Tom LaTourrette: Nuclear Energy After Fukushima

Dr. LaTourrette examines nuclear power in the aftermath of Japan's Fukushima power plant disaster, with a special focus on US nuclear power plants.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[deedubya286]

I think it's the same phenomenon as aircraft accidents. Auto accidents kill thousands of people per year and nobody bats an eye. An airliner with 300 people on board crashes every couple of years, is a major news story, and people become terrified of flying. Both cases boil down to a combination of media hype coupled with general ignorance by a majority of the population. How many people do you think realize that you get higher energy radiation from a flashlight than a cellphone?

[TheMacrowaveOven]

Compare natural gas and coal power, which actually eject things like radon and thorium into the atmosphere. Type in "radiation from coal" and click on the first link; scientific america; it suggests that coal fired power stations may be 100 times worse than nuclear. Coal is the dirtiest form of electrical power generation, but even natural gas ejects huge amounts of radon.

[watafug]

well, considering that nuclear power is vastly more efficient per cost and resource, has killed less people than any other form of power and produces virtually no form of toxic emission during normal operation, I am curious as to what alternative you propose.

[milflyboy]

We learn from every accident. They now have a small reactor that can be installed underground and requires no active cooling whatsoever, making it walk-away safe. I'm guessing you think greenhouse gasses are a real problem. Do you have any concept how much GHG emission would be required to power China, India, and the developed world without nuclear power? Hydroelectric has its own problems and isn't possible everywhere, and solar and wind aren't efficient enough to provide enough capacity.

[UU361]

Just 3 WTF how many fucking more accidents is it going to fucking take?

[Christine Fellie Johannessen]

v=fDSoep_3pF0

[puncheex2]

... But compared to the radioactive fission products (like iodine, strontium, potassium and cesium) uranium is a mild, mild problem. Granted it will be around a lot longer, but there will probably be tech fixes for that eventually. We already know how to separate dirt into its constituent parts, akin to the enrichment process for uranium, but it is hideously expensive and slow for something like mass extraction from soil. It may not be so forever. Oh, and take your epithets and self-apply.

[puncheex2]

Consider: Every acre-foot of soil, all over the Earth, contains 5.5 pounds of uranium on the average. Everywhere. It's in the dust we breathe all the time; we and our forebearers have lived with it always. It is radioactive for a very long time, and that fact makes it equivalently mild in radioactive intensity. As for "why aren't they testing", they are. Though common geiger counters are gross instruments for measuring radiation in general, uranium and its cousins are easy to detect.

[patternsinchaos]

And so radioactive Uranium isn't a problem now? And how long is it radioactive? And why aren't they testing for it? Idiot.

[puncheex2]

Jan's blog tekknorg. Good stuff, usually, but you know he is goal- rather than evidence-driven when this pops up: "If the food you EAT contains 1 becquerel of let’s say Cesium 137 – it’s not safe. You eat many times a day, many days a week, a month, a year, a whole LIFE." Everyone eats much more than a becquerel per meal, and not just cesium. Much more than that will be radon 222 and potassium 40, and that goes all the way back past the dawn of mankind. I personally try to avoid such rhetoric.

[puncheex2]

Moi? I said nothing about you personally. Your paranoia is also not my problem.

Mox fuel (or any real reactor fuel) doesn't stay in the atmosphere; it is too heavy for that. It settles into the ground and water in a short time. And they are the least of a radiation accident's problems. In the short term those are fission products, like iodine, potassium and cesium.