[natmaka]

The Banqiao dam suffered from major flaws then from decades of a fair amount of diverse very adverse conditions and absence of proper maintenance... and it kept up. Then it took a typhoon to finally destroy it. The grotesquely bad handling continued during the crisis which followed.

A few hours of improper use were sufficient to trigger a disaster at the Chernobyl's reactor, then the authorities' reaction (evacuation, liquidators...), albeit imperfect, was way better than at Banqiao.

[sofixa]

Chernobyl was of a flawed design with a very serious bug which was known (but classified), and it took a terrible very poorly coordinated drill to cause it to actually meltdown.

A more accurate comparison would be Fukushima, where the design was wrong (backup generators in the basement, in a flood prone zone) that survived a 9 on the Richter scale earthquake and was only damaged by the resulting tsunami (but only because the operator had ignored all the warnings about the placement and protection of backup power).

[natmaka]

The design flaw (every equipment has some...) did not condemn it: this Chernobyl's reactor was a RBMK, many RBMKs ran for decades after the disaster, and some do run right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#List_of_RBMK_reactors

Fukushima was designed to survive to earthquakes (all most things are in Japan). The mishap at this nuclear plant had, indeed, a very simple cause (a wall wasn't high enough) and it caused 2203 deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... then a very expensive cleanup (which is considered as far from perfect) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup

The Onagawa plant, more exposed, survived: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onagawa_Nuclear_Power_Plant#20...

A non-maintained flawed huge dam copes with decades of major problems then a typhoon breaks it, while a nuclear plant missing a few bricks exposed to a huge tide breaks havoc in a few hours.

[yetanother4968]

The flaws in the RBMKs which were known before Chernobyl were fixed afterwards (with changes that had been proposed before Chernobyl) in the other reactors that were kept running, though. Not claiming that the RBMKs were flawless after the fact, but the specific flaw that led to the disaster was fixed.

[natmaka]

> The flaws in the RBMKs which were known before Chernobyl were fixed afterwards

Indeed, and it shows that the design wasn't flawed to the point of condemning it: a fix was possible. Implication: even a non-major flaw can trigger a disaster.

> (with changes that had been proposed before Chernobyl)

Indeed, and it shows that even detected problems sometimes aren't fixed. This is not reserved to the USSR: Fukushima also showed it (it was well-known that the seawall/levee wasn't high enough, as recalled in my previous post here the nearby Onagawa plant had an adequate levee).

[arcticbull]

There were 2203 deaths in the evacuation. Nobody died of radiation. If you had an oil plant with an inadequate levee you’d have had to evacuate too. This is at best tangential.

[natmaka]

Officially: 2202 deaths (attributed to the nuclear disaster) from evacuation, and 1 death from radiation.

Technically: determining the health impact of radiation is difficult and the methods are disputed. Moreover every specialist agrees that waiting at least 15 years is necessary because most induced ailments have a non-neglectable latency. Solid cancers, for example, develop in up to 15 years.

[arcticbull]

> Technically: determining the health impact of radiation is difficult and the methods are disputed. Moreover every specialist agrees that waiting at least 15 years is necessary because most induced ailments have a non-neglectable latency. Solid cancers, for example, develop in up to 15 years.

This is hand-waving and scaremongering. We have models. The models we use are the most pessimistic (linear no-threshold). The dispute is about whether we should use the more optimistic models (threshold). There's a whole debate, but rest assured, we're incredibly pessimistic.

You can of course say the same thing about cancer caused by particulate emissions, etc. You know what's radioactive and blown around everywhere? Coal fly ash. It's full of uranium and thorium. The question I have for you is over the life of Fukushima, how many people were saved as a result of not burning coal or oil?

Let's run the numbers. Nameplate capacity 5300MW for 32 years (1979 to 2011). That's a grand total of almost 1500TWh. Remember, coal kills 25 people per TWh, so it saved 37,500 people. Sorry, 37,499.

In my opinion, the deaths from the evacuation are attributable to the tsunami, not to the power plant. But even if you factor them in, that's still 35,298 folks alive today because of Fukushima Daiichi.

Even at 2202 deaths is 1.4 deaths per TWh, which is 1.4% as many as a brown coal plant would have killed, ~5% as many as a coal or oil plant would have killed, 35% as many as a natural gas plant would have killed - and exactly as many as a hydroelectric plant would have killed. Only 3X as many as rooftop solar. Even Fukushima alone makes nuclear one of the safest forms of energy on the planet. The second-worst nuclear disaster in history - in isolation - is still one of the safest power plants we have.

These plants save lives. Don't fear the spicy rocks.

[natmaka]

> We have models. The models we use are the most pessimistic (linear no-threshold). The dispute is about whether we should use the more optimistic models (threshold).

There are many subjects disputed, to begin with the way assessments are conducted, check for example http://csrp.jp/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2013-UNSCEAR-Repor...

More fundamentally check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...

> Coal fly ash. It's full of uranium and thorium

Nobody here advocates coal. Renewables (wind, solar... power) don't emit such stuff.

> In my opinion, the deaths from the evacuation are attributable to the tsunami, not to the power plant

Most of those victims were attributed to the tsunami, the estimation quoted (2202 victims) quoted is only the small fraction of the victims (about 10%) which was attributed to factors (panic, effect on infrastructures of the evacuation...) induced by the nuclear disaster.

[arcticbull]

Give me a few hours and I guarantee you I can do just as much damage with a dam and I can with a nuclear reactor.

[natmaka]

I seriously doubt so.

[arcticbull]

I mean, Bangqiao wiped out numerous settlements. On the other hand you know the remaining RBMK reactors at Chernobyl continued to operate for years after the incident, the last one closing in 2000, and only after the international community conditioned funding for the New Safe Containment installation on it. There's still a few RBMK reactors operating - after the safety retrofits of course.

[natmaka]

> remaining RBMK reactors at Chernobyl continued to operate for years

Many reactors did continue to operate, in many sites. It shows that the design wasn't flawed to the point of condemning it: a fix was possible. Implication: even a non-major flaw can trigger a disaster.

[arcticbull]

Ok? But the bigger point is that’s not at all unique to nuclear. It’s common to a whole ton of things we do. And they can all have just as big an impact. Planes for instance. We iterate and improve, we don’t run back to the Stone Age.

Also the positive void coefficient was clearly a major flaw lol

[natmaka]

The major difference is that for nearly all other causes nearly all victims chose to use the thing. My own brother died during a jetliner crash (SR-111), not surprisingly while he was in the plane after deciding to climb in it. I'm sad about this but I sure cannot say he didn't decide to accept the risk.

This is not true for nuclear energy: even very remote bystanders unwilling to take the risk are majorly exposed. In other words those who build or agree are exposing those who don't (along with many generations to come thanks to plant decommissions and nuclear waste).

Moreover traveling to very distant places by land or sea is way slower, and more difficult/dangerous than by using a jetliner.

This is not true for nuclear energy: we already use other types of equipment (wind turbines, solar panels...) offering the same fundamental service (and we know how to alleviate their intermittency), without any measurable risk of major accident, no long-term dangerous waste, no dependency towards a combustible... Those very equipment, and this should not come as a surprise, are more and more preferred to nuclear: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...

Iterating/improving does not guarantee constant enhancement, nor a progress on the long-term, as any software development specialist knows. The keyword here is 'side-effects' (discovering a bug, then fixing it... and by doing so inducing a latent and more dangerous bug). Even if it did there is no way to be absolutely sure of our risk assessment because being sure implies to know each and every defect/flaw, therefore the very decision to take (or refuse) the risk would entirely lay on trust towards the specialists, leading to a vast array of major challenges (to begin with: specialists will be both judges and defendants).

No, given the RBMK architecture the positive void coefficient isn't a major flaw. It simply implies that some ways to operate the reactor (letting it gain thermal power after reaching a given low-power stage) is strictly forbidden. Each and every reactor has limitations of this sort, mainly defined as dangerous maneuvers or states duly declared to the operators as forbidden.

This approach (positive void coefficient) is intrinsic to RBMKs, there is no way to operate a RBMK reactor under another principle, and (I repeat) many of such reactors ran for decades after Chernobyl, and some operate right now. Therefore the positive void coefficient isn't a critical flaw (which would imply to immediately quit exploiting all RBMK reactors).