is curious what happens to nuclear power, many long advocated an end, while from not so long ago many venture a joyful rebirth: neither of the two options has materialized. At the end of this paper may understand why.
I. - Reactions to the accident: the perception of risk.
aside the demagogic reactions, from the purely electoral Angela Merkel to be expected from environmental organizations, anchored in a foundational ideology them inevitably leads to contradiction.
I'm more interested, for example, the subsequent actions of some representatives of both the nuclear industry and academia, which left much to be desired (not all), and who wanted to believe that everything was under control and that the thing was not deal. Again, the nuclear world lost an opportunity to generate public confidence and gain credibility they have never won at all. I say this with pain, because once I was part of that world. Because
to the public with little real knowledge of the operation of a reactor and the radioactivity, but widely publicized by the headlines and the historical memory of Chernobyl, the facts were being very, very alarming. Enough to forget about the 10,000 dead of the earthquake and tsunami, and focus on the evacuees, the radioactivity of lettuce and dolphins with three eyes.
What has happened, obviously, is that has changed our perception of risk . While nothing happens, we all accept a greater or lesser extent we run a risk when performing an activity, whether driving on a road or using a nuclear-generated electricity. And it must be that the benefits more than compensate us for the risks involved, although we have no clear awareness of these risks. But when something happens, we forget that there was an underlying risk (someone has calculated or estimated) and that we were accepting the risk of tacitly. When an accident occurs, the risk is confirmed and our reaction is to maximize it, just as until then we'd probably minimized.
Does it make sense this reaction, particularly that of many countries that have been put to question its nuclear programs? In my opinion, there is little reason for this question. For any, would have to conclude that the calculations on the probability of an accident with which they are designed nuclear plants are poorly made. Can I deduct this from Fukushima accident? Some say yes, but will require further analysis, nothing makes us think that the probability associated with the occurrence and intensity of earthquakes, which are consulted experts in geology, is wrong, good or regular ... simply is that driving, is one of the disposal at this level of knowledge.
We must remember that all industrial activity has risks must be estimated by calculating odds. The Probabilistic Risk more advanced, in fact, is possibly the nuclear world, and has led the security protocols (safeguards, procedures, redundant systems ...) more stringent industry with the aviation world. This is not to say that after a major accident does not take the opportunity to review the protocols and try to close those "gaps" where you can brew a catastrophe: it was done after Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, and is being done after Spanair plane accident at Barajas ... and so will the Air France plane crashed in the middle of the Atlantic ... and also after Fukushima. Therefore
: "review of protocols? Lessons learned? Of course. Questioning nuclear power? Questioning commercial aviation? It will be for other reasons, but not this ...
II .- The measurement of risk: earthquakes impossible and Cauchy goalkeeper.
Okay, try to bring something new to debate. What if after all if there was anything to question? In the final analysis, the Probabilistic Risk are tight does not mean they can not be improved.
analysis ramble is the worst possible events that may occur, which ends by assigning a probability. Many of these probabilities, such as major earthquakes, we estimate very small (one every 1,000 years or every 10,000 ...).
The problem is that for these rare events have no historical record to allow an accurate estimate. Moreover, most of the time I can not even assign a probability distribution: simply I have no idea what may look like its probability distribution. This becomes a problem of risk measurement in a problem dealing with uncertainty. For more inri , the occurrence of one of these rare events often have a catastrophic impact, whether economic or in human lives. This should make us take these estimates carefully, and when events are estimated to occur once every 1000 years occur twice in a century, perhaps we should conclude that the risks associated with rare events are severely underestimated. Is the argument that Joseph Stiglitz argues in this post , Fukushima and comparing the financial meltdown, though he seems to conclude that the business world doing it on purpose.
I prefer to think that is a problem limits of knowledge, at least in the industrial world (by the financier did not put my hand into the fire). When we estimate the frequency of an event, there is a natural tendency to consider its probability distribution as a Gaussian , mainly because it allows a mathematical treatment more or less straightforward, and gives us a (false) sense of uncertainty that we have mastered. Unfortunately, both the social and the natural world often show not fit a Gaussian distribution, but what is called "fat tails distributions ." These distributions are known for some time, and its main characteristic is that they allow the frequent occurrence of events that dramatically impact the average, moving from its place. Is very different from the bell curve, in which the likelihood of events far from the average drops rapidly and these, if any, hardly influence the average value.
To illustrate the behavior of a distribution of fat tails let me use an example developed by the mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy: a goalkeeper, blindfolded, placed before a target painted on a wall infinitely long. The archer shoots randomly at the target, and if we think it fits a bell curve, most of his shots would fall around the center and only a few deviate much. After a sufficiently large number of shots, their average score will stabilize near the center of the target, with a standard stable. But this is not what happens in reality is that many shots of an archer who shoots are blind large deviations of hundreds of meters, enough to change the average after each shot, the score never stabilizes to an average in a predictable and consistent variation around this average.
Many social phenomena and the most fascinating thing for me, too many natural phenomena appear to satisfy these fat tails distributions from the Nile floods, avalanches of snow ... even earthquakes. And whatever we say is that they are not totally random events, in the sense of a coin toss, but equipped with a second level of randomness deeper and difficult to understand.
Unfortunately, I think little we can say at present fat tails distributions allow us to better estimate the risks, it is a field of knowledge in development. What we can conclude, as Stiglitz, as Mandelbrot and Nassim Taleb ... is that possibly the risk of these events are currently heavily underestimated.
III .- The future is not what it was ...
After the brief digression in the previous section (which only allows the Nobel Prize or bloggers with no readers), put back the grounded. It is absurd to claim that the accident in Fukushima is not a blow (One more) to the already doubtful "nuclear renaissance" ... but I do better or worse estimate of the probability of an unexpected event is the key to determine its future.
The key is at another point, and it happened so that we ensured that it was virtually impossible: all redundant safety systems have proved inadequate to prevent serious damage to the nucleus and the expulsion of radioactivity outside. True, the earthquake and tsunami have exceeded all expectations, are "impossible" events ... but as we see, the "impossible" events happen more often it seems, and can happen again. We are assured, however, that even in the face "unimaginable" there were many safeguards that could not fail all at once or one after another. However, we have seen that they can fail.
some extent, much of the nuclear power plant safety is based on serious events which may affect the core may not occur (basically, all costs to keep your cool). Then once they occur, we are seeing how difficult it is to drive a severely damaged heart and prevent a certain amount of radioactivity was blowing out. I have no doubt that, after months of analysis quiet about what happened, long after the reactor to stabilize the situation, take measures on redundant systems to help improve the safety of all plants of the world. It's time for engineering, again. However, I am skeptical that the security level to be reached to achieve with the current reactor technology a qualitative leap to make to change the public perception. Not enough, of course, to ensure sosodicho "nuclear renaissance." At best (and not recently), is incrementally improve the safety of existing plants, clearly intended to prolong life if we want energy cheap and low CO 2 .
Can there be something after this hard blow Fukushima, actually causing a renaissance of nuclear energy? You might also: oil.
IV .- Oil Can nuclear energy save?
me Let me explain. We concluded in the previous section (in case any reader had not misled account) that the development of reactor technology appears to have reached a "plateau " of stagnation ... at least in terms of commercial deployment. New projects such as the Olkiluoto in Finland, flag Nuclear Renaissance and many countries followed carefully for the duration, cost and subsequent operation of the project are giving alarming signals to the industry for its management complexity and costs skyrocketing.
industry long ago, and especially the academic world, promises another reactor concept: smaller, more manageable, intrinsically safe, with less waste ... projects that a company can undertake without embarking on a high-risk megainversión associated costs and time for the regulatory uncertainty that often accompanies in most countries and the opposition of part of the population.
But for this type of reactor , only half think, can ever be really needed R & D and Innovation, a lot of innovation. What can we say about innovation in recent years in the nuclear field? Well, we know almost nothing, because the developments are often secret ... but what we can do is use the EPO / OECD World Patent Statistical Database (PATSTAT) to examine the number of patents associated with the nuclear field as a proxy of innovations in this field. Makes the Ecole des Mines de Paris in this article . Here are some of their graphics:
It can be seen from Chernobyl fell sharply patents through 2005 can be said to have stalled, at least compared with the strong growth through 1984 came from taking, including TMI accident .
is even more relevant, however, the following chart, we can observe strong correlation between oil prices and the number of inventions in the nuclear field.
This is logical not think I can surprise: when the acquisition cost of imported oil by refinery begins to rise, they also tend to raise grants and subsidies to R & D of alternative energy, including nuclear.
The important question now is: in an environment of strong growth in oil prices, with great potential that remains high (in the setting of 100-105 $ / bbl for the coming years according to the IEA) ... will it help this as a lever for Nuclear Research, and by extension for the possible development of a new industry, despite the accident in Fukushima?
This question, friend reader, is open to your opinions ... in this, we are all blind goalkeeper Cauchy.
UPDATE 04/05/1911: Watch where the boys of European Energy Policy Blog point a few numbers that show how the actual frequency of accidents with core damage turns out to be quite higher than mentioning the PRAs (probabilistic risk). This supports the thesis that the odds may be miscalculated and should be reviewed.
