Black Swan Theory and anti-nuclear sentiment

[wtmusic]

Black Swan Theory, as explained by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007/2010 book, The Black Swan, describes an event which is a disproportionally-rare occurrence, is unpredictable, but has a high-impact when it does occur. According to Taleb, Black Swan events include the September 11 attacks, the rise of the Internet, World War I and the development of the personal computer. As a result, the event’s non-predictability causes behavioral/psychological changes within people, especially ones who adhere to the scientific method for identifying events. Statistically speaking, these outliers pay a disproportionate role in public opinion and public policy.

Critics of nuclear energy point to the destructive capabilities of failed reactors and long-lasting effects of radioactive energy as reasons of pessimism. According to USA Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists cited “serious safety problems” that plague U.S. Nuclear plants as a main reason for halting nuclear energy programs.

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As the statistics show, well-managed nuclear programs pose less risk than other programs which we view as “safe”. The best way to change public opinion about the likelihood of nuclear accidents is to make more information available not only about the safety procedures in nuclear reactors, but also about the true causes of recent nuclear accidents—failure to arrest corrosion in two cases and an overwhelming natural disaster in the third case. Only by doing so will humans be able to driven by reliable statistics instead of the black shroud of the black swan."

http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/75598/black-swan-theory-and-anti-nuclear-sentiment?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

[a simple pattern]

1. More and more of these black swans around all the time.

Especially as the plants get older and their operating licenses are extended well past the limits of safe operation.

[FBaggins]

2. Really?

Can you name a couple nuclear accidents hat were caused by the aging of the plant (not the fact that the design was decades old)?

There have been no extensions beyond the age of safe operation. The only people who think so also believe that "one day" is beyond that line.

[a simple pattern]

7. Well the 40-year-old plants that were just designed last year are the safest.

Everybody knows that!

[FBaggins]

8. ??? A simple "no" would have sufficed.

You can't name a nuclear accident that was due to a aged plant just falling apart.

Chernobyl was essentially brand new. So was Three Mile Island. Fukushima was hit by an earthquake and tsunami... it didn't just fall apart due to age.

[PamW]

11. Nuclear plants were designed for more than 40 years.

Especially as the plants get older and their operating licenses are extended well past the limits of safe operation.
=========================

Nuclear power plants were designed for more than 40 years of operation.

They were licensed for 40 years; but that's not the design lifetime.

My driver's license is only good for 12 years; but does that mean that after my drivers license expires
on my birthday this year that I'm no longer competent to drive?

How come the anti-nukes never learn the difference between the length of term of the license and
the design lifetimes. We have so many instances of shorter license times, as per my driver's license
analog.

I guess they throw whatever BS comes to mind, without regard to good scholarship in determining whether
what they say is true or not.

Nuclear power plants are like jet airliners; they are maintained and parts are replaced on a regular basis.
About the only thing that isn't replaced is the reactor vessel, but that doesn't "wear out".
( Even neutron-induced embrittlement is a much longer timescale than the useful life of the plant. )

PamW

[kristopher]

3. How should we deal with the risk

"How should we deal with the risk that nuclear power might cause our country to perish? This question is what led me to propose the creation of a society free from dependence on nuclear power."
-Naoto Kan Sept 2011
Prime Minister of Japan During Fukushima Multiple Meltdowns

[FBaggins]

4. What? A politician willing to us extreme hyperbole to score political points with a hot issue?

I'm shocked!

[bananas]

5. Barry Brook is a "criminally stupid" imbecile - Here's what Taleb had to say about Fukushima

When Fukushima started melting down, Barry hyped an article claiming there would not be any significant release of radioactivity.

When people pointed out the article was bullshit, Barry deleted their comments from his blog.

Now he's being a perfect example of what Taleb calls the "criminal stupidity of statistical science".

From Taleb's website at http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/notebook

142 Time to understand a few facts about small probabilities (criminal stupidity of statistical science)

(I've received close to 600 requests for interviews on the "Black Swan" of Japan. Refused all (except for one). I think for a living & write books not interviews. This is what I have to say.)

The Japanese Nuclear Commission had the following goals set in 2003: " The mean value of acute fatality risk by radiation exposure resultant from an accident of a nuclear installation to individuals of the public, who live in the vicinity of the site boundary of the nuclear installation, should not exceed the probability of about 1x10^6 per year (that is , at least 1 per million years)".

That policy was designed only 8 years ago. Their one in a million-year accident almost occurred about 8 year later (I am not even sure if it is at best a near miss). We are clearly in the Fourth Quadrant there.

I spent the last two decades explaining (mostly to finance imbeciles, but also to anyone who would listen to me) why we should not talk about small probabilities in any domain. Science cannot deal with them. It is irresponsible to talk about small probabilities and make people rely on them, except for natural systems that have been standing for 3 billion years (not manmade ones for which the probabilities are derived theoretically, such as the nuclear field for which the effective track record is only 60 years).

1) Small probabilities tend to be incomputable; the smaller the probability, the less computable. (Forget the junk about "Knightian" uncertainty, all small probabilities are incomputable). (See TBS, 2nd Ed., or Douady and Taleb, Statistical undecidability, 2011.)

2) Model error causes the underestimation of small probabilities & their contribution (on balance, because of convexity effects). Any model error, just as any undertainty about flying time causes the expected arrival to be delayed (you rarely land 4 hours early, more often 4 hours late on a transatlantic flight, so "unforeseen" disturbances tend to delay you). See my argument about second order effects with my paper. [INTUITION: uncertainty about the model used for calculation of random effects causes a second layer of randomness, causing small probabilities to rise on balance].

3) The problem is more acute in Extremistan, particularly the manmade part. The probabilities are undestimated but the consequences are much, much more underestimated.

4) As I wrote, because of globalization, the costs of natural catastrophes are increasing in a nonlinear way.

5) Casanova problem (survivorship bias in probability): If you compute the frequency of a rare event and your survival depends on such event not taking place (such as nuclear events), then you underestimated that probability. See the revised note 93 on ??????.

6) Semi-technical Examples: to illustrates the point (how models are Procrustean beds):

Case 1: Binomial



Take for example the binomial distribution with B(N, p) probability of success (avoidance of failure), with N=50. When p moves from 96% to 99% the probability quadruples. So small imprecision around the probability of success (error in its computation, uncertainty about how we computed the probability) leads to enormous ranges in the total result. This shows that there is no such thing as "measurable risk" in the tails, no matter what model we use.

Case 2: More scary. Take a Gaussian, with the probability of exceeding a certain number, that is, . 1- Cumulative density function.. Assume mean = 0, STD= 1. Change the STD from 1 to 1.1 (underestimation of 10% of the variance). For the famed "six sigmas", the area in the tails explodes by 2400%. For the areas above 10 sigmas (common in economics), the area explodes by trillions. (More on the calculations in my paper).

[FBaggins]

6. Is that a consistent standard you're applying?

Given all the things that Gundersen got painfully wrong... I can only imagine how much lower than "criminally stupid imbecile" you'll go.

Of course... I think that one of the two has long since admitted his error.

[wtmusic]

9. He's wrong, and the Japanese were right.

There's been no acute fatality risk from Fukushima. No one has died, and the highest estimated risk from radiation (workers at the reactor early on) is mortality of one in twenty.

We should not talk about small probabilities? That's all the insurance industry does.

Taleb sounds like a totally self-absorbed moron in love with the sound of his own rhetoric.

[PamW]

10. Testimony to Congress

Here's the testimony to Congress by the eminent radiation epidemiologist, Dr. John Boice:

http://www.hps.org/documents/John_Boice_Testimony_13_May_2011.pdf

Dr. Boice testifies:

The health consequences for Japanese workers and public appear to be minor

The health consequences for United States citizens are negligible to nonexistent

Don't settle for just any old "health professional", there are some that are driven more by their politics than by any concerns for giving unbiased information.

Radiation epidemiologists are the professional scientists that are devoted to the scientific study of radiation on public health. Dr. Boice is one of the most stellar.

PamW

[joshcryer]

17. That article is written by Elaine Hirsch.

The population of Fukushima Prefecture is 2 million. Therefore there was a 2 in 1 chance that a Fukushima Prefecture resident would be affected by a nuclear incident every year.

This is why Gen II/III/III+ nuclear reactors are not viable, as they have too low of a probability assessment. Far too low. The author even talks about "small probabilities" which the Fukushima reactors, archaic technology, were depending on.

Lower chance than being killed by lightening. There are 24k deaths by lightening every year. By that measure nuclear power should be blowing up every day. It's horribly low. You need levels so high as to be so improbable as the planet exploding or something like that.

[waddirum]

12. let's talk safety procedures

"The best way to change public opinion about the likelihood of nuclear accidents is to make more information available not only about the safety procedures in nuclear reactors, but also about the true causes of recent nuclear accidents"

GE and TEPCO certainly have volumes of written safety procedures for all scenarios, I'm quite sure.

I would love for someone to show me the written procedures which state that sea water be pumped into the reactors and SFPs. Does such a thing exist? Or was this stop-gap measure just improvised?

What is a plant like Palo Verde requires supplemental emergency cooling? There is no body of water (fresh or saline) with which to pump.

What happens if the earthen dams which hold together many current cooling ponds washes out? What "safety procedures" will mitigate that?

[wtmusic]

13. Palo Verde uses treated sewage from Phoenix for cooling

which are stored 125 acres of reservoirs. The reservoirs are lined with soil-cement so even if there was a leak there is no possibility of them "washing out".

Re: Fukushima, sea water was used as a stop-gap measure. The earthquake was a once-in-a-millenium occurence so it makes little sense to plan around them. As it turned out, stop-gap measures prevented any radiation-related fatalities from occurring.

[waddirum]

14. earthquakes and tsunamis are NOT once-in-a-millenium occurrences

They are well known phenomena, that are part of Japanese history, literature, and art. Japanese Wood Block Prints are full of wave and tsunami imagery.

There is a saying in physics: "That which is not forbidden is Compulsory".

Regarding Palo Verde, it doesn't take much imagination to come up with scenarios whereby Phoenix can no longer delivery the needed quantity of treated sewage for Palo Verde. Nor does it take much imagination to envision scenarios whereby a cooling reservoir gets destroyed (i.e. liquefaction during an earthquake).

[wtmusic]

15. My mistake - 9.0 earthquakes in Japan are even less frequent

Earthquakes and tsunamis aren't once-in-a-millenium occurrences. But the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake was not just any earthquake, was it? In fact it was the strongest recorded earthquake in Japanese history - going back to 624. That means you'd possibly have to go back millenia to see something as bad. "Once in several millenia..." - I stand corrected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan

If you've been watching "Independence Day" or "Armageddon" for the fourteenth time it might not take much imagination to come up with frightful ways Phoenix could dissemble into a nightmarish, nuclear hell, or how a 125-acre lake could suddenly disappear beneath the Sonoran Desert. But when we look at how real life works - outside movie theaters - it's not that scary at all. Phoenix is the second-safest city in the country when it comes to natural disasters, and no earthquake in recorded history has caused deaths or injuries anywhere in Arizona.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/arizona/history.php

If you want to worry be my guest, but it's pretty pointless. Fortunately scientists are making most of the policy calls.

[kristopher]

16. At Fukushima #1 plant the earthquake was barely above specs.

The record breaking event was 100 miles away and the earthquake was only marginally above design specifications for the plant.
The table released by TEPCO comparing the earthquake's actual directional forces at the Fukushima #1 site to the reactor's design specs:


More at: http://www.democraticunderground.com/11271543#post1

[FBaggins]

18. So? The tsunami was well above "specs"

That plus the fact that the earthquake was WELL above "specs" for the power grid... Is what caused the disaster.

And the earthquake caused the tsunami of course.. So the magnitude at the epicenter is entirely relevant.