It's Really OK If Japan Dumps Radioactive Fukushima Water Into The Ocean - "They just don’t have any room left to store it. And storing it is the wrong strategy anyway. TEPCO has collected more than 250 million gallons of contaminated water from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting since the plant was destroyed by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The funny thing is that putting this water in the ocean is actually the best way to handle it. And that’s because it’s contaminated mainly with tritium, the least radioactive, and least harmful, of all radioactive elements. All of the other radioactive elements have been removed from the water by chemical treatment down to low levels and the amount of other elements in the water is relatively small and wouldn’t pose a hazard diluted to this degree... Critics, like Greenpeace, weighed in with the usual every-atom-is-dangerous and this water should be stored and treated forever. They don’t seem to understand the radiation and chemistry of tritium. But few do. Those of us who do understand have suggested slowly releasing the tritium-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean over about a ten-year period. The water is stored on-site in almost a thousand large tanks of known chemistry. Although not intuitive, this is a very good idea. Tritium is the mildly radioactive isotope of hydrogen that has two neutrons and one proton, with radioactivity so low that no environmental or human problems have ever come from it, even though it is a common radioactive element in the environment. Tritium is formed naturally by atmospheric processes as well as in nuclear weapons testing and in nuclear power plants. Let’s say that again – no harm has ever come to humans or the environment from tritium, no matter what the concentration or the dose. Tritium is just assumed to be carcinogenic to humans at extremely high levels, although that claim is only hypothetical since adverse health effects from tritium have never appeared in humans or in the environment. Only laboratory studies on mice at extremely high levels, only achievable in the laboratory, have shown any adverse health effects. Putting this water into the ocean is without doubt the best way to get rid of it. Concentrating it and containerizing it actually causes more of a potential hazard to people and the environment. And is very very expensive with no benefit. Unfortunately, the idea of releasing radioactivity of any sort makes most people cringe. But that’s the problem, only the perception of tritium is bad, not the reality. And in our new world of anti-science, such a wrong idea might rule over what is the right thing to do, wasting precious resources and time. Tritium emits an incredibly weak beta particle that is easily stopped by our dead skin layer. It only goes a quarter inch in air. Even ingestion of tritium doesn’t do anything. The health risks of tritium-contaminated water are so low that all the countries of the world have no idea what regulatory limits to put on it... there’s more tritium in the atmosphere from natural processes and that left over from old bomb testing, than ever has been, or will be, released from commercial reactors. Cosmic rays produce four million curies worth of tritium every year (150,000,000,000,000,000 Bq) in the upper atmosphere, much of which rains out into surface waters that we end up drinking. Typical cosmogenic tritium concentrations in seawater are about 700 Bq/m3 (19 pCi/L) These amounts of tritium from other sources are millions of times greater than what would be slowly released from these tanks at Fukushima. Since there’s been no health or environmental effects from any of these larger sources, it’s hard to get excited about dumping such a tiny amount from Fukushima into the ocean... So while Japanese fishermen fear this strategy of release from a public relations perspective, their fish will still test negative with respect to food radiation limits and their packaged fish sold at market would still carry the official 'safe' stickers. As usual, it all comes down to perception and fear. We as scientists can give you the answers, but you can ignore them if you want, especially since non-scientists make these decisions anyway."
Discharge of radioactive water of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant - Wikipedia - "In 2018, La Hague reprocessing plant in France discharged 11,460 TBq of tritium, which is more than 13 times the total amount of tritium stored in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. From 2010 to 2020, nuclear power plants in South Korea discharged a total of 4,362 TBq of tritium, which is more than 5 times the total amount of tritium stored in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant"
Fukushima nuclear disaster: did the evacuation raise the death toll? | Financial Times - "As life slowly returns to normal in Fukushima— visitors to the plant no longer need radiation suits, a face mask is sufficient — it is becoming increasingly clear, say experts, that the evacuation, not the nuclear accident itself, was the most devastating part of the disaster. It reaped a terrible toll in depression, joblessness and alcoholism among the 63,000 people who were displaced beyond the prefecture; of those, only 29,000 have since returned. There were 2,202 disaster-related deaths in Fukushima, according to the government’s Reconstruction Agency, from evacuation stress, interruption to medical care and suicide; so far, there has not been a single case of cancer linked to radiation from the plant. That is prompting a shocking reassessment among some scholars: that the evacuation was an error. The human cost would have been far smaller had people stayed where they were, they argue. The wider death toll from the quake was 15,895, according to the National Police Agency. Zero evacuation may be implausible. At the height of the crisis there were fears of much worse contamination. The question is rather whether people should have been kept away for weeks, not years. “With hindsight, we can say the evacuation was a mistake,” says Philip Thomas, a professor of risk management at the University of Bristol and leader of a recent research project on nuclear accidents. “We would have recommended that nobody be evacuated.” Fukushima prompted a global turn away from nuclear power and correspondingly higher carbon emissions in countries such as Germany and Japan. Yet if much of the suffering was proved to be avoidable, it might change that calculation. The future of nuclear energy, as well as the correct response to other catastrophes that cause evacuation, may rest on learning the right lessons from the disaster... The sick and vulnerable suffered most. “If you compare nursing homes that evacuated with those that didn’t, the death rate was three times higher among those who moved,” says Sae Ochi, a doctor at the Japan agency for medical research and development who has worked in Fukushima. Of the disaster-related deaths, 1,984 were people over the age of 65... “The thing we worry about most is disaster-related suicides,” says Koichi Tanigawa, a professor at Fukushima Medical University. The impact of the disaster on people’s mental health got worse over time, with suicides peaking in 2013, when 23 Fukushima disaster victims took their own lives... The result that did not materialise was sickness from radiation. “At present, there are no cases of cancer relating to radiation, and that includes workers at the plant,” says Dr Tanigawa. Among 173 workers exposed to radiation above occupational safety limits, there may eventually be a handful of incidents of cancer, he says. But the maximum dose to Fukushima residents was below those levels. “Statistically speaking, there should be no detectable increase in cancer in the general public.” Anti-nuclear campaigners point to more than 100 diagnoses of thyroid cancer in Fukushima children. But doctors say radiation cannot be the cause, since the disease typically takes four or five years to develop after exposure, and the cancers were found immediately. Rather, the thyroid cases were a result of screening every child in the prefecture using ultrasensitive equipment. Detection rates in Fukushima were similar to those found using the same equipment in other Japanese prefectures... “The sort of dose for even the worst-affected villages was something that was accepted in the nuclear industry 30 years ago,” he says. In the worst-affected towns of Tomioka, Okuma and Futaba he found that evacuees extended their lives by an average of 82, 69 and 49 days respectively, thanks to the radiation they avoided. In Mr Yamauchi’s hometown of Naraha, the decrease in lifespan avoided through evacuation was just a couple of days. In a few places, the figure was negative because people evacuated to areas with higher levels of radiation. Evacuation makes relatively greater sense for the young, who are more sensitive to radiation, and have more length of life to lose. But purely based on an economic calculation of cost and benefit, the evacuation was not worth it, says Prof Thomas. The expected compensation bill to evacuees is ¥7.9tn ($74bn). Add in the terrible health consequences of disrupting lives “and it becomes many more times not worth doing”. The lifetime risk of death from a 100 millisievert dose of radiation — more than any resident actually received — is about 0.5 per cent. In retrospect, the evacuation looks excessive. Less clear is whether those in charge at the time could have acted any other way... “Perhaps the most crucial thing is to say — at the time of the evacuation — under what conditions you should return,” she says. Safe radiation levels are a matter of dispute among scientists, but people are unlikely to trust a figure set after the accident. Ms Ochi also says it is safe to take time over evacuating the sick because only cumulative radiation exposure is dangerous."
What was the fallout from Fukushima? - "Shunichi Yamashita knows a lot of about the health effects of radiation. But he is a pariah in his home country of Japan, because he insists on telling those evacuated after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident that the hazards are much less than they suppose... Yamashita was born in Nagasaki in 1952... After growing up in the traumatised city, Yamashita dedicated his life to researching the health of survivors of the Nagasaki bomb and other victims of nuclear atrocities and disasters. He has visited Ukraine more than 100 times since the world’s worst nuclear accident there, at Chernobyl in 1986. He believes that, apart from the 28 immediate deaths among firefighters and maybe 50 victims of untreated thyroid cancers, the death toll from radiation has been small... “Less than 1% of the affected people got a dose of more than 1 millisievert from external exposure,” says Sae Ochi, a paediatrician who went to Fukushima as a volunteer after the accident. The global average annual background dose from natural sources of radiation is about 3 millisieverts in a year. But by then the damage was done. Seven years on, many people in Japan say they will never listen to nuclear experts again, including radiation doctors... Fukushima may have been one of the safer places to be during the tsunami. While thousands along the coast drowned, it may be that nobody either has or will die from the radiation released by the accident... Some invalids and old people left behind died of dehydration and hunger in their homes, says Ochi. “One woman called the ambulance from within the exclusion zone because she needed regular oxygen therapy and nobody had come to give it.” Somewhere between 40 and 60 old people died either through being left behind or because of the immediate trauma of their removal. A study of more than 1,200 old people in local care homes found that those who were evacuated were three times more likely to have died in the next two years than those who had not been evacuated. It wasn’t the radiation that was killing them, it was the stress of evacuation... A further wave of deaths resulted from stress among evacuees, says Leppold. There have been around 85 suicides linked to the accident and evacuation. Many more people have fallen into non-lethal depressions. They drink more, exercise less, spend hours watching videos and no longer feel in charge of their lives or able to understand what had happened to them. “The evacuation may have been more dangerous than the disaster for this population,” she says. One evacuee, gardener Ryoko Ando, wrote a paper for a medical journal describing how “radiation had no role in our consciousness until then; suddenly, we found that it was part of our lives, without having a yardstick to gauge it and form a judgment… we found ourselves drowning in numbers [and] strange units we have never heard of, such as the sievert.” A quarter of young girls surveyed feel they might not be able to have a baby because of the accident. Many parents fear their children will get thyroid cancer. Masaharu Maeda, the head of disaster psychiatry at the FMU, calls it “the Godzilla effect”, after the film about a mutant monster created by atomic tests. Some call this “radiophobia”"
Japan nuclear shutdown did 'more harm than good', study finds - "Increased electricity prices and greater use of fossil fuels have led to more deaths following the Fukushima accident in March 2011 than the subsequent evacuation from the area surrounding the nuclear power plant, a new study shows. No deaths have been recorded as a direct result of the accident itself, but the decision to suspend nuclear power generation in response to it has contributed to loss of life, it saysBe Cautious with the Precautionary Principle: Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident, by Matthew Neidell, Shinsuke Uchida and Marcella Veronesi, is a discussion paper published by the Germany-based IZA Institute of Labor Economics... "The decrease in nuclear energy production did not come without a cost: higher electricity prices," the study says. Increased imports of fossil fuels to offset the loss of nuclear generation resulted in increases in electricity prices by as much as 38% in some parts of Japan, it found. These higher electricity prices led to a decrease in electricity consumption, particularly during times of the year when heating demand was highest. "Given the role that climate control plays in providing protection from extreme weather events, we find that the reduced electricity consumption caused an increase in mortality. Our estimated increase in mortality from higher electricity prices significantly outweighs the mortality from the accident itself, suggesting the decision to cease nuclear production caused more harm than good." The authors calculated that these higher electricity prices resulted in at least an additional 1280 deaths during 2011-2014. This is higher than a previously documented estimate of 1232 deaths which occurred as a result of the evacuation after the accident, they say... The replacement of nuclear power with fossil fuels will also have had potential welfare impact because of local air quality issues, and the total welfare effects from ceasing nuclear production in Japan are "likely to be even larger than we estimate," they say. The findings of the IZA study concur with those of medical and environmental experts, who have stressed the devastating consequences of unnecessary evacuation... As a regulatory tool, the precautionary principle - that activities should not proceed when the threats of damage are not fully understood - has previously been met with mixed reactions, the authors of the IZA report say, and question why, given such "surprising" results, governments invoke this principle. "One possible explanation is that salient events, such as a nuclear disaster, affect perceived risk, which is often based more on emotions and instincts than on reason and rationality."
Ditto for covid
The cost of Germany turning off nuclear power: Thousands of lives - "Back in 2011, Germany decided that it was done with nuclear power. The Fukushima Daiichi plant had just melted down in Japan, and the threat of disaster seemed overwhelming. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, which had intended to keep Germany’s plants open, did an about face and voted to shut down all of the country’s 17 plants by 2022 The only politicians opposing the measure were those who wanted to shut down the plants even faster. At the time, nuclear provided a quarter of German electricity. In the years since, Germany has closed 11 plants, and is scheduled to shutter the remaining six in the next two years. Multiple studies since then suggest that Germany did more harm than good. In the latest of these studies, a working paper recently published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, three economists modeled Germany’s electrical system to see what would have happened if it had kept those nuclear plants running. Their conclusion: It would have saved the lives of 1,100 people a year who succumb to air pollution released by coal burning power plants... Few people really grasp how damaging air pollution can be. It’s a much quieter, more insidious threat than a nuclear explosion, the authors point out. Compared with the headline-grabbing power of nukes, it’s all too easy to underestimate a threat slowly spreading across the sky — whether it’s from dirty air or greenhouse gases."
As The Costs Of Germany’s Nuclear Phase Out Mount, Little Appetite For A Rethink - " It’s a sensitive time in Germany to draw attention to the costs of the nuclear phase out. Climate change has prodded some to rethink their opposition to nuclear power, which is virtually emission-free. In December, one of Germany’s few remaining nuclear plants, Philippsburg, began decommissioning. And this week in the New York Times, German columnist Jochen Bittner asked if, perhaps, it might be time for Germany to reconsider its nuclear phase out. That would be a tall order. A reversal of Germany’s nuclear phase out would not only be technically complicated but is also a political nonstarter, according to experts: no mainstream political groups favor reopening talks on the phase out, nor are nuclear utilities willing to reverse costly and complicated shutdown timetables. Only a handful of sidelined political groups are even open to the idea, among them the politically toxic far-right Alternative for Germany party. “What is important to realize is that this is a done deal—the ship has sailed,” said Benjamin Görlach, an economist at Germany’s Ecologic Institute, a think tank. “You don't just phase out a big power plant from one day to another, but you have to plan these things—in terms of backup capacity (permitting and building), grid infrastructure, working out plans for the staff, etc. All these plans have been made, and are being executed.”"
Nuclear Reactors Could Provide Plentiful Zero-Carbon Hydrogen, If Only We Let Them - "The vast majority of the world’s commercial hydrogen — over 95% by most estimates — is produced using the steam methane reforming process (SMR)... the carbon footprint of hydrogen production via SMR is high. In fact, more carbon is generated in the production of hydrogen via SMR than if you simply burned the methane used to make the hydrogen... The biggest issue with green hydrogen is the cost. It simply isn’t yet cost effective enough to produce hydrogen using intermittent renewables. It could become cost effective if the renewable supply is overbuilt, and hydrogen production only takes place when there is excess electricity being produced. However, that means that all of the associated hydrogen production equipment is only being utilized a small fraction of the time. Because of the low capacity factor of renewables, the subsequent capital costs of the hydrogen equipment drive the price quite high per unit of mass of hydrogen produced. Current estimates put green hydrogen production at roughly twice the cost of hydrogen production via SMR, but with a carbon footprint that is about 80% lower. Costs are expected to come down, but it will be challenging because of the intermittency... methane — with its four hydrogen atoms — can be thermally decomposed to carbon and hydrogen. This is a high-temperature process called thermal decomposition of methane (TDM) or simply methane pyrolysis"
Why Climate Activists Will Go Nuclear—Or Go Extinct - "Some journalists pushed back. The BBC’s Andrew Neil interviewed a visibly uncomfortable Extinction Rebellion spokesperson in her mid-30s named Zion Lights. “One of your founders, Roger Hallam, said in April, ‘Our children are going to die in the next 10 to 20 years,’” said Neil. “What’s the scientific basis for these claims?” “These claims have been disputed, admittedly,” Lights said. “There are some scientists who are agreeing and some who are saying that they’re simply not true. But the overall issue is that these deaths are going to happen.” “But most scientists don’t agree with this,” said Neil. “I looked through [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent reports] and see no reference to billions of people going to die, or children going to die in under 20 years… How would they die?” Responded Lights, “Mass migration around the world is already taking place due to prolonged drought in countries, particularly in South Asia. There are wildfires in Indonesia, the Amazon rainforest, also Siberia, the Arctic.” “These are really important problems,” Neil said, “and they can cause fatalities. But they don’t cause billions of deaths. They don’t mean that our young people will all be dead in 20 years.” “Perhaps not in 20 years,” acknowledged Lights. “I’ve seen young girls on television, part of your demonstration… crying because they think they’re going to die in five or six years’ time, crying because they don’t think they’ll ever see adulthood,” said Neil. “And yet there’s no scientific basis for the claims that your organization is making.” “I’m not saying that because I’m alarming children,” replied Lights. “They’re learning about the consequences.” Apocalyptic climate claims have had a major impact. In September 2019, a survey of 30,000 people around the world found that 48 percent believed climate change would make humanity extinct. In January of this year, a survey found that one in five British children were having nightmares about climate change. For the last decade I have been obsessed with a question: Why are the people who are the most alarmist about environmental issues also opposed to all of the obvious solutions? Those who raise the alarm about food shortages oppose expanding the use of chemical fertilizers, tractors, and GMOs. Those who raise the alarm about Amazon deforestation promote policies that fragment the forest. And those who raise the alarm about climate change oppose nuclear energy, the largest source of zero-emissions energy in developed nations... It is climate alarmist Democrats and Greens who are seeking to shut down nuclear plants in the US and Europe. Greta Thunberg last year condemned the technology as “extremely dangerous, expensive, & time-consuming,” which is false. And Green New Deal architect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has advocated closing the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York, which is now being replaced with natural gas. In nearly every situation around the world, support for nuclear energy from climate activists like Thunberg and AOC would make the difference between nuclear plants staying open or closing, and being built or not being built... the main problem facing nuclear energy is that it’s unpopular—and far more among progressives than conservatives, and far more among women than men. There are no good technical or economic reasons that nations from the US and Japan to Sweden and Germany are closing their nuclear plants. Center-left governments are closing them early in response to the demands of progressives and Greens—the very same people who are claiming climate change will kill billions of people. Trying to understand why that is set me off on the journey that led me to write my new book, Apocalypse Never... many anti-nuclear environmental groups, including Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and 350.org either take money from or are invested directly in, natural gas and renewable energy interests that stand to gain enormously by shutting down nuclear plants. A single nuclear plant like Indian Point can provide electricity for over three million people, and thus replacing even one nuclear plant is a lucrative business for competitor fossil fuel and renewable energy companies... Sierra Club, NRDC, and EDF have worked to shut down nuclear plants and replace them with fossil fuels and a smattering of renewables since the 1970s. They have created detailed reports for policymakers, journalists, and the public purporting to show that neither nuclear plants nor fossil fuels are needed to meet electricity demand, thanks to energy efficiency and renewables. And yet, as we have seen, almost everywhere nuclear plants are closed, or not built, fossil fuels are burned instead. But it’s not just about money. It’s also about ideology. Anti-nuclear groups have long had a deeply ideological motivation to kill off nuclear energy. Policymakers, journalists, conservationists, and other educated elites in the ’50s and ’60s knew that nuclear was unlimited energy and that unlimited energy meant unlimited food and water... Nuclear energy thus created a serious problem for Malthusians—followers of widely-debunked 18th-century economist, Thomas Robert Malthus—who argued that the world was on the brink of ecological collapse and resource scarcity. Nuclear energy not only meant infinite fertilizer, freshwater, and food but also zero pollution and a radically reduced environmental footprint. In reaction, Malthusians attacked nuclear energy as dangerous, mostly by suggesting that it would lead to nuclear war, but also by spreading misinformation about nuclear “waste”—the tiny quantity of used fuel rods—and the rapidly decaying radiation that escapes from nuclear plants during their worst accidents. There is a pattern: Malthusians raise the alarm about resource depletion or environmental problems and then attack the obvious technical solutions. In the late 1700s, Thomas Malthus had to reject birth control to predict overpopulation. In the 1960s, Malthusians had to claim fossil fuels were scarce to oppose the extension of fertilizers and industrial agriculture to poor nations and to raise the alarm over famine. And today, climate activists reject nuclear energy in order to declare a coming climate apocalypse... Nuclear plants in the UK require 450 times less land than solar or wind farms. And unlike solar and wind farms, nuclear plants operate reliably, day and night, rain and shine, wind or no wind... renewables are reaching their environmental and political limits around the world. The expansion of industrial wind energy in Germany has nearly ground to a halt due to citizen opposition to new transmission lines and forest loss. Ohio regulators have effectively blocked industrial wind turbines from being built in Lake Erie because they would kill and threaten the viability of several species of migratory birds. And a federal judge recently halted plans to build a massive new transmission line for industrial wind turbines that would have bisected the Sand Hills nature preserve of Nebraska, citing threats to endangered species including whooping cranes."
Of course, conflict of interest due to funding is only a problem when it goes againt leftist interests