Environment argument Continued ( Split from QuoVadis Versus Pandora Thread)

[ekianjo]

What I orginally was trying to tell you was, that you have a conflict in your argumentation. You wrote that nuclear energy is one of the safest possibilties to produce large amounts of energy. But you also wrote that contracts with the goverment are necessary, because no one wants to bear the risks alone - which makes no sense to me, as it can't be both, very safe and too risky for a company to build it alone.

I don't see where there is a contradiction there. It's a typical case of Low Risk - High Impact kind of issue. The fact that nuclear plants have Low risk of failure relate to the very low probability of incidents leading to serious consequences. 

But, if that risk realizes, this has high economic impact on the plant operating company. Because there would be massive spending needed to secure the areas, evacuate people, pay for relocation and indemnisation, dismantle the reactor and retire it early, decontaminate the environment, etc... And this kind of spending needs to occur immediately after an incident, that is precisely why governments work together with power companies on these kind of risks contingency plans.

It's the same thing as air travel, in a way: we always say that air travel is the safest form of transporation, right? Yet, when there is an air crash, it usually kills everyone on board. But on average, it's very safe to travel by plane. 

I see no contradiction at all. You are doing a logical fallacy here.

 

[ekianjo]

So in the end it was good to evacute a perimter around the plant (maybe not that far, but weather isn't that predictable)? People tend to ignore things they can't recognize with one of their senses. I read a book several years ago from an unkrainian author that visited people in the evacuted zones around Tschernobyl (that came back after some months, or simply didn't leave at all) several times (for some years inbetween) and they soon started to grow things in their gardens again, hunting, etc.

It is the right thing to avoid the most obvious contamination pathways. For example, evacuating the local population TEMPORARILY to avoid exposure through inhalation and food consumption during the onset of the incident. Then, ban products from sea or land as long as they show signs of contamination when harvested.  

Tchernobyl is actually a good case example that you can live in a nuclear incident perimeter without suffering from significant health issues. Once the main contamination is gone, it's ok to live on the same area again. 

And people living around Nagasaki and Hiroshima never left the place following the disaster. They did not know about radiations and radioactivity risks, and while there was apparently an increase in cancer rates (especially leukemia for those who were directly exposed to the gamma rays on the explosion), it did not impact everyone in the city and on the whole life continued as it was before. At that time scientists were saying it would take 75 years before the area would be "livable" again, but actually it took much less time than that.

Again, there is no clear data on medium levels of radiation exposure. Some say it's dangerous, but there are several indications that it may not be. A very debated topic.

 

[thatgui]

Waste disposal and plant dismantlement is not something new that has never been done and we know how much it costs, it's already included in the lifetime budget of all companies operating nuclear plants. You seem to assume companies don't plan for their financial prospects over the next dozens of years. Of course they do, since nuclear plants have several dozens of years of lifetime.

Are companies making these figures public ? I have no clue, but would assume that they keep these figures for themselfs. Looking at this from a different angle, I could argue, that figures released by a company could be biased. Or are they from an more independent source ?

What do you mean exactly? Do you have any concerns about deep geology storage ? It's not like we need to store massive amounts of materials every year.

I meant what I wrote, I know of no country that currently has an ultimate disposal place - looks like it is not ver easy to find, thus cost forecasts can't be very reliable.

Plus, modern reactors working in closed loop produce much less radioactive materials than open ones. 

And Thorium reactors are being developed as well, which should provide cleaner alternatives, too.

Are there any reactors planned (or maybe in the process of beeing built) ? The last information about the technologies you mentioned (plus transmutation) still contained a lot of "if"s and "when"s.

Then I am not sure by what you mean about the political aspects. Explain further.

Maybe I should have phrased it more clearly in the original post: I just wanted to point out that every country has its own set of rules about (nuclear) energy production so generalization is problematic in an international forum (like you talked cross-purpose with stevencraft => energy mix) - nothing more.

You are actually correct, but even if they had not received physical shocks, they would have died in a couple of hours from massive internal organ hemorragia.

Selfqoute: "(and SL1 operators died of physical trauma, but the radiation would have killed them anyway)."

 

[thatgui]

I see no contradiction at all. You are doing a logical fallacy here.

I don't think so, I guess it is just a matter of perspective, to me it looks like the probability that a incident could happen is still to high for anyone to bare the risk.Taking your air travel a little further: air traffic over dense populated areas is quite normal to day - imagine a big and fully loaded plane like an Airbus A380 crashing into a dense populated are (possible spared by WW2 bombings, so a lot of old houses are still intact)- imagine the effects this would have. Sure this is still far away from a nuclear incident, but so are the fincancial statements of the respective, responsible companies.

A very debated topic.

It truly is.