/61660/2011-03-08-molten-sa...

>Well, we're seeing them being proven wrong yet again. How much more proof are they going to need? How many more nuclear disasters is it going to take?

You've had one and a half. TMI had no ill effects on health, Chernobyl was caused by Soviet incompetence, and Fukushima is the result of an earthquake 7 times more powerful than it was designed to survive. Compare that to the damage caused by oil spills alone.

No power source that is economically viable on a large scale is 100% safe, including nuclear. They do their damndest, but sometimes it fails. There were some design flaws in Fukushima, namely the placement of the backup generators and the height of the tsunami barriers, but the precipitating earthquake was still the strongest in 1200 years. It looks like the containment vessel on the #4 reactor has been breached, and that's very, very bad. Still, the only people injured were those injured by the hydrogen explosions, not by radiation. There's been a few people (~12) who suffered radiation exposure, I believe all plant workers.

Is this event bad? Yes. Could it be another Chernobyl? Probably not. Reactor 4 is on fire, and is releasing radiation into the atmosphere, but on nowhere near the scale that Chernobyl did.

Most of the "optimism" yesterday was based on what had actually occurred: the coolant had failed, #1 was flooded, and #3 had encountered the same problems. Both reactors had hydrogen explosions outside of the containment vessel that didn't compromise them. No significant radiation had been released.

Today is a different story. We'll keep an eye on things and see how they progress, but the optimism was based on the situation at #1 and #3, not the yet-to-happen situation at #2 and #4.

"the precipitating earthquake was still the strongest in 1200 years"

People keep mentioning this as if that matters. The fact is that it happened, and there's really no telling when future natural disasters will strike any given nuclear plant. All we know is that they can happen and that if disasters on this scale do happen, nuclear reactors are not up to surviving them.

"Reactor 4 is on fire, and is releasing radiation into the atmosphere, but on nowhere near the scale that Chernobyl did."

Yet.

But this disaster may be far from over.

"There's been a few people (~12) who suffered radiation exposure, I believe all plant workers."

That's not what I'm hearing. From a former nuclear industry executive and whistleblower interviewed recently on Democracy Now:

"they talk about 160 people that have been contaminated. That’s all they’ve tested. Basically, everything they’re testing is coming up contaminated in that inner couple of miles around the plant. You’ve got radiation being detected 60 miles to the north in a Navy helicopter, a hundred miles to the east on a Navy aircraft carrier. So, it’s not clear to me that that cloud is not looping around and affecting Japan."

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/14/japan_facing_biggest_c...

As far as contamination goes, my information is ~12 hours out of date, so I won't argue that point. I will point out, however, that it's not the level of radiation that matters, but the specific isotopes causing it. Radioactive Iodine, for example, is particularly dangerous because it has a relatively long half-life and naturally concentrates in the lymph nodes. Shorter-lived isotopes, like N-16, will contribute to high radiation levels but not have any real health effects.

As for this not being on the same scale as Chernobyl, I doubt even a full, uncontained meltdown would be as bad as that. Chernobyl made heavy use of graphite, which burned for a long time, spewing long-lived fallout everywhere. Fukushima I uses a different design, with less inherent risk.

Wikipedia has a pretty decent article on the matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents#O...

Fukushima is still listed as INES 4, or lower than TMI, although that could change.

and Fukushima is the result of an earthquake 7 times more powerful than it was designed to survive

Actually the reactors came out of the earthquake quite well! It was that pesky tsunami taking out the backup generators to power the cooling systems that's really causing all these problems. And even then, new generators were brought in to fix the problem caused by the tsunami, but somehow nobody thought to check to make sure the new generators were compatible with the plant's power system before trucking them in. Oops.

It was a perfect storm. The plant shut down, as it should have, and the batteries operated properly. However, the tsunami submerged the diesel backups, and the rest of the power grid had been knocked out by the earthquake, so they couldn't use external power.

The mobile generators deal was a fuckup, plain and simple. I think, had they known what the price of failure was, they would have found a way to make it work. I think they were overconfident in the safety systems they had in place.

I generally see people talking about how safe the new reactor designs are, and how it's a tragedy that people are so afraid of nuclear that they won't let them be built. The reactors in Japan are 40-year-old designs. You can't compare them on the same level. It's like saying that people in favor of nuclear power claim that Chernobyl never happened because 'safe nuclear' == 'never was a reactor that was unsafe ever built.'

Add to that the fact that the other reactors there have stood up to a 9.1 quake with about 600 aftershocks -- ranging from mild to "I'm a pretty decent disaster all by myself" -- A sizable tidal wave and numerous fires with hydrogen explosions.

This could definitely have been far, far worse by now.

"This could definitely have been far, far worse by now."

It still can. The disaster may be far from over.

And it may take quite a while to calculate the real cost of this disaster, both economically and in terms of human life.

You might be surprised to discover that a 40 year old life is fairly standard in nuclear power plants[1], in fact some countries hope to keep their plants active for closer to 60 years. At close to $7B+ investment in just the building phase of a modern nuclear plant and close to 7-10 years construction time per plant[2], the limited lifetime of the plant does start to become a concern in the financial sense though.

[1]: http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2007/npp_extension.html [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor

I'm not balking at the age and saying that the place is 'falling apart.' I'm saying that they were designed 40 years ago, and that it's possible that we've learned things since then and can build better plants (starting at the design phase). I'm no expert though, so I'm making no claims.

actually they were designed 60 years ago. they were built 50 years ago.

> how many more nuclear disasters is it going to take?

Indeed....please provide us with the list of nuclear disasters, it should be an easy exercise judging by the tone of confidence in your post. Just for fun, throw in some stats on deaths per kwh of electrcity.

PREDICTION: you will not respond to this, because there have been no nuclear disasters. And no one disputes that in practice, nuclear is the safest form of power statistically. If you want to assert that nuclear power is incredibly powerful and dangerous, that is one thing, but trying to pass off potential disaster as reality, is a but disingenuous.

> because there have been no nuclear disasters.

You can't simultaneously accuse your OP of being disingenuous about nuclear power (which he is, and I agree), then claim there have been no nuclear disasters, because that is probably more disingenuous than the original claim. That's just not true.

Are we working with the same definition of the word disaster? Even bloody Wikipedia, which I'd hardly call the tome of truth, calls Chernobyl a disaster[1]. Human life, property damage (ask Belarus), worldwide fallout...you don't get to rewrite what disaster means so that nuclear power keeps an untarnished image. There has been at least one. Debatably -- and I don't care to get into it -- there could now be as many as three.

There's a parallel with airliner crashes. More people die every day on highways, but an airliner going down is a very serious thing because there are hundreds of lives suddenly ended. So it was with Chernobyl: due to a catastrophic failure of engineering, humanity, and government, dozens of peoples' lives suddenly ended. You can argue that tens of thousands of lives are now in jeopardy due to the radiological effects. That is a disaster, regardless of any pro/anti-nuclear agenda.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

I was speaking about disaster in an absolute sense, not a relative one. When you only have ten or so incidents to go by, then Chernobyl and three mile island are going to be called disasters, as far as nuclear disasters go. In terms of real disasters, when measured in human deaths, they are tiny footnotes in history, statistically irrelevant.

Hundreds of people die every year, just mining coal. How many people have died from nuclear power generators in their entire history? Disingenuous indeed.

Chernobyl statistically irrelevant?

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs303/en/index.htm...

There are a lot of relevant statistics in that document, such as the thousands of thyroid cancer cases directly attributed to the radiation exposure, not to mention the tens of firefighters that died saving the rest of the world. I would hate to live in your world, where there's a threshold of death to call something a disaster -- you are really minimizing the effects on hundreds of thousands (potentially millions) of people, simply because they haven't died yet or at all. How about getting uprooted from their homes and lives?

Just as I pointed out with my airliner analogy, the deaths from mining coal are over time, and many probably attributable to basic industrial accidents. Black lung has kind of been figured out, hasn't it? Five hundred coal miners didn't wake up on a Tuesday and die from coal poisoning, and as a result we're not talking about a disaster that needs investigation with coal power production.

What about those that die mining uranium? Not talking about them, are you? The Navajo would probably like to tell you about their history with uranium extraction: http://www.epa.gov/region9/superfund/navajo-nation/index.htm...

I agree that nuclear power is statistically safe, but you are really skewing facts and doing a great disservice to less-educated readers about the (real) dangers of nuclear power, and calling it science elsewhere in this thread. This isn't a binary proposition -- something can be really safe and have the occasional Big Deal. Just like air travel.

Safer than solar or wind power?

Solar and wind are not always there when you need them, so you need some source of electricity that is. Current ways to store power (batteries, pumping water uphill) are too expensive.

Those are not comparable power sources. They cannot substitute for fossil or nuclear plants, because they are way too expensive and do not provide 24/7 power without even more expensive batteries.

Actually, thermal solar plants can produce electricity 24/7 just fine. They can store heat in water or (more efficiently) molten salt up in a tower and use it to later generate power at a reliable rate.

Spain is known to be investing heavily on concentrating solar power.

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

This one deserves an upvote for at least citing a source.

Those are great they just don't generate a lot of power though. The biggest one so far peaks at 60MW while your standard nuclear or fossil power plant generates 1000MW consistently. You'd need at least 20 of these to replace just one coal plant. That makes it what, 5 times more expensive than nuclear / fossil? Not even the USA can afford to go 100% renewable with a price like that.

"That makes it what, 5 times more expensive than nuclear / fossil?"

I'm not sure that's an accurate assessment, given that solar will probably become much cheaper as more solar plants are built.

And, as we're seeing with the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters, the real price of nuclear could be much higher than just the price of a power plant.

What would be your price tag on the lives lost in or ruined by these nuclear disasters? (not to mention the economic cost stemming from the areas being contaminated by nuclear fallout)

"Not even the USA can afford to go 100% renewable with a price like that."

Of course they could. They could start by giving fewer handouts to the rich in terms of bailouts and tax breaks. Then they could cut the military budget so that the US no longer spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. And they could legalize drugs, and get rid of the War on Drugs, cut spending on filling prisons with people who commit victimless crimes, etc.

All together that would make for many trillions saved (plus a handy profit on taxing legal drugs). Then the US could easily afford to go 100% solar (and probably much more), without any of the risks of nuclear.

I understand that there are many political reasons why none of these things are going to happen in the US any time soon (though some estimates put legalization of pot on 10 year horizon, when the baby boomers start withdrawing from the political scene, and as the younger generation is far less afraid of pot). But it's not like these things couldn't happen.

It's all a matter of political will.

If there's one good thing that's come out of this latest nuclear disaster is that it's starting to wake people up to the true dangers and costs of nuclear power. Hopefully they won't need many more such lessons before they get the point.

More people die installing solar roof panels than in nuclear power accidents.

Do you really think the USA will stop building coal and natural gas power plants any time soon?

"Just for fun, throw in some stats on deaths per kwh of electrcity."

How many kwh of electricity is your life worth?

How many kwh or electricity are the nearly 1 million people who died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster worth? [1]

And I'd love to hear you show me a list of solar array or wind farm accidents that prove nuclear power is safer than either.

If Chernobyl or the Fukushima plants were solar arrays or wind farms, how much environmental damage and cost in human suffering would there have been were they to have been destroyed?

I'm looking forward to hearing you sing about how nuclear is the "safest form of power statistically" if the radioactive cloud from Fukushima ever winds up floating over your home town.

---

[1] "Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences"

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2010/2010-04-26-01.html

Solar array and wind farms kill people too. The by-products of mining and industrial production are often dangerous and result in disease. Solar cells in particular require lots of energy to create.

Is your home off the grid? Have you really considered the compromises that have to be made to live entirely(electric, heating, cooling, transport) from wind and solar? It's not easy, it demands changes to all aspects of ones lifestyle and has a significant price.

"Solar array and wind farms kill people too."

Just how many people do they kill?

You got any stats on that?

"The by-products of mining and industrial production are often dangerous and result in disease"

How does that compare to the hazards of mining radioactive ore and the hazards from storing and transporting nuclear waste?

"Have you really considered the compromises that have to be made to live entirely(electric, heating, cooling, transport) from wind and solar?"

These compromises aren't necessarily all bad. For instance, if the impact to transport means that we'll have to live on goods made locally and not be able to commute as far to work, that could make for stronger, more pleasant, and more sustainable communities and economic systems.

"It's not easy, it demands changes to all aspects of ones lifestyle and has a significant price."

Does that price approach dying of radiation poisoning from a Chernobyl-style disaster? Or how about having your children be born with all sorts of mutations caused by radiation? Or of poisoning the environment with nuclear waste?

> For instance, if the impact to transport means that we'll have to live on goods made locally and not be able to commute as far to work, that could make for stronger, more pleasant, and more sustainable communities and economic systems.

Good luck getting the rare earths from China for all those green technologies if you have to get them from local sources. The one big US mine was shutdown. The reason?

"In 1998, chemical processing at the mine was stopped after a series of wastewater leaks. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water carrying radioactive waste spilled into and around Ivanpah Dry Lake."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine

But it's okay because, currently, we get all those rare elements from China, where you don't hear about the pollution and accidents. Of course, China is saying that they don't want to share with everyone else any more, so that may change soon.

I'd like to know just how many tons of rare earths we have to import from China to run wind farms.

And why couldn't solar panels be developed without them?

Why not put a few tens or hundreds of billions (a tiny fraction compared to TARP or how much the US spends on the military) in to research in to these technologies to make them less dependent on rare earths?

But, as for the availability of rare earths outside China:

"As China slashes exports of rare earth elements, U.S. mine digs for more"

"Molycorp Inc., which owns the open mine, plans to dig out about 40,000 tons of dirt a year by 2014, up 1,200% from the current rate of about 3,000 tons.

The Colorado company is boosting production to meet an insatiable global appetite for rare earth elements..

The mine, about 16 miles from the Nevada border, has one of the world's largest deposits of rare earth elements outside Asia..

The company is spending more than $500 million to modernize and rebuild the 2,200-acre facility. The project is expected to create hundreds of permanent jobs and eventually produce rare earths at cheaper rates than mines in China."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-rare-earth-20110220,0,...

also:

"China's monopoly of the supply of strategic "rare earth" minerals will end when the Australian mining corporation Lynas brings a massive new refining plant in Malaysia into operation later this year...

The company has invested about $230 million in a refinery covering about 20 hectares which in September is due to start processing about 11,000 tonnes of rare earth oxide a year."

http://www.vancouversun.com/China+lose+monopoly+rare+earth+m...

I take it you didn't read the link I posted, or you'd have noticed that the mine that released all that radioactive crap was owned by Molycorp Inc. Yes, the same one you're talking about.

Wind can't do base load power, either. Maybe someone will work that out by, I don't know, storing the energy in a flywheel or something. But they haven't done so yet. It's also dependent on our solar energy budget (as is solar, obviously). Conservation of energy is a pain, but no one knows how to violate it yet.

How do you know how much something like that would cost to develop?

What is your suggested alternative to nuclear power, and what is its figure of deaths per kWhr?

That study is somewhat questionable. Official estimates are 4000, generally regarded as low, but probably not 3 orders of magnitude low.

Can you quote anything more credible than "The Environment News Service"?

Come on, do you expect to be taken seriously? Make a reasoned argument, I'm willing to listen. If you can quote any sort of a credible science agency that claims Chernobyl actually contributed to major death, I would consider it.

Historically, coal-fired power plants have been much more dangerous for humans than nuclear power plants. I think the record shows that nuclear power is on the whole pretty safe.

Regarding proof: I don't think anything has been proven, yet, except that there have been a lot of powerful forces at work with this disaster.

Yes, in history. But that turns an eye to black swan events of mass proportion that only nuclear power is capable of.

Only nuclear power? What about the BP oil spill? Exxon Valdez? Coal slurry wiping out homes in West Virginia?

Caesium-137 has a 30 year half life. If that blew into Tokyo, the city would be uninhabitable for 200 years - just like Chernobyl.

That said, there have been some pretty nasty events associated with coal as well, which are however surprisingly unknown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_sludge_spill

Doesn't compare to the potential consequences of a nuclear incident, but it's quite possible to build and mishandle crappy coal infrastructure, too.

So, coal is the car, and nuclear power is the airplane.

Alternative explanation: Being a pessimist is not productive. Woo-hoo, you were something in the ballpark of right. Is the world better because of it? If you look at every situation and assume the worst, you'll be right sometimes, but you'll never accomplish anything.

I prefer my nuclear engineers to pay attention to the worst-case scenario, even if it does make them a wet blanket at parties.

You're conflating the question of nuclear engineers preparing for the worst with question of whether, given two possible scenarios, we should just assume the worst (and, as implied by the GP, suggest that there is something defective with people who didn't make the negative assumption). The differences are incalculable.

However, nuclear power generation is serious. Things happen very fast and can turn nasty in milliseconds if you don't pay attention, if you don't understand what is happening, if you don't know what you are doing and if you don't have the right tools at hand to deal with whatever is going on.

One thing I learned in school is that you respect any machine bigger than you.

I have no idea why things went so completely wrong there. I always assumed people who design and build nuclear reactors do so in ways they can't fail. Now I am more inclined to believe they are happy to have plans B through G instead of having a really bulletproof plan A. It's certainly more impressive to list a long series of failsafe devices than just having a very unimpressive core that can cool itself in the event of an emergency.

It appears they were much less respectful than they should have been. Some people may end up paying with their lives.

The wise man knows when pessimism is warranted.

Only the paranoid survive.

No, paranoid means unreasonably anxious. If people had an appropriate level of concern that kept them alive, they were by definition not paranoid.

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