Is Nuclear Power Too Dangerous?

[bearice]

I'm thinking of the scenario where the economy completely collapses, and safety precautions at nuclear power plants become inadequate due to workers walking off the job, or possibly a major mistake, negligence, incompetence, or sabotage occurs, resulting in a meltdown. How about an earthquake, or some failure of equipment or structural damage that went unforeseen?

We saw an event happen at Chernobyl in the old USSR around the time of their economic collapse, and couldn't such a thing happen here in the U.S.? Is it worth taking the chance of such a disaster?

Can you lay these fears to rest?

 

[bearice]

Other forum:

Yeah, last semester I read articles about nuclear waste storage problems in France (80% of their power is from nukes).

Why not just use coal?

I have nothing against nuclear power but why bother when we have so much coal available?

I am convinced even if we had the world's largest supply of oil easily obtainable we would try and find something else to use.

When everything is working perfectly, nuclear power is clean and efficient. When it goes bad, for whatever reason, it is not.

Then again, you could have just as much potential death and mayhem from a failure of a modern refinery or chemical plant.

The Bhopal, India Union Carbide disaster killed some 20,000 people, more people than Chernobyl, IIRC.

 

[bearice]

Posted by SilverTrader:

When Chernobyl exploded 100 000 people got cancer all over Europe and Russia over the next 10 years.

As for Chernobyl, facts are this :

* The releases contaminated an estimated 17 million people to some degree.
* 143,000 people have been evacuated from contaminated areas of Ukraine
* 600,000 people took part in liquidating effects of the disaster, 100,000 of which already died or are now handicapped
* Cases of leucosis and thyroid cancer exceed average by 2 and 5 times correspondingly among the Chernobyl victims.
* There are 1.8 million people residing on the territories of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, which are still defined as contaminated
* For the 14 years since the disaster 300,000 died in Ukraine alone from the radiation sickness

I lived in Europe at the time and we definitely had higher leukemia cases as far down as Italy

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=216891&perpage=6&pagenumber=3

 

[nLepwa]

Quote from bearice:

Other forum:

Yeah, last semester I read articles about nuclear waste storage problems in France (80% of their power is from nukes).

Why not just use coal?

I have nothing against nuclear power but why bother when we have so much coal available?

I am convinced even if we had the world's largest supply of oil easily obtainable we would try and find something else to use.

When everything is working perfectly, nuclear power is clean and efficient. When it goes bad, for whatever reason, it is not.

Then again, you could have just as much potential death and mayhem from a failure of a modern refinery or chemical plant.

The Bhopal, India Union Carbide disaster killed some 20,000 people, more people than Chernobyl, IIRC.

Negative impact of coal on society is much bigger than nuclear power.

Risk is too be understood in terms of probabilities. Of course there can be large scale nuclear accidents... But how many sigmas are we talking of?..

Ninna

 

[Rabbitone]

I am a retired trader born at the end of WWII. But I have vivid childhood memories from the word “nuclear’; especially hiding in school basements waiting for nuclear bombs to be dropped on my town. Events like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl only reinforced these fears.

Many people around the world who are older and in charge of the world’s wealth today will hear the words ‘nuclear, leak and fallout’ from Japan and will also remember their child hood fears. I would not be surprised to see all markets down big on Monday if this fear takes hold in these people.

 

[bearice]

Quote from nLepwa:

Negative impact of coal on society is much bigger than nuclear power.

If there were no Global Warming - we would still be in an Ice Age. Humans didn't cause any of the previous thaws - guaranteed.

I agree, global warming is a natural occurance. As the living creatures on Earth increases/explodes, more water is released from ice-deposit regions due to warm Earth.

If world people do not burn fuel, wood and other substance the Earth will return back to Ice-age. Everyday millions of barrel of oil/petrol is burned, millions of Tons of coal is burned, millions of Tons of wood is burned, millions of Tons of cooking and industrial gas is burned. Think, if millions of Tons of these "fire products/substance" in not burned what would be the temperature of Earth.

There must be Volcanic activity under the Glaciers and Ice-deposit regions of the world because of which world ice is melting.

Heat from big cities cannot travel more than 20 miles or 30 miles. Forget big cities heat reaching Antartica, Siberia, Alaska and other ice-deposit regions of the world.

Global warming is limited/trapped/exists in big cities only. Camp 15 miles outside a big city and you will shiver in the middle of the night. But sleep in open space/ground. Do not sleep inside a tent/camp. There is no global warming in Antartica, Siberia, Alaska and other ice-deposit regions of the Earth. Abandon/leave big cities.

I was travelling by plane and the instrument in the front seat displayed outside temperature as -25 C. This means heat cannot travel more than 1000 or 2000 feet high.

Global warming is a myth. Anyone remember the global cooling fad in the 70's? It's all about money. Politicians have found a scare tactic to inflate their own pockets.

Scientists were recently caught manipulating data since the 90's to create the illusion of global warming. I think George Carlin had it right.

Everybody, set fire to all the waste plastic, waste rubber, waste paper which are lying around for many years and nobody is recycling them. Basically burn all the trash/garbage in the world and create some open and clean space. There is no such thing as global warming. Global warming is the biggest fraud in human history.

Some 7 billion tonnes of coal is produced worldwide per year which is equal to weight of 14,000 world trade center buildings (9/11).

Worldwide oil production for year 2010 was 30 billions of barrels.

http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/coal-mining/

http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch5en/appl5en/worldoilreservesevol.html

 

[nLepwa]

Quote from Rabbitone:

I am a retired trader born at the end of WWII. But I have vivid childhood memories from the word “nuclear’; especially hiding in school basements waiting for nuclear bombs to be dropped on my town. Events like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl only reinforced these fears.

Many people around the world who are older and in charge of the world’s wealth today will hear the words ‘nuclear, leak and fallout’ from Japan and will also remember their child hood fears. I would not be surprised to see all markets down big on Monday if this fear takes hold in these people.

People in general have very poor perception of risk. This is for a large part because the human mind is very bad at thinking in terms of probability (and because of poor education).

The attachement shows perception of risk vs actual probabilities (experts). Look at the first line in particular...

source: http://www.uns.ethz.ch/edu/teach/0.pdf

Ninna

 

[endsongs]

Solar should surpass subsidy-free grid parity for other energy within a few years, if it hasn't already. I say this because one company is already making solar modules that only cost ~$0.73 per watt to manufacture. It's expected that the cost per watt for a module at several companies should drop to around $0.5 per watt in a few years. Then, the modules should be sold at a low enough cost to allow an installed system cost per watt of ~ $1.00, which is equal to, or better than subsidy free grid parity.

Solar is taking it on the chin now, with several companies struggling. But other companies able to make modules that are a part of a system with installed cost per watt of ~$1.00 or less, should do well.

Also, remember that the cost for coal and nuclear has not decreased much in years while the solar cost has dropped dramatically in recent years. The solar cost is expected to continue to drop while the others stagnate. So, the question in a few years might be: why do we even still bother with coal and nuclear with solar's being the ultimate energy source in terms of cost and pollution?

 

[bearice]

Quote from bearice:

Some 7 billion tonnes of coal is produced worldwide per year which is equal to weight of 14,000 world trade center buildings (9/11). Worldwide oil production for year 2010 was 30 billions of barrels.

If the world factories would have been working for 12 hours a day only for past 50 to 100 years, then only 50% of world's resources would have been consumed today. The world economy would have easily survived for another 100 years without any problem. There would have been no financial crisis and multi-trillion bailouts for next 100 years and more. The human greed to develop very fast and competition has led to the downfall of world economy ultimately. Example, if there is 200 storey building, you will reach the top of the building by elevator/lift or staircase. If you use elevator you reach the top in 2 minutes and then you have to come down. If you use staircase, you reach the top in 2 hours and then you come down.

All the world factories should be shut down for 12 hours a day. There should be death silence so that everybody and animals can rest in peace and the Earth can cool down for 12 hours a day.

 

[dcraig]

Quote from bearice:

Posted by SilverTrader:

When Chernobyl exploded 100 000 people got cancer all over Europe and Russia over the next 10 years.

As for Chernobyl, facts are this :

[.... a lot of garbled nonsense and some claims that are not born out by the evidence]

[And then cites a post on ET as an authority!!!!]

Read the Chernobyl Forum report for the best and most complete expert summary of the health consequences of the Chernobyl disaster:

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf