I was talking to someone in class today and they said the reason japan is having so many problems with their nuclear power plant is due to government regulation, then said we need to remove all regulations from our power plants in the name of freedom and to save our economy. Is there any reason to do this? I really cant see a single reason to lower any kind of regulation when considering nuclear power.
Chosen Answer:
I’m sure that government regulations allowed an earthquake five times larger than the power plant designed for to happen. I guess when you don’t have facts you make up stories to fit your pre-concieved notions.
Let’s look at what happened in the U.S. when deregulation took affect: The Enron scandal. The airline bankruptcies. The higher paying jobs moving to China and India. The oil companies that were broken up into ten companies by Teddy Roosevelt have now merged back to two. Yup, sure looks like deregulation is a good thing to me.
Now let’s look at Fukushima: Consider that forty year old plants were hit with an earthquake five times the strength they were designed for and yet they still shut down safely. The generators came on like they were supposed to when grid power was cut. Then the tsunami hit and the generators were wiped out. However, the battery backup still worked for the designed eight hours. The problem happened when no new generators could be put in. Even so the problems have been minimal–media scare mongering for ratings not withstanding.
Here is an informative article describing the situation:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
And here is where you find current, factual status information:
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
And a slide presentation that describes the effects:
And here is a chart that helps make sense of the numbers:
http://www.xkcd.com/radiation/
And before you come down on nuclear energy, take a look at coal. In the U.S. 20 to 60 coal miners die each year compared to zero nuclear power plant workers. Pollution from coal power plants kill over 20,000 people in the U.S. annually compared to about 100 people killed world-wide from nuclear power over the last forty years. The only thing coal has going for it is that it doesn’t have “nuclear” in the wording so therefore it must be safe. It seems that most people have learned about nuclear energy from sci-fi B movies rather than from studying the science.
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2006/01/us_coal_mining_.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/ns/us_news-environment/
by: JerryJ
on: 16th November 11
