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March 29, 2012

[SSJ: 7324] Re: A couple of reasons why the electricity has keptflowing despite the nuclear shutdowns

From: Richard Katz
Date: 2012/03/29

I received a private response to my latest post of the three (A, B and C) scenarios for the cause of the Fukushima disaster, C being conscious deception and avoidance of foreseen and recommended safety changes.
As I said in the posting, there is a lot of C, but many of the press narratives write as if this were 90-100% of the problem. I'm raising the possibility that it's just, say, 50% of the problem and, say, 40% of the problem may come from scenario A, i.e. people doing everything reasonable but things going wrong because not every problem can be anticipated or dealt with in a cost-effective manner. As I said, no one is complaining that corruption caused the deaths of 20,000 or so people from the tsunami because the government paved over rivers instead of building high seawalls all along the coastline.

I've been told by a senior official in the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a Fukushima-type disaster would be impossible in the US because of a difference in reactor design. Are they right? I have no idea. And, if they are, maybe it will be a different type of disaster. Or none at all.

So, we may have to accept that nuclear accidents are going to occur and we can only reduce their frequency and severity. It would be interesting to hear from political scientists ideas on how to reduce the conflicts of interest that lead to scenario C and how to reduce the unconscious biases that lead to scenario B and from nuclear experts on how to reduce the problems that emerge from scenario A.

That still leaves us with the question: as bad as nuclear power may be, is it worse than coal or oil?

Ron Dore wrote:

>

> "John Mueller's book Atomic Obsession, OUP 2010
deserves to be
better

> known

>

> Basing himself, apparently, on Peter Finn in the
Washington Post,
11

> March 2005 and Wade Allison, Fundamental Physics for
Probing and

> Imaging, OUP 2006, he writes the following:<

>

> "An exhaustive study by eight United Nations
agencies, completed
some

> 20 years after the event, of the effects of the 1986
Cheernobyl

> nuclear melt-down.....The accident, which lofted a
huge amount of

> radiation into the atmosphere, resulted in the deaths
of less than
50

> people, most of them unprotected emergency workers.
Thyroid rates

> among children were raised, but almost all of them
were treated

> successfully and only nine died..."


I assume that Ron has cited Mueller completely. If so, then Mueller has engaged in exactly the sort of deceptive misreporting that I decried in an earlier post, whether it comes from the pro- and anti-nuke side. What Finn actually wrote
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2
005/09/23/AR2005092301846.html) was:

> "The discussion has been stoked by
a major new report from eight U.N.

> agencies that concluded the accident has caused fewer
than 50
deaths

> directly attributable to radiation. The U.N.
scientists predicted

> about 4,000 eventual radiation-related fatalities
among 600,000

> people in the affected areas, including plant
personnel, emergency

> workers and residents."


I had referred to 6,000, but that was a mistake of memory. In its initial 2005 report
(http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38
/en/index.html), WHO and other other agencies wrote:

> "Among the more than 200,000
emergency and recovery

> operation workers exposed during the period from
1986-1987, an

> estimated 2,200 radiation-caused deaths can be
expected during
their

> lifetime."

> "The international experts have estimated that
radiation could
cause

> up to about 4,000 eventual deaths among the
higher-exposed
Chernobyl

> populations, i.e., emergency workers from 1986-1987,
evacuees and

> residents of the most contaminated areas.

> "The report's estimate for the eventual number of
deaths is far
lower

> than earlier, well-publicized speculations that
radiation exposure

> would claim tens of thousands of lives."


Then, a year later, WHO upped the estimate to 9,000 (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr20
/en/index.html)

9,000 deaths would be the equivalent of the deaths from two years of coal mining in China and a tiny fraction of the estimated 2-4 million people who die around the world, mostly in poor countries, due to air pollution from current energy sources.

The rich countries have spent a lot of money to reduce those premature deaths and there are some estimates that the net economic gains outweigh the costs (due to reduced health care costs, extra years of work by those who would have died prematurely, etc.) But there are still thousands of deaths from fossil fuel-caused pollution every year, not to mention non-lethal illnesses.


Richard Katz
The Oriental Economist Report

Approved by ssjmod at 11:32 AM