While there are some very real issues at Hanford, the issue this week has been vastly blown out of proportion in the media (I work fairly near to the the location). There is a massive amount of work that has gone into detection of any kind of nuclear leak around here.
This seems to be universal with anything involving radioactivity.
The local media (aka, seattle) seems to have gotten the level of actual danger correct.. it was a 30 second blurb on NPR with a statement indicating no radioactivity had been released.
The media outrage is because the federal government has failed to clean up a project started ~30 years ago. Every time something bad happens (tunnel collapse, workers speak out when the federal gov't shafts them on health issues) it's like re-opening the wound.
I mean, how many times has Washington sued the federal government over this thing? Two? Three?
While this particular issue may not be much of a change, the overall situtaion still seems like one worth drawing attention to at any opportunity to encourage the federal government to stop putting off cleaning it up.
The window for nuclear energy has come and gone. Time to embrace renewables.
People can argue about safety of nuclear or storage of nuclear waste until the cows come home but what they can't argue against is government incompetence.
We need to embrace clean energy solutions that don't hold us hostage down the line.
All other forms of renewable (And non-renewable) energy generation kill more people then nuclear does, per KWH produced.
More people fall off roofs installing solar panels, then die in nuclear accidents.
Far more people die from hydro dam failures, then they do from nuclear accidents. Every hydroelectric dam is a loaded gun, pointed at the city downstream. Most of them are managed by the 'incompetent government.'
Also, Hanford isn't dangerous because of power generation. It is dangerous, to the extent it is, because of the crash effort to build weapons to defeat the Nazis and then to win the Cold War.
The Wikipedia entry is silent on non-rooftop solar installations, and I'm struggling to find good numbers. Can anyone with more experience in this sector point me in the right direction?
I would hazard a guess that non-rooftop installation is substantially safer than getting on a roof. I would also guess that nuclear would be more hazardous if reactors were installed on roofs.
I think the right conclusion is "they're both really safe". It's like people comparing things to the number of shark attacks per year. The number is so low that most things are more dangerous.
>How many deaths occur from solar once it is built/installed?
Well if we are talking about what would happen if energy was produced entirely with solar/wind wouldn't you have to include things like the people freezing to death during a string of cloudy yet still winter days?
It's pretty absurd to compare the operating hazards of nuclear plants to buildouts of residential solar. How many workers on nuclear plant construction projects have died per man-hour vs solar? It's akin to saying that hamburgers are less dangerous than avocados because more people have choked on avocado pits.
How are you accounting for deaths caused by waste containment problems over the next 10,000 years? In the Hanford case you have even nastier chemical and radiological materials on site prone to leakage or unintentional exposure in the future millennia.
Yes, nuclear accidents increase mutation rate and with it the occurrence of various forms of cancer, but it seems those mutations aren't passed on to next generations (layman's explanation: if it doesn't kill you, it's unlikely to have an effect on your children. If it _does_ kill you, you aren't likely to have children) http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/genetics_e/birthdef.html:
"No statistically significant increase in major birth defects or other untoward pregnancy outcomes was seen among children of survivors. Monitoring of nearly all pregnancies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki began in 1948 and continued for six years.
[...]
In addition, a clinical health study of about 12,000 individuals was conducted between 2002 and 2006 with a focus on lifestyle diseases, based on the idea that adulthood is when disorders from radiation effects may develop. In this study, possible relationships between parental exposure and a combination of six multifactorial diseases (e.g., diabetes and hypertension) were analyzed, taking into consideration such lifestyle habits as drinking and smoking. The results showed no evidence at this time of increased risk of these multifactorial diseases among the target individuals. However, given that the subjects were still young at the time of the health examinations, with an average age of 48.6, it would be desirable to continue the clinical health study of this fixed cohort."
"WHETHER THE ATOMIC BOMBS dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki will have detectable genetic effects on the Japanese is a question of widespread interest. The purpose of the present note is to show briefly that (1) many difficulties beset any attempt to obtain a valid answer to this question and (2) even after a long-term study, such as that outlined below, it still may not be possible to determine just how much genetic damage was done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
It's the exclusion zones that create a no man's land for decades or more every time there's an accident.
The exclusion zones usually encompass and affect residential areas and water supplies. People who buy houses or own homes in proximity to potential areas of effect take this point of contention very seriously.
Geography and evacuation infrastructure often plays a key role in arguments. From an urban planning perspective, over decades, creeping population density can paint pictures of curious outcomes in the shadow of an incident. Many people have a hard time thinking in these terms.
Yes, people live near active volcanoes too, but even with that, the idea is that you can return maybe a week later, and not deal with an eruption for the rest of your life.
People have an odd calculus for thess kinds of things.
"A comprehensive assessment by international experts on the health risks associated with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) disaster in Japan has concluded that, for the general population inside and outside of Japan, the predicted risks are low and no observable increases in cancer rates above baseline rates are anticipated"
No, it doesn't. This is also FUD. Fukushima is a local environmental disaster - not a global one. It has done nothing to natural seawater radiation levels.
We are detecting a 'large' increase in radioactive Cesium in the world's oceans. It is, however, dwarfed by the amount of naturally radioactive potassium already dissolved in it. Radiation levels 500km from the disaster site have increased... By 2%.
The way I understood it 'FUD' refers to a propaganda tactic that consists of aggressively spreading misinformation in order to spread (as the name suggests) fear, uncertainty, and doubt about your opponents' arguments. The key being that the person seeding the misinformation knows the information to be false or dubious.
Expressing concern isn't even close to the same thing.
Maybe I'm being overly sensitive about this, but I can't help but feel that if 'that's spreading fear / uncertainty / doubt' is considered a valid argument, then it can be used to dismiss anyone expressing concern or questioning something. Which in my opinion should be avoided at all costs.
>'FUD' refers to a propaganda tactic that consists of aggressively spreading misinformation
... which is exactly what has been going on for quite some time. There is a very real and very vocal anti-nuclear contingent that has been active for decades. Some of it is players in the fossil fuel industry who don't want their market share diminished. A much larger, much more vocal portion is the moonbats (Greenpeace, et al.) who have never considered any option other than "tax the rich to build more solar panels everywhere". They've been churning out propaganda for decades and their propaganda is what most people have heard and listened to. End-of-the-world-as-we-know-it emotional appeals are much more convincing to the layman than are actual scientific, logical explanations. I think FUD is a very accurate term to describe the current popular views of nuclear power.
OK, but the point of energy generation is to produce KWH or something like it. The point of stairs is not to travel miles. So you're comparing how well something meets its intended use with how well something else meets something other than its intended use.
And yet, earlier this year, 200,000 had to be evacuated because a dam in California nearly broke.
If 200,000 people in the US had to be evacuated because a nuclear reactor nearly went critical, every single nuclear plant in the country would have been shut down.
There's no risk to being somewhere a nuclear reactor melted down a billion years ago, either. The vast majority of radioactivity comes from short lived isotopes - Iodine, Caesium, and Strontium mostly.
And what precisely do you mean by "seeing and avoiding"? Ugo the caveman sees a slowly rising river, Ugo runs to the village, village safely runs away? Erm, no.
When you see a flood wave several stories in height, you may have a few split seconds to start videorecording on your phone, maybe the phone will be found afterwards and handed over to your surviving out-of-town relatives, it will make a nice clip in evening news...
With floods, you rely on authorities and early warning systems just as much as in radioactivity, actually you can buy a cheap dosimeters/Geiger counters and there are enthusiast networked detectors - but did you put a webcam with trained CV model on all surrounding flood paths? Did you put chemical sensors around all railway tracks in the neighborhood or do you just as well rely on "seeing, understanding and avoiding" a chlorine gas cloud?
It is just the prehistorical evolutionary parts of the brain speaking - we see flood, radioactivity we don't, danger, quickly bash it with a stick!
Eighty years ago that was the case. Fifty years ago that was the case in many places. Today that is no longer the case. There are very robust and effective sensor networks in any and every location where there exists any possibility of a radioactive concern.
The point stands - for the individual it is very reassuring to be able perceive a danger. And not all radiation sources have masses of alarms near them. Hospitals for example don't put detectors everywhere and they have some very nasty radiation sources.
> but what they can't argue against is government incompetence.
They can't? Governments are supposed to legislate based on the demands of the public. When you demand a stop to all nuclear power, the budget for the existing installations requires more political capital, making these kinds of events more likely.
Oh, and there is renewable nuclear energy. There's a bit of a controversy over it, the petroleum industry has spent a lot of money to say that it isn't renewable.
Or you can over-provision with renewables (which are cheap and getting cheaper all the time), or have utility/grid/home power storage, or balance renewable generation from different parts of the country/globe - it's always windy/sunny somewhere. There are lots of options.
Although that might _seem_ reasonable on its face, during peak periods (i.e. mid-winter during a cold snap), usually that other place you can get extra wind/sun supply from is on the other side of the globe.
Did you really read the article? The Hanford site was used in the 80s to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. An accident there is related to nuclear energy in the same way that forest fires are related to fireplaces.
Actually the Hanford site goes back to the manhatten project where it was used to produce plutonium and since that time continued to produce the fuel for our nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. One of the original reactors from the manhatten project is now open for tours and its fascinating to visit. Highly recommend for anyone nearby in the PNW to check it out. (Google "manhatten project b reactor".)
The point is that the Hanford site is unrelated to the future use of nuclear for energy production, not that in the past nuclear energy production and nuclear defense have been entwined.
