Radiation, explained for general public

[shynung]

 

15 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but I will until it sinks in.

Will people listen to what you're saying?

No. They already have an opinion. It's wrong, and it doesn't matter. The nuclear industry keeps shooting itself in the foot by lying about danger when there is danger. That creates a trust issue. Someone who claims to be an independent scientist is claiming that it's safe. Been there, done that. Why would John Q. Public change their opinion based on that?

You can argue over what to say once you've gotten through the front door, but that ignores the fact that you won't get through the front door.

That's because public opinions are based on the few significant events that goes through their news feed. Whenever they hear about nuclear power plants, it's always Chernobyl or Fukushima that ran through their mind. The fact that hundreds of other nuclear plants around the world keeps running without a hitch never crossed their minds.

And here's where I pinpoint the problem: Bad news sells. A newspaper with the headline "Nuclear Power Plant Explodes, 10 Dead" will sell better than "Nuclear Power Plant Celebrates 15 Years of Flawless Operation", or even "New Nuclear Power Plant Built, Electricity Prices Predicted To Drop By 25%". This is mostly because of how the human mind works, and exploited by news agencies to its fullest; they'd rarely report positive events.

[tater]

It's not just that bad news sells, it's that the reporters have no idea what they are talking about in most cases (regardless of subject), and themselves might have an (uninformed) opinion about nuclear power going in to the story. It's not just the news, either, because people would forget that. It turns out that narrative (even fiction) demonstrably changes opinions more, and more durably than "news." So the endless stream of popular culture showing evil nuclear power has had a profound effect.

[sevenperforce]

It's good to put it into terms people can understand.

Let's say you want to give New York City a year of energy. 36.2 billion kilowatt-hours.

Start with solar power. That year of energy will kill 16 people.

How about natural gas? That's a little scary: New York's energy consumption in a year would kill 145 people.

Oil is far worse. Provide energy with oil and its derivatives, and you'll kill 1,303 people.

Coal...well, coal is the worst. To provide New York City with a year of energy in coal will kill 3,620 people.

And nuclear power?

One year of energy for New York City on nuclear power will kill 3 people.

[tater]

@sevenperforce, those numbers seem very high. High rates tend to be in the ~100/TWh, solar, wind, nuclear are fractional.

[sevenperforce]

19 minutes ago, tater said:

@sevenperforce, those numbers seem very high. High rates tend to be in the ~100/TWh, solar, wind, nuclear are fractional.

Numbers are based on published figures for deaths per trillion kilowatt-hours, normalized to the average annual energy consumption of New York City.

I used worldwide numbers, not US-specific numbers, so that inflated coal. Worldwide coal deaths are inflated 10x by adding in China's horrible coal-related death rate. But factoring in Chernobyl and Fukushima inflates worldwide nuclear-power deaths 100x compared to the US rate.

[PB666]

39 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Numbers are based on published figures for deaths per trillion kilowatt-hours, normalized to the average annual energy consumption of New York City.

I used worldwide numbers, not US-specific numbers, so that inflated coal. Worldwide coal deaths are inflated 10x by adding in China's horrible coal-related death rate. But factoring in Chernobyl and Fukushima inflates worldwide nuclear-power deaths 100x compared to the US rate.

No one has died from Fukushima radiation, there were two heart attack associated deaths. The deaths caused by fukushima were from moving very old people from the places they wanted to live until their deaths.

 

[sevenperforce]

20 minutes ago, PB666 said:

No one has died from Fukushima radiation, there were two heart attack associated deaths. The deaths caused by fukushima were from moving very old people from the places they wanted to live until their deaths.

 

Well aware. But that is factoring in all possible deaths due to increased cancer probability assuming that there is no minimum threshold for risk.

If you only factor in average US deaths then I think you get like 31 years of NYC's energy consumption without a death. And the only US deaths were directly tied to nuclear weapons programs, not nuclear power generation.  

 

[tater]

Yep, nukes are incredibly safe. The rate is so low for nukes that they are super safe even were you to include every death from ww2 Japan related to fission.

[cubinator]

I thought the chart from xkcd (shown on the first page) was interesting in that the average person gets three times as much radiation from living within 50 miles of a coal power plant than from living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant. And all those levels are tiny. And, of course...

 

...cell phones don't cause cancer.

[FancyMouse]

So take advantage of it and buy a cheap house near a nuclear plant?

[PB666]

2 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

Well aware. But that is factoring in all possible deaths due to increased cancer probability assuming that there is no minimum threshold for risk.

If you only factor in average US deaths then I think you get like 31 years of NYC's energy consumption without a death. And the only US deaths were directly tied to nuclear weapons programs, not nuclear power generation.  

 

The SL-1 reactor was an experimentsl reactor so it did not necessarily tie to the weapons programs.  

[tater]

It was an Army project to produce power/heat for remote installations (like Alaskan bases), so yeah, not a weapon-related reactor. A buddy's dad was there, I think, when the accident happened. His dad was later X division at LANL as I recall, after blowing holes in the Nevada desert for years.

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, FancyMouse said:

So take advantage of it and buy a cheap house near a nuclear plant?

Just an aside, but if you're looking at property, check for buried pipelines. Liquid is fine. Liquid might be very unpleasant if things go south, but it will be fine in the end. 

Gas is not fine. For Kerbol's sake stay the frack away from gas lines.

Edited April 27, 2016 by sevenperforce

[PB666]

3 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Just an aside, but if you're looking at property, check for buried pipelines. Liquid is fine. Liquid might be very unpleasant if things go south, but it will be fine in the end. 

Gas is not fine. For Kerbol's sake stay the frack away from gas lines.

Gas pipelines are marked every few hundred feet. 

Edited April 27, 2016 by PB666

[sevenperforce]

9 hours ago, PB666 said:

Gas pipelines are marked every few hundred feet. 

All the better to help you stay away from them.

11 hours ago, PB666 said:

The SL-1 reactor was an experimentsl reactor so it did not necessarily tie to the weapons programs.  

Oops, corrected. Still military...that must have been what I was thinking. 

[DDE]

On ‎26‎.‎03‎.‎2016 at 10:41 PM, RainDreamer said:

Nuclear politics aside, I do hope people understand more about the differences between ionizing radiation and non ionizing radiation though. Getting tired of people saying WiFi and cell phone causing cancer and whatever health problems they want to blame on.

Yeah, but then you get people suffering from the nocebo effect and hence getting pain from wind turbines or Wi-Fi... so long as they think they're nearby.

On ‎27‎.‎04‎.‎2016 at 6:13 AM, PB666 said:

Gas pipelines are marked every few hundred feet. 

What kind of a-hole would sell property on top of what should be an exclusion zone?

[PB666]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36735687