Re: Nuclear power - are you for or against?
Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 10:39
Well, as you said later, historically it seems that we have a nuclear meltdown every 10 years or so. However, I would argue that the two major accidents we had are quite atypical of the risks most nuclear reactors face. Also, the definition of a "meltdown" is vague, because it can mean lots of things from small to large. But it's what we use to describe these things, so I don't personally have a problem with term even though it has no meaning in any technical sense.Pater Alf wrote:I can't find the link to that specific statistical risk model again, but at least I found a link to a mathematical model that says that the probability for a nuclear meltdown in Germany is 1 in 30.000 years (per each plant). Which is still nonsense I think...
Well, you are comparing apples to oranges. Also, being pedantic, the risk is usually defined by probability * damage (* assets), so the numbers above are probabilites, not risks. The first number is probability of a nuclear meltdown at a given plant in a year. The second is probability of a plane crash of a flight. To have a comparable metric, you would need to divide it not by flights, by number of planes, and which, assuming an average plane flies at least 10 flights a year, would be higher or at least comparable to the first number. =)There were two nuclear meltdowns in 25 years, which means 0,08 meltdowns per year. When we take the the 443 nuclear power plants we have today (and it were fewer 25 years ago), it means we have a risk of about 0,00018.
In comparision there are about 2.5 million passenger flights each year and there were about 30 fatal plane crashes (with passenger jets) each year. Which means only a risk of 0,000012.
It seems to me that flying is much safer...
Kein Problem, I read German in high school and university, so I knows my ways around it. However, at the quick glance the Spiegel article used the same numbers we already discussed earlier. Greenpeace just doesn't manipulate statistics, they manipulate facts. Having been employed in companies which have been targeted by that bunch; they don't live in the same reality or they just do it to get any publicity (and, donations) they can get.I just didn't give you the link because it is in German and I wasn't in the mood to search for an English source for every single number. And yes, I wouldn't believe Greenpeace as well. I wouldn't consider them as eco-terrorists, but they certainly tend to manipulate statistics if it fits their aims.
The INES number is the only thing Fukushima and Chrenobyl share, which probably just tells that the scale can't differentiate well enough in the high end. Definitely both are "Major accidents", but the scale of the accidents is still on a totally different scale in human and environment damage.You are certainly right about Three Mile Island, but I would be careful to prognosticate any numbers for Fukushima yet. The incident isn't over yet and no one knows what still will happen in the future and if Tepco and the Japanese gouvernment told the whole truth about what happened so far. It isn't a good sign that the accident was lately declared to the highest level on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
I think the climate change will be a problem for a larger part of the ecosystem. Of course, the climate change won't destroy the whole ecosystem, but it will have a larger impact on the ecosystem than what Chernobyl caused to its surroundings. But, you're right, a major nuclear accident can make the surroundings inhabitable for decades. I don't think this will be the case with Fukushima, for example.A generation normally means a time span of around 25 years. I can't see that the contamined zone around Chernobyl will be inhabitable again very soon, so I guess I wasn't wrong. And when I wrote uninhabitable I meant uninhabitable for humans. Of course there is wildlife even if some of it is mutated or changed. I think ecosystem can in fact take every hit (climate-change won't be a problem for the eco-system for example), but humans can't.
I still hope that the long-term effects of Fukushima will be very minimal. My main problem is that the most nuclear power building is happening in Russia and China, both which have nowhere near the safety regulations or track record Europe for example has. As I was doing some research I was quite surprised to find a Wikipedia article which stated that 2/3rds of nuclear accidents (with at least a fatality or high monetary damage) have happened in USA of all places.I really hope you are right, but I'm a little sceptical. I heard things like that before and if you would've asked some weeks ago, most people would probably have thought that something like Fukushima isn't able to happen.Zyx wrote: It's also good to keep in mind that we will, in all likelihood, never see anything like Chernobyl ever again. What happened there is no longer possible by physical laws and they willfully caused the accident. It will most likely stay as the worst nuclear accident ever.
But it's good practice =)I will answer the rest of your post as well, but it will have to wait till tomorrow. It's much harder for me to discuss such political topics in English than I thought.