Why do non-nuclear power sources get a pass to fail catastrophically?
July 24th, 2010
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In 1979 Three Mile Island experienced a partial meltdown of one of its reactor cores due to a coolant system failure and operator error. The actual reactor vessel, though internally damaged, held, and the additional layers of protection offered by the containment structure also held, but were not even needed. Nobody died, nobody was injured, no property outside the plant was damaged. To this day, many hold it up as an example of the horrors of nuclear energy.
Meanwhile, a form of “renewable” energy around the country has been destroying homes and snuffing out lives from the very beginning with little fanfare.
The Lake Delhi dam was built in the 1920’s as a hydroelectric generating facility. In the late 1960’s, the facility began to show its age and the operator didn’t have the capital to replace or refurbish the turbines, leading to most of the electrical generating capacity going offline in 1973. Had the Delhi dam been a nuclear facility, the owners would have been required to have a fund set aside for its decommissioning, thus assuring that it would not be left a derelict hulk that endangers the community.
But it wasn’t nuclear, so there it sat, turbines rusting and no power being produced. Instead, operations of the dam were turned over to the “Lake Delhi Recreational Association,” who apparently had no interest in generating electricity and was not at all equipped to maintain or repair the dam. The former hydroelectric dam, which held back a ten mile long lake seems to have sat under the control of the equivalent of a neighborhood association, and received little if any maintenance or inspection.
Although hydropower is a good economic and renewable source of energy, no government subsidies jumped in to repair the dam and thus several private attempts to repair the dam and put it back into service generating power went bust over the years.
Finally in 2008, it seemed that the plant would be brought back online. It had the potential to generate electricity, but since it was not wind or solar, it took a while to get regulatory approval to even begin the refurbishment for power generation. Yes, that’s right, the process to just get approval to begin refurbishment takes years!
By 2010, it looked like the plant was about ready to come back online. Unfortunately, as it was being refurbished it was discovered that the years of neglect had not been kind to the Delhi dam and was in worse shape than anyone could have imagined. Sediment had built up against the dam, at least one gate was severely damaged by a past flood and the integrity of the dam was called into question. In 2009, the Federal Government allocated 2.5 million for critical repairs on the dam, in part because of the safety issue it presented. The state of Iowa came up with another one hundred thousand dollars to begin a dredging and improvement plan last April.
But apparently, it wasn’t enough, because this morning, this happened:
Right now, how much damage this dam failure has caused remains unknown. Details are sketchy, but officials are already calling it “catastrophic.” At least a few homes are already reported destroyed and upwards of 700 could be in danger. At least fifty homes have already reported some level of damage and the flood has also been blamed for extensive power outages. Due to evacuations, it is hoped that deaths will be avoided.
The dam was not a nuclear facility, however, so don’t expect to read about this on the front page of the newspaper. In fact, don’t expect to read about it on the second page either. It may not even make the first section of your newspaper and if you don’t live in the US, it likely won’t make it to your newspaper at all. After all, it’s just a dam and those fail all the time. Small consolation to those whose lives have been washed away.
At least it was only water and not coal ash.
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 24th, 2010 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Good Science, History, Politics, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 24th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Will be forgotten in a years time, as the dam failures last year are now.
By the way, though, I’m not at all opposed to hydropower and actually if the environmental impact is favorable I’m all for it, and of course, where the dams are already built, since removing them could be its own negative impact. Hydro is great when it is properly done. This is an example of a very poorly run and kept up dam and those are always waiting to fail.
I will bet you anything the owners have nowhere near the asserts or insurance to cover all the damages this causes too! Either the property owners are out or the government pays. Take your pick.
Unacceptable. A dam is a good way to make electricity, but it’s too big and important to allow to decay for lack of funds to keep it up or to let it fail because the owner didn’t or couldn’t do what needed to be done. Anyone who builds or operates a dam should be held accountable to provide the necessary insurance and a fund for upkeep and repairs. That is only fair and if such rules existed and were enforced, this would not happen. Why are they not? It’s standard practice to require high risk industries to have funds for decommissioning or repair and to keep adequate insurance.
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July 24th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Why do non-nuclear power sources get a pass to fail catastrophically? Because nuclear makes better headlines, and because nuclear is vulnerable. Because dams and gas explosions kill instantly, but it is assumed that radiation will continue killing years later. But mostly because these catastrophes don’t get played again, and again, over and over to the public by a dedicated cadre of activists that work hard to keep the memory of these events alive.
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July 24th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
DV82XL said:
They may kill directly instantly, but a big dam failure can cause economic and cultural devastation that can last years or decades. So can fossil fuel disasters. Look at all the lives ruined and families upturned by the fire under Centralia. What about the Banqiao flood in China? It killed tens of thousands and totally washed away a huge number of communities.
You can’t discount the fact that these events continue to harm and kill for years after. When big areas are destroyed it takes a lot of time to get things back together and the economic toll can kill, because when an area is economically hurt it comes back in nutrition, healthcare, stress and all these change how people can live. What about those who lose family members but survive themselves? Orphans live their life without a happy family because of those killed and widows are left surviving on inadequate wellfare when their breadwinner dies.
Consider the Indian Tsunami. Five years ago. Don’t hear too much about it now, do you? Believe me there are still many places and even more people who are suffering from it and where things will take many more years before they’re “back to normal”
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July 24th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Yes, but radiation has that “sexiness” – it’s not as simple and straight forward as being economic devistation.
Also, the thing about the cancer angle that makes it perfect is people always get cancer. Cancer is the second or third leading cause of death and millions more people get cancer and survive. Any sizable community will have a fair number of cancer incidence, and you can always blame that on the radiation and make a very compelling story. Some sad person who is dying of cancer, has lost all their hair, is spending their last days with their family etc. Then blame it on the radiation.
In fact, the majority of cancer incidence have no attributable cause. Cancer just happens as a result of cell biology. People don’t like to hear that. Radiation is a good scapegoat.
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July 25th, 2010 at 12:05 am
These earthen dams were built all over North America in the early part of the last century ether to create hydroelectric reservoirs, or for irrigation projects, and many of them have since been orphaned. Often they were built by co-ops long dissolved, or by failed power and light companies. They are recognized as a danger both due to age and lack of maintenance, poor initial design and construction, and as targets for vandalism. The last, to my surprise, being rather common.
There are likely to be more of these in the future, as there will be more collapses and fires in abandoned coal mines. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any organized central authority responsible for such things, and this risk is poorly monitored.
Assignment: Compare and contrast the situation with that of nuclear energy which must show that its wastes and facilities will be sequestered and monitored for the next 10,000 years minimum.
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July 25th, 2010 at 11:17 am
Yep, in the Houston Chronicle the dam is only mentioned in passing as part of a story about heavy rains in the Chicago area.
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July 25th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Interesting article from the Des Moines Register about the dam failure.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100725/NEWS/100725009/-1/ENT06/Dam-failure-could-spell-end-of-Lake-Delhi
It talks about how the lake-side residents are losing their lake and their property values will plummet. They are hopping the state and feds will pay to repair the dam so they can have their lake back. No mention of what happened downsteam when the dam let go.
Also some quotes from the Dept. of Natural Resources.
“A state expert said the dam had a typical design, and although it was 88 years old, it was well maintained and operated.
“There was just more water than it was designed for,” said Jon Garton, a dam safety engineer for the Department of Natural Resources.”
“The DNR inspects dams every five years. The Lake Delhi dam was last checked in 2009. The inspector found minor damage left over from 2008 floodwaters, but nothing that could have led to the dam’s failure, he said.”
Well obviously their inspection missed something because the failure wasn’t caused by ufo’s.
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July 25th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
ddp said:
If that was the reason then this is case of criminal mismanagement of the impoundment by the owners/operators
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July 25th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Well there was also Tschernobyl, a much more memorable event with far more severe economic consequences than most dam breakings with a few tens of casualties. Of course there has been the Banqiao cascade failure, but that was in China in the seventies and was largely suppressed at the time. No other dam failure in recent times has caused as much damage as Tschernobyl – especially not to the west. Even though the fallout was negligible in western Europe, people were concerned about it at the time. I remember getting bottled water only in kindergarden and not being allowed to play outside for a month or so.
So unless the three gorges dam breaks (and it is under some stress lately) people will remember Tschernobyl as the largest industrial catastrophe in history (even though Banqiao was certainly bigger and Bhopal and a few others had more casualties but less economic damage).
I’m not disputing the fact that people are irrationally afraid of “the mystic rays that kills and that you cannot see”, but you have to take into account the fact that there has been this big, fat disaster in recent memory. Of course it was an eastern block graphite moderated RBMK-type, but it’s hard to explain that to people who don’t know AND DON’T WANT TO KNOW what goes on inside technology, nuclear or otherwise. All they care about is that nuclear has a bad safety record.
Satan_Klaus
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July 25th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Satan_klaus said:
Every time someone claims to speak to what the ‘people’s’ opinions are on the subject of nuclear energy, I am going to ask for some data to back up their assertions. I see too many that say that the public feels this way or that way, and all I see is repetitions of the antinuclear party-line, and little in the way of actual proof that any of these positions are not just propaganda from the other side of the hill.
Support for nuclear energy (when ever the public is actually asked) is growing. This suggests that broad feelings of fear for this form of energy is not as strong as we are being told by the press and by the political apparatus. We have to watch that we are not serving the enemy by repeating these things without substantive proof at hand.
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July 25th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s INPO rating just recently downgraded from INPO 3 to INPO 4. “New management” is still failing. The plant condition is not improving, it is worsening. How can the Edison Board of Directors tolerate this? Riddenoure, Hochevar, Kline, Hubley, Ryan, Clepper – you are not cutting it. Time to go.
Edison Board – do you think these are the only guys out there that can run a nuke plant successfully? Actually what you just need are seasoned execs that can run any operation and bring them through recovery.
Currently management is fixated on “Action Way” and the lastest crisis, and can’t see the forest for the trees. There has been no fundamental, positive changes in how the plant operates. It is all just window dressing.
If the CEOs of SCE and Edison can’t replace these guys, then they need to go too. This is effecting the whole nuke industry.
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July 25th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
ddp said:
That is contrary to all I have seen.
ddp said:
That males no sense. A dam should always be designed for the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE water level that a given site could produce and then some more as a factor of safety. In other words, it should be presumed that the lake is full and then that the entire area gets numerous consecutive days of unrelenting torrential rains.
Of course, there’s a point where the water i going to come over the dam. This should NEVER cause a catastrophic failure. There’s a solution to this called a spillway. As the name implies, it is an area intentionally designed for water to spill over it to have somewhere to go. A spillway must be designed so that the entire capacity of the river being dammed can flow over it. Therefore, even if the dam is completely closed and there is are no measures taken to reduce the levels, it will accommodate all the flow with no compromise to the structural integrity of the dam.
In addition to that, if heavy rains are occurring when the lake is high, the gates should be opened to regulate the levels. worst case should be having to allow full flow of what the river is producing.
ddp said:
A properly built and maintained dam should never fail. If it fails it was either not designed properly, not operated properly or not maintained properly.
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July 26th, 2010 at 1:43 am
Possibly by area, though if you’re calculating area, then the oil industry might be up there too. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster was the biggest industrial catastrophe.
I actually don’t agree with that one, to be honest. The biggest industrial catastrophe in history is still unfolding, with the progressive poisoning of a billion plus people and a large country by coal fired power and heating. The excess mortality from coal power generation is a figure that changes depending on who you talk to. There are extremes of up to 500,000 (http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/deaths-per-twh-for-all-energy-sources.html). Even dividing by 10 (the general approach to gee whiz figures) still makes it a major killer.
I do understand that you were presenting Chernobyl as a public relations issue as much as anything. Still, I think that the point needs to be made that there have been no nuclear power generation disasters so far that match the damage caused by coal.
I do hope I haven’t just jinxed things!
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July 26th, 2010 at 6:59 am
Disclaimer: I have an unenviable trait to play Devil’s Advocate whenever possible. This isn’t just to wind people up, I genuinely like probing the arguments and tend to find taking the other side to be the best place to start.
drbuzz0 said:
Define “numerous”.
It’s all well and good saying “it should be designed to withstand that”, but we’re talking about a construction from the 1920s which hit a capacity 3 feet above a record high set in 2004, potentially considerably above the record levels seen while the dam was still in commercial operation.
If we assume that it was over a metre (3′ 3.3″) above the operational record – probably more than that – then we’re talking about an extra 2 million tonnes of water on top of a base figure of (at most) 14 million but probably closer to 10 million.
[N.B. The figure for the surface area I've used comes straight from Wikipedia. 14 million tonnes would assume the lake was 21 feet deep with a perfectly flat bottom at this depth. 10 assumes a certain amount of tapering. The 2 million tonnes on top assumes the surface area remains unchanged.]
I’ll admit that a safety factor of 1.2 in civil engineering probably isn’t enough, but to expect that your previous record water high will be beaten by 20% within a few years of being set is unlikely.
How unlikely? Well it’s a question of statistics I don’t have access to. I’d expect that a clever person could plot rainfall / dam level stats going back a few years and see some indication of the means and the “noise” and from that extract some idea of a probability of that event occuring. Easy? No. Precise? Semi.
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July 26th, 2010 at 8:52 am
Chimp said:
Exactly. Public relations and media impact is the issue, not actual safety. Tschernobyl was actually not very deadly (though quite expensive), but it was in the media for a long time.
Why does hydro get a free pass, why does coal? Simply because if something happens, it is very small and localized. Only ten people die, maybe a hundred. But it happens quite often. By the same logic, one could ask “why do cars get a free pass?” There is lots and lots of traffic deaths, many of them avoidable. But no one really cares because it’s just how life is. But if something unusual happens, (or if children or puppies are involved) the media is all over it. So anything that creates rare but memorable accidents always appears in a worse light than something that produces small but numerous accidents.
Apart from Tschernobyl, nuclear power has had no major incidents, just a few criticalities, one molten core and a couple of ‘conventional’ generator fires and such. But it will always be remembered for Tschernobyl.
Satan_Klaus
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July 26th, 2010 at 9:55 am
Satan_Klaus said:
That and nuclear holocaust. We still live in a world founded and run by people who’ve lived through the Cold War, who remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and ultimately the constant (if perhaps over-stated in hindsight) threat of nuclear war and holocaust. Something leapt upon by the media in all sorts of exciting ways.
Films, TV shows, computer games – they’ve all at some point confronted the aftermath of nuclear weapons and quite often of nuclear power incidents too, and almost never do you get anything even close to the truth (i.e. that the death toll is surprisingly low and the area is surprisingly safe surprisingly fast). By implication they exaggerate the probabilities too; no-one writes screenplays about oil rigs blowing up.
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July 26th, 2010 at 11:42 am
I’mnotreallyhere said:
I still don’t see any proof for these contentions. Everyone pontificates at length on what and how the public feels, yet there is first, no substantive evidence for this, and two recent polls show that nuclear energy is gaining support.
Again, we should not fall into the trap of repeating the arguments of the antinukes without questioning them.
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July 26th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
How long has nuclear power been gaining support in the U.S.?
This may actually be evidence for I’mnotreallyhere’s statement that the media-trouble comes from Cold War-era fears. Kids who turned 18 recently were born after the Cold War and likely raised by parents who don’t remember the war in Vietnam or the Cuban Missile Crisis. People in the middle of their careers now would at least have at least been raised by parent who remembered the 60s so the majority of reporters, public workers, lobbyists, and voters would still be from the Cold War and the world would still be, as I’mnotreallyhere said, “founded and run by people who’ve lived through the Cold War”.
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July 26th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Stephen said:
A Gallup poll last year found that support for nuclear energy in the U.S. has reached a new high, with 59 percent of respondents favouring its use.
I am from the Cold War generation and I was there when Ban-the-Bomb segued into ban reactors. But consider this: Anti-nuclear groups used both legal intervention to impede construction of new nuclear power plants and hamper the operations of existing units. They legally challenged 73 percent of the nuclear license applications filed between 1970 and 1972 through a group called Consolidated National Interveners for the specific purpose of disrupting hearings of the Atomic Energy Commission.
I have yet to see an accounting of where the money and organizational skills for this came from. Strange too that this happened during the economic chaos caused by the oil crisis.
The point being that the Cold War didn’t shut down the growth of nuclear energy, as this period was the time of “détente” and the SALT I treaty, and it was well before the Чернобыль accident. Thus claiming ether of these are root causes of public antinuclear feelings is not supported by history.
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July 26th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I’mnotreallyhere said:
Nuclear weapons are pretty destructive and there’s no doubt about that. I’m sure an all out exchange between the US and USSR, with additional participation from the UK, France and China would be nothing short of an unprecedented disaster. New York, Moscow, Washington, London reduced to rubble and ashes with little warning to evacuate etc…
But this has nothing to do with nuclear power, nothing at all. Not even to mention the fact that nuclear weapons generally are more for deterrence than actual use. Whatever the case, nuclear weapons involve nuclear reactions, all of them having a fission component. This is the only similarity to a nuclear reactor.
Incendiary bombs have killed many many more and fire remains one of the most devastating forces in nature, not to mention being one of the most horrific ways to die. If it does not kill, the injuries it inflicts are beyond description in their gruesome pain and disfigurement. Fire has been the ultimate weapon of terror since antiquity.
Does this mean we should ban fire? What nonsense! Even our bodies are powered by a kind of enzyme-based combustion that occurs in the mitochondria.
It is just as smallminded to see nuclear reactors as the same as weapons as it is to see fire in such narrow a context.
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July 26th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
…Damn.
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July 27th, 2010 at 9:02 am
drbuzz0 said:
Tragic isn’t it? But to risk incurring the wrath of DV8 again, there is a public relations link between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. There just is.
Unfortunately, about the only TV show which regularly makes a feature of nuclear power is The Simpsons, and, well, let’s just say the employees of the Springfield NPP don’t exactly paint the industry in the greatest light.
To pull the first example that comes to mind: Civilization IV.
Sid Meier’s highly acclaimed empire-building game allows you to build a selection of power plants: Coal, Nuclear and Hydro. Coal creates pollution, Hydro requires a nearby river and Nuclear Power Plants? Well they have a constant risk of spontaneous meltdown, slaughtering the population of their home city and dumping nasty pollution over nearby terrain. For the record, the in-game effect of an NPP meltdown is largely identical to a nuclear attack.
I reiterate that there is zero chance in the game of a coal power plant blowing up, a dam bursting or an oil rig exploding and leaking crap over a vast stretch of coastline.
The game designers are not openly an anti-nuke advocacy group nor leaders of the free world, but the way they balance their game is on the basis that coal is dirty, hydro is awkward and nuclear is dangerous.
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July 27th, 2010 at 9:50 am
The standards for building electricity generating facilities today are basically the same for protecting people and the environment. Nobody gets a pass.
Currently there are 30+ new large nukes in some stage of safety and environmental review in the US. Zero is the number of rejections by state regulators and the NRC.
Currently there are zero new large hydroelectric planned planned. Personally I think some of our parks could be enhanced with a big lake. Grand Canyon and Yosemite are just two examples.
Next time some idiot is foaming at the mouth about nukes, just change the subject by suggesting flooding an icon.
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July 27th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
I’mnotreallyhere said:
I’ve been a lurker on this forum until now, but the sheer stupidity of this post prompted me to post.
I mean, seriously, your going on your experience of a *computer game* to guide your decision. Please tell me you are not serious.
I was playing Sim City 4 earlier – where a single wind turbine can power a large town, and a solar arrange can power a large one. A nuclear plant in SIm City has roughly a 30% change of a meltdown, and exposes nearby residents to high levels of radiation. Should I base my views of Renewables and Nuclear based on this evidence? – No, of course not.
Seriously, please do some real research. I recommend ‘Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century’ by Ian Hore-Lacy, and reserve the Civopedia for entertainment purposes only.
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July 27th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Huw Jones said:
I think you let the point of his post whiff right by you. He was not using the game as evidence of the pros and cons of the various power plants, but as evidence of public perception.
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July 27th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Shafe said:
Even so a game is still a poor indication of public opinion.
The importance of considering public opinion on policies relating to science and technology has been well highlighted in recent years, for example by the public backlash against GM crops demonstrated the need to engage with and respond to society’s views about this technology, it is no different with nuclear. When searching for the reasons motivating public attitudes to nuclear power, the first thing to be acknowledged is that, on a day-to-day basis, most people are much more concerned about issues such as unemployment, crime and healthcare than they are about energy issues, let alone nuclear energy. Even when people are asked “When you think about energy issues, what is the first thing that comes into your mind?”, the most frequent response is “price”. This suggests that most people have not given much in-depth attention to the question of energy policy, so that, more often than not, they will respond from a position that is not very well informed. However the public does demonstrate a very high level of awareness of the connection between fossil fuel sources of energy and environmental problems such as climate change, demonstrating that they can be made aware if the information is presented to them.
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July 27th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
I’mnotreallyhere said:
I understand why they do something like this. It’s a strategy game. The player is challenged to build their empire making decisions between various imperfect options with different levels of cost/risk/value etc. If one source were actually clearly superior to the others in all respects, there wouldn’t be much strategy to the game. If one source of power always out-preformed the others and had no risk there’d be only one obvious choice and the others would be extraneous.
Still, it does show a problem with how nuclear energy is represented in the popular mind and in culture in general.
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July 27th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Whoops, sorry I’mnotreallyhere (boy is my face red).
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July 28th, 2010 at 2:27 am
Huw Jones said:
Shafe was correct, I’m well aware that the Civilopedia is hardly a technical reference manual and was making reference merely to the portrayal of nuclear power. The last sentence of my previous post is the most useful.
But post more, join the fun!
@drbuzz0: Yes, but there are dozens of ways to balance the system – higher technology requirements or higher production costs are the obvious ones which come to mind. But let’s not deviate too deeply into game design.
@DV8: It’s a reflection of public attitudes, and if anyone is inclined to go down the road of “Grand Theft Auto turns our kids into sociopathic criminals” we’ve got to consider the other preconceptions that people pick up from games.
See also the PR own-goal scored by Ford, who supplied a fleet of fuel cell cars for the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. Then saw the final sequence and watched the villain’s base burn and explode because of the fuel cells used to power it. Oops.
For the record, car manufacturers have made a big thing of trying to burn hydrogen powered cars and get the to explode. GM put a HPV Zafira into a tunnel at a private test track, then set fire to it (tunnel fires are the worst case scenario pretty much). It burnt, no more or less vigourously than the petrol equivalent. Nothing happened. The hydrogen burned, but slowly and stably, the pressure vessel was not affected. Nor was it during crash testing.
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July 28th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Michigan and the Gulf Coast don’t have much in common — except a battle against oil-infused waters.
The Kalamazoo River is the new recipient of 800,000 gallons of crude oil, resulting from an underground pipeline in the Midwest, spanning across Canada and the United States. Estimates suggest approximately 19,500 barrels surged through the river and its surrounding area as a result. The pipeline is owned by a company called Enbridge Energy Partners. Discovered on Monday morning, the leak was plugged shortly thereafter as the pipeline’s operators ceased oil flow through the line.
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/07/28/new-oil-spill-hits-kalamazoo-river/#ixzz0v2LNBIgM
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July 29th, 2010 at 1:06 am
DV82XL said:
Interestingly, most of the surface slick on the Gulf seems to have vanished. There’s a lot of speculation about how much is from evaporation, how much is from skimming and burning, how much is from natural dispersion and degredation, how much remains below the surface, and how much oxygen demand the decomposition is imposing on the ecosystems.
I imagine water and wildlife sampling and testing will be in order for years to come, but I’m encouraged that nature is hard at work trying to put things back in order.
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August 9th, 2010 at 9:34 am
@ DV8 2XL
I knew I’d seen it somewhere – an entire day spent filing paperwork and the most satisfying thing to come out of it was a short paper written by a friend on the rise of nuclear power in Europe and hence I found a reference for opinion surveys on nuclear power.
The EU run something they like to call the Eurobarometer every so often and ask questions on nuclear energy (one of many themes regularly studied). So you can enjoy poring over the figures to your hearts content. I’ll not have the chance to read it properly until this evening, but this article on foratom.org will give you a quick summary and links the full 141 page .pdf file should you feel keen.
http://www.foratom.org/eurobarometer.html
Clearly totally Euro-centric (sorry rest-of-worldians) but I’d say you could potentially get loosely similar figures from other first world nations. Particularly of interest is the following (quoted from the foratom.org summary):
So about 40% of people who oppose nuclear power primarily do so on the basis of radioactive waste. You can spin that either way I suppose – I’m not certain that the report clarifies the objections of the other 60%.
Perhaps more concerningly (to investigate later):
59% is rather fewer than I had hoped – it’ll be interesting to chase the numbers and confirm what the original question was and whether the other 41% are afraid of minor leaks or apocalypse events.
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August 9th, 2010 at 10:41 am
I’mnotreallyhere said:
I wrote a guest post on Brave New Climate on that particular survey:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/05/04/dv82xl-2/
The basic conclusion that can be drawn is that the more a population feels informed about nuclear energy, the more likely they are to support it.
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