The France Syndrome

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14883521

There's been a fatal explosion at a French nuclear plant. However, it seems to be an industrial accident and there's no risk of radiation leaking.


Which is good but now it's time for another round of poorly thought out fear of nuclear power. And in a nation like France that gets 75% of its power from nuclear energy that's a serious issue.

Frankly, this bothers to me to no end. Yes, the nuclear industry has some problems that it needs to fix. But the FEAR of nuclear accidents far outstripes the risks or the facts. Look at Three Mile Island. To this day it's a buzz word for the dangers of nuclear power. But the fact is that no one was hurt or killed at TMI and the amont of radiation people around the plant were exposed to is the same amount you get when you fly on a plane. The freakout over TMI had more to do with "The China Syndrome" hitting theaters tweleve days before the accident than any actual FACTS about what happened.

So expect a nice extra bit of freaking out over nuclear power across Europe and people demanding it be cut back without giving the *slightest* thought as to where the energy that would be lost will come from. Followed by clueless complaining about increases in energy bills.

Comments

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

I'd rather call it the Japan syndrome. Or even further back, the Chernobyl syndrome. People will freak out even if someone sneezes in a nuclear power station.

[cill-ros.livejournal.com]

Yes, no one at all is giving any thought to developing alternative energy sources. And nuclear power is a cheap and environmentally safe form of power. *nods*

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Thought and action aren't the same thing. And yeah, as a whole nuclear is a pretty safe form of energy.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the Uranium ore is just as finite as coal or oil. We can't keep using this forever, even if we discount the risks of storage of nuclear waste and the threat of radioactive material getting into the wrong hands.

We really need to consider renewables, and scaling back demand to match what we can make with wind and solar power, etc.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you don't know about nuclear fusion and sea water.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Trust me, I live on an island, I know quite a bit about sea water. We can use waves, as well as tidal power, to generate electricity, but oil at present remains the main source of our power, and it is running out. we need to look at renewable alternatives, but uranium ore is not renewable.

If you think there is a cheap way of doing nuclear fusion invovling sea water, though , I am all ears. It hasn't been on New Scientist since the big debate on cold fusion that one was thrown out as impossible.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

If we abandon the nuclear industry we're never going to get to "cheap." Research takes time, money and will.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately nuclear fusion still doesn't work.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

It's still an idea with a lot of potential.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

And has been just 10 years away for at least 40 years.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

They've been workin' on flying cars longer but I still have faith.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

However by instituting a closed fuel cycle rather then the current open fuel cycle, we can extend affordable nuclear power for a much longer time, and the waste products are only dangerous for hundreds vs thousands of years.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

But is has a much higher energy density. One Kilo of uranium produces about the same amount of energy as several 100 tonnes of coal. Waste is an issue but molten-salt and other "Exotic" Reators look like they have the potential to solve that problem.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

With a bit of active exploration we have enough uranium to last thousands of years.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Yes, but what it lacks in renewability, it makes up for in potency, and concentrated energy. Fossil fuels will run their course generations before we could possibly exhaust fissile uranium.

It's a good time-buyer if nothing else.

"We really need to consider renewables, and scaling back demand to match what we can make with wind and solar power, etc."

Not so likely. Renewables are often diffuse, requiring eating up vast tracts of acreage, and I don't think you're keen yet on how much cutting back society would have to do (and how regressive it would have to go) in order to not have to dot solar panels in every open space, national parks and preserves included.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

Renewable energy accounted for 11.14 percent of the domestically produced electricity in the United States in the first six months of 2010.[1] Hydroelectricity is the largest producer of renewable power in the United States. In 2009, the U.S. was the world's largest producer of electricity from geothermal, solar and wind power and it trailed only China in the total production of renewable energy.

From wikepedia.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

You know...there are lots of accidents at fossil-fuel and hydroelectric power plants...

seventy-five dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano-Shushenskaya_hydro_accident)
eleven dead (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=abTSuT2fsxR4)
five dead (http://www.middletownpress.com/articles/2010/02/07/news/doc4b6ef2d228983062585943.txt)
three dead (http://www.salemnews.com/local/x1150907103/State-faults-engineer-outside-inspector-in-fatal-power-plant-accident)
six injured (http://www.wjactv.com/news/26817783/detail.html)
six injured, different state, same kind of accident (http://wtaq.com/news/articles/2011/feb/10/pennsylvania-power-plant-accident-injures-six-work/)

...yet there are no uber-scary media/popular shit-storms of hyperbolic "omfg we gotta close down all the plants now!!" overreaction, like the kind you see with nuclear power. I know that for many (stupid) people, nuclear power (stupidly) conjures up (stupid) images of the China Syndrome, mushroom clouds, and leather-armored warriors toting assault rifles around a post-apocalyptic wasteland (okay, I'm playing Fallout 2 at the moment, which is kind of ironic for purposes of this post...), but it's just so, well, stupid. I'd rather live on a nuke plant's doorstep than live within a hundred miles of a coal plant, considering the one provides clean energy and the other gives me asthma attacks.

I mean, of all the hundreds of nuclear power plants in the world, how many truly serious radiation-spewing accidents have there been since the 1950s? Two, and while being horrific in terms of lives lost and land ruined, one was caused by a one-two natural disaster punch that the designers, in retrospect perhaps foolishly, did not anticipate, and the other was an unsafe Soviet design.

The hyperbole of anti-nuclear reporting is silly and destructive.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

All that you say is true - the risks involved are minimal, and yet, we have to realise that the ore it takes to run a nuclear plant is not there as an indefinite supply. we are gonna run out of Uranium one day , so lets get serious about renewables now.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Ah yeah...I'm all for renewable energy, as well. My argument has always been that we've run submarines on diesel-electric systems since the Great War, and had we truly put thought and effort into the problem, by now we could have had affordable, accessible, viable hybrid or all-electric personal vehicles, to say nothing of solar and wind power on the grid (hydroelectric and geothermal are good, too, but obviously can't be done just anywhere).

However, the corporate masters of our glorious system have fought electrification and public transit tooth and nail every step of the way. Most sizable cities in America had electrified public transit systems into the 1940s and 50s and then reverted to fossil-fuel buses, which were largely inadequate and helped contribute to the growth of personal fossil-fuel powered cars.... (Details. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal))

Think of how different America's air quality might look today had our car-dependent large cities grown out through expanded mass transit. (And think of how life for us non-drivers would have been so much easier in 95% of America....) It's not that we haven't been able to develop efficient and cost-effective alternative energy; we merely haven't wanted to.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I don't see why the French would freak when there's no nuclear leaks and they're one of the biggest proponents of nuclear energy as an alternative.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Because people are dumb. Italy flipped out over Fukashima and Germany got real nervous. Somehow I don't think cooler heads will prevail in Frnace.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

79% of France's electricity comes from nuclear. If they decide to flip that means they'll have to make a gargantuan overhaul of their entire industry. Given the present economic realities, i doubt they have any options, whether cooler or hotter heads prevail in the public debate on nuclear power.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I expect the hot head to prevail (it is France after all) only to have thier dreams and rhetoric brutally crushed by reality. ;)

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Point is, whichever side of the debate prevails, is being made irrelevant by the realities of the French industry/economy. Even if they wanted to change something, this wouldn't be the right moment to do it because they cannot afford it at this point.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Hense the part about dreams and rehtoric getting brutally crushed by reality.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Just wanna point out that 'we'll run out of uranium!' is an easily debunked talking point, so please avoid that from now on, anti-nuclear people.

And dv8nation is absolutely right. What anti-nuclear people don't seem to realize is by being pro-nuclear, we're NOT AGAINST ALTERNATIVE ENERGY. It's a fallacy to make this association. I'm all for solar, wind, and whatnot- but it's extremely idealistic to ONLY focus on these things. I would like to see nuclear developed alongside these things, knowing that nuclear is viable all around the world safely and with plentiful fissionable material RIGHT NOW while sometime in the future maybe we'll invent cheaper ways to generate solar and wind power.

And don't think solar is a 100% safe thing either. Anything happens to these panels and the toxic chemicals will kill you. You have to wear industrial-strength toxic chemical suits to interact with one of these things if they're damaged. There are risks associated with anything, but no matter what statistics you look at, nuclear has had the smallest casualty rate of any "non-renewable" energy source in the world, and I put non-renewable in quotes because with a closed system and breeder reactors (which France does, but the US doesn't), it's highly renewable.