Fukushima Operator Admits Nuclear Crisis Was Avoidable

[homasse]

Fukushima Operator Admits Nuclear Crisis Was Avoidable

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Friday admitted it had played down the risks to the facility of a tsunami for fear of the political, financial and reputational cost.The admission is one of the starkest yet by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which has been

Comments

[the_physicist]

the 'fear' of the public argument is such bullshit, especially when it comes to safety. i just can't even with that. but such corporations and scientists in general have a lovely habit of treating the public like kids.

it would be easy now to say something like: something like nuclear power plants should never be privatised to avoid this issue!

with that i would actually agree, but even publicly owned plants can suffer from corruption and mismanagement at high levels.

fukushima was due to go offline and had its operating lifetime extended without the necessary work done, such as improving safety. all over the world the same is happening. the power plant i grew up next too has been scheduled to be decommissioned last year. instead, it will run another 20 years. these plants are old. they were built in another time. new plants would be safer.

but there is pressure to keep our world's ageing nuclear plants online, whatever the cost to safety. some countries feel like they have no choice. where is their energy meant to come from otherwise?

new plants would be safer, but it's not even just a cost issue right now. and it's not only a matter of public resistance to new plants - these kind of nuclear reactors were developed not for power generation, but for military purposes. but there are not enough specialised physicists to design new reactors with new cycles. there aren't even enough really to make ones based on the old cycles, so even countries like Japan and Germany that do have the money to build new plants, are/were just letting their old ones carry one.