[fbender]

But this is exactly the point. Catastrophes like Fukushima are practically always a combination of individual deficiencies in design, process, and operator errors. Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening. This is mostly because human imagination is limited and humans are fallible, and what‘s not covered by the previous two is lack of knowledge & understanding.

Said in other words, if you wait long enough, a catastrophe is inevitable. And history, both old and recent, has told us that the time you‘ll have to wait is much shorter that you‘d think.

I work in aerospace operations and every freakin‘ day things go different than planned and anomalies happen. In „my“ „industry“, we try to prepare for off-nominal situations and that buffers the effects, but you can only do so much and you end up in contingencies very often. You can also easily see when a new player enters the stage as they very quickly (should) learn that you‘ll have to react and adapt your plans very often and tone down any promises …

Long story short, whatever means you put up to prevent catastrophic events, they will never be enough. Then the question of cost arises, which is undoubtedly extremely high for nuclear events, especially in such a densely populated and small country like Germany, and you’ll quickly realise that you probably do not want to take that risk even if probability is very low.

And finally, we have yet to find a working way to handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k years. (I am aware of the options but obviously we are not there yet and it‘s unclear if we ever reach the state of „acceptable solution“ instead of pushing the issue to generations to come.)

[roenxi]

> Said in other words, if you wait long enough, a catastrophe is inevitable.

But the catastrophe in nuclear is substantially less damaging than business as usual in coal. I've lived in a coal mining region, I'd have better health outcomes if I'd lived next to Fukushima when it was melting down. And I don't feel threatened by the risk of either.

The damage done by solar/wind is also flying under the radar, but they are being scaled up to industrial levels of production. Nothing done at industrial scales doesn't produce a lot of waste and environmental damage. It is likely that nuclear is still safer and more environmentally friendly than the renewables.

Nuclear is safer than a hydroelectric dam, for example.

These risks are so firmly within the tolerable zone it isn't funny. And the negative exampels are all talking about 50 year old technology which is obsolete. Even Japan is re-opening their nuclear plants, presumably bowing to the reality that their Fukushima response was overly paranoid.

And it is a tired argument I always make, but "handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k year" - be serious. We have waste that lasts forever and we have plans to store it for 30 years. There is nothing there that matters and the people getting worked up about it are mistaking opportunity for cost. We have the potential to manage waste from an industrial nuclear process. That makes it unique, most other processes we dump dangerous waste, forget & hope. We produce much scarier waste than nuclear byproducts and the volumes involved are tiny.

[fbender]

I don‘t get why you‘d bring up any other means of power generation while my reply solely discussed nuclear, but I‘ll take the bait …

> substantially less damaging than business as usual in coal.

Never doubted that and never will. Though here we are talking two different scenarios (as you said): Accident vs. nominal operations. Strictly statistically speaking, nuclear „wins“ because of that, I‘ll gladly agree to that. That still does not mean nuclear is to be preferred, it‘s just the less worse option of the two in terms of one (of many) measure.

> Nothing done at industrial scales doesn't produce a lot of waste and environmental damage.

While I agree to that statement, there is more to be considered than just waste and environmental damage, e.g. for nuclear (and fossil power) esp. health risks.

> nuclear is still safer and more environmentally friendly than the renewables.

Source? Can you at least state how you would define „safer and more environmentally friendly“? That‘s a bold statement you make …

> Nuclear is safer than a hydroelectric dam

In what measure? Maybe if you look at Risk * probability (I‘d need a source, though) but unlikely if you look at Risk * probability * cost (except maybe the 3-gorges-dam but that‘s due to a number of unique factors).

> These risks are so firmly within the tolerable zone

Maybe for you but not the next person. Or insurer. Or government.

> negative exampels are all talking about 50 year old technology which is obsolete

Power generation from water is much older, even thousands of years (if you are willing to accept a slight redefinition). Saying the technology is obsolete doesn‘t fly if said technology is still heavily used every day and not being replaced (i.e. decommissioning of all old nuclear plants).

> Japan is re-opening their nuclear plants, presumably bowing to the reality that their Fukushima response was overly paranoid

It‘s a political decision by the Abe government. They were always very pro-nuclear.

> be serious. We have waste that lasts forever and we have plans to store it for 30 years.

Which is bad enough. (BTW: This is handled much better in the better part of Europe / Germany than the USA.) The unique problem with nuclear waste is that it requires special handling for 10k-100k years unless you want to die. While this may be true for other, highly toxic waste, this does not apply to the vast majority of waste.

> We have the potential to manage waste from an industrial nuclear process. That makes it unique, most other processes we dump dangerous waste, forget & hope.

Having the potential does not equal using it, rendering your argument void. (BTW: While I agree we should be doing this for all nuclear waste no matter the cost, reprocessing nuclear waste (like burnt fuel) consumes a significant amount of the energy that has been produced by the plant, rendering the process uneconomical.) Even then, it‘s not unique, for most other waste we know how to manage it but it‘s too often not done due to economic reasoning. (BTW: This is also an issue of externalized cost that we‘d have to solve. And again: This is handled much better in the better part of Europe / Germany than the USA.)

> the volumes involved are tiny

… but very deadly and toxic, rendering it a much bigger problem than most other waste. And we‘re not yet talking decommissioning a nuclear …

[kalleboo]

> In what measure

Presumably in the measure of "lives lost" if you look at the Banqiao Dam failure. In 2017, the Oroville Dam in California was also at imminent risk of collapse and prompted the evacuation of 180,000 people.

That puts hydro at one catastrophe with lives lost at the worst estimates of Chernobyl, and one mass-evacuation on the order of the evacuation of Fukushima

[cbmuser]

I rather have 10 Fukushima nuclear accidents than one big dam break:

> https://www.ozy.com/flashback/230000-died-in-a-dam-collapse-...

Fukushima is mostly restored already:

> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/05/national/evacue...

> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/20/national/beach-...

> https://www.pref.fukushima.lg.jp/site/portal-english/en02-01...

You can even read current restaurant reviews on Google Maps very close to Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

96% of the compound of the NPP can be entered with simple dust masks and regular uniforms:

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C83bsgU0Ysw&feature=youtu.be...

As for Chernobyl, in most cases the health effects of the incident are often grossly overestimated:

> https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/

[save_ferris]

> I rather have 10 Fukushima nuclear accidents than one big dam break

You say that, but Fukushima didn't even come close to reaching it's catastrophic potential. Japan was facing the possibility of having to immediately evacuate 50 million people[0], or roughly 15% of the US population. An evacuation on that scale would almost certainly top any other emergency evacuation in human history.

Japan got pretty lucky with the weather conditions during that episode, and if you flip that coin 9 more times, you'd find out pretty quick that they got pretty darn lucky the first time.

0: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/12/national/kan-ci...

[save_ferris]

I got curious about the largest evacuations in history and a cursory google search says that the largest sea evacuation took place in NYC during 9/11, when 500,000 were ferried out of the city, beating Dunkirk in WWII (319k).

So the prime minister of Japan was facing the possibility of an evacuation 100x this size. That is truly insane.

[Dumblydorr]

Coal has already killed far more beings than the highly rare nuclear power station disaster. If you care about wellbeing and human lives, swapping nuclear for coal is downright stupid.

[fbender]

Germany swapped nuclear (and coal) for renewables. While I wholeheartedly agree that it would have been better to extend nuclear in favor of decommissioning coal earlier, that‘ll still not make your argument valid.

[brutt]

This millennia is not ended yet, so it is too early to count total number of victims of nuclear accidents.

[MiroF]

This argument makes no sense

[brutt]

Radioactive contamination of soil has very long tail, so we should wait until radioactivity will be lower than background level to count total number of victims. I.e. 1 victim per year x 100 years = 100 victims, while 1 victim per year x 1000 years = 1000 victims, order of magnitude more victims.

[tremon]

Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening

That premise requires more convincing evidence for me. Nuclear reactors have an incredible safety record, given that most current reactors have their design roots in the 60s, and have been operated for longer than initially anticipated, on MBA-style shoestring budgets. Given that scenario, yes, accidents are bound to happen. But where are the improved designs you mention? What processes have been adapted to improve reactor safety since the 60s? Which reactors have been safely decommissioned at the end of their planned lifetime instead of running beyond their age?

What we have now is the result of thirty years of political (and economic) languishing: no firm decision had been made either way. I applaud Angela Merkel for finally making a firm decision on that subject, but I also think the decision was the wrong one. I applaud India's decision to actually develop and build 90s-era reactor designs.

whatever means you put up to prevent catastrophic events, they will never be enough

As evidenced by the impending climate catastrophe, you are correct. But even ten Tsjernobyl meltdowns will be less impactful than what we are facing now.

we have yet to find a working way to handle our nuclear waste for the next 10k-100k years

No, we already have that solution: Gen-4 breeder reactors, another 90s-era reactor design. We just never had the political will to build them, thereby perpetuating our 10k-100k year problem.

[fbender]

Take a look at history if you need more evidence. At some point, someone always said „now we know better and we can build XXXX to be perfect“, and now we are laughing about them (to give a bad but simple example: Titanic). You are naïve if you think today is any different than yesterday, even with all that superior technology and knowledge that we have – but that was also true for any other point in time.

And your „waste solution“ will not help one bit with the waste we already have. Hence my argument remains.

[tremon]

And your „waste solution“ will not help one bit with the waste we already have.

Why not? Breeder reactors can use spent fuel as (part of) their power source, and that spent fuel is the cause of our 10-100k year problem. From wikipedia [1]:

Since breeder reactors on a closed fuel cycle would use nearly all of the actinides fed into them as fuel, their fuel requirements would be reduced by a factor of about 100. The volume of waste they generate would be reduced by a factor of about 100 as well [..] In principle, breeder fuel cycles can recycle and consume all actinides, leaving only fission products [having] a peculiar 'gap' in their aggregate half-lives, such that no fission products have a half-life between 91 years and two hundred thousand years. As a result of this physical oddity, after several hundred years in storage, the activity of the radioactive waste from a Fast Breeder Reactor would quickly drop to the low level of the long-lived fission products

So, not only would fast breeder reactors reduce our waste volume by 99%, they would also reduce our waste storage lifetime from 10k-100k years to a few hundred years (a more than 99% reduction).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Waste_reductio...

[eirini1]

Did we stop building boats?

[ApolloFortyNine]

>But this is exactly the point. Catastrophes like Fukushima are practically always a combination of individual deficiencies in design, process, and operator errors. Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening. This is mostly because human imagination is limited and humans are fallible, and what‘s not covered by the previous two is lack of knowledge & understanding.

>I work in aerospace operations

It's odd you say this, since the entire aerospace industry exists because people at the time were willing to put up with the risks until we got where we are today.

[fbender]

If you talk space, the difference is that all relevant people were and are aware of the risks and do their job despite them. And they do their job in such a way that the risk is always minimized (through extensive preparation, Monitoring, …), you can handle a situation immediately or even recover from it (e.g. redundancy; failure detection, isolation, & recovery mechanisms; etc) and learn from it (post-mortem processes). Everything and everyone breathes risk awareness.

If you are talking aeronautics, the situation is fundamentally similar but also the scales are very different (also in terms of operating personnel vs. throughput). But more importantly, society in the majority seemed to have accepted a level of risk even though we know for sure that the next catastrophic event could happen any moment.

[wazoox]

Fun fact: if the Fukushima exclusion zone was entirely covered with solar panels, it wouldn't even match the nuclear plant annual energy production (note to downvoters: that's actual fact, a 10 km2 plant in India has only 650MW of power, and hits this power only 1 to 2 hours per day).

[Melting_Harps]

> But this is exactly the point. Catastrophes like Fukushima are practically always a combination of individual deficiencies in design, process, and operator errors. Designs can be improved, processes adapted, and people trained better, but that will not prevent accidents from happening.

Agreed. The consequences of Nuclear energy last millions of years, not Human lifetimes, to this day we still have not felt the true impact of Fukushima's contaminated water run off into the Pacific, nor the contamination of the food and soil the epidemiology of Nuclear fallout was abysmal in 2011, and was done by Soviet's. Sudden heart failures as well as birth defects, and other maladies of children are stauncly being hidden from the Media as they were ramping up the efforts for the Olympics, not to mention the People have not been able to return Home to their and remian in a make-shift refugee camp, and seen as 'less than' in Japanese society: look up the Hibakusha from WWII, and the same stigma applies now. I think TEPCO/Nuclear Village and the Abe cabinet are just waiting from them to die to make it all go away so they can get back to how things were.

> Merkel's decision ignored the truly extraordinary circumstances of the Fukushima disaster, which was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that, each individually, exceeded the design parameters of the reactor, which was 40 years old at the time of the disaster. Updated studies indicated the reactor was vulnerable to tsunami, but were ignored. Repeatedly.

First, if you are going to pull out her education in physics and then discount it, have a basis for doing so. And at least make the obvious correlation to the political decision that France is right next door and produces 379.1 TWh/71.6% of their entire energy production, so they will continue to just buy just buy it from them--I lived in S. Germany near the French Border and it that was common practice. With that said, I have a Biology background and just looking at how it devastated one of the most abundant Ag lands in Japan I'd say Humans are too fallible to have access to this tech to be able to use it on this planet. For Mars, sure, that makes total sense, but not here. We have way more, and better options.

Sidenote: I lived near SONGS in S. OC, which had a leak happen around the same time as 3/11.