Amory Lovins: Learning From Japan’s Nuclear Disaster

[kristopher]

...Nuclear power is uniquely unforgiving: as Swedish Nobel physicist Hannes Alfvén said, "No acts of God can be permitted." Fallible people have created its half-century history of a few calamities, a steady stream of worrying incidents, and many near-misses. America has been lucky so far. Had Three Mile Island's containment dome not been built double-strength because it was under an airport landing path, it may not have withstood the 1979 accident's hydrogen explosion. In 2002, Ohio's Davis-Besse reactor was luckily caught just before its massive pressure-vessel lid rusted through.

Regulators haven't resolved these or other key safety issues, such as terrorist threats to reactors, lest they disrupt a powerful industry. U.S. regulation is not clearly better than Japanese regulation, nor more transparent: industry-friendly rules bar the American public from meaningful participation. Many presidents' nuclear boosterism also discourages inquiry and dissent.

Nuclear-promoting regulators inspire even less confidence. The International Atomic Energy Agency's 2005 estimate of about 4,000 Chernobyl deaths contrasts with a rigorous 2009 review of 5,000 mainly Slavic-language scientific papers the IAEA overlooked. It found deaths approaching a million through 2004, nearly 170,000 of them in North America. The total toll now exceeds a million, plus a half-trillion dollars' economic damage. The fallout reached four continents, just as the jet stream could swiftly carry Fukushima fallout.

Fukushima I-4's spent fuel alone, while in the reactor, had produced (over years, not in an instant) more than a hundred times more fission energy and hence radioactivity than both 1945 atomic bombs. If that already-damaged fuel keeps overheating, it may melt or burn, releasing into the air things like cesium-137 and strontium-90, which take several centuries to decay a millionfold. Unit 3's fuel is spiked with plutonium, which takes 482,000 years.

Nuclear power is the only energy source where mishap or malice can...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/guest-post-learning-from-japans-nuclear-disaster/

[Iterate]

1. I feel slighted when Fermi 1 is omitted. Is it a bad time to mention liquid sodium?

I know all of the "pro" augments; it was only a prototype fast-breeder, only part of the fuel melted, the containment held, all of that. And new designs are safer, they're always safer, until they aren't, and then the new, new designs are safer. That argument misses the point that we never achieve a good design from paper, we only get good designs from failure and redesign. I can't think of a technology that hasn't developed from failure and have been looking for a long, long time. If I've missed it, please, someone let me know and I'll put away the misery of searching.

The proponents always want the discussion to devolve to a finer and finer discussion of technical details. I understand that, and would expect nothing less from them. When they do that they miss the generally bigger arguments, like it's a bad ideal to put liquid sodium, air, water, and plutonium in proximity.

When both sides squabble the biggest idea of all goes sailing by, the one that asks "who's right it is to decide or to set limits on their ambitions?" It's entirely a political, non-technical decision, our choice. For that matter, I've never heard from a proponent who could actually build one, because it's out of their hands as well.

BTW, thx for your efforts in E/E.

[kristopher]

2. +1

I'd like to address the content of your post but I'm a bit distracted at the moment so it will probably be tomorrow.

You're welcome.

Spread the cure...
!
V

[david13]

3. Death is unforgiving, also, and very long term, longer term

than the radiation half life, and all.
But yet we all end up there.
Do you know how many people are killed in auto accidents every year?
I have tried to fathom life without electricity. I was there when I was very young, and when we went to my grandfather's cabin in the north woods.
But once I was thrust into this future, as I know it today, I became thoroughly addicted to readily available electricity.
I want it. And it isn't up to me how I get it, it is up to the people who get it for me. So as long as I am an electricity junkie I am the victim of the suppliers.
But so what. One way or another, I end up dead. And not for a half life dead either, but forever and ever.
dc

[kristopher]

4. Your point is that we are going to die, you like electricity so... We should build nuclear?

Is that how you see it?
Odd view I'd say.

Since nuclear power is one of the worst technical ways to meet our energy needs, I'd expect your perspective, hedonistic nihilism and all, would prefer the technical superiority of a system based on existing renewable technologies. They are less expensive, safer, cleaner, more sustainable AND MORE DEPENDABLE.

RENEWABLE ENERGY WORKS NOW

Share the cure...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x626150

[david13]

5. Non sequitir. Non sequitir, and you didn't read my post. I said,

and let me say it again, it ain't up to me.
There will not be any "we" building the plants, one way or another, any more than that I think you, as part of this great collective "we" built the plants in Japan.
I was never any part of any "we" that built any electrical plant of any kind.
dc

[kristopher]

6. The decision on what gets built is based on political support and economics,

with political pressure edging out the influence of economics. Since monied interests are the ones that promote nuclear power through the political process and enable it seemingly unending access the public purse, as a member of the "public" in "public opinion", no citizen can avoid responsibility for participating in the decision. Further, since the divide is largely along the lines of corporate influence vs public welfare, the decision to not participate is a de facto enabling vote for the power elite that can only be controlled by an active public.

You may hope for absolution, but we all bear bear responsibility for the state of the world around us to some degree.

[david13]

7. I think you over estimate your power. We all like to, but ...

I think also you under estimate the power of the economics, the dollars.
Do you really think the politicians run the economy? Do you really think the government runs the economy?
I see both major political parties doing whatever it takes to get the money. Plain and simple.
Not what's best for anybody.
I don't get any of the money, and I don't bear any of the responsibility. With my stance I couldn't get elected to dog catcher. And with my attitude the money would pour into my opponents coffers and he would bury me in bad publicity.
How do you plan on doing it? And then not selling out?
dc

[marions ghost]

8. We the Powerless

bear NO responsibility.

None, zero, null

It is all on their shoulders. They have sold the unsuspecting public a nuclear pig. Knowing full well the dangers, it is a crime against humanity comparable to the insane despots of the Mass Killer Hall of Fame.

Let's get that straight. The average person bears no guilt for this.