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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On September 28 2013 01:54 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 00:53 unsniped wrote: I mean, if you want to try to discredit the work that the engineers working at the plants have done to keep them safe, then by all means call it luck. So you mean the only reason we didn't have more accidents that engineers have been doing excellent work? So if in the future they only do average work we can expect more accidents?
We've had nuclear power for 60 years, and a heck of a count of total power plants.
That is one hell of a sample size. Even if we were to assume engineers would do worse in the future (and why would you assume this? Given progress in reactor design and new automation/analytical/modeling/control tools they have at hand), it's still pretty disingenuous to say that up to now can really be attributed to luck. I must reiterate, we are talking several hundred power plants (and like probably several hundred thousand reactors overall), over 60 years in a variety of countries, and we've had what 3 major events? The record proves itself to not be just luck.
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It is pretty offensive to the engineers working on these plants to say that "oh, you know all of those thousands of hours you put into making the reactor safe? Yeah that doesn't matter its really all just luck."
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On September 28 2013 02:10 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 01:54 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 00:53 unsniped wrote: I mean, if you want to try to discredit the work that the engineers working at the plants have done to keep them safe, then by all means call it luck. So you mean the only reason we didn't have more accidents that engineers have been doing excellent work? So if in the future they only do average work we can expect more accidents? We've had nuclear power for 60 years, and a heck of a count of total power plants. That is one hell of a sample size. Even if we were to assume engineers would do worse in the future (and why would you assume this? Given progress in reactor design and new automation/analytical/modeling/control tools they have at hand), it's still pretty disingenuous to say that up to now can really be attributed to luck. I must reiterate, we are talking several hundred power plants (and like probably several hundred thousand reactors overall), over 60 years in a variety of countries, and we've had what 3 major events? The record proves itself to not be just luck.
There's no contradiction there. If the expected number of major disasters is 5 for 100 000 years of total operation and you observe only 2 you got lucky. That has nothing to do with the quality of the work of the engineers. They may have done excellent work to bring the expected number down to only 5/100 000 and then got lucky to observe only 2.
Turning it into an emotional debate about the engineers who work there isn't helpful or enlightening in any way.
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On September 28 2013 03:28 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 02:10 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On September 28 2013 01:54 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 00:53 unsniped wrote: I mean, if you want to try to discredit the work that the engineers working at the plants have done to keep them safe, then by all means call it luck. So you mean the only reason we didn't have more accidents that engineers have been doing excellent work? So if in the future they only do average work we can expect more accidents? We've had nuclear power for 60 years, and a heck of a count of total power plants. That is one hell of a sample size. Even if we were to assume engineers would do worse in the future (and why would you assume this? Given progress in reactor design and new automation/analytical/modeling/control tools they have at hand), it's still pretty disingenuous to say that up to now can really be attributed to luck. I must reiterate, we are talking several hundred power plants (and like probably several hundred thousand reactors overall), over 60 years in a variety of countries, and we've had what 3 major events? The record proves itself to not be just luck. There's no contradiction there. If the expected number of major disasters is 5 for 100 000 years of total operation and you observe only 2 you got lucky. That has nothing to do with the quality of the work of the engineers. They may have done excellent work to bring the expected number down to only 5/100 000 and then got lucky to observe only 2. Turning it into an emotional debate about the engineers who work there isn't helpful or enlightening in any way.
So by that argument if we observed 6/100,000 then is it the engineers/safety inspectors fault or are we really unlucky?
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thats the bullshit about statistics here, it shouldnt happen at all. Thats the deal.
EDIT: and by the rate we are going atm (1 per 30y) we got 3333 nuclear disasters in 100k years, thats just bad
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On September 28 2013 03:28 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 02:10 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On September 28 2013 01:54 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 00:53 unsniped wrote: I mean, if you want to try to discredit the work that the engineers working at the plants have done to keep them safe, then by all means call it luck. So you mean the only reason we didn't have more accidents that engineers have been doing excellent work? So if in the future they only do average work we can expect more accidents? We've had nuclear power for 60 years, and a heck of a count of total power plants. That is one hell of a sample size. Even if we were to assume engineers would do worse in the future (and why would you assume this? Given progress in reactor design and new automation/analytical/modeling/control tools they have at hand), it's still pretty disingenuous to say that up to now can really be attributed to luck. I must reiterate, we are talking several hundred power plants (and like probably several hundred thousand reactors overall), over 60 years in a variety of countries, and we've had what 3 major events? The record proves itself to not be just luck. There's no contradiction there. If the expected number of major disasters is 5 for 100 000 years of total operation and you observe only 2 you got lucky. That has nothing to do with the quality of the work of the engineers. They may have done excellent work to bring the expected number down to only 5/100 000 and then got lucky to observe only 2. Turning it into an emotional debate about the engineers who work there isn't helpful or enlightening in any way.
How is this an emotional debate about engineers? This is just how statistics work. We work with the data we have, not the data we expect to have.
We don't know for certain what the expected number of major disasters is over a period of time in the future, nor can we realistically know the expected number of disasters per powerplant per unit time.
What we do have is a large sample size, over a long time, is it possible that we are currently experiencing a lower rate than would be expected over the long term? Sure. But there is no way we could back that up with statistics, given that by nature we have no data on what will happen in the future. What we do have is statistics on our record so far, and any reasonable use of statistics would say, that given the sample size so far, we can reasonably have a high degree of confidence in the overall safety of nuclear power going forward.
Saying that we have high confidence that the failure/disaster rate will remain relatively similar is extrapolating future data from solid historical data, this may or may not happen, but there is solid reasoning behind it. Saying that engineers have been hitherto lucky, and that we would expect failure rates to increase in the future, is contrasting speculative(eg complete non existent) data from the future, and then saying that our current historical data is the anomaly.
I mean using historical rates to extrapolate isn't perfect, but which method looks more reasonable to you?
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On September 28 2013 03:43 DreamChaser wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 03:28 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 02:10 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On September 28 2013 01:54 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 00:53 unsniped wrote: I mean, if you want to try to discredit the work that the engineers working at the plants have done to keep them safe, then by all means call it luck. So you mean the only reason we didn't have more accidents that engineers have been doing excellent work? So if in the future they only do average work we can expect more accidents? We've had nuclear power for 60 years, and a heck of a count of total power plants. That is one hell of a sample size. Even if we were to assume engineers would do worse in the future (and why would you assume this? Given progress in reactor design and new automation/analytical/modeling/control tools they have at hand), it's still pretty disingenuous to say that up to now can really be attributed to luck. I must reiterate, we are talking several hundred power plants (and like probably several hundred thousand reactors overall), over 60 years in a variety of countries, and we've had what 3 major events? The record proves itself to not be just luck. There's no contradiction there. If the expected number of major disasters is 5 for 100 000 years of total operation and you observe only 2 you got lucky. That has nothing to do with the quality of the work of the engineers. They may have done excellent work to bring the expected number down to only 5/100 000 and then got lucky to observe only 2. Turning it into an emotional debate about the engineers who work there isn't helpful or enlightening in any way. So by that argument if we observed 6/100,000 then is it the engineers/safety inspectors fault or are we really unlucky?
If you observed more adverse events than could have been expected from all the available information you got unlucky. That's the definition of bad luck: doing worse than expected.
If you use prior experience to predict the future there's always a range of uncertainty. This accounts for the fact that you may have been lucky/unlucky in the past or may be lucky or unlucky in the future. The relative uncertainty is highest when the expected number of events is lowest. E.g. if you estimate the number of fatal car accidents for 2014 in the US you are unlikely to be off by more than 10-20% just based on previous data. Do the same for airline accidents and you won't do so well. The expected number might be something like 0.4 but 2 isn't completely outside the realm of possibilities. You could be off by a factor of 5 even though your estimate is based on tens of millions of observations.
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United States24345 Posts
You guys really let shell's silly throwaway comment drag you into a heated tangent?
If you want to discuss the safety or lacktherof of nuclear power, that is definitely relevant... so why don't you do that instead of wherever the heck this discussion is going.
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On September 28 2013 03:59 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
I mean using historical rates to extrapolate isn't perfect, but which method looks more reasonable to you?
Acknowledging that there's a fairly large uncertainty and work from there. If the results are unacceptable work on reducing them. Are we ok with a 10% chance of an accident in the next 25 years that kills 10 people, causes 1000 extra deaths via increased cancer risk due to low level radiation exposure and $200bn in property damage and cleanup cost?*
If we are, cool, go ahead. We still have to make sure the risks don't get worse over time due to complecancy or economic pressures but fine. If not, we need to go back to the drawing board.
Another point is that when you're doing something that's potentially very damaging you need to prove that it's not dangerous, not the other way around. And you need to prove it to a very high degree of confidence. The standard economic solution to this problem is to force the operator to take out an insurance to cover any potential damage in case of a disaster. But you can't do that here as any major disaster would bankrupt the insurer and possibly take down the reinsurer with it.
*These numbers are maybe somewhat worse than Fukushima as I understand it, and much milder than Chernobyl.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On September 28 2013 04:11 micronesia wrote: You guys really let shell's silly throwaway comment drag you into a heated tangent?
If you want to discuss the safety or lacktherof of nuclear power, that is definitely relevant... so why don't you do that instead of wherever the heck this discussion is going.
Because they are using future data that doesn't even exist (eg they literally thought it up on the spot to demonstrate a higher rate of failures than currently observed).
You can't have a meaningful comparison between extrapolated performance and completely made up future performance.
Shell's comment essentially boils down to saying that our current observed rate of failure is lower than should be expected (by some assumedly arbitrary value). That for whatever reason we should expect over the extrapolated rate from historical data.
The burden of proof is then on him to explain why we would expect the higher value (and given he probably can't see the future, and therefore doesn't have statistical backing, he would have to give mechanistic reasons).
We would happily discuss the safety of nuclear power, but it's difficult to have a discussion with people who are setting arbitrary values for things in the future.
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On September 28 2013 04:00 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 03:43 DreamChaser wrote:On September 28 2013 03:28 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 02:10 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On September 28 2013 01:54 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 00:53 unsniped wrote: I mean, if you want to try to discredit the work that the engineers working at the plants have done to keep them safe, then by all means call it luck. So you mean the only reason we didn't have more accidents that engineers have been doing excellent work? So if in the future they only do average work we can expect more accidents? We've had nuclear power for 60 years, and a heck of a count of total power plants. That is one hell of a sample size. Even if we were to assume engineers would do worse in the future (and why would you assume this? Given progress in reactor design and new automation/analytical/modeling/control tools they have at hand), it's still pretty disingenuous to say that up to now can really be attributed to luck. I must reiterate, we are talking several hundred power plants (and like probably several hundred thousand reactors overall), over 60 years in a variety of countries, and we've had what 3 major events? The record proves itself to not be just luck. There's no contradiction there. If the expected number of major disasters is 5 for 100 000 years of total operation and you observe only 2 you got lucky. That has nothing to do with the quality of the work of the engineers. They may have done excellent work to bring the expected number down to only 5/100 000 and then got lucky to observe only 2. Turning it into an emotional debate about the engineers who work there isn't helpful or enlightening in any way. So by that argument if we observed 6/100,000 then is it the engineers/safety inspectors fault or are we really unlucky? If you observed more adverse events than could have been expected from all the available information you got unlucky. That's the definition of bad luck: doing worse than expected. If you use prior experience to predict the future there's always a range of uncertainty. This accounts for the fact that you may have been lucky/unlucky in the past or may be lucky or unlucky in the future. The relative uncertainty is highest when the expected number of events is lowest. E.g. if you estimate the number of fatal car accidents for 2014 in the US you are unlikely to be off by more than 10-20% just based on previous data. Do the same for airline accidents and you won't do so well. The expected number might be something like 0.4 but 2 isn't completely outside the realm of possibilities. You could be off by a factor of 5 even though your estimate is based on tens of millions of observations. That's not really the definition of bad luck.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On September 28 2013 04:19 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 03:59 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
I mean using historical rates to extrapolate isn't perfect, but which method looks more reasonable to you? Acknowledging that there's a fairly large uncertainty and work from there. If the results are unacceptable work on reducing them. Are we ok with a 10% chance of an accident in the next 25 years that kills 10 people, causes 1000 extra deaths via increased cancer risk due to low level radiation exposure and $200bn in property damage and cleanup cost?* If we are, cool, go ahead. We still have to make sure the risks don't get worse over time due to complecancy or economic pressures but fine. If not, we need to go back to the drawing board. Another point is that when you're doing something that's potentially very damaging you need to prove that it's not dangerous, not the other way around. And you need to prove it to a very high degree of confidence. The standard economic solution to this problem is to force the operator to take out an insurance to cover any potential damage in case of a disaster. But you can't do that here as any major disaster would bankrupt the insurer and possibly take down the reinsurer with it. *These numbers are maybe somewhat worse than Fukushima as I understand it, and much milder than Chernobyl.
Noone is saying there is any certainty, we're just saying given the sample size, calling our current rate lucky is an objectively worse guess than saying it's probably somewhere close to long term rate.
As for:
On September 28 2013 04:19 hypercube wrote: Another point is that when you're doing something that's potentially very damaging you need to prove that it's not dangerous, not the other way around. And you need to prove it to a very high degree of confidence.*
That's the crux of the argument. This is a false dichotomy, it's not a choice between doing something dangerous or not.
Noone is saying Nuclear Power isn't dangerous, even with passively safe 4th Gen reactors, there is always going to be some level of risk. Noone can prove they arn't dangerous, because they are.
But the alternative isn't just, 'don't build them'. The alternative is to produce the same energy with fossil fuels we are using now, which is, as it were, more dangerous. Or go without that energy (lets face it we aren't going to produce nearly the same scale from solar/wind/tidal/geothermal in the forseeable future).
This is also why, there was alot of debate about how much dosage was being received from Fukushima, there is no safe dose of radiation. But not having exposure to radiation is not an option, you receive a dose from being where you are, from eating a banana, from being a carbon based lifeform, it's not that the extra dosage from Fukushima, isn't probably doing you some harm, it's just relatively insignificant compared to the dosage you receive merely from being alive somewhere on earth.
If you compare all the potential dangers to not doing anything at all, obviously every option is going to look terrible. But we live in an imperfect world where all our alternatives have associated risks, and you only get to pick the package that is least terrible. It so happens if you compare nuclear with fossil fuels, or with energy shortage (which are the realistic alternatives, not nuclear or not-nuclear), the risk starts to look far more acceptable.
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On September 28 2013 04:19 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
We would happily discuss the safety of nuclear power, but it's difficult to have a discussion with people who are setting arbitrary values for things in the future.
That's cool, you don't have to convince anyone. You might want to based on what happened in Germany but you absolutely don't have to.
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On September 28 2013 04:35 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 04:19 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 03:59 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
I mean using historical rates to extrapolate isn't perfect, but which method looks more reasonable to you? Acknowledging that there's a fairly large uncertainty and work from there. If the results are unacceptable work on reducing them. Are we ok with a 10% chance of an accident in the next 25 years that kills 10 people, causes 1000 extra deaths via increased cancer risk due to low level radiation exposure and $200bn in property damage and cleanup cost?* If we are, cool, go ahead. We still have to make sure the risks don't get worse over time due to complecancy or economic pressures but fine. If not, we need to go back to the drawing board. Another point is that when you're doing something that's potentially very damaging you need to prove that it's not dangerous, not the other way around. And you need to prove it to a very high degree of confidence. The standard economic solution to this problem is to force the operator to take out an insurance to cover any potential damage in case of a disaster. But you can't do that here as any major disaster would bankrupt the insurer and possibly take down the reinsurer with it. *These numbers are maybe somewhat worse than Fukushima as I understand it, and much milder than Chernobyl. Noone is saying there is any certainty, we're just saying given the sample size, calling our current rate lucky is an objectively worse guess than saying it's probably somewhere close to long term rate. As for: Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 04:19 hypercube wrote: Another point is that when you're doing something that's potentially very damaging you need to prove that it's not dangerous, not the other way around. And you need to prove it to a very high degree of confidence.*
That's the crux of the argument. This is a false dichotomy, it's not a choice between doing something dangerous or not. Noone is saying Nuclear Power isn't dangerous, even with passively safe 4th Gen reactors, there is always going to be some level of risk. Noone can prove they arn't dangerous, because they are. But the alternative isn't just, 'don't build them'. The alternative is to produce the same energy with fossil fuels we are using now, which is, as it were, more dangerous. Or go without that energy (lets face it we aren't going to produce nearly the same scale from solar/wind/tidal/geothermal in the forseeable future).
I realize that. I didn't give a specific alternative because there are a range of different options.
This is also why, there was alot of debate about how much dosage was being received from Fukushima, there is no safe dose of radiation. But not having exposure to radiation is not an option, you receive a dose from being where you are, from eating a banana, from being a carbon based lifeform, it's not that the extra dosage from Fukushima, isn't probably doing you some harm, it's just relatively insignificant compared to the dosage you receive merely from being alive somewhere on earth.
Yeah, I'm sure my own radiation exposure due to Fukushima is minuscule. But I'm more interested in the extra dose Japanese people got. More importantly the extra number of expected cancer cases.
If you compare all the potential dangers to not doing anything at all, obviously every option is going to look terrible. But we live in an imperfect world where all our alternatives have associated risks, and you only get to pick the package that is least terrible. It so happens if you compare nuclear with fossil fuels, or with energy shortage (which are the realistic alternatives, not nuclear or not-nuclear), the risk starts to look far more acceptable.
That might be, but I can't check for myself until I have some better ideas of what the risks truly are.
One point I find a little worrying is that there was no warning that Japanese reactors were dangerous. Even in this thread people say that the US regulatory regime is stricter and more reliable. Why was there no international outcry over the senseless risks Japan was taking before the disaster. If even the experts didn't know how much can we trust their current estimates?
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On September 28 2013 04:46 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 04:19 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
We would happily discuss the safety of nuclear power, but it's difficult to have a discussion with people who are setting arbitrary values for things in the future. That's cool, you don't have to convince anyone. You might want to based on what happened in Germany but you absolutely don't have to.
I'm not really sure what you mean. Honestly the German nuclear program looked pretty damn successful. 17 operating power plants before Fukushima, no major incidents since the 90s, no direct fatalities from what were considered 'nuclear incidents'. It has cost them quite a bit to clean up after their accidents, but 1 billion total isn't that crippling to the German economy, considering it was supplying around 20% of their power before Fukushima.
It's unfortunate that public opinion turned against it, but the public aren't scientists or engineers. It's really an indictment on the public perception of nuclear safety rather than the actual issue of nuclear safety, considering how successful their program has been.
Given that they haven't had a notable incident for 20 years, despite it being a significant portion of their energy capability, I'd say their nuclear program has been overall a success for them.
The best of luck to them on their renewable energy endeavours, but if it can't keep up with the loss of the phased out Nuclear plants (which is exceedingly likely in the short term), then they are going to have to buy power from other countries, which just means they've shifted the risk from themselves to whoever is producing the power.
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On September 28 2013 05:13 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 04:46 hypercube wrote:On September 28 2013 04:19 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
We would happily discuss the safety of nuclear power, but it's difficult to have a discussion with people who are setting arbitrary values for things in the future. That's cool, you don't have to convince anyone. You might want to based on what happened in Germany but you absolutely don't have to. I'm not really sure what you mean.
I mean that if you want to convince people that their fears are unfounded you gotta engage them on their own terms.
There's also a matter of trust: people would be much more willing to trust experts if the experts actually warned them which reactors were dangerous or which countries were managing their nuclear energy programs irresponsibly before a disaster happened.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On September 28 2013 05:07 hypercube wrote:Yeah, I'm sure my own radiation exposure due to Fukushima is minuscule. But I'm more interested in the extra dose Japanese people got. More importantly the extra number of expected cancer cases. Show nested quote +If you compare all the potential dangers to not doing anything at all, obviously every option is going to look terrible. But we live in an imperfect world where all our alternatives have associated risks, and you only get to pick the package that is least terrible. It so happens if you compare nuclear with fossil fuels, or with energy shortage (which are the realistic alternatives, not nuclear or not-nuclear), the risk starts to look far more acceptable. That might be, but I can't check for myself until I have some better ideas of what the risks truly are. One point I find a little worrying is that there was no warning that Japanese reactors were dangerous. Even in this thread people say that the US regulatory regime is stricter and more reliable. Why was there no international outcry over the senseless risks Japan was taking before the disaster. If even the experts didn't know how much can we trust their current estimates?
Well it's hard to give a dosage, but the estimates are generally that it will be noticeable to significant. The jist is, it'll be unpleasant, but the extra cancer (which will probably be noticeable) will pale in comparison to the actual earthquake + tsunami. Most people outside of the South East Asia region, (indeed just outside Japan), will receive an unnoticeable dose, just because of the sheer volume of water in the pacific.
There was no warning on how dangerous the reactors were, because the reactors themselves weren't really dangerous. It did take an earthquake and a tsunami, in addition to the neglect/incompetence to bring it down.
We would have been aware that the plant was overdue for being phased out, thats really all the warning we can reasonably expect, obviously Tepco aren't going to report their own negligence before an incident actually happened, and if we publicized any facility (nuclear power plant or otherwise that would be problematic when hit by an earthquake AND a tsunami, it would be such an immensely long list everything would get lost in the noise.
Moral of the story, don't be criminally negligent, phase out outdated technology, and earthquakes + tsunamis are bad.
On September 28 2013 05:35 hypercube wrote: There's also a matter of trust: people would be much more willing to trust experts if the experts actually warned them which reactors were dangerous or which countries were managing their nuclear energy programs irresponsibly before a disaster happened.
Basically any power plant that is overdue for being phased out. The rest of the factors are either opaque due to not being able to obtain info on negligence/incompetence, or being factors that will be themselves, orders of magnitude worse than the nuclear disaster itself, even from these outdated reactors.
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On September 28 2013 05:38 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 05:07 hypercube wrote:Yeah, I'm sure my own radiation exposure due to Fukushima is minuscule. But I'm more interested in the extra dose Japanese people got. More importantly the extra number of expected cancer cases. If you compare all the potential dangers to not doing anything at all, obviously every option is going to look terrible. But we live in an imperfect world where all our alternatives have associated risks, and you only get to pick the package that is least terrible. It so happens if you compare nuclear with fossil fuels, or with energy shortage (which are the realistic alternatives, not nuclear or not-nuclear), the risk starts to look far more acceptable. That might be, but I can't check for myself until I have some better ideas of what the risks truly are. One point I find a little worrying is that there was no warning that Japanese reactors were dangerous. Even in this thread people say that the US regulatory regime is stricter and more reliable. Why was there no international outcry over the senseless risks Japan was taking before the disaster. If even the experts didn't know how much can we trust their current estimates? Well it's hard to give a dosage, but the estimates are generally that it will be noticeable to significant. The jist is, it'll be unpleasant, but the extra cancer (which will probably be noticeable) will pale in comparison to the actual earthquake + tsunami. Most people outside of the South East Asia region, (indeed just outside Japan), will receive an unnoticeable dose, just because of the sheer volume of water in the pacific.
I'm not worried about my dose from Fukushima. I want to know what my extra dose (or extra cancer risk) would be if a similar accident happened somewhat closer.
There was no warning on how dangerous the reactors were, because the reactors themselves weren't really dangerous. It did take an earthquake and a tsunami, in addition to the neglect/incompetence to bring it down.
But earthquakes and tsunamis are perfectly normal in Japan. Blaming them for the disaster is like blaming gravity after a building collapses. And frankly neglect and incompetence is normal too. At least it's hard to eliminate it completely. If you estimate your risk based on the assumption that everyone will do their best and play by the rules your estimate is worthless.
We would have been aware that the plant was overdue for being phased out, thats really all the warning we can reasonably expect, obviously Tepco aren't going to report their own negligence before an incident actually happened, and if we publicized any facility (nuclear power plant or otherwise that would be problematic when hit by an earthquake AND a tsunami, it would be such an immensely long list everything would get lost in the noise.
You absolutely should if they are located in an area where earthquakes are common and tsunamis are possible too.
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On September 28 2013 06:08 hypercube wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2013 05:38 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On September 28 2013 05:07 hypercube wrote:Yeah, I'm sure my own radiation exposure due to Fukushima is minuscule. But I'm more interested in the extra dose Japanese people got. More importantly the extra number of expected cancer cases. If you compare all the potential dangers to not doing anything at all, obviously every option is going to look terrible. But we live in an imperfect world where all our alternatives have associated risks, and you only get to pick the package that is least terrible. It so happens if you compare nuclear with fossil fuels, or with energy shortage (which are the realistic alternatives, not nuclear or not-nuclear), the risk starts to look far more acceptable. That might be, but I can't check for myself until I have some better ideas of what the risks truly are. One point I find a little worrying is that there was no warning that Japanese reactors were dangerous. Even in this thread people say that the US regulatory regime is stricter and more reliable. Why was there no international outcry over the senseless risks Japan was taking before the disaster. If even the experts didn't know how much can we trust their current estimates? Well it's hard to give a dosage, but the estimates are generally that it will be noticeable to significant. The jist is, it'll be unpleasant, but the extra cancer (which will probably be noticeable) will pale in comparison to the actual earthquake + tsunami. Most people outside of the South East Asia region, (indeed just outside Japan), will receive an unnoticeable dose, just because of the sheer volume of water in the pacific. I'm not worried about my dose from Fukushima. I want to know what my extra dose (or extra cancer risk) would be if a similar accident happened somewhat closer. Show nested quote +There was no warning on how dangerous the reactors were, because the reactors themselves weren't really dangerous. It did take an earthquake and a tsunami, in addition to the neglect/incompetence to bring it down. But earthquakes and tsunamis are perfectly normal in Japan. Blaming them for the disaster is like blaming gravity after a building collapses. And frankly neglect and incompetence is normal too. At least it's hard to eliminate it completely. If you estimate your risk based on the assumption that everyone will do their best and play by the rules your estimate is worthless. Show nested quote +We would have been aware that the plant was overdue for being phased out, thats really all the warning we can reasonably expect, obviously Tepco aren't going to report their own negligence before an incident actually happened, and if we publicized any facility (nuclear power plant or otherwise that would be problematic when hit by an earthquake AND a tsunami, it would be such an immensely long list everything would get lost in the noise. You absolutely should if they are located in an area where earthquakes are common and tsunamis are possible too. There's basically no risk of increased cancer deaths. The Linear No-Threshold Model isn't even free of controversy, plenty of people don't trust it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model#Controversy
Further, the workers actually in the plant didn't die. If they're all OK, the general public is fine.
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