I hope the contributor won't mind me reproducing his post here from another thread.

I think it one of the best seen on these pages.

electricstorminhell

18 March 2011 5:37PM

for those arguing about risk and probability.
in a normal risk assessment, risk = probability of occurrence x severity of consequence.

As in a nuclear reactor the severity of occurrence can be at the top of the scale (catastrophic) despite having a low level of probability, in other other industry it would be considered unacceptable.

The nuclear industry just keeps telling us it is safe and worse, seems to act as if it is.

In 2009 a coolant pipe in the core at Sizewell broke.
Thousands of gallons of highly radioactive water was pumped into the North Sea as a preventative discharge.
The operator claimed to the Nuclear Inspectorate that it was 'unanticipatable'.
The Inspectorate accepted this and didn't fine them.
If the safe life span of a core coolant pipe is 'unanticipatable' nuclear plant risk assessments and maintenance schedules are not worth the paper they are written on.

Worse the only reason we have not had a major incident recently in this country is that safety policy is now discharge, not containment, to prevent the build up of problems.
The amount of 'authorised discharges' in the last decade is in the thousands.
All that radiation is dispersed but doesn't disappear, it accumulates.

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Lets hope that once this mess is resolved there will be a concerted " back to the drawing board" move to sort out issues like storing spent fuel next to reactors and cooling systems that are vulnerable to inundation.

Seems like this is an industry that, due to the rarified nature of its science, ignores some of the more obvious vulnerabilities when it comes to facing a worst case scenario. Or just maybe it is a technology that is literally too hot to handle and is a potential danger to mankind. The pro-nuclear lobby say that it doesn't need a rethink. This crisis proves that further thought wouldn't go amiss.

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Sizewell was shut down for 7 months due to 'excess moisture' - it turned out to be a leak of over a gallon a minute. During the shut down a fire broke out which took 8 fire crews over 7 hours to put out.
The most serious incident was probably in 2007 when a leak at the cooling ponds almost resulted in fuel rods being exposed. The leak was only accidentally spotted by some laundry workers.
We were told that even if the leak had been not been discovered there was no chance of the rods igniting. This is now obviously not true and went against the data available at the time (see nureg1738)
Nuclear power has one advantage and that is that most of the risk for the tax payer and not the power companies.
The government should work on an energy policy that benefits the people of this country and not work hand in hand with the power companies to help their profits.

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@mini37: TEPCO website press releases in relation to the incident at Fukushima http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/index-e.html
This is link to the press releases by TEPCO

Bored, sick and tired of all this hysteria.
Guardian, do some real journalism instead of speculating over something that, compared to the rest of the disaster, is of minimal importance or need for coverage.

@myspecialeye
WHO: "No health risk outside of evacuation zone"
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/19_04.html
We can trust their sources as much as our own, don't be so ignorant. The fact is that the Western media have loved sexing up a small part of a bigger picture with conjecture and speculation. All this achieves is hysteria, the spread misinformation and non-truths, and of course a healthy dose of panic, too. Shitty journalism is shitty. Get it together Guardian.

Something that wasn't that bad, in relative terms, just got better! Great!
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/19_28.html

kafkathejock
19 March 2011 3:55PM

I don't honestly see how you can have such a naive attitude.

The evacuation zone is 20km, the stay in doors and no fly zone extends to 30km. The US recommended evacuation zone is a radius of 80km which equates to 20000 sq km. Admittedly half that area is the ocean but never the less if you think that is trivial I would like to know what you call a disaster.

Radioactive particles have been found in the drinking water in Tokyo 175 miles away. The authorities have said the radiation levels are not dangerous, so would you be willing to drink a litre of this water? They are right about the radiation of course, but what they don't tell the people about is the risks of radioactive particles inhaled or accidentally eaten.

Oh and one last thing the Japanese have a history of covering up atomic accidents over the years, it is in their interests to play down such events.

After all small amount of ingested radioactive particles won't kill you immediately, but will have long term health implications.

How would you like your cancer sir? ....... shaken or stirred!!

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France has been reporting and informing its citizens that dispersed radiation is expected to reach France around Wednesday/Thursday, although saying that it is not hazardous... here's a link to the IRSN model:

http://www.irsn.fr/FR/popup/Pages/irsn-meteo-france_19mars.aspx

@ Annalena
and if the French plants explode, the radiation will reach the rest of Europe within 24 hours.

for those arguing about risk and probability.
in a normal risk assessment, risk = probability of occurrence x severity of consequence.

As in a nuclear reactor the severity of occurrence can be at the top of the scale (catastrophic) despite having a low level of probability, in other other industry it would be considered unacceptable.

Not only that, but the severity of the consquence can't even be put on normal scales. Those scales were devised and designed to manage discrete occurences (in other ones those whose consquences can be reversed). Nuclear consquences are indiscriminate and we have not the techonology to deal with them. Therefore the normal risk scales shouldn't even be used to "manage" them. At this point risk management gets superseded by risk issue management. Which isn't the same thing at all.

There is a reason that nuclear powerstations cannot get insurance. Why should the public be expected to pay? Especially those publics not getting any benefit or use out of the electricity supplied from the private powerplant?

With regard to acceptable radiation levels in food. I think the current comparisons being made between radioactive levels measured in food in Japan and the amount of radiation one receives in a CT scan are both misleading and potentially dangerous. A CT scan bombards the body with a focused beam of radiation which passes through the body and ceases the moment the machine is switched off. Over exposure to this type of radiation can be harmful, but normally this is not the case. Ingesting a radioactive isotope is an entirely different matter. Unless the half-life of the isotope is incredibly short, the consumer is being exposed for a very long time to an extremely dangerous toxin. The isotope may remain in their system for a very long time with cumulative effects. Remember the case of Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned with polonium-210. The isotope is difficult to detect because it emits such a small dose of radiation, but it killed Mr Litvinenko in around two weeks. Polonium-210 can be handled relatively safely, but once ingested it is fatal.

Lets have a better analysis of the effects of ingesting radioactive pollutants please.

@Serpifeu

yes i do realise that!

*rolls eyes*

A reassessment of nuclear energy is required; one based on facts and reasoning.

Anyone who says there is no problem is in denial, deluded, or their words are strategic.

Nuclear energy is not something to take chances with.

Any technology that we choose to use, we have a duty to use it responsibly.

A quote springs to mind: (I remember it being by Aldous Huxley, however I cannot find the quote to confirm this)

The quote is:

no discovery in itself is either good or bad but depends on man what he does with it.

Hopefully, the situation at the Fukushima plant has reached its peak in terms of danger, and the slow process of control and containment can begin.

The way I see it: what comes out of the Fukushima events: too close for comfort.

@DavidDavenport
yes, lets all panic.
Alexander Litvinenko was given about 2microgrammes of Polonium210, about 10 times the lethal dose.
2 microgrammes of P210 has an activity of about 1.66 Gbq, so 1.6 Billion nuclear decays per second
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning]

The reported radiation in food and water has been between 1.5bq/kg up to 400bq/kg - there has been a lot of varation in the reports, but those are figures commonly seen. The legal limit is 300bq/kg
[http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T110320002851.htm]

To put this into perspective:
Coffee = 1,000bq/kg
Brazil nuts = 460bq/kg
Granit = 63bq/kg (so if you're in a granit building, it's quite a bit)
Cornwall soil = 1000bq/kg
[http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm]
[http://www.rsc.org/images/number6_tcm18-17768.pdf]

So yes, you can compare this to Alexander Litvinenko, but only if you're prepared to eat about a million tonnes of spinach

@FreeBeing
I agree, an assessment based on facts and reasoning would be great. So far the facts are;
1. The plants coped very well with the crisis, and no-one has died from radiation, and no one is likely to. The level people have been exposed to is too low to show a real change in cancer risk, and that isn't going to change.
2. The media has sold a lot of colum inches by making a big thing about this. Go media. Great journalism.
3. Living in cornwall (from a radiation perspective) is about 10 times worse *at any time* than living next to Fukushima *right now*
4. A coal fired power station generates about 100 times the radioactivity into the environment than a nuclear power station
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
5. Coal mining 1000 people each and every year, directly from mine accidents, and indirectly many hundreds more from polution etc. Mining Uranium doesn't.
[www.msha.gov/mshainfo/factsheets/mshafct2.htm]
6. the list is long, but you just have a nuclear soapbox, don't you?

Why are we being told that although the levels of radioacitivity in food are significantly higher than allowed they're still safe! Basically, as the levels rise they just keep changing the numbers to suit themselves.

Further, "proof" of the minimal effect is made by comparing the dose to a CT scans, but this is highly ingenious as ingestion of radioactive particles is a lot different to a short exposure to an X-ray, as pointed out above. In this case the radioactive particles stay inside you and continually iradiate the surrounding tissue.

It seems to me there is a clear campaign to downplay the dangers in the interest of big business.

@SPMofSA
maybe you noticed that radioactivity is being reported in two different types of way (lots of different measurements actually, but two categories)

1. Activity, which is ofter reported in Becquerels (nuclear decays per second) or Curie, where 1 Ci = 3.7×1010 decays per second. There are others such as rem, rads etc. but they are all interchangeable. It is important to note here that the type of radiation is citical, with different types having different effects - alpha radiation is nasty when swallowed or inhaled, but not bad outside the body, beta rays are just bad.

2. The sievert which is the SI derived unit of dose equivalent radiation. Can also be reported in Grays. This translates the effect of the different types of radiation into the effect on the body.

So two similar numbers in Sieverts have the same effect - which is why you *can* compare a Cat scan with eating "glow in the dark" spinach, wherease two similar activity numbers might not be the same, unless they refer to the same type of radiation.

So you are right, those scientist types have been ingenious in finding useful ways of talking about radiation without getting hysterical.

Here is a nice article for all the hyserical anti-nuclear power people.

[http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html]

In reference to my above posts, the deaths for coal in this article don't include the mining deaths, just the estimate for cancer or lung damage related deaths from polution.

So after we stop all Nuclear power, we can stop every other type of energy production, since they are all more dangerous than nuclear from the perspective of the number of people they kill.

Nobody wants Fukushima to go pear-shaped, but if it does you can expect lots of disinformation. This is why all those embassies wanted to evacuate their nationals. If it burns it will be a world event.

Washington’s Blog
March 19, 2011

Science Insider noted yesterday:

The Daiichi complex in Fukushima, Japan … had a total of 1760 metric tons of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site last year, according to a presentation by its owners, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). The most damaged Daiichi reactor, number 3, contains about 90 tons of fuel, and the storage pool above reactor 4, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Gregory Jaczko reported yesterday had lost its cooling water, contains 135 tons of spent fuel. The amount of fuel lost in the core melt at Three Mile Island in 1979 was about 30 tons; the Chernobyl reactors had about 180 tons when the accident occurred in 1986.

That means that Fukushima has nearly 10 times more nuclear fuel than Chernobyl.

It also means that a single spent fuel pool – at reactor 4, which has lost all of its water and thus faces a release of its radioactive material - has 75% as much nuclear fuel as at all of Chernobyl.

However, the real numbers are even worse.

Specifically, Tepco very recently transferred many more radioactive spent fuel rods into the storage pools. According to Associated Press, there were – at the time of the earthquake and tsunami – 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools plus 877 tons of active fuel in the cores of the reactors.

That totals 4,277 tons of nuclear fuel at Fukushima.

Japanese cancer deaths and what re-condensed plutonium looks like:

http://noincineratorforcroydon.blogspot.com/2009/10/where-did-mushroom-clouds-go.html

The ingested or inhaled plutonium just sits there,stuck in some dying lymphocyte,like coal dust, and gives a cumultive radiation dose to the local tissue that is very large and carcinogenic.The autoradiographs of monkey lungs do not look pretty, with star shaped alpha particle tracks,lasting for 24,000 years, 10 1/2 lives to be safe (What does that mean for the soil and agriculture?). You should live so long!

@Lioc
You've pointed out some pretty interesting numbers above re radiation emited from various sources which adds a valuable perspective to the levels around the plant.

The fact remains, however, that the impact of an ingested particle is a lot different to a CT scan. Basically, the effects are ongoing and localised, the alpha and beta particles are not stopped by the skin, and the ionising gamma radiation is not attenuated much.

You state above that the emissions from a coal fired plant are much higher than a nuclear plant but this is not true when a major failure which emits a lot of radioactive particles locally. This local effect is clearly higher than from a coal plant otherwise we wouldn't be talking about the elevated levels in Japanese food, they'd be high all the time. Also, if the levels in Cornwall are 10 times worse than arond the plant why can we still buy food from Cornwall?

@SPMofSA

Actually, no, when converted into Sievert they are equivilent (or as close as possible), obviously there isn't a way to be 100% certain since different people react to radiation in different ways. and experimentation on people isn't done, but there is a lot of relevant experience to build on, Radium from the '20's, the Windscale fire, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Arizona, etc.
The conversion includes the fact that the particles sits there, where as a CT scan is a short process. In the case of Iodine 131 for example, the amount of radioactivity is halved every 8 days, so after 80 days you are are 1/1000th of the initial dose - it's not forever.

To your last paragraph, unfortunatly it is true. If you agregate the radiation from coal, it exceeds the radiation from all nuclear accidents (not including nuclear weapons).

Locally, it is important to remember that the majority of the radiation detected outside the gates of the plant is actually very difficult to distinguish from the normal backgroun radiation anyway, and is at most 50% of the normal background radiation for that region - which is anyway quite low compared to most of the rest of the world. There have been higher reading, agreed, but they are still not in any danger zone.

One of the quite little issues that gets missed over all this is that the permissable doses for food were set a long time ago by a civil servant who didn't understand radioactivity. He thought that 300bq/kg sounded pretty high, so that is where the limit is, but as I mentioned above, any number of common foods exceed that amount, so by quite a lot. Coffee for example.

Globally, cornwall isn't actually that high - living in Ramsur in Iran would cause you to automatically exceed the elevated limit for radiation workers of 250mSv per yer, since the background radiation there is 260mSv (and incidentally doesn't seem to cause them any increased cancer risks)

People don't tend to measure radioactivity for food next to coal plants (I can't find any info directly on that), so it's difficult to directly answer your point, except to note that the reported increase is tiny, and still doesn't take it past background level.

@SPMofSA

BTW, to be clear, yes, current radiation from Fukushima does exceed that from a typical coal power plant. However this radiation will go away, most of it in a matter of weeks. Coal power plants are there for decades.

Total confirmed direct deaths from the nuclear power industry are less than 100, with a few hundred more from cancer. This is my estimate.

Chernobyl = 28 direct radiation deaths
Windscale = 0 direct radiation deaths
Three Mile Island = 0 direct radiation deaths
Fukushima = 0 Direct radiation deaths
[criticality events] at least 21
Other events ~ probably some, lets double the above = +49

Cancer deaths: difficult to establish
Chernobyl = several hundred
Windscale = ~240 (however this was a military event, not a nuclear power event)
Three Mile Island ~ 0 (no difference in cancer rate could be detected)
Fukushima = too early to tell
Other poorly reported Russian events ~ 200-300

Clearly this is my quick estimate, not properly researched, but that is since 1945. Moer than that die every year from pretty much any other power source.

Democracy Now:

Interview :

KARL GROSSMAN: Yeah. They have known the consequences all along. This is a report—it’s called "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2"—done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not Greenpeace, and it projects peak early fatalities, peak injuries, peak cancer deaths, scale cost in billions in terms of property damage, and a large hunk of the earth being rendered uninhabitable for millennia. And just, for example, for the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant, which is about 35 miles from where we sit now in New York, 50,000 peak early fatalities; 167,000 peak early injuries; cancer deaths, 14,000; scale cost of billions, they say $314 billion—in 1980s dollars, we’re talking about a trillion.

JUAN GONZALEZ: You’re saying that the NRC itself estimated a 50/50 chance of a meltdown in our plants here within 20 years?

KARL GROSSMAN: Over a 20-year period. That was formal testimony provided to a watchdog committee in Congress chaired by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts, when he asked the question, "What does the NRC and its staff believe the likelihood to be of a severe core meltdown?"

@Lioc
Your figures are indescribably, awfully, minimisingly wrong.Speechless.Chernobyl caused 200,000 miscarriages Europe wide within first few years, and the lifetime deaths are approx1,000,000.I will not bore you with the references.

You seem to be completetly unaware of the deliberate, extended and international campaign, from Hiroshima and Nagasaki onwards, to steal data, censor data, do diversionary pseudoscientific reserach, essentially hide the truth. If only I were paranoid.

There is a segment of the Japanese population that know about Dr. Masao Tsuzuki, how useless the ABCC/RERF research was, and what the truth really was.If the Lucky Dragon reawakened their rage against the US, and convinced them that fallout existed, and that they had been lied to, how much more will they ,now, eventually rail against the government and TEPCO, when the plutonium covered vegetable plots bear their real significance.

@SMOGBAD
lets have some links. Otherwise I guess you're just smog.

@FreeBeing

I am sure that if you actually read the report, you would know that it does not quite support your argument.

also the NRC has this to say about the report:

NRC disclaimer of CRAC-II and NUREG-1150

"The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has devoted considerable research resources, both in the past and currently, to evaluating accidents and the possible public consequences of severe reactor accidents. The NRC's most recent studies have confirmed that early research into the topic led to extremely conservative consequence analyses that generate invalid results for attempting to quantify the possible effects of very unlikely severe accidents. In particular, these previous studies did not reflect current plant design, operation, accident management strategies or security enhancements. They often used unnecessarily conservative estimates or assumptions concerning possible damage to the reactor core, the possible radioactive contamination that could be released, and possible failures of the reactor vessel and containment buildings. These previous studies also failed to realistically model the effect of emergency preparedness. The NRC staff is currently pursuing a new, state-of-the-art assessment of possible severe accidents and their consequences."

HAZARDS OF BOILING WATER REACTORS IN THE UNITED STATES

In 1976, three General Electric nuclear engineers publicly resigned their prestigious positions citing dangerous shortcomings in the GE design.

An NRC analysis of the potential failure of the Mark I under accident conditions concluded in a 1985 report that Mark I failure within the first few hours following core melt would appear rather likely."

In 1986, Harold Denton, then the NRC's top safety official, told an industry trade group that the "Mark I containment, especially being smaller with lower design pressure, in spite of the suppression pool, if you look at the WASH 1400 safety study, you'll find something like a 90% probability of that containment failing."

Extensive cracking of circumferential welds on the core shroud has been discovered in a growing number of U.S. and foreign BWRs. A lateral shift along circumferential cracks at the welds by as little as 1/8 inch can result in the misalignment of the fuel and the inability to insert the control rods coupled with loss of fuel core cooling capability. This scenario can result in a core melt accident

@Lioc

From your quote:

....led to extremely conservative consequence analyses

Revelation of Endless N-damage Cover-ups: the “TEPCO scandal” and the adverse trend of easing inspection standards

On August 29 at 6 p.m., the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) announced
at a press conference that TEPCO had falsified
voluntary inspection reports and concealed it
for many years. TEPCO admitted the stated
facts at the press conference later in the same
day. According to the agency, TEPCO has
falsified the inspection records and attempted
to hide cracks in reactor vessel shrouds in 13
units of the 17 nuclear power plants owned by
TEPCO, including Fukushima I (6 reactors),
Fukushima II (4 reactors), and Kashiwazaki-
Kariwa (7 reactors).

TEPCO's Damage Cover-up and Data Falsification

@FreeBeing
So your saying that BWRs should be replaced, and that more regulation is needed? Fine by me. Reactor design has indeed been improved since the 70's and 80's.

Find any information about how may events have actually happened?
I think you will find the answer to be 4, Chernobyl, and the 3 reactors at Fukushima.

How many people have actually been killed? That would be 28 I guess, Chernobyl.

I am sure you have an actual point, but it escapes me. Designs improve, things get safer. This is good.

@FreeBeing

"TEPCO's Damage Cover-up and Data Falsification"

So your saying that more regulation is needed? Fine by me. True for all industries.

@FreeBeing

@Lioc

From your quote:

....led to extremely conservative consequence analyses

When you are writing a risk report, conservative means you look at the worst case, not the best case.

Severe Accident Recriticality Analyses (SARA)

The results of the analyses show that all three codes predict recriticality

MELCOR calculations of long-term containment response to predicted quasi steady-state
recriticality powers have shown that the containment would fail within a few hours after
recriticality if the accident is not mitigated.

@FreeBeing

I don't think you posted the link you meant to...

If a non nuclear power company has an accident, for example BP in the gulf, then they must bear the costs of any damages caused by the accident, including compensatory payments.

If a nuclear power company has an accident that costs above a certain threshold for the damage, then the full cost is not beared by the company but by the taxpayer.

This does not even take into account the relative levels of potential harm from various accidents.

The nuclear industry is subsidised.

Guardian:

Nuclear power generators will face £1bn in clean-up costs after an accident.

At present any operator of a nuclear site only has to pay the first £140m towards clean-up costs with the taxpayer contributing the rest.

Currently, any operator of a nuclear site only has to pay the first £140m towards clean-up costs, with the taxpayer contributing the rest.

The cap, enshrined in European treaties, was introduced because no company can obtain insurance against a nuclear accident – or would want to shoulder the risk themselves – because the costs could potentially be limitless.

Many environmentalists argue that agreeing to cover any costs above £140m amounts to a public subsidy, which the Conservative and Liberal Democrats have promised not to provide to the industry.

Also:

Taxpayer could be hit by nuclear waste bill for new reactors

The nuclear industry could end up passing on to taxpayers the costs of disposing of waste from new reactors under government plans, according to official documents seen by the Guardian.

@FreeBeing

Severe Accident Recriticality Analyses (SARA)

Though of course it is worth noting that this report fairly accuratly describes what happened at Cherobyl, which is nice, 10 years after the event.

Again, I am not sure of your point.

Improve designs? Yes.
Replace old reactors? Yes.
Panic. Fine by me, just try not to run me over - which is the highest risk factor for a nuclear event, people killing each other trying to get away

THE NRC AND NUCLEAR POWER PLANT SAFETY IN 2010

In 2010, the NRC reported on 14 special
inspections it launched in response to troubling
events, safety equipment problems, and security
shortcomings at nuclear power plants. This report
provides an overview of each of these significant
events, or “near-misses.”
This overview shows that many of these significant
events occurred because reactor owners, and
often the NRC, tolerated known safety problems.

FINDINGS
Overall, our analysis of NRC oversight of safetyrelated
events and practices at U.S. nuclear power
plants in 2010 suggests these conclusions:
• Nuclear power plants continue to experience
problems with safety-related equipment and
worker errors that increase the risk of damage to
the reactor core—and thus harm to employees
and the public.
• Recognized but misdiagnosed or unresolved
safety problems often cause significant events at
nuclear power plants, or increase their severity.
• When onsite NRC inspectors discover a broken
device, an erroneous test result, or a maintenance
activity that does not reflect procedure,
they too often focus just on that problem. Every
such finding should trigger an evaluation of why
an owner failed to fix a problem before NRC
inspectors found it.

3.2 PREVIOUS STUDIES ON SAFETY AND SECURITY OF POOL STORAGE

The overall conclusion of the study was that the risk of a spent fuel pool accident leading to a zirconium cladding fire was low despite the large consequences because the predicted frequency of such accidents was very low. The study also concluded, however, that the consequences of a zirconium cladding fire in a spent fuel pool could be serious and, that once the fuel was uncovered, it might take only a few hours for the most recently discharged spent fuel rods to ignite.

(Re - Post with correct link)

Severe Accident Recriticality Analyses (SARA)

The results of the analyses show that all three codes predict recriticality

MELCOR calculations of long-term containment response to predicted quasi steady-state
recriticality powers have shown that the containment would fail within a few hours after
recriticality if the accident is not mitigated.

@FreeBeing

long quote about how it's all too expensive.

A good point. The nuclear industry is too expensive. The only real argument against it I think. Might look quite cheap though when the fully loaded costs of other methods are consiered.

If you want to stop Nuclear Power get the subsedies taken away. Poorly researched arguements about risks will never make the case, economics might.

The challenge is to factor in the cost of climate change for Oil and Gas power, and I doubt anyone will ever manage to convince anyone of their answers on that one.

Personally, I would prefer to (and do) live next to a Nuclear Power Station rather than a Coal or Oil fired one. I can see my Nuke station from where I am, it's about 5k away I think.

@lioc

I agree, an assessment based on facts and reasoning would be great. So far the facts are;

You have not given any facts.

You have made personal assessments and presented them as such. You have not provided sources. Your comparisons are not valid. You have speculated.

1. Your own assessment

2. Your assessment

3. No source

4. Invalid comparison

5. Incomplete information or innacurate reporting of information.

6. Speculation.

The risk is immeasurable even with the most 'conservative' calculations, due to the severity of the dangers.

How many non - nuclear power stations have a 20km exclusion zone? And a 30km stay indoors zone? (80km US / UK recommended exclusion zone).

The bottom line: If a containment is ever breached, then radiation leaks.

Until the industry is ready to accept all responsibility and liability for any incident, then why should a Nuclear Power Co. be allowed to operate?

@lioc

I am sure that if you actually read the report, you would know that it does not quite support your argument.

Evidence?

So your saying that BWRs should be replaced, and that more regulation is needed?

That’s you putting words into my mouth.