# Germany: Nuclear power plants to close by 2022



## skycloud86 (Jul 15, 2009)

> Germany's ruling coalition says it has agreed a date of 2022 for the shutdown of all of its nuclear power plants.
> 
> Environment Minister Norbert Rottgen made the announcement after a meeting of the ruling coalition that lasted into the early hours of Monday.
> 
> ...


BBC News - Germany: Nuclear power plants to close by 2022


----------



## 22575 (May 23, 2011)

This is so dumb... according to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu:
"Worried about radioactivity? Coal’s still your bogeyman. Dr. Chu says a typical coal plant emits 100 times more radiation than a nuclear plant, given the flyash emissions of radioactive particles. "
-http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/12/11/steven-chu-coal-is-my-worst-nightmare/

But instead of getting rid of coal Germany is offsetting the energy production it is losing from shutting down nuclear power plants with new coal plants!
Europe's Image Clashes With Reliance on Coal - New York Times


----------



## Kriash (May 5, 2011)

Nuclear power is a great source of power, we just need to keep on the upkeep of the facilities, and have better emergency plans set up.


----------



## Khar (May 21, 2011)

My first thought: "Oh for pete's _sake_."

A reactor manages to withstand an unthinkable catastrophe of proportions unexpected or even realized until this year, including a massive tsunami reaching kilometers inland and an earthquake never expected, and this somehow makes nuclear energy more dangerous. I find it ironic that this is coming out with a slew of global warming articles -- congratulations, we are destroying one of the best long-term high-energy alternatives to modern fossil fuel consumption with more significant impacts to health world-wide already than we are going to see from nuclear use regardless of where we stand on the anthropogenic global warming and climate change issues. 

Instead of educating people about the merits seen here, "activism" has once again managed to be twisted from something good into something bad and the government is taking the political course of action in shutting these reactors down. There are hundreds of nuclear reactors, hundreds more being made, thousands being considered, and most of them are not near a place where earthquakes and tsunamis of any magnitude can hit them! At one point, this included the nuclear reactor in Japan, which was built to withstand what was beyond the expected highend of region earthquakes. It's been withstanding earthquakes for _54 years_. It could have handled tsunamis meters high, many times what was expected to reach inland, without being impacted at all. If anything, this has just shown us how to improve our safety standards, even in the case of the unthinkable occurring. It has _not_ shown us that nuclear technology is inherently dangerous. It has _not_ shown us we should turn away from it. It _has_ been a testament to the reliability of the technology, even under the most trying circumstances.

It's akin of moving back to huts because houses can't withstand fire, even though modern technologies make houses extremely resistant to it. And unlike that metaphor, nuclear reactors are even a hell of a lot less likely to "catch fire" than the alternatives out there compared to houses and huts.


----------



## Paeter (May 18, 2011)

I'm sorry but when fossil fuels become too expensive, the only fuel source that can produce the *volume *of energy needed to fuel civilization at a reasonable price is nuclear energy. It's actually incredibly safe.

How many people die each year in mining accidents? In coal processing? *In driving their cars to work?* Everything in life has risks and compared to how many people die from engaging in other enterprises, nuclear energy's risks are very low.

As Khar said, the Japanese nuclear station was hit *hard *and they _still _managed to contain and fix the problem well. Chernobyl's water vapor pressure was allowed to reach over a hundred times the normal pressure before it blew. It was so ridiculously, incredibly badly maintained. It would simply never happen with first world, well maintained nuclear plants. France has been running 80% of it's country on nuclear energy for years. Ever since Chernobyl, people think a well maintained reactor is dangerous and it simply isn't true. Everyone is so irrational fearful of any trace amount of nuclear radiation.

It doesn't matter anyway, the world *is *moving to nuclear energy whether the governments or the people like the idea or not. It's either that or energy prices rise so high that civilization gets plunged backwards and the standards of living decline massively. When energy is expensive, everything is expensive. Food prices alone will change people's minds. When you have to spend half your money on food just to live, you're not going to be happy. There are ten calories of oil energy in each calorie of food you consume. If the average person in america eats 2500 calories a day, that's 25,000 calories per person per day for food production alone. When people can't enjoy all the modern luxuries of capitalism and cheap energy, when they can't run their computer, their car, their hot water, and their modern lifestyles anymore, they'll soon forget about all the so-called problems with it and they'll see nuclear energy in a lot more favorable light.


----------



## Erbse (Oct 15, 2010)

Actionism for the win.

Country, I am proud you.

It's not that I wasn't anti renewable energy, or pro nuclear plants, but that decision at best threw us into the direction of the medieval. Fun fact; if they follow through we're likely to have to buy power from France / Belgium / Netherlands and the like. If you haven't guessed it yet; Yes, it's power coming from nuclear plants.


----------



## absentminded (Dec 3, 2010)

I would exhort anyone with something within several light-years of something that vaguely might resemble a clue about nuclear power to walk around a city like New York or LA with a Geiger counter, a banana and a video camera.

Ask people how much radiation they would have received standing outside the Fukushima plant at the height of the crisis. Hold the Geiger counter up to the banana and then tell them (on camera) that they receive more radiation from that banana than they would standing outside the Fukushima plant or any other plant in the First World. (There goes the banana industry >.<) Go on to share some statistics about operational safety in the nuclear industry versus fossil fuels. This includes uranium vs coal/oil/natural gas procurement, plant construction and operation and waste disposal. Statistics strongly favor nuclear.

Emphasize that nuclear power is far better for the environment than solar, hydrogen, etc. and that it will forestall global warming faster than any other alternative energy.

Solar, because photovoltaic cells are made from silicon. The most commonly used method for procuring silicon releases C02 into the atmosphere--solar power is inherently anti-environment. roud: Storing the energy is incredibly inefficient and you have no power half the time.

The energy required to build and operate wind and hydroelectric power plants is usually obtained from a fossil-fuel plant. If it isn't, it's from a nuclear plant. Wind farms (as I understand) rarely break even on the energy required for construction, operation and maintenance. --anti-environment, by their logic-- Hydroelectric breaks even, but does so incredibly slowly. Both types are incredibly fickle.

Hydrogen burning will never be an efficient large-scale power generator, but will almost certainly be a niche sub-economy. Even PEM fuel cells can't be scaled up industrially.

We have to assume that feasible fusion power is twenty years away and always will be. Plan for the worst hope for the best.

Nuclear is the only option that will be viable when fossil fuels disappear.

After explaining all this to the incredulous neohippy on camera, wander off and repeat the process several times. Do some snappy video editing and post on Youtube.


----------



## JackSparroww (Dec 10, 2010)

As an engineer and as a german I like to say a few things. To understand the debate one has to understand history and the geography of our nation a bit better. A few years ago when the whole atomic power plant things started, Germany of course build a few. And things were going well. At peak times we had around I think 40 reactors, being developed in co-op projects with France, becoming soon part of the most effective reactors worldwide. Everybody was happy there was just one small thing. 

A nuclear power plant operates according to the very simple principle of a steam-power machine. Water or an equal medium is overheated and the resulting vapor is used to propell a turbine which produces electrical energy. There are different ways to heat the stuff, one of these is radioactive power. A sum of heavy isotopes is put in line into a water bath and the natural decay going on overheats the water. There are a lot of different ways to build such power plants, but that is not important right now. What is important is the fuel, namely for example Plutonium. 

Plutonium 239 for example has a half-life and in that time it is decaying into two smaller isotopes from the original. The two smaller ones are, if added together, always smaller than the original one, the missing energy was emitted as gamma radiation. 

Gamma radiation is a form of radiation that ionizes an atom when it hits it. That means it does kick an electron out of the orbit. The electron then travels freely as secondary radiation thru the world and kicking electrons out of its orbit always produces x-radiation aswell. If that happens in the human body the consequences are damaged cells, cause the x-rays and electrons going vertigo. Since DNA is an acid it likes to be ionized and therefore the gamma radiation and its resulting secondary radiation does damage the dna and the human body in several points. Damaged DNA results in failed mitosis what results in cancer, and so on.

So while the gamma radiation is useful to power the overheater it makes people die aswell. Well ok so you just have to isolate it and then you're good. The problem that remains is, you can use the Plutonium for only so long, which is quite short and after that it doesnt produce enough radiation no more for the overheater. But it still does produce radiation and you cant stop it from doing that. That means even if you cant use the Plutonium no more to produce energy, it still does emit gamma radiation that is deadily and you have to store the stuff somewhere. It does so with an half-life of 24,000 yrs, so you have to store the stuff for 24,000 yrs.

So lets have a list of pro and cons for atomic power

Cons:
- it kills people
- "it cant be switched off" / the radioactive decay cant be stopped
- Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 yrs
- The children of our children will ask us what we have done
- There is no proven way to store it and even if there was storages grow full in time
- If the radiation should get into the ground water, it could ionize the water and create heavy water, called deuterium; that is toxic and has the same effects like radioactive poisoning, it kills people and plant life

Pros:
- it's the most quick and easiest way to make massive amounts of money with an energy supply

Ok what happened in Germany ? In 1980 people got pissed off by the government dumbing radioactive waste in the neighbourhood. They were farmers and were asking why the eff are you dumbing the waste under the land I need to earn money with. The problem is Germany is a very small nation with a lot of people, it's like 1/300th the size of America but has 80 million people. Americans have it easy to dumb waste, big country, big waste... well we dont have this luxury

I have wasted a considerable amount of my lifetime discussing nuclear energy on typologycentral. I tried to explain in a 30 pages long thread why its bad and I all the time felt like an idiot, cause I think it was natural to know this energy is bad and everybody would know that. Well I was wrong.. I am saying right now that I dont want to debate the issue and cant be convinced of the opposite of my opinion. There are not much but some things I believe in my life and one of them is the future. I still want that the children of my children will be able to fly a starship and not have a future in which humans filled the earth up with radioactive waste.

Of course people believe the boulevard press and think we have to substitute the missing energy with fossile fuels. Of course that is not the plan. The government has started a reasearch which was publicated lately in the newspaper "Die Zeit". it marked on the landmap all the areas in which it is possible to build wind energy converters. If you'ld only look at tha areas in which is perfectly safe to build WEC's without having troubles with the locals or anything, you are able to meet 66% of the german energy supply. If you combine that with people treating energy consumption reasonably, you'll be even able to get the last third without building more stuff. Of course this's not the end of development there are a lot of ideas on the table at the moment how to produce energy. America should not miss that opportunity, there is a whole huge and big market developing. 

Another important thing is to be said here: if the government does decide do quit atomic power supply by 2022 this does mean nothing. If industry and the people dont follow, things like that do change in 5 years from now. So its a direction, an idea they gave there, one they encourage, but its no final decision. 

At the end I want to comment some of the things said here:



unsung truth said:


> This is so dumb... according to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu:
> "Worried about radioactivity? Coal’s still your bogeyman. Dr. Chu says a typical coal plant emits 100 times more radiation than a nuclear plant, given the flyash emissions of radioactive particles. "


Ya but the waste of coal doesnt radiate for another 24,000 yrs.



Kriash said:


> Nuclear power is a great source of power, we just need to keep on the upkeep of the facilities, and have better emergency plans set up.


There is a popular term with engineers called remaining risk. It does reflect the amount of risk one couldnt compensate for while building a plant. The reactor in Fukushima had a remaining risk of under 1 % I think and one of the risks was "getting hit by a tsunami". People usually laugh at this but regarding nuclear power it is srs bsns because if something happens it always does massive damage.

Do you know why they dont shoot radioactive waste into space ? The risk is too high that the rocket explodes after the launch. If that happens it would prolly mean the end for the country that launched it.




Khar said:


> My first thought: "Oh for pete's _sake_."
> 
> A reactor manages to withstand an unthinkable catastrophe of proportions unexpected or even realized until this year, including a massive tsunami reaching kilometers inland and an earthquake never expected, and this somehow makes nuclear energy more dangerous. I find it ironic that this is coming out with a slew of global warming articles -- congratulations, we are destroying one of the best long-term high-energy alternatives to modern fossil fuel consumption with more significant impacts to health world-wide already than we are going to see from nuclear use regardless of where we stand on the anthropogenic global warming and climate change issues.


Ya Fukushima 1 exploded, 2 and 3 melted and the whole region is evacuated having Sievers-levels higher than the yearly dosage of an atomic power plant worker. You strike me to live in another world than I do.



> Instead of educating people about the merits seen here, "activism" has once again managed to be twisted from something good into something bad and the government is taking the political course of action in shutting these reactors down.


Activism, in my personal opinion is a thing that got lost nowadays. People have become to easily manipulative by the mass. Look at the Iphone hype: everyone has one, thats the death of individuality and active opinions, imo. Tho I am very biased on that one.



> There are hundreds of nuclear reactors, hundreds more being made, thousands being considered, and most of them are not near a place where earthquakes and tsunamis of any magnitude can hit them!


Yes but they produce waste.



> At one point, this included the nuclear reactor in Japan, which was built to withstand what was beyond the expected highend of region earthquakes. It's been withstanding earthquakes for _54 years_. It could have handled tsunamis meters high, many times what was expected to reach inland, without being impacted at all. If anything, this has just shown us how to improve our safety standards, even in the case of the unthinkable occurring. It has _not_ shown us that nuclear technology is inherently dangerous. It has _not_ shown us we should turn away from it. It _has_ been a testament to the reliability of the technology, even under the most trying circumstances.


See above what I said about the remaining risk to Kriash. You wont ever be able to eliminate that. Still if you would hypothetically, there would be the waste problem.



> It's akin of moving back to huts because houses can't withstand fire, even though modern technologies make houses extremely resistant to it. And unlike that metaphor, nuclear reactors are even a hell of a lot less likely to "catch fire" than the alternatives out there compared to houses and huts.


Pretty radical example, sure you aint an activist ? 



Paeter said:


> How many people die each year in mining accidents? In coal processing? *In driving their cars to work?* Everything in life has risks and compared to how many people die from engaging in other enterprises, nuclear energy's risks are very low.


So your reasoning is that it is ok to have another risk for people dieing because they die anyways ?



> As Khar said, the Japanese nuclear station was hit *hard *and they _still _managed to contain and fix the problem well. Chernobyl's water vapor pressure was allowed to reach over a hundred times the normal pressure before it blew. It was so ridiculously, incredibly badly maintained. It would simply never happen with first world, well maintained nuclear plants. France has been running 80% of it's country on nuclear energy for years. Ever since Chernobyl, people think a well maintained reactor is dangerous and it simply isn't true. Everyone is so irrational fearful of any trace amount of nuclear radiation.


I am honored that you trust engineers so much, but there is still the waste you cant get rid of if all plants were safe.



> It doesn't matter anyway, the world *is *moving to nuclear energy whether the governments or the people like the idea or not. It's either that or energy prices rise so high that civilization gets plunged backwards and the standards of living decline massively.


I hope you will change your mind one day about that way of thinking. Fatalism is the antagonist of idealism. He's my greatest enemy and my greatest mentor. 



> When energy is expensive, everything is expensive. Food prices alone will change people's minds. When you have to spend half your money on food just to live, you're not going to be happy. There are ten calories of oil energy in each calorie of food you consume. If the average person in america eats 2500 calories a day, that's 25,000 calories per person per day for food production alone. When people can't enjoy all the modern luxuries of capitalism and cheap energy, when they can't run their computer, their car, their hot water, and their modern lifestyles anymore, they'll soon forget about all the so-called problems with it and they'll see nuclear energy in a lot more favorable light.


This is the reasoning with which I am able to explain to myself how the nazis rose to power in Germany. What prevents me from killing myself when I think of that is the hope that there are still people out there who do think differently and dont need an iphone to be happy in their lifes.



Erbse said:


> Actionism for the win.
> 
> Country, I am proud you.
> 
> It's not that I wasn't anti renewable energy, or pro nuclear plants, but that decision at best threw us into the direction of the medieval. Fun fact; if they follow through we're likely to have to buy power from France / Belgium / Netherlands and the like. If you haven't guessed it yet; Yes, it's power coming from nuclear plants.


You should stop reading the Bild . Read "Die Zeit" instead, die wissen wovon sie sprechen 



absentminded said:


> Ask people how much radiation they would have received standing outside the Fukushima plant at the height of the crisis. Hold the Geiger counter up to the banana and then tell them (on camera) that they receive more radiation from that banana than they would standing outside the Fukushima plant or any other plant in the First World. (There goes the banana industry >.<) Go on to share some statistics about operational safety in the nuclear industry versus fossil fuels. This includes uranium vs coal/oil/natural gas procurement, plant construction and operation and waste disposal. Statistics strongly favor nuclear.


I am sorry I've tried to follow you but you have a very confused way of speaking. So you say banans are infested anyways so lets blow up all nuclear plants doesnt matter ?



> Emphasize that nuclear power is far better for the environment than solar, hydrogen, etc. and that it will forestall global warming faster than any other alternative energy.
> 
> Solar, because photovoltaic cells are made from silicon. The most commonly used method for procuring silicon releases C02 into the atmosphere--solar power is inherently anti-environment. roud: Storing the energy is incredibly inefficient and you have no power half the time.


Agreed solar has issues regarding material availiability and the amount it gives off isnt too good. Its probably not the solution, tho there is still a lot of research to be done and maybe with a good reinvention it has a chance.



> The energy required to build and operate wind and hydroelectric power plants is usually obtained from a fossil-fuel plant. If it isn't, it's from a nuclear plant. Wind farms (as I understand) rarely break even on the energy required for construction, operation and maintenance. --anti-environment, by their logic-- Hydroelectric breaks even, but does so incredibly slowly. Both types are incredibly fickle.


If you have a lot of windparks you can produce the energy for producing more windparks, so it is a transition, of course. ROI for windparcs isnt too bad on the contrary. With electromagnetical bearings they are even able to run indefinitly. Its one of the most probable technologies of the future. It would just need to come in combination with storage power stations to substitute low wind hours.

Still a lot of research to be done here, but if you pay a visit to the page of Vestas or Enercon, already a lot of questions they were able to answer.



> Hydrogen burning will never be an efficient large-scale power generator, but will almost certainly be a niche sub-economy. Even PEM fuel cells can't be scaled up industrially.
> 
> We have to assume that feasible fusion power is twenty years away and always will be. Plan for the worst hope for the best.
> 
> ...


Neohippy ahja. Guess in a forum which does put humanity into 16 categories you cant expect people to be free of stereotypes .


----------



## Erbse (Oct 15, 2010)

entropie said:


> You should stop reading the Bild . Read "Die Zeit" instead, die wissen wovon sie sprechen


Possibly, although regardless of whether or not the project is gonna be a success or failure I doubt it'll be worth my time to get back here by the time it's 2021 to throw a "told you so" out there.

Ideally, by that time, I wouldn't even be resident of the country anymore, but who knows what the future yields.

Lets not forget that the actual energy providers won't have to pay for too much, unlike the tax money that'll be burned in the process. Ironically it has been working like that for quite a while; tax payers pay the infrastructure (streets, grid, railroads) while the companies using these are privatized generating ridiculous amount of money (Energy providers, Die Bahn).

Given that we already pay ridiculously much for power as it is, I don't see a drop in price anytime soon, either. Quite the opposite if anything.


----------



## Paeter (May 18, 2011)

Vielen dank für deine interessante Argumente. Ich bin keiner Ingenieur aber ich hab ein paar Sachen zu sagen. ^_^



entropie said:


> I hope you will change your mind one day about that way of thinking. Fatalism is the antagonist of idealism. He's my greatest enemy and my greatest mentor.


This is realism. This is facing up to the reality of our current technology. At some stage, a technology might exist that will allow for nuclear power to be abandoned but as for now, this does not exist.



> This is the reasoning with which I am able to explain to myself how the nazis rose to power in Germany. What prevents me from killing myself when I think of that is the hope that there are still people out there who do think differently and dont need an iphone to be happy in their lifes.


Would you let them buy nuclear energy to power their iPhone or would you hold a gun to their head to stop them? Whether you think people go about their lives correctly or not is irrelevant. People want their current of standard of living because they currently work for it and they currently want an even better standard of living. These are self evident facts. We also know that a decline in the standard of living will increase overall uneasiness as the consumer goods currently serving people's wants to alleviate the uneasiness will not be able to be produced. You seem to be saying that they shouldn't be allowed to use nuclear energy even if it means a decline in standard of living. You seem to be saying that you think their dreams and desires should be ignored and that they shouldn't be allowed to act in a way that produces their own happiness. I'm sorry but surely you see the parallels with nazi totalitarianism and this mind set?


> So your reasoning is that it is ok to have another risk for people dieing because they die anyways ?


My reasoning is that a risk factor for death has never been a reason to not conduct a certain enterprise before so why should it now? If people are willing to take the risks they should be allowed to which they *will *when they run out of energy and see the relative safety of nuclear and the need for it if their lives are to improve and civilization is to flourish.


> I am honored that you trust engineers so much, but there is still the waste you cant get rid of if all plants were safe.


The waste is not that much and can be safely and easily stored in lead cylinders that can be stored on site until for many years until they are shipped to a final dumping site deep in the earth. There is enough space to safely and permanently store the waste like this such that this method could go on powering the earth a thousand years while we figure out other energy sources. As far as I know, a single car-park has enough space to hold the waste held in cylinders for many decades. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The point is this: if people want nuclear energy, there are ways to deal with the safety issues and the waste and there is always a trade off. There is no way for humans to live on earth without leaving a footprint.


----------



## JackSparroww (Dec 10, 2010)

Erbse said:


> Possibly, although regardless of whether or not the project is gonna be a success or failure I doubt it'll be worth my time to get back here by the time it's 2021 to throw a "told you so" out there.
> 
> Ideally, by that time, I wouldn't even be resident of the country anymore, but who knows what the future yields.


do what you must



Paeter said:


> This is realism. This is facing up to the reality of our current technology. At some stage, a technology might exist that will allow for nuclear power to be abandoned but as for now, this does not exist.


I think about that differently. People always tried to get the pragmatism into me in life that says, as long as the new technology doesnt exist, you have to settle for less. I rather tried to look for what is there and then start to combine and to create. I am a creator at heart and alot of this creations you do are insecure, irrational or farout. Did you know, they build a stone bunker at the sea, where there are tides. Then they had an opening for the water on the bottom. Every time the water rushes in from the tide and then rushes out it does produce an air current. That they use to power a turbine and produce electrical current.

Bottom line is, I like to speculate and not to end the day with the words "thats realism cant change that".




> Would you let them buy nuclear energy to power their iPhone or would you hold a gun to their head to stop them? Whether you think people go about their lives correctly or not is irrelevant. People want their current of standard of living because they currently work for it and they currently want an even better standard of living. These are self evident facts. We also know that a decline in the standard of living will increase overall uneasiness as the consumer goods currently serving people's wants to alleviate the uneasiness will not be able to be produced. You seem to be saying that they shouldn't be allowed to use nuclear energy even if it means a decline in standard of living. You seem to be saying that you think their dreams and desires should be ignored and that they shouldn't be allowed to act in a way that produces their own happiness. I'm sorry but surely you see the parallels with nazi totalitarianism and this mind set?


People must now for themselves if their dreams and desires are so important that they maybe fullfilled on the costs of the dreas and desires of their childrens which have to live in a world filled with nuclear waste. If you can settle that score with your consciencse that you despite having a dirty energy supply your dream is more important it is your decision.

I cant do it.



> My reasoning is that a risk factor for death has never been a reason to not conduct a certain enterprise before so why should it now? If people are willing to take the risks they should be allowed to which they *will *when they run out of energy and see the relative safety of nuclear and the need for it if their lives are to improve and civilization is to flourish.


If everybody thinks that a risk to take a scientific advancement was no issue, this's no reason for me to think the same. You tend to say that the world is going to an end if nuclear power vanishes, but that exactly aint the plan. The plan is to substitute nuclear with renewables over time, it's like I'd say I will loose 10 kilogram in 3 months. It's a goal. 



> The waste is not that much and can be safely and easily stored in lead cylinders that can be stored on site until for many years until they are shipped to a final dumping site deep in the earth. There is enough space to safely and permanently store the waste like this such that this method could go on powering the earth a thousand years while we figure out other energy sources. As far as I know, a single car-park has enough space to hold the waste held in cylinders for many decades. Correct me if I'm wrong.


I told you in Germany there is not enough space and the waste storing is far from safe. The political debate in my country is now for 30 years revolving around the storage. The salt mines they used are already leaking, some barrels are not holding. Politically and economically weak regions like eastern Germany are used for storage, so next thing will be selling storage to eastern europe probably and countries like Poland will be used for storing.

It's a very dirty overall process and it lets you feel very dirty dealing with it, maybe you can deal with it. I cant.



> The point is this: if people want nuclear energy, there are ways to deal with the safety issues and the waste and there is always a trade off. There is no way for humans to live on earth without leaving a footprint.


True but that footprint is too big, I cant think so pragmatically or programatically.


----------



## absentminded (Dec 3, 2010)

All quotes are from @entropie.

First, before I respond to your comments to me directly, I'm going to attempt to correct your woeful misunderstandings regarding nuclear chemistry and energy.

First, the principle source of power in nuclear energy isn't gamma radiation (which is really just a general term for photons-technically, you're being bombarded with gamma radiation daily from the sun, and several kilotons of radioisotopes located in the Earth's core) but free neutrons and energized nuclei generating heat. Heat energy powered by gamma radiation would be incredibly inefficient because much of it would pass through the optically transparent water. Remember, gamma rays are just really high energy light.

Second, Plutonium 239, when used as a fuel in nuclear reactors, breaks apart into two atoms of lighter elements. This means there is no more Plutonium and no more radiation after the reaction has taken place. Sometimes lighter radioisotopes are formed, but this is rare because it adds less entropy to the system and they usually have half-lives of a couple days/hours.

Third, the properties of nuclear waste are already well-understood and many have established economic value entirely outside of the nuclear industry. Bet you didn't know there's nuclear "waste" in your home. Americium-241 is found in your smoke detector. Don't believe me? Look it up, or better yet, peel your smoke detector open and point a Geiger counter at it. You see, Americium-241 emits alpha particles (basically an atom of Helium-4 without any electrons) and these particles ionize the air, which allows a current to flow. When smoke particles enter the detector, they decrease the ionization, changing the amount of current that can flow, which makes your smoke detector sound the alarm.

Fourth, it is an established fact of modern physics that the atoms of every element are somewhat unstable. This leads to the concept of "nuclear binding energy" which is the energy that holds an atom's nucleus together. The graph below shows that Iron-56 has the highest nuclear binding energy of any elemental isotope.








Nuclear fission works because Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 are on the right side of that curve, which means that energy is gained by splitting them apart. Nuclear fusion works on the opposite principle: you gain energy by combining nuclei on the left side of the curve. That's how the sun works.

This means that we can extract energy from every single type of nuclear waste by breaking it apart with neutrons, protons or alpha particles. This is a well understood process. It is quite simple (or so I've read) to design a plant that uses minor actinides (nuclear "waste") as fuel. The problem is that the government (both German and American) has banned the construction of such plants. France has several if I recall correctly.

Also, plutonium can be found readily in nature as a result of self-irradiating uranium.

I've included likes to relevant articles for your reading pleasure. I apologize that I can't provide them in German, but I don't speak/read it.

Nuclear fission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nuclear power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fast-neutron reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Radiation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



> I am sorry I've tried to follow you but you have a very confused way of speaking. So you say banans are infested anyways so lets blow up all nuclear plants doesnt matter ?


No. I'm saying that bananas are naturally rich in potassium. This means Potassium-40 which has a half-life of 1.2 billion years. A single banana bombards you with more radiation than a properly shielded nuclear power plant.

Also, you seem to have greatly misconstrued the concept of "half-life". The half-life of a decaying substance (radioactive or chemically unstable) is how long it takes for half of it to decay. After one half-life, half of the material has decayed. After two half-lives, three-quarters of the material has decayed.



> Agreed solar has issues regarding material availiability and the amount it gives off isnt too good. Its probably not the solution, tho there is still a lot of research to be done and maybe with a good reinvention it has a chance.


Depending on "innovations" that may never come is inherently bad policy. Many of the innovations that have come out of the photovoltaics industry are dependent on ultra exotic alloys like Cadmium Telluride and Copper Indium Selenide.



> If you have a lot of windparks you can produce the energy for producing more windparks, so it is a transition, of course. *ROI for windparcs isnt too bad on the contrary.* *With electromagnetical bearings they are even able to run indefinitly.* Its one of the most probable technologies of the future. *It would just need to come in combination with storage power stations to substitute low wind hours.*


The bolded text is my problem with this comment. Return on investment is good because governments the world over give tax credits to alternative energy companies, artificially bringing the cost down and return on investment up.

Electromagnetic bearings are powered by what? Electricity. What are you trying to generate? Electricity. Why are you using your product to try and generate more of your product? More importantly, do you have any idea how strong a magnetic field you'd need for a bearing in a multi-ton wind turbine that is off balance and potentially spinning at high speeds? You'd use up all the electricity you'd generate in powering the bearings. I'm preparing to study engineering and have a very good grounding in electromagnetism: I know whereof I speak.

Second, how would you store this power? Flywheels? They suck. Batteries? They suck more. Chemical energy? Aside from hydrocarbons, there aren't any effective storage methods that don't have problems with storage densities, etc. And storing energy in hydrocarbons defeats the purpose of the wind farm.



> Neohippy ahja. Guess in a forum which does put humanity into 16 categories you cant expect people to be free of stereotypes .


I was merely making a joke centered on a well-known fact that there are large populations in New York and California that are both highly liberal and relatively ignorant of the things they constantly chime on about.


----------



## Khar (May 21, 2011)

My apologies if any of this sounded offensive, confrontational, angry or so forth. When writing I adopt a neutralized form of speaking and tend to avoid the use of smilies or language which would show I am trying not to be confrontational, since it takes up a good deal of time to do that. Sometimes my word choice can be questionable, and sometimes it appears I am being unyielding -- but my posts are always open for scrutiny in all ways. I could always be wrong. 

This post was from the point of view of pro-nuclear power use. 

Second, I don't think I will be posting again in this thread. It is not out of disinterest, I just don't know if this discussion is going to go anywhere, for reasons I mentioned following the first quote. 



> Ya Fukushima 1 exploded, 2 and 3 melted and the whole region is evacuated having Sievers-levels higher than the yearly dosage of an atomic power plant worker. You strike me to live in another world than I do.


Do not mix up my words. Typically, this style of breaking down posts line by line leads to such distortions, and I do not like my words being twisted into something they are not. 

This may sound somewhat frank and even aggressive, but stating you are not going to be swayed from your position means you have come here to preach, rather than discuss. This is antithetical to the forum ideal. In complaining about having wasted your time on another site, you came here, essentially, to waste ours. 

Withstand does not have to mean that it came through it in one piece, although that is one of the definitions. In the face of incredibly trying circumstances, it offerred strong resistance (and I believe successfully) given what it was subjected to. Given the situation, it came through remarkably well. I noticed you directly avoided discussing the fact that this is an incredibly and shockingly severe situation, and you would do well not to in the future. 

I feel you are heavily overstating the impacts here (to be honest, I think the biased display of pro and cons is somewhat odd alone, as there are many positives to nuclear energy). No one was killed because of radioactive side effects, they were killed because they were in a disaster area. The material which spewed from the reactor into the surrounding area decays by 9% each day. This was no where close to being a Chernobyl. Becquerel readings in the area had already reached double what humans naturally produce a few scant weeks after the disaster and continued to fall, but still required governments to leap out and do something (to make people feel safe). Comparing a banana to the current radioactivity levels of that area is not far off, nor would it have been very far off two or three weeks following the crisis, when they were forced to evacuate the area. Much of the potential damage was contained. 



> Yes but they produce waste.


Indeed. 

Everything does (even renewable resources require the creation of some waste, like creating and processing the raw materials required). There are literally dozens of initiatives and methods to handle nuclear waste. 

Yes, this waste exists. The mass majority of it is low-level radioactive waste, not direct nuclear waste. Our efforts should be put forth to trying to correct these problems. Not running away, hoping that somehow when we turn to nuclear power the next time it will somehow have fixed itself. A great deal of modern technology allows for the reuse of nuclear byproducts. Areva reactors, for example, reuse 96% of all fuel which goes through the reactor already, and the rest goes to reprocessing facilities when possible. 

Eventually, someday, we *will* have to use this technology. Let's make it safe *now*. 



> See above what I said about the remaining risk to Kriash. You wont ever be able to eliminate that. Still if you would hypothetically, there would be the waste problem.


My field is all about calculating risks (after spending a lot of time in the Sciences, for the record, as have many of the posters here). Indeed, I was already talking about some of the stuff in my post. For example, I did state they had a risk assessment of being hit by a Tsunami -- the facility was meant to withstand 5.7 meters, which was an unthinkable level for a tsunami to reach at the time. This is very different from assuming that they didn't prepare for a tsunami to strike, or that the risk assessment assumed that the tsunami would be damaging, especially to any extent which occurred. 

You'll notice that I did not include my field before in this discussion, because my credentials are irrelevant to a discussion relating to something outside my experience or purview. Unless you are a nuclear engineer or an engineering physicist, I will treat your remarks the same I would treat mine or others. In Canada, to become a nuclear engineer requires years more professional education and training, and typically proponents with that degree of experience calling the technology safe means I would typically agree. They know there are problems, and they are working to solve them.

Since you are an engineer you should be experienced with dealing with people who call out about risks and such who are not in the field they are talking about. To use a well known recent example, remember when we started up the LHC, and people believed it was going to be the end of the world? That was according to the "expert" opinion of a chemist. Simply calling yourself an engineer does not mean you know "better" than others about how it works -- the beginning of your post was a somewhat skewed high-school level explanation of how nuclear energy and DNA works, for example, and likely educated few here. I mean no offense by stating this, simply stating that your audience is likely a bit more educated than you may believe given your explanation. 



> Pretty radical example, sure you aint an activist ?


I am not an activist. I am a realist. You propose we go away from a tested economically-sound technology to older or less capable (and more polluting) alternatives. It is the metaphorical house and hut.

This technology produces less dangerous waste to human society because it comes in such small amounts (which can generally be contained, save when a nigh impossible to concieve natural disaster occurs) than what we have from other forms of energy gathering. Regardless of whether or not we believe in anthropogenic global warming or climate change, the negatives of carbon technologies have a broad spectrum impact on human health, demonstrated ecological concerns and an incredibly inelastic demand schedule make nuclear technology a lot more tangible. I believe you are significantly overstating current problems with nuclear waste, and that you are, in addition, failing to keep track of modern research on the topic. This is just my opinion, however, as I could be incorrect. 



> If you have a lot of windparks you can produce the energy for producing more windparks, so it is a transition, of course. ROI for windparcs isnt too bad on the contrary. With electromagnetical bearings they are even able to run indefinitly. Its one of the most probable technologies of the future. It would just need to come in combination with storage power stations to substitute low wind hours.
> 
> Still a lot of research to be done here, but if you pay a visit to the page of Vestas or Enercon, already a lot of questions they were able to answer.


So we should research wind parks, but not research nuclear energy (with your stated aim in seeing nuclear energy decline in use), when one is already widely used and the other... is not?

You are beginning to get into the economics of the issue, and to be frank, this is my area of interest and an area I do have some expertise in, contrary to nuclear physics and design (where with my Sciences background, I am not exactly far off from your own experience). You see, I live in Alberta, a Western province of Canada, and here Resource and Energy economics a big thing -- in addition, I also have significant formal education in that field. Wind power has been a topic brought up time and again. 

Time and again, it has failed to pass muster. Even if the turbines were at the limits of efficiency, we would still require so many of them, take up so much land and use so many resources that it may be better to stick with carbon producing technologies in the short-term until there is another viable alternative -- which wind is unlikely to provide, in my own opinion and looking at the estimates myself. 

Small windfarms have already lead to problems in many other industries. For your country alone, I know an off-shore windfarm did some fairly serious damage to the mussel industry, for example, and ended up causing significant price increases in that good across Europe -- and that was just one impact looked after. Minor attempts in a Canadian province to introduce green energy has caused energy costs to soar to many times their original costs. Cost-benefit analyses and risk assessments in the past have pointed to wind energy not being as good an investment as we would like, without extensive government funding. Essentially, the ROI is in question, and tends to be overstated or ignores the amount of government subsidization required to make the ROI worthwhile for companies since there is a political, activist and mild populist will that it be described as such. 

In fact, academic studies indicate that the only tried and true method of reducing carbon emissions is... nuclear power. "Renewable" energy resources require extensive support from other energy systems, so they have not been assosiated with a reduction in emissions. To get to the levels where wind power would be building upon wind power would require astronomical levels of energy and resources to get there -- we might have to build a slew of nuclear reactors just to manage the requirements! 

Nuclear, on the other hand, is part of the basis for the massive economic, intellectual and social growth during the past few decades. It has shown to be better on handling green crisis issues than anything renewable, and it has a demonstrated ability to support large, developed nations. Capital and labour requirements are well within our abilities, it's already a tried and true technology, and research over the past few years regarding reprocessing have been promising. The advancements in the last thirty years alone have developed safer, cleaner forms of technology. This all comes from economics journals, who are dependant on true experts in the field for this information to be provided.


----------



## 22575 (May 23, 2011)

entropie said:


> I think about that differently. People always tried to get the pragmatism into me in life that says, as long as the new technology doesnt exist, you have to settle for less. I rather tried to look for what is there and then start to combine and to create. I am a creator at heart and alot of this creations you do are insecure, irrational or farout. Did you know, they build a stone bunker at the sea, where there are tides. Then they had an opening for the water on the bottom. Every time the water rushes in from the tide and then rushes out it does produce an air current. That they use to power a turbine and produce electrical current.
> 
> Bottom line is, I like to speculate and not to end the day with the words "thats realism cant change that".


This is a very good viewpoint, one which breeds innovation and I have much respect for it. I carry this perspective myself, and it is why I am supportive of research into nuclear energy as well as solar, wind, hydro, etc. I believe that by investing in these technologies we may develop creative solutions to the problems that are brought up within each one. Like how the problem of nuclear waste is being solved through reprocessing methods. Only a diverse "energy portfolio" will be able to stand up to the tests of economic as well as environmental impacts. To advocate the total exclusion of nuclear energy in the world is just as bad as advocating the total exclusion of solar energy, it is eliminating a potential solution.

Perhaps at this time it is indeed better for Germany to stray away form nuclear energy and invest in alternative technologies given the politics, economics, and geographical resources of that country; I hold no issue with this. What I do hold issue with is the reactionary force that exists against nuclear energy and no other energy source (and this is a world-wide phenomena, not just in Germany), thus why it is easier on public opinion to shut down nuclear plants and effectively replace them with coal plants which can be more damaging to the environment and public health. But as @entropie pointed out, the debate in Germany has been going on for a number of years now, with numerous incidents of the failures of nuclear energy and the plan is to eventually replace nuclear power with wind farms and the like; this in my view is a respectable goal.


----------



## 22575 (May 23, 2011)

By the way, there are a number of interesting alternative energy projects that I would like to mention and ask if anyone has any more information on these or other projects.

In my home state there is solar project involving mirrors re-directing light to heat up salt in a tower in the Mojave Desert:
The Solar Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This one was being discussed in another thread, gasification of waste:
Gasification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## JackSparroww (Dec 10, 2010)

absentminded said:


> All quotes are from @entropie.
> 
> First, before I respond to your comments to me directly, I'm going to attempt to correct your woeful misunderstandings regarding nuclear chemistry and energy.
> 
> First, the principle source of power in nuclear energy isn't gamma radiation (which is really just a general term for photons-technically, you're being bombarded with gamma radiation daily from the sun, and several kilotons of radioisotopes located in the Earth's core) but free neutrons and energized nuclei generating heat. Heat energy powered by gamma radiation would be incredibly inefficient because much of it would pass through the optically transparent water. Remember, gamma rays are just really high energy light.


Thank you for that lovely correction, I hope you someday receive the respect you have earned for your superior intelligence.
Of course you were right its alpha and beta radiation, if your highness allow me to use this very general description.

That we are bombarded with radiation on a daily basis I know, it's the dosage I am afraid about.



> Second, Plutonium 239, when used as a fuel in nuclear reactors, breaks apart into two atoms of lighter elements. This means there is no more Plutonium and no more radiation after the reaction has taken place. Sometimes lighter radioisotopes are formed, but this is rare because it adds less entropy to the system and they usually have half-lives of a couple days/hours.


That's what I have said, the end result is radioactive waste + a lot of contaiminated material used in the process.



> Third, the properties of nuclear waste are already well-understood and many have established economic value entirely outside of the nuclear industry. Bet you didn't know there's nuclear "waste" in your home. Americium-241 is found in your smoke detector. Don't believe me? Look it up, or better yet, peel your smoke detector open and point a Geiger counter at it. You see, Americium-241 emits alpha particles (basically an atom of Helium-4 without any electrons) and these particles ionize the air, which allows a current to flow. When smoke particles enter the detector, they decrease the ionization, changing the amount of current that can flow, which makes your smoke detector sound the alarm.


You may laugh but we dont have smoke detectors in many houses in Germany. I dont know why that is so. My theory is that people would be afraid they are being spied on. 

You said the properties of nuclear waste are very well understood, but that means nothing. Since you didnt have a way to get rid of the stuff or stop the radioactive decay. The reusage of waste is of course a good thing, but it still does produce waste again that has to be stored somewhere. 



> Fourth, it is an established fact of modern physics that the atoms of every element are somewhat unstable. This leads to the concept of "nuclear binding energy" which is the energy that holds an atom's nucleus together. The graph below shows that Iron-56 has the highest nuclear binding energy of any elemental isotope.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


You are talking about a Brutreactor (breeder reactor). This indeed a good thing, it's supposed to create new fissionable material during the process of fission. To my knowledge they are so dangerous that even France has abandonned them by now. I only now of China who plans to build some. It's in theory a good thing, cause it uses the fissionable material more efficient. The problem is that it still does produce radioactive waste. If it wouldnt, why wouldnt we have more of the reactors ?



> No. I'm saying that bananas are naturally rich in potassium. This means Potassium-40 which has a half-life of 1.2 billion years. A single banana bombards you with more radiation than a properly shielded nuclear power plant.


That doesnt justify to produce more radioactive waste, plus the dosage is different with nuclear power plant waste.



> Also, you seem to have greatly misconstrued the concept of "half-life". The half-life of a decaying substance (radioactive or chemically unstable) is how long it takes for half of it to decay. After one half-life, half of the material has decayed. After two half-lives, three-quarters of the material has decayed.


Yea, what did I miscontrue by saying Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 yrs ? Plutonium-244 even has a half-life of 80 million years.




> Depending on "innovations" that may never come is inherently bad policy. Many of the innovations that have come out of the photovoltaics industry are dependent on ultra exotic alloys like Cadmium Telluride and Copper Indium Selenide.


You can never tell what innovations may come and what not. I thoughts its american nature to poker, I dont really understand why you guys are so closed up towards the renewable market. There so much more than photovoiltaics, I came to understand America is pretty good in geothermics or solarthermics. Well these are markets, opportunities to earn some money in the future, dunno why they are ignored so vastly.





> The bolded text is my problem with this comment. Return on investment is good because governments the world over give tax credits to alternative energy companies, artificially bringing the cost down and return on investment up.


Well you of course need to motivate people to change, otherwise they wont do it. But I can see that this might be a problem concerning the momentary condition of the american government. 

Of course it's not the solution to subsidize everything, I'd rather like it if people would do it out from the good of their hearts. But thats prolly never gonna happen.



> Electromagnetic bearings are powered by what? Electricity. What are you trying to generate? Electricity. Why are you using your product to try and generate more of your product? More importantly, do you have any idea how strong a magnetic field you'd need for a bearing in a multi-ton wind turbine that is off balance and potentially spinning at high speeds? You'd use up all the electricity you'd generate in powering the bearings. I'm preparing to study engineering and have a very good grounding in electromagnetism: I know whereof I speak.


You can look for reference in the product portfolio of the company Enercon. Its possible by now to use them in WEC's and still generate a positive energy output. Its a thing intresting for offshore-parks or WECs in hazardous regions. 



> Second, how would you store this power? Flywheels? They suck. Batteries? They suck more. Chemical energy? Aside from hydrocarbons, there aren't any effective storage methods that don't have problems with storage densities, etc. And storing energy in hydrocarbons defeats the purpose of the wind farm.


here are some ways: water storage power station, wave power or tidal power storage power station (Hubspeicherkraftwerk in german, there aint even english articles about it on the webz :/), Battery pss, compressed air pss, solarthermic pss... there are countless new theories and ideas on the webz




> I was merely making a joke centered on a well-known fact that there are large populations in New York and California that are both highly liberal and relatively ignorant of the things they constantly chime on about.


Well what's well-known in America, mustnt be well known in the rest of the world.



Khar said:


> My apologies if any of this sounded offensive, confrontational, angry or so forth. When writing I adopt a neutralized form of speaking and tend to avoid the use of smilies or language which would show I am trying not to be confrontational, since it takes up a good deal of time to do that. Sometimes my word choice can be questionable, and sometimes it appears I am being unyielding -- but my posts are always open for scrutiny in all ways. I could always be wrong.


Sure thing, I just didnt understand why you made it sound as if nothing happened in Fukushima. You were the Fukushima guy right ? I start to get things confused here :/.



> This post was from the point of view of pro-nuclear power use.


Wasnt hard to notice, until I posted there wasnt really any post pro nuclear usage, whats a thing I dont understand since we have a lot of educated people here.



> Second, I don't think I will be posting again in this thread. It is not out of disinterest, I just don't know if this discussion is going to go anywhere, for reasons I mentioned following the first quote.


it wont be prolly going anywhere. I wasnt able to convince americans in the 30 pages long thread on typologycentral aswell. Of course you could say I cant be conviced aswell and it's true I am really stuborn, it's a very german thing. I've learnt in my 3 years on typeC that americans actually are pretty open and accepting beings, normally you can always convince them with sound logic. And the logic "it does produce waste you cant get rid of" would be sound enough to do that. But its not enough somehow the topic seems to be a like a needle in the side to an american. I think I do understand that a bit. First people spoke about global warming, then the reduction of CO2. America was using a per capita volume of energy of I think 13,000 kWH per year per head, while similiar countries like denmark or germany used the half. I as a child was always wondering why in american christmas movie they kept the light on in every room in the huge house. It made no sense since nobody was in the room. It's a thing I learnt differently, being the child of a war generation. Our parents needed to save their ressources more so I have grown up differently.

But that being said, first you had global warming, then the CO2 debate, then Sarah Palin and after that you get to know that the state is bankrupt. I think I can feel with you why you are somewhat closed-minded towards another new topic. But still I know that isnt normally the american nature, at least from what I know and that may very well be wrong.





> Do not mix up my words. Typically, this style of breaking down posts line by line leads to such distortions, and I do not like my words being twisted into something they are not.


I hadnt the feeling I mixed them up, I am sorry tho when I did, am no native speaker; sucks at times.



> This may sound somewhat frank and even aggressive, but stating you are not going to be swayed from your position means you have come here to preach, rather than discuss. This is antithetical to the forum ideal. In complaining about having wasted your time on another site, you came here, essentially, to waste ours.


That's an intresting conclusion, a bit surprising for me and not the only conclusion you can draw. I didnt intentionally came here to waste your time, my forum is down at the moment thats my problem. The thread in the other forum I did half a year ago and the topic was settled for me but I stumbled upon this thread again right here. 

I am not discussing my opinion that is true. Like I told you my opinion on this matter wont change, as long as there is waste, nuclear energy is no option for me. I am still answering out of a different reason. As I stated above I have come to get to know americans as a very open minded nation and over the last years I have made many friends over on the forum. Many people think like me alike, I am repped often or thanked like its called here and that shows me that lets me feel I have the heart at the right place.

It is important for my personal growth to reflect myself and I do that a lot with the feedback about myself thru others. This topic now was the first time in my life me and the people on the forum completly disagreed. It was an experience that didnt happen before, I was completly alone with my opinion, somewhat angry calling people names and stupid and I havent really gotten over it still. It's a learning experience for me andf when I got here I thought I'll do another comment and see if the results I had gotten elsewhere where just forum-related or a mentality. I do know now its a mentality.



> Withstand does not have to mean that it came through it in one piece, although that is one of the definitions. In the face of incredibly trying circumstances, it offerred strong resistance (and I believe successfully) given what it was subjected to. Given the situation, it came through remarkably well. I noticed you directly avoided discussing the fact that this is an incredibly and shockingly severe situation, and you would do well not to in the future.


I havent understood that.



> I feel you are heavily overstating the impacts here (to be honest, I think the biased display of pro and cons is somewhat odd alone, as there are many positives to nuclear energy). No one was killed because of radioactive side effects, they were killed because they were in a disaster area. The material which spewed from the reactor into the surrounding area decays by 9% each day. This was no where close to being a Chernobyl. Becquerel readings in the area had already reached double what humans naturally produce a few scant weeks after the disaster and continued to fall, but still required governments to leap out and do something (to make people feel safe). Comparing a banana to the current radioactivity levels of that area is not far off, nor would it have been very far off two or three weeks following the crisis, when they were forced to evacuate the area. Much of the potential damage was contained.


I am getting emotional because the true facts are often masked in language in the discussion and that makes me very angry. I am a very direct, no bullshit speaker and sentences like "nobody got killed of radiation but because of living in a disaster area" makes me wanna explode because it makes me, an otherwise very rational and calm person, so angry you cant imagine.

It tho shows the intelligence of the person I am dealing with aswell. 










> You'll notice that I did not include my field before in this discussion, because my credentials are irrelevant to a discussion relating to something outside my experience or purview. Unless you are a nuclear engineer or an engineering physicist, I will treat your remarks the same I would treat mine or others. In Canada, to become a nuclear engineer requires years more professional education and training, and typically proponents with that degree of experience calling the technology safe means I would typically agree. They know there are problems, and they are working to solve them.


Tho you guys like to hide behind your education to me it means nothing. I dont even care about your personality I just read what you write. Black eyes, white paper.



> Since you are an engineer you should be experienced with dealing with people who call out about risks and such who are not in the field they are talking about.
> To use a well known recent example, remember when we started up the LHC, and people believed it was going to be the end of the world? That was according to the "expert" opinion of a chemist. Simply calling yourself an engineer does not mean you know "better" than others about how it works -- the beginning of your post was a somewhat skewed high-school level explanation of how nuclear energy and DNA works, for example, and likely educated few here. I mean no offense by stating this, simply stating that your audience is likely a bit more educated than you may believe given your explanation.


That's true my audience is usually more educated than me and they like to point that out to me always because I dont explain things in University language. I can assure you tho that I went my 6 years to University aswell and earned my degree rightfully ( tho I prolly was always more intrested in doing other things besides learning ). Energy is not my speciality aswell, I am a robot and automotive engineer.

Regarding the education of the people here, it may be high on paper, but in my personal opinion they still have a lot to learn. Individual thinking for starters would be a good idea and not reiterating quotations from wikipedia like an automaton. I am convinced that you always got to learn a few things about life, since people already think of you being intelligent because you have a PhD nowadays, it shows how manipulative society once has become. Back then in old Germany there was a story about a prisoner putting on a uniform of a prussian captain and then posing as such. He commanded a whole company for 3 months without anyone noticing it. That my friend is intelligence


----------



## Out0fAmmo (Nov 30, 2010)

Nuclear is our best source of power right now. We would be foolish to throw it away due to some poor planning/engineering on GE/Japan's part.

I wonder how long it will take for the public to get over the paranoia associated with nuclear power.


----------



## absentminded (Dec 3, 2010)

@entropie 

I'm apologize if I have come across as arrogant. That was not my intention.

Your arrogance, however, is thinly veiled. You didn't come here to learn and you didn't come to debate. You came to preach and your demeanor demonstrates that clearly.

Rather than elaborate the concepts behind how one would design an electromagnetic bearing for higher efficiency, you refer me to the product portfolio of some alternative energy start-up, suggesting that you have no appreciable understanding of the subject matter. This indicates to me that you are accustomed to commenting on topics you have little understanding of. Your referral to "theories and concepts" for energy storage schemes implies similar, for lack of a better or kinder word, ignorance.



> This means that we can extract energy from every single type of nuclear waste by breaking it apart with neutrons, protons or alpha particles. This is a well understood process. It is quite simple (or so I've read) to design a plant that uses minor actinides (nuclear "waste") as fuel. The problem is that the government (both German and American) has banned the construction of such plants. France has several if I recall correctly.


I said very clearly in the quote above that breeder reactors break down nuclear waste, resulting in a net reduction of radioactive material and you ignored me claiming that France has abandoned them due to dangers. *France has not closed a single breeder reactor.* The data is out and in the open. France has performed safety evaluations of nuclear reactors in regions of high seismic activity, but not one plant has been shut down, nor has the idea been considered.

The primary reason other governments have banned such reactors is a result of unfounded paranoia.

I don't plan on responding to any rebuttal you may provide. Again, I apologize if I came across as arrogant, this was not my intent.


----------



## Ludendorff (May 30, 2011)

In 100 years, we will dearly regret ever using fossil fules. In 2000 years, we may regret nuclear power. However, barring a collapse of modern day society, I don't see why nuclear power is that dangerous. The Japan crisis is a testament to how indestructable these places are. 9.0 earthquake AND a tsunami AND loss of backup generators, and no meltdown??? 110% safe, much more so than coal. Ending climate change trumps all safety concerns anyway, I think.


----------



## Cover3 (Feb 2, 2011)

Khar said:


> This was no where close to being a Chernobyl.


Japan Raises Radiation Disaster Alert to Highest Level, Matching Chernobyl - Bloomberg


----------



## Khar (May 21, 2011)

Thanks for posting that, @_Cover3_ . It effectively demonstrates my claims (I hope that is what you were trying to do...?). In short, my comment is sound. This was no Chernobyl, and below I will link evidence as to why. 

For those wondering, @_Cover3_ 's article shows that they merely raised the alert level to that of Chernobyl's, but did not state that this was Chernobyl-esque. In fact, they show many ways things are different, and is not a sign they are the same level of disaster in the context of this thread's topic. His own article states:



> *Fukushima has so far released about 10 percent as much radiation as Chernobyl*, Japan’s nuclear safety agency said in a statement. The leaks won’t be stopped in “a few days or weeks,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.





> “*In contrast with Chernobyl, we have been able to avoid direct health risks,”* Edano said at a public event in Tokyo. “*The assessment level of 7 may be the same, but in terms of its shape and contents, the process has been different.” *





> *The disaster in Ukraine spewed debris as high as 9 kilometers into the air and released radiation 200 times the volume of the combined bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945*, according to a 2006 report commissioned by Europe’s Green Party.
> *Fewer people have been exposed to high levels of radiation from Fukushima than Chernobyl*, said Richard Wakeford, a professor at the Dalton Nuclear Institute at the University of Manchester in the U.K. *“The important thing is monitoring and protecting people on the ground,” Wakeford said by telephone. *
> The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale rates nuclear accidents in terms of their effects on health and the environment, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which helped set up the system. Each of its seven steps represents a ten-fold increase in severity.
> *A 7 rating means there has been a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures*,” according to the INES factsheet.





> *The assessment is based on the combined severity of the situation at reactor Nos. 1, 2 and 3, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA. *


In short, the article states that in some ways, including some radiation levels in some areas, this may be the same and outpace Chernobyl. However, this is different in a lot of ways. For example, there was no mass explosion, not the same extent of radiation spread, a lot fewer casualties, and so forth, under far more trying circumstances. Further evidence. 



> The new ranking signifies a "major accident" that includes widespread effects on the environment and health, according to the Vienna-based IAEA. *But Japanese officials played down any health effects and stressed that the harm caused by Chernobyl still far outweighs that caused by the Fukushima plant.*​





> *Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, said the revision was not a cause for worry, that it had to do with the overall release of radiation and was not directly linked to health dangers. He said most of the radiation was released early in the crisis and that the reactors still have mostly intact containment vessels surrounding their nuclear cores.*
> The change was "not directly connected to the environmental and health effects," Unesaki said.
> *"Judging from all the measurement data, it is quite under control. It doesn't mean that a significant amount of release is now continuing."*​


Let us continue looking at articles.

*Fukushima vs. Chernobyl: Still Not Equal*

_The Japanese government on Tuesday raised the rating of the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant to a level 7. That's the highest possible level on the international scale used to evaluate the seriousness of nuclear incidents. The only other nuclear incident to earn that rating: the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine._

_The decision to bump up the rating from 5 to 7 was prompted by new data on the amount of radiation released at the plant in the early days of the crisis — not by any recent change in the plant's status._

_Some 370,000 terabecquerels of radioactive iodine and cesium have been released at Fukushima — more than officials originally thought. (A terabecquerel equals 1 trillion becquerels, a measure for radiation emissions.) Most of it spewed into the atmosphere in the early days of the crisis, and radiation levels have generally been declining._

_Though Fukushima and Chernobyl are both level 7 nuclear accidents, the health consequences in Japan to date are much less severe. In part, that's because far more radiation was released at Chernobyl. So far, Fukushima Dai-ichi has released about one-tenth of the amount of radioactive material that escaped Chernobyl, according to an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency._

_At Chernobyl, an entire reactor exploded, sending up a massive fire and radioactive plume that dispersed radiation over a wide area. The reactor at the Soviet plant was not surrounded by any containment structure, so radiation escaped freely._

_People near Chernobyl were not warned against drinking contaminated milk, and many residents later developed thyroid cancer. Two Chernobyl plant workers died on the night of the accident, and 28 more people died within a few weeks from radiation poisoning. Over the long term, several thousand more people were put at risk for cancer._

_Fukushima has also experienced explosions and fires, and some of the reactors' containment vessels may be damaged, but the highly radioactive cores remain largely protected. Much of the radioactive material already released in Japan has been carried out to sea away from populated areas, thanks to prevailing winds. And the government moved quickly to evacuate people from risky areas and to keep contaminated food out of the stores._

_Some workers at Fukushima have been exposed to high levels of radiation since the crisis began. The long-term health effects of that exposure remain unknown, but there have been no known deaths associated with the crisis to date._

_The World Health Organization confirmed Tuesday there was "very little" public health risk outside the 18-mile evacuation zone around the plant._

Fukushima Daiichi is Not Chernobyl (Fortunately)

*The Fortunate Differences*

_The critical situation at Fukushima Daiichi, although very serious, does not come close to Chernobyl in terms of magnitude and risk. There is reason for concern, but not for panic, particularly on the West Coast of the USA. Most of the plant and surrounding area well within safe radiation levels, despite occasional “lethal” readings._
_The international press has been quick to report the radiation levels in Fukushima Daiichi as many tens or hundreds of times the level of natural background radiation we are normally exposed to. Normal background radiation is about 0.2 rems per year. Although technically true, the radiation levels the average human can tolerate before showing the first signs of Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) are about 500 the normal background dose or about 100 rems. At that rate, symptoms can be “mild” (headache, pain, nausea, diarrhea) and rarely result in death, and the risk of contracting cancer rises less than 1percent. A dose starts becoming very lethal at 300 rems, and at 600 rems is a guaranteed painful death._
_Exposure is cumulative, so one exposure of 120 rems in five minutes with nothing the rest of the year is the same as a constant monthly exposure of 10 rems. Although technically the same accumulated dose, the body that is exposed to lower but constant levels of radiation may have lower risk of ARS and cancer. Like wise, exposure to two large doses of 60 rems per year is likely less risky than a single dose of 120 rems. The more time and lower intensity between exposures, the more human body cells are able to recover. It also makes a difference if the dose is distributed evenly across the entire body or in a certain part. Exposure to 120 rems in one finger may increase the risk of affecting the limb in question, but will likely not have a chance of giving the patient generalized ARS._
_The average levels reported within Fukushima Daiichi are still below 25 rems per YEAR. This is 25 times above the maximum suggested annual dose, but still very much within safe exposure levels. Astronauts and lab technicians are often exposed to similar levels. Although not as high, frequent fliers, pilots, and anybody who has had an MRI are likely 100 percent to 500 percent above the usual recommended annual dose. As a point of comparison, some workers and firefighters in Chernobyl were exposed to 300-600 rems in a matter of HOURS, and died as a consequence of that. An estimated 50,000 – 100,000 people around Chernobyl are thought to have been exposed to an annual dose between 25 – 150 rems in a matter of days or weeks, resulting in less than 250 “official” (I note the lack of credibility in Soviet statistics, although many other studies tend to confirm the numbers) cases of ARS._
_The press reports MAXIMUM rates in Fukushima Daiichi to be within the range of “Lethal”. Again, this is technically true but needs to be put into the context of how widespread and how constant this dose was. The highest readings came from directly above the compromised reactors. The equivalent of about 325 rems up to 800+ rems per year was briefly recorded, but this reading was not found to sustain itself for more than an a few minutes. The average recording at the edge of the plant’s perimeter is equivalent to about 25-50 rems per year._
_The most important things to consider when differentiating the conditions at Fukushima Daiichi as compared to those at Chernobyl, are the integrity of the isolation layers and capacity of the emergency cooling systems to operate. Chernobyl was caused by serious design flaws coupled with gross human error. Reactor #4 literally lost its roof, and the emergency systems were instantly fried and lost for ever. In contrast the structure at Fukushima Daiichi bravely withstood a class 9.0 earthquake, a tsunami with 7m waves, fires, and hydrogen induced explosions. Cracks appeared in the structure and exposed radioactive material to the atmosphere, but this was comparatively minimal. Critically, the emergency cooling pumps, flooded by the tsunami are already partially restored and doing their job._
_The two tables compare the individual risk scenarios and help illustrate the thresholds of radiation exposure. For balanced reading of the situation in Fukushima Daiichi, I recommend the __World Nuclear News__ site._

*Comparative Tables*










*Understanding Relative Radiation Levels*










Here is an extensive report from the CASEnergy Coalition which confirms this was not Chernobyl.

Most importantly -- all those effected by evacuation, will be returning _home_.


----------



## Cover3 (Feb 2, 2011)

No that wasn't what I was trying to do, I remember having seen a bloomberg article clearly stating that it was on par, or at least would be with chernobyl, but I posted this article in a hurry as I was going to sleep. At any rate, I sincerely apologize to people for posting this old article (12 April) without double-checking it.


Here are more recent articles Soil contamination from Fukushima crisis comparable to Chernobyl: study ? Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion and Fukushima Containment Chambers Probably Damaged, Computer Simulation Shows - Bloomberg

here's a quote from bloomberg's article:


> “Unfortunately I can’t find any consistency in the report,” Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University, said by phone. “Tepco hasn’t released sufficient radionuclide analysis of leaked contaminated water. Now they’ve confirmed fuel rods melted, they should also release more data including plutonium and uranium readings.”


The ''further'' and ''looking at articles'' links are from April 12th also and mirror the article I posted prior to this post.

The ''Fukushima Daiichi is Not Chernobyl (Fortunately)'' link (and the 2 diagrams which were taken from it) were taken off a blog from March 19th

The WNN(World Nuclear News) site is a site exclusively dedicated to promoting nuclear energy.

And finally, the last link contains a whopping ''extensive report'' consisting of a diagram by an organization called CASEnergy, which was founded in 2006 by NEI(Nuclear Energy Institute), a quick check-up on this institute reveals this (taken from their wikipage):


> The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) is a nuclear industry lobbying group in the United States.





> In 2006, NEI founded the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASEnergy) to help build local support around the country for new nuclear build.


I guess we can't trust TEPCO as far as we can throw them, now I really need to sleep, peace out.


----------



## Paeter (May 18, 2011)

entropie said:


> True but that footprint is too big, I cant think so pragmatically or programatically.


No such thing.


----------



## Paeter (May 18, 2011)

entropie said:


> Bottom line is, I like to speculate and not to end the day with the words "thats realism cant change that".


I like to speculate too! I never said we shouldn't be looking for better alternatives and I'm hopeful for things like cold fusion and so on. I think there are *possible *alternatives on the horizon and that they should be thoroughly investigated and brought to fruition if they work. Creative thinking is wonderful and leads to further progress for humanity. Unfortunately, creative ideas, speculation and thinking don't produce energy though. Something _has _to be done in reality and as technology stands *today*, my contention is that nuclear energy is the only other energy source. We cannot see into the future and know that something else will pop up_ for certain._ If something doesn't, it's nuclear or mass starvation for the poor and a radical decline in standard of living for everyone else. I'm not saying there's _nothing _that can be done, I'm saying that with current knowledge, the only practical solution for the time being is nuclear. You misunderstand me, sir. In my original post I stated that nuclear is the only power source that can provide the volume; the necessary megawatt hours in total that is demanded at a cheap enough price. What you have to factor into tidal, solar, wind and other alternative energy is the cost to utilize it and the total amount of megawatt hours it would be able to produce if fully economically utilized. As far as I know, the other alternatives will not produce enough energy in total. We will always have _some _energy, there's no problem there, we have plenty of sources, but how much total megawatt hours of energy we have and at what price is the problem. Replacing the megawatt hours of oil is the problem. Oil energy is just so incredibly cheap and abundant the world has become accustom to cheap energy and the population has expanded with it. It's not the end of energy, it's just potentially the end of cheap energy. No one told the developing countries a hundred years ago not to use oil for cheap energy because it leaves an environmental footprint, I think it's totally evil to consider the environmental footprint over the well-being of human beings. Developing countries have a right to develop too.

Environmentalism is wholly anti-human and anti-civilization. The fact we leave a footprint means we are prosperous. I'll never understand why some turtles and frogs are more important than human life, human happiness, and human prosperity. The environment should be conserved _only _to promote human life not _in spite_ of human life.

I do not take kindly to someone's existential notions of what _is _and_ is not_ an "expectable" level of human footprint on the planet. There is none. To say that there is, is to deny human beings the right to promote their own life.

"It's as if the socialists discovered that their plan creates poverty, so they decided to change﻿ their name to environmentalist to make poverty the goal." - Lew Rockwell

Honestly, though, it's not a big deal to me because I live in Australia. I'm not going to die and my standard of living will be OK whatever way the world goes. It'd just be better with nuclear energy. I imagine that the countries that do use nuclear energy will be so prosperous in comparison to the countries banning nuclear energy, that they will get the message. If not, people in these countries will struggle through life while those that use nuclear energy will continue to surge forward and advance.

Central Australia is essentially a worthless giant dessert no one cares about except aboriginals and hippies. Dump all the damn nuclear waste you want there, deep underground, for the next 1000 years, for a fee of course!


----------



## Khar (May 21, 2011)

Cover3 said:


> No that wasn't what I was trying to do, I remember having seen a bloomberg article clearly stating that it was on par, or at least would be with chernobyl, but I posted this article in a hurry as I was going to sleep. At any rate, I sincerely apologize to people for posting this old article (12 April) without double-checking it.
> 
> 
> Here are more recent articles Soil contamination from Fukushima crisis comparable to Chernobyl: study ? Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion and Fukushima Containment Chambers Probably Damaged, Computer Simulation Shows - Bloomberg
> ...


 
The one article is improperly sourced. It lead to a blog instead of a news article, where the quotes are from (it will hence be easy to find). I will be correcting it shortly. It too is from the 12th of April.

The blog was meant as a summary of the information of the data available on April 12th. I was unaware of any problems with WNN (she sourced much of her article from that site), and hence I guess we will also have to ignore many of the articles which came out on the 12th -- sites like NPR and so forth were using the WPA as a news source, of which WNN is heavily related. Credence with news organizations when it comes to science has always been spotty. 

Unfortunately, I had hoped the CASE one was a full link. I searched the web for a full version because I have full academic access to a lot of various articles. Given concerns of it being biased, I will drop it as a source (I have to admit, I find it kind of funny that it was proven as such from a site like Wikipedia in an argument predicated on media's ability to report news, haha!). Unfortunately, most direct comparisons are either old, or come from sites like this. 

I can give you some recent news articles from the AFP and CNN, however. Here is the AFP one. Here is the CNN one, where it talks about comparisons being slammed. The expert talking about it has his opinion's fleshed out more here. It should be noted that most articles state that Fukusima Daiichi is the "worst nuclear incident since Chernobyl," effectively demonstrating that Chernobyl is not equal in caliber, but worse than the incident in Japan. 

Fukushima Daiichi was bad. Not as bad as Chernobyl. Yes, some parts of the Japanese catastrophe were worse than the Russian ones, but overall? Newspapers, experts, they are all saying the same thing -- this is the worst *since* Chernobyl. This is not Chernobyl. Your sources, my sources, inadequate and adequate, all state the same thing; this is not Chernobyl. There are other measures of a disaster than soil radioactivity levels, even for the environment and radiation levels. That is my only conclusion I drew from all this in the section of my post you originally posted in this thread. 

Soil samples were expected to be worse than Chernobyl's, not equal, as previous articles stated (this is actually better news than I thought, although I am sure levels will rise). Many of the other salient facts remain from the beginning of these links. Your own links, for example, have the following quotes, demonstrating this is not Chernobyl. 



> The size of the contaminated areas in the Fukushima crisis is one-tenth to one-fifth of those polluted in the Chernobyl disaster, Kawata said.
> 
> While the expected radiation exposure from 1.48 million becquerels of cesium is around five millisieverts a year, below the government’s benchmark of 20 millisieverts for evacuation orders, decontamination will still be necessary before evacuees can return as radioactive cesium binds strongly to soil, making it hard to reduce radiation levels, Kawata said.





> The Fukushima plant 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo hasn’t yet released as much radiation as Chernobyl, Junichi Matsumoto, a Tepco general manager, said yesterday. The company doesn’t expect large releases in future.


There was no explosion comparable to Chernobyl (the top was literally blown off), the impacted area is still smaller, no one died in Japan as a direct result of the nuclear component of this disaster. Simply reading about Chernobyl, where it is still abandoned, and to Japan, where people will be able to return following decontamination, demonstrates these are very different incidents. Given the slow nature of Japan's, it could be handled a lot better than the crisis with Chernobyl. The costs and manpower required are much higher at Chernobyl. WHO reports thousands could die as a result of Chernobyl, but no such thing as been said about Fukushima Daiichi. Up to 60,000 cases of cancer are attributed to Chernobyl, and dozens of countries report impacts from it.

I'm not sure about TEPCO either. Apologies for the lack of smilies -- I don't like the set here on PerC, so if this seems cold, imagine a smilie or something following it, since I probably would use them on other sites to mitigate the cold sound. I have trouble sometimes separating out normal forum posts with writing academically (which is second habit to me now).


----------



## JackSparroww (Dec 10, 2010)

@Paeter 
Well the two of us most definitly come from different Worlds in our way of thinking .

I understand your opinion, but dont share it, there are some factors that change things for me. For example, I agree that human life is the most important on Earth. But in the big picture the Earth is an eco-system and there could be reciprocal reactions happening when you kill all the turtles. Of course you can only preserve the natural life to such a great extent, at some point human life gets more important. But if nuclear waste is a necessary evil, I doubt that.

You said that renewable energy concepts wouldnt suffice to constantly give of energy. Well thats the thing why you'd need not to only build ne wind energy converters, but an energy distribution system and storage facilities aswell. Energy cant be "stored" of course, but it can be transformed into water energy for example. If you have these storages you can build an intelligent network and distribute energy according to the demand. In fact people are working towards that goal in my country at the moment.

It's not the idea to burn more fossile fuel but lesser nuclear power, if we cant manage it with renewables will kepp the reactors necessary.

The thing is that an energy efficient behaviour by people already can do a lot to preserve some energy and thats an attitude that comes with the whole green movement. It creates a new consciencse for people, one I am experiencing in my neighbourhood all day atm and one that I really like (like every second house a solar or solarthermic panel already and my neighbours build a small WEC). I have seen documentaries about places in America where equal things are happening and I convinced that reaction cant be stopped no more.

The fear regarding countires not doing nuclear will get poor wasnt very well thought thru. Here's a real problem a morale twist you will not get so easily rid of, even if you had renewables. Germany was before China came ( but sometimes overtakes China again ), the country on the world that exports the most goods to the outside world. That means when we get renewables, we'll still build nuclear power plants in your country and earn money with it.

And thats a really dark morale twist that I find baleful. 






absentminded said:


> @entropie
> 
> I'm apologize if I have come across as arrogant. That was not my intention.
> 
> ...


Enercon is no startup it is the largest german WEC manufacturer. The design for magnet bearings you can find everywhere in the internet, who am I your papa ?

Regarding France shutting down breeders, here are some links. One breeder even had an INES 2 event:

Superphénix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Phénix - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's intresting that in the english wikipedia articles the dangers of the reactors, namely malfunctions or INES events (International Nuclear Event Scale) are just barely mentioned, sometimes only as a sidenote. Or that the Superphenix didnt produce any energy the last 10 years because they couldnt control the reaction. This kinda shows a very different information policy.


----------



## 22575 (May 23, 2011)

@Khar 
I would be very careful in regards to the casualty figures for Fukushima vs Chernobyl, even though the amount of radiation from Fukushima may not be classified as "lethal" it will most likely have significant adverse effects on the local populations. In the Chernobyl disaster about 30 people were killed directly (a few of them actually died in a helicopter crash which was unrelated to the radiation, helicopter hit some crane lines), but we are only beginning to see the real death toll from the increased cancer rates. Estimates vary anywhere from a couple thousand to a million people being significantly affected by the radiation.


----------



## DarklyValentine (Mar 4, 2010)

I think mankind be sad.
germany too as I am not certain how many gigawatts (or the one up for that i forget cos iam getting olde and senile)they require to become self sustaining.

What got me with the german bollix is that they will rely heavily on france nuclear capability.

Although per capita I forget who invest the most on renwewables - china for cash alone but, the germains and the british crumpets and wot nots and us scottish devils - oki we are awash with wind, per capita are heding in the right direction - oki miybe not southern england greedy lot.

There are enough renweables the world over, there is just not enough will - Actually there is - we are just told by those idiots we vote for incinerating the planet at a phenomenal rate in the manner known as _gobble up_ is the way to go. meekly.


So for you commercial raving loons intent on raping mother urth shame on yous all
I didnt vote for that,
No sane person votes for that
are you a lie, 
a misnomer
fib

Yet, the odd thingie is they continue as so.

My thoughts on nucleur are well known - should pick up the slack and its repository for the least number of deaths slow or quick...mind you I always wanted to go by_ a ravishing
_

blah blah

Now dont get me started on evil conglomerates and nefarious lying governments


----------



## Cover3 (Feb 2, 2011)

Khar said:


> The one article is improperly sourced. It lead to a blog instead of a news article, where the quotes are from (it will hence be easy to find). I will be correcting it shortly. It too is from the 12th of April.
> 
> The blog was meant as a summary of the information of the data available on April 12th. I was unaware of any problems with WNN (she sourced much of her article from that site), and hence I guess we will also have to ignore many of the articles which came out on the 12th -- sites like NPR and so forth were using the WPA as a news source, of which WNN is heavily related. Credence with news organizations when it comes to science has always been spotty.
> 
> ...


I don't want to see any smilies.

here's a quote from your AFP article


> Earlier this week, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced it would send about 20 international experts to Japan between May 24 and June 2 to conduct a fact-finding mission.


and 

your articles are still old though (19th May) considering the IAEA team arrived the 24th, and suddenly TEPCO admits reactor 2 and 3 have effectively melted down since march, effectively confirming they're full of it.

Also, while your numbers on Chernobyl seem high, I've looked around and it seems you got your stats wrong,

-right after the incident in 1986, Soviet estimates directly related to the incident was anywhere from 2-31.

- UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) said only 64 people died as a result of radiation(2008)

-WHO, in a joint report with IAEA, UNEP, and FAO estimate the deaths might amount to 4,000, not 60,000

- TORCH (The Other Report on Chernobyl) estimates(the one you apparently used) vary from 30,000-60,000 --> this report was made on the request of the European Green Party

So it certainly doesn't seem anything like an exact science, so how can you unilaterally say that Fukushima was ''nothing like Chernobyl'', when after 25 years experts don't even seem to be able to come up with a consensus?(that's giving the TORCH report the benefit of the doubt), it's just not possible to make that judgment a mere two months after the incident, while the thing is still not close to be brought back under control.


----------



## Khar (May 21, 2011)

For pete's sake, I've had enough of this, @_Cover3_ . This is not Chernobyl. Your links say this is nothing like Chernobyl. Your initial response was recognized as invalid by an expert in the field. Your followups show this is not Chernobyl. I have said nothing supporting TEPCO.

Until some new information comes out from a reliable news source which actually states that this is WORSE than Chernobyl entirely, I won't be responding. 



> your articles are still old though (19th May) considering the IAEA team arrived the 24th, and suddenly TEPCO admits reactor 2 and 3 have effectively melted down since march, effectively confirming they're full of it.


No, you are once again, ignoring the content of those articles. 

One was explaining was a class 7 means. Both talked about ambient radiation levels. That level of soil contaimination was expected to be worse, as our articles show, between April 12th and late May. The amount will still remain the same. 

Hell, the article itself had an expert state "The breaches were created awhile ago, so they won’t cause rapid increases in radiation doses." In other words, current radiation levels discussed in my articles? Stand. Regardless of the date beside the byline. 

The problem has to do more with tainted sea water. Which, if you will do a search, will take you to even newer articles still calling this the worst... *since Chernobyl*... as they explain what this means and how the Japanese will have to work to fix it. 



> -right after the incident in 1986, Soviet estimates directly related to the incident was anywhere from 2-31.


Right after this incident, it was... 0! 

Those who died at Fukushima Daiichi or in the area died because of the Tsunami and Earthquake. 



> - UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) said only 64 people died as a result of radiation(2008)


That would still be "dozens." Response is irrelevant. 




> -WHO, in a joint report with IAEA, UNEP, and FAO estimate the deaths might amount to 4,000, not 60,000


Would you kindly begin reading my posts before you respond? As you did in the Canadian Elections thread, you are skewing what I said. I QUITE CLEARLY wrote "WHO reports thousands could die as a result of Chernobyl, but no such thing as been said about Fukushima Daiichi." Not tens of thousands. Four thousand is thousands. I said nothing about WHO saying 60,000 could die.

As a result, this response is irrelevant. 



> - TORCH (The Other Report on Chernobyl) estimates(the one you apparently used) vary from 30,000-60,000 --> this report was made on the request of the European Green Party


Yes, it was. Greenpeace would later release their own report claiming 200,000 people as a result of that. I did not include theirs because they did not go through experts to have it done. 

4,000, 60,000, whichever value you'd like to use. The differences is that one was talking mostly about direct radiation exposure amongst disaster workers and nuclear personnel, and residents. The other was talking about cancer rates (in other words, they are discussing *completely different things*, if you had bothered to read the report). WHO is working on further reports to look at that, where they already attribute 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer:


Approximately 1000 on-site reactor staff and emergency workers were heavily exposed to high-level radiation on the first day of the accident; among the more than 200 000 emergency and recovery operation workers exposed during the period from 1986-1987, an estimated 2200 radiation-caused deaths can be expected during their lifetime.
An estimated five million people currently live in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that are contaminated with radionuclides due to the accident; about 100 000 of them live in areas classified in the past by government authorities as areas of “strict control”. The existing “zoning” definitions need to be revisited and relaxed in light of the new findings.
About 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children and adolescents at the time of the accident, have resulted from the accident’s contamination and at least nine children died of thyroid cancer; however the survival rate among such cancer victims, judging from experience in Belarus, has been almost 99%.
Most emergency workers and people living in contaminated areas received relatively low whole body radiation doses, comparable to natural background levels. As a consequence, no evidence or likelihood of decreased fertility among the affected population has been found, nor has there been any evidence of increases in congenital malformations that can be attributed to radiation exposure.
Poverty, “lifestyle” diseases now rampant in the former Soviet Union and mental health problems pose a far greater threat to local communities than does radiation exposure.
Relocation proved a “deeply traumatic experience” for some 350,000 people moved out of the affected areas. Although 116 000 were moved from the most heavily impacted area immediately after the accident, later relocations did little to reduce radiation exposure.
Persistent myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation have resulted in “paralyzing fatalism” among residents of affected areas.
Ambitious rehabilitation and social benefit programs started by the former Soviet Union, and continued by Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, need reformulation due to changes in radiation conditions, poor targeting and funding shortages.
Structural elements of the sarcophagus built to contain the damaged reactor have degraded, posing a risk of collapse and the release of radioactive dust;
A comprehensive plan to dispose of tons of high-level radioactive waste at and around the Chernobyl NPP site, in accordance with current safety standards, has yet to be defined.
Any good news at Chernobyl, is good news at Fukushima Daiichi. 



> So it certainly doesn't seem anything like an exact science, so how can you unilaterally say that Fukushima was ''nothing like Chernobyl'', when after 25 years experts don't even seem to be able to come up with a consensus?(that's giving the TORCH report the benefit of the doubt), it's just not possible to make that judgment a mere two months after the incident, while the thing is still not close to be brought back under control.


No one said it was an exact science. It certainly doesn't seem like any of your links have stated it is overall worse than Chernobyl, or I am wrong in any way. 25 years later, experts are still in agreement that even the best case scenario for Chernobyl is worse than your scenario for Fukushima Daiichi two months in. I noticed that you went out of your way from the CNN article, and out of your way from looking at the differences in radius for each level of radiation, radiation spreading, the differences between the melt down and so forth. 

As I said in the Canada Elections thread, where I had to correct your history three times (not to mention basic facts about an important politician's gender, and provincial rights while you were calling our Quebec electorate "uninformed"), please don't begin rewriting history. I'm honestly wondering why you appeared here directly after you disappeared from that thread (using evidence including polls you conducted yourself but did not share, and spiting the poll values/election results I provided you) to respond to a post many days old.

Every single news article I've read is still calling this the worst since Chernobyl, experts are calling it the worst since Chernobyl, and to me that means they've been looking ahead at the end of the line impacts of this incident. There is conflicting information across the Chernobyl case because it was such a massive event and abilities to research in a time of political tension was difficult. Dozens of countries were impacted. There is one unifying aspect to all of these -- thousands of people died, including dozens in the days following the blast. Tens of thousands of people were permanently removed from their home. There was a large release of radioactive materials into the air all at once. 

I can make that judgement for EXACTLY the same reason the experts in those articles can, including the person at CNN. This is a slow leak, and so far has only released 10% (your own article said the "new information" isn't going to cause ambient levels of radiation to rise) of what Chernobyl released. Because it is a slow leak, we have a great deal more control over it. The level of radiation people recieved is much less than at Chernobyl, leading us to believe there won't be the same level of cancer development (as stated by experts in our sources). Decontamination efforts will be underway for those people's homes. No one died from radiation. This is already massively different from Chernobyl, in every single one of those regards. Two months in has already been far less damaging with Fukushima Daiichi than with Chernobyl. It is a level 7 because of complexity, not because of intensity like Chernobyl -- that says something about it right now, and it's overall efficacy in effecting things in the future. 

@_unsung truth_ , yes, I know. Looking at levels of radiation exposure and current knowledge, I doubt it will. We aren't seeing contaminated food being transported and sold, we aren't seeing entire parts of continents with raised radioactivity levels, and those radiation levels are rising slowly because we can see them coming -- with Chernobyl, massive doses came about before it was done. Even the initial incident was much less dangerous. Experts have already stated that rises in many types of cancer is not expected, as seen by reading those articles.


----------



## Cover3 (Feb 2, 2011)

You said 'this is *NOTHING *like chernobyl, you're making a judgment based on old news and arguing semantics, I'm also done with you, and will from now on uphold my promise from the other thread, have fun eating up TEPCO lies, and have a good life.


----------



## Khar (May 21, 2011)

I guess I'm easily trolled.



> You said 'this is *NOTHING *like chernobyl, you're making a judgment based on old news and arguing semantics


The irony of the beginning and end of this line is funny. Especially since I said this was no where close to being Chernobyl, not "nothing" like Chernobyl. Your own articles show this. The WHO support this. History demonstrates this. The old news was still correct, as your new news confirmed. You've made several grievous errors (me saying thousands does not mean I am saying 60,000, and so forth). Since the last time I ended a thread (with a diplomatic apology) you edited your final post so it made it look like I was apologizing for a lot more, here is the rest of the post as it stands now:



> I'm also done with you, and will from now on uphold my promise from the other thread, have fun eating up TEPCO lies, and have a good life.


Still ignoring that I said I wasn't supporting TEPCO... and that the sources I used were typically independant. Please do not follow me to another thread again.

Semantics are important if they make a world of difference between one word and another.


----------



## Cover3 (Feb 2, 2011)

Khar said:


> I guess I'm easily trolled.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Actually, I'm pretty sure I edited before you finally posted, if not then I sure as hell don't remember adding the edit mischievously.(believe or not, idc), I edited to tell you exactly why I took offense to some of the things you've implied, instead of just leaving my original feeling there without a little explanation, I actually appreciated the gesture, but now that you're using the troll card on me, I guess it would be better for the perC forums that we don't interact anymore...


----------



## sprinkles (Feb 7, 2010)

> There is no way for humans to live on earth without leaving a footprint.


I'm not so sure. Things were going pretty well in that department until the advent of industrialization.

The world population spiked from a few hundred million, about 1000 years ago, to almost 7 billion, and most of that spike has happened in the last 100 years. Most of our environmental issues we face today have also come in the past 100 or so years.

If people can't live without this mess, then how were there people to invent it?

We can live without leaving a footprint (or at least only leave a very tiny one) but the problem is _nobody wants to_.


----------



## Cover3 (Feb 2, 2011)

sprinkles said:


> I'm not so sure. Things were going pretty well in that department until the advent of industrialization.
> 
> The world population spiked from a few hundred million, about 1000 years ago, to almost 7 billion, and most of that spike has happened in the last 100 years. Most of our environmental issues we face today have also come in the past 100 or so years.
> 
> ...


what's your solution though? de-industrialization?


----------



## sprinkles (Feb 7, 2010)

Cover3 said:


> what's your solution though? de-industrialization?


I think it would be ideal, actually, but I'm not going to advocate it because I don't think society is mature enough yet to handle that type of regression willingly. 

I think it will happen though, whether we like it or not, if we last that long.


----------



## Cover3 (Feb 2, 2011)

sprinkles said:


> I think it would be ideal, actually, but I'm not going to advocate it because I don't think society is mature enough yet to handle that type of regression willingly.
> 
> I think it will happen though, whether we like it or not, if we last that long.


it might happen, and while the vast majority of people are gonna be forced back to the dark ages, the elite will be exempt from the laws/society they create, and then we'll be stuck in artificial scarcity forever, is that really what you want(because that's what *they *want)? I mean, some people seem to think that industrialization is only there to pollute, and completely forget to account for all the positives it has brought to society(health, transport just to name a couple), I see the nobility in your idea but I just can't get behind it.


----------



## absentminded (Dec 3, 2010)

sprinkles said:


> I think it would be ideal, actually, but I'm not going to advocate it because I don't think society is mature enough yet to handle that type of regression willingly.


Why?

Do you have any idea how many people would have to die to make de-industrialization possible?

People would starve because of lower crop-yields. Diabetics wouldn't have access to insulin. Transportation would isolate everyone from everyone else.

In what universe would that be ideal?


----------



## JackSparroww (Dec 10, 2010)

I am starting to doubt if human life or natures survival at all has a priority in some peoples lifes. Yesterday I've seen a german documentary on TV and a conservative politician said: "In energy politics, morales have no place." 

I contemplated his words, they make no sense to me. If morales have no right at a certain place, what else could be more important ? What could be more important than the preservation of life ? 

At the end of the day it isnt even so much about nuclear power no more, it is more about this attitude by people saying like the pigs in George Orwells animal farm "Some pigs have more rights than others". I am convincved the demand for ethics in industrial nations will get higher. Germany is a heavily industrialized country with lots of companies fighting for the best prices and maxing out their profit, so far the regulation has only been the good soul of people. I hope this will last thoughtout Generation Y.


----------



## sprinkles (Feb 7, 2010)

absentminded said:


> Why?
> 
> Do you have any idea how many people would have to die to make de-industrialization possible?
> 
> ...


Yes I know that. It's kind of the point. We live in a bubble right now which we try to keep from bursting by cramming more resources into it. In some places it is getting to the point where you are practically considered not human if you don't have a house and a car at the very least.

Yes, a lot of people would die. The ones who are left will be the stronger individuals who can survive without all this superfluous crap. e.g. 2 ton machines to move one 200 pound body.


----------

