back to article Fukushima fearmongers: It's your fault Japan dumped CO2 targets

If the Fukushima crisis has proved one thing, it's that nuclear power is safe. Everything that could possibly go wrong did, the accident was agreed to be at the top of the international scale for seriousness, and yet in decades to come scientists will not be able to attribute any deaths to radiation released from the Daiichi …

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No middle ground for the hard Greens...

    The trouble is that the hard left Greens would rather see the whole world freezing in sackcloth and ashes than burn a single molecule of "fossil fuel". They need to become more realistic.

    They can't understand that the single greatest improvement in carbon emissions can only come from cleaning up the the third world where no modern emission controls have been implemented on power plants and cars. Old uncontrolled coal/oil fired Power Plants, Diesel cars, Open burning, wood/dung for cooking etc all do more to damage the atmosphere at this point in time than anything that the first world does. Cleaning them up would provide an immense immediate improvement to carbon (and more importantly SOOT) emissions.

    In the first world where this emission control has already been done, there are no reasonable improvement to be made that do not adversely affect the economy and they can't bring any immediate change in carbon.

    The first world can't be further penalized until the low hanging fruit have been picked.

    1. Dire Newt

      Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

      "They can't understand that the single greatest improvement in carbon emissions can only come from cleaning up the the third world"

      This just goes to show how ignorant your average person is about CO2. Whether you believe in global warming or not - the third world cranks out *a miniscule fraction* of anthropogenic CO2 - because they don't have any bloody industry. "Open burning?" You seriously think cooking fires are a major pollutant? ...We're all doomed. http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

        Depends on what you mean by third world.

        china and India don't have much of a green movement curtailing their emmissions

      2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

        "This just goes to show how ignorant your average person is about CO2. Whether you believe in global warming or not - the third world cranks out *a miniscule fraction* of anthropogenic CO2 - because they don't have any bloody industry. "

        That depends where you put India and China.

        I'd say both countries have quite a few people with "3rd world" living standards.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

          "the third world cranks out *a miniscule fraction* of anthropogenic CO2 - because they don't have any bloody industry. "

          That depends where you put India and China.

          I'd say both countries have quite a few people with "3rd world" living standards."

          Quite.

          If the West didn't buy manufactured goods from China but had them built in the West in pollution-controlled factories, and also avoided the apparently massive pollution from global shipping (sorry, no link) would it make a significant difference to pollution? Would it make a significant difference to profits? Which one (profit maximisation or pollution avoidance) is more important now? Same answer in fifty years time?

      3. Dan Paul

        Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

        How ignorant are you? ALL FORMS OF COMBUSTION CREATE SIGNIFICANT CO2. Look at India, hundreds to thousands of smaller facilities add up to major uncontrolled pollution, China alone is unbelievably huge for uncontrolled burning, EVERY manufacturing facility is uncontrolled, un monitored and spewing ten thousand times the amount of emissions that any first world facility of the same type would. China had to shut down ALL manufacturing & power generation so the air was clean enough to hold the Olympics or did you not remember?

        North Korea, old Soviet Union, the WHOLE Middle East all of Indonesia etc all do the same thing.

        They are still the "third world" to me if they do not have and utilize emission controls like the first world does.

        How about burning wood, garbage etc? How about burning forests to clear land? That covers most of Africa, and all of South America not mentioning that ALL OF THEIR INDUSTRY is ten thousand times dirtier as well!!!

        Take some time to look up emission control and combustion controls, you may learn some things.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

      Burning wood or dung contributes no CO2, unless they have dug up 1000 year old wood and dung to burn.

      1. Matthew 25

        Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

        That is just not true. Trees take carbon out of the atmosphere over hundreds of years which is then released in minutes when they are burned. Added to the fact the energy density of wood is nowhere near that of fossil fuels and we end up with massive deforestation

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

        ALL TYPES OF STANDARD COMBUSTION (BURNING ANYTHING) WILL FORM CO2

    3. t.est

      Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

      Blaming industrialised countries problem on developing countries, we heard it before, it's nothing new, just a way to remove one's own responsibility upon others. Imperialism?

      If anyone can do anything about it's emissions it's the developed countries. If they learn how to control it they can show the developing countries how to build their infrastructure. Not the other way around as you imply, that the developing countries should solve the industrialised countries problems for them.

      If you wouldn't had been so incredibly ignorant of your own responsibility I would have voted you up. As I can't stand the logics from the green movements either. But in comparison to your logic they are Einstein's each one of them.

      Fortunate for you, you understood to comment as anonymous.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

        As if you are any less anonymous, "t,est"

        The Developed countries can do nothing about other countries practices, especially when they turn a blind eye to doing even the smallest amount of emission control. You are obviously too ignorant on the subject to even comment as you know not the first thing about controlling the emissions from a coal fired power plant and I have spent 20 years designing and selling equipment to do so

        China creates more pollution than almost any other country and yet the third world does nothing and expects the first world to clean up their shit.

        Are you fukkin kidding me?

    4. Sirius Lee

      Re: No middle ground for the hard Greens...

      Some, understandably, are concerned at the future consequences for humans (i.e. themselves) so wrap themselves in the comforting blanket of carbon reduction. They form an easy market for scare stories but even so, it's bizarre that mainstream media is happy to run with stories from individuals and groups that are really advocating genocide. In any other context, the suggestion that the world should take an action that would have the effect of killing billions of people (billions not millions) would be ridiculed. But for some reason not in this context. Because the earth may warm up a bit in the next 100 years and some ecosystems may change, it appears to be acceptable to advocate policies that would have disastrous consequences. Fight a highly unlikely Armageddon with a certain Armageddon.

  3. Alistair
    Mushroom

    Thank you Lewis

    I know that many many will disagree with quite a few of your points.

    I however am a pragmatist and a realist, not an ideologue. Thus although some of your data points will never be *either* proven or disproved, I must wholeheartedly agree with the overall sentiment.

    We NEED nuclear. ITER is 15 or 20 years from fruition at best, and 50 or 60 years from being functionally working in the real world. There are nuclear options that *can* provide the energy we do need and will need in the future. Fossil fuels will come to an end. Perhaps not this decade or in the next 5. But they will end. Renewable energy sources are subject to the same vagaries of nature that we are saying will be horribly negatively affected by the carbon levels in the atmosphere.

    Stop the evacuation from the nuclear energy lifeboat that is sitting here for us. Lets get back to reality and work on IMPROVING nuclear energy and start building the plants that will provide the energy the human race needs to keep moving forward.

    I'll eat the downvotes for backing Lewis. This is something I believe.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Thank you Lewis

      Re: We NEED nuclear. ITER is 15 or 20 years from fruition at best

      Being conservative, I would suggest that the replacement for Uranium/Plutonium reactors is actually Thorium as it is known to work, unlike ITER, plus it provides a very simple and effective way of massively reducing the long-term waste from the Uranium/Plutonium reactors we are currently using. But this doesn't take the pressure off ITER to deliver, only that we aren't betting our future on it delivering anytime soon.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Whoa!

    It was a good article for a while there. Well reasoned. Logical. And then the "reveal" or the "comment" when suddenly it all went Bat. Sh*t. Crazy. and the author was revealed to be either a raving conservative alarmist who wouldn't clean an oil spill up if his children were drowning in it at best to verging into delusional paranoid schizophrenia territory.

    Oil's going dude. Keep ignoring that and then you really will be living in the dark. Renewables are the future and nothing you say, do, or write is going to change that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whoa!

      He's not talking about OIL, hes talking about nuclear power. He even says that it will be stupid to depend on Saudi or any other oil supply.

      (Still, don't let facts get in the way of a good rant eh?)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whoa!

      "Oil's going dude. "

      We evidently need a new posting moniker "Anonymous knob".

      There's no shortage of fossil hydrocarbons. Coal's plentiful, there's shit loads of "non-conventional" and tight oil, there's shitty shit loads of tight gas (and more than a little of conventional loose gas). And when all of that's gone, there, bazillions of therms of gas hydrates.

      1. DavCrav

        Re: Whoa!

        "There's no shortage of fossil hydrocarbons. Coal's plentiful, there's shit loads of "non-conventional" and tight oil, there's shitty shit loads of tight gas (and more than a little of conventional loose gas). And when all of that's gone, there, bazillions of therms of gas hydrates."

        And they're all OURS!!! Mwhahaha. We can do whatever we like with the planet's resources now, because the future doesn't exist, and there will never be a time when we will need those precious resources for something other than burning them.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Whoa!

          "there will never be a time when we will need those precious resources for something other than burning them."

          Some people act as though it's true.

          Feedstocks for petrochemicals and agribusiness? To make (e.g.) plastics and fertilisers?

          Grows on trees, those carbon based raw materials.

          Unfortunately the trees it grew on all died rather a long time ago, and there's very little we can do now to replace the fossil fuels we're burning, not in any relevant timescale.

          But let's all carry on using fossil fuels for energy as though there's no tomorrow. Because before too long, there probably won't be.

          I'm not anti nuclear. I'm anti stupid. Carrying on the way we in the West have been for the last few decades, using fossil fuels for energy, is likely to turn out stupid.

    3. itzman

      Re: Whoa!

      If renewables are the future I am glad I wont be living in it.

      And glad I wasn't living in the past where renewables were the present.

      Anybody who says renewables are the future

      - hankers after the Dark ages

      - wants to kill most of the human race (not an unreasonable position given how crowded with green idiots its getting)

      - is lying

      - has an interest in a renewables company

      Or is simply a batshit stark raving bonkers swivel eyed loon.

      1. peter_dtm

        Re: Whoa!

        about the only thing you forgot was :

        and doesn't 'think of the children' the majority of whom will live short brutalised peasant lives

      2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        @Itzman

        "Anybody who says renewables are the future

        - hankers after the Dark ages

        - wants to kill most of the human race (not an unreasonable position given how crowded with green idiots its getting)

        - is lying

        - has an interest in a renewables company"

        Or maybe has a very narrow definition of what "renewable" means.

        Can include

        Anerobic digestion

        Micro hydro

        Geothermal from every oil well that has ever been dug and is no longer producing.

        Space solar.

        But these options are a bit complex and "industrial" for the wigwam living Jades.

        And of course if you want large scale compact, no CO2 then logic --> nuclear systems.

    4. donlaw

      Re: Whoa!

      Yes I agree with the fact that all oil and methane will eventually be used up at some year and then it will revert to coal and nuclear power. It is a matter of time since industry is needed to create anything the human race requires. We are even looking at mining asteroids and other planets since the powers to be know the above is correct. My partner and I have looked into many things for energy and both of us have worked and done some designs on nuclear plants even the ones in Japan. To us the renewable option is the only way to supply energy to make this world survive. There are few options but Nuclear is one but has the problem of storage if spent rods in pools of water, two, Wind, Ocean Waves, Solar panels, Hot salt from directed sun through mirrors to drive electric steam turbans, all are electric power devices. Even though they are designing the electric car or Hydrogen car or Fuel cell car these devices all have to use the electric grid. The World electric grid even USA grid will not support the above without a total revamp. So we have looked for what is needed and come to the conclusion that if industry and personal and domestic travel is to survive there has to be a liquid fuel. So we have searched and found a special hybrid sorghum which is not a food can produce 2400 gallons of ethanol a year in warm areas and 1200 gallons a year in cold areas since it has been bread to grow in cold areas of Canada. Since it takes only 10% ethanol and lye to produce biodiesel meaning the diesel trucks and boats and trains and planes can move by biodiesel. So in my thoughts where is the vegetable oil found and it can be grown in the USA and warm tropical areas of the world. This is a renewable fuel and is clean. So in my thoughts the future is diesel engines and the phasing out of gas engines. Vegetable oil is a massy grown oil and will never run out in the world as long as humans are alive.

  5. WalterAlter
    Mushroom

    No, the plan is feudal warlordism run by banks

    >>But WWF and the other hard greens know the realities too: they know that no carbon + no nukes = economic misery. They just don't care - their plan is that humanity should abandon economic growth and sink into poverty.

    We need to understand that the latter day trotskyite battle plan is de-engineer, de-evolve, and de-populate the planet into a neo-feudal caste stratified aristocracy plus peasantry arrangement that will suit the crypto-fascist banker oligarchy to a well tailored T. At the radical end of the political spectrum, occult elements of both the extreme right and the extreme left have identical aims in the salient economic battlefields. This is the cause of the left's schizophrenia re the feudal anachronistic aspects of Islam, which will become the global state religion during this little "transition". This is why radical environmentalism is, in fact, a right wing strategem as copiously explained here: http://www.ecofascism.com/. Once the actual shape and asset disposition of the Game Board are known, counter strategies become clear. The financial oligarchy will begin to shrivel like a green-skinned witcht as soon as Glass-Steagall laws are passed by nations.

    1. NomNomNom

      Re: No, the plan is feudal warlordism run by banks

      occult elements?

      1. Mystic Megabyte

        Re: No, the plan is feudal warlordism run by banks

        occult ~ adj.

        1. hidden and difficult to see

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No, the plan is feudal warlordism run by banks

      Sorry to rain on your rant, but Trotskyites, bonkers as they are in other ways, are all in favour of industrialisation and economic development. The hard left is bang alongside anything that raises the proletariat - and that means a focus on industrialised farming, mining, machinery, oil production, you name it. The former Soviet Union, when it collapsed, had a glut of technical commodities. Their problem was that they never worked out how to identify and supply consumer demand, owing to centralised planning.

      As for Islamification, I cannot imagine anybody in the far Left supporting it for a moment. You are confusing the Left with multicultural liberalism, which is a completely different beast (are you American? They tend to do this.)

      I agree that radical environmentalism is a de facto far right policy; the 1933-45 German government were certainly as Green as you get in many ways and their desire to keep the German people in a relatively deindustrialised state was a consequence of the influence of the East Prussians.

      The root problem of the more left wing Greens is their utter scientific illiteracy which leads them to fear anything that emits radiation, unless of course it's the Sun.

      1. WalterAlter
        FAIL

        Re: No, the plan is feudal warlordism run by banks

        >>Sorry to rain on your rant, but Trotskyites, bonkers as they are in other ways, are all in favour of industrialisation and economic development.

        You speak of pre-"New Age" trotskyism. Post modern trotskyism is giving head to Fabian socialism while caught in a redux of steam engine artisan ennui coupled to caste system "Eastern spirituality" and its hideously pathological quantities of tree hugging empathy. I see no leftist elements humping in the May Day meadows today who are not fatally technophobic and hypochondriacal.

        >>As for Islamification, I cannot imagine anybody in the far Left supporting it for a moment. You are confusing the Left with multicultural liberalism, which is a completely different beast (are you American? They tend to do this.)

        D%d, stop hairsplitting and see that radical Islam is the de-nutted left's marcher lord. Where is the salient leftist hue and cry over the utterly feudal Sharia tenets from genital mutilation to child rape other than the occasional furrowed brow by the occasional feminist? If the Tea Party farts even upwind there is utter bedlam on the left. Some tribal goat herders stone an adolescent girl to death for opting out of an extortionary marriage and the ONLY ones reporting are the Western right wing press.

        >>(are you American? They tend to do this.

        Are you an academic? They tend to think the world is just a big textbook.

    3. DiViDeD

      Re: No, the plan is feudal warlordism run by banks

      Holy Zarqhuan's Flying Fish!

      Haven't heard the term 'crypto fascist' since Citizen Smith. And it still means as little now as it did then. A true linguistic survivor, that one!

  6. Vociferous

    Well, two thoughts...

    The writer is absolutely correct about nuclear power. It is one of the most environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity there is, only solar and wind can compete*, and the environmental movements opposition to nuclear power has long since gone from being justified from the precautionary principle, to braindead dogmatism. It vexes me that fellow environmentalists seriously, for reals, think that coal, oil and hydropower* are more friendly to nature than nuclear power.

    It especially vexes me when normally level-headed organizations like the WWF get swept up in the dogmatic anti-nuclear-power-ism. That harebrained organizations like PETA and Animal Liberation Front oppose nuclear power doesn't surprise me, but organizations like WWF and Sierra Club should know better.

    * hydropower is _massively_ damaging to the environment, especially in the tropics. It is the only form of energy production which has made entire species globally extinct, and _a lot _ of species at that. It's got an undeserved reputation as environmentally friendly because it's renewable, but from a conservancy point of view it's probably the worst form of energy production there is.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well, two thoughts...

      "The writer is absolutely correct about nuclear power. It is one of the most environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity there is"

      No, it's not, and I'm sick of the tired old misdirections on the attempt to paint it as such.

      Running the nuclear power plant itself is "clean" - practically no emissions. But I have had it up to HERE with proponents of nuclear power proclaiming its environmental purity while completely and utterly avoiding the discussion of the waste from the uranium enrichment process, the transportation of materials to and from the plant, the processing and storage of the waste nuclear fuels and finally the eventual full decommissioning and deconstruction of the plant.

      The uranium enrichment processing alone has created some of the worst polluted industrial areas of the planet. Once used, the nuclear fuels become energy sinks from the power grid, requiring continuous cooling for years afterwards during the fuel's initial decay stabilization. And then we won't even bother talking about how long it takes, and the complex processes involved, with decommissioning a plant - on second thought, lets. I would LOVE to have someone here prove that the nuclear power plant decommissioning process isn't as onerous as it truly is. The decommissioning process and handling of spent nuclear fuel will add MILLIONS of tons of CO2 back into the atmosphere from all the complex processes, including power usage over the lifetime of the spent fuel handling, required. I guess that, once hundreds of tons of toxic materials are buried, the world shouldn't bother itself to ever think about it again [/sarcasm]

      Please. Spare us. You want to talk about the impact of the full production cycle of other energy source - fossil fuels, solar, wind, wave, etc. - and then completely and utterly ignore the parts of the nuclear production cycle that does not meet your discussion's agenda. If you want to talk apples-to-apples, please do so. But when you call nuclear "clean" and then completely disregard the pre- and post-production fuel and cleanup issues...you only prove yourself to be extremely biased.

      1. DavCrav

        Re: Well, two thoughts...

        "The decommissioning process and handling of spent nuclear fuel will add MILLIONS of tons of CO2 back into the atmosphere from all the complex processes, including power usage over the lifetime of the spent fuel handling, required."

        Dude, from the table in a post above, in 2008 alone the UK emitted 572m tonnes of CO2. If decommissioning the nation's nuclear power plants only MILLIONS of tonnes of CO_2, then that's fine, it's about 1% of our yearly output. If you want to use scare capitals, you need BILLIONS of tonnes, not MILLIONS.

        1. James Loughner
          Happy

          Re: Well, two thoughts...

          Radioactivity = energy. why throw away perfectly good energy sources. Convert Reactor waste to nuclear batteries. They run for decades and if done on a large scale they can be protected and supply supplemental energy.

      2. Tomato42

        Re: Well, two thoughts...

        Yeah, because it's so much better to have the toxic waste spewed all over the plant for tens of years than to bury it in one place with safety mechanisms that are over engineered to hell and back few times over.

        Maybe your organism can handle trace amounts of lead and mercury and high amounts of soot in atmosphere but mine will take twice as high background radiation any time of the year. Life in general have evolved to deal with the latter, not the former.

      3. Andydaws

        Re: Well, two thoughts...

        "The uranium enrichment processing alone has created some of the worst polluted industrial areas of the planet. "

        Eh?

        I used to live about 10 miles from the UK's main enrichment plant at Capenhurst, It's in Cheshire, Close to Ellesmere Port. Here's the Google Maps link

        https://maps.google.com/maps?q=capenhurst&oe=&safe=on&ie=UTF-8&ei=DESHUuquB4b07AbSp4C4DA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg

        Looks rather green and unpolluted to me.

        Here's the French equivalent - "Eurodif" at Tricasitn in South-West France:

        https://maps.google.com/maps?q=tricastin+eurodif&oe=&safe=on&ie=UTF-8&ei=D0WHUqTdCrPQ7AbHpoCoCQ&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAg

        A bit browner (well, it is southern France) but still hardly a polluted wasteland.

        " Once used, the nuclear fuels become energy sinks from the power grid, requiring continuous cooling for years afterwards during the fuel's initial decay stabilization"

        Again, eh?

        within three years of being removed from a reactor, it's perfectly routine to move fuel into air-cooled natural storage circulation - a PWR or BWR assembly is making well under 100w of decay heat.

        " I would LOVE to have someone here prove that the nuclear power plant decommissioning process isn't as onerous as it truly is"

        you do know it's now been done at least a dozen times with LWRs in the US; here's a link to the highest profile example:

        http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/SITING/Pages/trojan.aspx

        "Decommissioning is the process of removing the radioactive material from the site and restoring the site for other uses. PGE built Trojan on what was an already an industrial site before PGE bought it. Now that decommissioning is complete, the site is safe for any type of use, including industrial, commercial or even residential....

        ...The process took about 9 years. Trojan began decommissioning in earnest in spring of 1996. They completed decommissioning December 2004."

        I have a sneaking suspicion you've not the faintest idea about what you're talking about.

      4. Vociferous

        Re: Well, two thoughts...

        > No, it's not, and I'm sick of the tired old misdirections on the attempt to paint it as such.

        Well, I'm happy you agree that the running of nuclear plants is environmentally friendly, and Andydaws has already given a nice rebuttal to your other points, so I'm instead going to focus on the only thing which is NOT environmentally friendly about nuclear power: uranium mining. If you want to criticize nuclear power from an environmental point of view, then it's the mines you need to concentrate on -- they've historically been poorly handled and have spread radioactive dust around them. That said, the effects are localized and even the worst uranium mines pale compared to mining of brown coal or extraction of oil from tar sands.

        I honestly have no idea why the environmental movement has become completely irrational over nuclear power, to the point of embracing real horrors such as tropical hydropower.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Well, two thoughts...

          A lot of his "rebuttal" is simple bogus.

          ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

          "Eh?

          I used to live about 10 miles from the UK's main enrichment plant at Capenhurst, It's in Cheshire, Close to Ellesmere Port. Here's the Google Maps link"

          Well, good for you. Why don't you learn about:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

          http://www.epa.gov/radiation/cleanup/npl_sites.html

          from

          http://www.epa.gov/radiation/cleanup.html

          "The total number of sites contaminated with radionuclides in the United States is in the thousands. Contaminated sites range in size from corners of laboratories to sprawling nuclear weapons facilities covering many square miles of land. The contamination extends to all environmental media, as well as to on site buildings and equipment."

          The most damning point to your "reply" is

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Resources_and_reserves

          "In 2005, seventeen countries produced concentrated uranium oxides, with Canada (27.9% of world production) and Australia (22.8%) being the largest producers and Kazakhstan (10.5%), Russia (8.0%), Namibia (7.5%), Niger (7.4%), Uzbekistan (5.5%), the United States (2.5%), Argentina (2.1%), Ukraine (1.9%) and China (1.7%) also producing significant amounts"

          So you try to prove a point on how little environmental contamination occurs from uranium by quoting the fact that you live in a UK community. The UK does not even produce a major amount of uranium oxide for the entire world. Your statement is like saying that your life is so clean, that the world is so great...because China is handling all your toxic waste for you. Your UK comparison of "cleanliness" is completely irrelevant because the UK isn't even on the map in terms of having to deal with uranium processing cleanup in the first place.

          Why don't you ask Russia and the United States about their nuclear processing and site cleanups? THEN you will have a sound argument.

          ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

          "Again, eh?

          within three years of being removed from a reactor, it's perfectly routine to move fuel into air-cooled natural storage circulation - a PWR or BWR assembly is making well under 100w of decay heat."

          Is your argument simply trying to blind us with apparent slight-of-hand? 3 years of cooling, then moved to a (still controlled environment of air cooling, then moved to processing or further storage...you, somehow, did not mitigate my statements but only redirected to a non-solution.

          After 3 years of active, highly monitored, power-sucking cooling, the fuel as per your own comment then gets moved - more energy - to highly monitored air cooling, either passive or active. Afterwards...where did the fuel go, exactly? Nowhere. Still must be dealt with by yet more means, doesn't it?

          ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

          "you do know [decommissioning] now been done at least a dozen times with LWRs in the US; here's a link to the highest profile example:"

          Decommissioned sites? A few. What are the sites being currently USED for? Very, very little. Most of them are considered brownsites and, while they technically are classified as "clean", they are monitored and NOT used for other purposes.

          https://forms.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/

          http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/13/idUS178883596820110613

          "To date, all 10 of the fully decommissioned plants have met the NRC requirements for unrestricted use, which means the sites are safe enough to be reclaimed for any purpose including agriculture, housing or green space.

          In the second option, called SAFSTOR, the plant is closed and awaits cleanup at a later time, offering plants like Zion extra time to increase their decommissioning funds. The NRC gives utilities up to 60 years to complete decommissioning."

          So the reply is proud of the fact that, in the cleanup he mentioned, it took 9 years. A decade to clean up. 10 out of 23 decommissioned areas in the U.S. are at "safe cleanup" stage. 10 out of 23. And the NRC allows up to 60 YEARS to handle the issue.

          "Of the 13 reactors currently being decommissioned, six chose immediate decontamination and seven remain in SAFSTOR conditions."

          So the writer is proud that, after initial shutdown, some of the plants can take up to 3/4 of a *century" to clean up.

          Several "cleaned up" sites are being "reused" as nature reserves, thereby 'eliminating' the issue of their (human) reuse (try a Google on that). In the UK, according to

          http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-Land_released_for_reuse_at_Magnox_sites-0302124.html

          "In 2006, Berkeley became the first site to achieve delicensing since the NDA was formed.

          ...

          Last year saw the first time that UK land had been fully released for further use, when two plots of land at Capenhurst, totalling seven hectares, were transferred to Urenco's neighbouring site."

          So, with all the nuclear sites decommissioned = "[2011] saw the first time that UK land had been fully released"

          Reason to be proud [/sarcasm]

      5. Nuke
        Holmes

        ac @ 21:36 - Re: Well, two thoughts...

        Wrote :- "I have had it up to HERE with proponents of nuclear power proclaiming its environmental purity while ... avoiding ...the transportation of materials to and from the plant, the processing and storage of the waste nuclear fuels and .. the decommissioning"

        As it happens my job is dealing with those, so I at least cannot be accused of "avoiding". Because so much energy is derived from uranium fission, the transport of fuel to and from the plant is trivial, I am not even sure what you are on about - the fuel used by the transport?

        Processing of fuel before and after use, at Capenhurst and Sellafield respectively, is a routine matter, not an issue except to those who wish to make it one.

        Decommissioning is not rocket science, but I have to say that the plant staff THEMSELVES tend to make heavy weather of it and can drag it into years simply because thier jobs will come to an end when it is done. Being fairly senior, I have done a few things to cut through some of the unnecessary delays.

        Storage of the final nuclear waste is also a straightforward matter - technically. Again, even some within the industry itself are making heavy weather of it, while I have always pushed for simplification and expediting things. However the indistry's hands are tied by politicians - it is a political and sociological problem and the cause of that is scaremongering.

      6. jcnewman83

        Re: Well, two thoughts...

        I could not have said it better myself!

      7. Nitpicker

        Re: Well, two thoughts...

        Ah, but there is a walk-away-safe molten salt nuclear reactor design that can all run for many decades just burning up the high level waste from those unsafe high-pressure water and solid fuel rods reactors that we made just because the military wanted more plutonium to make more bombs. Our biggest problem is to cut back our overused military, but it you worry about energy, and nuclear energy in particular, just invest quickly in WAMSR technology. Low pressure Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactors can burn up almost all of that waste that we have no way to safely store for tens of thousands of years. They run hotter so create electricity more efficiently and desalinate water too, solving another major problem. Carbon dioxide is proving not to be the huge threat that the fear mongers pretend, but the (radioactive) particulates from burning coal do kill lots of people and we should stop doing that as quickly as possible. Perhaps China will help us out if our own nuclear regulators take decades to do the right thing.

      8. t.est

        Re: Well, two thoughts...

        What about using the waste in modern Nuclear power plants that can (could as no one builds them).

        That might very well be due to some countries want's nuclear weapons too, so they build power plants that would feed them with such waste materials.

        But the designs that could use the waste from normal nuclear power plants have been out there for decades now, I assume as the first time I read about them is pretty long time ago. Still the designs that are built are based on tech from the 60's. Common build something that at least is based on the tech from the 80's why is it so hard to use all the research that has been done?

        Are we afraid of building modern plants, is it that everyone want's someone else to take the risk of introducing something new?

        I understand countries that have nuclear weapons, but smaller countries as those within EU who build nuclear power plants but have no intention of producing such weapons. Why buy the same old designs from Japan?

    2. itzman
      Childcatcher

      Re: Well, two thoughts...

      Saying solar and wind can compete with nuclear is a bit like saying a clipper ship can compete with a nuclear submarine.

      ESPECIALLY if you rule out hydro..

      Let's run the idiot scenario of a solar wind and nuclear grid. Now these are technologies that actually do exist, so we don't need to invent pixie dust and powdered unicorn horn fuelled devices. We just go with what we know.

      First of all, there will be times. Dark cold still winter evenings, typically in January or February when we will need around 60GW of power on today's grid, and the wind won't be blowing anywhere and the sun will have set.

      So to cover these, we need 60GW of nuclear power.

      That 60GW of nuclear power can run the entire nation. Its costly to build but its dirt cheap to run and emits no carbon. Neither does it need any fossil fuel. And without fossil fuel we have to have it anyway.

      Why on earth would we add renewables to it?

      To add energy security? we don't need to. Nukes already have a decade or two of fuel stored and to bulk buy more to make that 100 years would be peanuts.

      To reduce emissions? Pardon me, emissions are, once the nukes are built, already zero. And you have to build the nukes. Building the renewables would increase emissions in the build process. And probably the maintenance phase as well.

      To reduce fuel burn? why would we even BOTHER since nuclear fuel has a massive EROI anyway, and is dirt cheap.

      No, gentlemen, once we have an adequacy of nuclear power, intermittent renewables simply cannot compete. They are more expensive they cannot be dispatched and they cannot be stored and they add nothing anybody wants or needs to an all-out nuclear grid.

      They are all cost and absolutely NO BENEFIT WHATSOEVER.

      Once you say 'lets have some nuclear power' at ALL, the (rational*) case for having any renewables actually vanishes.

      This is why the anti-nuclear lobby is so vociferous. The intermittent renewables have no chance whatsoever of competing with nuclear, which is why if you have companies like Vattenfall and Siemens in your country running your grid, you have to BAN nuclear altogether, or people will start asking questions.

      As indeed they are, already...

      http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/new-uk-nuclear-reactor-spurs-reexamination-of-german-policy-a-930822.html

      The ONLY situation where intermittent renewables 'work' is there they can be offset with a lot of pre-existant paid for hydro that can't be run flat because its rainfall limited. THAT can then be turned down on windy or sunny days to conserve water.

      But even there, the costs exceed using nuclear to do the same job. Switzerland is about IIRC 60/40 nuclear hydro and it works marvellously. The 60% nuclear covers the base load and the 40% hydro is used to cover the peaks.

      IN short there is not a single job that intermittent renewables can do that can't be done better and cheaper by nuclear power.

      Beware of people who say we will need, or the future is, 'nuclear and renewables': they are not logical people who understand power generation. They are politically motivated or profit motivated to keep 'renewables' alive long past the time when the stench of green corruptions has begun to become obvious to everyone.

      *The 'case for renewables' is in fact not rational at all in any case, they represent a cosmetic solution that doesn't actually work (overall integrating them into a real world fossil grid makes no impact on its emissions commensurate with the amount they generate) to a problem that probably does not exist either. CO2 impact is widely seen as either insignificant, beneficial, or a mild combination of both. Its real purpose is top make money and capture the illiterate green vote.

      1. peter_dtm

        Re: Well, two thoughts...

        stirling summary sir !

        Anyone pushing for 'Renewable Energy' is either corrupt; ignorant or a political idealogue - or perhaps all three

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: WWF

      The Chernobyl power plant was capable of producing 4GW of constant electricity and 56 people died in an accident there. On the other hand this wind turbine might have been capable of occasionally producing 0.0005GW and 2 people died there.

      Whilst any death is a tragedy, the figures claimed for Chernobyl were in the 10s of thousands so in this respect the actual figure of 56 is a "small number".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: WWF

        One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.

        - Joseph Stalin

        If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.

        - Adolf Hitler

        Interesting company you keep

  8. ragnar

    Your stats on Chernobyl are pretty misleading.

    Can I direct you to

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_%28Chernobyl%29

    and specifically the biorobots

    http://disinfo.com/2011/04/the-biorobots-who-cleaned-up-chernobyl/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Its in wikipedia, it is about a controversial subject so it must be true.

      I don’t think so.

      Whilst I will happily defer to wiki on subjects such as the history of the USPS I do not trust it on any subject that is remotely controversial.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        But...

        ....you take as read what the register says.... class

    2. DavCrav

      According to Forbes, they took the worst-case Chernobyl and Fukushima calculations. Take a look.

      http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

  9. Richard Tobin

    Oh dear...

    Every time Lewis Page writes an article about how safe Fukushima is, a few days later Tepco admit they've lied again and the figures they gave before were completely wrong. So watch the news over the next few days.

    1. Mikel

      Re: Oh dear...

      That was quick:

      http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0000797189

      1. Andydaws

        Re: Oh dear...

        Sorry, you think it's news that water's flowing out of the containment?

        Given that the've been injecting a about 5 cubic metres/day invot each reactor since the accident, it's not exactly a surprise to find that it's passing out somewhere - all that this story is telling us is that the flow path (or at least a significant contributor to it) has been located.

        If anything, this is a positive development - rather than some sort of gross breach of the containment, this looks relatively easily remedied. Which will make the task of flooding the containment and removing the damaged fuel rather easier.

    2. TheOtherHobbes

      Re: Oh dear...

      Page might want to adjust his definition of 'safe' after talking to all those Fukushima kids who now have thyroid cancer - and the increasing numbers who will be diagnosed over the next few years.

      1. Stoke the atom furnaces

        Re: Oh dear...

        The chances of anyone dying of cancer as a result of the Fukushima accident are remote.

        You are just scaremongering.

        Fukushima’s doses tallied : Studies indicate minimal health risks from radiation in the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear disaster.

        http://www.nature.com/news/fukushima-s-doses-tallied-1.10686

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Oh dear...

          >the chances of anyone dying of cancer as a result of the Fukushima accident are remote.

          Nope - if you are in Eastern Europe and about to get a couple of million tonnes of coal power station ash dumped on you as Germany shuts down it's nukes - they are quite high.

          It's going to drop a lot more Becquerels on them than Chernobyl did - however it won't affect anyone west of the oder so we don't give a .....

      2. Vociferous

        Re: Oh dear...

        > all those Fukushima kids who now have thyroid cancer

        There have been no increase in thyroid cancer in the Fukushima region. There was a small increase at Chernobyl because a) the dose was much higher and b) the soviet government didn't distribute potassium iodide pills to the population until two weeks after the disaster, because they tried to hush everything down.

      3. peter_dtm

        Re: Oh dear...

        if it isn't pure scare mongering/green delusion you will of course have a WHO or equivelent reliable organisation's reference for this claim ?

        WWF; TEPC, Greenpeace, Japanese Power Ministry are all excluded from the concept of reliable organisation due to past failures to tell the truth

    3. Vociferous

      Re: Oh dear...

      So how many people have the Fukushima disaster killed?

      If only all lies had as few casualties as Tepco's, eh?

    4. Mikel

      Re: Oh dear...

      Lewis may have hit the jackpot this time.

      http://www.euronews.com/2013/11/15/japan-postpones-removal-of-fukushima-atomic-fuel-rods/

      1. Andydaws

        Re: Oh dear...

        "Lewis may have hit the jackpot this time."

        you - and whoever wrote the story you linked to - have about as little idea as each other.

        Let's run over the basics....

        the fuel rods that are to be removed are in the spent fuel pond of reactor 4. The postponement has been requested by the new Japanese regulator because it wants to observe a rehearsal of the handling procedures for the casks into which the fuel will be placed.

        http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20131105p2g00m0dm035000c.html

        the leakage point that's been identified is in reactor 1.

        So, the fact that the story suggests the former is somehow the result of the latter basically shows the ignorance of the author...

        as to the "bent" rod. It's a rare, but by no means unknown occurrence in refuelling. The assembly in question was loaded into a perfectly stanadard holding rack within the pond, so hte bend can be no more than a millimetre or two over a metre of length.

      2. itzman
        Headmaster

        Re: Oh dear...

        Do keep up at the back

        http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Systems_ready_for_Fukushima_fuel_removal_1311131.html

  10. Jim O'Reilly
    Pint

    IPCC doesn't help

    I think Lewis hit the nail on the head. We need nuclear power, though I'd like a push for Thorium-cycle molten salt reactors, because they are cheaper, safer and create almost no long term waste. Thorium supplies run to thousands of years already, which gives us a bit of extra time to do fusion!

    Of course, IPCC's fatuous insistence that we are heading toward climate disaster misses the point. We'll run out of oil and gas first. Their insistence on orthodoxy in thinking is constipating the debate. We need to talk to the fuel supply issues and not to Gaia-centric irrelevances.

    I'll end with the standing disclaimer, cos I don't want to lose my grants. "Irrespective of any facts, and based on a model that is known to be totally inaccurate, Anthropogenic Global Warming will possibly happen sometime on a planet near Earth."

    1. Robert Sneddon

      The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

      Thorium-cycle molten salt reactors don't exist and never have existed other than in graduate student Powerpoint presentations. Thorium can be "burned" in nuclear reactors but it's difficult since it takes a lot of neutrons to breed it up into fissile U-233, molten salt can be used to transport nuclear fuel through a core to cause criticality and create fission energy. The two ideas have never been put together for a lot of good reasons; for one thing the core I mentioned is a large lump of carbon of the positive-void coefficient sort that burned so nicely at Chernobyl.

      I could mention a lot of other things that the proposers of such reactors wave away with "and then a miracle occurs" but the key thing is that we never hear how much the electricity from a molten-salt thorium breeder will cost per kWh at the consumer's meter. The fact that thorium is abundant isn't much to recommend it when uranium is incredibly cheap now and abundant for at least the next fifty or sixty years.

      1. petrosy

        Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

        Cost of uranium for fuel is about $2500 per kg. Then you need to factor in disposal costs. It's also rare when compared to other minerals.

        Thorium is abundant and while we in the west sit with our fingers up our butts, China and India are going ahead with this tech. China aims to have an operational plant by 2020 and they are patenting the Hell out of it. So not only will they own the world manufacturing they will own the worlds energy market. Best you start learning Manderin .

        I am pleased that someone if perusing this tech as it has the potential to save the planet and I welcome our new/old Chinese overlords.

        1. Robert Sneddon

          Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

          Yellowcake (U3O8), the minehead product of uranium mining costs US $35 per lb as there's a glut on the market at the moment. Known exploitable reserves at a pricepoint of under $100 per lb are good for about a century of exploitation, probably more without the need to actively explore for more sources. Japanese scientists have carried out proof-of-concept extraction of uranium from seawater, estimated cost US $300 per kilo of metal. There's also reprocessing, at the moment spent PWR fuel contains as much as 2% U-235 after it is removed from a reactor along with some Pu-239 and Pu-240, both of which could be recycled given the will to do so and the facilities. It costs a chunk of money but it vastly reduces the mass and volume of waste needing deep-geological disposal in the future.

          Thorium by itself isn't a nuclear fuel, it's not fissile. The most common isotope is Th-232 which can be bred into U-233 which is fissile but only in a very fast nuclear reactor with a much greater neutron flux than a regular water-moderated reactor, and the history of uranium breeders over the past few decades has not been a technological or commercial triumph -- very hot, compact cores with extremely high fast neutron fluxes tend to go wrong in spectacular ways (see Dounreay, Monju, Phenix, SuperPhenix, the fiery Soviet BN-600 et al).

          Proposed molten-salt thorium reactors need a kickstarter of several tonnes of U-235 and Pu-239 in the salt to start breeding and burning the magical thorium. U-233 can be substituted but there are only a few tonnes of that material in existence in the world, it is horrendously expensive as it is made in nuclear reactors and it can be used to build functional nuclear weapons (not very good ones but they will work).

          Some work has been carried out in pebble-bed reactors using mixed-oxide fuel with thorium; bits of the "peebles" flake off, dust and crumbs, pebbles crack and disintegrate, jamming the mechanisms that should move them through the carbon core (see Chernobyl) where fission and breeding takes place. The Germans are still waiting for their broken pebble-bed reactor to cool down enough so they can start decommissioning it; it was shut down in 1987. Basically any nuclear reactor that relies on moving fuel around at 700 deg C is probably a bad idea, and that's what the molten-salt thorium breeder has to do to work at all.

          Folks like the Indians are working on using thorium in regular PWR reactor designs as a mixed-oxide fuel, experiments are taking place in a Norwegian test reactor at the moment to see what happens chemically, physically and radiologically to pellets made from a mix of thorium, uranium and plutonium over a period of years. This is very long-term research though because uranium is cheap and plentiful for at least the operating lifetime of the next generation of new nuclear plants (sixty years and more).

          1. blah111

            Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

            Thorium breeders are thermal, not fast breeders. Why are you claiming otherwise? And if you're so concerned about the temperature of the fuel please explain the freezing problem or the fact that ORNL turned off the reactor on the weekends! Try doing that with a light water reactor.

            1. smartypants

              Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

              "Try doing that with a light water reactor"

              More usefully than turning a plant off at weekends is to modulate the power output according to load, which is actually perfectly possible with modern LWR designs:

              This report gives examples of the practice in Germany:

              http://www.iaea.org/NuclearPower/Downloadable/Meetings/2013/2013-09-04-09-06-TM-NPE/9.geer_germany.pdf

              This in-depth report gives a bit more detail on load following with nuclear in general.

              http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp.pdf

              So no need for hysteria over LWR after all.

          2. beast666

            Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

            You Sir, are the problem... You spout nonsense that you claim is backed up with science and come to the conclusion that nothing can be done...

            Oh contrare! I can't be arsed at the mo to point out how Thorium can indeed make a good powerful fuel... No Carbon emissions... Not like anyone gives a toss.. 17+ years no warming whilst CO2 goes up is a FACT!

        2. Andydaws

          Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

          "China and India are going ahead with this tech"

          No, they're not.

          first the Indian programme. That's baed on two technologies - first is a mildly adapted version of their "PHWR" design (based on the old CANDU). It uses conventional solid fuel with additional thorium rods in which 233U is bred. There's no molten salt involved at all - the moderator and coolant are heavy water. In the longer run, they propose to use throium in a sodium-cooled fast reactor.

          Second, the Chinese prototype that's under design doesn't use molten fuel either. It's going to use "TRISO" type uranium carbide fuel in a bebble bed design using molten salt only for coolant - which rather precludes it being used as a breeder (the downside of TRISO is it's all but impossible to recycle, and hence any "bred" material isn't accessible". The idea is a small proportion of thorium in the fuel will breed, and extend the life of the fuel in the reactor, much as was done in the trials at Shippingport in the later 70s/early 80s.

          By the way, China certainly doesn't intend to have an "operational plant" by 2020. They're saying they intend to have a non-power producing laboratory demonstrator by then. THe earliest they think they might commission a commercial demonstrator would be 2035.

          Just for scale, they're proposing to spend about $200 million on that technology by 2020. They're going to spend a couple of $billion on HTGR demonstrators. About $10 billion on LMFBRs (they're buying two BN-800s from the Russians). And at least $200 billion on AP1000 LWRs and derivatives thereof.

        3. itzman
          FAIL

          Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

          Oh dear. Spot price for Uranium oxide (which is by weight mostly uranium) is less than $40 /lb.

          http://www.uxc.com/review/uxc_Prices.aspx

          where do you get your information? Or do you simply make it up knowing its a total complete lie?

      2. blah111
        FAIL

        Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

        Aside from the fact that molten salt reactors with graphite moderators were demonstrated years before powerpoint even existed you're completely accurate. ORNL ran their reactors on both 235U and 233U, the latter of which was provided by separate breeders operating from, wait for it, thorium. It's fair to say that ORNL never built a fully integrated reactor that bred its own fuel and had its own attached processing plant (because that wasn't the target of the research), but it's completely inaccurate to claim that the the cycle has never been demonstrated. As to the nonsense about thorium requiring "lots of neutrons to breed" I suggest you do a little more research into the neutron economy of liquid fueled thorium reactors. Or were you just trying to confuse the issue by requiring the thorium to be burned suboptimally in a solid fuel reactor like the Norwegians are playing with?

        But go ahead and keep advocating for expensive, high-pressure reactors with pathetically low burn fractions of what, ~5% of the already enriched fuel? That's certainly a fantastic way of bringing down costs...

        http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/AmSci_LFTR.pdf

        http://www.torium.se/res/Documents/124670.pdf

        1. itzman

          Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

          Who cares if its only a 5% burn up? The fuel isn't lost - it can be reprocessed and re-enriched and passed through again, and uranium is dirt cheap at less than £70/kg.

      3. Marshalltown
        Thumb Down

        Re: The Tooth Fairy and Molten Salt Thorium Reactors

        Read more. There are other types of Th reactors that don't require fuel in the form of rods. Wikipedia isn't always your best source. For instance, look up the first operating Thorium reactor and why it was closed down. No miracle involved at all.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not quite

    The alternative to modern industrialized society is not starving and shivering in the dark. The alternative is war.

    1. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

      Re: Not quite

      ...The alternative is war....

      We know. Why do you think we're supporting green politics?

      signed,

      NSA, GCHQ, and the Military-Industrial complex of the USA

      1. TheOtherHobbes

        Re: Not quite

        Someone should tell all those climate protesters who were being shagged by Special Operatives[tm] that they were only doing it because they agreed with them - and not because of covert surveillance and intelligence gathering.

        When we hear how the NSA are collecting information about bankers and currency traders with a view to prosecution, I'll agree you have a point.

  12. Frederic Bloggs

    The elephant in the room

    Is, of course, all the wasted heat that any power plant has to get rid of generating all that 'leccy.

    Personally, I tend to agree with Lewis that the menace of CO2 is somewhat over done. It can't help that burning any kind of coal has, historically, dumped more many times more radioactivity onto the ground, as well as other solid pollutants both onto the ground and into air than all the nuclear + their accidents put together (by several orders of magnitude).

    However, none of them are thermally efficient on any objective measurement. Then there is heat wastage during usage. If one ignores the comparatively tiny amount of useful work that 'leccy driven widgets do, as well as the woeful insulation status of most human 'leccy usage, one is drawn to the conclusion that all power stations are essentially atmospheric heaters with a wide distribution network making sure than few parts of the planet escape some local heating. Oh and BTW physics tells what all that "useful work" ends up as.

    So current power generation digs something out of the ground and uses it to heat its surroundings. The heating might be local, but do enough of it for long enough, over large area of the planet and one has to ask if there is a better definition of "Global Warming". What we are doing is systematically overloading the planet's ability to dump excess heat. The other "bad" things simply add to the problem.

    So are we all doomed? Well yes, obviously. However if one needs to choose"fossil" then nuclear is easily the least polluting fuel generation method. But solar based generation has one advantage in that they can never *add* to the local heating of an area. The plant even (eventually) makes a profit on the energy expended on its manufacture - unlike windmills.

    I see a small ray of sunshine in the German government has belatedly twigged what periodic generation of 40% solar energy does to a distribution grid and is starting to think about subsidizing house sized energy storage systems to bring down the cost. To the point that households might largely (in the sunnier seasons in Europe) be electrically self sufficient (and therefore excess heat generationally "neutral" for a large part of a year - but they aren't thinking of that bit - yet).

    If they succeed in bringing the cost of storage at the same rate as the reduction in cost of PV cells, together the continuing improvement in PV cell 'leccy conversion rates, then the agreement that UK PLC has just made with France and China will look even more expensive than it currently does. It may never get finished.

    I've put my coat on, as it's cold.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The elephant in the room

      "German government has belatedly twigged what periodic generation of 40% solar energy does to a distribution grid and is starting to think about subsidizing house sized energy storage systems to bring down the cost."

      References welcome.

      Especially welcome as (afaik) cities in Germany are one of the few places where district heating ever really got anywhere, and consequently one of the few places where commercial-scale thermal storage (serving not just one house but whole estates) might be worth a look.

      "the agreement that UK PLC has just made with France and China will look even more expensive than it currently does.."

      There'll be a suitable getout clause in case that happens, surely? Surely the commercial outfits haven't once again got Joe Public to carry all the risk while the suppliers take all the (guaranteed) profits?

      No?

      Oh dear.

    2. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: The elephant in the room

      >So current power generation digs something out of the ground and uses it to heat its surroundings. The heating might be local, but do enough of it for long enough, over large area of the planet and one has to ask if there is a better definition of "Global Warming". What we are doing is systematically overloading the planet's ability to dump excess heat. The other "bad" things simply add to the problem.

      Hmm.

      Given that total global solar heating is around 100 petawatts, and total global power generation is about 15 terawatts, that means power generation contributes around 0.015% of global heating.

      I get that the climate is a sensitive balance, but I'd be very surprised if we could influence it by heating, in the absence of any gas emissions.

      Solar power would be nice, if it didn't need so much resources to make the panels. And in many cases the land used would be better off growing crops (the same applies to all biofuels - you are effectively burning food)

      This debate both amuses and depresses me. We have hippies (climate) versus hippies (anti-nuclear), with us scientists caught in the crossfire.

      1. catprog

        Re: The elephant in the room

        I can think of plenty of land that is not used for crops that would be useful for solar , including houses and carparks.

  13. Mikel

    Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

    We still have no plan for a deep geological repository and vitrification for the spent fuel we have already accumulated over the last 50 years. How about we figure that out first.

    The Fukushima disaster isn't over yet and won't be for over 60 years. Chernobyl isn't either. The Ukraine estimates the exclusion zone (30KM radius) will be uninhabitable for 20,000 years. 37 years later we still haven't managed to build a shed over the thing to keep the rain off it.

    "Carbon or nuclear are the only choices" is not a valid argument. PV solar, wind and geothermal complement each other nicely and are available in Japan.

    "Nuclear is cheap." Let's add in the costs of a 20,000 year lease on the Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones, the costs of vitrification and repository, the lost money from ruining the Japanese food export industry. The unknown costs of future nuclear disasters. The costs of decommissioning both retired plants and exploded ones. Wait, we don't know what those costs are. Until we do we can't say what the cost is, cheap or dear. Let's get some definitive numbers on those costs before we decide to go in this direction. Until then exploring alternatives with known costs that don't leave large tracts of our only planet uninhabitable seems the fiscally conservative, socially cautious choice.

    1. Robert Sneddon

      Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

      "We still have no plan for a deep geological repository and vitrification for the spent fuel we have already accumulated over the last 50 years."

      Liar. The Finns are digging a deep repository for unreprocessed spent fuel right now at Olkiluoto, the Americans are burying military nuclear waste at Carlsbad in a salt mine. Britain, France and Russia are vitrifying waste and have been for decades, Japan is just starting to. The actual amounts of waste left after reprocessing and vitrification is so tiny in terms of mass and volume there's no real need to spend the money to dig deep repositories for such material for several decades.

    2. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

      Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

      ...Chernobyl isn't either. The Ukraine estimates the exclusion zone (30KM radius) will be uninhabitable for 20,000 years...

      My! That's a lot of Fuc******!

      There is a small, shrinking community of stubborn, independently minded women who returned to their ancestral homes inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. They have been there for more than 25 years, but though their numbers are naturally shrinking due to old age, most researchers agree that they are outliving their counterparts of who accepted the Soviet Union’s relocation orders.

      1. Mystic Megabyte

        Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

        I think you'll find that radiation is more harmful to young children than the elderly.

        1. Andydaws

          Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

          "I think you'll find that radiation is more harmful to young children than the elderly"

          No, it has pretty much the same effect per unit dose...

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

        We just finished building a new multi-million $ treatment plant for the chemical soup pouring out of a mine that closed 50years ago. The mercury, arsenic, cadmium etc will be safe in 10^32 years if certain theories about proton decay are correct. Until then we can just keep cleaning the water and burying the toxic sludge.

        Removing 100years of the same stuff from the bottom of a 1000m deep fjord is going to be a little more tricky.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

      The radiation is nothing. It will take a lot longer than that to turn all the excess CO2 into CaCO3 or other locked carbonate. We've had a worst case accident at Chernobyl which was all the more worse because it was a graphite reactor core which was combustible but it's not been the Armageddon predicted. A PWR full meltdown would be a lot more localised and have a much smaller footprint in a worst case accident. There is one type of reactor though which IMHO is very dangerous and fortunately has been all but abandoned by most sane governments, liquid sodium cooled fast reactors. In the end I think we will have to live with the risks of nuclear power, we just need to keep them to a minimum.

      As an Indian energy minister once said "There is no power more expensive than no power"

    4. Vociferous

      Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

      > The Ukraine estimates the exclusion zone (30KM radius) will be uninhabitable for 20,000 years. 37 years later we still haven't managed to build a shed over the thing to keep the rain off it.

      The Ukraine actually decided earlier this year to reclaim most of the exclusion zone. Which is a shame, as it had become a wildlife sanctuary.

    5. Alistair
      Pint

      Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

      Chernobyl still has some residents inside the exclusion zone. They never moved. They still eat the food they grow. They have not sprouted a second head. Not to say that its "Safe" to live there -- but there is discussion about the original estimation of scientists having been a logical extension of "take the worst case and multiply by ten to be safe".

      Fukushima is being hyped into a "worst case possible" situation - primarily due to overall media ignorance of the reality and helpfully pushed over the edge by the hypergreen types.

      IAEA estimates put our waste levels at 180,000 metric tonnes of spent fuel world wide, plus 730,000 cubic metres of low level radioactive waste products (from generation, reprocessing and processing steps) plus about 1,800,000,000 cubic metres of mill tailings from uranium mining.

      The real nasty stuff, the spent fuel.... well -- the issue of disposing of it is more how to transport it to the location where we can bury it. I believe that Canada's disposal locations were built to handle everything our reactors were putting out times 10. Admittedly there are very few geologically stable locations, we Canucks are lucky on that front.

      The low level reaction byproducts and production byproducts aren't likely to be as difficult to move about, although the vitrification plants will have to eventually consume themselves -- its still *far* less than the waste produced by burning coal. At all.

      Where we have a serious concern are mill tailing from the mining process - this volume is huge, and some of the heavy metals in there are ugly indeed. Mostly this is being reprocessed for rare earths and where possible being put back where it was found. The uglier part of this is the liquid components. Sadly I don't see relevant data on how the waste liquids are handled outside of Canada, and in that case there is a successive process of sedimentation and floculants - although I cannot find stats on what volumes were produced and then processed, or what is done with the sedimentary waste.

      It was an interesting afternoon's read, but I think you've bought the green hype on the waste product front. It seems the IAEA has a reasonably good set of data and there are at least in a couple of locations decent material handling processes to cope with the waste.

      Finally, in several cases, Thorium salt reactors have been proposed to finally consume the last waste products from PLWR and PBWR and Gas cooled reactors. So -- following UP on the techology could well help mop up from the errors and things overlooked in the process so far.

    6. beast666
      Alert

      Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

      You should be banned from El Reg for spouting such crap...

      I'm watching you...

    7. smartypants

      Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

      "Let's add in the costs of a 20,000 year lease on the Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones"

      What makes me laugh, is how people like you never campaign for people to be stopped from living by the sea, despite 20,000 people being killed by it just a few years ago in Japan.

      You also don't seem to care very much about the blighted people of Devon and Cornwall who have to live daily with a radiation threat from the very rock their towns are built on, yet consider it important that the area around Fukushima remains an exclusion zone for 20,000 years despite it being impossible to measure any influence on your health.

      Why aren't you campaigning to end the appalling industry which sends brave long-haul pilots to sit bathed in gamma rays all day so you can get a cheap flight to Disneyland?

      It's this special elevation of the risks of radiation from nuclear power over any other sort of radiation, or for that matter, any other form of risk to life from any other thing at all which just gets to me every time.

      This selective hand-wringing hysteria is positively neanderthal. I'm often able to put up with crass human stupidity, but in this instance, the very simple straightforward effect of nuclear hysteria is the message to our descendants:

      "We're going to dump all the carbon we can find into the atmosphere. Fingers crossed this global chemistry experiment doesn't stuff you all!"

      Lewis Page may not have a problem with this, but honestly, why take the risk?

    8. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Humans aren't responsible enough for nuclear power

      In fact, if you went ahead with a Thorium breeder reactor, as opposed to the design that operated at Oak Ridge in the '50s, they require plutonium to reach criticality. So you could use spent fuel from light water designs to fuel them. And, at the same time you would be dealing with the worst of the spent fuel issues created by the current generation of light water reactors.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Diversity

    I think we'll continue to see more diversity in energy generation. Renewables will supply alongside fossil fuels, and nuclear. And more electricity will be generated at the local level, reducing transmission losses

    Just my 2p in the meter

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

    This is the Reg so I realize I may be downvoted for this.... But I have a worry, and no one has ever taken the time to alleviate my fears. No matter how angry LP sounds off about this issue, I don't feel any warmer about eating fish from the Pacific. I love fish, especially tuna, and I wish suppliers and shops and FDA type agencies would screen everything just in case, for piece of mind! Especially for those with young families.

    That said, I hate all the conspiracy theories about the death of the pacific from radiation not being diluted, to the Armageddon ELE from spent fuel pool unit 4l. But why are there so few sensible discussions on this topic? The Pro-Nukers decimate the anti-nukers with utter ridicule. But that's no win to win an argument over such a divisive topic. It just fuels resentment... And it only serves to make the doomsayers more entrenched and want to proven right IMHO!

    1. Sean Houlihane

      Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

      The risk from low level contamination is (at an individual level at least) pretty small, and thats even if you take the worst-case assumptions rather than the optimistic view that some radiation might even be beneficial. Far, far higher chance that you'll die in a road accident - so if you want to improve your chances, eat more fish and hope its good for the brain, and gives you better reaction times. Worrying about getting cancer in 39.5 years rather than 40 (my interpertation of the practical radiation risk) kind of misses the point.

    2. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

      Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

      ...But why are there so few sensible discussions on this topic? The Pro-Nukers decimate the anti-nukers with utter ridicule. But that's no win to win an argument over such a divisive topic. It just fuels resentment... And it only serves to make the doomsayers more entrenched and want to proven right IMHO!

      What are you actually asking for? Both the pro and anti nuclear sides are now entrenched - you said so yourself. Humans don't listen to reason in such circumstances. If you want to know who's right, the only thing to do is to research the subject yourself and come to your own conclusions.

      Or are you complaining that you don't know which way to think because nobody's told you?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

        "Or are you complaining that you don't know which way to think because nobody's told you?"

        I do research myself but there's so much contradictory info out there! For example explain what's wrong with what this scientist is saying about the assumptions made in the Sievert calculation? Thanks

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha3BDsZZ0ig&feature=youtu.be

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

          You expect me to sit here watching a twenty minute power point presentation to dig out some piece of information you are not sure about?

          How about you take the time and effort to write out the assumptions in the Sievert calculation (which one by the way) then tell us what his problem is with the assumptions. Maybe somebody can then clarify it for you.

          Don't expect somebody to put the time and effort into answering your query when you are not even prepared to put the time and effort into properly formulating a question.

    3. John Dawson

      Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

      With regard to the risk from Pacific fish irradiated from Fukashima it would appear that the additional risk is effectively infinitesimal according to this paper - http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/30/1221834110.full.pdf

      Basically one normal banana would give you about 20x the 137Cs radiation dose in 200 g of Fukashima-contaminated fish, from the naturally occurring Potassium 40 in the banana!

      Here's the meat so to speak :

      Dose to Humans. Consumption of 200 g (a typical restaurant-sized

      serving) of PBFT contaminated with 4.0 Bq·kg-1 dry weight of

      134Cs and 6.3 Bq·kg-1 dry weight of 137Cs (mean values for PBFT

      caught off San Diego in August 2011) resulted in committed

      effective doses of 3.7 and 4.0 nSv, respectively (Table 1). To put

      this into perspective, the combined dose of 7.7 nSv from these

      two Cs isotopes is only about 5% of the dose acquired from

      eating one uncontaminated banana (assuming 200 g weight) and

      absorbing its naturally occurring 40K (28), and only about 7% of

      the dose attributable to the 40K in the PBFT (Table 1). More

      strikingly, the dose from both Cs isotopes is only 0.2% of that

      attributable to the naturally occurring 210Po from ingesting the

      fish (Table 1). Furthermore, in August 2012, PBFT off California

      were found to have less than half the levels of radioactive Cs

      than were found in August 2011 (29), which would result in even

      lower doses to human consumers.

      HTH!

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

        But that is natural free-range organic radiation which haven't been forcibly bred in some neutron factory.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

        Thanks John Dawson!

    4. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

      >I don't feel any warmer about eating fish from the Pacific.

      You would prefer fish from the North Sea?

      Take every factory, refinery, chemical plant from Basel to Rotterdam and filter all it's waste through that fish.

      Then add every particle of brake dust, rubber additives, catalyst, and paint chips that flaked off every car in europe, Then add in all the human and animal sewage and pathogens

    5. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Anti-nukers... vs. Pro-Nukers

      "I don't feel any warmer about eating fish from the Pacific."

      Nor do I, but that's mainly because there are measurable levels of more prosaic toxins in them - especially stuff like mercury in long-lived species like Tuna.

  16. Herby

    Except...

    So those are the options. Air full of carbon, nuclear power, or shivering hungry in the dark.

    The problem is that those who expound the last option (rejecting the first two) are the LAST to embrace it. Here in the USA, I put Mr. Greeny Al Gore in that category.

    1. beast666

      Re: Except...

      I can't understand that! Air full of carbon... Really! Peeps need to know that CO2 is 0.039% by volume of the air you breath. Paying trillions of dollars to affect this is so very crazy.

      Don't get me started on how this tiny number doesn't affect climate in any significant way either.

      Bah

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Except...

        @beast666,

        Presumably you're OK with ingesting a gramme of hydrogen cyanide then? That's much less that 0.039% of your body mass.

        Or how about adding 0.039% mass for mass of sodium fluoride to the water supply?

        It isn't the percentage, it's the activity.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sievert calculation assumptions

    Can a more learned person than me, explain what's wrong with what this scientist is saying about the assumptions made in the Sievert calculation? Thanks

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha3BDsZZ0ig&feature=youtu.be

    1. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

      Re: Sievert calculation assumptions

      ...Can a more learned person than me, explain what's wrong with what this scientist is saying about the assumptions made in the Sievert calculation?...

      Certainly. I am not formally qualified as a teacher, but I have worked on the protection side for British Energy, the nuclear power station people.

      I will need some contact details, however, to send my bill in. My consultancy rates are £100 per hour (considerably cheaper than a solicitor) and I estimate that we will need 3 hours work on this.

    2. Andydaws

      Re: Sievert calculation assumptions

      I can't watch the video (I'm at work), but I do know of a few things wrong with other Starr's claims...Quite a few things...first the claim that Caesium bioaccumulates. It doesn't - it basically mimics potassium in the body, and equilibrium is reached quickly. Which also puts paid to the idea of "biomagnification" (which is a term I've never heard previously). It's worth noting the actual measured levels of 134Cs and 137Cs measured in Fukushima evacuees:

      https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/89/4/89_PJA8904B-01/_pdf

      Thosse levels simply aren't consistent with accumulation. What's truly wierd is that the graphs Starr shows in the paper

      https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/pjab/89/4/89_PJA8904B-01/_pdf

      show exponential decay of body burden following a single ingestion, and the reaching of an equilibrium in the case of chronic ingestion - both of which tell you that metabolic processes are removing Cs (otherwise the level would stay constant from a single ingestion, and continue increasing if there's chronic ingestion).

      The interesting thing (which rather puts paid to the "magnification" idea is that the highest internal doses are from people who are eating large quantities of traditional mushrooms, not from anything higher up the food chain...

      He then wanders off into the rather wierd territory of a claimed syndrome called "chernobyl heart", where apparently radioactive species of Caesium cause heart arrythmia, but non-radioactive isotopes don't - which is a complete negation of everything known about chemical processes!

      We then wander off into conspiracy theories about the researcher's work being suppressed...and worse he starts quoting from the utterly discredited Yablokov studies (the ones that reckon incresaed rates of cirrhosis in the Ukraine is a result of radiation exposure, not because alcohol consumption went up after the fall of the USSR).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sievert calculation assumptions

        @Andydaws

        Many thanks. I appreciate your thought provoking reply.

  18. Curly4
    Holmes

    It is an engeneering problem not a nuclear problem.

    Since the Fukushima crisis there have been many knee jerk reactions. People did not stop to evaluate what happened. From what I have read it was not the failure of the reactors nor the safety equipment that caused the melt down but the wall of water that knocked out the safety equipment that created the problem. Here is where it become an engineering problem, the site for the reactor was not well picked out. But it should be used as a learning experience. Maybe the engineers, at first, did not think of the dangers of the site. They do now and site selection should be a much higher priority now.

    The world is going to need nuclear power for a long time but may one day be able to be phased out. In the mean time nuclear power should be used but where there is not going to be tsunami will be able over flow it. This should not be a problem in Europe where they are phasing out nuclear power even though the price of the energy is quite high and looks to go even higher with the phaseout. This is coupled with the phase out of coal generators also and the shutdown of natural gas generators to a stand by status. To be there to take up the slack when the green energy fails or falls short. This in itself will be done at a very high cost and may even increase the CO2 emissions

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It is an engeneering problem not a nuclear problem.

      "This should not be a problem in Europe where they are phasing out nuclear power"

      According to the European Nuclear Society there are currently a total of 180 operational commercial nuclear power plant units in operation throughout Europe (not counting 5 in the Asian part of the Russian Federation).

      Of the 180 operational units some 53 or so are in France. Originally licensed to operate for 30 years, the French units are now subject to a 10 year review to permit continued operation. This is mainly due to the prohibitive cost of building new units. To date, I believe 2 units have been granted a 10 year extension.

      8 units in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia were closed as part of countries' accession to the EU. The Germans are to close and decommission the small number of units (8 or 9) they operate.

      17 units are currently under construction in Finland, France, the Russian Federation, the Slovakian Republic and Ukraine.

      Of course, most commercial plants that have so far been closed/decommissioned to date have been closed/decommissioned due to either reaching the end of their life, or for safety reasons (i.e those in the former East Germany), not because of any switch of mindset, such as the one the Germans have recently experienced.

      So, in a nutshell and ignoring normal end-of-life closures and as yet 'still to be built' nuclear construction projects, there were 8 units closed during the course of accession to the EU and 8 or 9 to be closed in Germany with 17 currently under construction, with additional numbers still under consideration for construction.

      So, in the immediate future, nuclear in Europe is here to stay. However, due to end of life closures combined with a lack of funding for building replacement facilities, it's highly probable that we may see more countries follow the lead of the French. That is, to consider extending the life of existing commercial units whilst desperately wondering what other than nuclear is going to solve the looming energy crisis.

      It's not really a phasing out of nuclear in Europe, more a case of, "Oh shit, how the eff are we going to fund replacement units?".

      Experimental, prototype and demonstration facilities are of course excluded from the above figures.

    2. anatak

      Re: It is an engeneering problem not a nuclear problem.

      No, it is not an engineering problem. It is a social / economic problem.

      The calculations were made to harden the plant against a massive tsunami but the accounting department deemed the chances too low to that actually happening so the height of the protective wall to be build was lowered with all the current problems as a result.

      IMO the problem is greed. Companies like TEPCO are only out to make as big a profit as possible. You can do this by upping prices (see how electricity became cheaper per the prediction of the pro nuclear lobby from the 60's - so cheap we don't have to meter it) and by reducing costs. Safety features are expensive so the bare minimum is implemented. Maintenance and actual repairing faults is also expensive so it is easier to bribe the inspector. the lifespan of reactors is being extended until they fail or the government will shut them down. This may all sound horrible and irresponsible but from a business perspective this makes perfect sense and that is why it is happening.

      As long as we will have greed I don't think nuclear power is safe. And running it by a not for profit outfit will not work either because there is too much power (the influence power, not the electric power kind) involved and people will get corrupted.

      The only way to run a nuclear plant is build by engineers, run by engineers, managed by engineers without restriction on budget to have the safest plant available. This will never happen.

      And then we did not even start talking about the mining of the fuel and the disposal of the waste.

      If we could move society to another reward system than money / power maybe then we could have safe nuclear power.

      My nut case proposal would be to ban all commercials and tax all companies to the exact amount that they spend on marketing and use that money to fund independent scientific research. Preferably from the blue sky kind.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: It is an engeneering problem not a nuclear problem.

        >The calculations were made to harden the plant against a massive tsunami

        That is precisely what engineering means.

        The plants should have been hardened against any conceivable tsunami/earthquake?

        What about the schools and homes- 1000s of people died in those.

        Surely all primary schools should be proof against a magnitude 10 earth quake?

        Here on the other side of the same fault zone we spend only a few million $$ bolting classroom bookcases to walls.

        If society had priorities then all the children would be protected by schools built deep underground in bunkers, and all the old peoples homes, and all the hospitals etc etc - in fact nobody would be allowed to live within 100km of the pacific ocean

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It is an engeneering problem not a nuclear problem.

        >As long as we will have greed I don't think nuclear power is safe.

        As the stats show, it's still a damn sight safer than non-nuclear power.

        1. alaskan1st

          Re: It is an engeneering problem not a nuclear problem.

          Too bad corporations have never been shown to be good stewards of the earth.

  19. John Deeb

    Inconventient facts

    Lewis forgets to mention a few inconvenient "facts".

    1. The 30 billion dollar clean-up operation: which other type of industrial accidents needs that in the electricity generating sector? Okay, apart from oil spills.

    2. What is the suffering and mortality rate of the evacuation itself? No any other energy related accident has shown those type of numbers (look them up, you won't hear them from Lewis his bubble)

    3. How many people will actually be allowed to go back over time? It seems right now that more than 10,000 people will be permanently displaced, robbed of everything familiar and historical to them. Which other accidents in other industries causes these things in the developed world?

    Then again, Lewis is correct in suggesting we need the nuclear industry when cutting carbon emissions is desired while still wanting to juicing up the rest of the world to decent minimum levels....

    1. Robert Sneddon

      Re: Inconvenient facts

      1. The coal industry is just one that needs billions spent on clean-ups and remediation. Aberfan ring any bells? Recent news from Scotland is that an open-cast coal mine's operators have gone bust leaving a gaping hole and piles of toxic waste for somebody else to deal with, and no money to pay for it. There was no ringfenced fund as there is for nuclear power generators for waste handling and decommissioning.

      2. Banquaio dam, the failure of which killed up to 200,000 people according to some reports. Really really dead, not exposed to some radiation and might have a fractionally increased chance of developing cancer ten or twenty or thirty years down the line, maybe. Destroyed thousands of square miles of homes, roads, fields etc., a bit like the tsunami that killed about 20,000 folks on 3/11 while no-one died or was even sickened by radiation. Banquaio is not the only dam that's killed folks when it let rip but it's the leader of the pack. Some estimates say the new Three Gorges dam complex in China could kill millions if it ever fails.

      3. Folks are already moving back into towns and villages around Fukushima as areas are tested and made safe by active decontamination operations and simple decay of radioactivity as well as weathering out of surface contamination. It's not big news because it's not bad news so you didn't know it was happening.

    2. smartypants

      Re: Inconventient facts

      Inconvenient response:

      "The 30 billion dollar clean-up operation: which other type of industrial accidents needs that in the electricity generating sector? Okay, apart from oil spills."

      Well the key point is that the fossil fuel industry is allowed to pollute the environment, even when the scientific concensus is that it is likely to change the climate, and nuclear isn't. A coal-fired power station dumps more uranium on the locality when operating normally than a nuclear plant does when it goes wrong. And the most dangerous pollutant - Co2 - can just be voided out into the atmosphere with no clue about how to deal with it. Cost? Nothing. What *would* it cost were fossil fuels not allowed to emit pollution? Well you may as well add a few zeros to 30 billion dollars.

      "What is the suffering and mortality rate of the evacuation itself?" That's an argument against doing stupid evacuations of an area which is less radioactive than Cornwall, and an argument against ignorant hysteria driving political decisions.

      "How many people will actually be allowed to go back over time?" Again, an argument against stupid, pointless evacuations driven by ignorant hysteria

      If politicians really wanted to make a significant impact on mortality, they should just ban smoking. The effect would be profound and easily measurable. But this isn't about safety. It's about hysteria, and political reactions to it.

    3. David Pollard

      Remember Bhopal?

      http://www.firstpost.com/politics/gas-tragedy-victims-in-bhopal-political-apathy-has-proved-worse-than-methyl-isocynate-1233167.html

      http://www.bhopal.org/

      Pointing out something much more damaging won't make Fukushima safe, but it might put the danger into perspective. 170,000 people received emergency medical treatment after the Bhopal disaster; 8,000 died within two weeks. The surrounding area still hasn't been cleaned up and there are still people suffering from this incident

      As a whole, industrial chemicals do vastly more damage than radioactivity, but they just don't hit the headlines in the same way or cause the same knee-jerk panic.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Remember Bhopal?

        But those were brown people - and even worse, poor brown people.

        The correct order of concern is:

        White Americans

        Europeans

        Japanese

        Black / poor Americans

        South Americans/Russians/Chinese

        3rd world smiling children

        3rd world starving children

        Other

        So Fukismima/Chernoby are about equal to a 3mile island, only because it may affect sushi or Welsh Lamb, a Bhopal is about equal to a Katrina

  20. jrio
    Mushroom

    Wait, what?

    I honestly believed the right for a few years there about nuclear energy being the safest and only realistic alternative to our voracious energy consumption. At least right up until I decided to start researching it for myself, more in-depth, by reading books written by people who were actually at Chernobyl and Fukushima (which by the way are only two in a long, sordid parade of "mishaps" and "accidents" whose details are covered up or OOPSY, discarded.)

    Chernobyl went into full meltdown mode and radiated the hell out of an extensive part of the Eastern Bloc, not because of a natural disaster like Fukushima, but because of Russian pride and the ol' "just following orders". Simply put, they turned off everything related to safety and backups to see if the plant could take it and quite obviously that was a huge mistake. They are some estimates that over the next few decades, abnormal levels of cancer cases will reach a ballpark figure of 50,000, with at least half that dying from the cancer. That's potentially 25,000 deaths attributed to nuclear energy being "safe". The truth is they just don't have an exact figure. Sure only 31 died in the direct blast and another 64 were immediately radiated to death, but we're still counting and will be for the next 20 to 30 years.

    Fukushima was a result of natural disaster, but there are reports surfacing that there was more to it than just an earthquake and some big waves. It turns out the person in charge of the plant at the time of the accident was there because it was his turn to have an upper-level job. Japanese bureaucracy and all. He had a degree in economics or something else just as useless. Did he cause the accident? No. He just didn't know what he was doing when it all went South, and it literally went South right to the bottom of the containment tanks. As the cores in reactors 1 and 3 were exposed and went into complete meltdown, this guy couldn't even answer simple questions related to safely securing the plant and cooling the cores. He knew nothing about any of it. Again, still not his fault.

    Fukushima was more a direct result of bypassing and foregoing safety procedures than it was anything else. Technically it should have been built higher up, further away from the ocean with a higher retaining wall in the advent of tsunamis. It wasn't, because all that stuff costs more money. The equipment at the plant, mostly related to safety and emergencies, was old and outdated because again, that stuff costs money to upgrade and maintain. The pattern emerging from the Fukushima disaster was more about a corporation's profit margin and hedging their bets on a serious disaster never happening, even though Chernobyl was obviously in the backs of their minds.

    Even after the disaster began to unfold and the reactors were going into full meltdown, the Japanese government and TEPCO went into full coverup and disinformation mode. Information on wind direction and speed, as well as the appalling levels of radiation pouring from the reactors was withheld from the public, even as hundreds of thousands were being evacuated right into highly radiated areas. A direct result of the careless evacuations were thousands of deaths by people already too old or sick to be moved. Several more thousand would commit suicide from depression as a result of being uprooted from their homes and lifestyles. Japanese culture and all...

    They are estimating around 8% of Northern Japan will be completely uninhabitable for the next 30 years, and that figure is conservative. Fishing is all but non-existent around Fukushima now. The only fish caught nowadays are being studied for levels of radioactivity. The bottom feeders are returning levels of extreme radiation.

    All this because nuclear energy is "clean" and "safe", remember? It's the only option we have.

    Don't get me wrong though. I, much like the rest, don't have a solution either. I don't think shutting down every nuclear plant is even realistic considering mankind's seemingly endless appetite for energy to power his iCrap. I just have to question any idiot who gets up on a virtual podium and starts to spew half-truths about nuclear energy being safe and clean. The truth actually is out there and it's not hard to find. There are numerous books and documents on the subject written by people who were actually at the aforementioned events.

    My challenge to anyone who runs around blathering about nuclear energy being safe and clean is this: you go and live within a 30 km radius of Fukushima, starting today. I want you to spend the next 20 to 30 years there carving out a life for yourself. Plant some crops, drink the water and milk, and do some fishing in the ocean near the plant and eat what you catch.

    Do that without contracting any kind of cancer and I'll start voting Republican and going back to church.

    On a side note, I noticed someone mention "global warming". Leftists say we're to blame, the right say it doesn't exist. You are all way off. Global Warming as an event is very much real, only an idiot or fool would believe otherwise, probably the same ones who think the concept of god is actually plausible, but it's not because of your next door neighbor's carbon emissions. Okay, he's probably not helping, but it's much bigger than 7 billion slave drones not caring.

    Mankind has been on this planet for roughly 10,000 years, give or take a few thousand, and he's been studying the climate for exactly 163 of those years. That's right, 163. We started keeping actual climate records 163 years ago. Only. So to the Left screaming about all the empirical data showing us that without any doubt whatsover the planet is heating up, I have to say HOLD THE PHONE. 163 years of data and mankind has been around for roughly 10,000 years and the planet itself is 4 BILLION years old. Correct me if I'm wrong but even if we were keeping records of climate change for 10,000 years, that's like 0.000010% of the total history of this planet. I think it's pretty bold of anyone, no matter how egocentric they are by default just because they are human, to make a claim that the Earth is heating up because of what we're doing wrong as a species on a day to day basis. It might be getting warmer, but warming trends, much like cooling trends, are cyclical. They've been happening for hundreds of millions of years of evolution that we barely know anything about because again, we're talking about 0.000010% of our in-depth study of this planet.

    The heat has to be coming from somewhere, right? Well yah dummy, OUR STAR. You know, the one that provides light and energy and heat and without it we wouldn't exist? Bingo. Turn that thing off and our precious Earth is just another lifeless rock. Our sun is cyclical and so are the heating and cooling trends which accompany these cycles. At some point they are going to figure out that we're looking in the wrong place for answers by blaming each other, but it'll be far too late. Regardless of the heat or cold, we're going to continue to spread like the virus we are, consuming anything and everything in our path until there's literally nothing left to sustain complex lifeforms on this planet. Our cities continue to spread like malignant cancers across the face of this planet and we've long since passed any limits of sustainability.

    Yet we all just sit there in our swivel computer chairs and worry about whether or not we'll be able to charge our iCrap tomorrow and the next day and the next.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Was: Re: Wait, what?

      "Regardless of the heat or cold, we're going to continue to spread like the virus we are"

      Hmmm, until now I have never come across a virus that could rant quite like that! Most entertaining :)

    2. beast666

      Re: Wait, what?

      tl;dr

      Nuthatch sir...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wait, what?

      Our Sun?

      but wait you'd need some measurable change on the level of energy produced or a better transmission level between source and sink to account for a rise in transfer. That obviously hasn't happened or it would be big news.

      Completely unrelated the earth's magnetic shield, the same one that protects us from solar radiation has reduced some 10% in the same sort of time scale we have been making serious climate study (if what you say is correct)

      http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2004/09/0909_040909_earthmagfield.html

      http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/cliemate/

      I am just learning, reading and cannot find a good trench to dive into so respond to the measured changes rather than shooting me down for not being on Team A or Team B.

      I think we are using too much energy to be sustainable in our current constraints but are also being played.

      I for one will live with the winter thermostat a little lower and a decent wool jumper because I'm "more comfortable" knowing my energy envelope is not expanded for vanity. I see people at work with t shirts on moaning the workplace is not heated enough. Ignorance is unsustainable.

      ==

      To the tl:dr comment, just make a bit of an effort eh, this is not the Daily Mail and it is the fucking planet we are talking about.

    4. Andydaws

      Re: Wait, what?

      " It turns out the person in charge of the plant at the time of the accident was there because it was his turn to have an upper-level job. Japanese bureaucracy and all. He had a degree in economics or something else just as useless. Did he cause the accident? No. He just didn't know what he was doing "

      I realy can't be bothered picking through the farrago of rubbish you've listed in that post, but the slur against the Plant Director can't be let go.

      The plant was managed by a gentleman called Masao Yoshida. He was a fully qualified engineer - his degree was in Nuclear Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he also studied at post-graduate level - and spent his entire career in nuclear operations

      He's probably the hero of the accident - had Naoto Kan not interefered and let Yoshida run things from the start, there's probably not even have been severe core damage. Yoshida wanted to vent the overpressures in the containments (whtough the filtered stacks) early in the process but was banned from doing so until Kan had held a Press conference. He also took the decision to depressurise the reators, and inject seawater while TEPCO dithered, and Kan tried to ban it.

      "They are estimating around 8% of Northern Japan will be completely uninhabitable for the next 30 years"

      i've no idea who "they" are, but if that's what they're saying, they're talking drivel

      http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Contamination_dropping_in_evacuation_zone_0706131.html

      the natural background in cornwall is about 0.9mSv/hour. If you take that as a threshold, the land area contaminated at that level is a few hundred km2 - and the levels are falling as the 134Cs decays (a 2 year half-life).

    5. Elsombre

      Re: Wait, what?

      I trust that you realize that there is no scientific basis for your "sun cycle" theory of global warming?

      Charming theory but devoid of fact.

  21. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

    1 - why are we restricting ourselves to the electricity sector? The chemical industry has just as many pollution problems. And they don't slowly fade away - they stay there.

    2 - suffering from evacuation is there because of your scare stories. Stop pushing them and the suffering drops.

    3 - ALL will be able to go back over time. As opposed to every other pollution, which requires clearing up...

  22. NomNomNom

    can't we just go back to burning witches for fuel?

    1. beast666

      I know one in particular that would be good for that. If she was fusion burned then I suspect we could all keep warm this Winter for nothing. Really. I wouldn't accept any payment...

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      How about just burning Chicken Littles and those who cry Wolf?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pretty sick with all the western reporting of this...

    One thing that really got me was the BBC interviewed some greeny and the quote was something like "I've been to Japan since the earthquake, it's pretty dark over there". I read that while sitting in my little apartment in rural Japan where it was nice and bright and my wife was watching loud "variety" shows on TV. I'm not sure exploiting a tragedy with outright lies to support their cause makes me want to even consider their opinions.

    Apparently one in two people* get cancer at some point here ... if anything people shouldn't be worrying about an increased chance of getting cancer as it's pretty high already. They should instead be making sure they are on an extra health insurance plan that will cover them if they do need treatment as people that are only on the state system are pretty fooked if/when they get cancer.

    *Yomiuri Shimbun's wording not mine.

    1. blah111

      Re: Pretty sick with all the western reporting of this...

      I was in Tokyo 2 months ago. There was absolutely no lack of light at any time and I'm not talking about people glowing.

  24. Marushka

    Fukushima: Worker deaths and injuries

    http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?page_id=3490

    Deaths Chernobyl

    Mortality after the Chernobyl Catastrophe by Yablokov

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ii1eBZsxzTbuELqjQ5bc-y5V8vnBviC3hmKmcUnwcS4/edit?pli=1

    Chernobyl, Cancer Deaths Alone: the author of the study that surmises total deaths of roughly 1-2 million

    "Behind the Coverup" (2006) by Dr. Rosalie Bertell, epidemiologist, Grey Nun

    http://www.pacificecologist.org/archive/12/behind-the-cover-up.pdf

    Congenital-Malformations-NY-April 1959

    comment Chernobyl Children Fukushima Children

    1 % mortality increase in Newborns per 0,00001 Gray (Thorium) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1372765/?tool=pmcentrez

    Deaths Fukushima Death Rates among 15-19 year old, especially of cardiovascular disease in Japan

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=471633416186919&set=a.344023565614572.103593.286163761400553&type=1&theater

    Don't need oil, nuclear or coal... we do need a renewal energy infrastructure, it will be cheaper and it definitely will be cleaner and save millions of lives:

    Stanford Report, January 26, 2011 “The world can be powered by alternative energy, using today's technology, in 20-40 years, says Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson” "co-authored by UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi “

    http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html

    Stanford Prof. Mark Z. Jacobsen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XCYlCF3QuQ 14 mins

    100 million people have died prematurely from fossil fuels

    Mark A. Ruffalo, Marco Krapels and Mark Z. Jacobson: Power the World with Wind, Water and Sunlight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_sLt5gNAQs 1hr 4mins

    1. Infernoz Bronze badge
      Flame

      Power the World with Wind, Water and Sunlight -> not happening.

      I'd bet that a lot of these deaths won't happen due to human adaption, or would happen anyway due to other causes.

      "Don't need oil, nuclear or coal... we do need a renewal energy infrastructure, it will be cheaper and it definitely will be cleaner and save millions of lives:" is BS!

      There can never be enough practical, and reliable power capacity from these with current technology, it would be too expensive to build and maintain, would blight agriculture, wildlife, and quality of life, and even if possible, you'd need to look at massive power storage to weather quite significant daily, bad weather, and seasonal lulls. The lulls and lack of local power storage are why these solar panels I see on houses, and the huge ugly windmills are black farce, which cannot save money and energy, but rather waste both because of the build cost, maintenance cost, and requirement for extra lull power generation.

      If someone could prove that renewal energy infrastructure alone provide power, at required power levels 24/7, during bad weather, all year round, with no fossil fuel power generation, and have affordable installation and maintenance costs, I might be convinced of it's merit; however I don't see this happening with current technology.

      I frankly regard households with grid feed solar panels and grid wind farm operators, so no local power storage, as f'ing parasites, because I am indirect forced to pay artificially higher energy bills for their junk because of government sabotage of energy markets!

    2. Richard 12 Silver badge

      ****shit merchants

      Extrapolating "possibly slightly increased risk" into THEY ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!11!

      As to their fundamental premise that solar, wind, and water will save us?

      How much sunshine do you get at night?

      How often is there enough wind to power the country, even assuming we cover an area the size of of Scotland? Does that cover the nights? How many Giga-Watt-hours of storage would that need?

      Finally, several hundreds of thousands of people have already been directly, provably and instantly killed by water power. No maybe or slightly-increased probabilities about it, just actual drowned, crushed and smashed into pieces dead.

      1. Vic

        Re: ****shit merchants

        > Extrapolating "possibly slightly increased risk"

        The first thing I do on posts like that is to see who the author is. Many of us here have known the other personae for some years, so it's often apparent who the newcomers are.

        So when you see a new user, joined that day, with just a handful of posts (often just one) posting something inflammatory, it's pretty obvious this is an evangelist...

        Vic.

    3. Vociferous

      > "Chernobyl, Cancer Deaths Alone: the author of the study that surmises total deaths of roughly 1-2 million"

      Yeah, there have been some really impressive predictions of deaths, it's just that they haven't materialized. As of right now, the worst effects of Chernobyl were psychological: as the population became convinced that they were doomed and were all going to die, so suicides and alcoholism skyrocketed. That's the reason for the increase in cirrhosis, not the radiation.

      Compare your "1-2 million dead" to UN's estimate of "no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure", apart from a fairly minor increase in thyroid cancer.

      The children of Fukushima did get potassium iodide pills, and received a lower dose. There is no reason to think the health effects of Fukushima will be distinguishable from random noise.

  25. jonathanb Silver badge

    Not looking at the full picture

    Most of the Chernobyl and Fukushima victims are still alive and in good health. However they have been evacuated from their homes and they are never going to return. Is that not something that should be taken into consideration.

    Also, a very big problem with nuclear is the amount of expenditure required on the plant after it reaches the end of its useful life. That isn't something we can rely on the private sector to do. Why would they spend money on something that doesn't bring in sales revenue? The great civilisations of 200 years ago aren't always the great civilisations of today. Some of them are now war zones, or have been at some time in the last 200 years. So we can't rely on the government to do it either.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: Not looking at the full picture

      They will return.

      Many already have, it just doesn't make the news.

      Radioactivity decays, and contamination in general dissipates through natural weathering.

      They'd be back even if nothing whatsoever was done to clean up, so the cleanup operation will get them all back within a few years.

      Don't conflate panic with reality. Panic always causes greater suffering.

      Nuclear decommissioning is already paid for by the industry via bonds etc, which is not true for any other industry, many of which can easily cause greater issues.

      How much did cleaning up the London Olympic Park cost? The industries which put the contaminants there paid none of it!

    2. Andydaws

      Re: Not looking at the full picture

      "Also, a very big problem with nuclear is the amount of expenditure required on the plant after it reaches the end of its useful life. That isn't something we can rely on the private sector to do."

      so, you make them pay a certain amount into a "sinking fund" per kWh sold. And no, it's not that expensive to decommission plant. The ten or so LWRs that have been dismantled and their sites cleared in the US have cost between $700 - $1000 per kW of capacity, falling with experience and less the larger the plant.

      And no, it's not "hundreds of years" to clear the site, at least if oyu don't do silly things like build masive gas-graphite plant. "Trojan" - an 1100MW PWR in Oregon took nine years from colure to the site being declared available for other uses.

      http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/SITING/Pages/trojan.aspx#How_long_did_decommissioning_take_

      1. jonathanb Silver badge

        Re: Not looking at the full picture

        OK, you have taken all the radioactive stuff off-site. Where has it gone? Has it disappeared, or do you need to look after it somewhere else?

    3. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Not looking at the full picture

      "Also, a very big problem with nuclear is the amount of expenditure required on the plant after it reaches the end of its useful life."

      Most of that is "waste disposal" and it's a self-inflicted problem. All that "High level waste" can pretty much go straight into a CANDU reactor once it's repackaged and that's without even bothering to build any molten salt ones (uranium or thorium)

  26. snowweb

    It's not over yet

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/fuel-removal-from-fukushimas-reactor-4-threatens-apocalyptic-scenario-radiation-fuel-rods-matches-fallout-of-14000-hiroshima-bombs/5355508

    1. Andydaws

      Re: It's not over yet

      "Global Research", eh?

      I do love it when people post links from quite such flaky places. If you follow up with something from "Rense", we can then have a think about what you can do to make it a hat-trick...

  27. behzad

    Cost

    $80 billion. And that's not even including the cost of decommissioning the reactors, which will take decades:

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/12/us-japan-fukushima-borrowing-idUSBRE9AB0H520131112

    'Nuff said - not worth it.

  28. smartypants

    XKCD to the rescue

    "I think you'll find that radiation is more harmful to young children than the elderly."

    I could equally say

    "I think you'll find that you're more likely to die of a tsunami if you live on the coast"

    So are you in favour of coastal exclusion zones too? Or is this just another example of selective hysteria?

    http://xkcd.com/radiation/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: XKCD to the rescue

      More harmful to the future of society if it affects young children. Because young children are the ones who are going to grow up and have babies.

  29. Mystic Megabyte
    Mushroom

    Facts

    If nuclear energy were safe then I should be able to insure my house or possessions against a nuclear incident.

    In fact it is impossible to get insurance for this type of accident.

    Since when do insurance companies turn away money for events that never or rarely happen?

    Go figure..

    1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Facts

      You also could'nt get insurance against the discharge of nuclear weapons.

      At least thats what the insurance co said when I bought my house near to the end of the cold war

      But for all those anti-nuclear people out there... that nice granite worktop you just installed in your kitchen is spitting out more radation than most of the fukushima residents will have been exposed to

      1. BartiDdu

        Re: Facts

        Who's got a granite work-top?

  30. and-job

    So right.

    The lobbying against Nuclear energy has mostly been done by the fossil fuel lobbyists who see any other form of energy as a threat to their business. Though they hide under the 'green' banner.

    The Nuclear power industry is possibly the energy industry in the World. It is just dogged with people that have that 'not in my back yard' mentality. Then they grasp at straws. Here is California they forced the closure of the San Ofofre Reactors citing fears that it would do the same thing. I live just a few miles from it and I have never given it a thought.

    Interestingly enough, the same people that campaign to kill off the reactors are the same ones throwing their arms up in the air at the Solar Energy sites and the Wind Turbines locally because birds get hit by the blades of those turbines and mistake the beds of reflectors or solar arrays for lakes and crash into them. Now they are demanding that they are shut down to save a few birds.

    Then of course they throw a fit over oil drilling, coal mining, Fracking and any other freaking type of energy they can find to blame.

    Someone commented that they would love us to be on Bicycles and wearing sackcloth, no I think they really would love the world to be right back into the middle ages.

    These days when someone starts spouting their crap about how the world is being ruined and that we are all doomed I just tell them to STFU and go back into their hidey hole. Just like these freaks with their 'doomsday bunkers', what do they think they will do after doomsday? Might be a lonely old world for them, lol, or maybe incest really is best in in the midwest!

    1. Robert Sneddon

      San Onofre

      The closure of the San Onofre plant was due to a fuckup in the design, manufacture and/or specification of new steam generators intended to keep the two reactors there running for at least the next ten years. The manufacturers, Mitsubishi are being sued and it'll take a court case to sort out who is to blame for the failure of the new steam generators and who is going to pay for it.

      In the end it was going to take a few years to fix the problem, get new steam generators built and installed and the reactors were already about 30 years old. It wasn't worth the effort and money that would have been needed to bring the reactors back into operation for only a few more years after that. The decommissioning fund is paid up and the reactors would not get further licence extensions without a lot more money being ploughed into the site even if years down the road the court finds for the plant operators and Mitsubishi pays compensation.

  31. jason 7

    Pointless arguing really.

    After all once our green and pleasant land is covered head to foot in wind-turbines and solar panel farms, once we get the still inevitable brown outs and power shortages we'll be building nuclear reactors like there is no tomorrow.

    So just sit back and relax.

  32. BartiDdu

    Funny that the article says, "If we were to close down industries on such grounds, we would not have any industry left and we'd have to live in mud huts and die like flies from disease and malnutrition," and, "... their plan is that humanity should abandon economic growth and sink into poverty," yet accuses others of scaremongering tactics designed to produce an emotional, rather than logical reaction!

    And they are ignoring the undeniable fact that infinite economic growth is impossible given finite resources.

    "So those are the options. Air full of carbon, nuclear power, or shivering hungry in the dark." Laugh? I would if there was anything funny about such small minded narrow thinking!

  33. Jeffrost

    Former fuel pool nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen notes that – for at least some period after the earthquake – the fuel pool had insufficient water, and the nuclear rods were sticking out into the air:

    Inside Fukushima

    http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/04/a-visual-tour-of-the-fuel-pools-of-fukushima.html

    Video

    http://vimeo.com/21789121

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      So?

      The rods get stinking hot (thermally and radioactively) when left exposed to air but the main reason for the "waste" rods to be immersed in water is to reduce radiation emissions to manageable levels and ensure criticality can't occur outside the reactor.

      Water is a wonderful absorber of both gamma radiation and alpha/beta particles - so much so that many designs for manned interplanetary craft use some form of water jacket for the biologicals area.

      Nothing living was around the pools when the rods were exposed and radiation levels outside the building weren't dangerously high. It may not have been good practice to have the pools where they were but the main effect of the rods being exposed was to make the immediate area a no-go zone until the pools were refilled.

      As for meltdowns, even the old designs have a giant concrete "tub" under the reactors in case of meltthrough. Once whatever dropped out hit those and spread out, any criticality would be lost and at that point you're just left with keeping the whole mess cool enough to not boil the water. Just because some rods melted doesn't mean it even got close to vessel melt through - it just makes cleanup a real bitch for the next 200-300 years thanks to the short lived radionucliides sitting at the bottom. The best solution is to park everything until radioactivity levels drop enough for it to be worked on, which is the solution adopted at TMI.

    2. Andrew Norton

      Wow, now he's a Former Fuel Pool nuclear engineer? He changes his job title more than most MP's

      Let's give him his real title shall we? 'Nuclear Engineer 72-76' perhaps? Or Perhaps "Anti-nuclear spokesman for hire 1979-present'.

      He's a well known anti-nuclear activist, often hired to be an expert by like-minded groups. He's not a 'former fuel pool engineer' though. You have anyone credible, such as people who don't make their living demonising and exagerating nuclear power/safety?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Pot? Kettle on the line for you.

        "You have anyone credible, such as people who don't make their living exagerating nuclear power/safety?"

        world-nuclear-news.org and other industry-supported outlets frequently quoted in comments here don't quite fit the "credible" description do they: "The WNN service is supported administratively and with technical advice by the World Nuclear Association and is based within its London Secretariat" from

        http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/About_World_Nuclear_News.html

        Who are the World Nuclear Association? From

        http://www.world-nuclear.org/WNA/About-the-WNA/WNA-Membership/

        "Current WNA Members are responsible for virtually all of world uranium mining, conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication; all reactor vendors; major nuclear engineering, construction, and waste management companies; and nearly 90% of world nuclear generation. Other WNA members provide international services in nuclear transport, law, insurance, brokerage, industry analysis and finance."

        When the pro-nuclear lobby is able to quote *independent* (ideally, peer-reviewed and refereed) articles supporting its case, then it can safely ask about "credible sources". Till then, independent minded folks have to make up their own mind which parts of the picture (and which people/organisations) to trust. Good game, eh?

        I'm not ant-nuclear, I'm anti-stupid. The stupider lobbyists (naming no names) generally do their industry few favours. Trying to quote world-nuclear-news as credible isn't exactly much better.

      2. Andydaws

        <ahem>

        Gundersen once actually did an SFP-related project, back in his nuclear industry days...

        He was responsible for deisgning the storage racks for the SFP at Vermont Yankee. the fact that they were wrongly sized and didn't fit in the ponds was largely repsonsible for why his nuclear career ended quite so quickly.

  34. ecofeco Silver badge
    FAIL

    This is a troll, right?

    Insignificant deaths from previous nuclear accidents?

    *cough*Google*cough*. Maybe you've heard of it? Search: cancer deaths related to chernobyl

    First result: 980,000 cancer related deaths. Obviously wild claim with an agenda.

    Second result with better references and less of an agenda: 7000 thyroid cancer deaths.

    Third result: 4000 to 25,000. Because they are scientists.

    Fourth result: even more conservative than the above, but still claims 4000.

    There are no results from Fukishima because it's too soon to see them.

    Then there is the financial consequences. Ask the people living near those plants how that worked for them.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: This is a troll, right?

      You are aware that there is a lot of rubbish on the Internet - after all, anybody could put anything they like there! Topmost on Google is irrelevant - and depends on your own previous Google activity anyway.

      The only one of those figures coming from a reputable source is the 4000, which is still really an estimate - not "prediction" - that has been falling ever since the first was made, as most of those who may have been affected stubbornly refuse to die.

      Check the UN and WHO figures, and (better) studies published in proper scientific journals if you have access.

      The deaths are extremely low - 56 to 64 - the numbers of people affected by thyroid problems are notably higher but they didn't die.

      I have noticed that these latter tend to get counted among the dead by some anti-nuclear protestors claiming to be doing studies. Clue - still walking around == not dead.

  35. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Why pay for uranium?

    There's nore than enough fuel left in the world's waste piles to power all the existing reactors for a few hundred years. That's not even going into the issue of all that thorium going begging as a byproduct of rare earth mining.

  36. KBeee

    Give it 2 or 3 more years..

    ..and due to the mainstream press coverage, people will think that 20,000 people died in Japan because of "The 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Disaster", forgetting that it was actually the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake.

  37. Silverchild57

    We need nuclear power now-mankind needs nuclear power, and lots of it! We need to very rapidly develop Fusion Power, which will give us unlimited, clean, safe, super power for centuries to come!

    Who would object to this? Prince Philip for one-he wants to be reincarnated as a deadly virus to "help solve overpopulation". High energy flux density power means human population growth, and human noetic development-that's the biggest threat to the Oligarchy on the planet, so they initiated and financed the "green movement" to brainwash and scare everyone into the insane, irrational belief that humans are destroying the planet, and progress is bad!

    The problem at Fukushima was the tsunami, not the nuclear power plant! How do we solve that problem? By advancing science, and improving infrastructure-that's what our cognitive powers are there for!

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I feel that people and the anti nuke groups have overlooked the Japan nuclear disaster. they have overlooked that the nuclear plant did shut down safely when the earthquake struck and the backup cooling engines kicked in to keep the rods cool. It was the tsunami that flooded the area knocking out the cooling engines that caused the meltdown. From documentaries I have seen on Japanese news channels Japan has very advanced nuclear power stations as it's in earthquake prone area. I don't think we can blame Japanese government or Tepco for this, they are both trying their up most best to clear contamination and control it. whilst nuclear is safe, the only issue is handling the waste and it is costly compared to burning gas or fossil fuels. it very easy to just say that nuclear is not safe and politicians for sake of keeping votes in hand, are shutting down their nuclear power plants which is just silly.

    there is a report I read that NASA believes that HAARP may have been used to induce the Japan earthquake. not sure if "the Register" would like to conduct a research into this and publish an article on it. Just seems a bit strange around a time when Russia, China are filing claims over japanese islands and suddenly this happens. I smell a rat maybe its to take away Japan's attention on the disputed islands?? Lets not forget that Russia and other countries also have very powerful antenna's designed to trigger weather patterns similar to HAARP. maybe the anti Nuke groups need to concentrate their attention here rather than chaining themselves to nuclear power stations.

  39. alaskan1st

    Just don't eat tuna. Tuna has been monitored for radiation since long before Fukushima. They are now 100% affected on the west coast of America. No tuna have checked out clean this month. Unless that radiation came from some unknown source, it's safe to say it came from Fukushima. The true effects of the leak will not be known for awhile.

    1. John Dawson

      Another troll surely? OK, on reflection, it's just more misinformation.

      Once again I refer you to this paper which tells us the radiation for naturally occurring potassium 40 in any fish is about 15x higher than the Cs contaminated fish caught off the coast of the USA. More interestingly the radiation from the naturally occurring Polonium in the fish is some 500x the Cs dose.

      http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/30/1221834110.full.pdf+html

  40. elfish

    I find it amusing that people who don't believe CO2 plays any role in climate change are touting nuclear as the answer to the CO2 problem.

    The author acts like we already know the final outcome of the disaster, but they are just now starting the cleanup. The estimated costs of the cleanup are $50 billion and many experts aren't sure it can be done. In fact, they are having to invent new techniques to do it. The plant is still leaking radio active water into ocean and they are attempting to stop it by "Freezing" the ground,something that's never been tried.

    But even if Fukushima never happened, economics dictates that Nuclear energy is not the answer to the CO2 emissions. It is just too expensive and to unreliable:

    1. HIGH CONSTRUCTION COSTS. Nuclear plants cost many times more than conventional plants. They require years to build and has an average cost overrun of 381%. Private investors won't touch them and no new nuclear plants have been built without government support.

    Economist Magazine 2001: "Nuclear power, once claimed to be too cheap to meter, is now too costly to matter"

    Forbes magazine: "[nuclear power is] the largest managerial disaster in U.S. business history, involving $100 billion in wasted investments and cost overruns, exceeded in magnitude only by the Vietnam War and the then Savings and Loan crisis."

    2. NUCLEAR POWER IS MORE COSTLY. MIT 2008 - the delivered cost per Kwh of various power sources:

    Nuclear: $0.14

    Gas: $0.10

    Coal: $0.09

    Wind: $0.07

    Gogen: $0.03 to $0.06

    3. POOR CARBON SAVINGS. While nuclear emits no carbon, it is one of the most expensive ways of offseting carbon.

    Kilograms of Offset Per Dollar:

    Nuclear: 5 Kg

    Gas: 6 Kg

    Wind: 14 Kg

    Cogen: 13 to 32 Kg.

    Conservation: 37 Kg

    4. RELIABILITY. In the US 21% were prematurely shut down due to reliability problems, 27% failed a year or more and 8% fail each year. They have to be shut down for 39 days every 17 months. They also require 5 to 15 days to be restarted if they are shut down for any reason.

    5. A RISKY INVESTMENT. People complain about the failure of Solyndra, but Nuclear is much riskier. According to the CBO, subsidies to the nuclear energy is much more risky and have a 50% chance of failure:

    "CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high-well above 50 percent. The key factor accounting for this risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources.

    6. FRANCE. France is the most experienced country in the world building nuclear plants. When Finland contracted with France to build a new reactor, it cost 50% more than the original cost and it took five year longer to build than originally planned.

    http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-01_NuclearIllusion

    http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly

    http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/42xx/doc4206/s14.pdf

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "2. NUCLEAR POWER IS MORE COSTLY. MIT 2008 - the delivered cost per Kwh of various power sources:"

      yes, mainly because nuclear power plants have to amortise their cleanup costs over operational lifetimes, whilst the the other generation facilities don't.

      Compoiunding that is the frankly wasteful way which light water reactors are operated, producing steaming mountains of "waste" which is most sensibly reprocessed into fuel, moved around the pile to increase burnup, or fed into a CANDU/Molten salt plant.

      If coal powered plants had to account for every step of the way from pollution cleanup of extraction and burning, as well as the "raw" cost of the fuel and treatment of affected civilians they'd easily cost 20 times as much per kWh produced.

  41. Elsombre

    Good Lord, Dude! You think Fukushima is over? Why is it that the operators of the Fukushima plant are desperately trying to engineer an "ice wall" to contain the radioactive water leaking from the plant? Fukushima continues to fail and the damage continues to grow.

    Scientists in Hawaii and Alaska have been keeping a close eye on the radiation levels in the Pacific, but don’t expect a “plume” of high-radiation-concentrate ocean water to arrive until 2014.

    If this is your proof that " .. nuclear power is safe", then you're seriously not paying attention.

  42. Whiznot

    The results are not in

    The crisis is ongoing. The state of spent fuel rods in reactor four is precarious given the geology of that region. The article is simply propaganda.

  43. JTWrenn

    Nice balanced article..ha

    While the extreme hippy types may be contributing to this issue I think the blame falls much closer to the meltdown. The companies/governments that run these reactors suck at it. They build things wrong, lie about the problems, and hide everything they possibly can. They do it for money, and that is why nuclear has never been trusted...because the people that run it are horrible. I am not talking about the engineers but rather the money hungry board at the top that cuts corners and causes these meltdowns in the first place.

    The damage has already been done by the two major meltdowns of our times. One Chernobyl was horrible and nothing will erase it from the minds of the people of the world. Fukushima while less so will also go down as horrible in many ways and was massively exacerbated by the lies of the company that ran the reactor.

    In addition saying everything that went wrong did...is a bit naive considering the history of Chernobyl. Much much more could have gone wrong.

    I am a proponent of safe nuclear energy but it needs few new safety measures. First, stop leaving these things there forever. We have much newer tech that would cost money to build but would be safer and we need some sort of time frame to start enforcing it. Second, look at different types of nuclear power. Thorium comes to mind on this. Using safer radioactivity based tech that would probably already be used if there were any measures that limited how long we could use old tech that is outdated and proven to be dangerous.

    Also...I know quite a few people who live in Japan. Their take on how bad it is....is a bit worse than ours. They really did screw up a lot of land, and eradiate a lot of ground water and other things in the area. This wasn't a small mess...it was big...it was bad...and they got lucky that it didn't go much worse. That doesn't mean it can't be done right though. So as usual. Both extremes are screwing up the middle ground. Congrats on adding to the mess with this article.

  44. Rebeccaaaaaaaa

    A 40 year clean up, the EPA & Japan raising the "acceptable" amounts of radiation we can receive, and you say that this is "fear-mongering"? If the Nuclear Industry wants to gain our trust, they'll put all their resources towards cleaning up this 40 year catastrophe quickly before asking to build more nuclear power plants. That's not fear-mongering, that's common sense.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "A 40 year clean up, the EPA & Japan raising the "acceptable" amounts of radiation we can receive, and you say that this is "fear-mongering"?"

      Did you miss th epart immediately after the accident where the japanese dropped allowable exposure limits and acceptable radiation levels in fish by 90%? Even without the meltdown a lot of the area would have exceeded the new limits (as would areas like Denver Colorado and Metropolitan Helsinki)

  45. Rebeccaaaaaaaa

    WE'RE NOT BLIND- A 40 year clean up, the EPA & Japan raising the "acceptable" amounts of radiation we can receive, and you say that this is "fear-mongering"? If the Nuclear Industry wants to gain our trust, they'll put all their resources towards cleaning up this 40 year catastrophe quickly before asking to build more nuclear power plants. That's not fear-mongering, that's common sense.

  46. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hunger and cold?

    Really? So it's nukes and carbon or hunger and pain. I have nothing against modern nuclear energy generation that leaves very little waste. I do have a problem with greedy politicians and contractors cutting corners - as they did with Fukushima. I also have a problem with the military refining material in a civilian facility - for obvious reasons. That didn't happen anywhere I know of. Wait a second now...

    All that aside and the smoke out of our tailpipes, what about the absolutely unnecessary data centres and production lines to support the effing brain dead entertainment sector known as mobile computing? Smart phones? Creepy. I don't want any of my machines to be smart. There are some things we can trim down on without going hungry. That's my personal opinion anyway.

    Before the snipers arrive on the roof of the office building across from my window, I think I'll make a run for it. I need that fake beard and hat I keep in the bottom drawer.

    1. BartiDdu

      Re: Hunger and cold?

      Not to mention the fact that intelligent architecture allowing for best natural illumination and heating/cooling (depending on environment), a rational transport policy, and increased electricity production close to the point of consumption (e.g. wind turbines / solar panels on the roofs of buildings using the energy) thus reducing the enormous losses in transmission, would together slash our energy requirements to a fraction of what they are today.

  47. Toxteth O'Gravy

    The missing 'W' word

    849 words of reasonable analysis - BUT not one of them was 'waste'.

  48. ianmcca

    Irrational anti-nuclear attitudes

    For an understanding of the anti-nuclear attitude of many people in the face of seemingly convincing evidence of its safety I think we need to look at my generation - the post-war baby-boomers - who grew up during the cold war and learned to fear all things nuclear from their understandably fearful parents. Learned fear is a species survival tactic which is deeply engrained in higher animals and is passed from generation to generation. So it will take a very long time and it may be impossible for humanity to get rid of a learned and irrational fear of nuclear energy.

    One might hope that rational argument would eventually win over irrational fear but this only works for a proportion of the population, probably due to wiring differences in the brain. Otherwise how could religion and arachnophobia exist?

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nuclear shmooclear..

    ..all you need is four candles and a pair of flower pots.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/10449357/Heat-your-home-office-for-8p-a-day.html

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Quite stunned by the level of nuclear ignorance in the article and in many comments.

    Obviously the media blackout is working well.

    http://enenews.com/

    http://hatrickpenryunbound.com/?p=3928 (links to FOIA docs)

  51. codejunky Silver badge

    Ha

    There will always be dreamers who think the world can be run on dreams and fairies, there is little you can do for them because often they are unable to be educated. However I have been happier recently to read greens who support power generation as wind and solar is limited to useless (depending where it is used).

    I dont believe this MMCC co2 theory but despair at the people who think unstable and useless generation sources like wind and solar are the answer. I have to laugh when such is compared to nuclear on the basis of cost. Nuclear, wind and solar cost a lot, but the difference is that nuclear actually provides power and it is stable and reliable. You cant power NHS emergency wards only when the sun shines. Street lights only if the wind blows.

    And if they seriously care about the cost of the energy (and how many people die because they cant afford the expensive green energy) then they would be happy with coal and gas which is vastly less.

    Some of these people struggle with the idea of reality and if they get their way it will bite them in the @$$

  52. TopOnePercent
    Childcatcher

    Quick question

    Assuming our energy use accelerates at the current rate, and we swapped all electrickery generation to nukes.... how long, using current technology, would the raw materials last?

    I'm just curious, as I'd always assumed the answer was 1000s of year, but thats based on nothing but my own guess.

  53. captainwiggins48

    Put a log on. Light the kerosene lamp. Listen to the sounds of the night. Peace!

  54. BartiDdu

    Crystal ball or Tarot cards?

    You say that, "the idea of running an advanced, developed human civilisation on renewables is a pipe-dream."

    Could you tell us how you came about the results to all future research into renewables, most of which hasn't even been imagined yet?

    1. A J Stiles

      Re: Crystal ball or Tarot cards?

      Not to mention that eventually, and pretty much by definition, renewables will be all that is left.

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