Nuclear Power Is Extremely Safe -- That's the Truth About What We Learned From Japan

FoxNews ^ | July 23, 2011 | Alex Epstein

[hamboy]

In the midst of a still struggling and fragile global economy, Germany has announced that it will shut down seven nuclear plants by the end of the year--which means that Germans will be left to run their factories, heat their homes, and power their economy with 10% less electrical generating capacity. Nine more plants will be shut down over the next decade and tens of billions of dollars in investment will be lost.

The grounds for this move, and similar proposals in Switzerland, Italy, and other countries, is safety. As the Swiss energy minister put it, “Fukushima showed that the risk of nuclear power is too high.”

In fact, Fukushima showed just the opposite. How’s that? Well for starters, ask yourself what the death toll was at Fukushima. 100? 200? 10? Not true. Try zero.

[driftdiver]

“It’s coal replacement has caused many more deaths, about 200/year, than the two killed and 16 to 20 who contracted leukemia over the next two years from the Chernobyl meltdown”

I support nuclear power but it is patently false that the meltdown and ensuing events only killed two people. Even the Soviets don’t use that number.

[Mean Daddy]

Nuclear is artificially expensive due to the amount of people it takes to operate and guard a plant. It’s estimated that to get a permit to build a new one will be close to $100 million and to actually build one will be close to $20 billion.

In contrast, a coal plant is around $1 billion. There are companies that are developing portable nuclear generation capable of powering 20,000 homes for 10 years.

[driftdiver]

I call them the dark earthers because they aren’t happy with any source of power or use. They want us back in the caves.

[Razzz42]

Storage of nuclear waste is always overlooked by pro nuke people, it’s like it never happens or is needed. In the long run nukes are not worth it but you can let future generations worry about that as background radiation levels continue to increase. (selfish)

Fukushima was a wake up call, you just hit the snooze button to rollover, going back to sleep, to dream about your wonderful lifestyle.

[RussP]

Yes, it’s the LFTR (Liquid Floride Thorium Reactor) design. And it is potentially revolutionary. We could have this thing producing commercial energy within a decade or so. And with the abundance of cheap, clean energy, we could start producing methanol or hydrogen from coal and/or natural gas. That could be used in cars to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. Think about it.

[SuziQ]

Oh, I think it's an awesome idea. I would love for us to be able to tell the Saudis and all the other Middle Eastern suppliers that they can eat their oil; we don't need it.

Our son is the one who told us about LFTR. He's majoring in Computer Sci. right now, but we suggested to him that he think about Nuclear Science. He believes, and probably rightly so, that university studies and research are still stuck in the big reactor rut, and not putting any funds into research into other technologies, like LFTR.

He's also waiting to find out more about Rossi's eCat. He wants to see some genuine impartial research done on it.

[RussP]

200 deaths per year due to coal-fired power? Way off. It’s more like 10,000 - 50,000 in the US alone.

[Larry Lucido]

Exactly. We need more nukes, not less. Safest form of mass production of energy (by man) in history.

[Larry Lucido]

In ten years, we’ll know.

Meantime, we need to build nuclear generation facilities. We’re not waiting ten years, then another ten years, then another ten years, etc. That’s what the envirocommienazis have done to the U.S. for the past 40 years, and we are the worse for it.

[Larry Lucido]

I agree. You should not receive any benefits from nuclear. You should get all your own energy from a bicycle-powered generator.

[RussP]

Contrary to the anti-nuclear propaganda, waste disposal is actually a major *ADVANTAGE* of nuclear power. See

http://RussP.us/nucpower.htm

Why? Because there is about a million times less of it than there is from any other large-scale source of energy. And that includes solar, by the way. The notion that solar is clean is a myth. The quantity of materials needed for it are huge, and some of those materials are toxic.

[RussP]

If this Thorium thing is half as good as it looks to me, I’d say nuclear science and engineering could soon see a renaisance.

[Spaulding]

Driftdriver, you are correct. My writing has always needed more editing than I usually give it. Those leukemia casualties are assumed to have died, although I do not recall the exact morbidity. Not at all expert on leukemia, I know that survival rates for some varieties have increased, but leukemia is bad regardless. The two deaths were immediate, within about 60 hours, from very high radiation levels. One and perhaps both deaths were to control room personnel. I have worked at University Lab reactors with better protection, and thoe were tiny kilowatt-sized research reactors.

There have been all sorts numbers reported, including a claim of 60 leukemia cases, all but three of whom recovered completely. Those recovery percentages don't correlate with radiation induced leukemia, and, the incidence of leukemia was actually below the average for similar population areas in Ukraine.

I also failed to mention the name of the phenomenon wherein radiation exposure enormously reduces cancer, where one data set came from 10,000 residents of apartments built with Cobalt 60. It is called hormesis, and should be thoroughly explored for everyone’s sake, but won't be because of our antinuclear Luddites and anti-capitalist traitors.

[Spaulding]

200 deaths per year due to coal-fired power? Way off. It’s more like 10,000 - 50,000 in the US alone.

RussP, it has been decades since I read that estimate published by our EPA. To what are the additional deaths attributed? I'm being lazy, and have not scoured the EPA site for many years.

It is hard not to become entangled with minutia when the important fact, no radiation affects, are so dominant, and the total absence of emissions is so critical to human health, as the Bejing Olympics so dramatically showed the world. Long distance athletes knew, but most didn't connect the air pollution with coal burning. China's rulers know, most of them having come from the scientific community, and are doing what our captive mandarins are not, protecting the future, the health, both economic and physical, of their citizens.

[driftdiver]

There were many deaths from radiation exposure. Troops hauled in to fight the fires, firefighters, heck one helicopter lifting sand in hit a crane and went down in the reactor area.

The reactor personnel were largely protected because of where they worked. The townspeople were exposed to extremely high radiation levels for several days before they were even told of the accident.

In reality there is no way to know the death toll because the radiation covered such a large geographic area. Some deaths probably haven’t happened yet and wont until the cancer develops and kills the person.

Downplaying Chernobyl of all events is hardly the way to dispel fears of the reality. Chernobyl is a great example of poorly designed, maintained, trained, and managed reactors aren’t a good idea.

[Razzz42]

The most dangerous byproducts from nuclear energy are completely man made and don’t exist in nature and are dangerous for tens of hundreds of years of course it is not your problem because you won’t live long enough to see the end result of your instant pleasures.

As soon as you can control earthquakes, floods and wars, let me know.

[driftdiver]

the 200 deaths isn’t my number

[driftdiver]

so you’re irrational about things other than nuclear power as well.

[RussP]

When someone starts talking about nuclear waste being dangerous “for thousands of years,” you can be pretty sure they are clueless. Chemical waste from coal burning is dangerous FOREVER, of course. And that includes mercury, asbestos, and many other dangerous chemicals — in far, far larger quantities than any nuclear waste.

Here’s an interesting little factoid. If we go completely nuclear for the next 10,000 years, the amount of land that would be needed for waste disposal is roughly the same as what will be needed for the next TWO WEEKS worth of coal-ash disposal.

And with Thorium based nuclear power (see my earlier post on this thread), the nuclear waste is reduced yet another factor of 100.

[Kickass Conservative]

Q - How many people died at Three Mile Island?

A - One less than died in Ted Kennedy's Oldsmobile.