Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

Japan led the world in nuclear accidents long before Fukushima.

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/dudzinski1/

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/1913786/mon...

In fact after reading some detailed descriptions of Monju I can only ask "what were they smoking?" because the design of the plant didn't seem to take seismic risks seriously at all.

I was watching a documentary the other day that described how bad their habits were at Fukushima. That generation of BWR has an "isolation condenser" that is supposed to help cool the reactor in an accident, when it operates a huge amount of steam blows out of two pipes that are called the "Pig's nose".

At 9 mile point in upstate NY they regularly test the isolation condenser so everyone there knows what it is like when it is working. At Fukushima they had never tried it so when it produced just a trickle of steam they thought it was working. Similarly they had a pipe that was supposed to deliver water to the reactor core but when they really pumped water into it they found out it went someplace else. If they'd been responsible (like nuclear operators in the US) they would have practiced emergency procedures ahead of time.

It's still a testament to how safe nuclear power plants really are.

- Bad operators? Check

- Earthquake? Check

- Tsunami? Check

...

- "There were no deaths from radiation exposure in the immediate aftermath of the incident, though there were a number of (around 1600 non-radiation related) deaths during the evacuation of the nearby population" Wikipedia

Biggest Earthquake in known history (1000+ years) even!

Nah, not even the biggest in the past 20 years (Sumatra was larger).

Sorry, I meant to say Japanese history.

It's the 4th biggest recorded on the Richter scale.

There were maybe 1600 drowning deaths in the area from the tsunami.

What would evacuation deaths even be?

Deaths that wouldn't have occurred had a mass evacuation not taken place.

Here's a paper analyzing the evacuation-related deaths from Hurricane Rita.

> A majority of the deaths (90/108 or 83.3%) were related to the mass evacuation process. Of these deaths, 10% were directly related to hyperthermia in motor vehicles. The combination of traffic gridlock and high temperatures, limitation of air conditioning to reduce fuel consumption, reduction of oral intake to decrease restroom visits, and conservation of limited supplies is suspected.

https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(16)51609-2/f...

(Note: I've limited the snippet here, it's worth reading in context from the abstract.)

> What would evacuation deaths even be?

I think some deaths occurred when evacuating hospital patients.

1600 people is an enormous number of deaths. It would have been reported.

I've followed Fukushima news since it happened, and never heard of this before.

1,600 seems a little high, my memory was about half of that. 100% due to the evacuation, not the reactor. It's just politically inconvenient deaths tend to get labeled something else, often the underlying condition that was exacerbated by whatever the issue da jour is. I've never seen a breakdown of exactly what caused the evacuation deaths but when you go shipping a bunch of frail patients around in a total mess you should *expect* deaths.

I recall an engineer writing that Fukushima did a lot to prove that the idea of a run away meltdown where the core melts into a super heated blob that escapes the facility and melts its way into the earth was even more unlikely than they had thought. If it couldn't happen at a poorly operated / out dated facility the odds must be pretty low.

People all over this thread making the enormously wrong point that nuclear is ~safe because Fukushima and Chernobyl weren't that bad... There is absolutely no indication that either one was the worst case and it's a failure of imagination to rely on what happened at either to assess the 'real' risk of nuclear.

As just one example -- the pools at Chernobyl below the reactor that the engineers had to manually open after the meltdown were sufficient to cause a massive steam explosion. Sure, some additional fissile material would've been spread by that explosion which would be bad -- but the real risk is whether a few hundred ton equivalent explosion in reactor 4 would have been enough to destroy the immediately adjacent reactor 3 building and the reactor 1/2 building as well.

There were 13GW of thermal energy in the complex and between design deficiencies and operator errors, 1/4 of that melted down and resulted in a 1,000 sq mi exclusion zone. It's absurd to think that was as bad as it could get.

> There is absolutely no indication that either one was the worst case

You're trying to prove a negative using Chernobyl (a 50-year old design) as some kind of proof.

Even with Chernobyl only 100 deaths are directly attributed to the disaster and there hasn't been any statistically observable rise in effects like cancer since.

So, the greatest nuclear power plant disasters in human history caused ... fewer deaths than a single coal power plant in a big city.

So yes. We will use them as examples of how safe nuclear power actually is.

This is like saying SARS1 was as bad as a modern pandemic could be... of course it's not. It was the worst we'd seen to that point but with some bad luck, it could be substantially worse. If you assume that the worst thing that has happened is the worst thing that could happen, you're going to be in for a very bad time.

This isn't remotely to say that Nuclear is 'bad' or that we shouldn't build new plants, just that we should be clear-eyed about the actual tail risks while designing them.

> it could be substantially worse

You could say that infinitely. That doesn't help you avoid anything... could direct you to worse decisions.

We use the incidents we know to inform ourselves about probability and etc. It's not just those incidents that are considered. And when more data comes along we use that too. That's how figuring things out works for just about everything.

> This is like saying SARS1 was as bad as a modern pandemic could be... of course it's not.

Of course its not. Meaning "of course it's not like saying <insert false analogy here>".

> but with some bad luck, it could be substantially worse.

Funny how bad operators + most powerful recorded earthquake in Japan's history + tsunami isn't bad luck worth considering because there's always worse luck around the corner.

> that we should be clear-eyed about the actual tail risks while designing them.

We are: the greatest disasters involving nuclear power plants have shown that they are incredibly safe. And yet, the perception is "this is just waiting for bad luck to be so much worse".

Strangely enough when we look at other sources of energy by deaths from normal operation (coal plants) or historical disasters (Banqjao Dam, 26 000 dead from flood, 145 000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless), somehow no one goes "oh you cannot look at those and state something".

Of course people look at those and state something... if you think that the Banqjao Dam failure is the worst dam failure that can happen, you haven't kept up on the news regarding the Mosul Dam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam#Renewed_stability_co...) or Three Gorges (https://www.wsj.com/articles/worst-flooding-in-decades-raise...).. So new dam projects are built to avoid the obviously worse potential outcomes.

I'm not sure how people are misunderstanding tail risks this much but NNT would be ashamed. "Regression to the tail" is super important when assessing long-term risk -- and likely points more in favor of nuclear plants due to the insanely disruptive tail risk that climate change represents.

But "our repeated accidents didn't end up being too bad" isn't the way to assess them.. acknowledging that the accidents resulted in thousand-mile exclusion zones, but limited loss of life is important but that should directly inform the siting of new plants and the operation of existing ones (and why it's a good thing Indian Point is shutting down).

And yet I don't hear anyone look at those and say "oh no, you shouldn't judge by the past, it can always be worse" :-\

> But "our repeated accidents didn't end up being too bad" isn't the way to assess them

It's a valid way to assess them.

> that should directly inform the siting of new plants and the operation of existing ones

What makes you think the new constructions don't take that into consideration? What makes you keep saying "no you shouldn't say itself because earthquake+tsunami+bad operators isn't bad luck enough, there's always worse luck around the corner"?

> It was the worst we'd seen to that point but with some bad luck, it could be substantially worse.

As we learned the hard way with SARS 2: Coronavirus Boogaloo.

> Even with Chernobyl only 100 deaths are directly attributed to the disaster and there hasn't been any statistically observable rise in effects like cancer since.

The trouble with taking the position that only 100 people were killed by Chernobyl and everything else is just estimates, is that holding such a position in good faith means chalking off similar back-of-the envelope estimates for deaths caused by exposure to coal plant emissions...

We can see the statistics for COPD, and control for other factors. We can see the statistics for cancers, and control for other factors.

> Even with Chernobyl only 100 deaths are directly attributed to the disaster

It was the same liquidator dying 60000 times. Just one death, but slipped in a banana skin and then fell from a window.

Put it in the box next to "Holomodor was not a genocide", "No hospital has been bombed", "it is just a special operation" and "we always tell the truth and never hide anything inconvenient".

> and there hasn't been any statistically observable rise in effects like cancer since.

That lie was easy to debunk...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30137557/

I mean, in both cases it could have hardly been worse. There were failures in the planning, in the operation and in external events. Like, what else could be worse? A meteor hitting the plant during a terrorist attack?

I gave one clear example - the pools below Chernobyl causing a secondary steam explosion that would've resulted in Reactor 3 and potentially 1/2 melting down as well.. naively making that disaster 3x worse than it was. In Fukushima, the explosion and subsequent power loss caused the spent rods from the 4th reactor to nearly boil the water away, had workers not been able to gain access to the site and manually spray the rods, they would've been just burning in the air releasing clouds of radioactive gases. Clearly this would've been much worse than what happened already, but is mostly unaccounted for when people proclaim that the accidents we've seen are evidence that those are the worst possible outcomes.

But the whole point is that we don't know the universe of bad things that can happen..

Chernobyl already disproved the China Syndrome hypothesis. If you have a critical or nearly-critical mass it flows--and it doesn't stay in the same shape as it does so. It quickly goes subcritical and solidifies. It left a room in the basement of Chernobyl that was suicide to enter (you couldn't get back out before you had sustained a lethal dose) but that's it.

I agree. I think Fukushima due to the more open nature and recentness indicates it as well, but yeah Chernobyl proved it, but with less transparency and etc.

Two real world / terrible runs at a full melt down scenario and it just doesn't seem to happen.

Japanese companies have been great at other things like manufacturing and decent at stuff like software. What gives when it comes to nuclear plant operation?

There’s been lots of fraud revealed lately. Japan has been simply covering it up very well.

Just a few examples that I recall this past year or two include faking emissions tests for vehicles, faking steel quality tests, faking GDP by counting construction costs up to four times, and faking about 99% of clams from Kumamoto and local fishermen were apparently aware of this for decades. All of these issues went on for several years. Corruption at all levels has been revealed lately, and when you stack this up, all these things passed of as “good enough. Nobody will know” can end up in total disasters when quality matters.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-revoke-hino...

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44763905.amp

https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14769587

https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14502921

https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14538401

Is it a Japan thing or more a human / "industry culture" thing where you had bad apples operating and that became the SoP?

I think it is different in different countries. I think the US has a much tougher attitude about health and safety than most places. Maybe we pay a cost for that, but it is for real.

I spent a year living in Europe and was surprised at how much worse nutrition labels were in Europe at the time. In Dresden, Germany they still had cigarette vending machines all over town and frequently had a candy vending machine mounted next to the cigarette machines to get the little ones started.

The US has been reluctant to license MOX fabrication plants in the US because of the fear of the the danger of plutonium dust poses to workers. France has been confident that it has it under control. It is a subject that people have talked about for a long time without a lot of data, but a relatively recent study shows the dangers are real

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28520643/

even if they aren't catastrophic like they were at the vermiculite mine in Libby, MT.

> the US has a much tougher attitude about health and safety than most places.

Attitude? Maybe. In reality? Often not.

No idea why you think nutrition labels are worse and how they factor in "health and safety" when corn syrup is everywhere in the food in the States and 42% of population is obese.

On the other end of the spectrum you have underinvestment in critical infrastructure. For example, dams: https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-an-era-of-extreme-weather-...

There are very few (developed) countries which are as lax about health and safety as the US.

I feel like you associate concern with safety to making people aware or restrictions.

In other words if a country has a higher drinking age, better education, and more labels then that country cares more about safety.

I think that the actions of the population are a better example.

Maybe you mean is "the US government is more concerned about safety " but that could be because the population doesn't care.

To be fair, Germany has a higher rate of people who smoke (around 23% vs 12%)

> In Dresden, Germany they still had cigarette vending machines all over town

We have those in the US, too. Granted, they're usually confined to bars, but there's no shortage of bars in the average American town.

> I spent a year living in Europe and was surprised at how much worse nutrition labels were in Europe at the time.

When was that? There is compulsory information about ingredients (sorted by percentage, so you readily see when "sugar" is on the very top), France has "nutriscore" which is a A-E scale of nutritional value.

There are strict rules on naming (for instance "100% juice" means that the jucie directly comes from pressed fruit (concentrates are forbidden) and that nothing else can be added).

You would think that the quality movement ideas that have made Japanese cars so good would apply to safety but the UAW will point out that a US car factory is a much safer workplace than a Japanese car factory. Some of that is the UAW being a strong union that looks out for its members, some of it is the adversarial legal culture in the US.

Japanese workers, for instance, like to make changes to their workstations to improve their performance (for instance, complete the job more quickly.) In a normal workplace that's a great idea, but when you are working with solutions of fissionable elements there are many details you need to control to prevent a criticality accident, and they evaded those controls.

For all the talk about Europe and Asia being ahead of us, I think we have the about correct amount of adversarial legal culture, maybe only slightly too much, and everyone else doesn't have enough.

I hear people saying the hot coffee lawsuit should have been thrown out , and to me that's just crazy that anyone would want to allow safety standards to go on ignored to that level.

Outside of safety related stuff our laws are a bit messed up, but I do appreciate the fact that we make an effort to keep people safe.

> I hear people saying the hot coffee lawsuit should have been thrown out , and to me that's just crazy that anyone would want to allow safety standards to go on ignored to that level.

I think it's a matter of taking personal responsibility rather than finding someone to blame when you make a mistake.

I personally don't think it's reasonable to assume that something intended for human consumption would be served hot enough to fuse one's labia to one's thigh if spilled on one's lap. In light of that, "personal responsibility" doesn't seem to be very applicable in that particular case.

I am absolutely empathetic to that poor women, but never really understood the physics behind it. You can’t superheat water under normal pressure, so it capped out at 100C (sorry, don’t know that in F, but boiling point of water). Which is pretty expected for tea, and not unheard of from coffee (without milk). I do get the economic.. money-grab on the company side that you can’t feel how bad the coffee tastes if it’s too hot, and also that it will get to a drinkable temperature when you’ve walked back to your office, but I don’t see any evil on this part and 90C coffee would not have caused much lesser damage. Of course their reaction after the fact was very disturbing (ridiculing the poor victim), but we’ve just forgotten how truly terrible any kind of burn is, and boiling water is just extremely hot.

Like, any number of news where someone poured boiling water on their cheating husband is just behind stupid and just shows an absolute lack of understanding of basic reality. I’m sure they didn’t intend that much damage, but they are just dangerously stupid at that point.

According to the case, Mcdonalds admitted it knew that 185f coffee caused exponentially worse burns than 135f coffee (typical home coffee temp).

Nsfl/gore warning: https://www.deshawlaw.com/blog/the-real-facts-of-the-mcdonal...

Yeah, they knew it could burn. They served coffee at the temperature people wanted it served. She was very stupid in handling a hot liquid.

> They served coffee at the temperature people wanted it served.

I can guarantee you that if McDonald's or Starbucks or what have you served coffee at the proper 135F-150F instead of "literally boiling" the percentage of customers complaining about it would have enough zeroes on the left-hand side for Japan to have another go at bombing Pearl Harbor.

Like many British people, I drink several cups of tea per day. A process that entails boiling water to 100C. Most people here make coffee at home in the same way. We trust children to have enough common sense to realise that boiling hot water can cause a nasty injury.

To put a cup of practically boiling water between your legs is utterly absurd. The companies actions are irrelevant, they did something silly and only have themselves to blame.

> A process that entails boiling water to 100C

That doesn't mean it's actually served at that temperature, for the same reason that me baking a pizza at 200C in my oven doesn't mean it's actually 200C when served. Serving temperatures are typically far lower than cooking/brewing temperatures - in the case of tea or coffee, typically below 80C - unless, of course, it's McDonald's or Starbucks overcooking the bejeezus out of their beverages for the sake of cheapness and consistency.

The problem with that is the world never gets any safer if we have full acceptance for companies creating unpredictable danger.

There are standards people are expected to follow, so we know what to expect in most situations.

I feel you’re presenting a straw man. I’m not suggesting we hold corporations blameless in all circumstances, merely that we can’t abdicate all personal responsibility for our own safety.

If it was just “ow I spilled some coffee” I’d totally agree but it was serious burns requiring hospitalization. It looked like an industrial accident not something one should get from spilling food.

If a steak house brings you a super hot plate they warn you profusely. McDonald’s didn’t do that here. I for one would never expect coffee handed through a drive through window to be so hot I am at risk of second and third degree burns. That’s crazy.

I don’t think the severity of the injury should dictate whether a corporation is at fault or not.

Accidents happen in unexpected ways.

If you drop a glass in a restaurant and cut yourself on a shard, is the restaurant to blame? After all, they could have served your drink in a plastic cup instead.

Hearing some of the responses to my post, I suspect there may be a slight cultural difference in expectations. Being from the UK, I wouldn’t find it remotely surprising to be handed a boiling hot liquid.

>hot coffee lawsuit should have been thrown out

Lots of these people don't realize factual details of the case. I was one such person. But the details are convincing.

NSFL/Gore Warning: https://www.deshawlaw.com/blog/the-real-facts-of-the-mcdonal...

TEPCO has an atrocious safety culture. the operators of the Onagawa plant (closer to the epicenter) had a very safety-first culture and it showed.

I am absolutely out of my depth here, but isn’t Japan very “agist” (not sure of the correct word)? Just basing it on a previous HN thread about Japanese website design, a commenter mentioned software company higher managers, who can’t use a computer and the like.

Some tendency of placing elderly people in important roles simply based on respect and not knowledge sounds like a plausible explanation, especially when one, high-enough people can wreak absolute havoc in a very top-down control flow.

But I’m talking out of my ass here, don’t take anything seriously.

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