For the last few weeks, I’ve been planning a Slate-style contrarian post, arguing that the US and maybe other countries should increase the subsidies for nuclear power associated with the attempt to launch a ‘nuclear renaissance’. My argument would have been two-fold. First, the straightforward point that it’s desirable to explore all options for non-carbon based electricity, and that the existing subsidies (combined with the absence of a carbon price) were not sufficient to make this happen (a decade after Bush launched the program, there are only a handful of starters, and most of the early proposals have been abandoned).
The second was political – for a substantial group (mostly on the political right), the desirability of nuclear power is an article of faith, and their (outdated) view that environmentalists resolutely oppose it forms part of the reason for adopting anti-science views and do-nothing policy positions on climate change. More funding for attempts to develop the nuclear option might convert some of them, and embarrass some others into dropping this particular talking point.
But after the disaster in Japan, and the failure of cooling systems at nuclear plants there, it’s most unlikely that anything along these lines will happen.
We have yet to see how bad the outcome will be, but it’s already apparent that two plants have suffered partial meltdowns or something close enough that they will never operate again. As cooling systems continue to fail, more are being affected. It’s likely, based on past experience, that plants in the same complex will be offline for a long period. So, even in the best case, the economic effects will be severe. The worst case could be disastrous.
The economics of building a new nuclear plant in the developed world were marginal at best before this disaster. The political climate was much more favorable than it had been, but still fragile. In the best possible case, the response to the failures will involve new, and expensive safety equipment, and more restrictions on the location of new plants. But that will almost certainly be enough to stop any new projects, and maybe even the handful (two sites in the US, and one in Finland) currently under way in developed countries other than Japan.
In Japan itself, political support for nuclear power has been fairly solid until now, but construction of new plants was already slowing down. In the wake of the disaster, it seems likely (if only because of the need for diversification) that the replacements for the plants destroyed or taken off-line will be non-nuclear, probably either gas-fired or renewable.
That leaves China (and perhaps India) as the only real hope for large-scale construction of new nuclear plants. It remains to be seen how that will play out.
Having said all that, the risks from the nuclear plants are insignificant when compared to the catastrophic loss of life and economic destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami. It’s hard to know what can be done in the face of such destructive force, other than to help the survivors as best we can.
John Quiggin 
I’m glad the the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant was not a liquid sodium cooled plant, such as the nuclear optimist have been pushing.
Fran, populist positions matter because politicians go against them at their own peril. Sometimes that shows admirable leadership and it carries the argument, other times (Michael Costa?) that shows ideologically driven kamikaze tendencies. I agree that there is a well documented human tendency to misunderstand risk but the argument in favour of nuclear simply isn’t strong enough to overcome the photogenic demonstation of the risk that we are now watching. You can keep on polemicising forever but your argument ends up as “are you going to believe Fran or your lying eyes?” BTW I agree whether you are economist is irrelevant, it was just ambiguity in my much earlier comment.
@jakerman
Compare the annual subsides for fossil fuel ($US500 billion), and the cost of Chernobyl $US(Hundreds of Billions) with the cumulative all time subisides required for PV to gain parity $/kWhr with coal ($US 50-160 billion).
Click to access Nemet_PV.pdf
Between 1/3 to 1/10th the cost of fossil fuel subsidees for a single year would be the cost to increase PV production rates over (18-29 years) along a learning curve to reach coal cost parity in that time.
The anti-nuclear position (or at least one of them) is not just populism. The “we don’t need to build any more” position is advocated by expert scientists at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
I’ve seen another study by other scientists (published in Scientific American) that renewable energies can not only meet our future needs, they are ultimately the best means for doing so, even when applying somewhat socially insensitive “cost-benefit” analyses.
Of course, such a renewable-energy society will require massive rebuilding of many things, including electrified transport, electric storage, and efficiency. But in the long run, factoring in all the ultimate waste, safety, and decomissioning costs, this is still cheaper than going non-fossil via the huge nuclear energy buildup option, which would be totally infeasible without breeder reactors, etc.
Ernestine, thank you. That saves me from writing a long reply at the misrepresentation of my position, the drawing of tangential conclusions and the subsequent demolition of a row of straw men by Fran.
Another interpretation of what Fran said could be that she meant, “We (collectively), cannot support (keep alive and reasonably content) our highly urbanised and densely populated urban societies without reliable energy.”
That is a true statement as far as it goes. But she should have said “safe, reliable and sustainable energy” because that surely is the full specification of what we need.
What the nuclear (fission) proponents clearly fail to see (apart from safety and environmental issues) is that nuclear energy is NOT sustainable. Mineable deposits of uranium will run out and rather soon too in historical terms. Peak uranium is about now as I argued in comments above. The breeder-plutonium path contains dangers of absolutely nightmarish proportions. We simply cannot trust fallible human systems to manage any process so dangerous and with prospects of causing such calamitous, widepread and persistent contamination.
Commercial fast breeder reactors and the associated cooling and reprocessing requirements are technically demanding in the extreme. Even projects heavily subsidised by military research and government funds have failed to lead to genuine or sustainable commercial applications.
“The world’s first commercial LMFBR, and the only one yet built in the USA, was the 94 MWe Unit 1 at Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station. Designed in a joint effort between Dow Chemical and Detroit Edison as part of the Atomic Power Development Associates consortium, groundbreaking in Lagoona Beach, Michigan (near Monroe, Michigan) took place in 1956. The plant went into operation in 1963. It shut down on October 5, 1966 due to high temperatures caused by a loose piece of zirconium which was blocking the molten sodium coolant nozzles. Partial melting damage to six subassemblies within the core was eventually found. (This incident was the basis for a controversial book by investigative reporter John G. Fuller titled We Almost Lost Detroit.) The zirconium blockage was removed in April 1968, and the plant was ready to resume operation by May 1970, but a sodium coolant fire delayed its restart until July. It subsequently ran until August 1972 when its operating license renewal was denied.
The Clinch River Breeder Reactor Project was announced in January, 1972. A government/business cooperative effort, construction proceeded fitfully and abandoned in 1982 because the US has since halted its spent-fuel reprocessing program and thus made breeders pointless.[19] Funding for this project was halted by Congress on October 26, 1983. ” – Wikipedia.
This article sinks fast breeder reactors comprehensively. Take note, fast breeder advocates. Thus Peak Uranium theory still holds. Game, set and match.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2779_138/ai_n53905175/
Ikonoclast,
You said:-
I’m still waiting for you to post “the facts”.
The following article discusses EROEI specifically in the context of uranium from sea water and also in the context of fast breeder reactors. It indicates that there is no problem. Happy to read any articles that dispute this but the conclusion seems reasonably safe to me.
http://metalsplace.com/news/articles/32845/will-we-run-out-of-uranium/
Even without new uranium reserves we still have a 700 nuclear fuel stockpile (assuming we all live like Americans) for fast breeder reactors. This stockpile is all the depleted uranium currently called “nuclear waste” as well as the plutonium stockpiled from decommissioned weapons. And we have over 300 reactor years of experience with fast breeders. So even if we switched our entire electricity supply to nuclear we should be okay until at least some time around the year 2700.
And then there is thorium.
Ikonoclast – your latest link does not sink fast breeder reactors. It just says that they currently cost more than conventional reactors. Which should be self evident from the fact that people still build conventional reactors. So what?
@TerjeP
Rubbish TerjeP, show us your data. If this were true why are nuclear power plants requiring so much subsidee and spending so much on deminishing ore?
As I said Uranium in sea water is 3 parts per billion, which is 5 orders of magnitude lower grade than the worste of the current economic (with subsidee) ore grades in use.
@jakerman
As I said, I’m still waiting for my response to you to get through moderation, apparently two links is too many. The upshot was that a pwr reactor has an efficiency of 33%, making my 10% estimate conservative. Either way, the EROEI was still easily greater than 1. Do you dispute my numbers, and if so on what basis?
Note that I’m not talking about any other technical or economic aspects of the enterprise, just the EROEI. It may well be that power from seawater uranium in a breeder is very expensive, and unable to compete with renewables without subsidies, but it would not have to be given an energy subsidy.
Your point about 3 ppb being 5 orders of magnitude lower than current is not an apples to apples comparison. The thermodynamics of extracting from liquid seawater is quite different from separating uranium ore from dirt.
@jakerman
Also, see my second link in #57 (the one that did work) cites other studies showing lower energy costs of extraction than that of desalination.
Terje, you are beyond rational convincing when you discount a report by the International Panel on Fissile Materials, Princeton, N.J below;
“Hopes that the “fast breeder”–a plutonium-fueled nuclear reactor designed to produce more fuel than it consumes–might serve as a major part of the long-term nuclear waste disposal solution are not merited by the dismal track record to date of such sodium-cooled reactors in India, France, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., insists a study from the International Panel on Fissile Materials, Princeton, N.J.”
You prefer a shonky internet report from “The Energy Collective”. Who are they? Are any of them world ranking physicists qualified in that speciality? It’s like discounting the IPCC and believing Cardinel Pell about climate change.
Your vision of a vast breeder reactor future would have the whole earth glowing with radioactivity. Great heavens, aliens would think they had spotted a new binary star!
The “uranium from seawater” issue is proving harder to debunk. But I am yet to see a reputable paper that proves it and that fact is equally significant to me at this point.
The most reputable appearing report I can find is a paywalled paper abstract from the American Nuclear Society.
“The total amount of uranium dissolved in seawater at a uniform concentration of 3 mg U/m3 in the world’s oceans is 4.5 billion tons. An adsorption method using polymeric adsorbents capable of specifically recovering uranium from seawater is reported to be economically feasible. A uranium-specific nonwoven fabric was used as the adsorbent packed in an adsorption cage 16 m2 in cross-sectional area and 16 cm in height. We submerged three adsorption cages in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 20 m at 7 km offshore of Japan. The three adsorption cages consisted of stacks of 52 000 sheets of the uranium-specific non-woven fabric with a total mass of 350 kg. The total amount of uranium recovered by the nonwoven fabric was >1 kg in terms of yellow cake during a total submersion time of 240 days in the ocean.”
I have seen other reports claim only 4.5 million tons of uranium in seawater (3 orders og magnitude less) though they all seem to agree on 3.3 parts per billion. The claim above in quotes seems dubious if not replicated by other researchers. Costings also sound dubious and scaling up from research to industrial production is not addressed anywhere I can see.
I would like to say at this point – that rationalism (all two or more freaking decades of it) has had it. Its finished. Its over. We are now reverting back, for the first time in a decade of more of functionalist rationalist crap, to teaching students to actually think, think and think some more…and not just parrot the years of Murdoch media and corporate and political propaganda in this country. Its happening. Al Dunlap is getting roasted alive as are all the growing list of corporate misdeeds and failures.
Mark my words pro nuclear denialists – you too are on the hit lists and in the firing line for the unethical conduct of the nuclear industry (as regards safety standards, as regards short term cost advantageous decisions versus the safety to people and as regards its very viability as a sustainable industry).
The denialists will have their place in history as a lesson to the young in how not to think and what not to be like, as people, as humans who are part of a society and part of large societies.
Academics and researchers and writers will come out of their morbid trance and speak the truth, out of their repression, out from under their bullying by this journal or that journal, or this colleague or that colleague, or this management or that management, or this government or that government and they will speak the truth and they will educate the young with honesty, and all who aided or abetted the growing corporate scandals including nuclear will be exposed.
@Alice
Yes, “economic rationalism” (so-called) might soon be in retreat. I certainly hope so. I wouldn’t be too hasty in proclaining victory though. It is a many-headed hydra which is damnably hard to kill.
“Economic rationalism is an Australian term in discussion of microeconomic policy, applicable to the economic policy of many governments around the world, in particular during the 1980s and 1990s.
Economic rationalists tend to favour Deregulation, Privatisation, a free market economy, privatisation of state-owned industries, lower direct taxation and higher indirect taxation, and a reduction of the size of the Welfare State. Near-equivalents include Thatcherism (UK), Rogernomics (NZ), and the Washington Consensus. To a large extent the term merely means economic liberalism, also called neoliberalism.
…
The now dominant negative use came into widespread use during the 1990 recession, and was popularised by a best-selling book Economic Rationalism in Canberra by Michael Pusey.” – Wikipedia
@Ikonoclast
Ikono – its dying. In terminal decline. A nonsense is being exposed for what it is…. a corporate misuse of people, ethics, sustainability and longevity.
Come to think of the Chinese may have something to do with it. They are smart people. They have made a law – in some places – you cant own more than one house. House prices have become too expensive for people to live in.
I cant think of a better way to kill rampant real estate speculation and its something the advanced nations should consider. After real estate speculation was the fuel that ignited the bubble in the US and many other places. Kill that and you may just encourage useful production (then kill the concentration of power in large oligopolies so that people have a chance to start a business, then kill the concentration eg of retail in malls so the Lowys of this world cant strangle and maim start up businesses, then beat up on banks who wont loan to small business and miners who dont pay their taxes).
We have so much repairing to do.
@jakerman
Let’s try this. Paper is at
http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/4/980/pdf
crosses fingers
I also dispute the claim the breeder reactors utilize all the energy in the uranium. The most optimistic claims I’ve seen are in the range 70-80%.
Good point, although the wikipedia site for “integral fast reactor” claims that 99.5% of uranium undergoes fission. Again, I know wikipedia is not totally reliable, but still.
Even if we do take my conservative figure of 10% though, (assuming your pessimistic 23% operating efficiency and also that construction energy costs exceeded all the fuel extraction energy costs and then some), we still have an EROEI of 2.9. So energy output would have to decline with age such that average output was a third of what’s calculated here before you get an EROEI of 1.
Re. you last paragraph, I think that shutdowns would not affect the energy economics very much (as opposed to the financial economics). It doesn’t take much power to restart the thing. Just pull the control rods back out. Coolant pumping energy costs just scale linearly with heat output.
@jakerman
Let’s try this. Paper is at
http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/2/4/980/pdf
crosses fingers
I also dispute the claim the breeder reactors utilize all the energy in the uranium. The most optimistic claims I’ve seen are in the range 70-80%.
Good point, although the wikipedia site for “integral fast reactor” claims that 99.5% of uranium undergoes fission. Again, I know wikipedia is not totally reliable, but still.
Even if we do take my conservative figure of 10% though, (assuming your pessimistic 23% operating efficiency and also that construction energy costs exceeded all the fuel extraction energy costs and then some), we still have an EROEI of 2.9. So energy output would have to decline with age such that average output was a third of what’s calculated here before you get an EROEI of 1.
Re. you last paragraph, I think that shutdowns would not affect the energy economics very much (as opposed to the financial economics). It doesn’t take much power to restart the thing. Just pull the control rods back out. Coolant pumping energy costs just scale linearly with heat output.
The International Atomic Energy Agency report “Analysis of Uranium Supply to 2050” dated 2001 is a bit dated now admittedly.
Click to access Pub1104_scr.pdf
It noted that;
“Just as an assessment of uranium resources would
not be complete without including unconventional
resources, a summary of unconventional resources would
be incomplete without at least mentioning sea water as a
potential source of uranium. The uranium content of sea
water averages about 3 parts per thousand million of
uranium. Estimates of the uranium resources in sea water
range up to 4 × 109 t U. As is the case with other unconventional
resources, extracting uranium from sea water,
while technically feasible, is very costly compared to
conventional resources. Research in Japan indicates that
uranium could potentially be extracted from sea water at
a cost of approximately US $300/kg U, more than
10 times the spot market price at year end 1999.
Research on extracting uranium from sea water will
undoubtedly continue, but at the current costs sea water
as a potential commercial source of uranium is little
more than a curiosity.”
I note that the entire report does not touch on EROIE (energy return on energy invested) or energy input costs but solely on market costs. This seems consistent with its general managerial/market/geological focus rather than any strict thermodynamic EROEI focus. Supply is seen as being essentially market constrained. Demand is seen as outstrippng supply in the high and mid demand scenarios but not as exceeding total reserve capacity. Total reserves are seen as being large and able to meet any demand scenario well beyond 2050 but (implicitly) they are not seen as being infinite.
The methodology of the analysis of reserves I rate as being suspect and deficient. It is of a piece with the conventional business wisdom which prevailed circa 2000 about all energy reserves. This conventional business wisdom did not explicitly claim infinite earth-based reserves of uranium, oil, coal etc but did implicitly and sometimes explicitly make a claim one could accurately characterise as follows; “infinite for all current practical purposes” or “sufficient for the next couple of hundred years and who cares after that or we’ll find a new energy source by then”. This conventional wisdom also showed (and shows) no understanding of the key issue of resource peaking and severe resource shortages after the peak. It seemed only concerned with absolute exhaustion of the resource and always placed this at some indeterminate and distant point in the future.
These style of reports also typically over-estimate known reserves and create special categories of extra reserves in the following manner;
1. reasonably assured resources (RAR)
2. estimated additional resources category I (EAR-I)),
3. lower confidence undiscovered (potential) resources category II (EAR-II);
4. speculative resources (SR).
Just repeat some of those phrases to yourself; “lower confidence, undiscovered, potential, resources” and “speculative resources”. These categories are laughable and indicate the managerial rather than scientific nature of the report. Once you give categories names like this, you can put in any numbers you like. The report sports a pseudo-scientific style with its imitatation of hard science writing.
Not sure why that all turned into italics.
@Sam
That paper is lucid, brilliant and completely debunks this “uranium from seawater” nonsense. Terje, please read it. Sit down and have your favourite mode of consolation nearby. You will need it.
Ok, Ive found the definitive refutation of the “uranium is plentiful” argument.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24414/
Go the bottom of this linked article and find the links for the four chapters of Micheal Dittmar’s report. Once you follow these links you can then look at the PDFs by clicking one more link for each.
Watch a real scientist demolish the capitalist, managerialist, obfuscationist, bulldust producers. It’s better than State of Origin! It’s intellectual bloodsport at its best! 🙂
Ikonclaust – I still come back to my earlier point which was that for fast breeder reactors our existing stockpiles of “nuclear waste” represents fuel for 700 years. And then there is thorium.
does this fix the italics problem?
test
@Ikonoclast
So it looks like we can’t fix the italics problem. To reiterate, I have no problem doubting the financial viability of uranium from seawater, but I stand by my EROEI point. Do you agree with the calculations I gave previously?
test
italics fixed?
So the risks associated with nuclear power plants are insignificant? Unless of course, you happen to live in the same hemisphere!
And in a further demonstration that you don’t have to be sane to be a conservative politician, the coalition spokesman for energy has renewed his support for nuclear power plants in Australia. His timing needs some work there. Have you noticed how, whenever a stray thought enters the head of a conservative, they just vomit it right out? You gotta laugh.
@TerjeP
1. Fast Breeder reactors have been unsuccessful to date. Most of them have had to be shut down. The tehcnical and safety problems have proved insurmountable to date. This is well documented. Why do you persist in peddling the breeder-thorium lie in the face of a mountain of evidence about the failure of breeder reactors?
2. Have you read Michael Dittmar’s report exposing the “Red Book” fabrications of uranium reserve figures?
All the necessary evidence is available from links in this thread that the arguments driving your nuclear power arguments are specious and totally lacking in any supporting scientific evidence. Terje, I can only assume that your continued adherance to your nuclear power arguments is an irrational belief set based on faith in dubious claims rather than acceptance of solid scientific evidence. Since your position on these matters clearly is not and will never be based on scientific and empirical evidence, it is fruitless presenting further objective evidence to you.
Fortunately, the nuclear push is now totally lost at all levels from practical feasibility to resource base to public opinon. Prof JQ is 100% correct in proclaiming the end of the “Nuclear Renaissance”.
The nuclear power industry may limp along for another 10 to 15 years but it is in terminal decline as of now. We can say definitively it is decaying into the background and a few loose neutrons will never re-initiate it.
text test
Terje, the trouble with fuelling future nuclear power stations with our massive stockpile of ex-weapons plutonium is that one other thing emerging from the present brouhaha is that it may be unsafe to do so. Specifically,
“Questions that have arisen in the situation in Japan include … the safety of mixed-oxide fuel, usually called MOX, made with plutonium. It’s used at one reactor there.
…. MOX, using plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons…. Plutonium, which is found in MOX fuel, makes the fuel more difficult to control…..”
As the situation at Fukushima ticks on more and more unexpected hazards emerge.
The pattern seems to be that proponents of nuclear energy say that the incident shows how safe nuclear energy is because the worst-case scenario has gone through and anticipated risk (n) hasn’t happened, at which point someone from Tepco goes on television to say that (n) is happening now; at which point proponents of nuclear energy say that the incident shows how safe nuclear energy is, even so, because the worst-case scenario has gone through and anticipated risk (n+1) hasn’t happened, at which point…
I don’t suppose there’s actually any causal relationship between Terje denying risks and the risks occurring, but I still wish he’d stop. No point tempting fate.
I suspect, Sam, that you let an unclosed italics tag after the string “crosses fingers”. I suspect PrQ has to close it.
Overall I am still a proponent of nuclear energy as a potential solution to climate change. However I have to agree that this incident does serious damage to the nuclear industry. Dangerous levels of radioactivity were recorded outside the reactor. To me that is failure. The fact that wind didn’t blow any towards tokyo till level dropped might just have been luck. Saying that the tsunami was a worse tragedy than the reactor does not make it OK.
I think one lesson from this is that all Gen I nuclear reactors remaining in use world wide should be phased out. It may be the case the later (Gen II/Gen III) designs are safer and cannot experience this sort of problem. But that does not give a free pass on safety to Gen I reactors. It seems some incidents in Gen I reactors can only be avoided with correct operator intervention. Fukushima has demonstrated that cannot be relied on. Unless they can be shown to be fail-safe, Gen I reactors should be closed. It would be in the interests of the nuclear industry to recognise this lesson quickly.
Font
F’
Chrissakes, you lot, you read the bloody stuff can’t you? So it’s in italics, whoa.
Fran, you have to say that nuke is under scrutiny, whatever its faults and virtues, its like offshore oil d rilling, ala morning horizon, because the pigs in charge of the technology were too selfish, lazy and greedy to ensure that it was safe.
If you are right and these technologies can work, all the greater the crimes committed by “developers” and corporations , causing the pubic suspicion of ideas new.
Our own country takes a hit out this too, because we make a lot of money flogging uranium.
@Fran Barlow
Yes my apologies everyone. I mistyped the “close italics” tag. I put the / after the i, rather than before. My fault entirely. Still, a well coded setup would sanitise the comments, restricting the problem to one message.
I’m still waiting to hear an answer on my question about whether waste products from the nuclear reactors have been strewn about by the tsunami/earthquake/explosions? Hopefully the answer is no; then again, Lateline had a nuclear expert talking head wonder aloud about spent fuel rods and the ponds they are stored in on-site. Apparently, some of the reactors had the ponds in the upper part of the buildings, and as any of many videos attest, the tops of the reactor buildings blew apart with the various explosions. To the best of my knowledge, no explanation or reassurance has been issued by Tepco (or other relevant people) on this point.
In Dr Peter Karamosko’s own words:
It gets worse.
@Donald Oats
The Peter Karamoskos interview was excellent if scary. Meanwhile apparently 50 workers are staying in the plants to battle the fires and explosions facing almost certain hideous death from radiation exposure. I wonder how many company executives, financiers and shareholders are amongst them? Or pimping journalists like Andrew Bolt?
Yes, it was a very gloomy show, particularly when one joined the dots between what was said and left unsaid.
And, as expected, the communications war is full on – the hosing down of ‘fears’ under the heading of putting things in perspective.
The smh published an article today under the heading, Lets keep the Japanese Earthquake in Perspective”,
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/lets-keep-the-japanese-earthquake-in-perspective-20110316-1bwd3.html
This article also contains a segment on ‘lets keep the Japanese nuclear disaster in perspective, based on a blogsite article, said to be owned by a business person in the electronic industry!
http://www.kalzumeus.com/about/
The business blog-tail is wagging the broadsheet media-dog? (for those outside academia, the foregoing expression is merely an adaptation of ‘the administrative tail is wagging the academic dog)
@Sam
So have you tried just posting a correct, closing tag…double checked?
There’s the aftermath of a horrible natural disaster affecting millions of people in Japan, right now. Media beat-ups of the (real) problems at the nuclear plant are doing nothing that I can think of to help anyone or anything.
Fukushima cannot possibly turn out to be as disastrous as Chernobyl where a total of between 50 and 100 workers died eventually from the effects of exposure to radiation, I believe: http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html#Health
The radiation released at Fujishima is significant it would seem. While there are many caveats on these things, two interesting pieces of information are readily available:
From the Australian, March 16th 8:29am:
He goes on to explain that the exposure at some urban areas further away is not likely to be harmful to human health…
Then, from the World Nuclear Organisation’s website, concerning the maximum safe annual exposure to radiation:
I would like to impress upon people that the chief cabinet minister is quoting an hourly exposure whereas the annual safe exposure is, well, an annual exposure level. So even accounting for the decay rate, I don’t blame anyone for starting to feel a little anxious about living near these nuclear “incidents”.
NEWS FLASH: ABC News at Noon (Australia) had another talking head explaining that one of the waste (spent nuclear fuel rods) storage ponds is boiling off; check ABC Website for updates.
PS: Nuclear power plant executives, banks, financial centres, etc, are exiting Tokyo and Japan. Where are the cubicle farm inhabitants? Still at work, loyally toiling away in their windowless offices.
@frankis
What point are you trying to make – it is NOT a competition about which nuclear disaster creates the least deaths.
What is an example of a media beat-up. So far I have only noticed them using the word “melt-down” when they should have said “partial melt-down”. But this is typical of journalism in general and not a serious beat-up.
Given the deliberate reticence of IAEA and Japanese officials to provide full information, journalists appear to have been reporting appropriately even if their sources contain errors revealed later. Sometimes the word “explosion” is used when there is a hydrogen “fire”. But I do not see this as a deliberate beat-up.
So where is there serious beat-up?
Ikonoclast – I read your links. I don’t share your conclusions regarding technical viability.
I’m sceptical regarding economic viability relative to coal. Quite optimistic about economic viability relative to renewables in the long term.
It seems to me the local press in Sydney is very conservative, relative to the NYT, in its reporting of the risks:
I’ve fixed the italics problem referred to above
My point’s perfectly clear. If the media collectively had much capability to report on the matters of most serious present and potential consequence to most people suffering right now or likely to be suffering in the future from this awful natural disaster in Japan then the media would currently be failing abysmally at their job. These are millions of people who could do without hysterical reporting of imaginary risks of nuclear power.
For instance there are no officially recorded deaths or injuries from the Three Mile Island accident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_mile_island
Fukushima then is already a worse crisis than Three Mile Island was, as claimed by an interviewee for Ernestine’s NYT article, so we should for the moment expect at Fukushima at least as bad an outcome as the no injuries and no deaths recorded at Three Mile Island 32 years ago.