One Plus One – Fukushima’s legacy

Thanks very much for the sane, rational presentation of actual facts. Much appreciated.

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BTW thanks for teaching us how to pronounce Fukushima.
I guess you got lots of coaching from you Japanese wife:-)

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I have just learned that restoring electrical power in various parts of japan, including the Fukushima area has been hampered by the fact that the country has mixed 50Hz/60Hz service depending on location.

The discrepancy has to do with the founding of electric power in the country. Tokyo Electric Light Co. used German generators, which operated at the 50Hz European standard, while in the west part of Japan, Osaka Electric Lamp Co. used generators from General Electric, an American company, operating at the 60Hz standard that is used in North America.

Unlike the most of the world’s national grids, the Japanese power grid was never unified around a single standard.

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Hydro and pumped hydro are obviously renewable, so I do not see what the issue is.

There was obvious environmental impact when they built the Snowy Mountains Scheme and some towns were flooded. But this damage was less and better based on democracy than the damage potential from nuclear.

It is irrational to balance the risk of dam failures without citing examples.

What dams have failed since Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima?

Did any dams fail in Japan or New Zealand?

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@Chris Warren

The problem with hydro is less risk of failure than the effects on the enfironment, such as loss of fish species, loss of silting/soil replenishment in downstream agricultural regions (such as degradation of Nile river delta), and increased salinization of water behind dams. There are huge externalized costs that are not included when planning these projects.

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@Chris Warren

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@Chris Warren

Russia’s Sayano–Shushenskaya dam failed in 2009 killing 74 and with one still missing. I posted a YouTube video earlier but it’s still awaiting moderation.

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Barry,
I am glad that I have watched that interview, though I am not exactly a friend of the way that nuclear power takes, but it was good to see somebody talking and see that there is a real person behind a reasoning which is not exactly mine. thank you for that…

i think what is actually missing in the whole discussion (not just here……everywhere) is our way of living. if people hear we have to change our way of life (and thinking!) they immediatly think that we would go back to the stone-age, which is absolute nonsense. we don’t, how can we? but at this moment – talking about nuclear power or fossils – we are debating about should we destroy the planet in this way or the other? we don’t use the word ‘destroy’ though and that makes it rather difficult. we hide that fact away behind words. it is just as much about changing our way of life and our way of thinking as it is about finding a form of energy which will keep the planet intact. we are a part of that planet for sure. the only problem is we behave not like that at all. in a way we keep asking many wrong questions all the time. that could be why we get a lot of wrong answers. i read a lot of the stuff which Daniel Quinn wrote about our way of thinking and why it is so hard for us to change or why it is made hard for us to. it is really inspiring. he just wants people to help to ask the right questions.

while debating about energy forms all the time, we forget that it is actually our way of life which is the biggest problem and we cannot imagine to step away from it. i say it again: it is not about living in caves again and all that. there has to be a middle way. this is the task. to find the middle way…

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oh, i like this blog. :)

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Quokka – so I did. 26000 was just the direct casualties, wikipedia suggests another 145000 following.

Thanks for the interesting link.

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I’m not sure this is a helpful interview.

The blind insistence that the risk to public is still less than living in the mountains or taking a flight or drinking beer (as just a sample of the misleading statements [unsubstantiated personal opinion deleted. Please re-post with authoratative references] Already they are finding food products in Japan that have radiation levels that exceed safety limits.

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iain,
yes. that is quite right. i think those comparisons are not very helpful. taking a flight, drinking a beer or living on a moutain are pretty individual risks. if there is something going wrong with a NPP all of a sudden a lot of people are involved without being asked, if they want it or not. this is and always will be a huge problem.

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I can’t remember what you deleted Barry. What you have left is what I wanted to communicate.

I do think your attitude towards communicating safety risk is turning off people who would otherwise be sympathetic to your general argument.

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Sophia: Something Barry said in a previous interview is worth repeating.

He comments that he can find no examples of countries, provinces or localities that have EVER decreased their consumption of energy (I would add, at least not willingly – war or disaster may change peoples’ use by destroying infrastructure).

It’s all very well saying that we need to alter our lifestyles. What is difficult about that is asking the serious question – Which conveniences are we prepared to live without?

The problem with THAT is that we all disagree on what is and is not needed. For example, I could live quite easily without ipods, plastic footballs and fancy shoes – but not everyone agrees with me.

For this reason I suggest it is better to attempt to lower the impact of existing behaviours rather than relying on altering behaviour (in ways which we are not at all sure are possible).

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Eveline, on 19 March 2011 at 8:54 PM said:

You need to check your facts. This was not a dam failure.

Turbines failed.

Certainly the world experiences industrial accidents, in all industries, but there was nothing about the dam that led to these deaths.

The real problem of dams, unlike nuclear, is not the rate of failure, but the lack of future sites for expansion. But it does provide much safer and renewable power than nuclear. There are no cooling ponds with hydro and no waste that must be stored for eons.

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John Morgan, on 19 March 2011 at 8:52 PM said:

the Banqiao dam failed in China, 1975,

This had nothing to do with hydropower.

My question was:

What dams have failed since Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima?
Did any dams fail in Japan or New Zealand?

If you want to go further back, then you have to compare the old dam engineering with old [graphite] nuclear technology.

Clearly, modern dams constructed in the same era as Three Mile Island and after – [Banqio was 1950’s technology in Third World China] – have a much superior safety and waste record than nuclear technology from the same period.

Comparing dams from the 1950’s and 1960’s in a then Third World country is not dealing with dams in the West, contemporary to Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.

A Chinese dam from the 1960’s, like graphite nuclear reactors, are not relevant to any questions being considered today.

Although it is an interesting historical anecdote for some.

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Sophia, there have been many studies, you can google them, from a variety of sources looking at increased cancer rates from Three Mile Island and also weapons manufacturing reactors that released lots of ionising radiation. They have exclusively found no increased cancer incidence up to very high levels of radiation (tens, sometimes even hundreds times average global background radiation)

What the studies show is either no effect of a positive effect up to quite high doses of radiation. Especially whole body dose, such as by external gamma sources, appear benign up to hundreds of times background.

The hypothetical death toll calculations are based on a stupid model which goes as follows, as DV82XL has explained:

First we determine that the deadly or just carcinogenic dose of radiation is x sieverts. Then we look at the total dose exposure. Then we divide total dose by the x sieverts to determine how many deaths or cancers.

The big problem with this is if you spread the dose out over a number of people

Ionising radiation is energy. There is nothing magical about it. Too much energy is harmful, especially if concentrated on a small part of the body. Small amounts have no effect or a benign effect. We see this everywhere – disease resistance, chemical poisons, ultraviolet radiation. Too little pathogens, not enough sunlight can make you sick. Too much also. Some amount is good for you.

I used to not believe the radiation hormesis model, but there are many studies which are difficult to explain without this effect, here is an example of Taiwanese residents that were severely irradiated by penetrating gamma rays for years. Yet the cancer incidence was reduced from the moment they went to live in those irradiating buildings:

Click to access low-dose-Cobalt-taiw-06.pdf

Furthermore radiation is everwhere:

http://energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2865

If you ask me the problem is that people fear what they don’t understand. We have a serious education problem on our hand. Surprisingly few people know what alpha beta gamma radiation is or have read scientific studies on the effect of low dose radiation. Greenpeace is taking advantage of this by scaring people so much they don’t even want to learn about radiation. Its such a sad situation, ten years ago I was just like those people. Now I know what an idiot I was, and yet I know only the basics of radiation and nuclear power. The more I learn the more I like nuclear, the more I learn about coal the more coal scares me.

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I wouldn’t be fair to not account for the damages and deaths avoided by some dams in rivers prone to flash flooding. Phenomena that is worsened by climate change.

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@Chris Warren

You do know that the same earthquake which last week triggered the tsunami and consequent probems at Fukushima also destroyed a dam in the same prefecture?

Fortunately death toll seems to be lower than originally feared… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujinuma_Dam

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what is considered a ‘near miss’ in the nuclear power industry? I can’t seem to fathom that such a ‘potentially dangerous’ industry would have anything close to going wrong considered a ‘near miss’. Common sense would dictate that in an industry like this, there would be a huge margin left for error either made by the designer or the regulations, or even both. So if the regulations in place are tough and strict, a near miss to violating a regulation would be in fact a nowhere near in terms of violating safety.

Someone out there must have the answer for that. I mean in comparison my friend who’s a pilot says that a plane that comes too close to another in the same vertical column of air must be declared a near miss, regardless of separation in altitude. So if one was 200 ft off the ground and the other was 35000ft of the ground, it still has to be a near miss. On paper to an outside observer would say ‘my god, that was a near mid air collision!’

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JohnG:
I take your point, although I wonder how such an effect pans out long term.

Of course, this is not scientific, but I can tell you that I don’t put the washing machine on for an extra cycle because electricity is cheap. I’m pretty frugal with what I use NOW.

Therefore the only way that I can really see price affecting my behaviour is if I am literally too broke to afford the bill, at which point my problems are bigger than not being able to watch TV . . .

I’m not saying that price increases can’t work, but they ARE a pretty blunt instrument. When I did economics (admittedly only a year at high school level, so I’m no expert), they used to talk about electricity as being the archtypical “price inelastic” good/service. Whereas the price of, say, a bottle of wine had a very large impact on whether or not someone would buy it, people would spend whatever was necessary to purchase electrical power.

Now, I’m a science teacher, not an economist. So there’s a very high probability that I have missed something crucial here. What is it?

Thanks.

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@ Chris Warren

There are documented examples of extinctions which have been attributed to the construction of dams, including dams for hydroelectricity generation. The Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) is one example of a species which almost certainly went extinct due to the combined effects from the Gezhouba Dam and Three Gorges Dam projects, and other anthropogenic activities. (Google scholar “Baiji extinction”). This is one example among many.

I am unaware of – and am almost certain that there have never been – any extinctions that have occured due to the nuclear energy cycle.

If you’re not looking at biodiversity as the primary indicator of environmental impacts, I don’t know what you’re looking at.

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One Plus One interview.

After listening to Professor Brook’s interview I would like to comment on the disparity between some of his impressions of the events and other versions of the facts as far as I have been able to discern them.

I rely on the following two references:

WNA: “World Nuclear Association” and the article entitled “ Nuclear Power Plants and Earthquakes” http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf18.html

From their WEBsite “The World Nuclear Association is the international organization that promotes nuclear energy and supports the many companies that comprise the global nuclear industry.
WNA arose on the foundations of the Uranium Institute, established in London in 1975 as a forum on the market for nuclear fuel.”

Hopefully not too hostile a source..

HER: “Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion”.

A Japanese quango. This organisation has no apparent connection with nuclear power – I use it solely as a source of information on past seismic activity in the Japan region. It is a very clear and concise account with a minimum of technical language.

From their WEBsite their reason for existence is described::
“The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster on January 17, 1995 killed 6,434 people and destroyed over 100,000 buildings, and brought to light a number of problems in our national earthquake disaster prevention measures.
The failure to sufficiently communicate and apply earthquake research results to the general public and disaster prevention organizations highlighted the need for a direct system of accountability in government policy regarding earthquakes, and the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion, a special governmental organization attached to the Prime Minister’s office (now belongs to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), was established in accordance with this law”

http://www.jishin.go.jp/main/index-e.html
There is also a Japanese version.

Hopefully not too contentious either.
I don’t have a transcript of the interview but have taken notes from it. Following are some of Professor Brook’s observations and an assessment of them based on information from the two sources listed above.

Professor Brook makes a number of related observations which include the following:

1. No infrastructure can be expected to survive Japan’s largest earthquake + a 10m tsunami.
2 Design decisions taken in the 1960s didn’t anticipate the scale of the earthquake and tsunami.
2. Fukushima is the oldest reactor in Japan.
3. Based on a design of up to 6.5 m tsunami. Designed for 7 times smaller earthquake

So the general gist of these observations is that the designs and specifications were made in the distant past and that modern reactors would have withstood these conditions. In fact, most did so. The event was without modern precedent, a freak of nature and this should not be taken as an indication that nuclear power is unsafe. Further the reactors stood up remarkably well to an event way beyond their design specs.
Firstly the assessment of seismic events by reference to Richter scale magnitude is not appropriate for assessing the destructive capability of the event. There are many other factors besides the total energy, obvious ones being the distance from the epicentre, terrain, geological structure, and local influences such as soil structure. Two other scales are of more relevance. Firstly a ten-level seismic intensity scale used in Japan & Taiwan by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) . This is used to map the surface intensity at particular places. Secondly the “peak ground acceleration” (PGA) scale – a continous measurement expressed in units of acceleration (eg cm/sec^2, known as ‘Galileos’) or sometimes as a multiple of a standard g-force (approx 9.8m/sec^2). The standards for power plant earthquake resistance are expressed in the PGA scale.

Referring now to HER (http://www.hp1039.jishin.go.jp/eqchreng/eqchrfrm.htm) we see that the recent quake is an “interplate earthquakes caused by the subducting Pacific Plate”. From ibid.
“Also, the crustal movement (upheaval and subsidence) at sea floor accompanying this type of large earthquake causes the seawater to either rise or fall, and tsunami tend to occur as a result. Therefore, coastal areas facing plate boundaries, particularly areas near their hypocenter, often experience strong ground motion caused by interplate earthquakes and tsunami that arrive immediately after the earthquake” . They then go on to say that large tsunamis can be generated from smallish quakes.
So there is no direct correlation between Richter value and tsunami size.
Now 4.1 specialises to earthquakes in the Tohoku region (which is where the current quake occurred).

“The area off the Pacific coast of the Tohoku region is one of the most seismically active regions around Japan. The characteristics of how earthquakes occur here differ depending on the location. For example, great earthquakes of M 8 sometimes occur in the sea off the coast of Aomori and Miyagi Prefectures. These include the 1896 Meiji Sanriku Earthquake (M 8 1/2) and the 1968 Earthquake off the Coast of Tokachi (M 7.9). The type of seismic activity that occurs in the open sea off Fukushima is of a different nature, however. While there have been several earthquakes with M 7 or so , such as the 1938 Earthquake off the East Coast of Fukushima Prefecture (Fukushima-ken Toho-Oki Earthquake) (M7.5), no earthquakes with M 8 or so are known to have occurred. Also, earthquakes of roughly the same magnitude have occurred every about 40 years since 1855 near the same sea location, the most recent one was the 1978 Earthquake off the Coast of Miyagi Prefecture (M 7.4).
So-called “tsunami earthquakes” (“slow earthquakes” or “low-frequency earthquakes”) also occur in this region”.

Now we look at 3 specific quakes in nearly the same location as the current one. The Meiji Sanriku quake of 1896, the Sanriku quake of 1933, and the 1968 quake off the coast of Tokachi.

On the first two: “Both earthquakes were followed by large tsunami about 30 to 40 minutes after they were felt. These earthquakes were catastrophic, destroying countless houses and ships. The reported number of fatalities for the Meiji earthquake 26,360, and that for the Showa earthquake was 3,064, primarily on the Pacific Ocean coast “.
“The maximum height for both tsunami was observed at Ryori in Sanriku, Iwate Prefecture. The tsunami height of the Meiji earthquake was 38.2 m, the highest tsunami recorded near Japan since 1868 (Meiji period) (Fig.4-8). The Showa tsunami, also large, was observed at a height of 23.0 m (Fig.4-9). The ground motion of the Meiji earthquake was not substantial, and is estimated at seismic intensity of 4 in JMA scale at most (Fig.4-10). Its tsunami was extremely high, however, leading observers to believe this was a tsunami earthquake with a slower fault slip than that which occurs during normal earthquakes”.
“The tsunami accompanying the Showa earthquake was the first to occur after a modern system for observing and studying tsunami was put in place. Accordingly, many different studies have been conducted on this tsunami”

On the 1968 quake:”Strong ground motion was felt over a wide area, primarily in the northern Tohoku region and southern Hokkaido. This earthquake also generated a tsunami that was 6 m at its highest point. The tsunami arrived at low tide, however, so only slight damage resulted :

Then there was a smaller quake in 1978 off Miyagi. “The new type of damage caused by this earthquake left a lasting impression on the Japanese people. Extensive damage was caused to the infrastructure indispensable for daily life, including gas, water, and electric utilities. This caused great turmoil in the lives of local citizens. In that sense, this was the first earthquake experienced by a modern city in Japan”.

If you look at the maps provided on the WEBsite, all these quakes occurred in almost the same place as the recent one.

To cap it off the look up what HER says about the 2011 quake:
“This earthquake caused a tsunami on the Pacific coast from the Hokkaido, Tohoku and Kanto regions, with tsunami heights over 7.3m in Soma, of 4.2m in Oarai, and over 4.1m in Kamaishi”

The actual height at a particular location is difficult to determine without specific information, as it can be effected by local conditions, but it would be odd if Fukushima experienced a higher reading than other locations closer to the epicentre

So as far as the tsunami is concerned the impression we get is not in accord with Professor Brook’s claims at all. The following is more like the truth.
“Earthquakes and tsunamis in the Tohoku region are frequent and well-known. Two tsunamis of heights 38.2 metres (in 1896) and 23 metres (in 1933) far exceeded the tsunami recorded in 2011. A 6m tsunami also occurred in 1968 and another destructive quake in 1978. Smaller quakes originating much closer to Fukushima have occured at roughly 40 year intervals.
Tsunamis are extremely well-known in Japan and billions of dollars has been spent on tsunami abatement walls on large sections of the NE coast of Honshu and of Hokkaido. To claim that a tsunami of this magnitude was unexpected or exceptional is completely false, and was false at the time the reactors were installed. ”

Now we consider the ground effects of the quake. The claim is that the reactor specs were exceeded by a factor of 7. But what was the effective quake level at the reactor.
From HER
http://www.jishin.go.jp/main/chousa/11mar_sanriku-oki2/p03-e.htm
we have a chart showing the distribution of JMA intensities. Not easy to read but it looks like a 5+ at Fukushima. This corresponds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_seismic_intensity_scale) to a PGA of up to 3.15m/sec^2 or 0.32g (even allowing for difficulty with the chart, less than 0.5g in any case).
ie say 400Gal to be generous.
The Japanese risk assessment process is far from static, and there have been ongoing revisions of the system,. A detailed account can be found in WNA. . The basic message is that standards are revised as estimates for the worst-case PGA levels at a particular site are reassessed.
This upgrading has to be performed to keep a reactor licensed, no matter how old. The following may give us a clue as to what was happening.
“Hamaoka units 1 & 2 had been shut down since 2001 and 2004 respectively, pending seismic upgrading – they were originally designed to withstand only 450 Gal. In December 2008 the company decided to write them off and build a new reactor to replace them. Modifying the two 1970s units to new seismic standards would have cost about US$ 3.3 billion and been uneconomic, so Chubu opted for a US$ 1.7 billion write-down instead.”

In other word, old units no longer met the revised specs and where withdrawn from service as the cost of upgrade was prohibitive.
But we also have:
“In March 2008 Tepco upgraded its estimates of likely PGA for Fukushima to 600 Gal, and other operators have adopted the same figure”.

In the 1970s there was a uniform earthquake spec, so probably the Fukushima spec was also 450 Gal.
So

1) The 400 Gal quake was probably near the design limit of 450Gal, but certainly not 7 times as claimed by Brook.
2) Tepco were facing an upgrade to 600Gal. We are told that the units were being withdrawn from service, so it was probably uneconomic to do the upgrade. Perhaps they operated them for too long after the 2008 ruling. Perhaps not.
The last shreds of Brook’s claims:

Reactor ages in Japan:
http://world-nuclear.org/NuclearDatabase/rdresults.aspx?id=27569&ExampleId=86
The ages of the 4 problematic Fukushima –Daiichi reactors vary from 1971 to 1978.
Well there’s Mihama-1 (1970), still operating!
And we also have
Genkai-1 (1975) Ikata-1 (1977),Mihama-2(1972), Mihama-3(1976), Ohi-1 &2 (1979),
Shimane-1(1974), Takahama-1(1974), -2(1975), Tokai-2(1978)
That’s 15 reactors in roughly the same age range as the ailing reactors.
As to the absolute requirement to maintain AC power, that is not mentioned by WNA, but given the detail and complexity of the Japanese regulatory system, it is almost impossible to believe it could just have been overlooked.
Finally, spare a thought for the people of Christchurch, NZ. If NZ weren’t a nuclear free zone, they may have been tempted to locate a reactor nearby. The February quake had a PGA of 2.2g (ie over 2000Gal) one of the highest ever recorded anywhere. And this on a previously unknown fault!

There’s a lot more in the interview to argue with, but that can wait for another day.

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Chris

Wow! A quarter million people dead is not relevent to the discussion?!? If dead are not relevent then just what are you saying is bad about nuclear? If that dam had not been built would those people still be alive?

If a 1960s dam is not relevent to the debate then why is a 1960s reactor design? I would really like to understand where you are comming from.

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Whalelawyer
Thank you for that information. In particular the links to sites with historical data for the region.

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Here is a map Showing peak ground acceleration

http://www.kyoshin.bosai.go.jp/kyoshin/topics/html20110311144626/main_20110311144626.html

I had to run it through Google Translate. It looked like the PGA could have been over 1000 Gal

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whalelawyer,
Thanks for an impressive presentation. It will take a while to absorb.

I suspect Barry is humble enough to admit that he may need to remove his rose colored spectacles.

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@Whalelawyer,

You write like a lawyer and not a scientist. That’s not meant to be disparaging since it’s seems to be your field.

You can’t think you’re establishing a scientific basis for your argument and think you can just transfer “a group of assertions or facts” into different areas of scientific inquiry and think it proves a scientifically stated hypothesis.

I think the problem with your arguments is that as a lawyer you seem to want to cast doubt in people’s minds rather than actually show scientific and engineering design flaws and scientific reasoning.

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One correction: Fukushima I nuclear plant didn’t withstand the quake that is 7 times more powerful than it’s projected for.

“According to the plant operator Tokyo Electric, the maximum earthquake intensity measured at the nuclear power plant was 507 gals at the No. 3 reactor building, smaller than 600 gals the nuclear plant is required to withstand. The data is a provisional figure.”

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/79568.html

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According to this the PGA at a measurement station in Fukushima (assuming that 00FUKUSH is Fukushima) was over 1300 Gal

Click to access nied_kyoshin1e.pdf

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Fantastic interview with ABC One Plus One. Thank you for what you do BB!

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John Tons,
When we 80% consuming 20% want to increase our consumption by 10%, do you think we should use coal? Its what we are planning to do buying coal from Australia amongst others.

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Chris,
Wow… The issue as I understand it is that you said hydro was nice and safe and nuclear plants were not. To support it you pointed out TMI, Chernobyl anf Fukushima and asked what damn had done as bad. When it was pointed out that indeed a dam had burst killing 26000 imediatly and another 14×000 fom disease etc while destroying many tens of square miles you said it was not relevent. It was after all an old dam built in China.

That is just foolish and bringing Hiroshima and Nagasaki into a discussion about nuclear plant safty is either the grossest hyperbole or shows a profound lack of understanding between a reactor and a bomb.

You obviously simply are againts nuclear power. That is fine I can understand and respect that position. What I can not respect but can understand is your unwillingness to accept that your alternitave, hydro in this case, does not have its own problems and has indeed killed quite a few people.

In any discussion of safty the most important thing is immediate risk of death, then critical injury then immediate destruction of property/environment then long term issues. Put simply dams have killed more people than nuclear plants by several orders of magnatude. You can not exclude something just because it was built with old technology, there are a lotbof dams out there built with old tech just like there are a lot of reactors out there built with old tech. That is an apples to apples comparason. New dams to new reactors is oranges to oranges.

Dead people are always relevent.

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konst
I wrote you a reply but it seems to have vanished, though Jushua seems to have seen it.
Joshua – I can’t see how you can get that interpration from those articles- the significance of the HER site is that there have been a number of tsunamis of similar or greater height in the last century or so. And the destructiveness of a quake at a particular location is measured by the Gal values, which were not unusually high at the reactor sites in question.

Now to Professor Brook’s reply.

1. The Hanshin-Awaji occured over land and caused no tsunami. My point here was that the nuclear power plants stood up to a beyond design basis earthquake, but not the subsequent tsunami.

Reply:

The only reference to the Hanshin-Awaji event in my submission is in the quote from the WEBsite of the “Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion” The only purpose of this quote was to provide some brief background on the organisation to persuade the reader (at least initially) of the credibility of the source. As Professor Brook indicates, this event has little direct relevance. My point is that the earthquake was not “beyond design base” – we agree on the tsunami.
I indicated that the actual figures to support this claim were based on an interpretation of a chart, and so not highly reliable, but another poster has supplied another reference which also appears to support my claim.
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/79568.html
This one claims a measurement of 507 gals, but a design tolerance of 600gals. But perhaps the 507 is also an estimate. Other references provided by bloggers are to charts, which have the same problems of averaging data in sample areas.
Whatever, in any case there is considerable doubt as to whether, or by how much, the design limit was exceeded.

2. I said no infrastructure along the coast can withstand such forces. I said Fukushima Daiichi units were ‘among the oldest reactors in Japan’ which is a correct statement. In both cases you left out a few key words.

Reply:
The actual quote is (25 seconds into interview)
“I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect any infrastructure along a coastline like that to survive an event like that”.
What – are you saying that no building has been left standing on the entire NE coast? Demonstrably false – at the very least there are those on headlands etc above the tsunami level. Many others had water wash through their lower levels and still survived, but I guess they were just being unreasonable. If it wasn’t reasonable to expect such survival, and as I argued, the risk was known or should have been known from previous records, then it must have been unreasonable to place these installations in harm’s way on the coastline (eg a headland would have been more reasonable). You are arguing that the designers did not act reasonably. I agree.

At 48 seconds: “These are amongst the oldest stations in Japan”. OK, a correct but misleading statement, which gives an impression that the age is special, unusual. A mitigating factor. The facts are that of the 55 currently operating stations 20 (36%) date from the 1970s, and 15 others (27%) date from the 1980s. So in fact this group of stations is not outstandingly old among the set of all stations. Professor Brook’s remarks indicate that stations of this age are under a cloud , that their age makes us less sure of their reliability. Why else would he make the remark? Clearly then one should conclude that there are significant doubts on the safety of at least 35% of reactors in operation in Japan . Fair enough, I’ll settle for that.

3. I am dubious about 38 m high tsunamis, and wonder what scientific evidence there is for them?
Reply:Another blogger has provided a different link to . http://www.gps.caltech.edu/uploads/File/People/kanamori/HKpepi72c.pdf
This one claims 30m in 1896, but that will suffice to settle the point – much bigger tsunamis are on the historical record (and 1896 is recent enough, especially given other big ones since) .

Further, by saying things like “The last shreds of Brook’s claims”you indicate to me that you clearly missed the whole point I was making about society making choices to accept significant risks in some areas and yet demand zero risk in others. Ho hum.

Reply:
I isolated 4 specific points and made out a case against them. These are issues of fact, not opinion.
The expression “last shreds ..” was meant to refer just to the 4 claims which I mentioned. Just a debating expression,
No great significance there. I didn’t miss the point – I have only analysed 1 minute of the interview, still 8’38” to go.

In sum, you seem to enjoy counting the number of angels that fit on the head of a pin, and yet avoid looking at the tapestry they’re stuck into…

Reply:
I will get to the tapestry later, if it hasn’t already decayed into a heap of dust.

Concluding remarks:
It should be remembered that the interview constitutes a political rather than scientific statement. The whole point is to convince viewers of the validity of the interviewee’s position. The vast majority of viewers do not assess the position by carrying out an independent analysis of every word and nuance. They form a subconscious opinion of the interviewee’s credibility, assessed from his manner, his ‘reasonableness’, his standing. Non-critical viewers will assume that a Professor will not present questionable facts to support his case. In politics opponents frequently hold vastly different positions. In mathematics this is never possible – someone has to be wrong. Opinions are formed from the aggregation of large numbers of tiny facts. If those facts are not quite right, then higher level arguments based on them can be misleading. This is now referred to as ‘spin’. All political discussions involve spin. Professor Brook’s interview is no exception.

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Joshua says
I read the site you referenced as well as a paper discussing how the big quakes and tsunami in this area occur. Both put the chance either event at the one in two thousand year bracket. What other industrial plants are expected to plan for events that rare?”

the answer is, any industrial plants which contain potentially lethal things.

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Karen,

I do not believe, in fact i know. That Oil and gal pipelined do not plan for one in 2000 yr events. Nor do airplanes nor so many things to numerous to name.

I understand the desire to be safe but as I have said here before there are only so many resources to go arround. At some point if you require something to protect against massive outlier events you will not have the money to protect against something much more likely to kill people somewhere else. The question how safe is safe enough must always be answered.

To use hypothetical based upon Japan’s disaster. If you had to make a safety decision would you have spent money to make these nuclear plants arbitrsirly safe or to build sea walls arround some of the communities that got washed out to sea?

I will agree wholeheartedly with the need to make sure that NPS owners/operators must be forced to comply with the safty standards they have and not cut corners just to make more money though

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The way I understand the news about quake intensity measurement is that they have several measuring instruments in the plant, and that the one in reactor 3 showed maximal reading of all of them.

“maximum earthquake intensity measured at the nuclear power plant was 507 gals at the No. 3 reactor building”

Therefore, I don’t have too much doubt about this figure.

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Joshua,
Also Peter
Tracking down precise data was a bit of a challenge. If you firstly locate the reactors on GoogleEarth, then look at the following, you can get some idea of the seismic readings.
http://www.strongmotioncenter.org/cgi-bin/ncesmd/iqr_dist_DM2.pl?IQRID=Japan_11Mar2011&SFlag=0&Flag=2

Things to notice are that the readings do not form a consistent cline. This is presumably because of variation in local conditions. There is no seismic station listed very close to the Daiichi reactors, but there may well be a private one there. The closest on the coast is at Sohma (FKS0001 = 0.632g = 620Gal). Readings on the tops of the hills are often higher FKS004 & FKS0019 = 850 ), to the west of the hills they are lower (~400).
FKS0010 is well to the SW. Fukushima is quite a large prefecture, 133km of coastline , 160km wide.
Unfortunately this is not conclusive, but there is no indication that the higher values (>1000Gal) occurred near F – Daiichi.
Could you tell me how to find the 718 and 726 posts please.
From the literature tsunami size is not a simple function of quake size. In simplified terms, if the movement is longitudinal, no tsunami, if there is a vertical displacement, there will be., but the direction will depend on which side of the fault slips downwards. Also tsunami height depends on things like tide level – the disaster planner has to factor all that in.
There are examples in this same area of big tsunamis with small quakes and the reverse.
Finally there seems to be some variation in the Gal data – in the Japanese data they appear to be measuring the 3D magnitude (ie the vector magnitude, taking into account all directions of movement) other data seems to have only the major component.

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I understand that immediate local geography can have an effect on how much a given site shakes. If the epicenter was experiencing near 3000gal and the plant is reporting 5xx Gal how much of that is simple attenuation and how much might be good site selection?

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Whalelawyer,
Thank you for the information. Have a safe and good trip.

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Whalelawyer…

Damn I am just not getting my thoughts out….
Something odd is happening with your posts. The one at 20 March 1050pm just showed up in my timeline, also if I remember correctly one of your posts disapeared, earlier I think you commented on it (might have been someone else, I do not rememver clearly)

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OK here you are:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/21/3168926.htm

Now can I say – whistleblowers (sorry just one referenced so ar) are appearing who are (is?) providing a similar picture to what I have adduced from scrutinising the literature.

BTW – prefixing a comment by ‘looks like’ does not constitute presenting it as fact – it is then a hypothesis.

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Karen

Bophal was a pesticide plant in which the feedstoce was phosgene and something even nastier. Nigeria is a major protracted social conflict revolving arround oil revenew and ethnicity. (As are many others)

If you would like to discuss the various social issues which may or may not be caused/helped by nuclear power on other power generation please join me over on the Open Thread.

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