It's quite remarkable that despite 20,000 tsunami and related deaths all the media hysteria is over the nuclear issues in which no-one received a fatal dose of radiation. More remarkable is the fact that 1960s nuclear technology could survive a Richter 9 quake. Of Japan's 127m population about 30m will die of cancer regardless and perhaps an extra 1,000 will die of radiation complications in older age, barely significant in statistical terms.

Meanwhile despite lack of evidence we cling to the belief that wind, solar and geothermal will replace coal. We may end up trashing the Great Barrier Reef for a few lousy bucks in coal revenue. There's something strange about humans that we see things that aren't there while ignoring stark reality.

Good article.

The problem is of course, that the few boys, & many of the girls, who were good at writing compositions at school, all too often go on & become "journalists".

Any of these that I have known need a calculator to figure out the change if they buy a bus ticket, & they are even more competent with anything practical.

Put the words science or physics in a topic, & they go blank.

The ABC employ these almost exclusively, & send them off all over the world to report back on what they think they've learnt. Then the locals, with no taxpayer support to fund such trips, parrots the same rubbish, as if it's gospel

This is an interesting site which monitors the levels of radiation dose in Japan.

http://jciv.iidj.net/map

As I understood it, typical background levels of radiation are of the order of 8 micro Sv/day. That is around 340 nano Sv/hr. Presumably this could vary by a factor of at least 5 either way depending on location (some locations are much more – I believe Ramsar in Iran is more like 70 times or 24,000 nSv/hr).

According to this radiation map, much of Japan seems to be around 100 nSv/hr (about a third the world average) with some on the west coast as low as 40 nSv/hr.

Leaving aside the hot spots south east of Fukushima city, the rest is probably not too dangerous given the known variation around the world - Fukushima city itself is around 3 times background.

Apart from the Dia-ichi plant all the locations seem to be below Ramsar where people have lived for generations with no apparent impacts on health from radiation.

The article is an excellent summary of the poor quality of media reporting. Even the Fukushima reactor problems are the fault of general engineering design not faulty reactor design.

It would be feasible to make every future reactor free of the hazard of faulty design. Every future reactor could be built floating on a barge on its own cooling water lakes built with the water surface level at least 30m above sea level. Such a design would overcome earthquake and tsunami risks. In Australia there are many sites where existing water storage dams could provide gravity fed back up cooling water to on site cooling water lakes.

With either fast breeder reactors or Thorium reactors the fuel supplies available would last 50,000 years or so and with either the waste products are nowhere near the rsik that opponents of nuclear power suggest.

Excellent article.
There is no doubt that what should happen is that all the inhabitants of the supposedly dangerous area should go home now. There are greater risks from psychological and other issues to do with dislocation than the tiny radiation problem in the area round the plant.
I am no good at showing links to items on the web, but two articles, one re Ramsar mentioned earlier and the other the UNCEAR 2008 report on health issues due to Chernobyl can be found by Googling. Be prepared for a shock re deaths from Chernobyl.
Firstly Google: Very high background radiation areas of Ramsar Iran:Prelinminary biological studies..
Secondly Google: UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the general assembly with scientific annexes. Volume 2 Annex D Health effects.

Sorry asbout my teck inadequacies.

Oh God. I just had a drink of water, it contained Radon. Poor me. Oh, even worse: this house is built of concrete - more radiation.
The fact is that all species of plants/animals that have ever existed developed in a world where there was radiation all the time. If we were as sensitive as the anti newks think we would not exist.

I am always amazed at the rubbish environmental groups will shameless publish even though they have been widely discredited. I can only assume that they feel that because their cause is just, they don't need to conform to usual norms of honesty.

In another thread another fervent anti nuke poster made the moronic claim that uranium supplies were sufficient for between 9 and 30 years.

While Jonathan Hughes has presented a reasoned rational approach, the truth is that the anti Nuke crusade is based on emotion and an effective scare mongering campaign.

You confuse two sorts of risks Jonathan. You are quite right is saying nuclear is safe when it comes to killing people. It kills far less people per joule produced than coal, or hydro. Hydro is in fact the worst. The nuclear industry regularly point as far as deaths are concerned, they are the least risky technology. Fukushima just proved that point once again.

But there is a reason they point it out. That is because it is, indisputably, the most financially risky of all production methods. In putting some 1000's of square kilometers of land out of production for decades in a country that has a shortage of it, Fukushima proved that yet again. An extraordinary percentage of nuclear plants (over 30%) fail before their economic life times are up - which means the investors (who have to take out 30 years loans to finance the hugely expensive things) lose money. This why in the US no nuclear plant has been commissioned in recent times built without the tax payers providing a loan guarantee for the entire cost. Ie, the tax payer takes on the risk. In the US the tax payer also took on the risk for long term (10,000 years) disposal of waste. Yukka mountain. It cost some $9B. But it also failed.

It needn't be this way. There are experimental nuclear plant designs that are burn 98% of their fuel instead of 0.2% so the waste storage becomes tractable, mostly fail safe and small enough so the effects aren't disastrous if the do fail. In other words, we can build nuclear plants that don't externalise their costs to society. But guess what - they will cost billions to make work, and will be more expensive per joule when they do.

So what does the nuclear industry do - they beat the "we are low risk drum", so we the tax payer take on this "low" risk. The other energy options can't externalise risk in this way. It's a huge bloody great conn, to get an unfair advantage. And you, Jonathan, have made yourself part of it.