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Fukushima disaster has not raised cancer risks [1] We need more nuclear power and less nuclear scaremongering. [1] http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/06/u

• coldtea 13y ago
  Sure, as long is away from our city, and the toxic waste is moved out of our state too.
• 3am 13y ago
  "UN scientists have concluded that the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster is unlikely to push up cancer rates in Japan. Some scientists remain sceptical of this claim, as the findings of the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) differ from those of several other studies, including a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report that predicted increased cancer risks among people living in areas with the highest radiation levels." That's literally the first paragraph of the article you linked. Doesn't sound like there's consensus on the matter.
• coldtea 13y ago
  >We need more nuclear power and less nuclear scaremongering. And why not more investment in solar power and renewable energy sources, instead of a potentially dangerous industry that produces extremely toxic waste, and can fuck everything around it in case of a terrorist attack, meltdown, etc?
  • fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    Have a look at LFTR, a much safer reactor design that produces much less waste.
  • cobrausn 13y ago
    Nuclear power is proven technology. Solar and renewable sources continue to ask for decades of research and funding to hope to be nearly as capable of providing as much power. As an aside, having one does not exclude using / researching the other.
    • rsync 13y ago
      1. Read "Normal Accidents" by Charles Perrow. 2. Alternately laugh and cry as you read the nuclear plant chapter(s). 3. Begin to seriously consider marching in the streets to protest new and existing nuclear plants (of the common, standard models).[1] [1] More modern designs without tightly coupled systems and associated risks (thorium, molten salt, pebble-bed, whatever) seem very promising.
  • jmackinn 13y ago
    Base load. Please look this up when talking about using renewable energy sources for our electricity. Without things like nuclear power, coal, and natural gas plants we cannot maintain a proper base load. This is totally besides the fact that when you look at the break down of the environmental impact of all power sources, nuclear continues to be one of the greenest solutions.
  • rayiner 13y ago
    I'm not convinced the semiconductor manufacturing process that goes into solar is appreciably cleaner than nuclear in practice.
  • ekianjo 13y ago
    Because fission produces massive amounts of energy compared to anything else. Solar is not cheap when you remove government subsidies. Its an economic choice as well.
  • mpyne 13y ago
    Certainly we can invest in renewable, but you'd also have to invest in energy storage in that case. However toxic nuclear waste may be in its most compact form, that is a political issue, not an engineering one. And the plant itself is hardly a problem in the scope of a terrorist attack, flying a plane into a skyscraper or disabling the brakes on a petroleum-filled train parked on a hill would be greater risks to public health for a given group of terrorists. Someday we may even finally upgrade from 1950s and 60s designs that can meltdown, but even the rickety old reactors have not been public health disasters on a par with coal or hydro.
    • lostlogin 13y ago
      Given how badly protected power stations are, they seem a soft target. this may in part explain the insane over reaction here https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7 https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7.
      • mpyne 13y ago
        Nuclear civilian power stations are fairly incredibly well-protected post-9/11. One of Canada's nuclear power facilities has continually swept the various S.W.A.T. competitions they hold in North America for at least a couple of years now, and other facilities are similarly well-guarded. But even if you managed to break in, you can't destroy the containment building with just the explosives you can carry on your person (it is, after all, designed to contain something much worse). Likewise you wouldn't be able to make it near the reactor complex itself as the radiation would kill the terrorists before they could get close enough to damage something. The best case (for the terrorists) is trying to impeded reactor cooling from the control stations, but that takes a long time for actual damage to occur (time enough to preclude the damage in the first place), and even if you somehow managed to hold out for a whole day and let the reactor try to melt itself (at a rickety old facility without passive safety), you'd just get something like Three Mile Island, not Fukushima. Perhaps you might try to fly a plane into the containment? But even that wouldn't cause a nuclear yield or anything close, especially with U.S. style containments. Steel-reinforced concrete simply eats planes for breakfast. The story you linked comes from a description of a nuclear weapons production facility, and even that security lapse was not inherently more severe than breaking into something like a chemical production facility. There's no magic fairies that kill 10,000 people just because you touched something labeled 'nuclear' after all, so even breaching into the facility wouldn't be a public health risk by itself.
  • ars 13y ago
    > that produces extremely toxic waste Solar power produces far far more toxic waste per energy produced.
    • coldtea 13y ago
      Citation needed.
      • ddeck 13y ago
        > Citation needed. No idea regarding relative amounts/toxicity etc., but I presume they are referring to these issues: http://news.yahoo.com/solar-industry-grapples-hazardous-wastes-184714679.html http://news.yahoo.com/solar-industry-grapples-hazardous-wast...
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
• fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  Did you read the article or the headline? It makes very little sense that such an accident can have no effect on cancer risks. It may not raise the risk appreciably. Maybe the risk would be greater of Fukushima had been a coal fired plant(s) instead. But even people who know nothing about nuclear power can see the flaw in such a statement, and I think that sort of thing undermines any message that follows; which is unfortunate because you're right about us needing more nuclear power.
  • bcoates 13y ago
    Why does it make very little sense? If the exposure was below the threshold dose at which radiation has been established to be carcinogenic it sounds like the most defensible position. The alternative is to say that anything can have an effect on cancer risks, which even if true in some pedantic sense isn't a useful way of looking at risk. It's not like large-scale low-dose ionizing radiation is an unknown phenomenon: radiation exposure from the ground and sunlight vary widely, and we have very large data from chernobyl and 1950s above-ground nuclear testing.
    • mpyne 13y ago
      The very idea that there is a threshold below which cancer risk is not appreciably affected is itself controversial. In fact, even saying controversial would not be enough, most major health physics societies assume there is no such threshold and that any exposure increases risk. Only France's national society and (IIRC) one U.S. health physics society seem to be confident enough in the current research to stake out a claim that there is a threshold. With all that said I personally lean towards the idea of a threshold-based response, though the no-threshold models are certainly easier to use for planning purposes (for which they've been used to assess risk for decades). Even if there is a threshold, that threshold may depend on length of previous exposure (acclimation) and may only be good for exposure within a certain time limit, both of which again make use within models more difficult (though not impossible).
      • w1ntermute 13y ago
• meej 13y ago
  A study published this spring in the Open Journal of Pediatrics indicates that it may have increased congenital hyperthyroidism on the West Coast of the US, however. http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=28599 http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=2... That said, I agree with you that we need more nuclear power.
• anigbrowl 13y ago
  I'm also in favor of more nuclear power, but handwaving isn't any better than scaremongering.
• veidr 13y ago
  I want more nuclear power too, because I am sick of the ongoing setsuden power-conserving measures here in Tokyo. But, having had the water in my apartment's shower tainted with cesium from Fukushima for weeks after the accident, and my local supermarket apologize for selling me beef with higher-than-legal cesium contamination, this kind of "rah rah! more nukes! less kooks!" boosterism is really annoying. The second sentence of the only link you provide begins "Some scientists remain sceptical of this claim, as the findings of the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) differ from those of several other studies, including a recent (WHO) report..." Furthermore, cancer is far from only problem mismanagement of nuclear power causes. Ask any of the tens of thousands of people who have been removed from their homes, many of them forever. So I would fix your sentence like this: "We need [a] more [rational and realistic framework for managing the real and potentially catastrophic risks of] nuclear power, [along with functional regulatory oversight], and less nuclear scaremongering.
  • nitrogen 13y ago
    When you talk about tens of thousands who were affected by Fukushima, remember the hundreds of thousands displaced or killed by the tsunami.
  • ekianjo 13y ago
    > Furthermore, cancer is far from only problem mismanagement of nuclear power causes. Ask any of the tens of thousands of people who have been removed from their homes, many of them forever. Yeah, especially when the ambient radioactivity was lower than the natural radioactivity observed in many places around Japan. The evacuation should have been temporary only (a couple of days/weeks maybe) until matters were settled and the radioactivity levels confirmed. Moving them away from their homes forever was a huge mistake and certainly caused more deaths than any nuclear incident. Living in temporary accommodation, you lose your job, your earnings, you are far from everything, which means overall worse welfare than living in a not-really-as-much-as-the-media-says "contaminated" area. People are way too scared of radioactivity - just because they don't understand it one bit and are constantly misinformed by media, green peace and other organizations which have vested interest in promoting other energies.