"Nuclear energy, to start with, is ultimately not safe, and the Germans have always been particularly uneasy with it. After the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the “Atomausstieg,” the exit from nuclear energy once and for all. Why? Because, as Ms. Merkel put it back then: “The residual risk of nuclear energy can be accepted only if one is convinced that — as far as it is humanly possible to judge — it won’t come to pass.” After Fukushima, Ms. Merkel, a trained physicist, was no longer able to believe that a nuclear disaster would not occur. That there was a catastrophe even in a high-tech country like Japan made her change her mind."
This article dismisses nuclear power as "not safe" with nothing more than the decision of Merkel to justify it. Yes, Merkel has a background in physics, but she made that decision as a politician. It's an unfortunate truth that science is rarely the first consideration in political decisions.
Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored. Repeatedly.
The reactors of 40-50 years ago can indeed be unsafe if operated poorly (e.g. Chernobyl) or if necessary threat mitigation is totally ignored. Newer designs are safer, and older designs can be made safer if people don't bury their heads in the sand about necessary updates.
Ultimately, nuclear reactors are designed and operated by humans, and mistakes do happen. However, the fact is that the Fukushima disaster has killed fewer people in total than coal power kills every year under normal operating conditions.
But this is exactly the point. Catastrophes like Fukushima are practically always a combination of individual deficiencies in design, process, and operator errors. Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening. This is mostly because human imagination is limited and humans are fallible, and what‘s not covered by the previous two is lack of knowledge & understanding.
Said in other words, if you wait long enough, a catastrophe is inevitable. And history, both old and recent, has told us that the time you‘ll have to wait is much shorter that you‘d think.
I work in aerospace operations and every freakin‘ day things go different than planned and anomalies happen. In „my“ „industry“, we try to prepare for off-nominal situations and that buffers the effects, but you can only do so much and you end up in contingencies very often. You can also easily see when a new player enters the stage as they very quickly (should) learn that you‘ll have to react and adapt your plans very often and tone down any promises …
Long story short, whatever means you put up to prevent catastrophic events, they will never be enough. Then the question of cost arises, which is undoubtedly extremely high for nuclear events, especially in such a densely populated and small country like Germany, and you’ll quickly realise that you probably do not want to take that risk even if probability is very low.
And finally, we have yet to find a working way to handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k years. (I am aware of the options but obviously we are not there yet and it‘s unclear if we ever reach the state of „acceptable solution“ instead of pushing the issue to generations to come.)
> Said in other words, if you wait long enough, a catastrophe is inevitable.
But the catastrophe in nuclear is substantially less damaging than business as usual in coal. I've lived in a coal mining region, I'd have better health outcomes if I'd lived next to Fukushima when it was melting down. And I don't feel threatened by the risk of either.
The damage done by solar/wind is also flying under the radar, but they are being scaled up to industrial levels of production. Nothing done at industrial scales doesn't produce a lot of waste and environmental damage. It is likely that nuclear is still safer and more environmentally friendly than the renewables.
Nuclear is safer than a hydroelectric dam, for example.
These risks are so firmly within the tolerable zone it isn't funny. And the negative exampels are all talking about 50 year old technology which is obsolete. Even Japan is re-opening their nuclear plants, presumably bowing to the reality that their Fukushima response was overly paranoid.
And it is a tired argument I always make, but "handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k year" - be serious. We have waste that lasts forever and we have plans to store it for 30 years. There is nothing there that matters and the people getting worked up about it are mistaking opportunity for cost. We have the potential to manage waste from an industrial nuclear process. That makes it unique, most other processes we dump dangerous waste, forget & hope. We produce much scarier waste than nuclear byproducts and the volumes involved are tiny.
I don‘t get why you‘d bring up any other means of power generation while my reply solely discussed nuclear, but I‘ll take the bait …
> substantially less damaging than business as usual in coal.
Never doubted that and never will. Though here we are talking two different scenarios (as you said): Accident vs. nominal operations. Strictly statistically speaking, nuclear „wins“ because of that, I‘ll gladly agree to that. That still does not mean nuclear is to be preferred, it‘s just the less worse option of the two in terms of one (of many) measure.
> Nothing done at industrial scales doesn't produce a lot of waste and environmental damage.
While I agree to that statement, there is more to be considered than just waste and environmental damage, e.g. for nuclear (and fossil power) esp. health risks.
> nuclear is still safer and more environmentally friendly than the renewables.
Source? Can you at least state how you would define „safer and more environmentally friendly“? That‘s a bold statement you make …
> Nuclear is safer than a hydroelectric dam
In what measure? Maybe if you look at Risk * probability (I‘d need a source, though) but unlikely if you look at Risk * probability * cost (except maybe the 3-gorges-dam but that‘s due to a number of unique factors).
> These risks are so firmly within the tolerable zone
Maybe for you but not the next person. Or insurer. Or government.
> negative exampels are all talking about 50 year old technology which is obsolete
Power generation from water is much older, even thousands of years (if you are willing to accept a slight redefinition). Saying the technology is obsolete doesn‘t fly if said technology is still heavily used every day and not being replaced (i.e. decommissioning of all old nuclear plants).
> Japan is re-opening their nuclear plants, presumably bowing to the reality that their Fukushima response was overly paranoid
It‘s a political decision by the Abe government. They were always very pro-nuclear.
> be serious. We have waste that lasts forever and we have plans to store it for 30 years.
Which is bad enough. (BTW: This is handled much better in the better part of Europe / Germany than the USA.) The unique problem with nuclear waste is that it requires special handling for 10k-100k years unless you want to die. While this may be true for other, highly toxic waste, this does not apply to the vast majority of waste.
> We have the potential to manage waste from an industrial nuclear process. That makes it unique, most other processes we dump dangerous waste, forget & hope.
Having the potential does not equal using it, rendering your argument void. (BTW: While I agree we should be doing this for all nuclear waste no matter the cost, reprocessing nuclear waste (like burnt fuel) consumes a significant amount of the energy that has been produced by the plant, rendering the process uneconomical.) Even then, it‘s not unique, for most other waste we know how to manage it but it‘s too often not done due to economic reasoning. (BTW: This is also an issue of externalized cost that we‘d have to solve. And again: This is handled much better in the better part of Europe / Germany than the USA.)
> the volumes involved are tiny
… but very deadly and toxic, rendering it a much bigger problem than most other waste. And we‘re not yet talking decommissioning a nuclear …
Presumably in the measure of "lives lost" if you look at the Banqiao Dam failure. In 2017, the Oroville Dam in California was also at imminent risk of collapse and prompted the evacuation of 180,000 people.
That puts hydro at one catastrophe with lives lost at the worst estimates of Chernobyl, and one mass-evacuation on the order of the evacuation of Fukushima
> I rather have 10 Fukushima nuclear accidents than one big dam break
You say that, but Fukushima didn't even come close to reaching it's catastrophic potential. Japan was facing the possibility of having to immediately evacuate 50 million people[0], or roughly 15% of the US population. An evacuation on that scale would almost certainly top any other emergency evacuation in human history.
Japan got pretty lucky with the weather conditions during that episode, and if you flip that coin 9 more times, you'd find out pretty quick that they got pretty darn lucky the first time.
I got curious about the largest evacuations in history and a cursory google search says that the largest sea evacuation took place in NYC during 9/11, when 500,000 were ferried out of the city, beating Dunkirk in WWII (319k).
So the prime minister of Japan was facing the possibility of an evacuation 100x this size. That is truly insane.
Coal has already killed far more beings than the highly rare nuclear power station disaster. If you care about wellbeing and human lives, swapping nuclear for coal is downright stupid.
Germany swapped nuclear (and coal) for renewables. While I wholeheartedly agree that it would have been better to extend nuclear in favor of decommissioning coal earlier, that‘ll still not make your argument valid.
Radioactive contamination of soil has very long tail, so we should wait until radioactivity will be lower than background level to count total number of victims. I.e. 1 victim per year x 100 years = 100 victims, while 1 victim per year x 1000 years = 1000 victims, order of magnitude more victims.
Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening
That premise requires more convincing evidence for me. Nuclear reactors have an incredible safety record, given that most current reactors have their design roots in the 60s, and have been operated for longer than initially anticipated, on MBA-style shoestring budgets. Given that scenario, yes, accidents are bound to happen. But where are the improved designs you mention? What processes have been adapted to improve reactor safety since the 60s? Which reactors have been safely decommissioned at the end of their planned lifetime instead of running beyond their age?
What we have now is the result of thirty years of political (and economic) languishing: no firm decision had been made either way. I applaud Angela Merkel for finally making a firm decision on that subject, but I also think the decision was the wrong one. I applaud India's decision to actually develop and build 90s-era reactor designs.
whatever means you put up to prevent catastrophic events, they will never be enough
As evidenced by the impending climate catastrophe, you are correct. But even ten Tsjernobyl meltdowns will be less impactful than what we are facing now.
we have yet to find a working way to handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k years
No, we already have that solution: Gen-4 breeder reactors, another 90s-era reactor design. We just never had the political will to build them, thereby perpetuating our 10k-100k year problem.
Take a look at history if you need more evidence. At some point, someone always said „now we know better and we can build XXXX to be perfect“, and now we are laughing about them (to give a bad but simple example: Titanic). You are naïve if you think today is any different than yesterday, even with all that superior technology and knowledge that we have – but that was also true for any other point in time.
And your „waste solution“ will not help one bit with the waste we already have. Hence my argument remains.
And your „waste solution“ will not help one bit with the waste we already have.
Why not? Breeder reactors can use spent fuel as (part of) their power source, and that spent fuel is the cause of our 10-100k year problem. From wikipedia [1]:
Since breeder reactors on a closed fuel cycle would use nearly all of the actinides fed into them as fuel, their fuel requirements would be reduced by a factor of about 100. The volume of waste they generate would be reduced by a factor of about 100 as well
[..]
In principle, breeder fuel cycles can recycle and consume all actinides, leaving only fission products [having] a peculiar 'gap' in their aggregate half-lives, such that no fission products have a half-life between 91 years and two hundred thousand years. As a result of this physical oddity, after several hundred years in storage, the activity of the radioactive waste from a Fast Breeder Reactor would quickly drop to the low level of the long-lived fission products
So, not only would fast breeder reactors reduce our waste volume by 99%, they would also reduce our waste storage lifetime from 10k-100k years to a few hundred years (a more than 99% reduction).
>But this is exactly the point. Catastrophes like Fukushima are practically always a combination of individual deficiencies in design, process, and operator errors. Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening. This is mostly because human imagination is limited and humans are fallible, and what‘s not covered by the previous two is lack of knowledge & understanding.
>I work in aerospace operations
It's odd you say this, since the entire aerospace industry exists because people at the time were willing to put up with the risks until we got where we are today.
If you talk space, the difference is that all relevant people were and are aware of the risks and do their job despite them. And they do their job in such a way that the risk is always minimized (through extensive preparation, Monitoring, …), you can handle a situation immediately or even recover from it (e.g. redundancy; failure detection, isolation, & recovery mechanisms; etc) and learn from it (post-mortem processes). Everything and everyone breathes risk awareness.
If you are talking aeronautics, the situation is fundamentally similar but also the scales are very different (also in terms of operating personnel vs. throughput). But more importantly, society in the majority seemed to have accepted a level of risk even though we know for sure that the next catastrophic event could happen any moment.
Fun fact: if the Fukushima exclusion zone was entirely covered with solar panels, it wouldn't even match the nuclear plant annual energy production (note to downvoters: that's actual fact, a 10 km2 plant in India has only 650MW of power, and hits this power only 1 to 2 hours per day).
> But this is exactly the point. Catastrophes like Fukushima are practically always a combination of individual deficiencies in design, process, and operator errors. Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening.
Agreed. The consequences of Nuclear energy last millions of years, not Human lifetimes, to this day we still have not felt the true impact of Fukushima's contaminated water run off into the Pacific, nor the contamination of the food and soil the epidemiology of Nuclear fallout was abysmal in 2011, and was done by Soviet's. Sudden heart failures as well as birth defects, and other maladies of children are stauncly being hidden from the Media as they were ramping up the efforts for the Olympics, not to mention the People have not been able to return Home to their and remian in a make-shift refugee camp, and seen as 'less than' in Japanese society: look up the Hibakusha from WWII, and the same stigma applies now. I think TEPCO/Nuclear Village and the Abe cabinet are just waiting from them to die to make it all go away so they can get back to how things were.
> Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored. Repeatedly.
First, if you are going to pull out her education in physics and then discount it, have a basis for doing so. And at least make the obvious correlation to the political decision that France is right next door and produces 379.1 TWh/71.6% of their entire energy production, so they will continue to just buy just buy it from them--I lived in S. Germany near the French Border and it that was common practice. With that said, I have a Biology background and just looking at how it devastated one of the most abundant Ag lands in Japan I'd say Humans are too fallible to have access to this tech to be able to use it on this planet. For Mars, sure, that makes total sense, but not here. We have way more, and better options.
Sidenote: I lived near SONGS in S. OC, which had a leak happen around the same time as 3/11.
> And this is why nuclear power is fundamentally unsafe: the operators have conclusively proven that they just cannot be trusted. Repeatedly.
So let's just keep reliably killing people with coal around the year like we do now...?
The fact is that nuclear power kills the least amount of people per unit of energy produced, with all accidents taken into account. If that's "unsafe" then you cannot consider any electricity production method safe.
I hate when people talk about solar or wind "saving the planet".
Solar in particular (and wind to a lesser extent) requires digging up then melting down literal mountains worth of ore to get the rare-earth elements to create them. Creating the space-age materials used for solar and wind installations is hyper-toxic for the environment and creates its own waste-storage problem.
You talk about deaths, but companies seem to be very tight-lipped about wind fatalities. Bucket truck electricians have a serious injury and fatality rate per-capita an order of magnitude higher than normal electricians. Tower workers have rates an order of magnitude higher than that.
Wind towers aren't like normal towers. They are smooth, aerodynamic surfaces. They are much taller than an average cell tower which adds complications. They have hundred-foot blades with all the lack of strength usually associated with airplanes travelling at up to 180mph. Unlike normal towers, you are definitely working on live systems (dead systems are even more dangerous as they are be at the whim of the winds). There's a huge, high-voltage motor in there exerting tons of torque (plus other motors for things like wing rotation). These extra hazards are standard. They don't account for the bonus hazards like fires, mid-air disintegrations, or even a bird (or something more exotic) getting struck and flying your direction. Even ground crews are at much higher risks.
I know several people who have worked at coal or nuclear plants. They wouldn't get anywhere near a wind plant because it's just too dangerous.
Germany is heavily investing in solar and wind. Why do you bring up coal?
Also - even if the nuclear power plant is 100% safe, it still produces nuclear waste that nobody wants to keep anywhere near their city and will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years, that's longer than humanity has been around - it's just the same trap as burning fossil fuels. Why would we want to make the same mistake again?
> Germany is heavily investing in solar and wind. Why do you bring up coal?
Because coal is what Germany really relies on in practice, making it one the worst industrialised nations when it comes to CO2 emissions per kWh. Check for yourself, right this minute : http://electricitymap.org/
> it's just the same trap as burning fossil fuels. Why would we want to make the same mistake again?
Because it's not the same mistake at all.
Nuclear waste is stored in highly stable geological layers, and the volumes are orders of magnitude lower.
As I wrote here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21996751), a year's worth of nuclear energy for running France's whole fleet of trains produces just 200kg of nuclear waste. Since the beginning of the nuclear programme, the cumulated volume is 3650m3, or an olympic swimming pool's worth of it.
Don't get me wrong, renewables are a worthy long term goal, but we might never get there in the first place if we don't tackle the climate change and emissions emergency first.
Phasing out coal in Germany is a political battle against a large entrenched century old industry.
The phase-out looks to be gaining traction in recent years. Deals are being made to retrain coal miners and fund economic redevelopment of heavily coal dependent regions. All players including the power companies, network operators, miners unions, green NGOs, central and regional governments have been in discussion about how to manage the phase-out. A schedule for when plants will be turned off is being written into law.
Where Germany has a bad record on emissions reductions is in other sectors such as transport and heat. Germany has had a centre-right political party running the show for 15 years, progress has been slow. The next election will likely be a CDU-Green coalition which will likely increase ambitions on emissions reductions.
The incontrovertible problem remains : wind/solar are intermittent, peak load sources (Germany doesn't have the geography for hydro)
No matter how you spin this, you NEED to pick one of either nuclear, gas or coal in your mix to complement renewables.
Of these 3, only one of them is low carbon.
Of the other two, one makes your energy grid depend on Putin's whims, while the other causes tremendous fine particles pollution causing thousands of premature deaths today, in addition to carbon emissions.
> Coal powered electricity generation is dropping and renewable generation is increasing.
But won't ever replace a base load source of electricity.
Even after a 300 billion investment and spectacular share increase of renewables from 6 to 46%, Germany's emissions per kWh are 5-10 times worst than the best.
> The next election will likely be a CDU-Green coalition which will likely increase ambitions on emissions reductions.
Increased ambition is great but the facts above are unescapable.
Are Die Grüne willing to drop ideology and face them ? That seems highly improbable.
Wind and solar, plus the already existing 6gw of pumped storage and increased curtailment gets you to 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent requires more storage.
Batteries can help to some extent for shifting day to day peaks.
Seasonal storage is more tricky. Germany has about 3 months worth of natgas stored in underground caverns. One approach would be to use this to store syntheticly produced gases from electrolysis.
Note so far everyone here is talking about electricity which only makes up a third of Germany's emissions.
Synthetic gases (non-fossil) will be required for high temperature heat, and chemical feedstocks for industry. For example some steel smelters in Germany are transitioning from coal to hydrogen.
Nuclear is a poor fit to an electrical grid which is mostly renewable for both economic and technical reasons. However it may be a good fit for running synthetic gas plants which can use both the heat and electricity and require 24/7 energy.
Regarding the Greens. They will be more willing to push back against the German car industry which should lead to increased reductions in transport emissions. Other sectors are likely similar.
"Nuclear waste is stored in highly stable geological layers"
That is just factually wrong. "Despite advanced schemes in Finland, not a single country worldwide has an operational underground repository." [1]
That was 2014 and plans have stalled or have been abandoned altogether due to local opposition and technical problems. The reality is that in nearly all cases storage is onsite or in other above ground locations.
France still has a plan to build and operate an underground storage facility in Bure [2], but costs have exploded due to not just very rose colored estimates at the start, but also due to running into problems such as water seepage and not being able to handle certain failure scenarios such as a transport catching fire.
So on the one hand with nuclear, we're talking about one swimming pool's worth of waste since the beginning of the French nuclear programme. Currently stored safely enough, long term solution identified and implementation in progress.
You find this unacceptable.
On the other hand, we have renewables with no solution in sight (let alone implemented) for the intermittence problem (awaiting an hypothetical scientific breakthrough in batteries).
In practice, you rely on coal for the day-to-day base load. Coal, for only a year's worth of running a country's trains generates "700.000 tons of solid ash (usually stored in the open air), plus 1.000 tons of soot and fine particles, including tons / dozens of tons of arsenic, lead, thallium, mercury, even uranium and thorium".
You call this the reasonable option.
And in another comment, you even feel entitled to lecture the Belgians and French about their nuclear plants near the border that might hypothetically fail one day, when 7 of the 10 worst polluters in Europe are Germany's lignite plants (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-lignite-plants-e...), with coal killing 23.300 people in Europe every year (https://endcoal.org/health/) right now, with certainty
You're being disingenuous now. It feels like arguing about aviation being the safest means of transportation and having someone answer "but it's scary and deadly when it happens!" This will be my last answer.
It's obviously not a swimming pool of plutonium ! Plutonium is less than 1% of the waste in the first place, and it's removed and recycled.
In any case, nuclear waste is vitrified into glass with an estimated 10.000 years lifespan.
Fukushima casualties : 1 confirmed from radiation, 2202 from evacuation, over 15000 from the tsunami itself.
"These numbers are very low compared to the estimated 20,000 casualties caused by the tsunami itself, and it has been estimated that if Japan had never adopted nuclear power, accidents and pollution from coal or gas plants would have caused more lost years of life"
Again, coal causes 35.000 deaths per year across Europe. Every, year. Right now. Coal or gas are currently mandatory in the renewables + nuclear-free mix that Germany has chosen as the future.
I'm sure you mean wel, and as I said before, like you, I want to believe. The difference between us seems to be you live in a fictional world where nuclear waste was stored in very safe places underground, vitrified into glass with a 10k lifespan, and dealt with very responsibly throughout the lifecyle.
I live in a country where power-plants were built by typical contract builders using sub-spec concrete that is cracking, where all nuclear waste is stored above ground near densly populated areas, where young activists (luckily without malafide intentions) find to their surprise they could just walk into supposedly military protected nuclear plants, where first 55.000 barrels nuclear waste were just dumped of the coast, where the rest of the stuff is in corroding barrels filled not with 10Ky Glass but with tar and concrete, where this deterioration was kept secret for years, and once it came to light resealing it in inox barrels is considered too expensive, where nuclear plants that have failures several times a year because of malpractice during construction and aging installations are kept open with permits issued by administrations and politicians in charge that pass though the revolving doors of the plant's exploiter right into plushy 'consulting' seats, ...
I wish my country was the exception. A rogue state in the very heart of Western Europe. Sadly, it is not. Humans will be humans, with all their vices and fallacies. Humans as a species just can not handle the responsibilities of this type of systems (significant and high short exploitation benefits resulting in extreme long term very costly mitigation commitments, low probability failure modes but with extreme potential impacts).
You imply that there is no alternative. That it is either nuclear or browncoal. This is not true. Germany is the largest net exporter of electric energy in the European grid. Net export amounted to 45.6 TWh in 2018. In that year 72.1 TWh was produced from nuclear power, so almost two thirds of nuclear power was exported). The advances in and deployment of Solar and Wind power have lead to a significant reduction in the use of coal especially starting the second half of 2019. There is no impact on nuclear because nuclear plants unlike coal and gas can not be easily shut down and restarted at will.
Energy is just too cheap by far, so we just continue to waste it like there is no tomorrow. Any gains we make in efficiency, we just take as a bonus and immediatly compensate for by consuming more (cfr. Jevons paradox). Sadly, a neoliberal market economy can never discover the solution of moderation or abstinence, as it is purely driven by privatized marginal profit. It is systemically outside of its potential.
Because solar and wind leads to continued dependency on coal and gas. The reality is, nuclear is the only geographically independent method of providing carbon free energy around the clock. The closure of nuclear plants leads to increased usage of coal and gas: https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/11/09/germany-is-missi...
We can discover efficient ways to re-refine those materials and provide even more energy for the future (actually, such techniques exist for a lot of waste, but mining is still cheaper, so we don't do it). By the time this process is done, the waste simply won't exist anymore.
Maybe it wiser to spend some profits of nuclear industry on problem of nuclear waste first. We already has tons of waste. Chornobyl and other sites are still waiting for a solution.
> The fact is that nuclear power kills the least amount of people per unit of energy produced, with all accidents taken into account. If that's "unsafe" then you cannot consider any electricity production method safe.
This is such a horrible stat, especially when taken in this context; I'm not for coal, I think its filthy and and obsolete form of energy, but do you realize the affects of Chernobyl, 3 mile island, Fukushima et al will be felt for millions of years AFTER you are gone?
With so many other forms of renewable energy, you'd think it were possible to create another model.
> do you realize the affects of Chernobyl, 3 mile island, Fukushima et al will be felt for millions of years AFTER you are gone?
No, because that's simply not true. At least not in terms of radiation. Perhaps politically, or in the general feeling of fear among people who do not understand nuclear energy, the effects might be long-lasting but the no-go area around Chernobyl is very small, Fukushima is basically liveable today and I don't think 3 mile island affected any area to such extent that radiation levels would be above the safety limits.
This is absurd, are you aware that people in Croatia had a mass epidemic of thyroid failures in children? That is a massive endocrine disruption at a very young age, these people then had children themselves and the affects to them have yet to be discovered, I worked with a woman in Istria that voiced these concerns, her child had to be hospitalized several times for weight loss and and heart beat iregularities. She was a proponent of entering the EU solely because her child may have a chance to have access to more promising medical technology.
Fukushima is habitable? Are you seriously insane? This is Abe's solution to get people to move back:
Chernobyl devastated large swaths of Ag land in Germany when it happened that still haven't entirely recovered...
Listen, maybe these things didn't have a direct impact on YOU so you honestly believe this, but I've seen it and lived with the affects of Nuclear Energy accident first hand, and they are costly environmentally and devastating psychologically. Its what turned me into a staunch environmental activist, but the toll of it is something I have to bear alone, and PTSD is only one of the things I have to live with, and I was an adult when it happened.
I cannot even bring myself to look at what has happened in the near 9 years since Fukushima's children were exposed in masse anymore for fear of inducing panic attacks. I can't even go to my friend's wedding this Spring in Japan because of the fear and panic I feel inside. They were already having a very significant spike in thyroid disruptions in 2012, heart problems soon followed, and the cover up began for pregnancies from that time--just as they were during Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I'd say that the biggest proponent(s) of Nuclear should have to live next to the plants themselves, which incidentally are being phased out in California due to our collective efforts, and see what those 'safe levels' really mean. But go ahead, get a remote job and live next to some of the most grossest offenders in the US for a decade and then we can re-evaluate your position:
Until then, you're just mis-informed entirely about the reality of Nuclear Energy Production and its consequences, and have at best a very glib understanding of it. Hell, to this day I cannot find a proper study done on them monitoring the radiation effluence from San Onofre and its surrounding areas from before then event and leading up to the massive leak. Let alone the epidemiological impacts of it, my old landlord just died in December from heart-failure and he was a lobster fisherman from the San Onofre region.
So, your rationalization is because you're already doomed you would have the rest of us die off just so to satisfy your poorly informed bias for Nuclear energy?
I think this is a much bigger dilemma than you think, and you should rethink your Life in general. The alternatives (renewables) that exist may not be perfect, but they are worthy candidates to at least be able to comprise of most of our energy needs.
But, if I'm honest, this is probably the same selfish mentality that can rationalize having a Humanitarian crisis ongoing while simultaneously being able to vie for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. How the Human mind can rationalize such a tragic fate, is beyond me.
The Fukushima accident had more to do with the culture in Japan than the industry globally[1]. The government and the regulator were basically in bed with TEPCO.
Do you think that this is somehow unique to Japan? How close do you think regulators and operators are in the US? Is there any industry that even remotely seems like it has a healthy relationship with its oversight bodies?
> Do you think that this is somehow unique to Japan? How close do you think regulators and operators are in the US? Is there any industry that even remotely seems like it has a healthy relationship with its oversight bodies?
Yes, and no. TEPCO, and The Nuclear Village are strong powerful entities and lobbyists in Japanese Society. But it was the 'Japanese' way of not asking the global community for help that ultimately ensured that the Abe Government and its subsequent action would take the act of secrecy in the face of one of Man's biggest ecological disasters.
Very, look at how much influence Edison and SONGS have over the Judicial system, and I will remind you San Onofre is home to some of the most expensive real estate in all of the US:
Perhaps, but business interests are always messy things within centralized governance models and I can go on my tirade for the imperative need for Anarcho-Capitalism, but to be honest if someone like Trump hasn't already made it clear to you that these imbeciles (they're all the same) in power will march us off to extinction for yourself, then my arguments will fall on deaf ears.
If the US inspections of offshore oil rigs are any indication of our lack of ability to fix things obviously broken, I can't imagine nuclear power plants would be any different, except the risk in a nuclear scenario would be amplified.
* Constructed by companies like Halliburton and Bechtel
* Operated by utilities like PG&E, collaborating with traders like Enron.
I don't know about you, but to me, the whole setup does not scream competence, good judgment, incorruptibility, and adherence to the highest ethical standards.
Indeed I am (that's why I wrote "like"), but they were the household name in the field. Frankly, I don't know who plays that role now, but how confident are you that they behave fundamentally different, as opposed to just not having been caught yet?
The lesson of Fukushima and Chernobyl is that an unexpected failure with nuclear power can become a massively damaging, insanely expensive, generational cleanup effort.
Sure, you can say newer designs are safer, but you can't say that the underlying technology behind nuclear power is inherently safe. Even a well-run, accident-free nuclear plant uses dangerously radioactive material and generates dangerously radioactive waste that must be dealt with. But if anything goes wrong with any of the processes surrounding all of that, the consequences can be dire. Why lean on dangerous, expensive, and risky tech when we have better solutions?
Removing the radioactive material from Fukushima is going to take forty years. Parts of the area around Chernobyl will be unsafe for the next 20,000. It doesn't matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
That isn't too costly to bear. There are already huge swathes of earth that are uninhabitable wastelands.
The change in evacuating a region is painful, but the length of time it stays evacuated isn't important. In the long term it is like the existence of the Sahara - just a fact.
Because the fossil fuel industries aren't bearing the burden of the cost of climate change (or geopolitical warfare) and that's what they have to be competitive with
The US Navy currently has 83 (known) active watercraft that are nuclear powered. Across all the reactors the Navy use and have used, they have amassed over 5300 “reactor years” without reactor incident.
With adequate processes and training, Nuclear is incredibly safe and green.
You make the common mistake of assuming one can scientifically prove a given nuclear plant is safe like one can prove that the square root of 2 is irrational or that carbon emissions cause warming. That is not the case and it boggles my mind how many people think it is.
If you know so sure what causes these accidents, then you can predict what plant(s) will have them next. Can you? Can anyone? Saying after the fact: it can easily be explained why that happened... that isn't science.
>After the nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the “Atomausstieg,” the exit from nuclear energy once and for all.Why? Because, as Ms. Merkel put it back then: “The residual risk of nuclear energy can be accepted only if one is convinced that — as far as it is humanly possible to judge — it won’t come to pass.” After Fukushima, Ms. Merkel, a trained physicist, was no longer able to believe that a nuclear disaster would not occur. That there was a catastrophe even in a high-tech country like Japan made her change her mind."
With this reasoning, any form of transportation should be "exited" (austeigt) too, because there were airplane, car... crashes in the past. And it is also highly unlikely that it wouldn't happen again.
one addition to the story:
Exit from nuclear power in germany was already decreed by law several years before, by the then government of social democrats and greens.
This decision was reverted by the first (I believe) Merkel government, only to be reverted again few years later due to Fukushima.
Merkel is known for being quite pragmatic and following the path of least political resistance in most cases.
While the exit of the exit was very popular at that moment, I do believe that in this case she was sincere when telling that seeing the Fukushima disaster changed her mind. I guess it was humbling even for world leaders to see how helpless everybody up to the PM were in Japan in the face of what was happening.
>Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored.
And that wasn't the only case, there were evidence it was the maintenance wasn't done properly. But no one was willing to admit it. Better to let the public think Nuclear is not safe rather than admitting to our own mistakes.
I kept thinking, had that reactor withstand that tsunami, would the world have turn around and built newer, better Nuclear Reactor.
I think nuclear power is a quick win, for the amount of CO2 discharged and the 'amount' of materials gained. The lasting legacy will always be the cost of maintenance, both in knowledge (in 100 years from now will people be able to operate the reactors and remember where all of the crud was left) and environmental impact. Certainly in the north sea area of europe, there is a drive for wind power, which I fully back. Nuclear power plants don't run themselves, which is why it's a highly skilled area, kill the skill, welcome to long periods of radiated land masses which are not obvious (unless you have a geiger counter)
I followed the Fukushima disaster very closely when it was happening. And I remember that during the crucial hours, when emissions of radioactive material was highest, the wind was luckily going to the east, out onto the pacific ocean, with thousands of miles of buffer.
Given that, it seems to me that Fukushima could have gone much, much worse.
I have a pragmatic proposal: lets use nuclear power if it's competitive including insurance and including the long term cost of handling its waste. If it's not or if nobody can insure it, we should probably not.
If a safety system requires that its operators are doing the right thing all the time it is an inherently unsafe system. It's as simple as that. Germany has understood this.
This article dismisses nuclear power as "not safe" with nothing more than the decision of Merkel to justify it. Yes, Merkel has a background in physics, but she made that decision as a politician. It's an unfortunate truth that science is rarely the first consideration in political decisions.
Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored. Repeatedly.
The reactors of 40-50 years ago can indeed be unsafe if operated poorly (e.g. Chernobyl) or if necessary threat mitigation is totally ignored. Newer designs are safer, and older designs can be made safer if people don't bury their heads in the sand about necessary updates.
Ultimately, nuclear reactors are designed and operated by humans, and mistakes do happen. However, the fact is that the Fukushima disaster has killed fewer people in total than coal power kills every year under normal operating conditions.
Is Germany paranoid about nuclear power? Yes.