As a physicist, I am certainly not afraid of "nuclear" and "radiation" in the abstract. But seeing the country you live in to be contaminated for so long just because a single operator error is quite sobering. Solar has its challenges on the technical level, as the power output depends on the daytime and weather, but that is not killing anyone. "And who say that batteries can't explode?" - well even if they would, you would have a ruined battery, perhaps a building. That can be rebuild. The damage done by Chernobyl cannot be fixed for centuries.
The good news in all of this is: by now solar has become cheaper than building new, safe and modern nuclear reactors. And as a lot of the grid load in California comes from air conditioning, I fail to see how solar would not be the perfect solution for these kind of loads.
What a bullshit. Please provide an official source for this claims.
Mushrooms in the Central Europe were contaminated, but only for a first few months after the disaster.
It is Ceseium-137 which still contaminates mushrooms and all animals regularly eating those. Occasional consumption is possible but not recommended. And that is 30 years after Chernobyl.
I remember one particularly scary item: Wild mushrooms from Eastern Europe, e.g. Poland.
Only, you didn't have to go that far to have real risk. At that time, some measurements had mushrooms concentrating relevant radioactive isotopes by circa 400 times, IIRC.
Weather patterns and geography created particular hot spots in the more immediate area. For some reason, the Tirol sticks in my mind, for one.
and this: http://qz.com/258731/radioactive-wild-boars-still-run-wild-i...
Both say the contamination comes from mushrooms.
The OECD estimates that the probability of an accident at a Gen. II or higher reactor that results in significant casualties is approximately one per one million years.
All of the accidents in the history of nuclear power have caused fewer deaths than the failure of a single hydroelectric dam. Combined these disasters resulted in an estimated 60,000 deaths.
That number pales in comparison to the 288,000 people who die every year from particulate inhalation due to fossil fuels.
The only two Level 7 nuclear events in the world — Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi — have have rendered large swaths of land unusable for a significant amount of time. Whether or not the exclusion zones surrounding these two areas need to be as large as they are can be argued. However, when a hydroelectric dam fails more people die initially, but as the cleanup happens and the reporters fade away, the event fades into the background. With nuclear incidents people are persistently reminded whether through apocalyptic movies or people going into the exclusion zones to photograph the ruins that are left behind.
We could make movies about dams that collapse, too and we have. I'm not even sure there are more about nuclear accidents (nuclear war, yes, but accidents?). Even if there are, I think the movies are a symptom of the problem, not its cause. The invisible danger of radiation being held back by walls of concrete just looks more dangerous to us than the visible danger of a wall of water being held back by walls of concrete.
And Chernobyl? A nature reserve. I can see someone writing a SF story about cultures that protect existing nature by the controlled disposal of radio-active material.
1. It's out-of-the-ordinary. Nobody would pay attention to the monthly news report that coal burning has, yet again, damaged the environment to the same degree as a meltdown.
2. Our monkey brains are incredibly bad at realizing that gases can be more dangerous than those scary barrels with scary warning symbols. Instead of being hidden away underground, gasses conveniently "disappear" into the air.
There is no way to reliably estimate an event that rare. And to publish such an estimate at all is insanely irresponsible.
It's the same way one calculates the probability of being struck by lightening, for example.
The risk analysis is here: http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2010/nea6862-comparing-r...
In it, the probabilistic risk of a major nuclear accidents are calculated. It's a bit difficult to parse without a stats background, but if you Google the title there are some good summaries.
Most of the data is presented in graphs common in probabilistic risk analysis, but the authors do examine an example of the anyhow burg Nuclear Powerplant in Switzerland.
This is a very low baseline. The plant consists of Gen. II boiling water reactors, built in 1967. The reactor core has multiple cracks in the core shroud.
Even with this design, the authors describe how the risk analysis demonstrates that the probability of a major accident (deaths > 2000) is less than one per one million reactor years.
The risk graphs demonstrate that for reactors newer than Gen. II, the risk is greatly reduced, to the point that modern reactors are 1,600 safer than Muhlenburg.
Iff those two are satisfied, go nuclear. Before, nope.
But even if they are satisfied: nuclear is a stopgap. Solar and wind are solutions. So I emotionally welcome everything which pushes those forward
Climate change aside, it's hard for me to see anti-nuclear activism (to the extent that it results in coal plants continuing to operate) as anything other than mass murder.
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053-600-fossil-f...
[1]http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/04/25/chernoby...
It's like saying: Army A is better than army B, because army B is causing more deaths in this war.
BTW. The Chernobyl and Fukushima desasters are still harming society. These desasters are still in progress.
Because if anti-nuclear activists were to back down and let us replace coal with nuclear, tens of thousands of lives would be saved. The death toll might not be 0, but it would almost certainly be lower.
Link? I'm also very curious what can be done with after carbon sequestration if you have any links for that…
If that's the case, sure, go full-tilt renewables. If not, then we have to weigh nuclear waste is a bigger problem than contributing to CO2 levels. I'm inclined to say no -- if only because nuclear waste can be a reasonably localized problem, whereas climate change from CO2 is global.
Technically speaking? Yes, for sure. Politically speaking? Hahahahahahahaha no, nowhere close.
I completely agree that we should be ramping up nuclear generation, but nuclear alone also has a timing issue that requires either batteries or a hybrid approach to generation. Unlike fossil fuels where the plant can be dialed up and down to cope with demand, the output of a nuclear reactor is generally fixed (at least on the timescales relevant to demand fluctuation).
Solar can be a big help here, because demand tends to be higher during the day and lower at night. Some sort of energy storage technology would likely still be needed even with a full nuclear/solar grid, since energy usage in developed nations tends to peak in the early evening.
There is nothing inherent in nuclear power that makes it impossible to throttle and indeed there are currently operating plants designed with load following capabilities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuc...
No offense intended for the author of the parent comment, I hope he won't take this the wrong way either!
Regardless of what you think of the industry of nuclear power, this specific reactor, at Diablo Canyon, is precarious and dangerous.
Under renewed scrutiny, PG&E is due to release ground-shaking safety reports in 2017 for the renewal of its lease in 2024 after some newish (last 7 year) USGS surveys suggested there may be more threats and that the fault lines may have not been properly characterized.
Also there was a whistleblower case against PG&E in the early 2000s claiming that safety concerns were routinely minimized (think deep water horizon) and expressing great concern for the accuracy of the claims of safety. (http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id...)
Anyway, there's serious safety concerns regarding this particular plant and that it could be the US Fukushima given its location and the fault line proximity.
I don't really think a reactor being retired at 40 is the worst thing (though I'm sure it could be run longer), but have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state (think the numerous oil refinery explosions that occur regularly worldwide)? What about oil train explosions (think the other oil train explosions)?
People express serious concern for some of the most outlandish, obscure risks on any project if it somehow involves the word 'nuclear.' Every project. A lot more lives could be saved if the same effort was used to create real safety standards on oil, coal, and gas.
1. Do you have some reason to believe there is a meltdown risk?
No. I've read and heard from qualified people who do. I can't speak for them beyond saying they exist. I was trying to summarize their positions, but I probably missed some things.
2. Have you spent as much time worrying about the oil refineries within miles of fault lines all throughout the state?
Diablo canyon popped up on my radar due to a podcast (TUC radio) which had a 2-part series: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/77429 and http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/77528. I found the case for the shutdown of this specific site quite persuasive - you may be more skeptical...
3. What about oil train explosions?
No. Again, this is a specific case. The focus is on the safety of this one thing.
You can look at my comment history, I don't believe I'm an alarmist. The concerns of the suitability of the plant seemed valid outside of any anti-nuclear concern.
I share GPs concerns about Diablo Canyon and, yes, I've spent lots of time concerned about oil refineries in the state (both seismic and other issues) having spent several years living near several of them, and having a family member who worked in several of them. And about oil train safety, for some of the same reasons.
Actually, I've observed that there is a considerable overlap in California between people who are concerned with nuclear safety and those concerned with oil industry safety, and considerable overlap between the people unconcerned each of those, even though those unconcerned with nuclear safety will wave around things like oil (or coal or gas) industry safety when nuclear safety is raised (but generally not in any other context.)
And, in the particular case of PG&E, part of the reason for concern about them is they don't exactly have a spotless record of nonfeasance and malfeasance regarding gas infrastructure safety, too.
Other disasters are not affected anyone outside of the plant, for example Three Mile Island. And that's all! On the other side, hydro plants actually make things much worse to a nature and already killed big rivers in siberia. Fossil-fuel stations (67% of worldwide energy) are even worse.
Nuclear plants are still the safest for environment and the only way to bring electricity to developing world because it can be very cheap. Take a look at B. Gates nuclear reactor: http://terrapower.com/pages/technology
Building some nuclear plants will be able to feed anyone almost forever. Unlike solar energy that you need to keep in batteries for the night. And who say that batteries can't explode? It is looks like fear of flighting: no reason to fear planes and much much more people die in car accidents that in plane one. Same here - much more people die from other sources that from nuclear plant disaster.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...