zsombor's lair

All life on earth is dependent upon the energy that comes from the Sun. This giver of life is surprisingly also the largest nuclear reactor that still has an ‘effect’ on life on this planet. Without it there would be nothing but a baren rock or not even that its gravity is prerequisite for planetary formation. Perhaps a gaseous nebula, a shapeless cloud of dust & hydrogen.

Every second the Sun gives out an average energy output of 3.86 * 10 ^ 26 Joules. That is 386 followed by twenty four zeroes. Note that only a minuscule fraction falls upon the illuminated side of the Earth, and even less gets trough the atmosphere and clouds. One Joule (J) per second is one Watt (W) , so the total output of the sun is 3.86 * 10 ^ 26 W or 3.86 * 10 ^ 20 MW.

This awesome display happens at an average distance of 149 million kilometers from earth (89 million miles). Our planet has an elliptical orbit so the distance from this huge energy release is sometimes more sometimes less.

Fearmongers are spreading FUD about how many people live within 150 miles of a nuclear powerplant, with the implied notion that sooner or latter we will all be wiped out in a nuclear holocaust. To be fair simple distance is not a good approximation, for reasons that are far too obvious. But lets compute be ignorant of design issues, flood & seismological risks, unparalleled safety record of the industry and just count the Dumb Distance Risk Factor (DDRF)

Take the largest commercial powerplant the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa installation with total output of 7965 MW. At 150 miles this would yield 53.1 DDRF. Same computed for the Sun from 89 million miles distance would yield 4.33 * 10 ^ 12 DDR .

In light of this I don’t get how some so called “green” activists claim that nuclear reactors are not safe. Their scientific ignorance coupled with dumb interpretation of data, ideological cherry picking of information yields results equally dumb danger calculations as my done above.