Risk, Trust, and the Arrogance of Numbers
…The coal and biofuel safety numbers don’t come with a disclaimer that the greatest number of additional deaths from these fuels are due to indoor use for cooking, not from industrial energy production. Wind and solar energy numbers don’t reflect that these are developing industries, without decades of safety standards behind them. (Including development numbers for nuclear would drastically change the picture there, given that it was a technology born out of war.) None of these numbers include the costs of destruction of ecosystems, displacement, and unrest caused by the exploitation of resources required….
Read an interesting commentary about the numbers
Taiwan: The Reassurance of Nuclear Safety is Not Convincing
Following the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, there are calls now for a review of Taiwan’s nuclear energy policy, particularly as a fourth nuclear power plant is now under construction.
Lin Tsung-yao (æ??å®?å ¯), member of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant Safety Monitoring Committee, has called upon [zh] the Taiwan Power company to do a thorough reevaluation of construction of its fourth nuclear power plant…
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Calif. panel weighs nuclear safety after quake
State senators are reviewing whether California’s nuclear power plants and gas pipelines are safe from earthquakes as Japan’s scramble to control its damaged reactors brings up uncomfortable similarities to the nuclear plants on America’s seismically active West Coast.
“Japan has always been a leader in preparedness,” said Sen. Ellen Corbett, the San Leandro Democrat who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Earthquake and Disaster Preparedness, Response and Recovery. “It’s time to revisit the safety of these plants in light of what we have learned from Japan,” she said at a hearing Monday…..
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IAEA concerned, lacks info on Japan nuclear plant
VIENNA – The UN atomic agency said on Tuesday it was concerned that it had not received some information from Japan about its stricken nuclear plant, saying the overall situation remained “very serious.”
“We have not received validated information for some time related to the containment integrity of unit 1. So we are concerned that we do not know its exact status,” Graham Andrew, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a news conference.
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