Candles Kill Many More Than Nuclear Power
Killed more people than nuclear power.
Japan’s earthquake has unleashed a massive wave of hysteria throughout Germany as media outlets hyperventilate over the danger of a meltdown at the Japanese Fukushima nuclear power plant. Sure nuclear power is deadly dangerous if not properly used, and the situation in Japan is critical. But listening to the media, you’d think nothing could be more dangerous.
Now activists are demanding we switch immediately over to the-planet saving renewable energy sources, like wind power for example.
But just how safe is wind energy? Just how “safe” are many things out there? What about public transportation?
It turns out that nuclear power is a minor killer when the big picture is examined.
Zero nuclear power plant deaths in the USA
Wind energy has killed more
The Japanese earthquake and nuclear reactor accidents is yet another example of the media’s distorted perception. It turns out that wind power has been a bigger killer than nuclear power in the USA. Here’s what treehugger reported awhile back:
According to one viewpoint of reports offering the comparison between wind versus nuclear energy, there has not been one single injury to a nuclear plant worker in all its 104 power plants and 40 years of service in the United States… not one!
The Wind Turbine Industry on the other hand, has quite a treacherous track record as you can see by the summary below:
Summary of Wind Turbine Incidents (December 2008):
• 41 worker fatalities – includes falling from turbine towers and transporting turbines on the highway.
• 39 Incidents of blade failure - failed blades can travel over 400 meters, killing any unfortunate bystanders.
• 110 Incidents of fire - When a wind turbine fire occurs, local fire departments can do little but watch due to the 30-story height of these turbine units. The falling debris are then carried across the distance and cause new fires.
• 60 Incidents of structural failure- As turbines become more prevalent, these breakages will become more common in public areas, thereby causing more deaths and dismemberment’s from falling debris.
• 24 incidents of “hurling ice”- Ice forms on these giant blades and is reportedly hurled at deathly speeds in all directions. Author reports that some 880 ice incidents having occurred over Germany’s 13-years of harnessing wind power.”
Another way to save the planet and to “live safely” is to ride your bicycle. Well it turns out that bike-riding is far deadlier than nuclear power. In the USA in 2008, 716 bicyclists were killed in traffic accidents. About 53,000 bicyclists have died in traffic crashes in the United States since 1932. Compare that to the deaths caused by nuclear power in the United States – or even globally.
Candles kill more than nuclear
Indeed many things are far more dangerous than nuclear power plants, at least they have caused far more deaths and mayhem. Here are some annual death statistics from the USA that cause many more deaths, taken from here and here at Arthur Hu’s site. Why don’t we ban all of these menacing products?
Nuclear power plants – 0 deaths per year
Candles – 126
Bicycles 1995 – 800
Agriculture – 1,300
Motorcycles – 2,500
Car Phones 2002 – 2,500
Alcohol – 100,000
Tobacco – 500,000
Candles kill 126 – in just a single year and in a single country! Having a reliable supply of electricity would mean less use of candles, and so lives would be saved. As far as I know, all of the above killer items are being sold without protest. Here are some other killers:
Roller skates – 10
Window blind cords – 13
Drawstring hoods – 17
Dog Bites – 20
Skiing deaths – 34
Yes, even the lowly blind cord has killed more than U.S. nuclear power plants have.
Green transportation is a killer too
Let’s go green and hop on public transport. But wait, they cause more deaths than nuclear power too. Admittedly these US statistics aren’t so up-to-date, but they give you an idea of the risks involved.
1999 bus deaths – 58
1999 railroad – 805
1999 struck by trains – 530
Dangerous occupations
And let’s move to ban all the following potentially catastrophic occupations. Actually they are not potentially – they simply just are! They are destroying the planet and kill humans. Occupations in USA; deaths/100,000:
Timber cutters – 117.8
Fishers – 71.1
Pilots and navigators – 69.8
Structural metal workers – 58.2
Drivers-sales workers – 37.9
Roofers – 37.0
Electrical power installers – 32.5
Farm occupations – 28.0
Construction laborers – 27.7
Truck drivers – 25.0
We accept many of the risks these products and occupations pose because their benefits far outweigh the harm they do.
Automobiles are far more dangerous
If zero deaths in the United States from nuclear power is too much to take, then take a look at what the automobile claims every year:
Traffic deaths per year global: 1.27 million
Nuclear power has an excellent record
One thing that constantly gets ignored is the cost-benefit analysis of nuclear power. It has a far better track record than many other products or systems out there and it vastly improves our lives as a whole. Of course, there is a risk in generating power with nuclear reactions, but the benefits it offers are immense.
Sure accidents will happen. But as technology improves, these accidents will become rarer. It is indeed difficult to find a product that has given us so much for so little in terms of lives lost. Even if the worst happens in Japan, the loss of life will be relatively small.
I recall a few years ago 4 workers getting killed in a biogas plant here in northern Germany. Yet, the incident went practically unreported in the media. Imagine if these four workers had been killed in a nuclear plant.
The issue has little to do with safety, and much more so to do with politics and power.
Resources:
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040101507.html
– http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/worldclock/
– http://www.edgarsnyder.com/bicycle/accident-statistics.html
– http://www.inquisitr.com/18588/wind-power-causes-more-deaths-than-nuclear-power/
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam
- nuclear power station worksheet
- nuclear power plant worksheets
- worksheet earth at risk nuclear energy nuclear waste
- nuclear waste worksheet
- nuclear energy worksheets
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Bild is a tabloid, as interested in hyping up any glimpse of
disaster as all the other papers to sell more units.
It’s a lot like the smoking laws issue. Clinton won in
1996 because Dole was seen, correctly, as being in the pocket of
Big Tobacco.
What exactly are you not getting here? Perhaps you should stop
trying to over examine and poke holes, and get to your point?
“The CIA factbook on Tchernobyl shows a massive region
equal to the size of the Czech Republic. I can get the link but
anyone can Google it.”
No Dirk – You are very wrong to make the claim that only
liberals are concerned about irresponsible nuclear pollution.
The jury is still out on whether high IQ people will abandon
Tokyo. It depends literally on which way the wind blows in the next
few days. The total fool who mentioned Nagasaki above doesn’t
realize that a bomb’s fallout is nothing compared to a
reactor’s fallout.
Candles might kill more people, but they don’t leave huge
areas of land virtually unusable for half a millenia if things go
wrong with them. That’s kind of the point behind the
“hysteria.” Not to mention that when something goes
wrong with nuclear, it’s compounding another major
catastrophe – like a massive earthquake and a tsunami. It
makes it really hard on the people of the region.
The question to you is: do you really feel that an attitude
about keeping the old technology running is politically viable and
scientifically sound?
What will an 8.9 quake do to a nuclear facility? Nuclear plant
designers should have known, even as they designed for 8.0. Ban
nuclear plants.
At least half of “small government” advocates like
myself would agree with me that blowing smoke in other
people’s faces doesn’t represent an “individual
right.” Smart Republicans have learned “Not to go
there” because you just aren’t going to win elections
by pretending that smoking in other’s airspace is an
individual right to champion above all the more serious individual
rights.
You’re right, Pierre. Greens would happily go into the
forest and cut down a tree to heat their home – we think we
can manage falling branches or avoid being run over by a rolling
trunk because we can see it coming. In fact, deadly accidents with
timber happen all the time but they don’t make big news. We
can’t feel radioactivity, so people fear it more than the
real risks.
The “donut ring” runs under the vessel and is
designed to capture access over pressure/steam.
Are you seriously trying to imply that this actually IS a right
vs left issue?
This is about POTENTIAL problems. Would you live beside a
reactor? Would you trust your life to what a few cash strapped
engineers and politicians have deemed safe?
Again – I acknowledged that I erred in my statement
– 100 Watts per hour was an incorrect statement – I
meant to say, as in my correction note back to you, that the house
consumes 100 watts, at any given time (i.e., that is the power
required to run the home at any given time, thorughout the night).
Over an 8 hour period of time that would mean that my battery bank
provided a total of 800 -Watt hours worth of energy to the
house….
GH is the largest renewable consultancy in the world, and
prepared a risk assessment that essentially found that the risk of
ice shed, when NO operational mechanisms are employed is very
small, primarily because ice typically does not get thrown more
than 200 metres. The fact remains, most, if not all wind plants are
at least 400 metres from participating land owners. Even with this
setback, the operators are trained to recognize conditions that may
lead to ice build up, the wind turbines have sophisticated
monitoring systems to detect vibration, and will automatically shut
down. Furthermore, wind plants constructed in regions known to have
ice build up, will be installed with cold weather packages.
Finally, operators will often prevent public access to the wind
parks, and, most people, at the end of the day, tend to not walk in
and around wind turbines in the type of weather that leads to ice
build up.
Taking a globalist position where you need to pay taxes to
“save the polar bears” is left wing.
But it was diluted enough by the wind that there isn’t so
much of it in Germany.
There is ZERO chance for the GOP if it is stupid enough to go
against any Democrat initiatives to, for instance, shut down all
the 23 Mark I reactors in the USA right now (Merkel of Germany
correctly shut 7 of these down last week and the liberals in
Germany got angry basically saying “That’s unfair.
You’re supposed to be pro-nuclear because you’re
conservative.”)
It’s getting tiresome correcting the misconceptions of
people… Please inform yourself before spreading
misinformation. I’m surrounded by rabidly anti nuclear
Germans in my daily life who have NOT gotten ANY information about
the actual radiation measurements by their beloved public
media.
This is an excellent example of confirmation bias. When you cite
Treehugger you take it one step further. Follow the chain back to
the original source and read them properly. The jump from “no
deaths from radiation” to “there has not been one
single injury” is amazing, but if you’re a believer
then maybe it doesn’t matter.
Thorium LFTRs do produce waste (just much less of it than
conventional Light Water Reactors).
It is not necessary to leave a mountain full of spent nuclear fuel
as a legacy to our children’s children. Thorium LFTRs use
their nuclear… fuel more efficiently (>99% typical fuel
utilization) and the fission product waste is more than a thousand
times less long term radiotoxic [1]. Thorium LFTRs are sustainable
nuclear energy.
But I will agree that Germany is still a great place to live
because of its people.
Merkel was smart to at least temporarily shut down the old
reactors. I don’t think she will politically get away with
starting those up again. Better to build new ones with newer, safer
technology.
This is the second explosion at number 2 and it was said that
the first explosion damaged the pressure release vent allowing the
pressure to rise to the level where where the “donut”
gave way.
One more word. Plutonium and Uranium are heavy metals; they
don’t vaporize easily and are too heavy to be carried far.
What was carried over 1000s of miles was radioactive Caesium and
Iod; both with half-lifes of about 30 years.
The CIA factbook on Tchernobyl shows a massive region equal to
the size of the Czech Republic. I can get the link but anyone can
Google it.
Haiti’s quake was smaller by a factor of almost a thousand
(7.0 Mw)! 316,000 people were identified as dead, an estimated
300,000 were injured, and an estimated 1,000,000 were homeless.
Why? Because they LACKED such modern technology as sensible
construction, because of medieval politics and values.
Today, i told a colleague that every nuclear power station gets
practically disassembled every 2 years when the refueling happens;
that 2,000 workers and engineers arrive for a few weeks and
inspect, repair and replace everything that needs it… that
these people travel from one nuclear plant to the next… he
knew nothing about it – he thougt we just let these plants
rot. Such is the level of “information” our ubiquitious
public media gives us.
Although we had a 5.0 quake in Germany las month near the town
of Koblenz we don’t suffer from Tsunami’s.
Anyone redneck and stupid enough to think so is dying to lose
the 2012 elections for the GOP – dying to snatch defeat from
the jaws of victory.
I should have been more accurate though in my energy consumption
statement, and your poor math has provided me an opportunity to
correct my mistake. I should have said that the home consumes an
instantaneous 100 W at any given time during the night (when we
aren’t watching TV, running internet, (fridge cycling) or
running our dishwasher), so in 1 hour, we consume approximately
100-Wh. Over the course of one night’s rest, say, 8 hours,
the home would therefore consume 800 Wh. This was intended to
provide an example of energy conservation, and how affective it can
be. The average home in North America consumes anywhere from 20
– 40 kWh per day, some dipping below, and many large ones
dipping up to 100+ kWh per day on average. I am not sure how you
came up with 3.2 kWh, or what you are referring to. The house
itself is designed to consume about 3 – 5 kWh per day, and
the battery bank holds sufficient capacity for about 2 – 4
days, depending on how much sunshine we get and how much laundry,
etc., we do.
by the way….have you factored in other, possibly less
tangible impacts? The Globe and Mail has just reported that Toyota
is possibly going to shut down for an undisclosed period of time
all of its manufacturing in North America….why you ask? I
suspect you know the answer – Japanese quake and continual
power issues (from lack of reliable power)….go figure.
What about the sustainability of:
“I heat my home with wood that is harvested from sick, dying
or dead trees, that are collected from around my home.”
Be honest – this is about human error, which ALWAYS
happens.
A windmill will never kill a million and leave a million more
homeless.
I really don’t want to believe that milk in Germany or
Poland is now dangerous.
Next let’s deal with Solar PV. I have a wife and two kids
– i doubt they would be impressed with a system that goes
completely dead everytime the sun goes down! So – we use
batteries to store energy, and they batteries, before you go there,
are nearly 95% recyclable. The biggest difference in my system and
your grid tied home, is that I can take real, tangible and
measureable steps to affect and adjust where my energy comes from.
And lastly, speaking of wind, see above, re., shadow flicker. I
probably wouldn’t be a very good engineer (I’m not a
journalist) if I located my wind turbine so that shadows would
affect the performance of the rest of my system…just
sayin’.
In 2005, the World Health Organization (in conjunction with the
U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency) published a report
on the actual and expected death toll from Chernobyl.
Less than 50 deaths by 2005 (over 20 years later) directly
attributed to the accident.
Most were fire and resecue personnel who died the 1st few
months.
It is true that thyroid cancer spiked, but they achieved a 99%
survival rate.
That’s enough for Luxembourg or Lichtenstein of Andorra or
the Republic of San Marino. Or for the Vatican. Or for Monaco.
These are the “dwarf states” of Europe. Czechia is way
larger. Please check the CIA factbook. We have small states, but
not that small. Germany is slightly smaller than Michigan IIRC but
don’t sue me if i’m wrong.
Third. The containments of the reactors or the reactors have not
been breached and no uranium or Plutonium entered the atmosphere as
far as we know, so comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl can only result
in the assessment “Fukushima was a very harmless incident
compared to Chernobyl.”
Thanks for mentioning my death rate spectrum, do ya think you
could mention me by name and not “here”, I mentioned
this article there, interesting. However I added up Fukushima
deaths including the 14 who died fleeing the nuclear evacuation
area, and including the six who supposedly died at the explosion
no. 3 it’s on the same order of people as Chernoybol (30
killed)
Greg McMullan, a friend of mine and a Nuclear Engineering major
at MIT, died in a fire started by a candle in 2008.
Recommendations for Risk Assessments of Ice Throw and Blade
Failure in Ontario, 2007, Prepared by Garrad Hassan
I would like to hear your informed opinion on how any political
party can win by taking your attitude.
Ok. I actually thought I was debating someone who understood
renewable energy, but clearly I am not…so let’s bring
things back a little so you can understand what renewable energy
is, and how it works.
“I power my home with 75% PV power, and we are working on
the remaing bit.”
Yes, the Green Party in Germany has skillfully taken up issues
that are not all inherently left vs right and stressed a popular
position on some of them.
At the moment, 70% of the population are following the left rat
catchers. The Greens use the fear of radiation to catch more
souls.
The other point is that we aren’t building wind parks in
neighbourhoods where people live. We are building them on tracts of
land that are typically used for agriculture, and it has been shown
the world over, that agricultural uses and wind park operation work
very well together, without affecting the ability of the farmer to
continue working the land. Also keep in mind that the very small
amount of land that is taken out of production (and the loss of
revenue from this) for the wind plant (1 – 5% as a range),
used for roads, foundation, etc., is more than made up for in the
revenue the farmer receives from land leasing, which offsets the
loss of revenue from the land that can not be used for farming due
to the presence of wind plant infrastructure. Furthermore, host
communities often reap significant benefits from hosting wind
plants within their municipal borders, from tax revenue, to host
community agreements, payment in lieu of taxes, etc.
The old communist caders have from the start dominated the Green
party and neutralized competing elements, all the while hiding
their agenda (albeit badly).
It begins and ends with energy conservation – we have
reduced our electricity consumption to about 3 – 5 kWh per
day (75 – 90% electricity reduction when compared to an
average home)….we have sacrificed no quality of life in
doing so.
We need 1 mistake/malfunction in nuclear power plant and we have
global catastrophy. We don’t need that.
What’s ironic is that the nuclear industry has sponsored
most of the global warming websites in a bizarre attempt to get
lefties to prefer the possibility of Cesium and Plutonium pollution
rather than have the world polluted by Carbon Dioxide.
So 8 hours after you go to bed, you’re using 800W more
power than when you went to bed, having consumed 3.2kWh in the
intervening 8 hours?
No doubt the Japanese didn’t pick the best spot for the
reactors. But I disagree with the statement it is not possible to
make them safe enough. Commerical jets are made safe enough. What
would happen if an Airbus 880 crashed and killed 500 passengers?
Would we ground them forever? After all, there is no way to make
them 100% safe.
Errors will always be made and lives lost. But the lives our modern
technical systems extend and save are far more. Sure if a Chernobyl
accident happens, it is a disaster. But I’m beginning to get
the feeling that it is getting awfuly hard for a Chernobyl accident
to happen. Not even a 9.0 earthquake combined with a 7 meter
tsunami and an ill-equipped and inadequate response system were
able to lead to a Chernobyl. As improvements are made, it’s
going get impossibly difficult to get one of these things to blow.
Again almost everything else has killed more people. If you want to
start banning things, then ban the bones that are real killers,
i.e. tobacco, alcohol, bicycles, cars, trains, chainsaws, sports,
etc., etc. My view.
It is true that people die less from nuclear accidents than from
other accidents. What we have to take into consideration is the
fact that after nuclear accidents wide areas around are not
suitable for life for long period. In case of Chernobyl it is area
almost as big as Switzerland. And for about 300 years.
And the movement to apologize for Fukushima got started via
websites like Better Climate which is for liberals who believe in
man-made global warming.
NREL in the US is conducting a study that is examining what 80%
renewables would require from a transmission perspective.
Preliminary results suggest that absent of storage, we could not
accommodate such a large amount of renewables efficiently. However,
at present penetration levels, models and experience (Germany,
Spain, Denmark, parts of the US) shows us that existing
infrastructure can more than accommodate, with the addition of some
new operational requirements (forecasting, telemetry, sub-hourly
markets, etc.). Essentially, existing “reserves” are
sufficient at renewable penetrations less than 30%. Check out the
NREL studies:
There has been an explosion in of the “donut ring”
of Fukushima Number 2, one of the first GE reactor designs.
Boy, you turned “7000 million people” by Bernd into
7000 billion in your reply. Watch them fingers when doing numbers.
Journalist?
Proof: Very few media reports mention that Reactor #3 has
plutonium MOX fuel rods. Do a quick check. I’ll wait. You
will see that the MSM is trying not to panic anyone, relatively
speaking.
So STOP IT if you think you’re “conservative”
while being dismissive of Chernobyl’s uninhabitable zone
being larger than most west European countries.
What also effects the radiation levels strongly is the wind
direction which is not favorable for the moment.
Within 24 hours a strong wind system is predicted that will
transport the contaminated air away from the land.
Don’t forget that Ted Kennedy’s car has killed more
people than nuclear power has.
How many charge-discharge cycles do you plan your batteries to
last, and are they Lead-acid or Li-Ion? Have you made a lifetime
calculation to find out how much more expensive this makes your
renewable energy?
I am not sure what you are getting at. Yes – I still need
electricity to run my home, and I still require a heat source in
winter.
After explosions at both units 1 and 3, the primary containment
vessels of both units are reported to be intact. However, the
explosion that occurred at 04:25 UTC on 14 March at the Fukushima
Daiichi unit 2 may have affected the integrity of its primary
containment vessel. All three explosions were due to an
accumulation of hydrogen gas. A fire at unit 4 occurred on 14 March
23:54 UTC and lasted two hours. The IAEA is seeking clarification
on the nature and consequences of the fire. The IAEA continues to
seek details about the status of all workers, reactors and spent
fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The list is just to give people an idea.
Actually there’s one thing that is always fatal in the end:
being alive!
storage is certainly the key to huge renewable energy
penetrations. Right now, places like Denmark have up to 20%
penetration (as a function of energy demand), but rely heavily on
large hydro (water) storage in Norway.
Cesium-137 has a half life of 30 years. It will take 150 years
to clear up across Europe.
Strontium-90 is apparently very much more in the teeth of
Germans as a result of Tchernobyl. It has a half life of 90 years
and won’t be considered “gone” for 450 years.
There is less of that in Germany than Poland.
Merkel was smart. She cut the liberals off at the pass, not by
being “hysterical” (which is what the nuclear industry
wants tools to repeat as if they are conservative for using the
word), but being an intelligent conservative leader.
And a fun story. One time, a belarusian guest student in my
hometown, Braunschweig, had to read a book by Adorno to prepare for
her studies. I couldn’t help her – i can’t find
out the meaning of the gibberish Adorno writes even though
i’m a native German. You gotta have a seriously deformed mind
to even try to understand him. Normal people just give up.
If all the Nuclear Reactors in Japan were Liquid Fluoride
Thorium Reactors there would not be any radiation leaking to worry
about. Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors shut down automatically any
time they overheat.
The Model T Ford would have been banned by these people: no air
bags.
What are air bags? Ford should have known. Ban the Model T
There seems to be once critical concern missing, however. The
duration of the hazard after a wind turbine blade gone wild comes
to rest and radiation/contamination hazards from a nuclear accident
that keeps on giving.
the most important thing to consider is deaths per killowat
hour. if we generate more of our power from one source than
another, than it can reasonably be assumed that there will be more
deaths from the larger source. So the only real way to compare
Deaths as a Negative Cost of power generation is to look at deaths
per kilowat hour of power. even if nuclear had killed 100 people in
America, it would have generated a much greater amount of power per
dead worker than coal or wind. Wind has not generated very much
power and already has a higher death toll. and with coal, we have
plenty of people dying in mining accidents or lung diseases, and
not nearly as much power generation as with nuclear.
So, every German nuke has, for instance, a
“Töpfer-Kerze” – a “Töpfer
candle” – when Töpfer was federal minister for the
environment, it was decided that every nuke has to have a catalytic
device that destroys H2 accumulations. Maybe this device was
lacking at Fukushima, or it went defunct through power
disruption.
Granted, but to replace one nuclear plant you need at least 6000
windmills, covering about 2000 km^2, making 500,000 people
permanently homeless even before anything goes wrong (estimates.
Largest wind park in scotland has an area of 80 km^2 and about 200
wind turbines. I assume a typical European population density of
about 250/km^2).
All through the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986 to this day i
drank milk and ate eggs and didn’t care a wit where it came
from. It is not the country that is irradiated nor its agricultural
products, it is the minds of 70% of the population who are filled
with Angst.
Dutch nuclear experts are involved in the global inspection
teams and they have been involved in the aftermath of the Chernobyl
disaster and they have direct contacts with the operators of the
Fukushima plant.
And it’s brain dead to compare the danger of a candle to
one person compared to the danger of a leaky old upwind nuclear
plant destroying one’s property value in the next 10 years
and maybe giving one of the people in your family cancer (your
quality of life is lowered as well by the uncertainty, especially
if you know you “better not drink the milk” in your
area because of high Strontium 90 levels.
The Green Party should not have been allowed to claim leadership
on issues regarding local pollution.
That said, the nuclear industry is paying a lot of people to go
around the Internet to say what you’re saying now.
The solution for large scale storage that will become viable
first will be Methane synthesis IMHO. Don’t know about the
time scale, though. Good luck with your batteries. Think about
turning it into a product.
Are you seriously trying to imply that the US Republican Party
can win by siding more or less on the side of the nuclear industry
about the continued operation of GE Mark I reactors which were
obsolete 40 years ago?
So “Don’t Go There” with this dismissal of the
tragedy of Tokyo possibly becoming a place where you won’t
want to raise a family anymore because you won’t want your
kids to grow up with Strontium 90 radiating in their bones.
In reading the article and checking with the source the
statement there has not been one single injury to a nuclear plant
worker in all its 104 power plants and 40 years of service in the
United States… not one! was misquoted and should have read
there has not been a single case of injury to any member of the
public. I imagine there have been some industrial accidents at
nuclear power plants in the past 40 yrs.
So i take it you plan on not using electricity on cloudy days
and in the night. I hope the flickering shadows of a wind turbine
will never fall on your PV panels for you would have a strong power
oscillation.
When you have something that consumes 100 Watts of power, and
you leave it on for one hour, then you have consumed, within that
one hour, 100 Watt-hours of energy. A 100 Watt lighbulb, operating
for one hour, will consume 100 Watt-hours of energy. If you were to
leave that same lighbulb on for 8 hours, it will have consumed a
total of 800-Watt hours.
Concern about man-made global warming may be stupid (globalist)
but concern about high tension wires over your apartment building
is not (individual rights).
Merkel today, pressured by the hysterical anti nuclear lobby and
protests and the upcoming elections, decided to close down seven
nuclear plants build before 1980.
The K-Gruppen members were, of course, well-versed in agitation
& propaganda and the various social sabotage techniques
developed by the Soviet Union. Originally they were students during
the 1968 student revolts; people like Prof. Adorno, one of the
founders of the Franfurt School – the driving philosophical
force of anticapitalism in the West – were their
professors.
No flawed arithmetic on my part. If you started at 0W when you
started, increasing at 100W per hour as you stated, then
you’d have consumed 3.2kWh 8 hours later. It’s the area
of the right triangle which is 8 hours long and 800W high at the
end.
“Finally, operators will often prevent public access to
the wind parks, and, most people, at the end of the day, tend to
not walk in and around wind turbines in the type of weather that
leads to ice build up.”
And I agree that lefties are hard to deal with on issues such as
taxes and political correctness.
Heinz Schmital, Greenpeace, Latif (wearing dark sunglasses) and
a lady
(I didn’t catch her name but she was an expert in energy
economics).
All units at the Fukushima Daini, Onagawa, and Tokai nuclear
power plants are in a safe and stable condition (i.e. cold
shutdown).
I think it’s good not to fall for hysteria and take time
to look at facts and data and make a rational decision.
However, the way you choose your data isn’t balanced. You
equate the number of fatal accidents for nuclear plant workers in
the US with saying that nuclear plants are save, which just
isn’t the case. Yes, they are save for employees of nuclear
plants if you look at those statistics, but that doesn’t mean
nuclear plants are save for humanity.
Apart of that – death isn’t the only thing. Radiation
related diseases might not always be deadly, but if they affect
tens of thousands of people in serious ways, that could be
considered more harmful than a couple of worker deaths.
However, I do agree that shutting down nuclear plants as a knee
jerk reaction is a rather unreasonable decision.
The IAEA remains concerned over the status of the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear power plant, where sea water injections to cool the
reactors in units 1, 2 and 3 are continuing. Attempts to return
power to the entire Daiichi site are also continuing.
- Update of UK Shadow Flicker Evidence Base; 2011; Prepared for
the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change
I assume German milk is OK to drink now? Is there data on the
Strontium 90 levels in German milk? Polish milk?
If we can’t have coal, oil, Nuclear, there will be no need
of somebody to switch the lights out in EUROPE, dark
ages………..oh yes and coming soon.
Never mind the fact that you have zero ideological standing to
claim any conservatism in your attitude.
As i quoted the other day,… a lot of the initial members
of the Greens, founded in the beginning of the 80ies, were
communists from the various small communist parties (called
K-Gruppen) in Western Germany of the 70ies. They recognized that
they could instrumentalize the Anti Nuclear movement for their
purposes. One of them is Jürgen Trittin, today one of the
bosses of the party.
And here is a great quote: “Granted, but to replace one
nuclear plant you need at least 6000 windmills, covering about 2000
km^2, making 500,000 people permanently homeless even before
anything goes wrong (estimates. Largest wind park in scotland has
an area of 80 km^2 and about 200 wind turbines. I assume a typical
European population density of about 250/km^2).” – this
is possibly the most ludicrous generalization I have ever seen
– are you honestly thinking that everyone who lives within
and around a wind park, even if your nubmers were correct, are
permanently displaced? My god man – where do you get this
nonsense from??? Either you are paid to right garbage, or you truly
are blind and ignorant….
If Chernobyl had happened in Czechoslovakia, there would be no
Czech Republic today because it would all be an uninhabitable zone
(along with maybe Dresden, Berlin, Munich, Regensburg, Linz and/or
Vienna).
As I said in my original post, I made an error in the way I
presented my information – did you read my correction? If you
did, and you still don’t get it, then let me break this down
for you, because you clearly are getting bogged down in nonsense
math that does not apply to energy and power consumption. We are
not talking pythagorean theorem here. We are talking about energy
consumption over a period of time, based on the power requirements
of the house.
The IAEA Incident and Emergency Centre (IEC) continues to
monitor the status of the nuclear power plants in Japan that were
affected by the devastating earthquake and consequent tsunami.
German Angst attaches to many things. Radioactivity, Genetically
manipulated food, cell phone radiation, EM sensitivity, Xenophobia,
Euro crash scenarios, surveillance state paranoia, Biofuel (might
wreck your beloved engine!!!). We have one panic a week, and our
media play it for all its worth.
You mention a battery bank. Fine. Are these Lead-Acid batteries?
Now, that’s quite a load of lead you need, then. Make sure
that they are not discharged too much, it shortens the lifetime.
Also watch the less than optimal energy efficiency, i think
it’s 85% for the complete charge-discharge cycle.
Take the blinders off or just stop blogging this dribble and do
us all a favour – I guess you are going to turn this into a
right vs. left debate again? And before you try to counter this
with the typical “what are you doing to conserve
energy?” counter point – I will answer for you. I power
my home with 75% PV power, and we are working on the remaing bit. I
heat my home with wood that is harvested from sick, dying or dead
trees, that are collected from around my home. When I go to bed at
night, my entire house (when my fridge is not running a cooling
cycle) consumes 100-Watts per hour….what are you doing?
At least you’re trying to buffer the PV fluctuations with
a battery which i find an honest try to go the full distance.
This is a measure of energy consumption – when you look at
the back of your television, it may provide you with several pieces
of information – volts, amps, frequency, etc. In order to
determine the effect of watching TV on your energy bill, or, more
simply, how much it costs to run your television, you have to
determine how much ENERGY it will consume over a period of time.
You take the power consumption (watts or amps) and multiply that by
the amount of time you will be watching television – that
provides you with an energy consumption value. You multiply this by
the cost of energy (usually about 10 c/kWh, depending on where you
live) and that will provide you with the total cost to run that
television, based on the total amount of energy it consumed in a
period of time, which is based on it’s instantaneous power
consumption.
After less than 30 seconds of listen to him getting even the
basics wrong, I paused the video and searched the WWW for his
name.
Bild nebenbei ist angeblich Konservativ (A German neocon paper
actually). They are hyping more than anyone else.
Another reason why the closure of the plants is a zealous affair
is the fact that all the neighboring countries leave their pants on
the grid.
And even if they reported about it, a lot of people would still
prefer to believe any “expert” from Greenpeace.
It’s crazy that Germany can function with this population and
these charlatans.
These comparisons are meaningless. Banana peels may kill more
than do hand grenades in your country, but does that mean you think
it is OK if you have hand grenades in your house?
They are not permitted to go below 60 – 50% discharge, and
they have about 3,000 cycles, but point taken on taking care to not
allow them to go too low, even if they are deep cycle…
I wouldn’t want to be a representative with a nuclear bill
on my desk right now, that’s for sure. I’d be boning up
on a natural gas platform if I were in that situation. Voters are
going to be a lot more interested in hearing about your natural gas
ideas for their region than your nuclear ones.
But they can’t do what they want with YOUR airspace. They
can’t do something that has ANY likelihood at all of
spreading Cesium 137 on your lawn or cow pasture. Look up the
“Law of the Commons”. Too many redneck fools think of
preserving the commons as “communism”. Anyone who
thinks that way really is a tool of “big business” as
the lefties would say (correctly – as stopped clock is right
twice per day).
It will be great if the reactors weren’t breached. But
those old GE Mark Is will be taken offline around the world as a
result of this.
If there is no breach in the containment vessel, then that will
be very good news!
They dug a hole nearby and buried all of the radioactive debris.
It wasn’t even a particularly deep hole. It occasionally gets
rained on. The nuclear waste hasn’t migrated out of the
shallow hole.
Thanks for the info. I’m tracking all the storage
solutions as i see a big need for it (created by Wind and Solar
Power of course). Personally i think it’s too early to switch
a country’s infrastructure, though Germany will probably
throw some billions at it when the Greens come to power. Maybe they
will subsidize solutions like yours; i heard SMA builds a product
using Lead-Acid batteries.
Watched the discussion at Das Erste, Beckman.
Only a single sane person (Hamer ?) at the table.
According to a Dutch radiation expert Jean Savelkoul who in the
past was involved with the radiation treatment of Chernobyl
radiation victims, the current radiation levels will force the
Japanese government to further expand the safety zone from 20 km to
at least 80 km.
As for the wood – sustainability is based on inputs and
outputs. If these are balanced, something is sustainable, by very
definition. With wood, trees regrow. We ensure to take wood that is
dead, sick or dying, and we burn these in energy woodstoves that
are maintained on an annual basis. We also ensure that we primarily
burn “good wood” – dry, and of hardwood species.
I never claimed to live in a glass house, nor do I (or likely will
ever be able to) claim to live in a manner that leaves zero impact
on the environment – i can however try to minimize that
impact wherever achievable and practical. However, as you say, what
about the other 7000 billion other people? While it is true that my
immediate actions will have no measureable impact on the quality of
the environment (regardless of how you measure
“quality”), I hope that my actions will provide an
evidence for other people that conserving significant amounts of
electricity does not need to affect ones quality of life, contrary
to popular misconceptions. Therefore, I try to lead through
example, and not simply preach something without actually acting on
those same values and ethics.
Your assumption is that a setback implies NO use. I am simply
saying yes, it is prudent that we don’t build a home
underneath a wind turbine, or within, say 300 – 500 m of one.
That doesn’t mean the land is not suited for
anything….it is, just not for a home.
Dutch nuclear and radiation specialists said Merkel’s
decision is premature and without merit because there is absolutely
no reason whatsoever to close down the plants.
“I assume German milk is OK to drink now? Is there data on
the Strontium 90 levels in German milk? Polish milk?
I really don’t want to believe that milk in Germany or Poland
is now dangerous.”
Yes – the batteries are lead-acid: the bane of off
gridding, to be honest….Although they can and will be
re-cycled, you are correct about the lead…it HAS to be
managed responsibly. The day someone invents a replacement for
lead-acid batteries for deep cycling, we will all be better
off.
“A single incident on the other side of the world is
causing elevated radiation levels in Ontario Canada! ”
Taking an individual rights position where you say “the
hell that I am paying taxes to have my property invaded by wires
and cell phone towers and nearby nuclear power plants” would
be more of a conservative stance.
There has been a lot of hog wash information about the
developments at the Fukushima plant in Japan.
There is NOTHING “conservative” about supporting a
toxic industry. At the far reaches of your mind, a nuclear lobbyist
might say “Small government theory says you should let
businesses do what they want”.
Thanks for confirming my position that wind “parks”
make the land that they occupy practically unusable for other
purposes, and thus confirming my position that a few thousand wind
turbines, theoretically (if they were a reliable power source)
replacing one nuke, would thus display hundreds of thousands of
people.
And to your point on radiation showing up in Ontario –
naturally I understand dose is important – the point I was
making, was that a nuclear accident in Japan has worldwide
implications. A wind turbine that falls down in
Oklahoma….well, I think you know where I am going with
that…..
400 MS/hr is probably approaching the point that biological
materials would be vaporizing. Accuracy and precision in technical
language matter. Being off by nine orders of magnitude
doesn’t help the conversation.
This level of under engineering suggests that maybe we should be
less confident that we have the ability to engineer reasonably fail
safe reactors. Proof is in the pudding, and I certainly would not
choose to live next to a BWR-4 now. Certainly, the old reactors
maybe need another look. The worst case scenario is that large
swaths of populated areas are uninhabitable, which is a little
different than the risk posed by candles and bicycles.
Don’t even begin to link a pro-Cesium-sprinkling attitude
should be incorporated into the 2012 GOP platform in the US.
For now they ordered people within the 20 – 30 km sector
to stay inside and close windows and doors.
You are right when you say that “we need to take another
look”. But at least in Germany, this is being done by the
industry, by the environment ministries, by the SSK
(Strahlenschutzkommission – radiation protection
committee).
That’s not how tobacco deaths are calculated. We know what
fraction die because they have followed up smoking and non-smoking
cohorts and after controlling for other factors you can determine
what your increased risk of dying is if you smoke. According to the
WHO, smoking is currently the leading cause of preventable death
worldwide, responsible for about 10% of all deaths. 50% of smokers
die from it. The numbers don’t lie.
But really, i don’t know if you want to fool me or if you
just have no knowledge about Europe, and about radioactivity at
all. The radioactive threat from Chernobyl has long gone, except
for in the Exclusion Zone where the ground is still irradiated. It
is 25 years ago. And Germany is far away from the Ukraine, and has
only been slightly affected, and only because the graphite fire in
the open reactor core of Chernobyl carried many particles high up
into the atmosphere.
So don’t think that a German, who may or may not be
getting paid by the industry, is going to influence the American
GOP to shoot itself in the foot by apologizing for Tchernobyl and
Fukushima.
If nuclear pewer is in doubt, we should move fast rail to the
stop action catagory. More Japanese have been killed from train
disasters than from radiation. JC
Let’s start with wind energy, and then we can move onto
solar photovoltaics. After that, perhaps you will be in a more
informed position from which you can debate others on the other
sources of energy for which you clearly think provide benefits that
outweigh the clear negative attributes – if you wish to speak
from an informed position, maybe you should research a bit
yourself, as you have suggested to many others on this blog. So,
please consider reviewing some of the following articles.
In France, the alarmist media has been absolutely hysterical
about the Fukushima “escalading catastrophe” with the
complicity of the greens. But judging how they have toned down over
the last 2 days, I think they are being afraid of a big backlash
which will undoubtedly occur.
In a heavily nuclearized country, you can’t trash nuclear
without consequences.
I am not sure what is more of a joke here….the crossing
the t’s and i’s by making sure your references to
Cesium 137 are accurate, so you can attempt to argue some point
that a nuclear power plant is safe, or whether you are trying to
argue that the wind industy displaces people, as a case and point
to why wind can’t replace nuclear…what about the
ridiculous comparison of worker safety being top notch…well
duh! Obviously it is a safe industry to work in – could you
imagine if the nuclear industry had the Occupational Health and
Safety Record of the oil and gas industry….would that change
anything???
To speak of economics when off-gridding is tough – partly
because it simply is not economical in modern, economic-investment
returns (people often seek 20% IRR for even common investments over
a modest period), and partly because the economic payback is a
moving target, heavily influenced by energy prices in general. I
would say that the return on investment is on the order of 15 years
to positive payback, so if people are doing this for a
“windfall of cash”, they should invest in McDonalds or
something with a better return. There are many reasons to go off
grid….for me, as an engineer, I felt an overwhelming need to
show my peers, colleagues and others that a family of four can
conserve a significant amount of energy, to the point where it
becomes relatively economical to power a typical home.
Let’s try this another way, just to make sure you get
it….if this doesn’t work then go and read a grade 12
physics text book and then come back and post.
Most people are assuming that there was a breach in one of the
Japanese reactors. If there was none in reactor 3 and that MOX fuel
has not been spread around, that would make everyone in Japan a lot
happier.
I’m not planning to buy South Belorussian forest real
estate anytime soon (in my lifetime or the lifetimes of my great
grandchildren).
Granted, it is possible to leave small spots within the turbine
field where you can cram people together into a tight
settlement.
You think it would be a winning political issue in the US or
Germany to think like you?
It won’t work to try this. You can’t even get Angela
Merkel to think the way you do. The FDP in Germany is going
anti-nuclear and they include a lot of real conservatives
(libertarian small government types are often the real
conservatives).
pj, i don’t know whether the Japanese constantly improve
their nuclear plants’ safety measures, but in Germany this
has always been the case. And the nuclear people give new safety
upgrades nicknames named after the corresponding environment
minister.
So I guess we would need to give up on everything to have a
greener world.
This afternoon however I watched an interview on Dutch
television with a radiation expert and a nuclear expert who
obviously had up to date information about the recent developments
at the plant.
In addition to the full exploitation of our vast reserves of
hydrocarbons we need to look at the Liquid Fluoride Thorium
Reactor. (LFTR) Producing energy cheaper than from coal it can
solve more crises than just global warming. The LFTR is an
alternative energy source that is not well known to the public. The
LFTR uses inexpensive thorium as a fuel, transforming it to
uranium-233 which fissions, producing heat and electric power at a
cost less than that from coal power plants. The LFTR is virtually
pollution free and Produces minimal waste. Operating at atmospheric
pressure it is absolutely safe and can be built on a scale from
small backup units to mega watt systems. All we need is the will to
proceed with this energy producing option.
We can solve our world’s environmental–energy crises by
launching a NASA-style “shoot the moon” or a
“Manhattan Project” to complete LFTR development and
deploy LFTR technology for inexpensive, safe, clean power.
The 3 or 4 Plutonium infested areas may each be the size of
Lichtenstein. Those are the areas that will never be inhabitable
for thousands of years.
50 km from Tokyo the background radiation level has risen 50
times above background level (2.5 x 50 = 125 MS)
So, these people are anticapitalist since 1968, and the thing
that itches them the most is the free market. They all believe in
Marx’ misconception that the value of a product is not
defined by its use-value but by the value of the worktime.
That’s why they love fixing prizes, for instance with the
German feed-in tariff for renewables. Introduced while the Greens
were part of a coalition.
This authoritative study examined policy and research from all
over the world, including Germany and the Netherlands, both of
which have dense populations and dense wind plant build outs. As
shown in this study, and confirmed not only by sophisticated
models, but by decades of operational experience, shadow flicker
beyond 10 rotor diameters is generally considered to be minimal,
and that the risk of significant flicker affecting quality of life
is minimal, as the environmental and operational parameters that
must be aligned to actually cause flicker are remote at best.
Within 10 rotor diameters, flicker can cause annoyance, when those
environmental and operational parameters align. Generally, absent
of any mechanisms employed to mitigate the flicker, 30 hours per
year is considered to be acceptable by most jurisdictions around
the world. When flicker is found to exceed this threshold,
operational constraints can be used to reduce the impact to near
nil – this can include curtailing an offending wind turbine
for small periods of time, until the flicker goes away (e.g., wind
direction changes, sun angle climbs too high, etc.). Still in other
cases, selective window treatments, blinds and shades, addition of
porches and roof overhangs, or planting screening vegetation may
also work, however that is more case by case, and may not work in
all scenarios.
Atomicinsights blog provides a reference to Washington
State’s elevated radiation levels that graphically
illustrates the elevated levels.
And yes, of course land around wind turbines becomes unsuitable
for humans to live there. The noise and the risk of ice throw or
(rather unlikely, but does happen) blade throw make it impossible
to live within about a km around the turbines.
The Army SL-1 reactor exploded in 1961 in the east Idaho desert,
killing the 3 operators. It was a small power plant, but a power
plant nonetheless. So more correctly, the death toll is
“3″ instead of “0″, and American nuclear
power has killed more people than Ted Kennedy’s car.
Which is in itself quite irrelevant, as long as we don’t
know the dose – the fact that you find it remarkable without
even caring for a number tells me that you could be a journalist,
for whom a story that he can tell is more important than the
facts.
Let it be clear that the failure of the donut/vessel is a
serious breach of security.
Some of your statistics are a bit dubious: being hit by burning
debris of a windmill, causing your death, is not the same as the
use of tobacco. Very few people die while smoking a cigarette. It
seems that after a certain age the death of everybody who is a
smoker, is registered as tobacco-related death. So you can easily
get the required impressive numbers. Missing in the lists is one of
the most dangerous things people can do, being in a hospital.
Parachute diving is also quite dangerous.
- Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study
- Western Wind and Solar Integration Study
- DOE 20% Study
you are confusing setbacks, associated with safety issues, with
use. We have setbacks for many things. Take for instance buffer
distances between landfills and residential areas. Those buffer
areas are not used for houses (harken to the days of the
“Love Canal”, albeit a different monster in many ways),
but they certainly have use.
“but they don’t leave huge areas of land virtually
unusable for half a millenia if things go wrong with
them.”
We have been overcome by government sponsored
“reasoned” tools of arguement ranging from statistics
of the average to statistics of the future with class statistics
from ” ideal” validated inadequate data. When that
doesn’t arrive at the desired answer then the
“selected” samples are re-selected for analysis. A
recently published article in the medical literature appeared on a
webpage for the medical profession that discussed the value of
clinical trials for the application of clinical therapy. The
medical statistician’s conslustion that there was no value. I
suspect that the pseudoscientific statistics generated for use by
social scientists and the various activist causes and higher
educational challenges in granstmanship have a similar value to
that medical discussion on treatments and research and certainly
any prediction of the future beyond the next five microseconds has
a similar quality and verity.
I guess the near 200,000 people now evacuated from near the
crippled Japan plant don’t count by means of comparison
-after all, the premise of this blog is a comparison, or did you
forget about those people? Are you that absolutely blind? A single
incident on the other side of the world is causing elevated
radiation levels in Ontario Canada! Albeit that radiation is going
to cause wide-spread damage, however, if conditions were slightly
different, like say, i don’t know, a reactor core meltdown,
would we be saying the same thing? Wind turbines may be annoying to
a small percentage of generally annoyed people in the first place,
but there is absolutely no evidence that they cause wide spread
property damage, disease, near-permanent environmental disaster
refugees, long term contamination…need I go on? Why
don’t we compare water use between the nuclear industry and
the wind industry?
In the mean time there has been a fire in Fukushima 4, the plant
that was shut down 1 month previous to the quake/tsunami
disaster.
However, the stored fuel stag, which after one month out of use,
still producing heat, had caught fire and the smoke release further
contributed to the rising radiation levels.
Te fire is under control now.
Never mind that the CIA maps show much more than the area of
several Lichtensteins was wrecked in 1986.
Because the donut ring is the lowest point of the reactor it
will be difficult to fill it up with water. Water and radioactive
material will simply flow out of the vessel.
I watched [half watched] a discussion on Newsnight on the beeb
[aka Global Warming television] tonight, where the nuclear industry
was being trashed by Jeremy Leggett of all people, a eco-fascist
who should know better, having been a Geology grad’ and who
worked in the Oil
industry………………………..OH
yeah, now he has a concern in the solar power industry
‘SolarCentury’ that’s why the beeb invited
him.
I wonder how many people die going to global warming conferences
in stretch limousines or Lear jets (or are hit by the same) or are
sent to certain doom by the carbon emissions of the same, or are
killed or injured by being hit by the same. I wonder how many poor
fish were injured by the Calypso. I wonder how many people and
animals will be killed or injured by the mercury in the compact
fluorescent light bulbs the liberals are making us use in the USA
(it doesn’t matter to them, they made us shut down the
incandescent light bulb factories, destroying thousands of jobs so
that more poor people will join the revolution. They can shut down
the fluorescent factories later, creating the same effect –
and then they can blame it on greedy businessmen.)
You are partially right. Pierre should not have looked at deaths
but at lost life-years, that’s how you properly compare risk.
So, when comparing a death through radiation exposure with a
bicycle accident, we must take into account that the bicycle driver
was a healthy 20 year old (losing about 60 life years) and the
radiation exposure related cancer death mostly happens to the
elderly, say with 60, losing only 20 life years (in both cases
compared with the average life expectancy).
Li-ion, although more efficient, are simply too expensive
– lead acid remains the most cost effective solution, albeit,
with some efficiency issues, but these are reasonable in and of
themselves.
Well, for somebody who reckons he understands renewable energy
systems, how would you classify this statement?
“When I go to bed at night, my entire house (when my fridge
is not running a cooling cycle) consumes 100-Watts per
hour….what are you doing?”