[sillygeese]

That's all fine, but for example Fukushima is still not under control, and may still cause enormous harm.

That kind of stuff is why we need to get rid of nuclear power altogether. All that's holding us back is politicians and their bribes.. and of course, to a lesser extent, people who rationalize not moving away from nuclear power.

[Asbostos]

Fukushima was an unsafe design. Chernobyl was both an unsafe design and being operated in an obviously risky and neglegent way when it failed. These kinds of disasters won't happen with more modern reactors that already exist. Even if they do, making a few permanent wildlife reserves in the irradiated areas isn't a global catastrophe. The world is full of uninhabited and uninhabitable places.

[kuschku]

> Fukushima was an unsafe design

Fukushima was a standard design. Built by European and US companies in the same style as dozens of plants in Germany.

This is not "Fukushima was unsafe". If you say "Fukushima was unsafe", then half of Germany’s reactors are unsafe.

Shutting them down was the only option.

> making a few permanent wildlife reserves in the irradiated areas isn't a global catastrophe

You are talking about Japan. A country with one of the highest population densities worldwide. Declaring a whole province – and one with lots of history – off-limits is not going to happen. Currently they’ve been digging out the ground in half of the province.

----------

EDIT: Some more info:

Fukushima was a Boiling Water Generator built by General Electrics. Reactors of the exact same design are Krümmel (Germany), Brunsbüttel (Germany), Philippsburg (Germany), Isar (Germany). Krümmel and Brunsbüttel had constant issues, including the town next to it having the highest cancer rate on the planet.

The same design used by Fukushima is described in Wikipedia as "the second most common type of electricity-generating nuclear reactor".

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_water_reactor

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunsb%C3%BCttel_Nuclear_Power...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%BCmmel_Nuclear_Power_Pla...

- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuk%C3%A4miecluster_Elbmarsch

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Powe...

[mpweiher]

>> Fukushima was an unsafe design

> Fukushima was a standard design.

The design was unsafe. The company knew this. In fact it had been known for 35 years. It was not unfixably unsafe, and in fact 5 of the 10 reactors had been upgraded. These 5 shut down properly during the Tsunami and survived without problems.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023048879045763955...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/fukushima-general-electric-knew...

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/16/fukushima-reactor-flaws-...

The main design flaw was that the vital emergency cooling equipment was sited in an unprotected building outside the protected reactor. This is especially troubling if you site your reactor on a Tsunami-ridden coast. It's less of a problem in the middle of Germany, where there are no Tsunamis. Or to put it another way: if you have a Tsunami reaching the middle of Germany, a meltdown at these powerplants is going to be among the least of your problems.

[kabdib]

1960s design, things have improved.

Of course, it is hard to demonstrate improvements, especially when nuclear power is so demonized.

[sillygeese]

Well the way for a reactor to "demonstrate an improvement" over Fukushima would be to withstand the same kind of earthquake + tsunami that Fukushima didn't.

It doesn't make sense to say it's hard to demonstrate improvements when it's not even under our control.

But demonizing nuclear power has nothing to do with it.

[mpweiher]

> Well the way for a reactor to "demonstrate an improvement" > over Fukushima would be to withstand the same kind of > earthquake + tsunami that Fukushima didn't.

Gee, what a great idea! In fact, a slightly improved reactor was operating in the other Fukushima plant, and all its reactors were shut down safely after being hit by the same Tsunami.

More modern designs are safer still. For example, there are designs that do not require external power for a shutdown at all.

[kuschku]

Yes, modern designs are safer – but the first lesson to be learnt from Fukushima should be to take the older designs from the grid.

[DasIch]

I'm sure that the people behind Chernobyl and Fukushima were no less convinced that the design was safe and operated perfectly fine, than you are convinced that modern reactors are safely designed and operated correctly.

[rosser]

All that's holding us back is politicians and their bribes..

No, unfortunately, that's not all that's holding us back. There are still some pretty substantial, e.g., storage and transmission problems with the renewables.

Unless you want us to keep burning coal or some other nonsense like that...

[kuschku]

There are no storage or transmission problems. Build hydro-pump-storage plants, and you fixed the storage issues.

Build power lines from everywhere to everywhere, and refit transformer stations to be up to the load of users producing more than using, and you fix that, too. (Incidentally, in Germany we’re having a huge debate about a huge powerline currently, NIMBY is one of the worst things that happened)

[mpweiher]

> Build hydro-pump-storage plants, and you fixed the storage issues.

You do realize that the largest ever energy-generation accident was a dam failure? 171000 people killed in 1975 when a dam in China failed. And overall, hydroelectric facilities claim 94% of the fatalities of energy-production accidents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

[kuschku]

What you are talking about is hydro-generation.

What I am talking about is hydro-pump-storage.

That type of storage has no dam that could fail – you take two lakes, one higher than the other, connect them with a tunnel, and place a turbine in the tunnel. Now you can push the water up (store energy) or let it flow down (produce energy).

[mpweiher]

Yes, that was a hydro-generation dam.

However, it is simply not true that hydro-pump storage never has a dam.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

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

In fact, when you look at the list of pumped storage stations, the vast majority of them have dams:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pumped-storage_hydroel...

[maccard]

And coal mines, oil/gas rigs have perfect safety records?

[TazeTSchnitzel]

They don't, but when they do go wrong the consequences are less severe.

[Asbostos]

That's debatable. Coal is known to cause far more deaths than nuclear. Even Fukushima was nothing compared to the 10's of thousands killed by the tsunami.

[mikeash]

"Far more" is even an understatement. Coal kills more people every year than nuclear ever has, and that still holds true even if you include the two bombs dropped on Japan in "nuclear."

[rayiner]

Coal irradiates far more people than nuclear even when it's operating properly.

[kuschku]

Yes. Perfectly working coal produces more radiation than perfectly working nuclear.

When coal has a major incident, though, it still produces the same pollutants as if it's working correctly.

When nuclear has incidents, like the plants of Brunsbüttel and Krümmel that frequently had leaks, you end up with the highest leukemia quote worldwide [1].

Krümmel had major issues, with nuclear fuel being found in the area around the reactor, outside, on the ground, with the power plant leaking coolant frequently, and more incidents. [1]

Mismanagement with Nuclear can lead to far more problems than mismanagement with coal.

More Info and Links: [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukämiecluster_Elbmarsch (Sadly, only German article available).

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kr%C3%BCmmel_Nuclear_Power_Pla...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunsb%C3%BCttel_Nuclear_Power...

[mpweiher]

> When coal has a major incident, though, it still produces the same pollutants as if it's working correctly.

Yeah. No.

"Coal mining accidents resulted in 5,938 immediate deaths in 2005, and 4746 immediate deaths in 2006 in China alone according to the World Wildlife Fund"

So each year more deaths from coal accidents alone than the entire predicted, somewhat speculative and hard to ever prove death toll from Chernobyl over the next 20 or so years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

[sillygeese]

What he means to say is that a nuclear meltdown can fuck up a huge area for millenia, but a coal incident can't.

[mpweiher]

While this is how many people feel, the facts say quite the opposite.

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

[iso8859-1]

You forget all the people killed through air pollution.