Comment by 542354234235 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 542354234235 | Hacker News Reader

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>Onagawa was… 60 kilometers closer than Fukushima Daiichi [to the epicenter] and the difference in seismic intensity at the two plants was negligible. Furthermore, the tsunami was bigger at Onagawa, reaching a height of 14.3 meters, compared with 13.1 meters at Fukushima Daiichi. The difference in outcomes at the two plants reveals the root cause of Fukushima Daiichi’s failures: the utility’s corporate “safety culture.”

>Before beginning construction, Tohoku Electric conducted surveys and simulations aimed at predicting tsunami levels. The initial predictions showed that tsunamis in the region historically had an average height of about 3 meters. Based on that, the company constructed its plant at 14.7 meters above sea level, almost five times that height.

>Tepco, on the other hand, to make it easier to transport equipment and to save construction costs, in 1967 removed 25 meters from the 35-meter natural seawall of the Daiichi plant site and built the reactor buildings at a much lower elevation of 10 meters.

https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/onagawa-the-japanese-nuclear...

This is why so many people are against nuclear. It may be theoretically possible to create safe nuclear plants, but capitalism is badly equipped to create them.

I can't tell if this is a tongue in cheek joke or just blatant ignorance. The biggest in size and death nuclear powerplant disaster was Chernobyl under communism and it wasn't there first or last.

Just because authoritarian communism is also not equipped to build nuclear reactors does not mean capitalism is.

If A, then B does not imply "B, therefore A". This is called "affirming the consequent".

Maybe you mean democratic societies are badly equipped to regulate capitalist economies? There are zero successful capitalist economies that lack powerful governmental regulatory control.

Fukushima 1F was a failure of governmental regulation.

It's really important to understand that, because otherwise you inescapably frame the argument wrongly. Capitalism isn't the problem, regulatory weakness is the problem. No capitalist society can survive lack of effective regulation.

(Fukushima was bad, and an example of regulatory failure, but Japan's overall effective regulatory influence over its corporations — and similarly, its mafia — is the secret sauce that has made it an economic overperformer. China can also do that — because it is a brutal dictatorship. America can't do that — and things aren't looking good. UK retains the power to do it, but it's Keystone Kops. EU can't do it, either, for reasons I can't understand at distance.

But creating safe nuclear power plants is fundamentally the same problem as creating safe elevators. In a capitalist society, it's 100% about regulatory power and competence, and nothing else.

It's also initially/primarily a failure of amoral capitalism.

Partlially agree, but one needs to try really, really hard to intentionally overlook the whole "influence of corporate giants on government" issue before the government regulation argument carries any practical weight.

So if anything this weakens the Fukushima argument: in a country with excellent regulatory tradition and little evidence of regulatory capture, this is less likely to be about bad or lacking government regulations.

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