He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
Although of course at least with the fugu you'll know straight away...
He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
I've seen the video of that. As a complete aside, it was a brilliant presentation of the data.
To look at Fukushima (a once in 100 year Tsunami causing a well contained nuclear accident with 0 deaths) and conclude that one should move away from Nuclear power for electricity generation in a country with no history of earthquakes or Tsunamis (as Germany did) was a very perverse conclusion.
Fair enough, I apologise for being slightly out of date. I would not wish to minimise any death but still 7 years after the event there was 1. One. Contrast that with Chenobyl.
Odd that you bring up Chernobyl in arguing for the safety of nuclear power generation.
That's just one in the long list of examples of why "let's bypass this safety system" and "that alarm can't be real - it must be malfunctioning" will almost always get you in to trouble.
The parallels between that kind of thinking and certain people's response to Covid-19 are rather obvious.
Odd that you bring up Chernobyl in arguing for the safety of nuclear power generation.
That's just one in the long list of examples of why "let's bypass this safety system" and "that alarm can't be real - it must be malfunctioning" will almost always get you in to trouble.
The parallels between that kind of thinking and certain people's response to Covid-19 are rather obvious.
What's rather obvious to Peter is opaque as pig shit to Paul.
The problem with "nuclear energy is perfectly safe, Chernobyl was just foolish people making mistakes" is that we will always have foolish people making mistakes, it's part of the human condition, and when they make mistakes with nuclear energy the results can be catastrophic.
What's rather obvious to Peter is opaque as pig shit to Paul.
"Let's bypass the safety system" basically always gets you in to trouble.* "Let's pretend that these people don't have Covid-19, because it's too hard otherwise" is a similar thought process. You ignore the safety protocols because they're inconvenient, and then get screwed by it.
*Yes, yes, there are real reasons to bypass parts of some safety systems under carefully controlled conditions. Tread very very carefully indeed.
The problem with "nuclear energy is perfectly safe, Chernobyl was just foolish people making mistakes" is that we will always have foolish people making mistakes, it's part of the human condition, and when they make mistakes with nuclear energy the results can be catastrophic.
I haven't said that nuclear energy is perfectly safe, although I think it's fair to say that I have more questions about real costs (ie. when you include decommissioning of the site and waste storage) than I do about the risks of a big disaster.
And yes, I agree that people make mistakes. Even sensible, non-foolish people make mistakes on a regular basis, which is why we have safety systems, interlocks, and similar devices and schemes to prevent someone's mistake turning in to someone's hand on the floor. And this is why "disable the interlocks" is an error of a rather different order than normal human mistakes.
The point is that Fukushima was a textbook response to a Nuclear accident (with one important exception*). No one sane would claim that nuclear power is completely safe. However if you look at it properly the injury and death rates from oil, coal and gas are orders of magnitude higher to both those that work in the industry and the wider public (primarily from air pollution). And that's before you factor in climate change! The main point here is that intuitive risk assessments are usually wrong!
And yes, the parallels for good/bad management of Covid-19 are indeed pertinent.
AFZ
*there were several deaths following an evacuation of the local hospital. There is on-going legal action because it is argued that the evacuation was done poorly. However, the earthquake and Tsunami killed thousands so a bit of context is needed.
At the risk of extending the tangent (does anyone want to discuss this further, and we can move these posts to a new thread?) several, the number depending on how you want to count them.
In 1960 at a research facility at Saclay operator error lead to a power excursion, though without damaging the core. In 1968 another research reactor at the same site suffered a power excursion while removing an experimental rig, damaging a small number of fuel elements.
In 1967 at the SILOE reactor (Grenoble) a fuel element partially melted, releasing fission products into the surrounding water and radioactive gases through the stack to the open atmosphere. Then in 1986 it was found that the bottom of the pool had eroded, and water was leaking (very slowly) into the ground water. Does that count as one or two?
In 1969, during online refuelling of the Saint Larent reactor operator error lead to coolant flow restriction melting several fuel elements. Again, in 1980 at the A station on this site a metal plate came loose blocking coolant flow through 6 channels with the associated fuel elements melting. Maybe we won't count the emergency shutdown of the same reactor in January 1987 when ice blocked the secondary coolant intake.
Should we even mention Cap de la Hague, where the worlds largest light water reactor fuel waste processing facility which routinely discharges radioactive waste water into the sea?
You may hear "nuclear accident" and think Fukushima and Chernobyl, maybe Windscale or Three Mile Island. But, worldwide there have been about 50 accidents which have resulted in releases of radioactive materials into the wider environment, not counting the releases which are routine in the operation of many facilities. More than 200 more where a reactor or other nuclear facility has been damaged without a release to the wider environment.
At the risk of extending the tangent (does anyone want to discuss this further, and we can move these posts to a new thread?) several, the number depending on how you want to count them.
In 1960 at a research facility at Saclay operator error lead to a power excursion, though without damaging the core. In 1968 another research reactor at the same site suffered a power excursion while removing an experimental rig, damaging a small number of fuel elements.
In 1967 at the SILOE reactor (Grenoble) a fuel element partially melted, releasing fission products into the surrounding water and radioactive gases through the stack to the open atmosphere. Then in 1986 it was found that the bottom of the pool had eroded, and water was leaking (very slowly) into the ground water. Does that count as one or two?
In 1969, during online refuelling of the Saint Larent reactor operator error lead to coolant flow restriction melting several fuel elements. Again, in 1980 at the A station on this site a metal plate came loose blocking coolant flow through 6 channels with the associated fuel elements melting. Maybe we won't count the emergency shutdown of the same reactor in January 1987 when ice blocked the secondary coolant intake.
Should we even mention Cap de la Hague, where the worlds largest light water reactor fuel waste processing facility which routinely discharges radioactive waste water into the sea?
You may hear "nuclear accident" and think Fukushima and Chernobyl, maybe Windscale or Three Mile Island. But, worldwide there have been about 50 accidents which have resulted in releases of radioactive materials into the wider environment, not counting the releases which are routine in the operation of many facilities. More than 200 more where a reactor or other nuclear facility has been damaged without a release to the wider environment.
Fair enough. But there is still a massive difference in the number of illness and death from nuclear energy v fossil fuels.
But there is still a massive difference in the number of illness and death from nuclear energy v fossil fuels.
I don't think there's anyone disputing that. What we were discussing was general perception of risk, and how that perception impacts actions. Which often is totally uncorrelated to actual risks. Why is it that many people in Japan won't travel to Fukushima or eat the (absolutely delicious) fruit grown there out of fear that they'll die of radiation induced cancer, but very few people will act as though the risks from coronavirus or fossil fuels are orders of magnitude greater. Why do some people think that nuclear power will leave the planet a radioactive wasteland devoid of life ... but can't be bothered to put on a mask when they go out because they don't think this is a greater risk?
But there is still a massive difference in the number of illness and death from nuclear energy v fossil fuels.
I don't think there's anyone disputing that. What we were discussing was general perception of risk, and how that perception impacts actions. Which often is totally uncorrelated to actual risks. Why is it that many people in Japan won't travel to Fukushima or eat the (absolutely delicious) fruit grown there out of fear that they'll die of radiation induced cancer, but very few people will act as though the risks from coronavirus or fossil fuels are orders of magnitude greater. Why do some people think that nuclear power will leave the planet a radioactive wasteland devoid of life ... but can't be bothered to put on a mask when they go out because they don't think this is a greater risk?
This.
100% this.
Which is partly why I'm so cross with the BBC. By pushing that 1 in 2 million figure without context, they potentially made this problem much worse.
But there is still a massive difference in the number of illness and death from nuclear energy v fossil fuels.
I don't think there's anyone disputing that. What we were discussing was general perception of risk, and how that perception impacts actions. Which often is totally uncorrelated to actual risks. Why is it that many people in Japan won't travel to Fukushima or eat the (absolutely delicious) fruit grown there out of fear that they'll die of radiation induced cancer, but very few people will act as though the risks from coronavirus or fossil fuels are orders of magnitude greater. Why do some people think that nuclear power will leave the planet a radioactive wasteland devoid of life ... but can't be bothered to put on a mask when they go out because they don't think this is a greater risk?
But there is still a massive difference in the number of illness and death from nuclear energy v fossil fuels.
I don't think there's anyone disputing that. What we were discussing was general perception of risk, and how that perception impacts actions. Which often is totally uncorrelated to actual risks. Why is it that many people in Japan won't travel to Fukushima or eat the (absolutely delicious) fruit grown there out of fear that they'll die of radiation induced cancer, but very few people will act as though the risks from coronavirus or fossil fuels are orders of magnitude greater. Why do some people think that nuclear power will leave the planet a radioactive wasteland devoid of life ... but can't be bothered to put on a mask when they go out because they don't think this is a greater risk?
Provide evidence these are the same people.
They're almost certainly not the same people (or, certainly not at the extreme positions). The point was that everyone is totally crap at judging risks and the risk reduction from particular actions. And, quite often they live contradictory lives - certainly in Fukushima there were people afraid to go outside because of elevated radiation levels, and associating that with increased risks of cancer, but didn't stop smoking.
In Fukushima, the extreme exaggeration of the risks from exposure to radiation seem to be linked to several factors, including:
the invisible nature of the threat (one thing that helped reduce stress, if not perception of risk, was the ready availability of radiation monitors allowing people to "see" the radiation around them ... though with the usual questions of whether the systems installed by the government were displaying the actual dose rate),
the delayed impact of radiation exposure (cancers would set in 10+ years after exposure to radiation, there's no immediate demonstration of whether or not you "dodged the bullet" in a particular activity - cf: say the risks of being in a car accident, as soon as you get home and lock the car you know that on that occasion you'd avoided an accident),
the word "cancer", the long term effect being increased risk of getting cancer
the lack of control over the situation, the radiation is present in the environment due to the actions of others (lots of blame placed on the operators, TEPCO, for building the reactors on that site without having taken adequate consideration of the risks of a large tsunami exacerbated by the initial response from TEPCO and the government saying that there wasn't a serious problem)
a general loss of trust in the national government and TEPCO with reassurance issued that people were safe taken with a massive pinch of salt (at one point I was one of a small group giving presentations at a public meeting on the final day of a science symposium, ahead of me someone from TEPCO was presenting plans for an interim waste storage facility planned for the heavily contaminated area outside the plant fence - he was subject to a very atypical for Japan treatment from the members of the public there with aggressive questions, later that evening over dinner one of our hosts said that if someone from TEPCO was to say it's Saturday that people would check their calendars)
What seems to me to be quite interesting is that many of the factors above also apply to coronavirus; it's invisible (we don't even have a detector to say it's present in a given location), exposure leads to delayed effects, we don't control whether the people we meet are carriers of the virus, and in most places the government has lost any trust that they can handle things. In Fukushima the general initial (ie: over the first few years after the accident) reaction was to exaggerate the risks enormously, and even now the general thinking would probably be that they're living with a much greater risk than reality people have just got used to it and it's no longer causing as many problems. But, in the current situation it seems that there is a combination of overestimating the risks and underestimating within the population - we've got people who are terrified of anyone coming to their door, and people who see no benefit in wearing a mask or avoiding crowded places (even ignoring the conspiracy theorists who say the virus doesn't exist at all, or isn't worse than a common cold). Despite some similarities in the situations, there are some considerable differences in the way people perceive the risks and thus how they act.
I hadn't thought of the parallels before but I think you're on to something there. There are clearly multiple aspects that push people towards an emotional assessment of risk rather than a rational one.
One thing which we haven't perhaps figured in here is not just the risk to myself (from Covid) but the risk I may unwittingly pose to other people. IMO wearing facemasks is more about the latter than the former. On a couple of recent bus trips fewer than 50% of the passengers were wearing the (supposedly mandatory) face coverings. If they feel that the risk to themselves doesn't warrant wearing them, that's fine by me. But they are being inconsiderate of others, which is a different matter entirely.
But really we're talking about opposites. People who are emotionally overinflating the dangers from the Fukushima meltdown (if Alan is correct), whereas the problem in the USA at least is people emotionally underinflating the dangers of Covid-19. I'm not seeing how the same facts-and-personality stew can explain both.
He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
Although of course at least with the fugu you'll know straight away...
Any "risk assessment" that I make about my own personal individual risk is necessarily ... *tricky* ... at best ...
The best information I will have about any particular *risk* will always be about percentages, numbers, "odds," and so on ...
People do not use mathematical models to calculate risk. It is only worth doing that if you are going to do something like a tandem sky diving or placing a bet* i.e. a one-off when the risks are usually known. Other than those specific circumstances there are usually too many unknown and the model is too complex; multiple factors each influencing the model in different ways so that the calculation of risk takes too long for us to take action based on it. Normally if a clear simple threat then we have less time to make a decision We short cut it by making decisions on the basis of emotional factors. These are good enough for us most of the time and do not leave us in the state of paralysis that doing it by rational means does.
It is rational to use the emotional system when approaching risk. Equally once something is in progress then there are often changes to the risks that entail on the spot quick calculations, our slow rational brains simply do not have the capacity to work this out. So if we work with our emotional system we have the calculation already there to adjust by the quicker part of our brain.
*the thing with gambling is people like to believe they can beat the system using their 'gut instinct' and the bookies' risk models are much better assessments than any punters.
*the thing with gambling is people like to believe they can beat the system using their 'gut instinct' and the bookies' risk models are much better assessments than any punters.
Actually there is a known issue of gambling websites banning players who reliably come out ahead so it's not unheard of.
People do not use mathematical models to calculate risk. It is only worth doing that if you are going to do something like a tandem sky diving or placing a bet* i.e. a one-off when the risks are usually known. Other than those specific circumstances there are usually too many unknown and the model is too complex; multiple factors each influencing the model in different ways so that the calculation of risk takes too long for us to take action based on it. Normally if a clear simple threat then we have less time to make a decision We short cut it by making decisions on the basis of emotional factors. These are good enough for us most of the time and do not leave us in the state of paralysis that doing it by rational means does.
It is rational to use the emotional system when approaching risk. Equally once something is in progress then there are often changes to the risks that entail on the spot quick calculations, our slow rational brains simply do not have the capacity to work this out. So if we work with our emotional system we have the calculation already there to adjust by the quicker part of our brain.
*the thing with gambling is people like to believe they can beat the system using their 'gut instinct' and the bookies' risk models are much better assessments than any punters.
People with ADHD are often very good at assessing risk in the heat of the emergency and make excellent paramedics etc. Our brains are wired for quick thinking, not slow reasoning/learning.
Many comedians are ADDers as we bypass that ‘what if’ part of the circuit and come out, fearlessly, with the comedy in the situation.
We would have been the hunters in ancient times. Our skills are far less needed in the modern world and these days we are often the fish expected to climb trees.
But, in emergencies, my reactions are not emotional at all. I go into a super calm state of hyper focus, very clear thinking and able to assess the situation.
On the subject of nuclear risk - I trust the man with a rocket under his arm. 🙃 🚀
But really we're talking about opposites. People who are emotionally overinflating the dangers from the Fukushima meltdown (if Alan is correct), whereas the problem in the USA at least is people emotionally underinflating the dangers of Covid-19. I'm not seeing how the same facts-and-personality stew can explain both.
"Nuclear" is scary. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines are called "MRIs" in hospitals, because the "N" word scares people. People don't understand it, but the associations they have are with nuclear weapons and Chernobyl.
I think Covid goes the other way. Again, people don't understand it, but the associations they have with a virus tend to be the 'flu (and they don't bother getting a 'flu shot, because it's just the 'flu), or people generally feeling a bit run down and under the weather and "I think it's viral". It would have been much better for us if people had associated Covid with AIDS or Ebola rather than the 'flu, but that was unlikely to happen.
He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
I've seen the video of that. As a complete aside, it was a brilliant presentation of the data.
To look at Fukushima (a once in 100 year Tsunami causing a well contained nuclear accident with 0 deaths) and conclude that one should move away from Nuclear power for electricity generation in a country with no history of earthquakes or Tsunamis (as Germany did) was a very perverse conclusion.
Data matters.
My German friend says Germany has not so much moved away from nuclear but rather *towards* renewables.
(they haven't got rid of their coal though!)
France has had how many accidents? Petroleum is going to end up killing far more people than Chernobyl would have, worst case scenario.
Ay up. Bin Skyrimming for months. Having just devoured Apocalypse Never I'm born again pro-nuclear with the cognitive dissonance leaping 55 years back and then knocking down 55 years of dominoes. Therefore petroleum representative of fossil has already killed, what, at least two orders of magnitude more, although it's a difficult cost-benefit analysis in terms of years of human life lost and gained: Fossil gave us everything we have. Only fission can get us through the ice age maxima. And only fission and massive hydroelectric can lift the developing world up to our level and beyond and fulfil the gospel.
I'm delighted and chagrined to find so much agreement. How can we reverse the Malthusian apocalyptic environmentalist tide?
Don't encourage me Cathscats, you know how bad I can get. I was accused of being nearly coherent in my daughter's wedding speech. Looks like I'm getting worse.
He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
I've seen the video of that. As a complete aside, it was a brilliant presentation of the data.
To look at Fukushima (a once in 100 year Tsunami causing a well contained nuclear accident with 0 deaths) and conclude that one should move away from Nuclear power for electricity generation in a country with no history of earthquakes or Tsunamis (as Germany did) was a very perverse conclusion.
Data matters.
My German friend says Germany has not so much moved away from nuclear but rather *towards* renewables.
(they haven't got rid of their coal though!)
That's partially encouraging... for me, the real answer is to go nuclear now as a bridge to renewables being everything as soon as practical (maybe ~50 years if we're lucky and serious about it).
As I understand it though, most of the shortfall of production in Germany was made up by increasing electricity imports from France...
He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
I've seen the video of that. As a complete aside, it was a brilliant presentation of the data.
To look at Fukushima (a once in 100 year Tsunami causing a well contained nuclear accident with 0 deaths) and conclude that one should move away from Nuclear power for electricity generation in a country with no history of earthquakes or Tsunamis (as Germany did) was a very perverse conclusion.
Data matters.
My German friend says Germany has not so much moved away from nuclear but rather *towards* renewables.
(they haven't got rid of their coal though!)
That's partially encouraging... for me, the real answer is to go nuclear now as a bridge to renewables being everything as soon as practical (maybe ~50 years if we're lucky and serious about it).
As I understand it though, most of the shortfall of production in Germany was made up by increasing electricity imports from France...
AFZ
What renewables AFZ? Low density energy can't get anyone to our level and can't keep us at our level, let alone increase it.
He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
I've seen the video of that. As a complete aside, it was a brilliant presentation of the data.
To look at Fukushima (a once in 100 year Tsunami causing a well contained nuclear accident with 0 deaths) and conclude that one should move away from Nuclear power for electricity generation in a country with no history of earthquakes or Tsunamis (as Germany did) was a very perverse conclusion.
Data matters.
My German friend says Germany has not so much moved away from nuclear but rather *towards* renewables.
(they haven't got rid of their coal though!)
That's partially encouraging... for me, the real answer is to go nuclear now as a bridge to renewables being everything as soon as practical (maybe ~50 years if we're lucky and serious about it).
As I understand it though, most of the shortfall of production in Germany was made up by increasing electricity imports from France...
AFZ
"Nuclear now" isn't on the cards though, is it? It's "nuclear in 15 years or so". Much better spending that money on renewables + storage.
He said that if you give people the facts, then they are very good at deciding which risks to take. This is simply false, we are all intuitively very poor at weighing one risk against another. There's a huge body of literature on this but I meet it every day in my working life when taking consent for surgery. Helping people quantify risk is a key professional responsibility. This especially true when if people change their behaviour, the risk will change and we don't quite know by how much but it's probably quite a lot!
Preach, brother.
People are particularly bad at thinking about long tails - small risks of really bad things happening, and about combining risks. If you tell people there's a 50:50 chance it'll rain, they do perfectly fine thinking about it.
If you tell them that 1% of the population is infectious, they'll probably think "1% is a pretty small number. I'm not at much risk". And then they'll sit on a bus with 50 people on it, and the chance of at least one person on the bus being infectious is 40%. Which is rather different from the 1% that they were thinking of.
Several years ago I was at a symposium in Tokyo organised by the British Embassy (complete with famous TV personality to chair the discussion) on risk perception and how to improve public understanding of risks and how that could both reduce anxiety and change behaviour. The particular situation under discussion was the risks associated with exposure to low level radiation from the Fukushima accident but the issues are similar.
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
I've seen the video of that. As a complete aside, it was a brilliant presentation of the data.
To look at Fukushima (a once in 100 year Tsunami causing a well contained nuclear accident with 0 deaths) and conclude that one should move away from Nuclear power for electricity generation in a country with no history of earthquakes or Tsunamis (as Germany did) was a very perverse conclusion.
Data matters.
My German friend says Germany has not so much moved away from nuclear but rather *towards* renewables.
(they haven't got rid of their coal though!)
That's partially encouraging... for me, the real answer is to go nuclear now as a bridge to renewables being everything as soon as practical (maybe ~50 years if we're lucky and serious about it).
As I understand it though, most of the shortfall of production in Germany was made up by increasing electricity imports from France...
AFZ
"Nuclear now" isn't on the cards though, is it? It's "nuclear in 15 years or so". Much better spending that money on renewables + storage.
A worse waste of money than fusion. It does more harm.
Has any nuclear power plant ever been constructed without massive government money?
The biggest problem with fission plants in the USA is that the designs are not standardized, which drives up the cost of design and construction and the later risks of accidents ...
Has any nuclear power plant ever been constructed without massive government money?
The biggest problem with fission plants in the USA is that the designs are not standardized, which drives up the cost of design and construction and the later risks of accidents ...
Please quantify that latter claim.
That was the problem with the first UK reactors; each one was a Rolls Royce quality prototype. The South Koreans have overcome this, I imagine the French and Chinese too.
(Sensei Dr. Alan I-AM-a-nuclear-physicist-and Cresswell will correct all error.)
Very few, if any, nuclear plants follow a standardised design. One issue is that the time taken to build a nuclear plant is so long that there's a lot of "if we do this it'll make things better ..." time for the engineers to rethink, plus finding out problems as you build one plant that you then correct in the next one. And, there are often local conditions that require slight changes to the design. The same would be true of any large engineering project. You only get things built to standard designs when they come out of factory production lines, we may get standardised designs for small modular reactors - should anyone ever start making them.
Very few, if any, nuclear plants follow a standardised design. One issue is that the time taken to build a nuclear plant is so long that there's a lot of "if we do this it'll make things better ..." time for the engineers to rethink, plus finding out problems as you build one plant that you then correct in the next one. And, there are often local conditions that require slight changes to the design. The same would be true of any large engineering project. You only get things built to standard designs when they come out of factory production lines, we may get standardised designs for small modular reactors - should anyone ever start making them.
The French and the Swedes have had good experience with standardized designs ...
What I worry about is that because nuclear power has been neglected by the West for the past 40 years, the many nuclear power stations now being built in the developing world are mostly to Chinese and Russian designs...
Very few, if any, nuclear plants follow a standardised design. One issue is that the time taken to build a nuclear plant is so long that there's a lot of "if we do this it'll make things better ..." time for the engineers to rethink, plus finding out problems as you build one plant that you then correct in the next one. And, there are often local conditions that require slight changes to the design. The same would be true of any large engineering project. You only get things built to standard designs when they come out of factory production lines, we may get standardised designs for small modular reactors - should anyone ever start making them.
The French and the Swedes have had good experience with standardized designs ...
Sweden has 12 reactors (half of them still operational); three are Westinghouse PWRs at one plant, one is a PHWR, the others are BWRs of four different designs and design variants. That's not exactly standardisation as most people would understand it.
France has a lot more reactors, and hence there are several plants with the same basic designs - 56 operational reactors built to 3 different basic designs. Coastal and inland sites have different cooling systems, even for the same basic design. Other differences within each design group include whether each reactor has it's own control room, or whether a single control room is used for multiple reactors. Other minor differences in design such as placement of emergency generators and other secondary plant may not be significant, but are non-standard features.
The Chinese are probably the closest to having standardised designs - the planned build are almost all one of two designs.
Very few, if any, nuclear plants follow a standardised design. One issue is that the time taken to build a nuclear plant is so long that there's a lot of "if we do this it'll make things better ..." time for the engineers to rethink, plus finding out problems as you build one plant that you then correct in the next one. And, there are often local conditions that require slight changes to the design. The same would be true of any large engineering project. You only get things built to standard designs when they come out of factory production lines, we may get standardised designs for small modular reactors - should anyone ever start making them.
The French and the Swedes have had good experience with standardized designs ...
And yet the French-designed reactor at Hinkley Point C is still massively delayed and over its already-vast budget.
Comments
We all noticed the irony that after the symposium we were all taken to a quality local restaurant where we were served fugu - which presents a far greater risk to health than any of the scenarios we had been discussing that lead to such high levels of anxiety in the Japanese population.
Although of course at least with the fugu you'll know straight away...
I've seen the video of that. As a complete aside, it was a brilliant presentation of the data.
To look at Fukushima (a once in 100 year Tsunami causing a well contained nuclear accident with 0 deaths) and conclude that one should move away from Nuclear power for electricity generation in a country with no history of earthquakes or Tsunamis (as Germany did) was a very perverse conclusion.
Data matters.
That's not quite accurate.
Fair enough, I apologise for being slightly out of date. I would not wish to minimise any death but still 7 years after the event there was 1. One. Contrast that with Chenobyl.
That's just one in the long list of examples of why "let's bypass this safety system" and "that alarm can't be real - it must be malfunctioning" will almost always get you in to trouble.
The parallels between that kind of thinking and certain people's response to Covid-19 are rather obvious.
What's rather obvious to Peter is opaque as pig shit to Paul.
The problem with "nuclear energy is perfectly safe, Chernobyl was just foolish people making mistakes" is that we will always have foolish people making mistakes, it's part of the human condition, and when they make mistakes with nuclear energy the results can be catastrophic.
"Let's bypass the safety system" basically always gets you in to trouble.* "Let's pretend that these people don't have Covid-19, because it's too hard otherwise" is a similar thought process. You ignore the safety protocols because they're inconvenient, and then get screwed by it.
*Yes, yes, there are real reasons to bypass parts of some safety systems under carefully controlled conditions. Tread very very carefully indeed.
I haven't said that nuclear energy is perfectly safe, although I think it's fair to say that I have more questions about real costs (ie. when you include decommissioning of the site and waste storage) than I do about the risks of a big disaster.
And yes, I agree that people make mistakes. Even sensible, non-foolish people make mistakes on a regular basis, which is why we have safety systems, interlocks, and similar devices and schemes to prevent someone's mistake turning in to someone's hand on the floor. And this is why "disable the interlocks" is an error of a rather different order than normal human mistakes.
Looked up the Japanese food fugu. (Poisonous puffer fish.) Yikes. Is that something people on a dare?
For... longer than I care to admit I thought that all sushi was fugu.
And yes, the parallels for good/bad management of Covid-19 are indeed pertinent.
AFZ
*there were several deaths following an evacuation of the local hospital. There is on-going legal action because it is argued that the evacuation was done poorly. However, the earthquake and Tsunami killed thousands so a bit of context is needed.
In 1960 at a research facility at Saclay operator error lead to a power excursion, though without damaging the core. In 1968 another research reactor at the same site suffered a power excursion while removing an experimental rig, damaging a small number of fuel elements.
In 1967 at the SILOE reactor (Grenoble) a fuel element partially melted, releasing fission products into the surrounding water and radioactive gases through the stack to the open atmosphere. Then in 1986 it was found that the bottom of the pool had eroded, and water was leaking (very slowly) into the ground water. Does that count as one or two?
In 1969, during online refuelling of the Saint Larent reactor operator error lead to coolant flow restriction melting several fuel elements. Again, in 1980 at the A station on this site a metal plate came loose blocking coolant flow through 6 channels with the associated fuel elements melting. Maybe we won't count the emergency shutdown of the same reactor in January 1987 when ice blocked the secondary coolant intake.
Should we even mention Cap de la Hague, where the worlds largest light water reactor fuel waste processing facility which routinely discharges radioactive waste water into the sea?
You may hear "nuclear accident" and think Fukushima and Chernobyl, maybe Windscale or Three Mile Island. But, worldwide there have been about 50 accidents which have resulted in releases of radioactive materials into the wider environment, not counting the releases which are routine in the operation of many facilities. More than 200 more where a reactor or other nuclear facility has been damaged without a release to the wider environment.
This.
100% this.
Which is partly why I'm so cross with the BBC. By pushing that 1 in 2 million figure without context, they potentially made this problem much worse.
AFZ
I feel very understood by that reference, @W Hyatt . Thank you.
Truly, thorium reactors are the civilized way for the world to do nuclear power ASAP.
Provide evidence these are the same people.
In Fukushima, the extreme exaggeration of the risks from exposure to radiation seem to be linked to several factors, including:
What seems to me to be quite interesting is that many of the factors above also apply to coronavirus; it's invisible (we don't even have a detector to say it's present in a given location), exposure leads to delayed effects, we don't control whether the people we meet are carriers of the virus, and in most places the government has lost any trust that they can handle things. In Fukushima the general initial (ie: over the first few years after the accident) reaction was to exaggerate the risks enormously, and even now the general thinking would probably be that they're living with a much greater risk than reality people have just got used to it and it's no longer causing as many problems. But, in the current situation it seems that there is a combination of overestimating the risks and underestimating within the population - we've got people who are terrified of anyone coming to their door, and people who see no benefit in wearing a mask or avoiding crowded places (even ignoring the conspiracy theorists who say the virus doesn't exist at all, or isn't worse than a common cold). Despite some similarities in the situations, there are some considerable differences in the way people perceive the risks and thus how they act.
Hmmmm.... Gonna ponder this some more.
AFZ
Any "risk assessment" that I make about my own personal individual risk is necessarily ... *tricky* ... at best ...
The best information I will have about any particular *risk* will always be about percentages, numbers, "odds," and so on ...
It is rational to use the emotional system when approaching risk. Equally once something is in progress then there are often changes to the risks that entail on the spot quick calculations, our slow rational brains simply do not have the capacity to work this out. So if we work with our emotional system we have the calculation already there to adjust by the quicker part of our brain.
*the thing with gambling is people like to believe they can beat the system using their 'gut instinct' and the bookies' risk models are much better assessments than any punters.
Actually there is a known issue of gambling websites banning players who reliably come out ahead so it's not unheard of.
It's called "fly by the seat of your pants" ...
Many comedians are ADDers as we bypass that ‘what if’ part of the circuit and come out, fearlessly, with the comedy in the situation.
We would have been the hunters in ancient times. Our skills are far less needed in the modern world and these days we are often the fish expected to climb trees.
But, in emergencies, my reactions are not emotional at all. I go into a super calm state of hyper focus, very clear thinking and able to assess the situation.
On the subject of nuclear risk - I trust the man with a rocket under his arm. 🙃 🚀
"Nuclear" is scary. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines are called "MRIs" in hospitals, because the "N" word scares people. People don't understand it, but the associations they have are with nuclear weapons and Chernobyl.
I think Covid goes the other way. Again, people don't understand it, but the associations they have with a virus tend to be the 'flu (and they don't bother getting a 'flu shot, because it's just the 'flu), or people generally feeling a bit run down and under the weather and "I think it's viral". It would have been much better for us if people had associated Covid with AIDS or Ebola rather than the 'flu, but that was unlikely to happen.
My German friend says Germany has not so much moved away from nuclear but rather *towards* renewables.
(they haven't got rid of their coal though!)
Ay up. Bin Skyrimming for months. Having just devoured Apocalypse Never I'm born again pro-nuclear with the cognitive dissonance leaping 55 years back and then knocking down 55 years of dominoes. Therefore petroleum representative of fossil has already killed, what, at least two orders of magnitude more, although it's a difficult cost-benefit analysis in terms of years of human life lost and gained: Fossil gave us everything we have. Only fission can get us through the ice age maxima. And only fission and massive hydroelectric can lift the developing world up to our level and beyond and fulfil the gospel.
I'm delighted and chagrined to find so much agreement. How can we reverse the Malthusian apocalyptic environmentalist tide?
That's partially encouraging... for me, the real answer is to go nuclear now as a bridge to renewables being everything as soon as practical (maybe ~50 years if we're lucky and serious about it).
As I understand it though, most of the shortfall of production in Germany was made up by increasing electricity imports from France...
AFZ
What renewables AFZ? Low density energy can't get anyone to our level and can't keep us at our level, let alone increase it.
"Nuclear now" isn't on the cards though, is it? It's "nuclear in 15 years or so". Much better spending that money on renewables + storage.
A worse waste of money than fusion. It does more harm.
I should hope not, they should all be public sector.
The biggest problem with fission plants in the USA is that the designs are not standardized, which drives up the cost of design and construction and the later risks of accidents ...
Please quantify that latter claim.
That was the problem with the first UK reactors; each one was a Rolls Royce quality prototype. The South Koreans have overcome this, I imagine the French and Chinese too.
(Sensei Dr. Alan I-AM-a-nuclear-physicist-and Cresswell will correct all error.)
The French and the Swedes have had good experience with standardized designs ...
France has a lot more reactors, and hence there are several plants with the same basic designs - 56 operational reactors built to 3 different basic designs. Coastal and inland sites have different cooling systems, even for the same basic design. Other differences within each design group include whether each reactor has it's own control room, or whether a single control room is used for multiple reactors. Other minor differences in design such as placement of emergency generators and other secondary plant may not be significant, but are non-standard features.
The Chinese are probably the closest to having standardised designs - the planned build are almost all one of two designs.
And yet the French-designed reactor at Hinkley Point C is still massively delayed and over its already-vast budget.