32 Comments

    1. ” but it gave bigger benefits too.”

      EP, that is quite possibly the understatement of the decade.

  1. Accidents involving clean and safe natural gas cause much more death than accidents involving nuclear power, but it is only mild death. Nuclear accidents cause much more severe death. This is why so many “environmentalist” oppose nuclear power ;-).

    1. @donb
      How often does a nuclear plant have a lethal accident compared to how often other types of power plant have them?

  2. Speaking of deaths, have you noticed how certain insurance company offer you an extended coverage (and premium to go) for accidental death on top of your life insurance policy ?

    There has to be a way to make a mockery from the prejudice of the energy industry vis-à-vis nuclear.

    1. Daniel,
      Here in NL (I believe in all EU countries), all insurance companies exclude all damage caused by nuclear accidents.
      Their argument is that they cannot afford it (or the premium will become to high).

      Also because the nuclear law limits liability of nuclear plants to a ridiculous low amount, so they cannot retrieve the damage if they have to pay (neither can the citizen).

      That nuclear law was installed because otherwise utilities said they could not afford to start with nuclear (it also limits liability for nuclear waste).

      Those contribute into making nuclear the most subsidized method of electricity generation.

      1. @Bas

        Their argument is that they cannot afford it (or the premium will become to high).

        In the US, the argument is that nuclear accident hazards are covered by insurance paid by nuclear plant operators, both the $375 million per unit covered by ordinary liability insurance and the $12 billion pool that results from the Price-Anderson Act. That insurance has always been sufficient; no one in the US has ever suffered an uncompensated loss as a result of a nuclear accident.

        I would bet that there have been hundreds of thousands of cases of uncompensated losses arising from oil, coal and gas related accidents over time.

        1. In fact, this was one of the big problems arising from the Deepwater Horizon oil platform explosion and oil leak. Many, if not most, of the people who suffered losses have yet to be compensated. In addition, this is now a litigation bonanza.

          Had there been a system in place like Price-Anderson, this would have never even become an issue.

  3. Hmmm. Why isn’t there a “Gas Regulatory Commission” with a flakey head commissioner working effectively for a competing industry, who would demand an automatic shutoff every 1000 feet of pipeline with a Halide purger for each section?

  4. donb says gas causes “mild” deaths.

    “Mild deaths”. That’s a new one! So then all those non-injuries at Fukushima should rightly be of zero concern to environmentalists, right?

    donb says Nuclear accidents cause much more severe death

    A LNG tank can cause much more severe deaths. Still here.
    A oil tank explosion can and HAS cause much more severe deaths. Still here.
    A burst dam can and HAS caused much more severe deaths. Still here.
    Nuclear plants have had over 50 years to show everyone how much more “severe deaths” they cause and no dice. So what does that make environmentalists whining about booting nukes out for safety and saving lives?
    Hypocrites in spades with a cherry on top.

    1. Just a heads up. Policemen, when negotiating their collective union agreement, always point out the fact that they do not die like other citizens.

  5. In august at the kyoto fireworks festival a small generator refueling accident that lead to a explosion involving a gas cylinder killed 3 and injured about 60. Many seriously. It was forgotten in moments.

    Now the anti nukes and many utter dingbats on the west coast are feverishly blaming fukushima radiation for an outbreak of star fish wasting disease. Never mind all through the 70’s and 80’s there were HUGE outbreaks and it is linked to warmer water.

    Im tired of the hysteria and stupidity and the cowardly scientific/academic and professional community that lets the media run unchecked perpetuating it.

    1. Please don’t blame the scientific/academic community – the media chooses who to quote and who not to quote.

  6. With all do respect to Rod, that fire isn’t even close to as spectacular as the H2 explosions at Fukushima.

    1. Are you serious? Did you watch those H2 explosions in real time, not super slow motion? There was not even a bright light, just a puff of white smoke that dissipated within a few minutes.

      1. You neglect the flying chunks of building, the visible mushroom cloud and all the other visual appeal of an explosion. I do agree there was no “fire” per se, but the sheer power of the event (equivalent in energy to a 500-1000 pound bomb if memory serves me right) is far more impressive than this fire. Now, if this were a BLEVE event, Texas City, or PEPCO I’d be on your side.

        Don’t forget, we’re on the same team here. Fukushima is an expensive mess, but that and the needless evacuation is the extent of the tragedy. However, I won’t bury my head in the sand either. Those Fukushima explosions were incredibly damaging to our image because they were almost perfect for the anti-nuke cases. I knew I was witnessing, in real time, a massive blow to nuclear energy when I watched them.

        1. Theatric build up too I guess. TEPCO calling it a partial “wall collapse” probably didn’t help much either.

    2. Seriously? If there are people around during large petro/NG tank/pipeline explosions its common for them not to even find remains. Ever.

  7. Daniel wrote:
    “There has to be a way to make a mockery from the prejudice of the energy industry vis-à-vis nuclear.”

    Well,…..I kinda wonder. Did some of these big environmental organizations see their coffers grow after nuclear perturbances? Was this coffer growth a “lesson” from Three Mile Island (TMI)? You never hear about the whales any more. Maybe, Greenpeace found a better thing to protest about. Something with much more green.

    People have a lot of things to feel Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about. Why do nuclear plants always seem to be at the top of their fear list? What connection is there? Who is ensuring that the fear continues?

    The Truth is Out There!

      1. Rod:  You might want to add a “tags” section to your sidebar to make the categories easier to browse.

        1. @EP

          You can easily browse through categories from the archives page – https://atomicinsights.com/topical-index/

          On any Atomic Insights page, look to the top left corner where you see “Home”, “About”, “More>>”. The “More>>” menu has a drop down if you hover your cursor over the word. The list includes “Atomic Show”, “Links” and “Archives”.

          Rod

          1. Tag clouds were invented to make these things more obvious and easier to grasp visually.

    1. @Eino,
      Why do nuclear plants always seem to be at the top of their fear list?
      Two main reasons:
      – The danger is invisible; and
      – nuclear folks and authorities have shown to be unreliable.
      The last one is probably the most killing reason.

      Who is ensuring that the fear continues?
      Authorities such as IAEA/WHO which once even stated that Chernobyl took less than 80(?) lives.
      Nuclear experts stating that exclusion zones are ridiculous.
      Nuclear experts immediately at the start of Fukushima stating that no death through radiation would occur, while first estimations by low level radiation experts now talk about many thousands.
      Nuclear experts all once guaranteeing that those accidents would occur only once in a million reactor years, while we now have 4 such reactors after ~12,000 reactor years.

      The citizen reading in his insurance policy that all nuclear (accident) caused damage is excluded. So he concludes that his insurance company considers that danger to high. And asks himself what he gets back for that prohibitive high danger.

      He then reads in the paper that the taxpayer has to pay ~100billion in order to organize the nuclear mess at Sellafield, which also made eating fish from parts of the Irish sea dangerous (forbidden).

      How can this citizen be pro-nuclear, unless he is a dreamer?

      1. Real person or just an annoying bot?

        How? because none of what you said is true, or relevant to any real risk.

        1. I really dislike how he has either no sources for his position or crappy, biased ones. I once asked him for credible, reliable sources to back up his endlessly repeated claims of massive nuclear insurance subsidies and he responded with his personal back of cocktail napkin calculations of the supposed subsidies rather than any reliable sources about them. One of his claims was that Fukushima cost $2 trillion! How bizarre.

        2. I tend to believe he is a paid troll, because he consistently repeats lies from the standard play-book of anti-nuclear deceptions and is completely impervious to external input.

          In other words, he has a list of talking points of anti-nuclear propaganda. He repeats those same points ad naseum. He never changes. Just keeps repeating those same lies over and over.

          About what you’d want in a paid troll. Keep your message visible, no matter how wrong, because most folks only read the thesis and don’t check the argument for validity.

  8. From WHO website:

    5 September 2005 | Geneva – A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.

    As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004.

    From Bloomberg News:

    And what of the lasting threat from radiation? Remarkably, outside the immediate area of Fukushima, this is hardly a problem at all. Although the crippled nuclear reactors themselves still pose a danger, no one, including personnel who worked in the buildings, died from radiation exposure. Most experts agree that future health risks from the released radiation, notably radioactive iodine-131 and cesiums-134 and – 137, are extremely small and likely to be undetectable.

    Yeh, The Truth is Out There

    The Giant Ants in the 1950s movies were real!

    1. I just finished reading this piece on Cs-137 deposition around Fukushima and had to note that 100 kBq is 2.7 μCi.  They use a very tiny unit to make a small amount look like a big amount.

      I’d like to see some studies on the migration of this Cs-137 through the soil, and the effect of the addition of potash on the distribution and radiation emissions at the surface.  If all they have to do to make the area safe is dose the grass with weed-and-feed… can you imagine the brouhaha?

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