How many pro-nuke enthusiasts have flown to Japan to help fix the broken nuclear power plant?

How many pro choice enthusiasts have ever performed an abortion? I want to see them take the hose and go at it!

In other words, you can support something and still not desire to be directly involved with it.

Obviously zero, but on a related note – never before have I suspected that online commenters are paid shills. But in a couple of other forums, I see people making repeated comments downplaying the seriousness of the disaster. Every day there is fresh bad news and they flick it aside and ignore the fact that their every previous statement has been wrong.

I really think it is an astroturf PR offensive on the part of the nuclear industry.

I am not talking about Fluther, I have not seen that activity here.

I would include a sassy response here, but @syzygy2600 has crafted the perfect response already. I agree with it.

Most nuke enthusiasts aren’t qualified for the work. Like me. I rather like nuclear power, but I am neither physicist nor construction worker – nor do I have the money to fly myself to Japan.

@syzygy2600 There are no pro-choice enthusiasts—just people who feel that a very difficult choice should be available to people. There are nuclear power czars, however, and they make lots and lots of money. They are also protected by laws in our country, so that if something goes wrong, they won’t have to pay the costs. Very different from abortion, I think you would agree.

@Nullo : Do you still like nuclear power?

@jaytkay
My brother is like that and he’s on no electricity company’s payroll.

Politics can lead to that sort of behaviour. There are a lot of people who have completely stupid reasons to dislike nuclear energy, so naturally there will be people who feel a need to compensate with more irrationality in the opposite direction.
Calling people out on being stupid is tremendously cool these days.

P.S. Since this is a discussion subject and not a practical question, I suggest that it be moved to Social.

@skfinkel Yes. I see it as I do cars and firearms – inherently dangerous, but useful if you’re not reckless with it.

@Nullo: Were the Japanese reckless?

@skfinkel – how many anti-nuke enthusiasts have flown to Japan to help dismantle the Fukushima – or any other – plant?

Thought so.

@skfinkel
I’d like to interject here that “reckless” may not be the most suitable word for that question; I’d recommend “not careful enough” instead.
They certainly weren’t reckless, but I think the actual question should be whether they could have prevented this situation by being more careful.

^ this, @skfinkel.

@the100thmonkey: The thing is, the people in charge of these broken nukes are going to commit suicide anyway, they might as well help the situation first. As for anti-nuke enthusiasts (of whom I am proudly one), I am racing to see what is being done to prevent another disaster like this in the world—and how I can help.

@skfinkel, there have been issues with the Japanese plants for thirty years. There has been a degree of recklessness involved. I’m no huge fan of nuclear power myself, but I’m curious as to what you see the alternative to be.

By the same thinking we should all flee the coastlines around the world, head for the inner parts of the continents far away from fault lines, and avoid areas where severe weather may interfere with our lives.

I don’t know if such a place exists.

Cars kill more people than nuclear power.
Guns kill more people.
Starvation kills more people.
Poor diet and exercise kill more people.

I’d venture that swimming pools, hippos, heat waves, and coal mining kill more people.

There don’t seem to be a lot of swimming pool protests and I wonder how many people complaining are going to their nearest food pantry to stop hunger or starvation.

We fear what we don’t understand and what we feel is beyond our control, nuclear power fits both, but it’s not the biggest threat out there.

They said on the radio this morning that Wikileaks is going to release or has released documents showing that the Japanese have been not taking appropriate safety measures with their nuke program.

@funkdaddy: As bad as your list is, like guns kill people, and starvation kills people, all true, the big difference with nuclear power is that the results of a disaster doesn’t just end when it ends, but it takes years (if plutonium is released, thousands of years) to be over. I frankly always thought nuclear engineers could manage to avoid a plant meltdown, obviously an incorrect assessment, but have been against nuclear power because no one knows what to do with the radioactive waste. What has happened in Japan has shown that people can’t even manage to run these things without threatening the long term health huge populations of people. I would venture to say that this is worse than swimming pool accidents.

A plain English explanation of what’s happening in Japan

Written by a nuclear engineer yesterday.

@quarkquarkquark Thanks for asking about alternatives. The first alternative would be to put some energy into fixing all the ways we waste power right this minute. For example, lowering thermostats, closing flues, putting up storm windows. I have been aware that driving around to find a parking place for a half an hour which is common in many cities, are huge wastes of energy. Why don’t we have first class mass transportation? We could save more than 20–30% of the energy we use, just being careful—and not even changing anything serious about our lives. Then, you could look around the room and see how many things you have on all night. If it is lit up, it is on. Computers, TV’s, all kinds of electric gizmo’s are on all the time, whether we are using them or not. How many appliances have to be thrown out, because they are made so cheaply that it is less expensive to buy a new one than it is to fix it, if people even knew how to fix anything anymore. And then, of course, if we were interested in providing a clean world, there are all kinds of renewable energy sources, but the lobbyists for these groups pale in comparison to those of the big guzzlers of natural resources. I have no doubt, that if our lives depended on it (which is ironic, since they do) we could figure out how to live far cleaner with cleaner energy, and not threaten the future of our children with what we are doing now to the environment.

Here’s what the Union of Concerned Scientists have to say:
http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear?utm_&utm_medium=head&utm_campaign=sp-nuke-head-3%2F13%2F2011-pm

@skfinkel
“What has happened in Japan has shown that people can’t even manage to run these things without threatening the long term health huge populations of people.”
The people where I live can handle their nuclear power plants just fine, thank you.
Are you noticing that this only happens or threatens to happen once every 25 years or so, world-wide? Do you know how many nuclear power plants there are on this planet that work just fine?
Me neither, but suffice it to say there’s a whole lot of ‘em.

It’s horrible when it happens, but if you want to compare dangers, you need to multiply the horribleness by the probability, because one happens a whole lot more often than the other.

@fyrius: Nuclear power plants that can break (which is all of them) provide a risk to vulnerable young children and pregnant women that in my view is immoral. Period. Too expensive, in more ways than one. I would like to live in a world in which babies and children and pregnant women are safe and not exposed to even a drop more of radiation than what nature provides. If you had a young child (which I presume you don’t), would you want to be close to that collapsing nuclear power plant? There are alternatives. We just have to find a way to make the developers of these alternatives rich, and then we will be home free.

@skfinkel What is a viable alternative that has a lower risk? Was it available when these plants were built?

1) People use a lot of electricity.
2) Producing electricity costs a lot of money.
3) There’s never enough money
4) Most ways to produce electricity have an environmental impact.

With those constraints, what option would you choose? We could reduce population, reduce other services, or increase reliance on even dirtier methods of producing electricity.

I’m not even what I would consider pro-nuclear energy, and I think other methods have to be brought along quickly, but I don’t blame the previous generation for choices they made in light of trying to get away from 100% burn-based electrical production.

Not snarky, just trying to illustrate that it’s a complicated issue.

@funkdaddy Yes, it’s a complicated issue. But nuclear energy has been blessed with lots of additional benefits, such as insurance from the government (limits on what they will pay out in case of an accident), and lots of support from the government that has been “pro-nuclear.” Many members of the previous generation fought nuclear power, but the people don’t always have the same resources as big business—and big business will win, unless the results are so awful, and so in your face, that they even they have to take a second look. We will see if this current accident will be enough for a second look in the USA, as it does seem to be doing in Europe, or if the powers that be will simply excuse the problem (how often do you get a giant earthquake and a tsunami?) and just let this go on and on, until there is another, even more terrifyingly destructive accident. It would appear that eventually this generation or the next, that will be stuck with these clunkers, will stop this craziness.

@skfinkel So what option for producing electricity would you choose instead?

Solar would be my first choice. And then I would like to know more about geothermal (heat from the ground, which would seem like an interesting thing to do some research on). Anything that uses what we have now without having to destroy the environment to get at it or destroy the world if it breaks. Whatever it is, it would have to be in conjunction with some reining in of the wasteful use of power that we now have. That alone would fill in for many new plants of whatever source.

@skfinkel,

Were the Japanese reckless?

Well, I do think that if you live in a place that is subject to earthquakes and seismic sea waves, you might want to think twice about building a nuclear plant right on the coastline. It’s not as if “tsunami” were, say, a French word.

Talk about a loaded question!

There are car buffs that cannot change their own oil, so I think having the skills to do a job are more important than whether one likes something. Do you want heart surgery from someone who likes watching House, or would you prefer a surgeon?

It seems like many people are using this as an excuse to do away with something they don’t like. Would it be fair to ban the sale of gasoline because I don’t like gas-burning cars? How about if I lobby Congress to criminalize the manufacture, sale, or posession of Apple products?

Seriously, I don’t see any fans of nuclear power going to Japan to clean up the mess for much the same reason I don’t see many sports fans playing in the major leagues.

@Jeruba, I don’t think that they were alone if, indeed, they were reckless. I have superimposed a map showing the region affected by the 1811–1812 earthquakes along the New Madrid Seismic Zone over a map from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission showing the locations of nuclear reactors in the US yielding this. Draw your own conclusion. This article provides some insight into the difficulty of planning for unpredictable events.

Consider: this power station has been generating up to 4.7 Gigawatts (yeah, yeah, Doc Brown and all that… calm yourselves) of electric power since being commissioned in 1971. “Green” energy options proven and ready-to-go on this scale were pretty limited (read: non-existant) in 1971 (4.7 GW? Is it still so?).

How many tons of coal or barrels of oil were NOT burned generating all this electricity. Quite a bit. I’m sure someone a bit more versed than I in electric power generation could come up with a ballpark figure. That coal/oil NOT burned did NOT release carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, sulphur compounds, and mercury or other heavy metals into the atmosphere.

As I’ve said in regards to where I work, one hundred “thank you’s” and “atta-boys” are canceled out completely by one “oh, shit!”. I don’t think that is an entirely fair and objective way to fly (but it is human nature).

@Jeruba according to a comment on this article at Ars Techinca, the facility had a 20-ft seawall to protect against this eventuality. Unfortunately, the waves made it to 23 feet. (Before someone starts going off on that, let me mention two words: levies, Katrina.)

“As I’ve said in regards to where I work, one hundred “thank you’s” and “atta-boys” are canceled out completely by one “oh, shit!”. I don’t think that is an entirely fair and objective way to fly (but it is human nature).”

I just had a Dr. Strangelove flashback!

“General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring!”

“Well, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.”

:D

I completely agree that other methods need to be checked out and further developed. But this particular plant was started in 1971, 40 years ago.

The largest solar power facility in the world today produced 80MW, the least productive reactor at this facility using 40 year old technology produces 6 times that much (460MW) and is one of six reactors at the facility. Solar isn’t a viable option for all of our power today, and certainly wasn’t 40 years ago when these decisions were made.

Geothermal power shows a lot of promise, but again we’re not there yet and my understanding is that there’s a lot of requirements when it comes to finding a good location. The most productive geothermal plant in the world produces about a third of the energy produced by this one nuclear facility.

I’m a huge proponent of alternative sources for electricity. I pay a higher rate for my electric because I want as much of it to be renewable as possible, and I hope in 20–50 years we can stop burning fossil fuels all together for electricity. But that’s not realistic today and despite “knowing better” people still have to make decisions based on what is available and realistic currently.

Nuclear power is cleaner by far than burning fossil fuels in terms of greenhouse gas production and pollutants. Burning to produce electricity contributes more to these problems than all the transportation sources that are so tightly watched.

Think about that. All those cars and trucks on the road every day and still our need for electricity puts more nastiness into the air.

So am I huge fan of nuclear power? Not really, we need to find something better for the long term. But do I think it’s a better option, even with the risks of what might happen, than burning which is certainly ruining the environment at a higher rate? Yes.

So I won’t begrudge Japan or anyone else for using it until a better viable option comes along. Hopefully it comes along quickly.

I’m a moderate anti-nuclear power person, but I know that pro-nuclear experts all across the world are involved behind the scenes, day and night. Collective intelligence can indeed help limit the damage. An expert analysis, an expert recommendation is as important as implementing these recommendations on site. Still the personal sacrifice involved cannot be compared. One loses sleep during the night, the other loses his life.

What I expect from pro-nuke enthusiasts is respect for the anti-nuke stance. There are good reasons for both views. Polemics on both sides should be avoided. But showing anger and frustration must be allowed. We should take the worries people have seriously.

We should also keep in mind that there are pro-nuclear people who are against nuclear power plants right next to the Pacific Ring of Fire. Yes, the Japanese were reckless. But now is not the time to enter a discussion with them. We have to offer them our support.

@mattbrowne There is little doubt that the workers who may be giving their lives to stop even more catastrophe in Japan deserve much of our support, in whatever ways that can be. However, I have had many conversations with people who insist that this kind of accident could never happen, and I wonder where they are now on the issue. In an interview a couple of days ago, the manager of the nukes in southern California, also sitting on a couple of faults and right on the coast, with a straight face told the public that their nuclear power plants would be fine in an earthquake; they were built to withstand a quake up to 7 point something. Well, that may well not be enough. And what about a tidal wave that could follow the earthquake? I think my problem with the people who advocate this kind of energy development is that, well, they are arrogant. There is never a touch of humility or doubt, and that is always worrisome. And the people who suffer as a result of their arrogance is not them, but all those they have reassured that everything will be okay.

@skfinkel A plant that can handle a 7.x earthquake may be fine for the Northeast, but even I think that that isn’t enough for California. There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance; I often cross that line myself. However, I think that someone who actually studies something is more able to judge than someone whose knowledge is limited to reading the news.

@mattbrowne If they were reckless, they would’ve gone cheap. Maybe an RMBK reactor, or only rated to handle a 6.0 quake. Yes, it’s a disaster and a tragedy, but earthquakes of that magnitude always are.
One thing you are wrong about is a cultural difference; the execs lose more than sleep, they lose honor. The average Westerner forgets that “Death before dishonor” is more than just macho posturing in some cultures.
But you’re right, we should focus on doing what needs to be done. We can fight later.

@skfinkel – Yes, many of them are extremely arrogant. And reckless. This applies to Germany as well. But more than 70% of all Germans want to end the use of nuclear power. This seems to be quite different in France, the US and Japan. @jerv – with reckless I don’t mean trying to save money. I mean the decision to build these plants right next to the most unstable region in the world in terms of plate tectonics including the high risk for large tsunamis (a Japanese word).

It’s easy to make claims that everything is safe. A year later or 10 years later these arrogant people will say, see, I told you so. Nothing happened. And no one can prove the opposite. The irony is the anti-nuclear people rely on accidents to support their claims. But let’s discuss issues like arrogance or recklessness in more detail in a couple of weeks. I’m really on edge right now. When I get up first thing I check is the news ticker. It’s Saturday morning over here and most people already consider it to be good news because the situation at Fukushima has not gotten worse. But we are not out of the woods. How can the maximum strength of aftershocks after a major earthquake be calculated? In the other thread @marinelife shared this with us:

“Aftershocks will obviously affect smaller regions than the mainshock, but, because of variations in location and radiation pattern and the cumulative nature of building damage, aftershocks can potentially be more damaging in some locations than their mainshock.”

What would more damaging mean for Fukushima? I guess the reactor cores would still be safe even if a 7.5 or 8.0 aftershock would occur within the next few days. But it might undo most of the repair efforts such as grid electricity restoration, cooling pump operation and so forth.

http://www.fluther.com/115204/how-can-the-maximum-strength-of-aftershocks-after-a-major-earthquake/

@mattbrowne In that case, it is also reckless to build roads, trains, or houses, and the epitome of foolishness to build anything with more than two stories. If you want to see the destruction and loss of life a tall building can cause, look at 9/11. And we lost how many in a tsunami in 2004? I am sleepy so I forget the exact number, but I believe it was over 250,000. Seems to me that you are saying that even living in Japan (or much of the Pacific Rim, really) is reckless.

I agree that maybe we should hold off for a couple of weeks, but I would like to add that the pro-nuke crowd also uses accidents to support their claims. Look how many buildings and roads and how much land area did not survive the quake and the tsunami, and notice that the cores are still intact and relatively cool despite the loss of just about every backup system due to a MAJOR catastrophe. Figure, if a nuclear plant can survive all that then there shuld be no problem with a nuke plant in the middle of a geologically stable area.

Lets let emotions (and reactor cores) cool down so we can look at the situation more empirically though.

@skfinkel: “the people in charge of these broken nukes are going to commit suicide anyway, they might as well help the situation first.”

This is possibly the most moronic statement I’ve read about Japan and its people in a very long time.

For your information: I live in Japan and my wife is Japanese. I don’t gather my data predicting the behaviour of Japanese companies and their staff from The Last Samurai (Featuring Tom Cruise playing himself; i.e – an arsehole)

If this is the level of thinking behind your question, then I’m glad that you’re proudly ignorant, but don ‘t expect me to give you any more of my time.

Fun fact: Since the sun is basically a gigantic furnace of hydrogen and helium undergoing nuclear fusion, solar power is also a form of nuclear energy, just harnessed from very far away.