Germany shutting down nuclear reactors

[Cheesecan]

Yes let's move all the children back so they can have leukemia. Good for property prices to have some green sludge in your backyard.

[HeavyLancer]

Yes let's move all the children back so they can have leukemia. Good for property prices to have some green sludge in your backyard.

I don't think you understand nuclear waste and radiation at all :/

[Cheesecan]

Yes let's move all the children back so they can have leukemia. Good for property prices to have some green sludge in your backyard.

I don't think you understand nuclear waste and radiation at all :/

Ah so you're saying your next vacation will be to Fukushima.

[dansan]

Radiation 100mSv meaning "high probabality of cancer" WHAT??
Get your facts straight man - its the lowest dose when increase is measurable...

100mSv = additional 1% risk of cancer

I think the problem here is the timeframe in which you get the dosis. The dose limit applied to workers during Fukushima emergency was 250 mSv/year. Public dose limits for exposure from uranium mining or nuclear plants are usually set at 1 mSv/year above background. [1] So if you get a one-time-dosis of 100 mSv it is not very healthy. Problem is the media not reporting these things with proper units/scales. (Makes news useless if you have to cross-reference 3 news papers to find out if a dosis was deadly or a joke )

And half life of uranium being long is not really a big deal - it also means its not very radioactive. (Of course unless you get chain reaction like in reactor).

That's true.
It's still very toxic, and you don't want quantities of it flying through the air if a reactor explodes like in Chernobyl.

Also in the waste there should be not much U235 not to mention plutonium which is not produced by civilian reactors. U235 is primary fuel, waste is mainly decay chains of U235.

Plutonium is a by-product of the nuclear reactions, so it would be present in any of the reactors. However, it is most concentrated in reactor number 3, which is the only one of the six at the Fukushima plant to use plutonium-239. [2]

Oh and wind plants are barely audible. I stood right below gigantic vestas 3MW tourbine at high winds (i calculated tips were moving at over 500km/h) and it was barely audible..

Yeah... there is a big FUD going on about wind mills. Some old wind mills were load, but new ones not anymore. Neighbours have one on their roof!

Yes let's move all the children back so they can have leukemia. Good for property prices to have some green sludge in your backyard.

I don't think you understand nuclear waste and radiation at all :/

For the sake of readability I put my answer to this in the next post.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ma ... -fukushima

[Licho]

Terrestrial solar power is not capable of sustaining current power usage levels.

WHAT? Again random BS? You need to cover just 0.3% of Sahara's sunlight to power whole Europe even with todays inefficient technologies. Not just electricity but also fuels which of course make most of primary energy.

Covering 1% of Sahara would power entire world.

[dansan]

From geeks to geeks with lots of pictures: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... nobyl_2010

Nice cut outs from article:

for comparison, the Chernobyl nuclear accident led to more than one hundred times the nuclear fallout of what was experienced during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

The fallout from this Chernobyl event was not contained to just this thirty kilometer zone, but measurable amounts of nuclear matter were found in Sweden and other European countries. A radioactive cloud also reportedly reached as far away as France and Italy following the April 1986 disaster. There are increased rates in Thyroid cancer among children in other parts of Europe that can be traced back to lead and nuclear material that escaped into the atmosphere during the Chernobyl explosion and resulting fire that propelled deadly material more than one-thousand kilometers into the atmosphere. There are also still food restrictions that continue to be enforced for places as far away as the United Kingdom because of contaminated fields and livestock.

In building the sarcophagus, robots were pushing debris off the roof and onto the ground where more robots would then bury the material. However, the radioactive material ended up interfering with the robots so Russian soldiers and civilians with handmade lead suits had to go up to the roof for just seconds at a time to push the radioactive material off the roof by hand. Over 200,000 liquidators engaged in this work and other work near Chernobyl are now classified as disabled and more than 20,000 of them are dead. Beyond many attributable deaths not going towards the official death toll, those that survived in their military records would also have their actual radiation exposure written down compared to what they were actually exposed to within the Zone of Alienation.

[Licho]

Yeah funny text .. if 20 000 out of 200 000 are dead what it means? That it happend long time ago and they died of old age

In the aftermath of the accident, 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness (ARS), of whom 31 died within the first three months.[9][89] Most of these were fire and rescue workers trying to bring the accident under control, who were not fully aware of how dangerous exposure to the radiation in the smoke was. Whereas, in the World Health Organization's 2006 report of the Chernobyl Forum expert group on the 237 emergency workers who were diagnosed with ARS, ARS was identified as the cause of death for 28 of these people within the first few months after the disaster. There were no further deaths identified, in the general population affected by the disaster, as being caused by ARS. Of the 72,000 Russian Emergency Workers being studied, 216 non-cancer deaths are attributed to the disaster, between 1991 and 1998. The latency period for solid cancers caused by excess radiation exposure is 10 or more years; thus at the time of the WHO report being undertaken, the rates of solid cancer deaths were no greater than the general population. Some 135,000 people were evacuated from the area, including 50,000 from Pripyat.

So yeah 70 000 rescue workers studied and no increase in cancer rates ..

[dansan]

So yeah 70 000 rescue workers studied and no increase in cancer rates ..

A report of the International Atomic Energy Agency,[7] examines the environmental consequences of the accident. Estimates of the number of deaths potentially resulting from the accident vary enormously: Thirty one deaths are directly attributed to the accident, all among the reactor staff and emergency workers.[9] A UNSCEAR report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008. The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests it could reach 4,000.[10] A 2006 report predicted 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths as a result of Chernobyl fallout.[11] A Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more.[12] A Russian publication, Chernobyl, concludes that 985,000 excess deaths occurred between 1986 and 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination.[13]

WTF? It's a mess with these studies... I'm really not sure which ones to believe .

[Licho]

WTF? It's a mess with these studies... I'm really not sure which ones to believe .

Well you can check the source. Also Greenpeace or atomic industry studies wont be reliable imo Generally neutral organization should be ok - UN WHO ones, possibly new Ukrainian or Russian.
I would place my bet somewhere between UNSCEAR and WHO.

Note that those studies are not mutually exclusive. Often all statements can be true.

* 64 direct deaths - ok
* up to 4000 cancer deaths in the future - ok
* near zero extra cencer deaths in rescue workers - ok (they were exposed to radiation but not to long term effects of nuclides in pollution)

[Panda]

I think that it seems a little odd that Germany would suddenly shut down its nuclear reactors like that. It must be because of the media scare about using nuclear power or maybe they suspect that their safety equipment is not up to par. When a nuclear reaction occurs radiation does not simply spew or billow like smoke out of a chimney which is why it is possible for it be contained and should be because it's true that it would be very bad if all of that radiation were to get into the environment. If the safety equipment is not adequate or Germany feels that they would not be able to properly handle such a situation with the resources that they have if something similar were to occur over there, it may be better if they did shut down their nuclear power plants then. Otherwise, it's a shame that they're now so afraid of nuclear power that they want to just up and stop using it like that when it's pretty clean and relatively inexpensive resource.

Video on how nuclear reactors work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bcrLiAT ... r_embedded

[hoijui]

yeah.. cause in the US, they never really though about shutting them ractors down, so they must be very safe.
but wait.. in japan they neither wanted to shut it down.. neither in chernobyl... maybe your theory is not THAT perfect after all, rite?

in soviet russia, nucular reactor shuts down you!

[Panda]

I think that my theory is just fine and, as I said, the machines are (as often happens in many different industries) not being maintained as well as they should be. I never said that there weren't any risks to using nuclear power.

[hoijui]

yeah just.. that there is 100% practical, real live evidence against your theory, and none pro it but... sure... makes sense!

[PicassoCT]

My grandfather worked at the kfa J├╝lich, he had some funny stories to tell. One day, one of the scientiest there somehow contaminated parts of the labs floor with a radiaoactive sample - without noticing it. He went home, stepping into his house, into the garden and so on...

2 hours later all hell broke loose- the decon team shredered all furniture of the house, the carpets, even his car, packed every piece of equipment he touched (even inside the kfa) into barrels- and thats how the low-radioactive waste comes to be.

Its not the technology that is faulty - on the papers its perfect, but in reality, Homer Simpson will fold a paperhat, while snorring at the safety controlls.

[SirMaverick]

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/untern ... 89,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/untern ... 20773.html

Current plan is to run nuclear reactors longer on average than previously planned.

[Wombat]

Its not the technology that is faulty - on the papers its perfect, but in reality, Homer Simpson will fold a paperhat, while snorring at the safety controlls.

this and nothing else matters.

i bet merkel with shout 'TOT FUR KERNENENERGIE' just to get few votes more and after election will be like 'oh, entchuldigung, wir haben keine energie ' *turns switch back on*

[Licho]

Dansan reporting sieverts without time is ok. It represents dose - damage to biological tissue.

It's radiation dose weighted differently by type of particle and type of tissue exposed.

For long term effects it should not matter if you get it in 1 day or 10 years unless doses are very high to cause radiation sickness.

Wiki says:

Symptoms of acute radiation (dose received within one day):[4]
0 ÔÇô 0.25 Sv (0 ÔÇô 250 mSv): None
0.25 ÔÇô 1 Sv (250 ÔÇô 1000 mSv): Some people feel nausea and loss of appetite; bone marrow, lymph nodes, spleen damaged.
1 ÔÇô 3 Sv (1000 ÔÇô 3000 mSv): Mild to severe nausea, loss of appetite, infection; more severe bone marrow, lymph node, spleen damage; recovery probable, not assured.
3 ÔÇô 6 Sv (3000 ÔÇô 6000 mSv): Severe nausea, loss of appetite; hemorrhaging, infection, diarrhea, peeling of skin, sterility; death if untreated.
6 ÔÇô 10 Sv (6000 ÔÇô 10000 mSv): Above symptoms plus central nervous system impairment; death expected.
Above 10 Sv (10000 mSv): Incapacitation and death.

And:

International Commission on Radiological Protection recommended limit for volunteers averting major nuclear escalation: 500 mSv[10]
International Commission on Radiological Protection recommended limit for volunteers rescuing lives or preventing serious injuries: 1000 mSv[10]

[Licho]

Very nice visualisation:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... y_Xkcd.png

Especially the micro doses are funny :)


You better get low radiation girlfirned, move closer to nuclear plant (away from coal plants) and switch to LCD

It really shows how silly the scare is .. look at exposure to Fukushima town or the plant itself - its nothing .. there were just 2 workers who got dose that is linked to increase in cancer rate..

[Panda]

Nice!

yeah just.. that there is 100% practical, real live evidence against your theory, and none pro it but... sure... makes sense!

[Gota]

In short...I want a nuclear station built near my house asap!!