Cycle helmets and nuclear power

wgwarburton

Hi,

The connection? Public perception of risk.

So- Fukushima has suffered a massive earthquake, way in excess of what it was designed to cope with. Followed by a tsunami, also in excess of design parameters. Despite this there have been only miniscule and essentially harmless controlled leaks of radioactive material and the various reactors (some forty years old and nearing the end of their service lives) are either safely shut down or well on their way to it. The engineers have apparently not got close to running out of options and the safety systems, backups and backups of backups have all worked as they should.

A ringing endorsement of the safety of properly designed and built nuclear power plants, you would think...and yet there are calls to roll back plans to build more of them, even in areas extremely unlikely to experience a disaster on this scale during the lifetime of the plant.

The perception, reporting and general hysteria is staggering. The judgement and assessment of risk totally divorced from reality... there are some who apparently believe that a sensible response to this situation would be to replace nuclear plants with fossil-fuel ones... Incredible!

We really need to get better at making sensible choices on risks.

Cheers,
W.

UndercoverElephant

Here he goes again, banging on about bloody cycle helmets. You're obsessed, man.

davis

Have you been reading Bruce Schneier? Sounds like his risk perception stuff, like people panic about air crashes when they're more likely to be killed crossing the road / driving to the shops / getting dressed / varnishing an elk / someotheractivity.

...Not disagreeing or owt, just saying...

Kieran_Burns

So.... you're saying that if the Reactors wore helmets there wouldn't be a problem?

Kieran_Burns

davis wrote:

Have you been reading Bruce Schneier? Sounds like his risk perception stuff, like people panic about air crashes when they're more likely to be killed crossing the road / driving to the shops / getting dressed / varnishing an elk / someotheractivity.

...Not disagreeing or owt, just saying...

Crypto-Gram out today

CiB

It's the meeja innit? They love these harem-scarem stories to spook the punters with.
It'll be something else next week.

MonkeyMonster

davis wrote:

varnishing an elk

this is all my brain read and the games that would ensue off it...

lost_in_thought

Read the comments on the beeb site - quite entertaining...

What would you do if you lived 32km away from the place?

Also - I thought they'd had exposed fuel rods at a couple of points? If I understand correctly, that's a bad thing...

rolf_f

WG - you and JR should get a room. You can gas on about helmets endlessly whilst he fails to listen to you while blathering on about helmet cams. You are the perfect couple!

As to Japan. Amazing what an incident like this reveals about a country. The Japanese attitude to risk would never be tolerated here (eg lets build a power station on an active fault and right on the coast where we can guarantee it to be hit by tsunamis. It's OK because w'll cover it by a last minute shut down protocol which we might follow if we feel like it. And lets build all the houses in the really vulnerable locations and not on the adjacent much safer hills......) Almost as bad as New Orleans......

davmaggs

this site takes the radiation dose you get from a bananna and converts it into the amounts circulating in the news about Japan.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/banana-dose-equivalents-of-radiation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Rolf; In terms of why Japan has nuclear power it is because they have virtually no natural resources and want some energy independence. Stations are build near the sea because that's the place with lots of water on hand.

lost_in_thought

Courtesy of Bill Bailey on Twitter

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/f ... planation/

Rolf are you trolling?

rolf_f

lost_in_thought wrote:

Rolf are you trolling?

Yeah, a little bit. End of financial year stress

And my home PC is kaputt..... terminally!

davmaggs wrote:

Rolf; In terms of why Japan has nuclear power it is because they have virtually no natural resources and want some energy independence. Stations are build near the sea because that's the place with lots of water on hand.

Yep, I know that. It's just that when the odds are that something nasty is going to happen at some point in the foreseeable future with extremely nasty potential consequences, it makes some sense to come up with some effetive mitigation measures. Just like New Orleans, this wasn't something that came unexpectedly. It was bound to happen. The reality is probably that the state took a (mis)calculated risk to save costs the consequences of which were felt by the people.

rjsterry

davmaggs wrote:

this site takes the radiation dose you get from a bananna and converts it into the amounts circulating in the news about Japan.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/banana-dose-equivalents-of-radiation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Fadvancednano+%28nextbigfuture%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Rolf; In terms of why Japan has nuclear power it is because they have virtually no natural resources and want some energy independence. Stations are build near the sea because that's the place with lots of water on hand.

Can the new SI unit of radiation be the banana (Bn)? Then we can have such sentences as "Readings 2.9 millibananas were taken on the edge of the 1 mile exclusion zone, rising to
as much as 4.5 gigabananas at the site of the blast."

Just to put the wind up everyone: we might not be on an active fault, but we have nuclear power plants on the coast, and we do get disastrous storm surges now and then (like that in 1953).

Sewinman

It is not over yet though is it. I would not be bullish about how successful the safety measures are until the crisis is actually over. Likewise on signing the death warrant for nuclear power.

dhope

WGW - read this?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/14 ... _analysis/

rolf_f

rjsterry wrote:

Just to put the wind up everyone: we might not be on an active fault, but we have nuclear power plants on the coast, and we do get disastrous storm surges now and then (like that in 1953).

1953 probably wouldn't kill anybody if the same event happened today (except the odd 4wd owner deciding to go for a drive). It certainly wouldn't hurt the power stations.

UndercoverElephant

We have nuclear power stations on the coast as they use sea-water to cool them down. It'd be a much worse disaster if you couldn't cool the reactor.

bearfraser

just wait until the lights start going out then every one will want nuclear power, unfortunatley it willl be toooooooooooooooo late by then.!!!!!!!!!!





WD40,gaffertape and hammer ,who needs anything else??

MonkeyMonster

I'm still drooling at the idea of a megabanana...

wrapped in foil with fuck loads of dairy milk bars and cooked by godzilla...

wgwarburton

lost_in_thought wrote:

Courtesy of Bill Bailey on Twitter

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/f ... planation/

Rolf are you trolling?

Always... :-(

Cheers,
W.

jonginge

MonkeyMonster wrote:

I'm still drooling at the idea of a megabanana...

wrapped in foil with fark loads of dairy milk bars and cooked by godzilla...

But who would win in a fight between MegaBanana and SuperTomato?. SuperTomato can fight cancer you know. It's true, it's all here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... ancer.html

dhope

JonGinge wrote:

MonkeyMonster wrote:

I'm still drooling at the idea of a megabanana...

wrapped in foil with fark loads of dairy milk bars and cooked by godzilla...

But who would win in a fight between MegaBanana and SuperTomato?. SuperTomato can fight cancer you know. It's true, it's all here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... ancer.html

Nuh uh, they cause cancer
http://www.scientificpsychic.com/blogen ... ancer.html

EKE_38BPM

JonGinge wrote:

SuperTomato can fight cancer you know. It's true, it's all here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... ancer.html

dhope wrote:

Nuh uh, they cause cancer
http://www.scientificpsychic.com/blogen ... ancer.html

C'mon people, don't you know that EVERYTHING both causes and cures cancer (possibly simultaneously) if you listen to scientists.

Specialized Needs

I think thishas been posted before

kurako

On the subject of public perception:

My missus said: "It'd be great if there was an iPhone app which told you where the buses were but I suppose they don't want to because of terrorism". I said, "Why would anyone want to blow up a bus?" and she said "Someone did" and I said "That's cos he couldn't get on a train"

Then passing conversation with the company lawyer I said "I guess we're lucky we don't have to live with the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis" and he said "But we have to worry about terrorism"

What the fuck is the obsession with terrorism? We've had the risk of being blown up by nutters for as long as I can remember. Why is it different now it's al-Qaeda rather than the IRA?

EKE_38BPM

I agree with you, but the IRA often called in warnings and didn't use suicide bombers.

Still scum though, just a different flavour of scum.

rolf_f

Kurako wrote:

What the fark is the obsession with terrorism? We've had the risk of being blown up by nutters for as long as I can remember. Why is it different now it's al-Qaeda rather than the IRA?

Almost comical if you work out the numbers. eg starting from September 11th, add up the number of people killed in terrorist atrocities. Now, from the same date, add up the number killed in environmental disasters. Now compare the two.........

Next (and probably impossible to find out) determine how much money has been spent on anti terrorist measures and how much on mitigation against environmental disaster. Then divide the sum by the number of deaths as appropriate and you get a feel for the expenditure in terms of death rate. In a sensible world, the two figures would be much the same. I suspect they aren't.