Pursuit of the unattainable goals of zero risk and legal proof of perfection has had a paralyzing effect on effective engineering and construction management.
'Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. (...) the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.' It's nice to have some well formed ideas lying around! Thanks Jack.
The Fukushima estimates were based on the ambient air dose rate maps extrapolated back to release time. The max number was based on the portion of each town with the largest dose rate. The min number was based on the part of town with the lowest dose rate. See https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/snt-versus-lnt-at-fukushima
MACCS is a simple Gaussian plume model. In any run the wind direction and velocity is fixed for the entire length of the run, which means you can't model real weather which is changing all the time. The other programs are Lagrangian puff models. The release is modeled as a series of puffs and each puff is tracked separately. The weather can change both spatially and temporally. The results can be qualitatively different. There is a dramatic example in https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/leave-town-or-hunker-down
AFAIK nobody except the NRC still uses simple Gaussian plume for serious work. Certainly EPA and NOAA do not.
Very well said. Too few people recognize that nuclear power's entire cost problem is political. Repealing Jimmy Carter's ban on reproccessing and allowing more flexibility in nuclear research could also revolutionize many different fields
I keep thinking of this Milton Friedman quote:
'Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. (...) the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.' It's nice to have some well formed ideas lying around! Thanks Jack.
Jack, re: "Redo all the SOARCA release analyses assuming SNT, no evacuation, and a far better plume model than MACCS, such as CALPUFF or Hy-Split."
What did you use to estimate the radiation exposure to residents of Okumo? What's better about CALPUFF or Hy-Split, poor about MACCS?
The Fukushima estimates were based on the ambient air dose rate maps extrapolated back to release time. The max number was based on the portion of each town with the largest dose rate. The min number was based on the part of town with the lowest dose rate. See https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/snt-versus-lnt-at-fukushima
MACCS is a simple Gaussian plume model. In any run the wind direction and velocity is fixed for the entire length of the run, which means you can't model real weather which is changing all the time. The other programs are Lagrangian puff models. The release is modeled as a series of puffs and each puff is tracked separately. The weather can change both spatially and temporally. The results can be qualitatively different. There is a dramatic example in https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/leave-town-or-hunker-down
AFAIK nobody except the NRC still uses simple Gaussian plume for serious work. Certainly EPA and NOAA do not.
Very well said. Too few people recognize that nuclear power's entire cost problem is political. Repealing Jimmy Carter's ban on reproccessing and allowing more flexibility in nuclear research could also revolutionize many different fields
Garret,
Reagan repealed the Carter ban in 1981. But availability of uranium, NRC red tape, and fear of a repeat has stimied reprocessing.