Preventative Measures and Why We Have Them

[maradydd]

Something that's been annoying me on Twitter lately is the cries of horror and outrage that 200,000 people have been evacuated from the area around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors and that iodine tablets have been distributed. This isn't something I can address effectively in 140-character splurts, so I'll talk about it here

Comments

For Twitter

[praecorloth]

Preventative measures: It doesn't do any good to sandbag the riverbank after the flood has started.

[jered]

Agree x 1000.

The annoying thing is that this will probably set the cause of nuclear power in the US back another 10 years. I hate fucking hippies who one week go on about the evils of coal (I agree), and then next week continue on about how nuclear is scary. Look, if you're concerned about carbon, nuclear is about your only large-scale viable option for the next 50 years. Stewart Brand came around on this; you guys can too.

[maradydd]

I know. And in the US we have a lot of tectonically stable places to put reactors. In the end, the fact of the matter regarding Fukushima Daiichi and Daini is that they outperformed their design, and we're quite fortunate that they did. But that doesn't sell newspapers (or ad impressions, I suppose).

I have a little more sympathy for people who are concerned about proliferation, but the thorium fuel cycle pretty much puts paid to that. Pebble beds already or GTFO.

[anaisdjuna]

So you think nuclear reactors on the Pacific Ring of Fire is a good idea?

[maradydd]

I think they're Japan's only realistic option given its population density, incredible need for power, and limited natural resources. The Japanese aren't dumb; their recorded history goes back a long way and earthquakes are a leitmotif in it from the very beginning. They knew that siting nuclear plants anywhere in the country would require extraordinary safety engineering, and so far, these 40-year-old reactors have outperformed their already incredible design considerations.

I also think the question you're posing is far too large and nuanced to be boiled down to "good idea/bad idea". All risk assessment problems are like that.

[anaisdjuna]

I didn't mean to imply that it was a simple question of good or bad idea. I meant good idea, in terms of whether after the necessary risk assessment had been conducted, it should actually be done.

I, personally, think the risk and result of things going badly is more costly than the expense and difficulty of seeking to get power through other measures, as difficult as they are given the material constraints native to Japan's geophysical parameters.

Things are getting pretty scary there and given the strong cultural programming towards not losing face; I'm even more worried about what is not being truthfully said to keep whatever face they might wish to still have from melting off.

[capnbuckle]

In the case of Japan, what other option is there? You're not going to meet the energy demands with hydroelectric. They don't have the free space for massive wind farms. Tidal and geothermal methods just aren't mature enough to scale well. And fossil fuels are not economically viable for a country that has to buy _all_ fossil fuels from someone else.

The Japanese carefully weighed the risks and planned the best mitigation of those risks as possible...and despite the spin that all the news reporters are putting on it...trying to make their careers off the latest round of disaster porn...the Japanese are doing amazingly well. It was a 9.0, followed by a 30+ foot tsunami. The whole damn island shifted 8 feet to the east. You just can't _plan_ for that...and yet...the Japanese are still doing quite well, from what I can see, in responding to this disaster with what resources remain.

I'd be impressed that they managed to keep all five of their letters on the map, and they've done so much more than that.

[patrickwonders]

Thank you, for this. I live in MN and the folks here are just starting to consider lifting the ban on nuclear power plant construction. I am all for it. I am afraid this earthquake is going to derail the ban-lifting.

[maradydd]

MN sounds like a great place to build some new plants. Lots of wide-open space, next to no tectonic activity. I hope the FUD doesn't derail progress.

[nasu_dengaku]

I wish you worked for a major media organization... this is excellent sfuff, and I was recently bemoaning the lack of articles on how well-prepared Japan was.

[maradydd]

It really is surprising how poorly the engineering perspective is represented in the news media. We seem to take defense in depth and redundant safety measures as a matter of course, whereas people unfamiliar with the concept don't really have the tools needed to understand the different levels of response. (Software engineering is unique here in that by and large, it doesn't have the kind of methodical safety engineering process that, say, mechanical or chemical engineering do. But I digress.)

A lot of activist groups have gotten really good at doing media trainings, teaching people how to interact with reporters in order to get a message across. The EFF has done events at conferences and hackerspaces focused on how hackers should deal with the media and law enforcement. I wonder if it's possible to do something similar for engineers.

[anaisdjuna]

They'd have to do voodoo on the decision makers and bean counters at media outlets to make them care about information over titillation. They want ratings. They want people to tune in too see Radiationzilla menace Japan.