Tepco slow to respond to growing crisis at Fukushima plant | Hacker News Reader

Tepco slow to respond to growing crisis at Fukushima plant

asahi.com

67 pointsdane-pgp103 comments

This article's use of language is different from the situation it is describing to the point of absurdity.

> "new nightmarish challenges"

> "frantically scratching around for ideas"

> "ALARMING DEVELOPMENTS"

It seems the problem is they have a big tank and the article author wants it to be replaced? And that they measure density at the top of the tank and he wants measurements from the bottom? The article is unjustified fear-mongering and panic. It isn't even an especially big tank, they include a photo.

They have literally hundreds of these tanks. They were building them every few days.

Doesn’t take away from your main point though.

While true, I find it hard to believe that moving water from one tank to another is some kind of grave threat to humanity like the article wants the reader to think. In the worst case scenario can't they just put these tanks in a big hole and pour concrete on them?

and what happens with concrete when the ground trembles...? it breaks. apart of that concrete is still damaged by radiation and such wholes and concrete needs to be redone after some years (there's already second one i chernobyl). and then after some years you have a lot of contaminated cement, which you need to cover again... and again... and again... it'll need to be redone even after both you and I die (assuming I don't get to my dream of changing all organs for new ones and living to 500 ;))

In other words, a problem we already know how to solve and have done so multiple times before.

Hiding problems from sight doesnt solve them. It justs hides them. Its like a temporary patch, but the ground will be radiated for long time. What then? Another spot? Then again in another spot? So my and your grandchildren will basically have live to on radioactive waste/a ticking bomb? Thats not solution.

This is how landfills work currently so it is not much of a deviation from the status quo. It would still take millions of years before we run out of land to put all the nuclear waste ever created in.

There’s not that much radiation in this water. None of those concerns would apply. They could literally just dump it into the ocean without measurable effect, which is the plan of record.

The original article this was translated from is here: https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASPDG3FGWPD6ULBJ019.html?iref...

The inflammatory language, in particular the parts you quoted, seem to have been added for the English translation.

I concur; the original Japanese article is uncolored, and the English language article is not a faithful translation. Although the people responsible for authoring and editing TFA seem to go unmentioned, shame on them.

Asahi is known to biased to anti nuclear for a long time. Japanese readers may consider the bias.

Heavy molecules sink. Salts sink. Density is used to estimate radioactive molecules, so if you measure only in the surface you are underestimating the amount of radioactivity in your mix. This is lying to themselves and to everybody, (maybe with the goal of to be allowed to keep leaking/trowing it to the sea) and must be criminally prosecuted. Is like saying that a soup is oil entirely because it has a thin layer of oil in the surface. Specially if radioactive strontium is forming a mud in the bottom of the tank

At this point of the problem the data used to evaluate the problem should be required to be accurate. We should adopt a zero tolerance with this BS. Enough is enough.

> Radioactive waste generated from treating highly contaminated water used to cool crippled reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has thrown up yet new nightmarish challenges in decommissioning the facility, a project that is supposed to be completed in 30 years but which looks increasingly doubtful.

So not only did their nuclear engineers fail to foresee the effects of the tsunami, they are still being caught out by unexpected problems a decade later. It seems that nuclear energy is just beyond the ability of even well organised societies to safely manage.

Nuclear pollution is scary but coal pollution isn't? I bet coal pollution has killed way more than nuclear pollution per plant.

I think part of that is due to nuclear power primarily being in decently wealthy areas with very strict regulations and high amounts of security measures being taken. Coal plants are in even the poorest, most run down areas and run by just about everyone. They’re the baseline for energy.

I support expanding nuclear energy in areas that are capable of doing so, but there are some places where nuclear would be an absolute disaster far beyond what coal could ever be.

You could imagine, if this were to be made a global priority, a UN organisation dedicated to running nuclear plants around the world, with protection by UN forces etc.

I can’t see it happening in the current anti-nuclear climate but I think it’s fixable.

Wont happen, there are much more nuclear plants set to be closed than created.

both are bad and scary? why even bring them up together? there is no need to bet because both are stupid so why should nuclear power be defended here?

do you know why there is no article how bad coal is? because everybody knows but unfortunatly most people do not understand how fucking bad fukushima even is, people like you that try to make nuclear look cool just because there exists something worse does not make nuclear look cooler.

> why even bring them up together

Because reams of news articles are written about one but not the other, feeding the incorrect perception that one is vastly more dangerous than the other.

Here's the problem with coal power, the damage is not equatable to nuclear plants:

There is no way to control the impact to the environment - areas immediately surrounding a coal plant have much higher cancer rates, the ground & streams becomes toxic, wider areas have heightened acid rain risks. Then you get to impact on the global climate. All this in a perfectly operated idealized plant.

In a nuclear plant that is run properly, not even perfectly, produces radioactive waste. No atmospheric pollution, no water pollution.

Major "normal" failures cause radiation leaks. These are so rare that the events are individually named. Accidents that result in atypical operation that don't even harm the plant, let alone cause external impact are all recorded, and systems are updated to prevent recurrence. Even major events like three mile island have not caused any excess deaths or cancers.

Catastrophic failures have basically be down to understood design flaws: Chernobyl had an RBMK reactor with know flaws, Fukushima had emergency generators in the basement despite being advised to place them higher up. Precisely because of flooding concerns.

As for waste: Nuclear waste is of course hard to manage, with most "solutions" being "bury it". Whatever the end solution is, we know it won't be as horrific as a coal plants solution: aerosolizing it and pumping it into the atmosphere.

A lot of noise is made about decommissioning a nuclear plant. Decommission a nuclear plant means deconstruction of the reactor and removing the remaining waste. There is no need to remediate the land itself. No one talks about decommissioning coal plants as they simply don't: the land on and around the site is left permanently toxic.

Not to deter from your point, but said basement was far far above the water line and even above the flood wall. And different placement would have been more risky for earthquake damage. The failing was the insufficient flood wall, which TEPCO very definitely knew about, with almost exactly this scenario predicted, not the placement of backup generators.

> do you know why there is no article how bad coal is? because everybody knows but unfortunatly most people do not understand how fucking bad fukushima even is

And most people have zero idea how bad coal is.

How many lakes and streams has nuclear destroyed? Nowhere near the number that coal has between both acid rain and mine runoff. The Monongahela river and its tributaries still have enormous sulfate loads.

How many people have died of nuclear radioactivity? Nowhere near the amount that have died of black lung.

And this is before we start talking about just how bad the pollution in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc. used to be and how many people died from that.

People don't understand even the tiniest fraction of how bad coal is. Nuclear power, even with accidents, is a saint compared to coal.

Don't forget about decades-long fires burning underground due to mining accidents. Not small ones either, miles long:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

They should be brought up together because coal is in common use today, nuclear is well equipped to replace it, and nuclear uses about one million times less fuel than coal does to fulfill the same demand.

Worst case for nuclear is probably worse than the worst case for coal. The planet might be transformed in unwanted ways due to global warming, but that's better than it becoming irradiated and inhospitable to life.

That being said I still think that nuclear is our best option.

Chernobyl was literally the worst case for nuclear power. The design flaws were myriad and the industry has learned a tremendous amount. It's not going to irradiate the whole planet, full stop.

Coal is killing the planet now.

Chernobyl could have been much, much worse. It was successfully contained.

yes, coal doesn't lead to a choice between obliterating northern hemisphere vs living with 30x radiation.

You're conflating pollution (which I take to mean typical by-products of both fuel generation i.e. during mining, and power generation i.e. at the plant) and catastrophic destruction of the plant.

You may well be correct with respect to pollution - I don't know and certainly would find it tricky to determine (is there a consistent measure of "negative environmental impact" for comparing such things?).

However, with respect to catastrophic destruction, this recent example at a coal plant [0], pales in comparison to something like a Chernobyl or Fukushima.

[0] https://reneweconomy.com.au/worlds-newest-and-most-expensive...

> However, with respect to catastrophic destruction, this recent example at a coal plant [0], pales in comparison to something like a Chernobyl or Fukushima.

That's not a catastrophic destruction, merely a generator explosion.

Wikipedia has articles on mining and energy accidents, and you can see there are far more catastrophic one with coal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_accident

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents

A simple way to think of it: one incident like Fukushima destroys the economics of the entire nuclear industry over a very long time span. Nuclear can only be cost competitive if there are zero such incidents ever.

It’s like if one plane crash cost more to clean up than the revenue of the entire airline industry for years.

Interestingly the same cost analysis is not used for nuclear weaponry because it is presumed that nuclear retaliation is more important than any economic cost...the important question is if we will view climate change as that same kind of enemy and authorize nuclear energy knowing that there will be future incidents, but the price of cleanup will be worth it to avert climate disaster.

Zero people died from the plant.

Carbon is killing almost a million and a half people a year, plus screwing the atmosphere.

We've put ten times the money it would take to solve this on nuclear into solar, and unless you incorrectly use nameplate capacity, it hasn't even broken the 2% mark yet, but it's already throwing the grid into chaos.

Worldwide, in all of history, nuclear power has killed fewer than 200 people. Yes, I know HBO told you it was more. HBO is lying for profits. The UN says it's 156.

There is no safer technology in history, of any kind, than nuclear power.

Nuclear has already fixed 1/4 of the problem. It can fix the rest in time. Nothing else can.

You have six years left to wake up before it's too late to vote for the fix we already have.

> We've put ten times the money it would take to solve this on nuclear into solar,

Could you share the numbers for how much subsidy money was put into solar technology, and how much for nuclear energy (and fossil fuels, for that matter) over their history?

> and unless you incorrectly use nameplate capacity, it hasn't even broken the 2% mark yet,

The number I'm seeing[0] for solar, globally (based on 2019 data), is 2.7%, which, combined with wind, wave, and tidal etc. comes to 10.5%, compared to 10.4% for nuclear. Both are dwarfed by hydropower's 15.8%, of course, but it's hard to manufacture the right sort of rivers.

> but it's already throwing the grid into chaos.

That hasn't been the experience in Australia[1], so it sounds like you're referring to a politics problem, not a technology problem.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/08/Global-energy-vs....

[1] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/08/31/renewables-improve-re...

> Could you share the numbers

No thanks, you're doing a fine job finding wrong numbers by not knowing the difference between nameplate and delivered already.

> The number I'm seeing[0]

is irrelevant, as it's about how much power the solar panels could produce, if the planet had noon 24 hours a day and the panels were forever perfectly aligned.

Energiewende is unambiguous.

> which, combined with wind, wave, and tidal etc. comes to 10.5%,

When you learn what to look for, it's under 1%.

No, I don't have to teach you this in order to speak where you are also present.

No, googling things without foundational knowledge isn't a valid push back. This is energy anti-vaxing.

> That hasn't been the experience in Australia

Gee, who'd have thought that Australia, whose solar panel industry barely exists and which is entirely fuelled by coal and LNG, which can ramp up and down, would not yet be facing this?

If only there was a valid piece of history to meausure, which left an entire country dumping power at negative prices for more than a month in the desperation to not blow their grid

If only that country was radically more industrialized than Australia

If only you knew enough about power history to not need to ask me who I mean

If only you'd look at that eleven years and figure out what it meant

6 years until what?

"Zero people died from the plant." Have you ever searched for czernobyl victims? I advice it, but only if you have strong nerves. Especially those poor kids...

> Zero people died from the [Fukushima] plant.

Chernobyl had something like 60 direct deaths and a few hundred to thousand long term deaths.

That is equivalent to about one day of coal.

It's really easier to get rid of carbon than get rid of atomic waste. And i don't defend carbon, im for wind and solar as safer than two mentioned above. And you dont count deformations that came after. There's lots of it if you search for them. Carbon damage doesnt come close and you can get a nice filter. There's really no escape from radiation unless you shelter yourself with enough of lead and rocks. Maybe go live underground cause your standard carbon filter wont work on atomic fallout.

> and a few hundred to thousand long term deaths.

The official UN long term number is 53.

For everyone prognosticating future deaths, in reality, the cancer rate in the area went down substantially.

You will never find a sourced, measured third digit.

When the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake hit Japan, an oil tank ruptured and caught fire in the city of Kesennuma. The whole city burned down. As per Wikipedia: "As of 22 April 2011, the city had confirmed 837 deaths with 1,196 missing."

Which is lower than most death estimates for Fukushima.

In other words, the world's second worst nuclear disaster killed fewer people than another fossil fuel disaster that happened on the same day, due to the same external reason, which was so minor (for a fossil fuel disaster) that most people outside Japan haven't even heard about it.

So you say an oil tank burned hmmm... Yeat another argument to ditch fossil fuels completely.

> "As of 22 April 2011, the city had confirmed 837 deaths with 1,196 missing"

Hell, that's less direct deaths than Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster ( only in direct immediate deaths, indirect long-term deaths are hard to calculate, and the WHO estimated them to be at around 9,000, which is still probably less than what that oil tank's oil killed indirectly via pollution).

What if all of the waste was taken out to the middle of the ocean and dumped there, let to naturally dilute itself in all the water?

I'm being entirely serious. The oceans are huge. Would they be enough to dilute it to a level below any observable health risk?

That is their plan, except not in the middle of the ocean, just off the coast.

"The solution to pollution is not dilution." Strontium-90 can take hundreds of years to decay to safe levels and is taken up as a replacement for calcium in organisms. If it is released, it will end up in algae, and work its way up the food chain.

Good thing there’s no Strontium-90 in this water. The only thing it contains is trace amounts of titrium. Which could be safely dumped in the ocean.

It would be concentrated as it moves up the food chain

An artificial cave built at the south pole would be a better solution.

Or perhaps compounded into a ball we get these new rocket companies to fling into space every few years, at a trajectory likely to not hit any of the other planets.

What happens if the launch fails? If the rocket blows up on the pad? If it doesn't have enough delta-v for even a stable orbit and re-enters weeks later, at a random point on Earth?

Lets use this https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/space-catapult-sta... :) i love the idea of launching things with it :D

The solution is not atomic. the solution is smaller consumption. moving to slower travel (for sure?) with trains instead of cars (and that would reduce microplastics in sea cause its already proven tyres are biggest source of it). wear a tshirt for 6 years, not for 6 months. don't buy shitty stuff. dont buy stuff for buying stuff. in other words... stop being consumpionist. that's the solution. along with green power. its not about producing more and more energy, its about lowering our energy usage and stop being such a dickheads to our planet. stop taking planes for 2 freaking days of holidays or to save 3 hours you could spend on reading a book in train. take a slower, calmer life. that would reduce carbon.

“It takes around 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to produce just one pair of regular ol' blue jeans." - this is the problem and solution is not getting new jeans every year, not building atomic power plants (or at least not until we're 100% sure we can do it safely).

Dont buy stuff to show off your status and high pay because you have small one. Go to therapist. Stop using SUV's or 4x4 cars IF you don't live in mountains or areas where having 4x4 actually matters.

What is killing us is complexes and empty lives that we try to avoid to not think about by buying ourselves more and more toys and shit.

I've done this, and I feel great. I stopped buying things almost entirely, stopped flying, and live a much happier and more fulfilled life now.

Highly recommend it.

Same here, got some stuff that is years and years old (jumpers and hoodies that i have since 15 years). Stopped flying too :) I think much more people are starting to think like that (especially young ones) so we have a chance :)

Definitely. I buy only free-trade and organic products, I don't wear clothes, and I eat mostly house pets that I catch with a spear. It's brought me new understanding of stuff.

Thats just silly reply :) its about not being materialist and consumpionist. Not about living in the woods and hunting with spears. Its about balance and having things in life more important than new watch (another one), new suit (how many do you need?). You know... Love, friends, familly. Real time with your kids, reading them more books instead of putting them in front of tv and tablet.

I never said I live in the woods.

I dont eat my pets, but i do feed them with raw meat xD

2. Cost The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for a new nuclear plant in 2018, based on Lazard, is $151 (112 to 189)/MWh. This compares with $43 (29 to 56)/MWh for onshore wind and $41 (36 to 46)/MWh for utility-scale solar PV from the same source.

This nuclear LCOE is an underestimate for several reasons. First, Lazard assumes a construction time for nuclear of 5.75 years. However, the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors, though will take at least 8.5 to 9 years to finish construction. This additional delay alone results in an estimated LCOE for nuclear of about $172 (128 to 215)/MWh, or a cost 2.3 to 7.4 times that of an onshore wind farm (or utility PV farm).

Next, the LCOE does not include the cost of the major nuclear meltdowns in history. For example, the estimated cost to clean up the damage from three Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear reactor core meltdowns was $460 to $640 billion. This is $1.2 billion, or 10 to 18.5 percent of the capital cost, of every nuclear reactor worldwide.

In addition, the LCOE does not include the cost of storing nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years. In the U.S. alone, about $500 million is spent yearly to safeguard nuclear waste from about 100 civilian nuclear energy plants. This amount will only increase as waste continues to accumulate. After the plants retire, the spending must continue for hundreds of thousands of years with no revenue stream from electricity sales to pay for the storage.

You need to include the cost of battery storage to wind and solar to get a true apples to apples comparison. Comparing the cost of unreliable energy with reliable energy is like comparing the price of a high risk bond with a risk-free bond. People expect energy to be available, and if it's intermittent, they will need to buy batteries.

The reality is that we now work and already have technologies that increase solar efficiency (and some really clean solar collections) coming to market within next 5 years. Thats not enough to construct even one plant. As well in field of batteries there's some extremeley interesting stuff coming to market. Batteries that can have 10 time more recharge cycles are coming. Same with lithium replacement. Prototypes and ready ones are already being tested with multiple different materials.

650 billions dollars as for now to clean up... What about costs of keeping that stuff safe for next 50 years? What about costs for next 300 years? I dont want grandkids of my grandkids to pay for that. You can buy a lot of powerwalls for that. Thats why tesla got contracts to reduce tensions on electrical grid in california.

Batteries are coming but the cost of batteries can't just be ignored in the calculation of cost efficiency of solar and then waved away with "batteries are coming". Battery cost is the single largest cost of any solar or wind installation in order to compare it to reliable power. Solar and wind could be free, and still they wouldn't be cost effective with nuclear because of battery costs.

Ignoring that is a recipe for sky high prices and rolling blackouts, as well as the widespread abandonment of the entire enterprise. Those costs need to be factored in and then nuclear starts looking much, much better. It's not just solar not working at night -- even a cloudy day can result in 80% losses for solar. And wind is very intermittent.

The costs of keeping nuclear waste safe for 50 years is trivial compared to the costs of going through hundreds of billions of batteries and then recycling them over the same period of time, not to mention what to do with trillions of solar panels after they end their useful life, which is much shorter than 50 years. Solar and wind have a much bigger and more expensive waste problem, especially when you realize you need to recycle the batteries too.

https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=304070... and... Its just one of many options. Thank you :) you did compare with 50 years, what abkut 150? 300? 500? 1000? Or we dont think about shit thats beyond our lifetime? You dont want to leave nice clean planet for your kids? Or for kids of other people/in your familly? We need to think beyond our lifetime. Keeping up and fixing nuclear plants is extremely huge cost and needs to be done constantly. And the waste needs to be paid for for 100,000 years. Not for 50.

As for night time harvesting energy, we've already solved the issue (and one i link is not the only one) : https://www.saurenergy.com/solar-energy-news/arriving-soon-s...

No one mentioned hydrogen which was being hold by OPEC, but now its getting traction.

> And the waste needs to be paid for for 100,000 years.

No, it only needs to be protected until the radioactivity is the same as background level, or whatever comes from a banana (which is much higher than background level but still safe).

Seriously the amount of radioactive waste produced is extremely small and dealing with it may be a political problem because people are irrationally terrified, but it's not a technical or financial problem. Dig a hole, put the waste in, and cover it up. It's not some lighter than air stuff that will bubble out of the hole, form a monster, and then ravage the earth.

Now do the same for recycling many billions of tons of batteries and solar panels each year, which are made of lead, which is a known toxin and never stops being a toxin.

Solar, wind, and battery waste is a much harder and much more expensive problem to deal with -- one that we don't have any practical solutions for at the moment.

6. Carbon-Equivalent Emissions and Air Pollution There is no such thing as a zero- or close-to-zero emission nuclear power plant. Even existing plants emit due to the continuous mining and refining of uranium needed for the plant. Emissions from new nuclear are 78 to 178 g-CO2/kWh, not close to 0. Of this, 64 to 102 g-CO2/kWh over 100 years are emissions from the background grid while consumers wait 10 to 19 years for nuclear to come online or be refurbished, relative to 2 to 5 years for wind or solar. In addition, all nuclear plants emit 4.4 g-CO2e/kWh from the water vapor and heat they release. This contrasts with solar panels and wind turbines, which reduce heat or water vapor fluxes to the air by about 2.2 g-CO2e/kWh for a net difference from this factor alone of 6.6 g-CO2e/kWh.

In fact, China’s investment in nuclear plants that take so long between planning and operation instead of wind or solar resulted in China’s CO2 emissions increasing 1.3 percent from 2016 to 2017 rather than declining by an estimated average of 3 percent. The resulting difference in air pollution emissions may have caused 69,000 additional air pollution deaths in China in 2016 alone, with additional deaths in years prior and since.

I was born before explosion in Czarnobyl, roughly 600km away from Czarnobyl (that's the original name).

It was 28th April 1986, early morning in Poland. The radiation monitoring station in Mikołajki, Mazury area (north-eastern region of Poland - which is much further north) showed that the radioactivity in the air was 550,000 times higher than the day before. The radioactive cloud from Chernobyl had travelled to Poland.

We all had to take iodine pills for long time. I guess if you never lived close to nuclear accident place you just can't understand it.

And if 550,000 times standard radiation doesn't speak to you then go and take deep breath in Chernobyl, and stay there for a bit. Wish you good luck and quick death cause cancer from damaged cells will come 100%.

Depending on radiation level this may be actually healthy:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3526327/

The cancer mortality ratios (CMRs) in Poland in high and low level radiation areas were analyzed based on information from national cancer registry. Presented ecological study concerned six regions, extending from the largest administration areas (a group of voivodeships), to the smallest regions (single counties). The data show that the relative risk of cancer deaths is lower in the higher radiation level areas. The decrease by 1.17%/mSv/year (p = 0.02) of all cancer deaths and by 0.82%/mSv/year (p = 0.2) of lung cancers only are observed.

I know, there's a smiliar experiment in states. But you're providing wrong data, from wrong years and for insiginificant amounts of radiation, nothing compare to fallout from atomic accident.

The original statistical data for each set from 1 to 6 (GUS 2011; RAP 2005; AGP 1995; MRP 1995);

the accident was in 1986. and you wont find any data on it because russians who in reality ruled poland then didnt care.

Is there a claim in my post you're trying to refute? I didn't see any.

Your original post was inaccurate at least in this point:

> We all had to take iodine pills for long time.

Now lets make a claim - living in high background radiation city in Poland is much worse than Chernobyl exposure even if we look at 1 year period.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16575762/

In Poland the mean effective equivalent dose resulting from Chernobyl accident was 932 microSv and is close to the limited dose permitted in Poland, equalling 1 mSv/year.

So according to original article I cited (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3526327/) living in Jelenia Góra (4.75mSv/year) with high background radiation is ~3 Chernobyl doses per year every year vs living in Świnoujście (1.06mSv/year).

4. Meltdown Risk To date, 1.5% of all nuclear power plants ever built have melted down to some degree. Meltdowns have been either catastrophic (Chernobyl, Russia in 1986; three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan in 2011) or damaging (Three-Mile Island, Pennsylvania in 1979; Saint-Laurent France in 1980). The nuclear industry has proposed new reactor designs that they suggest are safer. However, these designs are generally untested, and there is no guarantee that the reactors will be designed, built and operated correctly or that a natural disaster or act of terrorism, such as an airplane flown into a reactor, will not cause the reactor to fail, resulting in a major disaster.

7. Waste Risk Last but not least, consumed fuel rods from nuclear plants are radioactive waste. Most fuel rods are stored at the same site as the reactor that consumed them. This has given rise to hundreds of radioactive waste sites in many countries that must be maintained and funded for at least 200,000 years, far beyond the lifetimes of any nuclear power plant. The more nuclear waste that accumulates, the greater the risk of radioactive leaks, which can damage water supply, crops, animals, and humans

The accumulation of contaminated water is visible on aerial views on Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/dr7DiK76sSWbLKF1A

Most if not all of these round structures are massive tanks storing contaminated water. Looking at it now, it seems like the amount of space they take has actually reduced in the past few years, I seem to remember them spreading out pretty far.

The problem with that stuff is that it's not about IF another earthquake will happen in that area. It's a matter of WHEN that will happen... and it will :(

Happily the most important group is turning away from nuclear. Its investors. We all know that if big investors and countries will turn away from certain tech then it will simply and slowly (or hopefully as fast as possible) die. And more and more countries are shutting down plants instead of opening ones. They cost tons of money more than predicted and the benefit is negligable (see example of france). Thats according to newest research and statistics (see germany which went full ahead renewables, closing down atomic AND coal). Paying 750 billions, was supposed to cost 250 billions euro (atomic plant in france). Plus many many billions for fixing up and upkeep of existing ones. It just doesn't calculate. And unless we build a new one every week it won't help with green house effect. We all are aware that atomic plants dont get opened up with speed of mushrooms growing after rain. So no. Atomic is no lt future.

Nuclear-power-a-false-solution-to-climate-change-44206

https://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/Nuclear-power-a-false-solu...

https://www.nirs.org/nuclear-doesnt-help-with-climate-or-pla...

> They cost tons of money more than predicted and the benefit is negligable (see example of france). Thats according to newest research and statistics (see germany which went full ahead renewables, closing down atomic AND coal).

Germany has multiple times CO2 per MWh generated than France, is that only a negligible benefit? Not even talking about Germany coal mines still operational and being a significant part of energy generation, and Germany buying that "bad" French nuclear energy.

Nuclear power is expensive and very long term, it should never rely on private investment, because only the public sector can be that long term. Until massive energy storage is solved and affordable, nuclear is by far the best option.

Growing crisis at Fukushima implies only one thing to me... spend fuel that isn't being actively cooled. I was relieved to see it unmentioned in the article.

The Potassium Iodide pills can continue to sit in storage, thank goodness. They're for my child, not me or my spouse, should things go south.

Here you go: https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:32030458

and this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/cladding-ma...

and this: https://news.mit.edu/2013/better-cladding-for-nuclear-reacto... <-2013... and still most if not all plants use zircaloy, here how safe are your plants.

Once we have cladding that doesn't degrade making us to store (somewhere?) damaged rods along with all water and fuel i'll become fan of nuclear. For now it's just too dangerous. I bet if all that money would be spent on water, solar and hydro it'd be enough to cover our growing energy needs. Especially using energy from sea (gravitation you know) :)

Girls and guys and atomic energy fans, downvote as much as you want. It won't change reality. Current technology used for rods cladding degrades as time passes. Its not just accidents. If you think its just accidents that is the problem with atomic power then you didn't get into subject deep enough. Go and learn. Add eartquake and Tsunami's and yeah... you have another Fukushima or worse.

Have you ever asked yourself why we still don't use and wont use for a very long time nuclear in space missions? Well, that's one of the reasons. Radiation will "eat through" materials with time.

Curious if that last comment is true or logical. It sounds wrong but I’m not an expert.

I don’t think we have any long term space missions for which power is a serious concern not easily solved with simple solar panels?

It's about manned missions. The weight of materials needed to protect them from radiation is just too much with current tech. Here you have the logic.

https://news.mit.edu/2013/better-cladding-for-nuclear-reacto...

Missions to Jupiter recently have used solar panels, but anything farther has thus far been RTGs, something which the US has very limited fuel for.

What about RTGs which are common in space use?

What about them? It's a very different technology from nuclear reactors.

The OP's argument about radiation degrading materials should apply whether or not it is a fission reactor, shouldn't it? And the page I linked does show some fission reactors which have been used in space as well.

The link was there mostly for cladding of rods thats corroding.

We’ve been running nukes in submarines and aircraft carriers for literally decades without major incident.

They do not stand still on ground on place with major continental fault lines.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/11/us/radioactive-soviet-sub...

did you say something about running safely boats... ahh, so for you dangerous amounts of radiation leaking into sea is not a major incident? or accident?

Is it OK to count Soviet accidents with the same technology, or should we pretend they didn't happen?

As wumpus said, we will never know about many soviet accidents. Im not sure ifnin today's russia or china such incidents... I think ifnthey could they try to hide it.

These fuel claddings already exist in the form of TRISO fuel for pebble bed reactors which are the next reactor generation. They should be able to contain reactor meltdown products on their own preventing the nuclear lava of Chernobyl and simplifying fuel handling.

https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/04/26/7-reasons-why-nuclear-ene...

Nuclear power might be climate change friendly, but it's not environmentally friendly...

More work needs to be done on it, but we have renewable green sources of power that we should be focusing on for now.

> but it's not environmentally friendly...

Neither are solar panels or hydro power

friendlier in half life measurements...

Something that seems to get lost in this discussion is the space requirements for green energy, since the land we build solar and wind farms on isn't free. Every acre has a cost, and it's reasonable to presume that the land costs far more than any of the equipment placed on top of it. Fukushima was able to generate over 5.3 GW with 860 acres of space[1]. In comparison, the largest solar farm in the entire world, Bhadla Solar Park, is currently generating 2.7 GW with an expected max output of 3.5 GW using...160 square kilometers[2], or ~39,537 acres!

To put this into insane perspective, one Bhadla Solar Park can hold ~459 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plants for a total power capacity of 2,432.7 GW or 2.4TW. The total amount of power usage globally is 17.7TW [3] which means that our hypothetical Bhadla Nuclear Park would supply over 13.5% of the entire world's energy. As an added bonus, there are far less tsunamis in mainland India.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta...

[3] https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/current_world_energy_...

No1 says we should go coal instead of atom. We should go GREEN and BLUE (water) all the way and as hard as we can. They're SAFE energy sources. And as many said. Burying nuclear waste in ground is not the solution. If something we should send it somewhere out of our planet ; )

My understanding is that hydro power (at elast traditional hydro) is largely utilized fully in many places and ecologically damaging on a local scale.

But it won't make your wife/husband have a kid with 1 leg and many other terrible deformations.

They'll just drown instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure

I dont mean dams, i mean getting energy from oceans

It's great idea to store atomic waste in place where we have major tectonic faults... and 3 tectonic plates edges... in a country with history of earthquakes... and most earthquakes on earth. So smart!

Every good hacker and every good programmer would realize that, but maybe not all scientists.

What happens with next strong earthquake and tsunami in that area? Will it flow together with that shit deeper inland? Scary to think - i need to visit Japan before it becomes ground 0/radioactive wasteland.

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