Image: iStockphoto/fr73
Long-standing collusion between Japan's regulators and industry set the stage for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, a tragedy that could and should have been avoided, according to an independent commission investigating the accident.
In a report released yesterday, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC) identifies a long list of technical failures that contributed to the disaster, laying blame squarely on the shoulders of the energy utilities, regulators and the government.
Those parties "effectively betrayed the nation's right to be safe from nuclear accidents," the report says. "Therefore, we conclude that the accident was clearly 'manmade.'"
The inquiry also raises concerns that a magnitude-9.0 earthquake may have damaged the Fukushima plant more profoundly than had been previously acknowledged. A previous in-house report by the plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), downplayed the significance of the earthquake, focusing instead on the tsunami that wiped out backup generators and impeded crews' access to the site.
The NAIIC's findings come at a moment of high tensions and deep divisions within Japan's political and civic bodies. Opponents have staged huge protests in recent weeks against the restart of the No. 3 reactor at the country's Ohi nuclear power plant.
The report will likely fuel those calls and may also bolster the demands of some citizen groups that TEPCO officials be held legally responsible for the disaster.
The country has been closing its nuclear plants gradually since the accident occurred in March 2011, and it shuttered its last and largest plant in May. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda restarted the Ohi reactor July 2, however, due to concerns over energy supply.
Need for cultural and institutional reform
The report lays blame at the highest levels of both government and industry, calling former Prime Minister Naoto Kan's response to the disaster "confusing" and claiming that both TEPCO and nuclear regulators ignored legal mandates to implement safety regulations.
Those parties "were aware of the need for structural reinforcement in order to conform to new guidelines, but rather than demanding their implementation, [regulators] stated that action should be taken autonomously by the operator," the report says.
Yet the report does not reserve its blame only for those in authority. In a curiously abstract introductory note, NAIIC Commission Chairman Kiyoshi Kurokawa said the regulatory failings leading up to Fukushima were a direct product of "cultural characteristics" specific to Japan.
Kurokawa cited ingrained conventions of Japanese culture such as "reflexive obedience" and "reluctance to question authority" as direct contributors to the overly cozy relationship that persisted for decades between operators and regulators.
"Had other Japanese been in the shoes of those who bear responsibility for this accident, the result may well have been the same," he wrote.
Trouble in the 'descent from heaven'
That is not a very satisfying answer to the ultimate question of what went wrong in Fukushima, said Daniel Aldrich, an associate professor at Purdue University who studies post-disaster recovery.
"It's true that there's always been motion and movement between regulators and the industry in Japan," he said. "The Japanese call this amakudari, but it's not specific to Japan." Amakudari, translated as "descent from heaven," refers to the custom of bureaucrats retiring to high-profile positions in the public or private sector.
The custom is common in societies with large, complicated bureaucracies, he said.
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52 Comments
Add CommentIn a disaster like the Fulashima one,where the plant got hit by a Tsunami far higher than was thought possible,the situation requires fast,well organised actions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese are not achieved by have discussions and having everyone on site giving their ideas.
It needs the chief and senior personel to take the necessary action because there is no time for delay.
This is what happens at sea all the time,the Captain issues the orders and the crew do as ordered.
It is incredible that the enormanity of the damage done by the Tsunami seems to be largely ignored and the focus is all on the actions of the staff.
From what I have read about the way the staff perfomed they should be given awards for bravery and devotion to duty.
I blame Harry Truman.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's put the blame where it belongs; corporate irresponsibility. TEPCO like any large company these days is beholding to the stock holders and the rest be damned. This is the same kind of response that happened at Bhopal, India by Union Carbide, Exxon Valdez in Alaska and the great oil spill which is still being downplayed by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Case in point, now BP is telling the world to come on down and eat the seafood. The water is better then ever in the gulf.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCorporations (which are people too) will do anything but tell the truth in order to protect their assets. Those responsible knew the risks, knew the seriousness of the matter and chose to immediately obfuscate, down play the seriousness and shift the blame.
It is the way business is done these days. This is exactly why anytime global warming is mentioned in the media these days, hundreds of self taught 'climate experts' come out of the wood works to spout right wing talk radio propaganda. The more stock they hold in the worst offending companies on the planet, the louder they scream, "Liberal propaganda!".
Meanwhile, the Fukushima failure and disaster will continue to be downplayed by the nuclear industry and it's advocates, has it has been from the beginning.
More political garbage from the corrupt Japanese gov't. There is ZERO evidence that the earthquake damaged the Daiichi NPPs and it didn't affect the Daini plants up the coast, that were harder hit by the earthquake/tsunami.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA rational analysis of the report shows what total nonsense it consists of, and fails to give one iota of blame to the Japanese govt for giving totally false projections of tsunami danger, which caused the NPP designers to under-prepare for what would have been REAL SIMPLE-MINDED to avoid. The same government people who caused 19,000 tsunami deaths are also responsible for the Daiichi incident. All they had to do is locate their Diesel Generators, fuel storage and switchgear above max tsunami height. And a good precaution would be to install steam driven backup pumps, diesel emergency pumps on hand, trivially easy spark ignitors to prevent hydrogen explosions, and simple minded filters to allow release of gases without releasing radioisotopes. Pretty basic stuff.
www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-accident-updates.html
The bizarre thing is you could replace the Japan Nuclear Regulator and the NRC both with a team of about 10 really bright no-nonsense Engineers, a few secretaries and techs and they would have had those potential hazards eliminated in short order. A giant unwieldy bureaucracy stifles safety, it doesn't enhance it.
Where is all the studies and media on the TERRIBLY BAD preparation of the Japan Gov't for the tsunami? It would have been easy to prevent most of the 19,000 Tsunami deaths in Japan. It is simple-minded to build Tsunami proof buildings that act as close-by evacuation centers - not done. The Japanese authority sent people to "tsunami safe" areas that were swamped and most died. Their Tsunami Warning alerts failed due to loss of power - an easy fix. Areas were declared safe by the Tsunami Authority but after all clear alerts they were swamped, and many died needlessly. Where is the press, where are the articles in SCIAM, where are all the studies? Why no concern in Canada & the USA since we are even less prepared for the even bigger Tsunami that is even more likely to hit the West Coast. Where is all the Fear Mongering about that?
The Japan Gov't and the Mainstream Media has ignored that important life-saving analysis, in favor of total focus on the zero death Nuclear incident, a release of ~10kg of radioisotopes. This anti-Nuclear Fear Mongering is TOTALLY about stifling the ONLY competition to Big Carbon.
Not having a redundant gravity fed emergency cooling design was to me a obvious foreseeable design failure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI notice the silence from GE and its engineers is deafening.
Gravity feed means a large storage tank which will only give a temporary cooling means, the AP1000 uses a water tank above the reactor building, that combined with passive cooling will prevent a LOCA incident for 72 hrs. The GE engineers who originally designed the Daiichi BWRs wanted steam driven backup pumps to be installed, but the bean-counters cut that out, big mistake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe NAIIC assessment of how the Japanese failed to properly account for rare natural disasters in their reactor designs shows how nuclear regulators have miscalculated the risk of catastrophic radiation release and how little they have learned from recent events. Rather than just trying to evaluate whether reactors are susceptible to similar natural disasters, the regulators should be evaluating the fault tree to determine how to prevent this chain of events from being irrevocably set into motion from natural disasters, human error AND INTENTIONAL SABOTAGE. A careful analysis of this fault tree would show that only a few negligent or intentional actions are necessary to start the sequence of fuel melting that compounds itself with hydrogen explosions and radiation leaks, which substantially impair the ability to regain control of heat in the reactors and spent fuel pools. The Report shows that reactor core meltdown can commence only three hours and 13 minutes after a loss of power to the core circulation pumps. Nuclear regulators and national security agencies must ferret out how these fault trees could be exploited by persons of ill will and develop countermeasures that would prevent initiation of these fault trees by any possible set of negligent and/or intentional acts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy initial assessment would be that it would take very few, relatively lightly armed assailants or an employee saboteur to do exactly what the tsunami did, cut off power to critical pumps for several hours. If you only consider the probability of this fault tree occurring after a combined earthquake and tsunami of these magnitudes, you will naturally conclude that the risk of catastrophic failure over the facility's operational lifetime at well over a million to one, but if you ask what the probability is of sabotage or negligence initiating the same sequence of events during 50 years of operation, the probability likely jumps up to well under 100/1. I would hope that a more comprehensive scientific analysis of this very short fault tree would lead to effective prevention measures of catastrophic contamination of lands and waters that can also precipitate a crippling of our power generation system and economy.
I'm so glad there was only ~10kg of radionuclides released as it is apparently well within your means to pay for relocation of all the displaced people, compensate them for their lost property and livelihoods and then recover all of the nuclides to prevent higher cancer rates in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this90% of the displaced people were needlessly and stupidly evacuated, and absurd as it was, the authority is already allowing citizens to return to much of the area. And the radiation levels anywhere and everywhere outside the plant gates are insufficient to cause an increase in cancer rates, most likely a decline due to the proven hormesis effect of low dose radiation:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisatomicinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/Cuttler-2012_ANS-President-Session_Jun23-copy.pdf
"...Radiation-induced: 10-100 DNA alterations per cell/cGy 1 mGy/year radiation 6 million times lower than spontaneous rate!!! So radiation is not a significant cause of cancer. We've known this for more than 20 years!.."
"..Low radiation dose/dose-rate reduces cancer incidence because it stimulates:
-- prevention of DNA damage
-- repair of DNA damage
-- removal of damaged cells and removal of cancer cells
High radiation dose/level has opposite effects.."
And they didn't have their property destroyed unlike the Mud Volcano in Indonesia caused by your NG drilling, which releases 6 million cubic feet of mud per day, causing the evacuation of 13,000 families already & a dozen deaths, homes buried forever, and is expected to continue for another 80 yrs. Makes Fukushima look like a bad rainy day.
Or just one of many Hydro Dams, like the The Itaipu Dam in the lush tropical rainforest of Brazil, which devastated more land PERMANENTLY and displaced more people than the temp Fukushima incident. And that releases 150x more GHG emissions than a Coal power plant, including methane & indirect land use effects.
Or all the historic towns in Germany forcibly evacuated and PERMANENTLY destroyed to make way for giant, filthy Lignite Strip Mines, whose product produces horrendous amounts of toxic, deadly emissions and giant, poisonous sludge heaps. Millions die every year from such Coal Pollution. Which is vastly worse your Nuclear Power Plant Terrorism fantasy or the VERY REAL effects of Coal Pollution:
www.dailykos.com/story/2006/12/28/284948/-Contemplating-the-Terrorist-Who-Strikes-the-Indian-Point-Nuclear-Station
The truth about the Fukushima disinformation campaign launched by Big Oil financed ENGOs, a time for a reckoning, those who cry "Fire" in a crowded movie theater deserve to pay dearly for their anti-social actions:
bravenewclimate.com/2012/06/17/time-for-reckoning/
www.npr.org/2012/03/09/148227596/trauma-not-radiation-is-key-concern-in-japan
It's no surprise that you're so self absorbed with your defense of the nuclear industry that you'd offer up plans to create more destruction of life and property at softer targets just to create the appearance that your industry is relatively safe. Even though I could go into a detailed debunking of your cited nuclear security article to show just how vulnerable NPPs and their fuel cycle are, I won't because it would likely create more risk than is warranted for this forum. Similarly, your comparison of nuclear to other power generation shortcomings merely demonstrates your short sightedness and the need to abandon all of the self destructive technologies in favor of benign generation options that won't create terrorist targets and pollution hazards lasting for thousands of generations. I'd hope you'd redirect your considerable talents to development of these benign options because even if the few existing stable governments could secure NPPs and their entire fuel cycle for the hundred thousand years+ necessary to isolate transuranics from the biosphere, we'll still need to deal with providing power to the majority of the world population that is subject to unstable governments that will only get worse as global warming, resource depletion, religious/political conflicts and super-volcanoes destroy your illusions of civilization and its overrated engineering prowess.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only benign tech that can replace fossil fuels is Nuclear Energy. You ARE an advocate for unrestrained Fossil Fuel growth and eco-destruction, whether you are willing to admit it or not. If you are really that paranoid about Nuclear Safety then there is always the Molten Salt reactor, can't meltdown, no LOCA possible, self-regulating without any controls, total station power blackout proof, proliferation resistant - Big Carbon Lackeys in the Govt are ensuring that ZERO FUNDING goes to that obvious Energy Solution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRetired ORNL engineer Uri Gat on the extreme Safety Advantages of Molten Salt Reactors:
nucleargreen.blogspot.ca/2012/06/uri-gat-and-ultimately-safe-reacoir.html
Now the prominent Green Economist Jeffrey Sachs has come on in favor of Nuclear Energy:
"...Nuclear power is only solution to climate change..."
"..."We won't meet the carbon targets if nuclear is taken off the table," he said..."
"...But Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and professor of sustainable development at Columbia University in the US, said the world had no choice because the threat of climate change had grown so grave..."
"...Sachs warned that "nice projects" around the world involving renewable power or energy efficiency would not be enough to stave off the catastrophic effects of global warming..."
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/03/nuclear-power-solution-climate-change?newsfeed=true
Another super-green, prominent environmentalist George Monbiot, also reversed his former position - POST FUKUSHIMA - and has come out strongly in favor of Nuclear Energy:
"...How the Fukushima disaster taught me to stop worrying and embrace nuclear power..."
www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
George Monbiot says: "...On every measure (climate change, mining impact, local pollution, industrial injury and death, even radioactive discharges) coal is 100 times worse than nuclear power... Nuclear kills when it goes wrong, coal kills when it goes right..."
World's #1 Climatologist Jim Hansen warns gullible, religious Greenies not to drink the Renewable Energy Kool-aid:
www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110729_BabyLauren.pdf
He explains, how he loves his grand kids and want to them to have a future and remarks how Big Oil gains from promoting Wind & Solar non-solutions.
James Lovelock, father of environmentalism:
"...Nuclear Power is the only green solution..."
www.ecolo.org/lovelock/lovelock-wind-power.html
James Lovelock calls Nuclear Energy "The Natural Energy of the Universe"
The only reason either fossil fuels or nuclear fission is deemed a viable power generation technology today is because their harmful effects are not included in their kwh price. If nuke utilities were required to self-insure for accidents/sabotage and mining/enrichment/waste/ pollution or dispose of their own wastes, they'd be penny stocks tomorrow. The fact that fossil fuels are ten times worse in hiding their externalities is not a logical justification for basing your economic decisions on the immoral and uneconomic results of nuclear industry lobbying. Why wouldn't you just pay the lobbyists to pass laws incorporating these externalities in the price of power and let the market choose conservation and benign renewables, or are you intent on having innumerable generations cursing your name for your persistent pollutants?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe observation by Prof. Aldrich about the amakudari, "decent from heaven," being present in many (really all) societies with large, complex (government) bureaucracies is a sad, but obvious observation. It is a natural corruption to provide favors to the private sector in exchange for being able to retire into prestigious and well-paying positions. -- Though to the repressed ego of a government bureaucrat, I would think it would seem an ascent, rather than descent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real problem is how to make such ego corruption actually feel like a descent to the individual him/herself -- and this can only come from a proper environmentally nurturing. Education that emphasizes pride in contribution to collaborative effort, rather than prima donna competition; societal values that don't smile upon the clever one who knows how to line his/her pockets, but rather values mutual responsibility -- such is the path to fixing such problems of corrupting ego reaching dizzying and deadly height nowadays.
I think nuclear advocates in general are culpable here. They very often talk about how safe nuclear power can be. That's fine, and may even be true. But if they can be so sure, why could they not distinguish the safe reactors from the unsafe ones? Why were they not highlighting these reactors as a risk?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou don't read to well. The point is your pretend, fantasy conservation and renewables won't do ZIP to replace fossil fuels, and Big Carbon knows that very well, which is why they are the #1 proponents of those same SCAMs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear pays for its zero-cost to the public insurance, unlike many other industries, - who paid for 911? Airlines, Aircraft manufacturers? NOPE. And I showed you Nuclear sabatoge is a neglible risk. And Nuclear emits far less pollution or pollutants than any other form of Energy. Why do you guys like to ignore all the pollution from the vast quantities of chemicals and raw materials that are mined for renewables. You want a long list of toxic disasters from Renewables materials?
Put numbers on it Nuclear has the lowest environmental impact of any form of energy, and unlike ANY OTHER form of energy it is capable of sustaining our civilization into the next century and indeed far beyond that. Renewables Pixie Power mean the collapse of our civilization - but of course that is what you Greenpeacers really want anyway isn't it?
"..why could they not distinguish the safe reactors from the unsafe ones.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDumb question. The Daiichi reactors were safe and withstood a thousand year earthquake, unfortunately they were designed for a max tsunami height that the Japanese Tsunami Authority - the JMA - claimed was the biggest possible. Too bad, it would have been an easy fix, and that doesn't mean they weren't "safe reactors", it just means they needed to locate their diesel generators, fuel storage and switchgear at a higher elevation. And they should have added simple minded hydrogen recombiners and passive filtering is apparent, as exists at most commercial nuclear power plants.
Are you saying because the Titanic and Costa Concordia sunk that those ships were unsafe and why didn't ship designers declare them unsafe for travel on the seas? A reasonable person would say because of those accidents changes need to be made in how ships travel, and add some preventative measures, and yes maybe some MODIFICATIONS are needed in existing and future ship designs. Why do you think Nuclear is different from Oil Rigs, Ships and Aircraft except of course Nuclear is FAR SAFER by all statistical analysis than any of those.
Your apparent fantasy is that the nuclear industry won't cut corners at every opportunity like every other corporate interest. You've cited numerous relatively inexpensive improvements that would have prevented the 6 meltdowns of cores and spent fuel but we both know that the reason the decision was made not to build higher was to save cooling water pumping cost. A similar rational went into the steam powered cooling pump decision, etc. The worst part is that you want to blame the Japanese Tsunami Authority for not imposing stricter standards when industry lobbyists fought to suppress the independently supplied data of historic tsunami levels. Just how much of the planet do you want to make uninhabitable before you wake up and smell the coffee of the dire consequences of the combination of corporate greed and fission technology? Yes, global warming may end civilization but two wrongs don't make a right and the proper pricing of externalities should direct corporate interests to a viable solution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreenpeacers, honesty is a word not found in their vocabulary. There was only 3 not 6 core meltdowns. And none of the Spent Fuel was damaged. And save cooling water pumping cost?!?, give me a break, it wouldn't cost ZIP to pump the water 10 meters higher.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd the Japanese Tsunami authority is responsible for at least ten thousand needless deaths, because they also underestimated the tsunami height for public protection. I know you greenpeacers believe humans are a scourge upon the Earth (except for fellow Greenies - who are "The Chosen Ones"), but I happen to believe the tragic and mostly unnecessary deaths of 18,000 persons is VASTLY more important than some ZERO DEATH industrial accident. If the JMA had properly prepared, they would have had tsunami proof buildings acting as close-by evacuation points in place, they are easy to build. And a warning system that works during a power failure. And not warned people all is safe when it wasn't. Much of this Fukushima Hysteria is being promoted to divert public fury from the abysmal and murderous failure of the Japanese Gov't to properly protect its citizens from a predictable tsunami. The Nuclear Failure was just a small subset of that same failure. You have a bunch of aged, stubborn old fools as senior bureaucrats in Japan, who consider it disrespectful for some junior smart-ass engineer or scientist to tell them they need to get with the program.
No deaths and no external costs, hmmm, so you'd be willing to repeal Price-Anderson and assume all disposal costs including recovery of all nuclides exceeding acceptable levels in Japan and in Eastern Europe? Who's going to clean up uranium tailings piles, enrichment sites and the West Valley, NY reprocessing site, you? Your compassion is so compelling that you must have a Chernobyl Heart.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFukushima disaster was a design error. The backup diesel generators were at the basement below sea level. The tsunami flooded the basement and disabled the generators. The generators should be elevated above sea level and the reactors below sea level. That way seawater will provide cooling by gravity. No need for power and pumps.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's hilariously ironic that you use the Dr. Strangelove handle and still want to rely on technological fixes for a hopelessly overcomplicated technology whose failure can result in harm to people and the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. The moral of Strangelove was precisely that reliance upon a few frail humans to control such a devastating and complicated defense system will be the death of us all. We need to redouble our efforts to develop benign energy tech and revamping our economic system to account for harmful externalities will go a long way towards properly rewarding those efforts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like how SCIAM deleted my comment that explained how terrorists could VASTLY MORE EASILY use LNG, Hydro and Oil to cause VASTLY MORE DAMAGE than any Nuclear Power plant terrorist attack could possibly do. SCIAM didn't want to give any hints to terrorists but they sure weren't worried about KYAGB's pathetic & hopeless plan for attacking a Nuclear Power plant - or they would have censored that to. Obvious where the REAL TERRORIST Danger is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's overcomplicated about water cooling by gravity? Nuclear reactors have been around since 1950s. Your laptop is a more complicated technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Strangelove was a parody of John von Neumann and the nuclear doomsday that never happened. The real Dr. Strangelove (von Neumann) and his Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) strategy did prevent nuclear doomsday.
It's not that your particular fix is not feasible for that problem, (although it's not feasible), the issue I was expounding upon was that the consequences of not precisely controlling the full range of technical and social problems associated with fission technology can be immediately catastrophic with harmful effects lasting for the thousands of generations needed for Pu and U to decay to insignificant concentrations. Although gravity fed cooling has been designed, it typically is only a short term solution due to limited water storage and circulation of the subsequently contaminated water through the core. You can't just cool the reactor vessel exterior as the fuel assemblies inside will still melt and cause hydrogen and steam explosions. DWDB has proposed some workable solutions above for some of these issues, but the industry knows these all too well and still cuts corners to reduce the initial capital costs of the units that is already problematic for the industry when natural gas is at $3/mmbtu and gas turbines are dirt cheap.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPS: If you think MAD works, tell Israel because Iran may well turn the Straits of Hormuz into a floating inferno with crude oil rocketing to >$200/bbl the next day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps you should cool the reactor vessel interior where the water cooling is supposed to pass. That would prevent a meltdown and hydrogen and steam explosions. It can be calculated how much water is needed to do this. And I guess the sea has enough water.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPS: Von Neumann should have been a mad scientist but he was a mathematical genius who formulated the MAD strategy based on game theory. Much to the disappointment of his critics, he was right.
So there are workable solutions for the safety issues and the industry knows it to well. Then it's an economic problem not technological. If car manufacturers don't put seat belt in their cars to cut cost, should we stop making cars?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf they dump nuclear waste in Mariana trench, 35,000 ft under the sea is safer than 30 ft under the cooling pool of nuclear plants.
The problem is an ethical one. Should thousands of generations suffer birth defects and cancers for your air conditioning? If you drive a car without seat belts you die in the accident, not someone who obtained no benefit from the convenience of your unrestrained trip to the grocery store. We've learned and come to accept that second hand smoke and lead in gasoline causes innocent third parties to suffer so what's so difficult to perceive that tenuously contained radionuclides are an unethical burden on innocent third parties for 600 years for the major fission fragments, (Cs 137 & Sr 90), and 460,000 years for plutonium? Dilution is not the solution to disposal of any pollutant that bioaccumulates as the substance concentrates in the food chain. Several of the nuclides in question do bioaccumulate, so ocean dumping will just bite us in the gluteus later.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem is scientific. People believe nuclear plants are too dangerous to health. Tobacco smoke is more dangerous. Coal plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants. Skin cancer from sunbathing kills more people than thyroid cancer from nuclear accidents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW we don't fish in the Mariana trench. The fishing line is not that long and the fishes cannot swim up. And it's another story when you don't put your seatbelt vs. you don't have seatbelt because the car maker is cutting cost.
You missed the point again. It's not only that nuclear is more dangerous than wind, geothermal or solar, it's that the radiation is dangerous to future generations that derive no benefit from the power produced. It's your right to commit suicide but deforming babies 400,000 years into the future is a bit pretentious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour comparison of fission radiation to coal radiation is also misguided given the disparate bioaccumulation/tissue concentration/particle emissions of the different nuclides under consideration.
Have you ever heard of the deep ocean Thermohaline Circulation and ocean nutrient upwelling? The current runs right through the Trench and the nutrient upwelling that supports the entire marine food chain would soon be radioactive.
You don't even have a point. Honesty is a word not found in your vocabulary. Just makes stuff up. And that is the REAL "ethical problem".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDeforming babies 400,000 years in the future?!? What an idiotic comment. Just how is that going to happen? If you knew anything about radiation you would know long lived isotope = very low radiation. The long lived isotopes of Uranium and Plutonium release a trivial amount of radiation. Some possible high dose if you some how managed to dissolve it in an acid and drank it, but still less dangerous than common substances like copper or lead.
Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 yrs, and insignificant radiation 150 yrs not your 600 yrs.
And plutonium / uranium in spent fuel has a lethal dose of 1 lb after 20,000 years by ingestion, if you can somehow figure out how to convert solid vitrified waste into a digestible form and eat a whole pound of it. Some risk that is. Vs .7 oz of copper (which lasts forever) - fatal dose by ingestion. So much for your invented number of 460,000 years.
And arsenic .1 oz is fatal dose and the Canadian Gov't is going to freeze in place, within 100 meters of Great Slave Lake - 240,000 tonnes of carcinogenic, poisonous Arsenic Trioxide, which will have to be maintained FOREVER. CANDU nuclear waste has the same radiation level as natural Uranium after 500 yrs. And that spent fuel replaced 2.4 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions. So 4X the total Spent Fuel in all of the USA, buried permanently, requiring active maintenance forever, in just one of thousands, if not millions of industrial waste dumps. Not one Greenpeace protest. Sierra Club could care less. But if there was even ONE OUNCE of spent Nuclear Fuel mixed in with those 240,000 tons of arsenic, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and their ilk, would have dozens of lawsuits filed, protests, roadblocks you name it.
And Greepeacers come up with these "deformed babies disinformation" due to non-existent radiation, but could care less about the 3 million people who die every year from their Coal pollution. And another two million from their Biomass pollution. No problem there.
You're the one missing the point. It's a bit pretentious you can predict deformation of babies 400,000 yrs into the future when the natural radiation is higher than radiation from nuclear plants. Why not predict deformation of babies now from cosmic rays?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour comparison of radiation is misguided. The comparison is for total radiation dosage accumulated in living tissues. People living near coal plants get more than those living near nuclear plants.
Have you ever heard that Thermohaline Circulation circulates from the North Atlantic to the Southern Ocean, and that Mariana trench is in north-west Pacific? You should worry about radioactive bananas rather than radioactive fishes.
Dear Dr. Strangelove and dwbd;
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanx for regurgitating the same old lame industry propaganda for me to debunk. We're faced with an energy future that truly challenges our ethical priorities and I'm also wavering between the economic realities of global warming destruction, control of radionuclides and the meager contributions of benign renewables to our energy needs. Yes, I can envision the Gates thorium reactors with molten salt working fluid as providing the needed central power sources but the capital expenditures are quite close to intermittent renewables with liquid metal batteries for time shifting, particularly if we develop global UHVDC marine cables and superconductor land cables for peak shifting power transmission, and the elimination of the need for a nuclear priesthood is then a no-brainer. Baseload geothermal using magma as a working fluid, (natural nuclear power), could even eliminate the need for batteries.
The fact that there are other deadly manmade pollutants does not justify adding additional mutagens and carcinogens to the mix as our ultimate survival is dependent upon minimizing all global pollutants in our very limited biosphere. Energy production is particularly pervasive in this equation as it has the potential for producing vast quantities of byproducts that will infiltrate every pore of our ecosystem if we choose a persistent polluting power source. The rule of thumb for determining the toxicity of radionuclides is 20 half lives until the original quantity has decayed to insignificant concentrations, (half lives of 28+ years for Sr 90, 30+ years Cs 137 and 23,000+ yrs. for Pu 239).
Please follow the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation past Antarctica into the Pacific where it rises in the Mid-pacific Ocean in upwelling.
Please be mindful that all of our pollutant insults to our ecosystem can be exacerbated by natural phenomenon, such as supervolcanoes, that will make it impossible for intelligent life to ever evolve on this planet. Instead of forcing a compromise between global warming and nuclide pollution, you should be seeking an economic and political climate that allows the most diverse and intelligent life to survive even more severe challenges than we have inflicted on our home planet to date.
Look again. The Thermohaline Circulation upwelling in the Pacific passing near Guam is a surface current. Mariana trench is far below the Pacific ocean floor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for regurgitating same old lame environmental activist propanganda for me to debunk. Your irrational fear and emotional appeal cannot change the fact that the risk of nuclear radiation is low. Natural radiation is much higher than nuclear plant radiation exposure by the public. More people are getting struck by lightning every year than the death rate of the worst nuclear accident in history.
If you want people to fear nuclear power, they should be more afraid cosmic rays, lightning and sunlight. The cure for irrational fear is knowledge.
Knowledge? Your entire industry only exists because you fraudulently conceal and demand immunity from the risks. Repeal Price-Anderson and then come back and tell me about my irrational fear of radionuclide contamination. Get Tepco to admit in court that they were fully informed about the potential for a higher tsunami and that they chose to strong arm regulators into approving the plant location anyway before you dare to don the cloak of knowledge. Show me one operating high level waste repository that can effectively isolate its contents for 460,000 years and I'll KYAGB.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe cat and mouse play of businessmen and politicians had nothing to do with the scientific fact that nuclear radiation risk is low compared to other risks we face in everyday life whether manmade or natural. So please don't give me that big business and government are bad rant. BTW I'm not from that industry. We're actually a competitor (renewables). I should be bad mouthing our nuclear competitor but that would be lying. You sir must be from Greenpeace.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a retired carpenter without any affiliation. My only dog in this hunt is my desire to see self realized life evolve on this planet and given the level of debate, it's readily apparent that we'll have to tip toe along a very narrow path for a very, very long time before intelligent life evolves. My studies in ecology have taught me that the most diverse range of species is necessary to sustain the food web as a whole and we shouldn't be poking out links in that chain with hydrocarbons or radionuclides. My studies in history, politics and economics tell me that exactly what the NAIIC report clearly stated; the regulatory process was corrupted by economics and ethnocentric authoritarianism. Whether the issue is mine tailings, fuel fabrication, generation plant design/operation, waste handling in perpetuity or weapons proliferation, the room for error in fission tech is so small that it cannot safely bear the burden of our innumerable foibles, mine fuehrer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe room for error in nuclear technology is small. Chernobyl accident was caused by one human error. BTW the operator didn't die when the reactor blew up. He was alive and well and telling the story 20 yrs later in a National Geographic documentary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVarious death estimates were made in the thousands. The actual death toll directly attributed to nuclear radiation was about 280 over 10 yrs. The radiation level today is lower than the natural radiation in Norway. That's the worst nuclear accident in history. That the industry actually has a good safety record seems unbelievable. 2,700 people die in car accidents in any uneventful day. We still drive cars.
If you shift your perception to the long term survival of the species, you'd realize that your solution is not that much better than fossil fuels so we must always keep our eyes on the prize. Your vision is too short term and fails to perceive the other accumulative manmade and natural impacts that can reboot life back to bacteria as has repeatedly occurred over the course of our planetary experience. I often wonder whether it would be better for a virus like Captain Trips to give Bonobos a crack at evolution where we persistently destroy each other and the rest of the ecosystem to boot and you're not helping the argument that humans deserve a chance to fix our fuxxups. The limited heat from our nuclear core and the limited solar stability won't necessarily allow life to evolve to our level again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe vision is short term because uranium reserve is limited. If the world shifts to nuclear, the reserve will be depleted in 50 years. All the nuclear waste in the US for the last 50 yrs will fit in one shipload and dumped in the Mariana trench. The threat of nuclear radiation is largely imaginary. Extinction by asteriod impact is more likely. The nuclear doomsday of Dr. Strangelove is just like the movie, a dark comedy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo there's no reason for international sanctions against Iran and we should sell them all the reactors, reprocessing facilities, uranium and centrifuges they want?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should stop making nuclear weapons and convert the current stockpile into nuclear fuel. At current usage, uranium resources will be depleted in 80 yrs. All the nuclear waste in the world for the last 50 yrs will fit in one shipload and dumped in the Mariana trench.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's a great idea and I'm sure Iran will take all the weapons pits you can muster and promise peaceful use and Marianas disposal. Wanna play?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course these people / agencies are to blame for the short comings! Who else in the chain? Housewives. Errant Husbands? Oh, oh, I know, Jay Leno.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou want all the nations in the world to shut down all nuclear plants because Iran might make a bomb? That's funnier than Dr. Strangelove.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe point was, again, that nukes and barely evolved primates don't mix well. Make your own list of countries that shouldn't have nuclear weapons or won't last the the 460,000 years needed to isolate plutonium wastes. Even though there aren't any left, imagine there were and explain how those countries not on your list could keep the technology out of those countries on the list.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy is this halfwit kYAGB continuing to comment. He has been told numerous times that plutonium waste will be burned in Gen IV reactors like GE's proposal in the UK and India's new 500 MW unit first of 5 to 2020. It is impossible to penetrate the thickness of nonuker. Perhaps his KYAGB gel might help?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPublish a link to the specs and I'll take a look but no gov't or corp. has ever taken responsibility for proper handling of their mining or fuel wastes so why are you so convinced that somebody's going to step up to subsidize $10 billion/GW breeders, abandoned tailings, hazardous/costly reprocessing when gas is ~$3/mmbtu and big combined cycle turbines <$1 billion/GW to build? Let's delude ourselves into thinking that India and Pakistan won't create a nuclear winter and that Transuranics are magically delicious. Has any gov't lasted even the 600 years to isolate Cs 137 and Sr 90? You keep on forgetting the frailty of the market and corporate liability that has the tendency for bankruptcy and buck passing as in Price-Anderson immunity. If the industry had the type of future you imagine, there'd be no need for gov't assumption of accident liability and waste disposal and I suppose you expect Gov't to now assume the cost/risk of transoceanic spent fuel shipping and reprocessing as well?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPublish a link to the specs and I'll take a look but no gov't or corp. has ever taken responsibility for proper handling of their mining or fuel wastes so why are you so convinced that somebody's going to step up to subsidize $10 billion/GW breeders, abandoned tailings, hazardous/costly reprocessing when gas is ~$3/mmbtu and big combined cycle turbines <$1 billion/GW to build? Let's delude ourselves into thinking that India and Pakistan won't create a nuclear winter and that Transuranics are magically delicious. Has any gov't lasted even the 600 years to isolate Cs 137 and Sr 90? You keep on forgetting the frailty of the market and corporate liability that has the tendency for bankruptcy and buck passing as in Price-Anderson immunity. If the industry had the type of future you imagine, there'd be no need for gov't assumption of accident liability and waste disposal and I suppose you expect Gov't to now assume the cost/risk of transoceanic spent fuel shipping and reprocessing as well?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook at the specs my ass. You couldn't tell a neutron from axle grease. Tell you what though - you can use Google all on your own - maybe start the learning process.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Indian reactor cost is 1.5 cents a kwh far cheaper than gas, Very little and dirt cheap pyroprocessing can be used.
Waste disposal is already paid for by the utility and there is no government insurance. Maybe put some on those nuke bomb sized LNG tankers instead.
Gas costs $9/mcf to produce but sells for $3 here and $18 internationally after a $2/mcf LNG tanker ride. How long do you think gas will be cheap here again?
If you're a barely evolved primate, yes you can't be trusted with nuclear technology. Not with airplanes, you might crash it and kill thousands of innocent people. Not with cars, you might run over children. Not even with stone tools, you might hit others. Apes can't handle any technology. It's too dangerous. On second thought, I saw some monkeys using stone tool. Maybe they're more highly evolved than some people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot so fast Seth, you're talking to an Alaskan who's had gas economics pounded into his brain and we can't even market our >110 TCF of proven reserves of conventional gas. There's so much tidewater gas in Australia and Indonesia that we have to reinject all of our considerable North Slope production. This gas glut is compounded by the fact that more US wind power has come on line than fossil fuel capacity in the last year. Either way the point is that the market is fickle and your grandiose claim that industry will rid us of the Transuranic plague out of the kindness of their corporate policy is pure hogwash
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