Nuclear Disaster Like Fukushima Unlikely in U.S.

Reader Comments
Back to blog

No surprise there. They're against every step man has taken since we left the caves. Of course they wouldn't care to go back. They've become too accustomed to all the things that modern civilization offers. But they do want their green consciences cleansed with the Green Holy Water of government regulation.
So instead, they wring their hands, gnash their teeth and attack the providers of all that they enjoy. Because, in their deluded minds, they believe that all of civilization can be supported on the fantasy of "Green Energy" and organic farms.
They are basically updated Eloi - Navi clones - products of educational and media propaganda - believing that Gaia will provide for them, if only everyone would worship her.
Remember, environmentalism has evolved to "big E" Environmentalism - Our State Religion. And everyone was sooo worried it was Christianity that would take over the government. Nope, it was Druids and Wiccans.... Helloooo... Lisa Jackson, BHO and Ken Salazar.
Going Green Has Gone WAY Too Far!

R.L. Schaefer of CA 3:39PM July 08, 2011

You wrote: "The public can become fearful and behave irrationally, such as buying iodine pills in the United States to protect against an accident in Japan."
Perhaps you should take a class in Meterology 101. Then you would understand how a plume of contaminants can travel vast distances and spread its contaminations around the world.

David Bear of AZ 2:15PM July 08, 2011

You wrote: "The public can become fearful and behave irrationally, such as buying iodine pills in the United States to protect against an accident in Japan."
Perhaps you should take a class in Meterology 101. Then you would understand how a plume of contaminants can travel vast distances and spread its contaminations around the world.

David Bear of AZ 2:13PM July 08, 2011

You wrote: "The problems really began as systems broke down when multiple tsunami waves overcame the safety designs of the site."
Perhaps you simply don't understand how closed piping systems work. It was the earthquake that ruptured the reactor cooling piping systems. When these broke, it became impossible to keep the cores covered with water because the reactor coolant pumps could not pump water through the broken piping. The tsunami had absolutely nothing to do with it. Certainly, the tsunami wiped out the backup diesel generators, but even if that had not happened, the reactor coolant pumps could not pump water into the reactor vessels because the coolant piping had been ruptured. Please understand this, because it is fundamental to understanding what happened.

David Bear of AZ 2:06PM July 08, 2011

The risk to life and property is not properly or fully insured. The existing facilities in the USA need to be taxed much heavier and no more plants should be built. Fortunately the oppossition to the nuclear power has the internet to unite.

whimsy of FL 1:39PM July 08, 2011

The USNRC tolerates too much bad information. For example, spread of bad zirconium fuel rod cladding material was not prevented by the NRC.
Good information is required to make decisions that prevent or reduce consequences of nuclear accidents. Zirconium behavior will usually be critical in accidents and storage decisions. Radiation releases and three nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima are believe to be due to failures of the nuclear fuel rod zirconium alloy cladding to contain uranium fuel pellets when overheated on the Loss-of-Coolant-Accidents. Fuel rods overheated and fell apart. The zirconium holding the fuel rods together reacted with water to form hydrogen, which exploded in reactor buildings. Zirconium cladding in cooling pools may have failed. None of this was supposed to happen. Before March 2011 statistics showed chances of Fukushima's LOCAs were miniscule- statistics based on bad data.
The US NRC standards for fuel rods are used to set worldwide safety standards. See "Nuclear Fuel Behaviour in Loss-of-coolant Accident (LOCA) Conditions. State-of-the-art Report". OECD 2009, NEA No. 6846. https://www.oecd-nea.org/nsd/reports/2009/nea6846_LOCA.pdf (p. 22).
Good decisions require good information when problems occur. Due to extreme radiation conditions, long lifetimes of operations and hazards, and the economics of nuclear power, the NRC and nuclear industry rely on computer modeling of zircaloy behavior when establishing safety standards.(For examples, see the OECD 2009 LOCA report , p. 26, 48.)
What does the NRC do when bad zircaloy data sets used to develop reactor components provided to the nuclear industry are discovered? The NRC has clearly stated that the NRC might do nothing, even though the NRC does not know uses of the data (http://www.alleg-no-nrr-1999-a-0057.org/ , AllegNoNRR-1999-A-0057.pdf). We are legally safe from bad decisions made from that bad data. Note that the OECD 2009 LOCA report describes how the same types of data were used in modeling LOCA accidents in order to make actual safety decisions (See pp. 95, 236, 237, and Appendix A of this OECD 2009 LOCA report).
While the NRC has the authority to decide what is legally safe, the NRC does not have the power to make nuclear power safe in the real world. Ignorance and greed will prevail, and there will eventually be an accident.
In this part of the Ohio valley we now feel lucky that companies building nuclear plants at Moscow Ohio and Marble Hill IN were so greedy and incompetent that those nukes could not be completed-- they were economic disasters maybe, but we're safe from nuke operators cutting every corner to squeeze the last nickel out of them in our backyard. Davis-Besse was an example of the NRC allowing operators to put short-term economics while risking long-term safety and the economy of the community.
Safe nuclear power may be technically possible, but safe nuclear power is statistically improbable if decisions are made based on bad information.

m. kelly of IN 1:33PM July 08, 2011

Lesson four should be restated "The nuclear industry and medical community do an abysmal job communicating to the public about the risks of various types of radiation exposure, the ways exposure is measured, and the specific risk at a given measured level." This is a lesson that was NOT learned from either TMI or Chernobyl (or going back further Detroit, Idaho Falls, Windscale, years of above ground bomb testing, or the "air cooled" experimental reactor in Dawson Forest). The industry acts as though it is better to keep the public ignorant and confused on the subject rather than to communicate coherently and consistently.

Steve Brooks of GA 12:48PM July 08, 2011

How about:
"Nuclear disaster like Fukushima was unlikely in Fukushima."

Don of NY 11:26AM July 08, 2011

No wonder my country is so misinformed.

Fallout of AZ 11:24AM July 08, 2011

Propagandist drivel copy pasted from NEI talking points. "Spewing so much radiation into the ground, atmosphere, and water is not good, but we need to better understand how bad it actually is." Well, I guess we will find out since the people of Fukushima are now unwilling participants in a long term human experiment on the effects of long term exposure to radioactive contamination. Shame on you.

Bradley Fried of NM 10:53AM July 08, 2011