UK Sticks With Nuclear Power 334
Coisiche writes "Despite recent events in Japan and the certain public outcry that it will generate, the UK government proposes to build new nuclear power stations. Well, earthquakes and tsunamis are very rare here."
Good! (Score:3, Insightful)
Good!
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Our electrical companies have been in the private sector since the 80s, apart from the nuclear part which was divided up into two parts: the electrical generation side and the disposal side. Guess which side the taxpayers got to pay for.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Informative)
Sure we invest in wind farms and tidal generators. I work for a company that has designed and is building a tidal turbine, and I've heard talk about wind energy projects. I still think it's important to continue with nuclear as well. I'm glad that our government doesn't seem as dumb and panicky as certain others.
Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK, like many countries, has committed to a substantial drop in CO2 emissions. Nuclear is obviously going to have to be a major component in that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Had a look at a topographical map of Norway lately? Now, compare it to one of the UK.
Hydro power doesn't work everywhere in the world.
-jcr
Not to mention the fact that the UK has 15.25 times the population of Norway.
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Funny)
Pah, like he said, you lack imagination! If we build giant funnels over the beaches, we can catch all the rain and use it for hydro power generation!
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"Giant funnels' - That would look just lovely.. as if the skies weren't dark enough already...
Giant vacuum cleaners would be much better, to suck the clouds out of the sky so the Brits could see what the sun looks like
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When I was looking to rent a house in Cheshire a few years ago, a lot of the ads mentioned "double glazed windows" as a selling point. Imagine that! A house with a bit of thermal insulation, in a country where the temperature will often drop to 0 C / 32 F durin
Re:Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
The UK is committing to heavy use of renewable power in the form of wind turbines, but we are a small island with a huge power demand, we need to follow every avenue that we reasonably can do in power generation.
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And we're barely self-sufficient. We would have to be a huge, huge net exporter of power for that to be a viable solution to everyone else. It's the hydro power that's enabled us to be such a big oil and gas export nation, because we haven't needed it ourselves. Sadly that's dwindling away, but we're still in a far better position than most any country for the upcoming oil crisis.
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Re:Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
The world could aim for 80% wind power if wind towers produced baseload power
Are you sure about that?
According to this [straightdope.com] (scroll down to the list of power sources), building wind turbines in all the locations where they generate sufficient power would produce a grand total of 2.1 terawatts, globally. Which is a lot of power - don't get me wrong, it's totally worth building them to get that energy. But it's nowhere near the 13.5 terawatts needed circa 2002 (the article cites a 2006 paper), or the projected 28-35 terawatts needed by the midcentury (all figures from the same article, feel free to provide counter citations if my source is incorrect or biased).
I don't think we can aim for 80% wind power even if we had the ability to combat intermittency.
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13!
6227020800?
Thorium anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
With the recent shit storm of FUD out there concerning nuclear power, I am shocked that there isn't a more vocal promotion of building/funding/using thorium salt reactors by the "scientific community". Although no technology is 100% safe, this seems to be the best middle ground when it comes to generating energy while not completely ruining the environment.
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No uranium (Score:4, Interesting)
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What do you need uranium for? It's completely useless as a nuclear fuel. Maybe you should start looking beyond 1950s-era reactors...
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Thorium is sub-critical unless you use a particle accelerator (expensive) or uranium to kick it off.
The other main complicating factor with Thorium, is lack of experience - the Oakridge Reactor did run fine for 4 years, but that was back in the 60's.
WTB: process engineers who are also nuclear physicists ......
The chemicals are cheap though, thorium isn't currently useful for much else and its as common as lead.
Also unlike uranium it requires only purification not enrichment, so the price should get down to
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Uranium has been mined in the UK before, it's just not economic at current prices.
But even imports don't mean a significant security of supply issue, as uranium is trivial to stockpile. Plus we have a bucketload of plutonium at Sellafield that nobody seems to know what to do with. That could be made into MOX fuel if necessary.
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India was doing some interesting work with Thorium recently but recent developments there are favouring Uranium reactors that can be tied in to military uses and imported fuel instead.
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Sure, it can create weapons grade stock for the military, and due to this focus we have more "experience with it", but that's about it.
Experience is gained through research, but that was canned to "protect" the public by not spreading doubt about dominant tech.
Time to dig out those experimental plans and do some real work for a change.
I for once would like to see a low-pressure, intrinsically safe - self moderating,
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Irony much? There are scientific and unscientific minds on both sides of the fence in all these big public "debates". Assuming that you are correct while decrying all research into any ideas you don't agree with is the complete antithesis of science.
Glad to see... (Score:2)
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No, Torchwood runs on rift energy. The Wylfa plant, now... That'll be Margaret Blaine's doing, and I know it has a major design flaw.
Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
Well, earthquakes and tsunamis are very rare here
A serious understatement. While the UK does have the very occasional tremor, they're so minor that nothing more than a single roof tile has ever moved*. There are no active volcanoes. And hurricanes/tornadoes/etc are extremely rare.
The UK must be one of the best places to build nuclear reactors.
* I'm just assuming this. The point is that they are incredibly minor compared to earthquakes experienced by most other countries.
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When it comes to natural disasters in the UK, about the worst we ever get is a bit of flooding and even then, that's just certain regions, there's plenty of places to build a nuclear reactor that would be relatively safe.
Except from terrorist attacks, of course, but we haven't quite pandered to fox news on that one just yet.
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Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Most of the problem had gone away already in the 1998 Belfast agreement. 9/11 was more the double nails in the coffin, the funding on the one side and the belief in terrorism as a means to provoke political change on the other. The final remnants of the arsenal wasn't destroyed until 2005, but they were just holding on to it at the time. It should also be noted that the IRA struck mainly British armed forces and police officers, even though they had quite a few civilian losses as collateral damage.
Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Interesting)
It should also be noted that the IRA struck mainly British armed forces and police officers, even though they had quite a few civilian losses as collateral damage.
Which police were the IRA targeting when they planted a bomb outside McDonalds in Warrington on mothers day?
Which armed forces were they targeting when they blew up Manchester a few years later?
Tim Parry, aged 12 and Johnathan Ball, a 3 year old toddler, were killed in the American-funded murder in Warrington in 1993.
4 years later Tim Parry's parents shared a platform and shook hands with Gerry Adams.
After a terrible terrorist attack, three people do three things.
Person A: Invades one country, then another, looking for the ring leader. Fails to find him, spends trillions on it.
Person B: Sends troops into an ally's country, performs an extra-judicial killing, and buries the body at sea.
Person C: Forms a Foundation for Peace, shares a platform and shakes hands with the ring leader.
Who gets the Nobel Peace prize?
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"Angry Irish" had one of the best fire discipline of all times. They succeeded in bombing stuff that inflicted massive financial pain on Great Britain with minimal cost of lives, which was their entire goal - make the small patch of Ireland cost so much that it isn't worth it at the costs of minimal amount of civilian lives not to actually piss people off to go to a full out war (I'm not talking about special forces torture squads with various power drill fetishes).
Blowing up a nuclear power plant isn't goi
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This is an organization that build napalm-like incendiary bombs and set them off in hotels, restaurants and pubs where civilians gathered in large numbers. I don't see why you think they would hesitate to attack a nuclear power station or other such facility.
I served in the British Army. When we started using warfare tactics such as full sized all out ambushes rather than just patrolling and playing at being targets, all of a sudden this supposed Irish army who had declared war against the UK decided that this wasn't fair when we went to war footing in some areas instead of policing and complained to the European Courts that we were being too heavy handed!! Err, who was it who said they were an army at war with the UK? The IRA attacked soft targets. Nuclear pow
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Nuclear powerstations along with gas storage facilities are well guarded by armed guards.
I wasn't aware of any armed guards at my nuclear power station in Essex back in the 90s. However, there were rumours that if you went for a walk out on the marshes, camouflage vehicles would appear from nowhere containing scary-looking people asking you awkward questions about what you were doing.
I was too lazy to go out walking, so I suppose I'll never know.
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I think most of their real political goal have been met actually. That is end of GB's support for unionist paramilitaries, and especially their power-drill fetishist torture squads.
Their modus operandi on England side was very clear: as much damage to corporate and government interests of GB as possible with minimal casualties. Hence, incendiary bombs that cause large scale fires, and warning well before they go off so that there is time to evacuate everyone. And in the end, when they managed to paralyze Lo
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Over a third of the people they killed were civilians. About half were military - most of the rest were police and other paramilitary group members. Perhaps in these days of regular drone attacks in Pakistan 33% collateral damage equates to 'the best fire discipline of all times', but it doesn't sound all that great to me.
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Do note the side of the big watery mass that their strikes that caused deaths took place, and who were the victims in there.
Then note the vast discrepancy between those strikes and strikes that happened on English side.
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The IRA destroyed the lives of thousands of innocent civilians with their sick US funded terrorist war, we have the even more vile bin laden to thank for cutting off their funds. There was nothing romantic about them, their main occupation was organised crime and their hobby was shooting the kneecaps off their own people they had dissagreements with. We are fighting hard for a political solution in the UK and listening to driveling idiots like you suggest that bringing back the violence is a great idea beca
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Funnily that was one strike that IRA always denied to have been theirs, and if you study the strikes that they did take credit for, this one was very clearly different. Instead of their classic "minimal casualties, maximum damage" doctrine, that one was exact opposite - material damage was fairly low, but casualties very high.
It was in fact often noted that the other side of the North Ireland conflict, Ulster's militias was far more likely to have been behind it to gain more support from Great Britain in it
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Which side of the Irish sea? On the Irish side, the conflict was essentially a low key civil war between protestants and catholics. There were no good guys there - just protestant militias with their torture squads, catholic militias with their torture squads, and british army stuck in between those two getting shot at. That's where most of human casualties of the conflict were - three fighting sides and families of militias who often got tortured. Protestant militias were especially famous for having tortu
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The UK armed forces got involved because the police couldn't deal with them as the IRA was robbing banks, blowing people up and had massive ammunition stock piles which were funded by
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The Islamic extremists are pretty pathetic compared to the IRA. One successful attack so far only.
The thought occurs that the suicide bomber strategy is somewhat flawed. It's like a company firing its only successful employees.
Sea level rise (Score:2)
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There is typically a major earthquake, of the sort strong enough to for example demolish Canterbury Cathedral once every 100 years. We also usually have a tsunami about once every 100 years, though we haven't had one now for 300 years. While it is undoubtedly much more stable than most countries, it isn't completely risk free. If for example the volcano on Gran Canaria were to erupt, we would have a 10 meter tsunami flooding most of the west coast of Britain.
Citation needed. (Score:2)
Are you sure about this? Canterbury Cathedral was damaged by an earthquake 600-odd years ago. It has never been "demolished" by an earthquake.
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Well, you see, there's only one Canterbury Cathedral left. They don't tell you, but there have been ten of them, of which 9 have been demolished by earthquakes. They somehow managed to make everyone believe that those nine cathedrals did never exist. They even managed to erase all traces of those cathedrals, so even archaeologists won't ever find them. This shows you how powerful the nuclear lobby in the UK is. :-)
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No, because they weren't all in Canterbury. Every 100 years or so in Britain doesn't mean every 100 years or so in a particular part of Britain. It means once in recorded history in a particular part of Britain.
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Yup, a pretty good place, but "...the risk of a tsunami impacting on the UK... is low, but that it cannot be discounted completely."
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/using/casestudies/tsunamiuk.asp [nerc.ac.uk]
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not entirely true about the earthquakes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_the_United_Kingdom [wikipedia.org]
No, Not a problem (Score:3)
That is rather disingenuous, and I think you know it.
'Tornadoes', here in the US, are graded on a 5 level scale, from EF0 through EF5.
An EF-0 tornado has winds between 65-85mph(105-135km/h). The strongest tornado to hit the UK in the past 200 years was the equivalent to an EF-2(93 and 130mph). A basic, run of the mill winter storm, has stronger gusts in the UK on a yearly basis. Here in the US, there are residential stick houses that could functionally survive the worst tornado the UK has seen in modern t
But what about the waste? (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the UK planning to do about nuclear waste? It cannot be kept in cooling ponds forever. I just watched the intriguing documentary Into Eternity the other day (99p rental on iTunes) about Onkalo, the massive network of tunnels the Finnish are digging in solid bedrock in which will become a giant subterranean depository for the country's nuclear waste. The documentary reminds us that nuclear waste remains harmful for something like 100,000 years, and shockingly they reveal that although Onkalo will be used only for Finnish nuclear waste, the country will need to dig many more Onkalos to handle all of it! What hope is there for countries that are not on a shield of bedrock? Why isn't Canada doing something similar? (Think Canadian Shield.) I recall the US was going to proceed with Yucca Mountain, but Obama slashed the budget that would have funded the work...
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The UK reprocesses spent fuel so there's a lot less waste to start off with.
In any case, too much CO2 in the air remains harmful for thousands of years. However, the nuclear waste is all in a concentrated, known location instead of being spread around the world resulting in a global problem.
Re:But what about the waste? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean you drop it into the ocean [wikipedia.org].
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In any case, too much CO2 in the air remains harmful for thousands of years.
Nice, you got modded insightful for saying plant food is harmful.
Re:But what about the waste? (Score:4, Insightful)
And rightly so. The fact that something has useful properties doesn't mean it isn't harmful in other places. Plants also need water, and we still consider floods to be harmful.
The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
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The UK reprocesses spent fuel so there's a lot less waste to start off with.
Well, we did for a while. Now we're just storing it again.
THORP was closed in 'temporarily' 2005 after a big leak, and due to various problems isn't up and running again yet.
The idea was that it would reprocess spent fuel for other countries for cash, but lost its biggest client (Japan) when it was found that BNFL was faking safety data. So with that and the leak, THORP turned out to be a huge white elephant. It's a shame, but about par for the course for the UK's nuclear power industry.
France have the COGE
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I think the plan is to keep it in Sellafield until it's fe; that building a proper place to put it wont be political suicide, and then doing that.
It seems to be one of those things that nobody really wants to decide upon, though.
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I'm sorry, you must have misread, they plan on building NEW reactors. You know like the type that could say, run on waste, or the type that generate very little waste at all, our the type that generates waste that remains radioactive for decades not centuries.
Failing that, if the do decide to build a soviet era reactor and shun 40 years of technical progress, the UK has existing very nasty reactors and along with it an existing waste management strategy, be it dump it in the ground, our sell it to someone w
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So new reactors might be a nice way to reprocess waste from the old reactors.
That magic doesn't exist yet (Score:2)
Accelerated Thorium reactors look like they could run on SOME high grade waste such as spent fuel rods from other plants and expired weapon materials - but there hasn't been one designed or built anywhere yet. Nothing else comes close to your dream.
No such thing unless you redefine "little" to mean whatever you want it to be.
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I watched that same documentary, I fully agree it was very interesting and insightful.
However, as naive as this probably sounds, I don't think burying the nuclear waste is the right course of action. As the documentary points out, suitable locations are rare, it's expensive and even Onkalo is no guarantee that future civilisations won't try to dig down far enough to find out what's down there.
I also don't think we should ignore nuclear power, either. It has tremendous benefits and although its very dangerou
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What is the UK planning to do about nuclear waste?
There's no such thing as nuclear waste. There's only stuff you haven't configured your mixed oxide plant for yet.
Another guy that loves tech but hates science (Score:2)
It's this counterproductive and idiotic bullshit that resulted in research on how to deal with nuclear waste getting held up for nearly forty years. Look up synrock and wh
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I dunno, figure out how whatever keeps them floating in the air works and tap that?
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Parent probably means countries where the bedrock isn't close to the surface. In some places, it's more than a mile deep, which isn't going to be very practical.
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Parent probably means countries where the bedrock isn't close to the surface. In some places, it's more than a mile deep, which isn't going to be very practical.
Most countries have bedrock closer to the surface than that, even if not everywhere. Moreover, mining to more than a mile down isn't too hard, especially if you're not digging through a coal seam (when you would have gas problems). The main issue with deep mines is usually just water ingress, but not all sites have that problem. For example, Boulby [wikipedia.org] (a salt mine) is nearly a mile deep. The only reason we don't normally go down that far is because it's expensive and what we're after is typically closer to the
Thorium! (Score:2)
Now they just need to make them Thorium reactors. Safety issues: solved.
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UK government doesn't have powers over power. (Score:2)
The Scottish Government doesn't agree.
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2011/05/31082406 [scotland.gov.uk]
Westminster aims to recover the power to build nuclear stations in Scotland with the passing of the Scotland bill/Calman commission. We export electricity to England as it is so perhaps the next generation of nuclear stations will be so safe they can be built in Battersea where it's needed.
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They shouldn't have turned the old power station into an art gallery. Typical lack of forward planning. ;)
Tag suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:2)
Congratulations, UK! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Same Old Same Old (Score:4, Interesting)
We don't have as many earthquakes or tsunamis here as they have in Japan. But we do have exactly the same industry that's immune to public reaction or the liabilities of risk. The US reaction to Fukushima is to make laws to cap nuke plants liability in the event of catastrophe. Which means yet again the power corps (monopolies and cartels) have capitalism for profits, but socialism for losses. This is already true, because nuke plants are uninsurable in the market so the public covers their insurance. But now it's even more starkly true. And what's even more starkly true is that the US nuke government/industry complex is interested in only that "innovation", not in any other changes even when events confront us with the actual risks and damages from these expensive, hazardous boondoggles our Cold War legacy has forced on us.
The technical problems can be patched. The business problems, especially the corruption of a government captured by the industry it regulates, show no sign of any of hope for patch. And that means not even the necessary technical solutions will be applied, when they cost a little profit.
Smart, but the tech needs to continue evolving (Score:3)
In addition, we really should be working towards SMALL-MEDIUM MANUFACTURED reactors ideally, doing IFR. With that approach, we can burn up what we have, rather than pay the high costs of storage.
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Gimme safe, gimme cold, gimme reliable fusion power!
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Fact this everyone is in favour of green energy until a windfarm is proposed on the local beauty spot.
There's too many NIMBYs to make wind farms work. They can't generate all the energy we need.
Nuclear is safer than Coal and Gas when you take into account the number of miners and gas workers who have died in accidents over the years. The number of people who have died as a result of Nuclear is in the 60s. Cars kill thousands a year but I don't see many people talking about eliminating those?
We could have re
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There's too many NIMBYs to make wind farms work. They can't generate all the energy we need.
Simple solution: Ban NIMBYs! Or, cut off the electricity supply of all NIMBYs and inform them that they will now have to generate their own electricity. All that hot air and outrage has to be good for something afterall (generating energy?). :-p
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We have the same problem in the US, except both of our major parties are unable to deal with the issue for different reasons. No matter who we choose (the two party system is a statistical certainty given our constitution) we will end up with a government that won't solve this problem. It'll keep getting worse for us until something breaks. I hope it's our constitution (certain provisions regarding apportionment and representation) and not our entire economy and way of life.
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We as a planet have no real practical alternative to nuclear fission in the short term, while we develop nuclear fusion for the long term. The only alternative is the return to the austerity of the 18th Century. Please can we all just recognise what is staring us in the face; nuclear power is the
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Although true, It is also clear that designing for the "100 year disaster" for your area is insufficient when such disasters can result in a 1,000 square kilometers of "can't go there" for multiple tens of years following. (or worse, > 100 year exclusions...).
The number should be chosen such that the steady state quantity of contaminated area will be expected to remain below some agreed-upon acceptable threshold. And obviously, the number should never be less than the expected exclusion term, as then th
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From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster [wikipedia.org]
Reported deaths: 1 (heart attack)
Let's put that in perspective, the Bhopal disaster (chemical based) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster [wikipedia.org]
The official immediate death toll was 2,259 and the government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release
In fact, 1 death is on a par with the number of deaths related to people putting lava lamps on stoves [darwinawards.com] (that we know of)
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Least worst option? I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, and that you didn't see the news for a decade, e.g., Fukushima nuclear reactor, Google it.
"Ring of Fire" Google it.
Re:Death per kwh? (Score:5, Informative)
Why don't you ask your favourite search engine? This was the top hit for me. [nextbigfuture.com] The important data (deaths per TWh):
So, Nuclear power is 3-4 times safer than wind, and twice as safe as hydro-electric.
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The estimate seem unreliable.
That the whole study is an obvious pile of stinking bullshit is the less politically correct way of saying it.
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The source you cite gives a range of 18,000 to 50,000 deaths. It predicts 60,000 deaths, but states that this is much greater than the 4,000 that the WHO projects. I'm not sure why their figure is more reliable than the WHO figure.
Over 50 years of nuclear power, the WHO number gives 80 Chernobyl deaths per year. Total nuclear energy production is around 8,283TWh, so that works out at 0.0096 deaths per kWh, just under a quarter of the deaths that they list. If you take the lower bound for the number of
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Here you go: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html [nextbigfuture.com]
Rgds
Damon
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Link please.
Probably should just have mod you a troll.
A quarter of mill does not hide this kind of information, the fact that you received a donation from nuclear companies might be better. Not that its anything more than coincidence, how does undetected radiation cause deaths within 10 weeks in the US. Maybe if in the next few years we get a 35 percent rise in thyroid cancer this would be remotely plausible.
Found the link:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html [aljazeera.net]
It might
Must be noisy data, hard to do good science (Score:2)
Several of my friends in the Pacific Northwest USA operate (privately!) scientific instruments to detect radiation levels. They were all watching radiation levels carefully after Fukishima. None of them detected statistically significant changes in background radiation levels at their Oregon or Washington sites. While their instrumentation is not super-sensitive, they detected little or no change.
I am not a doctor, but I know a bit about the effects of radiation. Most of the harmful effects of low lev
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