Radiation: it scares people.
http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/
There's been a lot of anti-nuclear sentiment being vented over the last few days, but it seems to me that if a reactor this old survives an earthquake this big without serious consequence, the safety of nuclear power is no longer in doubt. Natural disasters don't come much more challenging than this.
These reactors are much better designed than Chernobyl. They have control rods that don't speed up the reaction as they are being inserted. They have a whole extra layer of defence, which hasn't been called into service yet: the secondary containment vessel. Some scare mongers have been suggesting that if meltdown occurred, the core would melt its way down through the base of the plant into the ground. This is plainly not true: there was a meltdown at Chernobyl, and the core didn't melt a hole in the concrete floor then. Unlike at Chernobyl, if there is a meltdown, it almost certainly will be contained inside the secondary containment vessel, which is designed specifically for that contingency. The reactor will be beyond repair, but the environmental impact probably won't be much worse.
Nonetheless, the poor Japanese are afraid of radioactive rain, and all sorts of other horrors. In the population around Chernobyl, the increase in suicides, and alcoholism is far greater than anything cancer has inflicted on them. This is presumably because they worry about dying of cancer. The enemy is not radiation. It is our fear of it:
http://www.atomicinsights.com/
http://www.tai.ee/failid/
There's been a lot of anti-nuclear sentiment being vented over the last few days, but it seems to me that if a reactor this old survives an earthquake this big without serious consequence, the safety of nuclear power is no longer in doubt. Natural disasters don't come much more challenging than this.
These reactors are much better designed than Chernobyl. They have control rods that don't speed up the reaction as they are being inserted. They have a whole extra layer of defence, which hasn't been called into service yet: the secondary containment vessel. Some scare mongers have been suggesting that if meltdown occurred, the core would melt its way down through the base of the plant into the ground. This is plainly not true: there was a meltdown at Chernobyl, and the core didn't melt a hole in the concrete floor then. Unlike at Chernobyl, if there is a meltdown, it almost certainly will be contained inside the secondary containment vessel, which is designed specifically for that contingency. The reactor will be beyond repair, but the environmental impact probably won't be much worse.
Nonetheless, the poor Japanese are afraid of radioactive rain, and all sorts of other horrors. In the population around Chernobyl, the increase in suicides, and alcoholism is far greater than anything cancer has inflicted on them. This is presumably because they worry about dying of cancer. The enemy is not radiation. It is our fear of it:
http://www.atomicinsights.com/
http://www.tai.ee/failid/
Lets get over it. The Japanese don't need any unnecessary suffering just now.
