Thread: solar power economics

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Excellent, while we are at it let us compute the potential of the Earth turning into a vast blob of peanut butter and its consequences. In any case, this was a design flaw of a particular model of reactor design, and corrective action has been taken, much as happened with the RBMK design following Chernobyl. It is EXCEEDINGLY unlikely, therefore, that a malfunction of the same type will again take place, perhaps more so than the peanut butter scenario. Peanut butter, incidentally, is a source of the highly toxic and carcinogenic aflatoxin, so before you make your next sandwich, conduct a full and thorough risk analysis.

The fact there was a design flaw, and we didn't know about it until it was exposed by a catastrophe, strongly suggests that there may exist other design flaws that we also don't know about yet, which haven't yet been exposed by catastrophe.

The biggest problem we're seeing with insurance companies is they can only handle catastrophes up to a certain scale. Even if they actually have funds on hand in reserve for the situation, they can't even spend those funds without causing financial trouble elsewhere in the economy when the investment instruments they were using to keep those funds ready are affected by the sudden sell. Money is make believe. If you spend too much of it too fast it creates local inflation instead of results. A guy on the radio today was talking about how he was on a trip to the Bahamas, got caught in a big rain storm and ended up paying $10.00 to buy a trash bag so he could use it as a rain coat. It was an ordinary trash bag.

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident, as long as adequate measures to deal with radiation hazards are taken. No nuclear facilities per se were involved in Katrina cleanup, but there were other hazardous wastes involved. Indeed, because radiation is so easily detected and monitored it is easier to know exact extent of contamination and degree of efficacy of removal than regarding biological and perhaps some chemical hazards in the aftermath.

Is incorrect to say flaw was not recognized in advance, also. Affected reactors at Fukushima were nearing end of service life and new generation of reactors recognizing and correcting shortcomings, ESBWR was near approval date of design near March 2011. Is generation III+ design with passive safety, effectively immune from event such as occurred at Fukushima. Best insurance is prevention.

"Economic Simplified Boiling Water ReactorThe reactor formally known as Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) is a passively safe generation III+ reactor which builds on the success of the ABWR. Both are designs by General Electric, and are based on their BWR design.
The ESBWR uses natural circulation with no recirculation pumps or their associated piping, thereby greatly increasing design integrity and reducing overall costs.
The passively safe characteristics are mainly based on isolation condensers, which are heat exchangers that take steam from the vessel (isolation condensers, IC) or the containment (passive containment cooling system, PCCS), condense the steam, transfer the heat to a water pool, and introduce the water into the vessel again.
This is also based on the gravity driven cooling system (GDCS), which are pools above the vessel. When very low water level is detected in the reactor, the depressurization system opens several very large valves to reduce vessel pressure and finally to allow these GDCS pools to re-flood the vessel.
All of the safety systems operate without using pumps, thereby further increasing design safety reliability and reducing costs.
The core is made shorter than conventional BWR plants in an effort to reduce the pressure drop over the fuel, thereby enabling natural circulation. There are 1132 bundles and the thermal power is 4500 MWth. The nominal summertime output is rated at 1575-1600 MWe, yielding an overall plant efficiency of 35%.^[1]
In the case of an accident, the ESBWR can remain stabilized for 72 hours without any operator action. Below the vessel, there is a piping structure which allows for cooling of the core during a very severe accident. These pipes divide the molten core and cool it with water flowing through the piping.
The probability of radioactivity release to the atmosphere is several orders of magnitude lower than conventional nuclear power plants, and the building cost is 60-70% of otherlight water reactors.^{[citation needed]}
The energy production cost is lower than other plants due to:

1. Lower initial capital cost
2. Lower operational and maintenance cost"

Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor - encyclopedia article about Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor.

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident, as long as adequate measures to deal with radiation hazards are taken. No nuclear facilities per se were involved in Katrina cleanup, but there were other hazardous wastes involved. Indeed, because radiation is so easily detected and monitored it is easier to know exact extent of contamination and degree of efficacy of removal than regarding biological and perhaps some chemical hazards in the aftermath.

It's radiation. It can give you cancer, or give your children odd birth defects. Falling buildings, floods, etc.... those could kill you too, but at least they're conventional threats, something our animal minds are programmed to know how to address.

Then, there's the extended damage. Nobody knows after a nuclear melt down if they can eat food from the surrounding area, or drink the water. It's certainly dicey to try and live there.

Originally Posted by prince

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

The also want safe, reliable rocket service to the moon, for mining and flying cave vacations. But honest cost estimates of that project preclude the actual building of it.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident,

Damages from accidents are routinely included in cost estimates of things people build. The cost of the bridges in a road system, for example, include the risk premium of cleaning up after they fall down for any reason - and insurance is routinely purchased against such eventualities, or government budgets include the cost of repairs and assess those costs to roads and bridges. If someone is estimating the cost of a road and bridge system, and fails to include the cost of handling road and bridge damage repair and failure consequences, they are incompetent accountants.

Originally Posted by kojax

The fact there was a design flaw, and we didn't know about it until it was exposed by a catastrophe, strongly suggests that there may exist other design flaws that we also don't know about yet, which haven't yet been exposed by catastrophe.

You don't even need that: a large fraction of the reactors in the US, including several in flood zones on earthquake faults, have exactly the same design flaw as the Fukushima reactors.

And we did know about it - at least, some of us. The hazards of building nukes on earthquake faults, risky handling methods for waste including specifically those at Fukushima, inadequate maintenance and preparation for what has never happened over years, ignorance - based confidence, are common knowledge among the anti-nuke crowd. They have been common knowledge for many decades now. The anti-nuke crowd saw nothing unusual or new at Fukushima - they saw some standard predictions come true, and worse disaster averted by luck once again.

Originally Posted by kojax

something our animal minds are programmed to know how to address.

Ding Ding Ding!

Bravo for getting to the heart of our disproportionate fear of nuke power.

something our animal minds are programmed to know how to address.
Ding Ding Ding!

Bravo for getting to the heart of our disproportionate fear of nuke power.

One relevant flaw in human perception, visible throughout this discussion, is the difficulty we have recognizing the threat posed by very improbable but very bad disasters. We are not built to respond to very improbable but utterly lethal threat - we tend to dismiss it, deny even plain evidence before us, on the same kinds of cognitive grounds that lead us to buy lottery tickets. We don't handle very large and very small probabilities well.

There is no disproportionate fear of nukes themselves visible here. What the saner and more adult assessments base themselves on is their estimate of the reliability and trustworthiness of the technical experts in the field, given the obvious and experienced risks they are asking the rest of us to run - basically, they have a long and solidly established history of dishonesty, coverup, foolishness, and callous disregard for other people's wellbeing. They like their high tech little marvels, and they simply refuse to take the reality of the things seriously. They're in denial.

After Fukushima we were greeted, in the media, with the same lavishly funded bureaucratic runaround and corporate organized deceptions we faced after Chernobyl, after TMI, and after every other crisis emerging from the mess this industry has created. There on the TV were twins of the talking heads we saw during TMI, filling the bandwidth with their little routine about reactors not being bombs, the average radiation dose over the area being so many dental Xrays, the ubiquity of background radiation hardly worse than this, etc. They do not learn. They have no shame. They do not even remember their past routines. And they will not, on their own, face even the direct event consequences, let alone the risks, of their harebrained scheming.

My wife put her finger on the central problem, I think, when she pointed out that most of these techies have never had to do housework for other people, cleaned up after children or husbands, faced personally the reality of somebody else's hubris-created messes for a few years on end. When faced with a big project, they have no mental reflex or automatic awareness of the necessity of cleaning up after themselves in the interests of children or the community, or the risks to passengers or bystanders posed by overconfidence and attitude at the wheel of power. It's an alien concept.

Which is why we have yet to see, from these guys, a remotely realistic comparison of the economics of solar power - total cost estimations, etc - with nukes or anything else. Not even on a thread supposedly devoted to that subject.

The problem with your post is fear, based on the reasons Kojoak hit on, will drive that cost far beyond empirical data. Safe areas remain off limits for decades, safe food and animals destroyed, and of course their return to fossil fuels which will actually kill people--by the hundreds and thousands which somehow is easier for people to get their minds around than the "spookiness" of one or two people from radiation induced cancer.

Fukushima was an over-reaction.
The correct approach to decision making is to get the facts before making a decision. At Fukushima, the decisions relating to the evacuation of the populace were made without getting the facts, and indeed, by ignoring the facts.

Here are the important facts. The minimum radiation dose that may cause cancer (but usually doesn't) is 100 millisieverts, when that dose is almost instantaneous. There are people who live in places where natural radioactivity adds up to more than double that, spread over a full year, and there is no sign of greater than average cancer rates. So any radiation released from the Fukushima power plant that is less than, say, 50 millisieverts per year, can be regarded as harmless. Except within 1 kilometre of the plant, all such radiation was well below this level. So the evacuation of all but a few people was cruel and unnecessary.

Three people died at Fukushima, and none of them from radiation. All three died of mundane accidents of the kind that happen all too often at industrial sites. There is no indication that anyone will develop cancer from Fukushima radiation. If it does happen, it will be in those heroes who worked within the plant to fix the emergency, and not among the general population.

There are, of course, people who are not interested in the scientific and factual account of what happened. These people operate on dogma, and Pavlovian reflex. Rational thought and consideration of data is not needed with those irrational types. Nuclear = radiation = cancer = massive death toll. Duh!

The other problem for nuclear catastrophes is quantifying survival. If a flood or earthquake rips through your town, and at the end of the day you're still alive with no broken bones, you can breathe a sigh of relief because you now know for certain that you were one of the survivors. If it's a nuclear catastrophe, and you're still alive at the end of the day, it's still not over yet. You may discover in a month or a year that in fact you ... weren't.... one of the survivors. You just didn't know it yet.

Think of the difference in trauma between parents who's children die, and parents who's children go missing. Logically, the parent of a missing child should be happier, because there's still a chance they'll turn out to be alive, but what we actually witness in society is quite the opposite.

Originally Posted by lynx

The problem with your post is fear, based on the reasons Kojoak hit on, will drive that cost far beyond empirical data.

The "empirical data" is mostly bs from corporate stooges, and I am not subject to that kind of fear.

Read Skeptic's post for prime examples - I believe you endorse this crap?

Originally Posted by skeptic

The minimum radiation dose that may cause cancer (but usually doesn't) is 100 millisieverts, when that dose is almost instantaneous.

That's a linear extrapolation from the measured effects of higher doses of different kinds of radiation delivered under lab protocols. It's a guess. Nobody knows that.

And why are you just talking about cancer?

Originally Posted by skeptic

So any radiation released from the Fukushima power plant that is less than, say, 50 millisieverts per year, can be regarded as harmless.

Meaningless. You're averaging over a landscape again, instead of measuring individual exposures, and lumping all forms and carriers of radiation into one number.

There is no indication that anyone will develop cancer from Fukushima radiation. If it does happen, it will be in those heroes who worked within the plant to fix the emergency, and not among the general population.

If so, by chance, it will be thanks to extraordinary efforts and expenses at a time when they were badly needed elsewhere, and a lot of good luck (for instance, no serious aftershocks like the previous Japanese big one generated). Both the luck and the expenses (including the unmet needs elsewhere) need to be assessed against nuke power, when doing comparative cost estimates.

A series of very expensive and tense near disasters (and this one is still to be evaluated for "near") is not something from which safety can be inferred.

Originally Posted by skeptic

There are, of course, people who are not interested in the scientific and factual account of what happened. These people operate on dogma, and Pavlovian reflex. Rational thought and consideration of data is not needed with those irrational types. Nuclear = radiation = cancer = massive death toll. Duh!

Strawman argument, typical from nuke proponents. Silly irrational people are the only objectors, reactors are not bombs, background radiation is normal so these releases are safe, trust us.

One big problem with nukes, essentially all of them, and the real source of much of the fear, is the line of bullshit that was fed to the public when they were built (yes, every one), and the attempts to snow and deflect and cover up when they crash, and the mealy mouthed avoidance of serious issues after the initial crisis has passed. When every nuke proponent around has demonstrated their willingness to nod their heads and think they know something when they read crass stupidity like this

So any radiation released from the Fukushima power plant that is less than, say, 50 millisieverts per year, can be regarded as harmless.

we are justified in simply ignoring them, and making our decisions based on the prevalence of that kind of thinking among nuke proponents.

Who can trust anyone who would sucker for such obvious bullshit?

The "empirical data" is mostly bs from corporate stooges, and I am not subject to that kind of fear.

Read Skeptic's post for prime examples - I believe you endorse this crap?

I not only endorse this "crap" as you call it, I'm pretty familiar with it from a two courses in it. What your position lacks is empirical data--without it you're doing nothing more than fear mongering, or being subject to the primal fear that Kojax so adroitly expresses. Unfortunately that same irrational fear is influencing irrational energy producing decision, making nuclear energy seem far more expensive than it should be, and putting all of us at far more risk as we turn towards the only other viable base-loading technology--which will remain fossil fuels for the next few decades.

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident, as long as adequate measures to deal with radiation hazards are taken. No nuclear facilities per se were involved in Katrina cleanup, but there were other hazardous wastes involved. Indeed, because radiation is so easily detected and monitored it is easier to know exact extent of contamination and degree of efficacy of removal than regarding biological and perhaps some chemical hazards in the aftermath.

It's radiation. It can give you cancer, or give your children odd birth defects. Falling buildings, floods, etc.... those could kill you too, but at least they're conventional threats, something our animal minds are programmed to know how to address.

Then, there's the extended damage. Nobody knows after a nuclear melt down if they can eat food from the surrounding area, or drink the water. It's certainly dicey to try and live there.

Yes, and radiation is natural fact of life on planet- is constantly declining too. Can people live in vicinity of meltdown and radiation release? Ask residents of Pennsylvania near Three Mile Island. TMI Citizens Monitoring Network

Or Ms. Duda:

No significant rise in cancer deaths in 3-Mile Island residents over 20 years, says Pitt

Or an unrelated study of the consequences of a meltdown in 1959 near Simi Valley, Ca. which in all probability you have never heard of:

"The results from this study suggest little or no association between residential distance from SSFL and the incidence of total cancers or the group of (radiosensitive) malignancies thought to be affected by ionizing radiation."

Pretty exhaustive report, covering nasty chemicals used at or near site as well:
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/erg/final_epi_report.pdf

Originally Posted by iceaura

Originally Posted by prince

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

The also want safe, reliable rocket service to the moon, for mining and flying cave vacations. But honest cost estimates of that project preclude the actual building of it.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident,

Damages from accidents are routinely included in cost estimates of things people build. The cost of the bridges in a road system, for example, include the risk premium of cleaning up after they fall down for any reason - and insurance is routinely purchased against such eventualities, or government budgets include the cost of repairs and assess those costs to roads and bridges. If someone is estimating the cost of a road and bridge system, and fails to include the cost of handling road and bridge damage repair and failure consequences, they are incompetent accountants.

Originally Posted by kojax

The fact there was a design flaw, and we didn't know about it until it was exposed by a catastrophe, strongly suggests that there may exist other design flaws that we also don't know about yet, which haven't yet been exposed by catastrophe.

You don't even need that: a large fraction of the reactors in the US, including several in flood zones on earthquake faults, have exactly the same design flaw as the Fukushima reactors.

And we did know about it - at least, some of us. The hazards of building nukes on earthquake faults, risky handling methods for waste including specifically those at Fukushima, inadequate maintenance and preparation for what has never happened over years, ignorance - based confidence, are common knowledge among the anti-nuke crowd. They have been common knowledge for many decades now. The anti-nuke crowd saw nothing unusual or new at Fukushima - they saw some standard predictions come true, and worse disaster averted by luck once again.

Insurance is purchased by nuclear plant operators too, why is bridge different? So "large number" have same design flaw? Good to know that much of USA is not exposed to tsunamis then. It would appear that in wake of Fukushima, operators would be most negligent not to take measures to ensure no repetition, as RBMK reactors were modified following Chernobyl. Anyway, ESBWRs when built will have this designed out, as will LFTRs when same are operational. It is most annoying when critics incorrectly assume all nuclear reactors are same design, cobbled together by incompetents and built by backward primitive types. If tsunami had not happened you would still be ranting about Chernobyl and TMI, with better cause, as these incidents were more directly caused by operator error, or Windscale and the fire there in late 1950s.

Originally Posted by iceaura

Originally Posted by lynx

The problem with your post is fear, based on the reasons Kojoak hit on, will drive that cost far beyond empirical data.

The "empirical data" is mostly bs from corporate stooges, and I am not subject to that kind of fear.

Read Skeptic's post for prime examples - I believe you endorse this crap?

Originally Posted by skeptic

The minimum radiation dose that may cause cancer (but usually doesn't) is 100 millisieverts, when that dose is almost instantaneous.

That's a linear extrapolation from the measured effects of higher doses of different kinds of radiation delivered under lab protocols. It's a guess. Nobody knows that.

And why are you just talking about cancer?

Originally Posted by skeptic

So any radiation released from the Fukushima power plant that is less than, say, 50 millisieverts per year, can be regarded as harmless.

Meaningless. You're averaging over a landscape again, instead of measuring individual exposures, and lumping all forms and carriers of radiation into one number.

There is no indication that anyone will develop cancer from Fukushima radiation. If it does happen, it will be in those heroes who worked within the plant to fix the emergency, and not among the general population.

If so, by chance, it will be thanks to extraordinary efforts and expenses at a time when they were badly needed elsewhere, and a lot of good luck (for instance, no serious aftershocks like the previous Japanese big one generated). Both the luck and the expenses (including the unmet needs elsewhere) need to be assessed against nuke power, when doing comparative cost estimates.

A series of very expensive and tense near disasters (and this one is still to be evaluated for "near") is not something from which safety can be inferred.

Originally Posted by skeptic

There are, of course, people who are not interested in the scientific and factual account of what happened. These people operate on dogma, and Pavlovian reflex. Rational thought and consideration of data is not needed with those irrational types. Nuclear = radiation = cancer = massive death toll. Duh!

Strawman argument, typical from nuke proponents. Silly irrational people are the only objectors, reactors are not bombs, background radiation is normal so these releases are safe, trust us.

One big problem with nukes, essentially all of them, and the real source of much of the fear, is the line of bullshit that was fed to the public when they were built (yes, every one), and the attempts to snow and deflect and cover up when they crash, and the mealy mouthed avoidance of serious issues after the initial crisis has passed. When every nuke proponent around has demonstrated their willingness to nod their heads and think they know something when they read crass stupidity like this

So any radiation released from the Fukushima power plant that is less than, say, 50 millisieverts per year, can be regarded as harmless.

we are justified in simply ignoring them, and making our decisions based on the prevalence of that kind of thinking among nuke proponents.

Who can trust anyone who would sucker for such obvious bullshit?

But reactors are NOT bombs, and you ARE silly and irrational, as all may see. You unwittingly provide perfect example of hysterical person impervious to reason or factual information as provided numerous times. Background radiation differs in intensity on natural basis from region to region, but are travel advisories issued accordingly?

No.

Why is only ARTIFICIAL ionizing radiation harmful then?

Based on maps below, radiation phobic individuals should move to sunny, and hurricane-prone, FLORIDA.

USGS Open-File Report 2005-1413: Terrestrial Radioactivity and Gamma-ray Exposure in the United States and Canada

Permit Prince to observe that debate, while engaging, has digressed from nominal topic.

Was going to post these observations in"How Green Was My Solar" thread, but will enumerate here:

1.) Gallium arsenide solar cells are made with, you guessed it, ARSENIC. Will there be NIMBY factor associated with manufacture of same on large scale? Count on it!

2.) Indium is used in thin film solar cells, 96% of which is indium-115, a beta emitter with a half life of (GASP!) 600 TRILLION YEARS! How many times can iceaura scream NIMBY in 600 trillion years? As you Americans are saying, "Suck on that!"

Peculiar idiom there...

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident, as long as adequate measures to deal with radiation hazards are taken. No nuclear facilities per se were involved in Katrina cleanup, but there were other hazardous wastes involved. Indeed, because radiation is so easily detected and monitored it is easier to know exact extent of contamination and degree of efficacy of removal than regarding biological and perhaps some chemical hazards in the aftermath.

It's radiation. It can give you cancer, or give your children odd birth defects. Falling buildings, floods, etc.... those could kill you too, but at least they're conventional threats, something our animal minds are programmed to know how to address.

Then, there's the extended damage. Nobody knows after a nuclear melt down if they can eat food from the surrounding area, or drink the water. It's certainly dicey to try and live there.

YES of course, not knowing exact degree of contamination is most worrisome. Somebody should invent Geiger counter RIGHT AWAY. While they are at it, should invent wheel, too, to facilitate departure from contaminated area, and yoke for oxen to pull platform mounted on wheel... This is one advantage of not being animals only, ability to invent stuff. Not easy but fun and useful.

Google

To Iceaura

Re health effects of radiation.

The information we have on this is not extrapolation. It is the result of many decades of intensive empirical research. It began, as I told you before, with Hiroshima. The survivors have been monitored to a degree rarely experienced anywhere else. The degree to which each was exposed is easily calculated from known data. Those survivors have shown, most definitively, that one off exposure to less than 100 millisieverts does not lead to a higher risk of cancer.

However, that was not all. There are people in many walks of life exposed to radiation, from dentists to radiographers, to nuclear ship builders and so on. These people are studied. We know that high levels of radiation confer a greater risk of cancer. High levels mean more than 100 millisieverts as a one off dose, and more than 250 msv per year if spread over a period of time. These are empirical results. It is science.

Correct me if I am wrong, Iceaura, but I get the strong impression that you have been influenced by the more political and less scientific anti-nuclear groups. Greenpeace or some similar and equally irrational group?

Those groups like to exaggerate nuclear hazards by using a no-threshold calculation method for harm from radiation. Let me illustrate. We know that something a bit lower than 100 millisieverts does not increase risk of cancer. This established a threshold - say 50 millisieverts.

The anti-nuclear group then carries out this kind of calculation. (The exact numbers below may not be accurate - they are for illustration only).
"Suppose a million people are exposed to 1000 millisieverts after a nuclear accident. This is enough to cause 10% to develop lethal cancer. So 100,000 will die.
Now suppose a million people are exposed to 10 millisieverts. 1000 of them will die."

Do you see the spurious 'logic'? Do you understand how political misrepresentation of threshold/no threshold models can give the irrational anti-nuclear groups the result they want? Wrong though it is.

In fact, with an estimated threshold of 50 millisieverts, at 10 millisieverts exposure, no one will develop cancer, or die.

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident, as long as adequate measures to deal with radiation hazards are taken. No nuclear facilities per se were involved in Katrina cleanup, but there were other hazardous wastes involved. Indeed, because radiation is so easily detected and monitored it is easier to know exact extent of contamination and degree of efficacy of removal than regarding biological and perhaps some chemical hazards in the aftermath.

It's radiation. It can give you cancer, or give your children odd birth defects. Falling buildings, floods, etc.... those could kill you too, but at least they're conventional threats, something our animal minds are programmed to know how to address.

Then, there's the extended damage. Nobody knows after a nuclear melt down if they can eat food from the surrounding area, or drink the water. It's certainly dicey to try and live there.

YES of course, not knowing exact degree of contamination is most worrisome. Somebody should invent Geiger counter RIGHT AWAY. While they are at it, should invent wheel, too, to facilitate departure from contaminated area, and yoke for oxen to pull platform mounted on wheel... This is one advantage of not being animals only, ability to invent stuff. Not easy but fun and useful.

Google

Radiation isn't the only issue. There's also contamination. Fission puts off some nasty by-products. You have to figure that you're splitting atoms, so lots of randomly selected elemental compounds are getting made from all the different ways a Uranium atom can split, compounds which would be dangerous even if their radiation level was a perfect zero. The problems now on the Bikini Isles where the USA conducted its nuclear tests are things like plants substituting a carcinogen for other compounds they used to use to grow, which makes the plant effectively poisonous should a human eat it. There are still warnings issued to tourists not to eat game hunted by local hunters from the area around Chernobyl for the same reason. You never know what the animal was eating.

If all a nuclear plant does when it melts down is irradiate the local area, but all the waste is successfully contained, then all we have to do is drown the area in concrete and be done with it. In a case like Fukushima, the problem is that waste was still too hot. It might melt through its containment and get into ground water.... and then we'd have real problems.

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident, as long as adequate measures to deal with radiation hazards are taken. No nuclear facilities per se were involved in Katrina cleanup, but there were other hazardous wastes involved. Indeed, because radiation is so easily detected and monitored it is easier to know exact extent of contamination and degree of efficacy of removal than regarding biological and perhaps some chemical hazards in the aftermath.

It's radiation. It can give you cancer, or give your children odd birth defects. Falling buildings, floods, etc.... those could kill you too, but at least they're conventional threats, something our animal minds are programmed to know how to address.

Then, there's the extended damage. Nobody knows after a nuclear melt down if they can eat food from the surrounding area, or drink the water. It's certainly dicey to try and live there.

YES of course, not knowing exact degree of contamination is most worrisome. Somebody should invent Geiger counter RIGHT AWAY. While they are at it, should invent wheel, too, to facilitate departure from contaminated area, and yoke for oxen to pull platform mounted on wheel... This is one advantage of not being animals only, ability to invent stuff. Not easy but fun and useful.

Google

So much about living close to nuclear power plants. But please allow me to remind you of the waste problem again. Or, like i have been writing above:

Who or what is giving us the right to leave tons of waste, and dangerous waste even, on this planet for future generations, just so we have our asses nicely warm, and for smalles possible cost (allowing us to use our money on other, in many cases completely unnecessary items) ??

Would you care giving me an answer to that ?

ChristianHJW

Who gives us the right to leave waste?

Practicality. Waste is an inevitable by product of technologically advanced society, and I, for one, want to live in such a society, and not dig up insect larvae for my evening meal!

Nor is nuclear waste the biggest problem. Not even a blip on the horizon compared to other waste problems. I have already pointed out that coal ash contains far more radioactive waste than all the waste from nuclear power stations put together. And that is small potatoes comparted to other industrial waste, which is also tiny compared to sewage waste, domestic rubbish, or waste from farms that pollutes water ways.

Humanity has come a long way in reducing waste. As I have also pointed out, 100 years ago there was no industrial waste treatment. If your factory belched toxic smoke, you just let it go, and to hell with those who breathed it. If your plant made liquid waste, you just dumped it in the nearest river and allowed all the fish to die. Today we use scrubbers and precipitators on chimney smoke. We pass liquid waste into treatment plants and remove the toxins and treat it all by various measures so that what is eventually dumped is of minimal harm.

Sure we have a long way to go, but we are on the road. Nuclear waste is a very, very small problem against the rest, but it is all being worked on, and there is continuous improvement in reducing pollution.

Originally Posted by skeptic

The information we have on this is not extrapolation. It is the result of many decades of intensive empirical research.

The establishment of theoretical "safe" radiation dosages and the like involves extrapolation from the data provided by intensive empirical research - in the case of your number, linear extrapolation.

Originally Posted by skeptic

It began, as I told you before, with Hiroshima.

Confusing bombs with reactors, as I mentioned. Their radiation type and delivery pattern is not at all the same. Neither is the pattern from dental Xrays, occupational exposure in shipbuilding, etc.

Originally Posted by skeptic

The survivors have been monitored to a degree rarely experienced anywhere else. The degree to which each was exposed is easily calculated from known data.

Not "calculated" - estimated, with statistical error bounds not based on empirical data (for example, the variance in exposure from the Hiroshima bomb cannot be "calculated", since actual individual exposures were never measured).

The only individual exposure measures at Fukushima, aside from the workers actually going in, are just beginning to be made - in schoolchildren living nearby, who have been provided with radiation measure badges to wear for a while. Inadequate as that is, without provision for ingesting dirt from one's hands and that kind of thing, that will be the almost the first "empirical data" of the general kind we need from this reactor accident.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Those groups like to exaggerate nuclear hazards by using a no-threshold calculation method for harm from radiation. Let me illustrate. We know that something a bit lower than 100 millisieverts does not increase risk of cancer. This established a threshold - say 50 millisieverts.

The anti-nuclear group then carries out this kind of calculation. (The exact numbers below may not be accurate - they are for illustration only).
"Suppose a million people are exposed to 1000 millisieverts after a nuclear accident. This is enough to cause 10% to develop lethal cancer. So 100,000 will die.
Now suppose a million people are exposed to 10 millisieverts. 1000 of them will die."

Do you see the spurious 'logic'?

Yes. It's a linear extrapolation based on assumptions never checked. Exactly the kind of argument used to set the safe exposure threshold level you posted.

You might be interested to find that many in the serious anti-nuke crowd are actually using a couple of different kinds of extrapolation, with somewhat different assumptions, called "logarithmic" and "logistic". In that kind, the threshold level illusion is created by the steep early rise of a logarithmic or logistic curve. So you get your threshold, sort of, but have larger consequences for exceeding it by a small variance in the exposure.

So the variance is critical.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Nor is nuclear waste the biggest problem. Not even a blip on the horizon compared to other waste problems.

It is nevertheless a large and expensive problem, as yet unsolved. In a thread on solar power economics, any comparison with nukes must include the heavy risk and handling premiums attached to nuclear waste.

Originally Posted by ChristianHJW

So much about living close to nuclear power plants. But please allow me to remind you of the waste problem again. Or, like i have been writing above:

Who or what is giving us the right to leave tons of waste, and dangerous waste even, on this planet for future generations, just so we have our asses nicely warm, and for smalles possible cost (allowing us to use our money on other, in many cases completely unnecessary items) ??

Would you care giving me an answer to that ?

ChristianHJW

Who or what gives us the right to emit the carbon dioxide and various chemical wastes associated with the increased use of coal generated electricity (the result of shutting down the German nuclear plants)? And who or what gives us the right to produce all the chemical waste associated with the production of solar cells and the tons of concrete and steel that would be needed to cover many acres of land with solar cells?

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Money is simply a means of exchange, wealth is what people NEED or want- like safe, reliable nuclear power.

Personally Prince does not understand why damage to Fukushima should be treated differently than any other damage from incident, as long as adequate measures to deal with radiation hazards are taken. No nuclear facilities per se were involved in Katrina cleanup, but there were other hazardous wastes involved. Indeed, because radiation is so easily detected and monitored it is easier to know exact extent of contamination and degree of efficacy of removal than regarding biological and perhaps some chemical hazards in the aftermath.

It's radiation. It can give you cancer, or give your children odd birth defects. Falling buildings, floods, etc.... those could kill you too, but at least they're conventional threats, something our animal minds are programmed to know how to address.

Then, there's the extended damage. Nobody knows after a nuclear melt down if they can eat food from the surrounding area, or drink the water. It's certainly dicey to try and live there.

YES of course, not knowing exact degree of contamination is most worrisome. Somebody should invent Geiger counter RIGHT AWAY. While they are at it, should invent wheel, too, to facilitate departure from contaminated area, and yoke for oxen to pull platform mounted on wheel... This is one advantage of not being animals only, ability to invent stuff. Not easy but fun and useful.

Google

Radiation isn't the only issue. There's also contamination. Fission puts off some nasty by-products. You have to figure that you're splitting atoms, so lots of randomly selected elemental compounds are getting made from all the different ways a Uranium atom can split, compounds which would be dangerous even if their radiation level was a perfect zero. The problems now on the Bikini Isles where the USA conducted its nuclear tests are things like plants substituting a carcinogen for other compounds they used to use to grow, which makes the plant effectively poisonous should a human eat it. There are still warnings issued to tourists not to eat game hunted by local hunters from the area around Chernobyl for the same reason. You never know what the animal was eating.

If all a nuclear plant does when it melts down is irradiate the local area, but all the waste is successfully contained, then all we have to do is drown the area in concrete and be done with it. In a case like Fukushima, the problem is that waste was still too hot. It might melt through its containment and get into ground water.... and then we'd have real problems.

So specifically, what fission products are of concern to you and why? Presumably it is due to radioactive nature of some, but not all such fission products, e.g. helium, which is product of alpha particle emission, is not radioactive, or in other words, has half life of infinity, since will not decay further.

"It might melt through containment"? What is it, in what matter is contained, and is water soluble to what degree?

More information would be helpful. Helium is not radioactive nor particularly water soluble so you must be meaning something else- what is it?

NOTE: The above data is already 2 years old. Things have gotten even better since that MIT data was summarized.







Some other helpful explanation here: Krugman: Only Politics Can Delay "an Energy Transformation, Driven by the Rapidly Falling Cost of Solar Power" | ThinkProgress



[h=3]Natural Gas Damage Larger Than Its Value Added For Even Low CO2 Prices[/h]http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/13/332882/economics-coal-fired-power-plants-air-pollution-damages/

Okay, public health experts have known this for a while — see Life-cycle study [Epstein et al]: Accounting for total harm from coal would add “close to 17.8¢/kWh of electricity generated.”

<...>

The actual social cost of carbon today is at least 5 times that price and more than 10 times that in the near future (or now, see here). As but one example, the relatively Conservative International Energy Agency (IEA) noted back in 2008 that just to stabilize at 550 ppm, which would likely still be catastrophic for humanity, you’d need a price of “$90/tonne of CO2 in 2030,” which is to say $330 a metric ton of carbon. You need a 2030 CO2 price of “$180/tonne in the 450 Policy Scenario” — $660 a metric ton of carbon.


And let’s not forget the work of Martin Weitzman on the impact of even a small chance of catastrophic impacts — see Harvard economist: Climate cost-benefit analyses [like Nordhaus's] are “unusually misleading,” warns colleagues “we may be deluding ourselves and others.”


The fact is that on our business as usual emissions path, we have a very high chance of catastrophic impacts, not the 3% or so chance Weitzman estimates (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts“).


And yet Nordhaus and company still find that the total damages from natural gas exceed its value-added at a low-ball carbon price of $27 per ton! At a price of $65 a ton of carbon, the total damages from natural gas are more than double its value-added!


And so once again the literature makes clear that a massive ramp up of natural gas ain’t the solution to global warming – as many 2011 analyses have found, including the IEA’s. Needless to say, if natural gas does more harm than good, you can imagine how bad coal is.

Originally Posted by iceaura

In a thread on solar power economics, any comparison with nukes must include the heavy risk and handling premiums attached to nuclear waste.

True, is nominally the topic solar power economics, so why has it become nuclear-oriented thread? Would seem that more appropriate exploration of pros and cons of nuclear would be elsewhere, Prince freely admits to participating in digression.

So why there is not more solar power? Sunbeams is free and cells last for the decades, mirrors longer, equatorial tracking devices are outside scope of Prince's knowledge with regard to longevity.

Free fuel! What could be stopping it?

Price thinks it is because of highly diffuse, unpredictable nature of terrestrial solar and difficulties associated with availability and storage of electrical power. 17 nuclear plants worth shipped, dotcomrade inow? Those 17 nuclear plants operate around the clock and calendar, rain or shine, day in, day out, at any location where need exists. What about your solar devices, can we say same of them?

No?

Any other opinions?

Carrying kojak's principle of mobile marine solar collectors to logical extreme, should be vast fleets of barges with panels mounted migrating from pole to pole with seasons like so many slow, awkward, foolish Arctic terns. Perhaps genetically engineer penguin-tern hybrid and mount solar panels on dorsal surfaces, there to electrolysis the seawater for tiny fuel cells to be exchanged during mating season?

THE ARCTIC TERN

Carpet Sahara Desert with them, too, as only Arabs live there and have no civil rights anyway. Mount cells on Arabs and make them move around, saving on heliostats, maybe.

Amphibious Arab/penguin hybrid is ultimate goal, forget the fusion power!

Once again Inow has posted some nonsense which compares kilowatt-hours of unreliable solar energy against kilowatt-hours of reliable baseload generating capacity. They do not compare.

Thanks, inow, for an interesting and factual post.

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Once again Inow has posted some nonsense which compares kilowatt-hours of unreliable solar energy against kilowatt-hours of reliable baseload generating capacity. They do not compare.

For anyone who bothered to actually read the Krugman article it is clear that

So what we’re actually looking at is still a partial role for solar, as a piece of a multi-source energy system. The point, however, is that it’s now looking like a much larger part than anyone imagined — and if we priced coal-fired power properly, that transformation would be happening now.

Meanwhile greenhouse emissions continue to exceed the IPCC's worst case assumptions:

News from The Associated Press

Is this indeed "worst" case? Further digression into AGW territory seems outside scope of thread, but it HAS been alluded to regarding "carbon footprint" of various methods of power generation. Rough estimate, since solar necessarily takes up more area, solar should emit more carbon than nuclear.

Is this in fact the case?

Rough estimate, since solar necessarily takes up more area, solar should emit more carbon than nuclear.

1. Inow's post considered solar and natural gas. Nuclear was not mentioned, except considered indirectly when discussing a multi-source power generation system.

2. What is the relation between area (for example of domestic rooftops) and carbon? What is the equation please.

In short, what are you talking about?

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Is this indeed "worst" case? Further digression into AGW territory seems outside scope of thread, but it HAS been alluded to regarding "carbon footprint" of various methods of power generation. Rough estimate, since solar necessarily takes up more area, solar should emit more carbon than nuclear.

Is this in fact the case?

Huh? Solar generation is passive and has no carbon emissions except during manufacture of the panels or infrastructure.

It doesn't emit anything!

Huh?

Originally Posted by MeteorWayne

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Is this indeed "worst" case? Further digression into AGW territory seems outside scope of thread, but it HAS been alluded to regarding "carbon footprint" of various methods of power generation. Rough estimate, since solar necessarily takes up more area, solar should emit more carbon than nuclear.

Is this in fact the case?

Huh? Solar generation is passive and has no carbon emissions except during manufacture of the panels or infrastructure.

It doesn't emit anything!

Huh?

Indeed and it is the manufacture and installation phase to which Prince refers, perhaps to compare with similar output nuclear source. Both are naturally carbon-neutral once operational, as far as is known to Prince. Just to clarify.

OK, so do you have any figures to back up the relationship you suggested between area and carbon emissions over the life cycle? Just to clarify

Originally Posted by MeteorWayne

OK, so do you have any figures to back up the relationship you suggested between area and carbon emissions over the life cycle? Just to clarify

This article TCASE 4: Energy system build rates and material inputs « BraveNewClimate compares the requirements for steel and concrete for nuclear versus wind and solar.

Originally Posted by MeteorWayne

OK, so do you have any figures to back up the relationship you suggested between area and carbon emissions over the life cycle? Just to clarify

No. Obviously it takes energy to extract and transport raw materials to site of manufacture, probably combustion energy unless transportation is via electrified railway, nuclear driven as may be possible in certain locations, e.g. France. Then comes CO2 emissions associated with manufacture of concrete and steel for foundations towers, mounts, etc. Steel generally involves much coal in process of manufacture. Then is coming more fuel consumption on way to site of final assembly. This is long and complicated process, prompting Prince's question. Probably better to phrase in term of total VOLUME of materials vs surface area, to be more specific.

Prince is searching Internet so far without luck, wanting to make valid comparison.

Did find THIS, which may be of relevance to discussion: SHPEGS - Solar Heat Pump Electrical Generation System

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Originally Posted by MeteorWayne

OK, so do you have any figures to back up the relationship you suggested between area and carbon emissions over the life cycle? Just to clarify

This article TCASE 4: Energy system build rates and material inputs « BraveNewClimate compares the requirements for steel and concrete for nuclear versus wind and solar.

Thank you! It is looking like nuclear is advantageous from this point of reference based upon cursory examination of graphs, not so? Prince was suspecting as much but having good evidence is of course greatly preferable. Not just carbon but energy return on energy invested should be taken into account, an area SHPEGS website above addresses. This looks like an integrated storage/generation approach which has a certain elegance of appeal, even to Prince.

God, you guys are idiots with your blanket dismissals. There is no one production method for a solar panel, and different methods have different environmental impacts. It's a sad state of affairs when something so trivial needs to be explained to people who pretend to know what they're talking about.

Originally Posted by inow

God, you guys are idiots with your blanket dismissals. There is no one production method for a solar panel, and different methods have different environmental impacts. It's a sad state of affairs when something so trivial needs to be explained to people who pretend to know what they're talking about.

Perhaps you will provide a most enlightening explanation of every possible permutation with associated costs, environmental and otherwise. Then we will learn something and you can REALLY look down your nose at us! A win-win situation!

LONG LIVE TSF!!!

Originally Posted by harold

This article TCASE 4: Energy system build rates and material inputs « BraveNewClimate compares the requirements for steel and concrete for nuclear versus wind and solar.

The article omits waste handling and disposal, also fuel mining and transport, and any auxiliary structures such as roads and walls and gates and the like, for nukes. It uses the very latest and best (and untried, so the extra expenses of problems and accidents can be ignored as unknown) third generation (at least) nuclear tech.

It uses Spain's Andasol plant to represent all of solar thermal - a glance at Spain's latitude will show that to be a strange choice. Also, Andasol is essentially first generation thermal solar - it's inclusion of storage, for example, is novel.

I'm sure you fellows would like to compare 50 year old nuclear technology to pie in the sky future solar technology. However, the intent of the TCASE article was to compare today's technology.

Originally Posted by harold

I'm sure you fellows would like to compare 50 year old nuclear technology to pie in the sky future solar technology. However, the intent of the TCASE article was to compare today's technology.

Strange they omitted today's nuclear waste handling technology - a huge expense, an unsolved problem, and an employment of lots of cement and steel - today's mining and transport, today's security and access infrastructure, etc. Lot's of cement and steel involved there, left out of the calculations.

And strange they didn't pick something better to represent all of thermal solar - Spain sits above the 35th parallel, and molten salt storage is not exactly cutting edge tech.

Originally Posted by iceaura

Originally Posted by harold

I'm sure you fellows would like to compare 50 year old nuclear technology to pie in the sky future solar technology. However, the intent of the TCASE article was to compare today's technology.

Strange they omitted today's nuclear waste handling technology - a huge expense, an unsolved problem, and an employment of lots of cement and steel - today's mining and transport, today's security and access infrastructure, etc. Lot's of cement and steel involved there, left out of the calculations.

And strange they didn't pick something better to represent all of thermal solar - Spain sits above the 35th parallel, and molten salt storage is not exactly cutting edge tech.

Nuclear waste handling technology is not an unsolved (technical) problem. It is an unsolved political problem because of hysterical fears such as you have expressed here on this forum. There isn't much concrete and steel involved. Mining, transport, and security are problems already being dealt with for existing plants. How do you figure that there is lots of cement and steel?
The Andasol plant is located near a center of population, in a sunny climate and its thermal storage capability improves its capacity factor. There are plenty of less desirable sites that will have to be used in a large scale use of solar power. You could build it in the desert, closer to the equator, but then you will need transmission lines, and will have to add the steel, concrete, copper, and whatever else goes into that.

Originally Posted by harold

Nuclear waste handling technology is not an unsolved (technical) problem. It is an unsolved political problem because of hysterical fears such as you have expressed here on this forum.

It is an unsolved problem of very great expense. And the only symptoms of hysteria around here are the somewhat desperate-sounding resorts to that kind of slapshot on the part of people who have no facts or reasoning behind their holdover childhood visions of nuclear utopia.

Originally Posted by harold

There isn't much concrete and steel involved. Mining, transport, and security are problems already being dealt with for existing plants. How do you figure that there is lots of cement and steel?

OK, a nuke power proponent is asking me, in apparent sincerity, how I figure that a lot of cement and steel is involved in mining, transport, security (Iraq war, recall?), and storage, of nuclear fuel and waste (let's not forget the decommissioned reactor structures, in the "waste" category).

How to respond?

Originally Posted by harold

The Andasol plant is located near a center of population, in a sunny climate and its thermal storage capability improves its capacity factor. There are plenty of less desirable sites that will have to be used in a large scale use of solar power.

Depends on how it's used, and for what. Spain is pretty far north of most of the human population of this planet - hardly a "typical" setup for a thermal solar power plant of the future.

Originally Posted by Harold14370

I'm sure you fellows would like to compare 50 year old nuclear technology to pie in the sky future solar technology.

Given the copious amounts of data I've shared here and elsewhere on the site, your use of the term "pie in the sky" to describe solar implies that you failed to a) read it, b) comprehend it, or c) argue in good faith about it.

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

So specifically, what fission products are of concern to you and why? Presumably it is due to radioactive nature of some, but not all such fission products, e.g. helium, which is product of alpha particle emission, is not radioactive, or in other words, has half life of infinity, since will not decay further.

"It might melt through containment"? What is it, in what matter is contained, and is water soluble to what degree?

More information would be helpful. Helium is not radioactive nor particularly water soluble so you must be meaning something else- what is it?

The biggest offender is Caesium-137. Like you mentioned, it's radioactive, and biologically it fills the same role as Potassium, so plants pull it up through their roots, and animals have a high chance of consuming it. It's a major problem both on the Bikini Isles and around Chernobyl. Even in non-radioactive form Caesium is mildly toxic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137

Originally Posted by Wiki Caesium137 Article

Caesium-137 reacts with water producing a water-soluble compound (caesium hydroxide), and the biological behavior of caesium is similar to that of potassium and rubidium. After entering the body, caesium gets more or less uniformly distributed throughout the body, with higher concentration in muscle tissues and lower in bones. The biological half-life of caesium is rather short at about 70 days.[10] Experiments with dogs showed that a single dose of 3800 μCi/kg (140 MBq/kg, or approximately 44 μg/kg) is lethal within three weeks.[11]
Accidental ingestion of caesium-137 can be treated with Prussian blue, which binds to it chemically and then speeds its expulsion from the body

Caesium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Wiki (normal) Caesium Health Hazards

Caesium compounds are rarely encountered by most people, but most caesium compounds are mildly toxic because of chemical similarity of caesium to potassium. Exposure to large amounts of caesium compounds can cause hyperirritability and spasms, but as such amounts would not ordinarily be encountered in natural sources, caesium is not a major chemical environmental pollutant.[95] The median lethal dose (LD50) value for caesium chloride in mice is 2.3 g per kilogram, which is comparable to the LD50 values of potassium chloride and sodium chloride.[96]

There is also RadioIodine, which substitutes for normal Iodine, accumulating in your thyroid.

Iodine-131 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And RadioStrontium, which substitutes for calcium, accumulating in your bones.

Strontium-90 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm highly skeptical of the solar price information shown as module pricing trends because it's done by a solar company. Heck you can't even buy broken solar cells in mass for $1/W, yet this site says that's about average. It also doesn't mean squat when it comes to base-loading where our problem actually is.

Originally Posted by lynx

I'm highly skeptical of the solar price information shown as module pricing trends because it's done by a solar company.

Yet you accept such obviously bogus numbers as "skeptic" has repeatedly posted, in which (for example) PV solar and thermal solar are presented as aggregated and unscaled categories of fixed and approximately equal efficiency, the government support of nuclear power is left out of the cost per kwh, and so forth.

And you accept the official estimations of risk, exposure, harm, etc, from official sources that have been consistently wrong for fifty years, lied and been caught at it continually since WWII.

And you, like the other nuke proponents here, accept the attribution of "hysteria" to the entire anti-nuke crowd, because they don't trust such obviously bogus numbers and they automatically mistrust these official sources - joining the faction here that was labeling as "hysterical" the ones that automatically mistrusted the immediate official claims of no danger of meltdown at Fukushima, for example.

They weren't "hysterical"; they were sober and accurate assessors of fact. As it turned out. Again.

And all we are asking here, in this thread, is that the costs of building hundreds of nuclear power reactors all over the place be accurately assessed, if you are wont to compare that power source with solar power economics.

As Samuelson put it, and I paraphrase here the quote that appears at the beginning of an early chapter in the standard economics textbook of the twentieth century, a course in economics can be considered a success if it inculcates the meaning of a "cost".

And you accept the official estimations of risk, exposure, harm, etc, from official sources that have been consistently wrong for fifty years, lied and been caught at it continually since WWII.

Yes, I know it's one big conspiracy, by the scientist across multiple disciplines in multiple nations, independent agencies that have studied the risk factors for half a century and across multiple lines of exposure sources. Meanwhile, you continue to cry about how bogus Skeptics numbers area while lacking actual empirical data to support your ludicrous, irrational fear-driven conclusions. (whatever)

Originally Posted by iceaura

Originally Posted by harold

This article TCASE 4: Energy system build rates and material inputs « BraveNewClimate compares the requirements for steel and concrete for nuclear versus wind and solar.

The article omits waste handling and disposal, also fuel mining and transport, and any auxiliary structures such as roads and walls and gates and the like, for nukes. It uses the very latest and best (and untried, so the extra expenses of problems and accidents can be ignored as unknown) third generation (at least) nuclear tech.

It uses Spain's Andasol plant to represent all of solar thermal - a glance at Spain's latitude will show that to be a strange choice. Also, Andasol is essentially first generation thermal solar - it's inclusion of storage, for example, is novel.

Novel? Good word. Terrestrial solar will be forever a novelty, like fake vomit or doggie doo or the whopee cushion. Spain is one of sunniest locations in Europe, solar will fail there as it has in North America.

Scrutinizing article, Prince sees no mention of waste handling, etc. left out of estimates but instead finds this statement: "In reality, as I shall explain in the future, the figures I cite above for wind and solar, huge though they are, will turn out to be severe underestimates." He is looking forward to further expansion on this theme.

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

So specifically, what fission products are of concern to you and why? Presumably it is due to radioactive nature of some, but not all such fission products, e.g. helium, which is product of alpha particle emission, is not radioactive, or in other words, has half life of infinity, since will not decay further.

"It might melt through containment"? What is it, in what matter is contained, and is water soluble to what degree?

More information would be helpful. Helium is not radioactive nor particularly water soluble so you must be meaning something else- what is it?

The biggest offender is Caesium-137. Like you mentioned, it's radioactive, and biologically it fills the same role as Potassium, so plants pull it up through their roots, and animals have a high chance of consuming it. It's a major problem both on the Bikini Isles and around Chernobyl. Even in non-radioactive form Caesium is mildly toxic.

Caesium-137 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Wiki Caesium137 Article

Caesium-137 reacts with water producing a water-soluble compound (caesium hydroxide), and the biological behavior of caesium is similar to that of potassium and rubidium. After entering the body, caesium gets more or less uniformly distributed throughout the body, with higher concentration in muscle tissues and lower in bones. The biological half-life of caesium is rather short at about 70 days.[10] Experiments with dogs showed that a single dose of 3800 μCi/kg (140 MBq/kg, or approximately 44 μg/kg) is lethal within three weeks.[11]
Accidental ingestion of caesium-137 can be treated with Prussian blue, which binds to it chemically and then speeds its expulsion from the body

Caesium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Wiki (normal) Caesium Health Hazards

Caesium compounds are rarely encountered by most people, but most caesium compounds are mildly toxic because of chemical similarity of caesium to potassium. Exposure to large amounts of caesium compounds can cause hyperirritability and spasms, but as such amounts would not ordinarily be encountered in natural sources, caesium is not a major chemical environmental pollutant.[95] The median lethal dose (LD50) value for caesium chloride in mice is 2.3 g per kilogram, which is comparable to the LD50 values of potassium chloride and sodium chloride.[96]

There is also RadioIodine, which substitutes for normal Iodine, accumulating in your thyroid.

Iodine-131 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And RadioStrontium, which substitutes for calcium, accumulating in your bones.

Strontium-90 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And how many documented cases of each of these isotopes "melting through containment"? What type of containment? And parenthetically Prince notes that each of these isotopes has practical applications, often of medical variety, so, obviously soluble in water to some degree.

Scrutinizing article, Prince sees no mention of waste handling, etc. left out of estimates

Yep. Pretty worthless, without them even being mentioned. But out of sight out of mind with these folks.

but instead finds this statement: "In reality, as I shall explain in the future, the figures I cite above for wind and solar, huge though they are, will turn out to be severe underestimates." He is looking forward to further expansion on this theme.

That will not be difficult, as physical reality will not impede.

Originally Posted by lynx

Yes, I know it's one big conspiracy, by the scientist across multiple disciplines in multiple nations, independent agencies that have studied the risk factors for half a century and across multiple lines of exposure sources.

From hysteric to conspiracy theorist, without a pause for actual discussion, argument, attempt at refutation, nothing. Fine display of typical nuke proponent argument.

No one has ever measured, or even modeled other than landscape averaging, actual exposure to various nucleotides released by nuke accidents in real situations (children, the old and sick and pregnant, behavioral variability, plume variance in space and time, etc). No long term studies of such measured exposures are possible without first measuring the exposure before, after, and long term. That's not rocket science, that's stats 101.

Originally Posted by lynx

Meanwhile, you continue to cry about how bogus Skeptics numbers area while lacking actual empirical data to support your ludicrous, irrational fear-driven conclusions.

Skeptic's numbers remain obviously bogus, no matter how deeply you delve into your thesaurus for pejoratives. And you bought them. You swallowed that silly list of obviously false, borderline meaningless numbers whole. Why?

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

And you accept the official estimations of risk, exposure, harm, etc, from official sources that have been consistently wrong for fifty years, lied and been caught at it continually since WWII.

Yes, I know it's one big conspiracy, by the scientist across multiple disciplines in multiple nations, independent agencies that have studied the risk factors for half a century and across multiple lines of exposure sources. Meanwhile, you continue to cry about how bogus Skeptics numbers area while lacking actual empirical data to support your ludicrous, irrational fear-driven conclusions. (whatever)

Conspiracies can be vast, as Prince has noted before. United States was founded by conspirators. Manhattan Project, big conspiracy. The list is endless.

Look for consistency of information with known facts or fabrications, appeals to emotion rather than logic, particularly fear, greed, and lust, and ask always, "Cui bono?"

Originally Posted by iceaura

Scrutinizing article, Prince sees no mention of waste handling, etc. left out of estimates

Yep. Pretty worthless, without them even being mentioned. But out of sight out of mind with these folks.

but instead finds this statement: "In reality, as I shall explain in the future, the figures I cite above for wind and solar, huge though they are, will turn out to be severe underestimates." He is looking forward to further expansion on this theme.

That will not be difficult, as physical reality will not impede.

And what do you know about "physical reality", o omniscient one? You ASSUME the exclusion of such expenditures just as you ASSUME imaginary costs and hypothetical disasters- in short, you are not far from the fringe of psychosis with regard to such matters. Your delusional posts are ample testimony. Plus you are racist, as noted on another thread.

Most antiproliferation cranks ARE racists, though, assuming that black, brown, and yellow people are not fit to possess nuclear technology, despite the fact that WAR CRIMINAL TRUMAN of USA was only one to ever use on civilian populations, and was white as any white American of European extraction could be. More delusion, is all..."out of mind"?

Quite possibly.

Originally Posted by prince

You ASSUME the exclusion of such expenditures just as you ASSUME imaginary costs and hypothetical disasters

No, the exclusion if those expenditures is explicit - I actually read the link, see, and noticed how he obtained his figures for nukes by multiplying the footprint of the Westinghouse III in standard Chinese installation. Just that reactor footprint.

That's also where I noticed he was using a European installation north of the 35th parallel as his basis for multiplication in his analysis of global solar thermal footprint.

Always read your own links, would be the lesson.

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

\

And how many documented cases of each of these isotopes "melting through containment"? What type of containment? And parenthetically Prince notes that each of these isotopes has practical applications, often of medical variety, so, obviously soluble in water to some degree.

I assume this is the quote to which you were referring?

Originally Posted by kojax

If all a nuclear plant does when it melts down is irradiate the local area, but all the waste is successfully contained, then all we have to do is drown the area in concrete and be done with it. In a case like Fukushima, the problem is that waste was still too hot. It might melt through its containment and get into ground water.... and then we'd have real problems.

If the fuel in a nuclear power plant overheats, it's going to get really really hot. It's unlikely anything you try to contain a hot fuel rod in is going to hold it. So, you have to cool it off first. The main problem with the Fukishima malfunction is that they were having trouble getting coolant to the reactor. It was shut down, so the chain reaction had stopped, but it was still generating heat from residual decay and stuff like that. Fortunately they did manage to cool it down. If not for the coolant problem, it probably wouldn't have even been considered a "disaster" to begin with.

In the case of Chernobyl, the fuel rods got so hot it caused an explosion, which spread those isotopes far and wide. It's too late to try and contain them once they've dispersed into the air.

So... melting through containment hasn't been documented yet, I guess. And that makes sense given that there are only two documented cases of a nuclear disaster that even got close to the critical point where something might happen so far to begin with.

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Most antiproliferation cranks ARE racists, though, assuming that black, brown, and yellow people are not fit to possess nuclear technology, despite the fact that WAR CRIMINAL TRUMAN of USA was only one to ever use on civilian populations, and was white as any white American of European extraction could be. More delusion, is all..."out of mind"?

Quite possibly.

It's not a question of who is and isn't qualified. It's a question of how many fingers do you want on the launch button? The fewer the better. Zero would be the best number, but if we can't have that then we should try and get the number as close to three as possible. (2 or less and you run the risk of somebody feeling invincible.)

Originally Posted by iceaura

Originally Posted by prince

You ASSUME the exclusion of such expenditures just as you ASSUME imaginary costs and hypothetical disasters

No, the exclusion if those expenditures is explicit - I actually read the link, see, and noticed how he obtained his figures for nukes by multiplying the footprint of the Westinghouse III in standard Chinese installation. Just that reactor footprint.

That's also where I noticed he was using a European installation north of the 35th parallel as his basis for multiplication in his analysis of global solar thermal footprint.

Always read your own links, would be the lesson.

Ah, the charge is withdrawn, thank you for correcting me. So we should include cost of reprocessing plant, still negligible compared to solar thermal. If we TRIPLE figures for nuclear and HALVE figures for solar thermal, nuclear still wins, just by smaller margin, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

\

And how many documented cases of each of these isotopes "melting through containment"? What type of containment? And parenthetically Prince notes that each of these isotopes has practical applications, often of medical variety, so, obviously soluble in water to some degree.

I assume this is the quote to which you were referring?

Originally Posted by kojax

If all a nuclear plant does when it melts down is irradiate the local area, but all the waste is successfully contained, then all we have to do is drown the area in concrete and be done with it. In a case like Fukushima, the problem is that waste was still too hot. It might melt through its containment and get into ground water.... and then we'd have real problems.

If the fuel in a nuclear power plant overheats, it's going to get really really hot. It's unlikely anything you try to contain a hot fuel rod in is going to hold it. So, you have to cool it off first. The main problem with the Fukishima malfunction is that they were having trouble getting coolant to the reactor. It was shut down, so the chain reaction had stopped, but it was still generating heat from residual decay and stuff like that. Fortunately they did manage to cool it down. If not for the coolant problem, it probably wouldn't have even been considered a "disaster" to begin with.

In the case of Chernobyl, the fuel rods got so hot it caused an explosion, which spread those isotopes far and wide. It's too late to try and contain them once they've dispersed into the air.

So... melting through containment hasn't been documented yet, I guess. And that makes sense given that there are only two documented cases of a nuclear disaster that even got close to the critical point where something might happen so far to begin with.

Actually, Windscale in '57 could have been pretty bad but scrubbers were retrofitted to the top of the plant- providentially, as matters turned out.

Windscale fire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Three?

That boat has sailed already. You think you can talk the nuclear-armed nations of today into giving up their capabilities?

Good luck there.

Originally Posted by inow

Originally Posted by Harold14370

I'm sure you fellows would like to compare 50 year old nuclear technology to pie in the sky future solar technology.

Given the copious amounts of data I've shared here and elsewhere on the site, your use of the term "pie in the sky" to describe solar implies that you failed to a) read it, b) comprehend it, or c) argue in good faith about it.

A graph which projects the installed cost of electricity by extrapolating a line on a graph, and which does not account for the capacity factor of the power does not impress me as "copious amounts of data." I guess if you extrapolate that line far enough, somebody would be paying you money in addition to installing the solar cells for free.

Solar proponents always have to assume some major advance in energy storage, or electrical grid technology in order to make their idea work, because right now, it doesn't. That's why I say pie in the sky.

Originally Posted by Harold14370

Originally Posted by inow

Originally Posted by Harold14370

I'm sure you fellows would like to compare 50 year old nuclear technology to pie in the sky future solar technology.

Given the copious amounts of data I've shared here and elsewhere on the site, your use of the term "pie in the sky" to describe solar implies that you failed to a) read it, b) comprehend it, or c) argue in good faith about it.

A graph which projects the installed cost of electricity by extrapolating a line on a graph, and which does not account for the capacity factor of the power does not impress me as "copious amounts of data." I guess if you extrapolate that line far enough, somebody would be paying you money in addition to installing the solar cells for free.

Solar proponents always have to assume some major advance in energy storage, or electrical grid technology in order to make their idea work, because right now, it doesn't. That's why I say pie in the sky.

Hi, Harold, would you care to comment on this variation? Looks less silly than some.

SHPEGS - Solar Heat Pump Electrical Generation System

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

Hi, Harold, would you care to comment on this variation? Looks less silly than some.

SHPEGS - Solar Heat Pump Electrical Generation System

They have a section in there about economics, and although they don't put any numbers to it, it looks like they are admitting the cost, in the current design concept, is not competitive with market prices.

Originally Posted by iceaura

Skeptic's numbers remain obviously bogus, no matter how deeply you delve into your thesaurus for pejoratives. And you bought them. You swallowed that silly list of obviously false, borderline meaningless numbers whole. Why?

Because Skeptics numbers match virtually all the data while you've brought almost no meaningful data to refute his contentions....here's probably the biggest "Skeptic" issue.

There's a threshold of low dose ionizing radiation, below which humans seems well adapted and no evidence for increased disease rates. It's born out at research from Horoshima, Chinobyl and TMI. The radiation models which assumed linear risk down to zero exposure are completely unsupported by that research and now long obsolete. This is why the half dozen studies of cancer rates at TMI, for example, despite predictions of tens of thousands of extra cases using the linear model from that accident 30 something years ago, all have been either shown as flawed (not accounting for natural high radon), or inconclusive of any causal link.

The Chernobyl data is looking similar with many more people exposed to higher doses looking much the same way. Early forecast, based on the now-obsolete linear risk to exposure models predicted nearly a million excess deaths from the accident. Now compare that to the actual numbers....
UNSCEAR reports: "... there had been up to the year 2005 more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases can be expected during the next decades. Notwithstanding the influence of enhanced screening regimes, many of those cancers were most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident. Apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated. Although those most highly exposed individuals are at an increased risk of radiation-associated effects, the great majority of the population is not likely to experience serious health consequences as a result of radiation from the Chernobyl accident. " UNSCEAR assessments of the Chernobyl accident

Another way to interpret the results is the linear risk-to-exposure models overestimated that risk by a factor of nearly 200 and even if it doubled in the next few decades as we see the lifetime effect, it's still orders of magnitude too high--high enough to probably reject as useful model when making empirical-based risk decisions about potential disasters--or the related cost of such disasters.

So there you have it hundreds of reactors, only 3 serious accidents and actual lost lives orders of magnitude smaller than that lost in their equivalent fossil fuel energy production. But mostly because its nuclear, "invisible" and the deaths are often by uncommon diseases--we fear it way more than the thousands hacking their lungs out after working in a coal mine, or gasping from the bad air downwind of a dirty coal plant, or a drowned man from the stronger than normal storm (from a warmer planet) which over topped his farm levy.

In a future of Hobsian choices, despite not being absolutely safe, nuclear energy is by far a least worst case compared to continuing to develop fossil fuels in places like the oil sands, coal, methane hydrates and other projects. Until we develop effective electrical energy storage tech solar and wind only get us about a quarter of the way, perhaps as much as half if we build efficient electrical distribution grid from coast to coast.

Originally Posted by lynx

Because Skeptics numbers match virtually all the data while you've brought almost no meaningful data to refute his contentions.

His numbers refute themselves, simply by asserting a single number for both "PV" and "thermal solar" and asserting these numbers to be approximately equal.

No data can "refute" such nonsense, because no valid data of that type exists. You are asking for something like refutation of posted data showing the average weight of unicorns in North America compared with Russia - there is no refutation data. A relevant category of "PV" does not exist. A relevant category "thermal solar" does not exist. If they did exist, that they would be approximately equal in efficiency regardless of employment is absurd.

Originally Posted by lynx

There's a threshold of low dose ionizing radiation, below which humans seems well adapted and no evidence for increased disease rates. It's born out at research from Horoshima, Chinobyl and TMI.

That's based on a linear extrapolation of lab data from higher dose experiments, used to explain the monitoring data from those events with all "radiation" lumped into one number. At no time in the bearing out of that extrapolation were actual exposure measurements from those events employed, or exposure regimes differentiated and measured independently - there were no such measurements.

Originally Posted by lynx

The radiation models which assumed linear risk down to zero exposure are completely unsupported by that research and now long obsolete

I have repeatedly posted objections to linear extrapolations from higher dose data, linear extrapolations of landscape averages, etc. Nobody here is using such obsolete approaches except the nuke proponent crowd - in the radiation exposure numbers for Fukushima, above, for example.

Originally Posted by lynx

So there you have it hundreds of reactors, only 3 serious accidents and actual lost lives orders of magnitude smaller than that lost in their equivalent fossil fuel energy production. But mostly because its nuclear, "invisible" and the deaths are often by uncommon diseases--we fear it way more than the thousands hacking their lungs out after working in a coal mine, or gasping from the bad air downwind of a dirty coal plant, or a drowned man from the stronger than normal storm (from a warmer planet) which over topped his farm levy.

Your projection of such thinking ("we"] onto other people here is offensive, and lacks evidentiary support on this thread. No one here is arguing from such a base, and your repetition of this is simply strawmanning the current discussion.

Originally Posted by lynx

There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure.

There is a considerable pile of evidence from medical professionals in regions affected by Chernobyl showing increases in "non-malignant disorders" (and even some malignant ones) that your authority there (UNSCEAR) has simply excluded from consideration, giving as its reason the lack of previously demonstrated mechanism or significant correlation involving "ionizing radiation" in high dose studies. I posted links earlier, and have referred to the matter several times. Recall any of that?

UNSCEAR has gone so far as to omit successfully treated thyroid cancer - however permanently debilitating or personally costly the treatments - from its accounting of permanent harms and long term costs.

btw: your link there provides yet more support for my repeated observations here, for example:

Originally Posted by UNSCEAR

The present understanding of the late effects of protracted exposure to ionizing radiation is limited, since the dose-response assessments rely heavily on studies of exposure to high doses and animal experiments.

and here:

Originally Posted by UNSCEAR

Moreover, a general increase in mortality has been reported in recent decades in most areas of the former Soviet Union, and this must be taken into account when interpreting the results of the accident-related studies.

Ring a bell? They are landscape averaging ( with dubious a priori assumptions on their data collection), not following people with known and measured exposure regimes.

There has been a big increase in mortality in what used to be the Soviet Unon. By sheer 'coincidence' it exactly parallels an increase in consumption of vodka. This increase does not follow what we would expect from geography if it had anything to do with Chernobyl.

Ethanol is known to be toxic and teratogenic. We should ban it forthwith, oh WAIT! We DID!

Looks like iceaura finally admits that there are no valid data to support his claims, game over, better luck next time. Bring some numbers that stand up to scrutiny then, okay?

Originally Posted by kojax

Originally Posted by The Finger Prince

So specifically, what fission products are of concern to you and why? Presumably it is due to radioactive nature of some, but not all such fission products, e.g. helium, which is product of alpha particle emission, is not radioactive, or in other words, has half life of infinity, since will not decay further.

"It might melt through containment"? What is it, in what matter is contained, and is water soluble to what degree?

More information would be helpful. Helium is not radioactive nor particularly water soluble so you must be meaning something else- what is it?

The biggest offender is Caesium-137. Like you mentioned, it's radioactive, and biologically it fills the same role as Potassium, so plants pull it up through their roots, and animals have a high chance of consuming it. It's a major problem both on the Bikini Isles and around Chernobyl. Even in non-radioactive form Caesium is mildly toxic.

Caesium-137 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Wiki Caesium137 Article

Caesium-137 reacts with water producing a water-soluble compound (caesium hydroxide), and the biological behavior of caesium is similar to that of potassium and rubidium. After entering the body, caesium gets more or less uniformly distributed throughout the body, with higher concentration in muscle tissues and lower in bones. The biological half-life of caesium is rather short at about 70 days.[10] Experiments with dogs showed that a single dose of 3800 μCi/kg (140 MBq/kg, or approximately 44 μg/kg) is lethal within three weeks.[11]
Accidental ingestion of caesium-137 can be treated with Prussian blue, which binds to it chemically and then speeds its expulsion from the body

Caesium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Wiki (normal) Caesium Health Hazards

Caesium compounds are rarely encountered by most people, but most caesium compounds are mildly toxic because of chemical similarity of caesium to potassium. Exposure to large amounts of caesium compounds can cause hyperirritability and spasms, but as such amounts would not ordinarily be encountered in natural sources, caesium is not a major chemical environmental pollutant.[95] The median lethal dose (LD50) value for caesium chloride in mice is 2.3 g per kilogram, which is comparable to the LD50 values of potassium chloride and sodium chloride.[96]

There is also RadioIodine, which substitutes for normal Iodine, accumulating in your thyroid.

Iodine-131 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And RadioStrontium, which substitutes for calcium, accumulating in your bones.

Strontium-90 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Of the three, I-131 is probably least worrisome, as thyroid cancer is generally easily and successfully treated on a statistical basis, and exposure window is small, with half-life short enough to be mostly gone in about 4 months. Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 each have half-lives of around 30 years. Effective reprocessing would help us isolate all such hazardous isotopes and allow us to harness them productively and store them safely. The LFTR design of reactor permits continuous reprocessing and transmutation of such isotopes.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Originally Posted by iceaura

Skeptic's numbers remain obviously bogus, no matter how deeply you delve into your thesaurus for pejoratives. And you bought them. You swallowed that silly list of obviously false, borderline meaningless numbers whole. Why?

Because Skeptics numbers match virtually all the data while you've brought almost no meaningful data to refute his contentions....here's probably the biggest "Skeptic" issue.


There's a threshold of low dose ionizing radiation, below which humans seems well adapted and no evidence for increased disease rates. It's born out at research from Horoshima, Chinobyl and TMI. The radiation models which assumed linear risk down to zero exposure are completely unsupported by that research and now long obsolete. This is why the half dozen studies of cancer rates at TMI, for example, despite predictions of tens of thousands of extra cases using the linear model from that accident 30 something years ago, all have been either shown as flawed (not accounting for natural high radon), or inconclusive of any causal link.


The Chernobyl data is looking similar with many more people exposed to higher doses looking much the same way. Early forecast, based on the now-obsolete linear risk to exposure models predicted nearly a million excess deaths from the accident. Now compare that to the actual numbers....
UNSCEAR reports: "... there had been up to the year 2005 more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases can be expected during the next decades. Notwithstanding the influence of enhanced screening regimes, many of those cancers were most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident. Apart from this increase, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated. Although those most highly exposed individuals are at an increased risk of radiation-associated effects, the great majority of the population is not likely to experience serious health consequences as a result of radiation from the Chernobyl accident. " UNSCEAR assessments of the Chernobyl accident

Those numbers look pretty good. I think we overestimate the dangers of exposure because that's just the right thing to do when we can't be sure. Nuclear's main problem is just that it's a young technology. Humanity has hundreds, even thousands of years worth of documented experience dealing with soot, floods, and other conventional catastrophes. We know what to expect. Nuclear has not yet existed for a full human lifespan. If we take 1945 as our starting point, that's 66 years. A child born at that time would only barely be past retirement age.

It's good that the data we get is promising, but we can't even be sure we've thought of all the problems that are on the horizon. Sharks near Bikini Atoll have been observed mutating. Some of them have an extra fin now. It's a small thing and benign, but what happens if microbes start mutating? Will our immune system be prepared for the new strains of bacteria/virus? (On the plus side, at least we have a way to restore biodiversity if we feel the number of species is starting to run low. Just irradiate a wilderness and leave it alone for a while. )

There has been a big increase in mortality in what used to be the Soviet Unon. By sheer 'coincidence' it exactly parallels an increase in consumption of vodka. This increase does not follow what we would expect from geography if it had anything to do with Chernobyl.

Overall landscape mortality in the Soviet Union invoked in place of actual study of "non-malignant disorders" correlated with Chernobyl exposure patterns and the like is deliberate deception. There is no other explanation for it - professional epidemiologists and statisticians know better.

Originally Posted by kojax

Those numbers look pretty good.

If you are talking about Skeptic's repeatedly posted absurdities - you're kidding, right? If you are talking about UNSCEAR's medical overview of Chernobyl's effects, read the original - they do report on their compilation methods and assumptions, including the startling criterion used to screen out all those "non-malignant disorders" and even many malignancies from consideration (the lack of long term studies on them relative to reactor accident type exposure - no joke), their omission of successfully treated thyroid cancer from the permanent damage list and similar decisions, their failure to actually analyze and compare those generally higher mortality rates with careful and measured delineation of the actual exposure patterns to the actual stuff from Chernobyl, their simple and explicit throwing up of their hands when faced with the enormous extent and complexity of Chernobyl's actual coverage zone.

Originally Posted by kojax

I think we overestimate the dangers of exposure because that's just the right thing to do when we can't be sure.

The UNSCEAR study you are admiring there handled all cases of insufficient information and lack of surety by setting the reported risk at 0. Explicitly. That's, for example, what their exclusion of "non-malignant disorders" no one had studied relevantly means.

Meanwhile, the thread issue - economics - remains here. We need to add the total response expenses of Chernobyl as projected - the cost of treating all those thyroid cancers, including opportunity cost to the medical system as well as to the victims, say: the various blockades and security expenses continent wide in scale, the lost farming income and so forth - to the kwh hour cost of nuclear power in the relevant geographical area, compared with various solar options.

The argument seems to be that if few enough people have died so far in these near miss accidents, and the government agencies set up to promote nuclear power have sufficiently assured us that our successful dodging of bullets so far indicates safety (what has been termed "Challenger logic"), we can justify the higher cost and dubious politics and technological dependencies of nuke power on the grounds that it saves lives.

But so far we see that argument applied to coal, not solar as the thread would anticipate. And so far we have had quite a bit of trouble getting this higher cost of nukes in focus - in lives as well as money. Sooo - - - - -

Humanity has hundreds, even thousands of years worth of documented experience dealing with soot, floods, and other conventional catastrophes. We know what to expect. Nuclear has not yet existed for a full human lifespan. If we take 1945 as our starting point, that's 66 years. A child born at that time would only barely be past retirement age.

It's good that the data we get is promising, but we can't even be sure we've thought of all the problems that are on the horizon.

You might be right...perhaps it's time. If so, I guess we're now missing an opportunity to have these plants on the landscape enough that people become more familiar with them. Much of the news, and reports, and risk data hasn't been updated from the linear risk modeling so it's hoped that changes as well. Even with that there's the "fear factor" associated invisible risk and uncommon diseases and unwillingness to accept even the most credible scientist evidence. Failure to become more comfortable with this subject is having many effects on us including preventing us from taking the most safe path towards energy grids for next few decades, border security screening, and space exploration. It's hard to overcome almost superstitious fears.

Originally Posted by kojax

Nuclear's main problem is just that it's a young technology. Humanity has hundreds, even thousands of years worth of documented experience dealing with soot, floods, and other conventional catastrophes. We know what to expect. Nuclear has not yet existed for a full human lifespan. If we take 1945 as our starting point, that's 66 years. A child born at that time would only barely be past retirement age.

Nuclear may be relatively new, but radiation isn't, and the differences in dose rates in different areas of the world are substantial. Those hundreds or thousands of years of experience would have told us practically nothing about the effects of low doses of mildly toxic chemicals, radiation or other environmental effects. Even the risk of tobacco smoke, which is far worse than your worst nuclear nightmare, was not recognized until relatively recently. The medical science and statistics were just not available, and even if they had been, most people would probably be killed by something else before the tobacco got to them.

Originally Posted by lynx

Much of the news, and reports, and risk data hasn't been updated from the linear risk modeling so it's hoped that changes as well.

One good start might be to quit posting that safe threshold number for "ionizing radiation" that is the most famous result of bogus linear extrapolation.

Originally Posted by lynx

Even with that there's the "fear factor" associated invisible risk and uncommon diseases and unwillingness to accept even the most credible scientist evidence.

When proponents can't even deal with the arguments here, or recognize the lack of credibility even in things like "skeptic's" repeatedly posted absurdity on relative costs (let alone the slightly more subtle deceptions like those based on the UNSCEAR report ), what chance do they have employing legitimate arguments against anything, let alone some presumed mass irrationality of superstitious fear?

But the attempt could be made. The thread is on solar power economics - they could try contributing.

Here's one tack: recognizing that nuclear power proliferation has cost trillions in dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives in various ways, that huge risks have been and are being run by our employment of these plants, one could argue that this is sunk - that the huge investment has been made, and the marginal kwh cost of further proliferation is not nearly so high as the kwh cost so far, the marginal added risk much smaller than the per venture risk already launched and irrevocable. This marginal cost would be the key number.

Then a more reasonable estimation of the launch and run cost of a well-designed and well sited thermal solar plant could be made, perhaps based on some better reasoning regarding Andasol than hitting the multiply button on a calculator, and the two numbers realistically arrived at could be compared.

Originally Posted by iceaura

One good start might be to quit posting that safe threshold number for "ionizing radiation" that is the most famous result of bogus linear extrapolation.

What? A linear extrapolation does not assume a safe threshold. The currently accepted model is called the "linear no threshold model" and assumes some chance of contracting cancer for ANY dose at all. This is conservative - many believe overly conservative.

Originally Posted by Lynx_Fox

Humanity has hundreds, even thousands of years worth of documented experience dealing with soot, floods, and other conventional catastrophes. We know what to expect. Nuclear has not yet existed for a full human lifespan. If we take 1945 as our starting point, that's 66 years. A child born at that time would only barely be past retirement age.

It's good that the data we get is promising, but we can't even be sure we've thought of all the problems that are on the horizon.

You might be right...perhaps it's time. If so, I guess we're now missing an opportunity to have these plants on the landscape enough that people become more familiar with them. Much of the news, and reports, and risk data hasn't been updated from the linear risk modeling so it's hoped that changes as well. Even with that there's the "fear factor" associated invisible risk and uncommon diseases and unwillingness to accept even the most credible scientist evidence. Failure to become more comfortable with this subject is having many effects on us including preventing us from taking the most safe path towards energy grids for next few decades, border security screening, and space exploration. It's hard to overcome almost superstitious fears.

That's why I wish we'd go to micro-nukes. They don't make as efficient use of the fuel, but they're cheaper in a whole lot of other ways. Just telling people that the fuel rod is the size of a tic-tac will probably calm them down noticeably. And, if it means we have more separate nuclear plants in total, then we'll be compiling information at a faster rate.

PR is an expense we like to ignore, but its real money.

It's really a big headache to go through such a long thread. How did you guys do it? I've to admit English is not my native language, but I've used it for about 10 years.

Originally Posted by iceaura

If you are talking about Skeptic's repeatedly posted absurdities - - -

Iceaura

I quote solid references, good numbers, and reputable sources.

Your lack of willingness to quote good references leads me to believe that you are relying on disreputable, political, pseudoscientific web sites, which you fail to quote since you are so ashamed of them.

Originally Posted by harold

What? A linear extrapolation does not assume a safe threshold.

The other way around - the safe threshold posted above assumes the validity of linear extrapolation from higher dose lab data.

Originally Posted by harold

The currently accepted model is called the "linear no threshold model" and assumes some chance of contracting cancer for ANY dose at all.

Accepted by whom? Nobody on this thread.

Originally Posted by skeptic

I quote solid references, good numbers, and reputable sources.

You posted comparative kwh costs for "PV", "Thermal Solar", "Nuclear", and IIRC "Coal". Those were the categories. "PV" and "Thermal Solar" came out about equal, "Nuclear much cheaper.

You then defended that list, posted it repeatedly, and based other posts on it.

That's absurdity, nonsense, comedy, pick a noun. The categories are meaningless, the costs meaningless, the information content zero, the conclusions you drew utterly foolish. Whatever source you got that list from is not solid, or reputable, by definition. And your posting that crap, even after the nature of it had been pointed out to you several times, is trolling.

Originally Posted by iceaura

Originally Posted by harold

What? A linear extrapolation does not assume a safe threshold.

The other way around - the safe threshold posted above assumes the validity of linear extrapolation from higher dose lab data.

This is wrong. Making a linear extrapolation from higher dose data gives you a proportional risk for any finite dose.

Originally Posted by harold

The currently accepted model is called the "linear no threshold model" and assumes some chance of contracting cancer for ANY dose at all.

Accepted by whom? Nobody on this thread.

Accepted by the NRC for example, and I'm pretty sure by all the official agencies who make the estimates you are complaining about.

Originally Posted by iceaura

You posted comparative kwh costs for "PV", "Thermal Solar", "Nuclear", and IIRC "Coal". Those were the categories. "PV" and "Thermal Solar" came out about equal, "Nuclear much cheaper.

You then defended that list, posted it repeatedly, and based other posts on it.

That's absurdity, nonsense, comedy, pick a noun. The categories are meaningless, the costs meaningless, the information content zero, the conclusions you drew utterly foolish. Whatever source you got that list from is not solid, or reputable, by definition. And your posting that crap, even after the nature of it had been pointed out to you several times, is trolling.

I certainly did post comparable costs. Here it is again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

The exact numbers quoted change periodically, as the costs are regularly updated. As of today, the costs are still 12 cents per kwh for nuclear, 21 cents for PV and 31 c for solar thermal. Your personal dislike of the fact that these costs obviate your own arguments does not make them wrong.

The reference has the methods of calculation described. The mere fact that you do not like the results does not make those results incorrect. If you have a better source, then post it.

He is calling you bluff, iceaura, as others have done before. PV vs thermal solar, so what? They have both the same sunlight energy falling on them per square meter which is an ABSOLUTE LIMIT, a few percent of efficiency of conversion either way is of little consequence, you strain at the gnat. If you have evidence to support your delusions post it.

This SHPEGS scheme strikes Prince as something you might investigate further, given your predispositions, only a suggestion, best regards to all.

Originally Posted by skeptic

I certainly did post comparable costs. Here it is again.

Those numbers are even sillier than the ones I was mocking, from you, in that they are more elaborately dressed up.

They have the same absurdities, however: just to point to two already mentioned - they have the "levelized" cost of "PV" at 2/3 the levelized cost of "solar thermal". They have the "capacity factor" of "PV" at 5% more than the "capacity factor" of "thermal solar".

Need another? None of the medical costs of coal are included - the ones you and others have been trying to use here to make nukes look good. So can I expect you to follow your own standards, and quit bringing them up?

Meaningless numbers from meaningless categories. Comedy.

Their refusal to keep honest books on nukes is just the standard crapola, visible immediately in their taking of average numbers for solar types to compare with the top end of nuclear performance (as rigged by them, no security costs or risk premiums or unpaid waste handling etc), but that's just normal stuff not mocked.

Give it up - you can't use these kinds of numbers in reasonable discussion about future societal investments.

Originally Posted by harold

This is wrong. Making a linear extrapolation from higher dose data gives you a proportional risk for any finite dose.

Depends on the slope of the line. Theirs showed a threshold, with only linear response above it, and they claimed agreement with the landscape averaging studies of carefully circumscribed malignancies noted above (Chernobyl's leukemia, etc).

I'm not the one to argue that point with. I - and much of the rest of the anti-nuke crowd - agree that linear extrapolations in this situation are probably invalid.

Originally Posted by Harold

Accepted by whom? Nobody on this thread.

Accepted by the NRC for example, and I'm pretty sure by all the official agencies who make the estimates you are complaining about.

Then go argue with them. We've got a discussion here, that doesn't assume anything like that - specifically denies it, in several posts.

If you have a better source, then post it.

Pages and pages of waiting.... and still nothing....

Another problem for nuclear is just the psychological. People don't like having a nuclear plant in their area because it's just one more thing to worry about. Yet another catastrophe that could befall you, and you have no control over it. (If there's going to be an accident, it will be some professional who decides. Mr. John Q Average is just trying to live his day to day life in the reactor's shadow.) It's just... not a good feeling having that hang over you.

Also, you have to consider the nature of a cancer death. It really really sucks. My sister contracted lymph node cancer a few years ago, and survived because of chemo therapy, but there were a few days at first when we didn't know yet if it was going to turn out to be curable or not (waiting on test results I think). So, one day a while after she recovered, we're having this conversation about executing criminals, and she points out that what would suck about an execution is knowing so far in advance you're going to die. And there's nothing you can do about it. Because that's what she went through for those few days. Cancer is a death sentence. You suddenly find out one day that all of your long term dreams have been cancelled, but you've still got to drag on for a while.

Kojax

I agree that psychology is a problem.
Disagree that cancer is necessarily a death sentence. If caught early and properly treated, many cancers can be successfully treated.

Cancer risks, though are much, much higher if you are a smoker or live with smokers than living near a nuclear power station. That problem, too, is psychological.

The inability of human beings to handle small risks of large disasters reasonably is well known.

The people who dismiss such risks, deny their existence, persuade themselves of safety on the basis of near misses and poorly analyzed related disasters, etc, are no more rational - and somewhat less forgivable in their smug and willfully maintained ignorance - than the people who harbor fears they cannot specify or quantify amid the marketed erosion of sound public discussion.

Iceaura

It is entirely rational to quantify risks. Put numbers on them. This is something I have been doing throughout.

It is entirely irrational to demand that people believe something is a high risk without numbers to back up those claims, or worse, to demand something is high risk when the numbers show the opposite.

Nuclear power does, of course, carry a risk factor. But so does every other means of generating electricity large scale. It is relative risk that counts. Here is another number.
Wind energy fatalities come to 0.15 per terrawatt hour, or over 1300 per terrawatt year. This includes a poor woman in Germany who was doing a parachute jump and drifted into the wind turbines. Ouch!http://www.wind-works.org/articles/BreathLife.html

This compares to 8 deaths per terrawatt year for accidents at nuclear power plants. Total deaths per terrawatt year for nuclear power, including all cancers from Chernobyl, come to between 64 and 500 depending on who is doing the estimates.

So the measured risk from nuclear power is much lower than for wind power.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Kojax

I agree that psychology is a problem.
Disagree that cancer is necessarily a death sentence. If caught early and properly treated, many cancers can be successfully treated.

Cancer risks, though are much, much higher if you are a smoker or live with smokers than living near a nuclear power station. That problem, too, is psychological.

The wrong kind of cancer is a death sentence. You're right that sometimes it's not, as was the case with my sister. We lucked out. It turned out to be a curable kind instead of a "you have X number of months to live" kind. Of course, I've known people who got that second kind as well.

Psychological trauma arguably matters a lot more than whether you live or die. Everyone will die eventually. Some people won't see it coming, and they'll die quietly in their sleep. Others will get crushed in an Earthquake when the building they're standing in comes down. Others will slowly watch their body waste away over months. Which group do you want to be in? How large a risk do you think people should be willing to take?

Originally Posted by skeptic

It is entirely rational to quantify risks. Put numbers on them. This is something I have been doing throughout.

It's something you have been refusing to do throughout, despite repeated encouragements. I have been nothing if not persistent in attempting to persuade you that including risk premiums and quantifications of risk indemnity in any cost estimate of nuclear power generation is essential for cost comparisons with solar power of various establishment.

You haven't even been willing to acknowledge the existence of major and expensive nuclear risks, and I have been spending quite a bit of repetitive time pointing that out.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Iceaura
It is entirely rational to quantify risks. Put numbers on them. This is something I have been doing throughout.
It is entirely irrational to demand that people believe something is a high risk without numbers to back up those claims, or worse, to demand something is high risk when the numbers show the opposite.
Nuclear power does, of course, carry a risk factor. But so does every other means of generating electricity large scale. It is relative risk that counts. Here is another number.
Wind energy fatalities come to 0.15 per terrawatt hour, or over 1300 per terrawatt year. This includes a poor woman in Germany who was doing a parachute jump and drifted into the wind turbines. Ouch!Contemporary Mortality (Death) Rates in Wind Energy by Paul Gipe
This compares to 8 deaths per terrawatt year for accidents at nuclear power plants. Total deaths per terrawatt year for nuclear power, including all cancers from Chernobyl, come to between 64 and 500 depending on who is doing the estimates.
So the measured risk from nuclear power is much lower than for wind power.

LOL ..... this post really lifts the whole discussion here onto a new level :-D .....

If somebody is doing a parachute jump close to a field of wind turbines, he must be plain crazy, dumb, or going for suicide. Blaming wind craft energy for being dangerous because of this, is beyond my imagination, sorry. And most other incidents were either people injured or killed during erection of the turbines (that's normal, when people work they are always in danger) or plane accidents, and in the latter case, if a pilot has lost orientation, it doesn't really matter if he will end up in a high voltage power line, in a high tree or in a wind turbine. Again, as soon as you enter an aircraft, you know you are in exposed danger and have to deal with that.

And what about the risks for future generations, after we have left 200 years of nuclear waste on this planet ? What if one of the storages doesn't hold, and releases large amounts of radioactive elements into the ground water, poisoning thousands of square miles of land ?

In a country as large as the USA, you may be able to leave this area, and move elsewhere. In Europe (maybe besides Sweden and Finland), we don't have this opportunity.

Whatever you guys do with nuclear power, one day you - or your ancestors - will have to pay the bills, thats for sure.

ChristianHJW

Christian

Sorry, but that is bollocks.

First, the parachutist. I only included that for irony. However, that was in Germany, and it would be very difficult in that country to parachute anywhere away from cities without being somewhere near one or more wind turbines. I travelled by train across North Germany, and we were in sight of at least one pretty much the whole time.

Most fatalities, though, are workers on wind turbines who suffer industrial type accidents. They are still part of the hazard rating of wind power, and must be counted.

On the risk of a future release of radiation. As I have been at pains to point out, time and again, radiation is a normal part of life. All living things are exposed to it, and evolution has created a lot of tolerance to radiation. The average exposure is around 2.5 millisieverts per year, but a few parts of the world involve exposure to 100 times that. This is due mainly to emission of natural hydrothermal waters that carry radioactive isotopes. The people who live in those areas appear to have no higher rate of cancers or other fatalities compared to the norm.

If some hypothetical future release of radioactive waste is going to cause health problems, it will have to involve more than 250 millisieverts per year exposure, and this is avoidable with minimal precautions. I have already mentioned my personal suggestion of how to dispose of such waste, with minimal risk.

Compared to other methods of generating electricity in large amounts, nuclear has the best safety record, with the possible exception of burning natural gas, which releases large amounts of greenhouse gases.

If you want to make a case to the contrary, you will need to do better than alarmist generalities. This is a science forum and good data is required.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Most fatalities, though, are workers on wind turbines who suffer industrial type accidents. They are still part of the hazard rating of wind power, and must be counted.

Maybe if we made the training/education requirements a little bit higher - as they already are for nuclear - we'd have fewer accidents. Essentially building a wind turbine is a construction project, and accidents happen. But because it is (currently) being done by small enterprises using poorly trained workers and site managers, people are taking dangerous risks and paying the consequences.

I agree with Christian that it is terribly unfair to blame the technology itself for that.

Originally Posted by ChristianHJW

Originally Posted by skeptic

Iceaura
It is entirely rational to quantify risks. Put numbers on them. This is something I have been doing throughout.
It is entirely irrational to demand that people believe something is a high risk without numbers to back up those claims, or worse, to demand something is high risk when the numbers show the opposite.
Nuclear power does, of course, carry a risk factor. But so does every other means of generating electricity large scale. It is relative risk that counts. Here is another number.
Wind energy fatalities come to 0.15 per terrawatt hour, or over 1300 per terrawatt year. This includes a poor woman in Germany who was doing a parachute jump and drifted into the wind turbines. Ouch!Contemporary Mortality (Death) Rates in Wind Energy by Paul Gipe
This compares to 8 deaths per terrawatt year for accidents at nuclear power plants. Total deaths per terrawatt year for nuclear power, including all cancers from Chernobyl, come to between 64 and 500 depending on who is doing the estimates.
So the measured risk from nuclear power is much lower than for wind power.

LOL ..... this post really lifts the whole discussion here onto a new level :-D .....

If somebody is doing a parachute jump close to a field of wind turbines, he must be plain crazy, dumb, or going for suicide. Blaming wind craft energy for being dangerous because of this, is beyond my imagination, sorry. And most other incidents were either people injured or killed during erection of the turbines (that's normal, when people work they are always in danger) or plane accidents, and in the latter case, if a pilot has lost orientation, it doesn't really matter if he will end up in a high voltage power line, in a high tree or in a wind turbine. Again, as soon as you enter an aircraft, you know you are in exposed danger and have to deal with that.

And what about the risks for future generations, after we have left 200 years of nuclear waste on this planet ? What if one of the storages doesn't hold, and releases large amounts of radioactive elements into the ground water, poisoning thousands of square miles of land ?

If it is to be a fair comparison, we should be asking what will happen if people parachute into the cooling tower, or crash their planes into barrels full of nuclear waste, or put incompetent, untrained workers in charge of the reactor.

In a country as large as the USA, you may be able to leave this area, and move elsewhere. In Europe (maybe besides Sweden and Finland), we don't have this opportunity.

Whatever you guys do with nuclear power, one day you - or your ancestors - will have to pay the bills, thats for sure.

ChristianHJW

Good point. There is actually a decommissioned nuclear power plant in the state where I live. Most people don't go near the site. But, like you said: we can spare the space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Originally Posted by ChristianHJW

And what about the risks for future generations, after we have left 200 years of nuclear waste on this planet ?

Are these risks greater than the risks of the coal pollution released because of Germany's decision to shut down their nuclear plants? Please show how you calculated the numbers.

What if one of the storages doesn't hold, and releases large amounts of radioactive elements into the ground water, poisoning thousands of square miles of land ?

Where is the containment vessel for the chemicals produced as a byproduct of solar cell manufacture?

Originally Posted by skeptic

On the risk of a future release of radiation. As I have been at pains to point out, time and again, radiation is a normal part of life. All living things are exposed to it, and evolution has created a lot of tolerance to radiation.

The types of exposures and dosage regimes common to nuke accidents are not a "normal part of life". There is no evidence that evolution has created a lot of tolerance for them, and considerable evidence that they are harmful to most forms of multicellular life.

Absence of research - and the research has proven too difficult and expensive to actually do in many cases (see the UNSCEAR report on Chernobyl for examples of what they had to dismiss from consideration for lack of research), another cost of nuke power not included in the proponents' cost estimates - is not research showing absence.

Originally Posted by kojax

I agree with Christian that it is terribly unfair to blame the technology itself for that.

It is not a case of 'blame'. We can blame a human being for a mistake. We cannot blame a piece of technology. It is just a case of quantifying relative risk. If humans can take sensible action to reduce that risk, then great. In the mean time, I am just providing the numbers that make that risk quantitative.

To Iceaura

I am aware of no evidence that radiation from nuclear power is any different in terms of its health effects compared to natural radiation. Natural radiation is harmful in excess. Radiation from nuclear activities is harmful in excess. It is simply a matter of quantifying exposure. If you have any empirically based objective data to show I am wrong, please post it.

As I have said before, this is a science forum. In science, which is the very best guide to objective truth, data is king. Opinions matter not at all. If you have an opinion which is contrary to the data provided, then it is meaningless until you can come up with better scientific data.

I have been posting data on relative hazards. Data in the form of numbers. Some of those numbers have wide error bars, since they are expert estimates rather than measured numbers, but when that is the case, I admit it. Iceaura seems to be allergic to numbers, but is very good at providing subjective and unsupported opinion.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Originally Posted by kojax

I agree with Christian that it is terribly unfair to blame the technology itself for that.

It is not a case of 'blame'. We can blame a human being for a mistake. We cannot blame a piece of technology. It is just a case of quantifying relative risk. If humans can take sensible action to reduce that risk, then great. In the mean time, I am just providing the numbers that make that risk quantitative.

If someone is driving a car at 200 mph down a race track, their first mistake may be their last. It's a tough call deciding whether the situation (traveling at 200 mph) or the driver was responsible for that. Human error should be singled out when it's the dominant cause, but not when it's just one of many causes.


Some examples of risk, like a plane hitting a windmill, I would put down human error as the dominant cause. It's just as common for small planes to hit power lines, trees, or any number of other looming obstacles which we're not planning to eliminate any time soon. You'd have to demonstrate that the overall crash rate of aircraft has been impacted by the introduction of wind mills to the landscape. (Similar burden of evidence to demonstrating cancer rates to have risen near nuclear accidents.)

For accidents in construction, I think it's fair to say the situation is the dominant source of trouble. It is risky to build huge wind mills. However that's also true of other construction projects, such as high rise building construction, or dam and aquifer construction, or mining (such as mining for coal). Measures can be taken to reduce risk, but there's always going to be a chance of something going wrong. One likes to hope the workers will be apprised of that risk, and that their paychecks will reflect it in some way. This doesn't affect people who aren't involved in the industry though. It only affects people who individually choose to be affected.

Risk of bridge collapsing exists, when it does we build better bridge.

Returning to topic:

http://www.xsunx.com/pdf/39894 Thin ...s 2006 (2).pdf

Originally Posted by skeptic

I am aware of no evidence that radiation from nuclear power is any different in terms of its health effects compared to natural radiation.
- - - -

? Lessee: assuming you did not deliberately intend that typical Fox trick of sliding the subject (from nuclear accident hazard, the topic of the post 493 you replied to, over toward some kind of general fuzzball "radiation" handwaving), you appear to be claiming that you don't know what a "plume" is, what "variation" means, what nonlinear or "threshold" damage implies, what a radionucleotide is, why people take iodine pills in the wake of nuclear accidents but not as a prophylactic against radon exposure in their basements, what nuke debris contamination involves that differs in kind from things like dental X-ray exposure, and so forth.

This is all just "radiation" to you, and you are content with estimated landscape averaging of millisieverts as a description of, say, the various exposure regimes suffered by the victims of Fukushima.

Originally Posted by skeptic

I have been posting data on relative hazards.

You have not. You seem to lack even basic comprehension of the relevant hazards.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Data in the form of numbers.

Ooooh. Numbers. But they're "data". That must mean you aren't some kind of idiotic troll who thinks decimal points are scientific. Can we look forward, then, to your making sense of those numbers with some kind of argument for their relevance and implications? Some day in the near future?

And my favorite part, the Bandarlog moment (these people want respect. No kidding - the following is not a joke. They mean it. They ban people, for disrespecting them):

Harold14370

and Lynx_Fox like this.

This in a thread on solar power economics. From moderators. "Science", you know.

Originally Posted by iceaura

Originally Posted by skeptic

I am aware of no evidence that radiation from nuclear power is any different in terms of its health effects compared to natural radiation.
- - - -

? Lessee: assuming you did not deliberately intend that typical Fox trick of sliding the subject (from nuclear accident hazard, the topic of the post 493 you replied to, over toward some kind of general fuzzball "radiation" handwaving), you appear to be claiming that you don't know what a "plume" is, what "variation" means, what nonlinear or "threshold" damage implies, what a radionucleotide is, why people take iodine pills in the wake of nuclear accidents but not as a prophylactic against radon exposure in their basements, what nuke debris contamination involves that differs in kind from things like dental X-ray exposure, and so forth.

This is all just "radiation" to you, and you are content with estimated landscape averaging of millisieverts as a description of, say, the various exposure regimes suffered by the victims of Fukushima.

You do realize that the millisievert is a measure of the equivalent dose which is an estimation of the biological effects of the different types of radiation on man. As such it is the appropriate unit of measurement. I suppose you think you can estimate these things better than the people who do this for a living.

Originally Posted by skeptic

I have been posting data on relative hazards.

You have not. You seem to lack even basic comprehension of the relevant hazards.

Originally Posted by skeptic

Data in the form of numbers.

Ooooh. Numbers. But they're "data". That must mean you aren't some kind of idiotic troll who thinks decimal points are scientific. Can we look forward, then, to your making sense of those numbers with some kind of argument for their relevance and implications? Some day in the near future?

And my favorite part, the Bandarlog moment (these people want respect. No kidding - the following is not a joke. They mean it. They ban people, for disrespecting them):

Harold14370

and Lynx_Fox like this.

This in a thread on solar power economics. From moderators. "Science", you know.

Well, yes I do like it when people post good logical arguments. Do you have a problem with that?

Originally Posted by harold

You do realize that the millisievert is a measure of the equivalent dose which is an estimation of the biological effects of the different types of radiation on man. As such it is the appropriate unit of measurement.

I'm sure we're all happy to have some kind of unit at hand, for something or other we find "appropriate".

That doesn't solve the problem of measuring the wrong thing in the wrong way, drawing foolish conclusions from the muddle, and apparently not even registering the bizarre nature of them when they are directly pointed out - let alone the actual goofiness we have here of invalidly estimating the wrong thing wrong way measurement to begin with.

Do you understand why people take iodine pills in the wake of possible nuke mishap plume exposure? Do you understand the concept of "plume", the nature of nuclear plant accidents, the hazards of radionucleotides and the concept of variation in exposure regimes, etc?

More to the point - do you have any interest in what the risk of such accidents imposes in the way of costs, compared with the risks of thermal solar power? If not, what are you doing on this thread?

Originally Posted by harold

Well, yes I do like it when people post good logical arguments. Do you have a problem with that?

Only if I have to defer to this kind of dishonest asshattery as if it were "science". If I can simply respond in kind, no problem - it's your forum, the style is yours to set.

Originally Posted by iceaura

Originally Posted by harold

You do realize that the millisievert is a measure of the equivalent dose which is an estimation of the biological effects of the different types of radiation on man. As such it is the appropriate unit of measurement.

I'm sure we're all happy to have some kind of unit at hand, for something or other we find "appropriate".

That doesn't solve the problem of measuring the wrong thing in the wrong way, drawing foolish conclusions from the muddle, and apparently not even registering the bizarre nature of them when they are directly pointed out - let alone the actual goofiness we have here of invalidly estimating the wrong thing wrong way measurement to begin with.

You have directly pointed out nothing of the sort. You have merely blustered about how you disagree with the conclusions of official government agencies.

Do you understand why people take iodine pills in the wake of possible nuke mishap plume exposure? Do you understand the concept of "plume", the nature of nuclear plant accidents, the hazards of radionucleotides and the concept of variation in exposure regimes, etc?

Indeed I do understand those things. What is your point?

More to the point - do you have any interest in what the risk of such accidents imposes in the way of costs, compared with the risks of thermal solar power? If not, what are you doing on this thread?

Yes. The difference in risk posed by the different methods of power generation has been discussed quite extensively, with the conclusion that nuclear poses a low risk. Solar thermal power, as it stands, is not capable of replacing baseload power plants, such as nuclear. So the comparison is pointless.

Originally Posted by harold

Well, yes I do like it when people post good logical arguments. Do you have a problem with that?

Only if I have to defer to this kind of dishonest asshattery as if it were "science". If I can simply respond in kind, no problem - it's your forum, the style is yours to set.