"Why Fukushima Made Me Stop Worrying And Love Nuclear Power"
George Monbiot goes all sensible on us in The Guardian on nuclear power:
You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.
Raddy...(Raddy is our nuclear power expert)...I've had a crazy week, but feel free to post what you sent me (in e-mail I have yet to get to) about nuclear power. Or anything else you can tell us. Learned a lot from your comments on one of the last ones about nuclear energy, which I'm strongly in favor of.
Amy, the e-mail in question is a Powerpoint presentation being circulated at work, which shows the construction of the Japanese plant and discusses what is happening and what design features do. I am not sure it is in the public domain, although the information is public knowledge, because it was prepared by/for Florida Power & Light.
Readers will please just recognize when your news comes with editorial commentary. For every article on "perspective", like the chart from XKCD, there is a fallacious comparison to other industries; remember, the risks of an activity are validly compared only to the benefits of THAT activity.
Seek articles about the fundamentals of radiation. There is NO SUCH THING as "beneficial" exposure, no matter what Ann Coulter claims. The real world is totally outside the purview of political punditry, and this event is far less nebulous than global climate issues.
Radwaste at March 23, 2011 2:46 AM
I'm hardly an expert in this field, although I do have a degree in physics, so at least I understand the basics. I do have a lot of experience in constructing systems for a safety critical industry - tunnels - and the performance of the plant operators here has been exemplary under the circumstances. The huge amount of ink that has been expended on it is totally unwarranted.
I read this article earlier, and yes, I was astounded by George Monbiot actually sounding reasonable.
Ltw at March 23, 2011 3:44 AM
I cannot figure why a nuclear power plant would be built in an earthquake zone. This means Japan or anywhere within 100 miles of the San Andreas fault line.
Nick at March 23, 2011 6:10 AM
I cannot figure why a nuclear power plant would be built in an earthquake zone. This means Japan
Japan doesn't have easy access to fossil fuels to generate electricity, and has relatively few locations for hydroelectric generation. Nuclear power generation was the logical choice.
I R A Darth Aggie at March 23, 2011 8:24 AM
Consider the industry is 50 years old give or take a decade and this is only the third major disaster and the first caused by forces outside of anyones control. Chernobyl was both cost cutting as well as human error. They bypassed safety systems to run a test and it blew up in their face. Three mile island was due to poor design (the control board not showing a valve indicator) and lack of trained personnel. I think the Japanese are doing very well with what they have and as a fellow engineer I raise my glass to some heroes who may have sacrificed their lives or health to try to bring it under control.
There is no clean stable power source. We all know oil and diesel. Solar and wind power are flawed in that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. The environmental effects of wind turbines are still being discovered. Hydro blocks entire rivers. There is no clean coal and look into the figures of how much radiation they release as coal contains small amounts of radioactive materials. Nuke power is stable, overall has a good track record and the new technologies are safe. I would not mind one in my back yard. Really one of the little ones they have made that are the size of a garden shed and does not require service for 20 years. Put it right next to the barn.
Horse at March 23, 2011 9:11 AM
"There is NO SUCH THING as 'beneficial' exposure, no matter what Ann Coulter claims."
So radiation therapy is quackery?
Don't play with absolutes, they're too easy to topple.
My main problem (for lack of a better word) with nuclear power is it's being used in the same way as fossil fuels: as a heat source to boil water. The boiling water makes steam which turns the generator to make electricity. It's generating so much energy, and we're using a fraction of it. We need a science-fictiony invention that converts all that energy more directly, then watch the power supply skyrocket.
Every method of generating power has dangers. Nuclear power has some of the worst potential dangers, but are the most controllable. there's no comparison between all the pollution from a fossil-fuel plant and that from a nuclear plant (when both are working properly) because a nuke plant barely pollutes at all.
Yes, should something go wrong, it could be calamitous, but how many times has that happened?
Vinnie Bartilucci at March 23, 2011 9:34 AM
Since every inch of Japan is an earthquake zone, the only way to prevent deaths due to structural failure would be to evacuate the entire country, or turn out the lights & go back to the stone age. The last big quake with an epicenter right next to Tokyo was the Great Kanto Quake of 1923, which killed 140,000 people when the city collapsed on top of them and burst into flames. It would be hard to find any structure near the epicenter of the recent quake that did not collapse and add its contribution to the toll of 20,000 dead & missing:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/hydroelectric-dam-failures-fujinuma-dam.html
Buildings, bridges, dams...all things considered, the 40-year old reactors held up better than any of them. And it was a single failure of design - not having the backup diesel generators a couple of feet higher above sea level - that turned Fukushima from an incident into a crisis.
Martin at March 23, 2011 9:51 AM
er, Nick? Why would PEOPLE want to live near an earthquake zone? and YET? Millions of people live near faultlines. It is many magnitudes more likely that they will die in the quake itself than they would ever have an issue due to radiation...
People move to SoCal all the time with the knowledge that when the "Big One" comes many will die, and the aftermath will be astonishingly ugly, they're just rolling the dice. The Japanese on the other hand, as has been mentioned, don;t have a choice. Their homeland has always been a place of earthquakes, and they have lived their for thousands of years. IIRC there has been human habitation on the islands for 20,000+ years. They have made their choice.
SwissArmyD at March 23, 2011 10:17 AM
In the case of an energy hungry Japan it can be argued that nuke energy is their only option. They do not have the resources or land for other power generation methods. Considering the number of plants they have only one is giving problems after this and they are getting it (I hope) under control says something.
As for how we use nuke power steam is about the only option and is fairly efficient. In most cases power generation is just that something is turning a turbine powering a generator. The only one that does not is photovoltaics (sp? solar panels) that directly convert sunlight to electricity. Even in that case they are not very efficient and when you add in the hazard of the materials they are made from, battery storage and drop the efficiency even more at the inverter (converting DC battery/solar power to usable 60 cycle AC power) it becomes less appealing. I priced solar not long ago.
Basically the whole purpose of a reactor is to generate heat and the best way to use that heat is steam. Any other method would be trying to bottle the proverbial lightning. Even so a lot of steam is wasted. If they would allow the plants in more populated areas the steam could be used in many industrial processes and climate control. Short of a major failure in the heat exchangers the steam is just that. There is no radiation hazard. I know many universities and some older cities had steam plants for this purpose and they served many buildings.
Horse at March 23, 2011 11:07 AM
Chernobyl was both cost cutting as well as human error. They bypassed safety systems to run a test and it blew up in their face.
People forget this, or never knew it. No containment vessel to start with, and at the time the fire started they had a lot of safety systems offline. The bravery of the helicopter pilots who dumped sand and concrete on an (open core) reactor was incredible.
Fukushima, in the extreme, would have gone the same path if they had to. As it turns out they didn't. But for an old design it held up pretty well.
Ltw at March 23, 2011 12:53 PM
"So radiation therapy is quackery?"
Yes, Vinnie, it is - when the alternative is NOT literally killing cancer cells.
Cells are vulnerable to damage and mutation due to ionizing radiation in direct proportion to their growth/reproduction rate. It's the only reason why you can kill cancer cells faster than the normal cells around them.
Which also die in great numbers.
You do not derive immunity of any kind to radiation exposure. To insist that you do is to say, essentially, that shooting you constantly would make you immune to bullets.
Radwaste at March 23, 2011 2:39 PM
so, Raddy, I was thinkin' something else you might amplify, and that is what's the difference between ionizing radiation and other types? Isn't it ionizing that kills?
And thanks for the lowdown ;)...
SwissArmyD at March 23, 2011 2:52 PM
The article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-wasserman/people-died-at-three-mile_b_179588.html
gives a different perspective about the aftermath of Three Mile Island. Appears the official tagline of "no one was killed" is not quite accurate.
As for the Fukushima situation, workers at the reactors have already died.
Lynn_M at March 23, 2011 3:19 PM
wow, it's on the huffington post green site so it must be true, puhlease
ronc at March 23, 2011 4:16 PM
Coulter defends her earlier column (and excoriates her critics) here:
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2011/03/23/liberals_they_blinded_us_with_science
Wikipedia on hormesis:
Personally, I think I'll stick with the less-is-better theory of radiation exposure.
A major part of the reason the Imperial Navy attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941 was to make sure the US Navy could not interfere with the Japan's conquest of the Dutch East Indies, an area rich in oil and other natural resources that Japan lacked.
Conan the Grammarian at March 23, 2011 5:28 PM
One quick exceprt Lynn
"Three Mile Island Unit Two was a state-of-the-art reactor. Its official opening came on December 28, 1978, . . .
Every reactor now operating in the US is much older---nearly all fully three decades older---than TMI-2 when it melted. Their potential fallout that could dwarf what came down in 1979."
He just wrote every reactor in the US predates the 1960's and most of them predate the 50's.
He wrote that in 2009.
But the Palo Verde plant outside of Phoenix AZ didnt even beigin construction until 1976, and was not operationonal until the late EIGHTIES
Tell me Lynn how is a nuclear plant that started in 1986 30 years OLDER than one that started in 1978?
It isnt. Which means Wasserman is either just plain stupid or an outright liar. Either way the entire article is crap.
Given how easy such info is to find, I guessing he is a liar.
Also
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/nukelist1.htm
A site deticated to eliminating nuclear power plants.
I counted 40. FORTYplants that came online AFTER the three mile island event.
That doesnt even take into account the sheer number built in the 60's and 70's which also highlight his lie that all nuke plants are older than 1960. Nor does that site take into account small reactors owned by private reaserch companies and univerisite or even the military
I found that in less than five minuets. That guy gets paid to write for a livivng, so why is it that I could invalidate his entire fucking article in less time then it takes me to masterbate?
Next time promote an author who isnt such a fucking doucebag liar.
lujlp at March 23, 2011 5:52 PM
"so, Raddy, I was thinkin' something else you might amplify, and that is what's the difference between ionizing radiation and other types? Isn't it ionizing that kills?"
Well, think of it this way. There's a definition here. Ionizing radiation is that which can produce an ion with every interaction. Non-ionizing radiation doesn't do this.
Yes, this is usually applied to the human body. It's a lot harder to ionize an Iron atom than an organic molecule.
You are exposed to a lot of radiation that doesn't ionize anything. Its effect isn't localized or strong enough.
Think, "sunshine". It can heat you up, even enough to overheat and kill you from heat effects, but what you're feeling is a truly huge number of exceptionally low-energy impacts. I mean, think about it. It hurts, but you can look at the sun. Visible light isn't enough to burn you right away.
But individual gamma rays, though they are the exact same type of radiation as visible light, have a serious attitude - serious energy per wavicle. A single interaction with an atom in your body will transfer enough energy to wreck that atom - to overcome the weak nuclear force binding a molecule in a cell in your body. A rare one can be strong enough to actually turn into matter if it passes close enough to an atomic nucleus which is heavy enough in itself.
So these gammas ARE strong enough to "burn" you. Ionization produces radicals which oxidize and reduce atoms near them. Fortunately, most of the time, the number of these gammas is so small your body repairs the damage.
Think of it this way: some radiation, the non-ionizing kind, acts like it's pelting you with BBs. A Gamma, though, of high energy and emitted from an atomic nucleus, will come on like a rifle bullet. It does immediate damage rather than bother you over a period of time. It breaks things, and right now, while other radiation just raises temperature.
So, what's an ion? Just a charged, free particle. The name means "wanderer" in Greek. It seeks stability in bonding in what we usually call chemical bonds, and this effect is what produces heritable or acute effects in the cells of your body.
You're a fat cell, just chillin', preserving bodily fluids and hoping your boss doesn't call for the liposuction machine. Bang! There's an impact, and now you don't feel so good. An acid has been formed, kinda, right next to part of your structure that tracks how you work. The rest of you works on dispersing the energy and fixing things. You can do just four things: nothing - the impact was in the water that makes up most of you; fix the damage right - go back to work as a fat cell and lay on the sofa; fix the damage wrong - on the next cell division, you go nuts and build a cancer cell; or fix the damage wrong and die. Urk!
It's not easy bein' a cell. Life is so hard that most of the cells on the outside of your body are dead - even when it looks lovely. The skin is the largest organ by far, to cope with this. And it's fulla holes. Dang!
Radwaste at March 23, 2011 7:07 PM
Rad, I'm sorry, but I can't buy that the only safe level of radiation exposure is zero. If that were true, the Earth's background radiation and the carbon-14 in our own bodies would kill all of us.
It cannot possibly be true that death due to radiation exposure extrapolates linearly across all dosage levels. The numbers just don't bear that out. And we know it isn't true in the case of poisons -- there's arsenic in nature and a little bit of it gets into everything we eat, yet we're still alive.
Cousin Dave at March 23, 2011 9:31 PM
Dave I dont recall Rad saying a thing about 'safe' he was talking about 'beneficial'
lujlp at March 23, 2011 9:58 PM
Radwaste: excellent.
It is worth noting that some elements are fatal in other than trace amounts, and their complete absence is either fatal or disabling.
I doubt that the complete absence of radiation would be harmful, but I wouldn't be surprised if the LNT model vastly overpredicts harm at low exposures.
----
Somewhat OT.
I flew over Sendai yesterday. Even from 36,000 feet you could tell something was wrong. Small harbors dot the coastline. Some of them, protected from the tsunami by accidents of geography, had lots of adjacent roofs.
Others, not so fortunate, had one or two.
Hey Skipper at March 23, 2011 10:25 PM
Cousin Dave, what part of life being limited has escaped you? All of it?
No, you do not benefit from any radiation exposure. Part of this is because DNA does not reproduce faithfully, and its departure from such fidelity as it displays is proportional to its exposure to outside agents. Chemicals are actually a much bigger enemy than ionizing radiation.
Damage is just that: damage. You die because the environment around you wins. It's that simple.
Can you name a cigarette you can smoke without damaging your body?
What part of your automobile can you beat with an unguided hammer and make it better?
Do not mistake genetic diversity for personal benefit. You are not evolving, your race is.
You cannot be made bullet-resistant by shooting you. That is the bottom line.
Radwaste at March 24, 2011 3:30 AM
Hey Skipper has reminded me of something.
You may not know this, but AIDS is not the proximate cause of death for everyone who has it. Some people with it die of other things.
Radiation effects are also masked by the myriad other things we do, like drink lots of coffee, smoke, take prescription drugs, step in front of buses, etc., and lots of people still don't get it that they are genetically unique. Nothing affects you exactly the way it does me. We are even handicapped in definition, using a colloquialism for the word, "exactly" in this case.
Radiation exposure is not even a specific event. You don't get to say, "only this part of the mitochondria in these cells are affected" because the exposure is really unpredictable. It's not random, though. It behaves according to physical laws, and the number of events occurring in your body which are undesirable dwarfs any other interaction because cells are not operating normally with guided input from radiative impact. That's how I can state, unequivocally and with the full backing of the physics, that no exposure is inherently beneficial.
Radwaste at March 24, 2011 3:47 AM
'I cannot figure why a nuclear power plant would be built in an earthquake zone.'
It was built to withstand an 8, the highest magnitude the experts said could occur there...they all thought that the 'Big One' would hit around Shizuoka....and a 9 hit the area. Even so, the cooling rods lowered into place and the emergency generators kicked in...all might have been well but for the tsunami.
'As for the Fukushima situation, workers at the reactors have already died.'
Do you have a source for that?
crella at March 24, 2011 7:01 AM
The IAEA maintain good daily updates of events at Fukushima. Here is a listing of reported injuries & contaminations as of last Thursday, after the crisis peaked:
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/fukushima170311.html
Martin at March 24, 2011 12:55 PM
Another summary report from last week:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Progress_by_on-site_workers_170311.html
Martin at March 24, 2011 1:11 PM
Oops:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Progress_by_on-site_workers_1703111.html
Martin at March 24, 2011 1:18 PM
And an update from today:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Exposures_and_progress_at_Fukushima_Daiichi_240311.html
Martin at March 24, 2011 1:20 PM
There is something suspicious going on.
The news says that drinking water in Tokyo is contaminated. I'm sorry, but I want to see more about this before I believe the source is F. Daiichi. Does the urban water system go from rainfall to tap in two weeks?
Radwaste at March 24, 2011 2:19 PM
I agree Rad it is odd, but then there is also all the tsunami water saturating the ground too, how is it that of the millions of gallons of salt water there is not a trace of salt in the water systems?
I can see though even if there is radioactive contamination how it might be more harmfull to a new born. What is the size ratio difference betweenn babies and adults anyway? 1 to 10 or even larger?
lujlp at March 24, 2011 3:14 PM
"That's how I can state, unequivocally and with the full backing of the physics, that no exposure is inherently beneficial."
Rad, there are two problems with that:
1. According to the generally accepted linearity theory, there is no such thing as a safe dose. So, if it's not beneficial, it must be harmful -- there is no other possibility. From this, we conclude that there must be a linear and measurable correlation between cancer deaths and living in different parts of the country with different cancer levels. Yet, the data fails to support that; the surveys I've seen find no correlation within the U.S. between cancer deaths and what part of the country you live in. Similarly, there must be a direct correlation between cancer deaths and how much time you spend on airline flights, but the data doesn't support that either.
So if the linearity theory is false, there must be some low dosage level at which no measurable effect occurs -- in other words, it's safe. If there is a safe level, then the data we have does not exclude the possibility that a beneficial level exists. (In order to find out, we'd have to start raising control groups of people who are never exposed to any radiation at all. That would mean keeping them cooped up in lead-lined boxes for their entire lives, and filtering all natural radionuclides from their food/water supply and their atmosphere. Actually, I've wondered about the possibility of doing this experiment with lower forms of life. But anyway...)
2. You are assuming that all mutations are harmful. That can't be true because if it were, evolution would not work and there would be no life forms on Earth today. Some percentage of mutations must be beneficial. What percentage that is, I have no idea, but it can't be zero.
BTW, insulting my intelligence is not helping you persuade me.
Cousin Dave at March 24, 2011 3:43 PM
Dave...
...I've already cited the effect which conceals this from the public.
"Radiation effects are also masked by the myriad other things we do, like drink lots of coffee, smoke, take prescription drugs, step in front of buses, etc., and lots of people still don't get it that they are genetically unique. Nothing affects you exactly the way it does me. We are even handicapped in definition, using a colloquialism for the word, "exactly" in this case."
Cells simply do not use ionization events provided by the external environment to their advantage. Again: it's because the power of an ionizing particle produces an unplanned radical.
And it does this without regard to location in the cell or in your body.
Here's another analogy:
You're shooting a Gatling gun at a parking lot full of cars. One car gets a mirror adjusted properly by an impact; another has a suffocating dog released by a broken window. One car is disabled, stopping a drunk from getting in an accident.
But the work done by the energy transfer is called "damage", because it is unguided. The vast majority of the cars are damaged, and so will the cells in your body. The proportion is even constant across a range of exposures, because the number of cells, not the proportion of impacts to cell death, is what changes. If you keep shooting, the number of dead cars goes up with time alone.
I haven't said anything about mutations other than what a cell can do. Note that individual cells don't convey inheritable properties in the overwhelming majority of events.
People who insist on linear correlations never seem to notice that a particular cause has to "surface", above other causes, to even appear. That's what the part in italics above is about.
Radwaste at March 24, 2011 5:24 PM
About reactions between particles and cells:
The behavior of nuclear particles has been studied about as intently as anything in history. In a world where desktop processors with switches five atoms thick are ho-hum common, hundreds of atomic and subatomic particles are being examined.
The energy transfers they engage in with their surroundings are the primary subject of study of several national labs, a bunch of international associations and one Large Hadron Collider.
In short, the effect of neutron, gamma, beta or alpha radiation on any part of a cell is known. The fate of cells in such cases is known, even for varied impact energies.
This is because the scientist herself needed to know.
Radwaste at March 24, 2011 5:56 PM
About that drinking water in Tokyo - was iodine-131 measured in the water coming from taps in peoples homes, or in the water on the surface of the reservoirs within city limits?
Cousin Dave, you'll find a really thorough discussion of the linear non-threshold hypothesis here:
http://www.toxexpo.com/ISOT/SS/RiskAssess/ArchToxicolLinearity.pdf
Martin at March 24, 2011 10:18 PM
There are studies showing an inverse relationship between genetic damage & dose rate over a certain range of dose rates. See here, for instance:
"Inverse radiation dose-rate effects on somatic and germ-line mutations and DNA damage rates"
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/10/5381.full.pdf
This suggests a genetically programmed optimization of cellular repair mechanisms to radiation damage at certain dose rates. At lower rates, cells may not recognize the signal of radiation damage amongst the noise of damage from other sources. At higher rates, their repair mechanisms would be overwhelmed. Selection for protection against DNA damage occurring as a result of exposure to radiation over the course of evolution does not imply that radiation exposure is beneficial.
And on that note, if you google "Oklo phenomenon" you'll be fascinated. Since the half-life of U-235 is 700 million years while that of U-238 is almost 4.5 billion years, uranium was naturally enriched in past eons. About 2 billion years ago, when uranium was almost 4% U-235 compared to 0.7% today, there were completely natural fission reactors on the planet, and life actually made them possible. Uranium only dissolves in water in the presence of oxygen, and photosynthetic bacteria made that oxygen. And that dissolved uranium flowed into algal mats with microorganisms that concentrated it until spontaneous chain reactions were set off.
Martin at March 24, 2011 10:56 PM
I wonder what lesson is being learned. I suspect, "none".
This is not just likely to happen to California - the only question is "When?"
But it's disregarded.
Radwaste at March 26, 2011 4:16 AM
I forgot to bring something up in addressing this idea:
"Radiation effects are also masked by the myriad other things we do, like drink lots of coffee, smoke, take prescription drugs, step in front of buses, etc.,..."
Suppose, for the sale of argument, that a combination of radiative impacts on a cell, a hundred cells, or even a thousand cells in your body made them immortal.
They would still die when you do. Their DNA, not being built into anything you might pass on to your offspring, doesn't make make it out of your body. If the DNA in a particular zygote does get out of your body, it isn't the last word in how your offspring is built, either.
By now, I have described what you know is true: there is no Peter Parker or Bruce Banner in real life.
And do not forget that chemicals are far more effective at acting on your body than radiation. It takes sci-fi to come up with Godzilla, but only thalidomide to make monsters out of ordinary people - with a disturbingly high survival rate.
Radiation, unlike a chemical, cannot cause the substitution of particular complex molecules in genetic coding, nor does their influence persist for as long a period of time.
Radwaste at March 26, 2011 4:36 AM
Thats really nice. Will do futher reading on this
Marissa Laehn at May 18, 2011 9:25 AM
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