This is basically a rehash of the Two Lies piece; but, inspired by Professor Emanuel’s use of the air travel comparison, here’s my take on why commercial airplanes are “safe” and nuclear power is “dangerous”.
I'm really pro nuclear (especially MSR needs to be developed more) but I'm still unconvinced Chernobyl had so few casualties. The cancer rates increased more than any other area of Turkey where the wind was coming from the North. Having said that, it's nothing to hold against nuclear power. It was a bad design, and they were testing a very dangerous thing without realizing what they were doing. I don't think an event like Chernobyl will ever happen, even if the world creates all its electricity by nuclear.
According to UNSCEAR, 2000, Annex J, Table 52, the population on the Black Sea coast of Turkey received an extra bone-marrow dose of 0.7 mGy and a thyroid dose of 1.5 mGy on average over a period of weeks. Even if LNT were true, any increase in cancer would not be statistically detectable.
Conversely, if such tiny doses were dangerous, than large parts of the United States and other high background dose rate areas would need to be abandoned. And nuclear power would be very dangerous indeed.
This has always been a background piece of information for me, and I've never researched papers over this so I might be very mistaken. It's just that it's always been like a fact that cancer rates skyrocketed after Chernobyl in Black Sea Region. The mechanism was said to be radioactive materials getting accumulated in the tea grown in the region and ingested by consumption.
After your reply I did some quick checking and there's a theory that says the increase in cancer patient numbers is because before 80s there weren't many good hospitals in the region so people went to Ankara etc to get diagnosed. So my "background knowledge" might just be an urban legend albeit one widely believed.
Even then though, to convince people for nuclear energy, is it wise to say accidents like Chernobyl might happen as a matter of fact? Designs will always be safer than the Chernobyl ones, and staff will be better trained. There might be many Fukushimas, and they aren't a big deal like you always write here. Is a meltdown really within possibility?
The Fukushima release was roughly 1/10th as large as the Chernobyl release. But many Fukushimas are OK and one Chernobyl is not?
Claiming we will have no more releases is a lie, which will certainly be exposed.
Claiming we cannot have a release as big as Chernobyl is a lie. Might take quite a while to be exposed. Or might not. Who knows what Putin will do if backed into a corner. Piece on this tomorrow.
I'm asking if it's really plausible for something like Chernobyl to happen again. Of course Putin bombing Zaporozhye or something similar (terror attack, war etc) might always happen. But I don't believe during normal operations, maintenance etc a second Chernobyl would happen again.
I'm not saying one is ok and other is not, I'm asking if it is wise to admit the probability of a horrible accident is more than it really is?
E Dincer - it is easily conceivable that the releases from Fukushima distributed to the public could have been at least 10 times larger than they actually were.
Suppose the plant had been located on the western shore instead of the eastern shore (and ignore the fact that the initiating event in this case mainly affect the east coast.) Prevailing winds would have blown the releases over occupied land instead of out to sea.
Imagine that Unit 4 had also been operating.
Imagine that releases had occurred a little later after even more core damage had occurred.
But even if the releases had been 10 times larger than they were, the public health effects would have been negligible unless the government permanently relocated the affected population.
I agree with Jack. We should never give the impression that we believe significant releases will NEVER happen. But we can assure the public that the consequences of those releases will be limited and that nuclear energy brings enough benefits to make the risk easily worthwhile.
So is the difference between Fukushima and Chernobyl only quantitative and not qualitative? To my uneducated guess, I'd prefer 1000 Fukushimas than 1 Chernobyl. No viable amount of tritium into oceans will kill anybody.
Turkey's age standardised cancer rate is about 2/3 of that in the US or Australia. It used to be even lower. But as countries get richer they do more of the cancer causing things ... it isn't' just because they are older. They eat more red meat, move less and eat more over all. If you evacuated people around Fukushima to Australia (where I live) their cancer rates would rise dramatically. You couldn't possibly have a nuclear accident that caused anything like the cancer impact of lifestyle changes.
Jack ... the word "casualties" means a person injured or killed in an event. I have seen it used in technical literature the way you use it, but not for a general readership. The sentence about 488 casualties will confuse many until they get to the deaths ... then they'll wonder wtf "casualties" means. Better to just call them crashes or accidents!
Jack, it would help if you could be more specific about who you mean by "nuclear establishment" and how we get them to change. To the anti-nukers I have been interacting with, you and I are both "nuclear establishment". I imagine what you mean to include are the nuclear regulators and the contractors making money with cleanup and decommissioning, etc., but not the people designing the new reactors, or the people in the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, who are sponsoring tests of the new reactors. I would also exclude regulators who are working to adapt the requirements to accommodate the new designs (bypassing "bedrock" safety requirements, to use the words of Amory Lovins).
How do we get the "nuclear establishment" to change?
2) The DOE and teh national labs. The sprawling enterprise that was created during WWII to make the bomb and was never shut down after its reason for existence disappeared. It requires feeding at the rate of $20B/year
3) A few large vendors that have developed the expertise to manuever through the regualtion and formal QA procedures. Call them the incumbents. They have a big stake in maintaining the current system. Imagine how pissed off Nuscale would be if after all that time, effort, and money, it turns out that all you need to do to start real testing is to post a big bond.
4) The university NE departments which largely subsist on funding from teh DOE.
5) A few large utilities most of whom operate as regulated monopolies.
The key players in this complex easily move back and forth among the components.
Honesty, ignorance, malevolence. In unequal parts. A vanishingly small number of the 8 billion earth understand risk (frequency/severity), as is evident by their decisions every day.
Jack: I concur with most of what you wrote, but I'd change "nuclear power establishment" to power establishment and change "as part of their campaign against nuclear weapons" to "as part of their campaign to control the development of nuclear energy,"
I'll quote some key statements from the conclusion section of the BEAR 1 report, the one that was 100% funded by the Rockefeller Foundation as part of a ten year program to inform the public about the biological effects of atomic radiation.
"This report recommends that the general public of the United States be protected, BY WHATEVER CONTROLS MAY PROVE TO BE NECESSARY, from receiving a total reproductive lifetime dose (conception to age 30) of more than 10 roentgens of man-made radiation to the reproductive cells."
That statement directly recommends the "cost is no object" for preventing significant releases. Note: opponents don't just point to the releases that HAVE happened. They often point to the worst case conceivable and remind everyone as frequently as possible that TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima were close calls that could have been far worse. They also point to every insignificant - often permitted - release and rhetorically ask - "What if we allow nuclear power to grow without limits?"
"The fall-out from weapons testing has, so far, led to considerably less irradiation of the population than have the medical uses - and has therefore been less detrimental. So long as the PRESENT LEVEL IS NOT INCREASED this will continue to be true; but there remains a proper concern to see to it that the fall-out DOES NOT INCREASE TO MORE SERIOUS LEVELS." (emphasis added)
If the reason for the NAS BEAR Committee and the rest of the RF efforts to educate the public about the biological effects of atomic radiation had been part of a campaign against nuclear weapons, why would the conclusion of the Genetics Committee section absolve the high rate of weapons testing of the mid 1950s from causing public harm? Why would it include assurances that maintaining that high level would be okay?
Finally, the report concludes with this direct caution about the rapid growth of atomic power plants. (Note: the RF allies had no hope or desire to HALT nuclear energy. They just wanted its growth to be controlled so that it did not excessively inhibit fossil fuel growth and profitability.)
"We ought to keep all of our expenditures of radiation as low as possible. Of the upper limit of 10 roentgens suggested in Recommendation C, we are at present spending about one third for medical X-Rays. we are at present spending less - probably under one half a roentgen - for weapons testing. We MAY find it desirable or even ALMOST obligatory that we spend a certain amount on atomic power plants. But we MUST watch and guard ALL of our expenditures. From the point of view of genetics, they are ALL BAD."
This report was published in its entirety in the June 13, 1956 issue of the New York Times and in the June issue of Science Magazine. It was clearly and overtly aimed as a public communications effort. It was a message to all scientists and science aware people telling them of the conclusions of an eminent committee of the most credible science organization in the country.
Given that the damage being warned about was invisible and could only be discerned by challenging, expensive research projects by experts in in the field, there was no challenge to the report and its cautions.
Sincerely,
A recalcitrant choir member
Ref: "The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation: Summary Reports" National Academy of Sciences 1956.
I can share a PDF of the full report and also can share a PDF of the New York Times article on June 13, 1956. Here is a link to the article summary. It includes a link to the subscriber-only TimesMachine full image version.
The machinations of the Rockefeller Foundation in promoting LNT and the disastrous effect this has had on nuclear power are not in dispute. But the assertion that Big Oil motivated the Rockefeller Foundation is contradicted by history. See
Jack - I don’t think I’ve ever blamed “Big Oil.” I repeatedly say “fossil fuel interests.” Many of the entities that you seem to lump into “nuclear industry” - like reactor vendors, EPC contractors and electric utility companies - qualify as “fossil fuel interests” that have always considered nuclear energy to be just a sideline to their main profit centers.
I’ve perused RF endowment assets as of 1953-1963. Roughly 70% of annual income came from interest and dividends from various fossil fuel stocks and bonds including coal, oil, transportation, and natural gas.
I agree that friends have contributed to industry woes, but so have competitors and other enemies.
I get it. The Rockefeller Foundation was fronting for King Coal.
We've taken this useless conversation about the RF motivation in the 50's far enough.
Let's focus on the present. Big Oil has technical expertise, financial muscle, and knows how to do big projects. It also knows petroleum resources are limited. It sees the lucrative gasoline market moving to EV's. It knows nculear will need peaking and back up from petroleum. It knows the only way synfuels can work is if cheap 24/7 electricity is available. Maybe nuclear and Big Oil can once again become partners, as they were in the 60's and 70's.
I'm not a fan of euphemisms. Accident is a euphemism with the clear connotation "nobody's fault". It's true that the word has been so overused that the connotation is muted. But I still cannot bring myself to use it for casualties where there was one or more screw ups, which is almost all of them.
My dictionary says 1) Disastrous accident (gak) , 2) One injured or killed in an accident (gak). My dictionary may be a little out of data, like its owner, but I'm on a crusade to bring back the old meaning.
I agree honesty is the best way to go, however the focus on deaths as a measure of the effects is overdone. Resulting deaths are easy to measure but don't tell the full story. The worst effects of a radiation release are not the immediate casualties but the destruction, by forced evacuation, of people's homes and livelihoods. Air crashes are different in that nearly everyone dies immediately, whereas a meltdown kills virtually no-one, but many lives are ruined. Hence the focus should be on ways of reducing the need for evacuation zones and permanent no-go areas.
Almost all the evacuations to date in radioactive releases have been unnecessary and counterproductive, in some cases murderously so. See comment section on Nuclear Power is Too Safe and the analyses in the Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop book.
Absolutely accepted. My point is just that focussing on deaths isn't enough. People are still justifiably afraid of losing their homes and in cases livelihood. Hence your arguments about buffer zones and when radiation is actually damaging are the most important.
FTR the use of rigorous accident analysis is obviously a good thing to guide improvements. I worked in the explosives industry for 20 years and similar approaches were used there, as well as containment and safety distances to minimise casualties.
I'm really pro nuclear (especially MSR needs to be developed more) but I'm still unconvinced Chernobyl had so few casualties. The cancer rates increased more than any other area of Turkey where the wind was coming from the North. Having said that, it's nothing to hold against nuclear power. It was a bad design, and they were testing a very dangerous thing without realizing what they were doing. I don't think an event like Chernobyl will ever happen, even if the world creates all its electricity by nuclear.
E,
According to UNSCEAR, 2000, Annex J, Table 52, the population on the Black Sea coast of Turkey received an extra bone-marrow dose of 0.7 mGy and a thyroid dose of 1.5 mGy on average over a period of weeks. Even if LNT were true, any increase in cancer would not be statistically detectable.
Conversely, if such tiny doses were dangerous, than large parts of the United States and other high background dose rate areas would need to be abandoned. And nuclear power would be very dangerous indeed.
This has always been a background piece of information for me, and I've never researched papers over this so I might be very mistaken. It's just that it's always been like a fact that cancer rates skyrocketed after Chernobyl in Black Sea Region. The mechanism was said to be radioactive materials getting accumulated in the tea grown in the region and ingested by consumption.
After your reply I did some quick checking and there's a theory that says the increase in cancer patient numbers is because before 80s there weren't many good hospitals in the region so people went to Ankara etc to get diagnosed. So my "background knowledge" might just be an urban legend albeit one widely believed.
Even then though, to convince people for nuclear energy, is it wise to say accidents like Chernobyl might happen as a matter of fact? Designs will always be safer than the Chernobyl ones, and staff will be better trained. There might be many Fukushimas, and they aren't a big deal like you always write here. Is a meltdown really within possibility?
The Fukushima release was roughly 1/10th as large as the Chernobyl release. But many Fukushimas are OK and one Chernobyl is not?
Claiming we will have no more releases is a lie, which will certainly be exposed.
Claiming we cannot have a release as big as Chernobyl is a lie. Might take quite a while to be exposed. Or might not. Who knows what Putin will do if backed into a corner. Piece on this tomorrow.
I'm asking if it's really plausible for something like Chernobyl to happen again. Of course Putin bombing Zaporozhye or something similar (terror attack, war etc) might always happen. But I don't believe during normal operations, maintenance etc a second Chernobyl would happen again.
I'm not saying one is ok and other is not, I'm asking if it is wise to admit the probability of a horrible accident is more than it really is?
E Dincer - it is easily conceivable that the releases from Fukushima distributed to the public could have been at least 10 times larger than they actually were.
Suppose the plant had been located on the western shore instead of the eastern shore (and ignore the fact that the initiating event in this case mainly affect the east coast.) Prevailing winds would have blown the releases over occupied land instead of out to sea.
Imagine that Unit 4 had also been operating.
Imagine that releases had occurred a little later after even more core damage had occurred.
But even if the releases had been 10 times larger than they were, the public health effects would have been negligible unless the government permanently relocated the affected population.
I agree with Jack. We should never give the impression that we believe significant releases will NEVER happen. But we can assure the public that the consequences of those releases will be limited and that nuclear energy brings enough benefits to make the risk easily worthwhile.
So is the difference between Fukushima and Chernobyl only quantitative and not qualitative? To my uneducated guess, I'd prefer 1000 Fukushimas than 1 Chernobyl. No viable amount of tritium into oceans will kill anybody.
Turkey's age standardised cancer rate is about 2/3 of that in the US or Australia. It used to be even lower. But as countries get richer they do more of the cancer causing things ... it isn't' just because they are older. They eat more red meat, move less and eat more over all. If you evacuated people around Fukushima to Australia (where I live) their cancer rates would rise dramatically. You couldn't possibly have a nuclear accident that caused anything like the cancer impact of lifestyle changes.
Jack ... the word "casualties" means a person injured or killed in an event. I have seen it used in technical literature the way you use it, but not for a general readership. The sentence about 488 casualties will confuse many until they get to the deaths ... then they'll wonder wtf "casualties" means. Better to just call them crashes or accidents!
Jack, it would help if you could be more specific about who you mean by "nuclear establishment" and how we get them to change. To the anti-nukers I have been interacting with, you and I are both "nuclear establishment". I imagine what you mean to include are the nuclear regulators and the contractors making money with cleanup and decommissioning, etc., but not the people designing the new reactors, or the people in the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, who are sponsoring tests of the new reactors. I would also exclude regulators who are working to adapt the requirements to accommodate the new designs (bypassing "bedrock" safety requirements, to use the words of Amory Lovins).
How do we get the "nuclear establishment" to change?
David,
The nuclear power establishment is:
1) The NRC
2) The DOE and teh national labs. The sprawling enterprise that was created during WWII to make the bomb and was never shut down after its reason for existence disappeared. It requires feeding at the rate of $20B/year
3) A few large vendors that have developed the expertise to manuever through the regualtion and formal QA procedures. Call them the incumbents. They have a big stake in maintaining the current system. Imagine how pissed off Nuscale would be if after all that time, effort, and money, it turns out that all you need to do to start real testing is to post a big bond.
4) The university NE departments which largely subsist on funding from teh DOE.
5) A few large utilities most of whom operate as regulated monopolies.
The key players in this complex easily move back and forth among the components.
You do not change it. You get rid of it. See
jackdevanney.substack.com/p/market-regulation-of-nuclear-power
Honesty, ignorance, malevolence. In unequal parts. A vanishingly small number of the 8 billion earth understand risk (frequency/severity), as is evident by their decisions every day.
Jack: I concur with most of what you wrote, but I'd change "nuclear power establishment" to power establishment and change "as part of their campaign against nuclear weapons" to "as part of their campaign to control the development of nuclear energy,"
I'll quote some key statements from the conclusion section of the BEAR 1 report, the one that was 100% funded by the Rockefeller Foundation as part of a ten year program to inform the public about the biological effects of atomic radiation.
"This report recommends that the general public of the United States be protected, BY WHATEVER CONTROLS MAY PROVE TO BE NECESSARY, from receiving a total reproductive lifetime dose (conception to age 30) of more than 10 roentgens of man-made radiation to the reproductive cells."
That statement directly recommends the "cost is no object" for preventing significant releases. Note: opponents don't just point to the releases that HAVE happened. They often point to the worst case conceivable and remind everyone as frequently as possible that TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima were close calls that could have been far worse. They also point to every insignificant - often permitted - release and rhetorically ask - "What if we allow nuclear power to grow without limits?"
"The fall-out from weapons testing has, so far, led to considerably less irradiation of the population than have the medical uses - and has therefore been less detrimental. So long as the PRESENT LEVEL IS NOT INCREASED this will continue to be true; but there remains a proper concern to see to it that the fall-out DOES NOT INCREASE TO MORE SERIOUS LEVELS." (emphasis added)
If the reason for the NAS BEAR Committee and the rest of the RF efforts to educate the public about the biological effects of atomic radiation had been part of a campaign against nuclear weapons, why would the conclusion of the Genetics Committee section absolve the high rate of weapons testing of the mid 1950s from causing public harm? Why would it include assurances that maintaining that high level would be okay?
Finally, the report concludes with this direct caution about the rapid growth of atomic power plants. (Note: the RF allies had no hope or desire to HALT nuclear energy. They just wanted its growth to be controlled so that it did not excessively inhibit fossil fuel growth and profitability.)
"We ought to keep all of our expenditures of radiation as low as possible. Of the upper limit of 10 roentgens suggested in Recommendation C, we are at present spending about one third for medical X-Rays. we are at present spending less - probably under one half a roentgen - for weapons testing. We MAY find it desirable or even ALMOST obligatory that we spend a certain amount on atomic power plants. But we MUST watch and guard ALL of our expenditures. From the point of view of genetics, they are ALL BAD."
This report was published in its entirety in the June 13, 1956 issue of the New York Times and in the June issue of Science Magazine. It was clearly and overtly aimed as a public communications effort. It was a message to all scientists and science aware people telling them of the conclusions of an eminent committee of the most credible science organization in the country.
Given that the damage being warned about was invisible and could only be discerned by challenging, expensive research projects by experts in in the field, there was no challenge to the report and its cautions.
Sincerely,
A recalcitrant choir member
Ref: "The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation: Summary Reports" National Academy of Sciences 1956.
I can share a PDF of the full report and also can share a PDF of the New York Times article on June 13, 1956. Here is a link to the article summary. It includes a link to the subscriber-only TimesMachine full image version.
https://www.nytimes.com/1956/06/13/archives/text-of-genetics-committee-report-concerning-effects-of.html
Rod,
The machinations of the Rockefeller Foundation in promoting LNT and the disastrous effect this has had on nuclear power are not in dispute. But the assertion that Big Oil motivated the Rockefeller Foundation is contradicted by history. See
jackdevanney.substack.com/p/big-oil-and-nuclear-power
In any event, nuclear's problem is not its enemies. It is its so-called friends.
Jack - I don’t think I’ve ever blamed “Big Oil.” I repeatedly say “fossil fuel interests.” Many of the entities that you seem to lump into “nuclear industry” - like reactor vendors, EPC contractors and electric utility companies - qualify as “fossil fuel interests” that have always considered nuclear energy to be just a sideline to their main profit centers.
I’ve perused RF endowment assets as of 1953-1963. Roughly 70% of annual income came from interest and dividends from various fossil fuel stocks and bonds including coal, oil, transportation, and natural gas.
I agree that friends have contributed to industry woes, but so have competitors and other enemies.
Rod,
I get it. The Rockefeller Foundation was fronting for King Coal.
We've taken this useless conversation about the RF motivation in the 50's far enough.
Let's focus on the present. Big Oil has technical expertise, financial muscle, and knows how to do big projects. It also knows petroleum resources are limited. It sees the lucrative gasoline market moving to EV's. It knows nculear will need peaking and back up from petroleum. It knows the only way synfuels can work is if cheap 24/7 electricity is available. Maybe nuclear and Big Oil can once again become partners, as they were in the 60's and 70's.
Geoff,
I'm not a fan of euphemisms. Accident is a euphemism with the clear connotation "nobody's fault". It's true that the word has been so overused that the connotation is muted. But I still cannot bring myself to use it for casualties where there was one or more screw ups, which is almost all of them.
My dictionary says 1) Disastrous accident (gak) , 2) One injured or killed in an accident (gak). My dictionary may be a little out of data, like its owner, but I'm on a crusade to bring back the old meaning.
Jack
We agree here. Today’s major energy companies have good reasons to include nuclear in their portfolios.
I hope they do so in a very public way in the near future.
I agree honesty is the best way to go, however the focus on deaths as a measure of the effects is overdone. Resulting deaths are easy to measure but don't tell the full story. The worst effects of a radiation release are not the immediate casualties but the destruction, by forced evacuation, of people's homes and livelihoods. Air crashes are different in that nearly everyone dies immediately, whereas a meltdown kills virtually no-one, but many lives are ruined. Hence the focus should be on ways of reducing the need for evacuation zones and permanent no-go areas.
David,
Almost all the evacuations to date in radioactive releases have been unnecessary and counterproductive, in some cases murderously so. See comment section on Nuclear Power is Too Safe and the analyses in the Why Nuclear Power Has Been a Flop book.
Jack,
Absolutely accepted. My point is just that focussing on deaths isn't enough. People are still justifiably afraid of losing their homes and in cases livelihood. Hence your arguments about buffer zones and when radiation is actually damaging are the most important.
FTR the use of rigorous accident analysis is obviously a good thing to guide improvements. I worked in the explosives industry for 20 years and similar approaches were used there, as well as containment and safety distances to minimise casualties.
David,
Point taken. Will try to do a better job of making your important point in the future.