Nuclear Power

[MrGongGong]

Here's why I think its important to get things right..........
If (for example) I was talking about how far it was from one place to another and insisted on measuring every distance in leagues as "the ridiculous modern imposition of the mile or even worse the Kilometre are not correct". You would at best think that I was a bit of a buffoon and at worse not take any notice of anything I said whether it was true or not.
If one appears to speak knowledgeably about things one should be prepared to back up ones arguments with references otherwise you appear to be yet another armchair expert.
And if you decide that all "experts" know nothing then I suggest you ask the postman to give a hand should you ever require heart surgery as he probably is much more financially expedient than some so called "expert" who has only spent at least 7 or 8 years studying medicine !

[Lateralthinking1]

MrGongGong - You just have to be a New Labour person with arguments like those. With respect, I didn't say that experts know nothing. I said that I doubt that anyone is an expert. Some have more expertise than others. That doesn't make them an expert.

As for measurements, they are all a form of language. I love language but while it can blow above the solid substance and even tunnel down alarmingly when debate heats up, it can never be more significant. What matters is what is there. Hence, you could completely lose your marbles and say that the tremors here have ranged between one and six grey squirrels. As long as you are consistent and accurate in your grey squirrel calculations, I understand what you are saying and it makes sense.

[MrGongGong]

"New Labour"

my arse

I didn't know you were chair of physics at Nutwood

Theres no point in measuring things in squirrels if the rest of the world uses something else even if you are consistent you just appear to be a buffoon and as i said it takes away from what probably are things worth listening to..........

[Stillhomewardbound]

Somehow, we delude ourselves that coal was mined without fatalities, nor gas lines layed, or oil platforms drilled without a loss of life. And what about the respiratory impact pre the clean air act?! A time in which we had to contend with large and fatal fatalities.

Yes, nuclear power is a scary phenonemon but actually far many more persons have perished through carbon based technologies than we can ever anticipate in Chernobyl, Windscale or Japan scenarios.

Nuclear power when it goes wrong is horribly fatal, but in general terms it does not pollute, is high energy yielding and no more of a risk than any of the previously relied about upon fuel generators.

[Lateralthinking1]

Your point is well made. I have been down into a couple of mines - not coal - which gives a real sense of what the working conditions would have been like. Any risk assessment - and in fairness you hint at this - is not fundamentally about what has happened but would could do. I realise that this argument can work both ways. One of the most striking aspects is the speed at which the world raced into nuclear power following the initial breakthrough in this science in 1951. We have just 60 years of experience of a technology that can have adverse impacts for many hundreds of years.

Given Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and indeed what could have happened - we have on balance been lucky - I don't think it was fair, sensible or reasonable to test run it outside laboratories. I am sure that scientists in the 1950s were confident that it "should" all be OK. By common consensus, we wouldn't embark on such a programme now. And while there have no doubt been technological improvements, it is quite possible that in another 60 years, people will look back and have to accept that confidence in 2011 was also misplaced. This may be a race against time in terms of population growth and climate change but it is no space race where the main risks are to the few ambitious individuals involved.

There is one point in particular that seems to typify the differences between the pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear posts on this thread. It is about the willingness to make energy savings and to cut consumption. This for me goes beyond the question of climate change. Not only do I feel uncomfortable with the unmeasured impulses of adults to keep grabbing biscuits from the tin while those elsewhere are barely surviving. I don't actually like the speed, the noise, the showiness, the unreality, and the immaturity in that isolationism. It isn't a climate I find pleasurable living in. In fact, I find it mad and often somewhat overwhelming.

People are never going to agree on this one. In many ways, it is about personality differences and you can tell that in many ways from the mixed reactions this week in Tokyo. I like the Japanese. I have considerable admiration for them. Anywhere, if there were a disaster even of the magnitude of this one, I believe that I would be there to offer whatever practical support I could. But the nuclear dimension is different for me. As soon as I became aware of the problems at Fukushima, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have been on an early plane out of the country, long before the Foreign Office's advice to consider leaving.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

People are never going to agree on this one.

I do. You present the argument in a thoughful, balanced and ungreedy way.

[MrGongGong]

There is one point in particular that seems to typify the differences between the pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear posts on this thread. It is about the willingness to make energy savings and to cut consumption. This for me goes beyond the question of climate change. .

You make some good points here
but don't you think (and I often wrestle with this one !) that there is more than a little irony in that these discussions take place via technology , precisely the technology that is part of "the problem".

One of the things i'm always telling music students (particularly those that are studying "music technology" )is that sometimes the solution is less rather than more technology.

The other thing is that if one decides that population growth is the real problem then the solution to that is probably more not less technology. People in affluent societies like ours have less not more children.

I think people will not agree on this and i've been trying to remember the name of the person I heard on R4 talking about attitudes to Nuclear Energy (it might have been on Thinking Aloud) who had some interesting things to say about how attitudes and opinions are formed. For myself i'm from a generation who are instinctively opposed to Nuclear Power but am surprised that as i get older i have mellowed somewhat ......... my working life has relied on the ability to travel , by car , train , plane as well as using increasingly complex technologies to create and distribute music, even though we grow most of our vegetables and have an old car we do make more impact than is sustainable in the long term.........

[Globaltruth]

Fukushima in particular

As ever the reporting across the media goes for a broad brush approach, ignoring specific relevant detail.

Here's some info on the matter:

Areva is the main supplier for the power plant in Fukushima. They are subsidized by Melox, which holds 95% of the market shares for the nuclear fuel MOX. As shown in the export license issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Areva also supplies the center with the safer fuel uranium-235 but in much smaller amounts. Why? Well MOX is a lot more profitable for Melox.

As early as May 2001, Greenpeace advocated that nuclear reactors in Fukushima should abandon using MOX because of a specific issue pertaining to Fukushima’s boiling water reactors.
Greenpeace wrote:

The safety of conventional thermal nuclear reactors fueled by MOX is seriously compromised by two important considerations: difficulties in the fabrication and quality control of MOX fuel pellets and differences in the behavior of plutonium and uranium in the reactor.

MOX is apprently extremely reactive and fuses much faster than enriched uranium.

However its role in the recent nuclear accident is difficult to determine - little information is leaking out. shame they couldn't manage the radiation as well.


A report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) following the 2007 earthquake in Japan is also relevant. This natural disaster affected the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant located 250 kilometers north of Tokyo. The IAEA made the following recommendation:

For all nuclear power plants: Diligence is required in the design, construction and operational phases of all plants to assure that seismic systems interaction issues are minimized…

So, a nuclear plant in a known earthquake zone ignores the recommendations of the IAEA - is this good practice?

An emotive quote from the author of Greenpeace's 2000 report on this matter

MOX is the most dangerous substance on the planet – even more than uranium. The financial stakes around MOX supersede the knowledge of its effects on public health. Within 30 minutes of the earthquake, everyone who knew Fukushima’s business affairs could imagine what eventually happened – it was predictable.

Finally it appears that in 2002 Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company), the power company that runs the plant in Fukushima, falsified the results of quality checks for some of its reactors. In a report from the US Department of Energy, the findings confirm the forgeries, stating “the documents concealed from government regulators (reported) knowledge about cracks in structures holding nuclear fuel in place in reactor cores at several Tepco power plants” (p. 8). I've read that both BNFL & Belgonucleaire, as producers of nuclear fuel, were also involved in this falsification - here's the link, make your own mind up

http://www.corecumbria.co.uk/newsapp/briefings/briefsmain.asp?StrNewsID=56

Personally, and at odds with Greenpeace (not a member) I think worldwide use of nuclear power is now inevitable, unless we see a rapid breakthrough in an alternative energy source which is quickly adopted globally.

Will the lessons be learnt from this episode though?

[Lateralthinking1]

MrGongGong - You sound like a reasonable person. One car, growing your own veg, and less technology is more in terms of music. Can't disagree with those.

Global - I've been distracted from my host role on this issue. My apologies. I'm never quite sure what your background is but I see you as the technical person on the world music site. While I have a lot of mistrust of science as a business, and even of the commercial temptations that those in academia succomb to, I have known several individual engineers and other technicians who I have a lot of time for and have learnt from. Yours is an interesting post and it raises a number of further questions. Should Melox have a virtual monopoly? Who have the biggest financial interests in the company? Should the IAEA have more powers - a greater regulatory role, the production of fewer guidelines? We all know that the region is in an earthquake zone. Would it be reasonable to assume that activity in 2007 would have added to the medium-term risk, ie imply that further activity was more likely to occur? If so, what should have been done in those circumstances? Personally, I would also like to see some more information on the linkages between the earthquake and tsunami. I am not convinced that one can say that it is the waves that have caused the problem and in doing so remove the earthquake (artificially?) from the equation.

The falsification of documentation is extremely serious and has happened here, leading to resignations. See one of my earlier posts. The nuclear industry doesn't help itself in that regard. Here is a radical suggestion that I am not sure I would actually propose without thinking it through further. Take it out of all the possible scope for litigation with the agreement that it is fully opened up to very regular, detailed, independent, inspection by panels who have extensive powers to take action to improve its safety, including hiring and firing and closure. This, I think, can only work effectively if it isn't relied upon but rather in genuine competition with other sectors. From memory, Jonathon Porritt published his book "Seeing Green" at the beginning of the eighties. Governments have been woefully slow in providing sufficient resources to support research and development in alternative technologies. There is always even now an immediate scientific answer as to why their uses are limited. I don't accept them. It seems to me that if the same outlook had been applied to sending astronauts to the moon and to nuclear technology itself, both previously unthinkable, neither would have happened - Lat.

[johnb]

There is one point in particular that seems to typify the differences between the pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear posts on this thread. It is about the willingness to make energy savings and to cut consumption.

I'm not at all sure that is true.

The thing that riles me about the anti-nuclear posters is how they base everything on their gut feeling (or emotional response to nuclear) and then cherry pick whatever arguments they can find to support their case, with very little regard to whether those arguments are credible or whether they represent a balanced appraisal. Even then the points are often made in a misleading way.

[Edit - I've deleted the rest of the post, but I do urge people to listen to Thursay's "Material World" as it seemed to give a good overview of the whole situation at the time of the broadcast.]

[Mahlerei]

The Japanese government have just raised the crisis level at the Fukushima plant from 4 to 5, putting it on a par with Three Mile Island.

[Globaltruth]

The business of Mox used as a fuel at the Fukushima I plant and questioning whether that has had a bearing on the disaster. Well Mox has been used there since September 2010 - but only in one of the reactors (No 3). The other reactors use low enriched uranium.

.

On March 14, Unit 3 of the Fukushima reactor exploded, sending that huge smoke plume into the air that was shown widely on the media.

In the event of accidents involving the accidental release of MOX, the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) recommendations for general public exposure are that only about one mg of plutonium may be released from a MOX facility to the environment. As a comparison, in an uranium fabrication facility, 2kg (2,000,000 mg) of uranium could be released in the same radiation exposure.

So one mg of MOX is basically two million times more powerful than one mg of uranium. It's those plutonium-containing fuel rods in Fukushima which appear to be damaged from the recent explosions and leaking into the environment

[Frances_iom]

So one mg of MOX is basically two million times more powerful than one mg of uranium. It's those plutonium-containing fuel rods in Fukushima which appear to be damaged from the recent explosions and leaking into the environment

please give a ref to such a report - I can't find it outside of the antinuclear spam machine - and to which uranium isotope are you comapring it to ? - eg I've handled uranium bars weighing well over 2kg without any problem - I'm willing to accept that plutonium is not a 'nice' radio isotope to have around.

Google shows how the blogosphere picks up such messages and amplifies them to drown out any competing message

[MrGongGong]

MrGongGong - You sound like a reasonable person. One car, growing your own veg, and less technology is more in terms of music. Can't disagree with those.

the key phrase in relation to music (and maybe other things) is SOMETIMES
sometimes we need MORE, like we need MORE electroacoustic music broadcast by the BBC, and more live electronics at the proms but LESS music where we attempt to conflate the sound of an acoustic instrument with a synthesised version....... but thats a whole other discussion

[Globaltruth]

Google shows how the blogosphere picks up such messages and amplifies them to drown out any competing message

Please let me know what the competing message is?

I am definitely and seriously interested in a balanced view....


This report
Mox vs Uranium does a risk assessment. It is quite old, and, as with any risk assessment, the number of variables mean a huge variant in their prediction. But in each case MOX comes out as significantly more dangerous than uranium.

but the original referenced report actually has a broken link
[URL="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/missing?orig=%2fsmpp%2fcontent~db%3dall~content%3d a713724307&triedmissing=true"]Informa world[/URL

which is a drag...

and, tracing back the link from where I got the original info...