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FUKUSHIMA
September 23, 2013
I guess I gotta say something about Fukushima,
though I can't say I feel like all the facts
are in, even two years later...
But I'm still talking my
pro-nuclear line, and anyone
who hears me presumably things How can I remain unshaken by
this is crazy, if only because yet another Nuclear Disaster
of Fukushima. Which Threatens To Kill Us All
And May Mean The End Of All of
Civilization In Japan If Not
The Entire Pacific Rim, And
Haven't You Heard It's Leaking
Leaking Leaking--
Sorry.
In summary: I can be be reasonably
sure I'm going to learn nothing
about Fukushima that turns me
against nuclear power, because of
the sheer magnitude of the other
problems that we have.
Would it be worth a Fukushima every
few decades if it meant we could Could nuclear power be
do away with, say, coal burning? Yes. made increasingly safe,
so that we could expand
Coal exhaust kills ~20k annually it's use without any
in the US. It's also one of the main Fukushima's at all? Yes.
sources of greenhouse gases.
We've just seen a spate
Sure, Fukushima sucks, and I of rail and plane accidents
hope the now-established leakage that have killed people--
doesn't hurt too many people, I haven't heard anyone
but nuclear material isn't some suggest that this means
magically evil demonic substance we must abandon trains
that destroys all who dare to and planes. Instead,
tamper with it. we investigate the causes,
and work out improved
I have my doubts that we should safety proceedures.
really be calling the Fukushima
incident a "disaster"... (Oct 24, 2014)
With Fukushima, there don't
An earthquake and tsunami that kills seem to be any deaths from
20,000 people, now *that's* a disaster. rad exposure. (None. That's
zero. Got it? Can you
I've talked to people in San Francisco remember that?) There are
who are freaked out that some Fukushima however deaths due to the
contamination is supposedly detectable evacuation.
on this side of the ocean... but:
(1) at this point, we can detect angels
farting on the head of a pin,
(2) radioactives are one of the easiest Wouldn't it be cool
things to detect. if we couild make
*all* poisons
And more to the point, if you're living radioactive?
in San Francisco, the thing you should
really be worrying about, the lesson It'd be nice to know
you should take away from all this is immediately where all the
"how are my earthquake supplies?". agricultural pesticide
runoff is going...
Japan got hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake.
The Loma Prierta earthquake that had everyone
in the Bay Area in a tizzy back in 1989?
That had a magnitude of 7. (actually: 6.9)
Japan got nailed by one a 100 times
stronger, and that could happen here at
any time.
Some remarks of mine from May 31, 2013
(posted to slashdot):
Obvious point to learn from Fukushima:
the emergency pumps need to be up above
the flood line. One would hope that's Instead, it sounds like
easy enough to understand and fix, and they're shutting down all
one would hope they don't drag out the nuclear facilities in
necessary changes for too long. Japan. It's not clear to
me that this is intended
to be permanent, but it
There's admittedly a harder problem could be.
to solve pointed at by Fukushima:
how do you prevent "regulatory
capture"? What can you do to make A lot of the panic about this
sure that watchdog agencies really incident could be allayed if
watch? only people felt that the
authorities would be straight
(My impression is that with them, and tell them what's
the vulnerability of the really going on. Everyone
cooling pumps to flooding worries they're being lied to,
was known, and ignored. and not without reason.
If that's not the case,
then I've been suckered.) You go around conning people
and you end up with "credibility
problems". Funny thing, eh?
Unfortunately, the fundamental
problem here is hardly limited to
the nuclear power industry.
It's difficult to see how to structure a
modern industrial society without regulatory
agencies, but over time there's a real risk
they'll become neutralized and gradually
become ineffective.
Is there something inherently difficult
about the case of nuclear power that
exacerbates these problems? Well, no,
apparently not. If you use any halfway
reasonable metric for safety in power
generation, like say deaths per kilowatt
per year, nuclear power looks pretty good,
and I predict it will still look pretty
good, after the Fukushima incident plays
out completely.
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