Downplaying the problem at TMI is not good but neither is overplaying the problem at TMI while ignoring the obvious problems other energy sources have. Some people have been shouting about the dangers of nuclear power, real and imagined, for so long that a lot people accept without question that it is too dangerous. They write it off without even thinking about it because ‘eveybody’ knows how dangerous it is. That is not good. We need to look at all our energy options and do so in a rational mannor.
BTW, I just sent an email to my Dad asking him for his thoughts on TMI and the safety systems at the time. I am not sure when I’ll get a response, he is on a trip. He was flown in the day after the accident and was asked to head the clean up at one point. He ran the Sandia National Labs Nuclear Reactor Saftey division.
What is name of the NRC guy who wrote the book? I probably know him, or at least met him. My summer vacations when I grew up were going to wherever the American Nuclear Society and NRC meetings were. My Dad worked during the week while we went sightseeing, though he’d go out with us on weekends. I’ve been to 43 states thanks to the NRC and ANS.
Slee
I still have Nuclear News (an American Nuclear Society magazine) socks that I picked up somewhere along the way. I use them as string cleaners. Them ANS people sure made some good socks, those things are like 20 years old.
If memory serves me right , the Karen Silkwood story was about companies covering up inferior welds ,covering up deficiencies and stopping squeelers. The companies are after profits and the American way is at any cost. We have to pay the ultimate price .They will be as safe as we force them to be. And it is very likely they will cheat to maximize profits. Enron and other power companies haveshown contemptible practices and you want to trust them. They buy off the regulators and make the laws by buying the polititians. Sorry i am not comfortable with them.
Take the nuclear plants out of the private enterprise sector. They are so dangerous that the profit motive has to be removed. All energy should be done by the government.
OTOH, there is a valid reason to be concerned about pumping cooling-tower water back into the river or lake it came from: Having been used to cool the reactor, it’s warmer. Raising the temperature of a natural body of water could really disrupt its ecosystem.
Or hydrogen-powered cars. Nuke plants could generate the electricity to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen. But there’s a lot of technical obstacles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle
As for batteries . . . In his novel Friday, Robert Heinlein envisioned a future revolutionized by the “shipstone,” a battery (named for its inventor) of practically unlimited storage capacity. No more need for power lines – every building’s power grid can run off a shipstone in the basement. Assuming it needs a power grid – appliances can run off miniature shipstones. Of course, that was a “black box” technology without even a theoretical basis suggested. A while ago I started a thread inquiring if such a thing is possible. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315535&highlight=shipstone Nobody could say it is. Unless, perhaps, they come up with room-temperature superconductors.
Until we crack one or the other – or until we redesign our whole built environment to make us less automobile-dependent – the U.S. economy will remain dangerously dependent on cheap imported oil.
This wasn’t cooling tower water. It was swimming pool water. There was a beta radiation source at the bottom of a pool. Dumping this water into the sewer system would be the exact same as draining a regular pool (well, to be exact, a pool full of water that is about as radioactive as beer). Further more, as I stated, the outrage *wasn’t * because warm water might disrupt the ecosystem of the sewer system, the outrage was because the water was ‘radioactive’.
A bigger point is that EVERYTHING we do is going to change the ecosystem in some way or another. The question should be what things are going to do the least amount of damage.
I think it was at San Onofre that the warming of the sea by cooling water changed the local ecosystem. Whether the change was “bad” or “good”, I don’t know. “Good” is what I’ve heard.
Modern reactors use pretty much all the heat they generate.
I think there was some confusion on my part. When I responded to BrainGlutton about dumping water. I was thinking of one specific incident and he was speaking in general. In any case, if dumping warm coolant water is a big concern it is an easy problem to fix, just let the water stand for a while before dumping into whatever lake/river/ocean you need to put it in.
I did get a response from my Dad about TMI and the safety systems. I asked him specifically if the saftey systems were 'dangerously inadequate’. He said:
Frankly, I am suprised he doesn’t remember the initator. He generally has a pretty good memory but it has been over twenty-six years and he has been retired for quite a while.
The idiots built a plant on the San Andreas fault for crying out loud.; The waste products will be shipped around the country. Enron and peolple like that want to build them. Sixty minutes did a story on a series of tanks that are being built by Halliburton . The welds are sub standard and they have been building thejm for years with huge over runs and construction problems. Enron is out of business but their spawn are still in power.
I use the USPS whenever possible. They are efficient and cheap. First class mail is a hell of a bargain, as is parcel post. They level out the cost of a highly variable service. I can send a letter to the wilds of Rhode Island for less than I earn in one minute’s work. That’s why I, inspired by your post, suggested them as a business model for the nuclear power industry.
mangeorge
