A Thought Experiment

[drplokta]

Suppose that you saw the following statement in the media, and after a little research discovered that it appeared to be well substantiated. How would you react? What do you think would be the general public reaction?

Radiation released from nuclear power stations continues to exceed safe limits in central London, and is causing over 4,000 deaths from cancer per year.

It's not true of course. But let's change a few words, and we get a statement that is true (as far as can be determined):

Particulates released from diesel vehicles continue to exceed safe limits in central London, and are causing over 4,000 deaths from asthma, lung disease and heart attacks per year.

So, what's your reaction to that one? And the public reaction? Is there a difference? Why?

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Me too.

(Although I share Monbiot's deep distrust of the private sector nuclear industry -- and indeed of all private sector energy industries, because they all have a profit incentive for sweeping bad news under the rug. (See also: BP oil spill.) I'd much rather our nuclear reactors were nationalised so that the externalities can't be ignored, and that the stated goal for running them was to reduce CO2 emissions while providing relatively safe base-load energy -- not cheap energy.)

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I hate the action of nationalisation and don't advocate it in general, but with regard to nuclear power it seems like a damn good idea.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Previous to the Fukushima incident the two largest releases of nuclear material into the wild from reactors were at Windscale, under the direct control of the British Government at the time and Tchernobyl which was definitely not a privately-held operation.

A privately-held operation such as TEPCO has to put up with no-knock inspections from all sorts of international bodies such as the IAEA to account for fuel inventories under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and others. The assorted non-power generating reactors in, say, the Big Green Square at AWE west of London are under no such obligations relying only on government-appointed inspectors to ensure safe operation of their small but very interesting reactor fleet, including the sweat-inducing supercritical VIPER (although that may have been dismantled by now, unlike the sheds which need lead paint to prevent the plutonium washing out of the wooden planking when it rains -- do you know how hard it is to get lead paint these days?).

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

So you are saying that in private hands nuclear power stations would get more inspections and thus be safer?

Hmmm.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Would the stations necessarily get more and better inspections because they are publicly-held? Any government-run business would have budgets and financial targets to meet just like commercial operations do, and the High Heid Yins would be under similar pressures to make the balance sheets look good come end-of-year.

As a private business the government inspectors can be as heavy-handed as they like with restrictions, limits etc. When the inspection team's boss is an old Civil Service College buddy of the head of British Nuclear Power Pty. then maybe stuff will be brushed under the carpet to give them a chance to fix things before the next inspection, as a favour to an old friend.