Fukushima report shows nuclear power can never be safe and cheap

Fukushima report shows nuclear power can never be safe and cheap

www.guardian.co.uk

Japan is perhaps the most technologically advanced nation on Earth and yet, time after time, the report finds missing measures that I would have expected to already be in place. It highlights the fundamental inability for anyone to anticipate all future events and so deeply undermines the claims of the nuclear industry and its supporters that this time, with the new generation of reactors, things will be different.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is interesting ... especially since it comes from the IAEA.

Although, much of the negativity in the article does appear to be the author's (not so unreasonable) interpretation of the IAEA report

I disagree with all this in one aspect. Although perhaps true for nuclear fission, I don't think it is true for nucleur fusion.

With abundant fuel supplies and safe byproducts, "it's the way of the future"

Anybody else want to jump on the fusion band wagon with me? ;-)

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

IAEA Report

The author's conclusions based on his reading of the report:

To sum up, when you build a reactor you are committing to controlling the nuclear fury at its heart for half a century or more, and controlling the waste produced for many thousands of years (using methods no-one has yet developed).

On those timescales, unforeseen events are a certainty, with hugely costly consequences. The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan were extreme, and the IAEA report tries to argues that new nuclear safety regulations should learn lessons from the failure of the system at Fukushima to cope.

But the real lesson is that it is impossible to cover all eventualities. That means nuclear power is not safe or, given the colossal clean-up costs, cheap. Regretfully, I believe it is an illusory answer to the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Originally posted by EthanT
This is interesting ... especially since it comes from the IAEA.

Although, much of the negativity in the article does appear to be the author's (not so unreasonable) interpretation of the IAEA report

I disagree with all this in one aspect. Although perhaps true for nuclear fission, I don't think it is true for nucleur fusion.

With abundant fuel supplies and safe byproducts, "it's the way of the future"

Anybody else want to jump on the fusion band wagon with me? ;-)

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

IAEA Report

edit on 21-6-2011 by EthanT because: (no reason given)

For the very near future... Fusion. For existing I'd read up on thorium.

]To sum up, when you build a reactor you are committing to controlling the nuclear fury at its heart for half a century or more, and controlling the waste produced for many thousands of years (using methods no-one has yet developed).

On those timescales, unforeseen events are a certainty, with hugely costly consequences. The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan were extreme, and the IAEA report tries to argues that new nuclear safety regulations should learn lessons from the failure of the system at Fukushima to cope.

But the real lesson is that it is impossible to cover all eventualities. That means nuclear power is not safe or, given the colossal clean-up costs, cheap. Regretfully, I believe it is an illusory answer to the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, nuclear waste isnt a techincal problem, its a political problem.

I hope Mr Limey Know it All will kindly take his own advice on the evils of nuclear power and unplug his laptop, TV, blender, refrigerator and cram them up his a$$.

Originally posted by SirMike

]To sum up, when you build a reactor you are committing to controlling the nuclear fury at its heart for half a century or more, and controlling the waste produced for many thousands of years (using methods no-one has yet developed).

On those timescales, unforeseen events are a certainty, with hugely costly consequences. The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan were extreme, and the IAEA report tries to argues that new nuclear safety regulations should learn lessons from the failure of the system at Fukushima to cope.

But the real lesson is that it is impossible to cover all eventualities. That means nuclear power is not safe or, given the colossal clean-up costs, cheap. Regretfully, I believe it is an illusory answer to the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, nuclear waste isnt a techincal problem, its a political problem.

I hope Mr Limey Know it All will kindly take his own advice on the evils of nuclear power and unplug his laptop, TV, blender, refrigerator and cram them up his a$$.

As it stands nuclear waste is almost entirely a technical problem... You care to breathe in DU or other radioactive particles, and self-radiate the rest of your short life expectancy? I'll answer this for you... Nope, didn't think so. The only political aspect is funding the right technology.

Originally posted by Americanist
As it stands nuclear waste is almost entirely a technical problem... You care to breathe in DU or other radioactive particles, and self-radiate the rest of your short life expectancy? I'll answer this for you... Nope, didn't think so. The only political aspect is funding the right technology.

edit on 21-6-2011 by Americanist because: (no reason given)

Reprocessing waste and separating out high level waste for reuse in reactors from low level waste for low level disposal has been done for decades ...just look to Areva. Its been banned by law in the US for nearly 30 years now ... thats the political side.

Funny, I guess the writers of this report have never heard of CANDU reactors. Our reactors use raw uranium for fuel, which is much safer than using refined uranium. CANDU reactors are also cheap and reliable.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Funny, I guess the writers of this report have never heard of CANDU reactors. Our reactors use raw uranium for fuel, which is much safer than using refined uranium. CANDU reactors are also cheap and reliable.

I'm not familar with CANDU reactors, but the problem might be that you need to seperate the IAEA report, which specifically talked about Japan, from the opinion of the author who wrote the guardian article, which extends the argument to "all" nuclear reactors.

Regardless, fusion is still better ;-)

Originally posted by EthanT

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

Funny, I guess the writers of this report have never heard of CANDU reactors. Our reactors use raw uranium for fuel, which is much safer than using refined uranium. CANDU reactors are also cheap and reliable.

I'm not familar with CANDU reactors, but the problem might be that you need to seperate the IAEA report, which specifically talked about Japan, from the opinion of the author who wrote the guardian article, which extends the argument to "all" nuclear reactors.

Regardless, fusion is still better ;-)

But there are no fusion reactors, right? Unless you want to count the Sun.

I implore you to look into CANDU reactor technology though, if you're interested in reliable reactor technology.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

But there are no fusion reactors, right? Unless you want to count the Sun.

I implore you to look into CANDU reactor technology though, if you're interested in reliable reactor technology.

No, but I think if we really tried we could get it going over the next decade (or two). Some of the folks using the laser method feel they are very close to achieving fusion on a small scale

I saw a stat somewhere that said the UK alone spends more money on ringtones each year than the entire world does on fusion research.

Clearly, we are not really trying very hard.

I'll check out the CANDUs .. thanks!

The fukushima 2 plant, just 7 miles south of the striken plant, also took a heap of damage - but with reactor designs about 10 years newer than fukushima 1 it survived without serious incident - en.wikipedia.org...

the tsunami that struck them was estimated as 14m high - twice the height they had been designed to expect.

And newer reactors are safer still - the latest generations being designed to not need secondary cooling at all to maintain temperature.

reply to post by EthanT


Indeed, we are seriously lacking in developing alternative energy technology.

There was a story not too long ago about cold fusion development, but I'm not big on physics so I'm not sure how legitimate that story turned out to be.

The inventors of safe alternative energy are all either dead, or their patents owned by the energy giants and corporate elite.

Seriously, if there were ever an easy and cheap alternative energy for the world it would destroy the global economies.... Can't let that happen now can we?

Originally posted by EthanT
Anybody else want to jump on the fusion band wagon with me? ;-)

www.guardian.co.uk

Thanks for posting this, I've wanted to see the IAEA report. It's 162 pages long so I haven't read that yet but I will.

I read the article discussing it and some of the lessons learned are scary, those are things in some cases we thought the nuclear industry was already doing. In fact Japan had a big program to build some emergency response centers not that long ago (maybe a decade ago or so?) but apparently the latest suggestions for emergency response centers are more specific in saying that the center should survive an earthquake, have access to controls related to the plane, etc. I wonder what the emergency response centers Japan built were like? (Maybe just window dressing to convince somebody they'd done something but it apparently wasn't very effective).

Regarding fusion, I've thought about that. At least if a fusion reactor explodes, it may leave a smoking crater where the fusion reactor once was, but it won't contaminate the whole planet like the fission reactors if and when it blows up.

And it seems we already have a larger fusion reactor than we need...the sun.

We have more energy coming from the sun than we need. We just haven't learned how to harness it yet.

Or maybe we are just starting to figure out how to do that?

MIT prototype solar dish passes first tests Low-cost system could revolutionize global energy production