[ RadSafe ] Fwd: [New post] Meticulous research indicates much greater likelihood of another Chernobyl-scale nuclear accident

[Roger Helbig]

Is this really meticulous research or are these people anti-nuclear
activists first and scientists second?

Roger Helbig

Meticulous research indicates much greater likelihood of another
Chernobyl-scale nuclear accident

by Christina MacPherson

Wheatley and co's work suggests that a Chernobyl-scale accident is
worryingly likely to occur within the working lifetime of the reactors
now being built. And when that happens, a once obscure place will
enter the lexicon as a synonym for catastrophe, just like Chernobyl,
Windscale and Fukushima.

These risks will have to be carefully weighed against the advantages.
The question for engineers, policy makers and the general public alike
is whether that risk is worth taking, given what's at stake.

The Chances of Another Chernobyl Before 2050? 50%, Say Safety
Specialists, MIT Technology Review  April 17, 2015  ".....And there's a
50:50 chance of a Three Mile Island-scale disaster in the next 10
years, according to the largest statistical analysis of nuclear
accidents ever undertaken........

 What is the likelihood of another Chernobyl in the next few years?

Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Spencer Wheatley and
Didier Sornette at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Benjamin Sovacool at
Aarhus University in Denmark. These guys have compiled the most
comprehensive list of nuclear accidents ever created and used it to
calculate the likelihood of other accidents in future.

Their worrying conclusion is that the chances are 50:50 that a major
nuclear disaster will occur somewhere in the world before 2050. "There
is a 50 per cent chance that a Chernobyl event (or larger) occurs in
the next 27 years," they conclude.

The nuclear industry has long been criticised for its over-confident
attitude to risk. But truly independent analyses are few and far
between, partly because much of the data on accidents is compiled by
the nuclear industry itself, which is reluctant to share it.

The International Atomic Energy Agency rates accidents using a system
called the International Nuclear Event Scale, which is related to the
amount of radiation released. However, the Agency does not publish a
historical database of these accidents, probably because it has a dual
role of both regulating the nuclear industry and promoting it. Read
more of this post

Christina MacPherson | April 22, 2015 at 8:22 am | Categories: safety
| URL: http://wp.me/phgse-jiW

http://nuclear-news.net/2015/04/22/meticulous-research-indicates-much-greater-likelihood-of-another-chernobyl-scale-nuclear-accident/