Water from the fuel pools at the top floors of the No. 7 and No. 2 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture spilled over due to strong earthquakes, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. announced Monday. No damage or leakage out of the buildings was confirmed.
The act of nuclear fission is not safe. What is safe is how we design the systems that contain the reaction and protect the workers, the public, and the environment. We should never ignore the potential dangers of nuclear power, lest we become complacent and really screw up. Instead, we should continue constructing, operating, and maintaining nuclear power plants with the highest appropriate levels of safety.
The reason people have to come out of the woodwork to “go to any length to ignore it’s dangers” is that the “dangers” reported in the media almost always pose absolutely zero risk to the public, and only serve to inflame anti-nuclear rhetoric.
Take this case: 14L of liquid spilled inside a closed and sealed containment building. There is zero chance of any of that radioactivity encountering the public or the environment. The operators noticed the problem, and are (as far as we know) taking appropriate recovery actions. Really, it shouldn’t even be news. But it is, because nUcLeAr bOgEyMaN sCaRy.
I don’t know that I can say anything to really convince anyone otherwise, especially not without sounding like the nuclear simp you mention (even more than I’m sure I already do), but truly, (given the facts at hand) there is zero danger to the workers, public, or environment from this isolated incident.
Agreed. The biggest drawback of nuclear power isn’t radiation, it’s cost.
Even better, the water in a cooling pool like that is less radioactive than the normal background radiation level outside the pool. (That’s one reason they use water to begin with, it absorbs radiation and doesn’t easily become radioactive itself)
While technically accurate, the water could still transport entrained fission daughter products, so there still might be a significant spread of contamination outside the pool, even if the water itself isn’t activated.
But here is the scenario I think you’re referencing!
Indeed I was thinking of that one. Love the final paragraph.
I thought of mentioning the possibility of corrosion/leaks, but I’m pretty sure they monitor for that, and (though I hadn’t remembered this) even in the What If, it says that the levels likely wouldn’t be serious.
There’s your problem right there.
Nuclear power generation can probably be safe, in theory.
Nuclear power generation in our current late-stage capitalism where corporations, and even governments, will cut corners for the sake of profit and politics, is not.
It’s a cool technology, but I personally don’t trust the world with it right now.