Fukushima and Chernobyl Side-by-Side 284
Posted
by
timothy
from the holy-super-pollution dept.
from the holy-super-pollution dept.
gbrumfiel writes "It's now been six months since an earthquake and tsunami sparked a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. New data from the Japanese government is now allowing a closer comparison of the fallout from the disaster with the Chernobyl. In terms of Cs-137, the contaminant of greatest concern, Fukushima appears to be about a fifth as bad as Chernobyl. Nature News has a Google Earth mash-up that lets you see the two accidents together. Nature also reports that chaos and bureaucracy are slowing efforts to research the crisis." (Note: There's plenty left for Linux users in the accompanying text, but the Google Earth plug-in is for Windows and Mac OS X only.)
Accuracy in the article. Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
"The total radioactive release from Fukushima is currently estimated at about 5.5% of Chernobyl, which spewed an incredible 14x1019Bq. "
Finally a story, (from something called the Nature News Blog no less), that doesn't try to say that the Japan incident is as bad a Chernobyl. Responsibility in reporting? I am shocked.
Side by side (Score:3, Insightful)
State operated nuclear power plant, designed to produce weapon grade nuclear material and operated without complete theoretical understanding of the underlying principles and mishandled due to political pressure
vs
privately operated, but State regulated power plant, designed to provide power while withstanding extreme weather conditions, but a plant that should really have been decommissioned and newer designs should have been put into operation.
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A reactor explosion due to build up of extreme pressure
vs
A reactor breach without an explosion but with hydrogen exploding subsequently around the reactor.
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Well, I want privately operated power plants with new types of design, that's what I want all over the place. I want private money being allowed into the field, letting up on the government regulations, I want a tiny nuclear reactor in my house and in my car and at some point in my lightsaber, how about that?
Re:Side by side (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're pinning your hopes on private money to build nuclear power plants you're going to be disappointed.
Nukes are a horrible investment for a private company. They take forever and a day to build and start recouping your investment, they require massive up front capital expenditures, and the nuke industry has shown nearly no ability to build them on time or on budget. Which is why nuclear power plants stopped being built in the US years before Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The only country which has fully exploited nuclear is France which did it through the government, not private industry.
It doesn't matter how severe Fukushima was... (Score:4, Insightful)
Never mind that Fukushima, as a BWR-type reactor, was designed in 1955 and that a new reactor would have practically nothing in common but the presence of uranium and steam. Never mind that a pebble bed reactor could, as far as I understand it, be left completely un-managed for months at a time or suffer a complete core breach and still be incapable of reaching the level of contamination caused by Fukushima.
No, nuclear power is bad. We need to wait for biological engineering or material physics or fuzzy starshine power to advance to the point where we can construct new capacity for $0.05/watt with no environmental impact and no space requirements. Huzzah!
Japanese Glasnost (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion, after a initial period of secrecy, the Soviet Union did a lot better job with openness and communication on Chernobyl than the Japanese Government / TEPCO is doing with Fukushima.
That should say something to the Japanese Government, but I fear it will not.
Re:Accuracy in the article. Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Accuracy? Those numbers are based on what Tepco and the Japanese government provided. So far every estimate they have given has vastly understated the actual levels. They have done that through this whole thing and may still be attempting to hide the true impact.
Until there is a legitimate 3rd party that can verify all this then we just don't know.
Re:Bit early to start comparing . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Sir –
With all due respect, your comments are not helpful.
The link you refer to does not shed any new light on the situation. In particular, it gives a "new estimate" of approximately 15,0000 terabecquerels being released from Fukushima between April and May. The wiki cites 770,000 terabecquerels since the explosion in March, 2011. The reference you have provided is significantly narrower temporal scope than that referred to in the wiki of significantly lower quantum (i.e. is not a "new estimate" of any merit). Please, in future, at least give a reference that advances your point.
Your point is unstated, but I speculate to be something like: the Fukushima disaster will be bigger than we estimated when we look back on it in the future. Alternatively, perhaps you're simply suggesting that we should do nothing because the data will never be good enough. In either case, I find it hard to imagine that in the future we'll be able to improve on the measurements that were taken back in March-July of 2011.
Second, I'm not sure what alternative you propose to "available objective data". Perhaps you forgot to elaborate on why TEPCO is relevant. The references from the wiki do not seem to source data from TEPCO, if that is what you were alluding to.
While you may think comparisons at this point are done by the "clueless", I believe such a conclusion is wrong for at least two reasons. First, the comparison puts into a useful context the information we have. Second, for posterity we shall have the opportunity to illuminate our errors. That the information we have is difficult to quantify or of questionable quality may certainly be an issue, but it requires a brazen or nihilistic cynicism to dismiss it as useless and those who use it as "clueless".
I respectfully suggest as well that you may have missed the point of wikis such as the one linked. It is a community driven publishing system that can be updated at will in response to new information. In this particular case, the wiki also clearly states that this article is about a current event and the article may change in response to new information. Thus, a criticism seeming to be that the data is incomplete or incorrect is not really a relevant consideration, since the wiki was designed with the ability to incorporate that new data as it becomes available (and if better data does not become available, we are no worse off). The wiki provides us with not just the ability to make the comparison with what we know today, but to update the comparison with what we may know tomorrow. It is preferable to work with something today that'll give us structure and historical reference in the future rather than nothing at all.
All to say, your criticism is unclear, your citation is not useful, your conclusions are misguided. I'll say nothing of the tone I perceive and language you use, other than to suggest you may have issues with attitude and maturity, though that is speculative.
As you may infer, it took much more effort to address your concerns than it probably did for you to crack them off. Perhaps you should consider the consequences of your comments before you make such a post. You've added nothing to the discussion, you needlessly distract from useful conclusions and valuable efforts with misinformation, and you've wasted my time writing a constructive response. You could do us all a favour next time, and refrain from posting in such poor form.
Re:Japanese Glasnost (Score:5, Insightful)
If they would rather spread around lies, then me not understanding them is probably more a consequence of that than anything I've done, don't you think?
If the purpose of communication is to exchange information, then there is no question that the truth is better than a lie. But if you'd prefer to use communication to manipulate people, then I'd happily tell you that's absolutely wrong. I don't care if you'd call me a cultural imperialist, since we've already established that there is no truth in what you say anyway.